Several years ago, in a regular feature Folio: magazine used to run about the magazines subscribed to by people in magazine publishing, I said the following:
Folio: If you could subscribe to only one title, which would it be?
Me: American Heritage. I enjoy history, and I enjoy the excellent writing. It also gives me a context for where l am today.
So, yes, I’m saddened with the news from its publisher that the magazine is “on indefinite hold.”
Sidenote: While not a direct competitor with American Heritage, Hammock publishes a beautiful magazine that includes an editorial focus on American history.
I’ve never watched the Jeff Jarvis-created “Idol Critic” show, however, I decided to tune in when I saw Nashville’s (as in the town, not the style of music) Melinda Doolittle didn’t make it into the finals of American Idol. (Even though I didn’t follow the competition, I naturally think such a decision is wrong.) I’m glad I viewed it, as about half-way through, Idol Critic Liza Persky makes an observation that caused the Coke I was drinking to come out of my nose:
“The governor of Tennessee is the whitest man alive.”
I’m a fan of Phil Bredesen, but I think Liza’s “blink” judgement is solid.
Google today announced a new feature for its Flickr-like (or, Flickr-lite) program called Picasa Web Albums. It offers an easy, one-click way to embed (YouTube-like) a flash-player version of a slide-show like the one on the left. Tech-savvy users have long known how to hack this, so today’s announcement is merely simplifying and making it “a feature” for the rest of us. Also, there are ways to embed a Flickr Slideshow, however, it is not “a feature” and may not work with a new version of Flickr Slideshow.
I know there are several startups (Slideshare and Slide and others) that allow one to create and embed presentation slide-shows. However, when Google adds a PowerPoint-like program to Google Docs later this year, and it adds this embed feature to a platform where individuals create and store photos, video, text and spreadsheet documents, well, these are the things juggernauts do when they demonstrate the difference in “products” and “features.”
On a personal note, while the Picasa feature is great, I’m still hooked on Flickr. By the way, the photos on the accompanying slideshow are from my Nashville Greenways maps/photo sets project that uses both Flickr & Google.
Technorati Tags: flickr, google, picasa, google
Gabe Rivera, in an interview with Wired.com: “For better or worse, I never concocted a founding myth.”
Gabe is actually the mythological creator of Techmeme (and memorandum, WeSmirch.com and BallBug.com) and is one of my favorite “met-through-blogging” friends. I’ve blogged about him often over the years and am always glad to see him receive recognition for his dedication to developing a “gesture-driven” news tracking service. I’ve enjoyed every conversation I’ve had with Gabe over the years, as he is always patient with my questions about his “algorithms.” He’s patient, because he knows I have absolutely no clue what he’s talking about a lot of the time, but he still labors to make it understandable to me.
There’s another great quote in the interview:
“The way I view it, Techmeme is gamed continuously because the real world is gamed continuously: Gamed in the sense that bloggers have always traded links and various other gestures of attention, sometimes through unspoken agreements, sometimes not. This was going on before my sites arrived, though these kinds of things can affect Techmeme. It’s hard to say how much. Ultimately, people will read Techmeme if they find it useful or entertaining, so I just need to maintain and improve Techmeme’s utility. Some of my efforts to accomplish that involve “anti-gaming” measures, but most of my efforts involve other things.
As with anything that grows in influence and popularity, Techmeme is the focus of a continuous debate among some who hang out on the tech blogosphere. However, I appreciate Gabe’s ability to tune out the noise and continue to stay focused on improving what he can improve. I like his attitude about his product: You’ll find it either useful, or not. No one will make you use it.
Technorati Tags: gabe rivera, techmeme
As I indicated in my post about the topic yesterday, I always knew the definitive word on the fake Apple email (now known as engadget’s $4 billion blunder), would ultimately come from the fake Steve Jobs, who writes:
“Bloggers, hear me now: This is war. You beat us in court, so now we’re resorting to Plan B. We’re going to undermine your credibility. Frankly I can’t understand why anyone believes anything they read on a blog in the first place.
Exactly.
