MediaSavvy

OK, I give up. I have no idea why there’s so much space before the tables in the next entry. Anyone who’s reading this know why it’s happening?
[UPDATE: This was fixed within an hour of posting by the first comment attached to this message. Thank you!]

This MSNBC story displays all the worst sins of Flash in news sites: useless animation for the sake of animation, long load times even on a high-speed connection, and crashing on a Macintosh. Then there’s their use of the word “interactive” as a noun to denote an interactive news story.
Couldn’t this story have been told better (and less expensively) using HTML?

Maistream marketers continue to foul the waters in which we all have to fish.
According to Marketingfix, Activision, Elvis Costello’s label, and thesite.org have hired an agency to post fake endorsements of their products to Usenet; and “MP3.com, owned by Vivendi Universal, requires users to provide an e-mail address before they can listen to music. Then, without offering a choice or notice, the site adds that address to six mailing lists, including a music newsletter and one for “partner product announcements.”
Why so much lousy marketing. Well, it works. Over at Clickz, Rudy Grahn admits a lousy, annoying banner he tossed off in a couple of minutes continues to live on–because it works.
Meanwhile Bonzi’s deceptive, jittery web junk is omnipresent–because it works. According to DoubleClick, “rich media” ads are gaining share–because they work (ten times as well as regular banners).
Big companies like Verizon and SBC assert their right to sell your private information to whomever they please and assert that it’s not simply their right, but that they’re doing you a favor. And Sprint PCS distributes flyers to their customers labeled “Sharing your information and protecting your privacy” without appreciating the irony.
But even Sprint can appreciate the irony of a spammer drowning in junk snail mail. He’s going to have to opt out of every one of those lists.

There have been many times in my life when Usenet answered questions I couldn’t get answered any other way: where can I get a copy of Benny Goodman’s recording of Bolero, what’s that song on Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, and how do I set the date on a particular vintage wristwatch?
I just got the wristwatch question answered yesterday by a netizen who took some extra effort to get the answer right, and it saved me a lot of trouble.
I love how smart and helpful people are on Usenet. I love how communities continue to thrive there despite trolls, spammers, and now big company Astroturf marketing.
Usenet may be on its way to being useful again specifically because AOL and the mainstream ISP’s aren’t pointing newbies and trolls in that direction any more, or even offering access to newsfeeds.

How much information is too much? WebSense notes that CBS MarketWatch’s links to meta-information (symbol, news, chart, profile) make the stories hard to read and aren’t really all that useful. A lot of this falls under the heading of something we do because we can and not because anyone uses it. Why not single link to a page with all that information and more? (Thank you, Jeremy Zawodny)

AOL/TW is remaking AOL in the image of HBO.
Their thinking goes something like this: (1) AOL’s long-term success depends on moving from the doomed dial-up business to the hip and happening broadband business. (2) AOL’s broadband business depends on relationships with the cable companies who control broadband access to most American homes. (3) AOL must offer cable companies the kind of deal they’re used to from premium channels (like HBO) if they’re to cooperate. (4) AOL must develop premium AOL-only content if it’s going to be able to add value to basic high-speed access.
Every link in this chain of reasoning is weak.
The dial-up business is going to be around a lot longer than anyone thought because the access monopolies control the pipes into our homes. Besides, if AOL feels it needs to move beyond dial-up, it should be exploring wireless infrastructure with IBM, AT&T, and Intel.
InStyle Online is not premium content. AOL’s premium content is its software and its network of users–not its content. AOL has neglected its software and its users for too long. Especially insulting is its tag line for AOL 8.0 (“It’s more than an new version, it’s a whole new vision” — it’s barely a new version).
HBO’s success is not based on TV versions of Time Inc magazines–CNN gets those. It is based on access to movies that are available from lots of other sources, and original content that is available nowhere else.

Mamading Ceesay on the U.K. Patent Office site says HTTP defeated Ted Nelson’s Xanadu because it was a publicly available protocol, and Xanadu was a deep secret. That’s an interesting thesis, but it seems to me that HTTP defeated Xanadu because it was dirt-simple and (not coincidentally) it was an actual working protocol.
Xanadu, like Charles Foster Kane’s mansion, was never finished.