Imperfect Equilibrium

The good news-We're up 100 percent! The bad news: They're still 35,607 percent ahead!

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 20:05:52 GMT

It appears that I'm not the only one exhausted with this election. Over at FactCheck.Org, subscribers were sent an email this morning saying to "expect no more than one article a week for a while."

Boy! Who could have seen that coming?

Meanwhile, Jay is either going to have a blow-by-blow account of the voting, or explode. Either should be entertaining.

This just in: Americans are researching the election online.

Over in the "voting by downloading" category, Internet Explorer is in a deep swoon, losing markets share for a bazillion months in a row. At the end of this precipitous plunge, "Internet Explorer dropped to 92.9 percent of the browser market as of Oct. 29. ..." Gee, only 92.9 percent of the market? Gates is going to get kicked out of the monopolists club.

This is interesting for two reasons. First, there again is the point about reporting and statistics -- any story with the words "fastest growing" should come with a big red sticker on it. After months as the "fastest growing," Firefox now has ... about 3 percent of the market. Second, it goes to the point that the Web has become mature, stable ... and boring.

We're ready for the new new thing.

/cjf

The hierarchy of blogging, how to tell if you are a likely voter, and why the incumbent rule is like flipping a coin

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 22:46:52 GMT

Well, I had promised to post a piece about new blog business models tonight, but I've decided to put it off for a few days. In general, I just think that everyone is so focused on the election right now that there's little interest in anything else.

Rather than fire an arrow in the dark, so to speak, I'll give the economics series a couple of days of rest, and come back to it after the election spasms have died down. Similarly, I started putting together a Data Dump of Dan Gilmor's book We The Media, but put it off because of the election signal to noise ratio. As my 15-year-old daughter said this evening, "Daddy, once this election is over they'll stop all these stupid commercials, won't they?"

Yes they will, darling. Finally.

In the meantime, here are some things to think about. Random Acts of Reality has developed a flow chart that explains the hierarchy of the blogosphere. Since he has asked people to host the files rather than link to them, here is a small version I made, clicking upon which will get you a large version. WARNING: Includes discussions of smilies and indiscriminate cat-blogging:

Meanwhile, Jay at the Horserace blog explains the t-factor and why "the incumbent rule" is only slightly less accurate than simply pulling a guess out of your ... err ... hat.

The Mystery Pollster, meanwhile, explains How To Conduct A Mail Poll, explains the likely voter calculation, and much more that is interesting and related to our topic.

Meanwhile, back at American Digest: "Now, I admit that might have been misquoted in the article, but due to my recent misfortune ( Blogger's Head Explodes) I'm can't be sure."

-30-

/cjf

Blogging for customers; How To Be Like Andy Fastow -- or maybe not; the old IBM rep joke

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:53:24 GMT

11/18/2004 21:45 CST

In his book "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge," Edward O. Wilson argues that the the Enlightenment's drive toward specialization of knowledge, and therefore the separation of the sciences and arts into ever more specific sub-disciplines, has injured our ability to see the big picture. Scientists, innocent of the power of symbolic logic worked out over millennia by philosophers, conduct experiments based on hypothesis that are blinkered and poorly constructed.

We technorati think this is a brilliant idea when we're pontificating on panels about Marshal MacLuhan and the effect of the rapid reoccurrence of the letter "e" in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" on the architecture of ERP systems based on RFID.

On the other hand, when it is 2:36 a.m. and the latest absolutely gotta, no debate, emergency patch from the Redmondites has fixed one problem you didn't have, and very completely broken several critical applications that you did have at 2:35 a.m., anyone foolish enough to mention Quality, Plato and his ##!@%% cave, and the fact that Microsoft software in the cave is just a pale shadow of the true software outside is quite liable to be beaten to death with a spare hot-swappable SCSI drive from dearly departed RAID array.

But I digress. No worries: the meds should balance out any moment now. Let's see if we can play our way through a few more graphs by then, shall we?

Some days you need a philosopher. Some days you need a son of a gun who stayed up all night nursing a Win2K server back into something that could pass for working condition when the doors opened in the morning.

Hence the rise of niche publications. Most of these publications are more community civic groups than publications in the traditional sense. They tend to revolve heavily around best practices, practitioner profiles, and conferences that are largely networking events.

Take CIO's, for example. The average tenure of a CIO -- which stands for either Chief Information Officer, or Career Is Over -- is just over 18 months. (Which means I'm halfway to average at askSam!) So the typical new CIO walks in the door of the latest job, and looks around. He sees IBM RS-6000s; he knows IBM AS-400s. He bitterly remembers all of the jokes about the IBM rep on his wedding night. And then he calls a buddy who has already wrestled 6000s to the ground to get up to speed.

Chances are he met that buddy at a conference sponsored by CIO Magazine. (Full Feola disclosure: I'm on the CIO conference advisory board.)

Or take the plight of the CFO: wouldn't you want to follow the practices of the Finest In Finance, as named by CFO magazine? On second thought, better check the date on that issue: Andy Fastow's work at Enron looked a bit less attractive after the bankruptcy, the lawsuits, the indictments and the jail sentances.

Note that these niche publication communities have common characteristics. They tend to serve price-tolerant communities with members that are willing to spend thousands on a conference, and think it a bargain if they can educate themselves about six and seven-figure projects. The publications themselves are almost always free -- they tend to be what are called "controlled circulation" publications, with a high cover price that is waived for people who have the right profile. And that right profile is the one that advertisers will kill for; in the case of magazines such as CIO and CFO, the proverbial People Who Can Sign Checks.

And, interestingly enough, those same advertisers will pay even more to attend those conferences and spend time in a resort jammed with hundreds of People Who Can Sign Checks.

But look closely -- this is primarily an old media model. Glossy magazines are expensive to produce, and expensive to distribute. Consequently, a profitable business model requires high-value customers.

But what about the promise of new media? If the old media can create niche publications that are win-win propositions for high-value customers, can new media create niche publications for Us Regular Folk?

Indeed, would it not be possible to cut out the middleman and create corporate niche new media that are operated by companies for the benefit of current and prospective clientele as a customer acquisition and retention strategy?

That's the purpose of An Imperfect Equilibrium. More on that tomorrow.

-30-

/cjf

11/18/2004 10:12 CST

This morning's links seem to be entirely dispatches from Odd World:

As of this minute, you no longer have a right to whine about spam: Bill Gates is getting 4 million emails a day. On the other hand, he also has a billionaire solution: he has a department that just handles his email.

Meanwhile, Iowa has almost finished the presidential election -- unofficially, of course. Some guy named Bush is leading.

In beta news, Google has a new service called Google Scholar, which allows you to "search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

Finally, people go on line to read and get information. Who knew?

Social grooming, wild packs of teenage girls, the metrics of online communities and How To Blow Up Stuff Real Good

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:56:44 GMT

11/19/2004 22:46 CST

How much time do you spend at social grooming?

There's an anthropological theory called the Dunbar Number that suggests humans have a hardwired limit in their brains of 147.8 people that they can have in their social networks. This theory is used to explain everything from military unit size -- the company or basic unit has stayed around 150 to 200 for almost all armies since the Roman Legions -- to village size, to the size of guilds in Ultima Online.

