December 31, 2002
NOTE: I see that Dive into Mark just gave me a link to this post on vlogs or video weblogs. The link to my showcase, below, does not work. Try these links:
- Buzzmachine vlogs... Buzzmachine vlogs at Screenblast....]
Vlogs: The state of the art
: I've spent my holiday vacation playing with vlogs -- video weblogs -- to learn what this can do for work (I imagine high-school kids giving sports reports) and for pleasure (that is, this blog). The lessons come here and there and so as vacation ends, I'm pulling together the lessons and links in this post.
I also just put up two new vlogs (with scripts below, where you can also leave comments... be kind) -- one about year-end media cliches and one about the fading fast-food culture. You can get to both, and my three maiden video voyages as well -- at www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine.
Some of the lessons:
: Vlogs are about somebody saying something. That's why the ability to work off a script and read off a teleprompter in Serious Magic's software is critical enabling technology. This isn't just about staring at a camera and trying to think of something to say; it's not about the live camboys and camgirls (to answer Jason Kottke); it's about at least trying to say something. Vlogs are to cams as blogs are to web pages and forums: They are produced, edited, throught-through; they have a point.
: There are two reasons why something should be on video instead of in print: the need for (1) graphics and illustration or (2) expression and inflection. Here, too, Serious Magic helps because it allows very easy click-and-drop insertion of graphics tied to your words (rather than to a clock).
: I'm still trying to find the right voice for these things. I know that right now, they're either embarrassing (my sacrifice for my art) or merely imitations of bad TV. But I'm starting to feel comfortable with the form. And I'll repeat what I said when I started this: Vlogging lets us online go up against our true competitors -- not news organizations and reporters but commentators, especially on TV (on Sunday morning, on Fox, on 60 Minutes). Bloggers compete with columnists; vloggers compete with pundits.
But that's just one voice that will work. Put these tools in the hands of young people with something new to say and a new way to say it and I know we will be wowed.
: Bandwidth is the enemy, but the enemy will be vanquished. When Glenn Reynolds linked to my vlogs, the crush of simultaneous users brought my server down. I solved that, for now, by using Sony's Screenblast. But I am confident that bandwidth will improve on the viewer's side of the pipe and get much cheaper on the server's side.
My links re vlogging so far:
: Introducing vlogging.
: How to vlog.
: To watch my vlogs go to my "showcase" at www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine.
: The drumbeat for Lileks TV.
Others' links on vlogging:
: Glenn Reynolds includes multimedia blogging in his look at the year online.
: Justin Katz responds to my vlog with a vlog of his own raising questions about the ease and interactivity of the form. (My response.)
: Alex Knapp also doubts. (My response.)
: David Galbraith defends the future of vlogs and foresees armies of bloggerazzi.
: Howard Sherman says the young will be the ones to innovate here.
: Henry Copeland sees convergence in vlogging and Gawker.
: A Dutch filmmaker's experiment in vlogging (more artsy, less scripted).
: An MIT Media Lab researcher, Aisling Kelliher, also experiments with video weblogging here.
: Macromedia folks videoed a recent conference here.
: The Shifted Librarian wants the text in RSS. Well, I'm halfway there: putting text up; RSS next.
: He hates the idea (because it ruins the off-the-cuff casualness of blogs) and so does he.
: Finally, I'm proud of this one: When I started this blog, the first snarky anti-me post online came from Follow Me Here. And now he's snarking at vlogging. I must be onto something.
: UPDATE: I'll try to keep this up-to-date with further links...
: Henry Copeland has a kind review of three of the vlogs.
: More kind words from Sean Kirby.
Vlog: Fast food fades
: Here's a vlog on the decline of fast food from a guy who was raised on the stuff; at last 6' of my 6'4" was built on fat, sugar, starch (and protein) from McDonald's.
You can see the blog here: www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine; click on the Big Mac.
The script (click on "more" for the rest):
I am a child of many parents: a child of the sixties... of TV... of the Cold War... of Sputnik... of rock 'n' roll... and also of fast food.
Ronald McDonald was a father figure to me. I was raised on burgers 'n' fries.
But now I fear that fast food -- the true American cuisine -- is in decline.
Consider:
> McDonald's just posted its first loss in 47 years and its CEO is slinking away.
> Meanwhile, Burger King is being sold for a mere $1.5 billion dollars. That's less than 1 buck for each of the 2.4 billion burgers BK sells annually.
Starbucks is worth five times more -- and it doesn't feed people, it only caffeinates them.
> McDonald's is being sued for making Americans fat, as if we are a people force-fed like French geese.
> At the same time, the two burger behemoths are fighting it out with dollar-menus that discount their core products into unprofitability.
> Finally, desperately, McDonald's now plans to monkey with the formula for its basic burger.
(No, they're not going to introduce meat.) They're going to spice up the taste and buff up the bun.
> You have to worry about a company that both discounts and changes it core product.
You also have to worry about a company that can't decide what its core products are. McDonald's spent a fortune to market a new flatbread chicken sandwich -- only to pull it off the market (just as I was getting addicted to it)... and now they're spending another fortune to REintroduce it.
I smell trouble.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I love American fast food.
Sure, be snotty about it: Be French.
But the truth is that even the French crave consistency as we do: Walk into any French boit and order a croque monsieur and it will be like every one other croque monsieur; it is the Gaellic Big Mac.
For the price, speed, and quality, nothing beats American fast food. I just wasted an hour in Friendly's -- thanks to my kids -- only to have a gawdawful, overpriced, lukewarm, chewy/soggy chicken sandwich -- and I had to leave a tip for the privilege.
I'll take Mickey D's or BK any day.
Fast food is a great invention of American economic ingenuity.
But it is failing.
And I'm not sure why.
It could be that these companies simply jumped the culinary shark, changing their products too often, or not paying attention to Ray Kroc's god: quality control.
Or it could be that something fundamental is changing in America and the world: our taste is changing -- or even more basic, our loyalty to brands is changing.
Look at the brands having trouble these days:
> McDonald's... Burger King... Coke... Campbell's Soup... even The Gap...
What ties these brands together?
My generation of Baby Boomers grew up with them.
Now we're growing old ... and so are these brands.
So the problem may not be that the burger culture is fading... It may be that the Boomer culture is fading.
Somebody, please pass me the Tums.
Vlog: Year-end media cliches
: Here's a vlog on the media's -- especially TV's -- parade of cliches that come at the end of every year.
Go to www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine.com.
Here's the script (click on "more" if you can bear it):
If you want to worry about the state of news media today -- if you want to fret that news is turning into a commodity -- all you have to do is watch TV news or read papers at the end of a year and you will see the worst -- the most predictable -- media cliches replayed again and again.
Since this is the season of lists, I give you my list of year-end news cliches:
1. The pre-Christmas shopping story: Will retailers make their numbers? We'll see!
2. The White Christmas story: Will it snow? I dunno. We'll see!
3. The bonus snow story: If it actually does snow, what does the city do? It sands... It salts... It plows... It digs out.
4. The holiday driving story:
If we don't remind you to be careful out there, you may forget and kill yourself!
5. The POST-Christmas shopping story: Surprise! It's the busiest shopping day of the year! Now THAT'S news.
6. The year-end tax story: If you didn't know that you should give to charity and sell some stock before the end of the year, well then you're probably too poor to worry about it anyway.
7. The pre-New Year's story: Times Square gets ready to drop that ball...
8. The holiday driving story, redux: In case you didn't listen the last time, we'll tell you again: Drive carefully!
9. The hangover story: If you drink too much on New Year's Eve, here's what do to about it on New Year's Day.
But if you're that brain-dead, why do we want you in our demographic, anyway?
10. Finally, the year-end list, in which editors chose the top stories ... even though no one asked them to.
And that's the way it is in media, year-end after stultifying year.
Remember the Seinfeld wheelchair episode when George...?
: The most entertaining story I've read in ages: A shoplifter in a wheelchair leads a low-speed chase from the scene of the crime in Norway. A wheelchair-bound woman didn't let her handicap hinder her escape after she was spotted shoplifting in a western Norwegian town Monday. She simply gave full power to her motorized wheelchair and sped off, crashing through a glass door and literally shaking off pursuers along the way.
Shocked witnesses at the Co-op grocery store in Sandnes, outside Stavanger, described the incident as a scene taken right out of a Hollywood action film...."I managed to catch up with her and grabbed onto the chair's handles, but could only hang on for 100 meters or so," Nes told newspaper VG. "She sharply turned the chair and we nearly crashed into a car. I fell off and couldn't take any more."
Three other employees continued the chase, which moved on from the parking lot to a busy city street. "She was driving like a maniac," said Asle Hellvik. "When she headed out into the street against a red light, several cars had to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting her." Guess who won...
Listless
: I hate New Year's lists and so here are some of them:
: Fimoculous lists his best sites. I find the list uninspired; Nick Denton doesn't.
: Karl Martino has the mondo list of lists.
: J.D. Lassica lists lists of top stories.
: I make fun of lists on a vlog.
: Andrew Sullivan goes on as long as the damned Oscars with his year-end awards. Then Mickey Kaus calls it like it is: "Does reading Andrew's blog have to be like reading Pravda?"
: Herewith Mad Magazine's list of the dumbest people, events, and things of 2002.
: Here's the best list of 2002, from Textism.
December 30, 2002
President Hillary Clinton
: The great thing about the right-wing demonizing Bill Clinton is that they only ended up beatifying his Mrs., Hillary Clinton -- or at least making her sympathic and human. They set her up for her Senate victory. They set her up for her run for the White House.
Laugh if you will. Ignore it if you try. But the Hillary bandwagon is starting to roll.
A week ago, she topped a Time/CNN poll of possible Democratic candidates for the presidency.
And now a Gallup poll says she is the most admired woman in America (edging Mrs. Bush and Ms. Winfrey).
Sure, some people hate her. But they're going to hate her no matter what -- and their hatred only endears her to Democrats.
But plenty admire her, clearly. Many sympathize with her. And many actually agree with her (every damned time they have to deal with idiotic, wasteful, even deadly practices by insurance companies and doctors).
Could it be Condi Rice vs. Hillary Clinton in '04 or '08?
More VLOGS!
: Just what you've been hankering for: two more VLOGs (video weblogs).
One counts down year-end media cliches.
The other examines the fading fortunes of fast food.
Both of them are up at my screenblast showcase: www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine.
By putting them there, instead of on my server, I don't have to worry about bandwidth constipation. So go ahead, Instapundit, link away: You can't bring me down now!
I'll post more about them -- and complete transcripts -- along with a summing up of where I am after my first five VLOGs tomorrow....
Blog imperialism
: Freenet.de, a German homepage service, now offers easy weblogs. My test: Buzzmachine auf Deutsch.
: As recent links would indicate, I'm finding a lot of good weblog work in Germany lately.
When technology was hot, I found that the Germans waited about six months until we'd worked some bugs out and then took over a technology and smoothed it out. Same pattern now with weblogs.
Some of the better veblogs:
: Der Shockwellenreiter -- by Jörg Kantel; sort of a German cross of Glenn/Doc/Cory.
: randgänge -- by Thomas N. Burg, who's organizing the BlogTalk conference in Vienna next spring.
: Ein Blog -- by Hanjo Iwanowitsch
: Fliegen von Ferne -- by Andrea Janßen.
: Dienstraum -- about media.
: Industrial Technology & Witchcraft.
: All of this is an effort to break into new weblog neighborhoods. I love my neighborhood with Nick, Glenn, Ken, Matt, Elizabeth, et many al but you remember high school when you wanted to hang out with some new kids once in a while, just for the variety. I find it fascinating to break into a new group and find all their links and likes. It's all about discovering parallel universes -- just like watching the Bizarro Seinfeld episode.
