Technology: Profiles in Courage

Mass High Tech brings us the amazing story of a superhuman high tech CEO who at one time worked ten hour days, six days a week, for FIFTEEN MONTHS... apparently without a break.

The sacrifices those of us in high tech must make for our ambitions are under-estimated by the general public. This story proves it. Ten-hour work days, six days a week, behind a desk, sitting in meetings, making Powerpoint presentations... it's probably enough to kill or cripple an ordinary human. That's why CEOs are a different breed of Man.

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/07/21/weekly1-New-Covergence-CEO-Moran-crafts-software-biz-growth-plans.html

CMS's say the darnedest things, #3

Sometimes the programmers or designers who code a newspaper's style into a production system (for print or online) want to be helpful, so they embed little shortcuts into the system to "save typing" or to help make the publication more consistent.

In this case, someone has decided that every image that could carry a creator's credit is a photo, and that every photo is "by" some person.

This is nit-picking, yes. But a commercial newspaper is presumptively a professionally-written, professionally-edited creation, and as such, should be a standard-bearer for both content and style. A newspaper should demonstrate effective communication, rather than daring readers to read around pointless eccentricities hidden in the software that puts the paper together.

For what it's worth, I first confronted this class of problem around 1986 when I naively hard-coded a similar "photo by" credit into a print-publishing system. The editors and production manager identified the problem with that approach the first time a non-photo image needed a credit...

[ Boston Herald, July 14, 2008 ]

CMS's say the darnedest things, #2

The Globe turns a critical eye to the Stingray Diet Plan for kids..
[ Boston Globe, July 7, 2008 ]

CMS's say the darnedest things, #1

Publishers of web sites that contain lots of frequently-changing material use content management systems (CMS) to coordinate the display of all the words, pictures, links, indexes, and so on. Not surprisingly, newspapers with full online editions use CMS's behind the scenes to manage all the stories coming in from reporters and wire services, and to sync the online and print editions. Much of this happens automatically. Some of it shouldn't.

I remember how much care we used to take when laying out a newspaper page. In particular, the relationships between images on a page, and headlines on a page, were always scrutinized. That probably still happens with print editions. I also remember the fuss over the first automated layout systems for print, how much concern there was about the appearance and utility of the page.

No matter how much attention they may still give the print editions of their papers, it's disappointing to see how little concern is directed at the packaging of that same material online. The Boston Globe in particular commits offenses daily. I wonder if they even look at their own "output" at the Globe. Maybe after too many layoffs and years of decline, there's nobody left to put the house in order. If these things happened in print, at least back when I worked in newsrooms, there would have been yelling, lots of yelling. Editors used to yell a lot. Maybe they still do. And after the yelling, someone would have come away knowing never to commit this sort of offense again.

Here's the first in a probably never-ending series...

Hint: that's not Steven Tyler.
[ Boston Globe, June 28, 2008 ]