Month: September 2009

Doc Searls On value and valuation

If you listen to Rebooting the News it’s a point that you’ve heard before but Searls puts it well:

If you had told me in 1999 that the two hottest names on the Web in 2009 — Facebook and Twitter — would both be silos, I’d have been disappointed. I’d have figured that by now most folks would understand the infrastructural nature of open code, open protocols, open formats.

Post Editor Ends Tweets as New Guidelines Are Issued

This is just ridiculous:

When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment. We never abandon the guidelines that govern the separation of news from opinion, the importance of fact and objectivity, the appropriate use of language and tone, and other hallmarks of our brand of journalism.

The crusade by news execs to always maintain impartiality is just absurd. A story is always partial no matter what you do to it. To not let staff members have a personality and outside opinion is just a weird desire in my eyes. Allow them to have and express opinions, it’s what makes the news interesting.

Graduating from beginner

The best way to graduate from beginner is to get in way over your head. Nothing makes you better faster.

The Bay Line apartments?

An interesting proposal to turn the soon to be replaced Bay Bridge into a floating apartment and park complex. Really great idea even if it doesn’t come to pass it should make us consider what we can do with older pieces of infrastructure. Photo via BLDGBLOG: The Bay Line.

The heart of socialism

From a reading for my senior seminar course in citizenship:

The heart of socialism [is] the fight against the exploitation of man by man.

Kenneth Kaunda, former President of Zambia

The next generation bends over

My sentiments exactly. This is why I cancelled my Mint account. They had so much going well for them I just can’t trust that the same level of innovation will be there after the sale to Intuit.

But here’s what happened: Intuit, last decade’s leader in personal finance, just became the next decade’s leader in personal finance. Mint had their number, but they sold it for $170 million. A big payday for sure, and if that was their two-year goal then they nailed it, but I can’t believe that was the point behind Mint. It had too much potential.

Spending time off the grid

Andrew Sullivan is back from his month-long vacation from The Daily Dish, cable TV, and the internet with some interesting reflections:

What did penetrate was the long-term cost to spending the majority of your waking hours on a laptop and modem communicating with people you rarely see, and processing reams and reams of stories and data at lightning speed morning, noon and night. I do not see the web as Leon Wieseltier does from the vantage point of his towering pedestal who on earth approximates his lofty genius?, but I do see its dangers the longer I hang around in it. It took weeks to unwind enough to do the things I used to do with no real effort: socialize, chill, make new friends, catch up with old ones, let the mind wander, let the soul breathe with a little less concern for contemporaneity, read the paper because youre mildly interested in whats gong on in the wider world.

Worth keeping in mind for those of us who spend inordinate amounts of time (albeit justified time) online.

Baseline

I linked to this earlier on Twitter, but I think it’s worth a mention here as well. Baseline looks to take all the things I love about CSS frameworks and make it even better. The idea of having everything align to a baseline grid is making me seriously consider transferring this site and others to this framework.