If you want good stuff, visit the blogs

Mark Potts recently weighed in something I've noticed for a while -- the interesting content on newspaper Web sites is on their blogs, not their news pages. (Click here for link to Mark's post.)

I've commented on this before (click here for link) but it raises another issue -- why do newspapers insist on placing blogs in a separate section? Why, if you're publishing a blog covering sports wouldn't you find it in the sports section of the Web site?

The New York Times Web site, which is one of the better ones out there, is a prime example. (See screen shot to the left.)

One of life's mysteries, I suppose.

Dealing with Linksys

Since I am the first to complain about rotten customer experiences I feel morally obligated to say nothing but good things about Linksys.

The past four months have been nothing but a heap of frustrations with my wireless router going out every few weeks. Couple that with the Linksys range expander going out as well as dealing with the help desk and, well you can imagine.

The final straw was the announcement a few weeks ago that I couldn't get any support since the warranty ran out end of December. What followed was a carpet bombing of corporate headquarters with letters complaining.

Since then I have received countless calls offering help and, as of yesterday, a replacement wireless router. So far, so good. Everything seems to be in working order.

Update (4/12): Not a problem yet. Not one crash. Not one reboot. Works like a charm. Fingers crossed.

Get over yourselves

Finalists for the National Magazine Awards have been announced prompting Dylan Stableford to rightly point out how New York centric they've become. (Full post here.)

Actually, nothing new there. And in fact the awards point out a number of flaws in today's magazine industry:

• Instead of worrying about how to attract more readers and to become more relevant the industry is instead patting itself on the back once a year.
• The awards tend to given to those magazines and subject matter that mean something to editors in New York. The reality is that the rest of America's interests rarely match those living in New York.
• Readers don't care about awards. They care about good content. I am willing to bet that winning this award has NEVER resulted in a magazine making more money or increasing circulation.

It's time to get over yourselves.

Reason to not follow the America's Cup No. 474

I honestly have lost track of all the back and forth and couldn't care less anymore. (Article on latest two lawsuits.)

I am starting to think that while it's good for most things to change and for sailing to become more popular, this is not the case for the America's Cup. In the quest to making sailing and the Cup more popular it's just turned into a circus. And those who didn't understand it before now just find the whole thing plain silly.

It's all kind of sad. I used to follow this event with great glee when I was younger. I even convinced my mother to drive me to Newport for a day to view Intrepid and Courageous sitting at the dock.

The quaint days when it was raced in September by amateurs (or mostly amateurs) on Rhode Island Sound look very appealing to me.

Where's the wind?

This is a bit off topic but I was struck by an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. (Article is behind a pay firewall.)

In short, it's about wind energy which I think has great possibilities. Lo and behold, power companies that use wind energy are faced with a problem those of us who sail have known forever -- it's hard to predict when it will be windy.

A cold front blew through West Texas on Feb. 26, temporarily lifting wind production. When it subsided, wind speeds dropped, turbines slowed and productivity dropped by 80% to 300 megawatts from about 1,700.

The situation was exacerbated by greater-than-expected energy demand and by lower availability of some fossil-fuel units. To get the system back in balance, the grid operator declared an emergency and tapped big customers who had agreed to be cut in exchange for cash payments.

The problem "showed us we need much better wind forecasting tools," said Kent Saathoff, vice president of system operations at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a quasipublic, nonprofit corporation that operates most of the state's high-voltage transmission system.

It's good to know there are others who face this same problem although it's probably a more important problem for power companies than it is for sailors.

Broccoli and french fries

I've always been a huge fan of Rob Curley's ever since I read a Fast Company feature on him about how he's helped enlighten newspapers in Kansas, Florida and now Washington about how to improve their products. (Read full article here.)

And while Rob is viewed as an Internet geek (which is good) his real value is that he points out some obvious truths that many people just don't want to hear. In other words, print what people want to read. This made me realize the main challenge facing newspapers and magazines today isn't technology but the fact that many just don't give the readers what they want. The only thing technology has done is speed up the process and point out the flaws.

I bring this up because Rob has a recent post using food as an analogy about how newspapers should think about news. (Read post here.)

He also agrees with my point of view -- that Sam Zell actually makes a lot of sense and people better start listening.

I know this is probably going to make me a little unpopular — or maybe that’s more unpopular — with some of the traditional journalism folks out there, but I actually agree with a lot of the things that Sam Zell has been saying lately.

We need to become more relevant to our audience. We have to make ourselves indispensable to our readers. We shouldn’t let a false sense of self-importance get in the way of trying to make news organizations matter to most folks again. Zell is absolutely correct on these points.