The BillBlog

Roy Greenslade notes the debate prompted by The Economist’s attempt to understand what is happening in the newspaper world, and refers to a piece on Today earlier this week:

Here is the response to The Economist by two editors: Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian and Simon Kelner of The Independent, talking on this morning’s Today programme. Rusbridger agreed that not all newspapers would survive because “there is a disaggregation of advertising from editorial… a fragmentation of audience… competition from free sheets.” He did, however, have faith that revenue could be earned online. Kelner does not accept that papers will die, but to survive they must innovate. As for income, he believes cover prices must increase to compensate for the falling take from advertising. (Via BBC Radio 4)

Rusbridger and Kelner on The Economist from Greenslade

Kelner’s Independent has always had an appalling attitude to the Web, and it’s not surprising that he continues to believe that papers can survive since that is the only world he knows. And I have said for many years that the dead tree editions will be reserved for the wealthy, willing to pay vast amounts to have a printed newspaper instead of one on digital paper.  I can’t claim credit for the insight, though – I got it from  Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, published in 1995 and read by me when I was right in the middle of my time at The Guardian’s New Media Lab.

Blogged with Flock

Some of us read the papers, others walk the dog. But for a true geek, Sunday is just the day for installs and configuration.

I, like many millions of others, have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router at home. Generally, it’s been fine, but recently I’ve found myself having to reset it every few days when connectivity just seems to go away. Updating the firmware from the Linksys site didn’t help.So today I took the plunge and installed one of the free alternative firmware distributions available: DD-WRT.

Status-Q » Blog Archive » Taking the plunge and flashing

And in case I should be seen to be less than sympathetic to Quentin, I must confess that I spent the morning finding an AAC player for my iPaq so that I can listen to music from my iTunes library without having to convert files…

[Later – I’ve just upgraded two WordPress installations from 2.02 to 2.04 while having coffee and cake.]

Blogged with Flock

I do a fair bit of freelance work for the BBC, so I’m often in Bush House and other buildings. While there I sometimes spot things of interest, such as a display case containing Alistair Cooke’s typewriter.

And, this being the digital age, I take photos of the things I see and post them to Flickr.

Well it seems the BBC, dedicated though it is to the provision of information to the world and having ‘nation speaking peace unto nation’, is rather less happy about people seeing what goes on inside its buildings. There is, I’ve been told – only eight months after the event – a general prohibition on taking photos inside or of any BBC building without written permission from facilities management or whatever they call the people who look after the buildings.

This doesn’t seem to have inhibited the BBC Pool on Flickr or stopped some important people posting cameraphone photos –  but I’ve been asked by the man who organised displays to take down my pics of the Cooke typewriter and, since he arranged the display, I have done so.