November 2007 Archives

White nationalist Hal Turner, who has found more to hate in this life than nearly everybody, has this message posted on his show's Web site about going to a subscription site on Nov. 28:
    .

Hundreds "kicked to the curb" as Hal Turner Show goes Subscription only

For the first time, the internet version of my weekly radio show aired on a subscription-only basis. The traditional LISTEN LIVE links on my site stayed live for only the first 15 minutes of the program and will do so each week.

At 15 minutes past the hour, the free feed was shut off and only the subscription feed continued to carry the show on the internet. Protected by an authentication system requiring user names and passwords, not a single non-subscriber was able to tap into the feed. Only those who carried their own weight could tune in.

Many said I wouldn't dare drop 90% of my audience. Tonight I did exactly that.

It wasn't bad, either. Still had lots of callers throughout the two hours.

The best part is, the 90% of the audience who leeched and freeloaded, who contributed nothing to the show, got exactly what they deserved: nothing.

Tonight, the Hal Turner Show became an environment for the successful; for the achievers; the winners among us. In one, brief, shining moment, I separated the wheat from the chaff and embraced those who not only are committed to our cause, but who have the means to back-up their commitment.

No more will we be burdened by those whose failures in life are so complete, they can't afford $5 a month.

I'm considering a new slogan: "The Hal Turner Show, losers and poor white trash need not tune in!"

A service for the discriminating listener, no doubt.

This picture of increased time spent on the Internet and this picture of time spent on news Web sites are not what we call the picture of the rising tide lifts all.

It's more like why is the sand castle washing away.

(webmink photo)

In the wonder-why-we-don't-have-it-here department.

While most large airports have Wi-Fi in their terminals, it is smaller airports — those serving 500,000 to 2 million passengers annually — that have full Wi-Fi access, and many of those airports offer it for free, according to the ACI.

The ACI is the Airports Council International, a trade group, and that paragraph is from a Denver Post story about Denver's airport now offering free WiFi. McGhee Tyson would fit pretty much in that smaller airport passenger range. I think it had 1.8 million plus passengers in 2005. It does have WiFi in the terminal, but it's not free. Wouldn't it make sense to offer free WiFi at McGhee Tyson?

The Denver airport's spokesman told the Rocky Mountain News it was done to "stay a leading-edge airport." Hint, hint.

I liked this quote from the Rocky story:

"I thank them for it," said Darryl Jenkins, a Virginia-based aviation consultant. "It's becoming a bigger deal, and it's now considered something you should do amongst polite society. Airports take you in so many other places, so it's not like they're starving for revenue. It's OK to let a passenger go through and leave with a buck or two."

I gave up on Netscape when it morphed into Propeller, but Muhammad Saleen's sneak peek and review has me considering going back:

wow. it took me a while to calm down before i could start writing anything. i got a chance to look at the new site design (not live, only internal) for propeller, and i have to say, it [expletive] rocks! the design will not only be much much better than the current site design, but it is safe to say that it will be better than all other social sites out there right now.

I think that means he likes it.

Attention Christmas shoppers: Chris Pirillo shares tech buying tips.

This could put a damper on exercise just as the holiday gorging season beings. I've used lesser excuses.


Month to date miles: 41.35

Do me a favor and subscribe to this feed.

Just like watching the detectives.
Don't get cute!"
It's just like watching the detectives.
I get so angry when the teardrops start,
but he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart.
Watching the detectives.
It's just like watching the detectives.

-- Elvis Costello

A special legislative study committee may decide to recommend "reforms" to the state Open Meetings Act today. Hopefully, it'll all be transparent.

Bryon Chesney notes this week's red light shooter story hit the mark on Google.

SEO = geekspeak for Search Engine Optimization, or how to get links to appear at the top of search results without paying for them. For the more adventurous.

On Dollywood values seen clearly from afar. Expect for not dealing with race, this picture of Dollywood is iconic of the conundrum that is the South.

