Discussions about the media, journalism and news.
As I watched actress Liv Ullmann read Liu Xiaobo’s address, ‘I Have No Enemies’, on BBC World, I was quite moved. The address is what the Nobel Prize-winning author and intellectual delivered prior to his sentencing by a Red Chinese court for subversion. What is fascinating is the dignity with which the words […]
Read More… from Even as Liu Xiaobo gets a Nobel prize, Beijing can be smug
There are probably two things, chiefly, that fuel support for Julian Assange. First, the idea that the mainstream media are not independent, but merely mouthpieces for the establishment. There’s some truth to this. Secondly, the fact that Wikileaks is revealing, this time, things that we already knew: that governments are two-faced. While […]
Read More… from Wikileaks’ brand of transparency is the enemy of the establishment
In the news: Julian Assange. While the prosecutor in Sweden is denying it, the lesson here seems to be: publish a Wikileak naming anti-Taliban Afghan sources and risk getting them killed, and nothing happens to you. Publish a Wikileak embarrassing the United States, and get the whole media talking, while you’re charged with rape. […]
Read More… from The Julian Assange affair looks like a Smith and Jones gag
Aside from writing a branding report today (which I will share with you once all contributors have OKed it), I received some wonderful news from Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go. Those who are used to the Duck will know that you can search using what he calls bangs—the exclamation mark. On Chrome, which […]
New Zealand Police has issued two videos from the Pike River coal mine, which shows the fourth blast on Sunday. These are probably the clearest yet, and give an idea of how terrible the conditions must be within the mine. May the 29 men who were trapped and who possibly perished there two Fridays ago […]
Read More… from Police issue videos of fourth Pike River explosion
During the campaign trail, people tended to ask me if I was left or right. While I cheekily said, ‘Forward,’ many a time (and had at least one imitator), there’s something to be said for abandoning what are, effectively, nineteenth-century constructs. And unless you are DI Alex Drake in Ashes to Ashes, you need […]
Even though more young women are spending time on Facebook at the exclusion of other sites, last night I decided to stop connecting the Lucire RSS feed in to its Facebook fan page. We began the fan page very late, having relied on using a Facebook group. And even then, these were promoted half-heartedly. […]
Read More… from Putting a full site feed on a Facebook fan page is not a good idea
Spotted on the Lucire website today, an advertisement for Consumer magazine. It’s a Flash animation, suggesting that not all car insurance policies are perfect. The opening frame shows a car with oversized coins for wheels, and the wheels shrink to a more standard size at the end of the animation. The copy reads, […]
Above: The US Ford Granada in a contemporary advertisement, as posted at americangranada.com. Not the European car, but the American one of the same name: the Ford Granada was marketed as a US alternative to a Mercedes-Benz. Not as overstyled as, say, the Ford Maverick, this was an extremely heavy car, and Ford’s marketing […]
Read More… from Retro moment: the first American Ford Granada
Spotted on Tumblr yesterday, via Dave Sparks: ‘Why Facebook Browsing Annihilates Web Browsing’, on the Fast Company blogs. The intro pretty much summarizes the whole piece: Recent research suggests that Facebook is overtaking search engines in terms of “time spent” on the web. Want to see where the trendline is heading? Take a look […]