Dear US Senator for Silicon Valley, Please Help Fix the Mobile Phone Industry
Today, I received a response from my senator, Dianne Feinstein to a canned email form I had sent to her about mobile carrier practices. The following is her response and my reply.
Dear Mr. Baker:
Thank you for writing to me about exclusivity agreements in the wireless market and your support for legislative reforms. As a wireless phone customer myself, I understand your concerns. I welcome this opportunity to respond.
Although the market for wireless phone service has become increasingly competitive, some consumers have not seen the kind of efficient, reliable, and fair service that they want. Rather, according to the Better Business Bureau, wireless phone service has become the Nation's most complained-about industry.
I appreciate hearing your support for open access to wireless networks. I understand the frustration of purchasing a mobile phone that is locked and then not being able to use it with a different carrier. There have been multiple lawsuits filed by consumer advocates to prevent wireless carriers from locking their mobile phones, or at least to force carriers to find ways to guarantee interoperability of locked phones between networks.
How the courts resolve these cases will impact what practices are allowed and whether legislative action is warranted. With our State's large business sectors and diverse communities, any change in our telecommunications laws needs to take into consideration a variety of competing concerns since it will have far-reaching effects.
Several states, including California, have enacted or are in the process of enacting laws to protect wireless phone subscribers. Nonetheless, federal legislation may become necessary so that all Americans are treated fairly. I believe that any workable solution for telecommunications reform should focus first and foremost on consumers and the public interest, while also balancing the needs of the network, service, and information providers.
Please know that I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as the Senate works to address these issues in the 111th Congress.
Once again, thank you for writing. If you have any further comments or concerns, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.
Best regards.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
A Response
Senator Feinstein–
Thank you for your response. I appreciate you giving some thought to this matter.
It's clear from your email that you've decided that wireless exclusivity is not an issue that deserves to make it into your portfolio. As the senator representing the Silicon Valley, and my representative, I must urge you to reconsider.
Mobile carriers in this country have taken advantage of consumers for far too long. There are a long string of examples where legislation, not court cases are called for.
- As covered in the New York Times last week, mobile carriers are making the us pay extra for simple services like voicemail. A bill to force carriers to allow users to set their own voicemail greetings, or one that forced them not to charge for listening to their service messages would go a long way toward controlling this out-of-control industry.
- In most other countries, customers are only charged for outgoing calls – much the same way landlines have worked in this country. In the US however, we're effectively double charged – for both outgoing and incoming calls. This practice, effectively allows mobile carriers to make twice as much off of each phone call. Legislation that enforced a "one charge per call" policy would go a long way toward straightening our backwards industry.
- As you may have heard, the FCC has just began an investigation of AT&T for potentially unfair exclusivity arrangements with Apple to the exclusion of Google and other VOIP providers. The issue is one of Net Neutrality: can AT&T control what data is allowed over its network? Users pay for access to "unlimited" data rates over the AT&T network. For them to disallow certain types of data because it competes with another aspect of their business is not only anti-competitive, it's censorship. I urge you to support the FCC in this investigation and take a strong stance on Net Neutrality.
Signed and Released: Side Projects Are So Good
Common thinking in the photography industry is to always have a side project going in addition to your main job. Work, even photography work, is tough. You've got to have a personal project going to keep you sane.
Turns out having a side project can lead to some really good work too. Just ask Google about their 20% rule.
After a long time of not following this sage advice, I am now fortunate enough to announce two.
The Vancouver Project
A good friend of mine, Andrew Burton, and I have been talking for a couple of months about the rise of DSLRs with video capability and what it the implications for sports photographers.
Andrew had the foresight to see that this new technology would come to head in the very near future – namely the coming winter Olympics in Vancouver. Exploring thought, we also realized that this Olympics would be the first since the rise of the real-time web, live video broadcasting from cell phones, Google Wave, and, and, and.
Our realization lead to a plan of action which we're calling The Vancouver Project. Stop by and check us out.
Shameless plug: if you're in a position to help by spreading the word to the right people we'd love to hear from you.
Linked Photographer
In other news, I'm writing a book.
That is a very weird sentence for me to write. I write posts, tweets, cutlines… not books. But, apparently, that's happening :)
An excellent friend of mine, and phenomenal fashion photographer, Lindsay Adler, approached a few months ago saying that she was looking into writing a book, would I be interested in co-authoring?
Today, I signed the contract. We'll be writing a book that's got the tentative title Linked Photographer. It will be part treaties, part howto, and part reference on how photographers can use social media for business. It's a bit more than a for-dummies book, but
We'll be launching linkedphotog.com soon, so stay tuned!
Google Wave: The End of the Wild Web
There will be many – many – blog posts written on Google Wave, and there already have been so many created, that I’m sure this one will be lost in the void, but for whomever keeps ‘The Record,’ add me to it saying: “Google Wave will revolutionize communication.”
I’m throughly shocked by the number of naysayers out there. The reaction on Twitter after the announcement, and the excellent review of the event on TechCruch, was mixed. Some were just as enthusiastic as me, but many have the wait-and-see attitude that, to me, doesn’t recognize the pure awesomeness that is Google Wave. There are only two obstacles Google Wave has to overcome to become as widely used as Google Search that I can see: market penetration and standards adoption.
HTML5
The switch to Wave is going to rely on HTML5, a standard that has been 5 years in the making. That’s a really long time coming. The same year the standard got it’s start gave birth to Facebook, Gmail was still new, and IE was still 91% of the browser market. In Internet terms, HTML5 has been in progress since the middle ages.
Changing the basic language of the web is a drastic change, and we need to be sure that the standard is right. Yet, surely we can adapt to adding new standards at a quicker rate? Because all “modern” browsers are open-source, and have a track record for continuous innovation, it’s inconceivable to me that was couldn’t innovate on a faster scale.
Five years is an awful long time, and it’s incredible how much – of the draft spec – the browsers are already supporting. HTML5 will bring about a friendlier internet – one that feels like a desktop experience. We have the technology to deliver that – why wouldn’t we?
LINKS | Generation Y Has Inherited the Media
“Maybe, just maybe, the existing model for generating, distributing and monetizing content could benefit from a Ctrl-Alt-Delete reboot.”- Can the Statusphere Save Journalism?
It's been two weeks since my last one of these, which is in part due to laziness, and in part due to my wanting to get a good list going on a contentious topic: Generation Y needs to take over the media.
