gdp's Comments

Chicken Feet & Clam Chowdah : Takoyaki: Street-Food Delight Comes Home

Tue, 4 Nov 2014 02:55:24 +0000

Hi Allison. We got the pan from Amazon. Just search the site for "takoyaki pan".

Matters of Varying Insignificance : A New Project: Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast

Tue, 3 Jun 2014 01:48:00 +0000

Hi SGH. Thanks so much for listening! Yes, you can borrow the image. I would just request that you add a photo caption attributing the image and linking to the podcast website.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Chromecast Review: Exceeding Expectations After 60 Minutes

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 02:07:36 +0000

Some Youku streams have the regional restriction while others don't. I just play the ones that don't.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Chromecast Review: Exceeding Expectations After 60 Minutes

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 16:10:25 +0000

Exactly. Alternatively, in Chrome, right-click on the pop-up player window, and there is an option to "Show page as tab". That'll turn the pop-out window into a tab. Then you just expand the player to full-screen.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Chromecast Review: Exceeding Expectations After 60 Minutes

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 01:40:47 +0000

Thanks Steven. Sure, go ahead and link to the post. As for your question, I have no idea what Google is going to do as far as local streaming goes.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Designers Should Code; So Should Other Communications Professionals

Tue, 6 Aug 2013 19:01:31 +0000

Hi Wayne. Thanks for reading and commenting. No, don't disagree with the call for UX professionals to become proficient in product management and business strategy if that's a path they're interested in. But I am curious: Would a designer worrying about, say, business-strategy concerns face similar potential conflicts of interest as a designer worrying about implementation challenges?

Matters of Varying Insignificance : My Theory: The Paywall Fight Isn't About Paywalls

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 01:03:24 +0000

Thanks for the links, Steve. Those are ideas worth exploring. Hey, did we just have a debate about paywalls without it turning into a religious war?

Matters of Varying Insignificance : My Theory: The Paywall Fight Isn't About Paywalls

Thu, 6 Dec 2012 21:09:59 +0000

Thanks Steve, and no apology, partial or otherwise, is necessary. The resources, attention, and priority for implementing paywalls are indeed big factors, which is why I say paywalls should be "evaluated" (as opposed to just implemented b/c it worked for this other guy) as a potential revenue stream like all other potential revenue streams. Every strategy takes resources away from another, so let's evaluate them all on their own merits, pick a mix, and adjust it as things progress. Paywalls may not be right for many, if not most, papers, just as, say, a newsroom cafe may not be right for many papers (e.g., their audience may be more McCafe than Starbucks). You asked: "Can you cite one example, just one, of a newspaper company pouring similar resources, attention and priority into development of a revenue source that's not ads or subs?" How about yours? :) Seriously, while I can point to projects here and there, no, I can't name a single newspaper company that's spending as much on a revenue source other than ads and subs. But those two are, after all, the two biggest digital revenue sources for media, newspapers or otherwise. So the fact that investment in non-ad, no-sub revenue streams has been limited is not surprising. Is it bad? I definitely think there needs to be more investment in this area, but how much more depends on how much potential revenue there is in those alternative sources. So the NYT (reportedly) spends $40 million to make/save $100 million (or whatever the real number is). To say whether that money would've been better spent on developing non-ad, non-sub revenue sources, we need to know whether there is $60 million of potential non-ad, non-sub revenue out there to be had. And I'm not qualified to say whether there is or not. Got any resources/research on that kind of info? (NOTE, edited to clean up typo).

Matters of Varying Insignificance : My Theory: The Paywall Fight Isn't About Paywalls

