A little ways into the future

In the not distant future, I expect a scene like this:

A family gathers in the family room in front of a large flat screen. It is not connected to cable or satellite TV; it is just one of many computers on the family's wireless network. Perhaps a media server is connected to a content source such as Comcast or XM radio, but perhaps not.

It's Saturday evening around 7. The family finishes watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother from 2010, and now they're thinking about dinner. Pizza sounds good, so they open a browser and navigate to their community news site. The latest hyper-local headlines are available in the sidebar, but their focus now is on food.

The site manages the family's connection to their neighbors, remembering the stories they've shared (such as the photo essay they posted on their Yucatan vacation), the comments they have posted on issues and articles (just as Amazon records your product comments). So, naturally, the site knows this family's favorite pizza place.

The hungriest--the eldest son perhaps--uses the remote to land on the Pizza Place's community page and gets a personalized welcome back along with a special offer--3 pizza's for the price of 2, tonight only. Sibling rivalry appears and an argument ensues. We always go to Pizza Place. Where else could they go for pizza? The community site knows them all, knows which are open right now, and can even apply predetermined rules so the restaurants effectively "bid" for the family's business.

They settle on Salvatore's, where they've never dined before. They have a good introductory offer, and the YouTube video highlighting Salvatore and his pizza philosophy was compelling. To order, they click to a page that looks like a menu, but is also an order form. They'll pick it up. Salvatore's knows who is ordering, because the family is logged in to their community site.

Tomorrow, by e-mail, whoever ordered will receive a request to rate the experience (just as Amazon does today). Returning to Salvatore's page earns points either on the community system or just at Salvatore's.

Dad rates Salvatore's and checks the box that allows Salvatore's brag that they have one more happy local customer. He clicks through to the home page and sees that the beloved former mayor has passed. The service will be next week. Dad clicks that he will attend, adding his name to the event page, then pauses to offer his condolences on the guest book.

Dad's reaction to the event could be kept private, but he chooses to make his appreciation of the former mayor known to his neighbors. Random readers who are not members of the community site can visit and see the news and the business pages, but cannot see the messages or rsvps that members post for their neighbors' benefit.

While he's there, Dad remembers he wanted to research the word of mouth about an insurance broker in town. Every insurance broker is listed; most have nice encomiums on their pages. Dad posts a general query to his neighbors for their advice. Members comment on the query like they do on an article or an event or a business. Twenty-four hours later, there are 20 responses, including several from insurance brokers themselves.

"Meeting" New People

I discovered two people in this space this week: Steve Buttry and Khoi Vihn. They don't know me, but I know a lot about them now through their blogging.

I've long enjoyed The Onion, the font of satirical news, and I admire their web site--it feels like a newspaper, but its online. I don't know what it looked like before, but it was rewritten in August 2005 using Drupal by a Manhattan firm called Behavior. The principal of Behavior was then Khoi Vihn, one of the early advocates (with Mark Boulton) of grid-based web page design. Khoi graciously shared his Onion designs with the world and then explained the grid that makes it seem tidy.

In "Making New Fake News," Vihn says the challenge became "how to create a site that might pass for a legitimate news organization on the level of The New York Times or The Washington Post." Later, he writes, "If the results look suspiciously like a green [The Onion's signature color] version of The New York Times Online, it's because we spent a lot of time studying how the Gray Lady delivers news--but I like to think we were conscientious enough not to steal crassly."

I have also admired the design of the New York Times online for many years, and now I know why: four months after The Onion's new site debuted, Vihn became the Design Director for the NYTimes.com. He's been there since early 2006, as I learned from "Black, White and Read Online," an article from last June.

In an unrelated story, as they say, I also came across Steve Buttry, who is not a designer, but rather the former editor of the Cedar Rapids [Iowa] Gazette. He is still associated with that newspaper as C3 Innovation Coach. C3 is his term: Complete Community Connection. He described his vision in a blog post from April 27, 2009.

