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16 Apr 2010 13:46

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Politics: Daily Show’s war on Fox News takes on issues of logo design

  • Can we stop comparing logos to other logos and trying to draw meaning from the conclusions? Seriously. Next think you know, someone’s gonna start calling us commies because we use a lot of red in our site design.

14 Apr 2010 22:51

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Tech: The most useless quote from Chirp comes from will.i.am

  • I love the world of social connectivity, the real-time responses and connections, the same thing that crippled the industry I live in. Now you can surf people’s thoughts.
  • will.i.am • Discussing why he likes Twitter. He seemed like a strange presence at the conference (especially after he suggested bands will have official programmers). And what a conference it is – Twitter introduced a bunch of crap that directly steps on the toes of what developers are already doing with the technology, going so far as to offer their own URL shortener. Well crap. There goes the neighborhood, kids. source

02 Apr 2010 15:11

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Biz: Newspapers willing to guilt you into reading their articles

  • “If you don’t have us around, we’ll break your leg.” Journalism is an interesting beast these days. There’s more of it going on than ever, but not nearly as much of the kind that is truly helpful to the community. But we can probably all agree that scare tactics won’t convince people to start reading the paper again. It’s journalism’s job to innovate, not the other way around.
  • there’s a point here As poorly as this ad puts it, it does have a point. The nitty gritty of the journalism process is in severe danger of going away. The low-paid scab reporter who willingly covers boring but necessary city council meetings? There’s no equivalent of him or her in the blogosphere (at least not with a paycheck for their work). Local journalism is at a real turning point.
  • proving its worth The problem, though, is local news outlets are generally really bad at explaining this point, and when they do, it’s really heavy-handed (see the subway ad above). So, what’s next? We’re guessing one of two things need to happen: One, it needs to be community-supported on a non-profit basis (see MinnPost), or two, it needs to truly innovate. Or both.
  • will the iPad help? Tomorrow, many large papers, from USA Today to The New York Times, will release apps to coincide with the release of the iPad. From a outsider’s standpoint, they look great (especially the USA Today one). But really, we want to see what mid-sized dailies will do. USA Today won’t go away. The Kalamazoo Gazette might. And, honestly, we need it more. source