Old School Journalism
Wow…absolutely hysterical… Via Suzeanne Yada on Twitter…her description is better than any I could come up with: A 1940s short film on journalism. Watch as men in fedoras call editors with visors and completely shaft women!
10 Killer WordPress Hacks
Jean-Baptiste Jun has come up with a truly useful list for WordPress developers in his article for Smashing Magazine entitled “10 Killer WordPress Hacks“. 2008 was a very good year for the WordPress community. The software was updated numerous times, leading to the recent release of version 2.7, and many new blogs dedicated to WordPress were created. Of course, tons of new hacks were discovered, which helped lots of bloggers enhance their blogs. In this article, we’ll show you…
A Great Big Social Media Bubble
Over the past couple weeks we’re seeing a lot of folks coming around to the view I express last year: The thing that calls it all into question for me is the number of people who are generally ex-online marketing folks now using strange titles like “Social Media User Guru” or something equally ludicrous. It reminds me of a networking group I once attended that turned out to be a room full of sales people, each hoping to sell something,…
Top Ten Posts from 2008
Following Ari Herzog’s example, here are my top 10 posts of 2008. It’s a hard choice to make, but the votes are all in and I’ve got the envelope from our friends at Price Waterhouse containing the winners: Why Most Online Communities Fail… A peice that really sums up the problems we face building online communities, and the common problems that cause them to fail. The Newspaper Decline – The Side We Don’t See – A great analysis of the problems facing…
WordPress 2.7 Released
It’s out and you can get it here. Words to the wise: There are some issues with Image Handling which have not been resolved. These issues appear to be related to server setup, and not the actual code, but sites where images handling worked on 2.6.5 may find that it is broken in 2.7 – like this site. (Update: yes, image thumbnailing is working for me now – it appears it’s finicky on large size images and doens’t like some…
Branded Community or Sponsoring Niche Communities
Paul Gillin posted on a topic that I’ve been mulling over for the past few days: Branded Communities. I’ve said it in the past and I will say it again here and now: why would you buy a build a branded community when you can rent one instead? From Gillin’s post: Pssst… is intended to bring fans of General Mills products closer to the company by inviting them into a members-only space where they can receive inside information, get coupons…
Newspaper Death Watch: Trib Goes to 11, NYT Mortgages the Farm
Newspaper insiders for the most part weren’t all that surprised to see the Tribune Company file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday. The Trib has been in trouble for some time, and it hasn’t been helped by high profile fights of the past two years by owner Sam Zell, who purchased the company in April of 2007, which saw him take the company private. Since then his fights with the leadership of the Los Angeles Times have achieved near…
New Journalism in Action – Using Twitter as a Photoblog with the Iphone
The idea: to run a live Tweet stream from the varied events of the Sutton, Ma Chain of Lights, a celebration that happens at many different locations thoughout the town and its villages. I used my Iphone with the Twitterlator Application that lets me post pictures direct to Twitter with pictures that I take on my phone uploaded right at that moment. The tweets all contain the hashtag #suttoncol – short for Sutton Chain of Lights which make them searchable…
Layoffs for for Book Publishers
Layoffs at Random House, Simon & Schuster Random House, etc. layoff…Yahoo is attributing it to the economy, but I wonder how much is do to people not reading in paper as much. The economy has crashed down on an industry once believed immune from the worst — book publishing — with consolidation at Random House Inc., and layoffs at Simon & Schusterand Thomas Nelson Publishers. At Random House, the country’s largest general trade publisher, the man who helped give the world “The Da Vinci…
The Tragedy of the Virtual Bookshelf
David Churbuck has found that which we are losing in this digital age. It reminds me of the discussion I had with my 9 year old yesterday when she asked me if I’d read every book in my library. I like the Kindle. Indeed I love it. But I can’t indulge my penchant for giving away books thanks to this selfish device. I can tell people to read “Moneyball” but I can’t back that up by emphasizing my desire…