Coal Ash Spill Map

My buddy and yours @mr_schwartz has been doing some work with the Tennessee Clean Water Network integrating field data into Google Maps.  He’s done some really cool stuff with the spill in Kingston, plotting not only news, but also the results of water samples at exact lat/longs on this map.

He’s also put up a second map that shows info on the Ocoee Dam release on January 4.

Good example of mashing up information from several different sources and dispersing it to the public!

A Quick Hi and Some Thanks!

The last few days have been pretty crazy.  Last Thursday Newscoma and I launched a little project, NewsTechZilla.  We thought it was a good idea and would be a fun way to document some stuff.  Little did we know it would explode.  We’ve seen an unbelievable amount of support (and traffic) so far, and I want to take second to thank some people from this side of the State for their help.  Without you guys, we would not have seen this kind of success.

Seriously, you guys helped us get the word out, give us feedback, encouragement, and even content.  We can’t thank you enough!

Michael Silence was unbelievably generous in writing our first feature article, and he went a step further by featuring us in his Sunday deadwood column.  Jack Lail wrote a very nice intro for us on his blog last Thursday too.  These guys got us noticed by Glenn Reynolds, who gave us an unbelievably successful first day “live” when he linked to us from Instapundit. All this within the first three days!!!

Guys, I know a link from me here is worth about 1/100 of what you did for us, but it’s all I can do for now.

Since then, we’re receiving more support from people like SVD at KTownLowDown, and some local guys from Copa Creative, Abunga.com, and TUAW who were generous with their time in answering some questions about the iPhone for an article we were doing.  I can’t even begin to thank all the people who’ve talked about us on Twitter and sent their followers our way.

I’m uber-busy with work (real job) right now, but I intend to (at some point) thank all the local people I’ve forgotten in this short post and all the other folks around the country who’ve been so supportive.

I’m also going to change that poll before the eight week period (I hope).

A Content Generating Machine

NewsTechZilla!!!
NewsTechZilla!!!

Obviously, I’m not talking about me.  I’m talking about Newscoma, who normally writes more before 9 am than I get to read all day.  How lucky am I to get to work on a new project with someone like that?

There’s a lot of buzz in the blogosphere right now about the demise of newspapers and changes in the media.  This “citizen journalism” thing seems to be a little more than just a fad.  It’s leaving a lot of journalists with some choices to make, and it’s a tough row to hoe for some to learn new technology.

So we’re developing a resource to help them along the way, answer questions, and discuss the changes that are occurring in media right before our eyes.  We were even able to persuade Michael Silence to write our first featured article.

NewsTechZilla is where tech (me) and journalism (Newscoma) collide, duke it out, shake hands, exchange barbs, and hug it out for the good of all.

Actually, there’s good stuff theree for everybody, not just journalists.

We just decided to do this a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve been working like mad over the holidays to generate content, work on our site layout, get our feeds up, fix the things I break, etc. and “officially” launch today.  Go over, check it out, SUBSCRIBE (it’s free) and jump into the fray.

I Made the Deadline This Year

But just barely. Last year’s “year-end” post didn’t get written until we were literally hours into 2008. I’m on the ball this year though.

Lots of changes for me this year!  One big event is that I changed jobs.  More accurately, I quit my job and got another one later.  It was basically a case of a one man union going on strike.  Negotiations didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, but I’m in a much better place now.  That seems to happen to me every time I change jobs.  Not a bad time at all to move out of the auto industry anyway.

I took advantage of my new situation to work on some really cool stuff in 2008, and I’ve met some great people who are thinking in the right direction.  Most of them are more Twitter-centric than blog centric, but I’ve also made some great connections in the blogosphere that have helped me become super-productive and inspired.  I’ve finished this year in a frenzy working on a new project that I’m very excited about–more on that tomorrow when it’s officially launched.

But enough about me.  Let’s talk about me.  Here are my top 5 posts from 2008, as determined by you the reader:

5.  Jitterbug Cell Phones for Old People
I saw this commercial and thought it was downright insulting to elderly people.  Then again, I like the idea of having a phone that just lets you talk to people and nothing else.  It’s very novel.

4.  Homeschooling Ruled Illegal in California
That may have been a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much.  It comes down to the State of California claiming to have more of a right to decide how a child is educated than a parent does.  Right.

3.  Died in a Blogging Accident
I saw this cartoon on XKCD and thought it was funny.  It turned out to be one of the most searched for terms on Google that day, and me being the SEO master that I am, I popped up second.  Weird that traffic is still tricking in on this.

2.  My Ideal News Thingy
One of the things I’d hoped for in 2008 was to get a link from Instapundit, and I got it pretty early on.  It’s interesting that almost one year later, I’m involved in a project that deals directly with some of the things I talked about in this post.

1.  Another Naked Idiot
Like everyone else with a blog, my most popular post is bound to be about a chick getting naked.  I’ve made a habit of writing about naked idiots because, well, because they make me laugh.  They get traffic if you are early to post.  LOL!  I try to keep it confined to naked idiots in Tennessee, but we seem to have exceeded our quota over the past couple of years.

