Memex 1.1

Sitting next to Michael at dinner tonight we talked about Thomas Friedman, the celebrated NYT columnist. I argued that one of the reasons for F’s publishing successes (both The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat have been best-sellers) is that they contain just the right number of half-truths. (This is also the secret to successful business books btw.)

Then I came home and found this on Dave Winer’s Blog. It skewers Friedman very economically.

“I did a good job of stifling while listening to NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman”, Dave writes, “although at times I did gasp out loud at his arrogance and disregard for us, the audience…Friedman told an old story about how the Internet out of control would turn everyone into a public figure, like Friedman, who suffers from slander and exposure”.

Friedman told the story of an Indonesian woman who thought Al Gore is Jewish, something she heard on the Internet, which Friedman says is untrustworthy. But we remember when Friedman warned of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, who explained to us in his audience why we had to go to war. If I had time to ask a question, I might have asked him what regrets he has about the mistakes he’s made, the lies he told that caused more death than the lies the Indonesian woman who thought Gore is a Jew. The mistake we make is when we blindly trust any source, including the NY Times.

Spot on!

… according to Cyberwire’s Website Value Calculator.

Er, $1,543.

I’ll stick with the day jobs, then.

Just for comparison, Lorcan Dempsey’s Blog is ‘worth’ $124,069 and BoingBoing would apparently be a snip at $13,164,332.

Later… Martin Weller points out that Tony Hirst’s site is ‘worth’ $217,468, while his own could command $5,662.

James Cridland’s MediaUK site comes in at $263,691.

Interesting to see, also, that Quentin’s Blog — ‘value’ $1,443 — is down in the poverty zone with me.

Just as well that we don’t do it for the money!

Oh the poor dears. First Harry is denied permission to offer himself for abduction in Iraq. And now his brother William (Wills to you) has to deal with a Facebook hoax.

More than 45 members of Wills’s inner-circle were hoodwinked, including former classmates at St Andrews University and Eton College. In the past month the trickster has posted photos and messages to many of William’s friends.

Daily Mirror, May 16, 2007

Shocking. Er, tut, tut.

You lose a tenth of your readers every paragraph. So if you have an 11-para story, you’ve lost them all.

Bob Satchwell, Director of the UK Society of Editors and a former newspaper editor.

Bob says this is received wisdom in the print business. Wonder if it also applies online? Jakob Neilsen thinks it does — he maintains that, for the most part, Web readers won’t scroll down.

Later… Quentin comments: “If you lose a tenth of your readers every paragraph, then perhaps at
the end of 10 paragraphs you still have a third of your readers left, because 0.9 ^ 10 = 0.35. Of course, if it’s a tenth of your initial readers, then you’re in trouble…”

Leadership makes change possible. Management makes change happen.

Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra Beer, overheard on TV by Chris Blackmore.

I followed a link to an interesting wiki aimed at cancer sufferers and their families and friends. The wiki hosting company has signed up for Google Adsense. Guess what kinds of ads the Google servers place on the page?