Moblogging in the new year
: From Joi Ito's blog: We're going to have an open moblog for people to post pictures to on New Year's Eve to welcome 2003. It is "open" but please use common sense when sending stuff. The URL is http://www.bloggers.jp/. The email address to send stuff to is mailto:misoka@bloggers.jp. The site and the email address will be running between GMT 2002/12/31 0:00-23:59.
Send jpeg images as attachments with the title of the item as the subject. The template will resize the height to 120 pixels. 120x120 is probably the best size.
Pass it on. ;-)
"Misoka" comes from "Omisoka" which means New Year's Eve in Japanese.
Asked and answered
: A researcher from the University of Montreal, Sébastien Paquet is conducting a survey on the usefulness of weblogs and wikis for sharing knowledge. I took it. You should, too. The more information we as a community gather about what we do and what value it has, the better.
December 29, 2002
Iranian blog
: Thanks to the Blogtalk conference upcoming in Vienna, here is a blog on Iran by an Iranian in Canada: In English or Farsi.
Babe compass
: Shift magazine crashes a few MeetUp meets in Toronto (ending up at least hopeful about this attempt to get us bandwidth buddies, we strangers in the light, to actually see and hear and not just read each other) and finds a curious benefit to having a sign in a bar that points to bloggers, this way: At this point, two young women in bicycle gear approach our table. The word "blog," with its amputated-portmanteau quality, has piqued their interest. "What's a blogger?" Needless to say, a lengthy explanation follows.
After they walk off, Tim remarks, "This sign is a real chick magnet."...
Tim then goes out for a smoke. As the door closes behind him, another young woman approaches our table to ask what a blogger is. I shake my head, thinking to myself, "Damn, what if this thing really is a chick magnet?" : Note, too, that Canada's New York has a Toronto webloggers weblog and they use this as an excuse to get together. Hmmm. Shouldn't New York's New York have such a thing? Or is that Gawker? Then shouldn't there be meet-ups of Gawkers (or are we Gawkerites)?
: Toronto also has a restaurant blog: EatMyToronto. I'm jealous.
: And a subway blog, too.
GO... to hell
: When you're driving with your EZ-Pass in New Jersey and you see the sign tell you to "GO," you'd think you know what that means, eh? But you don't. "GO" means something's wrong and you may be getting a ticket; "GO" means it's screwed up but you should just go anyway and we'll harass you later; "GO" means just "don't stop." Welcome to the frightening mind of a New Jersey DMV bureaucrat. From today's Star-Ledger at NJ.com.
Now that you have all this type, what do you want to do with it?
: Dean Allen, the man who brought you Textile (below), also brings you a fine weblog called Textism. It's kinda sorta like y'know Lileks with a Canadian accent (I think) and a French attitude (though this guy abhors Lileks: Mr. Matter, meet Mr. Antimatter). Very good reading, in any case: A clement Sunday morning paired with the approaching end of hunting season means there’s no time like the present to pack away a few breakfast pastis, fill your flask with liquid warmth and, clad head to toe in military fatigues, head out with your yappy little dog to blammedy-blam the morning away in a vain but manly quest for scrawny pigeon and diseased rabbit or maybe just maybe a big smelly boar because that’s what you do, it’s what you’ve always done. And, putain, why not do it in my back yard you inbred hick, I mean, sure, there might be people asleep in that house, but that just shows at best a lack of initiative and at worst a lack of independent outdoorsmanship. Best let the timeless song of spattering birdshot nudge them to the correct path. If they don’t like it, bohrf, call the cops. But the nearest cops are ten kilometres away. Lunch!
More font fun
: I'm finding neat sites about typography via German weblogs (some Linotype nostalgia and Textile, both below). Here, via ein Blog, is font(p)age, a quick history of technology and type.
December 28, 2002
If only geeks loved Linotypes
: Textism gives us Textile, a tool to sand and polish the rough edges of Web typography. It will: : Replace single and double primes (' and ") used as quotation marks with HTML entities for opening and closing quotation marks (‘’ and “”) in readable text, while leaving untouched the primes required within HTML tags.
: Replace double hyphens (--) with an em-dash (—) entity.
: Replace single hyphens surrounded by spaces with an en-dash (–) entity.
: Replace triplets of periods (...) with an ellipsis (…) entity.
: Convert many nonstandard characters (ŸúߊπŒ) to browser-safe entities corresponding to keyboard input.
: Apply block- and phrase-level structural tags automatically and at the discretion of the writer via quick tags.
: Create hyperlinks and insert images via quick tags.
: Define acronyms via quick tags
: Wrap an tag around runs of three or more capital letters automatically.
: Convert (TM), (R), and (C) to ™, ®, and ©
: Convert the letter x to a dimension sign: 2x4 to 2×4 and 8 x 10 to 8×10
: Find the first person who broke your heart and report back on how devoid of joy their current life is.
Gizmodo withdrawl
: With Gizmodo on a vacation, I have to get my gadget fix wherever I can. Here are the latest new toys from Japan [via Lost Remote, a site that keeps getting better and better]: an in-car computer, colorful Exlim cameras, a mobile-phone-come-cell-phone,
 | I want my Lileks TV!
: And this is what it will look like (from James' natty new design).
Note that Glenn Reynolds has joined the chorus chanting:
I want my LTV! |
Bandwidth constipation
: If you're trying to watch a vlog, please use this link to see the WTC or Media/Weblog 2002 vlogs. Those are on the Sony Screenblast server. The links on my server reach a crawl if too many people try to watch at the same time (and so I temporarily disable them until things return to a normal flow).
Which leads me to this:
HELP! Does anyone have any suggestions on where I can host Windows Media Player files for a good price (starting bid: free)?
Second question: Does it make a big difference that I do not have a Windows Media server; I only put one copy of the file on my server. I'm assuming that a Windows Media server allows more simultaneous users and makes more efficient use of bandwidth. I have no desire to get a Windows Media server myself (expecially since my host is all Unix and Windows Media doesn't work on Unix... of course). But I'm assuming that if I use hosting at a facility that has the Windows Media server, the bandwidth constipation won't be so severe. Am I stupid?
: Update: For now, I am going to host all my vlogs at Sony Screenblast, which is a generous service (even if the navigation is slightly rococo). This address should work: www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine.
December 27, 2002
Bloggerazzi
: David Galbraith defends the future of vlogs and invents a new word along the way: Now imagine an SMS to blog gateway and a picture weblog posting pictures of celebrities snapped by passers by. Ubiquitous digital cameras and simple publishing will give way to a new type of Bloggerazzi - celebrities beware. Right. Tie mobile publishing tools -- text and photos -- with mob technology -- such as UPOC's cellular celebrity sightings -- and you have a publicist's nightmare.
Where we live: A German site, Bloggbox, takes the Google Zeitgeist chart and crops it to look like a colorful valley: the place where we live now.
Sex sells
: Keith Kelly in the NY Post reports that Caroline Waxler, known to many a blogger hereabouts, has sold a book: Waxler's book, "Stocking up on Sin: How to Crush the Market with Vice-based Investing," will focus on how to make lots of cash through socially irresponsible investing in things like booze, drugs, weapons, gambling and prostitution.
VLog fight
: In the world of blogs, you know you're onto something when you start reading a lot of posts arguing why you're not onto something.
I vlog and Justin Katz (below) vlogs about how vlogs won't work. Now Alex Knapp says vlogging won't work because video takes longer and because it's harder, thus evil Big Media will control it.
Quite the contrary, sir: Vlogging brings the power of video into the hands of the people. Just as Quark and blogging let anyone publish so does vlogging let anyone produce video. You're not listening to me: This new software makes it EASY. I'm not exaggerating when I said that my 6-year-old did it.
: But here's the real point. Read the comments in Knapp's post and you see a groundswell demanding Lileks on video. Now that's an idea whose time has come: Lileks TV. Repeat after me: I want my LTV! I want my LTV!
: I'm still playing with the right voice, content, and look for this idea. Of course, vlogs should not replace blogs; they are clumsier and slower. But for the right content and the right voice, vlogs will be perfect. Lileks will be perfect because he has a strong voice and he has a great graphic sense of humor and I'll be his inflection and emotion will only make his bleats even more entertaining, for example.
Searchopoly
: David Galbraith says: Expect FAST, the Norwegian company behind Alltheweb, to be acquired by Overture or possibly even Microsoft.
That will leave 3 players in online search, the rest won't matter.
Finally
: Clay Shirky reports on his confab-come-experiment in social software. [via der Schockenwellenreiter]
The BMW driving school
: Steer here.
A pot to...
: Check out the pisser of a pissoir.
December 26, 2002
My VLOG children
: Well, two snowflakes do not an avalanche make, but it's a start.
Justin Katz answers my vlogs with a vlog of his own, a neat job with some new tricks to teach this old dog (including taking a clip from my vlog and inserting it into his).
Having said that, Justin sees problems with vlogging -- cost, bandwidth, added copyright armor around video. None of that is wrong.
But I still say that for the right content and the right voice (both of which I'm still trying to find and fine-tune), vlogs will be best (and bandwidth will increase and, thanks to the software and equipment I use, costs are already coming down).
Vlogs will snowball soon enough.
: I note also in my town paper that my town -- run by tax-and-spend Republicans who act like drunk Democrats (because they are unopposed hereabouts and, as you know, power corrupts and so they spend to prove they are powerful, but I digress) -- is debating improving the free access channel it controls on my cable system. They're talking about taking $300k worth of equipment they already own AND adding $500k more AND hiring someone to run the thing, all to create something expensive (isn't that the point) that no one will watch (isn't that also the point?).
Well, folks, for a few cheap webcams and a cheap piece of software and one good high school teacher with some smart students, you can create a great channel that's also accessible on the Internet anytime you want it.
Why, we could broadcast all those committee meetings where you don't allow any debate (because you are all-powerful). That is what this revolution can bring.
: The point of this vlogging is that it will seed others' imaginations. My kids just used my software and cam to record videos for their grandparents. My 6-year-old wrote her own script and read it on the teleprompter and chose her graphics. It is THAT easy. My sister, a Presbyterian minister, looked at this and imagined the videos she could create for new members or fundraising campaigns. Glenn Reynolds has unpacked his. Justin created his own vlog. BoingBoing points to a different kind of vlogging by a Dutch filmmaker (it appears to be off the air right now). And the folks at Macromedia put up video snippets -- interviews and commentary -- from a recent conference.
My goal was to prove the concept and see where it goes from there.
New VLOG address...
: The good news is that Glenn Reynolds linked to my latest VLOG. The bad news is that Glenn Reynolds linked to my latest VLOG and it being video, the bandwidth choked like Trent Lott saying he supports affirmative action.
But I found another place to serve the video (and I'm investigating other sources).
Sony has a neat (if too neat) site called Screenblast that offers 50 megs of free storage and unlimited bandwidth. That is the good news. THe bad news? The site is as difficult to navigate as Trend Lott's morals.
But here is an address for my video showcase that should work. Go there and click on the MEDIA 2002 link and you will (I hope) get the video to which Glenn so generously links.
I've disabled the link to the vlog on my server temporarily; will reactivate it as soon as the server can breath again.
Merry Christmas to me
: My wife and I did not exchange gifts and it's terribly liberating: I buy a few things for myself. I just put in an order for a Linksys 802.11b signal booster. Corey Doctorow worried about warring networks but in the country, where I live, this just gets me through the whole house without wimpy signals. The true American motto: More power!
December 25, 2002
Beware: The season of lists is upon us
: But not all lists are bad (see the post below). Some lists are merely about bad things.
Marc Weisblott lists the year's 10 worst blogs, including himself in the list, and topping it off with the obligatory poll (no write-ins allowed). I'm still considering my vote as I think my lucky stars I didn't make the list.
Top Web Design Mistakes of 2002: No. 11
: Paying the slightest attention to Jakob Nielsen.
: In the comments, Oliver says: "I never get the anti-Nielsen feelings. In my web development efforts, his stuff is more right than others 80% of the time ..."