For readers, C3 is to be "their essential connection to community life--news, information, commerce, social life." C3 is intended to be essential to businesses, too, "often making the sale and collecting the money." Buttry's goal is to displace Google as the go to site for his community. Urging Gazette Communications to think grandly, he says "We need to change from producing new material for one-day consumption in the print product or half-hour consumption in the broadcast product."

Buttry gets it--news is important but it shouldn't limit a community site. He wants them to "add to our information storehouse daily with news and other information" while staying open to other opportunities. Cautioned by a professor that change is scary, Buttry says "I can think of nothing more scary for our industry than failure to reach far enough or change thoroughly enough."

He says that, but he quickly reverts, in the same blog post, to "We will serve other people...[by] producing and delivering their morning paper and their evening newscast..." Sigh. Has he not read (or read and not believed) Clay Shirky? I'm sure he hasn't read my blog, such as this from last June:

The next question, "What is the best way to communicate these items to everyone in town?" has an obvious answer. Who in their right mind would suggest printing thousands of copies of the items on literally tons of paper, then hiring people to deposit them on every doorstep? A bundle of newspapers on the curb waiting to be distributed may evoke nostalgia, but it also represents a significant and needless environmental impact from depleted forests to burgeoning landfills.

Save the trees, save the landfill, and serve the community first and Gazette Communications will survive, Mr. Buttry. He is focused on not missing opportunities, particularly in mobile and email, RSS, Twitter, social media, iPod, game device, GPS, or some other device--he sounds like he's writing a patent application, trying to cover everything he can think of and more.

A good community news site can introduce people to their neighbors, and a blog by, for example, a past mayor, might draw a sizable audience. But when Buttry says it, it sounds forced and commercial: "The C3 will help people form personal connections with our staff and each other similar to the personal connections they feel to Beth Malicki, Bruce Aune and other KCRG anchors. They will feel as if they know people they have never met, ranging from the bloggers they follow to moms or sports fans they connect with through our network."

My problem with that is that I've watched my share of local news on television. I'd rather hear from a Realtor. TV's talking heads aren't really in the community doing things--no offense to Beth and Bruce, et al. A good editor is vital, highlighting important news with a compelling headline, or moving the boring detail lower to improve a story's scan. Talking heads are not editors.

News in the time of the iPad

Both the Kindle and the Nook--two e-Readers from book sellers--are black and white. The new iPad is about the size of the larger Kindle DX, but slightly heavier. And full color. I think heavy might be better--I like that my iPhone is heavier than a piece of plastic--but I know color is absolutely superior. News isn't just words, it's also the images that go with the text.

Here's a table that I haven't seen before:

Device	Width	Height	Thk.	Weight	Color?
Kindle	5.3"	8"	0.36"	10.2 oz.	No
Kindle DX	7.2"	10.4"	0.38"	18.9 oz.	No
Nook	4.9"	7.7"	0.5"	12.1 oz.	Lame color cover picker
Apple iPad	7.47"	9.56"	0.5"	24 oz.	Beautiful

I stumbled across an article about some physical considerations regarding newspapers, "Forget Blogs, Print Needs Its Own iPod" by David Carr, from the Oct. 10, 2005 New York Times.

Carr points out that you can't read a newspaper while you're driving, but that it is, as a medium, even more portable than, say, a laptop. You can't have a newspaper on in the background while you do other things. By contrast, the web seems to be what Carr calls "companion" media--"a pet platform that sits in the corner and pays attention to you when you pay attention to it."

"There are all sorts of devices coming along," said Dick Brass, who built the first spelling checker that worked and a format for e-books for Microsoft. "When something is good enough and close enough to paper for people to say, 'I want to use this,' then things will change quickly as they have with the iPod."

What if I offered you a magic tablet that connected you to your immediate community? Upcoming events, a traffic accident that just happened, a sale at the local new-age pharmacy, your neighbor's concerns about the planning commission, a new business opening, and a profile of the new elementary school principal. The device would give you access to the latest, as well as to the archives of the minutia of your community. You could share your opinions with your neighbors, participate in polls about the community's priorities, and so on.

The iPad isn't required for this scenario, but it certainly puts the stylish new device to useful work.