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Dear Internet friends,

I think you’re swell.

But please cease and desist pumping every single Twitter update, Flickr photo, blog entry, comment on your blog entries, YouTube video posting, comment on other people’s blog entries you made, Delicious link, comment someone made on a post you made 3 years ago about some web service that doesn’t exist anymore, rss feed, and live streaming video update on what you are currently eating/drinking into every single social media tool on the planet that we are linked with.

Feed your Twitter updates into Facebook; everyone does that. But for the sake of humanity — end it there.

There’s this fantastic thing called FriendFeed that you can dump your whole life stream of links into and we can be friends there. I can marvel at all the fantastic things you do/eat/drink there.

Or if you must turn a fire hose on innocent bystanders, follow Kottke’s advice and offer a ‘real friends’ profile and a ‘fire hose/marketing/spam’ profile. I’ll take the former.

Please stop spamming me or we’re not going to be friends anymore.

Thanks,
Will

 The Associated Press’ youth-y multimedia wire, “asap” is getting killed off by October.

I’ve written 3 drafts of this post and I’m still not happy with any of them.

Each had the same theme–I’m pretty disappointed asap is getting the axe so young, without much restructuring, revamping or experimentation beyond it’s original format. And it’s not because I whole heartedly endorsed everything asap did–I definitely read some of the articles and cringed. But part of it was an experiment because everyone knows, the kids just aren’t reading traditional media at a rate that will replace their dying parents and grandparents.

Squaredster might have said it best:

“asap did video. It did blogs. It did some good content that was of interest to the demo. It wasn’t entirely like Lawrence Welk at a rap concert, to borrow a line from Jon Katz. But I can’t imagine anyone was able to make a go of a new print section (one of the touted beauties of the initiative) based on it. Or saw traction on a standalone site or section hanging off  a newspaper.com. It wound up helping to change AP’s content-gathering culture a little bit, I’d guess. Good! And now will live on in providing at least some content that moves the basic AP stream a few millimeters closer to relevance to a younger audience.”

I hope and assume the AP will fold in some of the alternative story forms that asap used into their outfit, as well as diverse voices and tone of their content. And I really hope we figure out a way to get youth interested in news and that we realize some of this research, testing and development takes time.  … Something that we don’t have much of, unfortunately.

Full Disclosure: A friend of mine, Hillary Rhodes, is a writer for asap and was also the original editor for Your Mom, another innovative youth project that ended up dying earlier than it should have. Hillary was part of the group at Medill (with me) that researched, prototyped, designed and proposed the youth site/product to Lee Enterprises and the Quad City Times.

Goodbye to the music industry
“So, why do I say goodbye to the music industry? Because how do kids find out about new music? On the Internet. Where on the Internet? Radio stations. Well, when they aren’t stealing music or borrowing their friends iPods that is.” More info. Given this disappointing news about internet radio, now check out this article on libraries:

If Public Libraries Didn’t Exist, Could You Start One Today?
“I am guessing there would be a huge pushback from book publishers. Given the current state of debate about intellectual property, can you imagine modern publishers being willing to sell one copy of a book and then have the owner let an unlimited number of strangers borrow it? I don’t think so. Perhaps they’d come up with a licensing agreement: the book costs $20 to own, with an additional $2 per year for every year beyond Year 1 it’s in circulation. I’m sure there would be a lot of other potential arrangements.”

Audio: Ted Stevens Wants To Switch Between Phones “As I Ride My Motorcycle”
I’m not sure if this is very funny or very sad. Perhaps both.

FCC Auction Should Allow for Open Wireless Network, Say Lawmakers
Finally, some positive news in telecom regulation! “This issue of open access lies at the center of the debate about rules that will govern the spectrum auction, which are expected to be released this month. FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin has proposed setting aside one-third of the spectrum for an open network that would work with any cellphone.”