I reply: Just look at his site: not only ugly but unreadable: no sense of how to use size and emphasis, no sense of the need to have a focal point, no effort to help guide the user/reader/viewer/consumer. His design is the perfect representation of his attitude: arrogance.
Since you asked....
Christmas 2002
: Snow is falling here now; the earth is white against the dark. The children are in bed with their dreams. Santa is on his way. The church service is over. The candles are dark. The presents are out. The stockings are hung. There's beautiful music still on TV. And there's still a little wine left in my glass.
And I sit here wondering whether it feels like Christmas yet.
I think back to last Christmas and know that much has changed. Last year, so close to September 11th, I was a mess and only now do I know how much of a mess I was. A few weeks ago, I took our son to one of our holiday traditions: a road production of A Christmas Carol. It's warm yet cheesy. Still, last year, at every emotional cue, I was practically weepy. This year, I was just me again: stiff stuffed into those little theater seats. Last Christmas eve, I had the same problem in our church service during practically every hymn: they tore into the soul. This Christmas eve -- tonight -- I was simply worried about finding my bass notes in those same hymns.
Is Christmas returning to normal or have I grown a callous around my soul?
Last Christmas, I mourned the 3,000 dead of September 11th and feared for the future. I wrote in this weblog (in archives that have mysteriously disappeared): So 2,000 years ago, we are led to believe, strife and suffering in the Holy Land led God to send his only son to Earth to wash away our sins and give mankind the hope of a new beginning.
Now, exactly 2,000 years later, at this Christmas, there is still strife and suffering in the Holy Land and it has spread the world around, escalating to nothing less than a World War against terrorism and evil now being fought at our door.
Yes, this is a depressing thought -- not exactly the gift you were hoping for this Christmas.
It would seem as if we've made no progress in all this time. In fact, it would seem as if we've made things even worse. And if we are left still with sin and suffering and without hope, then perhaps God also made a mess of things or did what He did in vain. It can look like that.
But stop there. Now is the time -- if there ever were a time -- to look at what Christmas actually means. And I come to believe that Christmas is not about the light -- the star, the gifts, the warmth, the virtue -- but instead about the contrast, about the dark around it. Christmas is about the need for hope among the hopeless, virtue amidst sin, light in the darkness....
So Christmas is not lessened this year because it is a bad year. No, precisely because it is a bad year, Christmas is more needed, more meaningful. For Christmas is a time for the future -- for our children and for hope. This Christmas, we mourn the death of my wife's father, a wonderful man sorely missed.
I don't know whether I'm having trouble igniting Christmas because of that or because of that callous grown over the last year and a few months.
I'll probably know by next year.
Right now, I just look forward to tomorrow morning as much as my children do, in their dreams. I can't wait to share in their joy, the greater gift than our presents.
For Christmas is still Christmas for them.
I hope Christmas is still Christmas for you and yours.
Merry Christmas, my friends.
December 24, 2002
New VLOG address...
: The good news is that Glenn Reynolds linked to my latest VLOG. The bad news is that Glenn Reynolds linked to my latest VLOG and it being video, the bandwidth choked like Trent Lott saying he supports affirmative action.
But I found another place to serve the video (and I'm investigating other sources).
Sony has a neat (if too neat) site called Screenblast that offers 50 megs of free storage and unlimited bandwidth. That is the good news. THe bad news? The site is as difficult to navigate as Trend Lott's morals.
But here is an address for my video showcase that should work. Go there and click on the MEDIA 2002 link and you will (I hope) get the video to which Glenn so generously links.
I've disabled the link to the vlog on my server temporarily; will reactivate it as soon as the server can breath again.
(I repeated this post above)
A new vlog: The year in blogs and media
: I just put up another vlog that combines my view of the year in blogs with Glenn Reynolds' (below) with the item about old radio (below). I'm still experiimenting to find the right voice for these vlogs and that's why I'm using material I've already put online in print.
Please use this vlog showcase address: www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine. Alternately: I put up both a high-bandwidth version here (on a page that -- thanks to my HTMLing son -- now includes links mentioned in the VLOG and an embedded media player) and also a pretty cruddy low-bandwidth version here.
: For the script of the vlog, click the "more" linke below.
Media notes
What a year it has been for blogging.
Thanks to 9-11, this was the year when blogging passed from its founders with their tech interests to a wider world.
> Blogging will forever be part of the media record of 9-11.
> Blogging gained influence in politics this year, most notably in the Trent Lott story.
> And blogging is beginning to influence big media, giving the audience a voice and making big media listen to it.
In his review of the year in blogging, Glenn Reynolds sees a future in what you're watching right now -- call it multimedia blogging, call it vlogging -- and in mobile "mob-blogging."
Says Reynolds: "The term 'correspondent' may go back to its original meaning of 'one who corresponds' rather than 'high-paid face with good hair.' "
There's hope for me yet.
: You can gain a lot of perspective on the state of media tomorrow by listening to media yesterday...
thanks to the University of Virginia, which has put up a day's radio programming from a Washington station on September 21, 1939.
Listen to it and you will hear that the golden age of media was not then -- just as the golden age of TV was not its early vaudeville days.
The golden age is now.
> Listen to this radio and on the one hand, you will hear more vivid news writing -- because they didn't have audio and video clips and wowy graphics; old radio has a voice, as bloggers do.
> On the other hand, listen to this radio and you'll note that just sitting and listening to radio is... well, boring. That is why I never got enthused about audio blogging. That is why I am enthused about video blogging.
> Finally, listen to this old radio and you'll note that they had short attention spans back then: Most shows were 15-minutes long.
My generation is wrongly accused of decimating the nation's attention span when the truth is that 30- and 60-minute shows were invented by media companies out of economic efficiency.
I believe that the nature of the Web, the cost of bandwidth, the cost of producing programming -- and the competition for our attention spans -- will turn that around again and bring shows -- on the air or online -- back down to a rational, useful length ... like this two-minute bit of populist media.
I'm Jeff Jarvis and this is a Buzzmachine.com VLOG
The future
: Glenn Reynolds -- who better? -- looks back at the year in blogging.
And what a year this has been. Blogging passed from its founders and their tech interests into a wider world, thanks to 9.11, with more bloggers, more interests, a larger audience, and greater influence. Blogs played a part in our post-9.11 world and will forever be part of that record. They played a part in politics, most notably the Lott story. And they are beginning to play a part in media, showing a new relationship to the audience, giving the audience a new voice, finding new ways to create media.
At the end of his column, Glenn looks to the future with a generous tip of the Instapundit fedora to vlogs and mobile moblogging. What's clear is that the professionalization of journalism—a trend underway for most of the 20th Century—is now in full reverse gear, and the term "correspondent" may go back to its original meaning of "one who corresponds" rather than "high-paid face with good hair." Democratization instead of professionalization? Sounds good to me. Me, too.
December 23, 2002
Attention spans
: Thanks to the University of Virginia [via Die Zeit], here is a full day of radio programming for a Washington station on Sept. 21, 1939. Note:
: Most shows were 15 minutes long. Since when -- and why -- did 30 and 60 minutes become the standard? And why are we latter-day Americans accused of developing short attention spans? Radio back then was short and sweet -- and it was onto something. All you have to do is watch one episode of Dateline NBC that stretches a six-minute story into 60 minutes and you'll agree that TV could stand a haircut.
: The quality of the programming is not what it is cracked up to be. I have long said that the supposed Golden Age of TV was just shlocky vaudeville; this is the real Golden Age. I have been similarly suspicious of the wonders of radio. This bears out my suspicion. It has its moments (for example, the news writing on old radio is so much more vivid, since it does not rely on either pictures or sound) but all in all, what we have today beats the hell out of what they had then.
: Listening to radio is frankly boring (unless you're stuck in your car). TV is better. That is why I now push vlogs. Many of us had experimented with audio blogging but that just didn't work for me; it was boring (and a bit embarrassing) just sitting there listening to my PC. We expect more today and there's nothing wrong with that.
Yahoo-oo
: So Yahoo buys Inktomi. Says George Mannes at The Street: Yahoo!, conceivably, could use Inktomi to replace all or part of the search results it receives from Google. On the other hand, Microsoft, whose MSN portal competes with Yahoo!, may not be interested in using Inktomi's technology once it's acquired by Yahoo!, giving Google an opportunity to take Inktomi's place on MSN. Inktomi, which was a pioneer in automated Web search technology, has seen its prominence overshadowed by that of Google and its own formulas for finding relevant search results for Internet users. On the one hand, Yahoo gets a search engine cheap. On the other hand, it gets the also-ran search engine that is clearly behind Google in quality and acceptance.
December 22, 2002
Woof
: Norwegian mother takes orphaned puppies to her own breast.
Vlog revolt
I am watching Andy Rooney waste dots on a screen once again, blathering and fumbling about packaging, about a camera packed inside foam inside a box and how that is supposed to reveal something absurd about life.
YOU OLD FOOL, YOU HAVE DONE THAT EXACT SAME SHTICK A HUNDRED TIMES AND IT HAS BEEN JUST AS STUPID AND JUST AS MEANINGLESS EVERY SINGLE TIME AND YET YOU KEEP DOING IT!
Tell me that any of you could not create a vlog with far better, more meaningful, more compelling, more informative, more entertaining commentary than Andy Rooney.
Sports is just sweat
: Glenn Reynolds suggests that the World Trade Center site should be given over to a baseball stadium.
Ah, drugs, betting, and greed.
Now there is a real symbol of American corruption.
: Continuing our sports report, Tony Blair is ready to give up Britain's bid for the 2012 Olympics.
He has that right.
New York is already getting gaga over the prospect of having the Olympics.
I'm not.
They are wildly expensive.
They bring security risks to a city that does not need them.
They will overcrowd an already overcrowded town.
The games are forever tainted by drugs, gambling, greed, and politics; they are not the symbol that they once were (or that we thought they were).
Go, Tony!
: Meanwhile in Texas, they want to just go full circle and turn the Astrodome into a casino.
Bigotry by any other name
: David Warren outs himself as anti-homosexual (read: homophobic) as it regards gays in his Anglican church. He fears the issue will bring schism to the church.
The church would deserve it.
The Presbyterian Church's bigotry toward gays and inexorable leaning toward a conservatism that smacks of the Baptists is the reason I left. I refused to raise my children in their atmosphere of hate. Justify it however you want, it's bigotry(Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond justified their brand of bigotry in their day too, eh?). It is hate in an institution that is to be founded on love, an institution that is to cede the right to judge man to God.
Quality of life
: Gawker makes fun of the NY Post today for warning that the squeegee men are back. "Panhandling is bad," snarks Gawker, "but panhandling that results in clean windows is apparently worse."
Well, lemme tell you, the squeegee men are not urban clowns or the hapless homeless; they are derelicts, bums, criminals, thugs.
Almost 11 years ago, I was driving home with my very-pregnant wife at 39th and 8th when squeegee thugs approached to "clean" the windshield. I did what all New Yorkers did (even those with Jersey license plates): I waved them off, turned on the windshield wipers, and moved forward.
And what did they do?
They smashed my car and tried to open the doors and drag us out.
My wife went into premature labor from the stress.
I had to yell at the cops to get them to come and help. They didn't give a damn.
That is why Rudy Guliani became a hero in this town; that is why David Dinkins was an utter failure. And the Post is quite properly warning Michael Bloomberg not to go Dinkins.
This is not just about quality of life. This is about law and civilization.
And I'll take the liberty of reminding the Mr. Gawker that he just left San Francisco in part because he couldn't stand all the bums on the streets there.
The Post is right.
When I'm sixty-four...
: I was driving by a senior citizens' residence (or whatever you're supposed to call them these days) and saw a sign out front touting a nostalgic neighborhood for the memory impaired. I've read about this: When you have Alzheimer's, you tend to live in the memories you still have (see also recent frightening stories about Holocaust survivors who now relive that horror as if it were yesterday). In these homes, they put up a neighborhood of the sort that Pat Robertson would call the ideal America and the old folks are supposed to feel safe and comfortable there.
