Conspiracy of Silence
Half Ton Man

64/104

And not a good one, either.

I checked my Gmail this afternoon to find a rather unpleasant surprise: All of my 50-some labels were suddenly on the left side, buried “below the fold” in what is largely considered no man’s land in Web design. The labels went from useful to extra work with all the scrolling.

Turns out, Gmail has announced a new and improved labeling system. If you don’t want to follow the link, here’s the relevant explanation:

All of these changes also mean the end of Right-side Labels, an experimental Gmail Labs feature. This is the first Labs feature we’re retiring. (The idea behind Labs was always that things could break or disappear at any time or they might work so well that they become regular features. More on that soon…) Now that labels aren’t in their own little box and take up much less space, moving them around the screen didn’t seem as important. We realize quite a few of you used and liked Right-side Labels, so if you feel strapped for left nav screen real estate without it, try turning on Right-side Chat in Labs instead.

Already, the backlash is beginning. The “didn’t seem as important” comment makes me wonder, did they ask users their opinions? And not just geek users and “Gmail Ninja” users, but anyone else? After reading Redish’s book and Krug’s book, I can’t help thinking they should know, to any degree, how that change is going to impact usability.

I preferred seeing the entire list on the right side because I use filters to sort mail into relevant folders for reading later. That kept the Inbox relatively free of things that didn’t require immediate attention and in general pretty uncluttered.

It will be interesting to see if Gmail puts the feature back, or if it continues to hide behind the “labs are experimental” comments.

Edited to add: This post explains some of their testing and monitoring, but I don’t think it answers the basic question: Why?

Reports are swirling that Michael Jackson is dead from a heart attack at 50, but all of the reports remain unconfirmed as of this writing.

If you look closely at most of the reports, they cite TMZ. That site credits an unnamed cardiologist.

A Reuters story cites TMZ, but is careful to note, “There was no official confirmation of the reported death and spokespersons for Jackson could not be reached for comment.”

CNN also tries to be careful: “Entertainer Michael Jackson has died after being taken to a hospital on Thursday after suffering cardiac arrest, according to multiple reports including the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press. CNN has not confirmed his death.”

FoxNews further tries to careful: “The Los Angeles Times reported the legendary singer, 50, had fallen into a coma, and the Times and several other media reported that Jackson died. FOX News has yet to confirm this information.”

The Fox story soon was revised to read, “FOX News confirmed that the legendary singer, 50, was rushed to the hospital Thursday afternoon, but did not confirm reports of his death.”

AP stories note the information came from “a person with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press. He was 50. The person said Jackson died in a Los Angeles hospital. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.”

(Please note that all of those links will go to stories that get revised and updated every time new information comes in.)

Several of these stories claim that Jackson has died. They have headlines that read he has died. Yet three major news organizations cannot confirm his death with a credible report from a coroner, a family spokesperson, or a hospital spokesperson.

It’s not a credible story until you have a confirmed, named source providing the information, and TMZ is not a confirmed, credible source nor does it cite a named, credible source.

So why are the major media citing it and running with the story anyway?

Sacco and Vanzetti
Children Underground
Honeyboy

62/104

The shift from the printed word to the moving image has been occurring for a while now. Mitchell Stephens’ book The Rise of the Image, The Fall of the Word made one of the most concerted arguments about this shift 11 years ago. With the rapid proliferation of the Internet since then, the shift has been speeding up.

According to a Cisco report, “The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand, Internet, and P2P) will account for over 91 percent of global consumer traffic by 2013. Internet video alone will account for over 60 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2013.”

Though the report refers to “consumer,” I wonder how that will impact all the blogs, wikis, and other information sources that use text? Or even e-mails? Will they become v-mails instead?

Though four years shy of the estimate, the moves toward video already are happening. That same report notes, “Video communications traffic growth is accelerating. Though still a small fraction of overall Internet traffic, video over instant messaging and video calling are experiencing high growth. Video communications traffic will increase tenfold from 2008 to 2013.” Some examples of that trend include the following:

• Video chat is already available through multiple providers, and many computers now come with built-in webcams. Even my little netbook has a webcam in it.
• Video blogging, or vlogging or vidblogging, has been available for a while, though video responses on Youtube are growing.
• Wikipedia is allowing videos to be added to its pages.
• Consumer-oriented cameras and software are becoming even easier to use and video is becoming even easier to edit.

After teaching writing for the media these last couple years, I find this shift from print to video interesting and maybe a little frustrating. The Internet is a scanning culture, and a capricious scanning culture at that. As much as good designers make beautiful and hopefully accessible pages, people will scan and use them as they see fit.

I prefer to scan, or if the subject interests me enough, read. I can get through a text-based article faster than I can wading through a video. If I seek confirmation of a fact or statistic, I can zip through the text or even do a search for a key word.

