Newsweek: Clinton campaign was a PC, Obama a Mac

In a Newsweek video, reporter Nick Summers says that going from covering the Hillary Clinton campaign to the Obama campaign was like switching from a PC to a Mac. The Web video, called Secrets:'The Dysfunction', is a part of the publication's special coverage of the recent political campaigns.

In a Newsweek video, reporter Nick Summers says that going from covering the Hillary Clinton campaign to the Obama campaign was like switching from a PC to a Mac. The Web video, called Secrets:'The Dysfunction', is a part of the publication's special coverage of the recent political campaigns.

  • Rules for journalists/bloggers/witnesses? A Guardian debate

    Here's a debate that just went up at CommentIsFree (please go comment there; the discussion's already underway): me vs. Michael Tomasky, the Guardian's man in Washington, over whether, as he has said, bloggers should operate under the rules of journalism….. Editor's note: Earlier this month Barack Obama's election campaign was shaken by a report that Obama had described rural, white voters as “bitter”. The news was broken by a “citizen journalist”, Mayhill Fowler, and was carried on the Huffington Post's politics blog, Off The Bus. Last week Guardian America editor Michael Tomasky argued on CiF that Fowler's reporting raised serious ethical questions and argued that blogging, like journalism, needed rules. CiF commentator Jeff Jarvis responded on his blog Buzzmachine that openness, not rules, was demanded in the era of the internet. The answer? Bring the two men together to thrash it out, right here. Jeff Jarvis to Michael Tomasky: I believe the rules you long to carry into the new world are inherently corrupting for journalism: We journalists have long traded in the currencies of access and exclusivity with the powerful. But the price we pay is complicity in a system of secrecy. That's what off-the-record talks and unnamed sources add up to: secrets. As journalists we should be allergic to the idea of helping public officials hide anything from the public. And as journalists, I'd have thought we'd be rejoicing in the idea that witnesses can now share what they hear from public figures. Openness is our cause, transparency our goal, no? Yes, we may lose some exclusives - but exclusives now have the half-life of a click. With more openness and more reporting - by all - we will end up with more stories, the public will get more information, and politicians will learn that anything and everything they say and do can (and should) be reported. You want transparency from the citizen journalists. I agree, but I'd expand that: I want transparency from all journalists, and not just about donations but also about influences, especially in the US, where claims of objectivity have lately become a cloak for partisanship. That's the simplest rule: openness for all. I think we should be applauding and supporting Mayhill Fowler. Her reporting of Obama's “bitter” remarks - in spite of her support of his candidacy - is an impressive act of intellectual honesty. She knew those remarks would be newsworthy. She knew they could hurt him. But she opted for openness, directly to the public, around campaign spin as well as press filters: the witness reports. I'd say she showed veteran journalists how to operate under new rules of her own that, in this case, were superior to the old rules of conspiratorial secrecy. Michael to Jeff: Well, sometimes the rules I “long” for (what a word!) are inherently corrupting and result in secrets being kept from the public. But sometimes, indeed more often, it's just the opposite. Sometimes, only the protection of anonymity will ensure that a source with important information about powerful people comes forward. In this way, the public has learned about a million things, from the Pentagon Papers to the less alarmist intelligence assessments about Iraq before the war. You know that. And very few journalists I know would favour “[hiding] anything from the public.” They would, however, favour not publishing something until it's verified. That's scarcely complicity in secret-keeping. That's just being responsible. I'll tell you what. Let's go ask Alan Rusbridger the following: One of his reporters hears from one source (unwilling to go on the record) that David Cameron praised Oswald Mosley in a private talk. Should the Guardian publish on the basis of that alone? I'm guessing that Alan would prove himself to be “old-fashioned” on this point, and properly so. But none of this has to do with what Fowler did. To recap: She got in the door because she donated money to Obama's campaign. This is something no beat reporter would or could do. Then she was able to take advantage of that situation. She “showed veteran journalists” nothing, because “veteran journalists” would not have been allowed in that meeting! You write as if these “veteran journalists” would have heard Obama's remarks and kept them secret. But the point is that veteran journalists would never have gotten through the door in the first place. So fine; call them “witnesses” and drop the whole conceit that they're journalists. And I'm glad you agree about listing witnesses' donations. Will you take that message to Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen [the co-sponsors of the Off The Bus citizen journalists' blog]? Jeff to Michael: Well, I think you're mixing apples and kumquats into a bit of a rhetorical fruit salad. There's quite a difference between hearing a tip from a whistleblower and recording a presidential candidate speaking at a forum. There's also a difference between verifying such a tip with reporting - which we'll all agree is necessary - and playing that tape-recording, which itself was the verification anyone needed. Obama's words and voice spoke for themselves. So I don't see the connection you make between keeping something off the record and verifying it; the former does nothing in the interest of the latter in this matter. To make your hypothetical case consistent with the discussion at hand, if the witness who heard David Cameron praise Oswald Mosley put a video of it on YouTube for all to see, I imagine that you and the Guardian would deal with it at face value. You would, as reporters did in the Obama case, report further - you'd put an oyster around the pearl. But these witnesses are the ones who now start the story. Now let me extend your hypothetical: let's say that a reporter did get in the room with Obama and had made a pledge to keep it off the record. But a donor - any old donor, with or without a blog - had recorded the session (as Fowler says many did) and put that on YouTube. Does it now matter that there was a journalist there? Who is serving the public better? I say the journalist should be delighted that word got out and that demanding such off-the-record pledges is now fruitless. This is a crucial element in a new architecture of news: when witnesses share what they see publicly we need to figure out how to integrate that into our journalism. It will become even more complicated when they share what they see live with their camera-phones, as technology allows today. Veteran journalists may be nowhere near that news - because, as journalists, they had not been allowed in the door or merely because they had not arrived yet - but they will depend on such reporting or witnessing, call it what you will. It will still add up to journalism in the end. As for your challenge on disclosure, I've done more: I reveal my politics on my blog's disclosure page, including my vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. I've blogged my expectation to see similar behaviour from bloggers and journalists alike. I went so far as to ask my readers recently whether, having revealed my preferences anyway, I should put my money where my mouth is and donate to Clinton's campaign. Their view (like mine) was mixed. But it's worth asking: if I'm going to be a citizen journalist, shouldn't I act like a citizen? Michael to Jeff: You make a fair point in the bulk of your third and fourth paragraphs, but then you end, for me, on a false note. I suppose Fowler served the public interest in the sense that, sure, those remarks of Obama's were revealing of something or other. But I still say it's a little sneaky and sleazy to be a citizen for the purposes of making a donation, and then getting to be a journalist for the purposes of writing it up. There is a certain duplicity there, Jeff. Let citizens or witnesses videotape and audiotape to their hearts' contents. But no, it doesn't add up to journalism. It adds up to recording, or transcribing. As I said in my original CiF column, I overwhelmingly embrace the blogosphere, and I like most of what I've read under the Off The Bus rubric. (I felt you didn't acknowledge this in your original Buzzmachine post, which practically made it sound like I have a Linotype machine in my basement to which I pay secret ritualistic obeisance.) But I admit that I'm a little less persuaded that it's such a great and necessary thing that we know every single word public people utter. People say dumb things and things they don't really mean. They misspeak. Whether constant recording of such missteps, and the inevitable intense fixation on them, will over time serve the public interest and help voters make more “informed” decisions is not yet settled in my view. That it will lead to more “gotcha!” moments on the campaign trail as candidates are caught saying naughty things isn't a particularly stellar claim to make for the blogosphere, which actually does far more important work in the areas of media-monitoring and community-building. What I like about the blogosphere is that, at its best, it elevates the debate. Mainstream journalists would think I'm out of my mind to say that, but it's true - there are, for example, all manner of policy experts with blogs who shed real light on substantive questions, or bloggers with the intellectual chops to make really interesting and important observations about something happening in the news. Or look at what FireDogLake did during the Scooter Libby trail, which was awesome. All those things are great. Catching pols putting their feet in their mouths may make news, but it's not exactly why John Peter Zenger went to jail. Jeff to Michael: I don't think this is really about bloggers. It's almost coincidental that Fowler had a platform at Huffington Post. If she hadn't, she'd still have found the way to tell her story, if only on YouTube. This weekend, at an open house for students at the City University of New York graduate school of journalism, where I teach, I spoke with a potential student who has been volunteering in the Clinton campaign and she has a great story to tell about the reaction she has gotten, as an African-American woman, from Obama volunteers. Now the fact that she's a volunteer is not just something to be disclosed, it's at the heart of the story. Hers is a great story that is revealing about the campaigns and, more so, the country and the times. I urged her to start writing and said she should pitch it to a magazine. Or better yet, wouldn't the Guardian like to see it? I think this discussion is balancing on what will add up to journalism and who all does that adding. I believe that coverage of stories and topics will, more and more, become molecules that attract all different sorts of atoms: a bit of reporting - and, yes, it's reporting - from witnesses; reporters' work adding balance, depth, vetting, answers to questions; editors packaging and adding links to background and source material; readers and bloggers adding - as you indeed point out - corrections and context; sources having the chance, at last, to respond in kind. Journalism becomes less of a product and more of a process. When I was at the Guardian a few weeks ago to talk about its new newsroom, this notion was at the centre of the discussion. What you're really talking about, I think, is not rules but is a new organizing principle of journalism. I'm glad that Fowler had her recorder and shared what she heard. That, I believe, is the seed for journalism and we in the business and in the society will benefit. And so, in the long run, will politicians, once they learn the benefits of living and working more transparently. Will we have silly gotcha moments? Sadly, yes. But sadly, we had those long before bloggers were born. Was what Fowler reported a gotcha moment or a revealing one? Well, that's where our perspectives - and our transparency about them - come into play. I thought it was revealing, but I'm a Hillary voter and you'd be within your rights to judge what I say accordingly. You have been laudably open about your preference and so it's right for you and your readers to wonder what impact that might have. This becomes one more ingredient in what it turning into a bigger and bigger pot of journalism stew. Michael to Jeff: Regarding your last paragraph, I already said that Fowler served the public interest. I think the quote was revealing of something; at the least, the fact that Obama has comparatively little direct experience dealing with and talking to white, rural working-class people and not enough familiarity with their way of life. So that's a fair knock. It's just that these things do get blown out of proportion, and it gets comical (or sometimes worse) watching millionaire pundits natter on about “elitism.” I'll just end where I started. I still say she came by the quote at best surreptitiously because she got in the door as a citizen (via her donation) and then became a journalist when that was handy, a contention you haven't seriously refuted except to say (1) that's the way it is these days, and (2) okay, then, let's drop the word journalist from our description of Fowler et al and just call them witnesses. That's my claim, and you haven't said anything to dissuade me from sticking to it. On all this other meta stuff, we don't especially disagree.