And so I was wondering what kinds of heighborhoods they will build for us when, God forbid, we live in the land of memories:
Woodstock? A bunch of old children of the '60s in tie-dyes and flowers or -- yech -- topless groovin' to Richie Havens and, if they're lucky, think they're on drugs.
Vietnam? Aged grunts take the point in the jungle and, if they're lucky, think they're on drugs.
Discos? Arthritic boogiers stand outside the old folks' home trying to look cool so the bouncer lets them in and, if they're lucky, they'll think they're on drugs.
Silicon Valley? Busted boomers sit on Aeron chairs and yell into cell phones and, if they're lucky, believe they're still rich.
It's going to be hell getting old.
Vlogging advances
: Just got email from Glenn Reynolds admitting that he ordered the video software I touted the other day with my first two vlogs. It just looks like too much fun, he says. And he's right. Glenn warned me that bandwidth would be a problem and he was right about that, too; but he has unlimited bandwidth.
I tell you all this only to shame Glenn into actually using it.
I'll watch the Instashow, won't you?
December 21, 2002
Rabid redux
: A Time/CNN poll says Hillary Clinton leads the Democratic pack for President.
Maybe just name recognition.
Or maybe people really do respect the Clinton dynasty.
And maybe they wish she had reformed f'ing health care.
The Blook is in! The Blook is in!
: Just got my copy of Tony Pierce's Blook -- the book begat by his blog -- with a few other Merry Christmas goodies in the box (thank you, Tony).
I opened at random to one of my favorite posts from way back last spring, the tale of the nosey neighbor, a story on a page (as it turns out in print) that could turn into a novel or maybe a sitcom; it's dense like a fruitcake but one you'd actually like to eat.
I'm looking forward to reading more and more.
(By the way, Tony is terribly generous, giving me a thank-you on page 2 for inventing the title.)
Order your Blook now.
FREE SEX (well, one out of two ain't bad)
: Glenn Reynolds quotes blogger Acidman, who finds the fit of begging after Andrew Sullivan's successful hat-passing, to be unseemly, turning bloggers into squeegee men and homeless pundits. Agree.
Glenn says he has a decent day job with a passable paycheck and so he won't beg or charge for his good services. Agree.
I love doing this (that must be why I keep doing it, even when I should be starting to write a book or something useful). I have a day job. I'm no good at sales or begging. So this, too stays free. I take the Glenn Reynolds free pledge.
Oink
: I usually leave this turf to LittleGreenFootballs, but I still couldn't resist this excerpt from a report on Saudi education at Memri: A textbook for 8th grade students explains why Jews and Christians were cursed by Allah and turned into apes and pigs.Quoting Surat Al-Maida, Verse 60, the lesson explains that Jews and Christians have sinned by accepting polytheism and therefore incurred Allah's wrath.To punish them, Allah has turned them into apes and pigs.
The Two Towers: Part III
: David Galbraith, a real architect (and smart guy) says of the WTC designs: The bad news: they are all either mediocre or unbuildable.
The good news: the architects themselves are not all mediocre and the eventual buildings will be nothing like the original competition entries.
Harumph
: Rick Bruner calls me "the old man of new media."
Remember this: The beard is prematurely gray. Very prematurely. Damnit.
But I'll forgive him because he takes kindly to vlogs (scroll down till you see a prematurely gray beard on TV).
: OK, maybe I am the old man of new media for I remember Linotypes, the wonderful, filthy, kerchunketa-kerchunketa machines that used to set type back when type was type and rewritemen were rewritemen. I was there when we switched to cold type and then to computers (that's how I got into this whole technology thing in the first place).
Anyway, I loved the old machines. And now here is a site dedicated to Linotype memories. [via ein Blog]
: And here's more proof that I am the old man of new media. Damn.
I just recalled wowing a consultant type recently recalling that I was there the day WYSIWYG was invented. I was at a conference of publishing technotypes in California for Time Inc. way back when it was still Time Inc. and John Seybold (the patriarch of all the other Seybolds) stood up and noted a trend in publishing systems back then, an entirely new idea, the thought that you could change something on a screen and end up with exactly that on paper. He said he heard a lot of people talking about "what you see is what you get" and he abbreviated it then and there. You may not be impressed. But some are.
Who's who
: I just noticed that Mickey Kaus has the best blogroll around. It's annotated. (Scroll to the bottom of the page.)
True multimedia
: Visionary and nice guy James Lileks gets a DVD with his New Yorker and ponders the future of maximultimondomedia (nevermind the nice plug for me): Here’s to the day when every issue of Entertainment Weekly comes with ten trailers for movies you want to see, and a dozen MP3s and two audiobooks and a comic strip and a game demo, and a contest to see who can find the face of EW progenitor Jeff Jarvis, which is hidden somewhere in the data. They would hide the face, believe me.
In any case, Lilek's right: It's now not hard to imagine a magazine coming with a soundtrack and b-roll (and, of course, ads that sing and dance and pop up and over and under and through). You could also call that the Web. But as I'm learning in my new career as a bandwidth hog (see links below on Vlogs), it will still be cheaper to deliver lotsa bandwidth on discs, for a little while longer.
Imagine if AOL had actually sent out some Warner Bros. songs or movie trailers on all those CD-roms over the years; people might have actually welcomed them instead of ridiculed them.
But soon, the delivery won't matter -- you'll get content over your Internet connection or your TV (to your TiVo) or even in the mail with a disc. And devices won't matter, since your TV and computer and MP3 player/stereo will all be wifi'ed together to collect and play anything. What will matter is the content you want when you want it.
On the Internet, content was not king. In an anarchy, no one is king.
But in a world of bandwidth everywhere, content shall rise again.
Location, location, location
: Next May, a blog conference in Vienna [via Klog] -- in English oder auf Deutsch.
Wien? Ich kann auf Deutsch blog. Blog mit Schlag!
The Lifetime Achievement Award goes to... [hushed anticipation]... Mario!
: The game industry gets its own awards show.
Flesh is good (so long as it's alive)
: PETA gives you its celebrity calendar and the electronic equivalent of pin-ups: desktop wallpaper.
Modesty
: If anybody deserved a little web triumphalism post-Lott, it'd be Josh Marshall, who dogged the Lott story like a Southern sheriff's bloodhound. But you can't sniff a whiff of nya-nya on his site. Liberals are dignified.
December 20, 2002
Catch a blogger by the toe...
: Do you think that Trent Lott ever heard of "bloggers" before last month?
Master of my domain?
: So I bought Vlog.tv as a domain because I'm so excited about this video blogging (read: vlogging) thing. I buy it on Register.com and have them forward to this address. And what do they do without telling me (in any way a mortal can see): They add a frame at the bottom of the page with a Register.com ad.
F'ers. F'ing f'ers.
How the hell did we hand this quasigovernmental task of domain registration -- a simple task of organization, a goldmine of a job -- to such sleazoids?
Big names
: Chris Locke starts a new blog on the ever-better Corante. "Why are we blogging our lives away?"...
We think we're hiding behind all these random words we sling around. Then we're horrified to realize we've betrayed ourselves. Our masks have given us away....
What we are seeing today on the web -- discounting the plethora of corporate spew -- is the emergence of ourselves as human beings discovering what it means to be human....
We're giving ourselves permission to be outlaws.
Those Two Towers, Part Two
: Comments on my comments on the World Trade Center designs:
: Says Tom Villars: "The proposed buildings are obviously an attempt to restore the pride of New Yorkers. To not rebuild something to the same grandeur as the original towers is defeatism."
: Says Richard Bennett: "Would you be happier with a big collection of stone vaginas?"
: And I reply: "I didn't think I was going to have this reaction to more skyscrapers until I saw the designs. My reaction was visceral, emotional, protective: I wanted to cup my hands around Manhattan's groin and crouch and mutter, 'Oh, no, not again.' It felt exposed, vulnerable. Perhaps this is all good reason to start therapy, but the economy sucks and so I won't bother."
Use this link
: I moved the video file to a different service (a free trial at Audiovideoweb.com (thank you very much!).
Try this link: WTC designs video. (Alternate on my server here.)
And here is the Christmas-tree video. (Alternate on my server here).
Hog vlog clog slogs blog
: Update: I got so hammered by bandwidth drain that I couldn't update the site and when I tried, I repeated this same post a half-dozen times as if in a stuttering panic. Live and learn. I'll play with bandwidth fixes later.
Update
: Well, it took me just one day to exceed my free-trial bandwidth at AudioVideoWeb.com. So try the second links above. But be gentle.
Further update
: So I was allotted 425mb of bandwidth for a month. I used 1,500mb in a day. Thus, the AudioVideoWeb.com account was closed; the links above are dead.
: Nevermind the alternative links above; I've corrected the links below.
December 19, 2002
Vlog clog
: Well, it appears that I have already hit the bandwidth ceiling just from two videos. So I've moved the WTC video to my son's account, hoping that works, and I've cut off the Christmas video for now, to see whether this helps. Yes, yes, I know: bandwidth is precisely the problem. But bandwidth (like memory and processor power) keeps getting cheaper and cheaper; it's a trivial limitation. Video still has a future in this, our world.
NOTE: Instead of the links below, please use this link to see the vlogs: www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine.
Vlogging: Video weblogs
: Welcome to a new age of blogging: video blogging.
I've created two video weblogs -- one about the new World Trade Center designs and one about my Christmas tree -- because (a) there's new software that makes it easy [more on that below] and (b) I'm becoming convinced that video is the next frontier for blogging.
It's a simple equation: We bloggers do not compete with newspapers, because we do not have news operations.
Instead, bloggers compete with pundits because what we do have is opinions.
And where do you find the most pundits?
On TV.
TV is no big deal. Oh, TV people would make it look like a big deal with all their jargon and staffing and equipment and adrenalin. But the truth is, all you do to make TV is stare at a camera and read and say something: It's easy.
There's no reason a blogger should not be the next Andy Rooney or Charles Grodin or Ann Coulter (easy marks, all!). I'd take any of their jobs, tomorrow.
When you get right down to it, there's no reason a blogger could not be a new-age TV anchor, for TV news is really just a weblog with pictures that move and talk: TV news links to the same video everyone else has (news being a commodity today) with a talking head tying it all together.
Well, bloggers have heads. Bloggers can talk (at least the ones I've met can). Ergo, bloggers can make TV.
So I decided to prove the point with these two vlogs, as I'll annoint them.
They're not slick; they're not good TV; I talk too fast; I couldn't get the reflection off my glasses; the lighting is harsh; the focus is funky; I didn't get the graphics to zip and zap quite as smoothly as I'd have liked; I'm not as young as I used to be.... It's a bit embarrassing but I'll do anything in the service of populist media.
OK, it's not GMA. But it's not hard to see how you could produce a segment every bit as good as any on GMA with just a little work.
It's TV. It's only TV.
Now nominate all the bloggers you'd love to see and hear, not just read: Glenn Reynolds (whose video pro wife could make real TV)... James Lileks (soon to costar with real TV star Al Roker)... Josh Marshall... Elizabeth Spiers... Mickey Kaus... Ken Layne... Matt Welch... Virginia Postrel... Tim Blair... Corey Doctorow... Rossi... Richard Bennett... Nick Denton... Tony Pierce... and, of course, me...
Welcome to the future. Welcome to our future.
Vlogging: How to vlog
: I just discovered this amazing software from Serious Magic called Visual Communicator that makes it easy to make TV. And it costs just $99. Add a good webcam (that is, one for $80 instead of $50 -- here's my new notebook cam) and you, my friend, are a TV pundit.
Click on the "more" link and learn how...
The software comes with a few crucial bits of functionality:
: First, it has a teleprompter, so you can write a script and read it while looking at a webcam. If you tried to make TV before, you had to memorize a script or wing it and say, "like, y'know, I mean" a lot while you thought of the right words to say. No more. You have a script, just like a TV anchor, a TV reporter, an Oscar host, or a presidential candidate.
