Technology

'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros

March 20, 2002

React

About that cable Internet conversion...
Former @home customers might have spared themselves a lot of trouble by ignoring the CD that arrived in the Cox ("Happy Meal" box) conversion kit. We were just changing ISPs again, as many of us have so many times before. Once you changed your email address and password on the Cox site, all that remained was to change the mail and news server names in your browser's preferences/options. Why didn't Cox tell us that, asks nearly everyone I've mentioned this to.

Worldview 2001
World Press Photos of the Year for 2001. Top prize went to Erik Refner of Denmark, for a photo captioned The Body of an Afghan Refugee Boy Is Prepared for Burial, Pakistan, June. Some famous photos from Sept. 11 were also honored and the subcategory winners are also worth exploring.

R.I.P. John Champlin
Lori-Ann D'Antonio was one of the first women I ever met online, back in the Rhode Island computer bulletin boards in 1990. She met John Champlin and married him in 1992. John died suddenly last week of a virulent strep A infection, a sore on his leg that turned quickly deadly. Here's his obit and funeral arrangements. Our thoughts are with his widow and family.

AP Snow on the first day of spring in Rhode Island.

Cuba libre
There's no agreement over travel to Cuba right now. In July, the House voted 232-186 to stop enforcing rules that limit the ability of Americans to travel to Cuba, but the provision was dropped from a Treasury funding bill in October. Last week, the Associated Press reported, "Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says that if Bush administration policy would let him, he would cut back on tracking down and fining United States citizens who travel to Cuba." CubaWeb is ready for us, whenever we get there.

Tempers run high on this one. CNN ran a piece on how to go there, outraging the Miami Herald TV critic, Glenn Garvin, who threatens to show you how to break the law by stealing satellite TV.

His claim that this was the first time a news organization outright told you how to go to Cuba and not get caught raised my eyebrow: Over the years I've read several first-person travelogues that started in Toronto and casually advised bringing only cash, so as not to leave a paper trail. It's not illegal to go to Cuba, just to spend money there, but some groups are exempt.

I went looking for one of those travel stories online, and ran into a pile of tales. One, in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, recounts a retired schoolteacher and a Go player blithely telling customs agents they'd just come from Cuba, unaware it was illegal -- and that they were about to  pay Uncle Sam a $7,500 fine for the pleasure.

But what really caught me was Garvin writing, "I wish somebody from CNN's news side would have talked to me  because there's something I would have liked to ask: What is it about Cuba that makes TV newsmen go soft in the head?" -- nobody wants to go to North Korea.

(The frequent arts festivals,  music and nightlife, friendly people, architecture, the beaches, the cigars, the lack of tourists and schlock, the Ernest Hemingway International Marlin Fishing Tournament, perhaps, Glenn? Here's a report from a writer who went there legally.)

There's a loophole that would have saved the schoolteacher and the Go player some bucks: Those charged have a right to a hearing, and, the Associated Press reported on Dec. 16, 2001, "Nine years after Congress granted the right to civil hearings for anyone accused of violating the Cuba travel ban, no judges have been hired and no hearings have been held." The backlog on hearings -- some cases are from '95 -- is getting long, since the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces embargoes, is now also investigating terrorists' assets.

No fines yet for those whose travel advice extended through getting caught, including Ben Treuhaft (interview) who's the son of author Jessica Mitford (The American Way of Death). The National Lawyers Guild writes, "Treuhaft said he wants a hearing so he can take a stand against the embargo.  The New York City man has helped send more than 100 pianos to Cuba through his ``Send a Piana to Havana'' campaign. He has held several licenses allowing him to visit Cuba, but didn't have one in 1994, when he got caught.  He faces a $10,000 fine. He is accused of illegally donating piano supplies, spending money in Cuba and accepting pay for tuning pianos. Treuhaft mocks the accusations, saying the United States is trying to bring Cuba to its knees by making Cubans listen to out-of-tune pianos."

Treuhaft's sendapiana.com documents the effort.

The worst instructions: The contest for the worst technical manual is over, and the results are in.

Report from the old world: Leave it to BBC radio to let Britons smash a national symbol when life gets too much. The Architectural Heaven & Hell buildings game permits virtual demolition of Heathrow Airport, Buckingham Palace and two shopping centres -- your choice -- with a crane and wrecking ball. You have 90 seconds. Jolly fun.

$$$: U.K.'s Guardian Unlimited reported last week that "The Enron scandal has forced a spotlight on the gross disparities in America between the earnings of top executives and their workers" and quotes AFL-CIO figures that, "By 2000, chief executives were earning $531 for every dollar taken home by a typical worker." At the AFL-CIO website you can personalize that figure. At the Executive Paywatch page, "Click on a company name to find the CEO's total compensation and to see how it compares to your and other workers' earnings."

Slow night on the news desk: Every desk editor who's ever cruised the international wires knows this story. A bus, usually in India or Pakistan, overcrowded with pilgrims, chickens and mangoes, misses a mountain curve and plunges into a gorge, killing dozens. Sometimes the driver is drunk, the bus is always overloaded, and it always plunges. It never topples, teeters or merely falls. It plunges. Go there: BusPlunge.org.

GoogleArt: The search engine's homepage logo changes: Here's the gallery and the one-man art department behind the whimsy.

