ARTS & FARCES internet

Steve Outing’s column today in Editor & Publisher, “With E-mail Dying, RSS Offers Alternative,” covers well-trodden ground on the death of email as a publishing medium, with one really nice addition:

“Of the subscribers (62% to 83%) who do successfully receive e-mail from ethical publishers, there’s another big chunk who don’t open it. The typical opt-in commercial/marketing message is opened only about 40% of the time, according to the most recent Doubleclick E-mail Trend Report. E-mail newsletters typically fare better, but nevertheless a lot of them sit unopened. As users’ in-boxes fill up with more and more junk, it’s common for people to simply miss asked-for mail and inadvertently delete it—or because of information overload, simply not have time to read it.”

That’s the first solid numbers I’ve seen on the open-rate of email publications, although it’s about what I suspected.

Outing goes on to briefly explore the beginnings of a couple approaches to an RSS business model, noting that some publishers are beginning to embed advertising in their feeds. While I want to see a sustainable business model for RSS as quickly as possible, I don’t think embedded ads are going to be it. At least I hope not.

Oh, and hey…. Utne‘s RSS feeds went live yesterday:

• Utne magazine: http://www.utne.com/pub/index.xml (published bi-monthly; articles that require payment to read are indicated with the ($$) notation)
• Utne Web Watch: http://www.utne.com/webwatch/index.xml (published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
• Utne Web Specials: http://www.utne.com/web_special/index.xml (published every weekday)

We haven’t publicly announced anything yet, so whatever you do don’t tell anyone.

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The future of sustainable motorized transportation is an enclosed driverless golf-cart-on-a-stick. Known by lots of names—Skyweb Express, Taxi 2000, MicroRail, Higherway, or Skycab—they’re all trade monikers for Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), a system for moving people in a manner similar to the way networked computers move bits of information around the Internet.

The PRT cars look like Jetsonesque enclosed golf carts that run on a narrow elevated guideway that very much resembles a life-sized slot-car track. Only the body of the car can be seen above the guideway. Underneath is a short post connected to an induction motor and a set of four tires on wheels that ride in the semi-enclosed guideway.

The guideway forms a network throughout a metropolitan area. Like the Internet, the PRT network itself is quite unintelligent; there’s absolutely no intelligence embedded within the PRT cars or the guideway. All intelligence, again like the Internet, is found at the edges of the network; in the case of PRT, the intelligence resides in the computers that control the cars. The result is maddeningly simple: PRT moves people the same way the Internet moves data.

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The question of whether or not publications like this are journalism got a little bit more complicated—and interesting—this weekend. Dr. David Weinberger is blogging in near-real-time from the Dean campaign trail. Continuing the spirit and form established by Boys on the Bus and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, Weinberger is publishing a first-person account of his experience in serial bursts. And it’s compelling stuff.

I’m still betting on Dean making a hard right turn to the center, but his campaign clearly gets the net (Weinberger’s account is cross-published on the Dean campaign weblog).

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Having not been an employee for more than 20 years, I’ve missed out on certain things in the workplace like “bennies” and “perks.” Like “vacation” and “personal days”—what a concept. One of the “perks” in working at Utne is being able to regularly root around in the media bins. Of the tonnage of media material that passes through the magazine’s offices, the material that isn’t retained for the Utne library makes it into these media bins, where it is quickly picked over by the staff. The quantity of the materials that make it into these bins is just short of alarming.

While scavenging through a bin of audio CDs while waiting for a meeting with the publisher, I came across Eric Clapton’s 2002 release, One More Car, One More Rider. Don’t bother; Clapton is one of the planet’s best guitarists, but this release plainly sucks rocks. “Reptile” sounds like bad elevator music, if you can believe that. But that’s not the point of this missive. The copy of One More Car, One More Rider in the Utne bin was a promotional copy with generic packaging and this nice little addition:

“Please note: This CD has been individually watermarked with a unique identification number embedded in the music. This number is traceable directly to the authorized recipient, which allows us to identify the source of any unauthorized copies or other reproductions of the music contained on this CD. The watermark is not changed or destroyed by extracting clips of the music, or by using any compression technology such as MP3. The sound quality of the audio playback is not affected. This CD is intended to be listened to solely by the authorized recipient and no portion of its contents may be copied or reproduced in any manner, nor made available in any manner to any third party (whether by means of streaming, so-called ‘peer-to-peer’ networks or otherwise). This CD should not be played in a computer. Thank you in advance for your understanding… Enjoy!”

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A United States District Court judge ruled yesterday that the title of Al Franken’s forthcoming book, Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, does not infringe Fox News’ claimed “fair and balanced” trademark.

Here’s Susan Saulny’s take in today’s New York Times:

“Calling the motion ‘wholly without merit, both factually and legally,’ the judge, Denny Chin of United States District Court, said that a person would have to be ‘completely dense’ not to realize the cover was a joke, and that trademark protection for the phrase ‘Fair and Balanced’ was unrealistic because the words are so commonly used.”

For his part, Al Franken (who wasn’t present in court) told Saulny the ruling was “a victory for satirists everywhere, even the bad ones. In addition to thanking my own lawyers, I’d like to thank Fox’s lawyers for filing one of the stupidest briefs I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Franken should thank Fox; he couldn’t buy this kind of publicity at any cost. Penguin, his publisher, will rush the book to market next Thursday with an initial print run of 435,000 copies, 50,000 more than originally planned. This has been orchestrated so well, one has to wonder if it wasn’t all scripted and choreographed like a professional wrestling match.

Indicating a marked sense of humor deficiency, Fox’s lawyers argued in court—presumably with a straight face—that a picture of Fox entertainer Bill O’Reilly on the book’s cover would be seen as an endorsement. Saulny reports that Judge Chin’s question to the Fox lawyer on the point, “Do you think that the reasonable consumer, seeing the word ‘lies’ over Mr O’Reilly’s face would believe Mr. O’Reilly is endorsing this book?” was met with laughter in the courtroom. The reply from the Fox lawyer, “to me, it’s quite ambiguous as to what the message is here, it does not say ‘parody’ or ‘satire,’” was surely delivered in a deadpan as straight as the crease in her clothes.

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