: Second, it allows you to incorporate graphics with nothing more than a click and a drag. I put in pictures of the WTC designs with little effort. Once I actually learn what I'm doing, I'll do a smoother job of it but the point is still made.
: Third, it comes with green-screen technology (and the $139 version comes with a green backdrop as well as a quality microphone) , so you can put an image behind you (as I do in the WTC vlog). So just like a real TV anchor, you can act like you're in front of the White House or backing up to the New York skyline.
: Fourth, because you can cue your graphics to your words, you don't have to go crazy writing scripts that time-out exactly. You write your words and add graphics; you rehearse; you record; you're done.
It is incredibly easy.
See an online demo here.
Once you make the video, you save it as a Microsoft Windows Media Player file (no, not a Real Audio file), and just put it up on your server (as Anil Dash instructed me) and you're done. God help any of us if this becomes popular; the bandwidth costs will kill us. But it is easy.
And as bandwidth increases out in the audience, this will become only more popular.
This is eye-opening technology. It does for video what Quark did for publishing and Blogger did for punditry. It brings video to the masses.
Dan Rather, beware!
NOTE: Please use this address to see the vlogs -- www.screenblast.com/buzzmachine -- rather than the addresses below. Sorry to keep repeating this through the various vlog posts, but I'm trying, post facto, to prevent further bandwidth discomfort.
Vlogging: My first two vlogs
: I created two new vlogs. The first vlog -- here -- is just a rewrite of my post about the new World Trade Center designs, below. But video allowed me to show the designs as I spoke about them and to add expression. TV adds life.
My second vlog -- here -- is about my family's failed attempt to get a fake Christmas tree.
To read the script for that, slick on the "more" link below.
CHRISTMAS 2002
It has been a hard year -- and so, in our effort to find ways to be easy on ourselves, my wife suggested we just give in, this year, and get a fake Christmas tree.
"Sure," I said -- so long as our kids will allow it.
"I've mentioned it," she shrugged. And besides, she said, we always get into fights over trees: too big, too little, too dead. And half our family is allergic to nature.
So, she ordered a tree grown in some oil field and I went to pick it up.
And when my son saw the big box in my car and asked what it was, my wife said it was our Christmas tree.
He broke down.
Oh, boy. "God's getting ya for gettin' this tree," I said.
The next morning, when I came down for breakfast, I asked where our daughter was.
"Downstairs... crying," my wife reported.
"Why?" I asked.
"I told her about the tree," she admitted.
My own childhood memories of Christmas are consistent: of real trees, real cookies, real religion, and plastic toys... of comfort, warmth, safety, and contentedness.
But no matter how hard we try, that lovely greeting card changes when we grow up.
Last year's Christmas for me was all about surviving September 11th, about trying to reconcile grief and gratitude. I was a mess last Christmas.
Seventeen years ago at Christmas, I fell in love with my wife and she must have fallen in love with me, because she introduced me to her father that year.
It was a great Christmas.
He died a few weeks ago. That is why this will be a hard and sad Christmas for us.
But we are doing everything we can to keep Christmas for our children distant from that sadness.
Christmas is the right of children. For them, for every child...
Christmas should taste... like cinnamon.
Christmas should sound like bells and sweet voices singing good news.
Christmas should feel crinkly like wrapping paper and warm like a fireplace and cold like a snowman.
Christmas should look like... a Christmas tree.
And Christmas should smell like, yes, pine.
So I took my son to the fake tree store with our un-tree in its unopened box so he could see this forest of plastic in full bloom.
I sat him down and told him that Christmas belonged to children -- it belongs to him -- and so this choice was his:
We could have a very nice artifical tree, or we could return it and get a real one.
We sat down and stared at the trees, all decked out like tarts walking Tenth Avenue.
And he decided.
And so, today, we went to get a real tree.
And the house smells of pine.
It smells of Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you.
Vlog.TV
: I registered Vlog.TV, just in case this turns into something big.
Building
: Steven Johnson disagrees with me on the WTC designs.
: Greg.org was there for the presentation of the designs; his report. [via Gawker]
Spot on
: Queen of all media, Tina Brown, groks (pardon the geeky verb) weblogs exactly: The now inevitable fall of Lott was a triumph for the “bloggers” — the opinion samurai of the internet who lead the charge on any loose-lipped remark in public life. They kept stoking the story for days until it crossed over to the mainstream and burst into flames. The New Yorker critic Adam Gopnik has been proved right in his often-voiced prediction that the internet would be less an amazing instrument of information than the ideal medium for opinion, endlessly revised and delivered in short bursts.
Information takes time and money to acquire, but opinion on the web is fast and cheap. The industry has now become so prolific that it can exhaust a subject even before it’s happened. In the case of Lott all those roving bands of opinion could finally fasten on a fact.
December 18, 2002
If Freud were an architect...
: I cannot begin to tell you how much I hate the latest designs for the World Trade Center.
Most of them are so pathetically phallic.
It is as if we are erecting giant private parts and daring the bad guys of the world: "Cut this off!" (Again.)
It is a case of overcompensation: They cut them off before so we'll put them back again, bigger, louder, gaudier than ever.
This exhibits a lack of imagination and vision and purpose.
It is urban development as a macho sport.
: Examples of the public private parts: The Foster design, the THINK design, the United Architects design, the Peterson-Littenburg design, and the Libeskind design (each link goes directly to a photo that illustrates the buildings at their most FU perspective).
: Other designs -- and other aspects of the designs above -- are chaotic to the point that they are disturbing. My son looked at one and said, "That looks dangerous." He's quite right. I looked at the frightening, falling angles and could only think once again of people falling to their deaths there. They are disturbingly insensitive.
United Architects' design is such a nightmare: It is post traumatic stress syndrome in steel and glass.
: And some designs are merely architecture as performance art: self-indulgent, impractical, show-off, fits of fancy that scream, "Look at me, not at my building." I usually despise performance art (and now, thanks to the brainless fool with the subway "art," so do most New Yorkers); I sure don't want to live or work in it. For this, look at Foster and Foster again.
: That's not to say there are not ideas to pursue here. The SOM et al design has a huge, grand space. THINK's great room, on the other hand, reminds me of Berlin Alexanderplatz under the communists: vast to an inhuman scale. But then THINK has an inviting amphitheatre, as does Peterson/Littenberg.
: These designs are all about architects showing off.
They should, instead, be about humanity.
They should exhibit grace, dignity, strength, human scale, human life, perspective, memory, taste, history. These buildings should deserve to stand forever.
They have none of that.
I hate these designs. I fear them.
: The Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s site choked today as soon as the designs were put up. I begged Gawker to put up a sampling of images as a public service; you can find them there. The Times just put up a slide show as well.
3-2-1-launch
: Gawker is up.
Scrambled
: My @)#*$&$^#@^% Cablevision cable is down and with it, not only my frivolous TV but also my essential Internet access. Thus the silence.
Fox viewers, on the other hand...
: Get a load of this elitism in a review of a show about Islam in today's NYT: t would be fair to say that the most important invisible figure on American television is Muhammad, the seventh-century prophet who founded Islam. Even many educated PBS viewers know very little of his story, yet his legacy is felt in some form every day in the United States as well as in the rest of the world. [bold mine] Even PBS viewers? F me.
If PBS viewers are so smart, why do they like John Tesh?
No, PBS are note smart. They're just snobbish.
When I was a TV critic, I hated hearing nothing more than, "Oh, I only watch PBS." Which is to say that you are dull and isolated and like John Tesh.
December 16, 2002
Gawker
: Any day now, you'll get to see the latest nanomedia product from the weblog mogul -- weblogs' very own Rupert -- Nick Denton: Gawker is a New York weblog written by one of my favorite blogger-hyphen-writers, Elizabeth Spiers (so that's where she's been); published by Denton; and designed by Jason Kottke (whose wonderful logo is all you can see at Gawker.com right now). It will be filled with news, gossip, event tips, a very useful list of links to every essential New York service on the Web, and some surprises.
I've been lucky enough to be watching Gawker sprout and have been reading its dress rehearsals lately. It is going to be great. Gawker will be worth reading for what it is -- an entertaining, provocative, useful, current must-read for New Yorkers and those who love it -- but also what it represents for the medium: like Denton's Gizmodo, the gadget blog, Gawker takes the amateur (yes, that's a compliment) form of weblogs and gives it a clear purpose and a polished professionalism as well as an economic reason to live.
I'll let you know when it's live.
Jesus would be so proud
: Tacky Christmas lights.
Crisis interruptus
: Tonight, as I was about to get on a PATH train from Manhattan back to Jersey, I heard an announcement telling all the Port Authority agents to return to their headquarters. That's when I knew there would be no New York subway-and-bus strike. Crisis over.
: I sense such disappointment on TV -- such media schadenfreude -- over the near-miss of the strike. They were all so ready for Team Coverage. This morning, reporters with visible breath stood on cold street corners using the verb form "would-" a lot as they talked about what would have been happening today if there had been a strike: This commuter train would be crowded; this bridge would be packed; these commuters would be harried. But they weren't.
Beemer bigot
: When I lived in San Francisco, there was a commonly accepted stereotype -- obnoxious, wrong, and offensive as all stereotypes are, of course -- that said that some people just didn't drive as well as others. I'll leave it there. It's just bigotry, of course.
Here in New York, I have developed my own bigotry regarding drivers. Every time I see somebody driving like an ass behind me -- weaving, tailgating, swerving, eating, shaving, phoning, speeding -- I make a little bet with myself and I always win: It's somebody driving a BMW.
BMW drivers are asses. Nice cars, obnoxious drivers. I wouldn't want to own one because I wouldn't want to be one.
But Hogwarts looks nothing like Mississippi
: Solly Ezekial finds the Harry Potter connection: Trent Lott is to Lucius Malfoy as Strom Thurmond is to Salazar Slytherin.
December 15, 2002
You won't have Al Gore to kick around anymore
: Why not run? Because he thinks George Bush will win again and he doesn't want to lose again.
: Note that in public life, career deaths -- just like celebrity deaths -- come in threes: Law, Lott, Gore.
December 14, 2002
Racist Southern politicians, the sequel
: Josh Marshall now branches out from his Trent Lott specialty of the last few days to find another racist Southern (or might-as-well-be-Southern) politician who talks to a racist publication, just as Lott did. It's a quiz: Guess the politician.
Answer: John Ashcroft.
(I cheated. I put the quote into Google and came up with the answer. But I wasn't surprised.)
: Speaking of Lott... Everyone has been speaking of him too much lately. Marshall has done a great job on the topic. So have Sullivan and Kaus and a few others.
But then everyone piled on with what they each thought of Lott, as if they all had to be on the record.
But it was an overdose. It reduced the topic to the interest-level of My CD Collection.
I preferred to stand back and watch the Lott pros in action.
That's it. It's over. The world has ended.
: Instapundit has not posted all day.
December 13, 2002
Credit
: Josh Marshall gets well-deserved credit for keeping the Lott story alive and influencing a national issue.
December 12, 2002
Pixeltees
: Competition for Cafe Press: Pixeltees. It comes with a nice little Flash ap that lets you design your T-shirt and then order.
Blogging by example
: Let me be the 100th person to note what a great job Josh Marshall is doing with the Lott story. Note, too, that this is what blogs too best: They point you to everything worth reading on a topic (they read so you don't have to). They emphasize speed; no paper can keep up with this as quickly as Josh can. They take advantage of interactivity (you can send a news tip to Josh and see it up online in moments; won't happen that way at NBC Nightly News).
Merged
: Blogger buddy Trellix -- which now offers its own blogging functionality -- has been bought by business web host Interland. Trellix founder (and blogger and software pioneer) Dan Bricklin announces it on his weblog.
