Yahoo shoots self in foot
November 16, 2007 -- Several times a day for about a decade, I've logged onto My Yahoo to check my mail, stocks, headlines, weather, etc. As of today I've switched my homepage portal to iGoogle -- not because iGoogle is better than the old My Yahoo, but because the old My Yahoo was better than the new My Yahoo. This is yet another case of an ill-advised redesign being forced down the throats of consumers. I've previously given up on Internet Explorer 7 for much the same reason.
The trouble started unbidden. My Yahoo simply switched itself to a new and inferior beta version and I had no choice in the matter. I have tried in vain to switch it back.
The first of many problems was that the email pod was moved from top left to top right, the red New Mail notice replaced with less noticeable black type. There's a new email-preview function but it is so painfully slow (even via my zippy cable modem) as to be unusable. There's also a weather subpod that insists on telling me the temperature in Albany, New York and won't let me change location to New York City where I actually live. The new Personal Assistant includes four other subpods that are useless to me. They can be reassigned to other functions, none of which I want, but not deleted.
Eventually I figured out that I could delete the Personal Assistant altogether, replacing it with a simpler email pod, and returning it to the top left where I prefer it.
Right below the Personal Assistant is another non-deletable pod, quite a large one, with revolving content in which I have no interest. I have tried to make it go away but it seems to be the one pod on the page that can't be deleted. You must let Yahoo you hector about adding new unwanted garbage.
I might have reluctantly adjusted to these various insults except for a far worse problem. When I upsize the font in the new My Yahoo, the layout shoots off the righthand side of the page. The horizontal scrollbar adds a good two inches to the upsized layout with the result that I must scroll not only up and down (as I normally would) but left to right. This, incidentally, is the same reason I dumped Internet Explorer 7 for Firefox. I have no such problem with iGoogle. Upsizing the font does not change the horizontal proportions of the layout.
I'm pretty happy with iGoogle. By customizing it, I've managed to reconstruct almost every aspect of the old My Yahoo. The email pod is back at top left where I want it and includes a Compose Mail button -- another thing I miss from the old My Yahoo. iGoogle also previews emails like the new My Yahoo but does it more speedily, turning an unusable feature into a usable one. The only area in which My Yahoo, new or old, still excels is in the tracking of stock portfolios. I have several of them (real and imaginary) but iGoogle will let me set up only one list. Yahoo Finance is still the class act of the field and it's still easier for me to track my investments on My Yahoo -- so I'll revisit it from time to time. However, Google Finance is still in beta and will surely improve over time. Eventually I expect to stop using My Yahoo altogether, following a bookmark directly to Yahoo Mail.
I guess I may seem a little self-indulgent, slamming a free product and stomping off in a huff. But free or not, a product has to be ergonomically savvy if the designer wants it to be heavily used. Yahoo has lost my business, such as it was, and Google has gained it.
Practical Home Theater now in seventh edition
October 1, 2007 -- It's time for the changing of the guard. The 2007 Edition of Practical Home Theater has given way to the 2008 Edition. The new edition further tightens and refines what has become the best compendium of information on home theater, if I do say so myself. You can find the new edition on Amazon and I expect to find it on Barnes & Noble and other sites within a week or two. The price of the U.S. version has not changed since the first edition and the U.K. version is actually two pounds lower this year to account for the horrible (from my point of view) exchange rate. Good deal, eh?
Author predicts cascading catastrophes
July 21, 2007 -- It's July, the fireflies are blinking out in the park, and I'm meditating on doom, which is my natural state. Still, reading James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency left me feeling like I'd been hit by an SUV. The author contends that the peaking of world oil production will collide with every aspect of our lives. Kunstler's past work -- including The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition -- has been motivated by his outrage over the sheer ugliness and inhumanity of car country (notably Las Vegas) and a concurrent love for well-designed cities (notably Paris). But though he admits his latest book is a "harsh view," he adds: "I will concern myself with what I believe is happening, what will happen, not what I hope or wish will happen." He then offers a blend of history, reporting, and prognostication that should leave even a BMW-loving skeptic shaken.
He starts with a neat capsule history of fossil fuels, explaining how this massive body of stored solar energy has propelled our industrial civilization and indeed our culture. U.S. oil production peaked in 1970, setting the stage for the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and the unhinging of the economy. President Carter warned us of an energy crisis; the voters replaced him with President Reagan. That was not a good sign for our longevity. He goes on to geopolitics, concentrating on the flashpoints of the Middle East. Another chapter concerns alternative fuels and "why they won't rescue us." All this is a cakewalk for the reader compared to what follows.
