DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I attended a panel discussion on “Blogging and Social Networking” tonight.

One of the panelists (I didn’t note who) declared that “journalism is dead.” I read the paper every day, so I can’t say I agree, but it made a nice soundbite, a nice affirmation for anyone whose living depends on whatever thing has been crowned the “new journalism.” The evidence cited: media consolidation results in a loss of perspective, a loss of fair coverage, and a homogeneity of interpretation; scandals like Jayson Blair undermine the credibility of even the most revered news sources.

The proposed solution — of course! — is blogging. Therefore you should immediately cease reading Google News, the Tribune, the Chronicles and Timeses and Heralds of the world, and rely solely on debris.com for all your news. Thank you.

Blogs are unfiltered. There’s no newsroom bias, no editor squashing stories that would offend an advertiser or board member or President. The implication: blogs are more honest.

Also, most blogs (erm, not this one) have a feedback loop — an opportunity for readers to comment on stories. One of the panelists suggested that had the NY Times provided a commenting feature, Jayson Blair would have been accused and outed long before he’d managed to fabricate 30+ stories.

Jason Calcalis challenged Dan Gilmor with this question: assuming compensation and benefits were equal, wouldn’t you rather be a full-time blogger than a newspaper columnist with a blog on the side? Gilmor’s answer surprised me, and probably most everybody in the room: he said no. He said he already has total journalistic freedom. And he admitted that being on staff at the Merc has brought lots of traffic to his blog. I appreciated that turnaround — not only is he not eager to abandon his newspaper column… he relies on it to drive readers to his blog.

Gilmor made another interesting point. He described blogs as the first realization of Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision of an interactive web. Until blogs, the web was a read-only medium. With blogs, it has become read-write. (Except at debris.com. But, hey, you can send me email if you like.)

Mark Pincus was asked about his ownership of the sixdegrees social-networking patent. He claimed he’d purchased the patent, in partnership with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, to prevent other companies from using it to restrict competition. He didn’t name names, but there seemed to be some tension among the panelists.

I have to believe there will be some lawsuits around this before very long. Consolidation is inevitable. Nobody wants to have to maintain profiles and networks at, let’s see, Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe, Orkut, Ryze, Spoke, ZeroDegrees, Ecademy, RealContacts, Ringo, MySpace, Yafro, EveryonesConnected, Friendzy, FriendSurfer, Tickle, Evite, Plaxo, Squiby, and WhizSpark. And for all the talk (during this panel) of open vs. closed networks, does anybody really believe all the industry leaders will embrace open standards so that users can export profile and network information to ease migration into a competing network? I don’t see it.

The Chronicle reports on the status of the Streisand vs. CaliforniaCoastline.org lawsuit (about which I’ve written before):

Singer Barbra Streisand has been ordered to pay the legal fees of an amateur photographer who defeated a $10 million lawsuit she filed over a picture of her Malibu mansion posted on his Web site.

Streisand actually lost the suit back in December — I’d missed the news. But I’m gratified it went this way; I disagreed with her claim.

I do understand the desire for privacy; that’s one of the reasons I moved out into the sticks. If I had $10M to buy a chunk of coastline, I’d probably do it. I like to think I wouldn’t sue californiacoastline.org if they took an aerial picture of it, but maybe the cost of having $10M to blow on a house is losing touch with reality.

Anyway, in sympathy for and solidarity with Barbra, I’ll post an aerial photo of my own home. I’m somewhere in the middle; see the red arrow. Barbra — if you’d like to commiserate, call me this weekend. You have the new number, right?

(Bim took this aerial photo. He has a really tall tripod. The questionable color correction is my own doing.)

I stumbled across MusicPlasma [update 2007-03-28: now called LivePlasma] — “the music visual search engine.” Type in a band name and it draws nifty diagrams of related bands. The graphs are navigable, sort of. (My experience indicates that the company hasn’t worked out all the kinks yet.)

Physical proximity within a map indicates musical “closeness.” Also, bands are clustered by genre and epoch: a search for REO Speedwagon lists every band I heard on the radio when I was in grade school. (I once saw Supertramp in concert. And Styx! That was my favorite band in 1977.)

Next I entered “Camel,” a band I’ve been digging for 20 years. The resulting diagram contains nearly every band I listen to regularly, and several I should be. It contains every major progressive rock band I can think of.

Some of the bands are surprising — the “Beatles?” Who are they?

These charts remind me of the Family Tree diagrams drawn by Pete Frame in the 1980s. The one I remember best is from the 20th Anniversary Box Set for Jethro Tull. Here it is, in glorious grayscale mid-fidelity complete with JPEG artifacting: Pete Frame’s Family Tree for Jethro Tull, 1968-1988.

Frame’s family trees are dense with the chronology of rock history; the charts show the incestuous development of the best bands of the 1970s and 1980s. The first book, Rock Family Trees, traces Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Genesis, The Police, King Crimson, Fleetwood Mac, the Yardbirds, and many more. If you’ve ever pored over liner notes while the record was playing, you need to see this book.

The second volume, More Rock Family Trees, contains Jeff Beck, Black Sabbath, CSN&Y, The Cult, Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Pink Floyd, Santana, Sex Pistols, Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Smiths, Spirit, The Velvet Underground, and about a thousand more. Cool, cool, cool.

The Chronicle reports on new laws about GMail: Bill puts limit on ads in e-mail:

In an effort to protect user privacy, the state Senate voted Thursday to place limits on Google’s new e-mail service and its controversial advertising policies.

Seems like an overreaction, doesn’t it? I mean, Google’s offering a feature-rich web-based email service for free… who cares if they show some ads alongside the messages?

But maybe Google is not so innocent after all. The print version of the Chronicle article claims:

Google … had originally planned to save deleted messages indefinitely and collect information about individual users to create databases of their preferences for marketing purposes.

The above passage does not appear in the online version of the article. The online version has apparently been revised:

Because of the wording of Gmail’s terms of service, some privacy groups were concerned that Google would save deleted messages indefinitely and collect information about individual users to create datatbases of user preferences for marketing purposes. Google denies any such plans.

Well, never mind then!

Here’s a handy tool for your inner health fanatic. (Yes, you have an inner health fanatic. It’s down inside there, behind the brownies.)

CalorieKing.com offers a searchable database of nutritional information for produce as well as packaged foods… everything from amaranth to zwieback.

The search engine is nice. Enter ‘trader’ to see a selection of Trader Joe’s products. Enter ‘avocado’ to see a choice: California or Florida? Enter ‘Subway’ to see a 5-page list of what appears to be the restaurant chain’s entire menu.

The database contains basic stats on protein, fat, calories, fiber, cholesterol, sodium, etc.

On a related note, I found a great quote about the role of the food industry in American society’s obesity epidemic, in a Harvard Magazine article called The Way We Eat Now: Ancient bodies collide with modern technology to produce a flabby, disease-ridden populace. (linked from Kottke.org)

There’s the incessant advertising and marketing of the poorest quality foods imaginable.

Something to think about when the next Cheetos or Taco Bell ad comes on.