Planet Abell

A Christmas Story

2011-12-25T10:53:00.003-05:00

I always get presents for the cats at Christmas. I'm conflicted, but not a complete jerk, and frankly it's fun to help Santa out. They get some kind of shiny, chasy toy or some battery-powered thing which moves about by itself and holds their attention for five seconds.

This year have a ferret (long story). This is our Christmas with Lucy (the ferret) and so, of course, she had to be made to feel part of the family. I found some squeezy toys at Target in the $1 bin (I'm sentimental, but, as you may recall, conflicted) — the sort of thing that she instinctively drags around with super-ferret strength and hoards and hides in various places around the house.

Nothing she can grab with her teeth is safe: socks, toothbrushes (the abandoned kind, not those in current rotation), even shoes. Any open dresser drawer is a sanctuary. If only she'd put in the sock drawer ... but instead I find some beanie baby in there, and socks in a corner of an unused closet.

This year I set up my wrapping station in the large, open room where we sometimes let Lucy roam for a while every day.

Last night in my wrapping frenzy I could not find her toys. This sort of thing happens every year. Or often I think I got something, and didn't. But somehow because it was the one thing I had got for Lucy, it seemed a particular shame.

So imagine my surprise and delight this morning. A Christmas Miracle! Well, not really. Lucy had done what children have done since the beginning of time: she had found the stash of unwrapped gifts, located what was hers, and took them out to play.

I found two of the three (uh, I think) toys in my sock drawer (of course). The third is still out there some where.

Lucy was naughty. But it was nice.

+John C Abell

Lifetime: Now, The Tough Part

2011-12-10T14:27:00.001-05:00

I'm not much for Signs from Heaven except, of course, when there are so abundantly OBVIOUS even Mr. Spock would put aside logic and raise his hands and say "D'uh!"

It's Dec. 10, one year to the day from when the picture below (left, if you have any doubts) was snapped. It remains my official bio pic at Wired and though I would love to swap it out for obvious reasons I'm not really working very hard to get that done. It's a good reminder of where I was, and what a difference a year can make.

This is also, as fate would have it, the first day that I weighed in as a Lifetime Member of Weight Watchers, which I joined on Feb. 19 — 80.6 pounds ago. Completing the trilogy (every good sign is comprised of a trilogy, silly) is the fact that my number was 155: my goal weight, to the ounce.

It's a good sign.

My six-week maintenance was a bit of a parabola but I began and ended it within (below, actually) the requisite two-pound leeway which will grant me lifetime membership perks, including free meetings and free access to online tools and the WW app.

To maintain membership in good standing I have to weigh in once each calendar month -- 12 times a year, instead of the 52 when you are losing — and I will never pay Weight Watchers one penny ever again. If I'm more than 157 pounds at an official weigh-in (which is the first one you show up for in a calendar month) then I pay a weekly fee to maintain my membership.

It should be easier to keep at this level, and in short order it will be. But there is something about applying the breaks — and being able to give oneself more breaks, since I will have to eat more than I have been for months to stop losing — that can be as tough to learn and internalize as developing the habit to drop pounds. It could actually be tougher: This is why there are always many more people who have lost all the weight they wanted to than those who have maintained that loss.

Some people find it difficult even to lose a few pounds but among that group whom the TV weight loss ads describe as having lost atypical (but correct) amounts of weight the head-to-the-ground pursuit of losing weight is easier to sustain than a lifetime of keeping the weight off. When we ease up even a little, in all aspects of our lives, the floodgates can suddenly fly open, there being fewer hard-and-fast rules we can blindly follow and the taste of freedoms being so sweet.

So I know I am still battling the percentages, and as good as I should feel about reaching this milestone it's really just a new level, filled with new and potentially tougher challenges. "Lifetime" is like the transition to adulthood: It requires the exercise of responsibility children often can't handle (many adults, too). Forbid an obedient child from having any candy and she won't. Tell her to have some candy, but not too much and, well ... you get the idea.

That's why now comes the tough part. Or why, at least, I am telling myself that it is the tough part. Because I need to replace the rigid approach that served me well with something that will remind me that even though I have more freedom I still have work to do. Lots of it. For the rest of my life.

Of course, there will be pie.

+John C Abell

Week 35: GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!

2011-10-22T17:18:00.000-04:00

Ok. No more farting around. Well, actually, there is quite a lot of farting. I think it's the fruit. That's another story.

After eight months, almost to the day, I've hit my goal weight and now begin Weight Watchers maintenance. After 37 weeks of trying to lose weight (and the last nine, where I didn't net/net at all), I had a serendipitously successful seven days: Nine pounds lost, three under my target.

Under maintenance, which last six weeks, I get to eat more, to stop losing. At the end of six weeks, if I am within two pounds above or below 155, I get to be a life member: I never have to pay a cent again to go to meetings as long as I stay in the four-pound range, weighing in officially once a month now instead of once a week.

I cannot say that I have fully grasped this yet. So far, this is a typical Saturday, which means that in a few hours there will be gin and more than the usual amount of eating — that's the way it is in the hours after the weekly weigh, the safest time to eat into your weekly and activity allowances.

In a way, reaching goal is somewhat anti-climactic. Each week or five pounds' loss brought new feelings and lessons, rendering a goal-line something important to shoot for, but not actually an end unto itself. And now new skills must be learned, because while losing weight is harder than putting it on, it's easier than trying to walk the balance beam that is neither gaining nor losing ... forever.

Fortunately my eight months has exposed me to big losses, big gains, and periods of inertia — a microcosm of the rest of my life. I know what it feels like to put on even a little weight, what it takes to recover from that, how to lose by eating (even more!) instead of starving.

+John C Abell

Week 33: The 2% Solution

2011-10-16T11:52:00.001-04:00

It's possible to lose all the weight you want just by eating less, of course. The math is simple: Burn more calories than you consume. Exercise is a force multiplier, and if you do it right it won't lead to a bigger appetite (offsetting the benefit of burning more calories in the course of any given 24 hours) and will self-reinforce staying consistent.

Good news: The "bigger appetite" part almost takes care of itself: turns out that exercise is something of an appetite suppressant. Also, when you are actually doing it, it isn't possible to eat much of anything, so it is an opportunity suppressant as well. The best thing to eat to take the edge off, right after a workout, is protein, which goes directly to the muscles instead of the hips. The best kind of protein is up to you; before I was a vegan I had a ton of turkey bacon and eggs right after a run or bike ride. Now I have prepared tofu or a protein bar.

It's even more important to stay with it. For me, that is staying home to go to the gym (Rule #1) and committing to a particular time of day for one's main workout, which for me is before the workday begins.

Staying consistent also means not trying to do too much, or settling for too little (Rule #3). But how?

I call it the 2% solution. It's easy when you are hovering at that pain/discomfort point to simply stop, back off completely. But you don't have to, and dialing back just a little works wonders. I first learned of this technique during a boot camp class I used to take when we lived in Virginia and I actually was a member of a gym. The instructor would have us do something ridiculously strenuous for an insane amount of time, and then in between we'd jog or do jumping jacks — and she called this our rest/recovery period in what was essentially interval training.

So, rest/recovery isn't doing nothing. It's doing less. But how much less?

Why, 2% less, of course. I made up that number — make up any number you like. Ease back instead of stopping during an intense moment in your workout. Drop your cadence by 10 or 5 or 20 and listen carefully to your body as it recovers while you are still working out. You will feel the energy coming back, and the discomfort receding, when you make only minor adjustments.

I take the stairs at work and when I started had to rest, completely stop, at some point along the way. No more. Now I climb with some intensity and take four slow steps in between landings — that is my rest, my 2% solution, and it allows me to power through 15 flights.

Scaling back, in real time, helps prevent giving up.

+John C Abell

Week 32: Standing and Snacking

2011-10-04T19:20:00.001-04:00

Metro North Station, White Plains

ABOARD THE 7:01 HARLEM LINE TRAIN -- Every rail commuter knows a thing or two about seat etiquette (Example: Real men don't vie for the middle one) and where to position oneself on the platform, factoring in the station and time of day, to maximize the possibility if scoring one.

It's exhausting. And, just like flying, the window seat is good for exactly the opposite of what the aisle seat is good for, and neither are good for everything.
I've always played the game, pleased that when I commute I can almost always score a seat. But it's a flimsy victory.

It occurred to me, as part of my standing campaign, to stand during the 50 minutes or so each way. Like my uncle taught me when I was a lad, I don't lean or support myself in any way (unless there is turbulence), the better to improve balance and burn calories and work on the core.

What a revelation! In addition to the health benefit (small, but cumulative) I realized I can now always ride in the first car, or in one which has a bathroom (um, I drink plenty of fluids).

Yes, this is ... obsessive. But big lifestyle changes can be enhanced and re-enforced with small ones; it's tougher to sabotage and cave if that means retreating on several fronts instead of just one. Now, before I think of not spinning or running every morning, I have to decide to stop standing at my home desk, taking the stairs whenever possible, and now riding the rails in the full upright and locked position.

Related, but random: I also got a bit of re-enforcement of the "de-accentuating the meal" thing from a recent episode of Dr. Oz, who has partnered with Weight Watchers in a million-dollar contest challenge. Turns out that snacking is a medically indicated approach to dieting because eating releases a hormone called gherlin, which suppresses appetite and makes you feel satisfied.

As with any technique the devil is in the details: Snacking on Devil Dogs won't help.

Finally, I was famished today. I consumed maybe 10 servings of fruit and plenty of protein and vegetables. Lots of coffee, too. And, I'm looking forward to dinner.

One of those days ... but all still well within my basic daily Points Plus allowance.

Week 32: Tracking, And Back On Track

2011-10-01T13:18:00.001-04:00

My Week 31 post pretty much laid out the unusual week I had, but in a nutshell (strange how many metaphors are food related): I weighed 171 yesterday morning, and 158.8 this morning. That puts me further away from my goal of 155 pounds — from which I had been a tantalizingly-close 0.02 pounds for the previous two weeks.

But it was a fine week, and I enjoyed myself, so much so that I expected the damage to be much worse.

I spent that last 24 hours not starving myself or putting on some other kind of straight jacket, but just sticking with the program, returning to my original course and speed, recovering. This morning I've had my usual bounty of fruit, and started the day with my usual workout routine.

I think I was properly rewarded for that behavior, and appropriately dunned for not tracking much last week, and having a no-holds-barred anniversary dinner for which I have no regrets.

I have a new commitment now for not treating the weekend as a lost cause -- I exaggerate, but honestly I would dip into weekly allowance or activity points just because, and this isn't my practice or desire during the work week. So, no biggie.

I figure I am two weigh-ins away from goal, at worst. You heard it here first :)

+John C Abell

Week 31: Oy Vey

2011-09-30T08:57:00.001-04:00

Bloated me.

I suspected this week was going to be a challenge, but that's a word and a half.

My Saturday weigh-in was fine: no change, 0.02 from my goal of 155. But a mere six days later I am at 171! That is a gain of 16 pounds. I don't see it. Nancy doesn't see it. I still fit fine in my goal-weight pants.

But, I have been eating a lot this week, and not exercising as much, and that is what happens.

I don't think I'll be tipping the scales at what is my July 9 weight (week 20) tomorrow morning. But I'll almost certainly be in the 160s. So what happened?

I was on vacation this week, away from work and at home for an extended period for the first time since I began Weight Watchers seven months ago.
Four of these six days I didn't track.
Monday we had a no-holds-barred anniversary dinner which included Margaritas, beer, a burrito that could have sunk the Titanic and even dessert.
I've been snacking too much on salty things.
I've been drinking lots of fluids -- gallons a day.
We had a workman in the house and I had lots of chores which made fitting in exercise difficult.
I banged up some ribs a little bit doing one of those chores, so exercise of any intensity hurt a little, and I avoided it for that reason too.

This litany of excuses seems to explain the causes, but the scale (no pun intended) of the effect is staggering. I can't wait to see, behaving myself today as I shall, what my settle-down weight will be in a scant 24 hours. At this point anything under a 10-pound gain for the week would seem like a victory, and erasing what's left over the subsequent week would be amazing.

I say it's not a race, and that recovery is the most important skill. But I still am upset with myself and need to channel that into something positive and realistic

But I will weigh-in, and talk about about it, because that's what it's all about.

+John C Abell

Saddest Piece of Spam, Ever

2011-09-21T08:06:00.001-04:00

I don't know why I was on the 'undisclosed recipients' list this went to, and have no idea who Trev was.

But there was something about the proper, restrained, just plain British-ness of this anouncement which I found very moving:

Just a note to say Trev passed away peacefully on 16 August surrounded by his family.

His services will no longer be available. Should you have any questions or issues please don't hesitate to contact myself (niece) or his son via the email address: [redacted] and we will endevour to help where we can.

I would like to thank those of you for your emails of concern. This is very much appreciated. Trev will be sadly missed.

All the very best to you all.

Regards

Dawn

+John C Abell

Week 30: De-Accentuating 'Meal Events'

2011-09-18T13:16:00.002-04:00

I closed my seventh month on Weight Watchers with another unusual week, scheduling wise. It allowed me muy best opportunity to far to test new theory of eating — and the result is a solid loss of 1.6 pounds. My Google Spreadsheet says I've lost 100 percent to goal, but the truth is that I am 0.02 pounds from my goal of 155 pounds (I mean I was, before enjoying myself thoroughly last night, which is my custom on weigh-in day...)

My new mantra is, don't call them "meals," and don't even call them "servings." The nomenclature can be pejorative and can allow one to manufacture a behavioral paradox in which over-eating is unavoidable, or at least easier to justify.

It's not a new problem, this business of having meals versus grazing. Huge numbers of fit and healthy people are in both camps. My judgement is, however, that a substantial number of people who need to learn how to eat properly, again, for the first time, would be better off grazing than aspiring to fixed meals at fixed time.

Like any rule, the point is to illustrate rather than apply a rigid standard. But the outline is pretty simple.

For example, I do have "breakfast," but it is almost never shortly after I get up, and almost entirely always comprised of fruit, which is "free," i.e., is not counted towards one 29 PointsPlus allotment each day. My habit had been to make myself a big bowl, cut up a protein bar, sit down, and have a meal. When I couldn't have "a meal" at the meal's normal time, the semantic conflict bled into the nutritional issue, which is ridiculous.

Master: Is the first meal of the day breakfast, even if consumed at 2 p.m., eight hours after awakening?

The other truism that I have found helpful is to deconstruct the three-meal-a-day paradigm. The purpose of eating at intervals is to ensure one has the right amount of fuel, and to schedule pit stops so one can't forget or skimp, which leads to poor performance and over-eating.

For people like me, skipping a meal isn't exactly a problem. But like many people scheduling drop-dead meals times can be problematic because that means I could very well eat at least three times a day, not just three times.

My habit, before Weight Watchers, has been to consume an entire meal while preparing a meal. I'd have maybe more spaghetti while cooking spaghetti than I served myself for "dinner." Sound familiar?

Now, since I am counting points and nutrients, the emphasis is on these metrics, and not on what time it is. I'll begin eating hours after I get up if that makes sense for me on any given day, or shortly after I get up. I'll have small amounts of a pre-portioned amount of something over time — grazing — rather than have a meal event. Sure, the family dinner is still an important event. But more often than not these days even this meal has been comprised of this and that rather than a "dish" and "sides." And in this family the dinner hour has always been a moveable feast anyway.

The pitfall of grazing is also well known: the potential for over-eating is huge because you are eating all the time, essentially. The solution is simple and, of course, all about the discipline and self-control which is the necessary if insufficient starting point for every improvement in one's eating habits.

Fruit and vegetables are "free," so they can be grazed with abandon. Other things need to be portioned out, bags closed, cabinet doors closed. So, put that 3 PP serving of chips in a little bowl, and snack on that for hours instead of just sitting down and having them all "at once."

Yes, you can just have one Lay's potato chip. 12 or so times a day.

Cut up that protein bar and have bits and pieces over a few hours -- a bit is great with morning and afternoon fruit, and as a treat with your coffee or tea (which I drink straight), or as a bit of dessert. You are still getting 20g of protein, and using 5 PowerPlus points (though, actually, having half servings spaced apart general saves you one PP, for some reason.

But by grazing one is consuming food a way which, I fervently believe, will prompt the body to store less of it for later and use more of it for now. This, I am convinced, has a direct connection to fat buildup, maybe even the number of fat cells your body thinks it needs.

Anything can work, of course. The point of a meal event is to monastically avoid eating until the appointed time. For those of us who have learned to eat poorly, this makes it easy to create other meal events -- snacks — and then to over-eat in this way, as well at the main meal events themselves.

Grazing has about it the air of complete anarchy, removing structure which is meant to both provide opportunities to properly fuel in proper amounts at appropriate times and, by default, exclude over-eating.

But rules are easily broken. For some, denying oneself food except for certain windows is the only way to be disciplined. For me, by and large, the perfect situation is to eat when I am starting to feel hungry, and then only in relatively small amounts to sate that feeling. I am finding that topping off, rather than running as far as I can until empty, is the better way to live.

In this vein, someone at my Saturday meeting suggested an idea which I just loved as another device to eat at a good pace, and thus, especially as a grazer, in the right amounts.

So I am now using chopsticks, all the time. Well, as "all the time" as I can without being a total jerk (at least outside my the embrace of my immediate family.)

Think of the scene in Kill Bill where Kiddo is trying to eat rice with broken hands at the table of mentor Pail Mei. If she tries to use her hands — to "eat like a dog" — he knocks the bowl from her hand.

Using chopsticks is another one of those little life skills that may have no real practical value, especially in the West, apart from projection pretentiousness (hence the jerk issue). But since I have valid lifestyle peg, I'm sticking to my story.

OK, I'm veering into jerk territory. But I am trying to set standard from which I can retreat from jerkiness. So far I am proficient even in slippery melon, and small items like English peas, blueberries and Wasabi.

So, I'm thinking that sticky rice won't be a problem. Not that I eat much of it. Too many PointsPlus.

+John C Abell

Week 29: A Stand Up Guy

2011-09-09T14:59:00.001-04:00

My home workspace, with makeshift risers under the front legs of my desk.

I've added a new little dimension to my health-kick lifestyle: Standing as much as possible.

I've always had an affinity for standing, although people who stand for a living will tell you that any chance not to is Heavenly. But even U.S. Marine grunts have a rule about this which, from any other outfit, might sound downright lazy:

Never stand when you can sit
Never sit when you can lie down
Never stay awake when you can sleep

I still remember my uncle telling me when I was six or seven that standing while riding the New York City subway was good practice about learning to keep your balance, which, he said, would come in very handy while on a ship at sea. Since our family had no maritime history or prospects I had no idea how this random suggestion could be a practical life skill. But my uncle was/is a cool guy, and it sounded cool, the way the acquisition of almost any skill does.

