DefinitiveInk

Morning Reading

Even penguins need to remove their shoes at airports.  A slide-show of two penguins clearing airport security. (via Caterina.net)

List and description of "New Voices" grant winners for very innovative local media ventures, from the American Press Institute.  Funny years ago I produced the last "New Voices, New Visions" CD from a contest that Voyager and Interval ran, how times have changed.

Interesting article in the WSJ about Paul Shirley of the Phoenix Suns' blog and the difficulty of blogging in a corporate environment (sports league image) . (via Paid Content)

Link to the executive summary of Marketing Sherpa's annual e-mail marketing metrics report.

NYT OpEd piece by Hubert Van Es about the famous photo of the rooftop helicopter, he took during the fall of Saigon. 30 years ago.

Can't write enough about how great it is that Susan Mernit keeps posting Powerpoints from conferences she attends. Mary Meeker's  The Age of Engagment is a must scroll.  Also Doc Searls on What Blogs Are and Are Not. 

This is a sign from MoveOn that was for the rallys to save the filibuster that were held around the country on Wed. They are pretty much ideal for teenagers to put on doors. Hell, we are thinking of putting it on our front door.

Spelling with flickr

 

Storytelling is next frontier for Yahoo. MediaPost has an interview with Scott Moore the MSN exec who has just taken a key role at Yahoo.

  OnlineMediaDaily: What most excites you about the new job?

  Moore: The thing I'm most excited about is the next phases of Internet development, which I believe will be about storytelling. You need good storytellers ... I don't think the Internet as a medium has come anywhere close to realizing its potential as a storytelling medium. The other key area that I'm really interested in is user-generated content, particularly blogs and user communities like Craigslist. The challenge is to figure out how to harness the massive creative energy represented by those things, and harness it in a way that allows the highest-quality content to rise to the top.

  OnlineMediaDaily: Where is the storytelling going to come from? So far, there hasn't been much storytelling on the Web. The assumption is that Yahoo! will acquire original content by licensing it, buying small developers and animators, and partnering with production studios. There's been speculation that Yahoo! may even develop content on its own.

  Moore: If you look at massive multi-player online role-playing games, there already is a ton of storytelling online. But these games require a lot of work from the players. They're kind of like actors in a drama that they make up as they go along. Most people won't work that hard.

I believe great ideas and execution are the keys to great storytelling. Great ideas don't need to be expensive to develop. The cost of production for the Internet is a fraction of the cost in any other medium. We're dealing with pixels and bandwidth, not film production and movie stars or ink, paper, and postage. It's a lot cheaper than television and film, and that's why I'm so optimistic. Flash adoption is ubiquitous. Bandwidth costs are going down. The creative palette has hugely expanded for professionally produced original content. When you add in the phenomenon of user-generated content--things like blogs, vlogs, photo-sharing, communities of interest, and the like--the medium is set to blossom.

I'm excited to hear this as storytelling was one of the key reasons I wanted to work in "new media". On the other hand while this news is exciting I've felt lately that some ideas I have are over before they begin. That and the feeling that I am on the wrong coast and have to admit that I won't be moving West. As I work in big media it is the slowness of adoption, the resistance to change, and the inertia and confusing expense of some initiatives that makes it feel like dragging through mud.   This feeling is also reinforced by the sheer speed of Google and Yahoo which just makes you feel behind. Wake up and people can add their own notes to yahoo travel - well there goes the travel idea, etc.    I am not alone on this as  Simon Waldman, the head of Guardian.com (IMHO)  one the most innovative news sites online)  writes on his blog  in a post titled, Google the rampant ad machine - what’s a publisher to do..?

But the really striking thing here is the pace of it all. Blistering. Fuelled of course by an arms race with Yahoo! that seems to be bringing out the best in both players.

The point is - and let’s be honest here - there is no way that traditional media organisations can compete at this pace. Or even at half this pace. This isn’t an act of self-flagellation, it’s just a matter of fact - for better or for worse.

