Trust But Verify

CNN's Sit Room: Deja Vu All Over Again

Reading about the new CNN Situation Room and the other interactive efforts underway, I had the strangest feeling we'd stood and talked like this before. (Apologies to Rogers & Hart.) We had -- the CNN show was called TalkBack Live and it broke the ground the others stand on today. And yet it's as if the show never happened. I've posted the full article I wrote about TBL seven years ago in extended comments; here are some excerpts.

On any given day, participants can join a live audience, enter an on-line chat room, send e-mail, phone in or fax in. By late August, "TalkBack Live's" newest access point -- video conferencing -- should be out of testing and ready to go. And computer users with a fairly fast connection, a decent video card and the right software don't have to turn on a TV to watch the show via Webcast. ...

When "TalkBack Live" debuted on Aug. 22, 1994, the reviews were not all kind. Some were downright dismissive of the techno-gimmickry and the addition of yet another talk show. One reviewer described it as CNN's "'Larry King Live' crossed with 'Donahue' with just a hint of talk radio." ...

It may be hard to imagine, but the show began before the Web was a household word. Back then CNN's major on-line presence was through CompuServe, where "TalkBack Live" hosted a forum. E-mail, faxes and phone calls were all part of the mix. The show even tried video conferencing, but the technology was too slow to be of real use. ...

I'm not suggesting the Sit Room is a TBL remake or that it isn't worth attention in its own right. But it didn't spring from Zeus fully formed, either, and a lot of what's being tried now isn't new.

Automated Tech News Site Goes Live

A nifty new web service went live tonight -- Gabe Rivera's tech.memeorandum.com. I've been testing Gabe's handiwork since late June when he sent me a note suggesting "you might be interested in monitoring my still-in-development Tech news site.  By "interested", I mean it actually might assist you in your work!"

He was right. I quickly became addicted to checking the site, often multiple times a day, to see what kind of buzz it was picking up in the tech world. The pages are built automatically, pulling from mentions across the tech blogosphere and news universe. Just posting may not be enough to make the page, as I quickly found out, but posts bubble up as links multiply. One link from a site weighted heavily in Gabe's equation can push a post into view.

Gabe explains his goals here so I won't go into detail. The highlights: Recognize the web as an editor;  rapidly uncover new sources; relate the conversation. I like watching the conversation evolve as a story moves around the web, often in ways I would not have imagined.

He started the process with a politics/current events page that crosses political boundaries and cuts through some of the partisan kludge. I've given him a couple of ideas for future memeorandums -- personally, I'd like one on journalism ethics -- but these aren't easy to build. I'm looking forward to whatever he puts his energy to next. Thanks for the head start on this one, Gabe.

Update: Just saw Robert Scoble's rave review. He goes into enough detail for both of us.

Coda: That's Gabe on the left -- a picture he thought he wound up in by accident but I took very deliberately at the end of BlogNashville.

What's Voice Got To Do With It

Someone asked the other day  what I thought telephony/VoIP/internet phone had to do with media and entertainment content. In the strictest sense, the two seem like separate businesses with little crossover (save ownership in some cases). But the boundaries are shifting with increased access to free or cheap voice communication over the internet paired with the spread of broadband and improved audio quality. More commercial content providers are incorporating some form of telephony or audio chat, including  video games with live voice interaction. The lower price barrier enables global collaboration and with it more creativity and collaborative content. For instance, numerous podcasts include VoIP interviews or co-hosting from multiple locations, unthinkable for most at land-line or mobile long-distance rates.

I don't agree with the enthusiasts who say that voice makes everything easier. Time shifting by email has its place, as does communicating by IM (particularly useful during conference calls or situations when audio would be difficult or inappropriate). And, face it, it's still not foolproof. But  integrating voice into the internet -- in media and entertainment, in business, in personal communications  and preferably in meaningful ways -- carries powerful possibilities. 

Taking Part In A Barn Raising

It's nothing like the magnificent dance scene from "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" -- although I'd probably pay to see Dave Winer log roll  -- but I'm taking part in a modern barn raising. The barn in this case is Dave's OPML Editor and I gather from talking to him that I'm one of the few non-developers taking part in the process during this phase. That won't last long.

There's a weird kind of excitement to watching a program being built before your eyes -- and having some input no matter how minor. Read a message or post one about a glitch, blink and someone's got a solution or the code has been updated.  Sharing is a core value and goal of the program so as I'm working my outline Dave or anyone else who wants can read my take, act on it, comment on it via their outliner or brush it off. My first glimpse of the power in this came Thursday when I decided to use the instant outliner to track my progress with the OPML Editor; a conversation Dave and I had later that day about some of my issues leapfrogged several steps because we were on the same page already.

Of course, Dave did tons of work on it before any of us even got a look but there's still so far to go -- and  plenty of room for other developers to have an impact. I've already started a wish list.

Coda: Once some of the usability issues are resolved and it's ready for wider distribution,  the OPML Editor could make a good tool for journalists (in and out of newsrooms); notes, project planning, group work, resource sharing are just a few of the possible applications. The ground-floor cost is nothing but a little time investment/learning curve. The return on that investment could be manifold. The other editor in my house is already interested.

Steve Jobs Doesn't Get It

During a dinner chat at "D: All Things Digital," Steve Jobs was asked about Apple's lawsuits against bloggers. From John Battelle, who is among those blogging the conference: "He claims that no one has the right to publish confidential information just because they can, and so far,  the courts are agreeing with him. " Battelle's stayed out of the fray thus far but last night's comments pushed him into taking a public stance.

"I say, fuck that. I've stayed out of this one because it's orthogonal to search, but it's directly related to my ability to do my job, and I am not alone. At the core of this case is a clear attempt to draw a line between professional and amateur journalism, and as a practitioner of both, I have to say it's a very dangerous line to be drawing. Should the courts decide whether the next Tom Paine has to work at the Wall Street Journal before he starting cranking out his pamphlets? I don't think so."

He added: "Forcing journalism into some kind of a 'qualified' box is a very bad idea. Jobs vowed at the conference to take this issue to the Supreme Court if necessary. I hope he does,  and I for one plan to fight him the whole way there.  If you agree, help EFF work on this issue. "

John gets it.

Technical difficulties

The not-so-perfect end to a crazy week: our cable modem service is out, something to do with an unhappy RF signal not being able to make a commitment. I'm actually on 45.2 kbps dial-up right now. Charter Communications is going to see if someone can drop by tomorrow -- Saturday -- sometime during the day. No guarantees since my psychic powers didn't kick in, warning to me to make an appointment in advance because my service was going out. But they did promise to call my cell phone with a warning, allowing me to wander a short distance from home.

On the bright side, the Clayton Farmer's Market opens in the morning down the street from two hotspots (Starbucks, Krispy Kreme) and around the corner from "my" usual hotspot  (Northwest Coffee), in case  I have to mix business with pure pleasure.

RSS & Information Management

I'm an RSS addict and pusher -- it makes management of certain kinds of information so much easier -- but I'm not sure I want to live in an RSS world where everything is weighted the same and context can be elusive. It's like the difference between libraries that bring books to you and those that let you roam through the stacks. Sometimes, I want that one book and I want it immediately. Most of the time, I want to wander, trusting instinct and serendipity. 

This morning I went offline and took some newspapers (we still get four delivered) to my favorite bakery and oatmeal provider, where I wish they'd install WiFi and often appreciate the lack of it. I battled the wind  to sit outside, eat and read the papers, picking up bits and pieces that probably wouldn't have been in view otherwise. Could I live without them? Yes. But I often gain something -- story ideas of my own, a sense of current culture, news outside of my usual realm. One of my favorite scenes in "Working Girl" is when Melanie Griffith's character explains how she concocted a deal by playing mental hopscotch with published articles. Sure, you might get the same inspiration from collated, aggregated feeds but that sense of juxtaposition is much more elusive.

Similarly, looking at someone's web site can be more rewarding than the streams of copy flowing through my RSS readers (Usually Feed Demon and Bloglines). I can see images, text, design coming together, a holistic look at someone's personal space. I get a glimpse of how a public company treats its responsibilities to shareholders by how hard it makes it to find  information or whether earnings make the site's front page.

It's probably the same part of me that believes songs have a certain kind of resonance as singles but a different kind altogether as part of an album with songs placed by one another for particular reasons. Recent proof of that theory: Grey Seal on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road a few songs after "Funeral For A Friend" and "Candle In The Wind" provokes an entirely different, uplifting feeling for me than it does paired with different songs on the remaster of earlier album Elton John . I can -- and do -- mix my own playlists but some songs can't be separated from their original company; splintered, Springsteen's Nebraska, for one,  loses power.

RSS offers its own serendipity of my choices mixed together. But  information management alone would be a pretty spare diet for me.

Coda: I firmly believe if you  read USA Today's  Life section at least three times a week you'll be conversant in pop culture even if you never turn on a tv, something too many editors claim as a badge of honor. Editors who followed that prescription wouldn't have been caught off guard when Kurt Cobain committed suicide. I don't know why but it doesn't  work the same online; in fact, of all the papers I read both in print and online, USA Today is the least satisfying electronically.

Tags: RSS media

Listen Up

Anyone who thinks they know Dave Winer based on the reports from BlogNashville should listen to this 25-minute podcast for a conference in Pisa.  But that's not the real reason to spend a half-hour or so downloading and listening; listen if you want a clear understanding of the hows, whys and whats of today's internet -- blogs, RSS, podcasts -- and how the "unconference" concept fits in.. 

Julie Leung transcribed a bit of it; her post, too, is worth reading for other reasons. This is another part that jumped out at me:

"We have moved from an age of information poverty into an age of information excess in an incredibly short period of time,  in 10 or 15 years. Not only has the amount of information gone up but our expectation of information has gone up dramatically. "

Dave goes on to talk about managing information and how that led to the popularity of RSS, which got me thinking about the side effects of information management.  More on that in the next post. In the meantime, listen up.

Techy note: This was the first time I used my Nokia 6620 to listen to a podcast. I didn't want to wait until I got home from my WiFi-enabled coffeeshop and thought it would be good company for a round of errands.  I didn't have the right cable to move it to the iRiver I'm testing so downloaded it to the laptop and ported it by infrared to the phone, popped in the bluetooth headest et voila. Little strange grocery shopping with Dave ...

Tags: BlogNashville DaveWiner CommittingJournalism

Mislede-ing

There's a vast difference between defining simply and flat out leaving the wrong impression. Here's the lede from Tuesday's WSJ story by Brian Steinberg about corporate blogging:

"Found amid the unvarnished opinion and helter-skelter discussion on Web logs, or blogs, is something crucial to any marketer: raw consumer feedback. With that in mind, companies are embarking on the delicate task of turning 'corporate blog' from an oxymoron into the latest channel for direct marketing to customers and prospects."

Well, yes. There's a lot of journalism, too, and a lot of information and a lot of thoughtful discussion and a lot of consumer feedback that falls between raw and professional. Blogs run the gamut, and I don't mean the one Dorothy Parker used when she said Katherine Hepburn ran the gamut from A to B.  I doubt Steinberg was trying to leave the impression that all blogging falls into the boundaries he used but that's the problem with a lot of well-meaning journalism about blogs. Even a place like the Journal that's working with blogs of its own and working with bloggers too often misses the mark in its own coverage.