Archive for the &;technology-journalism&; Category

Time Capsule of a More ProsperousEra

October 15, 2009

Cleaning out my office I found some &;sacred artifacts of the past&;,  as Leonard Cohen sang in another context (about the loss of the  &;naked man and woman&;).

What did I find?  I found a Family Computing Magazine from 1999, talking about the best computer and printer to buy, how to set up your home office, fight viruses, etc.  At the time, people would pay $2.99 for a magazine that would impart such wisdom.  And writers and editors would actually get paid for their expertise in technology.

I used to say, &;If you can write about tech, you&;ll always eat.  You may not want to live, but you&;ll always eat.&;

No more.

In a related development, I found a NY Times classified ad page that had no less than ten (10) columns offering editorial jobs, from managing editor, puzzle editor, editorial/idea shaper, reporter, development editor, producer editor at Times Mirror  for hunting and fishing websites, music editors, editorial assistants, and even a copyeditor!

Rather than save these depressing time capsules, I tossed them.

The paperless era appears to be the payless era as well.  As Everybody knows&;

Tags:copyediting, death-of-journalism, death-of-print, Leonard-Cohen Posted in Journalism, technology-and-its-discontents, technology-journalism | Leave a Comment &;

Technology Lifestyle MagsDisappearing

May 4, 2009

And a good thing, too. I have before me a copy of CE Lifestyles, the February 2005  issue. The cover photo is a bodacious babe smiling a come-hither smile at her digital-camera wielding boyfriend. To further convince the fickle consumer, the cover price reads $5.99   $1.99.   Now apparently called First Glimpse, you can subscribe for just $29 a year. For years, publishers thought the combination of fetishized cool consumer electronics and hot cover babe would turn people men onto the so-called &;CE Lifestyle.&;  Why do these publications never take off?  Now, of course, advertising is a memory, as are freelance, photo and model budgets.  But that&;s not the real reason. A long time ago I went to a presentation by some of the editors of Entertainment Weekly.  EW itself is in trouble now, but not because it didn&;t follow the editors advice.  In terms of coverage, he said, &;Movies are best, then music and television.  Then sports.  Last is technology.&;

Tags:Consumer Electronics, death-of-magazines, technology-journalism Posted in 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, CES, technology-journalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;

Twitter is forTwits

March 26, 2009

I do have a Twitter account.  I haven&;t used it in more than a year. Nonethess I constantly get emails that so-and-so is &;following you&; on Twitter.  Why?  To see if I move or just continue laying there? I just got a tweet announcing I&;m being followed by, of course, someone I don&;t know.  Intrigued (not), I went to his profile page to see what his answer to the burning Twitter question, in fact the only Twitter question, WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW?, was.

watching tv

Actually, twittering as the latest expression of our addled ADD age isn&;t for twits.  John Cleese has it right.

Tags:John-Cleese, Social Media, Twitter Posted in Social Media, technology, technology-journalism, Twitter | Leave a Comment &;

Say Sayonara to SteveJobs

January 22, 2009

Although I am not an Apple fanatic, I do wish the best for Steve Jobs as a person.  Being sick and focusing on getting better is no picnic. That said, I think he should make a final break with Apple, in the same way that Bill Gates receded from Microsoft.  Lost in the happy news about Apple beating estimates in a shitty market today was this news about an SEC investigation into Apple&;s disclosure policies about his illness.  The investigation and Apple&;s non-disclosures (such as the &;hormone imbalance&; sham)  suggest the company took a  &;Weekend at Bernie&;s&; approach to propping up the great man.  And as usual, the dwindling band of technology &;journalists&;/Apple syncophants didn&;t ask the hard questions. While the Woz is right that Apple can survive with Jobs, the company needs to go cold turkey now.

Tags:Apple-Computers, bill-gates, Steve-Jobs, Steve-Wozniak, technology-journalism Posted in business-journalism, technology, technology-journalism | Leave a Comment &;

Websurfing is Good ForYou!

December 5, 2008

Survey says &;the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of the brain, whereas those new to the net did not.&; (These areas of the brain control decision-making and complex reasoning.) Study leader Gary Small of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA said &;A simple, everyday task like searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older,&; Small said. Of course, the survey didn&;t say anything about the effect of websurfing on one&;s s0cial skills, waistline, posture or self-respect.

