January 2008
"Our business is becoming more entrepreneurial all... →
Via Romenesko: “Entrepreneurial skills are essential for all journalists these days,” says UC Berkeley j-prof Marcia Parker. “Our business is becoming more entrepreneurial all the time. I don’t think j-schools do enough in this field. Many of our students are hungering for these skills. While not everyone will want to start their own businesses, they need to understand that...
The new news map →
Go to Google News. Go ahead, do it now. I’ll wait. Look at the lead story. As I write this, it’s about McCain beating Romney in Florida. After a few links to the usual suspects (the Times, CNN, USA Today), it offers to show me “all 3,959 news articles” related to McCain’s Florida victory. That story will also be the A1 story in almost every paper in the country...
"Go-bama!" →
That’s Roosevelt, lying in bed not sleeping, instead shouting out support for Barack Obama. That’s our boy. “Go-bama” indeed.
monetize vs making money →
37 Signals’ David Heinemeier Hansson (the creator of Ruby on Rails) takes a hard shot at corporate web culture: Only in the perverted world of the web can something as simple and fundamental as making money be in need of a fancy word like “monetize”. The most basic principle of business doesn’t need an exotic dress and an academic hat. Just a pair of working gloves.
Brilliant.
Do you raise chickens or goats? →
I’m looking for a local source of free range/pastured eggs and/or fresh goat milk that I can buy weekly for my family, either right now or as Spring approaches. If you raise animals and have some dairy and/or eggs to share, I would love to set up an arrangement with you and can probably gather additional people together, if you’re interested.
If you’ve never been here, then you...
Undersea arts and crafts →
Cart car! →
Bike practice →
splish splash →
One upside of three days of rain is plenty of puddles to splash in! Here’s Roosevelt going at it in a puddle just outside our kitchen door.
NY Times mobile fumble →
Odd that I blogged about the advances in mobile text in Japan earlier today, the same day the New York Times announced a major new text-message based initiative. While at a surface level, it’s a step in the right direction, the Times marches straight into the limitations forced on text messages by US cell carriers, according to Text and Ideas’ Nick Martin: The Times ran out of room....
Up so high with Jennifer! →
Learning to snowboard →
Goin' Mobile →
Five of the 10 bestsellers in Japan last year were novels written and read on mobile phones. Why Japan? The boom appeared to have been fueled by a development having nothing to do with culture or novels but by cellphone companies’ decision to offer unlimited transmission of packet data, like text-messaging, as part of flat monthly rates.
That’s all. Just a simple realization that putting a...
Keeping paid content alive →
Rupert Murdoch might be a total creepshow, but he’s also the last hope for paid content on the web, according to Romenesko: “We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of the Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering” for subscribers, he says. “The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you,...
EveryBlock runs circles around other HyperLocal... →
EveryBlock, a local news site, launched today and poses an interesting question:In dense, bustling cities like Chicago, New York and San Francisco, the number of daily media reports, government proceedings and local Internet conversations is staggering. Every day, a wealth of local information is created — officials inspect restaurants, journalists cover fires and Web users post photographs...
Steve Jobs and Larry Page: can you imagine the... →
Drive down posh Waverly Avenue in Palo Alto and, just north of California Avenue, you’ll pass the private residences of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Larry Page who, like some kind of Silicon Valley sitcom, actually live across the street from one another! What kind of awkward borrow-a-cup-of-sugar conversations do you think these guys have? Or what about when one of the Jobs children...
New York Times buys into WordPress →
The New York Times today announced that they helped to finance a $29.5 million stake in the for-profit arm of the opensource blogging software WordPress. While WordPress is great—it’s the blogging software I tell most people starting out to use—I’m at a loss to understand how buying into its parent company is going to give the Times a distinct advantage over other media...
Chicago street misses Punk Planet, collapses →
CHICAGO—The street just outside the old Punk Planet office collapsed yesterday, after nearly six months of missing the magazine. 80 feet of street and sidewalk gave way, and the street’s tears flooded nearby businesses and parked cars. A spokesperson from the former magazine apologized for the inconvenience caused by the brokenhearted roadway.