I'm increasingly convinced that the 'old media' model is broken largely because the old folks just don't get it. Not to say that there aren't people in 30s-70s who don't get 'it,' just that there are too few, too few in a position of power, and too few who get 'it' enough.
These are my links for March 29th through April 13th:
"You blew it"
- 'Star Tribune' Withholds Select Print Content From Web: Talk about Baby Boomers not getting “it.”
- Print is still king: Only 3 percent of newspaper reading happens online: There's a lot of fuzzy math done here, and reliance on numbers that may or may not be accurate. (readership is 2+ per copy!?) (avg. person reads 24 pages/day in print!?) Maybe I'm too genY, but I just don't see how this is possible.
- CIRCLE - A nonpartisan research center studying youth civic engagement and civic education. College Students Talk Politics: It's a valid point: GenY might not really pay attention to news b/c they feel like it's not relevant to them. It's largely just talking heads yelling at each other. Argues against Infotainment and for the masses being smart.
- Streisand effect: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”
- "NCAA: Greet the 21st century" : The Editor's Log : Blogs : News-Record.com : Greensboro, North Carolina: NCAA is trying to prohibit people from expressing opinions on Facebook!? They need to get over themselves.
- 1. Solve journalism's data problem. 2. Kill the AP. 3. Invest in the next market. BuzzMachine: Jarvis calls for the disbanding of the AP. In light of how backwards they have been, I’m for it.
- NYTimes-turned-NPR Exec: "Not Very Bullish on People Paying for News Content" - mediabistro.com: WebNewser: CEO of NPR in the news for the second time this week with details on how Times Select was a failure despite making 10 million/year.
- The speech the NAA should hear BuzzMachine: I love a good rant, and Jarvis delivers. I think I’m still hoping he’s wrong – that newspapers still can be re-tooled to work online, but I fear he’s right.
- Google's Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It: A good, old fashion, smack-down of the old fashion old media. “Robert, I’ve been creating original content on the internet for about 12 years longer than you’ve been editor of the WSJ. Shut up. Seriously, shut up. To say something like that simply indicates you really do not understand that all blogs are not echo chambers. I mean echo chamber? Sorry, that’s the mainstream media, too.”
- Google a 'Tapeworm:' WSJ Exec: Here’s more of the ‘old media’ mind-fuck.
Newsflow: How Journalism Is and Will Be Generated
The News Ecosystem according to Steve Johnson. Click for a larger version.
Steven Johnson, co-founder of outside.in, gave a very good, well thought out, speech at SXSW on the state of the news industry last week. In the transcript on his blog, he shares a slide on how he envisions the future of the news industry.
Steven has a good, albeit simplistic break down of how this new paradigm is working. I'm sure I agree with the flow of the information News → Commentary → Curation → Distribution. Seems to me that you'd have to distribute before you can get comments back, and that you'd need to curate the commentary… Forget it, the the chart is simplistic.
Steven does have the right context for this though:
Now there’s one objection to this ecosystems view of news that I take very seriously. It is far more complicated to navigate this new world than it is to sit down with your morning paper. There are vastly more options to choose from, and of course, there’s more noise now. For every Ars Technica there are a dozen lame rumor sites that just make things up with no accountability whatsoever.
I agree whole heartily with his point and I like the broad strokes of his chart. But, I suggest that this diagram far too simple to describe the new paradigm.
As Steven says, “The implied motto of every paper in the country should be: all the news that’s fit to link.” What his model is missing is the intricacies of linking, how data will be distributed to not only the customer, but among all of those gathering and generating news.
Hypothesizing on the new newsflow
Licensed under Creative Commons. Click for a larger version.
Yea… not as easy to understand right? I’ve got arrows going all over the place, and there’s not clear rhyme or reason to the way information flows. My apologies, these relationships are chaotic and often have many nodes. Let me make the key points:
Data is key. As Tim Berners Lee has predicted, the future of the web is “linked data.” This is is something that Steven addresses, but only briefly. As the semantic web becomes reality, displaying and accessing data will become the important role for journalism to fill.
LINKS | Micropayments Don’t Work, but Everyone Has a Better Idea
Somehow, I missed the links from the latter part of last week, and have been bookmarking like crazy this last week. So, ya'll get a ton of links. Apologies for the long, long list, but I've broken it up with some good videos — and I've edited down! These are the cream of the crop from February 10th through February 20th:
Journalism Business Models
Hulu's Superbowl Ad and the Boxee Fight - O'Reilly Radar: “I’m sure Hulu is totally pissed. They pretty much said just that in a somewhat more stilted way. The real insult, though, is calling the people who made them cut Boxee off “content providers.” They…
- Why I dislike micropayments, don't mind charity, but really have a better idea Network(ed)News: What a fantastically simple idea for a journalism business model: charge for interaction with the content creator. Donate some money to the site, and the chances of your comments etc being responded…
- Walter Isaacson: You've got it all wrong | Musings of an Anonymous Geek: Theodor Nelson writes the equivalent of a very long blog post as a response to Walter Isaacson’s use of his name in his argument for micropayments for news. Essentially, Nelson wants to use a…
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Interview: Wired's Chris Anderson on the 'free' business model | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com: Chris Anderson, author of Long Tail, discusses the Freemium business model.
- Tech Tools Day 1: Tomorrow's Journalism and Journalists - The Next Newsroom Project: “Readers have never been willing to support this industry economically,” Fine said. “Her advice for anyone in the news biz was direct: ‘I know that not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur,’ Fine…
- DigiDave | Communication is Key: Journalism Beyond Newspapers - Don't Become Nonprofits - Work for Them: Dave Cohn makes a good point: journalists can market their services toward non-profits who need the press and often can’t get their message out there.
- Forget Micropayments -- Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizing Content: Steve Outing endorses Kachingle, a micro-payment service for websites with one distinct caveat: paying is still optional. The user decides on how much they want to pay for their news, and all the…
- Will paid content work? Two cautionary tales from 2004 Nieman Journalism Lab Pushing to the Future of Journalism: Good look at the failures of the Paid Content model: LAT, and the Albuquerque Journal. End with a reminder: just because Editors think that they are entitled to make money from content, it doesn’t…
- Op-Ed Contributor - You Can't Sell News by the Slice - NYTimes.com: A New York Times op-ed on why paid content won’t work. Oh, and that even if it did, the revenue wouldn’t “save newspapers.”
- What does engagement mean for newspapers? - Eat Sleep Publish: A good summary and batch of links on why engagement on sites is important.