Steve Outing in E-Media Tidbits

First, let me say that any journalist who's working in the year 2007 should have a Facebook account and profile. I hope I'm not speaking to too many journalists who have not figured out yet that they need to understand the social networking phenomenon, and for that they need to spend some time in that space.

You'd be surprised (or maybe not). You can find me there, but not that many others in my newsroom.

(Cartoon by Dave Walker)

This is neat and useful. A map showing flight delays out of McGhee Tyson (or any airport).

Mashable says the site launched just before the Thanksgiving travel rush.

Some thoughts on breaking news.

Matt Drudge tells Britain's Sky News the secret to a good news Website is "keep it jumping" and media writer Steve Outing says when it comes to breaking news, "holding on to it for even a short while means you'll likely be beaten by eyewitnesses sharing what they know, and that information spreading virally."

Outing suggests Twitter could be one platform for breaking news and got some cool pointers from the Twitter folks.

 Kevin Anderson in the UK picks up on Outing's thoughts and has some ideas of his own in "Newspapers can break news again."

I thought how a Knoxville computer programmer and Twitter Doug McCaughan covered a high school football game Friday night was innovative:

Game over. Field stormed. Final score bearden 28. Farragut 14. Well played by both teams! 09:14 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden runs half the field for a touchdown! Bearden 28. Farragut 14. Field about to be stormed by the students. 09:08 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Farragut punts. Bearden has possession at farragut 35 with 2:41 left in the 4th. 09:05 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Farragut qb number 10 okay to walk off field 09:03 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Farragut making wild passes. Farragut quarter back injured. 09:01 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Score bearden 21. Farragut 14. 08:59 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden leads 21 to 14 08:57 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden on the 7 yard line with 4 minutes left in the 4th. Touchdown! 08:57 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden making short runs to bring the clock down. In field goal range. 08:54 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden defense giving farragut running game a hard way to go. Farragut passing game strong. Bearden now has possession at farragut 26. 08:47 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden punts to farragut 34. 1 minute left in the 3rd quarter. 08:41 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Farragut attempts a field goal and misses 08:35 PM November 23, 2007 from txt

Farragut intercepts. Has ball on bearden 24. Its cold out here! 08:32 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Farragut touchdown 08:26 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden leading 14 to 7 with 10 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. Another on side kick leaves farragut with possession at the bearden 43. 08:25 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden touchdown! 08:22 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden accidentally did an on side kick while kicking off in the beginning of the 3rd quarter. 08:19 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

4th and 2 field goal attempt by bearden blocked by farragut 07:51 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Beautiful full moon. Air crisp. Very clear sky. 07:39 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Bearden vs Farragut tie game in 2nd quarter 7 to 7 07:37 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

For high school football on the day after thanksgiving i have to park a mile from the stadium! 06:41 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

Heading to bhs to watch bearden beat farragut. And freeze. 06:29 PM November 23, 2007 from txt  

McCaughan wasn't a journalist covering the game and his report would have never made Drudge. The story from the newspaper journalist covering the game, which appeared online later in the evening online and in the paper the next morning, was a better read.

But McCaughan's Twitter posts had an immediacy that captured the drama and tension of a playoff game between two arch-rivals. It was breaking news to the people that wanted to know. It was news of the moment.

Update: He blogs about Twittering the high school game.

And in one of those strange but true twists, if it had been done from the press box by a press credential bearing journalist at an NCAA sporting event, it likely would have been verboten as play-by-play coverage. Journalist aren't the only ones who need to think in new ways.

Update: Some more thoughts from Outing.
Update III: Newscoma adds additional perspective at Music City Bloggers.
Update IV: Ryan Sholin on technologies to break news.

For traditional media companies, the online strategy is "substituting pennies for dollars," says New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman.

That's a fair assessment, although some may argue their online strategy is adding pennies to dollars. Behind that are lots of economic forces at work: disintermediation, new disruptive players, the power of the network, the loss of competitive advantages (or monopoly advantages) and on and on. Make your own list of woe.

The response of newspapers, television stations/networks and those lumped together as "traditional mainstream media" over more than a dozen years has been innovation in small steps instead of game-changing.

