March 2004 Archives
Current: The Murder Room by P.D. James. Set it aside for awhile to read Emotional Design.
Finished: Emotional Design: why we love (or hate) everyday things by Donald A. Norman. His first book The Psychology of Everyday Things was more eye-opening. Best parts were about designing robots with emotions so humans will feel more comfortable with them and "bystander apathy," where mistakes happen because everyone in the group thinks someone else will catch or has caught the mistake.
Audio book
Current: Flashing before my eyes 50 years of headlines, deadlines & punchlines by Dick Schaap
Finished: To America: personal reflections of an historian by Stephen E. Ambrose.
Wal-Mart and Time Inc. are publishing a magazine that will be sold only in Wal-Mart stores, according to this Reuters story.
If Wal-Mart, which controls 15 percent of all U.S. newsstands sales, is successful, other retailers could try publishing special magazines, says a journalism professor quoted in the article. Tip from rexblog.
Procter & Gamble is considering a print publication building on the success of its web site HomeMadeSimple.com, according to AdAge. One reason P&G is considering a print edition of that brand is possible backlash against Martha Stewart Living from Martha Stewart's conviction. A P&G executive quoted in the article says HomeMadeSimple has also tested a TV show in the UK.
P&G has created a new online media brand HealthExpressions.com, to tap the unmet need of "light health-care information" and the ability of P&G products to meet that need.
One more publishing note, NY Times reports on Ford's UK division signing a sponsorship deal with "Chick-lit" novelist Carole Matthews, that includes writing references to Ford's Fiesta into her next novel. The novel, The Sweetest Taboo, was almost finished when the deal was signed. In the original draft it was a Vokswagen Beetle.
Credibility with readers has become a non-stop worry with newspapers.
Losing touch with readers is one reason given for many ills in the industry from falling circulation to believability of articles to news judgment. The revelations of plagarism or fabrication these days fuel the concerns of editors and publishers. Here is an ombudsman column from the Sacramento Bee on the range of comments from readers about the credibility of the Bee.
Houston Business Journal: Gulf hides $10 billion hazard: Producers face escalating price to plug old wells
When newspapers first started Web sites, journalists envisioned it as a place where reporters could write long, putting back into stories what was cut.
That view didn't last long. Writing for the web requires shorter, tighter writing. People scan Web articles, and they'll leave a story quicker than they can turn a newspaper page.
Crawford Kilian writes Adapting Print Text for the Web urging shorter sentences, shorter overal lengths, more bulleted lists and being careful of color choices with text.
He has a 1,300-word "print" version and a Web "chunked" version about one-third as long. Tip: Steve Outing.
Boston Business Journal: Private parking: An elusive quest grows even tougher. Boston condo owner losing his $250-a-month spot considers paying $75,000 for a spot, if he can find a seller.
Atlanta Business Chronicle: A restart for nuclear power?: Industry, government want to build new plants
Wonder how difficult it is to read your writing? Try readability.info. You enter an MS Word document or a web page and it returns stats about grade levels, sentence info, passive sentences and other details. I scored too high on passive sentences. Tip: Debbie Weil.
From Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal: Nielsen/NetRatings finds three-quarters of Americans have access to the Internet from the home.
From earlier item, most people still use dial-up, though. San Diego has the highest share of high-speed access at 52 percent.
Current: The Murder Room by P.D. James
Finished: Scout's honor: a father's unlikely foray into the woods by Peter Applebome.
Audio book
Current: To America: personal reflections of an historian by Stephen E. Ambrose
Finished: Lost victories: The military genius of Stonewall Jackson by Bevin Alexander. I enjoyed the book, but gained more insight into Robert E. Lee's style and weakness than I did into Jackson's genius.
E-Media Tidbits; How to Turn Away Users Over 40. "So many sites I saw specify font size that's too small for my middle-aged eyes to read easily. Alas, many of them use CSS to specify such things, which means that the Text Size feature in my browser (Internet Explorer) doesn't work. I can't easily increase the font size to make reading less painful."