Better, because some of the worst things done online by media organisations were done very quickly, very expensively and very badly. And better because when you have a business to protect as well as one to build, time to think can be an incredibly valuable asset. But worse, because…well, you can fill that bit in yourself.

Most of us are now looking at pretty healthy online businesses. We have big, growing audiences. We see revenue growth of 30%+ which looks wonderful compared to parent industries which all have question marks hanging over them. Much good work has been done, and much more is doubtless being planned.

But if we look around and want to retain our share of readers’ attention and advertisers’ wallets, it’s going to take probably double the effort,imagination and, frankly luck that even the best of us have had over the last five years.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

 

 

Of course, one person's "organic" could be another person's "blatant overcommercialization," a risk that all those involved in such deals acknowledge." - From an article in the NYT about how magazines are creating new "relationships" and programs to extend their brand. In this case Rodale creating running maps for Westin hotels and training lobby staff to become "running concierges."

Paid Content article on blogging networks. It highlights several interesting B2B plays.

Shakespeare could help end gang violence.

It's a whole new Internet - article from Adaptive Path and Jason Kottke's comments about it. 
Consumating.com - site mentoned in the Adaptive Path article. Dating site with Tags. Not crazy about the x would do him/her x would not but interesting.

Al Gore and Google - "The Smart Money behind video blogging". Article in Business 2.0 about the upcoming industry/meme.

Susan Mernit posts several conference powerpoint presentations about search. Very interesting one from Tom Wilde of FindWhat.com about content search on the web.

Yesterday I received a press release about the launch of  Multiply.com a new social network search engine/site.  Haven't had a chance to play with it but looks interesting.

Speculation from a Curbed reader on whether Jonathan Safran Foer really paid for his new brownstone. which the NYT Styles section credits with erasing Brooklyn's inferiority complex.

Priceless thinking from the BBC - a great article on IP  and the BBC making its archives free for British citizens.

Received my first copy of Make magazine last week after waiting for 2 months. Isn't it remarkable that for the past 8 years there has been very little improvement in the speed of sub. fulfillment esp. since the web has become such a strong source of subscriptions. Inventory and process methods aside the truth is speed of delivery has no real effect on subscriptions. People  make the buy and just wait. Just odd given that basically you can buy anything online and get it in a week.  Make by the way is simply fantastic from the content, the memories of heath-kits it brings up for me, and its trim size.

Morning Reading

Gothamist on Huffington's blogging venture.

David Lynch's video weather reports.

NY Times on Google's shift to selling display ads on it's network of sites, also an article on Arianna Huiffington's blog/celebrity zine. Search article has some great quotes from John Battelle and the blog one fromJay Rosen.

The truth about online cannbilization of offline media - Fred Wilson has a great post about how online turbocharges offline rather than depleting it's reach.

Yahoo lets users create travel blogs on Yahoo travel. (via MicroPersuassion)
 

This Morning's Style section of the NY Times contains the following 2 corrections which I just find amusing.

A report in the Evening Hours column last Sunday about a performance and party sponsored by the Lincoln Center Hedge Fund Council at the Time Warner Center on April 13 misstated the sum raised for nine Lincoln Center organizations. A Lincoln Center spokesman said it was $2 million, not $200,000.

Can you imagine the furor this must have caused among such a self-important group? Was this some unconscious mistake or wish on the part of the copy editor to resize this council?

and then this right below.

An article last Sunday about custom CD's created as wedding favors misstated the "fair use" provision of copyright law. That provision covers uses for criticism and teaching. It does not permit a couple to make 500 or fewer copies of copyrighted material.

I second this or more accuratly 1,156th it(or "1,155 posts  matching new rule no MSM sorted by most recent.") this no more use of MSM in referring to Mainstream Media. (vis Kottke)

 

Synchronized skaters break out in a dance at the news that Jon Stewart has no interest in becoming the anchor of the CBS evening news or perhaps they are dancing because Business Week has decided that blogs are in.

