August 2013
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Thoughts on Privacy
In Here Is New York, E.B. White opens with this sentence: “On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.” Sixty-four years have passed since White wrote that, and it still makes perfect sense to me, hunched behind a desk in the back room Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Fashion XOAB, a new sock company started by @RickLevine (the quietest and most enterprising Cluetrain co-author) and his brother Neil. Dig the Kickstarter, which wasted no time reaching its $30k goal. The video rocks too. Follow progress: @XOABsocks. These Sci-Fi Dresses Were Made Using Mega-Magnets. By Liz Stinson in Wired. As a bonus, they erase Continue reading
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Daily Outline
War Syria crisis: US isolated as British MPs vote against air strikes — live updates. In The Guardian. Health Why We Can and Must Focus on Preventing Alzheimer’s. By David Perlmutter in The Daily Beast. Pull-quote: “…to a very significant degree Alzheimer’s disease is preventable. Research clearly shows that up to 54% of Alzheimer’s cases Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Wars and Rumors of Wars The First Global Civil War – Lionel Dricot. By Jaap van Till n The Connectivist. Syrian NYT Hack Shows New Asymmetries of Modern War: While U.S. troops readied for a possible military assault Tuesday, pro-Syrian hackers brought down the NYT and crippled Twitter. By Tom Simonite in MIT Technology Review. Obama is Continue reading
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News: Watching Cable Die
Now that Al Jazeera English‘s stream has been killed in the U.S., the only two streaming global news organizations available on computers and mobile devices are France24 and RT. They look like this: In other words, like TV. Talking heads and reports from the field. Also like PR. I certainly get that from RT, the Continue reading
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Remembering paradise
Mom died ten years ago yesterday, just as I was putting up the post below. I learned a short while later that she was gone. It was a good post then, and still is now. So I thought I’d run it again. — Doc Except for school, I had a happy childhood. That means my Continue reading
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Breaking news: Al Jazeera kills its live stream
If you have an Al Jazeera app on your U.S. mobile device you can no longer watch or listen to live streams. Click on the yellow LIVE button and then on “PLAY” next to “Watch Live” or “Listen Live” and here is what happens: Go to the Al Jazeera website, click on “watch now” and you Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Media The Natives Are Feckless, Part 2. By Bob Garfield in MediaPost. Pull quote: “For the sake of their audiences and for the sake of their own reputations, publishers must not let the content in any way disguise itself as editorial matter. Period.” How YouTube changes everything. By Miguel Helft @FortuneMagazine Designs for a networked beat. By Continue reading
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News isn’t about cable. Or newspapers. It’s about us.
Read Dave’s Cable News is Ripe for Disruption. Then Jay Rosen’s Edward Snowden, Meet Jeff Bezos. Then everything Jeff Jarvis has been writing about lately. Then listen to the August 9 edition of On The Media. Pay special attention to the history of New York’s newspapers, and the strike of 1962-3. Note how vitally important Continue reading
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Al Jazeera isn’t covering some big news about itself
Right now if you want live streaming of TV news, 24/7, on the Net, here in the U.S., from a major global news organization, you have just two choices: Al Jazeera and France24. Soon you’ll have just one, because Al Jazeera’s stream is going away. That’s because the company will turn its stream off when Continue reading
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What’s CBS worth? How about just the programs?
In MediaPost‘s TV Watch, West Coast Editor Wayne Friedman asks, Trick Question: What Would You Pay For Access To CBS For A Month? Here’s my (lightly edited) answer from the comments below the post: This is interesting. We have always been consumers of TV channels more than customers of them. First they were free over the air. Then we paid cable Continue reading
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A way to get CBS after all
If you live in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles or one of the other cities where Time Warner has dropped the local CBS station, there may be a free work-around. Because over-the-air TV still exists. And, if you have a flat-screen TV, it likely has a TV tuner built in. If it does have its own Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Cool Britt Blaser’s flying stories. The dude is a terrific writer who has lived to tell, and tell well. He should do that more often. Speaking of which, I interviewed him for this podcast. How 24 Tiny Satellites Could Change Business Forever. By Nate Hindman and Joe Epstein. Subhead: “Skybox doesn’t want to see pictures of Earth from Continue reading
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It’s 2013. Why are we still in login hell?
So I get an email (yes, I subscribe to it) from Ad Age pointing me to AT&T Ridding Some Retail Stores of Cash Register, Counters and Other Clutter ‘Warmer’ Shopping Experience Includes Orange Coloring, Wood Paneling, Demos, by John McDermott. I read it and decide to make a comment under it. I’ve done this before, Continue reading
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2013_08_01 Link Pile
Tech Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful. By Don Marti. THE INSIDE STORY OF THE MOTO X: THE PHONE THAT REVEALS WHY GOOGLE BOUGHT MOTOROLA. By Steven Levy in Wired. CW500: The rise of the machines — how devices are taking over the internet. By Bill Goodwin in ComputerWeekly. Measuring the full impact of digital capital: Although largely Continue reading