Bayosphere

Tuesday, Nov. 2 –

That’s the only word that even begins to fit the news that RealNetworks software has been surreptitiously gathering information about users’ activities and sending it back to the company. Half-hearted apologies, software patches and other measures don’t begin to contain the damage.

What’s most surprising about this episode is that RealNetworks, founded by ex-Microsoft people, has been trying lately to be a good corporate citizen. This kind of sleazy behavior is beyond the pale and only heightens rational suspicions about the way our privacy is being shredded by every corporate, governmental and other party that can find a way to make money or otherwise gain power through surveillance into our everyday lives. See the item below for more on this.

OK, Bub, Fork Over Those Medical Records

Monday, Nov. 1 –

Given Congress’ recent legislative record, one is tempted to be relieved when the lawmakers fail to meet a self-imposed deadline to do something. Maybe we’ll all look back someday and think that’s the case with the privacy of medical records.

President Clinton, however, knows a sensitive political issue when he sees one. Although his White House has been easily the most hostile to civil liberties and citizen privacy since the Nixon mob ran the federal government, Clinton’s team has actually come up with rules that go in the right direction.

Not far enough, of course. The administration, in its normal bent-over posture when law enforcement is in the room, has left a huge loophole open for just about any agency with any remote law enforcement duties. The rules don’t apply to paper records, where most of the privacy breaches have taken place so far.

Coverage of the president’s rule-making prompted a predicable response from a spokesperson for the libertarian Cato Institute, which believes privacy should be a business arrangement between you and the world — Cato worries about what will happen if the rules prevent doctors from getting to your records in an emergency. This is indeed a genuine risk, but there are ways to fix the problem without making your life and medical history an open book.

Contrast

Monday, Nov. 1 –

I walked around central Hong Kong yesterday and took this picture. It’s a wonderful juxtaposition of eras and styles. On the lower left is the heart of what was: the domed building where the Legislature meets. To its right, also in the foreground, is the old Bank of China building, a sturdy structure from days gone by. It now houses, among other things, the venerable China Club, which I hope to visit while I’m in town.

Behind the two is the essence of the modern Hong Kong. The building soaring into the sky on the left was designed by the great architect I.M. Pei; it is the new Bank of China, one of the most striking structures in the world today. Contrast it to the unremarkable skyscraper to the right. That ugly edifice, says a journalist friend, is known as “the box it came in.”

Sunday, Oct. 31 –

Something interesting has happened to client-server computing: It isn’t dead or dying, contrary to the predictions of some and the fervent wishes of others. It’s changing, though, and in some fascinating ways.

At least I think so. See my regular Sunday column to see why.

My Students Meet New Media, PersonallySunday, Oct. 31 –

Before I started teaching my first new-media class at Hong Kong University on Saturday, I snapped a quick digital picture of the group. As we brought the class to order, I asked them to be patient for a moment, because I wanted to put their pictures on the World Wide Web. That drew a few looks of interest.

The students, many of whom are already full-time journalists, watched as I slipped the memory card from the camera into a PC Card holder, then put the PC Card into my laptop computer. I logged onto my eJournal site, uploaded the picture onto a server computer in California, wrote an introductory line, clicked a button and waited a few minutes for an editor to approve the posting. And then, when we went to this page — or at least yesterday’s version of it — boom, there was the picture.

That, I told the class, is what one form of new media is all about.

Here is a picture of the class I’m teaching at Hong Kong University:

Saturday, Oct. 30–Godot Hasn’t Entered the Building

So. It’s no decision today in the Microsoft antitrust case. That means I and another zillion journalists, lawyers and tech industry folks will be speculating for at least another week over what Judge Jackson will actually say.

Why isn’t someone in Vegas turning this into a formal betting play? What are the odds the judge will find that Microsoft a) has a monopoly in the relevant market and b) has used its market power to maintain and/or extend the monopoly? I don’t wager on this sort of thing, but if the judge rules there’s no monopoly you can bet on this: Such a decision, if not overturned by a higher court or Congress, would effectively end antitrust enforcement in the Digital Age. You may like or dislike that idea, but those are the stakes here, folks.