Or so I'm told. I for one would never spend endless hours killing Nazi zombies with a flamethrower in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, or blasting 300 meter tall giant alien sorcerers with a hand-held cannon in Serious Sam, or, even better, running the debris strewn wasteland of The Factory on Solaris VII in a custom 35-ton Puma with twin Extended Range Particle Projectile Cannons blowing smoking holes into Daishis and Atlases three times your size ...

But I digress.

New research suggests that the Dunbar Number requires that a successful group have at least eight to ten members, and may have an upper limit of between 25 and 80 unless the members spend approximately 42 percent in social grooming, which would explain why teenage girls successfully travel in packs of 1,400 or more.

This also explains my children's puzzlement at The Apprentice, in which The Donald apparently runs a fairly good sized corporation based on a combination of caprice and the opinions of a small group of friends and associates. My teenage daughters are still at that wonderful age when they think that at some point -- probably in college -- they will learn the eminently logical plan by which corporations and the world are run.

So when they ask that -- "Real companies are run much more logically, aren't they?" I can only explain to them the true philosophy of corporate life:

"What is this logic of which you speak?"

Now we know what you are thinking right now, dear reader: Is it EVER possible for you to stick to a point for, say, 37 seconds without wandering off into the wilderness? Does this have anything to do with corporate blogs?

Well, yr. obdt. srvt. is always happy to oblige. So, herewith:

1. No.

2. Yes.

Allow me to elaborate. Social networking is the true circulatory system of business. Its how executives manage, negotiating the consensus that must be maintained between departments. It's how salespeople sell, using connections and reputation to earn the trust of strangers.

It's how investments are made: a guy knows a guy, who knows a VC ...

The Dunbar number explains why large companies tend to get so tribal; people need to split such large organizations up into manageable groups. On the other hand, companies that size always have the critical mass to launch communities around their products. A good example of this done right is the educational community web site Texas Instruments has put up for its calculators. (Full Feola disclosure: much of what you see there is the work of our great good friend Bronwen H. Walsh. So we are, editorially speaking, not claiming to be unbiased in our opinion of this work. But we're right, anyway, natch.)

Corporate blogs are an even bigger opportunity for smaller companies, for the Net offers the ability to find that critical mass that such companies often lack. That's part of what we are trying to do with An Imperfect Equilibrium -- build a community that has a reason to come and discuss information theory.

Of course, another way to build critical mass is by building a cooperative ecosystem. But more on that next week, along with further discussion of the purpose of this blog, and the Data Dumps. Even I have to sleep -- eventually.

-30-

/cjf

11/19/2004 19:32 CST

My morning links are just a wee bit late today ... sorry about that. So without further ado ...

James "I'm the dean of journalism, not the hardest working man in show biz" Brown, Ph.D, sings a paean to the passing of Kodachrome by digital media. It goes something like this: "Compact flash gives you life's bright colors/the greens of summer/Mama don't take my 482X 10 Gigabyte Lexar Ultra Compact Flash Card That I paid more for than the median price for a Toyota AWAAAAYYYYYY ...

But I digress.

Meanwhile, the dissidentneanderthal is explaining how to photoblog good. It is a somewhat different plan than that of the good Dr. Brown, which can be neatly summed up as "Purchase Everything Cannon Makes."

In a clever bit of reaction to our post yesterday about online niche communities and publications, The Volokh Conspiracy has sold out to ~~robot overlords~~ American Lawyer Media's LAW.COM. They are already planning to spend their ill-gotten gains on a ~~Conspiracy Jet~~ food that is not pizza, peanut butter or ramen noodles, which are the three basic University life food groups.

Brand equity, buying a Datsun, What askSam means to me, and what 300 million and a name change buy you

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 07:59:18 GMT

11/22/2004 23:13 CST

One of the most valuable -- but difficult to quantify -- assets for any company is its brand equity.

Customers spend money for a company's products. They have a good experience, and come back for more. (If they don't, brand equity goes to zero, as does the company's bank account -- a problem that provides its own permanent solution.)

Brand equity is like money in the bank: It takes a long time to build it up. You can squander it. And if you have it, you have to find ways to husband it, and make it grow.

First, a word or two about squandering brand equity, mostly to give you some idea of how to quantify this phenomena:

By 1980, Datsun was a substantial player in the US (and world) automobile market -- neck and neck in the US with Toyota and well ahead of Honda. Nissan decided to change the Datsun brand to Nissan. Four years and about 300 million dollars later, Nissan had fallen behind Toyota in brand share and was struggling to stay ahead of Honda. Remarkably, as late as 1988, a consumer survey indicated that the Datsun name was still as well know and highly regarded as the Nissan name, although it had not been used for 5 years.

In 1985 Black & Decker acquired the GE line of small appliances. In spite of permission to use the GE name for a number of years (shades of RCA), Black & Decker decided on an immediate name change in conjunction with their own, new, brand identity. In the first year and half, Black & Decker spent 100 million dollars to support the name change.

In 1988, three years after the demise of the GE name in housewares, a survey indicted that GE was still preferred 4:1 over Black & Decker as a houseware brand. Black & Decker's SpaceSaver and DustBuster brands (first into sub-sub-categories) may actually be stronger brands in housewares than Black & Decker itself.

Check it out -- after ponying up $300 million, the new Black & Decker appliances were only down four to one to the same stuff with the old name -- preferred by consumers who couldn't buy the stuff for three years.

Which makes sense, if you think about it. If you had a GE toaster, did you throw it out because the new ones had Black & Decker stamped on the side? I think not. And when it finally died, and you went looking for a new one, you probably looked for one from the company that sold you the one that had served so well for so long. And when they were gone ... you bought something else.

There's a lot of brand equity in askSam, which either means Accessing Stored Knowledge (via) Symbolic Access Method, or that you should ask Sam, the dolphin who appears as our icon, which is what I choose to believe.

So here is the $64 billion question (inflation, ya know): If companies have brand equity that they need to husband and grow, and niche media are primarily rallying points for niche communities, can companies become their own niche media?

Crazy? Probably. But think about it:

There are certainly companies that are already rallying points for niche communities: in computers, there's Apple; in photography, there is Leica; in cars, there is BMW; add your own object of passion here.

And let's face it: there's hardly anything left in the way of non-corporate media these days. Even bloggers are going corporate nowadays, what with Kevin Drum now blogging for the Washington Monthly, Micky Kaus over at Slate, Wonkette with Gawker media, and The Volokh Conspiracy taken over by robot overlords.

So, irregardless of impressions, there's hardly spitting distance between these things. Gawker needs to make money to stay in business; so does The New York Time; so does CBS; so does askSam.

(By the by, there is one place this is a controversial statement: in newsrooms, though more so in print than in broadcast. Here's an actual quote from a current article that I shan't bother linking to -- the only change is to the rude word and the removal of names: "What I wanted to hear at that meeting," says a longtime newsroom employee, "was very simple. I wanted my leader-- names removed --to tell me all you have to worry about is putting out a **** great paper. Just do that. We'll do our job. We'll make enough money so we don't have to fire anyone else. I won't even tell you how, because you don't need to know. Just write great stories. End of meeting." And, of course, no one outside the newsroom is allowed to say just what a "great newspaper" is, exactly. Certainly not the customers, who have been busy moving their business elsewhere. But I digress.)