I skip video for the most part. In that mode the information becomes time-based, which puts control for its accessibility with the creator and the service provider. Alex Juhasz did an interesting experiment with a class a couple years ago wherein everything they created and turned in appeared on YouTube. In her final video for the class, she reflects on how YouTube specifically (but also online video generally) makes for specific demands on the creators and how the nature of academic inquiry doesn’t quite align with those expectations for YouTube videos, which privilege entertainment and summary over extended inquiry. This is not to say that it’s impossible, but I wonder what changes when the ideas of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak or Michele Foucault shift from one mode of idea expression to another.

Digitizing the information also creates questions of accessibility. Video can be viewed on computers, cellphones, and the like, and with the shrinking of technology, the video device now fits in a jeans pocket or backpack quite easily. But what happens when the battery dies? It’s not like you can unfold your iPod and read what’s written there.

I was reading trade press story about public broadcasting and found this great comparison:

Like it or not, viewers often equate PBS programming with spinach. It may be good for them, but they don’t want to eat it.

Source: A.J. Frutkin and Michael Burgi, “Reinventing PBS.” Mediaweek 12.40 (4 November 2002): 28.

One of my courses this fall is an introduction to Web design and light coding. While programs like DreamWeaver and CoffeeCup make this coding easier, I strongly feel that opening something like Notepad++ and just writing the code from your head works best for learning and designing.

While theoretically I could use all online sources for this course, I still prefer having a book. The stack you see at the right contains some of the ones I am considering using. I am looking for two: one about coding and one about writing / architecture. The titles listed here include the following:

HTML, XHMTL, and CSS, 6th ed., Elizabeth Castro
Letting Go of the Words, Janice (Ginny) Redish
Don’t Make Me Think, 2nd ed., Steve Krug
HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Rob Huddleston
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, Jason Beaird

Any insights on any of these would be greatly appreciated.

Fall
COMS 359: Digital Media Production
COMS 457: The Documentary Tradition
COMS 466: Narrative Scriptwriting

Spring
COMS 419: Political Communications in America
COMS 460: Broadcasting Theory and Criticism (Television Studies)
COMS 466: Narrative Scriptwriting

Well, that wasn’t a pleasant surprise. I logged in to eMusic to check on an artist and lo-and-behold, not only did my rates go UP, my number of downloads went DOWN. It was $19.99 for 75 tracks; in July, it will be $20.79 for 50 tracks.

According to this letter, the trade-off for the higher prices is access to lower pricing on whole albums and access to Sony’s catalog of materials two years old and older.

The backlash has been fast and furious. eMusic attempted to respond here, but the backlash continues in the comments.

I agree with some of the comments: I didn’t sign up for eMusic to get access to Sony music. I signed up for the opportunity to hunt for new and interesting music. I discovered a lot of interesting stuff through that site, and much of what I found continues to be part of my favorites. I liked that the music was DRM-free and legal, and I liked that the site was designed for explorers like myself. It was fun finding good things I would never hear on the radio or many other places, really.

If I wanted mainstream stuff, I just went to Amazon — again, DRM-free and legal, if more expensive. I avoided iTunes because of the DRM issues, though those issues seem to be changing.

The price change isn’t just about the addition of the Sony catalog, though that’s what many people are latching on to. It seems also about the rising prices for tracks because some of the older pricing plans were causing the company to lose money. I used to have the 300 tracks for $74.99, but I can see how making that sustainable would be a challenge.

Now, though, the highest option is 75 tracks for $30.99. A $24.99 booster pack adds only 50 songs to that total.

What strikes me also as odd in this is the album pricing. eMusic will offer lower prices for entire albums with 12 tracks or more. The sales of albums has been the industry model for a long, long time. Singles were offered on 45s and cassettes, but the idea was, if you liked the song, you bought the album. That isn’t the case so much anymore, so why default to an antiquated pricing standard and tout it as a good thing?

But what are the alternatives? Hrm. I found some possibilities in the comments: Lala and Boomkat. A couple sites have free music: Jamendo and The Internet Archive. I’m still not sure if I will stay with eMusic or not, though.

And if you want some great, insightful commentary on the music industry as a whole, go here.

Not from me!

Indiewire has an interesting article by Basil Tsiokos, a documentary programmer who has been posting his brief comments through Twitter. The Indiewire article brings his tweets together with commentary for more in-depth explanation. He offers advice on talking heads, narration, dubbing, sound, and topics.

A.J. Schnack, another documentary programmer and maker, starts his tweets this morning with this: “Dear documentary filmmaker: You’re an artist. People disagree about art. You’re not doing this to be loved.” He links to this post, wherein he reminds documentary makers:

What you should do, may I humbly suggest, is make the film you want to make, the film you have to make. And do the best you can to make it great. Ask for help, get feedback, get help, and when its ready, submit it to a festival – if that’s what you see as the best path for your film – and then get ready to submit to another and another and another…

And for something else, here is Errol Morris on Twitter, his blog, and a Wisconsin Alumni Magazine story. I have to respect him even more now for quoting Dr. Strangelove dialogue in his tweets.