J.D. Lasica on difference between Ourmedia.com and Google video.

Cell phone for women, comes with its own perfume.  Mmm, I love that scent, is it CL75?  (via engadget)

Whither Mojo? Google results sap Yahoo, perhaps they needed a longer lasting pill?

Audible RSS feeds link users to timely free content. Notice how these aren't called podcasts anywhere.  (via Paid Content)

Has technology befuddled your brain. A Guardian quiz.

It might not be email that has made you stupid, but something has, and coffee is now the only thing supporting your higher brain function. Was that sentence too long for you? Stop. Checking. Your. Email. Try reading something to rebuild your concentration. Start with the television listings. Work up to a magazine article.

Morning Reading

PressThink - Chris Nolan on stand-alone journalism. Great post and definition. 

"There have always been freelancers and journalists who worked on their own, but one of the headaches they shared was not owning the means of production and distribution. As Nolan says, "We have our own printing press" (the nifty modern weblog) and "RSS gives us our own delivery trucks or satellite feeds." 

and

These are not bloggers. They are people who are using blogging technology--software that allows them to quickly publish their work and broadcast it on the Internet--to find and attract users. They understand that the barrier to entry in this new business isn't getting published; anyone can do that. The barrier to entry is finding an audience. That's why their editorial product is consistent, reliable and known. Readers have expectations and stand alone journalists understand this and put that understanding into practice.

So what--exactly--is a stand alone journalist? That's a definition that's going to vary with the person, of course, just as no group or reporters can really agree on what makes a "journalist." For me, the stand alone journalist succeeds in getting stories told in an honest and forthright manner without benefit of working for a larger news outlet. That doesn't mean they're objective or impartial; it means they're honest about their points of view or assumptions. A stand alone journalist understands that the main job is to inform readers; and the ethics that salaried journalists have when it comes to fairness, accuracy and honesty aren't just phrases. They're a discipline for doing the work that needs to be done: getting your facts right, your assumptions validated, your arguments well grounded.

(via MicroPersuassion)

Yellow page links from Searchblog this morning.
http://www.insiderpages.com/
http://yp.a9.com/
Google search history-  wow.

18-34 Year olds abandoning newspapers according to new study from the Carnegie Corporation.

"Abandoning the News," the study written by MSNBC.com's founding editor-in-chief, Merrill Brown, adds more grim statistics to growing literature documenting the newspaper industry's losing effort to appeal to a young audience.
 
The survey of 18-to-34-year-old finds, for instance, that just 19% read a newspaper daily, 17% read it once a month or less -- and 12% said they "never" read a paper to get their news.
 
By contrast, 44% of the young people visited a Web news portal every day, and 37% watch local TV news daily.
 
Only 14% of respondents called the newspaper their "most important" source of news. Local TV newscasts were called the most important source for news by 31% of the young adults, while another 25% cited the Internet.

 

Morning Reading

Kottke muses on the rise in NYT traffic.

Article about the founders of  Lonely Planet, Tony and Maureen Wheeler,  in The New Yorker. Lonely Planet started at a different time in book publishing and the article covers how it has changed with the times as well as how they travel. Nomadic hippies they remind me of the founder of The Body Shop, Tom's of Maine, Smith & Hawken, ben & Jerry,  and other businesses started in the 70's and how their companies change with success.  A  time when Banana Republic used to put out an illustrated catalog of travel clothing before they became the much more fashionable chain they are today.

Interesting article about the Washington Post's web site and the challenges presenting local and national news in OJR.

Kleiner Perkins funds Zazzle a company similar to cafepress , good notes from Rags Gupta about how they offer some museum and collection merchandise and how their pricing model differs from CafePress.

John Battelle on Wondir.com - answer search engine.  You used to be able to call the New York Public Library for answers to anything. I just have to wonder what would have happened if they had created something like this that combined community with experts. It potentially could have contributed something to their operations budget.

