On Dan Rather's Departure from CBS

You know, I'm actually going to miss Dan Rather. He was a far better personality and had far more integrety than 90% of the current day news personalities. It almost seems like an end of an era, I should be happy that bottom-up media is having an impact, but I don't want it to kill old media, merely shake it up and make it better. I guess you can't have a shake up though without a few heads rolling, but there will always be room for broadcast news, newspapers, and radio just as there has always been room for books and ukulelias.

"Of course, the guy has always been a little bit out there. There was his decision to sign off his newscast with the word 'Courage' for no apparent reason three times during a single week in 1985 as well as the bizarre 1986 incident in which Rather was roughed up by attackers who reportedly asked, 'Kenneth, what is the frequency?' -- a line later immortalized in an R.E.M. tune.

It also didn't take much to prompt certain peculiarities to exit Rather's lips, such as during my interview with him last year.

CBS Evening News with Dan Rather 1989 (RealMedia, 33seconds, 1.81 Mb)

Describing his love of CBS and CBS News, Rather observed in the interview last year: 'In my mind and the minds of the people I work with, this is a magical, mystical kingdom -- our version of Camelot. And we feel we are working at a kind of roundtable of King Arthur proportions. Now, it may be that this kingdom exists only in our minds. But that makes it no less real for those of us who live it every day.'

And then there was this: 'Ed Murrow's ghost is here. I've seen him and talked to him on the third floor of this building many times late at night. And I can tell you that he's watching over us.'

If Rather has been spending too much time of late yakking with the ghost of Murrow and too little confirming the veracity of his sources, maybe we need to cut the dude a little slack. He's earned the right to be eccentric by continuing the quest to be a real journalist when he didn't have to."

Article: Humble Rather earned departure fit for an icon

Video Clip: CBS Evening News with Dan Rather 1989 (RealMedia, 33seconds, 1.81 Mb)

Video from: InformativosTV

Blog is Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year 2004

Blog was the most looked up word this year on Merriam Webster's website. Let the backlash begin. ;)

CNN.com - 'Blog' No. 1 word of the year - Nov 30, 2004

Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year 2004

Googles Blogger.com crapping out (warning rant!)

While I love google's blogger.com (the free weblog too that this site runs on) I'm having more and more problems with timeouts. Blogger.com is either simply not loading or taking forever to load. It's getting impossible to post anything. If I can't post something on a whim then this serve is useless to me. I cannot sit around and wait five minutes for the damn blogger page to load.

Bloging is suppose to be convenient and spontaneous not a freaking chore! You may have noticed the amount of posts dwindling here. There has been a lot of great stuff I've not blogged about because I simply can't sit around and wait for blogger to load.

Has anyone else been having problems with blogger loading slow or not at all? I hate to complain about a free service, but it's less than free if it keeps abusing my time and I have to say it's really starting to piss me off because it's a betrayal of the trust I put in google, an insult and disrespectful of my time. If google can't run this service right or is unwilling to invest the money in a few more servers than I'm going to have to go elsewhere! And I can't believe I've recommended them to so many people. They're giving me a block eye for recommending such a crappy service. This is not on professional par with google.com or their gmail. They're turning some thing pleasurable into crap! And, if I have to spend the countless hours porting my blog over to another platform they're going to be forever on my shit list. Crapping all over your customers is inexcusable. This is a perfect example of "inhumane interefaces". The interface is about more than just functionality. Most obviously it has to first freaking show up, which is to say the page needs to load.

Oh, one last thing. This is also causing posts to appear multiple time on my blog. Meaning I have to go back and clean this crap up and it makes me look bad. This has happened before, but it appears to be happening more often and the timeouts seem to be getting worse.

The Long Tail of the Blogosphere

The "long tail" meme is alive and well on the web this week. It's scope and influence is still growing. You might say the original Wired articles made waves or turned on a great many light bulbs. A whole lot of people are suddenly "getting it" and a whole lot more are trying to apply it fruitfully (or not) to all sectors of business. What we have here is a little cluetrain manifesto stuff going on. You'll be sure to see more posts regarding this subject from me. That's for sure.