Thu, 6 Dec 2012 16:35:25 +0000

Thanks for stopping by, Steve. I did read your piece, and I agree with a lot of it. I thought CJR's declaration that the paywall issue is settled was silly and likely a hyperbole to stir up strong reactions (which it did). You're absolutely right in your post that paywalls will be subject to disruption, even if they work. BUT, name one successful business strategy that isn't subject to disruption. To me, that's not an argument to not do something. It's an argument to remain constantly vigilant, and I don't see a paywall as inherently counter to that. Maybe that's the main divergence in our opinions. You're right that nothing the NYT does can be reasonably extrapolated to most other newspapers. I've always thought the same thing as well. But also consider that the mantra in the months leading up to the Times' metered system was "It won't work." Now, the mantra is "Fine, it seems like it may be working, but it won't work for anybody else." What will we be chanting next year? What I draw from it is that in the end, you just have to try something (with an informed strategy) to see if'd work. Clay Shirky did say this is the time for experiments, no? You say you won't call the NYT paywall a success until its business starts growing rather than cutting. Fine. I have no problem with that. All I ask is that media doers and observers apply that same standard in assessing all strategies, including the so-called "forward-looking" ones. From what I've seen, that's not happening, or at least not enough. Finally, I'll pose the same question to you as I posed to Mathew Ingram: I'd like to see examples of paywalls killing off innovation, where a newspaper was innovating before, then put in a paywall, and has lost the will to try other things. I'm not aware of any examples, which is why I think papers that put in a paywall and think they're done innovating weren't innovating to begin with, so there's no innovation to kill off there. But if you show me some good examples, I'll say something I haven't seen anybody else in this discussion say: I was wrong about that.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : How to (Voluntarily) Become an Ex-Journalist, Part 6

Wed, 3 Oct 2012 02:10:07 +0000

Thanks for reading and commenting. As I said in the "Do These Tips Work?" section of the main page for this series (http://www.john-zhu.com/blog/how-to-voluntarily-become-an-ex-journalist/), all I can say is that these strategies worked for me in my job searches. I freely admit that everyone's situation is different and that I had certain advantages (such as being relatively young at the time when I got out of the journalism biz) that others may not have.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : How to (Voluntarily) Become an Ex-Journalist

Wed, 3 Oct 2012 02:07:12 +0000

Your post smacks a bit of trolling, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and reply as if you aren't: I'm not sure what more a job-seeker-advice site can do to help someone who's looking for a job, short of actually writing their applications for them. Heck, in fact, I've even been contacted by some people who've read some of these posts and asked me if I would be willing to look at their resume and offer any suggestions, and I've agreed to every one of those requests, asking for nothing in return just because it feels good to try to help someone. As for the "journalists are unemployable" comment, I firmly disagree with that. I think journalists have a lot of desirable skills that transfer well into other communication professions. The key is identifying those skills and finding jobs where they can put those to use. Of course, finding jobs, for anybody, the past few years has been tough.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Samantha Brown Should Be Banned from Traveling Abroad

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 04:04:24 +0000

Lily, thanks for reading and commenting. Yes, I generally agree with the "different strokes for different folks" stance. However, I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying, and definitely mischaracterizing me as a "seasoned dare devil, live on the edge" traveler or a "Grizzly Adams character". True backpacking or camping trips I've gone on, at home or abroad: ZERO. Here's the thing: You don't need to be living on one or the other extreme of this spectrum. It's not an either-or proposition where if you're not a Grizzly Adams character then you have to stay only in the tourist-only locales. Quick example: We went to England last year. A lot of what we did were tourist attractions (and you'll note in my post above that I said touristy is fine). But we also took some time out to do a few things not necessarily on the tourist agenda. One of them was a day-trip to Dorking, a little town an hour's train ride outside London that's not exactly on everyone's itinerary. And that turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip as we caught some glimpses of life in a real town, not just the Starbuckses and GAPs around Picadilly Circus (which we also visited). Did that little day trip require us to rough it? Did it require us to be daredevils? Absolutely not. All we had to do was look away from the typical tourist itinerary for a little while. Example 2: When we visited China three years ago, about half the trip was spent with a big group tour that did all the typical touristy things, which, again, was fine and pretty interesting. However, we also had a nice experience one night when we left the hotel and walked around downtown Hangzhou for a couple hours. We didn't venture down any dark alleys or seedy establishments, just walking down the street with a few hundred thousand other people. We rummaged through the English section of a Chinese bookstore and got a kick out of some of the titles there. We got an even bigger laugh when we went into an underground bazaar with a bunch of stalls, and the "foreigner in the vicinity" alarm went off as the vendors all immediately started shouting good-naturedly to my wife, who is American, trying to get her to buy their stuff. Again, nothing requiring daredevil or putting one's self at risk; just veering a little bit off the beaten path. And on the subject of travel shows catering to unseasoned travelers, I'm streaming Rick Steves' Europe on Hulu right now, and it struck me how much more informative and helpful that show is than Samantha's Europe series. Imagine that: A show where the host actually gives you tips on how to save a few bucks and a bit of history lesson instead of going, "Check out the $500-a-night room I'm staying in." What Samantha is catering to, more accurately, is RICH, unseasoned travelers.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Samantha Brown Should Be Banned from Traveling Abroad