Top 15 of 2008: The leading regional newspaper sites shuffle their ranks Nieman Journalism Lab Pushing to the Future of Journalism: The top regional newspapers have seen a significant increase in pageviews.
- lectroid.net Blog Archive Newspapers could actually try online: Really solid advice on how to evolve your print newsroom into a real, online newsorg. Topics include: Staffing, web design, and workflow.
- Reflections of a Newsosaur: How to charge for content. Theoretically.: Alan Mutter jumps on the micropayment bandwagon as the most “logical way” to make money online. He makes the wrong assumption that “Consumers might not like being micro-nickled and nano-dimed for…
Web Journalism
- The Doc Searls Weblog : Saturday, March 24, 2007: Fantastic list of things that newspapers should do on their websites to make them more relevant to users (read: user friendly)
- How an NYT developer built a new way to read the news online: The ‘new’ interface is a great move for the Times. It does distinctly reminds me of http://newser.com and I think corrects one of the major flaws of current online newspaper design: the lack of…
Why the Nikon D3 Sucks (and What the D4 Oughta Be)
I love me the Nikon D3. It's the first camera that I've used where I feel confident going into any situation. The high ISO performance, huge LCD, dual CF card slots, 9 FPS, and 12MP files are amazing. Safe to say, Nikon hit a home run with this camera.
That said, I've got some complaints. Call it a wish list if you will. But after using this camera for about 6 months in a wide variety of situations, it's pretty safe to say that the tool isn't perfect.
With the release of the D3x, I've come to realize that Nikon is advancing technology, but is clearly holding out for the next release to do anything drastic. I might/probably am too late to get into the D4 product cycle, but nonetheless…
What could be fixed for the Nikon D4
The D90 gets the OK button right. Why can't the high ends cameras that came out after it follow suit? (Looking at you D3x)
The OK button is useless. There are two ways to confirm a command in the menu system: hit OK, or hit the center of the 4-way dial. However, most things only require you to hit the 'right' button on the 4-way dial. The OK button, aside from being repetitive, is out of the wa
I'd like to see a repeat of the D90's solution. Replace the 'push the center to confirm' option of the 4-way control with the OK button. This reduces clutter and makes menu navigating a more one-handed operation.
Links for January 8th
These are my delicious links for January 8th from 13:18 to 13:49:
- China's Electronic Waste Village - Photo Essays - TIME - Wish TIME would start doing some video or at least audio with these stories. Nonetheless, this one has some fantastic imagery and journalism.
- Commenting survey results - Invisible Inkling - Informal survey says: comments are less civil on news articles than on blogs. Hypothesis: disproven.
- BBC NEWS | South Asia | Swat diary: 'Taleban rule now' - It's short, but it's really good journalism. It's proof you need feet on the ground to report.
If anyone knows a good way to get wordpress to display tumblr links instead of delicious via postalicious, lemme know!
Links for January 6th
These are my links for January 6th from 00:38 to 02:52:
- Blogging, a new journalistic genre ? | Monday Note - Pretty strong argument that blogs are a great new form of journalism.
Problem: they don't make money. Adverts don't value them and they just don't generate the pageviews an article does. - What is literacy? BuzzMachine - If online journalism is expected to work, the audience must be able to do the following:
Media literacy, then, must embrace all those activities and skills, not just reading but:
* knowing how to focus on a need for information and express that by crafting a query to find an answer;
* knowing how to judge the relevance and reliability of sources - including the PageRank-like skill of judging sources on sources;
* knowing how to create (and remix) content across all media types;
* knowing how to collaborate;
* understanding the impact of facts on perspective and perspective on opinion;
* understanding the impact of identity and anonymity;
* understanding the relationship of pieces of information that make up a larger story via links;
* understanding how to make and find corrections - On The Media: Transcript of "You Are What You Is" (November 28, 2008) - Jeff Jarvis makes a good case for convergence. The media is now a singular: no longer do jounos choose, video, print, photo, whatever. We're cross-medium.
- Twelve months of top journalism blog posts in 2008 Christopher Wink - Title says it all. It's a pretty darn good list of the top posts of last year. Worth reading through the list at least.
- HuffPo Worth $200M? Em, More Like $2M - Business news | Newser - Sounds like the $25 million dollar investment that HuffPo just got may have inflated the value of the blogging newspaper. Instead of the $100-$200 million the investment was based on, it might be worth closer to $2 million. Ouch.
- Reflections of a Newsosaur: Newspaper share value fell $64B in '08 - A look at the stock prices and market cap. of the major newspapers in 2008.
- The Turning Gate / TTG iPhone Portfolio - iphone friendly photo gallery direct from Lightroom: Cool!
- Lee Enterprises: A poster child for the ownership crisis | yelvington.com - Steve Yelvington breaks down the economic crisis for newspapers:
1. The internet means long term changes, newspapers weren't ready.
2. Global economic crisis = less adverts = less income.
3. Newspapers borrowed when the borrowing was good, and are in the same place as everyone else in this economic crisis. They debt they can't pay back.
Links for January 5th
These are my links for January 5th from 16:39 to 17:00:
- December: Newspapers that use Twitter | graphic designr - A look at the newspapers using twitter, and how fast they're expanding. Cool!
- BBC - Journalism Labs - blog - Nifty new technology that allows users to interact with video.
I Bet the CIA Could Do This 10 Years Ago…
Academic research has developed a technology that allows video and photographs to be combined to produce stunning results.Just… wow.
These videos are rather academic, and would be boring to watch, but their content is so amazing that I was entertained the whole time. The ease and quality of the result is simply astounding.
Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.
Esquire Gets It…
Before you read this please bear in mind that the gentleman is the deputy editor of Esquire – a major international magazine.
“The whole chain had to be reinvented,” said Peter Griffin, the deputy editor. “The interesting thing is it has almost nothing to do with the normal way of putting out a magazine.”
-News Flash From the Cover of Esquire - Paper Magazines Can Be High Tech, Too - NYTimes.com
Griffin is referring to Esquire's investment in New Media technology – a digital magazine cover. That's right, a dynamic, moving 'paper' magazine. There are no images that I can find of this baby in action – but what a great idea!
Not only that, but this is pushed by some of the top editors of the Media Industry – the very folks who are often accused of not getting 'it' when it comes to New Media.
Cheers Esquire – I'm looking forward to it!
note: Esquire – I really hope that you can deliver this technology at a low cost. If you charge double for a moving cover magazine, you'll do well on the initial issue, but once the novelty wears off, people will forgo the lack of functionality for lower costs.