As it happened, I didn't grow up spending any time on the water. But I don't still don't mind standing on the train even when there are seats available, and I like to stand while eating or watching TV. Standing around the kitchen island doing both simultaneously is my idea of a good time.

I haven't had job which required standing since I was in school — bookstores, movie theaters. My adult occupations have always involved offices, desks, and sitting for hours at a time.

At about the time I started on Weight Watchers in February my wife Nancy pointed out a New York Times article about the benefits of standing at work. These benefits are staggering in their simplicity and effectiveness, but they are hard to do in most corporate contexts because the cubicles and desk units the enterprise generally buys in massive quantities are designed to be in front of chairs. Indeed, even suggesting employees stand at their desks could be actionable or draw OSHA's unwelcome attention.

But at home, it's another matter. I am lucky to be able to work from home from time to time. I am also lucky to have inherited for the moment Nancy's drawing board, so I don't have to make an investment (monetary, mental, etc.) in the sort of thing Ryan Paul at Ars Technica wrote about this week.

A couple of risers (or a makeshift shim at pictured) on the front is all I need, since the desk surface plane adjusts back and forth.

It's working out great. Standing for hours at a time is a bit strenuous, but in a very good way. Like all of these little kick-it-up-a-notch things, the process becomes a mini-competition with oneself. Sitting down to work would be a tiny capitulation, just like not taking the stairs at work.

As the NYTimes article notes, there are all kinds of core strength stuff going on merely by standing up. So why not?

You can sit when you're dead. Unless you can lie down, instead.

+John C Abell

Week 28: Up, and Away

2011-09-08T16:01:00.000-04:00

Crazy week.

I put on 1.6 pounds, putting me that amount above my all-time low weight. In and of itself, not to worry. That kind of fluctuation is normal, and when on maintenance anything within two pounds is a gimme.

Prior to my last weigh in on Saturday it was the week of Hurricane Irene, and while the storm itself was meh the aftermath was pretty interesting: We had a four-day power outage in my neck of the woods. On the first day even the data networks on my mobile phones were dead, unwiring me off in a new and strange and exceedingly pleasant way.

After Saturday's weigh in I somehow managed to balloon to nearly 168 pounds by Tuesday — 10 pounds above the low-water mark. I was off the reservation on Saturday and Sunday, but not horribly or more than I had ever been (there was a gin factor, and a bit of Open Bag Syndrome with the Pop Chips, and maybe too much protein bar indulgement.

So, I cut back on portions of free "power" foods. I eat a lot of fruit, which is "free" (Zero PointsPlus Points), but fruit still has sugar, and calories. I also eat a lot of vegetables, which truly are free. But I cut back on added salt, which I mostly add to tomatoes.

After today's somewhat delayed workout, but not on an empty stomach, I tipped the scales at 158, which on a Saturday morning would be a new officiallow.

A new effect seems to be kicking in. At 16 weeks, you get a trinket because Weight Watchers believes if you have stuck with the program that long it has become a habit — something you do without thinking about it anymore, which in this context means not being terribly conscious anymore that one is eating considerably less, and thus possibly building up a resentment.

Three months later it occurs to me that my eyes are no longer much bigger than my stomach. I find that I've lowered my portioning out of even "free" foods, because my constitution has become better aligned with my appetite sensations. I also tend these days to eating relatively small snacks throughout the day, though dinner still looks like dinner.

I have also officially reset my goal weight, to 155 pounds, or 80 fewer from where I started on Feb 19, 2011. That is my second, and last adjustment. My first goal weight, 190 pounds, I knew was tentative; I had been that weight once before when I was in great shape and wasn't sure anymore how much I would really have to lose at that level.

When I hit 190 this time (previously, in 2005), it was clear to me that the charts which said a 5'6" man should be no more that 160 pounds is correct. So, I re-declared to 160. Then it occurred to me that the symbolism of working so hard to lose just enough to be as heavy as I could be was another cop-out.

So, I am copping out a bit less, aspiring to get and stay five pounds below the top of the chart.

Just between you and me, I may still choose to lose more than that. When you reach your goal in Weight Watchers you begin maintenance, which recalibrates your food intake so that you stop losing — suddenly, not as easy as you might imagine. After about six weeks of that, you become a lifetime member, as long as you neither gain nor lose more than two pounds every month (not week). The chief benefit of this is that you can remain a full member — attend meetings, keep your online account, etc. — and never pay Weight Watchers again: about $14 a week.

But — and don't tell corporate — here is the thing. The purpose of penalizing a lifetime member for losing more than two pounds from goal is so that s/he doesn't game the system by declaring a high goal, meet that and then stay on program for free while they lose all the weight they actually want to lose.

But if you are willing to, say, keep losing, and are willing to pay the occasional penalty and then declare that new low as your new goal weight, then, nobody loses. If a member is stupid enough to declare at a ridiculously low weight s/he was able to achieve through extreme measures, then s/he would be paying a lot of unnecessary money trying to stay there.

So I'll be happy at 155, but will also be listening to my body to understand if I should shed even a little more. And I will be happy to pay the piper.

But, hey — I am getting ahead of myself. Saturday is two days away, and 155 is probably further than that.

+John C Abell

Week 27: A New Beginning

2011-08-27T21:56:00.000-04:00

It was a triple witching Saturday: I reached by goal of 160 pounds, hit the 75-pounds-lost milestone and attended the first meeting with a new leader after having gone six months with the same one.

But, for a number of reasons, I've decided to re-set my goal for the second and last time, to 155. The least silly of those reasons is that 160 is the highest acceptable weight for my height (5'6") it the highest, and it strikes me that shooting only for that would be the sort of cop-out I've been trying to vanquish.

It seems like a blur, and that it hasn't take very long to get here. And that makes me wonder how hard I will work to protect my position. A big part of the reason that I have tried to be so transparent is so I couldn't retreat very easily.

I'm at 158.5 as of this morning, another new decade and the last I intend to crack.

I'm told that maintaining can be tougher than losing, as you learn to adjust to eating more — but not much more. I'd say that's a rich man's problem

+John C Abell

Week 26: Losing, and losing.

2011-08-21T10:40:00.013-04:00

Joan says goodbye.

First, the good news ...

For my weekly meeting weigh-in on Saturday I tipped the scales at 160.8: a frustratingly 0.02 pounds away (relatively speaking, of course) from the 75-pound, trinket-level milestone and 0.08 from my goal weight of 160 pounds.

It was the usual nutsy Saturday morning on the scale: Despite a very tame Friday and not eating terribly late the night before, my wake-up weight was 164.8 — more than two pounds above my previous weigh-in despite an entire week of behaving myself, and nearly four above my best weight during the previous seven days.

With my usual morning workout, perhaps a bit heavier on the cardio, I shed four pounds of what I can only assume was water weight. Sheesh.

This means that I am likely to hit my goal next week about six months after I started Weight Watchers in as winter waned. It marks the end of a beginning in what our leader describes, without a hint of the schmaltziness it must seem in print, a "journey."

And now, the bad news ...

Our leader, Joan, has been re-assigned to a different location, and won't be my leader anymore. This has had an impact on my mood and behavior for the past 24 hours. I hope it reinforces the positive, but so far it has proved negative.

Saturday was unusual for other reasons too, which played into things. Nancy and I spontaneously went out for breakfast with another Weight Watchers meeting attendee, so I had the fruit portion of my first meal, but no protein. When we got home, we had to turn around quickly and I forgot to take a Clif Builders bar (20g of protein, 7 PointsPlus). By late afternoon I was feeling undernourished and woozy and tired, setting up an evening where I could be tempted by sub-optimal choices.

The choices I did make were not absolutely terrible. I has my usual crudité combo of tomatoes, crimini mushrooms and shallots. I had hummus and some lentils. But I did go over points for the day, eating into my daily activity points wallet -- no biggie, because that are what they are for. And I had more carbs than I've been allowing myself lately, mostly from a variety of chips and raw peas.

And then, late in the evening, I got an enormous sweet tooth and thought it would be great to satisfy that and get some needed protein with an aforementioned Builders bar. Or, as the case may be, three of them ...

On Saturday, which is the one day I'll allow myself much latitude from Weight Watchers tracking, I often eat more than on the other six days of the week. But it's usually by design, with something -- one thing -- special: an Indian meal, a footlong Subway sandwich and chips, a real treat like Jolo's Kitchen.

Yesterday was, relatively speaking, chaos. Joan's sudden announcement got me in the gut, literally and figuratively. It's difficult to convey the importance of the leader; she is part therapist, part confessor, part AA-like buddy. Weight Watcher leaders are members who entered the program as customers and are lifetime members who have kept the weight off for many years, and the also have the certain-something motivational air about them.

And WW leaders have real skin in the game: When they gain weight, they lose their jobs.

But all leaders are not created equal. I was in Weight Watchers once before, less than half-heartedly, about 20 years ago. I recall that the leader was listless, and I attended no meetings, lost no weight and gave up within weeks. That was entirely my doing, because I had no real desire to be there, unlike now. But an engaging leader might have at least made it much more difficult for me to decide to shut down.

Joan -- we only know our leaders by first name -- was a draw. A big draw. I learned yesterday, as we commiserated with others, that some had been with her for as many as 10 years. She had personal friends in the room, coming to her meetings. She was being reassigned as a business decision by corporate, and the reason she did not exactly share was inescapable:

Joan is a star, a rainmaker, and was needed in another parish.

Today I am already back on track, starting slowly with just some coffee to continue to continue to digest the fruits of yesterday's debauchery. I am about to begin my workout, and then there will be a fruit salad and one (1) Builder's bar. And life will go on. (Update: post-workout, I am a pound up from Saturday's weigh-in, which is normal for me).

I have lost about 75 pounds, and Joan was a huge part of the reason that was possible for me. But the lesson is, staying on track is on you — not your family, your friends, the world, or your Weight Watchers leader. In a way, continuing this journey without Joan is a poetic reinforcement of this underlying truth that Joan herself stressed.

It's a lovely thought, and I will cling to it. But, of course, the best poetry ever written was — Greek tragedy.

+John C Abell

Spam Gold: Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me

2011-08-17T11:58:00.000-04:00

Wired colleague Dave Mosher shared this on Google+ this morning, and graciously granted reprint rights to Planet Abell.

We are choosing to believe this was spam, and not a perfectly-targeted solicitation ...

Hey Dave,

I'm reaching out to you because ******* is getting a lot of job leads for clowns, and I'm looking for another clown who is interested in taking on more clients.

After checking out your website [Here is Dave's web site: Ed]I think you are a great fit for ******* and I'd love to start sending you job leads. Please fill out a few details about your skills and rates, and I'll start forwarding you potential new clients.

If you have any questions about what ******* can provide, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks,Heather

+John C Abell

Spam Gold: Dear Escort / Masseuse / Dancer

2011-08-16T22:09:00.000-04:00

Quote unquote. Only the contact info is redacted

Dear Escort / Masseuse / Dancer

My name is ... and I’m a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer.

If you ever encounter unexpected trouble with undercover vice, for not having a city license, prostitution or drug possession, you will need a skilled and experienced lawyer, not a public defender to present your side of the story in court.

Los Angeles escorts, masseuses and dancers like you, whom I defended in court over the past fourteen years got their charges dismissed and reduced, and received no jail time. You will usually not need to attend court as I handle your matter from beginning to end. When the court case is completed, I will expunge your case, clearing this incident from public view.

If an unexpected situation with undercover vice ever arises, I respectfully invite you to call my law offices for a free consultation, so that we may confidentially discuss the best course of action for your case.

+John C Abell

Week 25: One Of Us

2011-08-13T20:50:00.007-04:00

I'm down four pounds this week — two away from 75 total and my goal weight of 160. It feels as though I am tracking correctly again after a month of gaining and losing the same 4-5 pounds in a see-saw session that rivaled last week on Wall Street.

But the biggest deal is that my daily PointsPlus allotment has been reduced to 29 — the fewest that Weight Watchers allows anyone. When I started this six months ago, at 235.6 pounds, I had 43 PointsPlus to play with every day.

That amount was significantly higher than most around me (I learned and inferred from those occasions when it came up in a meeting) and gave me great latitude. That, in turn, made it much easier to stick with it — how can you find fault with a weight loss program under which it is possible to have a Massive Martini every day and still lose at a pace of more than three pounds a week?

Forty-three points was high, but far from the highest, which is 89 points. But 29 is the fewest: It is even the amount allotted to life members, who get to enjoy every benefit of Weight Watchers without paying a dime as long as they remain within two pounds of their declared goal weight.

Theoretically, I am a week away of hitting my goal since my average seven-day loss for these past 25 is less I need to lose by next Saturday. We'll see — it's not a race. And I am also going to re-assess what my goal should be once I reach 160, since that figure is the top of what the medical charts say is the fit range for my height. At 160 my BMI will also be in a healthy range.

At that point, it becomes an exercise in being as fit as I can be without being obsessive. I think I listen to my body extremely well now, and won't abuse it on the up or downside. My annual physical is in two months and by then I am sure that I will be exactly where I want to be, and will then be able to medically reality-check all of my assumptions and lock in to a WW-guided program that keeps me there.

And that will be one hell of a great early Christmas present to myself.

Before then, maybe even next week, I get what will probably be my antepenultimate Weight Watchers trinket: a key chain charm 75-pound "barbell."

After that, it's a star for making goal, and then the lifer's key!

+John C Abell

Spam Gold: Vera Desmond — or Desmond Vera?

2011-08-10T10:29:00.002-04:00

We all get tons of spam, but I'm double lucky in the personal e-mail department because a) GMail actually stops tons of it and b) a good friend run my incoming through a whitelist server at a secret and undisclosed location before anything reaches my inbox.

At work, I'm not so lucky. Entourage does absolutely nothing useful to deal with even obvious spam, and trying to manipulate junk settings and rules is pointless. So I do a lot of deleting. And almost no reading beyond the subject line.

I don't know why this particular piece of spam caught my eye, but the horrible bot-like translation and gibberish in this common come-on is almost poetic -- title and all:

Waiting
How are you today my love?
My name is Vera Desmond, her 23-year-old romance of Rwanda in Central
Africa, I want to make friendship with you, I believe that age, race and
language. Distance has an impact on. A good relationship does not exist.
I was very happy to see your response.
Thank you for accepting me. Is your friend.
From your new friend.
Desmond Vera.

+John C Abell

Week 24: Give A Penny, Take A Penny

2011-08-07T10:33:00.001-04:00

Another gain for me, my second, and slight -- i.e., within the range that would not have jeopardized a lifetime Weight Watchers status if I was at goal. But it's my second gain in three weeks, and basically I have maintained for a month, with two gains and two losses and no movement in either direction.

This is fine, of course, except ... I am working harder than ever on the exercise front, and had no "excesses" this week. It is still fine because I am probably trading some fat for some muscle and because muy body is probably making another one of those larger adjustments as I settle into a range with which it is entirely unfamiliar.

And it is fine just because it is fine: it isn't demoralizing, and this isn't a race. And it feels as though I am solidly in the 160s, poised to declare a new goal somewhere in the 150s.

New this week: I rediscovered my joy of running, and ability to do same. The occasion was a business trip which took me to DC and a fabulous boutique hotel with an awesome gym with state-of-the-art Precor treadmills. I did five miles in an hour — my first run in six years — and was finally able to calibrate my Nike+ app.

There was a lovely sweet desert last night, and there may be a bit more tonight. But I feel entirely on track, and am about to hit the bike.

John's Google+ profile

In Social Media, Just Like In Presidential Elections, It's About A Choice

2011-08-05T09:43:00.000-04:00

Someone added me to a group on Facebook yesterday -- which I didn't even think was possible, since my privacy settings there are akin to "I was never here." Very annoying. So annoying that I not only left that group, but the small handful of others I had joined, for one reason or another, primarily fellowship for whomever was the admin, because I don't participate in any FB reindeer games anyway.

But that transaction clarified one of the important, deep philosophical differences between FB and G+ (and all the other non-FB's I venture to say). And my own relationship with FB -- indifference, but a "need" to be there -- may not be as atypical as I imagine. Throwing more and more water on little fires that crop up here and there spotlight what could be fundamentally different dynamics at competing social networks, and over time that can have a material negative impact on what had been a monopoly.

One of the interesting aspects of the G+ era is that Google is unlikely to walk away, even if signups level off. We'll only know where the tipping point was (not when it is), but clearly this can be the un-Facebook in pointed and in subtle ways. It is inconceivable on G+ (I hope it is) that anyone, even someone in your most trusted circle, could associate you with something unilaterally. Shoot, there isn't even anything generic to join or be part of on G+, since every connection and group and gathering is ad hoc, and controlled by the participants 100%.

On FB, when you are committed, that becomes part of your identity. So the inevitable ramification effect of (say) doing someone a solid by saying you like their silly little fan page is to nail your signed confession of heresy to the church door, John Proctor-style. And if someone -- how, I still wonder? -- can say John is a member of this or that group, what control do I actually have on my persona?

That's just unacceptable.

The big battle in social media is over online ID. The winning entity has to allow people to control that in every sense of the word. It isn't rocket science, and being fast and loose around the edges won't cut it in a world where people have real choices.

Is this on the radar yet for hundreds of millions of people? Remains to be seen. But multiply identity crises x10 or x100 and it could be.

For the next year or so it would not surprise me if the social paradigm is broken if only an incremental way, given FB's momentum: We could very well have two viable, "all purpose" social networks co-existing for the first time in internet history. And the dividing line won't be over internal communications, sharing, apps, games or any other commodity features.

It will be over who gets to decide what on the most important thing about your online life. Which means, the most important thing in your life.

John's Google+ profile

Week 23: Losing That Last Five Pounds

2011-07-30T16:03:00.003-04:00

The dreaded weigh-in table

It is a bit surreal, but I am now that person who can say, "I'm trying to lose five pounds" and not sound delusional. It does sound pretentious, which isn't better, but it's true.

I am within five pounds of my goal of 160. I'm down 70 since I started on Weight Watchers 24 weeks ago.

At this week's meeting the subject of maintenance was front and center. We have several life members in our group, and they all say that as tough as it is to lose it's at least as tough to stay at a given weight.

Lifers at WW only have to weigh in once a month -- not weekly -- to retain their status (which includes the fantastic benefit of not having to pay for meetings) and need to stay within two pounds of their goal weight. That is two pounds up or down, btw: a means of ensuring that you don't declare higher than you intend to lose and cheat the organization out of dues.

My trip has been pretty rapid, and I have not really entirely come to grips with the fact of my loss. I may yet lower my goal again, because I am trying to be in that BMI range which is considered medically "normal", and at 160 I'd still be above that slightly. And, of course, there is the full-length mirror test which does not lie.

If you can remain determined and focused and motivated losing weight becomes a personal challenge that is difficult to compromise with at those moments when one is weakest. But what about when one has to actually begin eating more again, when judgement day is as many at 30 away, not 7?

