“The Newspaper & Radio Bailout”

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I’m a little fuzzy on whether the following description of the newspaper business model should be attributed to Warren Buffett or Eric Rhoads (Radio Ink) but the point is the same:

“Write the news, cut down millions or trees for paper, build massive printing plants to print it overnight, have a distribution model that pays people to fold and bag hundreds of papers and burn thousands of gallons of gas to go house-to-house throwing papers out of their car windows so people can walk out into the cold or rain in order to read news that is 12-24 hours old.”

Well, if you put it that way… And I particularly liked the line: “Do they really believe the Internet generation can be convinced to sign up for home delivery?”

You can change everything

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In a recent post, Seth Godin reminds us we are not really stuck in a rut. We can, in fact, change everything and then lists a bunch of ways to do that. Some of my favorites: Move to Thiland; Become a vegan; Have all meetings in a room with no chairs, and everyone wears a bath robe over their clothes.

But as one who spends most of his days (and nights) working on websites, this one really spoke to me:

“Delete your website and start over with the simplest possible site”

Might be difficult to make this blog more simple. But some of our company websites could be a LOT leaner and cleaner. I’d love to flush ’em and start over as Seth suggests.

Tweetie

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Since installing Tweetie, I keep it running on the left side of my desktop. The clever folks who designed Tweetie must have anticipated this is how folks would use it. I can see at a glance when someone tweets; mentions @smaysdotcom or sends me a direct message.

Earlier tonight, William Gibson tweeted about a new movie coming out this summer, describing it as “must see” and included a link to the trailer. Well, when my favorite author says he “must see” the movie, you can bet I’ll see it, too.

When I saw his tweet, I thought: “Cool. William Gibson is online, at this moment, doing basically the same thing I’m doing.”

Now, I can’t direct message Mr. Gibson because he doesn’t follow me and I’d like to think I would not intrude if he did. But, with what other form of communication might I have such a real-time experience with one of my heros? Not email. Probably not a blog post. I’m not sure I can describe the feeling. Not quite personal, but almost.

Little Snapper worth a thousand words

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I take a lot screen shots. Every day. In the bad old PC days, it involved hitting the prnscrn key, pasting into Word or Photoshop, etc etc. When I moved to the Mac it got easier, with some short-cut keys. But I still had to do the Photoshop thing if I wanted to annotate or add arrows or such.

Yesterday Bradley pointed me to Little Snapper, a new (?) app for the Mac. I won't event try to list or describe the features in LittleSnapper, there are just too many. But if you're a designer, developer, researcher or writer, you'll want this on your utility belt.

At $39, this is probably not a tool that everyone needs. But if you use screen grabs as much as I do, it's a must.