Rupert rules
: Tina Brown visits her Heimat and soaks in the many papers of Britain and their many shouts on many newsstands, inspiring comparisons with the media scene over here: In America, the delivery system of the one-story gangbang is more diffuse. Scandal here often begins on Matt Drudge’s website, leaps to The Washington Times newspaper, from there to Rush Limbaugh’s rabid radio talk show and then on to the Fox cable news network, which legitimises it for everybody else.
Like Paul Dacre’s Daily Mail, Roger Ailes’s Fox News now dominates the whole media landscape and sets the political agenda as much as The New York Times. The old stereotype of the “liberal media” is laughably out of date. Clinton, Gore and Tom Daschle, the demoted Democratic leader of the Senate, have all spoken bitterly in recent weeks about the way in which what Clinton called “an increasingly docile establishment press” has itself drifted more and more rightwards while internalising the aggression of the fringe outlets against its alleged “liberalism”. She has high and proper praise for Rupert's other bully pulpit, the Post: Only the yellow New York Post has some Fleet Street pizzazz. It arrives in the morning with a squeal of tyres and a burst of gunfire. It’s read urgently, like a ransom note. It has the city’s best collection of gossip columns by far, but they are mostly literal rather than literary. In London, I savour Ephraim Hardcastle’s miniaturist eye on the daily trivia in the Daily Mail. I was grateful to learn, for instance, that Roger Moore’s toupee varies in colour between marmalade and nutmeg. The other night, I was talking with some smart people about biased vs. objective and exciting vs. dull media (read: FoxNews vs. MSNBC) and heard nary an objection to the argument that our news media -- printa and video -- should go for the gusto, embrace the bias, inject the excitement. That is the real lesson of Fox (and of Michael Wolff's dissection of the phenom a week ago). You want to know how to fix the news business? Give it a voice.
That, folks, is the real reason we all like weblogs so well: They have something to say.
The Google bubble
: Has Google run out of ideas? Google is the single greatest service on the Internet; no one has beat it. I admire how it works and how it has developed and how it has wisely let others develop around it. Nonetheless, its latest three tests are neat ideas looking for a reason to live (usually the result of brainstorming and an overextended sense of democracy as a good thing).
: Froogle promises to search all stores for the items you want. Neat idea, perhaps. But the results are not terribly useful because they are overwhelming (4455 notebooks, for example); in fact, when I do use Mothership Google to do just this kind of product search, I find it more useful than this.
: The Google viewer turns your search results into a slideshow, giving you new pages ever few seconds. But Google itself is far more useful; I can usually judge whether a site is worth a click by nothing more than the Shaker selection of words the text listings give me. (Such slide shows aren't new. A German company called Datango lets you not only create a slideshow but give it a soundtrack -- useful for customer service explanations, for example, but they are useful only because they are selected and produced and shown for a reason.)
: Google web quotes is supposed to extract quotes about a search give you some context but I haven't made it work well yet.
As David Galbraith said in a seminal post, Windows should work as well on my little desktop as Google works over the tera upon terabytes of information on the Web. It is genius. And I don't want to discourage invention anywhere (wouldn't it be great if Google turned into the Bell Labs of the Web?).
However, I do think these three ideas flop like dead fish.
And I do hope that Google is also paying attention to business so it remains as strong as it is today (I don't ever want to hear that advertising isn't paying and Google has to reduce its spidering).
Finally, I wish Google would turn its attention as well to helping me find what I need to find wherever I need to find it, even on this little desktop.
Steven Johnson points to a fork in the road in management of your digital stuff: There is the Apple view, creating separate appropriate applications for each type of data (photo viewers vs. word processors vs. calendars). There is the Microsoft view, creating one mother application that finds whatever you have stored on your desktop (and probably soon your personal storage space elsewhere).
What about the Google view: Find whatever you want wherever it is (no it won't be perfect but if it works as well as Google works, as quickly and easily as Google works, the world will be a better place).
: As I searched for that Galbraith post I mention above, I found another post that I'd missed before, which said what I just said, better, shorter, and smarter.
You can set your ideological clock by him
: It never ceases to surprise me how predictable Andrew Sullivan is. Today, he manages to tie the Trent Lott affair to a Bill Clinton insult (just because he thinks Lott sounds like Clinton). The man hasn't had an excuse to bash Clinton in a week and probably started shaking from withdrawl, and so he stretches this far to get one in. This is worth $20?
Find the nearest period
: Thanks to Emmanuelle's simultaneous translation, I read that the Minneapolis City Pages has given its staffers blogs. A quick gander shows that they pretty much treat this as the place where they can write the things that didn't fit in the paper: the bottomless column; lots of wind, few links. That's not to say they won't learn how to blog well; it's just interesting to note that people who start blogging because they read and like blogs take to the form quicker than professional (if ill-paid) newspaper writers. This is a new form, in which short beats long and generous llinks pay you back.
December 11, 2002
Dig, dig, dig
: Josh Marshall unearths a great nugget of political poop in the Trent Lott affair: Lott filing a brief on the side of Bob Jones University, defending its practice of racial discrimination against the IRS.
: Anybody starting a Trentometer on the odds that Lott might even have to leave office over this?
: Steven Johnson, among others, is saying that blogs kept the Lott story alive even as Big Media was dropping it. I think that's true. But I haven't yet seen where this crossed the bloodstream: Where do we see that blogs had an influence on the press and influenced them to get back on the story? I' m not questioning that it happened; I'm just looking for the specific proof, for that makes for much stronger bragging.
Dumb question (from a big, old, dumb, media guy)
: If I want to put up a video -- in Microsoft media format -- on my server, do I have to have the streaming software for you to be able to play it? If so, is there any service that provides streaming hosting?
Just call me Barney
: Glenn Reynolds at Tech Central Station says that big media dinosaurs are big, dumb, and doomed thanks to the plentiful tech revolutions that let anybody with a will have a way to produce media: news, commentary, music, radio, film. Like the armored knights of the Middle Ages, their position has been a function not of their own inherent virtues, but of a particular economic and technological confluence that is now passing away. And I believe that much of what's being marketed as "digital rights management" to prevent "stealing" of big-media works is in fact intended to serve as "digital restrictions management" to protect big-media operations from competition by making life harder on potential competitors.
I think they're doomed, technologically. But if Big Media let their position go without a fight to keep it by fair means or foul, they'll be the first example of a privileged group that did so. So beware. Two separate angles to argue here.
First, audience content: Not all big media muckers are blind to the audience revolution occurring here. The smart ones (and, no, they're not in the majority.. not by a long shot) are embracing this. I'm forever trumpeting the forums and interactivity that are cherished at my company but I'm not alone. Wise moguls are recognizing that the audience is producing content in new (and cheaper!) ways that will benefit everyone (if in no other way than providing competition to the expensive and often unionized producers who are working for the big media companies now). Wise editors/producers also recognize that they will get wiser if they listen to what the audience is saying and that will make them money. But the truth is that the economics of cheaper content that let us produce pages such as this are the same economics that big media companies need to producer better margins in the future. They will be delighted to get a really cheap -- and really good -- film from a new producer; someday they will also be delighted to cut out all the middlemen (agents, managers, drivers, gaffers, caterers, shop stewards); they will be delighted to save money. It works the same for everyone. What's good for the goose is good for the pate company.
Second, rights: This, too, is not necessarily a case of opposing interests. Yes, big media companies want to protect their product so they can make as much money as possible from it. But so do the original creators. That's why we copyright our work; that's why we charge for it; that's why we don't want it copied everywhere without payment; that's why we want to guard against such theft.
Sure, it's all a matter of degrees -- how smart are the big media execs; how restrictive are the rights restraints? But it's not a matter of black or white, on or off, doomed or alive.
At the Yale blog conference, I found myself speaking as the token representative of big media (though I'm skinny) and old media (though my beard is prematurely gray, damnit) who also lives in the nanomedia and new media worlds and I welcome that position. I've worked with plenty of big, old idiots at big, old media companies. But I've also worked with plenty of very smart people who know how to serve an audience and make media into a business and that's a skill we need in new media. And, frankly, I've also seen a fair amount of new media that is never going to make money because it's not worth paying for.
In the end, this is all a matter of economics. If you can produce quality (and discover quality) media for less, then you will. If you can make more money from your product, you will.
We dinosaurs aren't ready to lay down and die yet.
Never too old to learn
: A Norwegian nursing home punished a 105-year-old resident for complaining about the food, sending her to her room. After a newspaper reported on the sentence, the nurses relented.
Money, be gone!
: Here's a new way to waste money that's just about as dumb as naming a star after yourself (registered in book form!) or paying to have your message to the afterlife taken there by somebody dying: Send your message into outerspace for $20. Maybe Karl Marx was right. [via Shift]
Advertising works
: Oliver Willis produces a Bush/Lott campaign commercial.
Separation of press and state
: Not only do we believe in separation of church and state; we also believe in separation of press and state. And here's another good example of why that's a good idea: In the UK, the government is launching an investigation into its own network, the BBC, for spending too much on its web site, thus using British TV license fees to unfairly edge out commercial competitors in news and sports and such. Oh, what a tangled Web we weave....
: Note, too, that the Church of England is studying separation from the government of England. OK, then, nevermind: We call of the revolution. Just get rid of that dorky prince of yours and all will be forgiven; we'll join up again. And wouldn't you rather join with us than those Euro neighbors of yours?
Lost and found
: Lost Remote, a favorite weblog of mine about the TV industry, took a short break and is now back as a group blog.
December 10, 2002
Lottsa laughs
: I'm just sitting back, enjoying watching Republicans and right-leaning bloggers fall over themselves to dump and run away from Trent Lott. It's like watching a street fight from the safety of a third-story window. They look so dumb, so laughable falling over each other.
Pay or play
: Mel Karmazin, the god of Viacom/CBS, says that if TiVo catches on, he'll turn CBS into a pay network.
I think that's called PBS. Or, if you prefer, the BBC.
Across the spectrum
: Lawrence Lessig announces a conference on the future of spectrum governance: :If that sounds boring, then you really need to pay a bit more attention to the next extraordinarily important policy issue affecting innovation and growth. There is about to be a very significant shift in how spectrum is managed. One school says it should be propertized; another says it should be treated as a commons. Read: auctions vs. WiFi; or more auctions vs. mesh networks. More on the conference here.
He's right: This is incredibly important. And it will be fun to watch the torn self-interest of Repblicans. Big biz boys will want to own and profit from spectrum (read: networks, Microsoft, railroads, telcos and other giants of the past). Believers in the power of the open market, on the other hand, will favor a free commons with everyone profiting (see the Wild West, gold rushes, Linux, the Internet, and other ungoverned wealth machines). Big biz boys who say they believe in the power of the unfettered marketplace will be acting quite schizo.
if god else allah
:Solly Ezekial notes the repetiveness of Islamic Friday sermons and writes a Java sermon generator:
You don't say
: A topic of much discussion at the Yale Law School blog conference a few weeks ago was, of course, libel. One argument says that poor bloggers are judgment proof (that is, you can win, but you can't collect because they have nothing). Another argument says that because the world of blogs, as a whole, is so quick to correct itself (even if one author gets something wrong, throngs will fact check his ass), that there should be a different and lighter standard for libel. Yet nother argument (hey, it was a law school) says that the mere fear of libel suits has a chilling effect on the free speech of the wired masses.
Here comes another chill wind from the other side of the world: An Australian appeals court has ruled that the Wall Street Journal can be sued in Australia -- not the U.S. -- for an article that appeared in the U.S. newspaper's U.S. website.
Shhhh. Don't anyone tell the Saudis this.
: Of course, Glenn Reynolds has wise words on the topic, in the Australian press.
December 09, 2002
The camera lies
: Blogs are buzzing about Virginia Postrel's photo choice.
Middle, without doubt.
I've seen men vote for the middle. Seen no women's votes yet. I'm fearing we'll all be analyzed by our choice.
