When we moved here to Berlin about a month ago, I was expecting - and looking forward to - experiencing all the differences, large and small, between life in the US (if the New York City area qualifies) and life here in Germany.  A lot of what I’ve come across here was entirely expected: the healthy work-to-live attitude, the not-so-healthy attitude towards smoking (the otherwise cautious and sensible Germans seem not have gotten that memo yet), the smaller personal environmental footprint, the thoroughness and competency, that inscrutable Northern European reserve - the list goes on and on…

I’ve come across some unexpected differences, too  - for one thing, I now consider New York a relatively polite place (there is a German term for “excuse me” - but I can assure you that you won’t hear it on the sidewalks or subways of Berlin - ever).

On the other hand, there are more than a few pleasant surprises to be had  here as well - and one of them is the consistently high quality of German photojournalism.  Granted, when I pick up a copy of Der Spiegel or Stern, I can’t do much other than look at the pictures (yet) - but even so, the quality, honesty, and story-telling impact of the print media photography I’ve seen here is striking.  Photojournalism here in Germany, it seems, is simply operating at a higher level than what we’re used to (or what we’ve become used to) back in the US.

A paean to the lowly magazine photograph on a technology/new media blog?  Why not - because at the end of the day, doesn’t content quality deserve at least as much mention as any technical aspects of the medium and/or the delivery platform(s) carrying that content?

So if a picture is in fact ‘worth a thousand words’, maybe it would be worth 1024 words here on digitalmissive - but even though I’m sorely tempted to grab a few of the compelling photos from the “Fotografie” sections of the Der Spiegel and Stern websites and republish them here in an effort to entice you to visit the websites yourself, you’ll just have to take my word for it: although the best shots seem to be reserved for the print editions, both publications’ sites are still well worth a visit.

Tscheuss von Berlin…

An interesting thing happened at the New York Times over the past 10 years as the paper has shifted an ever-increasing amount of focus and resources from its print edition to its web edition in response to the rise of the internet:  America’s newspaper of record, the flagship of a print journalism industry facing arguably the most direct internet-related challenges of any industry you could name, has instead embraced internet technology - not only as a delivery medium, but as a newsworthy subject in and of itself.

And by doing so, the Times has evolved into one of the more important technology news destinations on the web.

Understandably, some of the Times’ technology and media coverage is geared purely towards the casual general reading public  (a recent Andy Rooney-esque lamentation on the demise of the Filofax comes to mind).  If you haven’t noticed, though, there’s also an impressive amount of reliably high-quality technology journalism coming from 8th Avenue these days: the top-level NY Times technology section contains feature articles by the Times’ able stable of tech writers, more informal and interactive coverage can be found in the Bits Blog, and lastly, for coverage of technology for the consumer there’s the “Personal Tech” section (since non-sales driven coverage of new CE products is pretty tough to come by, I find this section particularly refreshing).

It doesn’t stop there, though - the Times is also a reliably discriminating  aggregator of worthwhile tech coverage from external sources such as redwriteweb.com and venturebeat.com.

In short, I find the NY Times technology coverage well-considered, timely, and (maybe most importantly) comparatively hype-free.  It’s a web destination that’s well worth your time (and of course it’s all also available as RSS feeds and/or email newsletters).   So, props/kudos to the NY Times - for not only meeting the challenge of the  internet head-on, but for seeing an opportunity there.

Here are two recent NY Times articles that touch on subjects we’ve written about here as well:

• The privatization of internet We’ve been noticing an unmistakable trend towards the privatization of certain areas of the internet for a while now.  In fact, it’s been one of our favorite topics (we’ve written about it here and herehere).   For both purely technical and business-driven reasons, we’re looking for the trend to continue - and here’s a good NY Times article on one aspect of it: ‘peering’, the shift from public internet backbone routing to private networks:  Scientists Strive to Map the Shape-shifting Net

• Paying via credit card Back in February we wrote about how donating to the Haitian earthquake relief  fund via text message was so utterly painless that we had completely forgotten about it by the time the next phone bill showed up with those several unexpected $10 charges.   Here’s a Times article from a month or two later about more advanced (non-text based) methods : Cellphone Payments Offer an Alternative to Cash

San Fransisco’s  somafm.com (along with Jersey City’s own WMFU) is one of our favorite internet radio destinations.

Both offer consistently good (although quite different) music - but during Space Shuttle missions, somafm also streams “Mission Control” a mashup of the live NASA communications feed mixed over ambient electronic music.   The effect is  remarkable - minutes of ambient music will go by, and suddenly some mundane communication between the shuttle and Nasa will occur, rendered somehow strangely poignant by the underlying music.

The classic argument against space exploration - that there are more than enough problems down here on Earth to invest in fixing first - has sadly never seemed more compelling.  The topic was brought into focus again this week by the Obama administration’s call to increase NASA funding while switching the focus away from moon trips and towards longer-term technologies that could make a Mars expedition a possibility in our lifetimes.

Not surprisingly, this has since become the political argument/outrage of the week rather than the scientific discussion it probably should be - meanwhile, somafm’s “Mission Control” remains a great example of the kind of innovative niche programming the “long-tail” of the internet makes possible - and an interesting blurring of the lines between art and  science.

For those of you who are interested, tune in Monday morning May 19th, as Discovery is scheduled to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere at 7:43 AM EDT…

Ground control to Major Tom - it’s now official, Planet Earth has found a new religion.

