I interviewed my friend and long-time colleague Mary Jo Foley about her book Microsoft 2.0. It appeared recently in Shukan Daiyamondo. To find out why she thinks Ray Ozzie needs to step up, why Steve Ballmer is the guy to run Microsoft, and why the company has a bright future even without Bill Gates, read the interview. Mary Jo Foley
A funny little bit on Gawker about how people want copies of today’s New York Times as a memento of yesterday’s historic election. Can’t do that with an Internet headline, Gawker acknowledged. I am reminded that I once had a disk of the HTML files for the first-ever farewell Page One at my old newspaper, Copmuterworld. Even if I knew where the disk was (possible), I no longer have a way to read it.
Of course, electronic readers can’t protect the floor from a new puppy, either, but that’s just a market opportunity for the paper business.
I’m not sure when I stopped reading the funnies. True confession: they were the main reason I got the Sunday paper. (Then again, I no longer like playing in the rain, and only make snow angels for the principle of the thing. No wonder I’ve stopped reading the comics.) I get three Sunday papers and give the funnies to the kids. So it was pure happenstance that I saw the end of Opus.
“Bloom County” used to be one of my favorites, so I made myself go to the page on the Humane Society site where Berkeley Breathed said goodbye to Opus. (Don’t go to Breathed’s site — it’s so slow to load his tribute that it feels like accessing the Web on dial-up). Having to disconnect from paper to Web was annoying; but it was worse that it stirred nothing. I didn’t recognize the detritus that Breathed gathered to pull at the heart strings of loyal Opus followers, and thought the placing of him in Goodnight Moon was about Breathed, not Opus. I was happier seeing the sentiment in the eyes of Steve Dallas in the last panel in the paper.
Maybe I need to start reading the funnies again.
I’ve started a “5 Questions for” interview series with book authors over on Big Think. The first two are with Steve Weinberg, on his recently published dual biography of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller, “Taking on the Trust;” and Mohamed El-Erian, co-CEO and co-Chief investment officer of PIMCO, on his prescient investment book, “When Markets Collide.”
E-mail interviews aren’t my favorite — they don’t allow for the same opportunities to clarify thoughts as a live interview. But they are quick to do, which means muckety-mucks who can type are willing to try them.
A lovely piece on Studs Terkel, who just passed away, or ‘checked out,’ as he would’ve said. I never met Terkel in the nine years I lived in Chicago, and for some reason never listened to him on the radio, though I read several of his books. After I became a journalist, I did buy a collection of his interviews on cassette, Four Decades with Studs Terkel, which is available used on Amazon.com and worth the entire penny, plus shipping. I listened in awe: Terkel was a master at turning an interview into an intimate conversation.
The update, Voices of Our Times, came out in 2005. It’s high time for me to upgrade, especially since I haven’t had a cassette player in years.