So why not an askSam blog as the rallying point for a community? Well, that's certainly why I'm doing this. And here's another question: if most niche media bring communities together by gathering multiple vendors and practicioners in a field, could we get together that way to create a group blog with other companies and practitioners in our field? Would that make sense?

Let me know what you think.

-30-

ps: I'm testing some new blogging software, which includes an RSS feed, so you may see an email from me soon asking you to take a look.

/cjf

11/22/2004 20:22 CST

Blogging will be light this week, given the holiday. There will be an essay later tonight, then probably just links tomorrow and Wednesday.

That said, there is much of interest going on in the world. To start off with, if one were so inclined as to write an article pointing out that bloggers are a bunch of doofuses who can't get facts straight, one would not be so foolish as to spell a bunch of people's names wrong, unless there were really hard to spell names of really obscure people who would never find out or care or make fun of you. Dave Berry, for instance.

Meanwhile, Indy-based Brown Blog takes a look at the Indiana Pacers Most Excellent Adventure in Detroit, and decides to hand out additional penalties. Also suspended for Flagerently Failing to Act Like Journalists are the following, with details on their transgressions:

This is arguably one of the biggest sports stories in years. Consequently, it is pretty clear that most Indianapolis television stations do not take their web sites seriously.

At 8 a.m. the morning after the brawl, WISH, the CBS affiliate, had no mention of the story. WTHR, the NBC affiliate, had still pictures only. WXIN, the FOX station had nothing. Only WRTV, the ABC affiliate, had a story and the video on their web site. For one of the biggest stories in the NBA that involved a hometown team, this is miserable performance by stations purporting to have a news operation.

Meanwhile, over at the Philly Inky, Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine has a piece on how blogs will continue surging on despite the end of the election. Actually, no, but opposing viewpoints are welcomed and linked to around here.

Finally, a fascinating bit on the data to information conversion over at The New York Times looking at the GOP's Get Out The Vote effort, which adopted the data-mining tactics used by credit card companies:

After two years of polling, market testing and up-close demographic scrutiny of American voters, the manager of President Bush's re-election campaign, Ken Mehlman, offered another way Thursday to view the divide between the American electorate.

"If you drive a Volvo and you do yoga, you are pretty much a Democrat," Mr. Mehlman told an assembly of the nation's Republican governors here. "If you drive a Lincoln or a BMW and you own a gun, you're voting for George Bush."

Anecdotal evidence here, wherein an NPR reporter learns to shoot a shotgun and pistol, and suddenly and simultaneously finds her Volvo embarrassing and men who blow stuff up real good attractive!

Essay in a bit.

/cjf

Dan Rather, hot on the trail; a new Pulitzer prize

Tue, 23 Nov 2004 08:00:58 GMT

11/23/2004 19:20 CST

Greetings from soggy Grapevine, where a dim, fiery object appeared in the sky today. Some say it was the sun, though it has since set.

Also setting: Dan Rather's career. Much gloating and such all over the blogosphere; we will simply refer you to this report:

Veteran CBS News anchor Dan Rather this afternoon said he was "scrambling like a gila monster on hot sand" to verify allegations that he will step down from his role on the CBS Evening News in March 2005.

Meanwhile, returning to the topic of ~~our new robot overlords~~ technological advance, this was written by a computer:

"Dave Striver loved the university - its ivy-covered clocktowers, its ancient and sturdy brick, and its sun-splashed verdant greens and eager youth. The university, contrary to popular opinion, is far from free of the stark unforgiving trials of the business world: academia has its own tests, and some are as merciless as any in the marketplace. A prime example is the dissertation defense: to earn the Ph.D., to become a doctor, one must pass an oral examination on one's dissertation. This was a test Professor Edward Hart enjoyed giving."

I'd make more fun of it, but it will probably be in bookstores next week with the computers name under the giant "Tom Clancy Presents" logo, and zooming up The New York Times bestseller list.

This news just in -- The French are currently looking down their noses at: 1, the U.S.; 2. people who don't speak French, especially if they try to learn; and number 3 with a bullet, blogs, which are apparently tools of the global neocon conspiracy. And of course, we should listen to the French, because they are so very much more civilized than Americans. I'm already drinking the new Beaujolais, however, and will be buying more -- highly recommended.

Several notes on yesterday's diatribe claiming that there is daily less difference between corporations that are covered by media, and corporations that are media. First, MediaChanel.org is shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- that apparently media companies go around doing things like lobbying lawmakers for provide shelter from competition. American Journalism Review is puzzled by the practice of a series of L.A. Times owners to run that paper like a business. And a prize for those who think it is not necessary to such companies like a business: Pulitzer is considering selling out.

Mix Picasso, Ron Artest. Stir

Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:18:53 GMT

11/24/2004 16:44 CST

Just a few quick links today before we all head off for the long holiday weekend:

Under the "I'm not sure what this means" category of our show, here's what you get when you mix Picasso and Ron Artest.

In our continuing effort to document the fact that the operative word in "Newspaper company" is "company," it seems that when the good folks at The New York Times company told the government that they needed huge tax breaks to cover the cost of their new headquarters, or they'd ship hundreds of jobs to New Jersey, what they really meant to say was that they were going to clear tens of millions of dollars on the deal -- and keep the tax breaks.

Finally, a new advertising blog that argues that brands are dead -- and have been replaced by direct marketing. An interesting concept -- wrong, but interesting. Direct marketing is displacing many earlier forms of advertising, and rightly so. Brand equity, on the other hand, has to do with customer retention as well as acquisition; in other words, regardless of how you get them in the door, if they leave feeling abused, they ain't coming back. No amount of marketing can change that.

Finally, This is Stupid But Made Me Laugh: Cows With Guns.

I hope everyone has a terrific holiday. I'm taking a break until next week, at which point the essays will resume. Also, the testing has gone well on the new version of the blog, complete with RSS, so I'll hopefully get that out next week. Though Uncle Dave said it better, as usual:

A note to regular, irregular and sock monkey readers: Uncle Dave's Photoblog returns Monday. Enjoy your tryptophan-induced napping.

-30-

/cjf

Places Jayson Blair fogot to visit; a day with no links; magazines to buy

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 02:38:50 GMT

11/29/2004 23:47 CST

It seems that some generally categories seem to appearing in that section of the blogosphere that focuses on the media and journalists. There are a certain number of journalists. There are a certain number of ex-journalists, some playing defense for the careers they left for whatever reason, some playing offense against the sins of their former vocation. There are the wannabees and the Monday Morning Quarterbacks, of course. There are the political operatives, and those with an ax to grind.

Then there are the curmudgeons.

I include myself here, natch. There's always a small group of us, cranky when we're on the inside, and cranky now that we do other things. You know the type: on the inside, it was all "Why doesn't everyone do Computer-Assisted Reporting And Research?" "This is funny -- but seriously, what's your real lede?" and so on and so forth.

One of the good things about being on the outside is that you can be dispassionate about it -- the hot blood and immediate battles have faded to dry telegrams reporting wars long ended.

The long holiday weekend brought some of those telegrams.

Most interestingly, and sadly, is the latest report about the travails of The New York Times. Now I will admit to perhaps lacking the true scientific detachment on this particular topic; I occasionally argue with friends over whether today's times is better or worse than that of 30 years ago. And I will admit that my preference for that older times is perhaps colored by my memories of that big fat paper I used to curl up with as teenage, reading the book review and so many other wonderful things.

