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If you have a blog, you have a theme… You want your blog to say “YOU”, but you don’t want to pay a designer a ton of money to accomplish this… Artisteer ($49.99) makes it simple for you to create and customize your own WordPress theme with just a few clicks of the mouse.

The Mac version is in beta testing; there is a trial version for Windows.

Post first appeared at com495 course blog.

Almost two weeks ago, I urged early recipients of the Twitter retweet link to be cautious with its use, because most third party clients seemed unable to display these retweets.

Today I’m repeating the caution, and it’s not only because of spotty third party client implementation. It’s also because these new retweets don’t become “real time” in the Twitter.com timeline for tweets made by anyone yo...

Update: problem resolved. User error (but you’d probably already guessed that!)

The goal this afternoon … walk five communication students through setting up WordPress on their UW student accounts. Armed with the UW step-by-step instructions and with the help of Kristina Bowman, it seemed doable. After all, Kristina and I had both done this before.

Well, it wasn’t doable.

After two hours, the stud...

Update: more details at FlipTheMedia. From the YouTube business blog:

• MyPosterous: The Economist on music piracy: flawed article, but still worth a read
• MyPosterous: The Economist on blah CEOs
• GoogleReader: themes from COM546, evolution of digital communication technologies – Slideshare – Digital Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet)
• GoogleReader: if you’re not tired of the vilification of Google by media moguls – (1) TechCrunch –

Summer 2010, I’m going to teach a class on designing smartphone applications. This is in the University of Washington MCDM program, so the focus is audience, goals, UI, technical spec (not actual code). And the goal isn’t necessarily to build the best application, in the historical sense of the word (think PhotoGene, for example). Rather, what sort of iPhone applications should businesses and orga...

I’m Never Gonna Give You Up, from Pearl Jam’s official YouTube channel. What is Rickrolling? See widipedia, Wired.com.

In an interview with SkyNews Australia, Rupert Murdoch continued to insist that Google (and other search engines) are “stealing” his content and that newspapers should never have “given away” their content for free. And he hinted that News Corp. would soon block search engines from indexing their web sites and would successfully challenge the “fair use” of links in court. (YouTube interview clip e...

My comment on a MediaShift article on Net neutrality, Why the Future of Online Speech Depends on Net Neutrality:

Google and Microsoft already pay “metering” fees — that is, they pay more for bandwidth than a firm with 1/1000th of their bandwidth usage. No one (that I know of) is saying that network neutrality means that the cost of transmitting 1GB of data should be the same as the cost of 1TB.

What network neutrality means is that Comcast can’t privilege its bits over bits from Blip.TV.

“Network neutrality” would be better framed as “non-discrimination” — just like Verizon, for example, can’t privilege Verizon phone calls over T-Mobile’s or AT&T’s. (Geeks should not name things.)

We need all infrastructure owners (cable, fiber, copper) to be considered “common carriers” — not just the telecos. This would mean that they would have to lease their infrastructure to other organizations and they would not be able discriminate based on the origin of a bit.

That’s not the case in the U.S. today. The cable industry has successfully convinced Congress that they should be exempt from common carrier law. The resulting law — someone probably has calculated how many millions in lobbying it cost — gives them an economic (competitive) advantage over telecos as that “last mile wire” becomes our pipe to our connection with the rest of the world: “television” and “movies” and “phone service” and “newspapers” and “radio” — and-and-and.

We have to separate content (the bits that represent text, photos, sound, moving pictures) from the delivery channel. That’s in part because we (society) can’t afford to have competing infrastructure: multiple “cable” or “fiber” wires on each-and-every neighborhood street. That sort of competition is economically inefficient: infrastructure is characterized by very high fixed costs and relatively low marginal costs (the cost of attaching the line to one-more-house).

For those of you who are in the Twitter “retweet” beta test, I have a word of advice: proceed cautiously.

Here’s why. Currently, retweets that are executed via the Twitter web “retweet link” are visible to your followers who are using the web interface to read your tweets but are not visible to popular third party clients.

Let me say that a different way: popular third party applications are curre...

Presentation at Convergence and Society: Changing Media Landscape, 6 Nov 2009, Reno NV

Consumers want to control their media consumption. This is a major shift in power that mainstream media organizations are still struggling with or, in too many cases, simply ignoring.

What’s annoying to those of us who have been involved with the evolution of online news for a while was illustrated by Thom Baggerman’s timeline of online newspaper research, from shovelware (1999) to “basic needs” ...

Major media owners in Canada are “crying poverty” to get regulatory concessions, according to Mark Edge, speaking at the Convergence and Society: The Changing Media Landscape (#cconf09) in Reno. And yet … they’re still making money.

