Sharing the wealth...

I've got nothing witty to add this, so here ya go:

Swingers are growth business for U.S. firms

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Matt Virtue, who works as a consultant at a Washington law firm, says he spends more than $10,000 a year to attend conventions, hotels and clubs where he and his girlfriend can have sex with other partners.

"Any other hobby that I was into at 40 years old is going to cost me $10,000," he said from a hot tub he was sharing with his girlfriend and a couple with whom they had been intimate the night before. "Dude, I'm addicted to it, there is no doubt about it."

Full Reuters Story

iBug

This is a whole fun post on LostRemote.com about how Apple is in talks with Voltswagon to make a custom Applified car.

OSU Football

Ahhh...college football is back. In less than 28 hours The Ohio State University will begin its 118th season with a home game against division 1-AA Youngstown State University. This is promising to be a great game* and a great season.

What I love most about Buckeye's football is the sense of community that radiates from the city on gamedays. Scarlet and gray takes over the city. You can go anywhere inside the loop and scream "O-H" at the top of your lungs and not only will people not be creeped out and annoyed by you, but at least a few will return an "I-O". Over 100,000 fans will make the trip to the horseshoe for each of the 7 homes games this season and countless others will pack bars and living rooms across the city and country to watch the games.

This season is different for me than any of my other years as a Buckeye's fan. This time around this is my team and this is my city. I have always had a little bit of an outsider complex as a Bucks fan. But now I am an OSU student who lives a mile and a half from the Ohio Stadium and there is no outsider complex. I am a Buckeye.

Dispatch Bucks Coverage
2007 OSU Football Commercial
OSU O-H-I-O Archive
Youngstown Vindicator Coverage

*Blatant lie

Guess who's peeing on the neighborhood??

Everyone's favorite drunk, Andy Dick, was arrested at 7:30 in the morning on Monday for urinating on a building a half mile from my apartment. So basically as my neighborhood was waking up and going to work Andy Dick was pissing on it. Good stuff.

Full Dispatch story

Photostories

One of the best photo agencies out there, Magnum, has some amazing photo stories up in their Magnum in Motion section. I don't know how long they have been doing this for, but I had never seen them before. VII Photo, which is my personal favorite agency, also always has amazing photo stories.

Apple Sept. 5th

Reuters is reporting Apple has sent out invitations to an press event on September 5th. It is expected that they will release a new line of iPods. They are more than likely going to have touch screens.

Full Reuters Story
Think Secret story

Personal Note: Damn...damn...damn...So I originally thought about buying stock in Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) when it was at 91 (pre-iPhone). Then I thought again about buying it at $113 when a friend of mine bought. Then I thought about buying again when it dropped to $112 a week and a half ago. But I never had, because I am a jackass. It is now up at $133, up 5.5% today and with the upcoming announcement the stock will probably stay high. Either way, I should put money in. I really think Apple is a good term investment for the next 5-10 years. They seem to be doing everything fairly well...growing computer sales and creating new revenue streams.

The Internets

"Broadband service here is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States -- and considerably cheaper"

The above quote is from an article in today's Washington Post looking at broadband Internet access in Japan. It is shocking to me how far both our Internet and mobile technologies are falling behind alot of other developed countries. I mean we invented baseball and the Internet and now Japan kicks our ass in both. More seriously, I think it is detrimental to our country to not maintain a strong information infrastructure, specifically the Internet.

Pointer from LostRemote.com

Writing for academic journals

"Study: T-rex could outrun David Beckham"

That line has been on the front page of CNN.com for a good solid week now and I think it is a great example of making academic writing accessible to the masses. The study is a recently published scientific work examining the speed of multiple dinosaurs. I think the authors did an amazing job of making their study more interesting by using David Beckham as their example, instead of just using the generic "average human being." I think more academic authors should work on making their work more accessible. Please understand that as more accessible, not dummied-down. There is a difference.

Full CNN Story

Presidential Motorcade

This is just amazingly odd to me. In the last year two police officers having died in fatal accidents, while working as part of the presidential motorcade. That is just really odd.

Full Chicago Tribune article

HAHAHAHAHA

The best picture I have ever taken. I love NJ Transit.

My girlfriend is going to be pissed...

...when I cheat on her with Google. Google Earth now offers a feature where you can turn the view and look up at the sky...zooming in to various stars and galaxies. How badass.

Info from Google
Lost Remote reaction

Obama Girl

This is going to be one of those interesting things that becomes a footnote in the internet politics books. The "Obama Girl" YouTube clip, which has been viewed more than 3 million times, is easily going to make it into those types of textbooks. It is going to represent the rise of user created content, but the funny footnote is going to be who does Obama Girl actually support. CNN has her leaning towards Clinton. I love good footnotes.

Full CNN Story

Google Sky

This is badass.

