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We’re considering new services to develop at work, and there are lots of choices. So far, it feels like nothing is new under the sun, but novelty doesn’t seem necessary, as long as we provide content and services that people want. To date, content has taken care of itself (meaning: the editors and reporters know their stuff, and that is why they keep winning awards). The services are more my department.

Yesterday, during a discussion of our choices, two of the features planned were trimmed (conceptually) because the feeling was ‘start simple’. There was little concern over just repeating the steps of others. I don’t believe in novelty for its own sake, but I’ll admit that I would like to roll out something that makes people wish they had done it. At the same time, I know our readers would benefit from some ‘check the box’ features, if well executed. And executing well is not something to take for granted. Heck, it’s probably why I have a job. I don’t consider myself creative, but I take care of details and keep the trains running. Interesting expression: trains have fared better in our language and turns of phrase than they have as a mode of transportation, even if train travel can be wonderful.

Do I sound convincing? I’ll see if I convinced myself when I get to work.

Almost literally.

One problem is that I watched several minutes of the terrible Monday Night Football game this evening. The Bears really don’t belong on national TV.

But the larger concern I have is over the bundling of information, cable-TV style. Comcast owns the cable franchise here in San Francisco, having bought it from AT&T, which bought it from TCI… yes, three owners in seven short years. I have bills to prove it. Anyway, we moved to digital cable because I wanted to watch the Tour de France (which was fantastic television, especially this year). When signing up, I was walked through the process by someone friendly enough to convince me to try the Digital Silver package for a 3-month discount, which I could cancel. The sales person also commiserated with me that the Comcast website is not clear about which channels are available with which packages. Seems like a perfect use of the web… but maybe it was too perfect. I now think that the obfuscation is quite deliberate, since their website still (nearly three months later) does not offer a simple grid of which channels come with which levels of service. Instead, you get a list of all possible channels (this is the SF, CA version). Great.

I called Comcast twice this past weekend, the first time to cancel our Digital Silver package (we just don’t need the movies, etc.) and get whatever service would continue to provide Fox Sports World and ESPN2. I’m getting hooked on more and more English Premier League soccer, and with the Women’s World Cup often on ESPN2, I’d be a dumb husband to lose that channel just now. I like the games a lot, too. After asking three times for a list of the channels I would get with the “1/2 Tier Premium” package that was suggested and included Fox Sports World — and trying to confirm that ESPN2 was included — I accepted the offering without talking to Customer Service. For unknown reasons, whomever I was talking to couldn’t (wouldn’t?) read off a list of channels that were included… but she assured me ESPN2 was included.

Fifteen minutes later… nope, no ESPN2.

So I call again, go through the entire conversation again with a different person and find out that I need Digital Classic AND the 1/2 Tier Premium. So, I get to save about $4/month instead of $10/month from the discounted Digital Silver. Argh.

Each and every person I spoke to was polite, responsive, and I got through right away. The install back in July was quick, on-time, and friendly. But Comcast is costing themselves money and aggravating this customer through their unwillingness to do one thing: share information.

I might not like their packaging and bundling of information, especially if all there in black and white in pixels on my screen, but at least I would know what I was in for. Transparency will rule out. I’m almost (almost) tempted to call Comcast and spend enough time on the phone… on their dime… with them to get an entire channel listing for each and every package and put it online here, just to save the aggravation for others. (Google would out it. Two quick searches just now didn’t turn up anything of value.)

There is an ongoing thread right now on the online-news mailing list about the practice of bundling information, and its value for producers versus its value for consumers… if it weren’t late, I’d try and bring this all full circle, but I’ll just end here. The customer will win the war, eventually, but we’re losing some battles right now.

Any event which makes you forget that tomorrow is Monday, and you’re back to work again, is worthy of repeating. I just enjoyed dinner with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and their spouses and kids. Chaos, of course, with six adults, five kids (and one on the way), but a reminder why extended families — when they work — are really amazing. I missed my siblings (none in the Bay Area) and I look forward to when they have families, but through my wife’s family I get to kindle this kind of solid and comforting connection. And it draws deeper lines between my children and their first cousins, which they will treasure as they get older.

…why Hanan Cohen doesn’t write a weblog. [from Scoble] I haven’t yet read all 44 reasons, but I skipped to the bottom (to make sure there were 44 reasons), and I appreciated this, which Cohen borrows from another blogger (linking appropriately):

Do not assume, not even for a second, that because you read the blog you know who I am or who my parents are. And you are definitely not entitled to be disrespectful. Not everything that goes on in this house ends up on the blog, so please go play Agatha Christie somewhere else.