Major study released The State of the New Media 2004 Sunday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism takes a critical view of the trends in journalism including:
* a shrinking audience for news
* new investment focuses on distributing the news not collecting it.
* less effort is spent on synthesis or ordering of news.
* standards are changing with organizations not keeping the same standards with their organizations, such as what is acceptable for web sites compared with print.
* the audience loss will grow because little is spent building new audiences.
* the manipulators of the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists.
The report is 500 pages. The overview is more manageable today.
Coverage from NY Times: Study Finds a Waning Appetite for News; Romenesko: Report: News biz is in middle of "epochal transformation"; Washington Post: In a Deluge of Scandal, An Erosion of Trust; and USA Today: This just in: The future of news.
This report should keep lots of blogging journalists busy. Here are comments I've read by Dan Gillmor, Vin Crosby, Terry Heaton and Jeff Jarvis.
Dallas Business Journal: Report IDs traits of a 'rainmaker'
There's interesting reading about the reaction to Martha Stewart's conviction, thanks to Rex Hammock's weblog: Short memory-span theater and What he said.
I wonder if there will be as much reaction about WorldCom's restatment of $74 billion in profits over the last two years?
GlennLog: More Realistic Report on Laptops in Schools
He writes: This report from Pennsylvania shows that laptops in schools are a mixed blessing in a more realistic analysis than the constantly glowing but entirely anecdotal stream of news from Maine. In PA, computers are tools, but they also require care and feeding which takes time. And students forget to bring laptops 50 percent of the time when they're actually needed to projects in class. (This would argue that students don't need the laptops at home all the time and perhaps they don't all individually need laptops -- more of a pooled system could be better.)
Interesting difference compared with Wired New's stories about Maine's experiment with laptops in schools.
Los Angeles Business from bizjournals: Broadband share. San Diego is tops on list with 52 percent share.
A slide show of some spectacular shots from the Hubble Space Telescope, from Australia's news.com. Works better with faster access.
Scientific American.com: Hubble's Most Penetrating View Yet of the Early Universe
Also Wired News reported Friday that U.S. Senators are asking NASA to re-think plans to not repair the telescope and let it fail in a few years.
Ad Age Factpack: A Quick Reference Synopsis of the Year's Marketing and Advertising Data. Answer questions such as: Which marketer spends the most on advertising in the U.S.? How much does a TV ad cost? What is the total spent on advertising in different media? Which are the top 25 largest U.S. magazines and newspapers by circulation? Factpack is a 60-page PDF. Tip from Rex Hammock's Weblog
This is becoming a story with predictable results. Go ask county and state officials for the records that state law says anyone is entitled to see and then see all the ways they deny access and try to intimidate you.
Reporters usually get what they request. If you're thought to be a regular citizen, you don't. Here's what happened in Florida and Texas. Tip from Boing Boing Blog and Tim Porter.
Wired: Extra! Extra! Read All About You More newspapers are asking more information about readers. "To convince advertisers to spend online, newspapers say they need to get enough data about their users to tailor ads to the most receptive possible audience. Thus, it's necessary to have enough data about its audience to determine, say, how people live within driving distance of a particular store, or which readers would be most interested in offers from luxury-car dealers."
Warren Buffett's annual letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is great reading. It was posted midnight Saturday and continues to be discussed today at Motley Fool and CBS MarketWatch.
Current: Scout's honor: a father's unlikely foray into the woods by Peter Applebome
Finished: Jennifer Government by Max Barry
Audio book
Current: Lost victories: The military genius of Stonewall Jackson by Bevin Alexander
This to that.com tells you what to use when glueing things together.
Wired News: Outsmarting the Slick Ad Boys. Add rich-media ads to those being blocked by users or by ISPs such as Earthlink. Double Click says rich-media ads get more viewer clicks than other type ads, but some say the clicks drop over a short time as people grow weary of them.