  • Journalists’ votes matter

    Media have an Obama problem they're going to have to grapple with now or after the election: They love him. They hate Hillary. And the gap between the two is clearly seen in coverage, which surely is having an impact on the election. This, to me, only gives more weight to the argument that journalists should be disclosing their allegiances and votes. Reporters are not just covering the story. This year, they are part of the story. The ethic of transparency that I have learned online and that journalists apply to everyone they cover should also apply to them. I say that journalists have a responsibility to reveal their own views and votes — even as they endeavor to report apart from them with fairness, completeness, accuracy, and intellectual honesty — and we have a right to judge their success or failure accordingly as we also have a right to judge their roles in the stories they are covering. No, I don't buy for a second that journalists don't have opinions. They're human. To say that they are above opinions is just another means for journalists to separate themselves from the public they serve, to act as if they are different, above us. But journalists couldn't do their jobs if they didn't have opinions, if they didn't have a reason to do this story over that, if they didn't have a goal. Yet this is the fiction some journalists tell when they try to prove they are opinionless by not voting. As far as I'm concerned, that's only evidence that they are trying to delude themselves or us. And this year, the media's role in the Obama wave is an angle of the story that itself warrants reporting. Says Bill Clinton: The political press has avowedly played a role in this election. I've never seen this before. They've been active participants in this election. Don't you want to know the opinions of the political press? Don't you want to be able to judge their reporting accordingly? what makes them think that they can and should hide that from us? * * * Terence Smith wrote a dead-on column about the delta between negative Hillary and positive Obama coverage: The coverage of Hillary during this campaign has been across-the-board critical, especially since she began losing after New Hampshire. . . . And her campaign has taken the tough-love approach with the reporters who cover it, frequently ostracizing those they think are critical or hostile. That kind of aggressive press-relations strategy may sometimes be justified, but it rarely effective. Reporters are supposed to be objective and professional. But they are human. They resent the cold shoulder, even if they understand the campaign’s motivation. The result is coverage that is viscerally harsh: her laugh is often described as a “cackle.? Her stump speech is dismissed as dry and tiresomely programmatic. She is accused of projecting a sense of entitlement, as though the presidency should be hers by default, that it is somehow now her turn to be president. When she makes changes in her campaign hierarchy, she is described as “desperate.? . . . And on Obama: By contrast, has the coverage of Obama been overly sympathetic? Have reporters romanticized the junior Senator from Illinois? Have they glamorized him and his wife? Did they exaggerate the significance of Ted Kennedy’s endorsement? Have they given him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his meager experience? Of course they have. His rise to front-runner is described as meteoric, his speeches as mesmerizing, his crowds as enraptured, his charisma as boundless. Obama is characterized as the second-coming of JFK, etc. etc. It is all a bit much. On NPR, media watcher David Folkenflik says: Many reporters admit privately that they feel differently about the two candidates. And there's a phrase that's surfaced to described the phenomenon that's afflicted MSNBC's [Chris] Matthews: the Obama swoon. And why should reporters get away with saying that privately? I want a camera in the voting booth with Chris Matthews — he of the too-frequent too-late apologies — to verify the obvious. I want to know how they're voting. But some journalists try to evade that legitimate question by not voting, as if that absolves them of opinions and blame. Len Downie, editor of the Washington Post — and by that evidence, a damned good editor he is — has long argued that by not voting he keeps himself pure: “Yes, I do not vote. . . . I wanted to keep a completely open mind about everything we covered and not make a decision, even in my own mind or the privacy of the voting booth, about who should be president or mayor, for example.” Sorry, but I still don't buy that and I fear that excuse is seeping down to others in his staff. Here is the Post's Chris Cillizza — a fine political correspondent himself — arguing that not voting makes him objective: . . . [O]bjectivity in covering these races means that you stay objective before, during and after the contests. As, or perhaps more, importantly, however, is the obsession among some people to sniff out a reporter's “secret” political leanings. Time and time again, I find people commenting on this blog and elsewhere accusing me of having a pro-Clinton or pro-Obama or pro-McCain or pro-someone else viewpoint. I know in my hearts of hearts that I don't have any of those biased viewpoints, but if I did vote — even in a local or county election — it would add fuel to the fire of those folks who think I am a secret partisan. I have to say I smelled some Obama roses blooming in this from Cillizza on Howie Kurtz' show: KURTZ: Chris Cillizza, you could argue about whether this Kennedy endorsement was a big deal, but what a collective swoon by the media — ask not why this was such a big story. Are they totally buying into Obama as the new JFK? CILLIZZA: Well, you know, I do think, Howie, that in the Democratic Party, people have been waiting for the next JFK. A lot of people thought or maybe believed it was Bill Clinton. And I think Barack Obama is the next obvious heir to that legacy. It’s a powerful story, and I think as much as the media gets accused of bias, in the decade I’ve spent in it, I don’t think it’s bias as much as it is good storylines. And I will be frank — this is a very interesting, fascinating storyline…. If you are looking for the next John F. Kennedy, I believe he is it. After a line like that, there is good reason to ask where his heart is. You can stay away from the voting booth but that doesn't make you into the Tinman. I agree with John Harris, head of Politico, who calls this a tedious argument — “a subset of the most endless and least satisfying debate in the whole profession: Is true objectivity ever possible?” Harris does vote — sometimes. It is admirable that [Politico colleagues] Mike and Jim cleave to a scientific ideal of journalistic detachment, the way a surgeon cannot tolerate even the slightest bacteria on his instruments. Their piety on this subject is especially notable in an era when traditional lines governing journalism (or even who counts as a journalist in the first place) have blurred, and many new arrivals to the business don’t care at all about old notions of neutrality and fair-minded presentation. But Jim is right that I find his obsession a bit silly — and a bit self-deluded. . . . My belief is that being a journalist for an ideologically neutral publication like Politico, or the Washington Post, where I used to work, does not mean having no opinions. It means exercising self-discipline in the public expression of those opinions so as not to give sources and readers cause to question someone’s commitment to fairness. But Harris turns around and says he didn't vote in the primary because he didn't want to declare a party and then have readers make assumptions about where he stands. So he's pulling the same trick: He's trying to hide his opinions. Isn't that a form of deception by omission? Isn't it at least coy? I like his scientific analogy but I'll take it a different way: A scientist surely has desires. A doctor studying cancer naturally wants to cure it; she's against cancer. That doctor has opinions and beliefs, hypotheses to prove or disprove. But intellectual honestly will demand disproving a hypothesis that is wrong even if she believed it to be true. One can have opinions and still be factual, fair, honest, truthful. Indeed, it is easier to judge that scientist's work by knowing what she's looking for. Steve Baker of Business Week goes one step farther: I think it’s impossible for a person who thinks about politics, and cares about it, not to prefer one candidate to another. It’s fine for journalists not to broadcast our political views, but why pretend that we don’t have them? What’s important is to be fair. And if we want to keep our views secret, well that’s why it’s good that voting booths have curtains.. . . I don't think either Harris or Baker goes far enough. I believe that journalists should vote. They are citizens — and some get mad at me when I refer to amateurs as citizen journalists because they demand the label, too. They are human, too — they have opinons. They also have ethics that demand that they try to be — repeating the list of verities — fair, honest, complete, intellectually honest and I believe most hold to that. But now add the ethics of transparency and openness — and trust in the public you serve — and I believe that especially this year, journalists owe it to us to tell us what they're thinking. The only thing worse than an agenda is a hidden agenda.