The new photos are far better than her old photo. In fact, these don't even look like photos of sisters, let alone the same woman.
Anyway, Rick Bruner notes that many of us have photos.
He needs a new photo, too. Doesn't look anything like him.
Begging
: Remember when Andrew Sullivan was supposed to be the one guy who was making money doing this? Well, guess what: He isn't. That, it seems, was our own blog bubble and now he has pierced it.
Now Sullivan is begging, big time. In a long, defensive spiel (you know you're in trouble when it starts, "This isn't an easy post to write, since I'm not used to begging..."), he tells us about all the time he's spending on his blog and then comes up with the too-clever-by-90-percent idea of creating a blog pledge week, in which he'll mercilessly bother his readers with begging (and then promises to lay off). He even acts as if he's doing this for some greater good: He says this will help the economics of the blogopshere (though, unless he shared the blog begging booty bounty with others, I fail to see the end of that equation).
This is why I prefer capitalism.
When a magazine or newspaper dies, it just dies. It doesn't wimper and beg and moan and whine and try to make you feel guilty for its pain. It just dies, quickly and quietly.
And if it doesn't die, it makes money. That's how business works.
So the net result of this development is that even the guy who was supposed to be making money at this isn't and that means there isn't money to be made. Blogs are wonderful. Blogs are fun. Blogs are good reading.
But blogs are no way to earn a living.
: But I do think there are a lot of other sane economic motivations for blogging. Look at Drudge: His blog made him a brand. He has a radio show (and he'd still have a TV show if he hadn't blown things with Fox). He has books that sell well. He's a star, a pop culture icon, a brand.
Same thing is happening to Glenn Reynolds, who is becoming a smart brand online and out of this, I have no doubt that he will get more book deals and media deals and great (cushy) tenured chairs of this and that (but no record deals). Thanks to his weblog (and the work he puts into it, which is far greater than what Sullivan does), he is now known and respected coast-to-coast.
Tony Pierce is turning his blog into a book. It's self-published ... for now. But I'll bet this, too, will turn into a book deal for him. (And by the way, he tells me that the title will be Blook, inspired by my headline on the post pushing his book a few weeks back... I'm honored.)
Nick Denton is doing what I call nanopublishing with the aforeplugged Gizmodo and the upcoming Gawker, an exciting local project that is employing Elizabeth Spiers.
Patrick Phillips at IWantMedia and Rick Bruner at MarketingFix -- among many others -- are using blogs to promote their expertise at their day jobs.
It takes a bit of cleverness and creativity to make all this worth your time -- or it isn't worth your time and you shouldn't do it.
Me? I'm doing this to learn the new medium and hatch new ideas and I know it will pay off for me in some form, even if I don't beg (yet).
Whacked
: I'm surprised by the talk in NJ.com's Soprano's forum this morning. The finale has more defenders than I would have predicted at 10:15 last night. For example: Maybe now the the mooks who thought this was a show about Murder Incorporated have come to realize this is and has been a show about a New Jersey family (first and foremost) thathappens to have mob ties. And: Both James Gandolfini and Edie Falco deserve Emmy awards for their outstanding performances in tonight's episode. This was acting beyond anything you could hope to see on network television and far outranked the typical fare that is offered in theaters today. There are lots of complaints, too. I thought the chatter today would be all complaints.
The Daily Buzz
: For you tablet fans out there (I'm not one of them), here's a format for displaying newspapers on tablets, from the guy who has been pushing this in the newspaper industry for years and years, Rober Fiedler. From the business perspective, it will take a helluva lot of tablet sales and usage to make it worthwhile for papers and their advertisers to reformat their content for the medium.
December 08, 2002
Smart mobs, armed
: Dan Hon discovers that the Rand Corporation puts its nonclassified docs online and he discovers a fascinating one that looks at the positive and negative sides of the network society and the advent of "netwar." I'll quote the same nut graph that Dan gives you but the full text is interesting: The fight for the future is not between the armies of leading states, nor are its weapons those of traditional armed forces. Rather, the combatants come from bomb-making terrorist groups like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, or drug smuggling cartels like those in Colombia and Mexico. On the positive side are civil-society activists fighting for the environment, democracy and human rights. What all have in common is that they operate in small, dispersed units that can deploy anywhere, anytime to penetrate and disrupt. They all feature network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. And, from the Intifadah to the drug war, they are proving very hard to beat. And here's another fascinating piece of Randthink -- relevant, of course, to the current game of Iraqi chicken -- that investigates America's new (or revisited) ability to use conventional military forces as a coercive tool:
the threat of large-scale nuclear war has largely receded and the
United States has become the sole remaining superpower. Richard
Haass argues that “liberated from the danger that military action will
lead to confrontation with a rival superpower, the United States is
now more free to intervene.” Indeed, the United States now
possesses unprecedented conventional military capacity to carry out
deterrent strategies because it has the capacity to launch crippling
conventional attacks with virtual impunity on an adversary’s homeland
and his deployed military forces—or to threaten such attacks as
a form of coercion.But that only brings many complications.
Another reason not to leave home
: I still don't fly because of you-know-why. I had been thinking that a cruise might be nice instead. But then there were all those germs. And now there's this: antiterrorism military escorts for cruise ships.
December 07, 2002
Barbie, Ken, Dubya, and God
: The George Bush talking doll. Push the button on his back and hear him say, "Terrorism against our nation will not stand."
: Or here's the Huggy Jesus Doll. [via Buzz]
December 06, 2002
So long
Tim Blair has the last word on last words.
Smart mob
: After a news story had a spammer bragging about the nice home his e-crap bought him, slashdotters organized a campaign to sign him up for every bit of snail mail spam they could find. He is being buried in junk mail. Sweet justice. [via Shift]
Pity
: The backlash to Times-bashing starts here.
Smile
: Nick Denton shamed me into adding a picture; he says all bloggers should have pictures. My son took mine.
: Dan Hartung points out that the photo appears only on my home page because I was too lazy to put it in my archive template. Have to run now. So please hit the home page link above.
More wow-fi
: Here is a great example of what ubiquitous wi-fi can bring. Katja Riefler at Poynter (the weblog with no damned permalinks) reports: An interesting test just took place at a golf tournament in the "Golf Club München Eichenried." BMW sponsored the wireless LAN broadcast of the event and loaned about 200 PDAs (personal digital assistants) to tournament participants. So imagine a bunch of sports fans at a stadium equipped with wi-fi, able to get more data and angles and commentary -- even from each other -- on their PDAs and phones; ditto at sports bars. Now let them bet. You charge them for the content. You make the vig on the bets. You push the hot dogs and beers and souvenirs. You make money. It's not huge, but it gets huge when you automate this in every stadium for every game in the country.
: The work above comes from an innovative German company I've followed for years: TV1.de.
Check out their work on a high-speed multimedia browser that can play up to 100 videos at once on a Windows machine.
With terrabytes of cheap storage, with gigabytes of cheap bandwidth, with high-quality big screens, you start to see truly new media blossoming.
Watch the demo.
: Slashdotters are nervous about the Cometa wi-fi announcement (below). It's a matter of big-company paranoia. I say that to make this work, it will take big-company investment. Warchalking does not an industry make.
: Update: I just listened to the Cometa press call. A few details:
: The venture will build the infrastructure only; it will not build a consumer brand or customer service structure; the service will be resold by other companies.
: Because of its size, they promise to be the low-cost provider (well, not against free, that is).
: They say that once Intel and others build wi-fi into devices, we'll see an explosion form 3 million wi-fi-enabled devices today to 80-100 million in a matter of a few years. This will include PDAs, game devices, printers, and so on.
: Once this happens, Comedia president Larry Brilliant says there will be no end of wi-fi activity at an enterprise level (read: sales people getting into the company network from a restaurant) and at a consumer level: multiplayer games, shopping, telephony via your laptop (see Vonage on the go), downloading DVDs and other media, uploading pictures....
: Scott Chaffin is the voice of experience (re the likes of IBM and AT&T;) in the comments.
December 05, 2002
Wow-fi
: Wi-fi is set to explode past Starbucks thanks to a consortium called Cometa announced today by IBM, Intel, AT&T;, and VC Apax. They vow to put wi-fi access no more than five minutes away from any major market. This means 25-50K hotspots across the U.S. (vs. the 2K T-mobile has set up in Starbucks and the 800 Boingo has). Cometa will resell its access to other ISPs (so, to start, AT&T; business customers will get access to the network).
This will be big. It won't replace cell phones. But know that as access to wi-fi networks increase, so will wi-fi installations in devices besides just PCs. Wi-fi will be built into PDAs, game consoles, printers, lots of things. Wi-fi will talk to other devices -- for example, kiosks in stores, waiters' portable cash registers, let the imagination fly.
How do you think wi-fi will spread? How will it be used? What benefits will it bring?
New tax idea: The stupid company tax
: Mobilcom just wrote off the $10 billion it spent on its 3G mobile phone license. The German government alone raised $50 billion from such stupid phone companies in the midst of the mobile bubble (an aneurism formed off the tech bubble). Greed meets stupidity, always a good combination.
Now if this hadn't cost too damned much and essentially ruined the telecommunications industry, then maybe there would actually be real development going on with 3G that would create new jobs and new services and new wealth and new taxes. Instead, this government enriched itself at the expense of shareholders and employees and customers and the future.
: See, too, this story in the NY Times that says that high prices will hold back deployment of broadband in the U.S. -- and all the great services and thus sales, revenue, jobs, and taxes that come with it -- while in other countries, governments are helping subsidize and encourage its deployment and thus these nations are already ahead of us (and their next generation will be more technical than ours). Our government is too busy giving tax cuts in the midst of an economic downturn and deficit spending and war to invest in the future.
Ms. Blog 2002
: Glenn Reynolds points to a Ms. online effort to show the NY Times that there are many great bloggers who happen to be women. What I didn't know until I went there is that Ms. has a blog.
Hatfields v. McCoys
: In the simmering feud over anti-anti-anti-Europeanism and -Americanism (with Glenn Reynolds as a Hatfield and Nick Denton as a real McCoy), Nick tries to smooth feathers but then -- being Nick and being European -- tries to get the last word in, wondering whether middle Americans' mistrust of or distaste for Europeans is really a proxy for their resentment of American elitists on either coast.
No, Nick, turn that prism around and look at it the other way. I'd say it's much simpler than that:
When Europeans say stupid things they sound just like Berkeleyites when they say stupid things. And no Americans have any tolerance for them.
December 04, 2002
Bundle up, it's cold out there
: MediaLife says Playboy is wondering whether it should cover up Playmates' intimates to compete with Maxim et al and to sign up skittish advertisers. Whatever. But let's at least acknowledge something absurd here: The country has finally grown up to the point at which it doesn't collectively giggle at nudity on cable and in art and in some high-end magazines, not to mention the Internet. Yet we're going Puritan in print. Somebody's out of sync with reality and the audience.
Another one bites the dust
: Will Warren, the poet laureate of the Blogosphere, hands in his rhyming dictionary. Damn.
Come back, Peter Sellers, we need you
: My colleage Peter asked yesterday whether anyone is capturing the full Keystone comedy of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. I haven't seen it yet. And this is funny: Parades of inspectors (in natty blue hats and nice, white SUVs) followed by parades of newsfolk and led by parades of Iraqi stoodges all opening up Saddam's underwear drawer to sniff for nukes. Where does this lead but to Saturday Night Live or to a Peter Sellers movie?
December 03, 2002
Santa Pundit: The Blogger's Christmas Shopping Catalogue
: As a public service to generous (and greedy) bloggers everywhere, here is the catalogue of blog booty. (There's so much good merchandise, you need to click on the "more" link to get it all):
- The Tony Pierce Busblog book: freeze-dried blog brilliance now appearing on paper.
- A signed Tom Tomorrow cartoon.
- Anything from Gizmodo (and the Gizmodo Gift Guide).
