Paper Cuts Blog: An Eliot Fremont-Smith Reader
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Eliot Fremont-Smith, in a photo from The Timesâs archive, with markings by editors. Eliot Fremont-Smith, who died last week at 78, was a book critic at the Times from 1961-1968, stormy and important years in American writing. Iâm not old enough to remember his work here (or anywhere, really), but Fremont-Smithâs name has long been [...].
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It's not very often that you see something new in News.  News is not exactly new technology, but when personal computers came along, and then widespread networking, it created a whole new playing field for news, that has shaken things up for most of my life. Change comes in fits at starts. First there was the web, then RSS, and now I think we're on the cusp of another bit of change. If you want to see what I think it looks like, check out the home page of nytimesriver.com. But that's not the end of the story. A flat completely chronologic view of news probably isn't enough. And earlier this month at a meeting in NY, two engineers at the NY Times set me off in a new direction, with a very simple bit of advice. They told me to look in the HTML source code of their stories. When I did I saw they had applied a taxonomy to their news flow, and this opened the door to what I would like to show you today -- an outline view of the news.  http://nytimesriver.com/outline/  I believe it's fairly self-explanatory.  The topics are arranged in order of frequency in today's news.  In a previous rendering, the stories were shown in a histogram, but this view I think is much better. You can still see how many pieces relate to the indicated topic, but by clicking on the plus next to each topic, you can actually see the headlines and descriptions, and if you want more you can click through to the full stories. (Initially, the outline was sorted by frequency, with the most frequently occurring keyword appearing first. I changed it, based on feedback, to be alphabetic.) Now, there's still more to do, I showed this to a number of people during the weekend and got some excellent clues on ideas to pursue next, and I will do that. Further, in the process of exploring this, I've been shown the work of other developers who discovered the keywords on their own, and one in particular is very interesting. I'm hoping that these projects will come public so I can show them to you and tell you what I think they mean. This is what I live for, professionally -- the sense of being somewhere with great unexplored potential, a virgin landscape of the intellect. I'm never happier than when I get to play in such a place.  Om Malik: A new way to view news. Please comment on the screen shot page.
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Consider the New World of Information - stuff that, unlike the paper days of the past, doesn't always physically exist. You've got notes, scrawlings and snippets, Web graphics, photos and sounds. Stuff needs to be cut, pasted, highlighted, annotated, crossed out, dragged away. And, as Ross Perot used to say (or maybe it was Dana Carvey impersonating him), don't forget the graphs and charts.
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Tycho:  It wasn't until the strip was completed that I realized we had written two comic strips at the same time.  Gabriel thought this comic was literal, and I thought it was about miscommunication. At least, I hoped it was. This is a fantasy to which I still cling.
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A few notes on the NY Times outline... 1. I switched it back to the frequency sort, having tried it as an alphabetized list for about 18 hours. Now I want to see what happens with it flipped around so the most frequent keyword bins appear first. 2. Not sure, but I think it will empty out later this afternoon, as yesterday's stories expire, and before tomorrow's stories ship.  3. It seems that at least some people have bookmarked the site and are refreshing it. If so, I'm glad -- because that's the way these pages are most useful, they tell you something about what changed. Remember this is "news" not olds. 4. The outline view is something like TechMeme for the Times news flow. Not exactly because the keywords are assigned by people. Unseen news mavens. Where do they reside? Are they on the upper floors or in the basement of the NY Times skyscraper on 8th Ave, or somewhere inbetween? Maybe they work out of their homes. My mind wants to visualize these people, but I have nothing to cling to. It's not an algorithm that's determining where things sort out, it's people. Otherwise known as editors? Or are they librarians? 5. Do you bookmark the outline or the river? I'm a river guy for sure. I wonder about other people. 6. Francine Hardway twitted at me: "Times River is awesome on my iPhone! Was reading it while waiting for eye surgery and it was very distracting." Amen. That's the big secret. I wish there were a way to get everyone to look at the river on their cell phone. Eyes would open. 7. Thinking about integrating the two views, cross-relating them. Not sure exactly what I'll try first. That's why I wanted to let it settle in for a bit before moving in a other directions. 8. Of course, I know that if this ever becomes a "real" product, the user is going to control the view he or she wants to be the default. But for right now I'm experimenting. I want to see what people think. Enough people were asking for an alpha view that I wanted to see what would happen when I gave it to them, and if anyone would scream. Screaming isn't a bad thing, it's data.
