thecyberbrains.com

I got busted the other day. I logged on my blog and noticed something was different. The garage sale picture I used had a green background all of a sudden. I thought this was odd because I just linked to it from another site, but then I looked more closely. Turns out, the picture also had a message just for me.

I'm a lazy blogger. I'm stealing bandwidth from bestbuffalohomes.com.

It was a shock to get called out like that. I really hadn't thought I was doing anything wrong, let alone stealing. But I took the link to the picture out of the post just to make sure.

The incident has made me question my policy of borrowing pictures from other sites. The only reason I do it is to spice up my pages, and if I learned anything from my newspaper design experience, it's the difference a good picture can make. But it has also made me wonder about the nature of ownership on the Internet, and what rules there ought to be.

The funniest thing to me about the rebuke wasn't that I was stealing the picture. I'm sure it was just a stock photo anyway that I could have downloaded for free if I had taken the time. (That's probably why he called me "lazy".)

The most precious commodity on the Internet might be bandwidth. This probably isn't a great analogy because I'm not much of a network administrator, but bandwidth refers to the size of the pipe you have chosen to control the flow of information in and out of your site. Most of us don't have to worry about it. We can make due with whatever little pipe our hosting provider gives us. My Bluehost site even advertises unlimited bandwidth, although I hear the admins ask you to upgrade when you start getting thousands of hits a day.

But larger organizations need more dataflow and, to extend the metaphor to its most absurd level, they zealously guard their pipes from encroaching roots or clogs. I guess that makes me a big wad of toilet paper then.

Honestly, most of the time, someone is not going to mind if you link to a picture or post on another blog. A lot of times it will drive some traffic to the site. But the lesson I gleaned from this, and something I'm going to do better, is askfor permission first. It's really the neighborly thing to do, even on the Internet where you'll probably never see your neighbor face-to-face. So thanks for the lesson, Best Buffalo Homes, and here's to keeping your bandwidth flowing!

I got busted the other day. I logged on my blog and noticed something was different. The garage sale picture I used had a green background all of a sudden. I thought this was odd because I just linked to it from another site, but then I looked more closely. Turns out, the picture also had a message just for me.

I'm a lazy blogger. I'm stealing bandwidth from bestbuffalohomes.com.

It was a shock to get called out like that. I really hadn't thought I was doing anything wrong, let alone stealing. But I took the link to the picture out of the post just to make sure.

The incident has made me question my policy of borrowing pictures from other sites. The only reason I do it is to spice up my pages, and if I learned anything from my newspaper design experience, it's the difference a good picture can make. But it has also made me wonder about the nature of ownership on the Internet, and what rules there ought to be.

The funniest thing to me about the rebuke wasn't that I was stealing the picture. I'm sure it was just a stock photo anyway that I could have downloaded for free if I had taken the time. (That's probably why he called me "lazy".)

The most precious commodity on the Internet might be bandwidth. This probably isn't a great analogy because I'm not much of a network administrator, but bandwidth refers to the size of the pipe you have chosen to control the flow of information in and out of your site. Most of us don't have to worry about it. We can make due with whatever little pipe our hosting provider gives us. My Bluehost site even advertises unlimited bandwidth, although I hear the admins ask you to upgrade when you start getting thousands of hits a day.

But larger organizations need more dataflow and, to extend the metaphor to its most absurd level, they zealously guard their pipes from encroaching roots or clogs. I guess that makes me a big wad of toilet paper then.

Honestly, most of the time, someone is not going to mind if you link to a picture or post on another blog. A lot of times it will drive some traffic to the site. But the lesson I gleaned from this, and something I'm going to do better, is askfor permission first. It's really the neighborly thing to do, even on the Internet where you'll probably never see your neighbor face-to-face. So thanks for the lesson, Best Buffalo Homes, and here's to keeping your bandwidth flowing!

I'm not sure if I can get IRB approval for this on short notice, but I'm thinking of running a little local experiment here Saturday. I've advertised my garage sale in the local newspaper (The Columbia Daily Tribune) and on Craigslist and a local Yahoo! groups - KwikSwapColumbiaMO. I'm going to hand everyone that visits a short survey that asks them where they learned about the sale. Then I connect their choice with how much they spent and keep track of it all. By comparing the groups (Newspaper, Craigslist, KwikSwap, and other) I will statistically suggest which method will predict sales. I'm a genius! I wonder if I can add this to my dissertation proposal.

