August 8, 2008
02:10 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
Last week, a pedestrian walking through Times Square in New York stumbled upon the monthly Critical Mass demonstration, where legions of cyclists take to the streets en masse to raise awareness about transportation alternatives. Typical of a tourist in Times Square seeing something interesting, this pedestrian whipped out their cell phone and began shooting video. However, the pedestrian did not expect to witness a police officer violently shoving a cyclist off his bike and sprawling onto the ground. Naturally, like any good Gen-Y technophile, the pedestrian quickly uploaded the clip to Youtube (1.4 million hits and counting).
The cop involved in the skirmish, which I shall dub “Shovegate,” is a 22 year-old rookie. He’s also a 3rd-generation police officer (not sure if the chip on his shoulder is genetic). Initial reports of the cyclist being held in precinct jail for 26 hours were unfounded, thankfully. The police officer’s official report is perhaps the most audacious part of the whole thing, in which the cop cites that “the defendant steered [his] bicycle… directly into [the cop’s] body, causing [the cop] to fall to the ground and… suffer lacerations.” Clearly this cop had heard the old adage long revered by police officers on power trips: “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Not surprisingly, days after the video surfaced he was placed on “modified assignment” and was told to turn in his gun and badge.
This kind of modern-day muckraking, where Average Joes with cell phones can become today’s Abraham Zapruder, must’ve tipped off somebody at the New York Police Department. “Hey, wait a second. Why don’t we set up a program where people citizens can send video of crime [subtext: police brutality] to the NYPD?” Well, now you can. In the aftermath of Shovegate, Police Commish Ray Kelly declared that within two months any John or Jane Q. Serpico will be able to send video or photos of criminal activity directly to the 911 number. On top of that, this past Wednesday the Police Department unveiled a new service where concerned residents can text anonymous tips to police officers.
This is a great move. The NYPD has effectively deputized everyone in the city. This isn’t a local phenomenon either; Boston’s PD has a similar anonymous text-messaging-tips program. And why shouldn’t it? It works. Law enforcement agencies have realized that for many young people (including criminals) text messaging has replaced traditional phone conversations as the primary means of communication. Some critics have called this an amateurish and knee-jerk move by the NYPD in particular, saying that text messaging can never replace a good old 911 call. Clearly this is the case, but the text messaging service isn’t trying to supplant 911 – rather, it’s trying to bolster it. Texting and uploading criminal evidence helps remind citizens that they are part of the social contract that creates the police department in the first place. The new programs remind citizens that sometimes, it’s necessary to take the law into their own hands – and pockets, and purses, and backpacks…
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August 2, 2008
11:30 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Can’t say I didn’t see this coming a mile away – Western journalists in China for the Olympics (gasp!) can’t access certain websites. This despite the International Olympic Committee’s claim that reporters would have unlimited access to the web merely two weeks ago: “For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet,” said IOC President Jacques Rogge. It’s now looking like the IOC is toeing the (Communist) party line, allowing the Chinese government to maintain restricted access to sites which disrupt “social stability” and threaten “national security.” Now, reporters all over the world are crying foul.
Really? The media really thought that China would open up to the West? Were we expecting round 2 of Glasnost here? Please. Don’t act so surprised. This is China we’re talking about. It’s the same authoritarian government that has thrown human rights under the bus since 1949. It’s the same government that enlisted 20,000 “volunteers” to clear an algae field the size of Connecticut which grew in the middle of the Olympic sailing venue. It’s the same country that will claim responsibility for a lack of rain during the Games, due to their mastery of weather control.
There are a number of bad guys in this situation other than the Chinese government. Firstly, this situation has made the IOC look like a bunch of underhanded, deal-cutting, smoky-room-dwelling sellouts. It’s clear that they deliberately deceived the Western media. The Western Internet companies who cooperate with the Chinese government (and all that entails) in order to do business there are unsavory as well. Yahoo! has been under fire for years over its wheeling and dealing with the Chinese, drawing intense ire for its role in the conviction of two dissident bloggers earlier this decade.