That will be unchartered territory and, to listen to the lifers, an entirely new challenge.

John's Google+ profile

Week 22: What Goes Up Must Come Down

2011-07-24T10:39:00.007-04:00

It was a good run, but every good run must come to an end: After losing something every week since I joined Weight Watchers one Feb 19, I gained weight last week.

It felt good.

I spoke up at my Saturday meeting -- during the "scale and non-scale victories" portion at the end -- and got a nice reaction. "You're one of us!" one of the lifetime members kidded me. "Do you think it's bloating?" joked another lifer, who reached her goal after losing 187 pounds -- 87 with WW after she hit a wall dropping 100 on her own.

Our leader asked how I felt about it. My first reaction was, "Damn, I lost a week!" I replied. But then, I told her I had realized, "I lost a week from what?"

I confess, the losing pace has been a game for me. I have wanted to lose something — anything — in an unrelenting race to a finish line that I have moved further away once and will push away again. Along the way, I've come to many new understandings with myself. I have grown indifferent to some foods that were once staples for me, no longer equate quantity with satisfaction, and now realize that (Patton and mathematics notwithstanding) the shortest distance between two points isn't necessarily a straight line.

The ability to veer from the straight and narrow and then recover is one of life's most important all-purpose skills. The ability to leverage a lapse or a even a failure into an opportunity is the point. Education is at least as much about learning to learn as it is knowing how to diagram a sentence or what was wrong with the Articles of Confederation.

As weeks go, this was a good one to end my run. I had a birthday on Tuesday, and had cake (homemade vegan orange) and Soy Delicious Turtle ice cream. I have also worked out every morning, and incorporated a new exercise: taking the stairs at work (14 flights) at least twice a day, both directions.

It's possible that some of the 3.8 pounds I put back on were in part muscle weight -- booster and friend and GeekMom Jenny Williams has encouraged me to believe this, and I am inclined to agree, for what it's worth, since I have only introduced regular cardio and weight training in the past couple of weeks.

It has also been extremely hot, and our leader suggested that we are all retaining a bit more water because of that (Hey: I AM bloated!)

But none of the explanations matter, because the gain doesn't matter, this week, next week or in the grand scheme of things.

I had another blowout day Saturday, the day my family celebrated my birthday. We went to Jolo's Kitchen, I had two (2!) more servings of the cake and ice cream back at home, I snacked on pop chips.

And then, today, and tomorrow, it's back on the horse.

No regrets.

PS: After an incalculable amount of food Saturday, and my morning workout, and no breakfast yet, I was another pound up Sunday morning -- which is less than my typical gain on a Sunday. So a) go figure and b) this is a great way to begin Week 23.

John's Google+ profile

Week 21: A New Decade

2011-07-17T13:36:00.009-04:00

Twenty-one weeks on Weight Watchers is no particular milestone, but for me it's huge: I cracked through the 170-pounds barrier, and am now in a new "decade."

My official weigh-in was 166.4, and I partied a little on Saturday (that means an extra veggie burger, three servings of chips and enough sugary desert to fit in the palm of my hand) so my weight is up today. But in the 160s I will stay.

I continue to obsessively weigh myself, a bit of advice that isn't for everyone (number 4 in this post) but which is, if you can stand it, the best way to keep on top of things and not become depressed as you get in touch with how your body gains and losses inexplicably during the course of the week.

My personal trajectory has been extremely fortuitous. I have lost weight every week, 21 in a row, for my official Saturday morning Weight Watchers meeting weigh-in. Seemingly no matter what I do the rest of Saturday, I will have "gained" by Sunday. I "lose" 2-3 pounds after a morning spin (see number five in this post). I am generally above my previous registered weight as late in the week as Thursday. But I've lost at least 0.4 pounds every week, and am averaging 3.3 still. Two weeks ago, close enough to my goal that I expect only incremental losses, I dropped 7.6 pounds in seven days -- probably because I significantly increased the proportion of protein on my diet and had my first unbroken string of high-impact mornings cardio workouts.

I don't know when I was last in the 160s. My current target weight is 160, but I am seeing how that will still not be as good as I can get, without even trying to be an ironman triathlete. "Correct" weight is difficult to guage, but if you look at yourself in the mirror you know it when you see it.

My plan is to crash through 160 in the next 2-3 weeks and get an annual physical that will include a clinical BMI assessment for the first time. Consumer-grade scales report BMI, but I have no idea how accurate mine is. So with a properly-assessed number I can gauge at least progress and trends at home, and shoot for that number which is the best indicator of correct weight.

John's Google+ profile

The Joke Is, I Don't Wear Shoes Unless I Have To

2011-06-18T14:59:00.002-04:00

During my 2-1/2 years+ between jobs a while back I discovered two very important things about myself.

I would have no trouble keeping myself happy and occupied in retirement
I hate wearing shoes

I mean any shoes. The most comfortable sneakers. Hush Puppies, if I could get away with not getting beaten up. Terry bath slippers. I shed them all and discovered the joys of bearing my feet, walking, running and doing nothing at all.

To accommodate polite society I did develop an affection for flip-flops. I wore out my first pair in two years and in 2007 bought a pair of Rainbows for the outlandish price of $45 on the advice of a kid I should not have trusted. I wear them constantly, to this day. Excellent value prop.

But I digress. A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of dining with an eclectic group of people including Shane and Shawn Ward, the shoe entrepreneurs. We stayed in touch, and one day they graciously, and with zero warning, gave my wide-eyed daughter and I a backstage tour of the store at 238 Mulberry Street.

As we were saying our goodbye's and thank you's and as I awkwardly tried to figure out exactly what sort of handshake slash hug thing was going on (I can only imagine the fun the brothers had at my so-unhip white boy expense after we left) I reached into my pocket for a business card and also pulled out my money clip -- which probably also dates me, though it an accessory truly popularized about 5 generations before my time.

I had a few bills that day, and Shane started calling me J-Money. I am sure that this was only the leading edge of the fun they had at my expense moments later (see above). My daughter was mock mortified, increasingly so as I attempted to work my new, proud moniker into conversation after conversation.

And now, it all comes full circle.

I don't wear shoes unless I have to, but I have shoes named after me, by Shane and Shawn. And they are called J-Money.

Four Months, and a New 'Decade'

2011-06-18T14:32:00.001-04:00

I didn't have my greatest weight loss this week but I (knock wood) continued my unbroken string of dropping something every week, and 1.8 pounds is good by any standard.

But the real headline for me is that I've entered a new "decade" -- the 170s. Barely, but I'll take it.

It's been exactly four calendar months since I started Weight Watchers and I expect these 20-ish pounds to go to be the most difficult. Transparency is the most powerful inoculation against poor progress.

Also, here is some weird psychology: When I was at my heaviest, I knew I was fat, but seldom felt that way. Now, 56 pounds less, I know where every ounce of excess poundage is -- and I feel every bit of it.

Weeks 16: Habits

2011-06-12T21:59:00.009-04:00

When you have been with Weight Watchers for 16 weeks your leader gives you a charm in the shape of clapping hands. It's one of several charms you earn as you reach significant milestones. Losing 10% of body weight gains you a keyring which will hold future charms. When you drop 25 and 50 pounds you win a silver and gold barbell, respectively. I got the unusual 5K charm pictured to the right by participating in a group walk one recent Sunday.

These carrots are an effective way of getting members to stick to carrots (metaphorical or not) in the same way game designers (and Foursquare) have discovered that bestowing even a virtual prize can be a powerful incentive to someone to keep moving forward.

What's the 16 weeks about? It is to acknowledge some conventional wisdom that if you do something for that long, it becomes a habit.

Habits can be broken, however. I broke the toughest one a quarter century ago when I finally quit smoking for good. At various times I've also been very overweight, and in excellent shape — the former far more often than the latter. So I know that I can abandon good behavior that I have grown to love, and end bad behavior that might kill me, that I thought would kill me to give up.

In 16 weeks I've lost 54 pounds, and I'm 21 from goal. Which is why now is good time to double down on transparency.

I've been pretty open about my dieting (you're welcome, internet), influenced by Brian Stelter's stunningly successful and public weight loss. Being public is more about behaving myself than showing off, as it was for Stelter, who on the one occasion I saw talk about it responded to a question about how he had done it as laconically as was humanly possible.

I've Tweeted out my current weight and weekly and total loss after every Saturday official weigh-in, and built a spreadsheet tracking my progress that I also decided to share -- all to make it hard to face the prospect of ever having to explain "What happened?"

So this is part confessional and part due diligence and part some observations about what has worked for me. I hope none of it sounds preachy even though it is all about me.

Here are a few simple rules I have found very helpful:

1) Travel to the dangerous food. Stay home to go to the gym.
I have to admit, I have an advantage over most dieters because I've been a vegan for six years, so I already don't eat a lot of the things that are classic temptations. But the things I can eat without taking a breath include some pretty fatty things: chips, peanuts, pasta, beer. One of the great things about Weight Watchers is that every food has a computed value, so every food is "legal." That means you can indulge -- and are encouraged to as a way of making the diet easier to stick with long term. But one of the great strategies is going out to indulge, so you never have a reason to keep "bad" food in the house. With exercise, it is the same principal in reverse: I do all my formal workout stuff at home, with minimal equipment (a $150 bike trainer I've owned for years is the most expensive item I use) because traveling to a gym means that I won't.

2) It's not how you binge. It's how you recover.
Many diets are focused only on effective but short-term strategies to lose weight, which you are then on your own to keep off. About 10 years ago when I was as overweight as I was a 16 weeks ago my doctor (who was the definition of rotund) advised to get on the Atkins diet. It worked fabulously, and I eventually developed a very active lifestyle. I abandoned the diet in 2005 when it stopped working for me (completely changing course from eating meat and dairy to going vegan) and shortly thereafter gave up on the exercise thing. But with any dieting there is something to be learned from cardio training: It isn't that you get tired, it's how quickly you recover. The eating analogy is starting right over when you have overdone it -- not next Monday, or next month or next year.

3) Do what you can, but don't mistake discomfort for pain.
The U.S. Marines say that pain is weakness leaving the body. Trainers have drilled into me that you need to work as hard as you can without being in pain — and that discomfort isn't pain. Effortlessly fit friends have taught me that if you can't run as far as you want, walking part of the way is the thing do to. The point is to always move forward, and not to let two polar opposite excuses -- doing too little isn't worth it, and doing too much hurts -- get in the way.

4) Obsessively weigh yourself, unless you shouldn't
The best advice you will usually get is that you shouldn't weigh yourself every day. One of the core rituals of Weight Watchers is a weekly weigh-in, which can be at any meeting you choose to attend but for most people is the same one at the same place. Many people consider this non-public (only you and the person weighing you know the number) though public spectacle the single most motivating aspect of the program. But one's weight fluctuates due to forces not always in one's control, especially for women. Some people would find it discouraging to see evidence of little or no progress on a daily basis — like most sanctioned diets, WW is designed to lose around a pound a week. Watching yourself lose one pound over seven days as you're "depriving" yourself can be like watching paint dry, and discouraging. But weighing yourself several times a day is a good way to understand how your body reacts to things -- how much you put on after having a big salad, how much you loose after spinning for 30 minutes, how much you lose from when you go to bed to the moment you wake up. Like any data, it's indifferent. If you can be as indifferent, getting that data is a huge motivator. If you can't, then keep it to regular intervals — which might as well be on the morning of that day every week you'd like to take a little break from the regimen.

5) Everything is a game
WW gives you trinkets, and makes you check in. Get it? Exercise is boring, but anything can be made into a game. This works for me, and it's minimalist: I have a playlist of songs, some fast, some slow. It doesn't matter. On my bike+trainer, I spin for one song, sit up and do reps with a curling bar for another — various curls, crunches, presses; anything, mixed up, so different parts of the upper body are working while you are still pedaling -- and for the third mountain climb on a low gear standing up. I rarely look at the clock, but check my HRM frequently. Before I know it I've done 32-35 minutes, most in the 150-164 range (optimal cardio rate [220-54] for me is 166).

At my current pace I should be a weight I haven't been in I-don't-know-how-long sometimes this summer, which is a great time to be in good shape. Why don't I know when I weighed 160 pounds? Because most of my life I have obsessively not weighed myself. So for extremely long periods of my life there are no pictures, or any weight data — and for exactly the same reason.

The Catch-22 of Google Books

2011-03-28T11:15:00.005-04:00

It’s almost a Zen Koan: How many books does a library make?

For Google the answer is: “All of them.”

As of last August that particular number was about 129 million, and since then probably tens of thousands have been added to the world’s shelves, even if you exclude Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s A Shore Thing.

Some tiny fraction of that immense number is good enough for nearly every library in the world, be it the Library of Congress, the world’s largest, or modest locations which are no less devoted to the preservation and dispensation of the world’s collected knowledge.

For Google, though, it’s all or nothing: The Google Books Project — “one company’s audacious attempt to create the largest and most comprehensive library in the history of the world” as wired.com correspondent Ryan Singel put it — began nearly a decade ago.

The initiative has seen its up and downs over the years. But it hit a serious roadblock last week when a judge ruled that a difficultly-forged agreement among Google, authors and publishers was simply unfair to a particular class of writers: those who cannot not be located to be given the opportunity to choose to allow their copyrighted works be included in the project.

Read on at Reuters MediaFile

Libya, Obama and the Politics of Rationales

2011-03-28T11:03:00.002-04:00

I take as a given that it is impossible for sovereign states to be consistent in any meaningful way, and that there are degrees of pretense to projecting consistency.

What interests me here is that there isn't any particular US interest in eradicating the world of Gaddafi, and apart from the bluster of attacking his own people bent on attacking him (a peculiarly internal matter, one might even argue) no new one from a month or so ago.

So given that world leaders pick and choose their rationales like fruit at a Middle East market, we can only judge (I think) the intent by how far today's rationale is from self-interest. As I see it, Obama's failure here is entirely in the realm of domestic politics, which as these things go is exactly the right place you want to weak when lives are at stake.

Which has no bearing on the creation of a new precedent that cannot possibly be consistently adhered to without new conditions to tomorrow's rational for action, or inaction.

[Libya and selective US intervention | Bernd Debusmann | Reuters Analysis & Opinion]

The New York Times Pricing Scheme: Dumb, or Brilliant?

2011-03-22T10:30:00.019-04:00

Among the harsh criticism heaped on the New York Times for having the audacity to introduce a digital subscription model is that the pricing tiers are confusing, or self-defeating because they leave gaping holes for readers to game the system and thus make anyone who doesn't feel like an idiot.

I'm normally sympathetic to this kind of argument. It's why I avoid roll-your-own fixed priced restaurant menus, convinced I will get screwed because I won't be able to reel in the best value from that sea of possibilities.

In other words: Complex pricing blocks the road to assessing value.

Daring Fireball's always insightful John Gruber puts it this way:

One thing many companies — in any industry — can learn from Apple is the importance of simple pricing. If you make it easy for people to understand how much they’re paying, and what they’re paying for, it is more likely that they’ll buy it. Or perhaps this is driven more by the converse: if people are confused about how much they have to pay, they’re more likely not to. The decision to purchase and the act of paying are part of the experience for any product or service, and should be designed accordingly.

Not paying is always simple.

Correct. But this is true only at the moment one is confronted with a decision to buy or not to buy. For the vast majority of the people who read the New York Times -- online and off -- the moment of truth will not come on March 28, or maybe ever.

So, with three pricing tiers, a "giveaway" web site and an all-access pass for print subscribers, is the Times making it impossible, or easy, to close the deal?

Most people will delay a decision on what to buy, or if, as they encounter impediments to their normal Times-reading lifestyle. A huge swath will never even know there is an online paywall.

The Times of London (no relation) stops you the first time you click on anything. The New York Times won't pester you until you have accessed a link on their property at least 20 times -- probably more, since a lot (if not most) traffic will come from search referrals which aren't counted against that total, rather than from a landing page (front page or section). Count in the five free clicks per day via search engines and you're talking 170 accesses a month.

So the big change for the vast majority of people will be to encounter some unexpected request for money in a month or so, or never — and only at that point will those people decide if paying something is what they want to do. In other words, the change will be invisible to many.

Those of us who routinely use Times apps will face this music sooner, of course. I have already mused on this dynamic in a couple of ways: arguing that the Times has undervalued its online storefront, and that media apps aren't really a good way to dispense and consume breaking news anyway, however potentially good they are at collecting tolls.

But if you want to use an an app, you'll use an app, or walk away in disgust. And there are only two choices here: If you don't have an iPad, you won't buy the iPad sub. And if you have an iPad and want to stick it to the man to the tune of $5, Gruber points out, you'll get a $15 iPhone subscription and access nytimes.com using your browser.

Fine. There are workarounds and hacks, and some people will always gleefully take advantage of them. But as it happens very few people actually use Skype to avoid a phone bill or jailbreak their iPhone so they can tether without paying AT&T a monthly free. This is only ever one slice of the customer base, and not a very impactful one.

I mean, is this the way you want to read the New York Times?

Rather than focus on that the Times seems to be looking for a sweet spot which:

Find some samplers who will now pay something on the theory that these people are so inclined, always would have and just need to be asked
Don't make current paying customers regret and resent
Allow ample social access so that participation in the link economy isn't disrupted — which is not only great branding, but good for the ad CPMs the Times will still need.

There this notion that nobody will pay for something when a version of it is free. And yet plenty of money is spent on things that are also available on bittorrent or sharing sites. That's because nothing is truly free, and sometimes inconvenience is a heftier price to pay then some coin.

It is only when the inconvenience cost is close to free that paying customers flee.

I don't know if the Times plan is nuanced enough, or in the right ways. But that it is nuanced — and porous — is necessary, and far from dumb.

The Web Isn’t Dead: Newspaper Edition

2011-03-22T10:25:00.002-04:00

For all the talk about whether apps could be the salvation for newspapers, one little question has been glossed over: Are apps actually a disservice to readers of what, for lack of a better description, we still call newspapers?

The key advantage of the Internet over radio or TV is immediacy. Stories fly straight from pocket-sized devices to a great discussion in the sky with no friction being heard. Short bursts of information — as much or even less data than traders on the exchange floor use to make snap, million-dollar decisions — are what drive the conversation now.

Newspapers all have, or could have, vibrant web sites. Web sites are exciting because they are immediate, hamstrung only buy the stupidity of servers, how much traffic they can handle and how fast the Internet is working today. You share a story, and BOOM, there it is: Waiting to be discovered by random travelers, spotlighted by RSS, Tweets, Facebook updates and shared by a geometrical progression of friends you didn’t know you had.

The metaphor is: If you build it, they will come.

What is the metaphor for an app? Turns out it is exactly the same as the original newspaper paradigm: Here we are, come and get it.