Study: Most US Teens, Young Adults Don’t Follow The News Closely
“Harvard University has released a study that concludes that 60 percent of American teenagers pay little attention to daily news, Reuters reports.”

’10 That Do It Right’ No. 3: ‘The Onion’
“…the success of the Onion, the weekly mix of outright fake news, commentary, and real arts-and-entertainment coverage, is far from a joke. Promoting itself as “America’s Finest News Source,” the witty chronicle has grown from a small student publication at the University of Wisconsin to a major circulation and advertising powerhouse, equipped with a formidable, user-friendly Web site with all of the modern online offerings of any 21st- century newspaper.” The ‘Noke is on the ’10 That Do It Right’ list too!

Zillow expands into hyperlocal news
Oh-oh.

Suggestions for “scared” TV news sites
“I remember my days in the newsroom. Unless a viewer wrote a letter to management, most complaints went in one ear and out the other. Viewers were good for only two things: ratings and story ideas. The latter only if we wanted to listen.” Dude, TV people really are like that? I thought it was just an urban legend. Anyway, Angela has good stuff here for TV (or) newspaper sites to build audiences.

Using the Internet to Find Stories
“In a digital age, let’s expand upon that theory – let’s create Digital Listening Posts.” Great tips for reporters to get wired sources.

The Original (and Future?) Facebook
“The basic lesson is one I’ve said before, but probably is worth repeating: we collect a ton of information and only think about how it will help shape a smallish blob of text in tomorrow’s paper. And then we forget about it and move on. Now here’s the ironic bit. If you think about it, newspaper wedding announcements and obituaries (in particular) are the original social networking application: people volunteer or even pay to have these announcements printed, they hand over personal information that could be quite interesting or relevant in other situations and they really, really like to see those announcements in the paper.”

About our redesign — South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
The Sun-Sentinel joins the Orlando Sentinel in rolling out Tribune Corporate’s new “Gen3″ cms and layout template.

MySpace – Still The King (for now)
“I can imagine that all the Facebook hype is a little annoying to MySpace – which is still the largest site on the Internet. That may be some of the motivation behind the press release going out Thursday morning saying, effectively, that they are still the King of Social Networking.”

Sigbritt, 75, has world’s fastest broadband
“A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books – with the world’s fastest internet connection.” (via Digg) Hm… 40 gb, eh? I wonder if there’s a ‘Mr.’ Löthberg.

News-Gazette Launches Harry Potter Niche Site
I’m sorry, I don’t ‘get’ Harry Potter but I’m sure there are people who don’t ‘get’ Star Wars. I applaud this niche site effort.

What j-students need
“… You’re absolutely out of your mind.” These are awesome.

House Passes College Cost Reduction
“House Passes Single Largest Effort to Help Students Pay for College since GI Bill Bill Would Boost Scholarships and Reduce Student Loan Costs at No New Taxpayer Expense WASHINGTON, D.C. – By an overwhelming vote of 273 to 149…”

OMG — My Boss Wants To Be My ‘Friend’ Online
“But when his boss, in his 30s, invited Mr. Dyer, 24 years old, to be friends on the social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook, dodging wasn’t so easy. On the one hand, accepting a person’s request to be friends online grants them access to the kind of intimacy never meant for office consumption, such as recent photos of keggers and jibes from friends. (‘Still wearing that lampshade?’)” Note to self: Remove last weekend’s streaking photos from MySpace.

Medill – Great Storytelling in Visual Formats at Robb Montgomery
“Next month we’ll be gathering along Lake Michigan for a presentation and coaching in visual journalism at the annual meeting Alternative Journalism Workshop of Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.” All you Chicago readers should get to this.

YouTube – Michael Moore vs. Sonjay Gupta
My question is answered: The broadcast media does make corrections!

‘The Washington Post’s’ 10 Web Principles
“As the struggle between print and online journalism continues, at least one newspaper, The Washington Post, has issued a memo to staffers that hopes to iron out any misunderstandings between the two departments.”