Fudge it: The Drudge Report grew from a twinkle in Matt Drudge's monitor into a right-leaning links, gossip and leaks site that serious journalists love to hate -- then it spawned a slew of imitators: Drudge Retort (which cleverly grabbed the drudge.com domain) is what Matt Drudge might consider his page's evil twin: Same format, but all links tilt left. The Smudge Report does its parody in upper case, with a freewheeling lack of restraint. What they all have in common are great links to columnists and to their favorite sites. They're all portals to different ideological subworlds. The Mudge Report is the ringer here -- it's just a one-page parody by American Politics Journal. And two spinoffs call themselves The Sludge Report. The first, at sludgeport.org, bills itself as "ALL THE POLITICAL NEWS THAT'S UNFIT TO PRINT!" and its slender links are pure satire. There's another, one-page Sludge Report, that's a bit of an outdated ramble but shares Drudge's contempt for all things Clinton. Yet another Sludge Report is at sludge.com, but it shuns political fun and takes its self-appointed task seriously: fighting denial of insurance benefits for those who use chiropractors.

Knockoff recipes: Want to make Big Macs at home? How about following along with TV's Iron Chef competitors? Reverse-engineered Iron Chef recipes are just the tip of the sub-net of recipes. The big deal is "copycat recipes" for favorite restaurant and grocery store items.

You'll find McDonald's Copycat Big Mac sauce and Olive Garden Breadsticks at PastryWiz's Copycat site.

Secret Recipes by Gloria Pitzer offers to let you make "White Tassel" Burgers Like White Castle's, and "Recess" Peanut Butter Cups Like Reese's.

Gutsy's Original Recipes And Secret Recipes site plays the X-Files theme while you browse copycat recipes for Orange Julius, Benihana and Olive Garden salad dressings mixed with "Buzz's originals" -- Triscuit Tiramisu and Bleu Eye Apple Pie -- and a collection of recipes with no source noted. Each recipe comes with its own theme music in midi format. Braised lamb shanks gets Armenian folk music. Amazing.

CopyKat Recipes says their recipes will replicate Boston Market Creamed Spinach; Bisquick Mix Substitute; Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake; Durgin Park Indian Pudding; Hershey's Chocolate Syrup and Keebler Pecan Sandies.

Top Secret Recipes, a trademark-aware site, goes with Girl Scout Cookies® Thin Mints, Nabisco® Cheese Nips®, Nabisco® Nilla Wafers® and Nabisco® Old Fashioned Ginger Snaps, among others.

Recipe Source Copycat Recipes offers subcategories for candy, McDonald's, Wendy's, Olive Garden and Kentucky Fried Chicken foods, as well as a single page listing all 270 copycat recipes.

TasteAlikes.com Top 10 boasts a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts clone recipe.

The Malad, Idaho, recipe index is chock full: Baby Ruth Bars, Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia Ice Cream, Bisquick and much more -- quite a community resource.

There are 222 copycat recipes among the 32,492 recipes currently available at HungryMonster.com

Life after death: Want a Janis Joplin action figure?

March 21, 2002
Free new Young: You can hear Neil Young's new CD Are You Passionate? (due in stores April 9) in its entirety at neilyoung.com in a popup window or on this standalone page. There's also a live video of one track, Goin' Home, recorded at the Montreaux Jazz Fest, in Windows Media format.

Grass-roots democracy in the comfort of your own home: Protest is alive and well at www.PetitionOnline.com, an equal-opportunity soapbox. You can sign a petition or create your own. From high ideals to personal grudges, they're all here. The alphabetical index of active petitions (a large file) offers a glimpse into what the world cares about. Don't be put off by the foreign scripts at the top of the list. There are only about a dozen before the language turns to English. Among the current causes: Declare Sept. 11 a national holiday, start an All New Mickey Mouse Club and a petition to the president of Nigeria, "We urge you to pardon Safiya Husseini Tungar-Tudu, who has been sentenced to death by stoning for bearing a child without being married."

Jay (The Greatest) Gatsby : The current issue of Book magazine publishes a list of The 100 Best Characters In Fiction Since 1900, determined by a panel listed at its site. The website publishes only the Top 10 picks, hoping you'll buy the magazine to see the rest, but the cat is out of the bag: Sites as diverse as NPR and the Wakefield, Mass., public library have liberated the full list. The protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby tops it.

March 22, 2002

AP Photos
TYPE ON WOOD: A full-size, fully functional virtual keyboard that projects onto any surface debuted this week at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover, Germany. The virtual interface from Israel's Developer VKB Inc. can be integrated into mobile phones and laptops or used in sterile medical environments. The mini-projector, right, that detects the "typing" also simulates a mousepad.

The fight for the future: "A key senator (Sen. Ernest F. Hollings [D-S.C.], chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee) introduced legislation yesterday that would turn electronics manufacturers and software developers into copyright police." -- today's Washington Post. The battle has begun. West Warwick native Walter Mossberg (1998 profile), the Wall Street Journal's tech columnist, previewed the contenders earlier this month: DigitalConsumer Takes Up the Fight Against Copyright Plans in Congress. (Digitalconsumer.org was launched last year by Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, two of the co-founders of the Internet portal Excite.) Much more to come on this one...

Way beyond Who: Bill M. from Rumford was listening to the Neil Young tunes below as he wrote to offer a link to a Pete Townshend site. "Here he has semi-regular diary entries and loads of mp3 and other media files which are excerpts from live concerts, unreleased songs or just random rehearsals." Here's Townshend's streaming/downloads page.

Cookie diplomacy: AP reports Britain's Prince Charles plans to use organic cocoa grown by farmers in Guyana for his own line of chocolate biscuits.

Wal-Mart Declines To Free Woman Trapped By Newspaper Machine: "According to a 73-year-old Geneseo (Illinois) woman, employees at the Geneseo Wal-Mart store apparently felt that 50 cents was too high a price to pay after she became stuck in a Dispatch/Argus vending machine Wednesday evening in front of their store." (Dispatch/Argus via Editor & Publisher)

Check out the debut of my colleague Dave McPherson's NetRunner weblog.