senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter

mixing and matching online

• link of the day: thanks to amy, i followed a link to a couple of articles by vin crosbie about the bleak future of the newspaper industry. in the first one, vin predicts that unless the industry changes course, it will cease to be an economical industry within our lifetimes.
  
  

  Unless ways can be found to increase 
  the per user revenues generated from 
  newspaper websites, newspapers need to 
  gain fantastic numbers of Web site 
  users just to replace the declines in 
  print edition revenues.  A 50,000 
  circulation daily would need to gain a 
  million to 50 million Web site users 
  to postpone the time when it's no 
  longer economically feasible to produce 
  its printed edition!
  
  Even if newspaper Web sites' advertising 
  revenues were to continue their current 
  rates of growth (double in three years), 
  which could be possible in the short-term 
  but is very unlikely over the medium-term 
  and highly unlikely over the long-term, 
  new revenues still probably wouldn't 
  compensate enough for the declines in 
  print operating revenues.  The revenues 
  per user would still be too far apart.
  

  how to change course ? vin explains that the biggest problem is a misconception of the meaning of new media. he draws an analogy with transportation media (land, sea and air) and explains how the new media is not the technologies being used, but the fact that those technologies enable a many to many conversation between information producers and information consumers.
  
  

  The hallmark characteristics of the 
  New Medium are:
  
  * Uniquely individualized information 
  can simultaneously be delivered or 
  displayed to a potentially infinite 
  number of people.
  
  * Each of the people involved — whether 
  publisher, broadcasters, or consumer 
  — shares equal and reciprocal control 
  over that content.
  
  In other words, the New Medium has the 
  advantages of both the Interpersonal 
  and the Mass media, but without their 
  complementary disadvantages.
  
  * No longer must anyone who wants to 
  individually communicate a unique 
  message to each recipient be restricted 
  to communicating with only one person 
  at a time.
  
  * No longer must anyone who wants to 
  communicate simultaneous messages to 
  a mass of recipients be unable to 
  individualize the content of the 
  message for each recipient.
  
  ...
  
  because each recipient in the New 
  Medium shares with all publishers and 
  broadcasters equal and reciprocal 
  control over what that recipient gets 
  — either by each recipient's choices 
  of which publishers' or broadcasters' 
  websites to visit or else increasingly 
  by mechanisms that allow the recipient 
  to aggregate that content without 
  visiting each of those publishers' or 
  broadcasters' sites — these New Medium 
  consumers are leaving behind the 
  traditional Mass Medium's packaging of 
  information.
  
  Each is migrating towards whatever mix 
  of content most precisely matches her 
  own uniquely individual needs and 
  interests.  This is why more than one 
  billion consumers have migrated into 
  the New Medium; it allows them more 
  precise satisfaction of their needs and 
  interests.  They didn't migrate into 
  the New Medium to read, see, or hear a 
  Mass Medium package of information 
  online — information they were receiving 
  from traditional Mass Medium vehicles 
  in more readily usable forms.
  

relying on technology to a fault

1. Works to Do - Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers
2. There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis - Kirsty MacColl
3. The Man in the Moon - Chuna McIntyre & Marie Meade



4. Washington, D.C. - The Magnetic Fields
5. That's America - Bruce McCulloch
6. San Andreas Fault - Natalie Merchant
7. There's No Such Thing as a Non-Violent Revolution - Malcolm X



8. voices - Holly McNarland
9. Answering Machine - Bruce McCulloch
10. Vox - Sarah McLachlan



11. Sleepy Maggie - Ashley MacIsaac
12. Show Me Heaven (demo) - Maria McKee
13. Church of Logic, Sin & Love - The Men



14. Two Out of Three Ain't Bad - Meatloaf
15. I Should've Known - Aimee Mann
16. Meaningless - The Magnetic Fields



17. Spin and Spin - Marta
18. Ready for Drowning - Manic Street Preachers
19. Sonnet No. 3 (Like a Duck) - MC Honky



20. Edmonton - Carolyn Mark

open source tax software ?

i'm still piqued that people are 
forced to dole out money every year 
for tax software, when revenue 
canada could easily just send out 
spreadsheets with pre-filled info 
based on data that employers have 
already sent in. over the years, i 
have developed my own spreadsheet 
setup with all of the forms and 
schedules that i use regularly and 
this works well enough for me.

• link of the day: the full stephen colbert video from last weekend's white house correspondents' association dinner. now that guy deserves a medal!

mother corp groks podcasts

you *can't* tell me what's on my mind !

• link of the day: why popular stocks are sucker bets:

  As the authors put it: "We conjecture
  ... that experts fail to predict 
  success not because they are 
  incompetent judges or misinformed 
  about the preferences of others, but 
  because when individual decisions 
  are subject to social influence, 
  markets do not simply aggregate 
  pre-existing individual preferences. 
  In such a world, there are inherent 
  limits on the predictability of 
  outcomes, irrespective of how much 
  skill or information one has."
  
  ...
  
  In any given year, it's impossible 
  to predict which stocks (or bonds, 
  or mutual funds, etc.) will be 
  popular or unpopular, but the great 
  thing about investing for the long 
  term is that it doesn't matter.  We 
  don't have to predict what will be 
  popular next year.  We just have to 
  wait for great companies to become 
  unpopular.  In fact, the more 
  bipolar the market is, the more 
  profitable a disciplined long-term 
  investment strategy will be. 
  Ultimately, stock prices depend on 
  the cash a company generates.  And 
  if you keep your eyes focused on 
  that, and not the best-performers' 
  list, you'll do just fine.
  

flying towards warmth

strategy without execution means no progress