So if you made it to the end, there’s actually a little bit of a payoff.  The biggest news of this year is that we are having another delivery from the stork in July 2009 and we’re super excited about it!  Aside from lots of work, I’ve been pretty busy lately taking care of The Missus, who gets morning sickness 24/7 for the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.  That further explains the sparse posting, but I plan to pick it up as she starts feeling better.

The Death of News Stories?

I was running with @Mr_Schwartz the other day, and we were (once again) coming up with solutions to the world’s most difficult problems.  Unfortunately for the world, I’m not doing too much distance these days, so there isn’t enough time to fix every problem.  Nonetheless, the topic of conversation this cold and rainy night was the news.  See, @Mr_Schwartz made a funny comment to this post last week, but in making a joke he also made an excellent point:

Why is is that NO ONE in the popular media has talked about how much this guy looks like Stephen King? You don’t see many of those haircuts out there, and if you do then they aren’t hung on jack o’ lantern sized noggins like this guy. AND he wears track suits??? Awesome!
We have someone that is trying to turn himself into the most stereotypical corrupt politician since the Mayor “diamond” Joe Quimby on The Simpsons.
I need these angles played, media! Do the work, Campbell Brown! You have to earn it…

I’ve been harping on this for a while in a roundabout way.  It’s a little baffling to me that newspapers are continuing to struggle in a market where the appetite for news is insatiable.  Of course, the management of newspapers can lay some of the blame at the feet of bloggers, but the fact that bloggers are beating them at the news game seems like proof to me that the market is thriving.  Is this just a management issue?

I’ve also realized that so many people at the top of the news business (print in particular) are still dealing with old standards that no longer exist. Instead of using the tools available and realizing that there has to be a balance between newsroom/tech crews, there are some local papers that are just seeing the dark at the end of the tunnel.

That’s a scary proposition to me, and I’ll tell you why.  I’m afraid that the death of newspapers is going to be the death of news stories.

Not the death of the dissemination of news facts–I can get those on Twitter.  Actually, I prefer to get them there real time.   Not the death of news analysis–I can get that on countless blogs and cable stations.  Actually, I can just read my own blog for that.

But news stories that are investigated, fact checked, pieced together through multiple interviews and accounts may actually disappear with the newspaper.  I would hate to see that happen.  Anyone with time to hit 140 buttons can tell a lie on Twitter, and blogs are like opinions–everybody’s got one.  But writers who can piece together and accurately tell a story are rare, and a lot of them are working for newspapers…for now.

The good news is, I believe there’s a place for these folks online.  I think the ability to accurately tell a good news story is about as rare on the web right now as it is in newspapers (yeah, ouch).  And I think journalists who are enterprising may utlimately find they are more comfortable and productive working for themselves online instead of working for bosses who just don’t get it.

But that’s just the opinion of a guy behind a keyboard at 7:30 am…not a proven fact, and definitely not researched.  😛

Some Great Reading on Knoxville History

Doesn’t matter if you’re local or not, there’re two great stories in the KNS over the past two days that are very intriguing.  The story is about two possibly connected murders from 1968 and 1972 respectively.   Everything needed for a good novel is involved–an unsolved murder of a prominent wife whose husband was having an affair with a woman of notoriously ill repute, an unsolved murder of the husband of a prominent local madam who may or may not have been involved in the first murder, a possibly crooked police officer’s involvement in both, deathbed confessions that never happened, etc.

I love it that the KNS is featuring this type of thing.  There’s some great work involved in piecing together bits and pieces of information–police reports, old articles, interviews with old friends.  This is exactly what I meant back in January when I said newspapers can still do some reporting better than bloggers and armchair pundits ever will.  I’d love to see more of this, and I hope there’s a book in the making.  It’s a really interesting piece of local history.

Community Standards

First of all, a few housekeeping items…

Thanks to all of the new readers I’ve picked up in the past couple of days for subscribing. Nothing like a naked chick in a public park to boost readership, huh? And thanks to all of my readers who were with me long before this latest bit of urgent news hit Tennessee. Sorry if you guys were locked out yesterday–we had a little bandwidth issue while people were flooding the gate.

Something that came up in the discussion about the naked woman on the playground in Barlett was whether or not this woman had actually done anything wrong. Lots of folks were throwing up the fact that there are nude beaches in city A or this had been challenged in city B and that the Baptist minister should get a life. Others were saying that she’s unequivocally wrong and damn her to hell. So who’s right? I think it really comes down to community standards.

Yeah, this is the United States where we take everything to the Supreme Court that may involve free speech, but let’s just step back for a minute and look at this calmly. What’s wrong with a community setting its own standards of decency, and what’s wrong with respecting that standard? It’s not as if the fine folks in Bartlett want to outlaw bumper stickers or women showing their wrists. They just don’t want hot naked chicks playing in their parks.

