Category Archives: Science & Technology

School closings via text message

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I did the sign-on shift for most of my time on the radio. And on days that it snowed (not that often in southeast Missouri), the phone would ring off the hook from parents (and students) asking about school closings. The superintendent would get out early to check the roads and then call the radio stations.

Even though we gave the closings every 5 minutes, the phone never stopped ringing. It was madness.

We got a little snow here in Jefferson City overnight and while Shawna was bringing me my oatmeal, she got a text message from the Jefferson City school system, alerting her there would be no school today.

The school uses texting to communicate a variety of things, even providing updates throughout the day.

I assume the local radio stations still get a call and many people rely heavily on the on-air reports. This is just one more instance of disintermediation. The people with the information (schools) communicating directly to the people who want/need the information (students/parents).

I’m guessing most folks don’t give their mobile numbers to just anybody. And how valuable is it to the schools to have the mobile number of every “customer?”

Do most radio stations have the mobile numbers of the listeners? I would hope so. And are they using those numbers to provide something as valuable as school closing information?

The next 5,000 days of the web

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The web has only been around 6,000 days. So Kevin Kelly reminds us in his presentation at the recent Web 2.0 Summit. In the beginning, we thought the web would be “TV only better.” It has evolved into something much different and Mr. Kelly takes a stab at what the web will be 5,000 days from now. “As different from the web (of today) as the web was from TV.”
Here’s what I jotted on my Coffee Zone napkin:

  • “If what you create is not on the web, it doesn’t count.”
  • “If it can’t be shared, it doesn’t count.”
  • In the next 6,000 days everything will move to the Cloud; move to Database and move to Sharing. (He explains in the video)

He ticks off several things that we now take for granted but would have considered impossible at the beginning of the web. Which, of course, means that things we now consider impossible, will be routine in 15 years. I love the idea of “Believing in the impossible.”

New look for Mizzou website

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MuoasBranden Miller tweets the new look for MUTigers.com, the website of the Missouri Tigers. Mizzou is one of the universities with which Learfield Sports works, but I have nothing to do with the websites.

But I’ve always thought most of them were cramped, too busy and impossible to navigate. This new design is a huge improvement. I haven’t poked around on the new site yet but plan to later today.

I hope similar make-overs are planned for our other properties.

Webcasting high school football games

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“Beginning this Friday, Gannett will have 12 live high school football games showing on widgets posted to USAToday.com and many of our local broadcast and newspaper sites. The games are being produced by our broadcast and newspaper sites as well as a high school AV department. Most of the games are single cam, laptop, aircard + Mogulus productions.” — Liz Foreman, Lost Remote:

More US mobile phone than Americans 13+

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The following stats were featured in a marketing piece I received today. And I’m guessing the numbers are even higher in other developed countries.

  • Tin_can_string85% of Americans have a cell phone (there are actually more US mobile phones than Americans age 13 and older) Source: CTIA Wireless Association
  • 66% of cell phones in America are equipped with a camera Source: comScore
  • 40% of Americans with cell phones send/receive text messages (80% among 13-24 year olds; 63% among 18-27year olds) Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
  • 24% of Americans with cell phones send/receive photo or video messages (up 60% in the past year) Source: M:Metrics

And it will just get easier and easier to share those photos and videos. I’m not feeling particularly left out because I probably shoot-and-share more video than the average bear. But I can’t deny my mobilness much longer. Holding out for video iPhone.

Still in love with my Tracfone

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I paid $19.95 at Wal-Mart for my Tracfone (sometime in 2005). A year ago I bought a prepaid card (1 year/500 minutes) that expires in a few days. I still have 172 minutes which I lose if I don’t purchase another card. Despite pressure from all quarters to get an iPhone, I picked up another prepaid card. 60 minutes/90 days. I just punched in the PIN number and I’m good till mid-December.

I gotta tell you… I love the Tracfone. It’s like a Bic pin or a Swatch or drug store reading glasses. Does one thing well. Demands no maintenance. Disposable. And I don’t have one of those little holsters on my belt. The Tracfone goes in the glove box or the laptop bag.

It has an ugly little LCD display and a charge can last me a couple of weeks (I only turn it on when I want to make or receive a call.)

What I really want is a Flip video camera that can stream live to Qik. Small, inexpensive, does one thing well.

Cyborg Anthropology

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I doubt there’s any shortage of scholarly papers on the sociological and anthropological effects of the mobile phone. I’ve never had a desire to search out and read any of them.

But my interest was piqued by Amber Case, one of the attendees at Gnomedex 8.0. A recent graduate, Amber describes her area of work and study as “Cyborg Anthropology.” Ooh. She was kind enough to send me a copy of her thesis: “The Cell Phone and Its Technosocial Sites of Engagement.” Here’s a snippet from the introduction:

“Mobile telephony has ushered in social geographies that are no longer entirely public or entirely private. The mobile phone allows place to exist in non-place, and privacy to exist in public. Never before have people been able to disembody their voices and talk across any distance, in almost any place. Cell phone technology has thus changed the dichotomies of place and non-place as well as the private and public dichotomies into a technological-human hybrid.”

I think I’ve had a whiff of this idea from all the time I spend communicating online. And when I break down and graft an iPhone to my hip, it’s only going to get better/worse.

Twittering politics

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Good piece at washingtonpost.com on how folks are using Twitter to cover politics. A couple of nuggets from Slate’s John Dickerson:

“If I have a thought that occurs to me, I’ll fire it off,” Dickerson says. “Sometimes it ends up being the lead of a piece, or the notion a piece gets framed around.” At the same time, he says, “there’s an element of narcissism and class clownery. A wisecrack comes into your head and you want to share it.”

Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar:

“posting my real-time thoughts, impressions and wisecracks without having to worry about fleshing them out for a proper blog post. Working within that 140-character limit — and still managing to get out your observation, your comment, your setup and punch line or what have you — is great training for a writer.”

After a slow start, I’ve come to rely on –and enjoy– Twitter almost as much as blogging. You can follow my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/smaysdotcom. You’ll need to set up an account but it’s free and takes about 2 min.

Sports journo sees future on the web

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Sinkingship250Big time sports journalist Jay Mariotti has resigned from the Chicago Sun-Times:

“It’s been a tremendous experience, but I’m going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,” Mariotti said, “I don’t think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive. To showcase your work … you need a stellar Web site and if a newspaper doesn’t have that, you can’t be stuck in the 20th century with your old newspaper.”

His bosses have a different take on things and you can read what they have to say at CBS2Chicago.com.

“web think”

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I don’t think I’ve come across the term “web think” before I saw it on a post by Terry Heaton. It describes a way of looking at information and media and, frankly, the world.

“Those who influence my thinking do not come from a media background, but are pioneers in “web think” and the running of web businesses. This puts me in almost constant conflict with the world I’m actually trying to serve and help and fuels the rolling of eyes I often witness in conference rooms or sense over the phone.”

My theory is “web think” is like learning a second language. You’re really “there” when you start thinking (dreaming?) in the new language. You internalize it.