March 2012
85 posts
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“I think it’s funny, but the last thing you’ll ever see me do is jump up and...”
– My favorite actor, showing yet another reason for him to be a favorite, with a thoughtful and massively appropriate response to an unanswerable question.
George Clooney, on rumors that he’s gay. By George, Clooney’s Got Us | Current Issue | The Advocate. (via apses).
I have to admit I wish he...
February 2012
35 posts
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Inside Forbes: How Long-Form Journalism Is Finding... →
Forbes’ Lewis DVorkin reminds us there really is a big and growing market for long-form, quality journalism online, as Forbes keeps demonstrating with some of its most interesting work of recent times, and its continued explorations of how to evolve a print publication into a more fully formed suite of online and offline platforms.
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Print is Dead! Long Live Print? | TechCrunch →
Jordan Kurzweil has some fairly radical suggestions for remaking/saving print journalism. Some are dead on, like using data to drive product decisions, increasing transparency and communication between readers and writers/editors, and updating web platforms.
On the other side, it’s probably a bit fatuous for him to say, at this point, that there’s a lot of opportunity to “gut...
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Matter’s vision for long-form journalism | Felix... →
Another long-form online-journalism startup launches, or at least its $50,000 Kickstarter fundraising campaign starts. Not sure the model is as wildly transformational as this piece’s author suggests, but maybe he’s just understated what their plans are for journalism.
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Flavorwire » 5 Albums to Stream for Free This... →
Flavorpill offers links to hear free streams of new albums from several interesting groups, including personal faves Magnetic Fields, Andrew Bird and School of Seven Bells. A good week.
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My daughter's lyrical latest adventure in Ecuador
A short (and plaintive) note from me to my too-long-out-of-touch daughter during her months-long working visit to Ecuador yielded this lovely and evocative response below. The girl needs to just give in and become a writer, but I think she prefers to pursue big-money occupations such as trapeze artist and horse trainer. Sigh:
I got into Montanita yesterday and go back to San Pablo in a few...
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Submitting to SFMOMA's Tumblr
This is REALLY brave: SFMOMA, one of the country’s better museums (and technologically most forward-thinking), is going to be showing off on Tumblr each week the art other people have submitted to it.
I’m sure there’s already a lot of fabulous stuff coming in, which no doubt has encouraged this new venture. But I can’t help thinking it’s going to be a little, tiny...
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“44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving...”
– Paul Krugman, NYT
I never cease to be amazed by this stat.
(via arig)
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L.A. Times to Put Up Its Paywall March 5 | The... →
Partial paywall program announced by LA Times, effective March 5. Perhaps inevitable, but the question will be whether the Times’ content is unique and distinctive enough to generate lots of online subscribers willing to pay for its products.
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LAT: Three GOP candidates' plans would increase... →
If you’re serious about debt control, at least be honest in your budget proposals. Kudos to Ron Paul for being upfront about his.
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Bill Campbell makes future of journalism his next... →
Interesting piece on the involvement of Silicon Valley legend Bill Campbell in bringing together the joint Stanford-Columbia venture to explore the future of journalism, funded with $30 million from the original Cosmo girl, Helen Gurley Brown.
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Streaming video apps list →
Nice rundown of the best apps out there to stream video on various platforms. Lots of good content out there, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to see all this and actually, you know, work. Or eat. Or sleep. All of that.
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Who Has the Final Say on What's Good for Your... →
Smart analysis by DJ Waldie of a Lege Analyst report on redevelopment and What It All Means: Basically, the dysfunctional CA Legislature continues to take money from local governments to pay for its priorities that are “statewide interests,” though measures such as Prop 1A and Prop 22 suggest lots of voters would rather trust the most local possible government to decide priorities on...
“Mobile is the most democratic tool in India today.”
– By Shubhranshu Choudhary, quoted in this terrific CNN story about Choudhary’s project to use mobile tools to harness voice-driven citizen journalism and provide a voice for the estimated 100 million “tribals,” largely disenfranchised minorities in the Indian countryside. These...
