Boggling

the future of the phone? a cost effective system that projects information about what surrounds you over objects' surfaces, from MIT Labs. I'm not sure about the 'human' aspect of this, at the slightest making users look like "dorks" (although I'm sure that will be addressed before a public launch). I mean, do I want to light up with keywords on my shirt about my relationship with the person I'm meeting? And they use an example of shopping in a supermarket and using the app to recommend which product best suits a persons' preference. However in the future will we be shopping still in supermarkets? I hope so, and if so, this app will save that time I spend reading the fine print on products to check they're ie fair trade ; organic ; environmentally safe ; local etc. But it's the future:

The video gets interesting at 3.10 minute, and her last sentence:

Funding for investigative journalism

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund, a nonprofit fund launched recently, will produce a wide-range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers. Some excerpts and my commentary below.

As the newspaper industry continues to contract, one of the most commonly voiced fears is that serious investigative journalism will be among the victims. It is high cost and low quantity, however high quality. Yet in the financial recession it is important to promote investigative journalism. As a citizen I want to know the specifics of why particular companies have failed. For example I want someone to compare the increases in executive remuneration as a ratio of company performance (eg. revenues), across all companies over, say, 5 years. And investigative journalists are qualified to not only do this, but also to maintain an appropriate level of professional behavior, and not turn it into a witch hunt for headlines.

The HuffFund will attempt to change this. It will also provide new opportunities for seasoned journalists who have been laid off or forced into early retirement. Picture a large pool of reporters -- some on staff, and many freelancers -- proposing stories and also receiving assignments from Investigative Fund editors.

I presume the editors are those who pay the fund? hmmmmm........ Even though it has Jay Rosen as a partner, I'm not sure if this points the way to the future of investigative journalism. It may turn into tokenism. But still I've emailed them my idea - see what happens.....

why advertising is failing on the internet

Recent attempts to promote an online survey via advertising on media websites have not generated the hits I had anticipated. It was solely promoted online. From that experience I'm inclined to agree with Prof. Eric Clemons, who writes "The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed." Well ummm, I'm not sure that applies to the great survey I've been trying to promote.... but perhaps there needs to be a return to advertising as an art form, relationship building via conversations, or some other approach. It's not about transplanting a normal ad into the digital realm.

More here: Why advertising is failing on the internet

But having said that, isn't the ad below just... swell? And like, girls need to know that all boys seek out girls who wear Seventeen lipstick....

what I am missing in iTunes

the bass knob..... the song I'm listening to needs more bass.....

netbooks hype

I find the hype about netbooks mystifying when the Acer tablet has all such features (touch screen, swivel screen, grunt, tiny-ish size etc) and was around 9 years ago..... and I'm currently dusting mine off to compare it with the new netbooks...

looking for positives in the global financial crisis

one positive is that it will hasten change. Out of drives for efficiency allegedly comes innovation.

Take this comment:

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

Many industry behemoths are now having to face their reality because the retraction in consumer spend is highlighting those companies with old business models that need to change but so far have dragged their feet.

it's the weekend!

thought of the day while I'm baking a pie for dinner

I think the 'global financial crisis' spells the end of capitalism, just as a few years ago we saw the so-called end of communism.

according to last.fm I've listened to this song 107 times in the last 6 months and watching this YouTube I can now see why:

reading Don Walker

From the legendary songwriter of Cold Chisel...

This extraordinary memoir begins with Don Walker’s early life in rural Australia and goes up to the late ’80s. In mesmerising prose, Don Walker writes of growing up in northern New South Wales, gigging in St. Kilda, hitchhiking through rural Australia, playing for the Hells Angels in Broadford, Victoria, and travelling through Paris, Russia and Central Europe.

Walker evokes childhood and youth, wild times in the ’70s, life on the road and in Kings Cross, music-making and much more. Shots is a stunningly original book, a set of word pictures – “shots” – that conjure up the lowlife and backroads of Australia.

Don Walker is one of Australia’s leading songwriters – first with Cold Chisel and now as a solo performer and with Tex, Don & Charlie. This is his first book.