But the real issue that emerges from this delicate situation is the fact that organizations like NBC and the BBC are guilty by association of the same kind of disregard for personal freedom that hallmarks modern China. But it’s not as though NBC and the BBC actually intend to be in cahoots with the Chinese government; rather, this is a case of businesses knowing that despite the controversy, they will stay in the black if they keep their mouths shut. For media outlets, it’s easier to stay in the good graces of the IOC (especially given the enormous costs of broadcasting the Games) than to speak up against social injustice. It comes down to controversy vs. status quo. Are outlets like NBC and the BBC aware of their public perception? Of course. But as they deliver a whitewashed and sugarcoated image of China, the world will see a nation that is both painfully backward yet astoundingly modern. It’s a shame that media outlets don’t have the guts to speak up.
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July 29, 2008
02:15 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
Apple sent the business world buzzing late last week by announcing that CEO and tech icon Steve Jobs had recently gone under the knife, apparently to treat whatever was causing his drastic weight loss. His gaunt appearance at an investors’ conference last month sent waves of hushed rumors throughout the tech world, with Apple-philes concerned about Jobs’ health. What was behind the weight loss? Another bout with cancer? A “common bug,” as an Apple rep so calmingly put it? It turns out, Jobs’ condition stemmed from the internal organ shuffle he underwent in 2004 to treat pancreatic cancer, and he developed an internal infection; hence, the surgery to fix it all up.
But the company was reticent to give away any details about Jobs’ condition, saying that it was “a private matter.” Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, the promulgator of Jobs’ “private matter,” appears to have done a fairly good job of damage control surrounding the surgery issue. On the day of his announcement, Apple stock (NYSE: AAPL) plummeted 10% overnight, but ended the next day down only $4 to finish at $162.
Umm, excuse me? A “private matter?” Allow me to respectfully disagree. I can think of about 7.51 billion reasons why this isn’t exactly a private matter.
If Jerry Yang left Yahoo for health reasons, things would be OK without him (or maybe not, but that’s another story). Bill Gates has already left Microsoft, though not for health reasons. But despite the recent mixed press about the software giant, its profit margins are still very strong. If Steve Jobs were to leave Apple to take care of himself, the company would never be the same. That’s because Steve Jobs is Apple’s best and most reliable product.
He’s guided Apple from its days as a rogue PC-making startup in the early 1980s to its current status as the undisputed gadget colossus of mainstream America. Sure, the company has taken some missteps (*cough* AppleTV *cough*), but Jobs pulled Apple up by its bootstraps and kept on trucking. Without Jobs, there’s no single rallying point for Apple, no enduring symbol of its capacity to create game-changing products. Who could replace him, Steve Wozniak? He’s too busy living life on the D-list. There is simply nobody else that can do what Jobs has done.
When people buy an iPod or iPhone, they are buying into the image that Steve Jobs embodies – a stylish, techno-savvy, non-nerdy consumer. Users of Apple products have the occasionally-smug satisfaction of knowing that they are quantifiably cooler than the average Joe with a Dell or a Zune mp3 player. And they’re right.
Not everyone can pull off the black turtleneck tucked into a pair of jeans. But the hardest part of Steve Jobs’ wardrobe to step into are his shoes.
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July 23, 2008
03:08 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
Gone are the days of paper here at the offices of FastCompany.com. Virtually all in-house office communication is done electronically. E-mail is a given, as is teleconferencing. But what our office does, along with an increasing number of other streamlining-minded businesses, is employ wikis extensively.
The only paperwork I’ve had to do since I began working here is filling out timesheets and filling out W-2s. Having a paperless working environment has done wonders to decrease our carbon footprint while making project collaboration extremely simplified. We use Drupal, an open source content management system, to build our website. We use BaseCamp, a message board project management system as the primary tool of communication about upcoming projects instead of e-mail. No memos, no print-outs of drafts, and best of all no TPS reports. It’s all online.
Tools such as Drupal and BaseCamp make running a website simple and easy (most of the time). But it’s not just businesses that are using wikis to de-clutter their offices and streamline the way they operate: Newsweek reported late last year that the United Nations uses in-house wikis to help facilitate negotiation and debate about various issues of international importance. So too does the U.S. intelligence community; in fact, its collaborative sharing system among sixteen agencies is named “Intellipedia” (aren’t those government types clever?). The movement goes even further – some foreign governments are even using wikis to “involve constituents in policymaking.”
