On the way to campus this morning:

Everyone seemed OK. The troopers were there. We had just a slight slowdown and I met no ambulances coming the other direction for the rest of my drive. Even still, you see these small accidents and know that these people just had their week ruined. And on a Monday morning, too. But at least everyone is OK.

And now, to change the subject, here’s another hit from Kid President:

It is probably selfish to say, but I hope that guy never changes.

In class today we talked about mobile marketing. This is the part of the conversation where students always find the line dividing acceptable and creepy. Say you’re walking down the street and your phone buzzes, “Hey! We noticed you’re just a block away from Starbucks. Couldn’t you go for a nice coffee and muffin? Here’s a coupon!”

I mentioned this story:

Fan Zhang, the owner of Happy Child, a trendy Asian restaurant in downtown Toronto, knows that 170 of his customers went clubbing in November. He knows that 250 went to the gym that month, and that 216 came in from Yorkville, an upscale neighborhood.

And he gleans this information without his customers’ knowledge, or ever asking them a single question.

Mr. Zhang is a client of Turnstyle Solutions Inc., a year-old local company that has placed sensors in about 200 businesses within a 0.7 mile radius in downtown Toronto to track shoppers as they move in the city.

The sensors, each about the size of a deck of cards, follow signals emitted from Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. That allows them to create portraits of roughly 2 million people’s habits as they have gone about their daily lives, traveling from yoga studios to restaurants, to coffee shops, sports stadiums, hotels, and nightclubs.

One of my students mentions this even more disconcerting story:

In November, the Macy’s department store chain began testing a product called ShopBeacon at stores in San Francisco’s Union Square and New York’s Herald Square.

The app, created by Shopkick Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., enables a merchant to offer discounts on specific products that a customer has expressed interest in or, perhaps, has lingered near, prodding him or her to buy.

“We can find out where you are standing and how long you’ve been standing in front of the Michael Kors handbag and if you haven’t purchased,” Macy’s Chief Executive Terry Lundgren said at an analysts conference in November. “And if you haven’t, I’ll send you a little note to give you encouragement to do so.”

And that’s the new world in which we shop. Or does something like this just push you further away from brick and mortar stores?

I didn’t mention it but I did have a nice, brief bike ride yesterday evening. I got in a quick 14 miles, wherein I managed to have two thoughts. The first was that I haven’t been riding my bike enough. I knew this because I hit too small little uphill segments and pushed my feet down and accelerated and that was a wonderful feeling. The ride was really meant to be the first half of a brick workout, where I would take on a long run. Just as I went back outside, though, it started to rain. And while I enjoy riding in the rain, I don’t much see the need to run in it. But the other thought I was continually having on the bike was “I wanna run.”

I do not know what is happening.

I did not run, however, because of the rain. This evening I swam a mile, 1,750 yards. It even felt pretty good, which doesn’t happen often. Didn’t want to run, though!

Things to read … because I still don’t want to run.

The title overstates things, but … Robots have mastered news writing. Goodbye journalism:

“It actually started with me reading an article by Steven Levy in Wired about algorithms and news content — ‘Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?,” Christer Clerwall tells Wired.co.uk. “My first thought was ‘maybe it doesn’t have to be better — how about ‘a good enough story’?” Sadly, Wired may turn out to be the architect of its own destruction. Because Clerwall, an assistant professor of media and communications at Sweden’s Karlstad University, has found the answer to this question. And it’s yes.

This is the second small study I’ve seen like this. Both have to do with sports copy, which probably means something. What may be promising, however, is that as the algorithms improve this could free up writers from the more basic stories and allow for better storytelling.

Meanwhile, The First News Report on the L.A. Earthquake Was Written by a Robot:

Ken Schwencke, a journalist and programmer for the Los Angeles Times, was jolted awake at 6:25 a.m. on Monday by an earthquake. He rolled out of bed and went straight to his computer, where he found a brief story about the quake already written and waiting in the system. He glanced over the text and hit “publish.” And that’s how the LAT became the first media outlet to report on this morning’s temblor. “I think we had it up within three minutes,” Schwencke told me.

If that sounds faster than humanly possible, it probably is. While the post appeared under Schwencke’s byline, the real author was an algorithm called Quakebot that he developed a little over two years ago. Whenever an alert comes in from the U.S. Geological Survey about an earthquake above a certain size threshold, Quakebot is programmed to extract the relevant data from the USGS report and plug it into a pre-written template. The story goes into the LAT’s content management system, where it awaits review and publication by a human editor.

The copy, which you can read in that story, was basic, to the point, and not perfect regarding style, but it shared the pertinent information, apparently within three minutes. What happened afterward was telling. ” Quakebot’s post had been updated 71 times by human writers and editors, turning it from the squib above into this in-depth, front-page story.”

This first story, the early morning Quakebot copy, is a first step. It didn’t save the day, or save even a big part of a reporter’s day, but it is the sign of a utility to come, or, rather, a tool that is already here.

These next two items go together in an interesting, if unintended way. Welcome to the New First Screen: Your Phone:

Daily time spent on mobile devices is now outpacing TV in the U.S. for the first time, according a newly-released 2014 AdReaction study from Millward Brown.

Americans now spend 151 minutes per day on smartphones, next to 147 in front of TVs. But the numbers are even greater elsewhere.

Do you know what else is happening? Major Multi-Channel Video Providers Lost About 105,000 Subscribers in 2013:

“2013 was the first year for multi-channel video industry losses, but the modest losses represent only about 0.1% of all subscribers,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “While the overall market remains fairly flat, further share-shifting has taken place. Cable providers now have a 52% share of the top multi-channel video subscribers in the US, compared to a 58% share three years ago.”

We are at something of a hinge point in entertainment history.

Undercover TV Reports on School Security Raise Ethical Questions:

The three news reports followed the same format: Television reporters walked into schools with hidden cameras, under the premise of testing the security measures. Each time, the anchors provided a sobering assessment of the findings.

[…]

Critics say these kinds of undercover efforts do not provide an accurate portrait of school safety, and question whether they serve any public good. Some journalists question whether the news organizations become too much a part of the story, and whether it is dangerous for reporters to wander into schools now that students and staff are often on heightened alert.

Quick links:

Red Clay Readers to offer fresh look at ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ during 5-week book club

Vestavia Hills woman found nude in dumpster recovering in hospital; no foul play suspected

Auburn hoping go faster with Marshall back

Comments! Oklahoma’s Charles Tapper on Sooners’ spring swagger: ‘Whole defense just dominated Alabama’

And, finally, Arnold Schwarzenegger has a tank, and he wants you to take a ride with him:

If he’s taking the Adam West, Bill Shatner route of playing the caricature of himself, count me in.