Neutral on Net Neutrality
Stephen Green is torn on the issue of net neutrality, with his libertarian side thinking Internet service providers ought to be able to "charge what the traffic will bear" on their equipment while his conservative side preferring to preserve a status quo that works well to an unknown future. I'm on the same fence but do agree with Mark Cuban that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 31, 2009 08:24
Email Era Over?
"Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over." So begins a column by Jessica Vascellaro in today's WSJ. We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 12, 2009 08:18
50 Things Killed by the Internet
Matthew Moore marks the 40th anniversary of the Internet with a list of "50 things that are being killed by the internet." My favorites: 1) The art of polite disagreement While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 5, 2009 08:09
Books in a Blog World
Norm Geras points us to LAT book editor David Ulin's essay lamenting the "lost art of reading," specifically the difficulty in concentrating well and long enough to read books. Norm says it's easy: "You get a book. You switch off various things. If it helps, you close the door. Then you sit down and read. In due course, our man ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 10, 2009 08:23
Smartphone: From Gadget to Necessity?
Via Twitter (@MelissaTweets and @Armano) I see a week-old NYT piece from Steve Lohr titled "Smartphone Rises Fast From Gadget to Necessity." For a growing swath of the population, the social expectation is that one is nearly always connected and reachable almost instantly via e-mail. The smartphone, analysts say, is the instrument of that connectedness — and thus worth the cost, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 15, 2009 09:17
Voice Mail’s Obsolescence
People under a certain age have stopped using voice mail, Jill Colvin reports for NYT. When it was introduced in the early 1980s, voice mail was hailed as a miracle invention — a boon to office productivity and a godsend to busy households. Hollywood screenwriters incorporated it into plotlines: Distraught heroine comes home, sees blinking red light, listens as desperate suitor ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 3, 2009 14:24
Productivity Guidelines: Quality Over Quantity
Gina Trapani transcribes a corporate whiteboard offering solutions for "Workday Quality Over Quantity." Check email ONLY: 10AM 1PM 4PM Send any time Set email to check every 3 hours. NO email on evenings. NO email on weekends. EMERGENCY? = Use phone. FOCUS 1-3 Activities max/day LOG 1-3 Succinct status bullets every day on team wiki MINIMIZE chat MAXIMIZE single-tasking OUT by 5:30PM ~No excuses~ This sounds great. But it strikes me as implausible and even inefficient. For ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 28, 2009 09:40
Breaking: Few People Have Access To President’s Email Address!
The New York Times has a long-winded article that states the obvious: not too many people have President Obama's email address.It is now the ultimate status symbol in a town obsessed by status. Mr. Obama was spotted last week trying out his new BlackBerry — or actually a more sophisticated, encrypted variation — and aides say that he uses a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 1, 2009 12:29