I guess the days of lawmakers hashing out deals in smoke-filled rooms are ending just as quickly as the all-night office brainstorm session. Two heads are better than one, especially when it comes to the kinds of services I talked about. Effective collaboration has always been the make-or-break factor with group projects. Wikis are just the way to do it.
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July 16, 2008
04:03 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
Not all business travel is essential. That’s why some companies are eschewing air travel for video-conferencing and online communication. The fuel crunch has inflicted a serious wound on the air travel industry, with American Airlines as the biggest casualty – it announced two weeks ago that it would slash 7,000 jobs by the year’s end.
Everyone feels the effects of such "restructuring" efforts – fewer employees mean fewer flights, and fewer flights plus growing demand equal higher ticket prices and a more miserable flying experience.
That’s not even mentioning fuel prices, or bag-check surcharges, or the crying baby in the seat behind you, or your 747-sized two-seat-occupying neighbor.
With all these factors, it’s no surprise that the latest press release from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics suggests that people are opting to not fly as ticket prices reflect the exponential rise in fuel costs. Passenger numbers for March 2008 were down from March ‘07, when a barrel of crude oil cost was less than half of today’s price, at roughly $65/barrel.
Sure it’s sometimes required, like for contract-signing, family events or ribbon-cutting ceremonies. But this BTS data raises a question that is becoming increasingly relevant: is it really essential to fly, given the current costs?
To many businesses, the answer is no. Companies like Polycom (NASDAQ: PLCM), Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ), and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) create teleconferencing technology that fills the gap left from the abandonment of air travel. Teleconferencing allows for companies to connect with clients in a way that, although still short of actually being there, still far surpasses email or phone communication.
Now, the phrase “a fraction of the cost” gets thrown around a lot. But the newest high-tech video conferencing technology absolutely fits the bill. Companies not only save thousands of dollars in travel costs, but they promote the kind of business-greening that appeals to just about everyone these days.
The range of different organizations employing new video conferencing tech is expansive. Casting agencies in New York use it for auditions so that actors from Los Angeles can try out for that career-making role. Georgetown University uses video conferencing for a weekly military history seminar to include graduate students in Georgetown’s satellite in Qatar. A non-profit called Medical Missions for Children uses video conferencing to link physicians in third-world hospitals with the most knowledgeable doctors in the United States to help diagnose and treat children with severe medical conditions.
The list goes on. Everyone is looking to cut costs today. There are still unanswered questions, such as what the true value of face-to-face interaction is. Even so, companies should seriously examine video conferencing as not only as an alternative to travel but as a means to make their business that much greener.
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July 10, 2008
05:01 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Every headline I’ve seen about the sport in the last two years has made some mention of the vast doping problem that’s driving the sport into the ground. Case in point: last Thursday’s front page of CNN.com, which reports that mustachioed cyclist Floyd Landis lost his final arbitration hearing over testing positive for synthetic testosterone during the 2006 Tour de France.
Just a few years ago, pro cycling was in its heyday. Lance Armstrong was a sports-journalism darling. (These days he’s tabloid fodder; merely arm candy for Kate Hudson or one of the Olsen twins.) Sponsor money was pouring in, and professional teams were riding a crest of unprecedented popularity all the way to the bank. All pro cycling teams have sponsors, which bankroll everything from salaries to spandex.
But thanks to a series of doping scandals that have brought down nearly all of pro cycling’s heavyweights, sponsors are running for the hills. Big-name deserters include the US Postal Service/Discovery Channel (which sponsored Armstrong to seven consecutive Tour titles) and T-Mobile, which left after flagship rider Jan Ullrich of Germany, one of cycling’s biggest names, was caught doping. After this year, according to HBO’s “Real Sports,” fully one-quarter of teams will be without top-billed sponsors.