His timeline of convergence in Canada, which limits foreign ownership:

See what happened to the over-leveraged firms before ….

… they went on a buying spree:

Virtually every urban newspaper in Michigan has moved to a “hybrid” delivery model, based on the one introduced by the Detroit Free Press/Detroit News, according to Dennis W. Jeffers, speaking at the Convergence and Society: The Changing Media Landscape (#cconf09) in Reno.

The hybrid model introduced by the Detroit Free Press/News:

• Th/Fr/Su home delivery
• “e-press” (PDF-like) only the other days.

Detroit News and Detroit Free Press circulation have (each) declined 5.7%; contrast this with a general decline of 10%. There has been a small shift in revenue from advertisers to readers.

Evidence of the financial challenge (from today’s Editor&Publisher): “Clients [advertisers] have moved away from ROP [run of paper] because of the cost.”

There does appear to be a slow shift in newsroom behavior in Detroit daily newspapers. However, one problem: the average newspaper reader is 55 years old – behavioral change is predictably slow.

Community newspapers — as defined by geography or shared interests — are smaller (circulation 25-30K) and may be weekly, daily or online-only. This class of papers is losing advertising at a slower rate. In Michigan, there are about 250 newspapers (every county but one has a community newspaper) in this category; 200+ are weeklies, according to Carol McGinnis. Readership percentages appear higher than in the urban dailies.

Their emphasis on local news means that they have a unique product – something key to audience in our increasingly competitive information space.

Moving to “online only” papers: Lori F. Brost provides examples including AnnArbor.com, AnnArborChronicle, AnnArborUpdate, LeslinWeeklyGuardian, GrossePointeToday, TheRapidian, DomeMagazine, SustainableFarmer (MSU), Midland Issues on the Web, MichiganMessenger, MyBayCity.com, MyAntrim, RainbowMittens, RapidGrowth, ModelD, YpsiNews.com, LansingOnlineNews, AbsoluteMichigan, GreatLakesEcho, SouthwestLansing, WestMichiganNews (IRE), MichiganLiberal.com and RightMichigan.com.

AnnArbor.com “river of news” design (most recent first) that mixes local news with traditional newspaper content (such as Dear Abby). It serves as a portal for Ann Arbor neighborhoods (or it hopes to) with local bloggers. Business model remains an issue.

Sean Baker then turned to radio and television – “broadcast to bandwidth.”

The papers will (unsure of when) be posted on the conference website.

Back in March, Declan McCullagh reported that the Obama Administration cloaked its draft section of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) under “national security” wrappers — for the general public. At the same time, the document had supposedly already made the rounds of “corporate lobbyists in Europe, Japan, and the U.S.”

Today, someone has leaked information about the U.S.-authored draf...

Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and producer, is on UW campus today for the Danz lecture at Kane Hall tonight. He’s talking to students from two journalism classes this afternoon. Live blogged notes:

Three trends in media that are important:

(1) Changing economics “assault” of new media. not just delivery system. “Google” delivering free of charge what we spend money in producing. ...

Listening to Google CEO Eric Schmidt talk about the importance of a “new platform” while noting that “enterprise-focused” engineers are a small percentage of the company’s engineering team, I flashed back to 1984.

When Apple introduced the Macintosh with that Ridley Scott commercial, the company was making a statement about the “cultural implications of personal computers.” Apple’s deliberate shun...

Last week, Amsterdam hosted the eComm – Emerging Communications Conference and Awards, a twice-a-year global event launched in 2008. This “community focused” event focuses on convergence: telecom, cellular and Internet-based communication.

And even though GoogleWave is barely out of alpha, organizers put the architecture in place for collaborative notetaking for every session of the three-day even...

Last night in my econ class, I introduced students to the “amateur” v “professional” debate by talking about the 2007 Super Bowl, the first time any major brand had engaged fans in a contest where the winner got a Super Bowl slot. At the time, the contest spurred discussion of “professional” versus “amateur”. Note that most of western science in the 1800s and even early 1900s was conducted by, y...

Twitter search now has a FriendFeed-like boost that will enhance its usefulness while providing context: you can see a “conversation”. This enhancement suggests Twitter isn’t going to roll over and play dead even though Google and Microsoft are elbowing their way into real-time search. It also shows us how many Tweets are one-offs (not conversations), but that’s another story.

Here’s a screen cap...

I just posted this to my motorcycle/geek mailing list. Really quick, high-level thoughts. I’m working on some tips posts.