In his article "the long tail of the blogosphere" Steve Rubel, a PR strategist, talks about the need for marketers to embracing blogs and cites some examples of different sectors in the media that are already starting to do so. Below is his conclusion.

1. Taken in all together, the result is that big media will increasingly adapt and embrace blogging in order to maintain their dominance. As a result, marketers too will need to adjust their strategies -- everything from where they elect to place their PR messages to where they allocate their media budgets. Here are several short-term ways the long tail is already causing the media to adapt:


2. Publishers and advertisers are experimenting with unique custom blog sponsorships. The Art of Speed -- Nike's experiment with Gawker Media -- is one such collaboration.


3. Some media outlets are openly embracing bloggers -- either by buying them out entirely or by signing them to joint operating ventures that include revenue sharing. Mediabistro, for example, recently purchased CableNewser -- a popular TV industry blog, rather than launch its own competing effort.


4. The media will turn themselves into blog-like online aggregators that link readers to all relevant content in their area of focus, whether it's a blog or a news site. CNET's News.context, for example, already takes this approach.

Media Web sites will morph into social sites, employing comments, trackbacks, RSS feeds and other blog-like structures in order to create community. CNET and Variety are already pioneers experimenting here.

If the media are buying into the long tail, then the marketers should follow, right? I sure hope so, because those who ignore it may be forced to catch the tiger by the tail rather than by the teeth.

The Long Tail of the Blogosphere

Holiday tech purchasing trends:

"Holiday purchases of electronics dipping

Interest in holiday purchases of consumer electronics appears to be leveling off this year after peaking in 2003, a new survey found.

The demand for electronics gear is still healthy, but interest in high-definition televisions, DVD players, game consoles, PCs, digital video recorders, cellphones and wireless networking equipment all dipped a little, the Ipsos-Insight survey found.

From a list of 18 electronics items, only printers and satellite radio gained slightly, though the difference is still within the margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Interest in digital cameras, home theater systems, satellite TV, portable MP3 players, personal digital assistants and DVD recorders held steady.

About one in four surveyed said they wanted a new cellphone or PC, making them the most-wanted items, followed by digital cameras, DVD players, then printers.

The survey of 1,000 adults was conducted Oct. 28 to Nov. 5."

From: The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Kazaa adds free Internet phone to file sharing

Neutered dog haikus

Ironic that I
should spend my cruel life chasing
that which was taken.

My contribution to ZeFrank's neutered dog haikus

Virgin Dachshunds Eating Grilled Cheese Sandwich - the grilled cheese Virgin Mary meme

This is just to "important" not to post about.

Spawned by the original post, which ebay removed, there is now a feeding frenzy going on over at ebay for virgin mary grilled cheese and/or toast oriented collectables. This is no joke. Some of these excellent and superb collectables are going for over one hundred dollars. Get yours now.

LINK: eBay item 5536484772 (Ends Nov-22-04 19:38:15 PST) - VIRGIN DACHSHUNDS EATING GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH

View the complete line of Virgin Mary toast and/or grilled cheese products here: eBay - grilled cheese sandwich, Metaphysical, Weird Stuff, and Decorative Collectibles items at low prices

When meme's cross - "Sorry Everybody" meets Ellen Feiss

You're sorry, I'm sorry, everybody's sorry. Even Ellen Feiss is sorry. I so like it when a couple of good memes get together.

From: Sorry Everybody dot com

The backstory on Ellen Feis is still on apple.com, and the great Apple advertisements featuring her as pointed out in a recent post are on Errol Morris's site, though it appears to be down right now, likely do all the traffic.

Remember kids, old meme's never die. They just cross with new meme's to become extra super virulent memes.

BBC doing trial podcasting of several shows

Damn, the BBC website is a mess, it's impossible for me to decipher, but this much I know.

The BBC is offering mp3 downloads if not podcasting of several of its shows. This as opposed to the streaming real broadcasts. I could not find feeds of all the shows but I did find a podcast feed of atleast one of the shows. You'll have to manually download the rest unforetuneatly.