But there is one team that has successfully broken away from the pack. Team Garmin-Chipotle, one of two American teams competing in this year’s Tour de France, which started on Saturday, is one of the few teams in recent years to successfully acquire big-time sponsorship. (Its full name is actually the absurdly long "Team Garmin-Chipotle presented by H30.") How’d they do it? Team Garmin-Chipotle’s athletes are 100% drug-free.
Team founder and CEO Jonathan Vaughters mandates that his riders get tested about once every two weeks—twenty times more often than is required by the Union Cycliste Internationale, the governing body for pro cycling,. But drug testing in the age of BALCO has become increasingly difficult, with designer steroids and supplements that are completely untraceable mere days after use. That’s why Garmin-Chipotle’s doctors don’t search for individual drugs; rather, they search for changes in an athlete’s natural hormonal makeup. Team G-C has the most stringent anti-doping policy not just in pro cycling, but in all of professional sports. And it’s no coincidence that the team has flourished over the past three seasons, evolving into an international powerhouse that boasts some of the best riders in the world.
After six stages of the Tour, Team G-C is first in the team classification standings. Win or lose, Team Garmin-Chipotle is attracting plenty of media attention—this time, for all the right reasons.
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July 2, 2008
11:42 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
I participated in an somewhat-obscure Olympic sport in college: rowing. It's only on TV during the Olympics, and during that time you can't pry me away from the TV with a 30-pound crowbar. But for most people rowing is one of those novelty Olympic sports, like team handball and ping-pong. For the average Olympic viewer, watching a crew race is like watching a David Lynch movie - you'll watch the beginning just to see how weird it is, but by the end you'd really rather be watching something else.
I'm a little different. Crazy sports like badminton, rhythmic gymnastics, and modern pentathlon are among my favorite to watch. What makes the Olympics special is precisely the inclusion of such sports on the grandest stage in the world, right alongside the globe's most popular athletic endeavors. I sometimes fall asleep to the sweet sounds of the famous Olympic Fanfare in my head, counting the number of times Bob Costas jumps over a fence. But what really gets my goat every 4 years is that if I want to watch an event live, I have to wake up at 3 a.m. (no TiVo for me). If I don't catch it in the wee hours of the morn, I have to wait until prime-time to see my beloved sport that nobody cares about. The Beijing Games this summer will surely be no exception, as there is a 12-hour difference between New York and the Eastern coast of China.
Despite the Olympic drama there lurks a villain - the Internet. You know, that magical place of automated real-time sports updates which couldn't care less about your stupid sport. Every single major media network site broadcasts the results of the day's events as they actually happen. If you visit the site of a major network, there's almost no way to avoid big-time Olympic spoiler headlines. Even if you wanted to. "So what, just don't go to any major news sites for the entire 15-day duration of the Games, Brendan." I would, but it's not that easy. I am completely addicted to news. As a result, I can't tell you how many events were ruined for me during the Athens Games by sites like CNN.com.
So why should any sports fan, casual or borderline-psychotic (like me), settle for the Twitterized version of the Olympics? We shouldn't, quite frankly. Modern media has too much technology on its hands to let this happen. There are two fairly straightforward solutions that come to mind. The first is the easy fix: take all results off the heavily-trafficked network news websites. Create an "Olympics" section of the site and spoil nothing. The second solution is a little more complex: the social network-ization of major news sites. Not just network sites, either. ALL news sites would follow suit - sports, business, you name it.
It's simple. Users create personal profiles on the news site. Users then program the site to display all the news they want to see and none of the news they don't. Not only would sports spoilers no longer be a problem, but you'd also get a huge network of news-hungry users who have made the news their own. Imagine the Wall Street Journal, Digg, and Facebook all rolled up into one personalized news feed. The possibilities are endless. But there's a problem that emerges from such a system: if everyone personalizes their own news, then news organizations which collect, filter, and present the news in the first place will have to fundamentally change in order to stay in business. (Possible names for new news sites: "The You York Times," "MeNN," "WeSPN," "M-us-NBC," etc. OK, maybe not that last one).
News organizations (in some incarnation) will always be around, that's a given. But wouldn't it be more satisfying to read the news on your own terms?