Kos is wondering about which books to read on branding. There is an interesting comment thread at the bottom which is  worth perusing.

NBC Tech Guru paid to promote products. This include the iPod - first does anyone really need to be paid to promote it, second what does this say about Apple?

NBC also mulling blogs by anchors just as Sam Donaldson (ex ABC) is saying that network news is dead.

Pope Joke (heard by B): 3 Cardinals die and each has an audience with God. The first Cardinal goes in and comes out a few minutes later crying "how could I have been so wrong?" The second cardinal goes in and also comes out crying "how could I have been so wrong?" Cardinal Ratzinger goes in and a few minutes  later God comes out crying "how could I have been so wrong?" jokes aside and the NYT editorial.

Morning Reading

Television has been taken over by idiot culture - "For the first time in our history, the weird, the stupid, the coarse, the sensational and the untrue are becoming our cultural norm -- even our cultural ideal," he says. "The gravest threat today to the best obtainable version of the truth comes from these lowered standards. And the consequences to a society that is misinformed and disinformed by the grotesque values of this idiot culture are truly perilous." --Carl Berstein in remarks to the Kansas Press Assn.  (via Romenesko)

Nice article about Remenesko in Slate.

Jeff Jarvis on the changing nature of reporting the Pope's election.  I remember watching TV as a kid and being fascinated by the whole colored smoke thing. NPR was talking about the duration of the  conclave. In the middle ages one of them lasted 3 years and I thought how bad could that be? Small rooms yes, but the food was probably better than what they had at home. A PopeCam.

NY Times.com has record page views in  March. Of these, RSS feeds generated 5.9 million pageviews which represents a 342 percent increase year over year and a 39 percent increase from February's 4.3 million pageviews. (via Paid Content)

Surfcams from Primedia will cover 75% of the surfing spots in the country. Article describes new technology and ad supported model.

Reviews of new food at McSweeney's.  And a link to real reviews of snack food.

Morning Reading

Post by Evan Williams on the off the shelf  or rather on the web apps he is using to help run ODEO (via Susan Mernit) also from Susan a link to alarm:clock a site I'm glad to know about with the scoop on John Battelle's next venture which could be a publisher services platform for bloggers.

Teen Mags blamed for rise in girls'  suicides.

Series of articles on Media Futures by Seth Goldstein (via Fred Wilson)

Article in the Detroit news on Craig Newmark and the future of newspapers.

On the train in this morning I began Manhattan '45 by Jan Morris.  The book begins with the arrival of the Queen Mary as she brings back over 14,000 service men and woman and it will go on to describe a time which she describes as a special moment of grace, a period between times pre-war and post-war that  "... lasted no more  than a few years, and by the mid-1950s was fast becoming hardly more than a regretful memory. New York was never to lose its excitement, its power to move, its limitless energy; but never again, perhaps, would it possess the particular mixture of innocence and sophistication, romance and formality, generosity and self-amazement, which seems to have characterized it in those moments of triumph."  As my train went over the Manhattan Bridge her joyous description of the city on the verge made me incredibly sad, not because of  a longing for a time past but, I think, for my inability to embrace the changes in character that the city has had since 9/11 when we have been embraced and, somehow smothered in the bosom of the rest of the country.  I'm not sure whether my feeling is based on my family's leaving the city;   the invasion of chain stores; the quest for the Olympics masking real estate grabs; the police actions during the RNC; the way money has created a new sort of classism; or the monstrous SUV's that now crowd the streets making walking, biking, and even driving feel much more precarious than they did in the past.  Or perhaps it is Bob Herbert's edtorial in the NYT about Roosevelt this morning. I'm going to keep reading and look forward to the section on the great hotels that are now being turned into condos.

Morning Reading

"Congress: No to Point, Click and Kill" - a story about a bill introduced to ban interent based hunting.  I can't even believe that this exists and no less under the cover of letting the handicapped enjoy hunting. Perhaps we can teach animals to remotely drive SUVs into things?  For a fascinating though long read into the mindset that makes things like this possible  pick up Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully. I read this when it came out. Here is what the editorial review on Amazon says:

This is one of the best books ever written on the subject of animal welfare. Scully, a journalist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, chooses to fight on his own ground, and he rightly argues that the important thing is not insisting upon equal "rights" for animals but in treating them with a modicum of respect and dignity. His book is as close as a philosophy can come to representing "animal rights" goals while not proclaiming animals to be equal in status to humans, as do classic works like Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. As a journalist, Scully personally investigated several major animal industries, including those of hunting, whaling, and factory farming. He asks penetrating questions and shows the logical and political inconsistencies used to defend cruel industries. Although some may balk at the author's sarcasm, it adds an emotional element to his unequaled depth of insight. Scully has a remarkable grasp of the issues and a unique perspective on our societal treatment of animals. Every library should purchase this book. Highly recommended.

The NYT launches a hotspot finder with jwire.com

Andy Carvin on a different kind of citizen's media.  If you visit the link also go to the blog's main page. It uses babblefish to translate hs blog into multiple languages.

Morning Reading

Several articles about the economics of blogging and author payments handily collected by Susan Mernit.

So Rupert Murdoch gave a big speech about underestimating the Internet. Opined on paid content. And Jeff Jarvis had a hand in writing this speech. (Talk about media consolidation Murdoch and Newhouse. )

The ParkSlope Coop has a blog about which produce is in and out of stock.  It also had an interesting news bit about Grade B syrup. For those of you who have never had this, it is delicious and apparently illegal to sell in NY. you can get in New Hampshire if you are lucky.

Grade B Maple syrup For some craazy reason it is apparently against the law to sell Grade B maple syrup in New York State. I was told by the owner of Coombs maple syrup that this law has been on the books for many years, but that recently some bureaucrat decided to enforce the law when he happened to see it on sale in a store in upstate New York. Our distributors are not allowed to sell Grade B syrup to me, but they can sell it in Pennsylvania, Vermont, etc. This is not a health issue. Apparently there is some "protectionist" element to the law--wanting to protect the price of NY maple syrup from Vermont or Canadian syrup producers flooding the market. However, NY producers aren't allowed to sell syrup labeled B either, so it sounds like a no win situation for everyone. I was sent some incomprehensible info on spectrographic grading of maple syrup--it included no reason why syrup labeled Grade B could not be sold as such. My limited understanding is that NY state only recognizes two grades, Grade A and Cooking Grade, which is considered to be inferior to Grade B.

I'm a member fo the coop but had no idea that this blog existed. Thanks curbed.

A very silly video of people playing ping-pong as if they are in The Matrix.

The finalists for the  MoveOn Social Security flash animation contest.

Morning Reading

Wired News on DailyKos launching a number of sports blogs. All of them running Scoop... "Despite his concerns, Calacanis is optimistic that Moulitsas can become a mogul like him."

Recently I saw a headline on a .pdf for not-for-profits that said, "Artists empower corporate America."

PaidContent on Meeetup.com's radical change in strategy - going from a free service to one with very hefty fees. I agree that it offers a new opportunity for sites to grab what will soon be users wandering around in search of ways to organize.

National Magazine Award winners for best online magazine site. Nice to see that some nominees don't have print counterparts.

Morning Reading

The Guardian is having a contest for the best suggestions for the President's iPod playlist.

Boldtype - e-mail Book reviews from the folks at Flavorpill. Resuscitating the Blodtype magazine from Random House.

What a cameraphone can do in the hands of a real photographer. (via Kottke)

Program listing from the Buying and Selling e-content,  good for thinking about questions and seeing who is answering them.

Last night I watched a documentary on The Great Transatlantic Cable on PBS.  A very inspiring story about technological dreams and massive effort. The companion site is worth a look.