The MP3 trial runs till the end of the year (I didn't have anything to do with that, it's one of several MP3 download trials the department is running, and it's an enormous achievement for such a huge broadcaster. Very proud to be working here at the moment). But there are these folks writing software to make the whole audio-online experimence much smoother, the Podcast folks, could we give that a go too? And that's what today is about [I work in the BBC's Radio and Music Interactive department, btw].

Please let me know if you find any bugs/problems with our Podcast feed. I'll get em fixed. We'll be updating it once a week for the remainder of the MP3 trial (it's the same distribution channel really; no more or less information, no archives). The trials are being done because it's important to know what people think and how the MP3s will be used: Please share your reactions and give us feedback (if there's anything that needs addressing immediately, feel free to mail me too).

Via: you can now get (11 November 2004, Interconnected)

MP3 Available: BBC - Radio Five Live - Fighting Talk

MP3 Available: BBC - 1Xtra - TX - Download this documentary

PODCAST! BBC - In our time - Podcast

More info on the "In our time" podcast BBC - Radio 4 In Our Time - mp3 download

Via: cityofsound: Podcasting In Our Time

Errol Morris: Commercials - reliving a little apple switch

Errol Morris, film maker, has been building up a pretty amazing site full of materials in a blog type format. Here are a few of my favorite Apple Switch campaign ads, most of which didn't make it on TV.

My favorites:

	Will Ferrell Parfait		Will Ferrell Hot Dogs
	Ellen Feiss Bummer		Ellen Feiss Homework

Including this one with Mark Frauenfelder, that freak over at boingboing.net

2005 Stamps to Feature Muppets

ROCK!

"WASHINGTON-Nov4- It isn't easy being green. It isn't easy getting on a U.S. postage stamp either, but Kermit the Frog will manage it next year, along with his Muppet friends. New stamps also will recall the late President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites), singer Marian Anderson, actor Henry Fonda and songwriter Yip Harburg, notable scientists, famous Marines and sports cars, the U.S. Postal Service said Thursday."

Yahoo! News - 2005 Stamps to Feature Muppets, Reagan

The new sexier female Ronald McDonald from Japan

Classify this under weird and wacky.

Watch it (Win Media Player)

Download it directly, while it lasts (WMV 780k)

Via: Ookii Ne.com: Female and sexy

War & Culture - Fallujah & GI Joe (AP Photo)

A U.S. Marine of the 1st Division carries a mascot for good luck in his backpack as his unit pushed further into the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, November 14, 2004. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

Via Ookii Ne.com: G.I. Joe in Fallujah

War & culture - Fallujah & GI Joe

A U.S. marine from the 3/5 Lima company carries his "GI Joe Action Man" doll as he walks past the destruction in the restive city of Fallujah. (AFP/Patrick Baz)

How 'Dungeons' changed the world - Imagination and the D&D culture

I enjoyed this article by Peter Bebergal tremendously. To me it's about the power of imagination and the culture that supports it.

"To put it simply, Dungeons and Dragons reinvented the use of the imagination as a kid's best toy. The cliche of parents waxing nostalgic for their wooden toys and things 'they had to make themselves' has now become my own. Looking around at my toddler's room full of trucks, trains, and Transformers, I want to cry out, 'I created worlds with nothing more than a twenty-sided die!'

Dungeons and Dragons was a not a way out of the mainstream, as some parents feared and other kids suspected, but a way back into the realm of story-telling. This was what my friends and I were doing: creating narratives to make sense of feeling socially marginal. We were writing stories, grand in scope, with heroes, villains, and the entire zoology of mythical creatures. Even sports, the arch-nemesis of role-playing games, is a splendid tale of adventure and glory. Though my friends and I were not always athletically inclined, we found agility in the characters we created. We fought, flew through the air, shot arrows out of the park, and scored points by slaying the dragon and disabling the trap."

Read it: Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / How 'Dungeons' changed the world

Via: Boing Boing: How 'Dungeons' changed the world

More info: Dungeons & Dragons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia