Eubie's notes

Bizjournals: The best counties for quality of life.

The Business Journal of Minneapolis/St. Paul: Startup TV network taps stars of self-help

Current: Tell No One: A Novel by Harlan Corben.

The midwife’s apprentice by Karen Cushman. A Newberry book

Finished: The Firm by John Grisham.

Hope to Die: A Matthew Scudder novel by Lawrence Block

Audio
Current: Pertinent Essays on the literary life by Joseph Epstein

Finished: Winston Churchill by John Keegan

Yahoo adds Wi-Fi hot spots to its maps. Clever!

Bloglines, my choice, was one of several RSS readers discussed by Wired News. Bloglines’ best points are: web-based, disaposable emails for alerts, a good way to store and search items to read later and very easy to learn to use. Also it’s been improved greatly since I began using it last fall, such as managing my blogroll.

Gas-saving hybrids sounded good before gas topped $2 an hour, a 23-year-high (adjusted for inflation) says The Washington Post, but now they’re in demand while SUVs sit.

A co-worker bought a Civic hybrid this week, and I know someone else with a Toyota Prius. But actual fuel mileage is falling short, partially because of driving styles according to WiredNews. Coming in the fall: Honda Accord Hybrid.

I put my name on the list to try Google’s Gmail beta, but many can’t wait. Wired News: My Left Arm for a Gmail Account.

But since Yahoo! is raising the amount of storage it offers its webmail users to 100MB soon, it makes Gmail less appealing.

A follow to Journalists’ role when there is no gate: James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, writes in The N.Y. Times writes “The Twilight of the Information Middlemen”, about how blogs and easy access to much government data are eliminating much of the role previously filled by academic journals.

The article is not specific about the news media, but newspapers face similar flanking of the content they publish. More on this at E-Media Tidbits, Bob Stepno’s Other Journalism Weblog, and rexblog: Rex Hammock’s Weblog.

MyVesta, a nonprofit consumer education organization, has a Money Personality Test and The History of Money and Credit, including that counting of obligations goes back more than 9,000 years. Wonder what the annual rate and grace period was then?

The twin issues of the prisoner photos from Abu Ghraib and the Nick Berg murder video raise the issue of what newspapers should show.

Jay Rosen writes about the issue today in PressThink: Even the smartest people in the major news media–and this is especially so in television news–have not really determined for themselves or explained to us exactly what their role should be in the worldwide fight against terrorism. “Cover it responsibly and well” doesn’t begin to provide an answer. For it must have occurred to people high up in the network news divisions that the videotape of the beheading was made not only for Bush but for them, in their professional capacity; and that is a fact they have to live with, think about, whether or not they show us the gruesome act.

Jeff Jarvis gives his view on BuzzMachine: This is an extreme example of the revolution journalism is facing: When the people can see the news for themselves and judge for themselves, what is the role of journalists’ news judgment? Are we merely to become a pipeline for source material? Are we merely fellow citizens, like our readers, with opinions of our own? Do we still think we know more (and better) than the audience or do we admit that the citizens know more we do?