(Read on at Reuters|MediaFile)

What to Make of the Machine? It's Elementary, My Dear Watson

2011-02-16T12:51:00.007-05:00

I missed the first day of IBM Watson's assault on humanity, played out innocently on a game show. But Tuesday's edition of Jeopardy was as demoralizing for my human side as it was exhilarating for the android in me.

Part of the fun is what the IBM Language Team came up with to make humans comfortable in Watson's presence. The supercomputer has inflection, and a tone which puts one in the mind of Hal9000 before, well, you know. Watson mixed it up once with a "Let's finish out ..." the category, instead of just naming the category and amount. There was also some frailty on display when Watson gives the same wrong answer as another competitor — I have seen humans do this, so why not a supercomputer?

With Watson, though, weakness isn't seen as something with which to commiserate but rather a way to cling to a small hope that we aren't sowing the seeds of our own destruction, as predicted in countless Sci-Fi stories and screenplays.

Watching Watson is remarkable in many ways. It proves that there are still some companies where pure R&D matters. It continues a very important entrepreneurial tradition of showmanship to dramatize science and technology in a way white papers can't. It lets us all imagine what practical applications there are for the kind semantic computing power Star Trek fans have always known is the future.

Watson's success (so far) has also unleashed all manner of man versus machine humor. But I'm not worried. Machines that do one thing well don't frighten me. Watson is a Kindle, and humans are iPads.

Here are some of my favorite Watson Tweets:

Wired: For those not watching @IBMWatson on Jeopardy, we won't spoil it, but you might want to stock up on provisions. #skynet

Ken Jennings: @IBMWatson, I'm-a let you finish, but homo sapiens is one of the smartest species of all time.

Larson O'Brien: @IBMWatson Nice job on Jeopardy last night, though if you turn on humanity, we now know airports are safe havens http://bit.ly/dQxxo4

Justin McCammon: I wish @ibm could bring some of the intelligence from @IBMWatson into Lotus Notes. It feels like using an abacus compared to modern email.

Amir Blumenfeld: The final question on jeopardy tonight "What does true love feel like?" Which is totally unfair for WATSON. And also for Ken Jennings.

Greg Wyshynski: I'm just watching #jeopardy until WATSON unmasks to reveal that it's actually been Sean Connery this entire time. #GotchaTrebek

This Is Not a Christmas Miracle

2010-12-25T13:48:00.001-05:00

WikiPiques: Let’s All Just Calm Down

2010-12-11T12:23:00.002-05:00

The pariah du jour to the United States and the countries who do business with it is one Julian Assange, a soft-spoken Australian whose motives may be obscure but whose life work is pretty clear. The founder of WikiLeaks, Assange is the whistleblower’s whistleblower, enabling the disclosure of anything in digital form — which, in the age of the Internet, is everything.

The drama to marginalize/silence/demonize Assange is playing out like a (bad) Hollywood script, but the stakes — to commerce, to free speech, to the freedom of the Internet — are quite real. It’s a good time to take a deep breath.

While critics portray Assange as the sort of caricature you’d expect to see as Batman’s arch nemesis he actually hews more to the suave Bond villain (sex scandal and all) — an international man of mystery whose calm demeanor is incongruous with a determination to blow things up.

So, Here's A Twitter Question For Ya ...

2010-12-03T19:07:00.005-05:00

Ordinarily I would Tweet this question — but my question is about a potential Tweet I haven't been able to make, despite several attempts on two occasions a week apart.

So I am going old school, a blog post, to whisper in Times Square to be heard in Budapest.

Here is the text of the Tweet that will not be posted:

"M" is for the merriment you give me. "A" is for the ass that I become. "R" is are you having a martini? Yes.

Okay, I know it's trite. Looking at it, it's like the joke you have to explain. Cute by 1/2. Let's all look past that please.

Why has this Tweet been, apparently systematically, suppressed?

I know what you're thinking. I replaced "ass" with symbols, dots and a cute by 1/2 "[REDACTED]. No soap.

So I have been reduced to subterfuge. This post will automatically post to Twitter, with a URL and a headline designed to create interest.

If anyone knows what might be the reason this particular string of 110 characters are fated to spend eternity in purgatory, I'd love to hear from ya.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Do: ‘Objectivity’ in the Age of the Internet

2010-12-02T20:31:00.001-05:00

Alan Mutter, a media critic who is both wise and smart, has pointed to the elephant in the room: journalists aren’t objective. Can’t be, really (though many try). But their biases are so mundane, he argues, that these collections of predilections and conflict-appearing life facts certainly don’t disqualify the conscientious ones from being respected reporters — if the rest of us know about them instead of treating them like the insane aunt you won’t admit is locked in the cellar.

Mutter notes that the history of journalism is about partisanship, driven by newspaper owners with agendas. “Objectivity was not their objective,” he says. But it’s no accident that the internet — blogs, Facebook, Twitter — has accelerated the discussion not only of who is a journalist but how “objective” a journalist has to be.

Full post at Epicenter.

Congratulations to the New ONA Board!

2010-11-22T16:11:00.006-05:00

I wasn't able to make a case for myself, but the Online News Association will not be the worse for it -- from an extraordinary field a stellar new board has been elected.

The full story is here, but congratulations to Josh Hatch of USA Today, Robert Hernandez of the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Will Sullivan of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who begin two-year terms on the eight-member board on Jan. 1.

My one regret? While participation was up 14% this year, only 371 of the 1,816 eligible members cast ballots. That is a paltry 20.43% turnout.

I'd love it if the board undertook some kind of initiative to increase participation. Here's one humble idea. It's from a loser, so take it for what it's worth:

The annual ONA conference sells out these days, with 800 attendees — more than twice as many as voted this year. The vast majority are eligible members. Candidates for the board candidates are invited to attend and introduce themselves. Seems like a perfect opportunity to gently ensure massive voter participation. Members who don't attend can cast what amount to absentee ballots by e-mail.

The ONA has done wonders increasing membership in the past few years but as we are all reminded it is a volunteer organization — there are two employees, including the executive director. All committee work and most of the outreach are done by members, some of whom are on the board, and some who aren't.

Seems to me the least we can do is vote, and I for one have no problem being shamed into it.

Running For A Seat On the ONA Board

2010-09-20T14:42:00.007-04:00

I've been a member of the Online News Association for a number of years, spanning my time at Reuters and now at Wired.com. I've also done a lot of head-shaking about the state of our industry, enough so that I think I should at least try be part of the solution.

So, I'm trying a little of that by running for a seat on the ONA board. Competition is very stiff this year -- apparently there are many others who reached this epiphany at the same time as I. This is a good thing, because no matter who gets elected the ONA will be a stronger organization.

My candidate's statement is below, but I also encourage you to read those of the other (record-setting!) 21 people -- a total of six incumbents, and 16 new faces -- vying for seven seats.
____

Bio
I am Wired.com's New York City bureau chief, and direct our business and disruptive media coverage. Prior to joining Wired.com I was at Reuters, where my tenure was evenly split between pre-and post-internet eras. I began a traditional career as a reporter, editor and bureau chief. Later I built the internet's first real-time news feed, created Reuters' multimedia desk and was the founding editor of reuters.com. For an all-too brief period I was media manager at the Committee for Concerned Journalists, where, among other things, I did media criticism. A graduate of Stuyvesant High School and New York University, I live in Westchester County, New York, with my wife and daughter.

Vision for ONA
We are always at a crossroads, right?

The Online News Association has always tried to lift the boats (and spirits) of our print-oriented colleagues by both warning about, and extolling the virtues of, an inevitable digital future. For a long time this was an internal "us” and "them” discussion. The balance of power in newsrooms, and the sense of urgency among print media professionals, moved erratically between optimism (often undue) and despair (often overdone).

But now, even as the future remains unclear and such new opportunities as mobile in general and tablets in particular appear, we have almost proven our point too well.

Is there such a thing as online news anymore? Is there an old media, and thus a new? Can a newsroom possibly be effective if it isn’t "converged?”

I live at today’s crossroads. Condé Nast is still a print giant but is also accelerating into that uncertain digital future, placing big bets on the iPad and taking significant steps to alter its digital DNA.

Wired.com is a traditional news shop when it comes to journalism values, ethics and commitment. But we are a very driven team that embraces the best practices of what the digital era: Savvy use of social media, awareness of the tides and eddies of SEO and, above all, total engagement with the audience before, during and after we publish anything.

We need to obliterate the walls between ourselves and the community from which we draw strength and frankly, 100% of the information we sometimes snobbishly assume we have divined from thin air. This isn’t an abdication of responsibility but rather an acceptance of how it has always been -- an altered state the digital age has finally allowed us fully appreciate.

I’m a seasoned journalist, strategist and tactician who is eager to help lead the ONA’s efforts to help our membership navigate these waters. I believe in über communication, transparency and crowdsourcing. Besides living this I have spoken in many forums on the digital media from college classrooms to network television.

As everyone becomes an online journalist -- like it or not -- we have much tradition to maintain. But we have always adapted while maintaining our core principles. Perhaps these times seem more fearsome, and that is what drives some to the sanctuary of the known.

I know better. I know we need to do less of some old things, and more of some new. I know we need to stop appearing to be imperious, and yet leave no doubt about our authority and credibility. I know we need to stop treating the audience like amateurs while leaving emphasizing that there is no substitute for professionalism.

So, is this a crossroads? Maybe not. Maybe if your eyes get used to the light, you clearly see the path forward. I believe the ONA is an indispensable resource. By increasing outreach and participation and helping to make ONA part of the conversation every day I hope to be part of its great work.

Politics, Viral Media and the Chilling Effect on Stupid

2010-07-07T13:28:00.002-04:00

Does a politician on the campaign trail have any expectation of privacy? It's almost a silly question. But some pretty smart politicos have behaved as if there is more than one answer: Michael Steele is learning this, but unsuccessful Virginia Senatorial candidate George Allen and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown learned it the hard way.

Now California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown seems to be shocked shocked that there's video recording going on here.

Continue reading on wired.com's Epicenter blog

Facebook Privacy Week (Month, Year ...)

2010-05-29T11:32:00.001-04:00

My very first appearance on Reuters television.

VICTORY IS MINE!!!

Lost in Translation: Rewrite the Last Page

2010-05-26T11:45:00.004-04:00

Spoiler alert: This article assumes you’ve seen what passed for a final episode.

If you’re like me, Sunday night’s Lost series finale may not have exactly hit the spot. Sure, everyone’s dead — and some might say not a moment too soon. Well, nearly everyone: Inscrutable Ben Linus isn’t “ready” to “move on” and is left to his own devices right outside that multi-denominational church where the high school reunion from hell is going on. So, naturally, the dramatic plot device we are thinking of is: Blockbuster Feature Film.

I made my disappointment about the trajectory of final season clear in a post on my personal blog three weeks ago, so I won’t dwell on the ultimate dramatic sin of the series: Since anything is possible, nothing is impossible.

Continue reading on Wired.com's Underwire blog

The Unbearable Lightness of Lost

2010-05-06T14:38:00.011-04:00

The first sign that I had lost my edge came without warning: I Tivo'd Lost on Tuesday, when I was unable to watch the show in real-time for the first time ever, and then was in no real hurry to see it. I'm now the weary gambler who won't fold because he secretly wants to lose, and betting on an indifferent hand hastens that perverted joy.

A lot of people died this week on Lost -- only white people survived, a friend observes, and the suicide bomber was an Arab, she also noted. ~~Well, Sayid is Iranian and thus Persian, but at this point, on this show, which purports to be all about the details, this slight twist on an cheap cliché seems like an inconsequential inside joke.~~

Even death provides no finality in this bloated final season. Jacob says he can't bring people back to life and the seemingly untrustworthy Man in Black promises he can. But of course, nobody is ever really dead on Lost, because people can time travel and reunite in the past and also alter the future (with evidently imperfect effectiveness). And, anyway, Hurley can talk to dead people -- or pretend he has.

So what are we to say when Sayid and Jin selflessly make the supreme sacrifice, for love? Later, dude?

I think what really upsets me is that the creative forces behind Lost have miscalculated the value of "Anything is possible." It anything is possible, nothing is impossible. And when nothing is impossible, whatever happens has zero impact. Lost has created a huge appetite among a dwindling but committed fan base for answers, and at this point it no longer matters. That is the cost of having no canon; there is no need to hew to the nuance of a thousand delimiting historical "facts."

There is a strong religious theme playing out (or, sigh, so it would seem) but Lost has literally become the Bible: there are no fixed truths, lots of confused, needy, susceptible people living in caves and so many vague non sequiturs that it says exactly what you want it to.

And like the Bible, the only counter-argument is that Lost is not an the inspired word of God but the work of humans, which, of course, the Bible teaches us are flawed.

But SciFi needs rules, as well as faith. Certain things are impossible on Star Trek, for all of its imagination and invention. Lucasfilm employs a Star Wars continuity cop named Leeland Chee who keeps track of "thousands of years of story time, running through all the bits and pieces of merchandise" to protect the viability of that franchise. The boys on the Big Bang Theory can correct you in Klingon and argue about String Theory and make them seem equivalent.

Lost, meanwhile, has become a prime time soap with the worst daytime attribute: Nobody (Jack) ever asks the obvious question any intelligent person (neurosurgeon) would, settling something once and for all instead of staring as if lobotomized as we cut to commercial.

Lost is bound by nothing now, and that makes it uninteresting, by any definition.

Reuters Opinion 2.0

2010-04-30T14:43:00.007-04:00

Reuters waded into the waters of opinion and analysis against a very strong tide: An iron-clad policy of doing nothing that could conceivably open the 150-year-old news agency to the charge it was not absolutely free from bias. In the not-yet three years since Reuters columnists began taking sides on stories Reuters reporters were covering, a breakthrough I called "Reuters Opinion 1.0," its global reporting power has only grown.

But Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer seemed to complicate the question of institutional ambivalence with a post on his personal blog in which he inveighed against a "rush to judgment" concerning financial giant Goldman Sachs and a civil complaint by the SEC which accuses the Wall Street behemoth of fraud.

Glocer states an obvious fact: Goldman is guilty of nothing until the company is found guilty of something, or agrees that it broke a rule or regulation.

But now comes an object lesson into why this may not have been the best idea: News that federal prosecutors are now investigating the company prompted a rush to judgment on Wall Street as investors shot Goldman shares down 10% to a nine-month low.

Of course, Glocer's message is still valid and correct and (irony noted) probably not directed at the markets, whose amorphous, amoral, extralegal and essentially unchallenged power to literally take sides at all times on anything is precisely what Reuters' business is based upon (to say nothing of the basis of the broad charge that Wall Street created or at least exacerbated the global financial meltdown.)

I've lauded Glocer for being among the few CEOs who actually does blog. It is genuinely bold and refreshing: He has an unusually high burden to bear since he is not only a material person who can't say certain things publicly but the head of a media company which takes extraordinary pride in its impartiality.

So the problem isn't really that he's taken the side of a concept enshrined in the U.S. Constitution but that he picked this fight to take that stand -- a fast-breaking story being covered aggressively by people who report up to him who already know that they aren't supposed to pre-judge anything. And it doesn't help that Goldman is a major client -- at the very least an inconvenient truth.

Criticism when the context was only the sleepyish SEC civil case came quickly, from expected and unexpected quarters. The union representing US reporters seized upon the incident to renew its call for an ombudsman to advocate for editorial. The New York Times stepped in to say that Glocer's post was "an unusual step for a media executive." Michael Reupke, a former Reuters editor in chief and general manager, had much stronger language: "outrageous and inadmissible."

"Are the Trustees too sleepy to think of stepping in here?" Reupke wrote in a letter to "The Baron," a social network for current and former Reuters employees. "If this had happened in my day I doubt whether he could have survived in his job."

I'm inclined to think that there is nothing sinister going on, even though the atmospherics are terrible: Defending Wall Street, which pays many Reuters bills, as it digs it way out of the worst PR challenge since tainted Tylenol. The first non-editorial person to run the company in modern times, he screws the pooch in a way no Reuters journalist without a death wish could even imagine.

The Goldman story will play out for some time and there will be lots of opinions expressed about the company's comportment from all sides. In fact, Glocer need look no further for judge-and-jury-like conclusions than "The Great Debate" blog on reuters.com. Like in this post, from veteran columnist James Saft:

"Regardless of whether the actions of Goldman meet a legal hurdle of fraud, they very easily clear a very low hurdle of immoral and unethical behavior. Seriously, would you let these guys repair your car or treat your house for termites?"

And that's the point. The hue and cry of the masses -- and even by British Prime Minister Gorden Brown, whom Glocer singles out for excess -- are not part of the process Glocer wants to protect, unless one is to believe that the SEC will be persuaded by the likes of Jon Stewart.

Goldman will get its day and its due and is still powerful enough to do as well as is humanly possible in their legal tussles no matter what the world thinks of them.

As Saft notes in that same column:

So remind me, why will clients continue to do business with Goldman Sachs?

I know, it is a stupid question; investors and corporations will continue to do business with Goldman even after the bank has been charged with an alleged fraud for the same reasons they always have: because they hope, like every gambler, to beat stacked odds and because they flatter themselves that they are not the sucker at the table.

Conan Says He Wouldn't Have Pulled a Leno

2010-04-30T11:32:00.005-04:00

Conan O'Brien tells 60 Minutes that, had their rolls been reversed, he would not have returned to The Tonight Show if it meant pushing out Jay Leno.

I thought as much three months ago.

"He went and took that show back and I think in a similar situation, if roles had been reversed, I know -- I know me, I wouldn't have done that," O'Brien tells 60 Minutes interviewer Steve Kroft, as reported by TV Newser.

"If I had surrendered The Tonight Show and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well -- and then...six months later. But that's me. Everyone's got their own, you know, way of doing things."

Twitter Goes Mad (Men)

2010-04-15T21:51:00.004-04:00

Twitter started selling ads -- sort of -- in a modest attempt to get the Twitterati used to the idea that the start-up, valued at $1 billion based on private placements, is entitled to make serious money. So far, the sky hasn't fallen.

Twitter doesn't need to make a lot, operationally. The company has fewer than 200 employees and manages a sea of servers. Tech support, marketing and maybe one HR person.

In an interview with BBC radio, I talked about what Twitter is doing, what they aren't doing, and what they might do. I might have used the "dip their beak" metaphor instead, if I had thought of it. But on second thought, I'm glad I didn't. Hate those forced metaphors.

Tiger's Crucible

2010-04-08T12:29:00.007-04:00

Donny Deutch says it's "Brilliant" and since he's pretty brilliant himself that means more than a little something. The new Nike ad with Tiger Woods can be described in a number of other ways — "Jarring," "Attention-getting," "Bold," as well as "Crass," "Manipulative" and "Unfortunate."

Five of those adjectives, even the pejoratives, are probably fine with the Mad Men crowd, who dispassionately craft immersive messages that target our passions. The more difficult the message (Cigarettes are cool, Cars you can't drive as fast as they go on TV are cool, The Jonas Brothers are cool) the bigger the challenge and, when successful, the sweeter the victory.

