election.twitter.com

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People of a certain age might remember old TV shows that used an “applause meter” (it was just an audio level meter) to allow the studio audience to “vote” on something or someone. The kids at Twitter have come up with a 21st century twist for tomorrow night’s debate. From NYT’s The Caucus:

“If Senators John McCain and Barack Obama actually do debate Friday night, you will be able to watch what thousands of viewers think of their verbal sparring almost as they talk. Twitter, the service that lets techno-hipsters broadcast their thoughts in 140-character bursts, is setting up a special politics page to make it easy to tune into the chatter.

At midnight Thursday, the company is launching election.twitter.com, the first specialized section of its site. Like Twitter’s main service, it is dominated by a big white box. But instead of typing an answer to “What are you doing?” the election site asks, “What do you think?”

Below that box is a constantly scrolling display of the thoughts (called “tweets” in Twitterspeak) of other Twitter users. These include all the tweets entered on the election page as well as those entered in any other part of the service with obvious election-related phrases, such as “Palin.”

I think our company should do this very thing for each of the colleges we work with. Sure, you’d get a few fans tweeting that the coach made a bad call but I suspect the majority of posts would be supportive. And what a sense of “being part of the crowd” this would create for fans listening to the radio or watching TV. Might even be something a hip, web-savvy company would want to sponsor.

Webcasting high school football games

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“Beginning this Friday, Gannett will have 12 live high school football games showing on widgets posted to USAToday.com and many of our local broadcast and newspaper sites. The games are being produced by our broadcast and newspaper sites as well as a high school AV department. Most of the games are single cam, laptop, aircard + Mogulus productions.” — Liz Foreman, Lost Remote:

“Virtual Immortality Made Easy”

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Grannyfinal228x300Regular readers know  smays.com is all about getting those photos and home movies out of the closet and up on flickr and YouTube. I’ve even posted a time or two about digital immortality.

Scott Maentz and his wife are actually doing something about it. From their website: “Our mission at RememberGranny.com is to help technology challenged Baby Boomers create a legacy for future generations using today’s rich digital media and the latest Internet applications.”

RG.com has packages starting at just $99 but my favorite is the Complete Virtual Immortality Package ($499). Need some f2f help? Then you’ll want to consider the Virtual Immortality Mini-Vacation.

PS: I just went looking for some of my earlier posts where I talk about putting your life on line; paying flickr to keep your pix up forever and a day… and I can’t find them. Poor tagging. If anyone remembers some of these posts and happened to bookmark or link, drop me a line.

I’m closing in on 4,000 posts and it’s getting damned hard to find stuff.

If the boat is leaking, learn how to swim

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Had a chat with an acquaintance who now lives and works in another part of the country. He’s a long-time radio news guy and he called to get my advice on how his newsroom can better take advantage of “new media” (which ain’t that new anymore). As he talked about his newsroom and the company he works for (a good one), it became clear there was no clear direction for making the transition from Old Media to New Media. And unlikely to be one. So what can he do?

First, what he cannot do. He probably cannot change (or provide) the larger online strategy his company needs. But he can begin learning the skills he needs to survive. In no particular order:

  • Start blogging (any topic)  This includes reading other blogs
  • Start using an RSS news reader
  • Set up a twitter page (get a grasp of social networking)
  • Get a smart phone and learn how to use it (see above)
  • Keep a small digital (still/video) camera on his person at all times
  • Get a YouTube and flickr account and start using them. (any subject)
  • Begin the process of creating your brand

To an old radio dog, all of this sounds like a lot more work than it really is. But here’s the question I posed to my friend: If your current job went away overnight, what would you do? Try to get a job at another radio station? A newspaper? TV station?

What kind of skills to you think they’re looking for these days? Will it be enough to give them a cassette tape of your best work? Maybe a list of the RTNDA awards you’ve won?

The skills he learned in J-school are important. His many years of “radio” experience are valuable. But it’s a new game, that demands new skills. You got ’em or you don’t.

