Monthly Archives: December 2004

I know a lot of bloggers don’t like newspaper registration schemes, but for reasons that will be obvious to some, I support them.

However, I have just run across the worst, most onerous registration scheme yet devised by any newspaper. I registered just to see how bad it was. It’s at TheDay.com, which I guess is a small paper in Rhode Island. There are SEVEN screens of registration forms with every conceivable registration question. And then … and then … before you can open a link, you MUST confirm your registration by going through three more screens of forms and then clicking a link in an e-mail.

Standard practice is to have one registration screen and if e-mail confirmation is required, at least give the new registrant 30 days to respond.

I also find this wacky: Registration is only required for stories that are more than 48 hours old. In other words, the readers they should most care about registering, meaning their local readers who probably check the site daily, DON’T HAVE TO REGISTER? Only blogging schmucks like me, who are out of market and might look at the site only once in a lifetime, must register.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here. I’m only going off of what I saw. Continue reading →

This article by Dan Kennedy on podcasting is a good overview of the technology and the movement (via Instapundit).

Prescient observation from Mark Glaser:

Mark Glaser, a columnist for the Online Journalism Review, recently wrote a piece about podcasting in which he noted that four million iPods have been sold — but that 650 million cell phones would be purchased in 2004 alone. If the Internet were everywhere, and if every cell phone were equipped to tap into the ’Net, then, overnight, podcasts would have a vastly greater potential reach than they do today.

Last week Glaser, who’s based in San Francisco, told me that he thinks the next step is for manufacturers to equip MP3 players with built-in Internet access — “a no-brainer,” as he put it, since it would eliminate the need for a computer to download shows. To Glaser, podcasting, like satellite radio, is drawing people away from traditional broadcast radio because it gives them choices they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Over the next five to ten years, the media landscape is going to change tremendously. The ubiquitous internet is going to evolve the world toward a fragmented media where personalized content is the norm. This is a tremendous challenge for media companies, but I think some media companies are going to see this as an opportunity, not a threat. Not all of this micro-media content will be created by digital pamphleteers. Some of it will be created by forward thinking media companies. I’ve always believed that quality is what sells. Quality content will raise to the top, regardless of its origin — be it basement tape talk shows or big media news bytes — in a democratized media world, listeners and viewers will pick and choose the shows (and formats) that best meet their needs. Continue reading →

Deadwood returns with re-runs Jan. 3. All new episodes March 6. Continue reading →

If you’re interested in progressive Muslims on the Web, here’s a good place to start. There’s also a Muslim blog called City of Brass that is joining forces with Alt.Muslim to create Islamic blogosphere awards. Continue reading →

XM Radio was developed by people who love music. It is programed by music lovers of the first order. Music fans should love XM Radio.

I now know this about XM Radio because I got my wife XM for Christmas.

Fortunately, we’re both music lovers and XM hits the spot.

We got an ear full of XM driving to and from San Diego. We listened XM 12 (XCountry), XM 13 (Hank’s Place), XM 40 (Deep Tracks), XM 43 (XM U, or “what’s next”), XM 44 (Fred, which strikes me mostly as the new wave/punk of my late teens and early twenties), XM 53 (Fungus, and is mostly the brand of punk I enjoy), and all of the decades channels (there isn’t a decade of music that both my wife and I don’t find something we enjoy — in fact, since XM only goes back to the 40s, it doesn’t go back far enough for us. We’ll take the 20s and 30s, too.) We also made stops at every other spot on the XM dial, even doing a little Larry Elder, CNN, MSNBC and Los Angeles traffic.

What I like most about XM is that the people programming these stations know there music. They haven’t just stuck a bunch of CDs in a multi-disk changer and hit shuffle (which seems to be how the digital stations on DirecTV are programmed). There are real people picking quality songs, and not just the hits, but songs you haven’t heard in years or maybe never heard. And for hard core music fans like me and my wife, finding an Ernest Tubb or Wynn Stewart song we haven’t heard is an accomplishment.