Be that as it may, it's hard to feel much other than despair over this millennium's Times, or the constant finger-pointing and score settling that has settled in there. There was the massive score settling piece that Howell Raines did for the Atlantic some months ago.

Comes now the score settling for that score settling in the December Vanity Fair: a massive excerpt from Seth Mnookin's soon to be published Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media.

(Given that this is a curmudgeonly piece, I'm not linking to anything. Yes, I know how to do it: see various linkages below. But part of the theme of this piece is to Step Away From The Screen and Go Read Something Printed On Paper. You can do it -- I knew that you could. Or, as a friend said to me quite recently when I pointed out that it is possible to use IM to tell if I am online: "Why? You're ALWAYS online.)

Now there are many sad and interesting stories in Mnookin's quite depressing piece. There is, of course, the Jayson Blair Forgot To Go To Texas But Filed A Story Anyway bit, many bits devoted to stapling Raines to the wall for various sins -- indeed, if the rest of the book is as heavy handed as this excerpt, it may well do what was heretofore thought impossible -- it may make Raines into a sympathetic figure.

But beyond that there is this little matter at the center of things, one that elicits no comment -- at least in this excerpt -- from the protagonists, or the author: the response of The New York Times management to the Blair scandal "...was plainly setting up an independent unit in the paper to report on the paper."

Let's try that in a couple of other venues for fun, shall we? Come on, we know you want to play along at home:

In response to the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, President George W. Bush appointed Andrew Card and other White House staffers as an independent unit in the White House to report on the White House.

Hmmm. I can hear the howling in New York from here in Texas. Can't have that, can we? Let's try once more with feeling, shall we?

In response to the Raptor scandal, Enron CEO Ken Lay set up a group of Enron employees as an independent unit in Enron to report on the company.

Had enough yet?

The point here ought to be clear to anyone with the ability of self-examination: Politics, it has been said, is what happens when a third person enters a room. Large organizations have large politics; who got what byline where, and which assignment, is fodder for constant chatter, back biting and worse in any newsroom. Given that, there is no one in a large organization who is exempt from such politics.

Given that, there is no one in such an organization that could operate as an independent unit. If nothing else, there is no way to bring a fresh set of eyes to the situation.

Quite predictably, the unit managed to come up with a report that can quite unfairly be summed up as "Howell Raines is a Great Big Poopy Head," in quite large type, followed by this subhead: "Also, Jayson Blair forgot to go to Texas, Maryland, Washington DC, Washington The State, The Inn at Little Washington in Flaggstaff, and Probably a Bunch of Other Places, but We Got Tired And Lost Interest."

Sorry.

Anyway, go and buy the magazine, read the excerpt, and make up your own mind. Another reason to buy the December issue: An oral history of Page Six, the New York Post gossip column. Apparently, if you annoy the people who work at the Post, they will retaliate by putting you in Page Six, unless you really annoy them, at which point they will ban you from Page Six. There is also a fascinating Rashamonish story about whether Bobby Zarem tore up or ate a note from Claudia Cohen, which I'm sure I'd care a whole lot more about if I had any idea who these people are.

Finally, three more magazines you should rush out and buy:

If you can still find it, the November issue of Vanity Fair has a music CD with tracks by Steve Earle, Jill Sobule, Sonic Youth and others.

The November issue of Uncut -- a Brit import, so it's on shelves now -- has a CD filled with tunes from Martin Scorsese films, including a great live version of Roxy Music's Love is the Drug.

Finally, and most importantly, the November Wired also has a CD, but this one has music licensed under a new copyright scheme worked out by Lawrence Lessig. Basically, you are granted permission to file share/trade/rip/sample all these songs to your heart's content for non-commercial purposes, and can do the same commercially to all but three tracks. As to the tracks ... Chuck D, David Byrne, DJ Danger Mouse, Dan the Automator, Paul Westerberg, and yet another kick-but track from the Beasties. Go forth and buy it. Step away from the screen.

You can do it.

-30-

/cjf

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It's gonna hurt ... real bad ... for 8, 9 seconds ...

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 01:24:37 GMT

11/30/2004 22:56 CST

The problem, of course, with deciding to be a curmudgeon and have a "no links -- go out and read something in print" day on the blog is ... well ... you end up with all these links that you didn't put up. Especially if you decide to go off like that after a four-day weekend ... So, of course, today will be the Costco Size Pallet o' links ...

First, the Village Voice draw the opposite of my conclusion while reviewing Seth Mnookin's book on The New York Times. My view: investigating yourself is ... problematic. Their view: Heroic reporters save truly great newspaper from editors, Bush, publishers, evil orcs and things that go bump in the night.

Meanwhile, back in the part of journalism world where journalists actually cover something besides ourselves, the much-admired Sherri Ricchiardi covers the travails and harassment of women sportswriters in locker rooms across America:

Before the stunned reporter uttered a word, a sweat-soaked jock strap sailed through the air, smacking Boivin in the head and falling to the floor. She remembers looking down and thinking, "Oh my God!" as she turned and fled her tormentors.

Not pretty.

Meanwhile, in his never ending campaign to prove that blogs are irrelevent by writing about them on a daily basis, Frank Barnako's Internet Daily offers up the following thoughts over at CBSMarketWatch:

A blogger is selling his services over at Ebay. Current going rate: $1,500. Funny, but I'll work for a venti sugar free French Vanilla breve. Which says something about him. Or me. Your call.

Online shopping set new records over the holiday.

Say, here's some good news: More marketing email is headed your way.

A new search engine called PubSub is indexing blogs, SEC filings and sundry other strange and interesting things.

Finally, on the disintermediation front, a U.S. District Court has ruled that ForSaleByOwner.com does not need a real estate license, overturning a ruling by the California Department of Real Estate.

Also on MarketWatch: John Dvorak sees signs of the apocalypse in the EU's ruminations on software patents. Having read Dvorak on and off for some two decades, I've grown increasingly immune to his constant yelps of fear at this or that. Indeed, it would seem that his life must be a lot like that Christopher Walken sketch on SNL where he spoofs his reluctant psychic character from The Dead Zone -- instead of seeing murder and mayhem, he sees ... well ...

Ed Glosser: accidentally touches the male employee's arm and falls back into his trance ] At lunch.. you're gonna treat yourself to a vanilla ice cream.. you're gonna eat it too fast.. you're gonna get an ice cream headache.. it's gonna hurt.. real bad.. right.. [ touches the middle of his forehead ] ..here.. for eight, nine seconds..

Finally, a geed alert -- here's a six-minute trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended Edition DVD.

Well, that should about even things up, link wise, no?

-30-

/cjf

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How to play the flute, fix journalism, reform media companies and construct box girder bridges

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 02:11:06 GMT

12/1/2004 23:55 CST

One of the greatest Monty Python skits -- I know, I know, there are so many truly great ones, but still -- is "How To Do It." Tell the truth -- you know these guys:

Alan: Well, last week we showed you how to be a gynaecologist, and this week on "How to do it", we're gonna learn how to play the flute, how to split the atom, how to construct box-girder bridges...

Jackie: Super!

Alan: ...and how to irrigate the Sahara and make vast new areas cultivatable, but first here's Jackie to tell you how to rid the world of all known diseases.

