Articles are Antiquated
I was reading the Wizard of the East, Jeff Jarvis, questioning the need for articles in the near future www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/28/the-article-as-luxury-or-byproduct/. Geoff and I have been conviced the article is antiquated and inefficent since around 2003. The article is not the basic unit of storytelling, reporting, selling or anything else. It is an antiquated by product not of good journalism, but a quickly fading era. The article was... Read More
“Community” doesn’t matter
The way most tech entrepreneurs emphasize the word is disingenuous and possibly misleading for other startups. For example, I hear people say that users comment or participate because of a sense of community. I hear this all the time, so much so that “community” may be the new “go viral.” Users do things because they have incentive to do so. That’s it. That’s the grand thing. That incentive may be “community,”... Read More
Data Sphere: Here is what people mean by “cookie cutter”
Take a good look at these screenshots from 2 different neighborhoods – nay cities – in the Sacramento region. Same layout? Check. But also . . . Same content. Now read this quote from Gary Cowan of Datasphere in Street Fight today: People throw out the word, “cookie cutter,” but what does that actually mean? Does it mean you have a website laid out in a way that makes sense and you use that layout across the board? Tell... Read More
Hey Google! Time to fix Google Apps once and for all
Maybe enterprise solutions just aren’t that important inside the googleplex these days, but they ought to be. Why? Because cloud-based enterprise software is not just for big corporations, it’s for power users who like to work collaboratively. We’re all using tools like Basecamp and Posterous and Tumblr … and many of us are using Google apps. There is a lot to like about the service. Gmail is a powerful tool. Calendaring... Read More
Letter to the FCC
The Hon. Julius Genachowski Chairman Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20554 Dear Chairman Genachowski: October 3, 2011 The undersigned organizations are innovative local online news organizations serving communities across the country. We are new, start-up enterprises, and we are part of a growing movement of local online sites dedicated to news, information and community. As the legacy media industry has... Read More
