Barry Parr

"Things are much better now than they were twenty years ago. Even at the height of its powers, the traditional model of local news left vast numbers of communities underserved. On the San Francisco peninsula, the SF Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News did a good job of covering their home markets, but they neglected the two dozen communities in their shadows -- communities where the major metro dailies had driven our smaller competitors. They also neglected many neighborhoods that their advertisers shunned. And TV and radio couldn't be bothered unless there were bodies in the street. The giants may have done some good work in their day. I'd argue that there was a lot less of it than they remember. But there was always plenty of unmet need for community news that offered no business model to the publishers of major metro dailies. It's still economically unrewarding, but at least now interested citizens have the tools to reach their neighbors." - Barry Parr

"Seems to me that this was the strategy back around 2007. IIRC, the Houston Chronicle bet big on becoming a local agency five years ago. Things may have changed, one reason newspapers are hurting is that the big boxes have killed Main St and moved their ad-buying decisions to the home office." - Barry Parr

"Even corporations that own news organizations are incapable of acting more like newsrooms. They're organized to behave in an entirely different manner. There's a reason press releases don't have bylines." - Barry Parr

"I did some more research and it's still a mystery. My server is in Southern California. I checked my IP when logged in via Sidestep, and it shows that I'm where my server is supposed to be. We did a traceroute, and the packets never left California on the way to Google. Yet, when I go through Sidestep, Google forwards me to google.com.hk. Nothing like this happens with Yahoo, Bing, or Facebook." - Barry Parr

"I'm beginning to wonder. I guess I assumed their servers were in the US. I pinged Dreamhost support about the same time I wrote here. I'll ask them once they get back to me and let you know." - Barry Parr

"I love Sidestep, but I'm having a weird and troubling problem. When I use Sidestep connect to my domain, which is hosted by Dreamhost, all Google search results are returned by google.com.hk. Google thinks I'm in China. Any idea why that would be?" - Barry Parr

""All PC makers..."? I don't think your headline is accurate. Looks like Lenovo, Acer, and ASUS are all up worldwide. But this is a remarkable shift in what looked like a mature market two years ago." - Barry Parr

"Perhaps Reed Hastings is complaining about Comcast on Facebook (and not to his lobbyist) so he could get coverage on All Things D and Techmeme. >Hastings has all sorts of ways to complain/lobby Comcast and/or regulators (see, for instance, the new Netflix PAC). I continue to find it fascinating that he’s taken to posting on Facebook for this stuff. (Another reminder: Hastings is a Facebook board member)." - Barry Parr

"Alas, BTRT is still only available in analog formats. Which is more than I can say for TMVS." - Barry Parr

"Vimeo also delivers videos via H.264. I can still view them in Safari without Flash installed, This isn't a crusade against Flash in general, but I'm avoiding both as a user (installed on my computer) and as a publisher (all my videos are now available in H.264). But if you prefer to load from Vimeo via Flash, you're welcome to do so." - Barry Parr