A subsequent chapter takes on such horrific issues as climate change and disease epidemics and how they'll form a cascading series of catastrophes. Then Kunstler discusses the collapse of our cheap-oil-driven economy. It all culminates in a final chapter that tries to imagine how our lives will be different, with different forecasts for each part of the nation (hint: move to the frostbelt). A lot of our energy may be expended on just feeding ourselves, if that's even possible. Among all Kunstler's amazing array of facts, the one my mind has in heaviest rotation is the fact that natural gas is used to make the nitrogen fertilizers that fuel our food production. As with oil, our supply of natural gas (that is, methane, another fossil fuel) is running out. The ramifications of that should keep anyone awake at night.
Whether what Kunstler describes as "canned entertainment" -- in other words, the stuff I write about for a living -- will become entirely obsolete remains to be seen. I tried to come to terms with that possibility in this piece for DigitalTrends.com. A recent story in The New York Times tells of a man who used a backyard wind turbine to meet 90 percent of his house's electricity needs -- until his NIMBY-minded neighbors sued to make him shut it off! I suspect we'll get a handle on how to keep the lights on, if nothing else, especially if we follow Kunstler's surprising suggestion to reconsider nuclear power in light of the dire alternatives. But our car-dominated landscape, including tens of trillions of dollars worth of homes, is obsolete. When that fact penetrates the public mind, what follows will be sheer hell. Read this book. Know thine enemy -- and be advised that, terrorism notwithstanding, your biggest one might be yourself.
Concertgoers attacked by jetskis!
June 30, 2007 -- I just watched a squad of jetskis attack a chamber-music concert in Riverside Park in the mid-nineties. The Gotham Wind Ensemble was playing to a crowd of maybe 200 people. A group of four jetskis spotted the cluster of people and decided they'd found an audience in front of which to perform. They zoomed to and fro next to the riverbank, effectively drowning out the music.
The crowd remained calm. New Yorkers are a tolerant lot. The many children present were actually delighted. Unfortunately, the jetskis decided to escalate, not just buzzing the crowd but deliberately throwing sheets of water across the promenade. This alarmed the crowd a bit more -- would you want Hudson River water in your toddler's mouth?
Finally an especially zesty spray swept clear across the promenade, soaking several dozen people and landing within a few feet of the musical instruments. Upper West Siders being what we are (opinionated, politically engaged, and sensitive to injustice) a half-dozen people leaped to the railing and began yelling. Since there were kids present, the slogan they settled on was "get out of here!" One guy shook his fist (while smiling) and another held up two middle fingers.
To be honest, it was as entertaining as it was appalling, and it's possible that the jetski drivers didn't even spot the musicians playing. They just couldn't resist the opportunity to showboat in front of a crowd.
CW11: Stop lying about congestion pricing
May 31, 2007 -- Memo to my favorite newscast, the Emmy-winning CW11 in New York: Stop lying about congestion pricing.
Congestion pricing, in case you haven't heard, is a means of controlling excessive automotive traffic. Mayor Bloomberg is proposing to try it in car-choked Manhattan. Drivers entering Manhattan below 86th street would pay $8 for the privilege between the hours of 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. The primary aim is not to soak people for money but to persuade owners of private cars to change their vile, selfish, polluting habits. Benefits would include reduced global-warming gases, more breathable air, and swifter movement of pedestrian, bus, taxi, and -- yes -- car traffic. Not to mention ambulances. If your life is at stake, do you want to be stuck in traffic?
My beef with CW11 is not unique -- every TV station in the city is covering the story the same way. I'm just especially annoyed at CW11 because I watch it every night and believe it the best of its breed. The reporters purport to give both sides of the story, but they really don't. First they report on the latest progress of the mayor's proposal. Then they move on to the man (or woman) on the street interview -- which is invariably someone talking through the open window of a car!
Half of all households in New York City, and the vast majority in Manhattan, are car-free. So it's incredible that the only people CW11 can find to interview are on wheels. What about people pouring out of subway stations at rush hour? What about people stuck on slowly crawling buses? What about midtown office workers with respiratory problems? What about kids too young to drive, the elderly who can no longer drive, people too poor to own cars, or just people like me who are licensed drivers but choose not to drive?
