Dave Winer's Test Site Topics

Wheels for my Nissan 350z

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:33:50 GMT

I have been shopping around a lot of wheel stores online and haven't been able to come to conclusion as to what wheels I should put on my Nissan 350z. I am considering 20 inch wheels for my car. My options are Gianna Blitz Wheels, one of the wheels from iForged Wheels, or the Diablo Wishbone Wheels.Help me out here! My Nissan 350z is silver and it's brand new. Pick me some wheels to make my car look nice! Thanks.

Comment on post 576

Mon, 15 May 2006 22:50:15 GMT

Take a look at koolweb2. Some great web 2.0 sites. Users rank and review them..

Comment on post 574

Wed, 10 May 2006 23:26:11 GMT

And, you might notice that two of your colleagues, Dorothy Bowles and myself, are on the editiorial board of NRJ.

Rob

Comment on post 563

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 02:30:31 GMT

OK, this raises a question, sort of off topic but you brought it up.

On commas (and other punctuation) outside of quotation marks, when the quotation marks are "scare quotes" v. actual quotes of what somebody said, does that rule still apply?

For example, which is correct:

Bush pushed for Social Security "reform".

Or:

Bush pushed for Social Security "reform."

"Enquiring" minds want to know...

Comment on post 562

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 08:13:19 GMT

Hey Bob! Long time no see eh?

Don't forget that back in '96 we didn't have all this fancy broadband running all over the place. When I was first learning web design back in '97 I was taught to keep things simple and always when possible simply text with basic formatting. And this was right around the time that frames came out. Do you remember the huge deal that was frames at the time? I mean wow! Everyone was excited because now you could have fancy menu bars or persistent ad zones. Oh how time does fly.

It is too bad, and almost criminal really, the CSS problems with NYTimes, especially since this is a clear case of having to code around Microsoft's programming errors and disinclination to use standards. Oh well, here's hoping for more Firefox adoption. I look forward to hearing you speak for JEM week, I'll see you there!

Comment on post 560

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 00:08:45 GMT

Newsiness?

Comment on post 558

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 23:39:29 GMT

Bob--I'm on the prowl for interesting community media projects--enterprises where community organizations participate with a media entity to empower people and encourage civic life, to accomplish any worthy social goals together. Any candidates come to mind besides the Knight-Ridder papers emerging story?

I'm writing summaries of projects for a web databse the Benton Foundation (benton.org) wants to develop.

Comment on post 547

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 06:14:27 GMT

News is becoming more specialized due to the web. People can find more in-depth coverage on topics that interest them than their local newspaper can provide, from tech to travel to national and international politics. But only local reporters can cover local news well, so that's where local newspaper's value really resides.

Comment on post 539

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 03:13:08 GMT

Okay, I've lower-cased the "B"logger on my site. I didn't want the professor to grade me down. : )

Comment on post 527

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 09:02:56 GMT

Very nicely put, and thank you for understanding :-)

It's a fun topic but also a serious one. I think we will have a much better professional media, it won't be like the current one--and it will be a lot better. But the coming period of disruption is a concern, especially since we have some big problems to figure out. Hopefully it will be a short-storm.

Comment on post 449

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 07:16:40 GMT

Thanks for the link to Elizabeth Rose's Web Site back in August. I'm just now getting around to tracking trends and noticed the link.

Also noticed your UNC connection. There's a Podcasting Conference January 7th. Are you going?

Comment on post 532

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 01:07:20 GMT

Happy New Year Bob ;)

how to improve my network skill

Sat, 10 Dec 2005 11:12:18 GMT

i am a student from KMD.i study about computer science. i interested network.but i have not network knowledge.if everyone know how to improve network skill.plese tell me about that.