• Not surprising, your gmail ID becomes your googlewave addy
• It’s more alpha than beta
• Mac folks need to remember to install Gears, which will give you drag-and-drop functionality (among other things). WaveBoard is a better client for Macs than FF or Safari, but Snow Leopard folks will get drag-and-drop functionality only with FF Gears. That’s because Google hasn’t updated Gears for Snow Leopard; there is a hack that gives WaveBoard that functionality but I haven’t added it.
• PC folks may prefer Chrome to FF. Dunno. I haven’t decided.
• Right now, everyone seems to be TALKING (think chat or forums or mailing lists) rather than trying to do something. Not a surprise, either. New. Shiny. :-)
• I’ve started two directories: one for higher ed waves and one for UW people. Interesting exercise.
• To search “public” waves … put “with:public” in the search box. You will soon be overwhelmed (I think Matt said “drown”) because Wave keeps the blips you’ve *read* in your inbox! Eeek! You can make them go away (not sure if it is forever) by clicking “mute.”

TAFN!

Goldman Sachs bonus pool estimated at $725,000 per employee

This week, business reporters told us that Goldman Sachs 2009 third quarter profits swelled, compared with 2008, to an estimated $3.19 billion. The bonus pool stands at $16.7 billion, and, by the end of the year, it could hit $23 billion, according to reports. However, Goldman reported first quarter profits (net earnings) of $1.81 billion...

I had not thought about the long-term viability of advertising until Tuesday night’s Net Economics class. I think in my lifetime ads will not disappear, but they will continue to change. Maybe we’ll have more sponsored content, like early radio (and PBS), instead of interruptive adverts. And there will be more “free” content like Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (2009 Emmy, wikipedia).

Three tid...

Just this afternoon, I advised my communnication students that if a story seems “too” … much … to retain their skepticism.

I remembered my admonition when the following tweet crossed my timeline tonight:

Wow, crazy story. RT @kingharvest: “Wave of staff suicides at France Telecom | World news | The Guardian” http://j.mp/3EHilk28 minutes ago from TweetDeck @semmerson

I stifled any “retweet before reading” impulse and clicked the link. In the nut graph, I read: “more than 20 workers take their lives in the past 18 months.” After reading The Guardian story, dateline 9 September 2009 by the way, I learned the following from the next-to-the-last paragraph:

• In 2003, 22 France Telecom staff committed suicide.
• In 2002, 29 France Telecom staff committed suicide.

I knew that I couldn’t in good conscience retweet. Why? I did not know how many people France Telecom employed nor the suicide rate for France. I vaguely knew that suicide rates vary significantly by country and culture. So I started poking around. Was this, in fact, news?

According to WHO, in 2005 the suicide rate for French men was 26.4 per 100,000; for women, 9.2 per 100,000.

But I still didn’t know how many people work for France Telecom.

A second Google search led to this 15 September 2009 report from the Wall Street Journal: France Telecom employs 100,000 and “the number of suicides is less than the national average.”

Moreover, the WSJ article was more precise: 23 suicides among France Télécom in an 18-month period. They had more recent WHO data, as well. Today, a WSJ article reports 25 deaths in 20 months. This is significantly less than the national suicide rate.

How long had I invested in research? Less time than it has taken me to write this article, probably less than 5 minutes.

But why did I have to? The original Guardian article — published on the web with minimal length constraints — failed to provide basic contextual information. Moreover, it buried key information in the foot of the story.

I want to know what else is going on. Why is this a story? For example, that first WSJ reporter noted:

France Télécom is having more trouble than others cutting costs: 65% of the 100,000 people at the company have civil-servant contracts — dating to the time when the company was owned by the French state — and therefore can’t be fired.

What news organization other than the WSJ provided this context? And if the WSJ is providing this framing argument, what are they leaving out?

I am not saying that suicides are “OK” but I would like reporters to demonstrate an understanding of risk and statistics before writing stories that result in wringing hands, bleeding hearts and demands for someone’s head.

Mainstream media keep telling us that they are the guardians of “the truth” (whatever that is). But far too often, when I start trying to find answers to questions that should have been addressed in a story, my experience mirrors this one.

It’s enough to make your head explode. No wonder normal people escape to the sofa and the tube.

Notes for discussion at iSchool Research Conversation today:

• Twitter and Robert Scoble (early 2007)
• Twitter and journalism (winter, spring 2008 – Twitter genres, a draft)
• Twitter and politics (fall 2008 – com597, jan 2009 – Digital President)
• Twitter and journalism (spring 2009, Twitter and Politics, #140tc)
• Twitter class (summer 2009 – #uwtwtrbook)