MobileMe Reviewed
I've just gotten my hands on a full MobileMe account (thanks Ramon!) and I thought I'd take the opportunity to compliment and complain.
Features Not Working
As of this writing, the following features of me.com are not working.
- Backup software (download link redirects)
- According to the System Status: Homepage & Groups is currently not operating
- Still experiencing system slow downs, especially when accessing account settings.
MobileMe got off to a rocky start. The dotmac website stated that they system would be offline from 8pm-2am beginning Wednesday evening (Jul 9) to facilitate the transition. The presumption was that me.com would go live at 2am, which did not happen. Me.com went through periods of service and through Friday (the day of the iPhone 3G launch). The system became fast enough to be usable on Saturday (Jul 12, the date
It's so shiiiinyyy
Let's get this clear, me.com is pretty. Really, really pretty. It almost feels like a desktop app. You can use keyboard shortcuts just like a desktop app (replace ⌘ key with the ctrl key and you already know the keyboard shortcuts). You can drag and drop just like a desktop app. Windows slide down just like a desktop app. In case you didn't get it, it feels like a desktop app!
Switching between modules requires a load time, but actions within any one of the modules doesn't seem to incur a load time at all (very cool).
Based on SproutCore, MobileMe feels quick. Yet, there are still a few remaining speed issues. I've tried to upload over 5GB of photos to my iDisk via the desktop interface and the transfer has taken 9+ hours to get half way; reading another 9 hours to complete. (This upload later failed; twice.) Accessing the 'account settings' section of the web interface is hit or miss. Sometimes it pops right up, sometimes it just displays "loading" for eternity. No doubt, these are both symptoms of a freshly launched app, nonetheless, they are annoying.
iDisk
iDisk web interface.
The iDisk webapp works much as you'd expect. It's the same column interface that Finder has. Clicking on a folder reveals the files and directories contained. I haven't figured out the pattern yet, but sometimes the app displays a loading icon you click on a folder, and sometimes it doesn't. Also, the app gives no indication that you've clicked on an empty folder. In contrast, Finder tells the user that a directory has "0 items," the iDisk webapp has no visual indication, and frequently left me watching the computer screen hoping something would load.
The interface does not allow for previewing of files. Click on a jpg and the app will tell you that it's a jpg, but it doesn't display a thumbnail. The system also does not recognize RAW files. It would be nice to have a 'quicklook' like functionality so that a user didn't have to download a file to see what it is.
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| .jpg: no preview | .nef: not recognized |
Preferences for iDisk are extremely simple. You have the choice of displaying a 'Simple Folder Layout' - only Documents, Public and Movies are shown in iDisk home. The app behaves as you'd expect it too, and in someways is more responsive than the desktop plugin. Which is continually having connection issues. It seems that my iDisk can't stay connect for more than several hours at a time – no big deal until I try to transfer several gigabytes of files.
Deleting files on the iDisk via the desktop takes a very long time. But, the process is fast on the web app, and the changes are reflected nearly instantaneously on the desktop side.
In addition, I was surprised to see the webapp lacking two key features. 1) It is not capable of uploading directories, even though it can upload multiple files. The help instructs users to compress (zip) their directories first – what a poor solution. 2) Even though Contacts and Mail have instant search, iDisk does not. erm… makers of Spotlight – HELLO! I'd like to be able to search my files online too please. K, thanks.
I was impressed at the integration, but constantly frustrated by webapp limitations and the glacial communications times when using the desktop interface. iDisk is not ready for large file transfers but with luck, Apple will fix the bugs and speed will increase in the near future.
Gallery
Gallery web interface
Gallery is the me.com interface for hosting your photos. Think of it as the web based iPhoto.
The frontend is the same that users have come to know and love. It's extremely fast, good looking and offers a variety of options to viewers.
Uploading to Gallery
Uploads are very quick and the interface not only allows the user to upload multiple files at once, but has the option to add more files while an upload is in progress - nifty!
It's possible to sync Gallery with either Aperture or iPhoto but, in my opinion, there is one glaring sync error. Apple gives MobileMe users 20GB of storage to divide between email, iDisk, Gallery, and Backup. 20GB may seem like a lot but when all of these services are taken into account, the space goes fast. Ideally, MobileMe could offer users a complete cloud storage solution for all data. 20GB is simply not enough to accomplish that.
Following that logic, Apple should allow Gallery to use photos placed in the Pictures folder of iDisk. Not only would this ease the storage constraints, but it would simplify the interface between the two apps.
It's worth noting that Gallery has no photo editing capabilities or instant search. I don't think these are features that many users will miss, but as search is a key Apple technology and web-based photo editing is becoming more popular, it would have been nice for Apple to through those features in.
And that is as far as my complaints with Gallery go. It is otherwise and extremely well designed and extremely responsive app.
Calendar
Calendar web interface
Entering info into an event is a bit different on the web than in iCal.
Calendar isn't quite as slick as iCal, but it's still the slickest calendar interface I've seen to date. It has all the simplicity of gCal with fewer pages loads. (Less pages loaded means the app is faster.)
Notably, Calendar falls into the class of MobileMe apps that could use instant search and curiously doesn't have it.
While Calendar has no trouble syncing your iCal calendars, it does not import your subscription calendars. I can't fathom why this is, but it sure is annoying to not have holidays visible.
Aside from the different info panel (see photo, right), Calendar does maintain an interface virtually identical to iCal. This means that Calendar shares the same flaw that I find with iCal - it has poor support for ToDo items. As a simple list, ToDo is horribly uncomplicated and hard to use. There's no way to attach a todo to an event, one can't postpone todo items, and there is no method to group tasks with multiple calendars. Nonetheless, Calendar does what it's supposed to do elegantly and without trouble.
Contacts
Contacts web interface
Contacts should be the simplest app in the suite. Or at least, it makes sense to me that a simple database interface would be ease to do. …so of course, it fell to the bottom of the maintenance list.
My first sync (on Friday) caused some of my contacts to duplicate. I'm not sure why some duplicated and some didn't, but it was sure annoying and not what I expected from a first class sync app. Once I got that problem taken care of, I headed over to the webapp and tried dealing with my contacts there.
As with the rest of the me.com apps, Contacts online is very similar to contacts on the desktop. One glaring thing that is missing the smart contact groups. Normal groups show up online fine, but it's a strange thing to be missing when the instant search works so well. (whoohooo! instant search!)
One strange bug I encountered was that editing a contact name didn't always update the name in the contact list.
I won't say that Contacts is bad, far from it - it looks to be a promising web interface. But, it sure is buggy.
Mail web interface
Let me start by saying this. I really prefer desktop apps for email – I want the ability to search and write messages while offline. To accomplish this, I use Apple's Mail.app. But, I've used Yahoo, AOL, gmail, Comcast, squirrel mail, and a host (20+?) of other email webapps.
Let me say this, for all it's simplicity and flash, the new MoblieMe email app sucks. I like the instant search, but aside from that, there are a lot of serious flaws.
Mail doesn't import other email accounts. The reason I so like Mail.app is that I can have a ton of email accounts in it. I've got 6 active right now. They all do different things and I don't want them confused. Now maybe I'm unique in that respect, but I still want Mail's web interface to show those other accounts. I was quite surprised to find that it didn't. After all, gmail does it.
Mail doesn't support smart folders. Not too much of a surprise in light of Contacts not supporting smart groups, but very disappointing. But, Mail has instant search!
New Message opens a popup. Really Apple? really? Didn't you learn anything from AOL's mistakes and Gmail's success? Lets keep everything in one window, mhhhkay?
New Message doesn't auto-complete the "To:" field. Granted, I ran into this problem when I clicked on the address book, but that doesn't indicate that auot-complete wasn't working. This seems to be an obvious feature that everybody uses.
I count myself lucky that I don't depend on me.com as my primary email. The webapp is easily the weakest in the suite, and needs quick updating.
Other nifty things
In general, the help provided is very good. Clicking on a help link or pressing [ctrl+?] launches a new popup (appropriate in this case) which loads faster than OSX help windows do!
I did all of my testing in Safari Version 3.1.1 (5525.20), so your mileage in a different browser may vary. I'm very interested to know how IE deals with me.com.
You can set me.com to remember who you are for 2 weeks at a time, a good security measure.
This is way improved over dotmac.
It's possible to setup your own domain name to point to your homepage. That means you can get your iWeb site to live at its own URL.
Users can set how they divide storage between their email and their iDisk –very handy!
Aside from where I specifically mentioned, the me.com is fast. Load times are negligible and speed should only increase as Apple works out the kinks.
Syncing a computer with MobileMe is similarly speedy, I could be mistaken, but it seemed snappier than the dotmac sync.
What I really think...
I'm horribly disappointed with iDisk. I really expected better from a cloud storage solution. For now, I'm sticking with Wua.la. I don't doubt that Apple will work out the kinks, but right now, it's broken.
Gallery, Contacts and Calendar are really nifty apps that are well done, but have several bugs.
Though usable, Mail needs a lot of work. Stick with gmail, Yahoo, or a desktop client.
Now for the million dollar question. Is it worth $100 a year?
- Do you need to host a website or share you pictures online, but have little technical know-how?
- Do you already have a dotmac email address?
- Do you want a really slick way of showing off your photos and videos?
- Do you need a really simple way to sync two computers?
- Do you want a set-it-and-forget-it strategy to get an offsite backup of your most essential data?
If you answered yes to any of the above, give me.com a serious think. Note I didn't ask if you need a way to get your calendar, or contacts, or email, or photos, or data, online. There are free solutions for all of these, they're just far more manual than MobileMe.
I really appreciate the approach of MobileMe. And incase you didn't catch it, the interface is slick! I trust that once all of the bugs are worked out, life @me will be really sweet.
A totally arbitrary rating, for those that need a number: 7.45/10
Update
AppleInsider raises an interesting point that I completely missed. MobileMe is marketed as a push solution for all your devices, and it fails at this goal. Though changes made on an iPhone are apparently recognized instantly by the cloud, changes made on a Mac still need to be synced. That is not a push solution, not at all. I suspect that the next version of OSX aliviate, if not fix this issue with support for exchange built into all the necessary apps. Nonetheless, it is a severe disappointment to not have push now – as was promised. Syncing is a 2nd class solution, especially when it duplicates my contacts!
Update 2
Check out this for a great look at how Apple is fixing the problem.
I Know What I Want!
attn: John Nack
Black Stroke!
Oh, and by the way, lest I forget: yes, we’re changing the default stroke color to black. Just thought you’d want to know.
-Photoshop Insider » It's Guest Blog Wednesday Featuring: Photoshop Senior Product Manager, John Nack
Thank god! That red stroke is just plain annoying.
(Yes, that is a forum topic about the stupid red stroke default on a site dedicated to people who typically complain about broadband speeds. That choice is clearly unpopular.)
The quote ends an article that is an interesting read if you're curious about the direction Photoshop is developing.
It's written by one of the top dogs in the Adobe world, John Nack (sorry couldn't find a wikipedia page), who has a blog of his own, which is interesting reading in its own right.
Nack's article argues that Photoshop developers know what users want better than themselves. He uses the classic example of the history palette and history brush coming out of the comparatively simple user request for multiple undos.
Adobe, what's wrong? You sick?
Yet, he also protests Adobe's finite set of resources,
Much to my eternal frustration (and probably yours), we’ll never have enough time to implement even 10% of the good ideas that come our way.
…and that his team puts in a lot of backend work which doesn't immediately benefit the average user.
These things take a while. (I’m reminded of the line, “It might look like I’m doing nothing, but at the cellular level, I’m really quite busy.”)
I'm perfectly willing to grant that Adobe can't hire every developer in the world. I also grant that backend coding is a lot of hard work. And, I certainly am not going to argue that, "what customers say they want and what they actually need often differ." (By the way Mr. Nack, that "cellular level" line is used to refer to lazy people who actually are doing nothing.)
Yet, Adobe should be leading the image editing development sphere, not slowly adopting it's technology. 64-bit apps are not a new thing, Apple's Aperture has had the ability to leverage the GPU from it's first launch, Carbon is on it's way out, and Photoshop is facing all sorts of problems because Adobe hasn't ported it over yet.
What happened to the desire to lead the way? Remember when the Healing Brush was introduced in Photoshop 7? That was an awesome new feature. It also came with the shiny new file browser.
...Which is where we start to get into trouble, the file browser was poorly implemented, and its successor, Bridge, is still slow. And, It's not like a file browser is a radical new idea. It's a pretty basic thing that Adobe has only managed to get right with Lightroom.
It seems like every creative I know is on a Mac or, like most people I know, switching to one. I can't remember the last time I even saw Photoshop on a Windows box. If you're spending so much time under the hood, why can't Photoshop CS4 be 64-bit on the Mac?
