HaltinG StatE by Charles Stross

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“This brilliantly conceived techno-crime thriller spreads a black humor frosting over the grim prospect of the year 2012, when China, India and the European System are struggling for world economic domination in an infowar, and the U.S. faces bankruptcy over its failing infrastructure. Sgt. Sue Smith of Edinburgh’s finest, London insurance accountant Elaine Barnaby and hapless secret-ridden programmer Jack Reed peel back layer after layer of a scheme to siphon vast assets from Hayek Associates, a firm whose tentacles spread into international economies. The theft is routed through Avalon Four, a virtual reality world complete with supposedly robbery-proof banks. As an electronic intelligence agency trains innocent gamers to do its dirty work, Elaine sets Jack to catch the poacher.”

— Publishers Weekly

Former Bush staffers consider their legacy

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My favorite pull from a story by Peter Baker at WashingtonPost.com:

“(Rove) does not want to be identified solely by his ties to the president. He knows he will go down in history as Bush’s “architect,” but he thinks he can expand his identity beyond just that. “It’s not like my life from here forward is going to be defined by it,” he said. “I have a chance to create something else. I’m not just going to be typecast as, ‘Oh, that’s the Bush guy.’ “

We’ll see. I’d love to see someone put together a website that keeps up with all of the people most responsible for the last seven years. Maybe a big map of the world with a little red dot representing each of the players. Just showing where they are now, and what’ they’re doing. They played a major role in creating the world in which we live. I’d just like to know where they live and what they’re up to. Sort of a Marauder’s Map.

Scott Adams: The future of newspapers

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“…I see printed newspapers lasting until you upgrade your phone two more times. But the newspaper business can thrive online if it changes how it gathers and edits content. And clearly there will be massive amounts of consolidation. There won’t be 3,000 newspapers online. There might be a dozen. And local news will come from hometown bloggers who self-syndicate to all of the newspapers.”

It’s a brilliant post and I encourage you to read it.

Why I don’t listen to talk radio

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Mark Ramsey observes that broadcasters have given listeners the talk radio they want… but do a crappy job of giving them the non-music radio they might want:

“Wandering amidst the posters at NAB promoting radio’s prime Talk properties, it’s hard not to be struck by the fact that these talents are overwhelmingly Male, late-middle-aged, conservative, politically-charged white guys in suits. Sure, there are the exceptions, but for every Dave Ramsey there are a dozen Michael Savages.”

Ramsey goes on to point out that younger folk are not listening to these guys. You think?

OK on XM

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Radio Iowa News Director O. Kay Henderson will be doing a weekly shot on XM Radio’s POTUS’08 channel (XM 130). Few details yet, but looks like her bit will be around 1:10 p.m. Central time. I’ll try to remember to record and share snippet here.

Update 8-Oct-07: And here’s the snippet. Kay gives the low down on the campaign in Iowa to XM host Rebecca Roberts. Runs about 10 min and my apologies for the audio quality. I recorded on the nano, holding the wee microphone up to the car speaker. But this clearly illustrates why the Big Kids can’t get enough of Her Kayness.

Online Block Party

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Just had a nice chat with Brad Olsen and Amy Laughlin. They’re involved with Revolworks.com. They’ve got a really nice looking site, packed with ideas, mostly of a “spiritual” nature. They’re ready to move on to “phase two,” in terms of what they’re doing online and wanted my thoughts on blogging. I talked until their eyes glazed (Amy was on speaker phone, so her head was probably on her desk) over.

The point of this post is to illustrate how well blogs do in terms of Google search results ranking. I predicted this post would –within a week– show up on the first page of results of a Google search on “RevolWorks.”

This is happening hundreds (thousands?) of times a day. Companies and organizations jumping into the online conversational pool. RevelWorks.com looks great and the information found there is rich and deep. It’s like walking into a beautiful, well-furnished home… but you can’t find the people who live there. You can tell they’ve been there… but they don’t seem to be home a the moment.

A good blog would be like throwing a party on the front lawn.

Top traits for hiring new people

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“I just returned from a three-day seminar with Paradigm, a highly-respected sales training firm, and they recommend that managers ensure that new account executives are “adaptable” and “resilient” before hiring them. In fact, these two traits should be at the top of the list in the hiring process because the media world is changing so quickly.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to apply this same thinking when hiring for new journalists? That adaptability and resiliency are just as important as storytelling skills, for example? Of course, those traits not as easy to identify as watching a resume tape and looking at online writing examples (both of which should be required for reporters, by the way), but it means we need to ask job candidates to explain specific examples of how they’ve flexed with change and bounced back from failure.”

— Cory Bergman, Lost Remote

My first three-way

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Ichat_conf2Been doing more and more iChatting since getting the MacBook. Starting to take it for granted. Today we did our first three-way chat, just to see a) if we could and b) how it works. [a: yes, b: easy]

David works from his home in Springfield, MO. Roger’s office is on the other side of our building. I selected both of them in my “buddies list” and hit the video button. As they accepted the invite, they showed up in facing windows on my desktop. And that’s it. We chatted for a few minutes, marveling at how falling-off-a-log simple it was.

I mean, this is how shit is supposed to work, folks. I remember oohing about this to one of our IT folks last year, who responded: “You can video conference on the PC, too. You just have to get the ports configured correctly.”

ABC News forming one-man bureaus

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“Taking the one-man band news crews a step further, ABC News President David Westin announced today that they will open seven new bureaus around the world with only one person per bureau. According to TVWeek, the reporters will write, shoot, edit and feed their material digitally from DV cameras and laptops wherever they are in the field. Assignments so far put people in South Korea; Jakarta, Indonesia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; New Delhi, India; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.” — Lost Remote

Sorry, I’m a radio reporter. I do interviews, cut up the sound, write the wrap and anchor a three minute newscast. You’re just gonna have to hire some more people do to that other stuff.

Order of the Fez #9: Phil Powell

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Phil100_2We’ve had something of a member explosion this week over at the Order of the Fez. Hmm, let’s make that “membership” explosion. Phil Powell is Fez #9 (Last of the Single Digits) and hails from the UK. Like Howlin’ Hobbit (Fez #8), Phil is a ukuleleist, and shares my appreciation for the Laurel and Hardy. Welcome, Phil.