Wed, 7 Sep 2011 16:17:34 +0000

Sherron, thanks for reading and commenting. My idea of a good travel show is something that gives me a sense of the place and the culture that lies beyond the carefully marked tourist districts, bars, and shopping zones. A shopping district in Shanghai is eerily similar to a shopping district in London, which is eerily similar to everywhere else in the world, it seems. Personally, I travel to gain new experiences and new perspectives, not to shop in the same giant department stores I can find in the mall back home, so I want a travel show to show me more of the former and less of the latter. There's nothing wrong with going to touristy places or shopping on your trip, but if you're doing a travel show, I'd want you to show me something beyond what I can easily find online and in a million tourist brochures. You're right that the Travel Channel has become very food-focused, which is not necessarily a good thing, even though I'd argue that trying the local cuisine is definitely a big part of traveling. I enjoy Bourdain's show not so much because he chows down or because of his personality, but because he actually makes an effort to show more than a passing glimpse at local life in between the scenes of him eating and cursing. Finally, you said, "Seems to me Samantha Brown is practicing good safety for herself by not putting herself into harms way." What harm is there, exactly, in trying a dish prepared by one of the top chefs in one of the best restaurants in the country? What harm is there in coming across a spider a good 20 feet away from you? What harm is there in walking through a local street market and seeing meat that hasn't been processed into unrecognizable packages? Sure, tourists should be careful. I won't be camping alone in a jaguar-infested wilderness either. But when I'm staying in a novelty hotel? With a chaperon, not to mention an entire camera crew, right there with me? The more likely harm is to the jaguar than to me in that case.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Samantha Brown Should Be Banned from Traveling Abroad

Mon, 5 Sep 2011 14:27:48 +0000

That's right, Nancy. Anyone who criticizes someone you like must invariably be doing so out of jealousy. Way to sink to trolling 101. I think it's a shame that Samantha squanders the amazing opportunity her job affords her to experience the world in a way that most people don't get to. I don't begrudge her that opportunity. She did something to earn it; good on her. But I wish someone in that position would take full advantage of it.

reesenews : Professor quits email for social media

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:45:01 +0000

Agree there are better substitutes for some of the things that e-mail has been used for and will be interested to see how this experiment turns out. However, a lot of this depends not on what you're doing, but on the circle of people you have significant dealings with. If most of your contacts are already comfortable with using the same alternative services as you for work, it'll obviously be feasible to drop e-mail. But if most of your contacts are still heavily reliant on e-mail, there's no way you can drop e-mail without complicating things for all parties involved. If I have to tell someone that in order to have regular communication with me, they need to get an account on a service that they otherwise don't use, it's a fail. I can't tell people to stop e-mailing me and start collaborating with me via Google Docs when 95% of the people I work with don't use it. And unless the people they work with are using it, too, there's little benefit to them to use it just to talk to me b/c it'd be in effect complicating their routine just for the sake of simplifying mine.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : My Favorite Photos of Mine of 2010

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:48:00 +0000

Hi Jim. Thanks for the compliment and the correction. I've noted it above.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Plnnr: Short on Vowels, Long on Potential

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:36:29 +0000

Thanks for reading and commenting. Good point about roaming charges. Yes, a mobile app w/ offline access would probably be preferable. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of someone popping into a coffeeshop and hopping on the wifi for a few minutes to tweak the next stage of the itinerary. I agree that a human touch is definitely necessary in crafting an itinerary, though I do think something like point-to-point transportation can be automated. After all, Google Maps have done that for many bigger cities, tapping into the local transit system's timetables to provide directions for public transportation. The trip planner for the London Underground does something similar, plotting trips that include traveling by foot, subway, and buses.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Nerding and Dorking

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:01:18 +0000

Hi Jim. Thanks for reading, and thanks for the offer! Now you've got us itching to hop on the next flight to England :-) Seriously, if we're back in that part of the world, we'll definitely try to make Dorking part of our itinerary again so we can take you up on your offer. We really enjoyed Box Hill and Dorking, and now we have extra motivation to go back.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Going to Graduate School

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 16:50:25 +0000

Cool. See you in the fall, Mel. Thanks for reading and commenting.

Matters of Varying Insignificance : Going to Graduate School

Fri, 1 Apr 2011 13:49:09 +0000

Thanks Emma!