Here’s what turns out to be the most intractable problem I’ve encountered in my move to OSX as my primary work platform:

For years I used a programmers’ text editor tool in Windows called Ultraedit. It worked great and allowed me to record macros. The most indispensible one, which I… Read full post »

• Over at MediaShift’s Idea Lab blog, where as a Knight News Challenge grantee I’m posting occasionally, I’ve published a discussion of an interesting problem we’re grappling with at MediaBugs: How do you organize a set of categories for all the different kinds of mistakes jour
… Read full post »

While we’re on the subject of the value of search…

Ken Auletta is on KQED Forum right now, talking about his new Google book, and I just heard him comment on Google’s vulnerability to new competitors by hauling out the old complaint that Google’s provision of millions of resul… Read full post »

I’ve been reading Ryan Chittum’s recent posts at Columbia Journalism Review about the whole Murdoch/WSJ “We’re seceding from Google” flap.

Chittum applauds what he sees as a new appreciation in media circles for the “loyal readership” metric as opposed to… Read full post »

For years I organized my life with the wonderful, now-orphaned and somewhat antiquated Windows outliner Ecco Pro. For me Ecco was versatile enough to function effectively as both a todo-list manager and a repository for random information, scattered ideas and research. It really could do it all.

I… Read full post »

Just a note for those of you in the area: Come on down to the UC Berkeley School of Journalism this Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 6 p.m. if you’d like to hear me give a talk about blogging, journalism, and MediaBugs.

There will be only a little overlap with the talks… Read full post »

[photo from twitpic via Larfo]

I have a very personal relationship with the ups and downs of the Bay Bridge replacement project. This is not only because I’m a Berkeley resident who often depends on the structure. And it’s not only because I’m lucky enough to have a… Read full post »

Here are some highlights from the Say Everything front over the last couple of months:

• Jeremy Hatch at the Rumpus put together an in-depth interview that covered a lot of interesting ground:
  

  There is this constant refrain in the journalism-blogging dialogue, about how we need to support the institu

… Read full post »

Where was I?

It turns out that starting a small company, getting a project in gear, and hiring people is time-consuming.

I knew that. But I didn’t fully calculate how fully all of it would distract me from the routine of blogging. Then there was some travel and some… Read full post »

For a project I’m working on (not MediaBugs but another effort in the media realm that’s a collaboration with Dan Gillmor and Bill Gannon):

We have some work for a designer who’s got lots of experience with Drupal to help us finish up a partially implemented design. This is a short-… Read full post »

[crossposted from the MediaBugs blog]

Americans trust the news media less than ever: “Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate,” according to the latest results from the Pew Research Center rel… Read full post »

I’ve begun blogging over at MediaBugs.org on topics that relate to that project — specifically, journalistic accuracy, error corrections, and the state of trust in media. The blog will also report on our progress bringing that project to life in coming weeks. I’m not going to make a… Read full post »

Mark Bowden is a seriously good reporter, and his piece in the new Atlantic, “The Story Behind the Story,” is one that every student of today’s mutating media should read. Bowden traces the route by which the soundbite that came to define, though not derail, Sonia Sotomayor’s… Read full post »

The story of the rise of Blogger from the ashes of a dotcom startup to the largest blogging service in the world takes up a whole chapter in Say Everything. So when Rick Klau of Google’s Blogger team invited me to participate in a panel as part of Blogger’s 10th birthday… Read full post »

“Everyone’s a critic” used to be a joke; now it’s a fact. You may take populist pride in the Web’s profusion of user-contributed reviews; you may wish Yelp had never been invented. Either way, if you create stuff or sell things, you’re going to get written about.

A… Read full post »

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down!
– Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”

This week… Read full post »

Has the word “blogger” become meaningless?

Consider this item (from Mediabistro’s Fishbowl LA):

We asked [Jay] Rosen what he thought of the term “blogger” and how there is not a word to distinguish a journalist who blogs and a numbnut who blogs.

“Blogger will beco

… Read full post »

Say Everything is getting around. Here’s some links to recent coverage and related stuff:

My two favorite speaking gigs about the book are now both online. Fora.tv was there at the Hillside Club in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the video, in which you can, among other things, hea… Read full post »

I’m fascinated by this: Paul Graham’s startup-seeding outfit, Y Combinator, has announced that, with each new funding cycle, it’s now going to issue a sort of open call for submissions in a particular area. The general idea is what interested TechCrunch in writing the story up. But… Read full post »

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of talking about Say Everything with Michael Krasny on KQED’s Forum. I don’t think I fully infected Michael with my enthusiasm for bloggers and their place in our culture, but I was grateful for the rare opportunity this show (and host) provides to dig rea… Read full post »

A lot of people have flagged Benedict Carey’s piece in yesterday’s Times, “In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable,” and with good reason: it’s a fascinating report on research into the way the brain combines visual data and emotional responses to shape the sort of insta… Read full post »

Tomorrow night (Wednesday, July 29) at 7:30 pm, I’m speaking about Say Everything at the Hillside Club here in Berkeley. The event is sponsored by Berkeley Arts and Letters and also by the Berkeley Cybersalon, a series that I have been attending, in various forms, for 15 years now.

Also, it… Read full post »

Blog historian Rudolf Ammann has done it again. First he pointed out that my statement in Say Everything that Cameron Barrett’s original blogroll had not been archived was inaccurate. Now he has dug up links to most of the original content in Dan Gillmor’s pioneering EJournal blog for the… Read full post »

“A.P. Cracks Down on Unpaid Use of Articles on Web.” That’s the headline on a New York Times article right now. But if you read the article, you see that the Associated Press’s new campaign isn’t only about “unpaid use of articles,” it’s about any use o… Read full post »

Just a note to let you all know that I’m in Seattle for Say Everything-related events.

If you’re around these parts, come on down to the University Bookstore at 7 p.m. Wednesday for my talk and booksigning. Would love to see you there.

Seattle is in sunny glory tonight. What a… Read full post »