My friends, right now, they’re at a Wichita bar called the Anchor, celebrating our friend Barett’s birthday. My brother (also in Wichita): he’s totally jealous I’m going to see Kool Keith this Friday in Seattle. Yesterday, my best friend’s bulldog got nearly-mauled by our former neighbor’s dog. Miles apart, in different timezones. And we still know.

I bet you can see your mobile phone right now. While you’re at a computer — with the world at your fingertips — your phone is your crutch, it’s in your pocket, in your sights, within reach at all times. It’s your connection to your son that’s away at college, your wife that’s in Italy on business. You know they aced the test, went shopping and ate chocolate mousse for dessert.

You’re in the club, but, then, I’m sure you have been for a while. The club of being always on. Always connected, always in the know. I hope you’re happy. This is the end of anticipation.

The term, as far as I can tell, was first presented in Naomi Baron’s book Always On. Because of mobile phones, not to mention the internet, we spend Read more…

Thirteen Virgin Atlantic crew members were fired after insulting the company and its passengers on a Facebook discussion page.

The employees used the social networking site to criticize company safety standards and called passengers “chavs.“
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Don’t have a blog? Don’t bother starting one.

Go Twitter, Facebook or Flickr.

This from Wired Magazine correspondent Paul Boutin in a recent post.

“Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.”

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Got Twitter?

National Public Radio is calling on you to help fact check tonight’s vice presidential debate.

Use #factcheck in your Twitter feeds if you find anything questionable claims from either candidate.

It’ll be hard to beat this debate, but I think this experiment might steal at least some of my attention away from the debate tonight.

Follow nprpolitics during the debate for updates as well.

Washingtonpost.com’s recent launch of its Political Browser is not just an attempt to get in on the game of link journalism and news aggregation but an insightful way at wooing 36 percent of the American public that now regularly consumes news online. Perhaps more importantly, their nontraditional approach will be important in the future in capturing the attention of the young and currently disengaged to whom technology is second nature.

That the public is turning away from traditional media in lieu of online news isn’t news. But as the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported last month, a third of the public has reached a crossroads in which online news consumption blends with traditional media outlets. Many newspapers haven’t taken well to the trend, and The Post is in a position to lead the way.

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