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9 Ways for Newspapers to Improve Their Websites » The Bivings Report

This is the discovery of the day. Incredibly simple and blunt recommendations on how to bring a newspaper’s website up to date. My favorites are show who’s blogging the stories, and second, kill off registration, the last bastion of publisher stupidity.

“We took a long look at the features U.S. newspapers include on their websites a few weeks back. In doing the research, we spent more time than is healthy looking at these things. So we figured we’d use this new found expertise for good and offer the newspaper industry some unsolicited advice on how to improve their websites.

Found this via the Romensko daily email.

Figures. I go to my one and only baseball game tonight — Durham Bulls versus the Columbus Clippers — and a whopper of a thunderstorm rains it out. It wasn’t that I was looking for Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins (I met them once in a bar in the Bahamas on a bonefishing expedition and played pool and drank too much tequila with Tim in the lounge of the Pink Sands Hotel ((that’s my one and only Hollywood name drop)). It isn’t that I care much for baseball. I just wanted to sit in the southern evening and take in a frigging ballgame.

This was a company outing — after a full day meeting — and it was going to be fun … until the rain came. But whatever, I gave up on baseball on October 25, 1986 in the sixth game of the World Series, Red Sox vs. the Mets, when Bill Buckner committed his infamous error. The champagne was iced on the coffee table in front of me, ready to toast the Red Sox’s first series since cavemen roamed the earth, the big payoff of being a Red Sox fan since the age of 9 when they lost the Series to St. Louis in 1967 — The Impossible Dream Team with Jim Lonborg on the mound, Yaz, Tony Conigliaro …. I had stuck with them for twenty years, getting deranged and disappointed every season, my fanaticism rewarded only by the glory years of the Boston Bruins in the early 70s and the glorious dynasty of the Celtics in the 80s.

When Buckner blew it I threw the bottle of champagne at the TV and vowed never to watch another game, never read another newspaper article, to avert my eyes whenever they mentioned, shown, or otherwise invoked.

That worked until 2004 when they finally won a Series, but by then I was tainted, a fairweather fan. So … with cycling trashed by the Affair D’Floyd, I need a new sport. Maybe cricket.

Sheesh. This is like the campaign to out Joe Klein when he wrote Primary Colors. I hope the Fake Steve stays undercover for as long as possible. This is the blogged highlight of my day. Yesterday’s recommendation by The FSJ to Greenpeace took the cake. Today’s mea culpa welcoming the newest board member — after calling him a squirrel — is a classic. Someone needs to give this guy a contract.

I’m trying to put together a powerpoint in the style of Dick Hardt’s legendary Identity 2.0 presentation at OSCON last year, but damn!, it is not easy. Here’s the link to Dick’s masterpiece.
The old laws of three bullets and a chart go right out the window when you try a presentation that has a slide per sentence and requires a carnival barker’s patter to keep it rolling.

I’ve seen one other person attempt the format — David Vivero at IDG — who got great laughs when he showed a stuffed animal in his explanation of “taxonomy, err taxidermy”, a style allegedly pioneered by Lawrence Lessig. Which reminds me, one of these days I must buy Edward Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint.

A few years ago, while driving the backroads of the Cape to avoid the traffic snarls on the main drags, I was listening to WOMR – Outermost Radio — the weirdest radio station on Cape Cod and what you would expect from a radio station in Provincetown, the funkiest place on Cape Cod. The signal is faint, but where else can you listen to John Philip Sousa hour on Saturday mornings, followed by Tuvan Throat Singers, followed by the commercial fish landing report?

A song came on, I’d heard it before, September Song, a weepy classic from 1938 written by Kurt Weill.

“ Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you
These precious days I’ll spend with you”

The song summed up, right then, in the third week of September, with Cape Cod at its peak in terms of glorious weather, the bittersweet emotion of a summer’s passing in a resort town. While we natives may say good riddance to the craziness of the silly season, we know the northeasters of winter lie ahead, when the landscape turns into a black and white movie, and Cape Cod goes from glorious to bleak. I for one, will not be standing on an overpass over Route 6 waving goodbye to the Volvos with their kayaks and bicycles.
This summer seemed to end two weeks ago. Blame it on early school openings, but the traditional punction mark of Labor Day is gone. My two youngest start school on the 10th of September, my eldest is heading back to college in NYC on the 3rd, out of boredom more than anything else. Me, I’m looking forward to some clamming, a little sailing, and forging onwards with winter projects. My summertime productivity sucks.

