Ten Reasons Why

Global Attention Profiles maps the attention paid to each country on the planet by different US media outlets on a daily basis.

Culture

Dave Winer writes of another (perceived) attempt to grab control over RSS from someone who proposed an RSS re-naming contest. (Of course, it seems Winer frequently views anything that’s not 100% approval of RSS 2.0 as it stands today as an attempt to wrest control away from [insert whomever actually "controls" RSS this week here].)
The comments on the post expanded to one of my favorite pet peeves: the lunacy of the orange XML icon.
I wrote about this last week, but read on for a copy of my rant in Winer’s comment thread.

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Syndication & Aggregation

So back in the late 80’s, when I was an undergraduate with aspirations of being the Great American Novelist and cable television was 40 channels instead of 500, I was greatly amused by the fact that CNN had launched a second 24-hour news channel called Headline News. Why in the world would we need two 24-hour news channels, I thought. Certainly just the one is already overkill.
Ahem.
Anyway, so amused was I, that I began a draft of a satirical novel about the absurd fragmentation of the television industry into narrow niche channels. Said novel (which I never got more than about 40 or so pages into) was to track the lives of two characters at CCN, the Cable Cooking Network. Har har har, I chuckled to myself, pleased with my satirical genius. Sports? News? Sure. But certainly there would never be an entire network devoted to cooking shows!
Ahem.
Fast forward to the turn of the century. Survivor debuts and I am briefly fascinated with the absurdity of the so-called reality television trend. Again, I toyed with the idea of writing a satirical take on this, something so ridiculous that it would never be done, like, say, a reality show that has its contestants running for President of the United States. I even seriously considered timing said satirical story for the 2004 elections to maximize marketability.
Oh ferchrissakes. Friggin’ ahem, already!
So what are the lessons I should take away from this?

1. I’m a prescient genius who should be in California making a bazillion dollars “developing” the Next Big Thing.
2. I’m a damn idiot for not being that prescient genius.

For the record, I also came up with the idea of Magnetic Poetry about four years before that other English major. Bastard.

Culture

This color scheme tool makes me want to re-design Ten Reasons Why.
Thanks to Richmond homeboy Smakbo for the link.

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