Ok, I'm kidding of course (although the more I read this over, the more it sounds like a good idea. What a geek I've become!) But I think I will try to ask some people casually because I'm curious about which method will attract the most people. If I were really bold, I wouldn't have bothered with the Tribune at all and just counted on the Internet to drive traffic, but I'm a wimp and I still have a fair share of ink in my veins. However, my hypothesis is that the Web sites will account for more visitors than the newspaper. At least that's what I've heard anecdotally.

It makes sense too because Craiglist has really eaten newspaper's lunch in the classified business. The Yahoo! group theoretically gives me a captive and motivated audience because you have to join the group to see the listings. I don't think this is possible without the Web. Plus the Internet offers a wealth of other features that a newspaper doesn't such as an easy way to create a map to all sales. If I were really ambitious I could have even linked items in my description to images and reviews.

But I didn't because all I really care about is getting rid of stuff so we don't have to move it, and I think I have some things people can use. I can't help asking the questions and wondering if this is one of those moments when I need to test some of my wacky Internet ideas.

Now to be fair, the Tribune did give me a free Garage Sale Starter Kit with a couple of signs and some pricing stickers, I think. I don't remember and I don't really care. Who needs low tech signs when I can draw on the power of the 'Net to offload my stuff?

It seems an odd thing for one of the grand old ladies of journalism to do, but I'm glad the Washington Post isn't taking itself quite so seriously all the time. And even though the contest itself is decidedly low-tech, I think it serves as an example of how to reach out to your audience and involve them in the Internet age.

For the third year in a row, the Washington Post has sponsored a Peeps diorama contest. I nearly missed the class I had to teach today because I got lost in all the entries. I'm was surprised and impressed at the level of detail in many of the displays, and I marveled at the creativity. I was also heartened that so many of the entries had news themes. It says a lot for Washington Post readers, and it demonstrates that people are not just reading the news. They are digesting it and incorporating it into their lives.

I wish I could feature individual dioramas here, but I can't because the Post has put them all in one Flash file. But take a minute and scroll through to find an interview with Michael Peeps, I mean Phelps. It's a nice contrast of his glory and disgrace. There are also much more newsworthy entries, such as this one of green bunnies waterboarding pink bunnies at Peeptanamo Bay or any of the several dramatic depictions of the historic inauguration, one that recreates Aretha Franklin's hat in explicit detail.

I'm sure people scoffed at the original idea. I'm sure some are still saying this isn't something the Post should be involved in. But I like it, and I think all newspapers, especially national and regional ones, need to reach out to their readers more.

So is anyone planning a trip to Thailand any time soon? If so, I can hook you up with about 13,000 baht . It's the proceeds from another ebay selling experience gone wrong, and I'll tell the story here because it fits within the blog's theme. I guess I just assumed I could overcome all barriers online.

When my MacBook died, I decided to see what I could get for it. The monitor worked great, and the keyboard wasn't missing any keys. I found a good market online, and two bidders got into a bidding war. In the end, it sold for more than I hoped, but there was one catch. The winning bidder was in Thailand.

In my listing I said no international shipping, but ebay didn't stop him from bidding, and I couldn't find any way to legally welch. He also agreed to pay international shipping, and frankly, helepd me make a little bit more money.

The problem was the language barrier. I e-mailed him with directions on how to pay. He e-mailed me back with nonsense. Finally, I understood from his messages he was going to use PaysBuy , the Thai equivalent of PayPal. PayPal's a great service, even if they charge a little too much, so I assumed PaysBuy would be the same, and for the most part, it is. I can use it to buy all kinds of great merchandise. I just can't transfer the money there to my American account.

Frankly, that's my fault. I just assumed too much about how easy it was to transfer money in this digital age. I made the ugly American assumption that everyone online speaks English.

So as great as the Internet is, and how closely it can bring us together, it's not a magic bullet. We still need to complete some transactions face to face, and that's how it always will and should be.

So I think I'm going to buy an overpriced iPod and pay too much to have it shipped to me from Thailand, and in the end, I think I'll finish ahead. I'll trade a broken Macbook for an overpriced iPod any day. I just could have used the cash to fix my deck.

UPDATE (4/14/09): Getting Thai merchants to ship to the States is a bit harder than I thought. Looks like I'm going to be buying a lot of Thai books and music because that's all they'll ship. D'oh!

