Jack Dorsey talks about the origins of Twitter on his Flickr page…

Twitter as of today, Saturday, 7/19/08 @ 2:00 p.m.

Technorati Tags: Community, Social Networks, Twitter

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I grew up reading the San Francisco Chronicle, home of Herb Cain, the best columnist in the country, as well as a famous story about “Snakes in Toilets,” and a derogatory reference in All the Presidents Men (Jason Robards, as the Washington Post editor says, “Naw, we can’t publish that, give it to the San Francisco Chronicle.”)

The Chronicle may not have always got it right, but they told a great story. And because I have a number of friends who work for newspapers, I’ve been fascinated by the struggles of newspapers to adapt to the challenge of the new media.

Newspapers are famously losing ad revenue to Google and Yahoo, readership to some of the same portals; and their reporting is being challenged by bloggers and even posts to YouTube.

But as my reporter friend Henry Weinstein said when receiving a journalism award a couple years ago, “Who the hell is going to gather and write the news in the future? — Elves?”

How can newspapers adapt and provide some of the three-dimensional story-telling that the big platforms, blogs and forums can’t?

Check out this piece from MediaStorm, by Luis Sinco, a “traditional” photographer for the much troubled LA Times about the Iraq vet portrayed above. MediaStorm is a marvelous project designed to teach journalists the new way.

Technorati Tags: New Journalism, New Media, Newspapers, San Francisco Chronicle

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– After four days of waiting, Gregg Packer gets his iPhone this morning from the Fifth Avenue Store

– Issues in London.

– Silly headline on Fast Company site.

And, one of my office mates, Sean, tried to install the new 2.0 software on his “classic” iPhone, and got bricked:

And, as always, where’s cut and paste and the Flash?

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone

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David Caminer worked at the Lyons tea company in Britain in the early 50’s and developed the first commercial computer, the LEO, to manage the company’s 200 tea shops. He was an organizational genius who, according to many experts, could have beat IBM to the punch had his company capitalized on his efforts.

“In today’s terms it would be like hearing that Pizza Hut had developed a new generation of microprocessor, or McDonald’s had invented the Internet.” — The New Scientist 2001

The first LEO is interred at the Science Museum in London.

From Caminer’s New York Times obituary:

…Mr. Caminer drew up a flow chart to show how the different job requirements related. The charts became the basis of the computer code. Mr. Caminer has been called the first corporate electronic systems analyst…”

“The finished LEO, which had less than 100,000th the power of a current PC, could calculate an employee’s pay in 1.5 seconds, a job that took an experienced clerk eight minutes. Its success led Lyons to set up a computer subsidiary that later developed two more generations of LEO, the last with transistors, rather than the noisy vacuum tubes used in the first two models.

LEOs were sold to the Ford Motor Company, tobacco companies, a steel maker, South Africa, Australia, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, among other buyers. When the British government chose the last LEO to handle its telephone billing system, Tony Benn, postmaster general, praised Lyons for “standing up to and beating on its own merits” the competition from overseas.

But the Lyons computer operation merged into a succession of companies, which chose to use American technology, not least for its universality. Many have compared LEO’s experience with that of the de Havilland Comet, which was the first commercial passenger jet in production but which lost out to Boeing jets…”

When LEO was finally shut off in January 9, 1965, the Daily Mail ran an obituary for LEO. Prince Phillip was a fan of the sound the LEO made while running.

Technorati Tags: computers, IT, J. Lyons & Co

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Jeremiah Rosen, our Director of Accounts and a Campfire partner, married his partner, Karen Gerdes, this weekend in Stone Ridge, NY. For those of us who attended it was an extraordinary event, beautiful setting, including a 250 year old house where it is reputed that George Washington slept with a ghost. Food was top notch, but for me, I most enjoyed the aura of Jeremiah and Karen over everything, including the speeches from their siblings.

Technorati Tags: Celebrity, Events, New Journalism, Weddings

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The New York Times reported in its “Most Wanted” section today that American Airlines’ website led all other travel sites in sticky time, an astounding 57.06 minutes! I looked at the site and no, AA is not running episodes of The Wire. Something else is going on. As the Times says, “The time users spend on a site probably has less to do with popularity than with its efficiency.” Could people be spending this much time looking for an aisle seat?

Technorati Tags: American Airliines, New York Times

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Campfire’s intrepid space correspondent, former creative director Andrew Kessler, is in Tucson AZ covering the Mars Phoenix mission. A key operation of the Mars Lander, which arrived on Mars last weekend, will be the deployment of a robotic arm that will dig below the Mars surface looking for signs of Martian life.

Kessler is actually employed by NASA, working under Peter Smith, who instigated the Phoenix Mission. Andrew is writing a book about the project, and also reporting for Popular Mechanics and consulting on a Discovery special.

One of the unique aspects of the project is the reuse of a lander from a cancelled Mars exploration project in 2001 (the Mars Surveyor), lending a certain post 2008 recession budget consciousness to the entire enterprise. Perhaps the Pentagon could learn a few lessons from NASA when it comes to effective penny pinching.

Images and data will be flowing back for the next 3 months as the lander analyzes the ice under the surface for signs of life. We’ll keep you posted on any exciting news from the Mars front via Andrew.

The Mars Phoenix Project’s Twitter account has 8,894 Followers, with MarsPhoenix following 0.

Technorati Tags: Andrew Kessler, Campfire, Events, Mars, NASA, New Journalism

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Although they were hugging happily in Pasadena and Phoenix, there was sadness at Campfire on Friday, as Andrew Kessler, one of our key creative directors and the co-show runner on the long running MyHome2.0 campaign for Verizon, left to write a book about the Mars Phoenix Lander program.

Some may say discovering whether there was life on Mars is more important than the social media and marketing programs at Campfire — but you would not have found much support for this position at Andrew’s many going away parties this past week.

You can find a sweet remembrance of Andrew’s tenure at MyHome2.0 here, and, oh, here’s one of the first images sent back from Mars today:

I dunno, given the choice, I’d take a screening of Mars Attacks in the basement drive-in theater at the Zaharko’s any day of the week. But we’ll miss Andrew a whole lot, he’s an amazingly creative and soulful guy, and one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. We’re hoping he’ll share some of his experiences here with us from time to time as he explores his own life — as well as on Mars.

Technorati Tags: Campfire, Events, FiOS, marketing, Mars, MyHome2.0, Social Media

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“…When I interviewed Ben Golub yesterday, he told me that RSSmeme crawls FriendFeed via the API to see what people are sharing on Google Reader. I would guess that Techmeme uses at least some of that same data via either FriendFeed or directly from Google Reader. It’s here where the sharing in Google Reader becomes just like a Digg; one person in your circle shares the item, then others do. Some comment on it. Others additionally submit it to Digg and StumbleUpon. And suddenly, you have the same echo chamber effect in FriendFeed that you see on Techmeme…

– from a “Friendfeed, the New Echo Chamber” post by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

Technorati Tags: Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, Friendfeed, Social Media, Twitter

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Hey, check out John Hockenberry’s new show on NPR, The Takeaway. If you’ve been a fan of uh, listener to, Morning Edition and gotten tired of hearing about the plight of the bubble bee in Mongolia or appeals to ride your bicycle to work in the middle of winter, you’ll find the new show refreshingly-unNPR.

The fact that The Takeaway took Grand Theft Auto 4 seriously, and that they put a post by my son, Gabriel, about the game on the front of their busy site, has nothing to do with my recommendation.

If you like the show, post a positive comment, or vote mine up.

Technorati Tags: Gaming, Innovation, New Journalism, social media, Web 3.0

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