Category Archives: Uncategorized

Apr 14

Down with analog?

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Ivy shared this Mark Cuban post in Google Reader. It’s a radical proposition (as you might expect, given the source), but it actually makes quite a bit of sense:

If we want to truly change the course of broadband in this country, the solution is simple. Just as we had an analog shutdown date for over the air TV signals, we need the same resolution for analog delivered cable networks.

Transition basic cable networks from analog to digital over the next 3 years and all of the sudden there will be hundreds of megabits available on the smallest cable systems and more than a gigabit of bandwidth available on the largest.

I have to say, I’ve grumbled about the here-and-there erosion of basic cable to free up digital bandwidth — losing individual channels, one or two at a time. But I didn’t really understand the numbers as Cuban explains them. If this were done the way that Cuban suggests, doing away with analog in one fell swoop and making some form of digital package the new “basic” cable, and if the pricing could be kept competitive, it might be a major step forward.

Jan 13

‘We need a dialogue’

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Newscoma was responding to a meme, and I thought her remarks on one issue were particularly well-stated and in line with my own concerns:

3 — How would you describe your views on immigration policies in the U.S.?

I think that we need to treat everyone the same first of all and quit making the word “immigrant” a dirty word, which irritates the crap out of me. There are legal immigrants in this country and there are illegal immigrants here but the national argument is mind-blowing to me. There are laws on the books already to deal with the issue but we have forgotten human decency in this national/statewide argument. I find the whole immigration debate to be very important on one level though, and that is the Sneetches argument that certain folks want to make it an us-and-them thing. We need a dialogue, not a bunch of finger pointing.

Absolutely. Sure, there many are legitimate issues about border security, eligibility for social services, and what have you, that need to be discussed, frankly and openly. But there’s an edge, an undercurrent, to the whole immigration debate as it now exists that sends a shiver down my spine.

Dec 18

It’s all the buzz

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If you’ve ever used the online word processor originally known as Writely which is now part of Google Documents, you may want to check out BuzzWord, a similar type of product which is now owned by Adobe. I found out about it from j.bentley, who has a great review of the program.

Online word processors are great for collaboration — different people can access a document and make changes to it, no matter what platform they’re using or where they’re located, and they can usually leave sticky notes or comments attached to the document. They can also be an alternative for someone who wants to work on a document from various locations but doesn’t want to carry it along with them on a laptop or thumb drive for some reason. They can even be a way of backing up an important document, since the documents are hosted on the online word processor’s servers instead of on your computer. You can create a document in BuzzWord, of course, but you can also import documents created in a traditional word processor. (One quibble: at present, BuzzWord can only import Word or rich text documents, not OpenOffice documents, which Google accepts. So I have to use OpenOffice to save something in Word format before uploading it.)

BuzzWord has a Flash-heavy interface which is definitely more fun and flashy (no pun intended) than Google Documents. It also seems to take larger documents, since a document of mine which grew too large for Google Documents uploaded to BuzzWord with no problem.

It’s worth checking out and playing with, even if you don’t use it on a regular basis. You may need it at some point in the future to share a document with others.

Apr 12

K-Co

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All right, I admit it. I was wrong. And I’m now the very last person in Middle Tennessee to blog about the Kat Coble situation. Kat is being asked by an attorney to take down some posts about a career services company with which she and her husband had a bad experience.

I was reluctant to post yesterday about the matter. I was concerned that a minor outbreak of support would actually aggravate the situation. I was also a little annoyed at some of the “don’t back down” and “give ‘em heck” posts; it’s really easy to hand out that kind of advice when it’s not your name on the cease-and-desist letter. Traditional media outlets know that the threat of a defamation lawsuit must sometimes be taken seriously even if you’re innocent; a plaintiff with deep pockets or some other easy access to legal counsel can keep appealing and continuing until the process becomes a form of punishment and you’re forced to settle just to stop the bleeding. It’s never happened to me, thank God, but I know of it happening.