Interesting example (interesting to me at least) driving home this evening, I heard for the first time Jan Howard’s “Evil on Your Mind,” which is a song I had just been reading about. It’s a woman’s take on cheating, but before the man had actually done the cheating. And I thought, it might be interesting to write a song from a man’s perspective before the cheating had been consummated.

A couple of hours later over on XCountry, the DJ cued up Todd Snider‘s “Trouble,” with its chorus of “A woman like you walks in a place like this/You can almost hear the promises break,” and I knew for a fact what I already suspected — the song had already been written.

Speaking of DJs — another cool aspect of XM are the DJs. DJs’s on XM? Doesn’t that get in the way of the music? Well, a good DJ does a couple of things — first, he doesn’t get in the way of the music. In fact, he sometimes adds a little context or enlightenment. Second, somebody talkin’ at ya helps break the music up. Believe it or not, an endless stream of music can get a little monotonous. It’s nice to know there’s a real person picking out the songs. But the nice touch from XM is that all of the DJs are station appropriate. On the ’60s channel, for example, you’ll be reminded of the fast-talkin’ boss-DJs of AM’s salad days.

The current line up for XM means that just about every taste in music is represented. I wish there were a rockabilly station, and maybe jump blues, and something that is strictly swing would be nice. But at this stage of my XM listening, my needs are satisfied, and I know my wife’s will be, too. In fact, I’m so impressed with XM that next month, or the next, I’ll get XM for myself.

My one quibble with XM really has more to do with our set up for XM than a failing of the service itself.

Originally, XM was supposed to come with my wife’s Toyota Scion. The dealership ASSURED us repeatedly when we bought the car that all we needed to do to get XM was the buy the service for $10 per month. I didn’t do it right away for various reasons, and when I went to give it a try, I learned (with great difficulty and poor customer service from Ventura Toyota) that we had to sink an additional $300 into the Scion to get XM. I wasn’t about to pay $300 for XM, so while Ventura Toyota lost a customer, my wife was without XM.

What I bought for Billie was an XM car kit for $119, which included the receiver, a cassette adaptor and an FM modulator. Since neither of our cars have cassette decks, we were counting on the FM modulator.

The modulator is easy enough to use. You just have to find a free frequency and then flick a switch or two to tune the modulator to that frequency. It’s finding a open frequency (even with eight to choose from) that is the pain in the ass, especially while driving through metropolitan areas like Los Angeles or San Diego. It’s hard to go as much as 20 miles without starting a new quest for an open frequency. And for a large portion of our trip though LA, we couldn’t find an completely open frequency and had to settle for a bit of static.

Otherwise, the XM signal is just as crisp and clear as XM advertises. When tuned right, XM is better than CD quality.

I also bought Billie the home adaptor kit. It works on the office stereo, which is fine, but on the living room stereo we get a deep, rumbling hum. I’m guessing it’s a ground problem, but supposedly my fancy tuner/receiver shouldn’t need to be grounded, so I’m not sure what to do. I’m open to suggestions if you have any.

One additional benefit of XM: It’s the radio network that DOESN’T HAVE Howard Stern on it. Continue reading →

Associated Press is solidifying its policy on anonymous sources:

One of the lengthiest parts of the new guidelines relates to anonymous sources, stating they can only be used if the material is informational, not opinion or speculation; with approval of a news manager; and if the manager knows the source’s identity.

The policy also would require that such sources be identified as specifically as possible, not simply as “a source,” and may not be cited elsewhere in the story as someone who declined comment. All anonymously sourced stories must also carry a byline, according to the policy.

The new ethics code also defines “on the record” as information used with no restrictions and quoting the source by name; “off the record” as information not used for publication; and “background” as information that can be published with specific conditions set by both parties.

This is great for AP. Now if only the NYT, WaPo, etc. would get their acts together and craft a policy equally as strict, if not more stringent.

The most important clarification is that AP will restrict (if they following their own guidelines) to informational material. One of my pet peeves, as longtime readers know, is anonymous sources used for speculation and conjecture. Continue reading →