Here’s a riddle: What do Microsoft and Vegas casinos have in common? Answer: Unless you’re creative or lucky, if you play their game they’ll end up with some of your money.

Wonder What They’re Talking About…

Friday, Oct. 29 –

A few days after Dow Jones added Microsoft to the list of 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the two companies were partners, co-sponsoring a technology-oriented conference in Hong Kong. The list of speakers for the day-long event included Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s demonstrative president, so I stopped by the opulent downtown hotel where the gathering took place.

I was tossed out. The event, apparently a high-level schmooze for executives of companies with which Dow Jones and Microsoft do business, was closed to the press — except, of course, people who worked for the Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones media properties.

Do I need to explain the irony? Or note that this kind of thing tends to reinforce suspicions — unfounded ones, in my view — that the Journal is a bit cozy with the folks who run the company with the highest market capitalization in the world? Nah.

(Follow-up: A friend at the Journal strongly objects to the “cozy” crack, calling it unfair. We agree on many things, but not this one.)

What I’m Going to Talk About…

Friday, Oct. 29 –

Tomorrow morning I give my first Hong Kong University class to journalism students, many of whom are professionals earning advanced degrees. The course is about journalism and new media. Andrew Lih, a professor at Columbia University, taught the first part. Now it’s my turn, and my role is to talk about this brave new world from the perspective of someone who a) is a working journalist; b) lives and works in Silicon Valley; and c) is trying to practice some of the new-media stuff he preaches.

I’m going to kick off with a discussion of the implications of this new medium, from a Valley perspective. It’s almost impossible to overstate the long-term impact of the Valley and other technology centers on this craft and business. We in the traditional media worry that the Net is irrevocably eroding our business model, and it may well do that. We worry about Net ethical and accuracy standards, which often seem to be lacking. Then we look at the bright side, and note our wider access to information and sources, and the benefits of closer contact with our readers (listeners/viewer/etc.). All are part of this emerging mix.

But we are just one more business looking at the Net and wondering about something even more scary — whether we are all going to have to live on Internet Time for the rest of our lives, and whether our kids and grandkids will, too. We may have no choice, but it’s not all that attractive a prospect.

Internet Time is an adrenaline rush, no doubt. But I fear for a culture where the need for speed all but kills the opportunity for reflection. And I loathe the Valley’s popular saying that paranoia is a requirement for survival. It may be true, but paranoia is not an admirable trait. It’s a sickness. What should I be telling these students?

And what can they tell me? I’m expecting to learn from them, from the questions they ask and the after-class talks I hope we’ll have. When I talk about paranoia in business — including the journalism business — I have to keep in mind that my context is somewhat provincial.

I’m an American. I grew up with a First Amendment, in a nation where threats to journalists pale next to the things reporters and editors face elsewhere. I recall that a little over a decade ago I spent an academic year on a fellowship with about a dozen other journalists from around the U.S. and the world. One of our group was from the Philippines. He was assassinated after he returned home, apparently in retaliation for something he’d written.

Thursday, Oct. 28 –

When a study is financed by a company that stands to benefit if the results turn out a certain way, you have a right to be cautious in trusting the numbers. That’s the case with an optimistic analysis from the Center for Research on Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas.

Cisco Systems, which paid for the study and released the results, is getting good public-relations value for its efforts. The study’s predictions may prove accurate, but when the predictions are as specific as these — that e-commerce revenues will total $507 billion this year, up 67 percent from 1998 — you’re in grain-of-salt territory.

The Texas study looks a lot better than much of what passes for “research” about cyber-topics these days, actually. Remember the notorious Internet pornography “study” that suckered Time Magazine into a stupid cover story several years ago? Or those ridiculous cyber-addiction warnings?

Don’t be cynical. Just ask the obvious questions.