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June 23, 2008
12:07 pm | 0 recommendations | 3 comments
Good news for people looking to pin at least some of the blame on somebody for the subprime mortgage meltdown. With last Thursday's indictment of two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers, the American Public can point their collective fingers squarely at Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, who are charged with mail and wire fraud as well as conspiracy (the white-collar crime Trifecta). The FBI bases much of its charges on e-mail evidence, which clearly documents the two as they wheedled their way out of personal financial ruin while publicly singing the praises of their fund to investors. As they walked handcuffed into Federal Court, I couldn't help but feel good that these two idiots are being publicly humiliated.
For some reason, it feels great to see idiotic criminals get caught. Schadenfreude - taking pleasure in the pain of someone else - is a wonderful thing. The Germans historically have a knack for delighting in the misfortune of others (examples: World Wars I and II, David Hasselhoff, etc.). It makes sense that they would have a word for their unofficial national pastime. But it took America to really elevate the practice to an art form. Most cases of schadenfreude shouldn't be funny, but they are. We've all laughed watching people get splashed by huge trucks driving through puddles, seeing children's ice cream scoops plop messily on the floor, and the like. But sometimes feeling great about someone else's crappy situation is absolutely warranted. Say, for example, the Bear Stearns case.
Don't feel bad about hating these guys. They'll be spending a good chunk of time behind bars. The closest thing to Wall Street upper management in prison is the occasional freelance consulting gig regarding toilet wine and stabbing instruments. But seriously, putting away men like Cioffi and Tannin helps investors trust the market again, which is exactly the antidote the ailing mortgage sector needs. People know that a corrupted system is being righted. With time it wouldn't be surprising if more Cioffis and Tannins are caught, brought to justice, and exposed for being the frauds that they are. In situations like that, we should all feel good about someone else's pain - it means we're doing something right.
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June 19, 2008
12:44 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
The New York Times reports that on Tuesday the Associated Press eased off their initial threat to evil, quote-stealing bloggers worldwide. Last Friday, the AP issued an ultimatum to the blog Drudge Retort (not to be confused with the Drudge Report), asking them to withdraw seven specific posts that included AP quotes. They cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in their request. It all sounds fairly reasonable until you realize that the DMCA was signed into law in 1996. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to take another look at that law, hmm? After a very unsurprising backlash from the online community, the AP has decided to cool its jets a little. Not wanting to appear "heavy-handed," the renowned non-profit news cooperative has decided to re-think their policy towards "fair use" of copyrighted material.
It's not like a situation like this was unexpected by the news wires. After all, bloggers have been freely grifting headlines and sometimes entire stories from AP-client news sources (such as the New York Times) for years. I think most of the criticism of the AP for the initial crackdown is warranted, since I believe that the more public and free news discussions the better. But the idea in general - that the AP no longer has control over its protected material - is fascinating. Does this mean that ALL copyrighted material is potentially fair game? Probably not, of course. What I think is likely to emerge from this situation is some sort quasi-contract agreement between the blogging community and the AP, whereby bloggers are allowed to legally "sample" AP quotations (to an extent), much like how musicians "sample" music of the past.
If it's worried so much about bloggers unfairly exploiting their news, why the heck does the AP have RSS feeds for its stories on their website? Could they honestly not prepared for this confrontation a little better? Maybe even put incentives for blogs who have RSS feeds to the AP? Seems to me like the AP is looking to be two very different things at once - equally part of both the Old and New Media. The real issue here is the difficulty of transitioning to an age where information doesn't necessarily have to have a copyright to be valuable. It's no longer the news that's worth money, it's the vehicle bringing that news to the reader. Blogs - yes, even the Drudge Retort - are slowly being accorded the respect they deserve by stubborn Old Media organizations like the AP. Most newspapers have adopted online discussion as a major part of their delivery, and for that reason they are still incredibly useful and relevant.
But what happens when the granddaddy of news wires, a vanguard of modern journalism, has trouble adapting to this new landscape? Does it signal an approaching sea change for news distribution? Perhaps. Regardless, the AP and other wires have two options: change or die out. As trite and boiled-down as that sounds, it's the truth. The times are a-changin', and the wire services would do well to wisen up and stay with the rest of the crowd.
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