President Bartlet will see you now Senator

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I never got hooked on West Wing but I must have been the only one not watching this popular TV show about fictional U. S. President Jed Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen). NYT columnist Maureen Dowd asked WW creator Aaron Sorkin to imagine a meeting between President Bartlet and Senator Barack Obama. As you know, I’m fond of such fictional conversations, so I share a nugget or two from this one:

OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well … let me think. …We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know … I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! … Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

“Fooled, and used, and a lot of people died.”

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Bush and Paulson say the proposed bailout plan is the only way to save our economy. The only way. Okay, Dave Winer is willing to support the plan on the following conditions:

“Bush and Cheney must resign immediately. No immunity, no pardons. Nancy Pelosi will become President, promising not to run for re-election on November 4. Her term will be one of the shortest in US history, just long enough to enact the provisions of the bill being proposed by the Republican administration. If it really is the best thing for the country and not a trick, then the Republicans, being impressed by the seriousness of it, would have to insist that Bush step aside and let the Democrats execute the plan. The entire Bush cabinet stays in office through January 20, but reports, of course to Pelosi. And that includes Paulson. It’s pretty simple. If they won’t do it, we know they’re bluffing.”

For What It’s Worth

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There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
–Buffalo Springfield

When was the last time you really changed someone’s mind? I’m talking about something you did or said that resulted in another person changing a deeply held belief or opinion.

Folks, it does… not… happen. Or so rarely it’s the same as never (see Meteor Destroys Cincinnati).

And if you do hear the words, “I’ve been thinking about what you said and you’re right,” it’s far more likely the person saying those words is trying to patch up some rift based on a heated discussion.

Our beliefs are the results of years of programming. They make up who we (think we) are. We don’t throw these out the window because of something a friend said over a beer.

Few of us honestly challenge our own ideas and beliefs. Most of us read books and web sites, and watch cable channels that reinforce and support the things we already believe.

What the fuck are you talking about smays.com?

I’m talking about the futility and pointlessness of discussing (polite arguments) things like religion and politics, which –it now occurs to me– involve one group of people telling another group of people what they must do or should believe. Where was I?

ArmwrestlingwithscienceSounds like you’re saying we should only take part in discussions with people who share our views?

I think I’m challenging you to be honest with yourself about your motivation. The next time you find yourself in a “debate” about religion or the economy or who puts whose willie where… stop for a second and ask yourself why you care what the other person believes.

Intellectual curiosity? If that were the case, the discussion would be over as soon as opinions were exchanged.

The answer, I believe, is that if they are RIGHT… then you must be WRONG. And that just won’t do. [Cartoon by B. Kliban]

[Bell rings]

I’ll see you all tomorrow. Read chapters 8, 9 and 10. Don’t forget, book reports are due by Friday.

Sharing music

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We were listening to some new tunes on Roger’s iPod as we drove back to Jeff City from Columbia. Like most new cars, his has an input jack for the iPod (or whatever). So it was easy for me to pull out my nano [insert joke here], plug in and play one of my tunes.

As we listened, it occurred to me this simple act couldn’t happen in a pre-iPod world, at least not easily. Yeah, I guess I could have had a pocket-full of cassettes or CD’s, but Roger and I had thousands of songs between us and we thought nothing of switching from his iPod to mine.

Cb011960My old pal RP was an avid collector of 45 rpm records. He had big cardboard boxes jammed with “singles.” The best we could do back then was stack 20 or so on a fat little spindle that would drop the next 45 down to the turntable. Shuffle? Sure, like a deck of cards.

I seem to recall RP telling me he had copied all of his 45’s to CD. Don’t know if he’s made the final leap to an iPod.

It’s hard to imagine what’s next but even hard to imagine there won’t be a “next.”

Herman Miller Aeron chair

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Hermanmiller
I’ve done something rash. Another impulse purchase. No, not an Apple product this time. That comes next week (or whenever) when the new MacBooks arrive. I popped for a Herman Miller Aeron chair. Here’s the back-story.

Barb has been having some repetitive stress pain from a really shitty ergonomic combination of chair and desk. It got me to thinking about how much time we spend in an office chair in front of a computer. Six, eight hours a day? So I pulled the trigger. Stay tuned.