problems
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An evacuated view on the #ThomasFire
Here’s the latest satellite fire detection data, restricted to just the last twelve hours of the Thomas Fire, mapped on Google Earth Pro:That’s labeled 1830 Mountain Standard Time (MST), or 5:30pm Pacific, about half an hour ago as I write this. And here are the evacuation areas: Our home is in the orange Voluntary Evacuation… Continue reading
Broadcasting, data, Family, Geography, Life, Photography, problems, ThomasFire, Travel, tv, weather, wildfire -
Revolutions take time
The original version of this ran as a comment under Francine Hardaway‘s Medium post titled Have we progressed at all in the last fifty years? My short answer is “Yes, but not much, and not evenly.” This is my longer answer. In your case and mine, it has taken the better part of a century to… Continue reading
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Google enters its chrysalis
In The Adpocalypse: What it Means, Vlogbrother Hank Green issues a humorous lament on the impending demise of online advertising. Please devote the next 3:54 of your life to watching that video, so you catch all his points and I don’t need to repeat them here. Got them? Good. All of Hank’s points are well-argued and make complete sense. They… Continue reading
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Have we passed peak phone?
I shot this picture with my phone on the subway last night, while no less absorbed in my personal rectangle than everyone else on the subway (and I do mean everyone) was with theirs. I don’t know what the other passengers were doing on their rectangles, though it’s not hard to guess. In my case it was… Continue reading
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How True Advertising Can Save Journalism From Drowning in a Sea of Content
Journalism is in a world of hurt because it has been marginalized by a new business model that requires maximizing “content” instead. That model is called adtech. We can see adtech’s effects in The New York Times’ In New Jersey, Only a Few Media Watchdogs Are Left, by David Chen. His prime example is the Newark… Continue reading
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Exploring the business behind digital media’s invisibility cloaks
Imagine you’re on a busy city street where everybody who disagrees with you disappears. We have that city now. It’s called media—especially the social kind. You can see how this works on Wall Street Journal‘s Blue Feed, Red Feed page. Here’s a screen shot of the feed for “Hillary Clinton” (one among eight polarized… Continue reading
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The problem for people isn’t advertising, and the problem for advertising isn’t blocking. The problem for both is tracking.
In Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking, @JuliaAngwin and @ProPublica unpack what the subhead says well already: “Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names.” So here’s a message from humanity to Google and all the other spy organizations in… Continue reading
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@Staples, you can Un faster than that.
I just unsubscribed from Staples mailings, and got this: WTF? Is the request traveling by boat somewhere? Does it need to be aged before it works? We have computers now. We’re on the Internet. There is no reason why unsubscribing from anything should take longer than now. Staples is not alone at this, by the… Continue reading
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The cash model of “customer experience”
Here’s the handy thing about cash: it gives customers scale. It does that by working the same way for everybody, everywhere it’s accepted. It’s also anonymous by nature, meaning it carries no personal identifiers. Recording what happens with it is also optional, because using it doesn’t require an entry in a ledger (as happens with… Continue reading
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The Internet deserves its proper noun
The NYTimes says the Mandarins of language are demoting the Internet to a common noun. It is to be just “internet” from now on. Reasons: Thomas Kent, The A.P.’s standards editor, said the change mirrored the way the word was used in dictionaries, newspapers, tech publications and everyday life. In our view, it’s become wholly generic, like ‘electricity… Continue reading
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Help: why don’t images load in https?
For some reason, many or most of the images in this blog don’t load in some browsers. Same goes for the ProjectVRM blog as well. This is new, and I don’t know exactly why it’s happening. So far, I gather it happens only when the URL is https and not http. Okay, here’s an experiment. I’ll… Continue reading
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Is the online advertising bubble finally starting to pop?
I started calling online advertising a bubble in 2008. I made “The Advertising Bubble” a chapter in The Intention Economy in 2012. I’ve been unpacking what I figure ought to be obvious (but isn’t) in 52 posts and articles (so far) in the Adblock War Series. This will be the 53rd. And it ain’t happened yet. But, now… Continue reading
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Toward an ethics of influence
This event is now in the past and can be seen in its entirety here. Stop now and go to TimeWellSpent.io, where @TristanHarris, the guy on the left above, has produced and gathered much wisdom about a subject most of us think little about and all of us cannot value more: our time. Both of us… Continue reading
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TV Viewers to Madison Avenue: Please quit driving drunk on digital
Today AdAge gives us Clinton and Sanders Using Addressable Advertising in New York Market: Precision Targeting Is Especially Relevant in NYC, Say Political Media Observers, by @LowBrowKate. Here’s how it works: In order to aim addressable TV spots to those voters, the campaigns provide a list of the individual voters they want to target to… Continue reading
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A (so far) suckless printer at a good price
In my last post I said all printers suck — at least in my experience. YMMV, as they say. The most recent suckage at our place was produced by a Brother laser printer and an Epson ink-jet that co-died while I was elsewhere (coincidentally dealing with an Epson printer that refused to print anything from… Continue reading
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The Giant Zero
The world of distance Fort Lee is the New Jersey town where my father grew up. It’s at the west end of the George Washington Bridge, which he also helped build. At the other end is Manhattan. Even though Fort Lee and Manhattan are only a mile apart, it has always been a toll call… Continue reading