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The Anonymous mask
Nick Bilton, giving a brief history of the mask worn by Anonymous members:
Then in 2008, Anonymous embraced it, explained Gabriella Coleman, an assistant professor at New York University’s department of media, culture and communication. “Thousands of members came out from behind their computer and went into the streets to protest the Church of Scientology,” she said. “Anonymous knew if they were going to meet in a visibly public space for the first time, they needed to conceal their identity. They inevitably chose the ‘V for Vendetta’ mask to do this.”
“It had a chilling effect. There were literally thousands of people standing silently in front of the Church of Scientology wearing the same Guy Fawkes mask,” Ms. Coleman said. “The photos and videos that appeared in the news from the protests cemented the mask as the symbol of Anonymous.”
Eerie.
Messaging apps everywhere
Everyone said 2011 would be the year mobile, photo, social and local (MoPhoSoLoco), but I just want to know when I will have enough messaging apps to fill this whole folder.
Bonin on mobile
“Every single organisation that is dedicated to digital should be spending the majority of their time, effort and resource optimising for smartphones and various tablets.”
—Bonin Bough, PepsiCo’s global head of digital – “Tablet effect” takes hold: News from Warc.com
I wholeheartedly agree.
(Bonin used to be head of digital at and is now a client of my employer.)
via Paul Isakson
CNN sings praise for the CNN app
“A lot of people are going to have access to this who haven’t had access before.” —Sanjay Gupta, tonight’s guest host on AC360, describing the updated CNN iOS app that allows cable/satellite subscribers to watch live CNN
Yes, this is going to be great for all those people who pay for cable/satellite service but don’t own a TV.
(About once a month I watch some TV news, and this is the kind of bullshit I get to hear.)
Political quote of the week
Aside
Here in Minnesota we’re a full week into a state government shutdown. Apparently the shuttered state parks are not the only inconvenience being caused by the political gridlock:
“As soon as the Legislature and Gov. Dayton work out their differences, the licensing bureaus will go back to work and we’ll be able to put dozens of topless dancers on the stage and begin contributing much-needed tax dollars to the state coffers,” Langan said.
What “the media elite” read
The Atlantic has an ongoing feature where they ask media-famous people what they read, or more accurately what their media diets are.
The latest piece is by Aaron Sorkin and is mostly unremarkable aside from this gem:
The homepage on my web browser is Yahoo, which I’m told it shouldn’t be, but I’ve just been too lazy to change it. From time to time I’ll read some of the comments under stories on it to get a sense of what it must be like at a Klan meeting.
If you’re only going to read one piece in the series, make it Shirky’s, though it is a year old and a lot could possibly have changed since he wrote it.
The paywall
Aside
The New York Times announced their long-anticipated pay wall yesterday, and as Felix Salmon points out, it doesn’t make a lot of sense:
The message being sent here is weird: that access to the website is worth nothing. Mathematically, if A+B=$15, A+C=$20, and A+B+C=$35, then A=$0.
…
The pricing structure is also a strong disincentive to use the iPad app at all, of course. If you’re already paying $15 every four weeks to have full access to the website, why on earth would you pay extra just to be able to read the paper on its own dedicated app rather than in Safari? I, for one, prefer the experience of reading nytimes.com on the web on my iPad, rather than reading an iPad app which has no search, no links, no archives, no social recommendations, etc etc. If the NYT wanted to kill any incentive to read and develop its iPad app, it’s going about it the right way.
My first inclination after the announcement was to consider a Sunday-only subscription for it’s included online access across all devices; strangely the Sunday-only option is no longer available for Minneapolis on nytimesathome.com.
The App Wall
Aside
MG Siegler has hit The App Wall and so will you:
Granted, my usage right now is very extreme. Leading up to SXSW next week, I’m heavily testing out five to ten new apps that people are hoping to launch there. But the fact of the matter is that this is the way things are headed for everyone. It will take the average user longer to hit it, but everyone will eventually hit this app wall.
In this regard, apps are in a way just the new websites. There’s only so many you can visit throughout the day and so you find the ones you like and cycle through those day in and day out. Only on the rare occasion does a new site break into this must-visit cycle.
Photographing war in Brazil’s favelas
There was a low-grade war in the slums of Rio de Janeiro a couple weeks back. The Big Picture has the photo set that should be fascinating to any Brazilophile.
The photographers who shot these photos, just like those who shoot photos in Afghanistan and other dangerous zones throughout the world everyday, risk their lives. I call that journalism. Compare that to WikiLeaks, which cowardly risks other people’s lives.