But It's Not Google (BING)

Everybody calls it Coke but Pepsi still sells a lot of soda. Microsoft hopes that even if you use Google as a verb, you'll use Bing to do your Googling.

Microsoft's job will be harder than Pepsi's, which its reported $80-$100 advertising budget for Bing seems to acknowledge.

People don't do online searches; they Google. That would be like if the very act of drinking were called Coking or if wiping your runny nose were called Kleenexing. Google has more than 80% of the search engine market. Website developers work to get their sites to rank high not just on search engines but specifically on Google searches.

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I was happy to see that a Bing search for "personal documentary" returned my own Personal-Documentary.com as the top result.

Bing's high-def homepage image contrasts with Google's mostly plain text layout. Looks great, sure. But Google's simplicity makes it a perfect test page if you're having trouble with your Internet connection. If any page is going to load it's Google. Loading Bing's page sent my laptop into mild hysterics. With its cooling fan on overdrive, the computer huffed and puffed as it worked to load the page.

Browsers don't help Bing's cause. Newer versions of both Firefox and Internet Explorer include search boxes. You can change the default searcher from Google but Bing is not one of the options.

Even if Microsoft makes Bing the only search option in future versions of IE, guess what? Firefox has overtaken IE as the most popular browser. That happened in part because Firefox was better and partly because it let people protest Microsoft's hegemony.

That leads to Bing's biggest hurdle in trying to topple the king of Internet search engines: Google works! Google has not given Microsoft the same kind of ammunition that Windows' faults gave Apple for its brilliant "I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC" ads. Google gives users what they want. For free.

Good luck getting people to Google on Bing.

Trivia That May Interest Only Me

In the DVD commentary for his movie Gosford Park, director Robert Altman says he deliberately added the F-word to the script several times to get the film an R rating.

"I didn't want 14-year-old boys coming off the street to see this film," he said. "Because they wouldn't like it."

Note to Self

Watch this video and learn how to use layers in Photoshop.

What Did I Say...

...about emperors hating their public nudity pointed out to them a couple of posts ago? A high school valedictorian in Spring Hill, Florida, has gotten an early lesson.

Jem Lugo's vision for her graduation speech was rejected by the school principal as too crude. It included pop culture references, slang and mildly off-color language.

Read her intended speech as well as the sanitized re-write here.

In a letter to the St. Petersburg Times Lugo writes, "Graduation is no longer about the students at all. It's about the school, proudly presenting another fine batch of perfectly acceptable programmed graduates to the rest of the community." The officially approved version of her speech, "is not me."

Lugo will attend Harvard.

Not a Pollyanna Post

I promise.

WUSF-FM honored its volunteers today. That included those for its Radio Reading Service, which included me. The Radio Reading Service broadcasts readings of newspapers, magazines and other literature to blind and otherwise disabled people. People request the special receivers needed to pick up the signal.

I haven't been active lately but I had accumulated more than 100 hours of service over a couple of stints and I got a certificate for that.* I've read everything from the Tampa Tribune and Esquire Magazine to TV Guide and the National Enquirer.

The Radio Reading Service gets a lot of its programming from syndicated services now. The Internet has replaced satellites as the means of receiving the off-site programs, which cuts its cost greatly.

Volunteers still go in early each weekday morning to read the St. Petersburg Times and what remains of the Tribune. A popular item now is the grocery store ads.

The reading service is the perfect outlet for someone who loves the sound of his own voice as much as I do. Even reading something like TV listings, which I know sounds as boring as counting blades of grass, is enjoyable because you know someone is hanging on every word you say. You're doing something every broadcast wants to do — giving people information really important to them.

They held the event at the University of South Florida's Alumni Center. (WUSF is located on the campus.) The building did not exist when during my first stretch living in Tampa in the late 1990s. A large banner hung on a set of double doors read "Doormet," which I first mistook as "Doormat." It was hanging on a door.

I learned later that Doormet was pronounced "dor-may" and that it's a south Tampa restaurant that catered the lunch. It was good, but I'm going to pay for that mega-chocolate chip cookie later. At least I ate only one.

Almost the entire WUSF staff was there, from the general manager on down, smiling and shaking hands. Name tags let us match the strange faces with familiar voices.

I particularly wanted to see the station's early afternoon host Bethany Cagle. I have never heard a voice like hers. Bright, elegant and delicate. It sounds like a smile. I'd happily sit in traffic listening to her read the phone book.

After the event I approached her. I just wanted to hear this voice as it came out of her mouth. I almost said that but thought it would sound dumber out loud than it did in my head. She looked at me expectantly. When I didn't speak she introduced herself.

"Nice to meet you," I told her. "You have a magical voice."

*100 hours is relatively little. Two people earned recognition for exceeding 600 hours of service! "Six hundred?" I said to the person next to me. "Did he get a DUI?" Kidding! Am I still allowed?

Naked Emperors Hate Me (or Why Blog?)