Click Z: Beyond Pop-Ups looks further at the contradiction that while consumers say they don't like pop-ups, they have good response. The article says the good response is short term.
The article cites a report commissioned by Web behavior firm Bunnyfoot Universality. "The study reveals 60 percent of Web users mistrust 'any company that uses -- or even hosts -- pop-ups.' 'Brands undoubtedly committing commercial suicide by insisting on using pop-ups,' the company's director of business behavior said in a statement. 'Pop-ups are therefore not just a huge waste of money; they are also extremely negative for a brand.'
Wired News reports on Hewlett-Packard Labs study that finds the most-read webloggers regularly borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers -- often without attribution.
So why should bloggers be different than some newspapers and national media?
From Wired's article: "These findings are important to sociologists who are interested in learning how ideas grow from isolated topics into full-blown epidemics that 'infect' large populations. Such an understanding is also important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch products and ideas directly to the most influential people in a given group."
A Chicago Tribune writer changes name and profession of a source quoted about a riot by Aborigines in Sydney. Reader complains, papers investigates, paper suspends writer, writer says he did it to protect the source and has no regrets. This is the quote: "These people always complain. They want it both ways — their way and our way. They want to live in our society and be respected, yet they won't work. They steal, they rob and they get drunk. And they don't respect the laws."
To me the quote is proof of why the name and profession should not be changed. So who was he protecting?
Lost Remote: 31% of Internet users were online as the watched Academy Awards on TV. Sounds like wireless internet access and laptops are mainstream. Also I read recently that ESPN had designed its web site for viewers who are online as they watch its shows.
NY Times: Medicare and Social Security Challenge. Analysis article saying both systems will be broke and that politicians continue to ignore the problem. Article was on the heels of comments by the Fed's Greenspan that Social Security benefits need to be trimmed. Bigger issue is Medicare because of the uncertainty of how much medical costs will rise in future decades.
With today's virus du jour creating email headaches and Boston Globe joining other newspapers, including the N.Y. Times, that offer RSS feeds, this article from AP, Enthusiasts Call Web Feed Next Big Thing, is just more confirmation.
Dallas Business Journal: Patients' Rx: fast food?: Giving the term 'hospital food' a whole new meaning. "More and more Dallas-Fort Worth hospitals are resembling shopping-mall food courts, with retail kiosks and counters offering everything from Subway sandwiches and McDonald's fries to Starbucks coffee."
Current: Jennifer Government by Max Barry
Finished: George Washington's Christmas Farewell by Stanley Weintraub
Audio books
Current: Lost victories the military genius of Stonewall Jackson by Bevin Alexander
Finished: What Went Wrong? : The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis.
Wall Street Journal covers the tests by power companies of delivering high-speed access through power lines. Earthlink is testing in the Raleigh area and Cinergy is testing BPL, or broadband over power line, in Cincinnati area. The cost of access through power lines is expected to be cheaper than cable or DSL.
Reuters: Nearly Half of U.S. 'Net Users Post Content - Report summarizes latest report from Pew Internet & American Life Project. Most common ways to create content is posting photos and offering music to download. Survey showed 2 percent have created blogs and 11 percent read blogs. The Pew study found 53 million adults, or 44 percent of Internet users, have created content in some way or another. That would mean more than 13 million American read blogs and 2.4 million blog.
Bloggers were upset over AP's coverage Study: Blogging Still Infrequent, including Jarvis.
Kansas City Business Journal: Rural carriers worry about VoIP disconnecting access fees.
The issue will continue to grow as major companies offer service. From news.com:
AT&T to launch VoIP nationwide, which is expected to cost less than $40 a month.
Clay Shirky writing on VoIP: "It's clear what the consumers want -- the maximum amount of experimentation with all sorts of models, and not being forced to choose between new features and backwards compatibility. However, telephony regulation is notoriously resistant to user demands -- neither the FCC nor state regulators are elected, and neither group is very responsive to citizen action."