First the iPod. Then the iPod Touch. Next, the iPhone. And now, voila, in comes the iPad! At least throughout the Western hemisphere, the iGospel seems to have taken solid hold.

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I used to write a fair amount of music for television commercials.  It was interesting to have a glimpse into the workings of the advertising industry for a few years, even from the ‘gun-for-hire’ sidelines - for example, I was once called back in to do some minor revisions on a previously approved music track for an aerosol carpet deodorizer because of last-minute changes required by legal at the ad agency.

In this particular commercial, the product’s effectiveness was illustrated by an ‘odor-smelling wand’ prop waved over 2 pieces of carpet recently sat upon by the family dog - one carpet treated with our deodorizer, one with theirs.  After the post production was complete, though, it was discovered that the number of (fake) beeps coming from the prop didn’t accurately match the (real) numbers coming from the underlying focus group testing - so the spot had to be reedited with the correct  ratio of fake beeps  - hence my (and the voice-over talent’s) call-back.

Such is the attention paid to potential litigation arising from directly comparative advertising…

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Avid digitalmissive readers know, I have long considered the New York subway my prefered ad-hoc “test tube”, to get a read on the adoption status of the latest available digital devices and services. Turns out, when it comes to eReaders, I am really not seeing much excitement among my fellow straphangers these days.

Apart from the occasional Amazon Kindle, Big Apple subway riders don’t seem overly attracted (yet!) to the burgeoning world of portable electronic book and magazine devices.

How come?

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…maybe not.   But we’re going to write one anyway - because we feel there are still at least two interesting things left to say about the new Apple device unveiled last Wednesday:

Point #1. Technically, the new Apple new iPad device was disappointing on several levels (still no Flash support, still no multitasking, still no video partnerships, still no AT&T alternative).  But while the storm of negative Twitter reaction had already begun while while Steve Jobs was still on the stage, it was not until the next day that the negative reaction was reflected in the stock price.  Take a look at the chart to your left - the iPad event started at 2:00 Eastern Standard Time and was accompanied by a clear immediate spike in Apple’s share price, due as much to the sheer momentum of pre-event buzz as to superficial (”isn’t Apple the coolest?”) mainstream media coverage of the event itself.  Despite an army of bloggers and tweeters continuing to bash the iPad for its disappointing feature set throughout the day, the price remained elevated - in fact, it was not until the market open on the next day (Thursday January 28th) that the stock suddenly pulled back, ending up lower than it was pre-announcement (with knowledge of the twitter traffic, shorting Apple at about 4:00 that afternoon would have been a good move).

To me, this lag time between the (misguided) initial spike and the next day’s eventual retreat represents the disconnect that still exists between the technorati and investor classes.  That there was such a disconnect even in this case was surprising, though - because Twitter coverage of the event was fueled by an unprecedented number of tech websites serving live video streams of the event (surely a record for a product launch).  Potentially, it’s one powerful symbiotic relationship: the reach of internet video combined with the immediacy of Twitter- yet still, it took a day for the widespread disappointment in the iPad to register in Apple’s share price.

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A few weeks ago, we wrote that while a recent panel discussion of the iPhone NPR app was focused on the ability to access any NPR station despite its over-the-air local broadcast range constraints (geographic independence), the primary value proposition of the NPR app is the ability to access any program despite its scheduled air time constraints (temporal independence).  Put another way, this app represents the ‘tivo-ization’ of NPR.

In fact, the intrinsic ability to time-shift content is arguably the primary value proposition of any internet media platform.

Some recent coverage of Apple’s forthcoming Apple TV subscription model misses this point entirely, though…

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The keynote event at the Future of Television East conference here in New York a few weeks ago was a conversation with Paula Kerger, President & CEO of PBS.  During the discussion, the subject of the iPhone NPR app came up as a model of  what digital distribution of PBS content could someday look like.

Although the tremendously successful  BBC iPlayer might have been a more apt example, I was happy nonetheless to hear one of my favorite iPhone apps getting some recognition.

Of course, the ability of internet radio to provide access to any station regardless of the geographical limitations of its over-the-air broadcast range were touted -  Kerger, as it happens, enjoys listening to Maine public radio (where she has a summer home) while traveling.  However, what was left unsaid about the NPR iPhone app was what I feel is its most notable feature:  the “Programs” section, a comprehensive implementation of all available on-demand streams organized by program rather than station.  Not only that, but news shows such as “All Things Considered” are broken down by individual segments, so one can actually browse within the show (of course, for a more passive experience you can still play all segments sequentially via a playlist).

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Comcast has bought a controlling share in NBCU.  Maybe you’ve heard.

Just what this means for hulu is now topic du jour.  For those unfamiliar with the service (are there any left?), hulu is a browser-based premium video website that launched a year and a half ago as a NBC/Fox joint venture and has since became wildly popular (and deservedly so: on a technical level, the streaming is very well implemented, and on a user experience level, the UI is  very cleanly designed).  Since April, when Disney bought into hulu, CBS has been the only major broadcast network left outside of the hulu fold.

More than any other service, Hulu was looking like the future of premium online video.

Then along comes Comcast and makes things interesting: the largest company in the vertical industry most threatened by the advent of online premium (non user-generated) video is now part owner in the nascent medium’s industry leader.

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