During the time U.S. newspaper and television chains have been trying to develop workable online business models, lots of companies have sprung up that have developed either successful business models or huge audiences or both. Others, many others, have come and gone.

Here are some convenient reference points:

• Amazon was founded in 1994.
• Yahoo was founded in 1994.
• eBay was founded in 1995.
• Craigslist was started in 1995 and incorporated in 1999.
• Google was founded in 1998.
• Flickr was founded in 2002.
• MySpace was founded in 2003.
• Facebook was founded in 2004.
• YouTube was founded in 2005.
• Twitter was founded in 2006.

Zuckerman's quote comes from a story in PaidContent of the notes released Friday of a UK House of Lord’s Communications Committee that is studying media ownership. The committee visited the U.S. in mid-September and took the pulse of mainstream media.

The excellent notes doc is worth the read, but Rupert Murdoch has the Twitter version when he says the state of media is "fairly chaotic." The rest is just details.

A consistent theme is Zuckerman's "pennies for dollars" dilemma and what Scott Karp calls the 10 percent problem.

There may be some hopeful signs; Greg Sterling says newspapers have finally awakened five or more years late. Well, good news is relative.

Topless babes in ads, OK; breast feeding mom photos, no.

Hmmm ....

Chris Brogan posted Thursday a screen shot of a topless lass in the ad position in the left rail with a WTF commentary of how did that happen.

This, now, from the same folks that in the last few months banned photos of mothers nursing.

Laura Athavale Fitton wonders why more journalists (and regular people, too) aren't demanding answers:

I find this very egregious, and I am amazed they haven't been called on it or pressed to respond. I think the general public would be kind of horrified by this. I think the situation is outrageous and Facebook should immediately, and loudly, address it, fix it, and apologize.

Considerng what one can stumble upon on the Internet, I'm not quite as horrified. But still, another gaffe. Privacy, the Beacon, NSFW ads, the road gets bumpy when you no longer are a precocious young startup. Probably went over well at the Frat house, but your business model is beyond that, right?.

Fitton's right; Redress it ... them ... whatever.

Update Nov. 25, 2007, 9:19 a.m.: Mashable says Facebok has removed the ads in Facebook: Goodbye, and Thanks for the Mammaries. Company says in statement:

Facebook strictly prohibits pornography and adult content as part of its advertising guidelines, and it reviews ads running on the site to ensure they meet those guidelines. In this case, Facebook immediately disabled three ads after a review revealed that they were displaying prohibited images.

If you could only 100 blogs, which 100 should you read to be most on top of the news? Two Knoxville area blogs make the list: Instapundit.com at No. 1 and SayUncle.com at No. 91 in a Carnegie Mellon research effort called the CASCADES project.

The project studies "Cost-effective Outbreak Detection in Networks" and in the case of news, it's looking at how news (information) cascades through thousands of blogs on the Internet. The Top 100 list is basically the best places to see news surfacing.

It's described this way:

If I can read 100 blogs, which should I read to be most up to date? Unit cost (each blog costs 1 unit), optimizing the information captured -- population affected (we want to be the first to know about something with many people blogging about the story after us)

See the full list.

By the way, they say the technique works just like systems for detecting disease outbreaks in water ... and that's one comparison to news I have never made.

Here's what the researchers say:

Same techniques and algorithms as used for blogs also apply to detecting disease outbreaks in water distribution networks. Consider a city water distribution network, delivering water to households via pipes and junctions. Intrusions can cause contaminants to spread over the network, and we want to select a few locations (pipe junctions) to install sensors, in order to detect these contaminations as quickly as possible.

The sensor placements obtained by our algorithm are provably near optimal, providing a constant fraction of the optimal solution. Our approach scales, achieving speedups and savings in storage of several orders of magnitude.

I suspect there's a business model in here for someone. As far as a top blogs list, this makes a lot more sense to me than Techmeme's Leaderboard for one, although you'll find many of the same sites.