Comment on post 518

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 22:09:09 GMT

Former NBC weatherman Willard Scott, quite possibly the greatest pure talent that the medium has ever known was once asked to surmise the importance of the work done by television journalists. I have engraved his response on a cast-iron plaque that hangs over my dining room table. “Never slap a man chewing tobacco.” I have undertaken a lengthy mission of my own in the service of journalism. Namely, I have deigned to explore in www.themarshallpitch.com a few tasty morsels of truth, half-truths, three quarter lies and total fabrications culled from my lengthy and storied career as a professional journalist. So, loosen your belt a couple, push back from the kitchen table, give yourself plenty of elbow room and prepare to breathe deep as I dole out in cafeteria-sized clumps, the eight-course feast that is my journalism career. G.S. Marshall

Comment on post 383

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 21:32:11 GMT

Hi,

As promised, here are the detailsâ€¦

It looks like the NowPublic V3 beta program will be starting next week. Let me know if you want to join us. Weâ€™d be very interested in what you think. My email address is clorenz(at)nowpublic(dot)com.

Thanks, Calder Email: clorenz@nowpublic.com

Comment on post 510

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:48:24 GMT

Bob, I agree with you on the headlines. Feed processes at Scripps sites from newspaper to Web are partly automated, but for every feed, Web editors must still play gatekeeper, assigning articles to appropriate Web sections and approving them to go live.

We do that for the very reasons I stated in my own post: news categorization in print isn't as granular as it is online.

But a desirable side effect of this gatekeeping *should* be the opportunity to recast vague print headlines (or titles, in the case of feature packages) to be better call-to-click links. The examples you point out are classic, and too frequent on all our sites, not just knoxnews.

Regarding the Flash rotating poster, we decided to chance that one because, for dial-up users, the rest of the page should go ahead and build while the Flash object is pulling in its posters. So the page should be serviceable for the modem crowd, if not perfect.

Ads? Fact of life. Gotta pay the bills. Page overhead on the new knoxnews is less than the old one, if that's any comfort.

Comment on post 491

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 16:44:51 GMT

Never heard anything about it until this morning at Atrios and your place. Too bad, sounds like it was a lot better conference than that right wing extravaganza over in Nashville. But those guys always seem better at getting their message out.

Comment on post 473

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:00:48 GMT

There's a great account by Brian Thevenot of what it's been like to be a NOTP reporter at American Journalism Review: "Apocalypse in New Orleans."

We've excerpted it and dozens of other survivor and eyewitness accounts at a blog you may be interested in, "Recording Katrina."

Comment on post 478

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 16:21:24 GMT

My guess is that the KNS is trying to put together some kind of blog ad scam, er, program like the one over in Nashville that was blogged about last week.

Comment on post 467

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 01:49:54 GMT

You are right. An acknowledgment of Christopher Lydon's contributions should have been made. My apologies for the oversight.

Comment on post 463

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 01:44:41 GMT

Oops. Here I am talking about misleading leads, and my own headline could be better. I'm not at the computer that edits my weblog, so I can't delete the "TV" from the headline -- I wrote it with two of the TV news items in mind, then later put that impenetrable News Sentinel murder case lead on top of the list.

But I guess the headline still fits, if you think of newspapers as an "old source" of bad writing... Whether it's TV, Web or print, those things happen -- especially when a reporter (and editors), presumably on deadline, are just overwhelmed by something as complicated as that court case.

It's difficult to tell the basic facts of that story in one sentence, especially because there are multiple allegations that are not yet proven facts.

Was the woman raped?
Did her boyfriend offer a bounty to have the rapist killed?
Was the man suspected of rape guilty?
Was the man accused of the killing guilty?

Since we don't know for sure, the rape, the bounty and the murder are still allegations. But you can't clarify all of that in one sentence, so on't try.

And I wouldn't say "alleged rape victim." I haven't checked my AP Stylebook, but my gut reaction is that saying someone is a rape victim is not an allegation. I think of that word as meaning an unproven accusation of wrongdoing, even if the dictionary definition is broader.

On the other hand, I would use "alleged rape," even if I didn't have a stylebook handy.

Here's how I might rewrite the top of that story, using a 23-word lead instead of the 53-word one:

Blount County is asking the state Supreme Court to review a murder-for-hire case prosecutors said involved revenge for an alleged rape.

The rest of the original lead can be clarified in two more short sentences:

An appeals court reversed the conviction and death sentence of the Blount County man accused of killing the alleged rapist.

