Thugs is as Thugs do

A Quincy mom has disconnected her support for striking Verizon workers yesterday after a group of mouthy picketers surrounded non-union repairmen and turned a phone-line fix at her home into what she is calling a “ridiculous” protest scene.

“I looked in the street and there are picketers, 10 of them or more, doing a circle around the Verizon truck,” said Karen Austin, 64, a mother of five who lives on Forest Avenue. “Every time (the repairmen) would walk up to my house they would follow them. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This is ridiculous. Why are they picketing my house?”

With tensions rising in a work-stoppage now in its fifth day, Verizon filed lawsuits in five states, including Massachusetts, yesterday to limit picketing by the 45,000 striking workers.

Source

All I can say is, if that band of union members started trudging up my front porch two things would happen. The first is they would hear a shotgun blast. The second is the barrels being lowered on them as I call 911 for backup.

You want to picket, fine. But your rights to do so end at my front curb. Go find yourself a nice little VZ store front to picket. They are all over the place.

Kurzweil Reorders the ePub Market

Kurzweil, is there anything this guy can’t do? His book the Singularity is Near has spawned a whole new way of thinking about the future. He is a prolific inventor past and present. So what’s he go an do? Well remedy the bland existence of eReaders that’s what! —

One of Blio’s major advantages over current e-book readers is that the software offers a full color experience. E Ink, which is the black-and-white display used currently in almost all e-readers, works best for text, and even then most e-books still look ugly, thanks to design limitations in the readers.

Blio actually lays out the “pages” as they would be seen on paper, with typography and illustrations copied across. It also supports video and animation. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of the interactive magazine applications (also meant for upcoming tablet devices) shown off by the likes of Time Warner, Popular Science publisher Bonnier and Wired’s parent company Conde Nast.

Add to that some nifty features such as text-to-speech and the ability to synchronize things (like bookmarks, highlights and the page you last read) across multiple devices, and it makes for an interesting e-reader.

“We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such that you can hear the audio book and see the words highlighted on the PDF at the same time,” says Peter Chapman, an executive at Kurzweil Technologies.

For publishers, says Kurzweil the advantage is that Blio preserves the original book’s format, including typsetting, layout, fonts and pagination.

Wired goes on to mention stiff competition, etc. My guess is maybe not. First this has the attributes that most any student or researcher keeps in the stachel — marker, highlighter, sticky notes, etc. Then it supports color. Of course that’s more a hardware restriction than anything. But still color will probably be what separates the have nots from the haves in the ebook market very quickly once power issues are corralled.

What’s not to like? Well format for one. Got too many right now. Many non-Amazon systems were starting to gravitate around the ePub format. This will delay that for awhile.

Now the hardware makers need to step up. The merge of tablet and eReader will continue. Somebody will come out with a 8.5×11 formatted screen and the rest will be history. Whoever does it will have the same impact that IBM did when they introduced their laptop line oh so many years ago.

Linky.

Has Murdoch Lost it??

Its never been done successfully with one lone execption — WSJ. The exception is an exception. WSJ is a single purpose nexus for all news financial (Sorry Bloomberg, you’re good, but not that good.) As such they mix their pulp with their bits in a bundle is you want it that way. But due to the nature of the content they feed on each other –

Media giant News Corporation Ltd intends to charge for all its news websites in a bid to lift revenues, as the transition towards online media permanently changes the advertising landscape.

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch told analysts in a conference call after News Corp released its full year results that the traditional newspaper business model has to change.

“The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution,” Mr Murdoch said.

“But it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites,” he said.

He said News Corp would use the Wall Street Journal’s online vehicle as a model.

“The extended downturn has only increased the drumbeat for change,” he said, arguing that classified advertising for online news would never reach the levels once offered by print.

“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content, is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting,” Mr Murdoch said.

Here’s the insanity of this.