At Forbes.com, Lots of Glitter but Maybe Not So Many Visitors – New York Times

The Times slams into Forbes.com this morning on the eternal subject of squishy traffic numbers. This is an issue endemic to the online media industry, one that harks back to the days of Time-Warner’s Pathfinder when Gerald Levin would boast about millions of “hits.” Now that the industry has settled down and focused on unique visitors, there is still a vast discrepancy between the external traffic reporters — ComScore, Nielsen, Alexa, etc. — and a site’s own server logs, ostensibly the only true measure of traffic, yet one wholly dependent on what filters and analytics are being applied to the raw numbers.

With no equivalent to the magazine industry’s third-party audit structure in place (BPA, etc.), online media has been able to play a game of squishy reporting since 1994. Take a good stat, lead with it, and let the rest of the numbers fall where they may.

“But a closer look at the numbers raises questions about Forbes.com’s industry-leading success. For its claim of a worldwide audience of nearly 15.3 million, it has been citing February data from comScore Media Metrix, one of the two leading providers of third-party Web traffic data.

“There are several problems with that statistic, though, and comScore has since revised the figure downward to less than 13.2 million as part of a broader revamping of its worldwide data for many sites. Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore Media Metrix, said the new figures were released “a couple of months ago” after it changed its methods for estimating global audiences.”

While bragging rights are nice — “We’re the biggest” is always a nice marketing message — the advertisers are the one’s who are best placed to develop the metric that measures and that comes down to conversions. Forget CTR (click-through rates, forget reach (monthly uniques, visits), and focus on what happens to the referred traffic once it arrives in the form of generated leads, shoppers, etc. The notion that any media buyer would give more than a passing glance at gross tonnage metrics is risible. It’s their own metrics, how they measure what they’ve bought, that determines whether they’ll renew a campaign or drop it.

I try not to. A national business reporter pinged me this morning with a request to do an interview on a former employer. While flattering, I passed. Why?

1. The It-Takes-One-to-Know-One rule. In 1983, while covering local politics at a Massachusetts daily newspaper, I scored a serious scoop about a state senator representing a city that was home to my paper’s arch-rival newspaper. Front page, big lurid headlines, I totally de-pantsed the other paper. So their reporter called me to “congratulate” me. We saw each other all the time — this was a classic newspaper war deathmatch rivalry — and had a joking relationship. What I thought was a collegial conversation turned out to be their front page story the next morning. Lesson learned. The press shouldn’t talk to the press.
2. Don’t be retromingent, in other words, no pissing backwards. Slagging former employers, schools, colleagues is low behavior. This isn’t a case of not having nice things to say, but the odds of the one negative comment uttered in the course of an interview becoming the money quote for the reporter is usually 100%. No matter how well you stay on message, how much media training you have, you will feel misquoted.
3. Don’t let ego get in front of common sense. Seeing one’s name in print is a kick, sure, but ego aside, what’s the upside for the person being quoted? I’m not concerned about my “personal brand.”  If I were I’d submit an op-ed piece to the same paper. This doesn’t advance the cause of current employer, it doesn’t make me more marketable. So … what’s the upside? Little to none.

Apologies to the reporter, but next time, work on your email presentation: asking me if there is a “potential downside” is like telegraphing your intentions.

Bump keying: $1 keys open any lock – Engadget

Thanks to Buddy Ben for the pointer to this Engadget story/video on the death of locks. Think Kryptonite had it bad with the bike lock affair? You ain’t seen nothing. Couple seconds and 90 percent of all key-based locks can be “bumped” open. Load up on biometric stocks.

“…what would you say to the frightening truth that lying before the world these hundreds and hundreds of years we’ve been using tumbler locks, was a simple technique that allows an intruder to quietly, quickly, easily open any lock for the cost of a copied key? It’s called bump keying, and we can assure you it has nothing to do with certain white narcotics. By simply cutting some keys down to serrated-like edges of sharp, even peaks and valleys, an amateur can break into a home in less time than it takes to disassemble a bic pen.”

Funny, but in a random conversation today with a guy who’s ex-wife stashed all his valuables inside of a six-foot safe with a fingerprint reader, my wife came up with the demented solution to his speculation that even if he cut off the right finger and tried to swipe it, it would probably fail if it had a body-temperature sensor. My wife, nice lady, recommended microwaving the amputated digit up to body temperature.

Multi-Touch Interaction Research

Colleague Jim Leonard pointed me at this very cool demo, perhaps the coolest input design I’ve seen in a long time.

“While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.”

Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Cell Phone – Products – MSN Tech & Gadgets

“One reason Asians and Europeans have high expectations for innovation and sexy designs when it comes to cell phones is that they live in densely populated countries and must rely on public transportation.

