Bad Tech Journalism

I don’t know if Barrett Sheridan wrote his Newsweek piece, “The Internet Helps Build Democracies” in response to or independent of Evgeny Morozov’s recent piece in Foreign Policy (Think Again: The Internet ; May/June 2010). Still, it sort of amazes me that this techno-utopianism (or as Evgeny puts it, “iPod liberalism“) still persists, at least amongst smart, internationally-minded journalists like Barrett Sheridan. I mean, I get why popular opinion might come to this conclusion, and maybe even some well-intentioned policymakers.…

No offense to Steve Lohr, but I’m not really sure what the point of his piece in today’s Times “Silicon Valley Shaped by Technology and Traffic” was. As far as I can tell, the main message is “geography matters.” Is this news to anyone, in late 2007? Really? Alan Wiig had a much more interesting comment on it than I ever would: Yeah, there is at a book about this from at least ten years ago. I dislike the analogy…

The Daily Northwestern: “Eviting” is a rising trend on Northwestern’s campus that has become a common term among students. The site — www.evite.com — was originally intended as a corporate tool, first popular with the “Silicon Valley techie circle,” said Heather Soule, the company’s public relations manager. She said there recently has been a demographic shift toward college campuses. Evite.com is a free event-planning Web site that was launched in 1998. InterActiveCorp, which owns Web sites such as Ticketmaster and…

Alright, alright, so I’m a little slow on the Chronicles of Narnia SNL rap. But it’s damn great. Now children, as an excercise, let’s compare blog/media coverage of this event: NYT: Publication Date: December 27, 2005 Summary: Two white guys create the startup version of comedy. The Web helps them to get famous. Best line: And Mr. Samberg found himself in the delicate position of having to explain to his mother that the song’s chorus is a play on words…

Kevin Maney’s Predictions for 2006 (USA Today): This piece is just plain bad on so many levels. Here goes. “Cellphone cameras will actually become useful.” Wrong. First, I disagree with the premise that people want a camera on their phone. Yes, you can do it and have it and take pictures of your friends so that their photo comes up when they call you, but really how many of us were dying to have a camera on the phone? The…

The FOURTH NYT article about podcasting, almost to the day of the first one that I wrote? What is going on with the NYT’s tech coverage? (Previous post on this from May 11, 2005.)

InfoWeek: Q: Will there be an acquisition in the security space? ELLISON: Sure, it’s possible. ARGH! I hate the use of the word “space” in business/technology journalism. It’s so meaningless. What’s wrong with these other possibilities? Will there be a security acquisition? Will there be an acquisition in the security sector? Will there be acquisition in security? I’m reading John Battelle‘s The Search right now and he’s as guilty of it as anyone. I swear, if I hear about it…

Engadget: Gotta love how TechWeb can publish two stories about the Tablet PC with completely conflicting headlines within hours of each other. Better still, both have the same source, namely a research firm called In-Stat. One article focused on In-StatÕs recent report about the state of the Tablet PC (which talked about how after three years of mixed success Tablet PC sales were about to start growing), while the other was based on a chat with an In-Stat analyst about…

Wow, I scooped the AP by more than six months. w00t!

Via Boing Boing: CNN: (CNN) — In 1994, people had to call the bank to check their balances. Or inquire in person, or wait for a paper statement to arrive in the mail. Baseball box scores were found in the newspaper. Weather forecasts came over the phone from the weather bureau, or on TV. Back then, most Americans still had to lick a stamp to send mail. Then along came the Internet, and an experimental browser called Mosaic, followed by…