Category: Everything Else

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editorsweblog.org: Dan Gillmor, Chris Anderson, and the end of objectivity:

“Maybe it’s time to say a fond farewell to an old canon of journalism: objectivity,” says Dan Gillmor in his posting, “The end of objectivity (version 0.91).” The opportunities that the internet provides, continues Gillmor, allow this journalistic standard to be approached in a different manner; through thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency, all of which could add up to objectivity. Chris Anderson on his Long Tail blog, agrees with Gillmor, and contributes some distinct points to his theory.

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<![CDATA[PaidContent.org: February 08, 2005 Archives:

…the most interesting bit out of the new research released by the Online Publishers Association. Replaying new snippets is the most popular activity, performed by 66 percent. Watching clips of last night’s game and checking out new music videos and movie trailers are also popular video pursuits.

However, sports highlights are watched most frequently, with 48% watching at least once a week, and 11% watching daily.

Another interesting bit which is perhaps understandable (and confirms another study): 1-2 minutes is the preferred length of video watched online, for sports, news and movie trailers, but for music videos, it hovers in the 3-5 minutes range (due to their length)…

Check the graphic Rafat includes, too.
The unswered question is: Are we short attention-span people or are we piling dozens of short pieces together to try to get a complete picture? We found people doing the latter at ON24, and I suspect this is where a huge opportunity lies for podcasters and vloggers who want to deliver news analysis.]]>

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Edward Tufte on Beautiful Evidence (and more Stanford: December 8) (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog):

Tufte’s speaking in a huge lecture hall in the alumni building, but I get there late (because of the exam, which turns out to be ridiculously easy) and it’s packed full and they’re turning people away at the door. I didn’t run all the way here for this, so I find a way to sneak in, but even then people standing up are literally taking up all the room that isn’t taken up by chairs. Even though I can’t see over their heads, I try to listen in and follow what Tufte’s saying.

He’s talking about his invention of sparklines, compressed graphs that can be used inline with text, just like a word. They’re “just evidence”, he explains, no they shouldn’t be segregated. He gets off on a tangent on how he has to use 3 applications to make them because, unlike the original GUI at Xerox PARC, modern computers are filled with needless distinctions between operating systems and applications, with “marketing experiences” popping up everywhere. ‘It’s all because of political and economic power,’ he says to scattered applause.

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editorsweblog.org: US: experienced citizen journalism site set to expand:

With 45,000 citizen journalism websites around the country already, GetLocalNews.com may be defining the future of citizen journalism. After realizing that “local community members are addicted to interactivity,” the five-year-old company began establishing hyper-local sites whose success is based on turning readers into reporters.

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<![CDATA[WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Vodafone Predicts the Future:

It used to be a requirement that cutting-edge technology companies produce a video showing what The Future ™ will be like when the swoopy new toys their R&D folks are thinking about over beers eventually come to pass. The best-known of these videos is the Apple “Knowledge Navigator” video from the early 1990s (and if anyone has a link to that video, please let me know), showing just how much better (happier, more fulfilling, not drinking too much, etc.) your life will be (in The Future ™) once you have a computer-generated guy in a bowtie reading your email to you, making your travel plans, carrying on an affair with your spouse (if I remember correctly)…

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Here’s a scary fact: AT&T once followed me around for a day to make one of these films, which it showed at Comdex…. They said I lived slightly in the future. Of course, look what happened to AT&T and Comdex after that.]]>