Saturday, October 18, 2003
Treo Arrives
My functioning Treo 600 arrived yesterday. The top three Buzznet pictures at the right are with the Treo -- my cat, the arch at Grand Army Plaza and my stepson doing a cartwheel at Prospect Park. Clarity isn't fabulous - but really not too bad. However, it's just absurdly cool to be able to take the picture and send it immediately.
Friday, October 17, 2003
Government on the Go
Just got e-mail from NYC.gov on what must be an impromptu Yankees pep rally at City Hall.
Please join us TODAY to celebrate the New York Yankees capturing the American League Championship and to cheer them on as they head to the World Series.
Friday, October 17 at 11:30 am
Looks like they sent out the e-mail a mere 45 minutes before the event. I'm betting they still get a big response despite the timing.
The Price of the Free Press
A few weeks ago there was an uproar in blogville about the Sacramento Bee deciding it would start editing the recall blog by columnist Dan Weintraub. Interesting topic, but I lose interest when both sides take the holier-than-thou approach and refuse to concede the other side may have valid points. (The latest furor is over some NY Times reporter saying condescending things about blogs and bloggers saying dismissive things about NYT reporters. Yawn.)
My take is quite simply that newspapers should experiment with blogs and user-generated content. But bloggers, come on, they have huge legal liability issues the average blogger has been able to ignore thus far. (The exception is Drudge and his expensive scuffle with Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.)
But if Weintraub libels someone on his blog - guess who gets sued? His newspaper. If that blog hasn't even been edited, is a court going to call that reckless? I think media attorneys have every reason to be worried about the implications until there is precedent. That's not to say newspapers shouldn't do it at all, but you have to understand they have reason to be cautious.
We should be grateful for the news outfits who are sticking their neck out for change. Conde Nast and Jeff Jarvis are doing that with Advance.net and a small unpaid stable of "citizen bloggers," according to this Steve Outing article in Editor & Publisher. Here's how they handle libel:
(Advance seems to be counting on its liability being minimal should a citizen blogger libel someone. Its argument would be that a citizen blogger saying something harmful is akin to a discussion forum participant saying the same thing -- or a talk radio show listener blurting out something slanderous during a call-in segment.)
Note that he says "seems to be counting on." Once it's safe in the legal arena, you will indeed see loads of "citizen bloggers" at media companies big and small.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
New Low for Product Placement
For several years, "news" programs have "covered" a new entertainment product without mentioning that the movie or book in question is a product of the same parent company that owns the "news program." So maybe I shouldn't be so shocked that a local news outlet in Tampa is now charging $2,500 from "guests" who appear on their local NBC daytime talk show. The only identifier is small type after the questionable segments have aired, according to the story in the Washington Post. The station is owned by Media General, which owns 25 other stations and 25 newspapers including the Tampa Tribune. Media General sees no ethical problem with the new policy. Ouch. (via Romenesko)
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
A Cellphone that Says 'It's OK, I'm on The Pill'
Am I wrong, or doesn't this new "fashion phone" look like a birth control case? (Hint for the guys: It's the round pink one in the center.) (via Gizmodo)
Monday, October 13, 2003
My New Sad Treo 600
Won't hold a charge. Screen goes dead after three to five seconds. (And yes, I did let it charge the full three hours this morning and waited for the green light to come on.) Handspring said they'll ship me a new one - should take five to seven business days considering the demand.
However, it does work if I have it plugged into a wall. I played with it for a only a few minutes. Right off I can say the keyboard is easier to use than it looks. They are tiny lettered keys, but I didn't have any typos punching in a short memo. However, the main center navigation button is hard to use. Maybe my finger's fat (?) but I had to use the tip of my nail to get it to respond. Maybe it just takes practice. Photo quality looks only so-so on the screen - though Marc Brown warned me that Sprint doesn't have the best picture quality.
Correction - Marc has e-mailed to explain his issues aren't with Sprint's photo quality, but rather that their Picture Mail which he says is slightly annoying.
Quickies
I did indeed make it to the top of the Grand Army Plaza arch on Sunday as part of openhousenewyork. It was a pretty cool view and you find yourself just under the giant bronze chariot at the top -- supposedly facing South to remind them they lost the Civil War. The Parks guide said they had about 400 visitors on Saturday and would love to open the roof on a more frequent basis. I was expecting a great view into Prospect Park, but was surprised the arch isn't tall enough to let you see over the trees at the park's entrance. The Parks guide said she'd love to be able to come up once the leaves start changing color and again when it snows and the leaves are gone so you can see into the park. Great idea.