AP has put out a FAQ about its new initiative to capture revenue from search engines and aggregators. Hopefully my linking to them doesn’t constitute stealing.

Just for fun, I created a tag cloud using their text using Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/):

The one word that jumps out to me is “authoritative” and in context it’s referring to the content that is produced and the fact it should be most visible to people looking for it. They’re trying to protect the value of what they do, obviously, but I can’t help but think this won’t go over well with people who understand that the Internet has leveled that playing field somewhat.

Kos touched on this yesterday when he noted that what the aggregator-haters don’t get is that the Internet is more than a medium for content delivery. Because of social media and the innovative nature of Google’s search algorithm, he noted we have a meritocracy of ideas on the Web where you have to earn the right to call yourself a worthy news source. You can’t just claim to be authoritative and expect the dollars to roll in. Not anymore, at least.

Obviously the role professional journalists play has strong value. Any profession that claims ideals based on vetting and verifying information has worth in this emerging information ecosystem. But words like “authoritative” are a step beyond my own comfort zone because it means making impossible claims that ultimately will come back to bite you when the next Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass get exposed. Truthfully I don’t think selling yourself as the only trustworthy game in town is a smart business plan in the era of information abundance, search, and customization.

Words I’d love to see in this word cloud: Innovative, unique, conversation, value, open, responsive, customize, egalitarian, democratize.

Am I missing any? Do any other words in the image jump out that tells part of the story in this latest push by AP?

There’s been some excellent traffic and discussion on my last post regarding Singleton/AP and Google News. Much of that has been generated through social media (Twitter and links on other blogs), reinforcing a lesson I try to emphasize with my students: Think of social networks, not web sites, as your platform.

Anyhow, read the post and add to the discussion if you like.

I want to pull out one response I have to the comments though because it is pretty salient to the discussion. What happens if all these newspapers go away or put up walls around their content? Will people pay for it? Will the newspapers collapse and take democracy with it?

I think the oft-ballyhooed relationship between newspapers and democracy is overblown. The relationship between news and democracy is huge, but my definition of news is much more broad than that of some (not all) of my colleagues at the Missouri School of Journalism. And I don’t think news needs “saving” at all because that appetite isn’t going away; it does need to evolve and get better.

Markos Moulitsas had a nice post on Daily Kos today that highlighted the Google/AP drama (and linked to me … gracias), but most instructive to me was the opportunity to read through the comments. They were pretty varied, but these are news readers that one one hand understand the potential loss if newspapers were to collapse but on other hand realize that they wouldn’t miss most of the content.

The argument that stood out to me is what would fill the vacuum. I think Len Witt was referring to this earlier today in the comments on my post, but some of the comments on Kos’ post were highly skeptical that citizen journalism could fill the void. Most of this skepticism seems to be based on what citizen journalism is right now.

I’ve written before that the challenge news sites face is information overload, and idea I first borrowed from Matt Thompson. But if all these sites go offline and a vacuum is created, who is to say a citizen site can’t fill the void? Right now most of these sites operate in the overload age, but might they blossom in an age of scarcity?

We don’t know, but my bet is we’d be fine in the long run. It would be terribly shortsighted to think we can extrapolate a future based on what we see now. Humans evolve and adapt to change, and while there might be short-term loss in coverage the long-term good might be better. Less hegemony, less corporate-minded coverage, better methods for reporting, and so forth.

Because the point is that we would have the chance to create something new. Something that journalists and the public and populace can take ownership of together, perhaps. Nobody said a future without newspapers isn’t sad or even a little scary. But I’m more bullish on the future of news than ever, even as all these papers are going down in 2009. And, seriously, the L.A. Times ran a fake news story ad on their front page today … this is what we’re trying to save?

The million-dollar question for an educator is where the jobs will be. My guess is less on editing and more on community editing, where an editor has the dual role of content editing and site promotion, mixed with a bit of community organizing. I love the future for activist journalists who want to use storytelling and community to organize people. Creative folks who have a passion for telling vital stories will find work in this reorganization, or they’ll find a way to make work. Most importantly, we need to be training journalists not to be married to a platform and look for new ways to tell stories, even if it comes in the form of 140 characters.