Woods has re-entered the real world via the unreal world that is the Masters Tournament. This makes perfect sense to me, as do all of the things that deliver us to the place where we can drop the subject.

I am not sure who the audience is for this, though, and why Team Tiger must perpetuate an unfortunate pander that the public ought to have a say in how Woods behaves.

Woods is a business with human frailties who must, for the sake of business, do damage control. It truly is not personal, it's business. But it is also unseemly. He's is trapped in a scene from "The Crucible."

Of course it's right to be faithful. Woods made that promise to his wife, and promises are more important than the law: We make them because we want to, not because we have to. But relationships are an entirely private matter. When we give strangers discretion over our own choices we are just asking for such things as bans on gay marriage.

How's the ad? Great. Fantastic. Daring. Brilliantly produced. Elegant in its spare concept. Masterful in the use of Woods' lecturing, and deceased father, speaking in an entirely different context (or several?) who knows when.

What I see is a man humiliating himself for money. The ad proves that Woods is no longer able to do whatever he wants to do, because he used to. He hurt a finite number of people, all of whom he knows personally and none of whom need to see this video on YouTube in which Woods the younger gets second billing to his stern mentor.

Woods didn't cheat on and lie to me, but because other strangers wagged their fingers at him he has to at least act contrite for public consumption.

I would prefer a John Proctor moment. Or for the entire thing to just go away.

Get Unvarnished? Get Real.

2010-04-06T19:27:00.005-04:00

A new site still in beta is getting a lot of attention as the next place you will want to protect your reputation — and put someone else's in "perspective."

But does free-flowing anonymous snark, the internet's second most vibrant activity (after porn) really need another enabler?

Put Up Or Shut Up: iPhone Users May Get A Choice Soon

2010-03-31T11:05:00.009-04:00

Verizon, anyone?

The Wall Street Journal reports what may be the most convincing rumor yet that Apple is going to stray from long-time companion AT&T.

Who are the winners and losers? I talk about it on CNBC's Street Signs.

No fair guessing Steve Jobs (who always seems to have a winning hand) and Palm (which cannot catch a break)

Web Immoblization Hack is a Tech Non-Starter

2010-03-19T12:12:00.008-04:00

A disgruntled former employee is charged with hacking into the company's web-based remote immobilization to disable about 100 cars bought by customers who agreed to the leash because their credit rating would have made it impossible otherwise to get financing.

The technology is an opt-in technique the company requires to insure the trust they have that credit-challenged buyers will make payments on time is not misplaced — as well the car the Repo Man will come looking for when they don't. But these Austin, Texas customers had done no wrong.

It was a foolish payback prank that made a bad situation even worse for 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, now under arrest for "computer intrusion." But is this a Big Brother threat? Not so much.

I talk it through with Celeste Headlee and John Hockenberry on 'The Takeway' (which, for this segment, should probably be called 'The Getaway.')

Original reporting by Kevin Poulsen on Wired.com's Threat Level. At 3:30 am PT, the hit would have been too unfriendly for Kev, so he signaled the bull pen for a right-coaster.

Facebook And Geo-Privacy Concerns

2010-03-19T12:05:00.002-04:00

Facebook is getting in the geo-location business -- and make no mistake, a business it is. For FB, it's catch up to Foursquare and Twitter and Google, all of whom already have apps which convey from where you are texting your mind.

But just wait until you not only know what's around you, but who.

Digital Live with Shelly Palmer. My hit is at about the 4:36 mark.

Goodnight, And Good Luck, Jay Leno

2010-01-29T08:05:00.011-05:00

Watching Jay Leno interviewed by Oprah, he cut a more sympathetic figure — people often do, even or especially when interrogated, which the Queen of talk did not. But Winfrey asked nearly all the right questions and got Leno to the precipice a couple of times, making the contours of the recent late night skirmish clearer and perhaps also, despite himself, his own motives.

Leno has enjoyed unique success but laudably remains a blue-collar guy, a lot like the younger one who left Massachusetts in a beat-up car, listening to James Taylor and wondering if anyone would hear from him again. And he probably really is the hardest working man in show business, spending something like 200 days on the road doing stand-up and revealing to Oprah that he lives on what he makes without his NBC salary — an astonishing fact given his expensive car hobby, to say the least.

In my psychobabble view I liken Leno to Regis Philbin, a genuine child of the Great Depression who has to work, always work, always save, because you never know when you will lose it all, just like that (after that the similarities pretty much end; years ago in a conversation on the air it became painfully apparent that Regis had no idea even that he drove Jaguar.)

So here is the problem: Leno accurately (in my view) said this mess was driven by interests of the affiliates, whom he has always studiously courted, and acknowledged that NBC itself was making money on his show by dramatically cutting costs for the 10 pm period (scripted episodes, Leno said, cost $3-$6 million per). The affiliates, though, were losing money because he was losing his time slot big time, and in TV Land affiliates are like real shareholders who can and should have significant say about network programming.

Leno also said that The Tonight Show's ratings were down about 50%, and that it was losing money for the first time in its 60-year franchise, and that this fact largely escaped press scrutiny probably because the better story was him, the future of television, cratering at 10.

So, the first circle I can't square is the apparent fact that, even though The Tonight Show was a bigger relative ratings bomb, it was the failure of The Jay Leno Show which got this snowball rolling, something Leno indirectly acknowledges with answers here and there is the case but doesn't accept square on, by returning again and again to the fact that Conan O'Brien wasn't doing well, and worse than him.

But by Leno's own account it wasn't a desire to do something about O'Brien, as poorly as he was doing in his first seven months against the well-established David Letterman. Indeed, the NBC master plan assumed O'Brien would stay — NBC was not engineering his ouster. They wanted to keep him. What they didn't want was Jay at 10 anymore, lowering the tide for The Tonight Show as much as it was for the affiliate 11 pm news shows.

Trying to keep O'Brien may have been based primarily on a desire to save a large severance rather than a gut feeling that he would become a good earner. But they tried to keep him — and Leno, per Leno, in a sort of cruel poetic justice of the same dynamic which caused the network to lose Letterman in 1982 as they tried to keep both late night hosts and picked Leno for "Tonight."

But still, NBC approached Leno first, and not with a plan to outright replace an O'Brien the network assumed would play ball. O'Brien's departure was not a fait accompli, or even contemplated. Leno could have walked, accepting the consequences of breaking his contract it sounds like NBC was on solid ground not to re-negotiate much, given the very public direness of the 10 pm situation, and become a sympathetic one-man Grateful Dead working the crowds he loves forever.

I've been there and done that, he could have laughed. Stop firing me and then coming to me to solve your problems, he could have told NBC in his own letter to the People of Earth.

My other problem is that, in the end, it seems that Leno and O'Brien were both presented with the exact same choice and decided in the exact opposite way. This is telling: O'Brien didn't want to be moved (and The Tonight Show to change it's start time for the first time in its 60-year history) but was determined to protect the financial interests of his staff, for whom he negotiated something like $12 million in severances.

This is probably enough for some to retire and for the others to hang on while finding something else in the business, or to re-invent themselves. As a person who was once given a generous buyout to leave my job, I can say that there is nothing ultimately more liberating than this — as great as it is not to have to worry about not having a job.

But, oh yeah, you always worry about that. In TV perhaps more than in any other business. In fact, I have always had a nagging sense of guilt about engineering a continuing situation for one person on my former staff instead of perhaps forcing the company to make him an offer of a buyout or a job. By doing so I gave myself and the company — and not him — the power.

So largess and concern can have unintended consequences or can, I now suspect about Leno, mask one's true motives. Leno was concerned about the fortunes of his staff, he told Oprah, and decided on their behalves that the right thing to do would be to ensure the continuity of their employment by ensuring his own.

It may be that concern for his staff (they are not his employees, because he does not own the show) was his over-riding consideration. He did pay them out of his pocket during the writer's strike, and pretty much devoted his last Tonight Show (well, so far) to what seemed like a family picnic. Anyway I believe he believes it, to paraphrase Leno when he playfully suggested to Oprah that she had no more intention of fading away with her announced retirement next year than he had now to take take this opportunity to leave the stage.

But, after this interview, I am not so sure. Leno is a decent guy, but flawed in a way the younger and less experienced but perhaps more confident O'Brien is not. Even though Leno initially asked to be let out of his contract when he told his 10 pm show would be canceled, any resolve to walk away, and then shame NBC to do right by his people as O'Brien did, disappeared.

I can only think of one reason why this is true.

[Transcript of the Oprah interview]

John Edwards, Worst Person in the World

2010-01-21T19:36:00.004-05:00

It's rare for someone in the moral cesspool that is often public life to be as utterly shameless as John Edwards, so I feel compelled to write a few things down to keep track of it all.

Let's see:

You have an adulterous affair with a woman, from the office, who is younger than your dying wife, whose incurable cancer is a matter of public record.
You apparently have unprotected sex with this woman. A child is born, and you deny paternity so she will read all about that in a few years.
You not only pointedly lie about all this but you convince or force other people step up to publicly support your lie.
You say you will take a paternity test you cannot be compelled to take and have no intention of taking because you know it will expose your lie, a litigator's trick that is slimy even by litigator standards.
All this is going on as you try to get elected president of the United States. Disclosure of your sins during the campaign or after your election would stigmatize your party in a way not seen since Richard Nixon made "Republican" a dirty word. You don't care about that, either.
When you finally come clean, under the back-breaking preponderance of evidence nobody but a birther could possibly construe any other way, you don't come clean yourself, but put another crony in front of the cameras to spill your guts. He refers to you as a liar, whooppee, while also saying how tough this has been on you.
You, meanwhile, while not spilling your guts, acting as if any of this is going on, or even appearing conflicted or contrite, blather on about Haiti, making your vanity now hemispheric as you use the death and hopelessness of millions of people a backdrop for your attempt to re-enter the human race.
You decide to put on this pathetic show in Haiti, where your presence on the ground will do nobody any good, and where I hope your televised remarks about how desperate things are there will be mashed up with your hair-coiffing embarrassment and displayed on the hacked version of a campaign site you haven't had the decency to update so it at least does not say:

"I began my presidential campaign here to remind the country that we, as citizens and as a government, have a moral responsibility to each other, and what we do together matters."

Have I missed something?

And I thought OJ had balls.

(With apologies to Keith Olbermann)

Journalist, Editor, Ombudsman Deborah Howell Dies At 68

2010-01-02T10:55:00.009-05:00

Deborah Howell, a pioneering journalist who served in the sadly shrinking ranks of newspaper ombuds during a three-year tenure at the Washington Post, died in a road accident while vacationing in New Zealand.

Howell, 68, worked for both Minneapolis newspapers, ran one of them as it won two Pulitzer Prizes, and then became the Washington bureau chief for the Newhouse Newspaper Group and editor of Newhouse News Service — where her staff also won a Pulitzer. (Newshouse News is owned by Advance Publications, which is also the parent company of Condé Nast Digital, my employer).

"I don't think I've ever met anyone with as much passion for news and as much creativity and as much of a feeling for what it takes to be a great editor," Steve Newhouse said in an interview with Minneapolis Public Radio.

We never met, but I knew of Deborah Howell professionally; when she wrote an amusingly scathing piece about a WaPo opinion column which argued that women may actually be weaker and stupider than men because some of them had fainted at Obama campaign rallies, I wrote about it in a column for the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

Howell made it look easy:

Of course, it's important for provocative opinion to be in the paper, especially in Outlook, which is all commentary. And this should have nothing to do with politics. (Writer Charlotte) Allen is a conservative, and Outlook should pay attention to conservative opinion.

But my umpteen years of experience have taught me to be wary of using humor, satire or irony about gender, race or religion. Humor can easily go awry or be misunderstood; it deserves extra care in editing and labeling. The Allen piece was offensive because it was a broadside against all women, despite her weasel words here and there. And the piece had the fatal flaw of not being funny. At all.

Howell had the rare talent to be engaging and "readable" in what is often a clinical or adversarial position. I've always thought of a newspaper ombud as a Internal Affairs police officer: Nobody on the inside ever wants to hear from you, and nobody on the outside really appreciates what you do.

Ombuds are a dying breed at newspapers, which have very little ballast left to toss overboard anyway. But as the readers' advocate in what could otherwise be an echo chamber of self-adulation the position would seem to be an important differentiating factor as traditional media tries meets greater competition from upstart media which may or may not respect the same journalistic traditions.

Howell left WaPo in 2008. She will be missed.

What's Wrong With The Magazine Business (Or, Biting The Hand That Feeds Me)

2009-12-21T10:14:00.008-05:00

True confession: I don't really read magazines. Haven't for ages. Well, that isn't entirely true. I do read, or rather look, at magazines when they are hand-me-downs, or when there is a copy available for free at the office (that office being Condé Nast).

But it has been ages since I subscribed to a periodical, and ages more since I bought one on the newsstand; my last clear memory of doing so was four years ago, well before even the possibility of working for wired.com was real, when I bought my daughter a copy of Wired. Something on the cover grabbed her. I was horrified that the single-copy price was nearly the same as a 12-copy subscription. I mentally hemmed-and-hawed (being out of work, and all) but I didn't want to stifle her interest, so we took a copy home.

More recently I intercepted (*thanks, @MarketingVeep :) a list of magazine dreams my wife had intended to mail to Santa. And working through that list I realized that the traditional magazine fulfillment business is so archaic that the powers that be had better figure out a better way to deliver, because the cool kids won't stand for this. That means killer content will never reach an audience in print not because print is dead, but because the business of marketing and delivering that print is archaic and mean.

Let's start with a complete lack of transparency. I thought I'd take care of business just by going to amazon.com which, I figured, would in the main have the best prices. Since I was going to subscribe to 10 titles paying a little less for one would mean I could pay a more for another. That plus the frictionless shopping experience would make it all worthwhile.

I got lucky fast: one magazine on the list was on sale that week — $5 for a years' subscription instead of $20. That would level lots of playing field. But at the (very) bottom of each subscription page on Amazon there were sponsored links, and the top was always from the magazine's publisher. And at the publisher's page the deals were almost invariably better. I got three years for a little more than the price of one in one instance, $5 off for paying now at another.

So, I had to shop the old fashioned way, because on one corner of the lot the dealer was selling at one price, and at another, it might be less. Also, the old model of "Come to me" simply won't fly for much longer, even when doing so is merely a couple of clicks. There has to be a marketplace and that marketplace has to have the best price available. I know that many publishers have a razor-thin margins, and that Amazon and other middle parties take their cut (and in the digital domain control the pricing by controlling the customer relationship, but that's another post). But don't make me come to your lame, proprietary, non-functioning web site if you want me to stay happy about giving you my money.

Then there is the matter of when the subscription begins. Invariably there is a health warning which tells the prospective subscriber that the first issue won't arrive for as many as two months. In that time one might forget one has subscribed, and do so again. If you are dying for content in this or the next issue, you might be compelled to buy single copies, paying the exorbitant newsstand cover price and thus diminishing any savings from subscribing.

The old model of delayed satisfaction is untenable. A single intern can probably mail a current issue to every new subscriber that signs up — with personal note of thanks from the publisher even. How many new subscribers do you get every week? Isn't the smallness of that number the problem? This is an opportunity. William Gaines, the fabled publisher of Mad Magazine, once told an interviewer that he and his entire editorial staff once went to the house of a person who had written to cancel his subscription. The guy was so shocked that he changed his mind. Cost to Gaines & Co? A half-days' work (if you can call being on the staff of Mad Magazine work).

Many publishers, even the best known, have subscription pages which don't work (I'd like to say "lie."). On one I encountered, there was an offer to get a tote bag with payment in full. Declining the inducement took me to another page which insisted on payment in full. There was no alternative to be billed later. Some customers might just say "What the heck" and pay in full. I said "What the Hell" and left.

The old model of enduring your customers rather than catering to them isn't enough anymore. You may have the only magazine in your niche worth reading, but I can lose interest in the whole thing just like that.

Finally, there is the payment scheme. It is unusual for a vendor to bill for something at the point of sale, letting you walk away without tendering payment, so that remains a lovely and quaint and (see below) necessary option. But (see above) this isn't really what's happening, since you won't get your magazine for as many as two months, and they will bill you before then.

Years ago I stopped paying for magazines with a credit card for one simple reason, even though I pay for everything with credit cards: by doing so, I accepted automatic renewal and the often difficult onus of stopping a subscription and getting refunded for issues not sent. This is the wrong dynamic, and an approach used mostly these days by scammers and online pornographers. Not exactly the best company.

The old model, which assumes you must hook a customer you have baited, is simply wrong. Sure, chasing down people to pay you every year is a hassle. Sending reminders is expensive, even to ask permission to charge for another year or so, although e-mil makes this much cheaper.

But it can be done, and it is the right thing to do. That intern you hired to send out crisp current copies to new subscribers? Add this to the job description.

I am among the few that believe both that print periodicals are far from dead (and perhaps even on the verge of a renaissance) and that tablets have a fighting chance to capture an audience in a way that high-end advertisers will continue to pay premium prices to reach.

But as publishers try to manage success in a new medium, they have some housekeeping to do in the old one. It amounts to this: Don't make me angry reading you in print.

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's ... The Cloud!!

2009-11-26T13:02:00.002-05:00

This week's Digital Life. Shelly Palmer and I talk about cloud computing, Chrome and all that, at about 3:50.

Digital Life with Shelly Palmer

2009-10-24T10:20:00.004-04:00

I'm making regular appearances on a new TV show on "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer," a program on WNBC's (New York) NYNonStop, their digital channel (and off course, online).

This is the premiere program, which ran last Tursday, though we've taped a few others.

Fake AP Stylebook Steers You Completely Wrong — With Style

2009-10-24T10:19:00.000-04:00

Like many proper news organizations, we at Wired.com use the venerable Associated Press Stylebook as an arbiter to determine whether we write “one” or “1″ or whether it’s “Calif.” or “CA.” But the trouble with venerable is that it gets old and boring.

So we were delighted to learn of a disruptive newcomer to the writing style game. And the best part is that it’s on Twitter.

The Fake AP Stylebook (I can just see the AP lawyers falling out of their Aero chairs) tells us that we should “Precede basic statements of fact with ‘allegedly’ to avoid accusations of bias: ‘the allegedly wet water,’ ‘the allegedly poisonous poison’” — well, that rule tracks pretty good (or is it “well?”) with that other style guide.

Full story on Wired.com's Epicenter Blog

Turning Audiences Into Advocates

2009-10-24T10:17:00.001-04:00

Power Lunch appearance as part of a discussion on social media and the enterprise.

Wired-o-Nomics: Is E-Mail Dead, Dying or Here to Stay?

