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Today's blog
Feat of Clay 
| | In case I didn't point to the fine interview with Clay Shirky on Slashdot a couple months back, I'm busy re-appreciating it right now, so here it is. |
Or, if you get what you pay for, $0.00
| | Says here I'm worth $2,271,022.00. Kottke (the bastard) is worth $2,652,404.00. Turns out we're both below the male average of $1,916,555.00. I don't know about Kottke, but maybe I tanked because I said my IQ was 14. |
Proof that the soul of Sam Kinison inhabits the body of Steve Ballmer
| | Right here. Warning: it's a 3mb .mov. |
More locks on the box
| | Check this out. Creepiest quote: "That's just the way the world works." |
| | Not if you don't buy into it. |
Talk about Buzz
| | The still-blogless but always linkful Buzz Bruggeman (he of Activewords — and no relation to Deborah Branscum's Buzz blog, but the pun gives me a way to b-roll two friends at once) points us to MIT's Blogdex, a constantly re-ranked listing of the most linked-to blogs on the Web. Tops right now is Robert X. Cringeley's The Pulpit, which I have neglected to observe of late. Cringeley is one of the best writers in any medium. Right now I'm dropping my jaw over what he's doing with wireless, among other things. |
| | By the way, Buzz also points to this blog-following piece by Tom Weber in The Wall Street Journal. Linktrace: that's where Buzz got the Blogdex lead. |
| | Good as Weber's piece is (and glad as we are to have it), compare its tradition-anchored reserve with Chris Locke's maximally-clued perspective as a human octopus swimming along in the medium's real flow, not so much getting high as getting wide — spreading his mind's tentacles in every worthy direction, sucking stuff in, digesting it, and leaving behind a deliciously inky trail. |
Hope it's worth more than I'm not paying for it
| | The following is brought to you by the Informed Irony Department of this Weblog. |
| | I decided this morning that we should subscribe to the News-Press, our morning paper here in Santa Barbara, now that our latest address appears to be durable, if not permanent. |
| | But to my chagrin (I would say "surprise" or "astonishment" if I still expected newspapers to be any more clueful than mollusks about how to use the Web), the word "subscribe" does not appear anywhere on the paper's home page. There's a "2 weeks free" promo at the bottom, but that's it. |
| | Looking around, I found a subscription page in the site map, which is actually a list of links, some of which are at the paper, but many of which are not. I thought this would show the directory tree for the paper's own "content," along with its various services. But I became suspicious when I saw "Radiohead photo gallery" in the "lifestyles" section. In fact the gallery is hosted by the paper — it's in the /radiohead level of the virtual directory (access denied, of course), but there are other links to sites quite outside the paper's own schema. Such as the outstanding Santa Barbara Outdoors site listed under "travel." Further perusal also finds plenty of links to advertisers who surely pay for the privilege of being listed among the paper's sections and services. |
| | So I guess newspress.com is run, more or less, by the advertising department. The directory goes weather || auto mall || careers || real estate, etc. — which does not even roughly map to the sections of the printed newspaper. Though oddly the Auto Mall sub-site appears to be an editorial directory (with links to what I suppose are the only two local dealers with Web sites, although it may be the only two that pay to have their links put in the online "paper"). Yet there is no obvious link (except as a "Transportation" subcategry of "Classified" in the left frame) to automobile classifieds where newspaper readers could go to look for a car. Oddly, the Classified link takes you to yet another unclearly-related directory that includes Obituaries, Service Directory and categories not usually part of a customary classified section. Anyway, with some looking around, you'll find classifieds for cars under the Automobiles link in the Transportation section. |
| | Clearly this is one of those sites that is an ongoing project lacking in funding, direction or both. The rolling result, I am sure, is something that each new webmaster cannot fully understand or repair, so it kind of gallumps along. Now, of course, it probably also needs to justify itself as a "revenue producer." |
| | Can you imagine what would happen at most papers if every editor, every reporter, were suddenly required to "carry" his or her "weight" by "producing revenue?" Or if the paper itself had the same vague mix of advertising and editorial "content" as a Web site like this one? |
| | It is for twisty questions like these that the expression Whatever was invented. |
| | Oh yes. I signed up for the two free weeks. I should thank them for using their home page as an opporutunity to give readers a free coupon rather than a way to start subcribing to the paper. |
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