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Multitasking →
twitter as "microjournalism" →
None other than the New York Times weighs in on Twitter as a tool for journalists to log mini reports from the presidential campaign trail. It’s nice to see the technology behind Twitter being used in productive ways, as it too often resembles riding on a train with everyone talking on cell phones—the signal to noise ratio is often just too damn poor. But it’s not a standalone...
Lunch break →
Whale watching →
Duck spotting in sonoma →
Hey crab man! →
Hanging around →
Giant stumps! →
hacking citizen journalism →
Mother Jones has an interesting take on the downside of newspapers embracing citizen journalism: If the elitist fortress-newsroom mentality held John Q. Public at arm’s length, it also kept PR flacks and unqualified hacks out of the newsroom. By forcing their beleaguered staffs to depend on outsiders for content, then running the content without much editorial oversight, newspapers may be...
Roosevelt's aquarium →
Coloring fish →
broken ipod!! for sale i duno whats wrong with it... →
pleas buy my ipod, it is the very 1st one and i don’t know what’s wrong with it. so if u want to buy it for 30 o.b.o then thats fine .. pleas e-mail me. tnks for looking
The thing about this ad isn’t the horrendous number of typos (wood it kill u to proofreed?), but instead the fact that it obscures the fact that he jacked the price of a broken ipod by $10 from the title...
"Why are the tears coming?" →
That was Roosevelt tonight, as he dramatically wiped at his eyes, 14 hours after he woke up, at the end of a day where he went to his music class, to preschool, and then to a goodbye dinner for his Hungarian friend David—all with no nap. It wasn’t really a question of why they were coming, but why they took so long! Of course, loading him sniffling and weeping into the car at the end...
more on the power of the commons →
Sometimes I hit “publish” too quickly, before a thought has completely matured—that’s certainly the case with the previous post. Because yeah, the Library of Congress photos are cool and all, but what’s it got to do with journalism? Ultimately, everything. It’s a grand idea, harnessing users to do the heavy lifting on a project: it saves both money and time,...
the power of the commons →
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } G. Washington’s teeth (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress today announced a partnership with photo-sharing site Flickr to upload digital reproductions of thousands of...
two new books from Punk Planet Books
I may be away from work for a year, but that doesn’t mean that the awesomeness at Punk Planet Books has stopped. I’m happy to report that two fantastic books (one edited by me) are now up on the newly-updated Punk Planet Books site. They are You Must Be This Happy to Enter a collection of short stories by Chicago author Elizabeth Crane, and We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet, the...
Free *broken* Apple 65W Portable Power Adapter →
Technically, it may still work — I stopped using it because one day I plugged it in and quickly noticed a faint smell of burning electronics. … so I decided that someone else may want to set their house on fire, so I’m giving this away!
new medium = new metrics →
Jeff Jarvis looks at how various internet metrics allow unique looks into the popularity of various presidential candidates. In addition to a unique look at the election, it’s also a great crib sheet for how to compile metrics about just about anything.
Tossing rocks →
Climbing at the pacific →
Roosevelt's dream journal →
This morning Roosevelt said to me and Janice, “I had a tiny, tiny dream last night.” Really, we asked. What was it about? “A tea cup talking to a watermelon.” Really, what did the tea cup say? “I’m sorry!”
MAGAZINES WANTED →
I WANT A FEW RECENT (SINCE 2000) ISSUES OF HUSTLER AND PENTHOUSE MAGAZINES. MORE RECENT THE BETTER. BUT I’M NOT PAYING COLLECTOR PRICES - JUST OLD - DO NOT NEED TO BE IN MINT CONDITION.
It is truly staggering to me how much porn changes hands on Craigslist. But this ad, with its ALL CAPS immediacy and its insistence that the magazines DO NOT NEED TO BE IN MINT CONDITION may be the creepiest...
Rock climbing! →
"it looks like rain" →
Projections! →
On top of the world →