Twitter Not Just About Lunch
Norm Geras remains baffled at the Twitter phenomenon. Responding to a column by Nicholas Lezard, Norm asks: (1) Why would I want to record my daily activities for other people to follow? (2) Why would I want to follow the detailed doings of anyone else over the course of a day, and another day, and another day? You, of course, wouldn't. But that's ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 2, 2009 14:43
Twitter Memes
Becks observes, "I suspect many Twitter memes that I find annoying (one letter off movie titles, failed children's books, etc.) would have been quite hilarious Unfogged threads." The post title, "The Medium Is The Message," is appropriate. Several Twitter memes (created by adding a hashtag such as #failedchildrensbooks) of the sort mentioned can be amusing if one is in the mood. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 26, 2009 11:13
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
Banning the Birthers
Jon Henke thinks it's time for the Right to throw out the lunatics: In the 1960's, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being "so far removed from common sense" and later said "We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner." The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 1, 2009 09:33
RSS is Dead, Long Live RSS
A discussion that has been going on for a while among the tech bloggers and Twitterati is the idea that RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is dead. A study published last October found that 78% of U.S. online adults did not use it and only 19% of those who didn't had any interest in using it in the future. Then again, as ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 29, 2009 08:16
Jon & Kate Plus Don Hewitt Equals News?
This morning, Jeff Jarvis passed along Peter Daou's tweet "CBS Early Show Prioritizes Jon & Kate Over Don Hewitt’s Death," which linked this Consider This News video, itself prefaced "This speaks volumes about the state of TV news" My tweeted retort: "Old man dying yesterday not news?" Steven Taylor has some more detailed thoughts, notably that morning news shows have never been ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 20, 2009 14:33
Liskula Cohen Forces Google to Reveal Anonymous Blogger
A Vogue cover model of whom I'd never previously heard and does not conform to my preconceptions of what a Vogue cover model looks like has won a lawsuit against Google over an anonymous former blogger who called her names on the Internet. A Vogue cover girl has won a precedent-setting court battle to unmask an anonymous blogger who called her ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 20, 2009 09:04
3 Ways to Avoid Drowing in Information
Steve Rubel offers "Three Tips for Managing the Stream Before it Manages You." Between email, blog feeds, Twitter, Facebook, and various other applications out there, we've all got too much information to contend with. Those of us in the information business are even more overwhelmed because we both need to follow more things and figure out ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 19, 2009 10:09
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
You Know You Got it When You’re Going Insane
Norm Geras (who just celebrated his 6th blogging anniversary) points us to this hilariously annoying SPIEGEL interview with Wired editor Chris Anderson: SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism. Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism. SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 28, 2009 12:07
Fire David Keene – The ACU Pay-for-Play Scandal
David Keene and the American Conservative Union offered to take sides in an NLRB dispute between rivals UPS and FedEx based on who would pay to play. FedEx refused to pay the bribe of $2 to $3 million, so ACU supported UPS. FedEx went public, turning over the letter outlining ACU's extortion request to POLITICO's Mike Allen. Doubters ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 17, 2009 10:32
Great Tweets of Science
About right: PHD Comics: Great Tweets of SciencePosted in Outside The Beltway on July 17, 2009 07:07
Twitter is Dead, Long Live Twitter
Julian Sanchez notes that the rise of Twitter as a hot tool for political communication has killed Twitter the social networking service. After resisting for a while, I finally signed up for Twitter a little over a year ago because it became clear that it was no longer socially optional: My friends were coordinating via Twitter rather than sending around e-mails ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 15, 2009 12:44
Twitter Outages
Twitter, the social media tool that's supposed to revolutionize politics, save the Republican Party, and bring freedom to Iran is, yet again, down. Twitter.com is virtually useless but, because the service is open source, dozens of applications have sprung up to make it practical to actually use Twitter. But these apps, too, continually fail because of limitations brought on by something ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 10, 2009 13:30