Some Cough Medicine
My complaint is this: Adobe, I don't care what resources aren't available to you. You're the top dog in this market by a long shot. If you don't have resources, get them. Not having competition seems to have made you lazy, and operating at the cellular level isn't enough.
Enough with the excuses, you've proven that you can produce a great 64-bit, Cocoa, app that intelligently employs Smart Layers, utilizes the GPU, has a fast file browser, and is capable of implementing user feedback. Lightroom.
Your ability to improve upon user feedback is important, keep that up. Yet, the following disturbs me a bit:
It’s interesting that faster performance didn’t rate higher on the list. [of top ten requests] On the one hand, I’d like to take this as a good sign that our work in CS3 to speed up Photoshop’s launch time, take advantage of multi-core systems, etc. has paid off & that people are happy. On the other, there’s no such thing as “too fast,” and quicker performance is the best possible feature: there’s nothing to learn. Therefore I think all the muscle we’re pouring into R&D to leverage graphics hardware acceleration & 64-bit computing will make folks happy.
Mr. Nack, I do indeed want Photoshop to be as fast as possible. It does need to go 64-bit, it should be able to use the GPU, it should be a Cocoa app. But I expect all of this to happen without a cost to the user. Adobe via Mr. Nack seems to be resistant to adopting all of these technologies.
I hesitate to say that Photoshop is 'fast enough,' but if you're creating a list of priorities, speed isn't in the top 10. Lightroom's technologies are (7 of the 10 features in the top 10 list). A real noise filter is.
Oh sure, I want speed. I want the 3.5 gig RAM limit removed (you need 64-bit for that), but these are all things that I expect from any company that is keeping pace with technology. I also expect that once you've developed technology for one application, it can appear across all of your apps. Don't sacrifice one expectation in the name of another. They both need to happen concurrently.
Go back to surprising us with cool new features. Stay ahead of the curve instead of slightly behind. We want more surprises like the Healing Brush. We don't want to be told why waiting to get what we want is a good thing.
Adobe, you're doing better now than you ever have before. Just because you have a virtual monopoly, you don't get to slack off. There are companies biting at your heels.
Things aren't that bad…
Sure, that top 10 list wasn't a scientific sampling. Yea, it was probably weighted down by non-profesional users of Photoshop. Still, it's sampling of the market, and Adobe attention is warranted.
Photoshop is still best in class software. I still prefer Lightroom for my photo workflow needs. Adobe's efforts with Flash are highly appreciated. InDesign is my goto app for all layout work. I'll even use Bridge in a pinch.
Adobe products are fantastic, but I'm discouraged. I feel like Adobe needs a Canon.
Update:
It seems that Adobe's Acrobat Reader 9, which has just hit the wild, is a good example of Adobe getting lazy.
TMZ Got It Right!
As chilling as this may sound to some, TMZ could be the prototype of a 21st century news agency.
-How TMZ uses tech to get in your face | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
For those that don't know, TMZ is premiere online celebrity gossip TV/magazine site. Picture People Magazine but with a lot of video.
C|Net of all folks posted an article that got me thinking about what TMZ has actually done to help new media.
Pure Opinion
TMZ's growing reputation as Hollywood's in-the-know and in-your-face news agency was built by working the phones, developing sources and basically out hustling rivals, say executives.
Full disclosure: I really dislike TMZ. The morality of TMZ is questionable. They are nothing more than paparazzi and fully admit to shoving their cameras into celebrities' faces, and "hustling" to get their stories.
"You can't go around with big cameras, a sound guy, and a multiple-person crew," Paratore said. "You need a smaller footprint. It's all about being a fly on the wall."
Like all paparazzi, they make it harder for journalists who have more important issues to report.
Also, I just don't care about what TMZ is reporting. I know this makes me a bit of an oddity in the Western world. But I don't give a shit about Britney's latest hook-up or Brangelia's babies.
Honestly. I don't give a damn, and wish we could get the 'real' media back on track.
Sidenote: I'm still undecided on the value of 'infotainment.' I think that it's largely a bad thing, but there is something to be said for the business tactic.
end rant
What TMZ Got Right
They're doing things on the cheap; buying professional instead of industrial solutions. Why buy a custom built editing platform? A few high-end Macs will do the trick. Huge, do-it-all video cameras? Why? Shoot HD from a prosumer level camera. It's just going to go on the web.
They went with an all digital workflow. Always a smart move. It's better, cheaper, faster.
Better: Smaller video cameras let them do "guerilla-style" journalism. All-digital workflow lets them update archives and such with one button. Not to mention accessing old footage for research is a snap.
Cheaper: Digital workflow reduces overhead. Buying professional workstations and prosumer cameras seriously reduced initial costs.
Faster: Again, the digital workflow. Smaller cameras let them go into the field with one person instead of a 5 man crew.
Basically, go TMZ for showing how New Media is an accomplishable task.
Penguins Are Way Harder to Figure Out Than Humans
The BBC reports a very cool new technology that allows scientists to track penguins based on their biometrics.
I certainly can't tell one penguin from another, and if software can do that, think of the implications. Imagine a computer that knows, and can automatically keyword photos based on who's in them. Just tell the computer once, who someone is, and you're good to go.
Google Tries Tighter Aim for Web Ads – NYTimes.Com
Mr. Fox said that Google’s approach was different from what Yahoo, AOL and others call behavioral targeting. Those companies look at what a user did a few days earlier to show them ads about the same topic today. Google says it believes that search engine advertising is most effective if it relates to what the user has most recently searched for.
“We are trying to understand what the user is trying to do right now,” Mr. Fox said. “In some cases, those queries are ambiguous, so you need a little more context.”
-Google Tries Tighter Aim for Web Ads - NYTimes.com
Quick post:
Google being smart yet again. This is what everyone should be doing.
In the same way that if I'm reading the sports section of the paper, I want to see ads about golf balls, I don't want to see ads for photo equipment when I'm searching for movie times.
Cheers to Google.