I know you may be thinking, “why would you want to limit the presence of hot naked chicks anywhere?” Well, if you’ve ever been to a topless beach, you are well aware that for every hot topless French chick there are about 15 disgusting old German women who are topless as well. All of your hopes and dreams about a topless beach are quickly vanquished. All of a sudden, you are perfectly ok with everyone just putting their top back on. That becomes the standard you wish that community would set. But you don’t get to change the standard. You just have to stare directly at the sun until you have not only burned your eyeballs out, but hopefully the image of that herd of beasts you just saw thundering down the beach collecting shells as well.

Here’s another example–If you’re like me, there are certain words that you use around your friends that you don’t use around your parents. Actually, if you’re like me, there are lots of these words. I call it “parent vocabulary”. You may have a “kids are around” vocabulary that is similar. Do I think it’s a little silly that these words offend them? Sure. But it’s not big deal for me to refrain from using those words around them, even when we are on my turf…nothing lost.

In fact, that’s why I rarely curse when writing on this site. It’s not because cursing offends me at all. It’s because I’d rather set a standard here of saying what you want to say without cursing. There are times when that’s really the only way to get your point across, and in these times the use of naughty words makes the post more effective, at least in my opinion. I don’t have to explicitly state that–it’s implied, and most people with half a brain pick up on it.

And by the way, I really appreciate the fact that most of the people who comment here are respectful of that standard, even if the standards on their own sites are different.

I’m not personally offended by, well, anything. However, there was some stuff posted yesterday that I had to chop out of the comments. For my community standards, language isn’t the ultimate determining factor, it’s whether or not anything is being added to to the discussion. So yesterday I ended up deleting comments that were nothing more than links to the girl’s site and a couple that were just curse word laden without saying anything. Those would probably have been deleted even without the cursing. No one will miss them anyway.

But I’m perfectly ok letting a comment like, “all these prudes wouldn’t be here with out perverted thought from their horny dads muttered to their whore moms” from a commenter named “dickinyourdaughterdown” stand. Why? Because it is funny. My community standard (at least for that post) is that if I was amused, it’s a good comment. In this case, the post wouldn’t have been nearly as good if he hadn’t used the phrases “horny dads” and “whore moms”.

So summing all this up (I’m sure you couldn’t wait for that), I’d bet most people in sleepy ol’ Bartlett probably wouldn’t have cared if she’d shot this video in her house, or her backyard, or behind a WalMart at 3:30 am. Their problem with it was the fact that it was on a kids’ playground in broad daylight. A little prudish? Maybe by your standards, but you aren’t being loaded onto a truck and forced to live there either.

What would I think if this happened in the park where we take our kid? I doubt I’d think much of it if my kid wasn’t there to see it–no harm, no foul. And if we were there? I’ll give these folks the benefit of the doubt and say that they probably wouldn’t have shot the video in that situation anyway. Besides, I have enough to keep me occupied to bother getting upset over something that hasn’t even happened.

From Bartlett Grove Park–Another Naked Idiot

I’ve commented here before about how stupid you must be to allow someone to film you naked and not keep the one and only copy for yourself. Common sense risk management should tell you that it may end up on the internet. But letting someone photograph or film your privates in a public place with the intent of posting it on the web is even dumber–especially when that place is a playground. That’s what these geniuses did in Bartlett Tennessee.

Action News 5 was unable to locate the “model.” She writes on the web-site that the pornographic shoot took place just last week.

Give it, I don’t know, 2 hours or so and someone will identify her and post something on their blog or a message board about it. Probably no jail time involved, but I’d bet a heavy fine will come out of this.

Seriously, on a playground? And you’re stupid enough to say which playground? I guess there’s a reason why you are, ahem, “modeling” and not practicing medicine.

The news report calls this video “porn”. I don’t think a naked skank on a slide really qualifies as porn, but I guess community standards are what apply here.

Man Up Nine-Year-Olds!

My buddy Greg sent me this article at ESPN about a 9-year-old boy in Connecticut who has been told his 40 mph fast ball makes him “too good” to pitch in his baseball league.  Teams have refused to play when he pitches, and his team is being disbanded at players redistributed to other teams.

But Vidro says he didn’t quit and the team refuses to disband. Players and parents held a protest at the league’s field on Saturday urging the league to let Jericho pitch.

It sounds like there are some political shenanigans going on beneath the surface because the kid isn’t playing for the team league officials wanted him to play for.  My initial reaction was, “This is an outrage!  He’s pitching amongst his peers.  They should adjust to his speed and become better batters.”

Yeah, but…

He’s not pitching against his peers.  The age groups in little league are set up as a guideline for skill level.  His skill level is greater than most people his age, at least in this particular league.  Why don’t his parents let him play in either a tougher league or with older kids?  Those are his peers.  Are they afraid for him to have to compete too?

I don’t see either party as being in the right on this one.  The league is in the wrong to punish a kid and his teammates for being good at the game, but if the kid and his parents truly believe he’s on his way to becoming the next Randy Johnson, maybe they should consider having him play with kids who can challenge him.  If they don’t, everyone’s may catch up to him in a few years, and he’ll be left reliving the glory days of striking out second graders.