Archive for the 'News' Category

Ideas About Ideas

Published by Jarred on December 20, 2009 in Advertising, Books, Business, Computing, Consumer Behavior, Copyright, Culture, Design, Environment, Google, Health, Legal Issues, Lifestyle, News, Politics, Privacy, Science, Social Networks, Space and Web 2.0. Comments

The New York Times recently issued the ninth edition of its annual Ideas feature for its magazine.  I’ve read through most of the entries and found several really fascinating; others were also interesting but neglected to surface other important angles.  I thought I’d use this space to highlight both, seeing as Tropophilia is all about ideas that may bring about change in our world.

The Advertisement That Watches You - I’ll leave the details of this particular implementation to the article, but the essence of the technology is a billboard with a built-in camera that, through facial recognition technology, can tell when anyone within a certain radius of the advertisement is looking at it.  This one, interestingly, changes to its main message when people are not looking.  You can imagine, however, how this technology might develop over time: electronic ads could be powered off until it new there were passersby actually looking at the space.  Facial recognition could also be used to power an impressions-based ads payment system, much like exists on the web: advertisers would only have to pay per “view” or elapsed “eyeball time” on the ad.  Of course, such commercial use of facial recognition technology also raises enormous privacy concerns (How long are camera images kept?  Would the technology eventually be used to identify people and serve ads based on their personal interests, or  even the clothes they were wearing or the book they are reading at that moment?).  It will be interesting to see how this area grows, if at all.

Bicycle Highways - I thought this was a cool idea, but I’m not sure I see it gaining widespread adoption outside of cities that have significant numbers of bike commuters.  What I think is really clever is the possibilities raised with GPS and RFID technology that would allow for bikers to create on-the-fly pelotons, which in turn would be able to gain privileges for traffic lights and such: a mix between EZPass and carpool lanes.  Throw in a custom social network for the city so you could plan your departures in order to meet up with a regular riding group, and this could be really great for those cities with big biking cultures.

The Counterfeit Self - I think this research has implications for the Web.  There has long been a debate about authentication online: when writing a blog, posting comments, or joining a social network, is it “better” for users to have the ability to remain anonymous or pseudonymous, or should they be encouraged or required to use their real identity (obfuscated to whatever degree they prefer).  Many argue that encouraging or requiring authentication would, for example, solve the problem evidence by the (often hateful and troll-like) comments of any given YouTube video.  Opponents summon the right to free dom of speech as a defense of anonymous use of the web.  Some governments, like South Korea, actually require what is referred to as “real name verification” for websites in their jurisdiction that surpass a certain threshold of users; users are required to authenticate against a national registry before they can interact with the site.  Considering the idea of how behavior is influenced by fake identity could offer a fresh perspective in this debate.

Good Enough is the New Great - One aspect that this idea doesn’t cover (and I can’t remember anymore if the Wired article does or not) is information.  Just as consumers are turning to cheap cameras, low-fi music files, and YouTube videos, they are also turning to Twitter for their information fixes.  Many argue that in moving from mainstream to social media as our main source of information, we make a similar sacrifice of quality for convenience.  I think that may be true in the short-term, but I’m hopeful that just like companies are starting to fit better and better sensors into those tiny Flip cameras, so will Twitter eventually recapture some of the fidelity of the “news” that it carries.

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Google Reader Gets Magical

Published by Jarred on October 23, 2009 in Google, News and Web 2.0. Comments

I try not to spend too much time pimping Google’s products in this space, but let’s face it: we make really cool stuff, and whether I work for the company or not, I absolutely adore most of our products.  Fact is, our engineers and product teams cook up tools that are really useful for those who are ready to embrace the digital future.  Google Reader is one of those tools, and the team has just released a set of features that have got me plain jazzed.

Google Reader is a tool for pulling interesting content to a central inbox via “feeds.”  Almost every website on the web that publishes regular updates also sends out a feed that can be subscribed to via various tools.  As a result, instead of clicking through a long list of bookmarked sites to see if there’s something new to read, you can just subscribe to that site’s feed and all the new content will build up in your inbox.  (If you want to subscribe to Tropophilia’s feed, click here.)

Though it got off to a rocky start, Reader has been incrementally socializing and personalizing itself over the past two years.  First it let you share items publicly; later, those shared items became directly available to your contacts who also use Reader.  Recently, the team introduced the ability to “like” an item in addition to sharing it, and it also created a section of “recommended” feeds based on your reading, sharing, and liking history (although it was a little hard to find).  It has also given users new ways to share with the “send to” feature that lets you post to Twitter and other third party sites.

At first, it was confusing as to why there was both a “like” and a “share” feature, with many people not understanding when they would do one without doing the other.  This week, the Reader team cleared that up by delivering the punch line:

  • You can now sort any feed (including the comprehensive feed) by “magic.”  The sorting is based on what Reader has determined you’re interested in, as reflected by your reading/liking/sharing history.
  • The “recommended feeds” feature now has prime real estate in the main sidebar in a new “Explore” section.
  • There is a new “popular items” feed (also sortable by your personalized “magic”) that shows you what items have been popular across the web recently.

