onfocus

Yahoo Music is shutting down and their customers are losing their music. Ed Felton reminds, "Yahoo deserves blame here, but let's not forget who else contributed to this mess."

"Here are ten things newspapers could do, right now, to improve the quality of the comments on their sites."

"Media reporting about other media's approach to producing media is pretty confusing business to begin with. Feelings...will be bruised. But that does not fully explain the scorched earth between Fox News and those who cover it." [via Fimoculous]

The Prius will go solar? [via Doc]

"While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities -- ones where minors may be roaming."

"I do wonder, however, whether my son will someday feel that his privacy is being violated, or more likely, be embarrassed about the site." I struggle with this issue too and it's why I don't post very much in public about my son. [via Daddy Types]

"Google is to be forced to release the records of every video watched on YouTube, including user names and web addresses, to entertainment company Viacom after a US federal court ruling." Copyright trumps privacy. [via MeFi]

"Perhaps the right answer is to excise the links from the old posts and to add a note explaining why the links were removed." Rafe brings up a good reason why you might need to alter archives and how you might handle it in a way that doesn't break links.

Nice photo of rain in Pittsburgh.

Short-wave radio is still around and growing. Funny that China still expends effort blocking short-wave signals.

A collection of tips for preserving your digital materials by The Library of Congress. [via Long Views]

"[McCain] is not only 'breaking his word' he's breaking the law."

"The campaign...includes television and online ads and 'phone and in-person conversations with influential mommy bloggers.'" Beware mommy bloggers praising corn syrup.

I want one of these orchard ladders for cherry-picking in a couple weeks.

Looks like a good place to find information and ask questions about fruit trees.

from wikipedia

Andy Baio interviews Alan Taylor about his amazing new blog The Big Picture. I'm surprised there wasn't more resistance at The Globe.

mathowie explains why the TV show Mythbusters has the word "MeFi" in the background of some shots. It's a fun show.

Amazing that hackers are doing Apple's work for them on the AppleTV. This kit should jump-start custom plugins for AppleTV.

Matt and Jessamyn discuss the week in Metaflter that was. They have a nice rapport, and I think it'll be a great way to find gems across MeFi that I might have missed. (It's like a living, breathing sidebar!)

Cringely speculates that the *real* purpose of the AppleTV is building a massive P2P network for iTunes video distribution. Clever!

Someday everything will be tagged whether we know it or not. I, for one, welcome our new powdery RFID overlords.

Rafe on conflicting images of Iran. We're only getting one view of the country in our major media outlets, but the social Web provides a more nuanced, complete view.

haha, let fate determine where you should eat! Jim put together a fun visualization of Yahoo! Local business entries.

Tired: focus groups. Wired: immersion research. Ugh, when will people stop agreeing to be guinea pigs for marketers? If a marketer asks to live with you, say no. [via SOTD]

Marketing, meet Homeland Security. Homeland Security, Marketing. [via Flickr via waxy]