  • Marketing lessons from the US election

    The polls open in a few minutes, and unlike pundits that wait until after the polls have closed, I thought I'd do the opposite. It's obvious that this is the most talked about election in the history of the world, and I think there are some lessons for every marketer, regardless of nationality or political leanings. It turns out that one way you learn about marketing is by analyzing it. (The other way is to do it). Yet people hate analyzing three really useful but emotional examples of marketing that matters: politics, organized religion and their own organizations. I figure we can start here, with the easiest of the three. This is a long post. Fine with me if you skip it and just go vote instead. Here goes:Stories really matter. More than a billion dollars spent, two 'products' that have very different features, and yet, when people look back at the election they will remember mavericky winking. You can say that's trivial. I'll say that it's human nature. Your product doesn't have features that are more important than the 'features' being discussed in this election, yet, like most marketers, you're obsessed with them. Forget it. The story is what people respond to. Mainstream media isn't powerful because we have no other choices (see below). It's powerful because they're still really good at writing and spreading stories, stories we listen to and stories we believe. TV is over. If people are interested, they'll watch. On their time (or their boss's time). They'll watch online, and spread the idea. You can't email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. The cycle of ads got shorter and shorter, and the most important ads were made for the web, not for TV. Your challenge isn't to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we'll choose to watch it and choose to share it. Permission matters (though selfish marketers still burn it). The Republican party has a long tradition of smart direct mail tactics. Over the years, they've used them to aggressively outfundraise and outcampaign the Democrats. In this election cycle, smart marketers at the Obama campaign toned down the spam and turned up the permission. They worked relentlessly to build a list, and they took care of the list. They used metrics to track open rates and (at least until the end) appeared to avoid burning out the list with constant fundraising. Anticipated, personal and relevant messages will always outpeform spam. Regardless of how it is delivered. Marketing is tribal. This one, for obvious reasons, fascinated me this cycle. Karl Rove and others before him were known for cultivating the 'base'. This was shorthand for a tribe of people with shared interests and vision (it included a number of conservatives and evangelicals). George W. Bush was able to get elected twice by embracing the base, by connecting them, by being one of them. John McCain had a dilemma. He didn't particularly like the base nor did they like him. His initial strategy was not to lead this existing tribe, but to weave a new tribe. The idea was that independents and some Democrats, together with the traditional pre-Reagan core of the Republican party, would weave together a new centrist base. Barack Obama also had a challenge. He knew that the traditional base for Democratic candidates wouldn't be sufficient to get him elected (it had failed John Kerry). So he too set out to weave a new tribe, a tribe that included progressives, the center, younger religious voters, weary veterans, internationalists, Nobel prize winners, black voters and others. Building a new tribe (in marketing and in politics) is time consuming and risky and expensive. Both set out to do this. Then, McCain made a momentous decision. He chose Sarah Palin, and did it for one huge reason: to embrace the Rove/Bush 'base'. To lead a tribe that was already there, but not yet his. He was hoping for a side effect, which was to attract Hillary Clinton's tribe, one that in that moment, was also leaderless. Seen through the lens of tribes and marketing, this is a fascinating and risky event. Are people willing to suspend disbelief or suspicion and embrace a leader in order to maintain the energy of their tribe? If it had worked, it would have been a master stroke. He would have solidified his base, grabbed key constituencies of Clinton supporters in swing states and wooed the center as well. Three tribes in one pick. In McCain's case, it failed. His choice cost him the economically-concerned middle (which went to Obama's carefully woven tribe). And it clearly cost him the mostly female Clinton tribe. Yes, he energized the conservative base, but he lost the election. If he had chosen Mike Huckabee, one could wonder what would have happened. Would this less polarizing figure been able to collect a bigger tribe for him? This is a real question for every marketer with an idea to sell. Do you find an existing tribe (Harley drivers, Manalo shoe buyers, frequent high-end restaurant diners) and try to co-opt them? Or do you try the more expensive and risky effort of building a brand new tribe? The good news is that if you succeed, you get a lot for your efforts. The bad news is that you're likely to fail. Motivating the committed outperforms persuading the uncommitted. The unheralded success factor of Obama's campaign is the get out the vote effort. Every marketer can learn from this. It's easier (far easier) to motivate the slightly motivated than it is to argue with those that either ignore you or are predisposed to not like you. Attack ads don't always work. There's a reason most product marketers don't use attack ads. All they do is suppress sales of your opponent, they don't help you. Since TV ads began, voter turnout has progressively decreased. That's because the goal of attack ads is to keep your opponent's voters from showing up. Both sides work to whittle down the other. In a winner-take-all game like a political election, this strategy is fine if it works. So why didn't the ads work this time? The tribe that Obama built identified with him. Attacking him was like attacking them. They took it personally, and their outrage led to more donations and bigger turnout. This is the lucky situation Apple finds itself in as well. Attacking an Apple product is like attacking an Apple user. We get what we deserve. The lesson that society should take away about all marketing is a simple one. When you buy a product, you're also buying the marketing. Buy something from a phone telemarketer, you get more phone telemarketers, guaranteed. Buy a gas guzzler and they'll build more. Marketers are simple people... they make what sells. Our culture has purchased (and voted) itself into the place we are today. Did I mention you should vote?

  • Jobs Mixes It Up With Adobe, Google

    The comments were made during a town hall meeting. The person leading the town hall trashes a competitor who used to be a partner, and intemperate language may have been used. Another competitor who may yet end up as a partner is called "lazy." A media primed to snap up conflict and sensationalism does so, splashing the headlines all over -- just as the person who made the original comments may have suspected they would in the first place. A particularly juicy chapter in the political bestselller "Game Change" describing the 2008 Obama and Clinton campaign machinations? No.

