FT WEEKEND and the Sunday Business Post provide me with several hours of business news worth reading and on many weekend, those two newspapers are better than the Sunday business radio shows on national airwaves in Ireland. That's because many of those broadcasts feature people advocating a position, not informing public judgment. I enjoyed the Undercover Economist's view of weather forecasts [1] and the photo essay book review of Shop Class as Soulcraft [2], both topics covered in the FT Weekender Magazine. I lead off a 6-minute Qik video clip with these short items and cover a range of tech and business things as I page through those mainstream newspapers. I wish Donncha O Caoimh was writing some of the product reviews of digital cameras that the Irish newspapers print because his blog and photosets rock. (He's also on Twitter.) I'm determined to create a "corrections" category on my blogs because the newspapers inform me about the incorrect assessments I've made. I'm not wrong about wanting to visit Chicago again [3], this time with my Maxroam SIM installed.
MJ All Over. Nielsen, a research firm that measures internet traffic, said online discussions about Jackson far exceeded those of the recent swine flu scare and also surpassed the Obama inauguration. [4]
Online Censorship Revealed. Actions by Iran and China show that these countries understand internet filtering, deep packet inspection, denial of service attacks, human intelligence, self-censorship and edge-of-network restrictions. [5]
The iPhone Effect. Apple has raised its stake in Imagination Technologies, helping to spark an escalation in value for the stock. I call it "the iPhone effect" in my Qik clip. I imagine my Twitter following will spike just as nicely when I get an iPhone 3G S and I'm looking for Biz Stone to sponsor my phone. [6]
The Weckler Broadband Rant. Adrian Weckler points out that there aren't enough people buying subscriptions for truly function broadband because the status quo in Ireland is ignorant and indifferent about paying to download things fast. [7] In my personal opinion, I believe everyone wants broadband until they have to pay for it. There's a series of commercial reports behind Weckler's rant, written by industry flogging the need for speed.
Reflecting on Twitter. "It's not just that everyone is talking about Twitter. People are, in fact, using it to do things." [8] I wonder if the Media & Market editor in the Sunday Business Post has a presence on Twitter. She's writing about it a lot these days. She doesn't appear in Alexia Golez' Irish Twitter Index.
1. Tim Hartford -- "Why weather forecasts can affect your prosperity" in FT Weekender Magazine, 28 June 2009.
2. Margaret Wheeler Johnson -- "No Desk Required" in FT Weekender Magazine, 28 June 2009.
3. Jane Ure-Smith -- "City with the Wright Stuff" in the FT Travel section, 28 June 2009.
4. Matthew Garrahan -- "Death Sparks Off Web Traffic Jams in a special section of the FT Weekend, 28 June 2009.
5. Joseph Menn, Richard Waters, and Kathrin Hille -- "Control, halt, delete" in the Analysis section of FR Weekend, 28 June 2009.
6. John O'Doherty -- "Apple increases Imagination Technologies Stake to 9.5% in the Companies section of the FT Weekend, 28 June 2009.
7. Adrian Weckler -- "Stuck in the slow lane" in the YourTech section of the Sunday Business Post, 28 June 2009.
8. Catherine O'Mahony -- "A serious care of TwitterGuilt" in her Media World column, Sunday Business Post, 28 June 2009.
Direct link to Qik Clip: http://www.qik.com/video/2011929