2009-10-12T17:09:00.001-04:00

In an article in Monday's Wall Street Journal Jessica Vascellaro argues that the tipping point has arrived for the heirs apparent of e-mail, one of the internet's first, most defining — and most abused — applications. Can this be? In an appearance on CNBC's Power Lunch today I got the chance to bat this idea around a bit, but not enough, so the conversation continues here.

Vascellaro has it just about right, i think, and although reports of the death of e-mail are obviously premature it's fun to look for signs of a paradigm shift within a paradigm a mere 38 years after the first e-mail was sent. After all, haven't many of the other original internet protocols already been shown the door, like Usenet, WAIS, Gopher and Archie? What makes e-mail so invincible?

Continue reading on Epicenter

A Milestone for Facebook

2009-09-17T16:29:00.003-04:00

Facebook blogged that it had gone "cash flow positive" in the previous quarter, achieving a target it had set for itself sometime next year.

We didn't touch upon it in this CNBC Power Lunch interview, but I wonder what all the public companies that have a $10 billion market cap (Facebook's imputed value) think of the strict SEC rules about disclosure they must abide by, when a guy who is basically a grad student can get away with doing a post and no analyst telecons?

A Brief Remembrance of Ted Kennedy

2009-08-26T08:46:00.007-04:00

Back in '91 or '92, when I was in Boston for Reuters, I got to participate in an annual event that was legendary among journalists in the area: The Kennedys threw open up their Hyannisport compound to reporters and their families for a summer day of eating, playing and casual schmoozing.

And when I say "threw open," I do not exaggerate: We had the run of the place. When Ethel Kennedy's front door is ajar and you wander in and she looks up from her paper to tell you a story or two about Bobby and point out John's favorite chair in her house, well, that says something about the manner of this remarkably gifted political family.

It was like a company picnic and the entire management team was there to make us feel like family. We were greeted with a receiving line, with every hand shaken by every single Kennedy, even those whose ages were in the single digits, because it's never too early to learn about the family business. There was no pressure or spin but there was one particular Kennedy, driven by her life-long cause, who was on the prowl in this target-rich environment: a beleaguered PR person begged me to listen to Eunice Shriver's spiel about the Special Olympics and visibly sighed with relief with gratitude after I had.

Sen. Edward Kennedy — "Ted" to many there but not me — was our official host. The de facto Kennedy patriarch both loomed large, and mingled. I was flabbergasted at the ease with which he and the family dealt with so many strangers, so many whose job it was to not exactly paint him in the most favorable light.

There were probably no enemies in the press there, however, and it is also astonishing at how few enemies Sen. Kennedy actually had. His best friend in the Senate (perhaps anywhere) was the very conservative Orrin Hatch. Like the hospitality Kennedy showed the guests on his lawn we have all heard stories of his ability to reach across the aisle and really any divide in a sincere way.

Joe Scarborough, a rather rapid right-winger when he was in Congress and now a morning show host on MSNBC, recently told a story about a personal tragedy involving a child. "The first person who called was Ted Kennedy," Scarborough said, seeming still to wonder how the senior senator from Massachusetts could possible know so much about the family situation of this junior representative from Florida, and relate to it on so personal a level, and offer whatever sort of medical or any support he could. And stay on the phone for a long time. And mean it all.

I had no close encounter with Sen. Kennedy that lovely summer day, but he and my wife ate his food — and covered up an enormous, tabloid-esque scandal: there was broken glass in one of the cakes. No harm done as we made this discovery. I went to the catering table and asked for the person in charge and quietly told him the situation. He was grateful, and quietly pulled it off the table. Later on he came by to sort of take our temperature and I am sure our manner convinced him that his secret was safe with us. Even he had the grace that seems to be in the family's DNA by not seeking to take any formal steps to see to it we wouldn't give this scoop to the Boston Herald.

And how does a gracious Kennedy see to it that you do not overstay your welcome? One of the activities listed on the invitation was a boat ride in the bay. It was the last activity of the day. We were asked to gather our belongings. You know where this is going: it was a one-way ride to the parking lot that was our staging area, with the Kennedy's all along the shore, waving us goodbye.

I covered Sen. Kennedy once or twice when he was in his home district. As my brief was national and international in nature there wasn't too much story in him for me. But there was a big issue at the time that was national in scope and in which Sen. Kennedy had a personal stake: Health care reform. Then, it was an initiative of President Bill Clinton who had First Lady and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to get it done.

Here we are nearly a generation later with Sen. Kennedy's life work yet undone. He was ever the optimist; back then, at an event, the money quote from him was that he was sure health care reform would get done because the president had put his wife in charge. It was a fabulous line, both for a cheer and a laugh, typically conversation-ending and inarguable while being entirely playful. That is how you get things done without pissing off your opponents.

Weeks before his death Sen. Kennedy was quoted as saying that he would "walk on broken glass" to vote on health reform bill and, sadly, he will not get that chance. I don't think it is disrespectful — and doubt Kennedy would not have done some political calculation himself: how are health reform's chances with its greatest evangelist in public service now an object of such sympathy?

Photo: Ted Kennedy on his Hyanniport home porch, Sept. 28, 2008 by Boston Globe photographer John Tlumacki.

Social Media Restrictions at Sporting Events?

2009-08-20T15:06:00.003-04:00

An 'Instant Panel' discussion on CNBC's Power Lunch about recent attempts to restrict what fans can do with the pictures and videos they take at sporting events, by event organizers.

Good luck with that, guys.

Social Media Account Security on NBC Nightly News

2009-08-19T09:06:00.002-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

A hit on the NBC Nightly News, pegged to an uptick in attacks on social media sites.

Big Game Hacking on CNBC

2009-08-18T15:21:00.007-04:00

I was the convenient time-zone mouthpiece, but the work on this story has been done the inestimable Kim Zetter on wired.com's Threat Level blog.

So, guys, hope you liked it. Please don't drain my bank account.

August 17, 2000: Internet Crosses 50-Yard Line in U.S.

2009-08-17T08:56:00.001-04:00

2000: Half of United States households have internet access, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Nielsen is best known for measuring the popularity of a certain other mass medium that went viral a half-century earlier. How fitting that this paradigm shift came with fin-de-siècle serendipity to a millennium that had already witnessed staggering technological advancement.

Not since television transformed the world in the early 1950s had anything entered the collective consciousness as quickly or pervasively as the internet, which began its life 40 years earlier as "Arpanet," a relatively humble military experiment. (In Wired.com style, BTW, "internet" — even "the internet" — is lower case.)

Like television, experiencing the internet initially required the procurement of expensive, finicky equipment. And as in TV's earliest days there wasn't much to see. One internet service provider (ISP) even playfully reminded us of the limits of the net in a TV ad during which a menacing voice told a web surfer: "You have reached the end of the internet. Please go back."

Continue Reading on Epicenter.

Text Etiquette On Today — Or, How I Survived 5 Minutes Without My iPhone

2009-08-16T12:34:00.002-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I've become quite the mouthpiece on digital etiquette lately — specifically the rights and wrongs of messaging when you are with people. It's all tied to Wired magazine's August issue dedicated to the subject, and I am standing in for Brad Pitt, as usual.

In a recent appearance on CNBC's Power Lunch I argued that there was no sensible rationale for regulating texting from the boardroom. Not too much controversy there. But an impending hit on the Today show about texting from every place other than the boardroom spurred a good-natured mini intervention at home, where I was reminded that I'm addicted to love for my iPhone.

Yes, my name is John A., and I use my iPhone all the time. And, I am not alone, I do not think: With every new mobile means of communication comes a new opportunity to shut out people in the world that's right around us and engage in some sort of conversation with others who are not.

Some of this is business, of course, and some of it social. Some, perhaps most, is in that in-between world of burnishing the personal brand that has become absolutely essential to networking.

If that sounds a little too much like "my fans expect it," it is.

Continue reading on Epicenter

Ode to Noodle Soup

2009-08-15T16:01:00.006-04:00

For sniffles and snuffles
Here's the straight poop
There's no better tonic
Than hot noodle soup

Try apples, you’re thinking
Or nice canteloop
No no, that won’t do it
Just hot noodle soup

I know you’d like liquor
Imbibed on the stoop
But don’t let that blind you
To hot noodle soup

The brain cells are mushy
You might have the croup
No matter. There’s nothing
Like hot noodle soup

Away, I could sail now
Aboard my own sloop
If only my first mate
Was hot noodle soup

This isn’t their problem
That helpful friend group
But blessed are they who
Bring hot noodle soup

I’d like to perk up now
I do hate to droop
I know! I will find me
Some hot noodle soup!

The dreams are subsiding
Now there’s a big whoop
The rantings are waning
Thank you, noodle soup

Twitter TMI

2009-08-14T23:40:00.002-04:00

A brief appearance on a CNN piece about Tweeting TMI. Don't blink!

Contessa Brewer: All is Forgiven

2009-08-06T17:43:00.010-04:00

It took a year, very nearly the end of the world as we know it, and perhaps pity for some sincere remorse. But if every dog has his day mine came Thursday as I finally got face time with Contessa Brewer.

She would certainly have no idea of my embarrassment for having failed to recognize her in our first interview in the same studio back in September 2008 — a faux pas she handled with grace and self-deprecating humor.

This time we were soul mates, mourning even a brief interuptus with Twitter, the emotional impact of which we each implicitly understood. Ms. Brewer is an avid Tweeter as @contessabrewer, which she casually mentioned. When I told her that I followed her, she offered to reciprocate, and I am sure I blushed.

On air, it was more of the same. Near the end of the interview, when I allowed as I had "misted" when Twitter failed this morning, she offered me a tissue and laughed when I told her friends had immediately e-mailed me to ask how I would be spending my "Twitter vacation."

It's good to be able to walk in the sun again.

Next Monday I'm slated to do a live hit on "Today," in the 4th hour with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. Now that I have made peace with Ms. Brewer, the sky is the limit, evidently.

Related:

Financial Times iPhone App Worse Than Trialware

2009-07-14T13:41:00.000-04:00

The Financial Times released its iPhone app Tuesday, touting it as free. But the not-so-small print reveals that this is severely crippled trialware app that could very well be useless in first few minutes you use it.

Until the clock starts again in 30 days, that is.

(Continue reading on wired.com's Epicenter blog)

I Want My Mmmmm ... TV

2009-07-05T13:01:00.004-04:00

Update, Feb. 19, 2010: I review the Slingbox iPhone 3G app on Epicenter: "Hands On With the Slingbox 3G iPhone App: Ahhhhhhhhh…"

For me Independence Day came a day late but not a day too soon: like my forefathers I have exercised my right, my duty to throw off the shackles of terrestrial television.

That is to say, I finally got my Slingbox iPhone app working. It took a long holiday weekend to get to this task, even though I was among the first to buy this shamelessly overpriced bit of software.

My love affair with the Slingbox and all that it represents began at the discount table of a Staples many years ago, where I scored what is now an ancient device which seemed to offer greater freedom than proprietary alternatives which were in great numbers then, particularly one from Sony. My model SB220-100 has served me well, as has the company (in the main); last year, when the device was well out of warranty (even if it ever was for me) they sent me a replacement power supply that went missing in a move, no questions asked.

Slingbox tells me when I fire it up on the iPhone for the first time that the device is "unsupported," but it does work, and we knew this. The company's poor handling of the rollout of the app is well documented, but in brief registered owners were told a few weeks before the app was available that they would have to upgrade their hardware to the latest and greatest they had to offer, and they offered a $50 discount. That, to put it gently, was less than truthful.

I have always been fascinated by and addicted to television, an genuinely disruptive media which continues to disrupt as what we now have to describe as live streaming video. Our first family TV occupied a full cubic yard, received seven channels (a relatively large number; we lived in New York City), took time to warm up (um, just like HD ...), was black & white only, and was actually worth repairing when a tube blew.

When I was a kid, I marveled at the Sinclair portable TV — I never got one, but you can still find them I think, and it remains an engineering marvel even in a world which is no longer impressed by the Sony Watchman (which I do have).

But what a world we live in when a single device can be the platform for what was impossible, difficult and certainly required bespoke hardware. If everything can be normalized through software and connectivity, really, what are the limits?

I'm now set up for remote viewing, and with a jailbreak app which fools the Slingbox into thinking it's in a hotspot and not just a 3G network, can watch live TV just about anywhere, with no recurring fees.

If this is not freedom worth celebrating, then what is, I ask you?

(Photo: CNN on the Slingbox iPhone App)

Three Cheers for the Lori Drew Acquittal, But Not for Drew

2009-07-03T16:15:00.000-04:00

The directed acquittal of Lori Drew is the only sensible disposition of a depressingly sad case in which the suicide of a 13-year-old girl was linked to the bad behavior of a grown woman, the mother herself to a teenage daughter.

Drew could be ostracized, she can be sued for damages in a civil proceeding, she can become a pariah. I would not like to know her.

I am not a lawyer, but for the state to deny her liberty for lying when she created an account on a social network would be excessive and chilling and imperil hundreds of thousands of people who, while doing the TOS version of jaywalking, set themselves up for selective prosecution if some chain of evidence or events can associate them to someone else’s tragedy.

(Continue reading on Epicenter)

We Drive the BMW Mini E

2009-07-02T15:21:00.000-04:00

WHITE PLAINS, NY — The BMW Mini E is a solid little electric ride that provides a comfortable, effortless driving experience with all of the usual small-car perks, plus an ultra cheap operating cost and a carbon footprint approaching zero. But as a $50,000 two-seater with no head-turning quotient, the pitch for this first cousin of the Mini Cooper won’t be so much to our inner rock star as our inner Al Gore.

Tooling around a busy interstate and the city streets of White Plains, it is easy to forget this is a pure electric vehicle, and something of a prototype at that: There are only about 450 Mini E’s on the road, driven by an unusually generous band of volunteer beta testers who pay $850 a month for the privilege of helping BMW work out the kinks before the car’s anticipated launch in 2012. They have no dibs on their cars and will not be allowed to buy them when the lease ends. All maintenance, and car insurance, is paid by BMW.

And, of course, nobody pays for the gas.

(Continue reading on Epicenter)

Facebook, shmacebook: What’s the next great thing?

2009-05-18T19:15:00.001-04:00

Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla in the social media space, with some 200 million members, a valuation of perhaps $5 billion and a base that has expanded well beyond its early roots as a private hangout for bored Ivy League students.

But, like the ad says, life comes at you fast — and there is nothing more unforgiving than internet time. So, are the best years ahead for Facebook, or is the finicky mob of cool kids — and now their parents and grandparents — already peering down the road for another Next Great Thing?

One thing is for sure: Nothing lasts forever.

Continue reading 'Facebook, shmacebook: What’s the next great thing?' on the Reuters 'Great Debate' Blog.

Waiting for Steve

2009-04-23T14:05:00.004-04:00

First, the good news: I got to do this interview from a studio-for-hire a couple of blocks from my office, on a workday, so no long trip on a day that I would otherwise have been off (still — not complaining MSNBC!). But these things always seem to end in a 10th of the time you think you'll have.

Still, as @samerfarha advised, I said nothing to draw fire from John Gruber.

Also, you'll see I have much longer hair than my profile picture, which was taken a year ago almost to the day. My last haircut? Sept. 30, 2008.

Things Aren't Tough All Over: Hedge Fund Elites Reap Billions in '08

2009-03-25T18:13:00.000-04:00

Despite a year-long global economic meltdown that only got worse as the year wore on, the world's 25 most successful hedge fund managers raked in a total of $11.6 billion in 2008 — their third best haul this decade. The secret to their success? Well, some of it is a secret. But if you guessed big bets against banks and the housing market you'd be on the right track.

Topping the list is former math professor James Simons, won’t discuss his strategy (really?) except to say that it is based on "rapid-fire trading across almost every possible market and that it relies on computer-driven programs designed by an army of more than 100 PhDs," according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which has kept this score for eight years.

Simons, who runs Renaissance Technologies Corp., made $2.5 billion in '08, a year in which even most hedge funds lost money. Forget about trying to get in now; it's been closed to new investors since 2002.

(Continue Reading at Epicenter)

Test Ride: Even in New York, the Aptera Stops Traffic

2009-03-24T14:05:00.000-04:00

If the Tesla Roadster is sex on wheels, the Aptera 2e is like making out with the cute woman down the hall: It's a lot of fun and you want to do it again soon.

Tooling around New York in the funky three-wheeled EV is an odd experience where everything on the road slows down to check you out, when cab drivers not only obey traffic laws, they let you violate them at their expense, and New Yorkers — who pride themselves on being nonchalant about everything — stop dead in their tracks and ask, "Does it fly?"

No, the 2e does not fly. But it might as well for all the attention it draws.

The thing is, everybody knows the dirty little secret about cars: The real test isn’t how much tech it has or how fast it goes or how green it is or how many cup holders there are. The real test, especially for something so outlandish as an EV with three wheels and two seats, is this: Is it really a car, would you be caught dead parking it at work and what is the head-turning quotient?

My answers for the 2e are: "Yes," "yes" and "off the charts."

(Continued reading at Autopia)

Media Death March: Seattle P-I Stops Printing, Goes All-In Online

2009-03-16T16:25:00.005-04:00

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer publishes its last dead-tree edition Tuesday, the latest newspaper to succumb to the harsh realities of an internet economy where delivering bits is an increasingly inefficient way of delivering the news.

News of the P-I's decision to publish online only was telegraphed for weeks, and it follows the decision of the Rocky Mountain News to shutter completely, the Christian Science Monitor to publish online only starting next month and deep concessions by staff at another Hearst newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, to keep that newspaper afloat.

The owners put the newspaper up for sale on Jan. 9 and said they would shut it down if a buyer did not step forward. With a daily circulation of 117,000 the Seattle P-I is the largest daily to cease paper publication. The Christian Science Monitor is in 50k territory.

"Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time," editor and publisher Roger Oglesby told a silent newsroom Monday morning. "But the bloodline will live on."

(continue reading on Epicenter)

What's Your Name Again, Fella?

2009-03-09T12:45:00.001-04:00

Another cruel reminder.

Via TweepRoll.

Baby, You Can Drive My Carr

2009-03-09T09:25:00.005-04:00

There's going to be plenty of pushback on Alan Carr's NYT piece about how to save the newspaper, so I'll keep this short and sweet:

Any industry which says it can only be saved by collusion is suspect on its face. Any decent journalist would scream bloody murder if that was suggested by, say, the financial services industry or the airlines or — closer to home — a Starbucks/Caribou cartel.
The excellent examples of fee-based online services Carr cites cover niche topics, not geographical communities (except for The Arkansas Gazette, which gives away aggregator-length snippets). Odd argument, since these publications are doing exactly what newspapers aren't doing, by organizing around subjects rather than territory and not making me subsidize sports coverage I don't want. (Carr left out the Financial Times, which charges more than any of his examples and has an even more narrowly-defined clientelle.)
Google doesn't need you. Repeat: Google doesn't need you. You, however, might need Google, or something very much like it which tells people who have never heard of you that you've done some excellent work today. What percentage of your traffic comes from the homepage, again?
Aggregators do more than build "audiences and brands on other people’s labors." They provide a service readers find compelling. What is that? Brevity? Greater variety? Better writing? Decent design? No registration speedbumps? Rather than bemoan the success of a competitor one might copy it. And, while we're at it, how exactly do you shut down aggregators when you can't own the facts, whatever else you do to build paywalls?