(via J.D. Lasica)

Ethan Kaplan, 28, head of technology at Warner Bros. Records, says his secret dream is to be given a year at the helm of a newspaper to do a groundup reinvention. Now, that would be interesting. He has some ideas, including selling the presses!

Some other smart people have ideas as well on the future of newspapers.

Obviously, a lot of people from MoveOn.org to the other end of the political spectrum are weighing in negatively on the Facebook Beacon. But when it's wigging out smart people like Forrester's Charlene Li, ... uh ... it might be time to rethink.

Soon it'll be more popular than pop up ads. 

Terry Heaton on why "content is not king:"

Given the math, it's simply impossible to create enough content in a page view model to satisfy budget demands. It is impossible.

To see his full argument, jump to LEARNING MEDIA 2.0: CONTENT IS NOT KING  (I don't think the anchor tag works).

Do the math! The good news at least for journalists is content is still in the equation.

This week my exercise music was the John Butler Trio's Grand National, the video above is the cut "Good Excuse." More YouTube videos of the band.

Maybe everybody knows about this group; they been releasing albums since 2001. I didn't, but I have the "old fogey" excuse. They're an Australian roots/jam band group. They're big in Australia and have had hits in France and Japan. In the US, they've been on Leno and Letterman and toured with Dave Matthews and John Mayer. The latest release, Grand National, came out in March. More on the band and its history.

Good stuff. I would love to see them play the Tennessee Theatre.

It was a good week exercising, too.


Month to date miles: 30.09

Number9 says history was made this week with the first reading passage of a recall amendment by the Knox County Commission. He says:

The idea began in the comment section of the Knoxville News Sentinel. The comments section had only been in the Internet version of the News Sentinel for a few months. While not exactly a blog, people began to use it as a blog having long discussions about matters concerning local government.

Commenter Brian Paone wrote one day he would start a website for the Recall Amendment. He did, and soon an entire group of people including the founders of the Wheel Tax petition were on board.

Read the rest.

That's a powerful use of comments on news stories!

The virtual version of pulling up the other candidates' signs?

Is a Southern accent a political liability?

Sez David Freddoso:

It takes conscious effort for some New Englanders to overcome the First Impression that Southern Accent doesn't equal perhaps deliberate ignorance...Yes, it's prejudice, but try and get a New Englander, a genuine Yankee, to admit a shortcoming like this. It's almost always rationalized as something else, and thinly...

This doesn't bode well for a number of candidates if they aren't adept at code shifting.

There's a link below to a fun accent quiz and it correctly labeled me a Southerner (Imagine, that!). But the quiz didn't ask me about any of these; I guess they're my bonus points.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The South   That's a Southern accent you've got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don't have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it.
The Inland North
The Northeast
The Midland
Philadelphia
The West
North Central
Boston
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

(via Instapundit)

Longtime friend and journalism professor Jim Brown has a new book coming out, Long Journey Home.

Twitter cameos on CBS' CSI. Add me to your Twitter friends.

(via Lost Remote)

All these years, I've been working for a media blob that plans to morph into fraternal twins.

Wait, it is a big ole media octopus, now cutting off tentacles.

Whatever, Jack Shafer has a sense of humor in explaining deconsolidation::

Let's make a deal. What would you pay for the Los Angeles Times, the Nashville Tennessean, the Des Moines Register, Newsday, the Dallas Morning News, the Knoxville News Sentinel, or any other chain-owned property? Don't send your bids to me a slate.pressbox@gmail.com. Send them to the newspapers' respective owners and send me the finder's fee.

In their current configurations, newspaper companies are screwed. They would begin to help themselves by acknowledging and starting to deal with this.

-- Henry Blodget, stock analyst reduced to journalist

The technology Ron Sylvester utilized in covering a trial in Kansas may made the special agents of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation envious. If you work at newspaper, you should be, too.

Not because he had the fanciest and most expensive gear available (he didn't, but it was good stuff), but because he and the Wichita Eagle were able to cobble together low-tech and high-tech in a way that allowed unique coverage.

He explains in this posting.