Tags:Internet, Internet-and-aging, Internet-health Posted in technology-journalism | Leave a Comment &;

UCLA Snoops Shows No MorePrivacy

October 31, 2008

Some 1041 patient files were violated by peeping eyes at UCLA Medical Center&;and that&;s just the ones they know about. While the files violated included those of California First Lady Maria Shriver, actress Farrah Fawcett and singer Britney Spears, we don&;t even have 1000 celebrities in LA, even if you add 5 actors from each of the top 20 TV shows, another 5 from the top ten films, 50 musicians, the entire roster of the Dodgers, Angels, Lakers and Clippers (that last a stretch) plus comedians, politicians, artists and has-beens.  So that means people at UCLA (and probably your local hospital) are snooping on their ex&;s, their neighbors and &;that guy they brought in today&; out of boredom and unwholesome curiosity.  More than 165 workers at UCLA have been disciplined; doesn&;t seem to be working.  Maybe they should start actually firing and arresting people. As CEO of workstation maker SUN, Scott McNealy was best known for his intemperate attacks on Microsoft (referring to Bill Gates and the current CEO as &;Ballmer and Butthead&;) and his uninspired leadership of the failing company. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.  As McNealy told reporters back in 1999, &;You have zero privacy anyway.  Get over it.&;

Tags:Brittany-Spears, Farrah-Fawcett, Maria-Shriver, Privacy, Scott-McNealy, Sun-Microsystems, UCLA Medical Center Posted in Privacy, technology, technology-journalism | Leave a Comment &;

Humble Hard Drive Wins NobelPrize

October 10, 2007

It&;s good to see the discoverers of the basic science around hard drive technology winning the 2007 Nobel Prize.  The hard drive has become the ultimate commodity product&;everyone reading this has one, but like Rodney Dangerfield, the spinning disk that stores your applications, music and porn &;gets no respect.&; One industry spokesperson described manufacturing disk drives as &;the longest-running industrial philanthropy.&; If someone could find a way to make money with hard drives, that would be worthy of an economics Nobel!

Posted in 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, Computers, technology, technology-journalism | 1 Comment &;

E-Mail to End the Face-to-FaceInterview?

May 24, 2007

In a recent column, Howard Kurtz raised the suggestion that the face-to-face interview is essentially dead.  &;In the digital age, some executives and commentators are saying they will respond only by e-mail, which allows them to post the entire exchange if they feel they have been misrepresented, truncated or otherwise disrespected. And some go further, saying, You want to know what I think? Read my blog. Jason Calcanis, chief executive of Weblogs Inc., says on his blog that &;journalists have been burning subjects for so long with paraphrased quotes, half quotes, and misquotes that I think a lot of folks (especially ones who don&;t need the press) are taking an email only interview policy.&; Veteran magazine editor Jeff Jarvis adds at his BuzzMachine blog: &;Are interviews about information or gotcha moments? . . . Isn&;t it better to get considered, complete answers?&; There&;s a lot of food for thought here from both a journalistic and a media training perspective.  How do you verify who you&;re actually &;talking&; to?  If physical description is important, how do you know the 53 year-old woman you&;re talking to isn&;t a spoofing 15-year old boy? Creative spellers, the less educated and non-native English writers may look dumb in an email exchange, unless reporters &;clean up&; their quotes, a long and dishonorable journalistic tradition.  And far from any control advantage, the spokesperson may be actually be at a disadvantage by putting thoughts in writing he could more easily back away from in a verbal interview. For public relations pros, often acutely aware of how little control they actually have over their message, email interviews pose another control challenge.  If you&;re aware of an email interview, will you hover over someone&;s shoulder or watch/jump in on another screen?  More importantly, anyone in a corporation or government structure with an email address can now be subject to an email query from the press which becomes an interview.  People want to be helpful, but putting their own answers in writing without the knowledge or approval of management and public relations staff can be disasterous. Certainly, as news organizations ruthless trim staffs, the do-more-with-less pressure means journalists will be reluctant to leave the office for even the most critical face-to-face, so phoners and email &;interviews&; will become even more important.  (Smart publicists will continue to push for press tours that bring their spokesperson and product into the office and into the journalist&;s face.) Face-to-face interviews will continue in many settings, such as all kinds of television (no one wants to read email off another screen or have to hear the reporter&;s deadly voice-over) trade shows and conferences, press tours, investigative reporting (when the reporter actually leaves his office to track down a story) and for politicians and others who need to show sincerity and thus, as Calcanis puts it, &;need the press.&; But email interviews are perilously close to pure public relations opportunies.  I recently sold an international airline magazine on my doing a story on a Japanese company&;s innovative female CEO, a phenomenon even more unusual in Japan than here.  I&;d met the woman and spoken with her briefly. But the company publicist told me she was uncomfortable communicating in English and would only agree to do an email interview.  I initially refused, concerned I wouldn&;t know who was on the other end of the line and that I would be getting canned answers crafted by the publicist.  I wanted to do a face-to-face, or at least a phone interview, because as Kurtz says, &;When you see someone&;s expressions or listen to someone&;s voice, you get a sense of the person that words on a screen lack.&; We went back and forth for a couple of weeks, until it all blew up when the CEO resigned, with my story departing with her.