News gatherers are correct to assert that they do heavy lifting, and I, too, fear a scenario in which news gathering is divorced from news publishing, and the latter is controlled by entities with no journalistic tradition. So, news gathering has to be saved. But newspapers? The "What to do" argument is misplaced if it depends on anti-competitive behavior and taking out your frustrations on a medium. It's like arguing that gravity is bad.

There is a way out of this, but it requires a tremendous re-think and the wholesale abandonment of pet notions and even a loss of the trappings of power. Newspapers have been threatened for generations and were handed a gift in the internet — a way to increase audience and finally compete with television (a previous bogey man) on television's own terms, for one thing. But rather than capitalize on this and think different 15 years ago newspaper owners have acted more like their illusory monopoly on an audience was a birthright and all they had to do was shovel everything online because that is what they had and we liked it and where are you going to go, anyway?

Sounds like self-satisfied inertia of the Big Three automakers, who are only now acting as if they have found religion after watching their competitors prepare for the obvious, inevitable paradigm shift when times were good (or at least better). Whose fault is it that newspapers are more like Detroit than Silicon Valley, or even Bangalore?

To survive, newspapers have to organize around an entirely different set of principles rather than try to push the illogical premise that the one-to-many bits model is the only way to save journalism. That's not only bad business, it's bad reporting.

Talkin' Webcams on MSNBC

2009-02-16T16:05:00.000-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I talk about webcams with an easily-amused David Shuster.

Brand Panel at Social Media Week: Problem Solved.

2009-02-14T09:28:00.002-05:00

I was delighted to moderate a panel this morning as part of Social Media Week. The topic was "Making the Brand: Social Media for the Long Haul" and the panelist were Ian Shafer, CEO of Deep Focus; Brian Morrissey of AdWeek and Gary Vanerychuck of Wine Library TV.
We trashed a few brands, challenged a few pet notions and figured out how to solve absolutely everything, in about two hours.

Don't believe me? Watch the video of the proceedings at Ustream .tv, and then continue the conversation on Twitter at #mtb09, or comment below.

We got the ball rolling with the Powerpoint above. History will pass before your eyes in fewer than 30 seconds, or more, depending on your click rate.

Cross posted at Epicenter.

25 Random Things on GMA

2009-02-12T13:15:00.003-05:00

My recent appearance on GMA. No sightings of Regis, Kelly or any of the "The View" girls.

Questions for the Social Media Week Panel I'm Moderating

2009-02-12T08:35:00.023-05:00

I'm moderating a Social Media Week panel tomorrow called "Making the Brand: Social Media for the Long Haul" and I'm trolling for questions. The panelists are:

Gary Vaynerchuk, Host of WineLibrary.TV
Ian Schafer, Founder/CEO of interactive marketing agency Deep Focus
AdWeek digital editor and "notorious twitterer" Brian Morrissey

Check out the link for details. And, anybody have an questions you want put to this braintrust?

Farewell, Sweet Prince

2008-12-21T14:40:00.005-05:00

We don’t get many mentors. There are parents, sure, and for some the parents we wish we had. A fortunate few get a great teacher who just keeps on teaching long after you have parted company. In our professional life, it is even less likely that someone will have the generosity and temperament to take in interest in a pup without any house training in whom they somehow see some promise.

I am among the luckiest. My mentor was a man named Arthur Spiegelman. Art’s importance to journalism, and to the world he made a better place with his fearless, righteous and unfailingly accurate reporting, is legendary to those of us who worked with him and not nearly well known enough to everyone else.

Arthur died on Saturday after a long bout with lung cancer. Illness made it impossible for him to speak, depriving those around him of his incredible conversation and infectious laugh. But Arthur was receiving calls, made to a cell phone of a close friend at his bedside, who would hold it up to his ear. To his last breath, Arthur was doing what made him a journalist’s journalist. He was listening.

Unspeakable talent surrounded me during my years at Reuters, by reporters who calmly reported from battlefields, jungles and board rooms. Nobody had anything on Arthur, and everybody knew it. Nobody did it better. Arthur was known as “Dr. Lede” – if you were stuck, one call to the doctor would yield a passage of the exact story in 50 words or less, and the doctor was always in. Arthur’s leads would prompt professionals who saw his stories first to just stop reading, to go over those first few perfect words again and again.

Still, great instincts and abilities (and his renowned inability to spell or touch type) are not what set Arthur apart. He had a childlike quality that freed an apprentice of self-consciousness along with a visceral intolerance for bad writing and insufficient reporting.

Arthur took an interest in a certain young aspiring reporter and it is fair to say whatever I do manage to bring to the game is because of him. He allowed me to write for the wire when I had no right to, pushed me into greater challenges than I cared to face, gave me assignments he knew, in the right hands, would be plums.

Arthur gave me a high-profile assignment during the contentious 1992 New Hampshire primary: the improbable and nearly king-toppling candidacy of Pat Buchanan. Irwin Arieff covered Clinton. Both candidates came in second, declared victory of a sort and set the tone for the rest of the campaign of Clinton as the “Comeback Kid” and Bush as a tragically weak incumbent, waiting to be blown over. Our coverage won considerable kudos. Arthur, the chief political correspondent, took the wholly unglamorous assignment of desking our copy from a small hotel room.

A few years earlier, I pitched an idea about Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” the novel that earned the author a cleric’s death sentence. How was it selling, I wondered? Among other things Arthur, who ran the New York City bureau at the time, was Reuters’ unofficial book critic and literary maven, so he freed me from boring desk duties to wander the city’s book haunts, big and small. I discovered that the best-selling book “was nowhere to be seen in this book-buying Mecca.” I was very proud of the story -- and lede I hoped would make Dr. Lede proud. The look Arthur gave me from across the room, leaning back in his chair with wide eyes, head tilted and a small, hopeful grin told me I had nailed it. No feedback from anyone, before or since, has meant more to me.

I saw Arthur for the last time about a year ago, during an visit he made to New York from Los Angeles, his base for many years, that served as an impromptu farewell to a man who was not at all dead and not even retiring. I traveled from DC but others came from the UK and even Australia. The private room we hired at a mid-town bar was packed, and a cadre of Reuters’ luminaries paid him tribute.

As I got ready to leave Arthur and I did our personal schtick one last time. “Boss! Chief!” I would always greet him in the worst Boris and Natasha accent imaginable. “Youth!” he would reply, this time no longer appropriate for me at 50.

As we embraced I told him that the tributes were all very nice but that all those people had no idea how important he was, how important he was to me.

"Somebody did it for me,” he said. “Now you do it for somebody else."

That won’t be possible. There will only ever be one Spiegs.

What’s The Story, Pulitzer Folks?

2008-12-08T17:36:00.011-05:00

The Pulitzer Board has decided to open up qualifying publications to include some web sites, which is a step in the right direction. But it continues to exclude magazines, broadcasters and their respective websites -- which seems painfully quaint.

The Pulitzer Prizes are meant to celebrate journalism — well, U.S. journalism, but that’s another story. When they were created newspapers were arguably the best gene pool of quality journalism. They were also a major source of slipshod, opinionated, careless writing — which does nothing to explain the Pulitzer Board's current Two Internets policy. The term "Yellow Journalism" was coined during Joseph Pulitzer's New York City newspaper war with William Randolf Hearst, for heaven's sake, an era which saw tabloidy excess that would make today's least conscientious blogger shudder.

But — and it seems almost ludicrous to argue what seems so obvious — newspapers are no longer the exclusive or even main conduit for quality journalism anymore. Corporations that own them describe themselves as media companies which happen to own newspapers. Many long ago began buying up broadcasters — to subsidize their bleeding newspapers.

At the same time magazines — The New Yorker and Time and Newsweek and many others — routinely do impactful journalism (which may or may not originate on their respective websites), as do broadcasters. And, in the main, they remain considerably more viable as businesses. They will be around to do journalism when there aren't any newspapers (or whatever they decide to call themselves) anymore.

Any remaining divide in the definition of who does journalism is plain silly. Will newspapers have to be completely in their death throes until the Pulitzer people decide to embrace journalism, wherever it is done?

That day of reckoning seems to be approaching. The New York Times is worth only a little bit more than $1 billion (almost half the price at which some people thought Google would have been brilliant to pick it up) and is doing a re-fi on its new headquarters to get through 2009. The Christian Science Monitor is abandoning print. And, on the day the Pulitzer Board announced its changes, the Tribune Co. -- publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times — said it was applying for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

I have the appearance of conflict, so disclosures are in order: wired.com remains ineligible for a Pulitzer, as does sister Condé Nast publication The New Yorker. While I have no illusions about ever doing or supervising Pulitzer-caliber work (no offense, team) the continued ineligibility of my extremely talented colleagues seems absurd.

How absurd? Seymour Hersh won a Pulitzer for exposing the My Lai Massacre on the pages of the New York Times. A quarter-century later he again "set the political agenda," according to the New York Times, by reporting about the mistreatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib — on the pages of The New Yorker.

Sunday in the Perk with MSNBC

2008-12-07T12:28:00.009-05:00

NBC, Third Floor
Originally uploaded by John C Abell
Apparently all is forgiven at MSNBC even though I won't soon be forgetting my embarrasing faux pas with Contessa Brewer.

I got a call Saturday afternoon from a producer for an 8:30 a.m. Sunday hit. The call went straight to voicemail. So did the followup call from the wired.com publicist, on vacation in Florida. I was not playing hard to get. I was in a matinee performance of "Equus" with the family on my daughter's (day after) birthday.

When I finally powered up my mobile they were still interested in having me on and, since I have become increasingly enamored of the sound of my own voice (and maybe enjoy the application of professional makeup just a little bit too much, though not to a Sarah Palin degree) I was glad this opportunity had not passed me by as I tried to process Harry Potter as a sexually confused teen.

I gratefully accepted the car both ways and, since we had just been in town all day and my daughter had lready spent nearly every last cent to her name at Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and H&M, the family would not be coming with me this time. It was going to be a quick round trip: out of the house at 7:15 and back three hours later.

When an MSNBC booking producer asks if you are available for an interview they put it in the most genteel way: "We were hoping you could join us ..." is the phrase. That, the limo, the lovely hair & makeup people (always very conversational and informed on my topics; why they just don't book the sylists is beyond me) conspire to make even the lowliest of talking heads such as myself feel a little, well, important.

And since my arc at MSNBC is having a definite upward trajectory I admit I am becoming a bit adicted to the commentary dodge: My first appearances on MSNBC were from a secure but undisclosed location in Washington where I had a disembodied interaction with the anchor in New York. Pros know how to do this so that the viewing public is uaware of the slight audio delays which convey either what seem like awkward pauses or a strangely aggressive cross-conversation.

My second appearance was in the New York studio, not on the stage itself but off to the side at a pedestal table where you also face a lens and talk to it as if that were the most natural thing there was. At the MSNBC studio the so-called flash cam is at the anchor's 5 o'clock and about 20 feet away, so the interviewee has an excellent view to the left of the back of the anchor's head, and she does not have to look at you at all.

This time, though, I got "face to face" -- at the desk, actually speaking to the anchor, at her 11 o'clock and only three feet away. Alas, it was Ms. Brewer's (extremely well deserved, I must say) morning off so I could not attempt to make further amends, but I was delighted to chat with Alex Witt.

At first, however, I convinced myself that my boorish reputation has preceded me. When I was ushered on to the set during a taped segment Ms. Witt did not look even in my general direction. Uh-oh, I told myself: Contessa told her not to bother about niceties with that one. I waited patiently through the piece and then a live interview which preceded mine in which an AU professor (in that secure and undisclosed location) explained why these hard times were like and unlike those FDR faced.

Then, with no warning, I was up: Ms. Witt and I bantered amiably about iPods and the recession. I think I elicited a genuine chuckle when I made some remark that possibly reduced sales figures would nevertheless not be a sign of the Apocalypse. As we spoke I imagined that her friendly demeanor was for the audience's benefit and not mine, my penchant for poor social graces now being legendary in the halls of Rockefeller Center.

After the segment, though, Ms. Witt smiled broadly and reached across the desk to shake hands, and she even apologized for not welcoming me when I first sat down. I didn't miss a beat this time. "Not at all!" I said, in my best imitation of courtly manners. "It was a pleasure to meet you!"

Yes, I am enjoying my upward mobility, I must confess. Maybe next time I get a weekday hit to which I can actually walk from my office -- not that I am complaining, lovely people of MSNBC. And please do send my regards to Ms. Brewer.

Perfect for Whom?

2008-11-29T12:10:00.005-05:00

Mad Men is one of my favorite shows, so much so that I don't even trust it to the perfect television nanny that is TiVo. The series is an iPhone obsession I treat myself to for my Metro North commute, which runs parallel to the Ossining-to-Grand Central Terminal route Don Draper take when he bothers to go home (which isn't often, as it happens).

I don't need to explain the obsession to people in the know. But I have some personal reasons, too: It takes place at a time in my native New York City that was a Golden Age, during the afterglow of World War II when the Greatest Generation was giving way to a bunch of Boomers who would shepard this nation to a period of great prosperity and fairness.

It was the Boomers who decided that Gays were not "perverts" -- as described by one Mad Man -- and who changed the world just enough so that a black man who's greatest realistic aspiration might have been to operate an elevator at Sterling Cooper could now imagine becoming president of the United States, and make it so.

Alas -- I gush a little. I wasn't even in grade school yet during the Mad Men era, but I was a sentient being during the turbulent '60s when, among other things, feminism stopped being a dirty word.

In those days newspaper want ads still listed positions by gender, as in "Help Wanted - Male" and "Help Wanted - Female." I don't recall specifically what the different jobs were, but I am sure that in the main men were being offered executive positions and women to be their secretaries. This is the caste system in Mad Men -- which is another reason to cheer for Peggy Olson, who earns a spot at the copywriters table and one of the best offices in the place on talent alone.

So, how much has changed in the four generations which have transpired? Fair warning -- I'll make too much of what is to follow.

I was checking my iPhone account at AT&T wireless and noticed they were having a sale. There is one ad which says, "Perfect for Him," and another which said "Perfect for Her." For the life of me, it's difficult to see what features these two phones have which are gender specific, or which could be.

The "her" phone is narrower, but features text and email and all the things everyone (and the other phone) does. Neither Blackberry nor Apple, which dominate the Smartphone phone business, see the need to offer manly and girlie versions of their products.

So what gives? You be the judge:

Watching Obama

2008-11-24T12:31:00.004-05:00

President-elect Barack Obama is announcing his economic team, and taking questions, as I write. He is doing his very best to maintain the fiction that there is only one President of the United States at one time, and that he is not it.

It is difficult not to see the night-and-day difference in this appearance and those in similar situations by many past and current holders of the office. It's easy to still be wowed by the man; he will be handled with kid gloves for a while, especially until he is actually president in fact. When Keith Olbermann and especially Chris Matthews lose their youthful crushes on Obama then we'll see the sparks that are necessary to keep everyone honest and working hard.

But, watching Obama's first press conference as whatever he is, I had a thought: As well as he worked the room to get elected, and to achieve all the pre-conditional things that positioned him to vie for that office, Obama has been the recipent of some incredibly good luck.

When he was running in 2004 for the Senate seat that put him in the (mostly) gentleman's presidential prep school his opponent, Jack Ryan, was forced to drop out race over a sex scandal. They were vying for a seat being vacated by a Republican, and the state had been tending Democratic. It could very well have been the case that Obama would have won the seat in any event in time to seek the presidency 304 or 734 or 768 days later. But Ryan's ignominious departure pretty much sealed the deal.

And then, there was the Republican White House office holder. He was there, watching his popularity steadily deteriorate and with it the chances of his party, because of a contested 2000 election and a squandered 2004 election, either of which could have been won by the Democratic nominee (with a little luck).

With a Democrat in the White House Obama would have remained an intriquing question mark for years to come. At 47, he is a kid by political standards and his day may yet have come.

But anything can happen. This might have been his only moment. And how that moment materialized is a bit amazing.

Wired-o-Nomics: Too Big to Succeed?

2008-11-21T17:55:00.001-05:00

It seems like forever but it has actually been only been 52 days since Congress thought the better of providing any bailout money to financial institutions to stave off global economic ruin. They heard the arguments for and against, checked the election calendar, and voted down a $750 billion package.

The market immediately tanked. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed more than 600 points the next day to close at 10,365 (which frankly seems pretty bullish these days).

So lawmakers took another look at it. They heard the arguments for and against, checked the election calendar, watched with as much amusement as the rest of us I hope when John McCain "suspended" his campaign to take charge of things, and voted up a $750 billion package.

The market immediately tanked. On Thursday the Dow was down 33% from the day the original bailout plan was rejected a mere seven weeks earlier.

This is called, in polite company, the law of unintended consequences. It’s called less pleasant things in less genteel circles.

Read the full post on wired.com's Epicenter blog.

Wired-o-Nomics: Wall Street Bonuses and Abortions

2008-11-17T09:39:00.000-05:00

Ever since Congress threw $700 billion at financial institutions to help prop up the economy there have been a handful of reports about idiotic corporate expenditures, like $500,000 off-sites. These incidents speak to a massive disconnect with reality and create a public relations challenge but, like congressional earmarks, the money involved is relatively insignificant.

More serious is the question of whether Wall Street Masters of the Universe should get bonuses this year, at least at those institutions receiving taxpayer money. These year-end bonuses involve staggering amounts: in 2006, USA Today estimated that the collective pool was just a hair under $24 billion, which "works out to an average bonus of $137,580 for every person employed in the financial services industry."

In ordinary times we mere mortals may merely be disgusted by this sort of excess. This year, it isn't just about other people's money. Now, it’s ours. And our representatives have a compelling interest to make sure on our behalf that it isn’t spent on $6,000 shower curtains.

But the laws of economics are not suspended even in challenging times. Retaining top talent always requires what the market will bear, not what a politician thinks is fair. Still, the giver (or in this case, conveyer) of largesse ought to have some say in how money can or can’t be spent, right?

(Read the entire post on wired.com's Epicenter blog)

Hits & Misses on MSNBC

2008-11-16T10:55:00.002-05:00

Contessa Brewer on set, MSNBC
Originally uploaded by John C Abell
On Saturday I made two appearances on MSNBC, subject Barack Obama -- the tech president. I gratefully accepted the Town Car for the 30-mile trip and brought the fam to along for a day in the Big City, punctuated by my two brief appearances on the TV.