I have wavered about posting something I wrote the other day. I put it up, took it down, edited it, put it up again and finally took it down again. It had to do with a local TV news personality having the same name as someone who starred in a movie called "Assault of the Killer Bimbos" and the more than slight possibility that the two people were one and the same.

There was nothing defamatory or really damaging to the person involved. Or persons. Gotta acknowledge the umbrage a B-movie star might take if falsely accused of working in television news.

Don Henley's line from his song "Dirty Laundry" had it mostly right. "I coulda been an actor but I wound up here," he sang sarcastically. If the bubble-headed bleach blonde who comes on at five could have been an actor, she would not have wound up telling you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye.

I didn't write it trying to embarrass the person or the station. I thought it was interesting. And funny — a TV station trying to install someone as a beacon of credibility and expertise who may have resorted to TV news only after "Assault of the Killer Bimbos" didn't lead to anything better.

I'm not saying that's the case. I just lay stuff out. Remember the story "The Emperor's New Clothes"? I'm the kid who points out that the emperor is naked. I always have been. Guess what? Emperors HATE that. They always have.

The problem is that emperors are the ones who can hire me. Since I still sometimes work in TV news, I don't think I can do commentaries about things going on in local TV without incurring the emperor's wrath, as happened with WTSP, or making other emperors afraid that I'll point out their public nudity someday.

And we all know that emperors aren't going to stop acting like morons.

That leaves me wondering: What do I want to say here and, increasingly, what will cause me trouble if I say it? Do I become a Pollyanna who opines only about how wonderful everything is? Do I become one of those people who annoys you with the inane updates that fill Facebook pages? Just went to the store! (Or, worse, updates you WHILE driving to the store.)

If I were smart, I'd delete this whole thing and save myself the trouble before another unclad emperor comes along and I can't help myself.

You Might Be Surprised...

You know what would surprise me? A TV news promo tease that didn't tell me how surprised I might be.

Is Tweeting Reporting?

When is a reporter's reporting not to be taken as as an actual report? You know — with facts and all? According to Rick Stroud of the St. Petersburg Times, it's when you're on Twitter.

Stroud covers the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the Times. His articles appear in the printed and online versions of the paper. You can also follow him on Twitter @NFLSTROUD.

Friday afternoon he tweeted: "Hearing reports that Bucs might be interested in Marvin Harrison. Makes sense if they're looking at Plaxico...Need depth at WR..."

A website called ProFootballTalk.com saw it and repeated the information, including a link to Stroud's Twitter page, where the story, if 140 characters can constitute a "story," originally appeared.

Only problem? Twitter's 140 character limit apparently precluded Stroud from adding, "but don't quote me on that," before ProFootballTalk.com quoted him on that.

So word spread that The St. Petersburg Times was reporting that the Bucs had interest in Marvin Harrison. This is when the excrement hit the ventilating system. Perhaps Stroud's editor at the Times wondered why this scoop had not appeared in the paper that pays him to break such stories.

Perhaps it wasn't a scoop at all because it didn't come from a reliable source or one that could not be independently verified. You know — that pesky journalism crap like fact-checking to which newspapers (sometimes) still stubbornly cling.

Either way, Stroud tweeted a different tune the following morning: "People, if I tweet something bout Marvin Harrison it's agent-driven speculation. If there's news, I'll post it on Tampabay.com. K? Sheesh."

Putting aside the agent-driven speculation that Rick Stroud sounds like a royal a-hole, lemme see if I understand this. The stuff you report on Twitter doesn't count? Even though your Twitter page lists your name and your bio reads, "Busy covering Bucs/NFL for St. Petersburg Times and appearing on ESPN's First Take." It should be taken with a grain of salt? (Apparently as well two aspirin and several shots of tequila after trying to sort out what's real and what's not.)

Is tweeting reporting? Do the standards required for something to be printed in the paper or reported online apply to a news outlet's reporters when they're using Twitter? If not, what's the point? I wonder how many news organizations have considered the question and created policies to deal with it.

I doubt that a disclaimer dripping with condescension posted after the fact will suffice.

Always Bring Your Camera

Not long ago someone started a photography meetup group near me. I've gone to a couple of meetings ("My name is John and I'm a photoholic.") and yesterday went on my first group shoot at Medard Park in Hillsborough County.

The member who suggested the location warned of the "carnivorous" mosquitoes. Bug spray kept them at bay but did nothing to repel the flies, which plague parts of the park where people fish.

Those places are also where the birds hang out, looking to scavenge a free meal.


Strangely, the birds were camera shy. I'd get one in sight and as soon as I pointed my lens at it, it would fly off. I wonder what it looked like to them. A couple of alligators floated along in the lake. They reminded me of the several baby gators I saw sunning themselves Friday while playing golf, one of which I kneeled down only three feet away from. I didn't have a camera with me then. I'd brought it to the course with me but left it in the car because it was supposed to rain.

Which, of course, it did not.