  • Obama team chose Apple on election night

    Filed under: Odds and ends, Flickr Find In what could be a sign of things to come, an unnamed staffer Biden's son Hunter (thanks commenters) was pictured on Election Night showing Vice President-Elect Joe Biden something on a MacBook Air. Biden also appears to be holding an iPhone 3G with a sticker on the back. Biden was apparently observing something on screen, while President-Elect Barack Obama celebrated in the background with another staffer. The MacBook Air appeared to be connected to a USB 3G network adapter. The Obama administration could become the most technologically-savvy presidency so far. The President-Elect's transition team has already put up change.gov, a website developed by Blue State Digital, the same firm that created Obama's campaign website. Obama's administration promises to be the first to include a Chief Technology Officer, and he supports net neutrality. Obama has been photographed during his campaign using an iPhone. A Newsweek article in Feburary noted that Michelle Obama bought then-Senator Obama and their children each a MacBook, so they could stay in touch during the long campaign. Yes, we can add the team to the growing list of world leaders using Apple products. Thanks, Brian! Editor's Note: Political discourse can sometimes get heated, and that's understandable, but there are some boundaries. Multiple comments to this post have made threatening statements against the President-Elect. Any comments of this nature will be deleted and identifying information will be provided to the US Secret Service.TUAWObama team chose Apple on election night originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read|Permalink|Email this|Comments

  • The myth of the opinionless man*

    The problem in the cases of ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal and ousted Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel is not that they had opinions. Of course, they had opinions. Indeed, we should damned well want them to have opinions. If they each only accepted what they were told without doubts and complaints, without discrimination, they'd each be be very bad at their jobs, wouldn't they? The problem is not that those opinions were reported. Publicness — transparency, openness, authenticity, honesty — is good. It should lead to more trust. But here it didn't. It led to public disgrace. Why? The problem, then, is our myth of the opinionless man*. I don't think that is society's myth. We all know better than to believe that men have no beliefs — because we are all merely men* with beliefs of our own. No, the opinionless man is an institutional myth, a fiction maintained by news organizations, political organizations, governments, businesses, churches, and armies. The opinionless man is meant to be an empty vessel to do the bidding of these hierarchies. But opinions and openness about them subvert hierarchies. Or to translate that to modern times, via the Cluetrain Manifesto, links subvert hierarchies. This is the age of links. So hierarchies: beware. One opinion leaks out of the opinionless man and it is shared and linked and spread instantly. The institutions treat this revelation as a shock and scandal — as a threat — and they eject the opinionated men. That is what happened to McChrystal and Weigel. In my thinking for my book on publicness, I keep trying to look at such fears and offenses and turn them around to ask what they say not about the scandalous but instead about the scandalized — about us and about our myths and realities. Former Washington Post editor Len Downie was the self-drawn archetype of the opinionless man. He famously refused to vote, thinking it somehow made him immune from opinions and their corruption of his journalism. That heritage is what led to Weigel's ejection from the Post. But as Liz Mair argues (via @jayrosen_nyu), it's ridiculous to assume that Weigel should accept and agree with everyone and and everything he encountered on his beat covering conservatives. He should be skeptical. Isn't that a reporter's job? And what is the source of that skepticism but opinions? We want to know. Mayhill Fowler wrote a superb HuffingtonPost piece — inspired by McChrystal and her own experience in the Obama campaign — about journalism as a dance of seduction and betrayal. The corrupting temptation isn't sex or beauty or wealth or even fame but access. Her perspective is so valuable because she came to journalism and politics as an outsider and maintained that perspective. Michael Walsh, however, speaks for the institutions as he blows his vuvuzela until he's red-faced warning of the dangers of such openness: But the most important thing to emerge from this mess is the notion of privacy, that there is a difference between on and off the record, and it simply must be observed unless freedom of speech — and thus of thought — is irrevocably chilled. For decades, reporters have observed the distinction between what is meant for public consumption and what is spoken of behind closed doors. The principle is not only enshrined in journalism, but in the government: “executive privilege,” however at times abused, is vital to the decision-making process, and freewheeling (if often “offensive”) conversation and characterizations are part of that process. If we have arrived at a point where we literally have to watch every word we speak, than we are no better than North Korea or the former East Germany. Somewhere, Gen. McChrystal is smiling… Still, the days when “gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail” are long gone, and in cyberspace any utterance, no matter how “private,” is now potentially public — and potentially career-ending. That’s the real lesson from the Weigel flap: in the war of ideas in cyberspace, truth is no longer the first casualty. Trust is. Whoa, boy*. I think exactly the opposite: that privacy for government and those who cover it is exactly what we do not need, exactly what we are working to eliminate with sunshine and publicness. Journalists should have been the ones opening the drapes on those dark rooms but they didn't because they were seduced by their invitations in. So outsiders are forcing them open. Hurrah. Privacy is what protects the tyrants of North Korea and East Germany. Transparency is what kills them. So if we want more transparency — and I believe that we, the people, do even if they, our institutions, often do not — then we must stop going along with the myth of the opinionless man and the scandal of the opinionated man. We should celebrate openness and honesty whenever they manage to break through. We should recognize that — to reform Walsh's bottom line — transparency leads to trust. We should remind our institutions — government and the journalists who are supposed to cover them — that we expect them to judge and we will respect their actions more if we understand their judgment. The institutions' myth of the opinionless man is what is behind their disdain for the internet and its inhabitants — us. Don't you hear it all the time: Oh, the internet is filled with nothing but opinions, as if opinions — our opinions — were worthless. But opinions and the arguments about them — and, yes, the facts needed to win those arguments — are the basis of decision-making in any organization and in society itself. Opinions are the soil of democracy. Publicness is the sunshine that lets it grow. (/metaphor) What we're witnessing in these cases is more than a mere two-day kerfuffle. We are witnessing small evidence of a cultural shift away from the privacy, secrecy, and control that empowered and protected institutions in a centralized, mass society to new cultural norms of publicness. That publicness grants us independence from the powerful; it wrests control from their hands. That is why we are grappling so with questions of privacy and publicness. (That is some of what I am trying to grapple with in my book.) Alan F. Westin's influential 1967 book Privacy and Freedom expresses the view of the prior era: “The greatest threat to civilized social life,” he says in his gravest possible terms, “would be a situation in which each individual was utterly candid in his communications with others, saying exactly what he knew or felt at all times.” Well, hasn't he just described the internet? There we see our emerging social norm of publicness. There we see the war of the private and the public. It's about more than Facebook photos. Jürgen Habermas idealized the emergence of the (bourgeois) public sphere of rational discourse in the 18th century as a counterpoint to government authority and he lamented its eventual corruption by media and commercialization. I will argue in my book that perhaps now, in our post-institutional age, we may see his public sphere emerge after all. It's not going to look idealized for it is built on discourse — on internet opinions — and to those accustomed to the neatness of control by government and media, that looks messy. But if we have faith in our fellow man* then we can at least hope that out of this discourse, rationality may emerge. In such discourse, the opinionless man is silent. I'd rather hear him. * You needn't supply your rant about how I should not use the word “man.” I'm using it unapologetically — well, except for this footnote. I'm using it because there's nothing wrong with the word man but moreso because if you take every instance of the word “man” in this post and replace it with “men and women” or “persons” or “humans” it would result in awkward English and lose cultural reference. Besides, in this case, we happen to be talking about two men. And I am one myself. I'm unapologetic about that.

