Nick Bergus Thoughts on what media do, and can do better, and other things

Earlier this month, the Corridor Business Journal reported that Iowa City was all but video store-less. Mr. Movies and others have closed, and That’s Rentertainment, a local independent shop, was soon to follow suit, leaving us with a just single Blockbuster. This is gets back to the news business, just stick with me. That’s Rentertainment has clearly seen [...]

I find John Gruber, when he’s got the snark dialed up to 11, annoying, grating, vial and egotistical. But that’s only when I disagree with him. I, of course, love it when we’re on the same side. Gruber seems like a smart guy. His analysis and reporting is usually good. He’s willing to point out the [...]

Remember how The New Yorker is on Tumblr? Tumblr is diverse. Some blogs cover politics. Some collect examples of cutting edge Web design. Some blogs have a personal vibe. Some post for lulz. But the ones that work, at least to my mind, remember that Tumblr is a social platform and have an authentic voice. [...]

I use Google Reader like most RSS subscribers. But you know what? Tumblr’s better. (Added: I know Tumblr’s not a true RSS reader. Stick with me.) Here are five reasons: No “unread” counts I hate watching the number of unread items pile up until it hits “1000+.” Dave Winer thinks that’s the wrong way, too. [...]

A story posted by KCRG warns potential renters and home buyer about the dangers of finding property online! As technology improves, criminals keep finding new ways to scam people. Realtors say more and more con artists are trying to take advantage of people looking to buy or rent homes online. See, Realtors nowadays have to [...]

Today, The New Yorker said on Twitter: We are now on @tumblr! Follow us: http://newyorker.tumblr.com/ But the magazine has 199 pages of Tumblr posts and its first post is dated Dec. 1, 2009. So really they meant We are now going to try to pay attention to our @tumblr! Follow us: http://newyorker.tumblr.com/ or We remembered [...]

Just a few points that I wanted to make in response to the conversation I was having with Dave Schwartz on Twitter about Facebook’s ever-changing privacy policy and the growing complaints about it that doesn’t quite fit in 140 characters: Facebook isn’t “free” for users. It doesn’t cost them money (unless they’re buying gifts or game credits [...]

Twitter released a small, simple app called Blackbird Pie that, when Twitter isn’t painfully slow and blogged down, should make it easy to embed a tweet in a blog post. It creates little bit of static HTML code that you can plop in a page. Like so: .bbpBox{background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/profile_background_images/70541403/paper_background.jpg) #ffffff;padding:20px;}p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px}p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid [...]

Selling snowmen to Eskimos Information Architects‘ “The Value of Information” Information on the Internet is as common as snow in the arctic. You can’t expect Eskimos to buy a snowman. Jay Rosen on Twitter Journalist: hey, I made a snowman. Inuit: nice! Journalist: it took me all day. Inuit: what’s your point? Journalist: that’ll be [...]

The irony of Connie Schultz’s video diatribe against parasitic aggregators being embeddable shouldn’t be overlooked.