Category: Uncategorized

OK, it’s been a long haul, but the News.com redesign is live, with new services, a new look, a new width, and a new tagline… just the award-winning reporting stays the same.

Just for good measure, we threw in a list, the Blog 100. Everybody loves to hate lists, either because they are on them or are not on them. No matter — the point is that some people may find it useful to read these blogs. That’s the point.

I’ve answered hundreds of reader emails during the beta fortnight, and it’s very cool to be reminded that there is an audience, loyal readers who care about what you do. I love corresponding with readers, although I’ll admit to a bit of fatigue right now.

I hope it’s all working in the morning! 😉

First, I got excited that a Slashdot thread started about The Big Picture. Then I read the thread, and realized the initial post threw out the word “ontology” and led, oh, just about everyone down the wrong path. Ontology is not included in The Big Picture. Move on, start anew, look at the feature, and decide whether it’s useful or not based on what it does, not some academic label that is misapplied here.

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 a recipe sidebar from a print (!) article in the New York Times about Jamaican foods, and put it to the test. Not your usual morning beverage, but I think it turned out fine as I sip it now. The recipe and notes follow.

GINGER BEER
Time: 10 minutes, plus at least 4 hours’ steeping
Ingredients:

• 12 ounces ginger, washed and roughly chopped (about 2 cups); peel if you want a lighter-colored beverage
• 1 bay leaf
• 3/4 cup of sugar
• Juice of one lemon

Steps:

1. Place chopped ginger in a large bowl. Add bay leaf. Boil 10 cups of water and pour it over ginger. Let mixture sit for at least four hours or overnight.
2. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, place 3/4 cup water and the sugar and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer just until sugar has melted, stirring occasionally. Set aside to cool.
3. Strain ginger mixture into a pitcher or glass jar, mix in sugar water and lemon juice. Stir and serve over ice.

Yield: About 10 cups.

Slight gotchas in my first attempt included:

• Size/shape of the large bowl: The wide, shallow bowl I used for steeping the ginger was difficult to pour from, so I ended up hand-straining.
• Size of the pitcher: 10 cups was a bit too much for the pitcher I had selected, so some was wasted.
• One lemon’s juice: While I used fresh ginger, I used lemon juice from a prepared bottle, so I have no idea how much I put in… just squeezed until I thought it was enough. Wish the recipe had a hint about how much juice is in one lemon, in tablespoons perhaps?
• Color: Color didn’t matter to me, so I did not peel. Once you see fresh ginger in its original form, I doubt you will want to, either. Ginger is a root, with all the odd shapes that implies.
• Making the sugar water: I never brought the water to a boil, as the sugar melted quite quickly. I have no idea if boiling was important, or just the dissolution of the sugar. I chose the latter.

Not in a huge rush to do it again, but for those who like their non-alcoholic drink to bite back, ginger beer is elixir.

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 something I had missed.

Warning: above is only of interest if you’re a media geek.

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 the end of beta doesn’t mean the end of learning or changes, just the start of a new phase.

I’ll be at the TechCrunch Meetup tonight, to meet and to learn.

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 updated fully, especially for a random blog post. But my first search (surprise) was Google’s main web search, courtesy of the Safari search box, which saves removing fingers from the keyboard. And my post defining frieNDA came up first!?

So I followed up with Yahoo, MSN, and then Technorati. Only Google even had the post in its results. The big three all politely asked me if I meant to search for friend instead, a reasonable thought.

Anyway, Google wins this one. Whether it’s a good thing for web search that one single post, apparently unlinked to, can shoot to the top of Google results is left for the audience to decide. Below are the four screenshots, all taken on the morning of September 21, 2005.

Google

Yahoo

MSN

Technorati

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 threw the adjectives “Fierce” and “Little” before “Dragons.”

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 sucks” they have to care enough about the thing you”ve made to spend time with it and recognize how bad it is.

Every time a customer cares enough to tell us something is wrong, it’s an opportunity to earn their respect far into the future. At least they cared enough to tell you, instead of just leaving. Maybe they still leave, but perhaps you can fix the problem for the next person. That’s the goal, if not the promise.

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 and David Berlind in the Dan & David show on ZDNet. Yes, it’s easy to throw stones, but I don’t think I’m in a glass house on this one.