He hoped to collect a bounty from the boyfriend of the woman who allegedly had been raped, the prosecution said.
That adds about 10 words, but I think the three sentences are much clearer than the 53-word original. (The next sentence probably would identify the district attorney and say why the appeals court overturned the conviction.)

Comment on post 461

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 18:09:16 GMT

We don't even pretend to be challenging broadcast TV -- we're trying to demonstrate what can be done with some simple tools and get some user participation. We most certainly are trying to do something journalistically interesting for a newspaper -- and I think it very well could be. I'm sure as we go along, it will be enhanced and hopefully RSS will be one of those. The video has been uploaded into Google Video (video.google.com), which gives another way to access it. Thanks for watching!

-- jack lail, Knoxville News Sentinel

Comment on post 453

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 02:19:48 GMT

Gee, how can someone mispell my name: Wrecks? : )

Comment on post 456

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:09:00 GMT

Try this address. Because it's an embedded flash presentation, the size of your monitor or any other settings won't make a difference:

http://media.gatewayva.com/rtd/multimedia/TheyRunRichmond/run.swf

Comment on post 451

Sat, 13 Aug 2005 06:51:45 GMT

Nah, SKB's not Twisty. She's been around longer than he was, for one thing. And I take exception to your casting aspersions on her Photoshopping skills -- I think the Bush-bin Laden cockfight looks totally realistic! :-)

Comment on post 446

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 00:50:27 GMT

I can either post discussion questions on the main weblog page, or simply create a heading and let a "discussion moderator" state the question in detail here.

Comment on post 438

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 22:25:41 GMT

Yes, I'll miss reading his posts, too. And you're right, I wish he'd just left the archives up as a "knowledgebase." Oh well.

Thanks for mirroring the Rocky Top Brigade URL/XML/descriptions table! Now all we need are the e-mail addresses.

Comment on post 432

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 05:39:15 GMT

Thanks Bob for pointing out this article. It's a good one. A light in the doom and gloom.

Comment on post 430

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:38:33 GMT

It's interesting, isn't it, that only newspapers and newspaper people think that Lawrence has any relevance to the future.

Step outside the newspaper world and Lawrence.com and ljworld.com are only jumbles of irrelevance and fad-chasing.

Comment on post 426

Mon, 20 Jun 2005 05:45:12 GMT

Loved the suggestions about "pithy short answers" for the school of journalism 'fixes'.

I especially like numbers 2 and 3. Nr. 2 makes the student think about what they are up to.

Nr. 3 is my favorite ax to grind for everyone but especially for media(them who influence all of us) and politicians, bureaucrats, policy makers, etc. What's going on RIGHT NOW is fairly meaningless without consideration of where we came from to get here and where the inertia of our motion is going to take us next. To wit, the calculus.

I sincerely believe that a special form of calculus indoctrination could be arrived at that would get the point over to the poets as well as the engineers, no?

Got to your site by serendipity, glad I did.

Comment on post 424

Sat, 18 Jun 2005 07:52:39 GMT

check at skb's site. MP is involved. local blogging history is being written.

Comment on post 423

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 19:15:42 GMT

Welcome, Scripting News readers... I haven't been following the Google blog-ad controversy Dave alluded to, or EFF's role, but I do think this little booklet on other legal issues has useful advice. Here's Dave: http://tinyurl.com/98a9w

Comment on post 417

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 20:06:43 GMT

Good thing my wrist injuries are keeping me from typing. I should be easier to keep up with now.

Comment on post 418

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:11:21 GMT

why aren't more people commenitng on this great event???

Comment on post 416

Wed, 01 Jun 2005 16:15:59 GMT

You have it backwards. Woodward signaled to Felt by shifting a flowerpot. Felt would signal by marking Woodward's papers.

Comment on post 415

Tue, 31 May 2005 23:49:37 GMT

Thanks so much for the write-up, Bob. It's gratifying to know someone reads my drivel. While currently unfamiliar with your website, I'll work to rectify that and get back with ya. Thanks for reading...

Comment on post 412

Wed, 25 May 2005 02:14:49 GMT

WATE uses the AP Broadcast wire. The story at WATE.com has been corrected.

Comment on post 408

Sun, 22 May 2005 07:07:43 GMT

Hey Bob, I loved that show!

