Testing ScribeFire

This is the first test of a Firefox plugin called ScribeFire.

Inauguration

Hulu is offering a a live feed of the presidential inauguation on Jan.20. You can watch it right here:

Possibilities

Here are three pieces that might lend themselves to blog topics:

The first is on Twitter, and you can find it here. Do you use Twitter? How and why do you use it? What's the advantage over other short forms of messaging?

The second is on the record industry, and its attempts to cope with the Web.

The third is about a New Yorker writer's encounter with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly. It gives you an insight into how stories are produced.

And here are the blogs of two former students in this class. Note how they develop their ideas.

The first is here.
And this is the link to the second.

Daisy Ad

Tony Schwartz, the ad man who created the first negative political ad, died June 16 in Manhattan. He was 84.

Schwartz's ad, even though it was shown only once, marked the beginning of modern political advertising. The ad, called Daisy, showed a little girl picking petals from a daisy, then morphed into a nuclear explosion. It was designed for Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater, and played on fears that Goldwater had an itchy nuclear-trigger finger.

Here's the ad.

Why I can't concentrate

Here's a fascinating piece that helps to explain why I'm having trouble concentrating these days. I tend to skim stuff and find it hard to focus for any length of time. The reason? The Web is changing our brains.

How to dial a phone

Here's a how-to film from the 1930s, during the transition from operator calls to rotary dialing.

Looking for help

Here's what's happening with newspapers today -- cuts and downsizing and expecting print reporters to feel comfortable on camera. It's about survival, the owners say. Is there another way?