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Chiara Atik: June 16, 2012: Bloomsday in Dublin →
As both a Bloom and as proprietor of a Tumblr feed named Bloom’s Day, I must heartily endorse this plan: read “Ulysses” in a fevered push on, um, Bloomsday in Dublin, then talk about it over thematically appropriate libations for the next few months thereafter.
housingworksbookstore:
chiaraatik:
Lauren Leto are doing something crazy and we want you to join us.
The Plan:
...
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How to deal with Twitter overload | Macworld →
Overwhelmed by a tsunami of tweets? Macworld suggests some tactics and tools to ease the overflow.
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Twitter Blog: New version of Twitter, now on for... →
Twitter.com gets another makeover, making it more like the current mobile version. Looks pretty good, with some nice interface touches. I still like my Hootsuite though.
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I’m So, So Sorry. Here’s My Belly. Now Please Move... →
This is a good piece on what’s becoming best practices when a company, especially in the tech sector, makes a major misstep and gets a virtual tar and feathering by the social media mobs.
The playbook:
1) immediate unqualified apology
2) simple explanation that you’ll undo whatever awful thing you did as much as possible and never, ever, ever do it again
3) lie low for a couple of...
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The revolution will be tweeted - New Scientist →
Here’s an interview with BBC economics editor Paul Mason that provides a useful additional perspective on the uses and limits and nuanced impacts of new media/social media in the Arab Spring and other flash points from the OWS to China (and even autocratic owners of hairdressing salons in Kenya).
Interesting last quote:
“We have to be aware that this generation believes power ought...
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Study: U.S. gaming population has nearly tripled... →
These numbers are so astonishing that I kinda don’t believe them: 135 million Americans play video games at least an hour a month.
That’s nearly 45 percent of the U.S. population, including Grandma, who never did get the hang of that darned Wii (though I know of one who basically swiped her grandson’s machine and never gave it back).
One key quote by the study’s...
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“Hollywood can be like the hottest, meanest boyfriend you’ve ever had. But...”
– Actress and singer Laura Benanti, with an acute observation from her interview with the Wall Street Journal today. I didn’t really know her work previously, but Benanti betrays a wonderful sense of sly humor in this interview.
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Be Better at Twitter: The Definitive, Data-Driven... →
Tips on better Twitter. Reflects my experience too
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iTunes giveaways this week off the charts
Goodness but the iTunes store has outdone itself this week in terms of free music downloads. There’s “Sweet Sour,” an edgy bit from the very good Band of Skulls album that released this week; “Serpent,” a very hard-rocking piece of the moody and wonderful new album from Sharon van Etten; something from terrific rock en espanol band Novalima; and more from alt acts Ben...
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The Death of the Cyberflâneur - NYTimes.com →
Interesting point about the “death of the cyberflaneur” and the transformation of the web from a place where we stroll about anonymously and solo to an intensely mediated and tracked Facebook/Google space where every part of your online experience (unless you specifically prevent it) is brought in to you and then shared out to everyone around you.
We’ll see how much we miss the...
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Things That Were Once Amazing - NYTimes.com →
This piece by David Pogue is so ready to birth a Twitter/Tumblr meme: “Things that were once amazing but no longer should be surprising to anyone paying even one iota of attention to what’s been happening since, oh, about 1993.”
We’d probably need to shorten the hashtag to something #NotAmazing, or #OnceAmazing, or, better for brevity, #ExAmaze.
So, what things would be...
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Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Astral Projection and 3D... →
Interesting perspective about trying to find the Golden Mean of 3D mapping of actual places. Maybe you wouldn’t be at ground level if you had annotated maps and were trying to navigate an unfamiliar area. Rather, you’d be a little up off the ground, where you could see where everything is, and have some idea of what’s coming up.
mrgan:
If you could fly, how high would you...
