Eubie's notes

From Romensko:

Philadelphia Weekly
Departing Inquirer managing editor Anne Gordon says changes in the newspaper industry are more profound than any of us want to admit, and that papers are suffering the pain of their failure to innovate. More from her “exit interview”:
* “I see print journalists playing an active role less in the breaking of news and more in the analytical side-explaining it.”
* “I see opinionated, personality-driven voices breaking free of newspapers, going out on their own and becoming stars. I see journalists who will have to become real experts — Ph.D.s in select subjects. There will be stars who will earn a lot of money, and everyone else will earn a lot less.
* “I also believe this whole democratization of news, with a give and take between the provider and consumer, is not a trend but a reality of the next generation.”

WSJ: Short Is Good: The concise joys of condensed books — and the virtues of brevity. New condensed books by Orion Books may make reading condensed books respectable. Terry Teachout adds
that reading Reader’s Digest condensed books as a child, led him to read longer versions of the books, in some cases.

Like Orion’s Compact Editions, Condensed Books came in for a fair
amount of teasing. Betty Comden and Adolph Green, for instance, wrote a
very funny song in which they speculated on how the Digest’s editors
might have summed up “Gone With the Wind”: “Scarlett O’Hara’s a spoiled
pet/She wants everything that she can get/The one thing she can’t get
is Rhett/The end.”

Below is the graphic representation of an online poll where people give the common name. Study began several years ago.

Links about the study are BoingBoing: Map of words used for “carbonated beverage” in USA, by county and Gadling: Soda, Pop, or Coke?Generic Names for Soft Drinks by County

Image from BoingBoing

Make Magazine: HOW TO – Tie the 10 most useful knots

Here’s a guide on how to tie 10 useful knots including —

1. Overhand Knot
2. Figure-eight Know
3. Reef (Square) Knot
4. Sheet (Becket) Bend
5. Carrick Bend
6. Bowline
7. Clove Hitch
8. Timber Hitch
9. Taut-line Hitch
10. Sheepshank

How to Tie the 10 Most Useful Knots [via] Link.

MAKE reader Bill notes that you should really check out Animated knots too – Link.

BusinessWeek: Biz Tumbling All The Way To The Bank. Selling tumbleweeds over the web. Prices? $35 for a large weed, $25 for a mid-sized, $20 for a small size.

Editor & Publisher: At NAA Conference, Macy’s Exec Tells Papers How to Win Back Business

Highlights of a talk by Anne MacDonal, chief marketing officer at Macy’s:

Her company is very “concerned” about the declining readership and circulation at many newspapers throughout the country. “My company and I are not happy to see newspapers in decline. Newspapers deliver an immediacy that isn’t possible … newspapers help us cast a wider net than direct mail efforts,” she said.

But the inability of newspapers to hold on to current readers and attract younger ones is causing the giant department store to look at different media to reach them. “The readership and circulation data is causing retailers like us to shift our ad dollars,” MacDonald said.

From Make Magizine
Wind power from highways

Here’s an interesting idea, use the wind generated from cars on highways to power turbines, Joe writes –

The highway system that dissects Phoenix is expansive. While connecting 515 square miles of the Sonoran desert to support our sprawling culture, the valley freeways divide communities. My catalyst proposes to retroactively collect royalties on the land taken from social interaction. The design is a retrofitting replacement of the horizontal steel tube that currently holds freeway signage. The replacement will house two horizontal axis wind turbines (Quiet Revolution designs) that will be powered by the turbulence created from the passing cars.

String tripod

instructables : String Tripod – Link to article.

WSJ: Circulation Falls at Many Papers — Most U.S. newspapers continued to post circulation declines, reflecting the industry’s battle to hold onto readers migrating to the Internet and other media.

From Make Magazine — News from the future: Flying wind farms – Harvesting energy in the sky

Economist magazine has a possible solution to using land for power generating windmills… Put them in the sky!

IF IT ever seems windy where you live, be thankful you do not live 10km up in the air. At that height, the jet-stream winds blow stronger and more constantly than ground level winds, carrying up to a hundred times more energy.

So, just as oil companies are drilling deeper and in more remote locations in search of new reserves, pioneer wind-power engineers are looking higher in the sky for new sources of energy. Conventional turbines will not take them there–the highest to date is just over 200 metres tall. So they are trying to invent a whole new technology for harvesting wind: electricity generators that fly.

One of the most ambitious ideas has been developed by Sky WindPower, a company based in San Diego and led by Dave Shepard. Mr Shepard began his career cracking Japanese military codes during the Second World War, then developed machines for reading written text. His work led to the squared-off numbers still seen on bank cards today.

Flying wind farms [via] – Link.