Thanks for the mention. --Steve

Comment on post 403

Mon, 16 May 2005 20:06:59 GMT

Apparently, the 3-handed pope got to cast additional votes when he was elected. This could come in handy during the senate votes this week. Know any three handed senators?

Comment on post 401

Thu, 12 May 2005 02:26:46 GMT

No kidding. One of the reasons for the "upgrade" was to improve performance. I don't see how including a 100K+ flash on the main page improves performance.

Other than that, it is less cluttered and a little easier to navigate, and it does load a tiny bit faster over broadband, flash notwithstanding. (Which makes you wonder what was wrong with their old design.)

But you are correct that the article summaries were far more useful, and they (being just text) weren't the problem with performance or clutter.

Too bad corporate types at SH are probably calling all the shots, and outsourcing the web development to India or worse hiring first year IT majors to design a pretty important corporate asset.

Comment on post 384

Mon, 09 May 2005 20:30:44 GMT

I found your post about our site (NowPublic) and thought your readers might be interested in something we've just announced. This week we will begin giving out cash awards to the best photographs we receive. Our Citizen Photojournalism Awards aims to show the best news related photographs in citizen journalism. We've got a little blurb on the site that describes what we mean by 'news related'. Please pass the invitation on to anyone you know that has good material. Weâ€™ve got to give that $1000 to someone.

Feel free to email me with any comments or questions.

Best,

Michael. Mtippett (at) NowPublic (period) com

Comment on post 390

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 19:53:59 GMT

http://www.southknoxbubba.net/skblog/archive_2005_04.php#4131

Discussion on whether blogs made a difference in saving the S & W.

Comment on post 386

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 23:11:08 GMT

Bill O'Reilly didn't win a Peabody? That's too bad.

Comment on post 379

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 22:54:57 GMT

Bob,

Any thoughts on why the Mayoral election in Farragut is not being covered by local TV or radio? The early voting set a record and surpassed the entire number of votes for the last election.

The KNS has only given minimal coverage in the West Sentinel section of the KNS. Since the voters in Farragut will decide the fate of Metro in Knox County it is curious that the most important election in Farragut history is being overlooked. The election is very close and yet there is almost no coverage.

Do you have any idea why?

Comment on post 378

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 20:17:54 GMT

Cool stuff Bob, I was searching for other TN bloggers and found ya.

Added to my Onfolio feeds? Check :)

Comment on post 110

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 01:48:24 GMT

It was also faulty because it portrayed the Wright brothers as the first who flew a powered controlled aeroplane.

Weisskopf aka Whitehead had flown his aeroplane more than two years earlier, and had made both longer and better controlled flights.

The Wright brothers visited him in his workshop and they knew about his aeroplane and his motors.

The last time they visited him he commented after they left:

"Those rascals are probably never gonna invest any money in my aeroplane, and now I have given them all my secrets."

http://www.flightjournal.com/articles/wff/wff6.asp

Comment on post 363

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 23:46:43 GMT

loved the notice on SKBubba -- I remember looking at Nando during your tenure, not realising quite how cool online news was going to get, never mind that I would start to expect daily fixes from my favorite papers. way cool.

Comment on post 362

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 20:07:47 GMT

Brian Conley wrote that there will be an editorial in MP this weeks addressing sources and sourcing. Should be an interesting read.

Comment on post 360

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 00:04:25 GMT

I would have had the scoop on the fire if I had checked my e-mail earlier. Reader F-Stop e-mailed the photo and his report about 5:30 AM. WBIR's story was first posted, I believe, around 8:00 AM. The others followed in the order I listed them. I don't know why KNS was last to get something online.

P.S. Check the right side of my blog page to see how RSS feeds can be incorporated into a website. This is done using some open source PHP software called "Magpie" with a little wrapper I hacked together and plugged into my blog template.

Comment on post 355

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 17:59:24 GMT

Re. Hells Angels and Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail and Las Vegas and elsewhere...

Mabye the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle applies, i.e. the act of observing an experiment alters it.

(Or maybe the drugs altered his observation of the experiment, or...?)

Regardless, he was one hell of a writer. One of my all time favorites. Whatever method there was to his madness worked.