Looking for the mouse (contd.)

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Following my post about Tom Steinberg and 4IP (in which I quoted the story about a kid looking for a mouse behind the TV), Karl-Martin Skontorp pointed me at this essay by Clay Shirky, in which he tells a similar story:

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

The Great Experiment

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Hooray! We’re moving closer to a planned experiment that will tell us if — and how much — people are prepared to pay for online content. The Guardian report says:

The Sunday Times is set to launch a standalone website – and is considering charging readers for its content.

Plans have not been finalised, but executives at Sunday Times publisher News International are considering the charges to fall in line with the publicly stated desire of Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of parent company News Corporation, for his newspapers around the world to follow the lead of the Wall Street Journal by charging for content.

Sunday Times content is currently published online alongside its daily sister title the Times under the umbrella Times Online website brand.

One source familiar with the situation said the new Sunday Times website could launch within three months. Another said it would be later in the year and that many crucial decisions about the site had not been finalised.

MediaGuardian.co.uk understands that a final decision on how to charge readers to look at content – whether via subscriptions or micropayments – has not been made…

Oldweek — the new, new Newsweek

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Michael Kinsley has a delicious evisceration of Newsweek‘s frantic attempt to re-invent itself. Sample:

What, for example, is this graphic on the letters page? Why, for that matter, is there still a letters page? It’s the first page of content you come to. Five one-paragraph comments on the issue published two weeks ago–room for little more than a thumbs up or down. On the Internet, thousands of people have their say immediately and at length. And, then, a self-parody: “Your thoughts on swine flu”–the cover story two weeks ago–“in six words.” Hali McGrath of Berkeley, California, submitted, “Blah, blah, swine flu, blah blah.” And Newsweek published it.

But back to the graphic. It lists what I guess are five articles from the issue two weeks ago, each attached to a percentage. A thin line heads east from the second item (“16% ‘The Path of a Pandemic'”), turns south, and ends up at a pie chart (38 percent neutral, 21 percent positive, 41 percent critical). A tiny footnote says, “Does not add up to 100 due to letters received on other topics.” Oh, I get it, I think. This is a breakdown by topic of letters–letters!–received about the issue two weeks ago, plus a breakdown of one topic (possibly the cover?) by approval. So now you know that twice as many people who wish to comment on “The Path of a Pandemic” than those who wish to comment on “Tom Daschle and Mitt Romney on Health Care” know where to find a stamp. Fascinating…

Actually, the ‘new’ Newsweek“ is so feeble that one almost feels sorry for its staff. What it illustrates, I think, is how difficult it is for journalists trained in the print tradition to make the transition from the old, privileged, we-know-best, ecosystem to one in which you’re only as good as the value you add to what we already know. The only print magazines I read that are still succeeding to add value are: the Economist, the New Yorker, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.

Confirmed vulgarity

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A few years ago, at the height of the Celtic Tiger’s roaring progress, I attended the First Communion of one of my nieces. The occasion provided a useful insight into the extremes of conspicious consumption that credit-fuelled affluence had induced in my fellow-countrymen (and women). Now comes an interesting, er, confirmation that these excesses haven’t yet been extinguished by the recession.

TWO CO LOUTH priests have taken drastic measures to ensure the worst excesses of the boom don’t creep back into a weekend Confirmation ceremony.

Fr David Bradley and Fr Tony Gonoude have written to parents of children taking the sacrament in the Church of the Holy Family in Drogheda tomorrow with a list of rules and regulations that must be adhered to during the ceremony.

The rules are being introduced so the ceremony is not “ruined”, the letter states.

The 10-point list of conditions tells parents not to arrive in stretched limousines or horse-drawn carriages, as has happened in the past, because of the demand for parking. Instead, they are advised to make a donation to a local homeless charity or women’s aid centre.

In the letter – sent home with schoolchildren earlier this week – the priests said that “going on past experience, sometimes guests or extended family that the young people have with them attending the ceremony can absolutely ruin the whole ceremony”.

Parents are asked to arrive at least 10 minutes before the 11am start time and to switch off their mobile phones before entering the church.

Chewing gum is not allowed during the ceremony as it is “both disrespectful and bad manners”.

No standing is allowed in the porches or at the back of the doors during Mass.

Moreover, anybody leaving the church during the ceremony without good reason “will not be allowed back into the church until Mass is finished”…

Quote of the day

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Jon Gisby, Channel 4’s director of new media and technology, received a useful insight into the mindset of the digital natives from his six-year-old son, Josh, who he recently observed digging around behind the family TV.

“What are you looking for?” asked Dad.

“The mouse,” said Josh.

[Source]

What Tom Steinberg did next

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This is truly wonderful — from the MySociety man. Currently in private beta, but mainstreaming soon (I hope).

MySociety has done some amazing stuff in the past. This shows that they’re not flagging.

Also: Should have mentioned that this work is supported by 4IP, which is headed by Tom Loosemore and has funding some interesting work. 4IP has an iPhone App deveopment fund aimed at stimulating the development of socially-useful Apps.

Breaking up is so easy to do…

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This morning’s Observer column.

Here’s an idea for distressed newspaper editors: a regular feature entitled “Forthcoming Divorces”. Source material could be observations of squabbling couples in restaurants and supermarkets, comments written on Facebook walls, tagging of embarrassing photographs on Flickr, etc. And the feature could be surrounded by tasteful advertisements placed by legal firms specialising in matrimonial destruction, dating agencies, private detectives, house-clearance firms and purveyors of Viagra.

Those of us who watch the technology business do this kind of thing all the time. For years, for example, we’ve had our eye on a glamorous showbiz couple named Mr and Mrs AOL-Time Warner…

On this day…

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… in 1953, Everest was conquered as Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit.