FERNANDO CASSIA of the Argentinian yard points me to Daily Tech where I discover that not only am I being libelled, but my own pictures are being published too.
The page is here. The photograph of me was taken in Oxford Jail – now a tourist attraction rather than a clink. The IT Examiner and The News weren’t set up to take advantage of cheap journalistic labour. You can get cheap journalism anywhere, even in America it seems.
THE EVER-EGREGIOUS Google has been putting its oar into the newspaper business, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Yeah, while all around us newspapers fall – yeah unto the IT Examiner and The News – CEO Eric Schmidt has been advising suits from newspapers how to do their business better.
Schmidt, according to the Journal, told the Newspaper Association of America that publishers need to create a new format for online journalism.
That, Schmidt reckons, means creating personalised content readers want to read.
It’s readers that newspapers should always keep in mind, of course, and experienced journalists will produce copy and headlines that catch the eye, and taste good too.
Unfortunately, too many publishers think of their journalists as data gatherers, which is why so many journalists are being laid off all around the world, in a bid to reduce costs.
Online journalism is like any other journalism, Mr Schmidt. The overheads are much smaller than those of print journalism, but readers want hard hitting stuff, not regurgitated pap and crap. The Journal article is here – you will need a subscription. ♦
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Tagged Eric Schmidt, Google, IT Examiner, journalism, Newspaper Association of America, The News
ONE OF this bog’s most faithful commentators, the good Dr Drashek, should wake up to a new commenting opportunity.
Both The News and the IT Examiner allow comments – albeit subject to immoderation by the immoderators.
We are very much looking forward to immoderating DrashekWare on both titles. Chevron obviously decided to risk it for a friskit! Oi’ll be astonished if the Good Doctor does. ♥
THE BUILDING next door continues to rise, with few caring about the fate of the coconut dream axed in a dream of consumerism.
But today we went out and saw the labourers playing a game, so we felt compelled to ask Subhash, who works in Bangalore, for The News and the IT Examiner, what the heck was going on.
They, he said, are playing a board game, similar to chess, although the name of the game they were playing escaped him.
There are three things to note in these two photos. First, the ingenious use of wood instead of metal scaffolding. Secondly, the car in the broader picture appears to be a Reva (pronounced Raver), an electric car which appears to be Subhash’s car. Thirdly, the strategy involved in this game of chess. Chess, as everyone knows, was invented in India. ♥
I’M PLEASED to see that my first online IT publication, The Register, is an avid reader of the IT Examiner. Heck! And TG Daily too. As you can see by checking this Google link here. ♣
A DELIGHTFUL piece of guff on the IT Examiner web site today – a Press Trust of India (PTI) story all about how typewriters are making a comeback.
However, I have a confession to make. I have hung onto my IBM Selectric because I was fond of it so much. OK, it’s true that’s an electric typewriter,but my acquaintance with typewriters goes back far further than that. I got my first baby typewriter when I was 11 or 12 – my dad was a duty officer on Saturdays at a government establishment, and there was little else to do while he stood duty but play with the office typewriters.
The PTI story suggests that people are returning to typewriters so they can get up to speed with computer keyboards, but when I was in my early days of working, in the mid-1960s, offices had what was called a “typing pool”. These lasses, and they were invariably lasses, either took dictation directly or via a Dictaphone, or from an executive’s longhand.
The draft then went back to the suit to check, so there were plenty of opportunities for SNAFUs. Now, these days, the tables are turned, and the suits, whether they be female suits or mail suits, have to tap away on their own keyboards, so turning them into overpaid secretaries.
There was nothing more satisfying, in the days before photocopiers, than getting three sheets of quarto, bunging in two sheets of carbon paper, and expressing yourself forcibly through the power of QWERTYUIOP.
Type too fast or not skilfully enough, and the ts and the cs, the as and the ks all jammed together in a satisfying clash of the letters of the alphabets in which none of them won.
I don’t know why I’ve kept my IBM Selectric, but I’ve also hung to my AB Dick offset litho printer, a letterpress printer, and even a Stinkpad Butterfly from IBM as well as the bastard offspring of Acorn, the horrid Acorn Atom. This got so hot the only way it could be kept running was to cut a hole in the plastic casing to let out the heat. The other alternative was to continue to let the plastic melt onto the microprocessor. Must be nostalgia, I guess. ♥
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Tagged AB Dick, Butterfly 701 Thinkpad, IBM Selectric, IBM Stinkpad, IBM Thinkpad, IT Examiner, offset litho, Press Trust of India, PTI, QWERTYUIOP, typewriters
CHECK OUT Subhankar’s blog, here. ♥
SUBHANKAR KUNDU, one of the leading lights of the IT Examiner in India, has started his own blog, “Explore Subhankar”. Subhankar is a reporter based in Bangalore, and together with Jayant Mishra, an Examiner freelance based in Mumbai, excelled themselves by working through the night to bring readers the latest news of the outrages.
Which are still continuing, unfortunately, as the RSS feed on the right demonstrates. ♣
Dūrgā Devī