I don’t pretend I have an audience that is paying attention, but I definitely limit myself here, knowing that every single world I type here could be read by my boss, my family, my friends, my enemies, and so on. It’s still worth doing, but it’s not always as personal as it might be if I restricted access to those I know.

One year old, Google News attracts attention and speculation from the media, which eye it warily and longingly: competition or traffic source or both? Here is a long interview of Krishna Bharat, creator of Google News at USC’s Online Journalism Review. Like others in the media business, I’ve paid attention, but I don’t use it all that often (no RSS feeds… or not so that I’ve noticed). Two small points caught my eye.

1. Size of Google News is actually smaller than I thought… although it is certainly nothing to sneeze at. “Google News had 2.24 million unique visitors in August, making it the 17th most popular general news site, according to comScore’s Media Metrix.” is the quote in this article, but there is also a link to a separate OJR article from September 3, 2003 where Greg Bloom, senior Internet analyst at NielsenNetRatings, is quoted as saying “We have Google News with 3.4 million unique users in July.” Two different services, in the same ballpark.
2. When asked about the ‘beta’ label which still stands, even one year later, and whether the service would retain that label forever, Bharat answers: “No. Beta certainly means something. It basically means that our design is in flux, that we are evaluating the design and we are trying to make the engineering work. Before long we will have enough stability in engineering and we will have defined the pattern to the extent that we can take it out of beta.”

I know I’ve been wondering about that label… just a smokescreen? In any event, they’ve done a good job and forced media of all sorts to stay on its toes. Further reminder that competition is only a click away.

Just found this link to NewsFan, a new MacOS X newsreader application. I have no reason to switch from NetNewsWire, but always curious.

Ever say the wrong thing? I thought so. Let’s leave it at that.

In other news, my sister pinged me via Yahoo Messenger today. Glad she did, and we’ll see if it happens again. Of course, she was online with the idea of chatting with her new significant other, so I only distracted her for a few minutes. I find typing more fun than the phone sometimes, and way back (?) in 1994 and 1995, I would save massive phone bills IMing with my future wife.

My brother turned an internship with the Jackson Hole News & Guide into a full-time job, mixing newspaper layout responsibilities with some reporting on the side. Good for him, and I hope he enjoys the work. I’ve never been to Jackson Hole, but I would think it’s a fun place to be young and single. I’d point to an article, except their newspaper’s website only keeps one story a week in the archives, and without a decent URL until after the fact. But maybe that saves you from having to read about a local trial… here’s the lede:

Doctor cleared in jury trial

By Will Roberts
Jackson Hole News & Guide

  A Jackson jury on Friday cleared anesthesiologist Dr. William Nelson of negligence allegations and awarded no money to plaintiff Roen Perry following a five-day trial.
  The jury deliberated for seven hours on Friday before coming to its decision. Perry claimed in a suit in District Court that Nelson had acted “below the standard of care” while monitoring Perry’s vitals at St. John’s Medical Center in July 1998. He sought $75,000 in compensation. and so on…

Got to do the basics before you can do the rest. Go!

I feel like I’m not reading much at all, but I guess I am getting through a few pages after all. Reading is often the most selfish activity (apart from blogging?), so I feel like I need to steal minutes here and there for it. Those days when I take the bus to work instead of bicycling, I treasure the 30 minutes of reading time, even as I miss the slight exercise of the commute. Fortunately, the Aubrey-Maturin novels are of reasonable length, and I keep chipping away at them. I almost dread getting to the end of the volumes.

Patrick O’Brian’s The Reverse of the Medal is the eleventh in the series, and the first where more time is spent on land than sea. Aubrey, as foolish as ever on land, is given a stock tip (peace is imminent, therefore the market will rise), and he follows through on it. More importantly, he is not discreet, and shares his tip — which is fraudulent — with his father and his cohorts. After the market rights itself from the fraud, Aubrey becomes embroiled in a trial. The political target is his father, a Radical, but his father has wisely fled, so Aubrey — innocent of all but foolish trust in the justice of civil courts — stands trial and is convicted. While the penalty in this case is not imprisonment, Aubrey is removed from the Royal Navy as a result. While most of the book is spent chasing Maturin around London trying to avoid, and then soften, the inevitable outcome, it’s clear that for Aubrey, nothing could be worse than being stripped of his rank and place in the Navy that is his home. This installment ends with Maturin buying the Surprise, their long-time ship now being sold out of the Navy, as a privateer, with Aubrey to command. So begins an interlude of naval action, without the Navy… but that’s in the next book.

Been answering a lot of reader email over the last few days (for work… answering reader email from this blog wouldn’t take but a few minutes). It can be a struggle to stay polite, but it’s amazing to see how surprised readers are to get a response from a human to their complaint/comment. That can be worth all the wrist pain of typing and typing and typing. You get more with sugar, etc.