Puffbox

A quote from one of the many obituaries for Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin really jumped out at me:

I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message.

I was never a huge wildlife fan. I would never sit down to watch any of the BBC’s big-budget nature documentaries. But I would – and did – watch Steve Irwin. Not so much recently, to be honest; it got a bit repetitive and wearing. But that’s not my point. I watched the show purely because of his passion and enthusiasm for the subject.

Likewise Mark Kermode’s film reviews on Five Live. I haven’t been to the cinema more than three times in the last three years (for various reasons); but I always make a point of listening to his review slot. Same goes for Top Gear – one of the best things on British TV. An hour of unashamed good fun. And yet I don’t know anything about cars, nor do I particularly care to.

Why? Passion. Like him or not, Jeremy Clarkson really really cares about cars. He puts his all into the performance, and it makes for great telly.

If you’re not passionate about what you do, maybe you should be doing something else.

Suddenly it’s all happening in the world of newspapers.

The Telegraph is reported to be preparing to launch a ‘”click and carry” afternoon news service, in print, audio and video form in the next few days’ – following in the footsteps of the Guardian’s G24 exercise in PDF automation. The Times is trying to generate some buzz around its Comment Central blog by comment editor Daniel Finkelstein – following in the footsteps of the Guardian’s much more ambitious Comment Is Free.

The Sun’s website isn’t as dramatic a redesign as some would have you believe – most of its much-heralded new video content is no more than US-voiced Reuters reports, which don’t really follow the Sun’s editorial line. But one can only applaud the video versions of its Dear Deidre photo-stories.

Those outside the capital will be missing the battles at major Tube stations each evening, as the two new freesheets compete for our attention. TheLondonPaper is probably the better looking of the two, both in print and online. Meanwhile, the launch of London Lite is an excuse for a redesign of its supporting website, ThisIsLondon – with news remarkably low down the left-hand nav, reflecting the paper’s aim of being more of an entertainment guide.

Of the two, I think I have a preference for London Lite – it feels more like a ‘proper’ newspaper, sitting somewhere between its two stablemates Metro and the Evening Standard. Yesterday’s edition of TheLondonPaper was extremely short on news: its page three consisting of a picture of Kate Moss in her pants (apparently crashing the entire internet); and a couple being seen having sex in the open air. Oh, and a two-page spread about how pole dancing can apparently keep you fit. Liter than Lite.

But these new arrivals clearly recognise the need to do something with the whole social network thing. I’m struck by London Lite’s liberal use of the word ‘blog’ at every opportunity. TheLondonPaper seems equally keen to build interaction with its readership, as demonstrated by its placement of ‘contribute’ as the first link in its website’s primary nav: there isn’t much evidence of it so far, but then again, it’s only been publishing for a few days.

Tim Harford‘s current BBC2 series ‘Trust Me I’m An Economist’ can be occasionally infuriating – but I guess that’s the nature of economics. After several years studying it at university, I still saw it more as an art than a science. Too many ‘if’s.

Although he doesn’t refer to it in his write-up, this week’s episode made some interesting points about asynchronous information – where one side in a negotiation knows more than the other. He used the example of a second-hand car salesman: he knows the whole truth about that car you’re looking at, but you’ll never know if he’s telling you the whole truth (unless you negotiate some kind of no-strings cooling-off period).

Then, reading an equally challenging piece by Seth Godin about the futility of job interviews, I recalled an incident that happened to me recently. I went to speak to someone pretty well-known in the UK new media industry about a possible job opportunity. I already read his blog on a daily basis, so I knew a surprising amount about his interests and opinions. When he asked a question, I knew what answer he was looking for.

It was a very uncomfortable experience. One side did know more than the other… but this time, it was the buyer (me) rather than the seller (him). I suppose I could have just repeated his opinions back to him; he would have thought ‘wow! what a great guy!’ Instead I tried to ‘explore the situation’ a bit; I realised we were breaking new ground in post-blogging etiquette, and I wanted to see where it would go.

It didn’t go anywhere.

The price of those little SD memory cards continues to plummet. You can now get them via Amazon for a startlingly low £7.75. How on earth does Argos think it can justify a £69.99 pricetag?

At prices like these, there’s almost no point thinking about more complex ways to connect your devices. Engadget has details today of a video recorder from SanDisk which can use ‘any composite video source such as your set-top box, DVD player, or TiVo’. Record your video, take the card out, pop it into your PDA, and away you go. (And yes, this is finally happening – I’m starting to notice more and more people watching video on the train.)

Add some kind of EPG / Sky+ functionality to simplify the recording process, and I’ll bite your hand off.

It’ll be worth keeping an eye on David Cameron’s (apparently) one-off blogging effort during a trip to India. The first posting is half-text, half-video. It’s also half joking-in-departures, half earnest-piece-to-camera. It’ll be an interesting case study to see which approaches win out.