Gawker on the apparent strategy adopted by the city's newest paper, amNewYork: "just bore the people into looking at your ads."
LA Times editor John Carroll finally explains the logistics behind the reporting of the Arnold groping stories. Unfortunately, it's a week late and thousands of people have decided to never trust the LA Times. (via Matt Welch and L.A. Observed)
Mariane Pearl thinks a stringer for the Washington Post - writing in an English-language newspaper in Pakistan - may have caused her husband's kidnappers to learn he was Jewish and decide to kill him. (Howard Kurtz, second item. via Romenesko)
My Treo 600 arrived this morning and is now happily charging.
easyInternet in New York
easy Internetcafe on 42nd Street just off Times Square is the largest, and possibly cheapest Internet cafe in the world, so says Time Out New York. It has a 500-person capacity, opens at 6 a.m. and closes at 1 a.m. "And despite the lack of ambiance, the place is rarely less than half full."
The max price per hour is $2.25 for peak times - considered 3 p.m. to close. But it sounds like you just fill up your card with bills or coins and use any machine (like a Kinko's, I think.) The owner (who also founded discount airline easyJet) plans to franchise, and already has machines at a Ranch #1 near Rockefeller Center and at Cafe 101 at Park and 41st. So I'm guessing that if you have a card, you could check your e-mail real quick while you're waiting for your food at lunch.
The story also says the city's first Internet cafe, which opened in the "mid-90s," was at Lafayette and Prince but it closed last year. The easy Internetcafe opened at Times Square in 2000.
Time for Mantraps?
You all must surely remember two years ago when I started this blog, a lot of the entries focused on the holes in airline security and the industry's reluctance to make fixes quickly. So picking up that old thread, here's a letter to the editor in Aviation Week written by Barney Greinke, one of my cohorts from college.
Every time I fly, I notice how easy it would be for a small group of terrorists to rush the cockpit while the door was momentarily open, get inside, and then lock themselves into this armored fortress at the front of the plane.
"Guns in the cockpit" controversy aside, there is one thing we can do to make airline cockpits nearly invulnerable, and now is the perfect time to do it. In the security industry, there is an apparatus known as
a "mantrap" which is commonly used in high-security facilities. A mantrap is an entryway consisting of a set of two doors, an outer door and an inner door, and a small passageway in between them. The locks of
the two doors are controlled from within the secure facility, and are electronically linked to one another so that both doors cannot be open at once. To enter a cockpit through a man trap, one would have to:
1) request that the cockpit crew unlock the outer door
2) enter the mantrap
3) shut the outer door and have it locked behind oneself
4) only then could the inner door be unlocked by the cockpit crew
A mantrap makes rushing a cockpit nearly impossible.
With Airbus currently developing the A380 and Boeing the 7E7, now is the perfect opportunity for these manufacturers to incorporate mantraps into their flight deck layouts. By incorporating mantraps early in the
design phase, a dramatic increase in security could be had for minimal cost, weight, and space.
Barney Greinke
Berkeley, Calif.
Sunday, October 12, 2003
Anecdotal Recovery
Yesterday in downtown Manhattan, my husband and I were talking about how much busier the streets feel these days -- more cars, more tourists, and even more New Yorkers out on the streets. We were talking about whether it could be an early sign the recovery is starting. Then what do you know, today's New York Times takes on the same issue as it relates to heavier traffic in Manhattan.
Conversely, I'm still seeing a lot of new vacancies at places where I used to shop once in awhile. The latest is a wine shop with mediocre service in our neighborhood.
Media Bashing Under a Big Tent
From this year's Bakersfield Business Conference, my hometown paper quotes from Jesse Ventura:
He immediately brushed off comparisons between himself and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and soon launched into a lengthy, warmly received rant about the media.
The media isn't out to report the news, Ventura said. "The media is out to create the news."
He encouraged attendees to believe only half of what they read in newspapers. Ventura said he no longer gives interviews to Minnesota press.
"Don't be involved with the press where you live," he said. "They will only make your life miserable."
But he plugged his participation on an MSNBC show, saying he felt his message needed to get to the whole nation.
The Bakersfield Californian reports this is the first year the event hasn't sold out and the law firm that sponsors it says they may stop holding the hugely popular event. They only sold 7,500 of the $400 tickets this year.
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