"A different staff writer will be forced to break their usual routine and offer up posts they feel would garner the most traffic. While that writer struggles to find dancing cat videos and Burger King bathroom fights or any other post they feel will add those precious, precious new eyeballs, the rest of the staff will spend time on more substantive stories they may have neglected due to the rigors of scouring the internet each day to hit some imaginary quota."

"From July 29, 2011, until July 29, 2012 for the entirety that I'm 31-years-old, I will post a photo from my life each day - in analog black and white."

Tracking down Penny & the Quarters.

"They’ll ad lib their way through this so-called “script” a few times, rolling tape the whole time. Then Jad or one of the show’s producers cuts together a version. They listen to it. Then they’ll go back and re-record bits of banter, to make a quicker transition from one section to the next, or to slow down and explain some point more thoroughly, or to set up a piece of tape slightly differently."

"The timing and entrance of every little note, each of the sound effects, the quotes, the echo on the voices and music, the tinniness or bassy-ness of each element in the mix, it’s all calibrated and machined like an expensive handmade watch. No other radio show sweats the production work to that extent; it’s not even close. And all that meticulous work is in the service of something that’s the opposite of careful and meticulous: this totally chatty, happy, loose, spontaneous-sounding conversation between Jad and Robert and their interviewees."

Depressing (I think).

"There should be a word for that feeling you get when an older person — and not much older, so quickly are things changing — shames him or herself by telling young people how to live. I'd vote for Bedeutungslosigkeitschmach, or "irrelevance shame," (made up with the help of Google translate) or perhaps Rünschmerz, the horrifying gut pain one experiences watching Andy Rooney. Whatever it's called, Franzen brought it in buckets."

"The phonograph killed the player piano; radio, newspapers, and TV happily co-existed for generations. When did you last think fondly on the DuMont television network, or smile in recall of Friendster? This moment of anxiety and fear will pass; future generations (there's now one every three or four years) will have no idea what they missed, and yet they will go on, marry, divorce, and own pets."

More excerpts from "The Influencing Machine".

"Another reason for using comics: The world is full of media books with competing predictions of cyber-utopia or annihilating chaos. I steer between those shoals, and sometimes bump up against both of them. My argument (don't rejoice, don't panic) is built on many small, historical moments. I want those moments to stick with the reader. Pictures, especially the sly, evocative pictures drawn here by Josh Neufeld, are sticky. "

Excerpts from "The Influencing Machine" by Brooke Gladstone.

"Nearly one million weekly listeners trust NPR's Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the distortions and complexities of the modern media. This brilliant radio personality now bursts onto the page as an illustrated character in vivid comics drawn by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld. The cartoon of Brooke conducts the reader through two millennia of history-from the newspapers in Caesar's Rome to the penny press of the American Revolution and the manipulations of contemporary journalism. Gladstone's manifesto debunks the notion that "The Media" is an external force, outside of our control, since we've begun directly constructing, filtering, and responding to what we watch and read. With fascinating digressions, sobering anecdotes, and brave analytical wit, The Influencing Machine equips us to be smart, savvy, informed consumers and shapers of the media. It shows that we have met the media and it is us. So now what? Two-color illustrations."

"But the main reason why Gladstone wanted to use the comics form to opine on the past, present, and future of media was because she felt it was the closest way of re-creating on paper the intimacy of radio broadcasting. "I wanted to make a connection, not be an absent narrator," she says. By appearing in the panels as a character and guide herself, she could literally "look readers in the eye." "Look, some of the ideas [in "The Influencing Machine"] are kind of complicated, much the same as in McCloud's book, and sometimes the readers needs to be able to 'take a moment' to grasp something before moving on," she says. "Having someone in the frame talking to you and following along gives you the space to do that.""

"The video i took of the F5 tornado while at Fastrip on east 20th street. We huddled in the back of the store until the glass got sucked out , then ran into the walk in storage fridge. Sorry for the lack of visuals but the audio is pretty telling of how intense the storm was. The tornado hits at around 1:20 seconds."

Noticed this in one of @WSJ's tweets: using Unicode characters to display an infographic akin to Edward Tufte's 'sparklines'. Kottke's post captures the relevant discussion around this subject.
Should think about twitter data visualization in general: movie ratings using full/half-full/empty star characters, etc.
Related idea: tweet taxonomy metadata -- icon at beginning of tweet? (star = interesting etc.)

"Cascade allows for precise analysis of the structures which underlie sharing activity on the web.

This first-of-its-kind tool links browsing behavior on a site to sharing activity to construct a detailed picture of how information propagates through the social media space. While initially applied to New York Times stories and information, the tool and its underlying logic may be applied to any publisher or brand interested in understanding how its messages are shared."

Kevin Kelly asks his readers to name the best magazine articles ever.

Exactly what it says on the tin.