No, No, Newsprint IS Dead
Stanley Bing (Gil Schwartz) has written an article arguing that newspapers as we know them are not dead. Bing is a humor columnist for Fortune, so he takes his time to get to his point, which he presents as a list in his signature style. While I'd like to agree with Bing, I'm forced to face a more realistic, and sad, truth: print newspapers can't last. Let me address each of his points:
Bing's Reasons Why Newspapers Will Live |
Joey's Response |
| I like newspapers. I look at a few every day and even read some of each; | I like newspapers too, but that doesn't mean that they have a profitable business model (anymore). |
| I don't believe everything I read in the paper, but I'm interested in what they think is interesting; | I'm interested in what journalists, who are experts in their field, have to say too. Yet, I can find the information much quicker, and from a greater variety of sources online. Multiple sources make it much easier for me to believe what I'm reading |
| Newspapers have been around a long time, from medieval days through the time of Horace Greeley and beyond. Radio didn't kill them. TV didn't kill them. The Internet will not kill them; | um... are you seriously arguing that change isn't inevitable? Horses were the primary means of transportation for a few thousand years more than newspapers were a source of news. I don't drive to work in a horse. |
| If there were no newspapers, all we'd have is the Internet, whose capacity for the promulgating and dispensation of bulls**t is unparalleled; | erm... all of the newspapers are online too, so unless the news suddenly becomes bullshit by posting it online, it's the same info you get in print. |
| I am NOT interested in a PERSONAL, daily e-mail informing me only of the stuff I pre-select as of interest to me. What's the pleasure in that? | I agree, having to sort through an email or select out the news that you want to get is limiting and annoying ... that's why newspapers have whole sites online for you to read. |
| If we all had a euro for every article in some medium that declared another medium dead, we'd all be Europeans; | Yea, sure. But trust me, no one writes on clay tablets anymore. Or, a more recent example: who uses a typewriter? |
| Aggregators can only aggregate content if there is content to aggregate. No content, no aggregators; | Sure, we need content. No one's saying that the newspaper industry is going to cease to exist, just that it needs to evolve. Rapidly. |
| Contrary to popular belief, journalism is an actual profession that takes training, talent and skill, and one of the most rigorous and necessary places in which it's pursued is in newspapers; | Totally agreed, journalism is a hard, and noble profession. So let's keep 'em around. Their product is going to look a bit different, but that's cool right? |
| 89% of all citizen-journalists are just full of it. | 32% of all stats are made up on the spot. Seriously though, no sane person is going to argue that journalism as a profession is coming to an end, just that it can stand to be democratized a little bit. It's impossible for journalists to be everywhere at once. Let's farm out some of the story-finding to the average joe. Half the time he can write perfectly well about the birth of 6 lambs in Podunk, Utah anyway. |
| source: Life and Death in the Media Business | MediaCulture | AlterNet |
Bing also brings up a few points that he doesn't address in this list. He argues that both Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell have recently bought major newspapers: the Wall Street Journal and the Tribune Co. respectively. These industry titans must be investing in newspapers for a reason.
→ Mr. Bing, I agree, they are investing for a reason. The news business will not die. There is an inherent need for the fourth estate; both for the sake of democracy and human curiosity. These rather smart business men are simply buying low so they can sell high.
Bing writes that his kids love reading newspapers; he hints that there is a need for something physical for a younger person to be able to understand it.
→ If Bing is arguing that his kids won't be able to satisfy their "obamamania" without newspapers, he's wrong. They can always get their news online. Faster. From more sources. More reliably – will they look to a newspaper to see who won on November 8th? More likely they will keep track of the election night online. Or at least on TV.
As to the need for something physical, that is a problem. So far, we have nothing better than print newspapers as a physical medium. Trust me, solutions are being worked on though. I like OLEDs.
Advertising dollars are down across the board, and according to Bing, and all the bad press that newspapers are getting means that advertisers are being scared away.
→ There's bad press for a reason. The media industry can be pretty stupid. Yet, I trust them enough to report that part of the industry is failing only if it actually is failing.
Ads may be down across the board, and that might partially explain the loss of ad revenue for newspapers, but there's no way the overall decrease is responsible for the drastic losses that newspapers are seeing. They've lost their crown jewel of advertising, the classifieds, to the internet. An overall slump in the graph should not equal a valley for the newspaper industry.
I've got a bad habit of not being able to read the vocal inflections that people try to convey with text, so I apologize if I've taken any of what Gill wrote too literally. However, the point is important, the print medium is dying. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that technology is not ready yet with a replacement. In the mean time, newspapers have to find a stop gap solution where they can exist online and still maintain a physical product.
How I Want My Data: Locality & Cloud Aware
Boy, do I wish I had written this down first. The op-ed talks about 'syncing.' Or more appropriately, dealing with getting your data on any of your devices (smartphone, laptops, desktops, DVRs, etc…) whenever you want without any hassle.
This is something that I (and I'm sure many others) have been struggling with for a while. I personally own a boatload of devices; several computers, portable devices, and such; all of which I want to stay in sync. I've got a theoretical solution to the problem which I'll detail below.
Jon Stoke's article points out several obvious problems: there is currently no easy way to sync your data, the stop-gap solutions that exist now are poorly done and anything but set-and-forget, and that computers should be very good at performing a simple repetitive task (just like syncing files). However, Stokes forgets to tackle on important issue. Yes, I want my data to be the synced across all my devices. It's horribly inconvenient to have to deal with multiple versions of files and its a tragedy when I realize that the file that I need is not on the machine that I'm working on right now. Yet, the data that I want on each device is not identical.
The bigger issue
For instance, I've got a rather large iTunes library. Last I checked, it's over 115GB. It lives happily on my desktop which has more than enough storage available to handle that amount of frivolous data happily. The obvious problem is that I do not want all that music on my laptop which only has a 80GB hard drive, and it certainly won't all fit on my iPod Nano.
Or, take my photo library. It's as large as my music library and then some. I do want some of it on my laptop: current work, my portfolio, the images I have up on my site; but some random shoot from 3 years ago? There's no need to carry that with me (at least until SSD reach multi-terabyte capacities).
Solution
The problem is not that I need a solution to have all my data all the time. If I did or could, the solution would be fairly easy – the technology to sync two equally sized devices together already exists. No, the problem is that I want certain data to go to certain devices and not to others. My solution, and suggestion for those that can make this happen is this:
- Time Machine by Apple is a ready-made solution for syncing to devices. It already syncs one hard drive with versions itself. It can even do it across a network. All that needs to be done is to transition it from a backup utility to a sync utility. I'm no engineer, but I don't imagine it would be a very hard task to accomplish. Especially if you consider the underling technology behind time machine.