Jackie: Hello Alan!

Alan: Hello Jackie!

Jackie: Well first of all, become a doctor and discover a marvelous cure for something and then, when the medical world really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right, so that there'll never be diseases anymore.

Alan: Thanks Jackie, that was great!

GC: Fantastic!

Alan: Now, how to play the flute. Well, you blow in one end and move your fingers up and down the outside.

GC: Great Alan! Well, next week we'll be showing you how black and white people can live together in peace and harmony and Alan will be over in Moscow showing you how to reconcile the Russians and the Chinese. Till then, cheerio!

Silly, I know. Then again, how much difference is there between "you blow in one end and move your fingers up and down the outside," and this plan to reform media over at PressThink?

You can, of course, shoot right over there and read it for yourself, or you could read this short, completely unfair summary of The Media Company I want to Work For:

*Would let me print whatever I want.

*Would be run by my friends.

*Would be run based on traditional journalism values.

*Would only allow my friends and I to determine what are traditional journalism values.

*Would be run for the benefit of reporters and the reader community, not slimy business interests.

*Would only allow my friends and I to determine who are valid members of the reader community, and who are slimy business interests.

*Would offer enormous pay and benefits to reporters, who are clearly the cream of society.

*Would get the money for said pay by kicking the money tree out back, causing Franklins to come tumbling down out of the branches.

OK, that's slightly unfair, but not by much. Especially when the topic of money raises its ugly head in the comments, and the examples brought up are "hyper-local content" and user-generated content sites.

Of course, we already have hyper-local content, in the form of small town daily and weekly newspapers. Ever worked for one? Why not give it a try? You'll get a paycheck -- and still qualify for food stamps! And, of course, the entire point of user-generated content sites is that you don't have to pay for the content ...

Sigh.

On a brighter note, let's have the indispensable ScrappleFace have the last word tonight -- twice!

First, apparently CBS News has come up with a new strategy in the wake of Dan Rather's retirement announcement: "Anchors and personalities cost big bucks," said the source. "Instead of trying to find the next Dan Rather or Ted Baxter, we're thinking of getting back to basics. You know...just the facts. We're dead last now, so how bad could it get?"

Finally, "blog" is the word of the year; "Instalanche" isn't.

-30-

/cjf

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Blogger threated by Sony; journalists, lawyers, love and parades

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 02:46:14 GMT

12/2/2004 24:11 CST

Standing in the dark, wrapped in the comfortable soft chill of Texas fall, watching the troops of dancers and clarinets and trombones and goats parade past, I watched the mayor of Grapevine work the crowd, and wondered again where and when my old journalists juices were lost.

I mean, the old me would have been continuously outraged for five and a half years now. After all, the chief elected position of our fair city is not only apparently named "Mayor for Life," it is also hereditary. The current mayor was first elected in the Late Paleozoic, after a similar run by his predecessor -- his father.

Something must be wrong, no?

I'd complain more, but the town just works. The parade tonight sashayed down through the Main Street Historic District, which has been restored to something a bit better than the old Texas in Larry McMurtry's books. There were high school marching bands, and middle school walking in a group bands, and elementary school singers safely tucked away on floats built by each school's Dad's club. There two separate Volkswagon clubs -- one for classic VW owners, and one for New Beatle owners. One middle school band had parents playing along with their kids; people randomly walked out into the street, often pushing strollers, sometimes to take pictures, some times to talk to a friend spotted on the other sidewalk.

Some times just to dance.

It would be easy enough to conclude that the real world has somehow missed Grapevine, and the town is therefore in for a rude shock at some point. It would be easy, but it would be wrong. Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down by the law in this little town; about two-thirds of DFW airport is actually inside Grapevine, and there are too many major retailers, businesses, hotels and restaurants to mention. It works because the town has a plan, and the wherewithal to make it stick. Big development -- Bass Pro Shops, the Grapevine Mills Mall, the Gaylord Texan -- go out on the highway ring. Inside the highway ring there are quiet residential neighborhoods and the historic district.

Complain all you want -- many do -- but the town has the horsepower to make it stick.

It's called bringing a gun to a knife fight -- things tend to sort themselves out rather quickly.

Then, of course, there is the converse theory, where you bring a knife to a gunfight. This is somewhat less successful. And bloggers are starting to learn this the hard way.

In the movies, courageous journalists laugh in the face of threats, and always persevere. In real life, there are ... lawyers.

One of the oddest events of my career was when I was doing a piece about an attorney general. I don't even remember what the piece was -- I want to say it was fairly innocuous. Anyway, I call the guy for comment, and rather than a comment, I got lawyered up. I went to see the managing editor, and told him that I couldn't be completely sure what the guy had said, given that I was not completely fluent in LawyerSpeak, but that he had said "legal recourse" every other sentence, and that seemed clear enough.

This led to a fun evening spent team writing the story -- me, the ME, and two attorneys, who kept wanting to add pithy sayings such as "From time to time" in every other sentence.

The story ran; the guy never even called. He was a lawyer, but we had a couple squads of them. Like Grapevine, it didn't pay to mess with us unless you were ready to go to the mattresses.

Bloggers in many ways are still living in the movieland version of journalism: Get a bully pulpit, and shoot off your mouth. The truth shall set you free.

Lawyers, however, will staple you to the wall. And if you don't happen to have squads of them ... well, opponents can tangle you up, tie you down and even drive you out of business just by starting an action. Being right is small consolation if you're driven out of business because you don't have the wherewithal to defend yourself.

Which is where Jason Kottke finds himself today. Kottke, proprietor of the kottke.org blog, posted a clip of Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings finally losing. That prompted a missive from the legion of attorneys at Sony, pointing out that they owned the program and directing him to take the clip down. Which he did.

But he posted a transcript of the losing question -- where talking like six sentences here -- which prompted another visit from the Sony consigliori, and several questions: Did anybody at Sony fire a missive off to The Washington Post, which pretty much published the same sentences? And can Sony do this?

Why, yes they can, dear reader. It's called bigfooting. Even if Sony can't prevail legally, it can still win tactically -- we have more attorneys than the entire population of Guatemala; you don't.

And no, they didn't mess with the Post. Ya can't bigfoot bigfoot.

-30-

/cjf

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Remember the SLED; how to sink Sony's battleship; Jim Browns 8 petapixal Canon D30 log 12: An Imperfect Equilibrium for 12/3/2004

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 01:16:33 GMT

12/3/2004 20:09 CST

Small and cheap beats big and expensive -- every time. But no one believes it.

Remember the battleship? No one believed some puny little airplane would put the battleship out of business. In fact, the military court-martialled Billy Mitchell for saying "a single battleship costs $45,000,000, requires 1,000 men to man ... an airplane comparatively many times cheaper can destroy it: ... "

Remember the mainframe? There's no need to tell the story of the mainframe and mini, or the mini and the PC, not on a blog.

Remember the SLED? Early servers were built around Single Large Expensive Disk technologies, because no set of cheap, fast disks could match a SLED's seek speed or throughput. You may have heard of the competing tech, though -- the Random Array of Inexpensive Disks. Today any serious server has a RAID array, and its hard to find anyone who knows what SLED stands for spelled out.

Remember Sony? OK, I'm jumping the gun there.