Do you have reporters who have never emailed in a story with their Blackberry? Do have people who say you can't do without expensive gizmos? Are computer skills lacking?

What I found most encouraging is they just tried it.

Try it Ron's way and see what happens.

(via Mindy McAdams)

The dark, and very sad, side of social networking.

• Paper blasted for not naming adults linked to girl's suicide
• POKIN AROUND: A real person, a real death
• Blog Readers Out Anonymous Adults that Newspaper Refused to Identify
• Megan Meier MySpace Suicide: Cruel Hoaxers Outed, Let The Lesser Outrage Begin
• Blog Readers Out Anonymous Adults From Megan Meier MySpace Suicide Story
• More on the death of Megan Meir and the fake Josh Evan profile on Myspace
  

There is a battle going on, did you know that? It’s about the right to know. You might think all this stuff is small potatoes or think it doesn’t affect you, but it does.

That's Newscoma laying down the low down on open meeting law "reform" in Tennessee. You can contact the people making the decisions after reading her post.

Have blog postings -- many of them filled with inaccurate accounts -- so inflamed a community that it is impossible for a man charged in connection with a brutal murder case to get a fair trial?

That's a legal argument being made in Knoxville, Tenn., involving the gruesome carjackiing and murder of a young couple, Channon Christian and Chris Newsom.

The attorney for Eric Dewayne Boyd, charged with sheltering the accused ringleader in the crime, says Google returns 27,000 articles for "Channon" and "murder." I'm not sure what day the attorney, Phillip Lomonaco, did the search, but he's severely understating what's on the Internet. On this day, I got 50,400 returns from Google with those two words in the search box and further tests yielded somewhat varying results. Click the link and see what you get.

The murder which occurred in January 2007, already has reached "urban legend" status with an entry on the popular urban legend site Snopes.com.

There are at least 66 videos on YouTube when you search for Christian Newsom. Laomonaco said he found 82, but I'm sure what his search terms were.

There has been a circus-like rally by white supremacists with counter-protesters.

The attorney said in a court filing, the Internet buzz "spread lies and helped create an urban legend surrounding the details of the final state of the victims' bodies — details meant to outrage and taint any jury pool."

There hasn't been a ruling on the attorney's motion, but a story from The Associated Press quoted George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg:

"Judges have always been aware that potential jurors get their information in a variety of ways," said Saltzburg, who chairs the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section.

"It used to be newspapers, then it was newspapers and television. Then it was newspapers, television and cable channels. Now it is newspapers, television, cable channels and blogs and Internet messaging.

"I don't think it changed anything," Saltzburg said, adding that Internet concerns can be addressed with existing remedies, such as careful jury instructions and screening.

We'll just have to wait to see what's decided on venue. It would, however, be fascinating to know how the views, perceptions, and recollections of this case differ between people who primarily followed the coverage online and those who primarily followed the coverage in print or television. Do you think they differ?

And then, of course, there would be people that somehow missed it all and have been living in a dark place for a long time.

Long live the dead.

Clyde Bentley:

I found that to effectively replace a laptop with the current crop of smartphones, a journalist needs the eyes of a 20-year old, the fingertips of an elf and the tenderness of a surgeon. Tiny is tiny, no matter how you look at it. I couldn’t get the knack of quickly switching to audio recorder, photographing a poorly-lit subject on the go and texting the office while walking out of the meeting.

I've played around with the Nokia N800 with a Bluetooth keyboard, but I'm not sure it's there, either. I have blogged and Twittered  with an  iPod Touch.

Has any anyone found the journalist's "Trash 80" of the 21st Century?

The "Trash 80" or as Tandy labeled it, the TRS-80 Model 100, 102 or 200, was completely able to survive the dreaded "sports reporter" treatment, which should be de rigueur testing for all laptops billed as durable.

Inspired by how easy Greg Sterling made it look, I created a simple business presence on Facebook for the Knoxville News Sentinel. Click the link and add it to your "stores." (Stores has to be another in a long line of inane terms Facebook forces one to use. Also, there was no business type in its options for a news or media business. Geez.) UPDATE: Well, I recreated it as a "brand or product," but anyway.