  • 10 Years After Y2K -- Stories From the IT Battlegrounds

    "This really could have screwed up our lives, and you know, a whole bunch of little geeks saved us." - Paul Saffo. Director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California, in an interview with American RadioWorks It was a fear fest of epic proportions. Magazine headlines predicted that the end of the world would shortly befall us. They told harrowing tales of feral computer systems going awry the minute the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2000--planes would fall from the sky, power grids would fail, the global economy would crash, nuclear power plants would go into meltdown mode, lines of communication would be cut, and the contents of bank accounts would vanish."I cannot be optimistic...It's clear we can't solve the whole problem, so we have to allow some systems to die so mission-critical systems can work... Pay attention to the things that are vulnerable in your life and make contingency plans.... Don't panic, but don't spend too much time sleeping, either." - Senator Robert Bennett, then-Chairman of the Senate's Special Committee on the Year 2000 Problem, Y2K Citizens Action GuideThe cause of all this excitement was the purported Y2K bug. In response to dealing with computers that were about as capable as the iPhone, programmers prided themselves on being thrifty with their code to ensure it didn’t stress memory or capacity. One way to do this was to skip putting a “19” in front of the year and use only the last two numerals. And why not? These programs would be long retired by the time 2000 rolled around. However, not only were many expired programs, operating systems, and applications still chugging away as 2000 crept around the corner, they were also running critical systems like power grids, government agencies and financial systems, hospitals and airports, elevators and public transportation. And so, the race was on to fix the code before the bug bit. Often the fix was a simple patch, but in some cases, programmers struggled to figure out what little time bombs lurked in ancient and undocumented code. Around the world, attempts to squash the bug are estimated to have cost over $300 billion.Mac users were mostly immune as the system software was programmed to accept dates as far into the future as 29940. Assuming third-party applications didn’t go nuts, Macs would be fine. Apple happily pointed this out by airing a commercial during the 1999 Superbowl featuring the poster boy for naughty computers, Space Odyssey’s HAL.At the time, Apple's "acting chief executive" Steve Jobs had issued a statement saying: "HAL is the perfect spokesperson to address the Y2K issues because he lives in the year 2001 and speaks from experience. Plus, HAL is the foremost expert on things that can go wrong with computers." As the big day drew closer, gas masks, radiation kits, safes and water purification systems were hawked in magazine ads and late night commercials. People even began to horde survival supplies. An October 15, 1998 story in the New York Times shared the results of a poll stating that “10 percent of the nation's top executives are stockpiling canned goods, buying generators and even purchasing handguns.” Ominous quotes from experts seemed to indicate that life as we knew it might cease to exist for awhile."Suddenly, those individuals who have insisted that they will be withdrawing all their cash from the bank before the end of the year do not seem quite so misguided. The prospect of the millennium bug eating your savings may be more than just the nightmare of overactive imaginations. At a meeting in Washington recently, delegates were stunned to hear Henry Kissinger announce that he intended to withdraw all his money from the bank as 2000 nears."- The Times, London, March 20th, 1999But 1/1/2000 arrived and nothing dire happened. Perhaps enough code was fixed in time, perhaps the whole thing was insanely overhyped. Probably both. Even those who were on the frontlines of Y2K lunacy disagree about what might have happened. This is how they remember it.What's All the Fuss About?I'd like you to do me a favor. Get a steaming mug of coffee, herbal tea, or whatever beverage puts you in that relaxed, contemplative mood. Now close your eyes and drift back in time with me to early Spring of the year 1998. William Jefferson Clinton occupies the Oval Office, Dale Earnhardt still dominates NASCAR, Denver dethroned Green Bay in the Super Bowl, the U.S. unemployment rate is 4.3%, and the federal budget is enjoying a rare $70 billion surplus. Life is, all things considered, good. Fade in on a second floor conference room of the John Wesley Powell federal building on Sunrise Valley Drive in Reston, Virginia, headquarters for the U.S. Geological Survey. Around the table sit a half dozen (mostly) somber business casually-dressed technical types. The urgent mission that has brought them together is a discussion of the threat posed by and mitigation strategies for the impending Y2K disaster, looming a scant twenty months into a forbidding future.Speculation has been rampant, even this far from the target date.  Voices of doom permeate the airwaves, print, and cyberspace.  Aircraft will tumble, willy-nilly, from the skies. Trains will crash headlong into one another at high speed. Satellites will cease to communicate. Bank accounts will be drained.  Personal information will be lost forever, or exposed for all to see.  Twenty-four times, at the top of every hour, on average a little over 4% of the world's computers will freeze up or begin to spit out random nonsense as midnight processes along its inexorable westward path. The damage, the carnage, the impact on humanity will be horrifying. Society's misguided reliance on doped silicon semiconductors will lead to our downfall. All is lost. Cash in your 401(k) now and spend it all on Friends laserdiscs before Y2K drags us clawing and screaming into the slavering jaws of oblivion.One by one, the grim-faced custodians of the information systems that help guard our nation against a plethora of natural hazards--flood, volcanoes, earthquakes, invasive species, and more--give their candid assessments of the situation. The prognoses are poor. There is no cost-effective way to dodge the Y2K demon. Large-scale models are being created to simulate the event and ameliorate the consequences to whatever degree possible, but no one really knows what will happen on that fateful day. As we go around the table, administrators of the agency's thousands of Windows NT4 and 3.1 machines shake their ashen-countenanced heads at the terrifying uncertainty presented by this technological monster. Finally, it is my turn to report. I’m the Y2K coordinator for the Telecommunications Services Branch of the Office of Program Support at USGS HQI am reading ;Login: magazine and don't hear my name called the first time. They try again, with more stridency. I look up, eyebrows raised questioningly. "Please give the Y2K status for the Telecommunications Services Branch," the facilitator commands. I clear my throat. "We have two Sun 4500 clusters and about 250 Data General AViiON workstations. All of them are running some flavor of UNIX, whose designers intelligently provided the date function 32 bits to work with while Bill Gates was still mucking about in prep school. At 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038, when this issue has some relevance to TSB, I will be long retired and quite possibly dead. I really don't see any good reason to make a fuss over it at this point. End of report."And that, dear children, is how I got excused/banned from all future meetings.Robert G. Ferrell is still an Information Systems Security Professional for the US Government and, ironically, now writes the /dev/random column for ;Login: magazine.A High Stress Non EventI was one of the senior network engineers at Long Beach Memorial hospital in Los Angeles. We had five hospitals in our circle of responsibilities. Long Beach which was the home site, Orange Coast, Anaheim, Saddleback and Miller's Children's Hospital. Plus there were many small offices, labs and remote sites that "kinda of sort of" fell under our roof.There was a very chaotic assortment of very old software and new software with a lot of it falling between the two extremes. One of our oldest applications was the surgery scheduling software which ran on even then "old" Netware 3.1 servers using Btrieve. This was akin to a "made in the garage" application and was not well supported even in the best of times. This was not the best of times.We had new software down in Radiology where they were using high speed networks to digitize and read x-rays etc remotely. Not to mention all the odd appliances like routers, switches, print servers, neonatal data transponders, wireless, security systems and so on. And I'm not even counting all the COBOL applications that had been custom written by long past employees or consultants, DOS, Visual Basic apps, home brew Access Databases and yes, the rogue server or two. Or three…or four.In a word, messy.We spent over a year and a lot of effort trying to identify problem apps and put fixes in place either from the vendors or hacking it ourselves in the case of the unsupported applications. The idea was make this as much of a non-event as we could.When it came time for the actual roll over, all IT staff were required to be on site, not on call, be ON SITE which really tweaked more than a few spouses. In my department, we had our own itty bitty party and we got to see the fireworks from the Queen Mary from a parking structure. Right after 9PM we got a call from a sister facility back east saying one of their business scheduling apps died on the stroke of midnight. We used this same application, as did many other facilities, and we got calls as each time zone rolled over. Since it was a business app, I did not have anything to do with it. I was much more worried about my servers and network hardware. Happily midnight came and went and all my stuff was running fine. There were some instances where the date got jacked up but the firmware still ran even though the log files were nuts insisting it was 1961 or other silly things like that.In the end, Y2K was a high stress non-event for most of the IT staff at all our facilities. Mike Sweeney is now a Network Security Manager at an undisclosed location.Beanie Babies And Tulip Wars(Note: Mac|Life changed two names in the story below to protect the ignorant)Prior to joining True North at the end of 1998 (now InterPublic Group), which is the largest ad agency in the world, I was the CIO of Fallon McElligott, a much smaller ad agency. Fallon's CFO, Mr. X, and I began the "Y2K is like the Tulip Craze of the 1600s" war. My argument was that Y2K was just an end of the millennia mania, much like the Beanie Babies at the current time and the Dutch Tulipmania of 1633. All hype and not much reality. I argued that Beanie Babies were as worthless as the Dutch Tulip bulbs and in the same vein, Y2K would come and go with as many or as little problems as every other year. Mr. X, being a member of the bow-tie wearing, afraid of everything crowd, thought that Y2K would cause everything from elevator stoppages to airplanes falling out of the sky. I remember asking if he was related to Chicken Little. I was summarily let go from Fallon, only to "fail up" to being named the CIO of the world's largest ad agency.There I fell in with a much more enlightened crowd -- at least at the level of Management Executive Committee, or MEC (which was comprised of the CEO, the CEOs of the 14 major holding companies, the CFO, Chief Legal Officer, and myself). When I came on board at True North, the Y2K plan was like any other. We had the requisite letter-to-the vendors campaign (asking what they were doing), review of all software and OS configurations, and review of our Unix mainframe code.Because we were an ad agency, many of the thousands of computers were Macintoshes. No problems there. Many were PCs, and Microsoft was already addressing any patches there. That left outside vendors, physical plants, and our Unix mainframe. A quick call to the mainframe guys told me the one thing I needed to know -- if there was going to be a glitch, they'd catch it the day after, patch it, and we'd be back billing just fine. Besides, if someone doesn't get a bill for a couple of days, it wouldn't kill us.An hour or two of research on my part found that:1.    International monetary float would not be affected -- no international financial downside to any Y2K problems2.    Nobody would be billing the first few days after the 1st of the year anyway -- no world-wide downside to any Y2K problems3.    Our ad system (the system that runs ads on more TVs, print, and radio than you'd ever expect worldwide) was always pre-bought anyway, and I was assured by all TV stations that "every ad would run, even if we have to manually push a button" -- no client problems there, even if Y2K did go crazy.In short, if we could bill, and we could put client product out the door -- who cared what else would happen? Well, that was the logic that the MEC shared with me.Then I started to meet the IT team. Our CTO wannabe, Mr, Z, was convinced, much like Mr. X back at Fallon, that the sky was going to fall down."Microsoft is going to have more holes than Swiss Cheese" he would run around saying. Our EDS contractor thought that his letter campaign would help any liabilities (at $150 an hour on his part). Our security guys thought that someone would find some date-based loophole to break into our systems. Our physical security guys wanted signs on all elevators saying "do not enter on 12/31/99 unless you want to be here for awhile." My own IT-CFO (my budget was in the high tens of millions) thought that every billing system we had would fail. I had found Mr. X’s missing flock of Chicken Littles.To ease everyone's nerves, I promised not to do anything "radical" until we convened my own CIO's council, made up of all of the holding company CIOs and the national CIOs. Over 100 people. We all met in Chicago at the beginning of 1999. Think over 100 Chicken Littles. Squawking in 40 to 50 languages that the sky was going to fall.I couldn't believe it.It took me until June to convince my own IT staff to transfer the EDS $150 per hour letter-writer to the legal side of the house so I could fire him.I had to permanently assign my CTO wannabe to the Unix mainframe programmers (after taking them out for a great Steak and Wine dinner in NYC and promising that I'd make it up to them) so that he could randomly test any code with dates in it. We purposely set up the tests for twice a month because there were really only about a dozen or so places where a date could be entered. We figured that would keep him busy until at least December 15th and they only had to deal with him twice a month.I even had to acquiesce (because of the rabid IT leadership complainers) to sending out an "international testing task force" to review all of the Y2K binders in each country and at each of the major holding companies. A wry note here -- I noticed in the travel bills that no one went to countries like Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Congo or Ethiopia for testing. Of course the UK, France, Italy, Australia, Japan, Brazil and China; i.e., the "fun" places were visited.In short, I slashed the Y2K budget as much as possible. I would have killed it all had I been given the chance.By August the IT betting pool had me being "canned for short sited Y2K stupidity" at 2-1 odds.By October they upped the odds to 4-1. I took the bet.By November my CTO wannabe was writing "an official memoranda for posterity" and sending it to the head of HR and Legal that I should be canned for "Y2K Ostrich-like behavior". And he had additional signatures. The odds were now 6-1 against my making it to December 1st. However, our security analyst stopped staring at the sky and he convinced our IT CFO (who liked the "savings compared to our peers"), telephony, and physical plant staff to do the same.December 1st rolled around and the CEO and I had dinner on that night just for laughs (and to show support that leadership wasn't falling for any of the complaints). December 15th rolled around and the odds makers were now betting "for" me. I hedged my bet just in case.December 31st I held a party at my house in Chicago for anyone in IT leadership who wanted to attend. My CTO was at our HQ's call center "just in case." At "minutes after midnight" in every country in the world, I would get a phone call saying "all is fine". I told the CEO that by the time it hit Chicago, if I was still sober, I'd call him. About the time the fireworks on Lake Michigan died off, I called the CEO. I was semi-sober. He wasn't even close.When we got back to work I shipped everyone who had complained about my Y2K attitude a little "Clucky the Chicken" Beanie Baby and a Tulip Bulb (paid for by the big payoff on the bet I wouldn't be canned). Most didn't get the joke.Every December when I plant my Tulip bulbs here in California, I can't help but laugh.Dorian J. Cougias is now the founder and Lead Analyst of Network Frontiers and is the co-creator of the Unified Compliance Framework.NEXT: More Stories from IT BattlegroundsTiny Parachutes for SaleWhat really stands out in my mind about Y2K all these years later was the overriding unreasonable expectation of what could happen rather than what actually happened. Starting in about 1998 there were suddenly so many people who knew nothing about programming and next to nothing about technology explaining frantically why the Y2K bug was important and that programmers like myself really needed to pay attention to it. We were aware, thank you. I remember working on Y2K issues in 1981 for a product that was off the market long before 2000.I equated it to being in an airplane in bumpy weather. It’s then you wonder how good the pilot is. If you start screaming, “I wonder if the pilot knows about this” I’ll bet you could sell parachutes (even tiny ones that don’t work will help people overcome the fear you instilled). There was a lot of money made on Y2K, some of it was put to good use.But what everyone missed during the whole Y2K debacle is that your life depends on programmers honesty, intelligence and diligence. Yes, your life. That was true in 1999, it’s still true and everyone still misses the point.Geoffrey Feldman is now a software developer and senior problem solver at Seabase Consulting.We Learned NothingWe were hearing that Y2K was the end of the world, computers would crash, critical systems would fail, planes would fall out of the sky and we’d swiftly devolve to, at best, a pre-industrial age lifestyle. The newspapers were filled with stories about how people were building bomb shelters and stocking up on water and canned goods.And then Y2k happened but there was no meltdown because we fixed the issues beforehand. There were some minor problems around the world, passwords that thought they were expired, programs that figured their licensing period was up -- but no major issues. It made some people wonder if the superbug that they first created and then they fixed was worth all that money. Some people point to it as a problem that didn't exist. It existed, and we did a good job of fixing it.  At the time I was dealing with Y2K planning for several years at IBM as a Development Manager and Certified IT Architect, focusing on their products and customers’ systems. IBM was taking Y2K quite seriously as far back as 1995. We had a local conversion center with more than 1,000 professionals working with IBM mainframe systems to solve the customers Y2K problem.I saw many IT executives inflating their budgets, under the umbrella of preparing for Y2K issues. This was the only time that I remember when IT executives were strongly encouraged to spend money. Suddenly there was a way to get the hardware and software you needed or wanted if you used Y2K to justify it. And as anxiety levels ramped up once the general public started hearing about Y2K you could justify buying almost anything by chanting those magic three letters.There was definitely a lot of cynicism after the fact, and some of it was justified.The whole thing reminded me about how important computers had become in our daily lives and how a small problem could have really big consequences. It sharpened my focus on doing quality work. Overall though, we really learned nothing because only failure teaches. It was one of the only times in recent memory that the world has come together and spent a ton of money and time to prevent disaster. We can't seem to do this now with other impending crises like dangerous economic bubbles, resource scarcity and climate change. I guess it’s because those deadlines can’t be clearly marked on a calendar.Ulf Mattsson is now the CTO at Protegrity.Got an interesting or funny Y2K story? Drop it in the comments below.