In the not too distant past, a big company could simply run over a little one, by virtue of its size. But that strategy was undone by network warfare -- the idea that because they are cheap, a swarm of little things -- airplanes -- can be produced that simply overwhelm a dreadnaught.

Yesterday, buried under a bunch of artsy fartsy about parades and such, I mentioned the dangers bloggers can face if a big company -- say, Sony -- lets loose a battalion of lawyers on a blog -- say, Kottke.org.

In the not too distant past, that would have been the end of it. If you were running a mom and pop company, and Sony lined up the lawyers, you ran -- you didn't have the money to stay in the game -- you complained, and eventually your friends got bored listening to you moan about Sony.

Today, however, Sony is like that battleship, swarmed by dozens of planes. Not long after Kottke mentioned the letter on his blog, this appeared on InstaPundit:

I'M GLAD I DIDN'T BUY A VAIO, and I think I'll avoid buying any Sony products this Christmas. That's because Sony has been rather mean to Jason Kottke, and in a fashion that certainly seems quite unreasonable.

Jeff Jarvis thinks we need a bloggers' legal defense fund, and he may be right.

But Sony needs to be encouraged not to pick on bloggers.

So by the end of the day today, all Sony had done was start a discussion at several dozen blogs, with a daily readership in the millions, about What A Swell Idea It Would Be To Boycott Sony For Christmas.

I'm sure the Sony business managers depending on Christmas sales to make their numbers will make their appreciation known to the geniuses down in the legal department.

Sony will survive this, of course. But it is having a hard time surviving its lawyers. Ever wonder how the company that ruled the music world with the Walkman and Diskman could be non-existent in the digital music player world? How could Sony loose that to Apple, of all companies? Easy -- the electronics guys were overruled by the lawyers working for the Sony record label, so when Sony finally got around to releasing a digital player, it was quite deliberately incompatible with ... oh, everything. Say, there's something you want for Christmas!

In other news, here are some things you should read:

Over at Brown Blog, our Good Dean James discusses the last 25 years of journalism. He goes on to speculate -- and worry about the next 25 years. Don't worry, Jim -- here's what's really going to happen over the next 25 years. There will be lots of new Cannon digital SLRs; you will buy them.

And don't worry so much about the translation from staff to freelance jobs. That's having everywhere. Tech jobs are moving away from niche skills such as knowing some arcane language -- LISP -- and toward the traditional liberal arts problem solving skills. And if at some point we as a society solve the ridiculous way we deal with health care -- pretending it doesn't cost anything by forcing people to get it through companies, leaving individuals to pay insane rates -- then freelancers can, in effect, become there own businesses. More on that anon.

Meanwhile, back in the professional media, where professionalism and controls keep out the soft of mistakes one finds in blogs, apparently the BBC has managed to publish fake news.

In his relentless quest to prove that blogs are irrelevant by writing about them every day, Frank Barnako has filed a column showing that political blogs lost some traffic in November compared to October, but not much. One may remember a prediction in this fine publication saying that traffic would drop, but not until after 1. the election -- there was an election in November, though it seems hard to remember --and 2. everyone got the three weeks of moaning/gloating out of their system, depending on whether their horse won. Let's look at the traffic in January, shall we?

Have a great weekend, everyone.

-30-

/cjf

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An Imperfect Equilibrium -- from the road

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 00:08:57 GMT

12/6/2004 10:12 CST

Greetings from foggy Texas, where the unusual soggy weather continues. Light blogging this week; I'll be on the road for most of it. I'll post if I can, but can't guarantee anything.

So, so reading materials to tide you over. First, the Pew Center on the Internet & American Life -- apparently, there are only two fewer Pew Centers than Starbucks in the Lower 48 -- has had a brilliant idea. The entire file sharing debate has been between record companies and file sharing advocates, with artists pretty much the dog that didn't bark -- unless you want to consider Metallica in the artist category. So the Pew folks decided to poll the musicians for their Artists, Musicians and the Internet report. Bottom line: musicians can't agree. Who knew?

In the data to information part of our show, it turns out that the Bush team had a nasty surprise after the 2000 election. It turns out that the reason their television advertising did not perform as hoped was that Republicans watch much less than Democrats. That insight lead to a targeted media campaign in the recently concluded hostilities, reports The New York Times.

Oh, good. Just what we need: political telemarketers. If Bush or Teddy call during dinner, I'm gonna be ticked.

Finally, The Wall Street Journal fisks the book "What's the matter with Kansas." Very amusing.

/cjf

How to start a riot on a boat; how to annoy Canadians; news from other planets

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:23:03 GMT

12/13/2004 16:27 EST

Greetings from Perry, Florida, with stops in between in San Antonio, back to Grapevine for a few hours, and then off to chilly Indianapolis. I haven't had time to blog on the road, but I have been collecting links ... :

From IUPUI, proof that I was actually there, doing something or other.

Apparently, things are even more wacky than we imagined over at The New York Times, where they are worried that people are listening to their keyboards. Seems like it would be a lot simpler to just read the stuff online once it's filed. This reminds me of my time in an Army Public Affairs office at Ft. Stewart -- though back in those days it was the 24th Infantry Division (Mech) -- when we were busy setting up media of an operation we were doing, and the intel boys -- and one woman who almost caused a riot on a Navy boat that had been at sea for six months -- over at G2 decided to infiltrate our operation, which they successfully did. They were somewhat chagrined when they sprang news of their successful infiltration at the after-action with the general, only to be followed by us showing the same stuff being broadcast on each of the local tv stations. "Could have stayed in the hotel room and taped it," we told them, setting off a feud that lasted for a quite a while, as I recall.

Of course, they couldn't have caused the near riot from their hotel room. The female member of the G2 crew had been designated to play the "on-air talent," and had dressed and played the role as she saw it of an empty headed blonde anchor creature -- think Nicole Kidman in "To Die For." There were a few miscalculations in this plan, however. First, it greatly annoyed the actual female reporters who were there to actually cover the actual story -- a massive tank movement across Georgia, followed by the loading of said tanks onto Navy LSTs. Secondly, the wardrobe calculations, which had run to a very short dress calculated to look oh-so-right behind the anchor desk, had apparently missed the fact that movement on an LST consists largely of climbing up and down ladders. Exposed ladders. Over exposed decks. Exposed decks filled with sailors. Sailors who had been roaming around the Med for six months.

After the all too predictable mucking about -- typical discussion among the handful of Spec. 4s from PAO, expected to fend off hundreds of sailors: Anyone know how to drive that tank? How pissed will the Major be if we throw her overboard? Spec. 4s are a practical lot -- we were, to say the least, fairly annoyed to find that the whole thing was a ruse meant to infiltrate the very part of the operation we were trying to have broadcast on television.

But I digress ...

In other news, Opinion Journal does an after action report on the effect blogs had on election journalism -- and journalists.

Meanwhile, back in the cold, cold world, Oracle reveals its plans for PeopleSoft, now that it has successfully run it to ground. Here's a hint: Think of PeopleSoft as the baby gnu in one of those nature channel porn shows.

On the lighter side of business, CIO Magazine asks that burning question "When is tomorrow when some of you on the conference call are on the other side of the International Data Line?

This just in from other planets:

Still worried about the nut in the giant truck mucking with a cell phone rather than noticing whether he's running you over? Good news! Now he'll be Googling Thai Restaurants while crushing you beneath his giant wheels.