On the Ground

It’s Thursday morning in Hong Kong. I’ve had a good night’s sleep and am in the office I’ll be using for the next month at Hong Kong University.

Ying Chan is the dynamo behind the program in which I’ll be a visiting lecturer. She and her staff here have already made me feel at home. Now I have to figure out what I’m going to say to the students. (Only kidding, Ying…)

On the Plane

Tuesday, October 26 –

It’s a long ride to Hong Kong — more than 14 occasionally bumpy hours by 747 from San Francisco.

But look who’s also aboard: Kara Swisher, the excellent Internet reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and Megan Smith, CEO of PlanetOut. Kara’s speaking tomorrow at a conference in Hong Kong, after which she and Megan are heading off to Thailand for some R&R. We’re meeting for dinner in Hong Kong next week on their way back to the U.S.

Welcome to my weblog. What follows is a digested version of my column for Tuesday, October 26, 1999, in which I explain why we’re doing this and how I hope it’ll evolve.

Why? I’ve been thinking about the new ways of journalism, namely the ways the Internet is imposing on all of us. Internet Time has compressed the lives of all kinds of people in all kinds of businesses, and journalism is no exception. In fact, it may be one of the businesses most affected in the long run, both in the opportunities the Net creates and the threat it represents.

So I’m trying one of those new forms. It’s called a “weblog” — and it’s a combination of styles that could exist only on the Web. Text, pictures, hyperlinks and, soon, audio and video are all part of this new form, and I can’t wait to start experimenting with it.

We’re launching at an interesting time for me personally. I’m about to leave for Asia. For the next month I’ll be teaching part-time at Hong Kong University and reporting on technology around the region. During this time the Weblog will be my primary locus of operations, not the newspaper, though readers of the San Jose Mercury News will still find my column on its pages, if somewhat less frequently.

Let me know how you like it. Better, let me know how I can improve it.

Why Weblogs Matter

Anyone who’s become a fan of the weblog genre already knows why they matter. But those of you who haven’t seen this form of Web publishing are in for a treat.

Why do I like weblogs? Because the best ones are windows into the Web, various topics and people’s minds. Rather than trying to describe the form, let me show you several of the weblogs I look at daily (or even more frequently):

Good Morning, Silicon Valley was an early entrant in the weblog era. Patricia Sullivan, an online editor at the San Jose Mercury News’ SiliconValley.com site, has been the first line of knowledge for thousands of people each weekday morning as she puts together an easy-to-follow and comprehensive digest of the tech news. (Bummer: Pat’s taking her terrific talents to another publication. We will miss her — a lot.) Also at SiliconValley.com is our very own Minister of Information, John Murrell.

Scripting News is run by Dave Winer, a software developer, and you’ll see how the site reflects his interests. Dave uses software from his own company, UserLand, to put together his weblog, and we’re using the same software for mine.

Slashdot calls itself “News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters,” and if you’re into technology this has been a great place to find all sorts of interesting material. The most important part of Slashdot’s site is the discussions, because by the time you read through the comments you will have heard many sides of important issues.

Tomalak’s Realm has become a must-read site for anyone who cares about the future of online content. Lawrence Lee is the man behind the realm, and he gets high marks for design and style. Notice the indented links, which go to prior stories that provide context for the current news. Terrific stuff.

Media Gossip, by Jim Romenesko, now of the Poynter Institute, is equally a must-read for journalists. See for yourself…

Privacy? Sure

If you didn’t need another reason to mistrust Congress and the White House, look at the financial services bill now emerging from negotiations in which consumer privacy was hardly on anyone’s mind. The shamelessness of the political process these days, where big-money “contributors” get everything they want, is what drives ordinarily sane voters into the arms of Pat Buchanan and his isolationist, backward-looking, even racist ilk.

Can This Thing Actually Fly?

Stand under a Boeing 747-400 and you wonder how it could possibly get off the ground. This one is about to take me and several hundred other souls to Hong Kong.

The point of this exercise is to test the Manila software’s picture-posting capabilities. Handy tool.