Gimme a bloggin' break...

Ray Ozzie thinks publishing is dead, because of weblogs: "Gone, a relic of the past, dead as a doornail, breathless, buried. According to police reports, one-way publishing was killed off by a technology - Weblogs - that has reshaped journalism forever."

Now I have a lot of respect for Ray Ozzie, but that is just damn silly and this perspective makes me want to throw a shoe through my computer screen. Reports of the printed page's death greatly exaggerated and all that. I agree with Don Parks. And I would add to that: weblogging is still a very, very exclusive universe and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to get out more. Yes, there might be massive growth in interest and 300,000 people creating them, but still -- as a journalist who also blogs and has had a long-time fascination with its development, I cannot count how many times I have drawn a blank expression when I use the word 'weblog'. This happened recently at an industry gathering where I turned the conversation to weblogs and not one of the people in the room had even heard the term. I'd estimate that with 95% of the people I meet who work in the tech industry or who have an ordinary decent internet-users' awareness of what's happening out on the big wild web, weblogs have not registered at all.

Arguments that weblogs have (oh please!), or will replace the printed page in any near stretch of time take an incredibly small-view picture, and indeed, display a navel-gazing disconnect from Real Life,  when the vast majority of the world doesn't even have clean water. But hey, Let Them Read Blogs! Most of the world, for the foreseeable future -- for decades -- will not log on to blogs for their news but will buy print because it is a reliable, portable, comfortable, cheap way of getting information and has been for several centuries. Sure, weblogging has already and will continue to change the shape and definition of reportage but let's get real.

Watching the Directives

I have an opinion column in today's Guardian on some of the privacy issues surrounding 3G. Some of the UK and Irish operators haven't shown they are all too sure what their responsibilities are in handling their customers' data at the moment. What happens when 3G can reveal much more about you?

Sheesh...

OK, so I didn't quite get the fact that you have to leave the PC with the blog software running, and have it connected to the internet all the time, in order to post remotely. Unfortunately I didn't quite get this fact just as I left for California for a week. So all my plans for updates from Silicon Valley came to naught, just after I announce the launch of this weblog in my column in the Irish Times. Oops. More on all that later. This is just a quick explanation for why it looks like I have been stuck on Tuesday last week for the past 10 days... except for my one attempt at a remote post, written on the 22nd. which has finally gone through now that I've reconnected the blog to the net back in Ireland...

The Lost Post from the 22nd:

I am out in California for the next week, in Menlo Park, which is where my family lives. Just up in the hills alongside Sand Hill Road, the famed avenue of the venture capitalists. I see that there are still vacancies in the offices along Sand Hill, which more than anything in this area underlines the extreme alterations to the tech world between, say, 1999 (not a chance in hell of getting an office unless you had insider connections) and now (advertising to the passing motorists that yes! space IS available...). 

I was intrigued to see that telecoms giant Vodafone has a stand in Terminal Two at Heathrow with a display of all its mobile internet hardware options. What a great idea! You can fiddle with GSM and GPRS mobiles, laptops, and various handhelds. I think it's a very smart way of marketing -- people like to see this type of technology hands-on, they've got a captive audience looking for something to pass the time besides shopping at the in-terminal mini-Harrod's for souvenirs, and much of the audience would be business travellers likely to seriously consider buying some of the gear.

In sad contrast, the internet access terminals supplied at the airport are hideous -- you put in a pound coin for some chunk of time, 15 minutes I think, and have to work with a tedious and unintuitive browser interface designed for morons (or is that *by* morons...). Or maybe they're very smart -- it takes so long to use the thing for a simple task that the time flies by and you're pumping in some more pound coins. I figure a task that would take 25 seconds at home takes maybe 5 minutes on those things.

A glance at the morning Bay Area papers reveals that the California state government is still considering a privacy bill that would give consumers added protections in how their personal information is handled by financial institutions. The very idea that this sensitive material can be so freely managed -- and bought and sold -- by a third party is quite bizarre when you come from Europe's strict (but often violated...) data protection laws. I hope California does approve this bill and starts a chain reaction (as it often does legally) across the US. Time for some more morning coffee and some welcome sunshine after a dire summer of cloud, cold and rain in Ireland!