Haiti 90999– Giving credit where credit is due.

I typed “Haiti” and sent the text to 90999. Someone in Port au Prince with a pile of ten dollar bills must be watching his cell for my text so he can hand out the money to the hurting and hungry. What? That’s not the way it works? Naw. Normally, when I charge something to my phone bill, the cell phone carriers wait until they collect the money from me before they hand it over to the company I bought something from. That means that if my carrier processes my Haiti donation regularly, I would have to wait until my phone bill arrived in the mail, then write a check to the carrier, drop the check in the mail, have the postal service deliver it. And only after the cell phone company cashed my check would they send the money to the Red Cross. That billing cycle can take between 30 and 60 days – if there are no glitches and some of us use electronic payment. That is way, way too slow to help the people who are suffering.

But with this crisis, the cell phone carriers have abandoned business as usual. Now I am no real fan of cell phone companies – hey, who really is. But in this situation they have stepped up to the plate to expedite our donations to speed help to Haiti. In essence, they are going to float us all a loan help people survive. Instead of waiting for us to pay our bills, the major cell phone companies are sending the money immediately to the Red Cross. Through last week Verizon has transferred over $7.82M. AT&T has pledged to advance payment of the more than $10M that its customers have texted. And Sprint has agreed to advance 80% of the more than $3.1M its customers have given via mobile.

Sure, reading my cell phone bill is still like trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls. But I am starting to feel like there really might be a heart behind that fine print.

2. This DBB (Tu, 2/9, 2P) – Mike Greenwell, Danya Internationa

This semester, the majority of the student projects in the NMI are investigating how personal media (mobile, social media, and gaming) can contribute to public good. Specifically, we want to explore how these new technology tools can be used to help people live healthier lives. Our guest for the next Digital Brown Bag (Tu, 2/9, 2P, Visual Arts Room 116) is Mike Greenwell, Vice-President for Health Marketing and Communications at Danya International (http://www.danya.com/). Danya is global leader in health and education technology-enabled solutions. They have been involved in a range of innovative projects that use technology to make the world a better place. On Tuesday, Mike will share with us what he believes can and should be done with technology. Join us!

iPad the Future of Print? The plague of TMI.

Getting old bites because you realize what you want isn’t really what you need.I have been reading all the headlines that suggest Apple’s new iPad might be the savior of print media. And here is where my wants collide.

I want newspapers (in whatever form possible) to survive. True journalism is too important to society to fall victim to economic downturns. And yet, almost every week brings greater doubt that the course newspapers have charted through precarious financial straits will lead to anything other than more newsprint wreckage on the shoals of digital change. It feels like the next chapter for newspapers will be chapter 11.

And I want Apple’s new iPad (http://www.apple.com/). It’s an ultra-thin (less than half an inch thick) incredibly light (around 1.5 pounds) high resolution (9.7-inch LED backlit 1024x768) powerful (16 Gbytes of flash memory with a 1 GHz CPU) computer-esque device. With multi-touch, GPS, and an accelerometer it is a lot more like an iPhone than even the tablets we have seen in the past. Plus, it has a fairly reasonable entry price point of $499. So, heck yeah, I want it!

But are my wants compatible? Will the device I crave save the news source I desire? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. And the real problem is TMI.

My youngest son taught me that acronym when I tried to explain the birds and bees when he was eight years old. Moving beyond the ambiguous analogies of animals and insects to the more graphic components of reproduction (including a drawing that was marginally anatomically correct) sent him running from the room crying “TMI. TMI!” My oldest son (who had survived the “talk” a few years before) translated – Too Much Information.

In the case of the iPad, it is really TMFI – Too Much Free Information. The problem with newspapers today isn’t so much the medium we read it on, it is the economic expectations we have formed around each medium. Bottom line, we expect an online newspaper to be free. With precious few exceptions, all we need to receive gratis high quality information that is incredibly expensive to produce is a browser and a URL. We don’t need to pay at all. And it was telling that in his slick introduction of the device last week, Steve Jobs deliberately took us to the “New York Times” on his iPad – and he never entered his credit card info. The underlying message was “Buy the $499 device and get the news for free!”

So I want it, but the iPad really won’t save newspapers. It is just a new type of computer that we will use to navigate to free online newspapers. And that won’t help newspapers.

As much as I hate to admit it, the Kindle is what the newspaper industry needs. With limited technical capabilities, the Amazon Kindle isn’t nearly as sexy as the iPad. The Kindle doesn’t have color, video, or web browsing capability. I don’t want the Kindle as much as I want the iPad. But it has one feature the iPad lacks, a toll booth for news content. On my Kindle DX, there is only one way for me to see the “New York Times” -- I have to buy it. With the Kindle and all of the other e-readers, there is an understood expectation that to get content (whether books, magazines, or newspapers) you have to pay. Sure, Amazon takes a big cut of the $0.75 I fork over for my single edition, but at least some of the money is going back to the organization producing the news. Long term, that subscription revenue stream is essential to the long-term survival of newspapers. [Read item below for more info on e-reader research at Grady.]

So yes, I want my iPad – and I am going to get one. But my selfish behavior might come back to haunt me. Without big changes in how (or even whether) we pay for news, there will be less “good” news to read on the iPad.

This DBB (Tu, 2/2, 2P) – Digital Media at Turner

Turner is our digital media home town hero. It is a media monster that is harnessing brand new ways to bring you new types of content on whatever device you want to see it on. At our next Digital Brown Bag (Tuesday, 2/2, 2P, Room 116 Visual Arts) Phil Sharpe (Senior VP for Digital Media Competitiveness & Strategy) and Michael Adamson (VP for Sports New Products and Services) will be our guests. They have wild new ideas about how media is going to change in the next few years.Come hear what they have to say.

