Category Archives: Media

Silly Punditry

I’m tired of articles that oversell a perceived lack in a software-based product by assuming that the product is the be-all and end-all of what the maker envisioned. I am thinking in particular of iPad apps. I wish I had a dime for every person who has raged at the fall of Western Civilization (or destruction of journalism) because some iPad app they are using doesn’t have a bunch of linking and social features.

Building good interactive experiences—on the web, in apps, wherever—is hard. Everyone smart who is doing this, especially with a very young device like the iPad, is adopting a “build and then iterate” strategy. To do anything else would take too long, cost too much, and still get it wrong. Get it out there with the minimum feature set to be engaging, and then revise it to do more stuff, do more interesting stuff, do stuff better.

Wish you could email a friend an article, send a link to Twitter, or even, FSM forbid, “like” it on Facebook? Awesome, send the maker of the app a request, post to Twitter, write an article on your blog, shout it on the corner if that floats your boat—and here in San Francisco it might be surprisingly effective. Hey, hit all the channels you want. But do you honestly believe that anyone making an iPad app for subscription material is already completely done with the feature set? Really?

And when Murdoch’s iPad thingy finally comes out, and it omits all that stuff by design and has no plans to add it in, please don’t complain about that, either, because how could you not see that coming?

What Could Go Wrong?

Rebellion Research is a hot funds manager that uses an AI, developed a few years ago and only sparingly altered since then, to decide what stocks to trade. The AI produces a list, and humans execute the trades. Sexy Wall St math and programming blah blah. Here’s why they take this approach:

“It’s pretty clear that human beings aren’t improving,” said Spencer Greenberg, 27 years old and the brains behind Rebellion’s AI system. “But computers and algorithms are only getting faster and more robust.”

Savor that for a moment. But wait! There’s more:

The firm’s current portfolio is largely defensive. One of its biggest positions is in gold stocks, according to people familiar with the fund.

The defensive move at first worried Mr. Fleiss, who had grown bullish. But it has proven a smart move so far. “I’ve learned not to question the AI,” he said.

Letting the Machines Decide: New Wave of Investment Firms Look to ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in Trade Decisions

My Favorite Response to Nicholas Carr

At least, so far:

What is the four-sided Mind of which Nick Carr speaks — this imaginative, rational, inventive, subversive angel striding through the ages, showering the generations with its beneficence? Who is this promethean shapeshifter, whom we’re now in our churlishness binding to some rock for the crows to feast on its innards? What Carr is describing isn’t a historical reality — it’s a god. And it does not exist.

Reading isn’t just a monkish pursuit: Matthew Battles on The Shallows

Dave Weigel Roundup

Rothstein also noted in a post that “If you’re a reporter, you’re supposed to be objective. We shouldn’t know if he voted for Ron Paul, President Obama or David Hasselhoff. If you’re going to be reporting on any political movement, you are supposed to take an unbiased position.” This is how a smear campaign starts, with an argument that in principle, [ostensibly] sounds correct, but really is, at its core, ill-informed, ignorant, and sensational. —Foster Kamer

I’ve been reading about the Dave Weigel thing all morning, only because I couldn’t get away from work long enough to focus on it yesterday. Wow. Village Voice blogger Foster Kamer sums it up nicely and has all the pertinent links. It’s a tawdry tale of true believers being angry that someone who knows a lot about them and can see them so clearly, hacks who fantasize about being take-down artists suddenly discovering the value of “journalistic principles,” and, in the end, a really great demonstration of something Jay Rosen has been blogging about heavily lately: the ideology of news reporting gives priority to ritualistic theatre above accuracy, transparency, and fairness.

Dave Weigel’s Twitter stream

Update June 27: Nate Silver weighs in on the bizarrely unrealistic central issue here:

Is the expectation really that journalists aren’t allowed to develop opinions about the subjects they cover, even if those opinions are expressed only in private? We have a name for people who are so indifferent about society: we call them sociopaths. Or is the expectation that journalists are allowed to have opinions, provided that they keep them secret?

Also of note, the very sensible observation that the ‘blog ethos’ of frankly including point of view “is just magazine-journalism ethos with the addition of cat pictures”. This approach is immeasurably richer than the fake-objectivity approach of newspapers because, as Jim Henley continues, “The writer will make sure to include a substantial account of challenges to her perspective, if only to knock it down later.”

This Is Dumb

GM has sent a memo to Chevrolet employees telling them to stop using the term “Chevy,” because they seem to think it’s diluting their brand.

“When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding,” the memo said. “Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”

Yes. The memo mentions “Coke.”

From Saving Chevrolet Means Sending ‘Chevy’ to Dump

—

UPDATE this afternoon: The policy is already reversed.

The Leroy Stick

I am a big fan of BPGlobalPR.

GET WELLS SOON!

It sprang to life on May 19th with a quiet message: “We regretfully admit that something has happened off of the Gulf Coast. More to come.” It’s been faithfully maintained since, and the writer has been invited to give PR advice to readers of the Guardian:

6. Be willing to laugh at yourself! After I spilled a salad on my lap, I immediately tweeted about it.

@BPGlobalPR: Eating at a very expensive restaurant and spilled salad dressing on my pants. Not sure how to tackle this.

And now the writer has given an interview in a substantially more serious vein:

Do you want to know what BP should do about me? Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be? They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto[n] and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand. Honestly, Cheney’s publicist? That’s too easy.

I can’t help but admire BP for hiring Cheney’s publicist, though, I have to admit. But then, that is exactly the kind of sensitive and responsible approach we can expect from a company whose CEO claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was “relatively tiny” compared with the “very big ocean”.

Yessir. Heckuva glob, BP.

Coated in oxytocin

I’ve said it before, and the evidence is mounting: the iPad is coated in oxytocin, a hormone that has been linked to orgasm, social recognition, pair bonding, anxiety, trust, love, and maternal behaviors.

“After a 13-hour wait, it’s like giving birth,” he said after emerging from the Apple store.
“You’re in labour for 13 hours and you’re tired and exhausted, you’re hot one minute then you’re cold the next, and you’re in pain, but then there’s the ecstacy when you have this little thing in your arms.” —iPad goes on sale as Apple faithful flock to Britain’s stores

Sherwin-Williams: Cover the Earth

Ah what a difference a visual makes. They developed it toward the end of the 19th Century, and Sherwin-Williams still uses this horrific logo:

SWP Logo

It actually leaves me breathless, it’s so horrible. On the same building where the above sign appears is this mural (or at least was – I haven’t been back there for a while):

What Are They Thinking?

Seriously. What the hell? This time it’s personal!

Well, someone is at least making an effort to be true to SWP’s horrific tagline—”Cover the Earth” (I almost wish I had made that up)—and still make something aesthetically pleasing and that, you know, doesn’t invoke the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster.

See an animated ad on this theme – worth going just for the cardinal depiction. The frog is also awesome. Dear SWP, notice how, in the animation, your logo only appears at a distance where it—and its apocalyptic tagline—cannot be readily discerned. Smart!