Once in awhile CW11 manages to speak with an activist in favor of congestion pricing. The group most often quoted is Transportation Alternatives. It's a worthy organization -- I'm a member. But quotes from an activist group may be presumed to have an agenda and therefore carry less weight than the person-on-street interviews, which purport to be from, so to speak, the people. CW11, be advised that drivers have an agenda. Their agenda is to pollute and choke the streets because they're too stuck up to ride the subway.
Even within their relentlessly repetitive person-on-wheels interviews, CW11 distorts the issue by asking only one question: What do you think of paying more money to drive into midtown? Never does the reporter ask: Would you like traffic in midtown to move faster? Would you like to get to your destination faster? Would you like to breathe less pollution? Would you like to do your part in fighting global warming? Why aren't you using public transit?
I wonder how many of these reporters put down the microphone and then drive home from work?
CW11's disregard of its journalistic responsibility is not a victimless crime. By deliberately distorting this issue, the station is contributing to a media environment where congestion pricing may fail to attract enough support from public officials other than the mayor. Failure to adopt congestion pricing would be a tragedy for all New Yorkers, especially the car-free majority of Manhattan residents.
UPDATE, July 19, 2007 -- Sheldon Silver, the great dictator of the New York State Assembly, refused to let congestion pricing come to a vote. Instead, a "compromise" will result in the forming of a commission, which is what governments do when they really don't want to do anything. This may cost the city half a billion federal transportation dollars plus $400 million a year in congestion charges, resulting in a major subway and bus fare increase and dealing a potentially mortal blow to projects like the infant Second Avenue subway line. Silver is the same guy who scuttled the renovation of Penn Station, the most heavily used rail station in the U.S., which would have healed the wound caused by the original Penn Station's shocking demolition in 1968. Silver is the biggest obstacle to progress in New York City. The voters of his Lower East Side district should vote him down.
Honor your ancestors
February 18, 2007 -- Evidence of global warming has been mounting for decades. Anyone who's seen An Inconvenient Truth can never forget the footage of Greenland melting, with gushing rivers cutting through the deteriorating ice sheets. It's in everyone's best interest to fight destructive climate change. But getting started is hard. What, I asked myself, can I do? I already live in a small apartment, use compact fluorescent lighting, and do without a car.
My first inspiration came from the Al Gore movie. I promised myself that as soon as it came out on DVD, I'd ask all my relatives to watch it. A month ago the disc arrived. I watched it again, generated a bunch of stamped and addressed envelopes, dropped everything into one envelope, and mailed the package to one of my sisters. If all goes according to plan, each relative will watch the movie, check their name off the list, and mail the disc and the remaining envelopes to someone else. Eventually I'll get the disc back from the last person on the list. I hope!
Further inspiration comes from my travels. If you can't wrap your mind around the concept of doing good for your descendants, consider the people who built the great cathedrals of Europe. Some of them took more than one lifetime to complete. Virtually all of them anchor neighborhoods and provide a daily dose of inspiration to people living nearby -- and to many other people, in the case of my namesake, San Marco of Venice, pictured here. If our ancestors could do this for us, couldn't we work a little harder to make life better for those who will follow us in the future?
Lose pounds my way
February 16, 2007 -- First post of the year. Sorry it's taken so long. Besides being busy as the audio editor of Home Theater, I've also been keeping an eye on the scale. And the news is not good. I started the year a dozen pounds overweight. Lost seven of them. Five to go before I hit my target. So how does a sedentary writer lose weight? Here's what I do in three simple steps. Any one of them will help you a little and all three will help you a lot:
1) Never drink a calorie: The first calories to eliminate are the ones that slide down your throat way too easily. If you can't chew a calorie, don't let it enter your body. That means no sugar in your coffee or tea, of course, and diet soft drinks only. No alcohol. And no fruit juice -- that's just like drinking sugar. I drink unsweetened green tea and water.
2) Eat less of everything: Cut your intake of everything by about one-quarter. Yes, including salad. Have all your favorite foods -- just have less of them. It's hard at first, but as time goes on, your gut gets used to processing less food. Thus you can actually reduce your hunger. If you do it right, you'll actually become uncomfortable when you overeat.
3) Eat a balanced diet: Ignore Atkins and all those other quack doctors hawking diet books. What your family doctor told you when you were a kid is still good advice. You don't need a gimmick to lose weight, but you do need a complete set of nutrients to go on living. Starving your body of carbs leads to depression, malnutrition, and in extreme cases, the shutdown of major organs. Keep eating, just don't do it stupidly.
Hope this helps! Now I'm going to have to follow my own advice.
News 2006
