This is a much quieter week. The media was duped by a woman posing as a child who disappeared in 1986. The major networks all fell for it as did the law enforcement officials. Perhaps they will be a little more circumspect next time. The family must feel exploited not once from the original disappearance of their daughter, but twice in the past week - once by a criminal and again by the media with implicit cooperation by the law enforcement officials involved.



An interesting story concerning newsgroups from PCWorld. It looks like there is going to be a convergence eventually when your email, newsgroups, blogs and RSS will be seamlessly delivered to your inbox. The real problem that all of these technologies seem to be solving is information overload. However, the Microsoft solution as decribed in the story doesn't go far enough to help you make sense of that information. A cool piece of software that is closer to the solution is Scopeware. Scopeware Vision searches your PC for all of the relevant information you need and puts in at your fingertips, no matter where it is stored on your PC. A cool tool. Try it out.

July 25, 2003: The news is full of the photos of Saddam Hussein's sons. I've always more sensitive about television viewing, particularly news and my daughter. My husband have a running "joke" about content not being PG3, now PG5. But since September 11, we do not view television news with our daughter around. Seeing dead bodies and body parts isn't something we want our daughter to view. It seems that we watch a lot of PBS, Disney Channel, Cartoon Network and Nickolodeon. The marketing to children bothers me, but that's a blog for another day.

The most interesting thing about the news lately that I've been wondering about is why haven't they named Kobe Bryant's accuser. Especially with the recent outing of the Central Park Jogger. Turns out there is a lot of commentary out there. One of the better pieces is by Geneva Overholser on Poynter.org, Name the Accuser and the Accused, http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=54&aid=42260. Geneva concluded the piece by saying, "The responsible course for responsible media today is this: Treat the woman who charges rape as we would any other adult victim of crime. Name her, and deal with her respectfully. And leave the trial to the courtroom." I would agree if only we could trust the media to treat her respectfully. Rape is not like other crimes and should be treated differently.

Finally, it looks like Jayson Blair, late of the NY Times, got a writing gig with Esquire. Ok, so it is only for a book review and the proceeds go to charity, but, I think they should insist in proof that he read the book before they print or post the review.

July 23, 2003: Life is interesting. Just when you thought Bush might be down for the count, Saddam's sons end up dead in Mosul. Jessica Lynch is back home and tried to have a low-key homecoming despite the media. Is her pre-engagement ring really news on a network morning show? The networks have just about scavenged everything they could from her ... Next? A book deal. Maybe that's why Simon and Schuster is laying off 5% due to the news ticker I saw this am. What a deal! Actually, S&S isn't doing that book. I read Knopf is the one with the Lynch deal.

By the way, does anyone like the new InfoWorld.com design? And why does it seem like the top IT trades only cover IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Peoplesoft, Google and EMC? Editorial dependence on advertisers or what?

Anyway, this is my first experience with Blogging. Let's hope it is a good one.