Michael Boyle's weblog
I don’t read my RSS feeds as much as I used to, and there are a lot of blogs in there that I haven’t actively followed in years – mostly from the very early days of blogging. One such blog is that of Anil Dash – he doesn’t write like he used to either!
However, he published a very good piece at the beginning of October that I think bears some attention: We’re (still) not being alarmist enough about climate change.
There was more auspicious startup news this week, this time from Ottawa, where a very talented group (partly made up of some long-term friends and former colleagues) has launched PickupPal. PickupPal is a really great idea, and I think represents a class of website/webapp that we’re going to see more and more of in coming months.
The idea is simple: it’s an online ride-sharing marketplace that uses the familiar socnet/Web2 techniques in pursuit of practical, real-world goals that go far beyond simply building and maintaining your social graph.
The other thing about PickupPal that is especially great is that ride-sharing by definition is environmentally friendly and can help people reduce their carbon footprint. We’re not all lucky enough to live in a city like (central) Montreal with world-class mass transit – and a practical, easy way to help get a few cars off the road is very timely.
about the terrible devastation in New Orleans, you need to no further than NOLA.com’s Hurricane Katrina 2005 site. The NO Times-Picayune is publishing only electronically during the crisis.
in Montreal and hundreds of other cities. Blork has some great pics of the scene downtown during the day. Unfortunately, for me to participate in “Car Free Day” it would have had to have been subtitled “Home Office Day” as my office is pretty much inaccessible by public transit – or at least not within an hour of leaving the house.
has published an interesting DaveNet today, “Is it marketing or journalism?” Of course this question has been central to journalism for years, going back at least to the days of Hearst and Pulitzer’s yellow journalism. But though the question seems to have been sleeping for a while, it has definitely revived in the past couple of years.
As far as I’m concerned, Winer is pretty directly taking on the Telecom Reform Act in a piece like that. At least that’s my interpretation. By concentrating ownership of the media, the Act led directly (though it wasn’t the only thing that led us here) to the point where there is a lack of competition in the marketplace: competition that would (and traditionally did) keep journalists honest. Think of baseball. The owners always scream about keeping free agent salaries down, about controlling their environment. But with 30 teams, someone (usually Steinbrenner, it seems) always defects and refuses to toe the line and signs the big contract. That competition no longer exists in journalism. There aren’t very many players left (at the money end of things), so it’s less likely that someone will defect from current practice (i.e., not questioning the boss or money) and thus in effect keep them all honest.
Again, with feeling: the CDA was a smokescreen! It was the rest of the 1996 Telecom Reform Act that was really offensive. It vacated accountability in the media through the removal of competition. The effect this has had (with other influences) is undeniable.