• It has been tried with the editorial section of the NYT. The editorial section online essentially became persona nongrata to the larger national audience. Maureen Down had been stifled by her own publisher. Editorials have impact only when they have reach. After two years they quit.
• Good journalism does cost money, but publishers cut costs way back in their hey day to please Wall Street and the outcome proves Murdoch’s point. But the marginal gain in revenue from the Internet will not refill the news room with new staffers. So the decline will continue.

  Having abandoned the B & C local news segments the door was open for others to try and cover it. Third Pipe has been here before so I won’t belabor it.

• Following on the point above. To be a successful internet enterprise does not depend on massive number of bodies grinding out stuff. To be successful it depends on fewer people per impression than what WSJ garners. I point to the Michele Malkin site. Very successful, yet last count it only herself and 5 staff plus name contributors like Morrissey in the mix.
• Lets continue the cost angle. The internet blogs have the advantage. They don’t have the drag of a multimillion dollar press to keep fed. So lean and mean comes natural. Pulp media come from the other side of the cost equation and as a consequence everything they do is a cut. Cuts in material and personnel are heart wrenchingly painful. Many lacking the guts to do it like they should.
• Finally Murdoch assumes he has a product worth paying for. I don’t know the price that will be set, but I doubt if I will sign up for it. There is just so much material out there. And of course there is the ‘business ecology abhors a vacuum’ bent on the whole matter. If somebody can’t make it on ads for covering sports then some enterprising team of locals will do so and take the ad revenue to the bank.

I wish Murdoch the best. If anybody can pull it off it will be him. However my bet is on ‘Luck Lady’ in the 5th at The Downs. I would have as much better chance of winning.

Yo! Put Down the HTC!

Yes in my continuing saga of ‘wake up and look around’ against the dark forces of ignorance, distraction and lack of social skills fostered by the smartphone, I present you with another one –

Why didn’t she see it? You’re ahead of me here. She was too intent on tapping out a text message to notice the gaping gap in the sidewalk and just dropped straight on in. Idiotic, yes, but now Alexa’s parents are trying to blame someone else for their daughter’s stupidity while making a little money into the bargain. They’re suing the city.

I’m all for punishing people who walk the streets staring into the tiny screens of their cells. They’re a danger to cyclists, for one, and at the very best they’re an annoyance to normal pedestrians, the kind who actually look where they’re walking. That Alexa’s parents are not doing anything to teach her a lesson but instead are blaming city workers is quite ridiculous.

Life ladies and gentlemen is not a RoadRunner cartoon mixed with scenes from Matrix I. There are consequences and if you do something stupid you will get bit. Live with it. Parents, call off the lawyers. Take the smartphone away and make her get a summer job to defray the cost of the medical insurance for a couple of months.

Read the whole thing.

The Beast from 20,000 Leagues

Or should I say, Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Corp. The man does have one saving grace. He is the last of the CEO’s who have ever climbed a telephone pole and worked his way up. That being said, he is just one of about 4 that are delaying our broadband futures. Just VZ does it better than their competition.

Source: Charlie Rose show.
HT: Consumerist

New Definition of Insanity?

Look I am a live and let live kind of guy. But there is a point where actions of certain people have to be questioned even if they aren’t breaking any laws. Case in point –

At the office, in the car, even walking down the street, Nick Andes and Doug Klinger are constantly texting. They both have unlimited plans.

“Basically because of us being bored at work and just texting back and forth a bunch of times and we would try to bother each other,” said Andes.

Because they were already sending so many messages they decided to see what the standing record was for sent and received texts. They looked it up online.

“I think initially neither of us thought that the record was beatable; 182,000 texts is a lot of texts,” said Andes.

All told they sent 217,000 texts and ran up a $26,000 text bill. T-Mobile is supposed to have a unlimited that both these guys subscribed to. but the programming in the system was capped at 100k under the assumption that no one would go beyond that. If I were T-Mobile I would stick them with the bill.

Oh and guys I have a suggestion for your boss. They ought to fire you both. That should certainly liven up your life.

Linky.