"Popular mapping service Google Earth will launch a new feature called Sky, a 'virtual telescope' that the search engine hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers."

Full CNN Article

MAPOR Acceptance

I had a paper accepted today for presentation at the 2007 Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research annual conference. The paper, entitled "Presidential Campaign Web Usage in Times of Tragedy: A Case Study of Candidate Web Responses to the Virginia Tech Shootings" examines the way the 16 announced candidates for the presidency used their websites to address the Virgina Tech shooting. The paper was accepted based on an abstract and once I am done with the full paper I will post it or a shortened version of it here.

Call me an asshole, but...

This is my problem with the world now-a-days. The NAACP is showing strong support of Michael Vick. In a statement today, R.L. White, president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP, said Vick was a redeemable human being and should be treated like one. He clearly said Vick should be punished for his actions, but he also said the NFL shouldn't ban him. (Full Story from CNN)

I'm sorry but where was forgiveness in the Imus situation. I didn't hear the NAACP call for the public to hold their judgment and to remember he is a human being. He made a bad, clearly offensive joke. Mike Vick allegedly killed dogs for fun. I don't mind groups coming out for something they believe in. I don't actually really care that the NAACP is supporting Vick, but it is the constant hypocrisy that really bothers me. And unfortunately this isn't limited to just the NAACP. This extends to political parties, lobbying groups, and countless other organizations. The media and the American public has made it so simple to create these simple dichotomies were two people argue back in forth, that now-a-days I don't think it matters what they are arguing about.

We as people need to start examining these messages, so we can gain an understanding of not only the immediate message, but also the context that surrounds the message and the speaker. I believe this is again a call for all universities to add Media Literacy or some such class to the core curriculum. Students today need to have a greater understanding of media, so they can deconstruct the messages presented through it.

Now I'm going to need a ladder to get down from this pedestal...ohh nevermind, no ladder needed...there are a couple of soapboxes right here I could use to get down.

Facebook Hyperlocal

LostRemote is talking about Facebook's new hyperlocal neighborhood. Actually I guess it is a third party app not theirs, but either way I am going to have to chaeck it out tonight (after I hook up my new Tivo).

Today's the day...

I am writing a new article. It should be interesting and a little controversial. I am shooting to have it done by Wednesday. Hopefully available in the next couple weeks.

Columbus Congressional Seat opening

Rep. Pryce (R-OH) announced today that she will not seek re-election in 2008. Here are some interesting clips from the Dispatch article:

Pryce, 56, said family considerations were the key factor in her decision. Her daughter, Mia, 5, will be entering kindergarten next week, and Pryce said, “My daughter Caroline, who passed away, I missed a lot of growing up, and I don't want that to happen again.”

Caroline was 9 when she died of cancer in 1999. Pryce adopted Mia as a newborn in 2002.

...

Pryce said that it became harder to do the job after Democrats took control of the House this year and changed the traditional Tuesday through Thursday work week to Monday through Friday.

...

Pryce also said that while she had grown a thick skin from her last difficult race against Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, whom she beat by a percentage point following a recount last year, the increasing ugliness and rancor of campaigns is taking a toll on her family and friends.

Pryce said she was ready for another close race and the prospect of one wasn't the reason for her departure.

“The ugliness of the election may have played a part in it, but certainly not the closeness of it,” she said.

Full Article at the Dispatch

Holbrook looking for new job

Former OSU President Karen Holbrook applied for the President job at Florida Gulf Coast University today. As the Dispatch pointed out in an article today, this might be a slightly easier job:

Florida Gulf Coast is tiny compared to Ohio State, with slightly more than 9,000 students, 64 degree programs and a $130 million budget.

Ohio State has nearly 52,000 students, almost 400 degree programs and a $3.7 billion budget.

Back to 2007

So I am still in the process of moving, but my cable and Internet were hooked-up today and my new Tivo is in the mail. I never realized how bad TV was until I lived with Tivo for two years and then lost it for three months. What it comes down to is simple: I will never go back to appointment viewing.

Nielsen NetRatings

Nielsen NetRatings Top 10 Internet News Brands for July 2007 (Change from June)

1 Yahoo! News 32,674 (+381)
2 CNN Digital Network 29,757 (+1,436)
3 MSNBC 26,015 (-1,419)
4 AOL News 23,103 (+1,165)
5 NYTimes.com 14,149 (+1,614)
6 Gannett Newspapers 13,812 (+1,533)
7 Tribune Newspapers 12,218 (+180)
8 USAToday.com 10,611 (+2,019)
9 ABCNEWS Digital Network 9,876 (-976)
10 Fox News Digital Network 9,343 (+1,151)

Very interesting. Google News is not in the top 10.

Pointer from LostRemote

Like Saturday at the Masters...