Do newspapers need to be innovators?
“Why am I not seeing tons of slide shows — whether they be Flash or Ajax — every day? Photographers take countless good photos everyday, and my research indicates that people love photos — way more than they love video. And why aren’t photos searchable on sites? Every photos should be tagged extensively. If I go to www.washingtonpost.com, I should be able to easily find photos of President Bush in Iraq on a certain date for a certain event. I can’t. I want multimedia content tagged like crazy and searchable. It’s possible. Technology companies built the technology, now newspapers need to embrace it. None of what I am talking about is being a pioneer. It’s just being forward thinking.”

Rolling Stone Breaks Climate News! Well, sort of …
“Dickinson’s article, headlined, “Six Years of Deceit,” follows up on six years’ worth of media investigations that have used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and government whistleblowers to expose a deliberate White House campaign to cast aspersions on climate science and the threat of global warming. Dickinson brings some new information to light – including evidence that Karl Rove “vetted” spurious edits to government science reports – but a lot of his piece is elaboration on the previous investigations.”

The BBC should do less online video, says interactivity head
“‘Instead of putting up hundreds of pieces of video every week, is just to be more focused. We want to give them a higher profile so we can get to the point where we can embed them. Once we are doing that, I don’t think we can afford to disappoint the audience. That’s not to say that stuff is badly made, it may just not necessarily complement the text that we have written and it may not just suit the platform that it’s on.’ Video embedded into stories, he added, was proving to be popular with audiences in early experiments, as they tended to dispense with the traditional news format, instead just showing the footage necessary to enhance the text story sitting beneath the embedded player.

The Newspaper of the Future, Just Like your Library
“The main point: Just because they aren’t employing as many people doesn’t mean newspapers in the future will have to suck. ‘The connection between quality and head count would seem intuitive, but a dip into the microfilm archives of the New York Times and Washington Post shows that decent newspapers have been produced with far fewer hands.’”

‘Shake-up: Old Media Meets New Realities at the AJC
The newsroom population is only part of the picture. With daily newspaper circulation in a slow-motion plunge across the country, the AJC is struggling to transform itself from a lumbering print-media dinosaur into a nimble multiplatform information provider able to reach customers in print, online, by mobile download – however future generations will get their news.”

NPPA Multimedia Summit Video
Jim “Celda” rocks! As does Jim Seida.

World’s fastest camera shows how things break apart
“With the ability to take pictures at a speed of 200 million frames per second, Arun Shukla’s high-speed camera can make even the fastest moving objects look like they are standing still. In an effort to assist the military and a variety of industries, he is using this one-of-a-kind technology to study how things break apart.” (via digg)

Quiet structure for online news design
“While I believe that a few structural and hierarchical elements could have been addressed better, the overall result of this redesign is a very neat, very clean and clear presentation of information; exactly what an online news site needs.”

CJR: Damage Report
“Most of the two hundred journalists who left The Dallas Morning News landed on their feet. Those who stayed are not so sure.” (via Romenesko)

St. Pete Times prints ad blaming gay people for hurricane
“The ad reportedly implied God sent Hurricane Katrina to wipe out gay-friendly New Orleans. And because St. Pete hosts one of Florida’s largest gay pride festivals, guess which city the pastor who printed this ad predicts is the next to feel God’s wrath?”

BackFence Shuts Down
“The ambitious site raised an initial round of $3 million, but never had high penetration in its communities, or sold enough Yellow Pages listings or banner ads to be optimistic about its future.”

Optimus Prime is Refused Service at McDonalds, Shows Mercy to Feeble Humans
“Apparently it’s against the law to order a fajita as Optimus Prime.”

Mozilla releases Firefox 3 Alpha 6
Woot.

Ability to Pull All-Nighters Can Be as Useful as B.A.
“Keg stands” = “Able to work in difficult positions”

Groovy dancing girl – Daft Punk inspires daft dance – on Bore Me
Here comes the weekend! Have a great one.