Find evil thoughts in AC/DC songs by playing them backwards! (And all this time I thought the Highway to Hell was the Cross Bronx Expressway.) (Note to non-New Yorkers -- sorry!)

Proof that late night trashy movies CAN be educational -- How to Survive a Zombie Epidemic!

Media Bistro gives its take on the Year in Journalism.

And last, but not least, How To Annoy Our Canadian Neighbors To The Great White North.

--30-

/cjf

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Celebrity journalism and libel; is perfect the enemy of good? and the field expedient method

Tue, 14 Dec 2004 17:04:04 GMT

12/14/2004 14:56 EST

Light blogging today; lots of meetings, and the askSam holiday party, while everyone is here in Greater Metropolitan Perry -- wish you were here with us!

Despite yesterday's plethora of links -- and near riot -- there's much linking goodness today once again. So let's get right to it:

There's been much discussion, here and elsewhere, about how the media has changed in the age of celebrity. Comes now news that the celebrity machine bites those that feed it, which should come as no surprise to those playing along at home. A judge is suing a reporter and the Boston Herald for libel, in part because of comments the reporter made on television talk shows, which the judge argues show actual malice. Another sign of malice might be the Herald hosting chat areas on the stories where various readers suggested raping the judge's teenage daughters to teach him a lesson. Said lesson, apparently, is that there are morons on the Herald's chat boards.

One of the nice things about the Wall Street Journal folks is that they tend to defend folks they don't like on the principle of the thing. Today's example: A defense of the of the NAACP's right to say George W. is a big fat dope without having the IRS come calling. The WSJ argues -- quite rightly -- that the Heritage Foundation and all the other non-profits that screamed when the IRS came calling after they said Bill Clinton was a big fat dope need to scream just as loudly now. Quite right.

Another contribution from the WSJ: Is perfect the enemy of good? A compelling question, without a good answer, except for this: Never underestimate the ability of a couple of Spec. 4s to solve a problem using the Field Expedient Method.

Meanwhile, in News From Other Planets:

Today In Alternate History is a blog that keeps you up-to-date! On stuff that didn't happen.

And you can probably find that stuff on Google, which is adding major research libraries to its collection. The good news: Now you can Google the Harvard Library! The bad news: "Results 1 - 10 of about 28,500,000 for harvard." Ah well, it's in there somewhere. It's kind of like knowing where the fish are -- in the sea. True, but not the best fishing advice ever.

Meanwhile, Sun, having annoyed the entire tech community by playing kissy face with the great Gates -- amazing what a couple of zillion dollars will do -- decide now is a really good time to do stuff like that, on account o' people can't get much madder. So they have decided to make Solaris open source ... by coming up with their own license, which of course conflicts with the GNU General Public License. This looks like a brilliant strategy to annoy everyone simultaneously. The people who are annoyed by open source are still annoyed, because they don't care how Sun does something they think is stupid. And the open source people are annoyed by what they see as an attack on the GPL. Why, it's perfect! This can only be the product of a truly brilliant mind!

Finally, in other news about geniuses from other planets, the RIAA has lost. Every. Single. Lawsuit. In 2004.

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The State of McNews; will Firefox knock out ... Opera?

Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:15:40 GMT

12/15/2004 17:24 EST

Some quick links while running between hither and yon ...

Monitoring the media is not just for the big boys. In Texas, a news website is busy keeping up with the local reporter for the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. I'm guessing they never covered this in J-School.

Are blogs the new Beanie Babies? Dvorak weighs in. Bonus points for working in the "blogs as CB radio" bit as an aside.

Meanwhile, a former Washington Post reporter is launching a ~~Beanie Baby~~ local news blog next year. Of course, if you weren't a former Washington Post reporter, you could just go and launch it, like those Texas guys two items up. Of course, you also wouldn't get written up in the Post -- in the News That Might Occur Some Day section.

This just in from the newspaper folks: Newspapers are in trouble. So here's the new, new plan: McNews on electronic devices, and the serious stuff in print. Great Idea! Because, of course, there won't be any pesky competition online ...

Meanwhile, in News From Other Planets:

If a spinal cord injury breaks the connection to the brain, can we jumper the brain with solid state technology?

This just in -- Firefox continues to gain market share! And this just in -- the ultimate loser may be Opera, not Microsoft.

In his continuing quest to prove that blogs are irrelevant by writing about them every day, Frank Barnako has just noticed WizBang's blog awards.

In the debunking part of our show, that study showing patterns in Florida voting machines has been roundly roughed up by academics.

And, finally, here's a way to fix things the manufacturer forgot to fix in your digital SLR.

Orrin Hatch and other tales of Mickey Mouse

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 18:48:49 GMT

12/16/2004 17:08 EST

A VERY quick update today as I get back on the road and head home -- with of course some meetings on the way. I'll make it up to you -- promise!

Remember the Go Network? Disney stockholders do -- except they spelled GO S-I-N-K-H-O-L-E. Good news, Mouseketeers! The House of Mouse is going to try again ...

In other Micky Mouse news, Geico has been told by a judge to go pound sand. The insurer had been suing Google for trademark infringement for selling ads to competitors that came up when users searched for "Geico."

Finally, a bit of strange and related good news on the copyright wars front: Erstwhile singer/songwriter Orrin Hatch is stepping down as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and chances are that his replacement -- Arlen Specter -- will be less hostile than the guy who championed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, among other stupidities.

See you in the new year

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 02:41:49 GMT

Well, I have essays roughed out, and links collected ... but let's face it, you're not thinking about blogs, or data, or information right now, and neither am I. So let's save it for when we're all fresh and focused again.

In the meantime, I hope all of you and yours have a wonderful holiday season. See you in the new year.

-30-

/cjf

An Imperfect New Year

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 18:02:20 GMT

Welcome to an Imperfect 2005, from yr. ImPerFect CorRespoNdnt, currently under the weather with a Perfectly Nasty Sore Throat. We've been experimenting the last few weeks with a new and much improved version of the blog written by our friend Matthew and his Merry Minions, or some such, and are unveiling it for the new year. Among the promised upgrades -- there's an RSS feed in the upper left corner, a working calendar on the lower left with links to previous entries, and the ability to see who has commented on what. Unless you all continue to email me your comments, as usual, in which case They Will Not Be Counted.

More when my eyes resume focusing in the same plane, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

/cjf

A quick update

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:38:10 GMT

Some of the blog attributes changed when this software was moved off the test server yesterday, and I'm trying to get the type size etc back to normal.

I'm feeling semi human today, so there will be some links up in a bit.

/cjf

Well, that didn't work

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:40:29 GMT

Let's see if this looks any better.

/cjf

Hmmmm ...

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:41:41 GMT

OK, here's take 3 ...

/cjf

Still trying

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:43:59 GMT

I'm hoping there's only about 3 people on the RSS feed being driven crazy by this.

/cjf

Yet another attempt

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 18:02:58 GMT

Ok, so this is attempt 46 to solve the font size problem.

How to blog good; the Hitchhikers Guide to the Current Account Defecit

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 19:39:32 GMT

Greetings, Well, I'm feeling somewhat better, and now I'm messing with the font attributes and such; some things broke when we moved this app over to the main server. Please bear with us while we tidy up.

