Wednesday, June 15, 2005

PERMALINK

Ergo gnomic Two only vaguely related gripes: (1) I'm left-handed, and I'm proud to be part of the sinister 10 percent, but I'm still waiting for my left-handed digital camera. I'm tired of either holding the camera in my unsteady right hand or having to shoot two-handed. There appears to be a left-handed film camera available, here, but I'm not looking for a retro novelty. In this discussion, somebody suggests holding the camera upside down. Maybe. But look, you manufacturers, there's a market here! We're ten percent of the population! That's millions of potential customers -- a big fat bulge near the front of the Long Tail, waiting to be served. (2) I've always bought Thinkpad laptops, in part because they've been hugely reliable in the years I've had them, but also because I vastly prefer the Trackpoint device to the much more common -- and, to me, clumsy -- trackpad. Recently I realized that I actually think the Trackpoint is far superior to the mouse as well. As usability experts have long maintained, the big problem with mousing is that you're constantly switching modes and losing efficiency as you move the hand from the keyboard to the mouse and back. Wasted energy, wasted concentration. With the Trackpoint, you don't have to do that at all -- the "mouse" (pointer control) is right where your typing fingers already are. (Keyboard shortcuts are even better for those apps that support them, but they never give you 100 percent of what you need -- unless, I guess, you're a programming ace who lives and breathes emacs.) So why aren't desktop keyboards with integrated Trackpoint more common? I know IBM has made them over the years -- I bought an old used one on Ebay -- but they seem to be a hugely neglected market niche. Or is my Trackpoint preference even more of an eccentricity than my left-handedness? comment [] 8:43:42 PM | permalink

Credit report I was amused recently by an ironic juxtaposition of two blog posts. First, there was Jason Calacanis complaining that CNET had failed to credit Om Malik for "breaking" the story that the RSS aggregator FeedDemon had been bought by Newsgator. Business 2.0's Malik had posted the news at 5:31 PM on Monday, May 16. CNet ran a story at 9:27 AM on Tuesday, May 17. A few weeks later, the esteemed Dan Gillmor complained about how the Wall Street Journal, in its coverage of the Apple/Intel deal, self-servingly quoted a line from Steve Jobs implying that the Journal had the story first, when, in fact, CNET had it well before the Journal. There's no older complaint in the world of journalism than a reporter (or publication) that believes it broke a story feeling "ripped off" by another reporter (or publication) that follows on. Inevitably, this sort of complaint flows up the journalism food chain. CNET gets carped at for failing to credit a blog; the Journal gets carped at for failing to credit CNET. Big fish eat little fishes' stories -- stop the presses! I've seen this in action for a good 25 years now, ever since my days on the Harvard Crimson, where we believed we "owned" the university beat, and resented how national papers and magazines would swoop in to gather the fruits of our reporting labors -- almost never giving us striplings credit. Maybe I've mellowed, or maybe I'm just callused, but I've come to view this species of complaint as a waste of time. I can't count the number of times over the past decade that Salon has broken real news and not been credited. Ultimately, so what? Whining doesn't get you very far, and if you're doing your job, you should be onto the next story anyway. The type of story matters, too. If you invest the time and energy to do a long-term investigation of some scandal or underreported problem or issue, and emerge with something extraordinary that's never been reported before and that wouldn't be known if you hadn't chosen to pursue it, it's reasonable to expect some credit. But if you get wind of a business deal a handful of hours ahead of the competition, and the news is about to break wide anyway, well, okay, you've served your readers well, good work -- but don't expect a Pulitzer, or think you "own" the story. comment [] 2:06:53 PM | permalink

I've got a big backlog of posts that have languished as I concentrate on my 1000-words-a-day march toward meeting my book deadline. I'm going to try to upload a bunch before leaving this weekend for a family trip to the ancestral homeland (NYC). comment [] 2:03:53 PM | permalink