Tim Burden

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  • Tim Burden  Maybe you need to read this re Robert Cox: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010354.html
  • • 1 month ago
    •   The AP mess, day 4 (Scripting News)
    •   Scripting News
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  • Tim Burden  I agree. This presents an opportunity for MSM. It is probably more important than ever for a news organization to maintain its credibility and reliability. How else will readers sort through the morass of comment and opinion that forms around a story? At some point in the "process", someone with an authoritative voice has to summarize, distill and contextualize the event. Even so, I give poor marks to any news site that doesn't allow readers to comment on stories. Comments help other readers get a sense of what people are thinking about an issue, and spark thought and debate about what has happened. But I also question the motives of any outlet that gives priority to speed and "me too" and doesn't check the facts.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   What is “the news”? Good question
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Tim Burden  Oh, for sure, and I'm not trying to crap on people for using whatever they want to use. Personally, my problem with it appears to be twofold: 1. signal/noise ratio 2. work in building a network That last one is a bit of a Catch-22 - I don't want to put a lot of work into it until I see the value of it, and I probably won't see the value in it until I build up a network. In the meantime, I see a lot of stuff about Clinton/Obama (ahem - Dave Winer) and other stuff that doesn't interest me per se. And my friends and fellow students and journalists (except you, kind sir) don't seem to be on there. I want services that help me sort through all the available information quickly. Twitter doesn't do that for me. It's like a big chat room. I thought chat rooms went away in the 90's :) The difference now is that I can chat on there with my cell phone. Except I don't have a cell phone. Damn, you're right, I am NOT cool! :)
  • • 3 months ago
    •   How Twitter is like soap, or Soylent Green
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Tim Burden  Staying as informed as possible, if I had to put it as succinctly as possible.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   How Twitter is like soap, or Soylent Green
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  And I guess I would answer that different people like to be informed about different things, in different ways. Sometimes it's a big news event, sometimes it's a quirky story, sometimes it's a personal update from a friend. Different purposes, different methods.
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  • Tim Burden  Or maybe I'm uber-cool, for calling it. :) The Internet is for connecting computers together. On top of which you can build things like the Web and social networks. And?
  • • 3 months ago
    •   How Twitter is like soap, or Soylent Green
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Well, I could argue that connecting computers together is what the Internet *is*, not what it's *for*. But still -- what are the Web and social networks for?
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  • Tim Burden  I have to admit to some trouble understanding the usefulness of Twitter. Maybe I haven't built a big enough network, or maybe I don't get it on some more fundamental level. What was wrong with email? Well, one might say, one isn't likely to email all one's friends (or casual acquaintances or people you don't even know) to tell them you are watching Battlestar right now. Well, quite frankly, I'm not that interested when I see that on Twitter, either. To be notified of new blog posts, why wouldn't I just subscribe to someone's RSS feed rather than follow them on Twitter? And anyway, as the recent mantra goes, the news will find me. Twitter just looks like work to me. And Jake has a good point about connecting with the non-techie non-bloggers: they're not using Twitter, they're using Facebook. You can do more stuff there, and you don't feel like you have to update every sneeze and hiccup in life to be participating "properly".
  • • 3 months ago
    •   How Twitter is like soap, or Soylent Green
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Fair enough, Tim. Just admit that you're not cool enough to get Twitter. As for what's wrong with email, that would take a book :-) Seriously though, it's not for everyone. I think it's a lot like text messaging is for a generation younger than ours (or at least mine). Why do they do it? Who knows. Different reasons, I guess. Some are purely social, some are not -- in some cases it's broadcast, in other cases it's a way to get input. Sometimes it's informative, sometimes it's not. What's the Internet for?
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  • Tim Burden  I think you should just let it out, and tell us what you REALLY think of AOL :)
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Yahoo: Will merge for food
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Tim Burden  Heh...violent agreement. How would that look? "Let me agree with you or I'll stab you in the face!" Personally I do find myself commenting on people's stuff when I disagree slightly more often than when I agree, though not overwhelmingly so. Sometimes I just want to add my two cents, or point out a different angle or related fact. Which is sort of like disagreeing, I guess, if you want to take it that way. Never saw much point in the "Rah Rah" type comment either, as I'm sure others don't, which may skew the results.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Blogs and the “phone-in show” effect
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Thanks, Tim. I think there's definitely room for the comment that takes a different tack or points out something the writer might have missed, but doesn't necessarily violently disagree. That's certainly the type of comment I encourage :-) On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Disqus
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  • Tim Burden  This can't work, for a few reasons, some already mentioned. 1. People's URL structures change 2. People's blogs disappear. 3. People forget to maintain their Javascript applications. Any of these three would cause a nice fat javascript error 4. It doesn't save much time. 5. It doesn't allow pulling the part of the post I want, though I'm sure we could rig that. 6. It does include things I may not want, like the comments, though I do think that's a neat idea. 7. It won't count as Google food. 8. It won't be searchable on my blog search. 9. It's yet another thing my page has to go get while it's loading, and while that's not so bad in the sidebars, it could be irritating waiting for a post to load before I can read it. 10. There is no 10, but I like lists of 10. It did get me thinking though. What I think would be cool is if everyone's comments on a particular subject were melded together. Take this subject as an example. Anil does the originating post over on his blog. A couple of people comment over there. Then Mathew does this post, and when he does, he clicks a box that says this is a response to a post and enters the trackback. Now this post shows up here, and as well as a comment on Anil's blog. Now a couple people comment here, and these comments show up on Anil's post as well, and so on. And, all new comments from Anil's post show up here, too. So all the comments are all in one place. This is one place where you might WANT to be using JS so that Google doesn't see duplicate content all over the place. Just a thought...
  • • 4 months ago
    •   Is embedding better than quoting?
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Those are all good points, Tim -- and the comment thing in particular is something I've wanted for a while. CoComment and Disqus and other things are all attempts to do that, but they don't really work as well as they might. And I like number 10 the best :-) On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 5:30 PM, Disqus
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  • Tim Burden  Mathew, you mention the differences between online and print, and say that you were willing, when you launched the Globe's site in 2000, to be wrong sometimes because it was worth it to be first. I wonder if it is worth much of anything to be first. From the traffic point of view, the value of a story comes after it has been indexed. It doesn't much matter if you have the story on this afternoon or tomorrow morning, in the long run. People - well, me, anyway - wonder "what is the Globe saying about x?" after we've heard about it from some source or another. They don't go "hmmm....who had that story first?" and then award special brownie points to the site that did. I could be wrong - I'm wrong a lot - but I see that value of being right, and credible, as far more important than being first. Maybe it mattered in the Age of Print, when if you scooped something you had it over on the competition until at least the next day. Now, it seems to me, when you scoop something onto the Web all you're really doing is giving the competition a leg up for their print editions the next morning.
  • • 4 months ago
    •   Thoughts on new media and ethics
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Thanks for the comment, Tim. I think your point is a good one -- and it's worth remembering that in 2000, there weren't that many newspapers (in Canada anyway) doing live breaking news on the Web. You're quite right that being first isn't as compelling as it once was -- and likely hasn't been for some time, in paper or online. I didn't just mean first with the news, though -- I meant first with the smart analysis, first with the in-depth background or added value or research, first with the commentary and context that is often missing in the "news" business. On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Disqus
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