It was a quiet day in the studio: We had the green room to ourselves (though a page told us that Beyonce was in the building for her SNL gig later that day) and the halls were mostly empty, except for several tours ambling by perhaps disappointed there wasn't anyone famous in the green room.

I try to be casual about these things, the better to suppress the nerves. But this was only my second time around as a talking head and I may have come off as a wee bit too casual.

In makeup, a woman who clearly worked there and was going to be on the air sometime soon graciously walked over and introduced herself as I was about to be layered with foundation.

"Hi! I'm Contessa."
Beat.
"Without makeup."
Me: "Oh! Yes! Hello!"
(and then -- wait for it -- the capper)
"The last time we did this I was in Washington!"

I feel compelled to reveal at this point that I watch MSNBC incessantly. I know MSNBC Anchor Contessa Brewer's work very well. So it was not hubris but nerves which prompted me to think she was not being gracious to a stranger but saying something akin to "Nice to see you again." Consummate professional she may be, but it did not dawn on me soon enough how unlikely it was she'd recall me from the three-minute hit I did last July. That and the fact that she didn't say, "Nice to see you again."

Ms. Brewer even tried, I think, to excuse my faux pas by casually saying, "Yes, the bare-faced Contessa," as she strode back to her chair. Then she began chatting amiably with Bertha Coombs of CNBC, who does know how to have a polite conversation and actually needs no introduction.

Things deteriorated a bit from there.

After being mic'd (it's like getting tagged for an EKG with your shirt on) and tested and re-tested by the control booth for sound, I missed my cue when the on-air the moment arrived because I couldn't hear a thing in my earpiece. I knew what was going on (too late) because I could see myself on split screen out of the corner of my eye. They cut to news and when it all got sorted out, my time was cut in half. Lucky viewing public.

Two hours later, on my second hit, more audio troubles. The sound check from the booth was, "Can you hear me Bertha?" -- Ms. Coombs was doing the hit before me, and she was already at the desk with Ms. Brewer. I had the wrong pod. Sound man fumbles around and sorts it out seemingly with seconds to spare. If only.

The California wildfires were getting much worse and coverage of the disaster was extended, as it should have been, so the very thought of talking happily about what a techno-geeky-web-social-network-savvy guy the president-elect is seemed ... out of place.

And -- oh yeah -- the G20 summit was in progress and at the exact moment I was supposed to go on President Bush decided to give an update -- cut to the prez live. By the time he was done I had been in the flashcam seat for about 30 minutes, straining not to move a muscle lest some kind of John Edwards moment be captured.

I did some doodling on post-it notes left on the table. I took out my iPhone and sent some Tweets. About two minutes before I actually did go on my daughter called me, and I had to tell her I it wasn't a good time to talk. Surreal.

No clips of either hit online yet. My money's on there won't be. But if Wired ever sends me back out to do media I'll be doing a lot this: "Hi there! I'm John Abell from Wired!" So, watch out pages and security people and candy stand guy.

A Tribute to Greatness

2008-11-11T10:06:00.002-05:00

“Great” is one of those words that we simply use too often. Like the phrases some Oxford people think we have all heard enough, loose usage has devalued it into a pejorative, turning "great" into a lesser compliment than the equally diluted "awesome."

I have a soft spot for greatness. It is the genuine weakness that a parent has for a child or any one of us for a savior. I will spare myself further humiliation by mentioning no objects of my admiration. Except for one.

A few months ago a great man, friend and colleague died. David Mitchell and I collaborated in a world that had yet to coin the phrase “virtual meeting." In my 26 years at Reuters, I never met him or even saw a picture of him.

That is, until someone else I have never met and do not even know provided me with a happy snap of Mitchell in 1976, three years before our first encounter.

Last June I wrote a remembrance of Mitchell on a Reuters alumni site, and repost it here in a slightly different form (with apologies to Fred Gray, mentor and another great man) and the image, which helps to complete the picture.

David Mitchell, who with Tom Guinan and Fred Gray created, deployed and maintained the desktop editing system still in use in Reuters America and elsewhere, has died. Word from a mutual colleague is that Mitchell passed away a few weeks ago. I have no other details, but would welcome hearing anything about this great man.

Mitchell and his cohorts were the Reuters equivalents of the Internet Gray Beards: they practically invented everything that US journalists use to write and edit stories, and they decided on concepts and workflows and interfaces that seem to this day as the only way to do it.

David was one of the first technical people I encountered as a young pre-journalist; when I was a news dictationist, entering copy phoned in live from correspondents, there were endless formatting questions (agate, anyone?) as vexing then as even in more recent days. Mitchell had tremendous patience and a sense of humor which made it possible to for me to battle through one pain barrier after another.

Later on, when I needed detailed system information to create third-party applications that leveraged our quirky editorial mainframe and user interface it was Mitchell again who unlocked secrets and affirmed crazy ideas that just might work. In failing health even 15 years ago, he was always available and always utterly fluent in every matter, however obscure and unintuitive, that I presented to him.

It is not an exaggeration to say the crucial early successes Reuters New Media had creating programmatic desktop publishing solutions -- the core functionalities that powered real-time multimedia Internet news years ahead of the competition -- was possible only because neophyte dreamers were able to stand on his shoulders.

Voting.

2008-11-04T16:41:00.002-05:00

Voting Machine
Originally uploaded by John C Abell

Voting today was the easiest experience I've ever had: no lines, no poll watchers, lots of friendly volunteers. (Also, no free coffee or "I voted!" stickers, but you can't have it all.)

Our district is sparsely populated; we are told that there are 800 registered voters here in the 11th district of Westchester County, where we have lived for only a few weeks. About 500 is the most any have ever turned out to vote, they tell us; I ask if they expect to break that record today, and I get forceful, pronounced, silent nods.

Another reason why it was so easy? The voting machine was a fine beast of a thing, a relic from a simpler time when machines did the work that circuit and main boards are expected to now, with disputable success. Some solutions are better mechanical than electronic, I believe, and this is one of those areas (also, try digging a ditch with a computer).

The machine's caretaker was delighted to explain exactly how it worked. After his proud recitation I asked I could use a butterfly ballot instead. He declared his polling place a hanging-chad-free zone, and laughed.

The picture on this post shows the clearly-marked rows of levers, an at-a-glance view of one's entire voting intentions, leaving nothing to doubt. I have used touch screens, punch cards and ballots that had to be marked with a pencil -- never a paper ballot, though, as we still see in some showy Third World photo ops.

This majestic machine, complete with lever-controlled curtain, filled me with a confidence I have never had before as a voter. It was sturdy, most becoming for the enormous civic duty it enables.

I am going to brag on myself, as a certain Chappaqua neighbor has been known to say: the picture on this post got plucked for use on the flickr blog in a piece about election day.

And for a great read on the enthusiasm we should all have when we vote, read this essay by Nicole Spiridakis.

Now Would Be a Good Time to Rob the Place

2008-11-03T19:05:00.002-05:00

Through a series of events -- some personal, some professional, some opportunistic -- the bureau will be empty tommorow, with all of us scattered about takin' care of business remotely.

It's no big deal; our brosephs over at Ars Technica don't even have an office. Their newsroom is an IRC channel, which is much cooler than we will ever be. We do all have iPhones now, however, and there is serious talk about all us having beards, too, which would be tough on Meghan.

It sort of all started with that video by CEOs telling people not to work for an hour and vote. I passed on doing a story about it because most states (or all) require employers to give their workers time off to vote, so, thanks for nothing. And why give Trump more air time.

More to the point, most people don't live near where they work, so having an hour off to vote only makes sense if you come to work late or leave early. And Chris said he'd need six hours to vote, and that pretty much kills the day.

So we will work and vote and get'r done away from base camp. Btw, there isn't much worth stealing, though the reddit bobble heads are pretty nifty.

Shred for the Lord

2008-11-03T08:22:00.005-05:00

We don't do a lot of gadget-type stuff out of the wired.com bureau in New York. Lately it's starting to show.

Eliot Van Buskirk, who edits our music blog, Listening Post, has had a toy on his desk for weeks. "Guitar Praise" promises to let you "Strap on the guitar and play along with your favorite bands -- tobyMac, Skillet, Stellar Kart, Newsboys -- and more."

Yes, this is "Guitar Hero" for the devote. We can't wait (appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) to fire it up and experience the "Unparalleled Game Play" which includes:

Onscreen lyrics emphasize Christian themes (which makes perfect sense), and
Power duel mode sends surprises to mess with your opponent's play (which sounds downright unChristian to me)

This thing has become the Christmas gift you don't want but can't bring yourself to tell mom you'll never play with ever and would die if your friends found out you had one. But the truth is that, er, more pressing news has prevented Eliot from making much progress on this story which will probably write itself (no offense, dude).

Eliot finally got around to opening "Guitar Praise" about two weeks after it arrived and, a week after that, finally found a free moment last Friday to start shredding for the lord.

Thing needs batteries. Battery compartment held down by screws. We don't have a screwdriver. Yes, we are pathetic.

I Couldn't Be Less Proud

2008-11-02T20:19:00.004-05:00

A couple of years before I was axed at Reuters in a reorganization putsch our very savvy Editor in Chief was asked a long question at one of those town-hall-like meetings with the staff I can't imagine any senior manager looks forward to. The gist was, what do we have to be happy about, what with all the cuts and lack of optimism. His answer was brief: "Be happy you have a job."

The questioner (one of my direct reports) and I, and our four other colleagues didn't appreciate how much we should have taken that particular advice to heart. After all, we were the golden children whose product had unbelievable margins well after the internet news contraction: we were the innovators, the go-to trusted team.

It can happen to anybody.

It's happening now, again, in Silicon V/Alley, as VCs keep their powder dry in an industry where nurturing the possible is still a lengthy and expensive proposition.

We are keeping track of this, in a horse-race sort of way, with the wired.com tech layoff tracker. It's mainly by the numbers but I'm hoping the comments give us all a sense of what is going on out there in startup land, rather than just tossing numbers around. Let me tell you -- that never tells the whole story.

Hello, I Must Be Going

2008-11-02T13:02:00.005-05:00

The careful reader (you two know who you are) have probably noticed a couple of things: this blog looks a little different, and I haven't been posting much lately.

Let's tackle the easy one first: I meant to change the look, but did not do so an orderly fashion by, you know, saving templates and boring stuff like that. So there are design elements in this off-the-shelf template which I will probably change, because I can't leave well enough alone. But the idea is to get back to basics and shake off all the load-heavy eye candy crap.

The tougher one: I used to tease my good friend Katie King about not blogging. I thought it was especially funny that she didn't blog because she a) taught her GWU journalism students that they had an obligation to blog, and b) because she was also a corporate consultant whose mission was to evangelize to her clients on the need to ... blog.

My goads were unfair (the best ones are). She was working, hard, and I wasn't, at all. I needed to to keep my name out there and my "skills" sharp but, more importantly, I had the time.

Free time is shorter these days as I am no longer a burden on society, so blogging takes a back seat to nearly everything. But something else has changed too, in this age of Twitter: we have rediscovered that short can be more compelling as long, that brevity breeds clarity, and that if you want to be heard, whisper.

I should have known this, as a old hand at various wire-service positions which required short, concise and accurate headlines, alerts and summaries. But that was the dog wagging the tail: technology mostly dictated that this content had to be small. With micro-blogging, the tail is now in charge, and correct on the merits.

Do I believe that blogging has become passe? Too simple. New media seldom if never kills the old. But new media do fill unexpected demands. Twitter won't die simply because we need it, even though we didn't have it even a couple of years ago, and even if they don't have one of them fancy business models.

I read blogs, too many for business, and too few for pleasure. My two friends (there's that number again, Sherlock) are among my must reads: Nicole Spridakis has been blogging for years and never fails to transport me -- armed with a recipe, a keen eye, and a way with words -- to some place I'd like to be. Now, she is apparently trying to kill herself by taking part in NaBloPoMo, which is all about getting people to blog more. I say, in her case, you can't have too much of a good thing.

Samer Farha has take up blogging, a development for which I can't take credit but which I thought was way overdue. The spark was a 61-day trip which began with work at the Bejing Olympics -- but who cares what it took: He's back in the game.

My blog won't be much about politics and media anymore, I suppose, or at least so exclusively about those things which still endlessly fascinate me (that's why God invented Twitter). And there will be less to love.

But, my friends, do as I say -- not as I do. I still have lots of time to read on my loooong commute, and I am counting on you.

Print's Advantage Over Digital (Really -- It Has One)

2008-09-12T18:06:00.001-04:00

I was on a panel the other day, subject of "The Future of Journalism" (yeah, I know, that narrows it down to about 72 panel discussions in New York City this week alone) and the conversation drifted as it almost certainly did at the other 71 to why there will always be a demand for magazines, books and even newspapers, when all are available digitally.

Read the entire Epicenter Blog post here.

Yahoo Give Carl Icahn +2 Invite: Your Table is Ready

2008-07-21T09:58:00.002-04:00

Carl Icahn doesn't have to storm the gate after all -- he's been invited into the big house. Is Yahoo letting a fox into the chicken coop? Is this all about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer?

Or ... has Yahoo effectively inoculated itself against unpredictable sturm und drang by throwing Icahn and his 5% stake a bone?

Read the entire Epicenter Blog post here.

Yahoo: We Want You, We Want You Not

2008-07-18T10:30:00.000-04:00

Alot of propaganda is thrown around in ugly proxy wars, most of which can be safely ignored. Some of us can't afford to avert our eyes, and every once in a while we see some genuine comedy in them thar missives, like today's SEC filing by Yahoo.

Read the entire Epicenter Blog post here.

My Excellent MSNBC Adventure

2008-07-14T09:48:00.007-04:00

I did a couple of appearances on MSNBC Saturday morning -- I was meant to do three, but the car they sent for me (I love saying that) was late. The subject was Friday's release of the iPhone 3G, which required me getting an iPhone 3G, which took more than six hours and which I chronicled on Twitter.

The talking head thing was all new to me, but the experience is not unfamiliar to the smallish crowd of local regulars: you are well dressed only from the waist up (one woman actually wore shorts) and you sit in the green room chatting amiably with each other, including your on-air adversary if you have one.

Every once in a while somebody comes in and says, "You're up" and you are led to a sound-proof room with a chair and a table and a light in your face (think: film noir police station interrogations). There is a camera pointed at your face, you are told by the control room the name of the person whom you will greet in the next few seconds as if you are old buds and then you answer questions posed by her as she anchors in the New York studio.

In the Green Room before and after the "hits" I talked politics (and the iPhone) with Peter Fenn, who had an intriguing, off-the-record theory on why Jim Webb took himself out of the Obama Veepstakes. Fenn also said, for the record and with a laugh, that he thought he and Pat Buchanan, his on-air foil for the day, were the only two people in the country who still believed Hillary had a shot at that gig.

I got a quick peek at Buchanan, who showed up with his wife, which is just plain lovely (they live in the nearby power center of McClean). I didn't get even a quick chance to re-introduce myself: I covered Buchanan in his 1992 New Hampshire primary upset for Reuters, which was one of the best reporting experiences I ever had.

For me, it was all very serendipitous, in a Tom Wolfe kind of way. But for the regular hands I'm sure it is all a big bore.

Planet Abell

A Christmas Story

Lifetime: Now, The Tough Part

Week 35: GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!

Week 33: The 2% Solution

Week 32: Standing and Snacking

Week 32: Tracking, And Back On Track

Week 31: Oy Vey

Saddest Piece of Spam, Ever

Week 30: De-Accentuating 'Meal Events'

Week 29: A Stand Up Guy

Week 28: Up, and Away

Week 27: A New Beginning

Week 26: Losing, and losing.

Spam Gold: Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me

Spam Gold: Dear Escort / Masseuse / Dancer

Week 25: One Of Us

Spam Gold: Vera Desmond — or Desmond Vera?

Week 24: Give A Penny, Take A Penny

In Social Media, Just Like In Presidential Elections, It's About A Choice

Week 23: Losing That Last Five Pounds

Week 22: What Goes Up Must Come Down

Week 21: A New Decade

The Joke Is, I Don't Wear Shoes Unless I Have To

Four Months, and a New 'Decade'

Weeks 16: Habits

﻿﻿﻿The Catch-22 of Google Books

Libya, Obama and the Politics of Rationales

The New York Times Pricing Scheme: Dumb, or Brilliant?

The Web Isn’t Dead: Newspaper Edition

What to Make of the Machine? It's Elementary, My Dear Watson

This Is Not a Christmas Miracle

WikiPiques: Let’s All Just Calm Down

So, Here's A Twitter Question For Ya ...

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Do: ‘Objectivity’ in the Age of the Internet

Congratulations to the New ONA Board!

Running For A Seat On the ONA Board

Politics, Viral Media and the Chilling Effect on Stupid

Facebook Privacy Week (Month, Year ...)

Lost in Translation: Rewrite the Last Page

The Unbearable Lightness of Lost

Reuters Opinion 2.0

Conan Says He Wouldn't Have Pulled a Leno

Twitter Goes Mad (Men)

Tiger's Crucible

Get Unvarnished? Get Real.

Put Up Or Shut Up: iPhone Users May Get A Choice Soon

Web Immoblization Hack is a Tech Non-Starter

Facebook And Geo-Privacy Concerns

Goodnight, And Good Luck, Jay Leno

John Edwards, Worst Person in the World

Journalist, Editor, Ombudsman Deborah Howell Dies At 68

What's Wrong With The Magazine Business (Or, Biting The Hand That Feeds Me)

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's ... The Cloud!!

Digital Life with Shelly Palmer

Fake AP Stylebook Steers You Completely Wrong — With Style

Turning Audiences Into Advocates

Wired-o-Nomics: Is E-Mail Dead, Dying or Here to Stay?

A Milestone for Facebook

A Brief Remembrance of Ted Kennedy

Social Media Restrictions at Sporting Events?

Social Media Account Security on NBC Nightly News

Big Game Hacking on CNBC

August 17, 2000: Internet Crosses 50-Yard Line in U.S.

Text Etiquette On Today — Or, How I Survived 5 Minutes Without My iPhone

Ode to Noodle Soup

Twitter TMI

Contessa Brewer: All is Forgiven

Financial Times iPhone App Worse Than Trialware

I Want My Mmmmm ... TV

Three Cheers for the Lori Drew Acquittal, But Not for Drew

We Drive the BMW Mini E

Facebook, shmacebook: What’s the next great thing?

Waiting for Steve

Things Aren't Tough All Over: Hedge Fund Elites Reap Billions in '08

Test Ride: Even in New York, the Aptera Stops Traffic

Media Death March: Seattle P-I Stops Printing, Goes All-In Online

What's Your Name Again, Fella?

Baby, You Can Drive My Carr

Talkin' Webcams on MSNBC

The Catch-22 of Google Books