palewire

At the risk of sounding prudish, let me ask if I’m the first person to notice that the New York Times Web site is now running advertisements for erotica. So, I’m reading the big Rush Limbaugh profile at Pitfire Pizza and what do I see…

If you click through to Eden’s site you find listings for such enticing titles as Anal Massage For Lovers and Blow Him Away. Is this a new thing, or just something I’m picking up for the first time?

 Loading ...

Today my employer announced that we’re now publishing our newspaper on Amazon’s portable wireless reading device, the Kindle. I don’t have one, but if you do, and you want the LA Times on there, you can subscribe here. Big deal? Not big deal? Let me know.

 Loading ...

Yesterday I launched Tickertube.org, my first attempt at hosting a site using Amazon’s EC2 service. It’s a simple app, just an ever refreshing list of links from sites that write about telecommunications policy. I used to cover this stuff in DC, and I don’t really like using RSS readers, so it’s useful for me, if not anyone else.

But my objective isn’t to build a hit site. I just want to figure out Amazon’s toys. What I learned is that while they aren’t all that well documented, they can be a lot of fun once you figure out the basics. You’ll have to do more hands-on server configuration than you would with Google App Engine, but greater control does come with benefits.

I’d like to use Tickertube to woodshop a little in developing for smart phones. But since I don’t have an iPhone or Blackberry, I don’t have any way to test it out. Or a lot of motivation to get it done. But if somebody out there would like to use the site with a mobile device (and wouldn’t that be a shock!), just let me know and I’ll try to put in the extra time to adapt the HTML. Same goes if there are any feeds you’d like me to add the pool. Just shout.

Thanks to all the great tools that made this project easy. Besides Amazon, much love to Django, YUI and Feedjack.

Bo Diddley died today. But his beat lives on. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Try to tell what these songs have in common.

This Memorial Day weekend marked the formal launch of California’s War Dead, our database of the state’s casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s the result of a lot of hard work by many people at the paper, a large share of which had already been carried through the years by our many obituary writers.

The site intends to allow users to explore the data using a variety of criteria (for example, you can quickly look up fallen troops by hometown, high school or marital status). And to learn more about individuals by reading their obituaries from our back archives. Choice quotes have been selected to “pop” out of the individual profile pages and visitors are encouraged to leave memories and thoughts as comments.

Besides all my coworkers who pitched in to make this happen on a tight deadline, thank yous should be extended to all the great developers in the Django community. They not only provided the Web programming tools that made this idea possible, but also the leadership that showed me how the tools can be used to make journalism for the Web, not just on the Web. The same goes for all the people in the NICAR community who, by leading by example, have pushed me to keep learning new things and have the courage to take chances outside of journalism’s well worn comfort zones. Personally, I just hope that first group can forgive me for ripping off their ideas and that the second group doesn’t resent my getting the opportunity to do things like this without having to put in the once requisite 5 to 10 years on the cops-and-courts beat.

If you’re stretched for time, or maybe doubting there’s anything new to be learned about the war, let me promote a couple spots that might interest you.

• Over the course of assembling the data, I was surprised to learn how many immigrants to California have died. It’s more than fifty, from Mexico and the Phillipines and South Korea and a number of other places. Check out the lists here. A fascinating story is of Sgt. Rafael Peralta of San Diego, who enlisted the same day he received his Green Card and died in Fallouja, Iraq, when he sacrificed himself to save his compatriots from a grenade attack. His profile is here and the story of his heroic death is here.

• The most rewarding part of the project for me has been to see how quickly we’re getting great, thoughtful comments submitted by friends and family members of the deceased. One of my goals in the design was to give their writing equal footing with our previous reporting. It can be heartbreaking to read, but I’m proud to have helped make something that people think is worthy of such sensitive information. Examples I find particularly moving are the memories shared by the family of Sgt. Jason J. Buzzard of Ukiah and Corporal Christopher D. Leon of Lancaster, who I’m honored to know better now than I did before our commentors contributed.

• It seems natural to expect that spending so much time with casualty data would have a numbing effect. But I think that’s only the case when we let the very real people we’ve lost remain numbers in a casualty count or unknown names on a page. It’s the stories that bring them to life, and my experience has been that the more stories you hear, the less numb you feel. The pain is in the details. A moving example is Teresa Watanabe’s obituary of Lt. Mark J. Daily of Irvine, who was inspired to join the war by the political writing of war advocate Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens has since gone to write a moving response to learning of Daily’s readership, and sacrifice, that you can find here.

• Finally, I’d suggest checking out the video of California’s Riverside Cemetery by the LAT’s Saatchi Cunningham. Riverside is home to dozens of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, the top resting place in the state.

Today our A1 features Rich Connell’s look at the effectiveness of all those automated red light cameras positioned around Los Angeles. Here’s the nut:

In Los Angeles, officials estimate that 80% of red light camera tickets go not to those running through intersections but to drivers making rolling right turns, a Times review has found.

…

One of the most powerful selling points for photo enforcement systems, which now monitor 175 intersections in Los Angeles County and hundreds more across the United States, has been the promise of reducing collisions caused by drivers barreling through red lights.

But it is the right-turn infraction — a frequently misunderstood and less pressing safety concern — that drives tickets and revenue in the nation’s second-biggest city and at least half a dozen others across the county.

Our web package includes some hot tape put together by Rich, an awesome interactive explainer by Raoul Ranoa, the now perfunctory Google Map, and my own little goofy idea: portable downloads for TomTom and Garmin GPS devices (check out the roadblock halfway down the main story).

Loading the points into your device will not only map them on your dashboard monitor — but you can also easily program your system to give you an audio warning as you approach upcoming lights. And in that same soothing computer voice that already tells you when to turn.

I’m not sure how interested readers will be in this sort of product, but it seemed like a fun experiment. And since Rich had put in a great effort collecting the data from LA’s many fragmented municipalities, it seemed like we had to look for some extra yard to go for.

The technical part is pretty easy. Both manufacturers have handy developer guides that — once the data is prepared — only take a couple hours to suss out. Here’s TomTom. Here’s Garmin.

Any thoughts on other newspapery data projects that might work for GPS? The most dangerous intersections? The location of famous landmarks around town?

I must admit, I’ve fallen in love with that amazing video of Bill O’Reilly flipping out during his old Inside Edition days. Especially the hot remix. So, in homage, I’ve cut down the first 20 seconds into an mp3 file that should be easily portable as a ringtone to your smart phone of choice. Be it iPhone, Treo, Motorola, Nokia or LG.

Just right click the file below and save it to your computer. After that, you’re on your own.

• Bill O’Reilly Flips Out, The Ringtone.mp3

If, like me, you’re up keeping an eye on whether Obama might come from behind, I get the feeling you might enjoy the following.

Written, of course, by my fellow Iowan, Meredith Wilson.

So I’m browsing through Christopher Hitchens’ latest screed over at Slate tonight, and what do I bump into but an advertisment for the New York Times. Seems a bit funny, seeing as Slate is owned by the Washington Post Company. I’ve always thought of them as competitors with the NYT.

But maybe I’m wrong. What do you think? Seems a little weird to me.

 Loading ...

I had a little excess energy available tonight while watching Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s appearance on Bill Moyers’ program, so I dumped the transcript of his new statements into Many Eyes and ran it against what the Guardian bills as an “excerpt” of his famous post Sept. 11 sermon.

See anything interesting?