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Irresponsible copy-editing

New York Times - Associated Press Online SARS story error: click for larger image

Now my father is in the biz, so I know mistakes can obviously happen in any newsroom, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how some editor (or intern?) substituted Japan for Hong Kong in the headline for a story of yet more SARS-related deaths in Hong Kong, as pictured above (the story is here at New York Times online, though I suspect the headline will be corrected fairly shortly). In the Times’ defense, I’m sure this error was committed over at Associated Press, as it’s just a wire story being picked up and published as is. But at a time when there is a lot of panic about SARS, especially here in other as-yet-unaffected parts of Asia like Japan, it seems mighty careless and irresponsible of them, no matter who originally made the mistake. These kind of glaring errors rarely happen in print editions, with gauntlets of editors and proofreaders to go through, but they seem all too common online. When will we get to the point where online editions must pass through the same scrutiny?

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It’s not all about cute hearts and instant (ego) gratification

cellphone pic of me, taken April 5, 2003In its worst nightmarish iteration, this is what you can look forward to when I start putting my nascent moblogging into high gear! (I can hear a stampede to the exits as I type). Seriously, it looks like a camera phone will be in hand soon (the above pic was taken a couple of weeks ago, by a friend — he sent it to Naoko for me, hence the hearts, which were added unbeknownst to me), so knock on wood expect something new and hopefully not too pedestrian in this neighborhood in the near future.

In the meantime, the First International Moblogging Conference has been announced, to take place July 5th at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo. One of the conference organizers, Adam Greenfield, recently offered yet another well-considered piece on moblogging (in part), and how his interest in it fits in with, rather than deviates from, his concerns of design and usability that many of his readers know him by:

[Moblogging] offer[s]… a potential way for people to comment on, to annotate their corner of the world: I trust this organic grocer, the lines at this bank are out of hand, I got mugged at this corner a year to the day after my friend did, and so on. It’s this otherwise invisible or difficult-to-retrieve information that can help people make better choices about their neighborhoods, their resource allocations, and ultimately, where and how they want to live. This is a lot to ask of some software that lives on your phone, admittedly, but there’s nothing here beyond reach.

I have yet to decide the why’s and wherefores of adding moblogged posts to this site (and like this site over the last year, chances are a decision won’t be made, but rather an ongoing discovery process will be set in motion), but suffice it to say, Adam’s vision is nearer to my heart than the above, er, hearts.

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Private spaces, under the covers

A woman sits next to me on a crowded commuter train, reading a thick book in English. She’s Japanese, in her 50’s, and naturally my curiosity is piqued. What book I don’t know, but I see names like Goethe, and Germany. On the surface it must be history, or biograpy. But it reads like fiction. At any rate, I want to talk to her, find out the title, and why she’s reading it. But I don’t of course, the moment I do 10 pairs of eyes would shoot our way, bringing embarrassment. But I’m not worried about my embarrassment, but her’s. This is Japan, where people read their books on trains covered by some anonymous paper (usually provided by bookstores), giving them some “cover” of privacy. Of course it’s entirely possible she was actually letting me see the inside of her book on purpose, but we’ll never know, will we?

Posted via cellphone.