Somethings just don’t fit anywhere. But they feel bad if we call it miscellaneous, so they’re general posts.
Thought I’d change up the appearance of the site for the autumn. Mystique was cramping my style (literally, the theme is kinda narrow). You guys like this?
FYI, Stage Three is still happening folks. I’m still working on some capital for hosting and trying to get some more technical talent on board to help me manage the site. Once the arrangements have been made, the transition should be seamless
As a member of the WordPress community, I try to stay plugged into the rest of the world using WordPress’ services. One of WordPress’ more successful sites is without a doubt TechCrunch, a technology industry blog owned by AOL. It’s a site filled with a talented base of writers with strong opinions, often making insightful comments on trends in the tech industry. Yet, over the past few weeks, TechCrunch has really fallen off the wagon. Founder Michael Arrington earned the wrath of Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief at AOL, a few weeks ago when he announced he would start a Venture Capital fund called CrunchFund for start ups. Ms. Huffington was not too happy about this though, as TechCrunch is a blog that focuses much on start up news. A conflict of interest was unavoidable in Ms. Huffington’s eyes and Arrington had a hard choice to make: step down as the head of TechCrunch in order to make sure he wasn’t selling blog real estate to companies for personal profit, or not be a VC. He chose the latter.
The split between Arrington and AOL is not just a debate over journalistic integrity though. It really reveals the flaw in TechCrunch‘s design as a source for tech news. But if you want to have a discussion about journalistic integrity in today’s world, there may be no better case study than TechCrunch.
I laugh at this whole cluster-fuck of a firing because of what has happened to TechCrunch in the days following the departure of Arrington. The website has always relished is employing a team of strongly opinionated and grand standing writers. Some of them are, for all their sensationalism, still pretty good writers like M.G. Siegler – the voracious Apple fan he is. With Arrington out of the picture, we now see these unbridled authors spewing venom at their own kind. They’ve attacked the new Editor-in-Chief, threatened resignation, and pronounced their own site dead even as they continue to make a buck off such articles and publish upwards of 20 posts a day. The entire site is like a circus with out a ring master. Just visit the site and with little luck you’ll see evidence of the in-fighting.
This is what happens when you base your entire site, your entire business off the rantings of sensationalist journalists. Don’t get me wrong, TechCrunch can be a place of remarkable insight and high quality op-ed journalism. Posts on the site have at many times inspired me, as have the personal attitudes of many of the writers. But for every quality post, I see a lot of crud. The writers love taking shots not only at other websites (their assault on Engadget was one such example of Yellow Journalism) but at other writers on their site. It’s laughably poor.
Without Arrington, TechCrunch’s weaknesses have become apparent. Namely its gross subjectivity. If Arianna Huffington was really concerned with journalistic integrity, she would have looked into the problems with TechCrunch a long time ago. So as the site rips itself apart through the same mechanism that built it up, all I can say is that I’m not really surprised. TechCrunch should have reigned in its writers a long time ago and taught them about objectivity. Sure, outlandish posts and grand standing might “sell” but this same culture has turned the blog into a war zone.
And all I can do is laugh.
This has been a huge day for techies and gamers across the world. E3 is in full swing with every gaming company on the planet showing off their wares. Leading the way will be the Big 3 console makers: Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. Starting today was Microsoft’s press conference with tons of new info. A post about that is coming.
Up the coast in San Francisco, Apple had their keynote for WWDC and has announced iOS 5, OS X Lion, and iCloud. A post about those is coming too. Hopefully Ill get this all done today, but please understand if I can’t. Some of you who follow my Twitter may have heard that I was the victim of a robbery a few weeks ago. They got my laptop with tons of stuff on it and now I’m running my operation from a cohort of woefully slow computers and my iPad. None of them really match what had quickly become my workhorse over the past year. A replacement is on the way but my productivity has been shot by lacking a computer that can run even a Youtube video.
All of this means the process is a little slower than I’d like and its impacted Stage 3. I can’t prepare to relaunch the site until I’m running on the new machine. So bear with me as progress is stifled by my lack of equipment. And get ready for my E3 and WWDC blow out.
Tonight was an interesting night for me as a burgeoning WordPress user. My mother informed me of a WordPress user group that meets in Atlanta. This group is meant to bring WordPress users and developers together for collaboration and sharing tips. For anyone that follows my Twitter account this will be a repeat, but my mind was positively blown by all the powerful things that WordPress can do. My attempts so far have not scratched the surface, hell I haven’t even touched it yet.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always known that WordPress is a remarkably powerful tool for bloggers and full website makers. If it’s good enough for Wired.com, Entertainment Weekly, and CNN, it must be capable of professional work. A decent host, some CSS and HTML knowledge and the WordPress.org software are all that separates the novice blogger from the expert site builder. The problem is…. well, I don’t know HTML or CSS and I don’t have a host for WordPress.org. As such, it never seemed like it was
That changes today. Spending only a few hours with these people has opened my eyes to the power of WordPress.org and it is time I leveraged that power. Besides, I’ve always wanted to learn CSS and HTML, so this will give me an excuse to spend time learning these useful languages. Thus I am commencing Stage 3 of Digital Gravitas: the progression to WordPress.org and DigitalGravitas.com. Stage 1 was the creation of the site and initial development of my content so that I could define myself. Stage 2 was expansion of the site into stronger content and larger readership (courtesy of Freshly Pressed). Stage 3 is a final transition to the much more powerful tools that WordPress.org gives me and hopefully many more years of rich content and continued growth. This will be a multi-week process as I select a host, import my data, and begin to hopefully customize a theme that allows me to experiment with CSS and HTML.
Still, you guys will probably notice none of this. I’ll develop the site as I need and once the time is right, accessing DigitalGravitas.Wordpress.com should redirect you directly to the new site. I’m very excited for this next stage, and I hope it allows for a more powerful site and richer content. Here’s to the future, because it’s (almost) here.