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Turning The Wrecking Ball of News Into A Bola

Published by Jarred on August 9, 2009 in Business and News. Comments

The buzz over the future of news and the fate of newspapers has exploded since I last wrote about the topic in February.  I’ve been following the conversation carefully as it has continued to manifest itself across the web as well as in print, but I’ve been reluctant to write too much about it.  Hardly an article is written without either a wholesale indictment or wholesale exoneration of Google for blame in this drama, so I decided it was best to keep my thoughts to myself.

This is too important and fascinating a debate, though, for me to be content sitting completely on the sidelines.  So I thought I would take some time to write not an argumentative post, but a prescriptive (or at least predictive) one that offers what I think might be a successful model for the future of written journalism.

A little over a week ago, Mike Arrington posed a fairly radical hypothetical: what if the best 5-10% of the New York Times‘ reporters walked out and started their own company?  A lean staff count and modest production expenses for this web-based enterprise would allow plenty of budget for investigative journalism and other expensive reporting.  ”How many private equity funds would kill to put $100 million behind the ["New" New York Times] to make sure the company had plenty of money until it reached profitability?” ponders Arrington.  ”My guess is plenty. [...] And I know a couple of hedge funds that would be right there, too. I know this because they’ve pitched me on a vision not much different than this one.”

Arrington’s proposal was inspired by a recent fascination with Politico, whose leadership he met prior to their interview with Charlie Rose.  Profiled by Michael Wolff in this month’s Vanity Fair, Politico is the web-based Bible of political junkies that rose to prominence during the 2008 election season and has sustained more modest, but nonetheless impressive growth.  Both the article and Rose’s conversation with some of the staff are worth checking out.

Arrington fails (or declines?) to draw the connection between Politico and his own web publication, TechCrunch, and as a result does not recognize the disconnect between their shared model and his “New New York Times” proposal.  It is indeed an innovative idea to take the cream of the journalistic crop, free them from the burden of a bureaucratic and expensive print-based publication, and set them on a new (and hopefully profitable) course of news reporting.  But the Arrington hypothetical only addresses one of two major problems with written journalism today.

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The Human Side of Newspapers

Published by Jarred on February 28, 2009 in News. Comments

For all I’ve written about the changing landscape for text-based news, I have touched only briefly on the very real human component that is afflicted by this evolution.  There will be genuine sadness and hardship that accompanies the inevitable shift from news printed on dead trees to news distributed online, and it will come in the form of layoffs.  But even beyond that, the loss of a newspaper is not the just the failing of a company.  It is the instant disappearance of an institution, the vanishing of a familiar and relied-upon piece of everyday life.  While I fall on the side of those who believe that newspapers need to adapt their business and operational models for the digital landscape, it would be hard-hearted of me not to acknowledge the suffering that this change will bring to many well-meaning people.

This touching, emotional video by Matthew Roberts highlights that suffering.  On Friday, the Rocky Mountain News — the former competitor to The Denver Post — published its final edition.  The RMN was put on sale for a month, but no buyers came forward.  This video features interviews with everyone from the paper’s editor to reporters, from the mayor of Denver to random people on the street.  It is really well done and absolutely worth twenty minutes of your time.  But don’t believe everything you hear.

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Newspaper Is Not The “One Medium To Rule Them All”

Published by Jarred on February 11, 2009 in Business, Culture, News and Web 2.0. Comments

Reminder: I speak for myself and not for my employer.

Late last month, the New York Times ran an op-ed by David Swensen and Michael Schmidt called “News You Can Endow.” It begins with this quote from Thomas Jefferson:

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right. [...] And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.”

And then, ominously, the authors declare:

“Today, we are dangerously close to having a government without newspapers. [...] If Jefferson was right that a well-informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, then newspapers must be saved.”

I’ve done enough LSAT logical reasoning questions to recognize a broken argument when I see it.  I could hash it out, but I much prefer passive aggressive analogies.  Let’s say that Jefferson also wrote that the basis of commerce is the efficient movement of goods.  Today, however, we are dangerously close to having an economy without carriages.  Oh noes!  If Jefferson was right that excellent transportation is the foundation of our economy, then carriages must be saved!  Dunno about you, but I’m pretty sure the CEO of FedEx would disagree.

Swensen and Schmidt go on to argue that turning newspapers into non-profit organizations funded by endowments “would enhance newspapers’ autonomy while shielding them from the economic forces that are now tearing them down.”  In other words, they believe that because newspapers are not surviving the market economy with their current business model, they should — instead of adapting to consumer demand and concentrating on moving their operations online — forgo a business model altogether and become self-sufficient institutions that are immune to the desires of their audience.  I’ll give you a few seconds to apply and enjoy the carriage analogy here.

Of course, as Michael Masnick at Techdirt points out, Jefferson wasn’t really talking about newspapers as a medium, but newspapers as an implementation of journalism (just as — if my invented quote were true — he would probably have been talking about transportation, and not just carriages).  Doesn’t Jefferson’s quote really imply that, if anything, a citizenry who could be informed frequently, and even in real time, would be better off than one who only received news in a single, diurnal, static form?  To put it simply: wouldn’t Jefferson have been in favor of ditching newspapers for online news?

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