Its moving day. Finally, I should be able to unpack all my boxes and get settled in. I think I'll try to get a couch ordered this weekend. I also think I need more bookselves and a filing cabinet. Other than that I need some small things like a towel rack, a shower curtain, etc.

Also, in today's news the DOW is tanking. For some reason about three weeks ago I predicted to Glenn that it was going to fall to 12,500 before it would really settle. I am sticking with that prediction.

Back From AEJMC

As you can probably guess I am back from the AEJMC conference in Washington D.C. Overall it was a very good conference and I hope to submit various pieces of research to it in the future. You can catch various panel discussion from AEJMC on C-SPAN over the next few days.

How to Catch a Predator Caught in a Mess

A number of major media are taking long looks in to the NBC francise "To Catch A Predator." Today, The Dallas Morning News had a fairly lengthy article examining a recent sting in Texas, which lead to 20 arrests and one suicide. All 20 arrests were thrown out "because of evidence problems. Esquire, which hit stands today, also has an article about the case and 20/20 is apperently working on a piece also.

I think this all very interesting, because I have always had some problems with the idea of this show. First, from a journalistic standpoint I think it seriously crosses the line from reporting on news to creating news. This is a clear violation of the SPJ's Code of Ethics;

"Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events. If re-enactment is necessary to tell a story, label it".

Second, I always thought this was on shaky legal ground. The whole innocent until proven guilty is sort of thrown out the window by Chris Hansen and his team. I am all for arresting these men, but ruining their lives on a national scale before they are convicted of anything...hell, before they are even officiallly charged with anything is bothersome to me.

Is AOL at all relevant?

As I have mentioned in the last number of posts, I have been hanging out at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication annual conference. Well yesterday I went to a panel session entitled something like...YouTube Effect: Virual Marketing and blah blah blah...The panel was pretty good and mixed a couple academics with a couple of industry experts. What was interesting to me was there was an exec from AOL on the panel. I'll have to look up his actual title in the program at some point, but he said his job was essentially Director of Programming for AOL Video.

What he said was run of the mill kind of internet video stuff, but what I took away is that AOL is not relevant at all anymore. I mean seriously. He was sitting on a panel entitled "YouTube Effect." AOL does not seem to be coming up with any new or creative ideas. Example: the only new thing he talked about was minisodes, which MySpace made big. What can I say I am still sort of amazed that a company that played such a large role in revolutionizing media can become so irrelevant a decade later.

Anti-NFL vests

The AEJMC passed a resolution today condemning the NFL for their new proposed practice of requiring sideline photographers to wear vests, which have corporate logos on them. They join the RTNDA, NAB, NPPA, SND, and others who have spoke out on the proposal.

Regardless, I believe the NFL is going to go through with it, because they sort of got the photogs buy the balls. The NFL is the only organization that can grant access to these games and the journalist have to cover it because it is newsworthy. Unfortunately, the journalists can choose to boycott the games. A news organization cannot choose to not cover a bona fide news event.

Fred Thompson

ImWithFred.com got a facelift. It now, as my thesis predicted*, conforms to the websites of the other major players.

*My thesis, among other things, predicted that all the websites would end up looking just about identical.

AEJMC Day One

So I have successfully made it to Washington D.C. for the 90th annual* Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference. I started looking through the program and I must say I am a little disappointed in the low number of political comm stuff, but there is a good deal of very interesting journalism panels. Here is one I found:

Community Journalism Interest Group
Refereed Paper Research Session: Online Expressions of Community Journalism
Moderating/Presiding: Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher
-Weeklies and the Web: A Study of Newspaper Managers and the State of Their Online Editions*
Jennifer Wood Adams, Auburn
-Media Roles and Audience Engagement: Relationships Between Perceptions of Journalists’ Functions and Uses of Interactive Features Deborah Chung, Kentucky
-Connecting Virtual and Geographic Communities: Toward a New Model of Journalism in Bluffton, S.C. Heidi Fedak, Kansas

There is also a panel lead by former Ball State prof, Dr. Bob Papper, entitled "The Future of News," which includes Bob Garfield, from PBS's On The Media, and Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

So although this conference seems to be lacking on the poli comm stuff. I should be able to find something to do.


*I am not sure if it is actually the 90th, but I thought that is what I saw

Ooooh...snap

Slate.com is reporting Rudy Giuliani's daughter, Caroline, self-identifies herself as a liberal on her Facebook profile and was even a member of one of the various Barack Obama Facebook groups.

AEJMC

So tomorrow I head off to the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Washington D.C. I am unfortunately not presenting anything at this conference, but am just going to see how it works. I have yet to be to a national conference and am looking forward to hopefully higher caliber presentations and papers. I will be primarily looking for papers on new media and politics or journalism. I hope there are some good papers looking at online social networking and politics, but I am not going to hold my breath. Either way, next year I plan on submitting papers to the conference, so this will be a good learning experience.