Posted in howard-kurtz, Journalism, Media Training, Public Relations, technology-journalism, Television | Leave a Comment &;

Microsoft Presents Its BestFace

May 16, 2007

WinHEC, the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, is a hard-core technology event.  The attendees are mostly engineers from hardware companies (and a few freelance geeks) building devices around Microsoft products like the Vista operating system, which Bill Gates says has sold 40 million copies. (I&;m still waiting for my promised free Vista upgrade from HP 5 months after I bought my new PC; HP customer service is right down there with Dell.) I missed most of Gates&; presentation, but I did catch one by one of Microsoft&;s unsettlingly young and poised product managers.   He was talking about Rally,  which Mary Jo Foley calls &;a set of networking protocols and licenses designed to simplify consumers&;abilities to connect peripherals to Windows Vista and to each other.&; The presenter was a techie, presenting to a techie audience&;yet he took the time to create and go through a slide explaining arcane Rally terms and acronyms like Windows Connect Now (WCN) and Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS).  In our media training program, we call this &;when in doubt, spell it out.&;  Too often, speakers cannot resist the urge to do an &;information dump&; on their audience, who won&;t understand the jargon, acronyms or internal Kool-Aid that company spokespeople have been drinking.  And when an audience doesn&;t understand, they won&;t ask for clarification; who wants to lose face? So kudos to Microsoft for understanding this and enhancing communications with their target audience.   But don&;t rest on your laurels: twenty thirty years of media training has almost brought forth a kindler, gentler Bill 2.0.

Posted in bill-gates, Media Training, Microsoft, Microsoft-Rally, Microsoft-Vista, technology-journalism, WinHEC | Leave a Comment &;

PC World Editor Harry McCrackenQuits

May 7, 2007

Tech journalists would generally rather write about cool products and score them for themselves than attack powerful companies.  Computer magazines, like automobile magazines, are generally uncritical &;enthusiast&; publications.  Journalists for both love to write stories with leads like &;The new
is the best
yet.&; However, sometimes push comes to shove, and Harry McCracken, editor in chief of PC World, resigned last week after the magazine&;s chief exec (or publisher) killed a story about Apple Computer.  The story, perhaps not wisely for McCracken&;s tenure, was called &;Ten Things We Hate About Apple.&;  That kind of story is only OK with the publisher (read &;chief ad salesman&;) if all &;ten things we hate&; are on the order of &;1. Apple is so darned innovative that&;s it&;s hard to keep up with all their insanely great products.&; With more and more readers migrating to the Web, and thus not actually buying magazines,  advertising, both print and web, becomes increasingly important.  Indeed, the PC World publisher, Colin Crawford, claims 35% of IDG&;s income comes from digital sources.  So what&;s been called the  &;Chinese wall&; between the editorial and advertising sides is becoming increasingly porous.  As McCracken seems to have discovered, editorial independence is falling by the wayside, and the &;new Golden Rule&; is in place: &;He who has the gold, makes the rules.&;

Posted in Apple-Computer, Computers, Harry-McCracken, Journalism, PC-World, Publishing, technology-journalism | 1 Comment &;