March 23, 2008

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Forrest on journalism

March 23, 2008 in Journalism, News | 1 comment

Forrest Sawyer gave a killer talk at The Future of Multi-Media Digital News & Cultural Networks, which was put on at UCSB last year by the Carsey-Wolf Center.

I took part as well, on a panel that followed Forrest’s talk, speaking as a fellow with the Center for Information Technology and Society there. The pull-quote: We have seen the failure of the traditional media to live up to their responsibilities of oversight and challenging the government. And, …those who have not yet come to feel ashamed, will feel ashamed.

I enjoyed meeting and getting to hang with Forrest that day. He was a good and friendly guy, and not the least bit vain. So I’m not surprised to find that, a few months after this event, he was credited with “acts of heroism” following a helicopter crash in which he was also injured. Initially, everyone thought they were dead, including executives at the Travel Channel, that last story said.

Paleowebic

March 23, 2008 in VRM | 2 comments

I’ve been trying lately to look up stuff online that happened before the Web. It’s like looking for fossils in atmosphere. And the paleowebic tools are pretty sucky. Take for example the San Jose Mercury News archive search. I happen to know there was a story in the business section of the paper in June 1986, about Hodskins Simone & Searls, the advertising agency in which I was a partner for many years. If I look up hodskins, nothing comes up. If I search from 1985 to 2008, three items come up, none relevant. (Well, one might be, but to find out I have to create an “archive account”, specifying a payment method, before proceeding. Kind of a high-friction system.)

It’s not that I want to pay nothing for putting the Mercury to the trouble of providing a service that costs their servers more than nothing. But the complete absence of a widespread and easy to use system for perusing archival material from multiple sources is one that I’d like to help the market solve.

I do have ideas. Stay tuned.

Not just talk

March 23, 2008 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Was just pointed to The Age of Conversation. Not sure I’m in it (don’t think I am, anyway). But hey, I’m glad to see others roll a snowball I helped start.

Next up: The Age of Relationship.

Paperpassity

March 23, 2008 in Ideas | Comments closed

That’s my sniglet for the tendency of a printer to pass extra sheets through without printing on them.

Biking blogger wanted

March 23, 2008 in Places, Travel | 1 comment

Ross Rader is riding against cancer across Canada, and is looking for help. Specifically, While I would totally appreciate your financial support, that’s not the purpose of this post. The real reason I’m dusting off the blog is because we are looking for a chief blogger/podcaster/vidcaster type of person to come with us on the trip…Essentially, we need someone that can own all aspects of the online activity while we are riding – this means daily blog posts, interviews with riders, celebs, politicians and other luminaries along the way, spearheading our relationship with the blogosphere, helping us get some better traction with our facebook initiatives and that sort of thing.

Bloggers aren’t all. While I’m at it, we’re also looking for experienced bike mechanics and a few other types of volunteers. If you think you’d like to pitch in to make a difference, be sure to let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.

Follow that link and this one for more.