And yes, I think people will pay for the red meat, with traffic that sells ads or even subscriptions if you are niche enough. It might be a tougher haul for the feature writer or the sports writer unless you are hyperlocal, but Spot.us and the Huffington Post’s fund for investigative reporting give me hope that people still want investigative reporting. They just don’t want to pay subscriptions for bundles full of other news they don’t want.

It was a throw-away line at the end of another sappy Rick Reilly column.

And in a what-should-I-Twitter-about-myself-now? world, why would a young guy be so selfless? "Well, I know what it's like when your parents divorce. It can be hard. Moving. Splitting up from their dad. I wanted to make sure nothing happened to the kids."

But it really got me thinking about Twitter and how I plan to use it. Is tweeting all just self-promotion?

Well, you can be cyncial and site the recent exchanges between Shaquille O'Neal and Mark Cuban that have led to rampart speculation the Mavs will sign or trade for the aging superstar in the off-season as pure narcissism.

Or, and I'll admit here's the part that took some research, you can pull up the Huffington Post's list of the "Best Green Twitter Feeds" as an example of people letting their fingers do the walkign to give back. I'm sure there are lots of others.

But in the end, I think you have to recognize Twitter for what it is. It's a tool - nothing more, nothing less. If you don't want Twitter to be about ego-inflation, then stop making such a big deal of the celebrities who tweet. Add a Tweetfeed of your own that inspires people to do good.

That's what I hope to do. It's hard to let my account die after my class is over, especially now that I have more than 150 followers. A couple of them aren't even students in the class. They are friends and co-workers and even a couple people I respect in the industry.

While my reasons for keeping the account may be self-serving, the ways in which I use it don't have to be.

I’m a huge fan of The Simpsons, there’s no secret about that. One of my favorite clips, which unfortunately I can’t find on YouTube in English, comes from an episode a few years back when Homer decides to start an Internet business because he hears everyone’s making money.

The scene starts with Comic Book Guy surfing the Web for, um, adult photographs and finds the images loading too slow. He spies Homer’s “Internet King” banner ad and wonders if it’s time for an upgrade in Internet connection speed.

Cut to the next scene, with CBG visiting Homer at Homer’s “office” (his house, because, why not?):

Homer: Welcome to the internet my friend, how can I help you?

CBG: I’m interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud internet connection to a one point five megabit fiber-optic T-1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that’s compatible with my token ring ethernet LAN configuration?

Homer: (long pause) Can I have some money now?

As Homer also might say, it’s funny because it’s true. The bit satirizes the get-rich quick era of the Internet (which seems like so long ago), when the business plan came long after the server purchase and Internet connection was set up.

I’ve been thinking about this bit a lot in the past day after reading Dean Singleton’s charged comments about the Associated Press going after aggregators and link-makers like Google for a cut of their ad revenue. They’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore (Singleton actually said this) when it comes to aggregators making money providing indexes full of links to the day’s news. This is an old argument, of course, which says that making money off of headline links is tantamount to stealing.

(facepalm)

Quick full disclosure: I worked for Singleton at two newspapers he has since destroyed, including the once-proud Los Angeles Daily News. He has a reputation for gutting the soul out of newspapers, and his workers don’t call him “Lean Dean” for nothing. Needless to say, I don’t think much of his business acumen.

Anyhow, the journalistic pitchforks have come out, and they’re coming for …. Google? The same Google that drives so much traffic to AP member sites through its Google News search engine, traffic that these publications probably couldn’t get on their own? Some accounts are saying Google delivers 30% of a site’s traffic, sometimes more.

Some pretty smart responses have emerged in the past 24 hours. I loved Jeff Jarvis’ take, which basically says this is a spiteful move for an industry that “blew it” a long time ago. NYU’s Jay Rosen has amassed a lot of other responses to go with his own and it’s worth a read (Updated: I misunderstood the context when I read Rosen’s piece, apparently it was an older reaction to a similar happening. It’s what I get for reading the post and not clicking the links, which would’ve given me more context. What’s amazing is I read it now and it still reads current). And make sure to check out the response from Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Lastly, it bears noting that some of this was predicted back in 2005 by Matt Thompson’s excellent EPIC 2015.

How does this all relate to Homer’s fictional business? Most of what I’m seeing in the blogs makes the valid point that newspaper companies have had a flawed business model that misunderstands the Internet. Here at MU on the MyMissourian team, we called it the “Field Of Dreams Delusion,” which says that if we build web sites the people will come.