“If you spend an hour on the train every day, then you will want a cell phone with the latest functions,” says Franklin Chang, a research scientist who has worked in Germany and Japan. “If you are in your car, you aren’t going to be spending your time playing a game on your cell phone.”

This is an interesting notion from the point of view of product design. The degree of attention a user gives to the product determines the appeal of functionality, user interface and design. The iPod, which is held up as a classic example of design innovation and simplicity, spends most of its time in the user’s pocket. You don’t have to look at it to use it. A Treo, with its multiple functions, email, and browser, is designed to be stared and poked at. Great for a train rider, useless for an auto driver unless they have a death wish. Notebooks are generally touched all the time. One doesn’t play much off of them other than an occasional DVD on a plane trip. The rest of the time it’s mouse-mouse-mouse/type-type-type.

Anyway, interesting article on why European and Asian cultures tend to get more sophisticated and innovative gadgetry before Americans. Blame it on the car.

Four months with the X60s and I’m falling deeper in love with the Verizon EVDO service that comes bundled with the ultra-portable.

I write this on the 5:50 am Accela out of Providence. I commuted to NYC post-9/11 on the Accela and always rued the lack of access, wondering why some smart person didn’t figure out a way to offer Wi-Fi for a fee. Last week’s news that Boeing was dropping its airborne Connexion service (which I had one chance to try in July on SAS, but declined because the bandits wanted $20 for the privilege) is proof that no one has cracked the code for providing rolling connectivity.

In 1995, when Forbes.com officially launched, a press event on the Forbes yacht the Highlander was planned, replete with tons of demo machines running the website so the press could play around with it. I spent over a month looking for a way to get live data onboard, but alas, there was nothing short of a military satellite system that would have set the company back $100,000. So we ran the site on local caches.

It’s nice to be able to keep up a running IM conversation with a colleague, catch up on my Bloglines reading, run my usual Blogistan filters for Lenovo+Thinkpad, work on a big presentation for the week after next. My book (David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again) is going untouched. The newspaper is unneeded. And even the normally awesome coastal scenery is going ignored.

My colleague, Glen Gilbert, says always-on connectivity is a good-thing/bad-thing. I put it in the mostly good-category.

So, NYC today, RTP tonight, Washington on Wed. or Thursday — back to Cape Thursday night.

I’ve been feeding the hummingbirds for three
summers and it is hands down the coolest thing going on in the flower garden. Most evenings, right before sunset, I have a steady procession of them lined up at the feeder (I have two), putting on a show that is unbeatable.

Best $20 you can spend.

Open Sores

“The Adventures of Hans-Olaf Gutmansdottir, Iceland’s #1 Hacker and President of Free Software Foundation Scandinavia”

In the 90s Internet humor was defined by The Onion. Then came the usual crop of forwarded pictures, videos, and jokes that began to clog my inbox as badly as spam. But up until now there hasn’t really be a nasty, Spy Magazine level of geek humor as funny as the Fake Steve Jobs Blog and now “Open Sores“, the blog of Hans-Olaf, Iceland’s #1 Hacker.

Someone out there is having a very fun time, doing to the Valley what Valleywag wishes it could do.

The nastiest thing about WordPress and Cascading Style Sheets is their relative impenetrability to anyone other than a dedicated web monkey/producer. If you don’t work in this stuff for a living, then all you can hope for is a stable template, easy management and no bugs like the one that hit me this morning which is putting everything into italics. My patience wears thin. Sure, I can go into the admin console, hit “presentation” and do to myself what I did last winter when I took the entire blog down for a week and had to spend cash to get the coders at my ISP to un-befukticate me.

[Update: Ryan from the c-c-c-comments delivered the solution.]

I started a book two days ago. Just dove in and started writing. Most of the research is finished, heavens knows I’ve done enough procrastination, and at the urging of Jim Forbes I just opened a doc and started banging away.

In the old days the poets would begin by invoking the creative muses. Milton kicked off Paradise Lost with the usual call for help:

"Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of OREB, or of SINAI, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of CHAOS: Or if SION Hill
Delight thee more, and SILOA'S Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song"

John Barth, in the short novel, The Floating Opera, has his narrator, Todd Andrews, limber up his writing skills in a chapter entitled, “Tuning My Piano”.

Coleridge ate some opium. Hemingway pounded a bottle of rum. Me, I limber up with some good reading to get the old narrative voice locked in, put aside any mental overhangs and clutter, and then dive in at a steady forced march of 1,000 words a day with no re-reading or drafting. I am fully outlined, and I know enough not to stop to find a fact — marking holes with the old “TK” mark that means: “to come.”