 

Morning Reading - well afternoon really

NY Times on the President's iPod playlist.

iBeam launches Contagious Media Showdown contest.

Combining Goolgle maps and Craig's list real estate posts. A very cool hack/remix. (via curbed)

Jason Kottke's report on his micropatron adventure.

A very funny Treasurer's Report.

Jay Rosen on the people he would like to listen to on a panel about local blogging.  (via an interesting post from Fred Wilson on the local community and the future of newspapers.)

Morning Reading

Jesse Oxenfeld, of Editor & Publisher,  on the bubble of blogging conferences.

Moveon.org's Bush in 30 years contest to find great shockwave animations about the President's  plans for Social Security privatization.  It is based on a "am I hot or not" type of mechanism where you have to sit through one of the animations, vote and then get to another. While I applaud any effort to fight this proposal I have to say that I am disappointed by this site. I only made it through 5,  somehow B made it to 10.  Many  aspire to be jib-jab, the ones with audio all seem to have the same monotone voice, yuck.  The make your own anti-Bush ad contest they ran before the election got  much broader  and creative responses. I wish they had put their effort into a series of podcasts by George Lakoff on the framing of the Social Security issue, rather than try to get people to make; animations about the great depression, tax rates, the social security lock-box, the nature of an IOU, and old age. They could just have pointed people to talkingpointsemo. MoveOn lately has been disappointing me. I find it sort of pathetic that we are being urged to help our  elected Democratic representatives " find more courage" to fight  the Senate's " radical leadership's plan to eliminate the filibuster" to keep our basic system of government functioning.

Link to audio of the Who Owns the Culture Panel at the NYPL last night with Steven Johnson moderating, Jeff Tweedy, Lessig, etc.

J.D. Lasica on Google and people's video.

Morning Reading

Paidcontent.org is a must read today.
-  First comments and links to articles about digital magazine editions.
- Second - Exclusive about CNN's changing online video strategy.
From the BBC, MTV to launch online video channel.

If Willie Sutton were alive he might be starting a broadband video channel instead of robbing banks.

Susan Mernit's notes from her talk The Real Deal: How Young Adults Spend Their Time Online. Sadly I am no longer a "young adult" though I feel like one.

The NY Observer on Arianna Huffington's blog project and with an interview with Matt Drudge. So Warren Beatty is going to blog. I'm a little dissappointed that Annette Benning could only come up with when meeting Druge at a party was "How's Sidney Blumenthal" you would think that she could have come up with a more withering one-liner.

Scoble on CNET's purchase of HeyPix the 4 month old photosharing company they are merging into Webshots their photosharing service. He points out that webshots (which i join him in not knowing) has over .23 million members to flickrs less than a million and that it gets over 750,000 uploads a day which is more in a week than flickr has gotten since its inception. 

On another numbers note why is it that a petition signed by 20 million Chinese in a country that has over a one and half billion people gets coverage  in the Times, but a rabidly anti-semitic petition  signed  by 50,000 top Russian citizens about outlawing Jewish organizations gets no coverage,  yet gets  covered by AlJazeera of all places?

Lastly continuing my NY is becoming Atlanta meme the Port Authority is considering selling naming rights to bridges and airports. I'm having a huge flashback to Snowcrash.

Morning reading

Sploid - new tabloid from Nick Denton. Looks good.  Jeff Jarvis has the scoop on the team members.

Jason Kottke on the designer adage of "good, fast, or cheap, pick two", and general ruminations on why pick two out of three is the rule.  Interesting because it in fact isn't the rule when it comes to consumer choices.

CNet on  privacy or the lack of it and the Patriot Act.

Faster than a speeding bullet Memory maps group on Flickr- adding notes to google maps.

My early attempts at mapping my childhood on mygmaps.com.

Google Maps satellite view of Augusta National. 

I'm very fond of Gawker's weekly dissection of NY Magazine's Look Book.