And build we did. We built Web structures that mirrored our print product so well that it was an online-and-free duplicate. We ignored the emerging social aspect of Web use and focused on content. We destroyed the notion of paying for content by making it free. We focused on short-term profits and trivialized the news with fluff and stuff at the expense of the red-meat journalism such as investigative reporting, then had the gall to suggest we should charge for this watered-down version of the news.

And now the newspaper industry’s last gasp is to sue Google for driving traffic to their news sites. In other words, the industry doesn’t know how to offer a product people will use or meet the consumer’s needs, but “Can I have some money now?”

No, no. A thousand times no.

There have been suggestions that newspapers revert en masse to a pay model. I think this is a terrible idea. Most of the content they produce is either not worth reading or found elsewhere on the Web. People won’t miss your gardening tips or feature stories on the local pastor enough to pay for it. I’m sorry, they just won’t (as much as I’d like them to).

I get the desire to go after aggregators who are pulling content and making money off of it that goes far beyond fair use. But I don’t get the notion of going after revenue from sites that drive traffic. Google isn’t republishing content from sites like the Kansas City Star, but rather creating index pages with searched content that point to stories about desired topics. They’re making money off of search (i.e. the cost involved with driving traffic to news sites), not the content itself.

These newspapers do not own indexes of information any more than they own the rights to conversations between people that tell others about interesting articles they read. These papers seem to be arguing essentially that they own the rights to their own promotion.

I say good luck with that. The thing about the Web is it has changed the market model of media. Whereas once a newspaper such as the Star competed against local and state competitors, in the online realm you are competing with everyone. The problem is one of visibility, and hiding behind paid content walls or biting the hand that feeds your traffic is not going to solve it.

Schmidt’s advice was worth heeding. Focus on what consumers want and on customization. Innovate. Stop blaming Google for your own mistakes. But the best way, the way out, is also the most painful one. The problem with the market model is that it requires that these companies need to innovate in three months, not one year or three years. Quarterly margins and stockholders demand profits, and innovation takes investment. This is a big reason why Jarvis’ take was so right-on: The time to innovate was 5-10 years ago, when publications could do it incrementally. You can’t do it in three months without a mass selloff on Wall Street.

It seems all sort of basic and quaint, having a business plan before the implementation, but for Singleton and the AP perhaps it’s time to state the obvious. You’re fighting the wrong war.

I fondly remember rushing home from school to watch cartoons. I even got in trouble for cutting through my neighbor's horse pasture so I wouldn't miss the first half of RoboTech (Sorry Bro. Oswalt, may you rest in peace.) But those days are over if you don't have cable, and I feel bad my kids can't experience them.

Well, I've found just about the next best thing. CW4Kids.tv offers a full catalog of almost all of its shows, including Ninja Turtles, Sonic X, and Yu-Gi-Oh! (I'm embarrassed to know all those). But what's more is the site doesn't just stop there, and that's why its worthy of an entry on my "work blog." CW4Kids is doing what all networks that decide to offer shows online should do. They are using the full potential of the Internet to motivate and sustain fans.

No, I'm not just talking about the blatant advertising - and somewhat addictive - of special codes during their Saturday morning cartoons. Yes, I did a Google search for Huntik amulet codes the other day. It was fun seeing what they'd unlock.

What I'm really talking about are all the other ideas the site offers, even the decidedly low-tech ones. Specifically, today we downloaded and printed a bunch of the Papercraft characters to help the kids pass the time during conference, and while they were much too complicated for our six and three year olds, they were absorbing enough to capture the attention of me and my wife.

The three characters you see in the above photo are what we finished. OK, I just cut them out; my wife as the main builder. I blamed my big fingers, but really I just didn't want to. I think we did OK. Sonic, the first one we did was the best. Fergy from VivaPinata was easy. The tapes' only there to keep him together because Holly got a little overzealous with him. I'm not sure what happened with Knuckles, but we just couldn't keep his arms on.

Look, it's a pretty simple thing, and maybe it's a natural for a kids' site to do, although I think CW4Kids is better than PBSkids.org, which is a bear to navigate and requires Internet Explorer to work right. But it shows at least someone there is thinking about the audience and about how to make the Web work for them. That's a lesson I'm trying to teach my students because I think it's something the industry hasn't quite learned yet.