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The News Business Is Broken in the Digital Age - If You're an "ee", Not If You're an "er"
Via Tim O'Reilly's blog I come across San Francisco Chronicle publisher Phil Bronstein, predicting layoffs and saying the news business "is broken, and no one knows how to fix it... And if any other paper says they do, they're lying."... read more
Never Give a Client Three Choices
November 24 2010
In most design fields it's conventional wisdom that you should give a client three versions or "comps" of an idea, so they can choose their favorite, or maybe combine what they like best about two or all three of them.... read moreTop Drupal Gotchas, #2: White Screen / Not Enough PHP Memory
November 22 2009
Continuing my effort to spare newcomers to Drupal from falling into this powerful content management system's most common traps, this time I look at a frequent cause of white screens - the sudden and scary devolution of a previously healthy... read moreTop Drupal Gotchas: "Access Denied" and Permissions Problems
October 31 2009
The Drupal Content Management System keeps getting better and better. But the learning curve is still steep and the interface is still tricky - even after working with it for several years, some gotchas keep tripping me up. That tells... read moreWe Need to Teach Visual Critical Thinking
March 16 2009
I was just looking at yet another vacuous presentation graphic, this one purporting to illustrate the SMART test for defining objectives. It looked something like this: This is of course rubbish. Infographics guru Edward Tufte would object strenuously to its... read moreTaming an Airport Express WDS Network
March 14 2009
Apple earns enough goodwill with its usually beautiful design and usability that every now and then it gets away with murder. Case in point: the Airport Express. I recognize that many people are happy with their AE's. I've found that... read moreMarch 06 2009
Microsoft Songsmith, designed to be a software aide for musical composition, has instead proved to be a great tool for comedy, as early adopters have exploited its bent for generating hilariously inappropriate accompaniments to famous artists' vocal tracks. This is... read moreMore Creativity in a Can: When Thomas Dolby Met the Rhinestone Cowboy
March 04 2009
Microsoft Songsmith has been stuck in my mind lately like, well, a bad song (follow that link at your own risk). It's got me reflecting about the long trend towards using music technology to increase productivity, but not creativity. And... read moreFebruary 10 2009
For me, what's wrong with Songsmith is not that it's so uncool. It's what's wrong (though maybe not so egregiously) with a lot of music technology: the underlying premise that productivity is an absolute good. read moreDoes Brainstorming Actually Work?
December 11 2008
It's a staple of corporate retreats: gather staff, whip out the flip chart and announce that "there are no bad ideas". Many attendees just groan inwardly. Are they just cynics, or are they onto something? Apparently several studies back up the Dilberts of the world, at least to an extent.… read moreNovember 19 2008
Creativity is a good thing. But I think we sometimes fall into the habit of thinking it's the only good thing. Not happy in your job? You probably need more opportunities to be creative. Not happy in your personal life? If you could just express yourself more, you'd feel better.… read moreEsession Version 2: Online Recording, Now More Collaborative
April 06 2008
A little while ago I wrote an article about my experience using esession.com, a web-based "virtual recording studio". Esession struck me as having a very well-integrated collection of professional features. Now comes esession.com Version 2, and it looks like it's going to be better - largely by incorporating more non-professional… read moreAll You Need to Know about Creativity, in 48 Pages
September 20 2007
When I worked in Silicon Valley, I realized after a short while that a big part of my job as a manager amounted to finding ways to help people be creative. After all, if you have a collection of very... read moreFlow Award Nominee: FrameForge 3D Studio 2
August 20 2007
Recently I needed to develop a storyboard in a hurry for a TV commercial. Problem: I can't draw. Solution: FrameForge 3D Studio 2, a pre-visualization tool popular with film & TV directors. Unexpected extra: Flow! I loved working with this... read moreDigital Journalism Case Study: Live Blogging a Political Convention
May 07 2007
The California Democratic Party held its annual convention in San Diego April 27-29, and I was there blogging, along with hundreds of other traditional and web-based reporters. Here are some observations. ... read moreReflexion Filter: A Micro Recording Booth for Project Studios, Remotes or Podcasting
March 08 2007
In audio, as in the rest of life, the basics rule. For example, you can spend all the money in the world on great gear, but if your room is bad, you're just going to end up with a great... read moreReflexion Filter: A Micro Recording Booth for Project Studios or Podcasting
March 08 2007
In audio, as in the rest of life, the basics rule. For example, you can spend all the money in the world on great gear, but if your room is bad, you're just going to end up with a great... read moreBless You, Dolby: Technology Limits Annoyingly Loud TV
January 08 2007
Dolby Labs "is unveiling a sound-leveling technology called Dolby Volume today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that its executives say will finally eliminate the jagged audio discrepancies that exist between shows and commercials and even between scenes... read moreWhen A Pointless Flash Animation Is Just Right
January 01 2007
We're all familiar with pointless Flash animations that serve only as barriers to getting to useful web content. But I recently stumbled across an instructive exampe of a "pointless" Flash animation that works: It's on the web site of the... read moreFlow Award #3: The Frontier Design Tranzport
August 08 2006
The old saying, "You got peanut butter on my chocolate!" expresses a deep truth about creativity: two things that differ in characteristics but share a common domain may yield fruitful results when combined. The people at Frontier Design have taken... read moreWireless MIDI Keyboard Is Latest Attack On Tyranny Of Wires
June 03 2006
There’s a scene in the movie Crumb, about the retro-iconoclast cartoonist & musician R Crumb, in which he sketches out his belief that everything went to hell when wires were strung across the American landscape*. I’m with him. Wires are ugly, and furthermore they have a lot in common… read moreOh My! The News Is Next: Users Crash Journalism's Gates
May 28 2006
It surprised me to learn it, but one of my most-cited posts has been 10 Journalism Tips For Bloggers, Podcasters & Other E-Writers. It turns out there’s a lot of interest in using the web not just for sounding off, but for practicing real journalism. And as in so many… read moreLong Tail Money Goes To Aggregators & "Filterers"
May 12 2006
In a new-to-me post on his Ventureblog (OK, it as way back in Dec/05), venture capitalist David Hornik explains why the real money in Long Tail businesses goes to the companies that aggregate and/or filter content- and not to the content creators. This is the point I’ve been exploring in… read moreIs This The Inflection Point? EMI & Universal Sales Up
April 20 2006
More good news for the record industry - this via Marketwatch: Europe’s two largest music recording companies, EMI Group and Universal Music Group, reported increasing revenue on Thursday, underscoring the growing importance for both firms of selling music over the Internet. Label revenues have been falling for years now, suffering from the… read moreRecent Posts | All O'Reilly Posts