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A few days back there was a post on the "The Codist" blog about why the author would never quite understand the appeal of PHP to the masses and some of his thoughts behind it. Well, there was such an outcry and response to his comments that he's written up another post on what he learned from comments made.   Clearly I touched a nerve. However I did learn a lot of things that you don't read in a quickly tutorial on PHP. The whole point of writing something is to get feedback, positive or negative, and hopefully learn from it.   He admits that his experience with PHP and its developers has been limited, so his perspective might have been thrown off a bit. He still holds to one thing from the previous article, though - that PHP just isn't for him.
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Tycho:  Our newest comic is available here, regarding the blogger that Nintendo fired recently.  As usual, Gabriel and I disagree absolutely on virtually every point of this discussion, my own perspective favoring greater liberty while he presents a naked defense of fascism.  The two universal axioms we were both able to agree upon were that:
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Lance Knobel: "I'd install FlickrFan in every middle school and high school social studies class. I guarantee it would provoke endless discussion and ensure engagement in the issues of the day." I totally agree. It would be great to see it at checkout lines in supermarkets and on kiosks in BART stations too.
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Today, Seesmic, the company founded by Loic Lemeur, announced their initial $6 million funding. Several people noticed that my name isn't on the list of investors.  I'll probably end up kicking myself when Seesmic becomes the next Google or YouTube. I remain a fan of the company and Loic and his team and will be rooting for them.  Why did I get cold feet? It has nothing to do with the product or the company, both of which appear to be outstanding. It's the stock market. I had to make the final Seesmic decision as I was getting out of stock, at a significant loss. The only stock I hold now is AAPL, and sadly, it's way under the price I paid for it a few months ago. Like a lot of other investors, right now stocks give me the willies. I will likely get back in, slowly, a little bit every week to average out the price, hoping the market has found a bottom.
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I am writing to thank you for your opinion piece "Awareness is the mother's milk." Great job!  Bridgewater  ELLEN BORDMAN  (c) 2007 Patriot Ledger, The; Quincy, Mass.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning.
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I'm a big fan of Richard Stallman and his work â even though, the first time I interviewed him, he proceeded to criticise my questions before answering them, not a journalistic experience I'd had before.  Without his vision and sheer bloody-mindedness in the face of indifference and outright hostility, we would not have the vast array of free software we enjoy today.
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By Sherman, Will  THIS ARTICLE, REPRINTED FROM DEGREE TUTOR, MAY SEEM TO FOCUS ON PUBLIC LIBRARIES-BUT THERE IS WISDOM HERE FOR ALL INFO PROS. Many predict that the digital age will wipe public bookshelves clean, and permanently end the centuries-old era of libraries.
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It seems even a crusty old newshound like me can get burned. My item last week about a couple naming their baby âYahooâ turns out to be a hoax cooked up by a (now-unemployed) Romanian tabloid reporter. Reporters making things up just for a laugh? I am shocked, simply shocked.Â
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Arts & entertainment: The TS Eliot prize has gone to the 2007 Forward prize winner - the first time the same collection has taken both awards in the same year
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I was looking at what my friend Stephen Lewis wrote in HakPakSak a few days ago &#151; specifically newspapersâ roles as public trusts and cornerstones of our informational infrastructure &#151; i.e. sources of solid information and independent commentary essential to informed citizenry, democratic government, effective public policy, and well-functioning economies. What this brought up for me is the notion that human beings are themselves infrastructural;  especially when they are constuctive contributors to the structure we call civilization.
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I messed up in my Nov. 21 column, "Weak Case Against Homework," and failed to include comments from the authors of one of the books I was criticizing. I am way overdue for an appointment with the ophthalmologist, so my failing eyes missed their e-mail, waiting patiently in my inbox between a rant...
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