200 posts. I still have to grapple with the fact that I have written 200 posts on this blog. It’s still astounding to me not only that I have had such high readership, but that I have written so much content. Simple updates, long manifestos, consumer advice, editorials, and personal accomplishments. It’s all here. Sometimes I’m amazed at the diversity of my content, both in topic and quality. Some have been duds, some have become my gateway to success. But through it all, I love everything I write.
It might seem egotistical, but I love to go back and read what I’ve written. It’s not uncommon that I will curl up with my iPad 2 (yes, I have an iPad) and read my own blog. Granted, some of that is because the WordPress theme for the iPad is fantastic, but also because I need to constantly go over my own work. A good writer never finishes a piece, they never stop criticizing what they have worked on. Writing is fluid, it is a process on constant revision and refinement. But even more than for criticism, it’s good to be proud of what you write.
A blog is a platform from which we can all speak. It’s truly the 21st century equivalent of the “soapbox” and perhaps the purest representation of “free speech.” It is a valuable thing, to have a platform and it is important that we can be proud of what we say from it. Writing with the goal of being loving what you write, that’s just the best way to do it. Love what you write folks. It makes it easy to write, it makes it fun to write. And at the end of the day, you can go back and say “I wrote this. This is me.”
This has absolutely nothing to do with technology, the internet, or geek culture and I couldn’t care less. Sometimes an event happens in your life that is so fantastic you’ve got to use whatever platform you have to talk about it. Last night was one of those events. The death of Osama Bin Laden was a truly symbolic reminder that America can deliver justice to those who represent evil in our world. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 – which occurred while I was living in New York – remain a scar on our national identity, uniting us in anger, justice, and a renewed sense of patriotism against those who murdered thousands of innocent people. Bin Laden’s death serves as a reminder that we can win, that we can deliver justice.
But enough of this patriotic propaganda. Yes, all of the above may be true but the fact is that I am not patriotic enough to truly swell with emotion over the death of one man. I don’t celebrate death. Far more personally despised people in the international community have perished and I remain somber in my celebration. I just don’t like to glorify death. However, last night was a time to drop from my moral high horse and sprint over to the White House and join in the celebration with my fellow GW students. Sometimes you’ve just got to drop your “big picture” politics and join in some revelry. And what an amazing sight it was at the White House. Easily thousands of cheering people just out there being Americans. It was a brief moment where we could say “We were there when Bin Laden was served justice.” Even more than Bin Laden’s death, it was just a time for celebration. We as countrymen enjoyed the company of other countrymen, and that is a rare thing in America. This isn’t about patriotism or nationalism, this is about our community of Americans. As thousands of GW students descended on the White House, coming from all walks of life, we were united as the same people. This is the reason I love living in DC. For opportunities like this to see the best of America, even when I have to deal with the worst of it more often.
Liberals will continue to decry the follies of America and the blunders of the War on Terror. Conservatives will use this to promote the might of Militarism. But for the two hours I spent at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, it didn’t matter. We were just happy to be with one another. For that, I can proudly say that I will remember where I was when Bin Laden died. Not just because it was a day when an evil man perished, but because it gave us the excuse to unequivocally love being a part of our country, if only for a few hours. And that, my readers in America and abroad, that is something to enjoy regardless of which nation you live in.
Honestly I’ve lost track of what version of the site you can call this. But suffice to say I was getting bored of the old design so this is a fresh take on one of WordPress’s many interesting themes. Mystique brings a couple of great features like quick access to my facebook page, twitter feed, and RSS subscription. You’ll also notice the widget to the left has a tabbed interface for quick access to my categories, comments, tags, and most popular posts. Plus the theme gives me a lot of new features on my side for displaying content.
Love it? Hate it? Indifferent?
Damn good stuff folks. Basically sums up my feelings about why I blog. Not because I imagine I’ll rock the industry to its core with my assertions, but because it’s what I want to do. It gives us a voice, deeply personal and open for others to see.
Blog. Do it folks, if you’ve got something to say let it out, refine it, explore it.
via On Techies
With the terrible situation at the Fukushima Plant in Japan, there is a lot of information coming in about the dangers of radiation. Some of it is true and a lot of it is false. The fact is that the average public is actually pretty in the dark about the effects of radiation and nuclear power in general. Worse yet, a lot of people are using this disaster as a political gain against nuclear energy in this country, something I support as a clean alternative energy.
So thank the Lord for Randal Munroe and his web comic XKCD. Munroe is remarkably good at visualize data and has compiled a great graph that visualizes the real state of radiation exposure in our daily lives. I hope that this can shed some light for people out there and help them place all this stuff about radiation, nuclear power, and our safety in perspective.
Click to expand the picture
Hey everybody, Digital Gravitas coming to you from my fortified bunker in the DC hell hole. Wanted to touch base with everyone since my posting has been pretty much absent in the past few weeks. Basically, the deal is that academic pressure means I can’t devote as much to the blog as I want. That should change in the next week or so but keep it together until I go all John Henry on this mountain of work (ignoring the fact that John Henry’s heart exploded in the end).
Anyway, I wanted to take a second and express some really sincere remorse and blessings to the People of Japan over their terrible tragedy of the past two weeks. I have an extremely deep respect for the Japanese people in their cultural and technological contributions to the world and the current crisis in Japan is truly sad. I encourage everyone to give some money to relief efforts and keep our Japanese comrades in their hearts. Some of you may wonder where I was during Haiti and other crises from the past year. It’s not that I don’t feel for these other countries and peoples, but Japan just holds a special place in my heart as a land of fierce cultural identity and an economic and technologic power house.
Here’s the to future, because it’s already here.
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