In the meantimeand a resumption of essays as soon as I'm back to full speed, but here are links for today:

How to Be an A-List Blogger-- part 3 of a very interesting series over at The Evangelical Outpost. Read 'em all.

Over at Steve's Digicams, news that digital cameras now are 67 percent of all camera sales.

More cool tech: Vonage is announcing a WiFi phone. Sign me up!

Here's a cool new site I found on EconoPundit: Stats at George Mason University, where I did my grad work. Check out the Dubious Data Awards. Ya gotta love Number 5, in which a breathless LA Times story talked about the cancer danger posed by nail polish -- but left out that you'd have to drink 4.5 bottles of nail polish. A day. For 70 years.

I hate when that happens.

Another hat-tip to EconoPundit: the Cleveland Fed has posted a report entitled A Hitchhikers Guide to the U.S. Current Accounts Problem. Love the title, though it is another one of those "all Insert Expert Title Here So We Don't Have To Have A Discussion agree" thumbsuckers. And wrong, to boot. There's a far better take from Arthur Laffer over in the Wall Street Journal -- it's not free, alas, so no link. Quick summary: It's actually a capital influx. Capital follows growth, and the U.S. economy is the only industrialized economy exhibiting strong growth.

Finally, askSam news simultaneously good and bad from PCWorld, where our SurfSaver product is the subject of praise from Laura Blackwell -- who no longer uses it, because she's switched to Firefox.

Sigh.

This, of course, will prompt the ususal 20 people to send the usual 40 emails: "Why don't you have a FireFox/Mozilla/Opera/Netcoptor/Mac/Linux/FreeBSD/Atari Amiga/Commodore 64 Version of your software, you Andelluvian RedNeck?" Well, first of all, you've never seen my neck -- I tan quite nicely, thank you. Second ... well, timing is everything, no? It's interesting, as we posted last month, that currently Firefox is busy taking market share from ... Opera.

More tomorrow.

-30-

/cjf

Feeling a bit Dick Tracyish? Things that happen in Vegas should stay ... in my pocket

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 23:43:34 GMT

Greetings and felicitations. We're having a typical Texas winter: 70s yesterday, 30s today, 20s with sleet tomorrow ... and 70s on the weekend.

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do ... Come on! Everybody!

Sorry.

Well, I'm feeling better -- thanks to all of you who've asked. Will do a little more housecleaning on the blog, and then start the essays back up.

In the meantime, these links:

Feeling a bit Dick Tracyish? Time for a Fossil Abacas Wrist PDA! It gets an Editor's Choice, despite how hard it is to work those teeny tiny buttons.

In the "Stuff I Need" part of our show, Samsung has introduced a 5 megapixel camera phone with an optical zoom at the toy show that is CES in Las Vegas. Here's hope that what happens in Vegas ... ends up in my pocket.

Did I mention I need one of those?

Meanwhile, back in the media world, John Dvorak weighs in with this fun news for newspapers: "Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn't accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free."

Dvorak goes on to quote a new report on the effect Craig's List has had on San Francisco newspapers:

"Free community Web site Craigslist has cost San Francisco Bay Area newspapers up to $65 million in employment advertising revenue, according to a report released Monday.

Craigslist, which generates more than 1 billion page views each month, also has cost the newspapers millions more in merchandise and real estate advertising, and has damaged other traditional classified advertising businesses, according to a report published by Classified Intelligence."

Interesting reading. Though I'm not sure if Dvorak's solutions are of much use.

More tomorrow.

Money.

/cjf

Let's blame the Readers! Because it sure ain't us ...

Thu, 06 Jan 2005 17:32:15 GMT

Links, links links ...

The Columbia Journalism Review takes a look at the dismal state of the journalism business -- circulation scandals, ever-shrinking readership, trust ratings below reality TV participants -- and comes to the logical conclusion Let's Blame the Readers.

Here's a clever clue: If you are secretly planning to leave your employer with a bunch of your colleagues -- and a bunch of their clients -- you probably don't want to work out all the details on your soon-to-be-betrayed employers email system.

This just in from Bill Gates: People who oppose the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and similar works of genius are modern-day Communists.

Over in the political world, Arnold Schwarzenegger continues his disintermediation of the California political establishment. Here's his latest: taking the power to draw up legislative and congressional districts away from politicians.

More later.//cjf

Schadenfreude, or however you spell it

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:34:20 GMT

I fixed my daughter's computer over the holidays. It had gotten a few of those annoying ad-ware infestations about a month ago, and I had her install Spy Bot and, since she was fixing these stuff anyway, told her to upgrade to SP2.

She called later to say that she was locked out of her WiFi network. The PC could see the network, but refused to log on, citing "security problems." We reinstalled six or eight times, tried another adaptor, then let it rest until we were all on vacation.

A little rest prompted this thought -- maybe we can't fix the WiFi because there's nothing wrong with it.

So here's how I fixed my daughter's computer -- I told her to uninstall SP2. At the end of the uninstall there's a forced reboot -- and the computer came up with the WiFi running full blast.

Sigh.

So you'll excuse me if I am less that charitable today. I know that I should feel no joy that Windows crashed twice. During a CES presentation. Including a Blue Screen Of Death.

During Bill Gates' keynote. While hired gun/MC Conan O'Brien helpfully said "outraged" stuff like "Who's in charge of Microsoft? ....Oh."

No, I should feel no joy at all, no sense of that cosmic karma wheel coming around. I know you don't.

But then you're a better man than I, Gunga Din.

On another note: Have you worked with these guys? I've sure seen them at companies where I've been -- not askSam, natch. Here's the scoop on HuHCorp:

"Our main consulting strategy is to convince clients that we do stuff they can't do themselves, and that we deserve lots of money for it. The best way to do this is to always look good, and always sound like we know something you don't. Because we do."

-30-

/cjf

Peggy Noonan on Rathergate

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 13:07:06 GMT

Sorry about the silence -- I was on one of those trips where I thought I'd have plenty of time to blog, and ended up up not having time to sleep. Sigh.

Will say more on this later, but I'm trying to get more into the "post things as they come up" mode," rather than saving them up to do something more substantial. Guess I'm having trouble shaking that MSM mindset!

Much ado in the blogospere on the CBS Rathergate report, much of it uninteresting. Peggy Noonan, however, is always interesting and thoughtful, whether or not you happen to agree with her on any particular topic. Here, she puts the last few decades of changes in media into some historical perspective.

/cjf

Has the MSM been a political party?

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 13:18:16 GMT

Newsweek's Howard Fineman has some interesting thoughts about the changes hitting the Main Stream Media, especially in the wake of RatherGate.

He certainly starts out provocatively:

A political party is dying before our eyes - and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards. At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president. But all that is ancient history.

I remain unconvinced. As a card carrying member of the MSM for much of the period he discusses, I can say with a great deal of certainty that the MSM is no more capable of getting organized enough to pull off some grand conspiracy for good than it is capable of grand conspiracies of evil. Haven't any of these people ever been in a newsroom on deadline? All of the Monday morning quarterbacking about why a particular photo ran above the fold ignores the Occam's Razor delivered truth of how that editorial debate really went -- "Hey! The @**! photographer took a picture of the wrong guy! Again! Whatta ya got that I can run across 4 columns?"

Sorry.

/cjf