But what I didn’t forsee — and should have — is that Kat would actually get a major outpouring of support, including publicity from nationally-known web sites like Fark and Instapundit, and an offer of legal counsel from the Media Bloggers’ Association. Bob Krumm also took brilliant advantage of Google search ranking algorithms. The fight isn’t over by any means, but it’s out in the open — which is precisely what her opponents don’t want.

I’ve only been to one blogger meet-up. That’s not by choice; it’s just that a lot of the scheduled activities have been on days when I’ve had to work. But I did attend a meet-up last year sponsored by WKRN in downtown Nashville. I arrived horrifically early, as I often do, and I was wandering the sidewalks of Broadway, looking like a tourist, killing time before heading to the GEC for the meeting. Kat Coble, who’d never met me before, saw me on the street and recognized me from the photo which used to be on my site. “You must be John Carney!” she said, and I was immediately impressed.

I should have known that Kat’s case would attract this kind of interest and this kind of support. For the sake of free expression, for all of us, I hope the news continues to be good.

Mar 28

A nice little box

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Newscoma has an honest, gut-wrenching and informative post about domestic violence.

I don’t claim to know much about the topic; a civic club I used to belong to supported our local domestic violence shelter here for a while, and I heard a little about it at that time. But I know it’s a lot more common, and a lot more tragic, than most of us understand or would like to admit.

Go read this.

Jan 16

Blogger Idol: Why Journalists Should Blog

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This week’s “Blogger Idol” theme is “Why [insert occupation here] should blog.”

I’m a journalist, although I’m currently going through some serious questioning about what my next career should be. Since I haven’t answered that question, I’m stuck in journalism. Journalism and blogging are uneasy partners; journalists, being writers, would seem to take naturally to blogging, but some of them have gotten into serious trouble by second-guessing their employers or compromising their integrity in this type of alternate forum. For example, a journalist might have a story spiked, heavily edited or delayed, and might disagree with his editors about the reasons for doing this. The journalist then vents his frustration by blogging about the story in his own private forum, and that causes embarrassment to everyone involved. Or a journalist who tries hard to be objective and fair in print betrays his private political leanings in his private blog, and compromises the editorial integrity of the newspaper.

It’s for reasons like these that I generally avoid posting about work-related topics in this forum, except in a few isolated and non-controversial cases.

The Blogger Idol web site, in the post setting up this week’s topic, has links to several posts about occupational blogging, including a terrific blog entry by Tim Porter in defense of journalists being allowed to blog. Porter steals some of the points I might have otherwise made in this post. Here’s a terrific quote from Porter:

Newspapers need more creativity, not less; they need their reporters and editors to be more expressive, not less. Newspapers should do all they can to encourage their staff members to as creative as possible outside the office with the hope that this energy returns to the newsroom.

Blogging is writing. Blogging is photography. Blogging is communicating. These are all good things for newspapers.

Amen. I can certainly understand how specific instances of work-related blogging could cause problems for journalists, but I think it’s important that journalism organizations not react to these problems with a ham-handed prohibition of blogging in general.

It would be hard to prove it from my actual blog entries, which are sometimes rushed and sloppy, but I believe blogging helps make me a better writer. And writing is an important part of journalism. (It’s the part I love, which is part of my vocational hand-wringing.) I try not to make this a “dear diary” sort of blog, but it does include personal experience. That’s cathartic, especially for someone who’s single and doesn’t have a life partner to talk to. At the same time, I don’t have to feel as if I’m imposing on anyone; you can read if you’re interested and walk away (or skip to the next entry) if you’re not, and I’m none the wiser. I do worry that I might drive people off if the blog becomes too much about the minutiae of my life.

Anyway, I seem to have wandered afield. I think blogging can be beneficial to journalists for many of the same reasons it’s beneficial to non-journalists. It’s a way to communicate with the world, to start a conversation, to share ideas, to blow off a little steam. With some discretion and common sense, it can be productive and enjoyable.