April 29, 2005
Rethinking the Associated Press ...
A colleague and I published an article today in the Online Journalism Review arguing that the news industry needs a 21st century approach to sharing news and information.
An excerpt: "AP started as a cooperative. Today, it is a cooperative in name only. It’s time to take a lesson from music swappers and invent the new AP – a digital cooperative, a Napsterized news service."
I'd be interested in your thoughts on this ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2005
On apples and islands
Lots of good stuff on the music/book/Internet front in recent weeks.
Last night, NPR did a piece on a jazz band called Happy Apple. I liked the samples they played in the piece, not to mention the band's general attitude. So I jumped over to iTunes and download "Youth Oriented." Loved it. So much that I went back to iTunes and grabbed both of the other CDs that were on there: "The Peace Between Our Companies" and "Afternoon in Marrakech." The latter is a 34-minute meditation that's really a departure from the other two works.
I think my favorite tune so far is "Paulie's Quick Temper" from the "Peace" CD. Can't help but wonder if it's inspired by Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos. There's one part where it sounds like a CD stuttering, that maddening sound you get when the disc is scratched. Then it hops into an incredible jam. Really nice stuff. I'll be spending a lot of time exploring these discs ...
On the novel front, I'm well into Andrea Levy's "Small Island," which is a marvelous book. She's Jamaican, and the novel focuses on Hortense and Gilbert, who move from Jamaica to England after the Second World War. The contrast between the two islands is stark, and Levy does a wonderful job of breathing live into the characters, both Jamaican and English. I really like the scene where Hortense is having her first encounter with the English winter and its bleak, truncated days. I can only imagine how she must miss that year-round 12 hours of daylight in Jamaica. I know I do ...
And online, I've been reading a lot of travel sites, especially Travel Blog. There's a lot of drivel there, but if you sift through it (I use my RSS aggregator for this) there's at least one gem a day. Neat stuff about real people doing real stuff on the road. For something a little more off the wall and irreverent, I'm also checking Gridskipper daily.
And last but not least, two momentous TV events loom. Fetch, Tivo. Fetch:
1. Penn and Teller's "Bullshit!" begins its new season on Showtime Monday night.
2. The Family Guy returns on May 1. I can only hope and pray this resurrected version is as cool, irreverent and offensive as the first three seasons ...
Now Playing: Lincoln At Nevada from the album "Leftover Salmon" by Leftover Salmon
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:44 PM | Comments (4)
April 19, 2005
How to survive a zombie attack ...
Dr. Zeus has posted a guide to surviving zombie onslaughts over on Kuro5hin.
Fortunately, someone pointed out that Max Brooks (Mel's son) already beat him to the punch. But Zeus offers several helpful tips, including the good advice of determining whether you're dealing with fast- or slow-moving zombies and a poll on the best place to survive a zombie attack (a boat and an underground military bunker currently lead, but I seem to remember the underground military bunker theory falling apart in an ugly way during "Day of the Dead.")
Posted by Bob Benz at 6:57 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
Shopping for the right search ...
I've been casting around for the ultimate search engine, especially when it comes to shopping.
Google is great, as far as it goes. But Froogle really doesn't do it for me as a shopping search. It's too "kill 'em all and sort 'em out" in its approach. This weekend, I stumbled across something with a lot of potential.
Become.com just launched and it's still in Beta, but it's showing a lot of potential. In addition to doing some interesting things with the basic algorithms that make searching more productive, they're doing something that strikes me as a little retro. They're using human editors to identify sites that are particularly useful. That's a throwback to Yahoo's early days, when much of its directory approach was hands-on and it tended to focus on stuff that was worth checking out, not just everything that happens to be out there. There's a big difference.
The results tend to be a lot more useful, at least as far as I'm concerned. When I search for "luggage," for instance, Become quickly took me to a several sites with great advice on buying luggage. Consumer advocacy needs to play a bigger role in shopping search. Don't just tell me everything that's available: Help me make the right choice. Help me cut through all the noise and find what matters.
The guys behind this developed -- and then sold -- MySimon, another shopping-focused search. I never really like Simon, though, because I always had the creeping feeling that I wasn't necessarily getting the best prices/products; I was being steered toward products by the site's sponsors. Become.com seems to avoid that. So far ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:08 PM | Comments (1)
April 5, 2005
Travel tips?
Lara and I are going to Europe in early June, and I'm looking for any advice/recommendations you might have.
We're flying into Amsterdam, where we'll spend about five nights before going to Tallinn, Estonia, for my cousin's wedding. While in Estonia, we're planning a day trip to Helsinki.
From there, we're going to Paris, staying there for three nights.
LBJ is gonna love this ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:22 PM | Comments (8)
April 1, 2005
No laughing matter
This is bizarre. Even a little creepy. Two comics in this morning's paper both did a Ouija board bit. And they both had the same punch line.
It leaves me wondering if the writers of Foxtrot and Get Fuzzy were in cahoots, or voices from beyond were guiding their pens.
I mean, I can see this happening, maybe. But with both running on the same morning? And almost the same wording? Perhaps it's some sort of April Fool's joke?
(Cue Twilight Zone music here ...)
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:10 AM | Comments (4)