Month: September 2005
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A recipe for ginger beer
Sometimes you need to step away from the computer and tech, as I did last night. The kitchen is rarely my milieu, but with a four-ingredient recipe for making ginger beer, I decided it was worth the risk. Ginger beer is fantastically tart: think ginger ale squared, with less carbonation. Several weeks ago I clipped…
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More food for thought about TimesSelect
I don’t have anything new to add to the inside baseball discussion on TimesSelect, but I did find Jay Rosen’s Charging for Columnists: Notes and Comment on the Launch of TimesSelect worth the read, and the link to Steve Outing’s column at Poynter: “TimesSelect: Big Revenue Play or Dangerous Move?, where Eliot is quoted, was…
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Beta really does mean beta sometimes
As some have noticed publicly, we’re running a public beta at work. Nothing like testing your assumptions with real customers (even a small fraction). If you come across the beta, via whatever means, please do click the link at the top and send feedback. Lots of people are listening. This beta won’t last forever, but…
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TechCrunch Meetup
I’ll be at the TechCrunch Meetup tonight, to meet and to learn.
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Exploring the spread of frieNDA
To be clear, my attempt to coin the word frieNDA has not been much of a success. How do I know? Well, I searched for links to the article, or uses of the term, in a few of the obvious places. It’s been eight days, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect that web-wide indexes have been…
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I have not fallen into this trap…yet
Tim Bray shares what he’ll be doing on Saturdays: coaching a youth soccer team. I’ll spend my Saturdays attending similar “contests,” though I haven’t yet been conned into… I mean, graciously accepted… the offer to coach said team. Phew. (But I know it will happen.) Our group has a similar name to Bray’s, though someone…
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Why Software Sucks
I’ve moved most of my straight linkblogging to del.icio.us (hate the URL, love the thoughtfulness of the directory structure), but it’s worth calling attention to Scott Berkun’s Why software sucks essay. There’s plenty to consider here, so only one nugget: … “this sucks” is right in the middle. In order for people to say “this…
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Reuters podcasts… with a computer voice
So Reuters opens a lab, and their first product is podcasts, read by a computer. I applaud them on introducing a public experimentation space, but the human voice has a future, at least for a bit longer. Compare the Reuters tech offering to Charlie Cooper and Leslie Katz in the News.com podcast, or Dan Farber…
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Orange is the color of money, or initial reactions to TimesSelect
I’m not a visual design expert, but when I went to the NYT home page (which I do rarely, I realize) to look at TimesSelect, which was introduced yesterday, my reactions were to the visual presentation. More on that below. What is TimesSelect? Read the full details, including a well-presented comparison chart speaking well of…
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Book: The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945
The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945 has a misleading title. The book has a semi-interesting tale to tell about the debate within the American corridors of power about what to do with Germany after the war was won. Roosevelt, clearly, is a central character in that debate, but Truman, in…