Finally made it into the garage project. I said last August I’d do this. I’ve intended to do it from time to time in between. To be fair, other things have happened along the way. I meant to do it last week, but didn’t feel well. (I’m getting better. Now I merely sound stuffy and can’t breathe as much as I like. I like to breathe.)
So I made it into the garage, which has made a nice storage space. Of course it was 95 degrees out as I did this. The box fan wasn’t really getting the job done.
But I threw away three big garbage bags and a box full of things. I donated an entire car full of items to the Salvation Army. I sweated a lot. There are about four more boxes to go through, but this was a day of progress. Needed one of those.
In an unrelated adventure, I managed to explode the garbage bax with kitty litter in it. I felt like a thief when I was sweeping up the trail, covering my tracks as it were. I felt like an idiot when I realized I leaked some of it into the trunk of my car. Something else to clean up.
In journalism news the spin you see coming out of this story will require a complete and utter divorce from reality and credulity:
(V)isits to The Times of London and The Sunday Times’ Websites have dropped by 66% since parent company News International put those sites behind paywalls on July 2.
Information, it seems, wants to be free. So now we’ll join former boss Jeff Jarvis, mid-explanation:
But that is based on the assumption that content is a consumable, a scarcity that drains the more it is read. Of course, it isn’t. Content is, instead, a magnet that can create relationships of value; whether that happens is up to the creator of the content and the quality of service and relevance is gives. That, dare I repeat it, is the basis of the link economy.
But note the verb that started off the paragraph above: should. Readers who read more should pay more. This is the product of journalism’s sense of entitlement.
Jarvis concluded, in this January post, that the “risks (of paywalls) are great and grave.” Why? The change, Jarvis answers:
(W)ill have me make a new economic decision every time I want to read a story: Is this unique content I will get only here (there is a good deal of that) or is this commodity information I can get elsewhere (BBC, Reuters, Washington Post, Politico, TechCrunch…). The Times then restricts our relationship and it is in that relationship that it has to find value.
Publishers, if they wanted to make money online, missed the window by a little more than a decade. There’s a hope that apps will flip the model back in their favor, but there also be someone in the app stores (or whatever surpasses them) willing to spread news or sports or entertainment for free?
Jarvis talks about that, too. Peter-Paul Koch touches on the economics.
My thoughts and research are typically more geared to the journalism side rather than the business aspects, but these are important considerations throughout the industry. I’ll let you know when I have all of the answers.
Maybe the spies know. Here’s Wired’s read on the much anticipated Washington Post spy database collection:
It includes a searchable database cataloging what an estimated 854,000 employees and legions of contractors are apparently up to. Users can now to see just how much money these government agencies are spending and where those top secret contractors are located.
Check out the Post’s nine-page list of agencies and contractors involved in air and satellite observations, for instance. No wonder it scares the crap out of official Washington: It’s bound to provoke all sorts of questions — both from taxpayers wondering where their money goes and from U.S. adversaries looking to penetrate America’s spy complex.
But this piece is about much more than dollars.
Go read it over there. I’ve talked about spies enough for one day already.
Hope you had a great, kitty-litter free, Monday today and a great Tuesday waiting for you!
