AOL is dead, long live AOL

Truly, it’s the end of an era.

My first online job, way back in 1996, was as Content Editor of AOL’s Digital City Denver. It was a great time to be working on the Internet — there was a palpable sense of excitement. Everything was new, and everything was possible.

Never mind that AOL wasn’t exactly the “Internet” (many ‘Net folks pooh-poohed AOL even then), we were all missonaries preaching the online faith. Like the other handful of online companies at the time, we spent more than half of our long days meeting with potential partners, advertisers and content providers, as well as anyone who would spend the time to listen, to tell them about the Internet and how it would change their lives. Continue reading

Will podcasting take over the world?

I get a lot of inquiries about podcasting because DenverPost.com has had podcasts for a year, from newspapers interested in starting podcasts, consulting companies researching them, and from students working on papers.

I recently received a note from a student in England, and I thought I’d post his question and my response: Continue reading

Tuning in to the tiny screen

I love how smart Apple is with its line of iPods, and more important, the content it makes available for iPods. I got a video iPod for Christmas (good thing, since my 40GB 4th generation iPod is filled up with over 11,000 songs), and in addition to putting all my classical music and odds and ends like podcasts on the thing, I’ve been putting videos on it. Continue reading

The future of journalism

The future of journalism, of course, is in the hands of the young journalists and journalism students who are about to enter the profession.

That’s why I’m happy (and honored) to be volunteering as one of the professional mentors working with a group of students on AAJALink, the student-run Web site covering the annual convention of the Asian American Journalists Association.

The confab is in Minneapolis, a city I’ve never traveled to. So far, I haven’t seen much of it except what I’m sure must be the world’s largest Target (a two-story department store a block away from the retailer’s corporate offices, which is also on the downtown Minneapolis Nicollette Mall). Continue reading

Was It a Virtual Stoning?

There was an interesting piece in the Washington Post yesterday, about a woman in South Korea whose dog pooped on a subway. She refused to clean it up, much to the consternation of other passengers nearby (what the hell is a dog doing in the subway anyway?).

One passenger took a digital photo and put it on a citizen journalism Web site, and then all hell broke loose. Everyone started calling her the “Dog Poop Lady” and chattering back and forth online about how awful she is.

Bloggers joined in, and the search for her identity began (her face was obscured in the photo). Continue reading