  • Put yourself in the picture with PixyMe

    Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App ReviewDo you remember the personalized movies that had been showing up in your email a while back? The one that sticks in my mind was a 'get out the vote' video the Obama campaign sent out a month before the presidential election. The story told by the video was that Obama lost by just one vote and it was you, whoever you are. You name was smoothly integrated into about a dozen places in the narrative. It was a real attention getter. PixyMe (US $1.99) brings a static version of this technology to your iPhone or iPod touch. This beautifully designed and rendered app lets you incorporate any name or short phrase seamlessly into an eCard or postcard, appearing as though it were part of the photograph. The resulting personalized photo can be either emailed, sent to Facebook, saved in your photo album, or sent as a high-quality physical postcard to any address in the world. It works remarkably well, as you can see from the picture on the right and the gallery below. It's unfortunate that this app has the all too common problem of dropping you into the fray with scant instructions. That would be okay for a simple one-trick-pony, but this app is fairly complex and has functions that need explanation. There is an info screen at the end of all the options, but all it gives you are the raw basics and a link to get to the PixyMe site. What you probably don't know is that on the site is a great introduction and all the information you need to get started quickly in a video tour. You can view it at the end of this post. I feel that this video should be incorporated into the app or directly linked to rather than dropping you at the site. That's my only complaint. The rest of the app is a delight.Do you remember the personalized movies that had been showing up in your email a while back? The one that sticks in my mind was a 'get out the vote' video the Obama campaign sent out a month before the presidential election. The story told by the video was that Obama lost by just one vote and it was you, whoever you are. You name was smoothly integrated into about a dozen places in the narrative. It was a real attention getter. PixyMe (US $1.99) brings a static version of this technology to your iPhone or iPod touch. This beautifully designed and rendered app lets you incorporate any name or short phrase seamlessly into an eCard or postcard, appearing as though it were part of the photograph. The resulting personalized photo can be either emailed, sent to Facebook, saved in your photo album, or sent as a high-quality physical postcard to any address in the world. It works remarkably well, as you can see from the picture on the right and the gallery below. It's unfortunate that this app has the all too common problem of dropping you into the fray with scant instructions. That would be okay for a simple one-trick-pony, but this app is fairly complex and has functions that need explanation. There is an info screen at the end of all the options, but all it gives you are the raw basics and a link to get to the PixyMe site. What you probably don't know is that on the site is a great introduction and all the information you need to get started quickly in a video tour. You can view it at the end of this post. I feel that this video should be incorporated into the app or directly linked to rather than dropping you at the site. That's my only complaint. The rest of the app is a delight.TUAWPut yourself in the picture with PixyMe originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read|Permalink|Email this|Comments iPhone - IpodTouch - Facebook - Apple - IPod Classic