- As Stokes suggests, the 'drive' paradigm is very cumbersome once you get more than a couple of hard drives floating around. Changing this to the 'cloud' paradigm would be fantastic.Think about it like this: Google has tons (literally) of hard drives in their servers which provide the space for them to provide all their services to their millions of users. But as a user, you have no idea where your data is actually physically stored. It's somewhere, but you don't actually know where your gmail emails are stored, nor do you care.Introducing a similar solution at the personal level is a logical evolution. No, it's not really applicable to the 'average user' who only has a laptop and perhaps one external hard drive, but for small businesses or power users it could be a god-send.Again, I'm no engineer, but I imagine it working something like this:
You're home has a network setup, or at least one computer that is 'cloud-aware.' When you plug a drive into the system for the first time, it will ask you if you'd like to make this disk a part of the cloud – akin to the way Time Machine asks if you'd like to make a new disk a time machine backup drive. This is to ensure that portable storage (like a hard drive that's meant to travel with your laptop, or a flash card) won't get data stored on them that belongs in the cloud.Once configured, the cloud would be just be similar to a RAID 5 array. It handles all of your backup for you, it presents itself as one drive, if you unplug a drive from the system, or one dies, the cloud automatically compensates – all without you worrying about it.
Furthermore, the cloud is accessible to all of your devices. It's online, so if you have a password, you can get your data anywhere. Think, Back to My Mac, but simpler. If your device is connected to the internet, it automatically connects to your cloud.
Not into dealing with a mess of hard drives? Perhaps third-party companies can offer cloud storage for a price. Amazon and Google (among others) are already perfectly positioned to do this. Apple's iDisk already offers an omni-present storage space, and approaches this paradigm.
Cloud storage can help to solve many of the syncing problems, your data is always accessible, no matter where you are.
- There is one glaring disadvantage though – what if you're offline? Or what if the files are huge and would take too long (even over broadband) to access remotely?Here's where my solution gets a new twist.I propose a new kind of metadata that I'll call 'Locality.'
This is what I Imagine the interface looking like. Click for a large view.
Every file has metadata attached to it. It's how the computer knows what date it was created, who last opened it, etc... What I'm proposing is an addition that keeps track of what devices a file is supposed to be stored on. All of your devices will know about all of your other devices. Your smartphone, iPod, laptop, DVR, desktop, and so on, will all know that each other exist. That way, they will be able to automatically keep track of what data is supposed to be on each device – automatically.
The 'Save' dialog in every OS functions basically the same. It asks you what you want to name the file, where you want to put it, and the file type. A system that is 'locality-aware,' would ask you one more thing: which devices you want your data on. It could for instance, default to storing everything on your cloud. If you're offline, then it stores the file locally, until you can connect. However, the user can also decide which other devices get the data stored locally – in other words – you can decide right in a save dialog where you want to always access your data.
For example, If you're saving a new Word (or Pages) document, you can set it to save on your cloud and also go to your smartphone. The next time your computer comes in to contact with either your smartphone or your cloud, it sends that file off. That way if your smartphone contacts your cloud (more likely that it contacting your laptop) it gets the file right away.
The advantage to this system is that you can decide to keep a huge library of pictures safely on your cloud. Where it can be accessed by any of your devices, but isn't stored on them, so space isn't an issue. If you choose, however, you can tell any of your locality-aware devices to set the locality of a file however you choose. You can set some songs to go to your desktop and your iPod, but not to your smartphone.
Apple is most likely going to rebrand .Mac, mostly likely calling it "mobile me." In theory, it will tie the iPhone more closely to Mac computers via a cloud interface. Who knows, maybe Apple is on the right track.
I seriously doubt that Apple will present a solution as complete as what I've just suggested. I'm certain that my solution requires a re-wiring of an OS. Nonetheless, here's hoping that it's a step in the right direction.
Inteview: Nikon’s New Scene Recognition System
-Nikon | Imaging Products | Scene Recognition System
Nikon has posted an interesting (though clearly biased) interview with Hiroshi Takeuchi, one of the engineers behind the new scene recognition system in the D3 and D300. Aside from the cool graphic (above), it's interesting to read about how this has been developed (and makes me anxious to try it out).
Apparently, the tie-in with the AF system works very well, which allows you to compose your picture first, then auto-focus. This is much improved over the auto-focus in the center, then compose system that every other camera has depended on.
Still Photography Has a Future!
Here's the proof: VRMAG - WHEN CINEMA MEETS VR - JOHN GAETA TALKS ABOUT SPEED RACER. That's right, still photographers have a future in the film industry.
Counter-intutive? You bet. Here's the deal: digital FX guys need something to base a lot of their work on. (Same way it's easier to modify a picture in photoshop then try to draw it by hand.) Photographers then are needed to create hiRes digital panoramics of scenes that the FX guys will later use to create movies, like Speed Racer.
Citizen Journalism, Brought to You by YouTube
It was inevitable, but YouTube has joined the ranks of CNN, FOX, CBS, and Neighborhood America in calling for the average citizen to submit their own news stories.
Thanks to better, cheaper, and easier access to video equipment, there's an amazing amount of news being reported on YouTube every single day by citizens in all corners of the globe. You're conducting interviews with local community leaders, doing weekly reports on the latest campus news for your school television station, and investigating untold stories you think the world should know about. This stuff is fantastic, but we want to see more from you all and to bring more citizen journalists into the fold.
-Meet the new YouTube News Manager
Ars Techina reports:
Already the Citizen News channel has subscribed to over 70 of YouTube's citizen journalists who are reporting on various issues and niches. "Texascountryreporter," for example, covers "the backroads of Texas to find the people and places who make the Lone Star State one-of-a-kind." "TheRealNews" is a "global online video news network" with impressive production values, boasting "thousands of $10 donations" from users around the world.
-News unfiltered: YouTube embraces citizen journalism
Personally, I have yet to decide if citizen journalism is a good thing for the Media Industry. On the one hand, more people involved in the Fourth Estate is undoubtedly a good thing, especially considering the political landscape of today. On the other, it feel like a cop out for professional journalists to lazily allow the public to do their jobs for them.
Why TIME.Com Is My Hero:
TIME.com is running an article on the history of the Church of Jediism. [please feel free to pause reading and laugh for a while; I did.]
The article, entitled: 'Star Wars' is My Co-Pilot is a Q&A of the weirdest and wackiest coverage that I have ever seen on a major news site. Be sure to check out the disappointingly short, but fantastic video they published with the story. Cheers to TIME for covering (and publishing) this fantastically off-beat story.
TV Is Dead
This is a great clip about what web 2.0 is – from an academic (but still very exciting) point of view.
