Archive for the 'Publications' category
A Podcast Patent
July 30, 2009 9:15 amAP’s Boneheaded Move
July 25, 2009 11:57 amIt’s not often that you get to watch a company miss the point so completely, but AP has decided that the web doesn’t matter. Their president is quoted in a New York Times article as saying that a basic link is “unpaid use” that they’ll crack down on. I first found out about this from Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit, and it seems almost too stupid to be true. Next up, I’m sure, is a legal attack on any television or radio talking head who mentions that the AP is covering a story without shipping them a check, as well. (In truth, I suspect that almost anyone with access to a broadcast mic or camera is working for an organization with an agreement in place to use AP stories, but the point remains.)
I agree that repackaging stories wholesale is bad, and should be punished. It’s also already against the law. The idea that someone driving traffic your way should pay for the privilege is so wrong-headed as to be mind-boggling. I know that publishers are rather desperately casting about for new revenue streams, but we’ve seen that rampant stupidity didn’t serve them well through the 90s and early years of this decade — it seems unlikely that idiocy will turn out to be a winning strategy now.
For the record, if you’d like to quote from any of my posts in order to link back to this site, feel free. Let me know if I can make it easier. At least I understand how the web works — unlike some of the highly-paid executives in my industry.
Back in the Freelance Saddle…
May 29, 2009 8:39 pmThe first articles of my renewed freelance career are up at InfoWorld. In fairness, the bulk of the work for these was done while I was on staff, but it’s nice to see them published, especially since my friend and collaborator Brian Chee spent such an incredible amount of time working on the testing procedures and programming. We’re proud of the results, and look forward to continuing the testing regimen with new products in the near future.
The project was a review of universal threat managers (UTMs) appropriate for branch-office deployment. UTMs are like firewalls on steroids, responding to and protecting against a much wider variety of threats than can be handled by the classic firewall.
The review is in multiple parts. First we introduce the cast of UTMs, then describe the testing regimen we developed for UTMs. Next, we move on to a look at the test equipment from Ixia and Mu Dynamics that we used to run the tests. Finally we come to the UTMs themselves, with separate write-ups on the products from Astaro, SonicWall, WatchGuard, and ZyXel. Who won? Well, you’ll just have to go read the review to find out, now. Enjoy!
Looking for me this week?
May 18, 2009 5:54 pmBlogs and Social Networks…
April 25, 2009 7:11 amA Busy Blogging Time
April 20, 2009 12:12 amNew Post and Article
April 9, 2009 10:32 amMy first small article as a returning freelance writer is up. It’s good to have something “in print” again, but it’s obvious (to me) that I’m still in the process of getting my mind’s muscles back in shape. The physical side of things seems to be heading in the right direction…I just hope the mental side can keep up. I suppose there’s something to be said for being healthy yet “not the sharpest tool in the shed,” but I don’t want to be the one saying it.
Anyway, feel free to go take a look at the article on small business security and insider threats. There’s also a new blog post on netbooks and network infrastructure up at the Inside Interop blog. Let me know what you think about each of these — I’m looking for feedback on how my writing looks these days.
Keep your eyes open for a new series of podcasts coming soon. One of my classes at UF has a project requirement for podcasts and I thought that “learning about cardiac rehabilitation and health” might be a good topic, since I’ve been giving it more than a little thought lately. My only real question is whether to do them as audio or video podcasts — if you feel strongly about it one way or the other, let me know.
That’s it for now…more later.
Two Takes on the Future of Newspapers
February 1, 2008 1:52 pmThere’s no question that the business of newspapers (while never easy) has become particularly difficult in the last decade. The questions come over the reasons for the difficulty and the best response to the troubles in the industry. This week we’ve seen two different responses — one that I think could be helpful as we try to move forward, and one that pretty well encapsulates the attitudes that are leading us deeper into troubled times.
Jon Talton has written a serious and meaningful indictment of newspaper management in the current era. I saw many of the same problems he discusses, though mine were seen at magazines rather than newspapers. In too many cases, tech-phobic managers tried to block the technological forces of change rather than use them to deliver great content to the readers. Even more damning, too many publishers used a decline in readership as an excuse to abandon the existing reader base, rather than trying to build on reader loyalty to find new ways to grow.
The kind of inward-looking, defensive attitudes that Talton rails against are on display in Roy Peter Clark’s Poynter column on why the readers are wrong. I have listened to fellow journalists run through the arguments that Clark makes, and every one rings hollow, blaming our readers for not properly understanding our purity and greatness when we are the ones who claim to be professional communicators. If the public in large numbers say that they see bias in our coverage, then the proper response isn’t to claim that the majority of the population is unable to properly read for meaning, but to apply the same sort of rigorous scrutiny to our pages that we claim to apply to government, business, sports, and the other societal structures that we cover.
I firmly believe that the public isn’t falling away from newspapers because they no longer read, but because we’re no longer giving them stories that they want and need to read. Our readers aren’t fixated on celebrity twaddle because they’re shallow, but because we as an industry have offered them little else. Let’s stop pretending that our highest calling as journalists involves looking back at a "Golden Era" of limited competition for reader attention. Society needs the stories we’re able to tell, and deserves a press that looks at itself as honestly as we claim to look at them.