  • Top 5 Windows Games You Can Play on a Mac

    First off, I probably haven’t endeared myself with the title of this piece. In fact, you’re probably wondering where you put your torch and pitchfork, and how quickly you can Google my address and come egg my house.And I can more than understand your sentiment.Still, the fact remains that the grass can look fairly green and healthy on the other side. So after years of listening to the smug kids at Best Buy and GameStop talk smack about gaming on the Mac, we went looking for -- and found -- five excellent Windows PC games that not only are dirt cheap, but perform amazingly well under Apple’s Boot Camp technology.That being said, fire up the Boot Camp Assistant, carve out a Windows partition, install Windows XP, Windows Vista, or the Windows 7 beta, and get your game on. These incredibly fun titles will level the playing field between you and those friends of yours who are always rubbing it in when a hot game isn't available on the Mac.Left 4 DeadDeveloper: Valve CorporationPublisher: Electronic ArtsPrice: $27.99 at Amazon, or $29.99 at SteamESRB Rating: MatureMinimum Requirements: Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. 2GHz Intel Core Duo processor. 1GB of RAM. 128MB graphics card. Battling zombies in Left 4 Dead -- click to embiggen.You know, that Romero fella may have been on to something. One of the most fun games in recent memory, Valve’s Left 4 Dead puts you in the middle of an abandoned city filled to the brim with zombie-like Infected, undead mutants more than willing to tear you and your group of three other survivors to pieces. Complete with fast first-person shooter survival elements, incredible physics, clever AI, and enough varied gameplay to ensure that almost no position is truly defensible for long, Left 4 Dead gathered up lots of Game of the Year awards last fall -- and with good reason.Even with a fine blend of zombies, it’s the extras that put it over the top. While it’s inevitable that you’ll face swarms of attacking undead, it’s also easy and fun to set traps, defend your teammates, and lay down enough cover fire to sprint for the next safe room, which functions as a save point within the game’s four campaigns. Zombie-based first-person shooters have been done before, and something needed to come along to keep the genre fresh. Valve thought of this and implemented special zombies, this group consisting of the Boomer (a slow-moving, obese zombie that vomits Infected-attracting bile to you to signal the Infected to attack you en masse), the Smoker (a unit that will attempt to drag you across the map with its long tongue and will then constrict the life out of you), the Hunter (a ranged unit that can pounce your character from long distances, shredding you with its claws once it pins you down), the Witch (a crouched, sobbing female Infected that will chase after you, tearing through anything in her path to pin and shred you if disturbed by bright lights or sound), and the Tank (an enraged, almost bulletproof hulking pile of muscle capable of crashing through anything to attempt to crush your group). Left 4 Dead's Infected zombies soft-shoe on rooftops until we give 'em the proverbial gong. Where multiplayer is concerned, the title has only gotten better. A Versus mode allows you to play the part of both the human survivors as well as the Infected hunting them, a Survival mode allows you to see how long you cooperate online and live and cooperative co-op play lets you take on the four standard campaign levels with the help of friends online.For under 30 bucks, you can’t go wrong. Snag it, play it, and love it. ---Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Developer: Bethesda Softworks Publisher: 2K GamesPrice: $19.49 at Amazon ESRB Rating: Teen Minimum Requirements: Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. 2GHz Intel Core Duo processor. 512MB of RAM. 128MB graphics card.Oblivion's role-playing is easy enough for newbies, and its storyline will suck you in. Click to embiggen.While role-playing titles can be seen like a fair amount of work to someone outside their immediate fanbase, this one can draw in nearly anyone. In Oblivion, you're an escaped prisoner trying to thwart a plot involving opening gates to a realm called Oblivion and unleashing its horrors on the mortal world. The game's open-ended environment allows the player to travel almost anywhere in the world at any given time, while taking on almost any role or class imaginable and consistently gaining new skills and feats along the way.If beautiful graphics, terrific lighting and modeling, and voice acting by Patrick Stewart don’t haul you into this game, nothing will. Oblivion combines a great storyline with a convenient interface that proves helpful to both new and experienced alike. Not sure where to go to complete a mission? Follow the red arrow on your display to reach your target, and the game points out possible side missions along the way.Oblivion's open-ended world is rendered beautifully.The customization quickly becomes interesting, and players can craft their characters with almost any weapons, armor, items, and spells imaginable. Even with its depth, Oblivion remains inviting, gently pointing out how to play without demanding the player to have memorized half the game’s manual before sitting down for the first time. The main story is solid, you get plenty of room to explore, and even after a dozen hours of gameplay, we felt we'd barely scratched the surface.---BioShockDeveloper and Publisher: 2K GamesPrice: $19.99 at AmazonESRB Rating: Teen Minimum Requirements: Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo processor. 1GB of RAM. 128MB graphics card.BioShock's first-person shooting is just so satisfying. Click to embiggen.It’s strange. It’s weird and only gets weirder -- but man, is it fun. One of the best and most surreal first-person shooters on the market, 2K Games’ BioShock takes place in an alternate 1960. After surviving a plane crash, you must explore the underwater city of Rapture, survive attacks from mutants and robots, and discover exactly what happened to turn the city on its head.Combining the best elements of role-playing and survival-horror games, BioShock has a surreal environment and a continuously progressing storyline. You must use both conventional and biological weaponry to stand a chance against progressively tougher enemies. A one-two punch of shooting fire, ice, or electricity from your hands, and then blowing the stunned enemy away with a shotgun blast often succeeds. Die, alterna-60s robots!BioShock needed some scaling down to run well under Boot Camp -- the game requires a graphics card with 128MB of VRAM, but recommends 512MB of VRAM instead. Lower-quality settings produced significantly better framerates. Still, this title gets its hooks into you and draws you in. A good AI system keeps the battles interesting. The environments blend art-deco, comic book sci-fi, and touches of steampunk in the enhancements to your weapons.It’s dark and creepy -- probably not for your kids to play. But if your Mac has a beefy graphics card with 512MB of VRAM, BioShock is hard to ignore. ---Battlefield 2Developer: Digital Illusions CEPublisher: Electronic ArtsPrice: $7.99 on AmazonESRB Rating: Teen Minimum Requirements: Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. 1.7GHz Intel Core Duo processor. 512MB of RAM. 128MB graphics card.The multiplayer mayhem of Battlefield 2 -- click to embiggen. As intellectual and refined and dignified as video games have become, sometimes you've just got to shoot something. And if it’s your friends online, who’s to complain?Despite being four years past its initial release, Battlefield 2 remains as fun as ever. You play as a United States Marine, Middle Eastern Coalition soldier, or Chinese soldier, choosing a class (Assault, Support, Anti-tank, Special Ops, Sniper, Engineer, or Medic) and entering the battle. Once the game has begun, two teams must capture control points and/or wipe the other side out to whittle the number of tickets down to nothing and win the game.It may not have a deeper plot, but Battlefield 2 represents the first-person military shooter genre at its best. As in the original Battlefield, players find themselves rushing to attack or defend a control point, grabbing whatever vehicles or weapons are nearby, and laying waste to whatever they can before being killed and either being resurrected by a medic or waiting until the game lets them back in. The models, lighting, and terrain still look great, and the realistic physics provide an immersive feel.Ah, relaxing tank warfare.Battlefield 2 offers amazing multiplayer action, with experience points unlocking new weapons, items, ranks, and abilities. Take on the Commander role for your team and you’ll be able to easily call in airstrikes, drop equipment and supplies to specific locations, and issue orders for squads to follow. Finally, a cool co-op game mode allows you and your team of friends to take on dozens of computer-controlled opponents, with a customizable difficulty setting.This isn’t the game equivalent of Shakespeare, but for its low, low price, Battlefield 2 is worth snagging, installing, and seeing just how much destruction you can create with a tank, some explosives, and a few sneaky thoughts running around in your head.---PortalDeveloper: Valve CorporationPublisher: Electronic ArtsPrice: $27.99 on Amazon (includes Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Team Fortress 2). $19.99 on Steam.ESRB Rating: Teen Minimum Requirements: Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. 1.7GHz Intel Core Duo processor. 512MB of RAM. 128MB graphics card.Hmm, puzzling. Click to embiggen.One of the best titles of 2007 and proof that there’s still something original and amazing in the video game industry, Valve’s Portal is a perfect combination of a first-person shooter and a puzzle title. Here, you play a female prisoner who wakes up in the headquarters of a scientific corporation and must escape by solving a series of puzzles with the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (also known as the Portal Gun), a device that can create an inter-spatial portal between certain flat planes.Along the way, you're continuously taunted by an artificial intelligence named “GLaDOS”, who continuously offers you delicious cake as a reward for completing the puzzles. Good graphics, terrific sound, realistic physics, and a wry sense of humor make the title work. Even if puzzle games aren’t your thing, it becomes incredibly fun to figure out how to create a teleportation portal on the fly while falling to what should be your doom.Your character has lots of tricks up her sleeve, such as using the Portal Gun to drop attack robots onto each other or to help increase your momentum in order to boost a jump across a pit. You’ll find yourself wanting to keep playing to see what lies ahead. Perhaps it’s the constant taunting from the computer, the seemingly empty promise of cake, or just the sheer challenge, but Portal becomes the perfect way to waste about 10 hours of your life. Even when you hit the wall and take a break from the game, it’s rewarding to come back and try out a new series of ideas in order to get around the challenge that was previously driving you crazy.Portal runs like a dream under Boot Camp, but must be purchased along with Valve’s Orange Box collection (which also includes Half-Life 2, and Team Fortress 2), or snagged on its own from the Steam online store. Portal is clever and original, fairly nonviolent, totally addictive, and one of the best games for any platform, hands down.---

  • Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

    Citi makes Senate friends on cramdowns. In an about-face for one of the nation's largest mortgage lenders, Citigroup (C) dropped its opposition to a Senate bill that would allow judges to order mortgage 'cramdowns,' setting new repayment terms for mortgage holders in bankruptcy court. Aimed at helping millions of homeowners with underwater mortgages, the bill marks a major shift of power from lenders to debtors, leaving banks worried that cramdowns will encourage bankruptcies even among those able to pay. By way of explaining Citi's swift turnaround on the issue, CEO Vikram Pandit cited 'today's exceptional economic environment,' and Citi's opposition was dropped on the condition no future mortgages would be included in the law. Legislators had sought out Citi's support, hoping banking industry support would help the bill be approved more quickly, and Citi was duly applauded for 'being open-minded' and 'playing a major leadership role.' Senate Democrats hope to include the bill in Obama's stimulus plan. Treasury's critics get louder. In the harshest criticism to date of the Treasury's handling of TARP, a congressional oversight panel is releasing a draft report today noting 'significant gaps' in Treasury's ability to track billions of dollars of taxpayer money. According to the report's charges, the Treasury has failed to reveal its strategy for stabilizing the financial system, has done nothing to help homeowners and hasn't answered questions asked by a government watchdog. The report also faults the Treasury for having no standards for measuring the success of the program. Obama forecasts bleak future without stimulus. Obama painted a grim picture of the country's economic future sans immediate stimulus action, saying he doesn't "believe it's too late to change course but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible." Without a rapid fiscal stimulus package, he warned, the economy will become 'dramatically worse,' unemployment could reach double-digits and the recession 'could linger for years.' The speech marked the launch of what is expected to be an aggressive campaign to raise public support for the stimulus plan. (Read the full text of Obama's speech) How much will Madoff investors see? Based on the value of Madoff's brokerage, and assets including real estate, boats and jewelry, scammed investors may have access to as little as $1B of Madoff's money to satisfy as much as $50B in claims. The bulk of any refunds would likely come from other clients who withdrew money from Madoff recently, and government payouts (SIPC, tax refunds). According to one calculation, average Madoff victims might eventually get back $0.20 on the dollar. Small, direct Madoff clients could get back much more thanks to SIPC payouts of up to $500,000 per account. Large, indirect Madoff clients might not get much of anything at all. Meanwhile, insurers who cover financial institutions may be on the hook for over $1B to cover the legal costs for investment managers who gave client money to Madoff. Swiss secrets revealed. UBS (UBS) will close 19,000 secret offshore accounts of wealthy U.S. clients under pressure from federal authorities who suspect the IRS is getting ripped off (no!). Balances will be transferred to other banks or UBS divisions, or else checks will be sent directly to clients - creating a damning paper trail. Here's how one UBS client puts it: "You can either take that check and throw it in the woods, or deposit it somewhere and get busted." Prosecutors suspect U.S. citizens have about $18B buried in UBS accounts (that's all?). Lehman reaches P-E deal. Lehman Brothers has reached an agreement to spin out its private equity arm into an independent firm. As part of the deal, Lehman will retain a significant interest in the private equity business, called Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking, and South African billionaire Johann Rupert will assume $250 million in unfunded commitments to the fund. The move is part of Lehman's restructuring strategy of retaining a stake in its assets rather than selling them off wholesale in a weak market. Palm Pre wows. Palm pre-viewed its iPhone rival, Pre, to widespread accolades at the Consumer Electronics Show, sending shares soaring an unbelievable 35% to $4.45. Besides a slideout keyboard to complement its touch screen, the Pre also features a super-fast CPU, wireless battery recharge, and an "incredibly well thought out and smooth" user interface that "may be quite a bit more revolutionary than the iPhone." The show-stealing smartphone was a surprise to many who had already counted Palm out of the game. Its response: "Mobile is our DNA." Sprint Nextel (S), the exclusive carrier, climbed 8.4%. Engadget also liveblogged the intro. Citi takes a hit on petrochem exposure. Citigroup (C) expects to take a $1.4B pre-tax charge in its just-finished Q4 on its exposure to LyondellBasell. Citi ended December with around $2B of gross exposure to LyondellBasell, the world's third-largest petrochemical company whose U.S. operations filed for bankruptcy this week. The charge is mainly to boost loan reserves, Citi said. Jobless claims. Initial Jobless Claims fell to 467,000 last week, down 24K from last week's 491K (revised), and far less than the 545K economists predicted. The 4-week moving average of 525,750 is down 27K. More jobless data is coming later today with nonfarm payrolls due out at 8:30. Economists predict the U.S. probably lost 525,000 jobs in December, capping the biggest collapse in employment since the end of WWII. Unemployment likely jumped to a 15-year high of 7%. Earnings: Friday Before Open R.R. Donnelley & Sons (RRD): Sees Q4 EPS of $0.51-0.61 vs. $0.78 consensus. Maintains dividend. (PR) Earnings: Thursday After Close Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions (MDRX): FQ2 EPS of $0.14 beats by $0.01. Revenue of $173M (+4.3%) vs. $181M. Shares +4.2% after hours. (PR) Apollo Group (APOL): FQ1 EPS of $1.12 beats by $0.14. Revenue of $971M (+24.4%) vs. $912M. Shares +8.8% after hours. (PR) Lawson Software (LWSN): FQ2 EPS of $0.10 beats by $0.03. Revenue of $206M (-5.6%) in-line. Shares +2.9% after hours following a 9.6% fall during regular trading. (PR) Today's Markets Most Asian markets trended lower Friday. India led the losers on reverberation of the Satyam (SAY) scandal. Nikkei -0.45% to 8,837. Hang Seng -0.27% to 14,377. Shanghai +1.42% to 1,905. BSE -1.88% to 9,406. Europe is down a drop at midday; markets are quiet in anticipation of the U.S. employment data. London -0.6%. Paris -0.2%. Frankfurt -0.15%. U.S. stock futures are all lower, but have moved off overnight lows. Dow -0.4% to 8663. S&P -0.3% to 904. Nasdaq -0.5%. Crude -1.7% to $40.97. Gold +0.5% to $859. Friday's Economic Calendar 8:30 Non-farm payrolls 10:00 Wholesale Inventories Notable earnings before Friday's open: KBH Seeking Alpha editor Eli Hoffmann contributed to this post.

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