- A Hiptop.
- WeBlog from Meg et al.
- Ken Layne's Dot.con, imported from Australia.
- Very nice NYC Blogger shirts (I'll be buying myself one).
- Buy your favorite blogger a BlogAd.
- BoingBoing Good Germ t-shirts and more.
- Blogger bags, mouspads, mugs.
- A donation to Movable Type.
- Little Green Footballs T-shirts, still a work-in-progress.
- James Lileks' The Gallery of Regrettable Food.
- Any CD from New York bloggers' favorite band: Gogol Bordello.
- Glenn Reynolds' latest: The Appearance of Impropriety, a book; or Mobius Dick, his band's album; or the Nebraska Guitar Militia, a local NRA, I think.
- Rebecca Blood's Weblog Handbook.
- From the blogger's favorite network: FoxNews calendars and even a flannel nightshirt.
- From the print version of FoxNews: New York Post personalized headline product.
- From the blogger's favorite resource: Google pens, hats, shirts -- go search for it here.
- Frighteningly cute blog-bear graphics.
- Kathy "RelapsedCatholic" Shaidle's latest tome.
- Any of Christopher "RageBoy" Locke's many books.
- Dave Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
- Andrew Sullivan's Love.
- Mickey Kaus' book (slightly used).
- Bill "DailyPundit" Quick's many e-books.
- A PDF by Clay Shirky.
- Emergence by Steven Johnson.
- Peter Maass' Love Thy Neighbor.
- Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas.
- Douglas Rushkoff's many books.
- Virginia Postrel's The Future and its Enemies.
- Mark Steyn's The Face of The Tiger.
- ThinkGeek stuff and more stuff.
- Tickets to Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.
- Howard Rheingold's SmartMobs.
- Photodude suggests these fine figures.
- A subscription to Shift.
- A subscription to the New York Sun.
- Full of the Christmas spirit as I am, I'll even plug Salon premium.
- Or I'll sell you an autographed first edition of Entertainment Weekly.
Ho, Ho, Ho.
: If I forget anything, let me know.
: Add this:
- "Friends don't let friends blog drunk" -- a full line of fashion from Paul Frankenstein.
: Hear that? It's Ken Layne singing the blogging Christmas carol.
First blog on the block
: John Hiler of Microcontent News has started a Cityblog for New York and he sent me email asking my reaction. Well, blogs being a glass house, I'll respond publicly with two words (well, actually one, since the Internet killed the space bar):
CitySearch.
I've spent eight years working in local online and that whole time, people acted as if CitySearch were a killer ap. Well, killer is right. It killed capital.
There's no question that entertainment listings are useful. Only problem is, you use them only when you use them. If you're not going to a movie tonight, you don't need the movie listings (or theater listings or poetry listings or whatever).
I faced this, too, when I created Entertainment Weekly. Unlike People, which could be fueled by the bodily fluids of the stars (i.e., I didn't know she was shtupping him... I didn't know they're getting divorced already... I didn't know she was sick/addicted/drying out.... Too bad he's dead....), Entertainment Weekly was driven instead by the needs of each reader: If you don't want to be entertained this week, you don't need Entertainment Weekly. It's the guide problem.
CitySearch faced that -- its traffic was always tiny compared to my sites, which had news and sports and community galore, not just listings.
CitySearch also faced the economic reality that local entertainment advertising is hard to sell and harder to collect. Restaurants require way too much effort to sell (and they are notoriously bad at paying). Movie advertising is all national, not local. Theaters and such don't spend. Books aren't lucrative, book readings less so. And poetry? Hah! Let me say that again: Hah!
There isn't much of a business here in this slice of a niche.
And there is lots of competiton -- in newspapers, in alternative newspapers, in their online services, in movie sites, in venue sites, in restaurant sites, and so on. Google is a competitor.
I know local and I know entertainment and I know how tough they can be.
Ah, but that is where Hiler's effort may be different because -- like Nick Denton's Gizmodo -- costs are relatively low; the profit hurdle isn't as high. And Hiler is doing a good job listening to his audience, who will be sure to be appreciative -- though that audience will be smaller because this one market is only a corner of the still-small blog world.
So will it pay? That is always the question with blogs, isn't it?
I do think there will be more and more local blogs that will add up to a whole: blogs about local issues, blogs about local sports, and so on.
I know of another exciting local blog project but won't spill those beans yet. Stay tuned.
: David Galbraith adds his view as does JD Lasica and ditto Glenn Reynolds.
Europeans are just so... so... so Old World
: Nick Denton takes on Glenn Reynolds over European anti-Americanism.
I grew up with anti-anti-Americanism. My parents -- in the only instance in life in which I can think that they ever sounded like or agreed with Howard Stern -- said the French were ungrateful swine after the world wars and that's why we kids didn't see Europe until we were grown and paid for it ourselves. This is ingrained in the American DNA more than you know.
News happens
: Asparagirl finds herself amid the news. The more people publish online, the more we'll find witnesses to news publishing their own accounts.
Sick
: Afterlife telegrams: a dying person memorizes a message for an already dead person. Only $10/word. [via that Russian site that lifted Glenn Reynolds' blogroll]
December 02, 2002
Why Republicans are such fun (and Democrats are such fun fall guys)
: Michael Wolff has (another) brilliant column. Skip past the West Wing stuff and get to the marrow of the matter: Why is FoxNews (a) such fun and (b) so successful? (The answer to both questions is the same.): But then there’s Roger Ailes.
There’s something incredibly creepy about Ailes. He looks the way you imagine the man behind the curtain looking: That is, he doesn’t care about how he looks (which is, as it happens, gray and corpulent). He understands it’s all manipulation.
When he got found out giving the president ex parte advice on handling the war, he didn’t for a second whinge or show remorse. Let others pretend—he’s too old and too good at his job to start making believe the world works any other way than the way it works. The rap on Ailes is, of course, that he’s a hopeless partisan, a true believer, a Republican agent. But that deeply misses the point. Ailes is a television guy. He’s been doing television practically as long as anyone. His digressions into politics (for Nixon and for Reagan) have always been more about television craft than about Republican craft. His is the singular obsession of any television guy: to stay on the air.
Fox really isn’t in the service of the Republicans. Ailes can say this baldly and confidently. (The Republicans, more and more, follow the Fox line.) Fox isn’t in any conventional sense ideological media. It’s just that being anti-Democrat, anti-Clinton, anti-yuppie, anti-wonk turns out to be great television. Great ratings make for convenient ideology. You see, it is all an entertainment equation:
First: Republicans love to complain. Complaining is fun to watch.
Second: Democrats love to be serious. Serious is dull.
Third: You don't have to out of power to act like the outsider, the underdog freedom fighter. Even though you're in charge of all three branches of government and all of business and the No. 1 news network, you can still act like you're the avenging hero because Democrats and yuppies run the New York Times and other things you don't like. You make them into the enemy and yourself into the hero. If it works for WWE wrestling, it can work for any branch of entertainment.
Fourth: All good entertainment has a strong voice. Fox has a strong voice. It's Ailes' voice.
The result: Fox wins.
I watch FoxNews. It's far more entertaining -- that is, compelling, which means addictive -- than any of its competitors. It's maddening, of course. But then, remember that scene from Howard Stern's Private Parts, in which one befuddled network executive explains the results of an audience survey to another befuddled network executive: The people who love Stern listen because they want to hear what he says next. The people who hate him listen even more. Why? To hear what he says next.
That is FoxNews.
That is Stern.
That is also weblogs, eh?
Wolff's equation fits weblogs well. Why are they so conservative? Because that's more fun, more entertaining. And besides, everybody loves kicking the serious, wimpy, 98-pound-weakling, do-gooder, simp (read: Al Gore), especially when he's down. It's sport.
And I don't say any of that to denegrate any of these media beasts. Remember: I watch Fox; I listen to Stern; I love weblogs. I may be to the left of all those things (which is to say, at the center) but I know a good show when I see one. I'm a professional at it.
Wolff has more wise insight on the Fox formula: Fox has cultivated a fast-talking garrulousness. Traditional news is rendered slowly, at a deadly, fatherly pace. Fox gunned the engine....
Fox, too, is about arguing—rather than the argument. It’s a Jesuit thing. Thesis. Antithesis....
It’s the tweak.
This is really the Fox narrative device.
The entire presentation is about tweaking Democrats and boomer culture.
The Fox message is not about proving its own virtue, or the virtue of aging Republicans (except, of course, for Ronald Reagan), or even of the Bushes, but about ridiculing the virtues of Democrats and their yuppie partisans.
Pull their strings.
Push their buttons.
Build the straw man, knock it down. Night after night.
Here’s the way not to get labeled a phony: Accuse the other guy of being one.
Always attack, never defend.
And have fun doing it. It's not "fair and balanced." It's fun.
Sounds like weblogs, still, eh? Weblogs are fast-talking; they're argumentative; they love the tweak.
That's because weblogs, like FoxNews and like Stern, position themselves as the outsiders (even if they're not) and it all works because Americans love outsiders. Americans also love people who are sure of themselves (and that description, too, fits all these media beasts).
Read Wolff's entire column (especially his Ann Coulter and Al Gore punchlines); you'll be glad you did.
: Note, too, this column by the editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal suggesting that the way to turn around "this great, lumbering ship of journalism" is to abandon objectivity. He recounts saying this at one of those terribly boring industry conferences: I pointed to marketing surveys by all the big media corporations that startlingly discover the public has little appetite for political news, resulting in suggestions the news media cut back on its coverage of politics. To which I reply, maybe it isn't that the public doesn't care for politics. Maybe it is that you cover politics in such a boring, middle-of-the-road, noncommittal fashion that it induces yawns instead of yelps.
Why not come out swinging from an unabashed point of view? Use judgment. Take a stance. Challenge preconceptions. If it works for Rupert Murdoch -- at the Post as well as at FoxNews -- it can work for you. It works in Britain, too. We're the ones who hold onto this objectivity fetish.
Granted, it's easier to have a chorus of discordant voices when you have a nation served by national media -- as in Britain, Germany, France, and much of the world; it's much harder in U.S. cities served by one paper each. Still, a little opinion never killed anyone. It just led to longer dinners.
Republicans are fun (except for Andrew Sullivan)
: Sullivan is just so damned predictable. He is to dull what Al Gore is to dull: just dull.
Today, he complains about a Yale professor who wants the Yale Daily News to take down its forums because they are attacking her.
Right on, Andy.
Except then he just can't stop himself and he calls this typical liberal behavior.
Preditable. Stupid. Wrong. Dull.
I run lots and lots of forums and I can tell you that most of the people I hear from -- and I do hear from them -- who hate and fear the audience having its own voice in online forums are conservative.
Typical liberal behavior is defined as anything Sullivan doesn't like. Predictable. Ergo, dull.
Smells like a weblog
: The Independent [via IWantMedia] predicts a future of disconnected media. The concept of "a publication" may be obsolete in the ubiquitous information age. The current model assumes you pick your favourite newspaper, buy a small selection of regular magazines, tune in to a favourite station. But technology is going to make it easier to assemble your newspaper from multiple sources, or plan a video viewing sequence that is unpredictable. The mass market may soon be impossible to locate. Familiar, eh?
I was just thinking that....
: But Pete Rojas said it first at Gizmodo: When is somebody going to create a TiVo for radio?
It can be damned cheap: doesn't need lots of disk-space, for audio takes up less space -- and radio has less worth recording.
My list:
1. Howard Stern every day.
2. Kurt Anderson's Studio 360.
And that's about that.
Can some smart geek just create simple radio tuner that can record and convert signals at given times and given frequencies to MP3s so I can take them on the road?
That's what I want for Christmas.
Smart (though half-naked) mobs
: Germans used the Internet to start a grass-roots campaign (or national practical joke) with thousands set to send the shirt of their back to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Katja Riefler at Poynter translates for us (though Poynter has no permanlinks). The movement's site.
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