New iMacs

Apple (AAPL) did in fact announce new iMacs. They are all aluminum and sexy, but not a huge leap forward.

Jersey

So I made it to Jersey yesterday. We are heading to Youngstown today and then heading to Columbus on Sunday.

Apple Releasing new iMacs

CNN Money is reporting:

"Apple Inc. (AAPL) on Tuesday is expected to announce a long-awaited upgrade to its Macintosh computers.

Apple representatives weren't commenting Thursday beyond saying the company has scheduled a press event for Tuesday to focus on its computer lineup, and it will feature an appearance by Chief Executive Steve Jobs.

However, it's widely expected the company will unveil its first lineup of new iMac computers since the company initially adopted Intel Corp. (INTC) processors in January 2006."

2008 and Online Social Networking

A new study coming out of the Bentley College political science department looks at the use of online social networks (OSN) in the 2008 presidential campaign. The full study is going to be presented at the upcoming annual conference of the American Political Science Association, but by looking at the press release from Bentley it is not a very in-depth study. It seems to just look at very simple frequencies and does not apply these to any solid theoretical foundation. As an example, the study compares Facebook and MySpace friends to poll standings and web traffic and finds:

"First, the Paul, and to a lesser extent, Obama, examples show that a dominant online presence does not necessarily convert to a commensurate standing in offline polls or campaign contributions. Similarly, a weak online presence relative to other challengers need not preclude reaching the top of the polls, as Giuliani's numbers show" (para. 4).

This is a little too ambiguous of a finding for my comfort level.

They do successfully examine the various presidential candidate's OSN profiles and start making a list of characteristics of this new genre of communication.

*biographical information
*issue position information
*excerpts or clips from speeches, appearances, press coverage
*campaign photographs or videos
*comment blogs posted by visitors
(para. 10)

And they note some characteristics of OSN communication by presidential candidates, which are different from normal online communication (ie. candidate website).

*personal interests and activities, favorite music, movies, and books
*campaign events: Mike Huckabee is the one exception who announces them
*solicitations for campaign contributions: Sam Brownback and Kucinich are the two exceptions, generating $200 and $6, respectively through Facebook.
(para. 11)

I believe the 2nd and 3rd points of difference are referring to the lack of solicitations and campaign event info on candidate's OSN profiles. I think the press release is worded a little awkwardly.

Also of note, I am currently in the design process of 2 studies looking at the effects of OSN's on the 2008 presidential campaign. These are being co-author with Dr. Young Mie Kim, Assistant Professor of Communication at The Ohio State University. I will try to update the blog as these pieces of research go forward.

Neat-o

Here is another impressive interactive feature by the folks at the New York Times. This one looks at where the 2008 presidential candidates are getting their money.



I just can't say enough about the good things the New York Times are doing in the interactive realm. I mean seriously...they are by far the best of any of the mainstream media of weaving news and new media. Love it.

My Current Life

So I have successfully moved from Muncie, Indiana to Columbus, Ohio. I am living in the Short North. This is the area just north of downtown and just south of campus. It is a great neighborhood to live in. There are a number of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and art galleries, within walking distance of my apartment. I am actually subletting a friend's place for the next couple weeks and then I will move into my more permanent place on August 15th. I start my Ph.D. program at OSU on September 19th and am really looking forward to their program. I have already been able to start to get involved at OSU by jumping on a couple research projects.

The next couple weeks are going to be incredibly busy. I am flying out to Newark, New Jersey on Friday to spend the weekend with my girlfriend and help her move out of New Jersey. We will be taking our time driving back and I think she'll stick around Columbus until Monday. Then on Wednesday I head out to Washington DC to attend the AEJMC annual conference and hang out with my buddy, Glenn Luther. I'll get back to Columbus on Sunday and will be moving that next Wednesday. Busy. Busy. Busy.

Over the next couple weeks I hope to be able to keep blogging when I can and let everyone in on the research I am working on. Stay tuned.

Media and The Stock Market

So I am just thinking out loud here, but is it possible that the increase coverage of the stock market and the economy is leading to a more volatile market. I mean over the last couple weeks we have seen the market bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. I am sure part of that has to do with the sub-prime fallout, corporate credit situation, etc. But over the last 20 years...hell even the last 5 years...we have seen incredible changes in the amount of finance news available to everyone. We have also seen incredible changes in the amount of trading and the speed of transaction. Could all of this be leading to a much more volatile and fickle market?

So we meet again...

Well I think I am going to try this again. I honestly can't promise I'll keep up with it, but I am going to give it another whirl. I think blogs are an interesting way to test ideas and meet people within your field. Unfortunately, I think they are also a lot of work to maintain and a drag on my everyday life. However, it is very important to me to keep writing and testing out my ideas, so here goes nothing.