Author: Dave

  • Remembering Harry Dean Stanton at The Bottom Line

    Remembering Harry Dean Stanton at The Bottom Line

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    Rest in peace, Harry Dean Stanton. Circa 1988, I worked the ticket booth at The Bottom Line Cabaret on weekends, during the day, while I was at NYU. Stick thin, long-haired little weirdo. One rainy day, the night’s band was loading in. Suddenly, in the little yellow ticket booth, Harry Dean was next to me…

  • Eavesdropping on Jeffrey Brown and James Corner

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    Thrilled to eavesdrop on Jeffrey Brown’s PBS NewsHour interview with genius James Corner of Field Operations, at the High Line in NYC. I was too shy to ask for a selfie, but I snagged a few snaps.

  • Why Does Your Company Exist? Brand That Before How and What

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    It’s refreshing to rewatch Simon Sinek’s TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” The lesson of first communicating why you do what you do, before how or what, is convincing. We’re barraged with messages online, and our filters are thick. Why has the best chance of getting through. Just be sure the how and what are worth…

  • The New Republic Editorial Shake-Up: The Long/Short, Old/New Media Debate

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    Two recent Charlie Rose interviews – see below: One with Leon Wieseltier, long-time New Republic editor who resigned in protest last fall, and one with Chris Hughes, the Facebook cofounder and young grandaddy of online political organizing (Obama ’08) who purchased The New Republic in 2012. It’s fascinating to see them wrestle with topics such…

  • Duolingo.com: Learn a Language, Translate the Web, for Free

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    In this TED video, Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon introduces Duolingo.com, a free online language tutorial site that (in the background) uses your quiz answers to help translate the web. Massive online collaboration. Along the way, von Ahn explains reCAPTCHA – those two-word “type the mangled words to prove you’re a human” tests found on…

  • A First Look at Medium.com

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    Medium.com is in beta launch, allowing posts from friends and family and inviting reader reactions via Twitter sign-ins. The intro page describes it as a new platform for sharing stories and ideas. It’s longer-form than Twitter and organized into collections, by topic. So far, the design is very readable – gray-on-gray and all text (no…

  • John Battelle’s “Musings on ‘Streams’ and the Future of Magazines”

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    John Battelle muses on the shift from page-based content (magazines, blogs, and similarly grouped content) to streams of aggregated content. What’s lost is that experience of consuming one publisher’s meal – instead, we stream a mishmash of snacks. That “page-based content” experience has value – editing and designing a publication is an art – but…

  • Grammar Is for the Front Office and the Back Office

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    I have to agree with the managers quoted in Sue Shellenbarger’s June 19, 2012, Wall Street Journal article, “This Embarrasses You and I*” – practicing good grammar in the back office can help ensure that a company’s external communications are boo-boo free. Internal proposals and communications – especially when pitching a strategy or explaining a decision –…

  • Benchmarks for Estimating Editing Speed – Update

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    I was happy to hear my article “Benchmarks for Estimating Editing Speed” will be discussed in Heather Severson’s workshop “The Mercenary Writer’s Guide to Setting Fees: How to Bid a Project in 5 Minutes or Less” on Tuesday, April 17, in Tuscon, for The Arizona Chapter of the Editorial Freelancers Association. Heather was kind enough…

  • Photos: Aaron Hobson’s Google Street Views

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    Check out Aaron Hobson’s brilliant portfolio of Google Street View shots taken around the world, in “enchanted and remote lands” typically only seen by locals.  Such a great idea!  http://aaronhobson.com/gsv.html (h/t thenextweb.) thenextweb: Check out the full collection of photos on Aaron’s site. (via Photos Taken by Google Street View Cameras) (Source: http://aaronhobson.com/gsv1.html)