So, a major project is underway. It feels good.

John Simonds blogs on my buddy David Hill, the man behind Lenovo’s first “official blog” Design Matters and the heart and soul of the Thinkpad:
Delusions of Adequacy » David Hill – Chief Lenovo Designer, a Man Who has Created Much, and Touched Millions

:If you’ve ever touched a Lenovo or IBM Personal Computer or Server product, David has touched your life, I’m guessing many hundreds of millions here. As you’ll read below, his design reaches out to you rather than you looking at it.”I always try to bloggerview interesting people, and this is as interesting as any I’ve done. While being quiet spoken, his thoughts and creativeness speak loudly. Go to David’s Blog to be informed. That was what I did and why I asked him to be a guest here.”

Hmm. Appears I have started, or joined a meme. What if you couldn’t bring your laptop on the plane anymore?

Marc Orchant says we’re all going to move our stuff into the cloud. Which is right, if you are looking at the world from Foldera’s point of view. Where Marc is the man.

“This may be an external catalyst to a migration of data to the cloud – one I should have seem coming but frankly did not. I don’t know about you, but the notion of putting my laptop through the ordeal of the commercial carriers’ baggage handling gymnasium is not terribly comforting.  I can see my ideas about the value of a laptop loaded with all of my “stuff” changing dramatically if we get to the point here in the US that we can not bring a laptop onto a plane as carry on luggage or if the time penalty associated with carrying personal electronics becomes too costly.”

Incremental Blogger: Would you check your Tablet PC or laptop? Loren Heiny writes:

“My second concern is with theft. Over the last couple years I’ve met two people that have “lost” their checked laptops. All of their luggage made the trip except what do you know, but the laptop. This makes me a little reluctant to play checked baggage roulette. (By the way, in both cases the airlines did not compensate the travelers for their loss in any way.) I’d rather leave my Tablet behind if there’s even a 2% chance of it being stolen. With the amount of travel I do, that might mean I’d lose a Tablet once every two or three years. Ouch. Yes, laptops can be stolen at any time, but I do my best to keep mine at my side as much as possible.”

The LATimes talked about the separation anxiety faced by travellers on their way to Heathrow.

And buddies Jim Leonard, Mark Hopkins and Mark Cahill comment in my post about this morning’s slog that predict the rise of USB keys, high volume phones, and Web OS’s with ubiquitous devices at your destination.

On my way to RTP this morning and the lines at T.F. Green airport in Providence, RI were the longest I’ve ever seen — snaking out the doors onto the sidewalk when I arrived at 6:45 a.m.

Big bins set up along the aisles and aisles of shuffling passengers, people dropping in bottles of water, me contributing a lost set of Nyquil gel tabs. I cleared the line and the scan in 45 minutes, which was pretty surprising. It had the look and feel of a 90 minute wait.
The screening was no different than any other trip. I was asked if I had any liquids and that was it. I don’t believe they can screen for liquids per se, and I was very paranoid that my four pacls of spare contact lenses would get confiscated due to the little bit of saline solution they float in.

I simply didn’t bring any shaving gear. No razor, no comb, no nothing. The pharmacies and convenience stores are going to have a rush of business I think.

The mood is grim. People are seriously bummed out to have to go through this. The air of resignation is high among me and my fellow Willy Lomans. This is going to be the norm for a very, very long time. This morning’s news of a massive laptop battery recall by one of our competitors and the the “Snakes on a Plane” effect makes me worried that we could see notebooks next on the list of banned devices — or anything with a Li-Ion battery. These things apparently cook off at 600 centigrade and after yesterday’s piece in the WSJ, I think it is a matter of time before we all pack our lives onto USB keys and plug them into desktops at the other end of the journey.

Ez-Pass Airport Security – Forbes.com

So that’s where Steve Brill went ….

Schneier on Security: Last Week’s Terrorism Arrests

I became a Bruce Schneier fan while running the website for CSO Magazine at IDG last year (CSOonline.com). He has some smart things to say about the current state of affairs at airport security stations. In the past few days I’ve heard everything conversationally from a call for a national ID with pre-clearance for known good travellers, to the insane notion of a special airline for undesirables.
Schneier blogs:

“The new airplane security measures focus on that plot, because authorities believe they have not captured everyone involved. It’s reasonable to assume that a few lone plotters, knowing their compatriots are in jail and fearing their own arrest, would try to finish the job on their own. The authorities are not being public with the details — much of the “explosive liquid” story doesn’t hang together — but the excessive security measures seem prudent.”But only temporarily. Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-ons won’t make us safer, either. It’s not just that there are ways around the rules, it’s that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.”