Some Sunday morning reading to share.
The big tech companies are going after each other tooth and nail. Apple is now working on its own maps app, obviously spurning Google, Microsoft is working with Rupert Murdoch to help make his bluff/threat to remove his media from Google search in favor of Bing, Apple has been working with Microsoft to bring Silverlight to the iPhone, continuing its spat with Adobe. It’s a dog eat dog world and at this point, no dog has an advantage. Steve Lyons says they all care less about creating new products than they do about hurting each other. That’s why “it’s just business” is such a pre-historic concept.
Sarah Palin and the Bard? Conservative Joseph Hatch compares those enraptured by Sarah Palin to the groundlings of Shakespeare’s day, and says that the groundlings are the ones who turn a play into a hit or not, and that the Republicans need to cater to those masses and forget the elite. It’s a theory that tries to focus on the populist appeal of the common versus the elite, but ignores the fact that in Shakespeare’s day, even the groundlings understood the real issues behind the stories being told, and that Shakespeare felt no need to dumb down the message to appeal to them.
More on Rupert Murdoch and his ranting. This one is called How The Grinch Stole Google News.
The Critical Unraveling of US Society. Worth a read for its scope and scoping.
MG Siegler compares Twitter to Walter Cronkite in today’s age of realtime. I like his points, but the prism is ever so slightly askew. We gathered around Uncle Walter, (and others) when news happened, no matter how messy the reporting was because we had no other real choice. In today’s world the choices are just as messy, quicker, and unfortunately able to be tied into knots by the sheer volume of reporting and re-reporting news as it surfaces. In my view, the trust factor (and the forgiveness for error factor) is diminishing to a point that no one has belief in any source.
News that isn’t news. Apple is testing a new iPhone. The news would be if Apple wasn’t doing so.
A couple crashes a state dinner and becomes this year’s Thanksgiving weekend media story. (Until Tiger Woods’ incident.) Maybe we’re closer to Sarah Palin and the Bard than we think.