As Sterling demonstrates with screen shots, it's dead simple. Figuring out how to promote it short of a bunch of cajoles and a cache of plastic cash  with Facebook ads; not so simple.  I couldn't convince it to take my corporate credit card; Facebook sniffed nose at Old Media Cash.

Charlene Li of Forrester fame makes the business case for being on Facebook and MySpace.

Knoxnews' online producers have a MySpace page for their RandomThis videos and there is one for our Friday entertainment section, Preview.

Blackfive.net on Glenn Reynolds' prodigious blogging in action:

... it has long been surmised that he chains law students to banks of computers like galley slaves and then blends up puppy smoothies to power his superhuman output capacity. Not true, he is actually a collection of Cray supercomputers housed in a remarkably affable and convincing human transport. Since this was the most self-referential event in history I sat next to Glenn and watched him take and upload some pics in reality and then watched them appear on my laptop at the same time, he did this while simultaneously conducting a video interview and cooking a chicken dinner.

(via Reynolds' Instapundit.com)

I had to post this one cause it's about the home state candidate and it's just dang innovative for stodgy old opinion writers. And it's the funniest thing I've seen in awhile.

The Wichita Eagle opinion staff has created a satirical video about the age and looks gap between two presidential candidates and their wives.

Damn, two Fred videos in the space of as many days.

(via Howard Weaver)

Got back to the right number of sessions, but not enough miles or time. Some improvement, however.

Hmmm .... I do know where the Halloween candy went.

Tim Ferriss of the four-hour workweek fame, has a blog posting on an exercise regimen called "I Gained 34lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks" and one on dieting called "How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise".

The guy's hype is certainly something. He solves everything from junk info to junk food.

Recent postings on his blog:

• How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour (Plus: A Favor)
• Embracing Ignorance as Advantage—a Case Study (Plus: Speaking Nov. 5th and 10th)
• How I Prostitute Myself (and Other Options for You)
• The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen (and Weapons of Mass Distraction)
• What Happens When an Agnostic Follows the Bible Literally for One Year?

Stowe Boyd says at least as far the four-hour workweek, he's just bunk in "Cult Of Productivity: We Know He's Lying, But Who Cares?"

You got any thoughts on Ferriss and his miracle, no-sweat recommendations?

Month to date miles: 16.01

An excellent and in-depth explanation of Feedburner subscriber and reach stats, and why they go up and down from day-to-day.

This is a better description of Feedburner stats than I've been able to find on Feedburner's site. Good stuff!

Oh yeah, subscribe to my feed.

Is Tennessee's Fred Thompson the savviest presidential candidate at appealing to the net community? That's the question posed by Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins at Mashable.

The video above aimed at liberal movie maker Michael Moore is but one example. Hopkins said:

Sean Hackbarth, of the Fred Thompson campaign, sent me an email yesterday essentially stating that not only is Fred Thompson a lawyer, but he played one on TV, citing his appearances in In the Line of Fire, The hunt for the Red October, Die Hard 2, and Law and Order. As such, he recognizes the value of “star power” in spreading the word about why “Fred will make a great, conservative President.”

Essentially, Fred wants to create the next Chris Crocker or Star Wars Kid by surveying the roster of YouTube-worthy talent in his support base, have his fans vote for the favorites, and then promote the heck out of them, and by proxy Fred (ostensibly on YouTube, although I wouldn’t rule out traditional TV ads).

All you need to do is upload your video, and stay tuned to Fred08.com to vote yourself up. He’s looking for positive videos about himself, trying to stay away from attack ads against his competitors.

Wonder which Tennessean is the biggest star: Fred Thompson or Chris Crocker?

Conservate GOP candidate Ron Paul gets my vote. I can tell from KnoxNews' referring domains and pageview reports anytime the Texan is mentioned on the Web site.

Other contenders are Democrats John Edwards (he's still twittering among other things) and Barak Obama.