Kindle needs to change to reach young readers – Grady Research.

Researchers in the Grady College have been looking at whether e-readers like the Kindle could help newspapers attract young readers. Bottom line, e-readers feel like old media young people. They want color and video – sounds like the iPad, eh? You can read more at http://bit.ly/dmMEOU.

Personal Media / Public Good – 5/1/10 – Save the Date!

This semester in the New Media Institute, we are investigating how personal media (mobile phones, social media, and games) can contribute to public good. Specifically, our projects are going to look at how these personal media platforms can be used to encourage health behaviors. On Saturday, 5/1/10, the Health and Medical Journalism Program (http://www.grady.uga.edu/KnightHealth/), the Center for Health and Risk Communication (http://southerncenter.uga.edu/uga/ugacenter.htm), and the New Media Institute are teaming up to host a conference exploring the ways that new digital media tools can help make communities stronger. It will be a day of panels, discussion and planning. Plus we will be debuting all the NMI projects. So mark your calendar. I will be sending you more information as we finalize plans.

MLK Day – Closing in on the Dream?

[The following post contains language that some readers might find offensive.]
They weren't a good team. It was as simple as that. He and his brother were the only black coaches in the east side Little League division. And every year when we drafted players, they seemed to pick every black kid that was available. I heard the snide off-hand comments from the other coaches that he was “prejudiced.” I learned the real reason when he approached me to make a trade, one of his better white players for my younger black kid who still hadn’t learned to hit. “Needs a ride, Coach. He needs a ride.” Sure enough, at every practice and game that coach never arrived without a car full of his players. Transportation issues guaranteed that every year he had many great kids on his team, but few good players. He just seemed to have other priorities.

That team was responsible for one of the worst wins of my coaching career. His team hadn’t won a game and we were in second place. My team had gotten complacent. Late in the last inning, our wheels came off. We gave up three runs. His team was only down by one-run with a runner on second. His dugout was going crazy. Then like something out of a black and white movie, his number nine hitter blooped an opposite field homer. Incredible. His team went wild – with the top of their order coming up they had a real chance to win this game. The runner from second got so excited, he touched third, took off his helmet and started pumping it in the air. A real no-no. From the first league meeting, we had been telling kids to keep their batting helmets on until they got into the dugout. Safety. The League was serious. It was an automatic out. My son, the catcher, pointed out to the umpire the bare-headed runner about to touch home. The umpire called him out. Game over. We won. He and I came to the plate to hear the umpire explain. He listened quietly, then he put the offending helmet on his own head and walked back to the dugout with his arms extended as if to say “See?” Then he put his arm around the kid who had cost them the game -- who happened to be crying.

That year the east side played the west side in a kind of Athens tournament. We were the weaker league but we had some players. Bragging rights were on the line. My team won our first game – a wild two-strike homer by my son, Scoop (did you think I would write this whole thing without giving a nod to a Shamp?) After the game as we were gathering up our equipment, we heard a commotion from the adjoining field where his team was playing. Then a kid came up and said the east side coach had pulled his team off the field. I hurried over to see what was going on and I met the coach walking to the parking lot with his team behind him. I asked what was going on.

“He called me a n**er. That coach called me a ni**er.”

I was shocked. That couldn’t happen here – not in one of the most enlightened spots in the entire universe. I said he had to have misunderstood.

“I know that coach and he wouldn’t say something like that” and as soon as those words left my lips I knew that wasn’t really true. He looked at me.

“My son heard, Coach. My son was right there and heard.” He put his arm around his son who was standing next to him and walked off.

Today on Martin Luther King Day, I thought about that coach’s pain and pride. He helped me remember that racism isn’t just a societal problem, it is always personal. It damages us all by wounding the few. This year we can congratulate ourselves on the progress we have made in addressing long-standing bias and even hatred. A black man in the White House. Who can say things aren’t getting better? But I have been thinking about that coach in the car ride home when he had to explain himself to his team, to his son. Maybe the policies of the person in the Oval Office mean less than the beliefs of the person in the opposite dugout, your neighbor. Dr. King had a dream and we are closing in. But we still have such a long way to go.

This DBB (Tu, 1/19, 2P) – Clarkson Logan, Maestro

OK, imagine this. What if I could load a little piece of software on my computer connected to the internet, then be able to listen to my music on that computer on any connected computer – anywhere in the world! Heck, I can even listen to all my music on my iPhone. Oh, and I can let other users listen to my music, too. That is Maestrro (http://www.maestro.fm/). And it is too cool. At our next Digital Brown Bag (Tuesday, 1/19/10, 2P, Room 116 of the Visual Arts Building) Clarkson Logan, the co-founder and CEO of Maestro will be our guest to explain his vision for where online music is going and what it is like trying to build a business around innovative products. Join us. And remember, we have moved Room 116 in the Visual Arts Building – we ran out of room.

Texting for Haiti

Instant gratification. It is one of the biggest gripes about Generation Now. They don’t understand delayed gratification. They have to see the immediate impact of their actions. They just can't wait. But instant gratification has been the vital key to raising money for Haitian relief. Old calls for help asked us to write a check and drop it in the mail. More recently we could call the number on the screen and provide our credit card number to donate to a worthy cause. That took too long too many people were not willing to take the time. But things have changed. Almost immediately after the earthquake in Haiti, a nonprofit called the Mobile Giving Foundation (http://mobilegiving.org/), set up a service that allowed users to give to Haitian relief by texting “HAITI” to the phone number 90999. For every text, the users cell phone will be charged $10 with the proceeds going to Red Cross Haitian relief. By last weekend, over $8M had been received via this system. Why is it so popular? It is easy and quick. Instant gratification. So impatience isn’t really a bad thing – if you know someone is in need.