Wednesday, July 3, 2002

Steve Outing: Board The Weblog Bandwagon Now, Please. "The newspaper industry historically has not been able to notice a hot Internet trend and act to capitalize on it fast enough to beat pure-play Internet competitors to the punch. How about if next time, the newspaper industry notices a trend and takes it seriously? We can start with weblogs... "Imagine if most every reporter, for example, had an outlet for material that doesn't fit in the print product. A city hall reporter runs across a wealth of interesting tidbits every working day, and some of them can be added to a city hall news weblog. I'm not talking about stuff that's 'not good enough' for the print edition, but rather 'insider' information that might not be right for a general newspaper audience... "Most likely you'll want to have webloggers post their content without publishing, then have the city and/or copy desk edit it before hitting 'Publish.' That's going to take some editor time if you have a lot of staff journalist webloggers." Whoops! Got the first part right, but nix the editorial control. To make staff weblogs really fly, there has to be a quicker turnaround than would be possible if the editors have to approve every word. It just won't fly. The publication has to trust their writers to exercise their own better judgement. Outing goes on: "The other major area for news organizations to consider in the weblog scene is to host them. Today there are many software and Web service solutions for hosting weblogs... "Given the number of people publishing weblogs now, and the significant growth, weblog hosting should grow into a sizable business. Local newspapers, especially, are well positioned to introduce the weblog concept to their readership -- many who will not yet have heard of weblogs -- and profit from hosting their new weblogs. Possibilities include charging for hosting..., selling weblogging software, or selling advertisements to run on free public weblogs." [via Rick Klau] 21:12'16    comment []

Reuters: Burning Man Festival Sues Over Naked Women Video. "The lawsuit charges Voyeur Video Inc. with invading the privacy of unsuspecting women by filming them nude in their campsites and elsewhere at the private event, said Terry Gross, the lawyer representing the Burning Man organization." [via Cory Doctorow] 20:52'25    comment []

Simon Fell: "Cool, DJ has a Jabber pub/sub layer to go ontop of the weblogs watcher service. The service was designed so that it could scale by doing fanout chaining [as DJ is doing, and as BlogToaster also does] but its still centralized." 20:48'12    comment []

Paul Kulchenko quotes Sam Ruby: "Paul Kulchenko has started a blog. He definitely needs to add a coffee cup. Done." Subscribed. 20:45'23    comment []

Another NYT Op-Ed piece, this one by Paul Krugman: Everyone is Outraged. "My last column, describing techniques of corporate fraud, omitted one method also favored by Enron: the fictitious asset sale. Returning to the ice-cream store, what you do is sell your old delivery van to XYZ Corporation for an outlandish price, and claim the capital gain as a profit. But the transaction is a sham: XYZ Corporation is actually you under another name. Before investors figure this out, however, you can sell a lot of stock at artificially high prices. "Now to the story of Harken Energy, as reported in The Wall Street Journal on March 4. In 1989 Mr. Bush was on the board of directors and audit committee of Harken. He acquired that position, along with a lot of company stock, when Harken paid $2 million for Spectrum 7, a tiny, money-losing energy company with large debts of which Mr. Bush was C.E.O... "Unfortunately, Harken was also losing money hand over fist. But in 1989 the company managed to hide most of those losses with the profits it reported from selling a subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum, at a high price. Who bought Aloha? A group of Harken insiders, who got most of the money for the purchase by borrowing from Harken itself. Eventually the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that this was a phony transaction, and forced the company to restate its 1989 earnings. "But long before that ruling -- though only a few weeks before bad news that could not be concealed caused Harken's shares to tumble -- Mr. Bush sold off two-thirds of his stake, for $848,000. Just for the record, that's about four times bigger than the sale that has Martha Stewart in hot water... An internal S.E.C. memorandum concluded that he had broken the law, but no charges were filed. This, everyone insists, had nothing to do with the fact that his father was president." 19:52'53    comment []

Jeff Cheney: "Sign of Change. I just noticed a 'For Sale' sign on the side of my apartment building. Change is coming, ready or not..." 19:40'55    comment []

MSNBC (WSJ): Music labels go after song-swappers. "Major music companies are preparing to mount a broad new attack on unauthorized online song-swapping. The campaign would include suits against individuals who are offering the largest troves of songs on peer-to-peer services." To quote Dave's comment about a similar report by Reuters: "Fuckers!" 18:53'46    comment []

Anthrax? The F.B.I. Yawns

NYT Op-Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof: Anthrax? The F.B.I. Yawns. "[It] seems fair to ask the F.B.I. a few questions: "Do you know how many identities and passports Mr. Z has and are you monitoring his international travel? I have found at least one alias for him, and he has continued to travel abroad on government assignments, even to Central Asia. "Why was his top security clearance suspended in August, less than a month before the anthrax attacks began?... Are the C.I.A. and military intelligence agencies cooperating fully with the investigation? "Have you searched the isolated residence that he had access to last fall? The F.B.I. has known about this building, and knows that Mr. Z gave Cipro to people who visited it... "What now? When do you shift into high gear?" 18:45'28    comment []