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Trend spotters say: Yes, I knew that. See: Americans favor cell phones over landlines

Newspapers are failing, and my friend and advisor Alan Webber knows why: the problem isn’t technology, shifting business models or all the other excuses newspaper executives like to talk about. The problem is lousy products.

From Alan’s Nov. 13, 2006 post:

What’s happened, I think, is that newspapers have stopped asking the right questions. They’ve stopped provoking public conversation about the great issues of our time. They’ve stopped seeing themselves as provocateurs of public discourse. … Why do movies, the Web, TV, get to have all the fun? Ask all the good questions? Carry all the inspirational, challenging, provocative answers?

Ouch.

Via Smartmobs, here’s another event taking place within SecondLife, a 3D virtual world. This is the part I love: “Visitors will be able to listen to audio and video, attend live mixed reality events …”

Now my head is hurting - damn, a new phrase I’ve got to learn to avoid: Mixed Reality Events.

There, I said it again. See, the harder I try, the worse it hurts. Even to try to forget is to get sucked into a mixed reality event. Where’s the Advil when you need it?

Let’s just call this a What The Bleep incident. This must have something to do with quantum physics, which both fries and un-fries my unworthy brain at the same time. Where does “live mixed reality” begin or end? Howard Rheingold, can you help? I think live mixed reality used to hang on the wall somewhere in Plato’s cave.

Source: Smart Mobs: Howard Rheingold in “Infinite Mind” broadcast in Second Life today

Recent Links [rebelpixel productions]

I’ve been “wandering” online a bit more lately, rarely with a destination in mind, and rarer still to reach one. This morning (it’s Saturday - boys in the basement getting their fix of KidsWB) - Jon Dube’s Technorati cosmos and tagcloud caught my eye during a brief stop at CyberJournalist.net, which led me to wander over to Six Apart to browse the MT plugin collection there, and then on to Wordpress to check out the plugins there. No conclusions - it looked to me like MT had a bigger collection, but that may be wrong - WP has plenty. And, at any rate, I somehow wound up here, and intrigued by Markku Seguerra’s Recent Links plugin, which I hope to play with. So far I’m pleased with WP, but the default Links generator for the sidebar is NOT one of its strengths. Meanwhile … I’m liking Diigo more and more - it’s also a hnady way of collecting links and then posting a few in a daily “links” post.

Wired 14.06: The Rise of Crowdsourcing

From the June issue of Wired, which, sorry, I did not devour as soon as I got it. … The strength of weak ties is the value of a broad, expansive network that includes many different skills, capabilities and perspectives. This fits precisely the goals of the We Media Network, and it’s the exact opposite of what happens through traditional professional and trade associations, in which networks may be large but are also homogenous - monocultures vs. communities or ecosystems.

A VC: Are You Bored?

• Mark Cuban thinks the Internet is boring, Fred Wilson thinks otherwise - and this is my first bookmark with a Firefox extension called Diigo that sways me toward Fred’s perspective in terms of technology. But if we’re talking about content, utility, or creativity - then I’m with Mark. The volume of content has exploded, with diminishing returns. Blogs and same-as-the-other-guys big media sites dominate our attention, but I want to find sites that suck me in, that astonish and inspire me, that keep me up late. Yes, they are out there, and I’d have to think there are many more than I know about. But on a day-to-day basis, I don’t find them. COuld be I don’t try. And I find myself enjoying the Net less and less. - post by anachison