Category Archives: Current Events

$ong ¢ontest

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Kamehameha’s 87th annual Song Contest has been airing for a little more than half an hour now, and I must say that I’m somewhat disappointed. This year marks the first year KGMB 9 has picked up the broadcast, and I’m somewhat disappointed by the noticeable increase in commercials.

Song Contest has had commercials for as long as I can remember, and it’s not the ads per se that bother me. What’s new is that they are now clearly and obnoxiously separate from the body of the program. Jack, I love you, but I really don’t care that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Song Contest used to be a package deal, but apparently the tasteful, soft commercials — spots that were about image, not commercialism — weren’t profitable enough.

Hopefully that’s the last we’ll see of LOUD BLARING SPOTS for the remainder of the evening.

People Living Worldwide

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Twitter started as an experiment to strip away all the complexity of social networking sites. At its core, it’s a micro-blog: a tiny line of text updated as often as every few minutes with the thoughts and goings-on of ordinary people worldwide.

Today, a new mashup combining Google Maps and Twitter was released. Twittervision is like a birds-eye view on the mundane. You can watch people going to bed, shopping at the supermarket, holding twittersations with people on the other side of the world, and more.

I wonder what would happen if somebody launched a mashup of journaling and Twittervision. Could it be a new way to share insights from devotions? A new way to stay accountable?

Newsgathering Now and Then

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Today marks the Honolulu Advertiser’s 150th anniversary issue. In 1856 (five years after the first edition of the New York Times), a few hundred colorless editions came off the press. Today, the Advertiser can print 48 full-color pages per issue.

The longevity of newspapers in an increasingly digital age seems to be a testament of simpler times. Despite the proliferation of radio, television, blogs, RSS, podcasts, and vidcasts, the nature of informing the public has changed dramatically, yet enough things stay the same. Even with all the competition, dailies still sell millions of copies a day.

Standards developed by papers over a century ago are largely still followed today, and in many cases have influenced competing media. For example, considered the “inverted pyramid” style of writing – originally developed to cope with the unreliability of the telegraph, but now a staple of reporting found in every form of news we use today.

With news now mallable and routinely edited by the reader, it’ll be interesting to see how newspapers continue to adapt to the brave new world delivered by technology.

iProposal

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Marriage ProposalAn enterprising young man took advantage of an Apple media campaign today to deliver a somewhat unorthodox marriage proposal.

The anonymous man stood outside Apple’s Fifth Avenue retail store this morning between 5:30 AM and 6:00 AM Eastern Time with three paper signs reading “Uschi Lang, I love you, will you marry me?” A time-lapse camera captured the proposal. It was only 10 seconds on Apple’s web site, but if the 30-second movie shows pictures at a constant rate, the man was standing there for 20 minutes. That’s dedication. The complete movie is available at the URL above, for millions of people to see.

No word yet on the identity of this hopeless romantic, or whether Ms. Lang had the good humor to say yes. Best wishes to the couple, regardless of the outcome.

Lose Weight, Save the Planet!

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The Miami Herald (subscription site, no link) is reporting that heavier Americans are costing the airline industry millions in additional fuel. According to the CDC, the average American gained 10 pounds in the 1990s. The Herald says the extra weight adds up to 350 million gallons of extra fuel, and 3.8 million tons of released pollutants.

That’s a lot of CO2.

(Via Fox News Channel)