It’s true! They studied it!

Thank you, cognitive science department of Indiana University.

Elyse Apantaku has brought it to my attention that two days ago was the 25th birthday of the emoticon. That is, 25 years and two days ago, somebody first suggested that we use colons, dashes, and parentheses to indicate smiling and frowning faces. Clever guy.

Today, the New York Times ended their online TimesSelect subscription service, which offered online access to the Times archives. TimesSelect was available to all subscribers to the physical paper, as well as many university students and any individuals willing to pay $50 a year for the service.

Nowadays, a great deal of the material on the Internet is available for free. Revenues are largely raised through online advertising, itself a business so large that it funds much of Google’s activities. In fact, newspaper websites are perhaps the largest destinations at which users have to pay for information online. (And pornography, which has always been a burgeoning business in virtually every medium.)

As I see it, the reluctance of newspaper websites to rely on advertising is primarily twofold. While newspapers have always relied on print advertising to keep themselves afloat, they view the Internet as an extension of their print business, not necessarily as a new market in and of itself. (To wit: online-only news sources tend not to require subscriptions.) Print sources see their websites as a great opportunity to take advantage of the technology available and provide extensive archives. Since those who browse archives are probably hardcore enough to be willing to pay, why not charge for the service?

The other reason is that newspapers cost a lot to run, and subscriptions generate a better, more stable source of revenue than online advertising, especially for upscale outfits such as the Times which would be averse to “Shoot the Gangsta” type ads. Indeed, the Times was making over $10 million a year through TimesSelect. So why drop it, and so soon after it was introduced in 2005?

A major part of it is the growing importance of search engines. By opening their articles to all users, they are also opening those pages to search engines like Google, which can index them and attract more readers to the Times online. More readers, in turn, attract more ad revenue.

Transitioning from the walled garden to the open model of the Internet is certainly not a new idea, but it’s one that print media has been reluctant to accept. Such a bold move by one of the most respected print news agencies in the world is certainly something worth noticing.

Alright, alright. I’ll post a picture of the Panasonic ring. I think those white things in the background are my fingers, but I’ve been wrong before.

It was hard to get the camera to focus up close on the ring instead of my hand, so the ring is a bit blurry. (Note: I did not try very hard.)

I just received my championship ring from the Panasonic Academic Challenge. It’s pretty awesome.

This is perhaps the funniest thing I have ever seen. This is a real album cover.

I taped the picture on the outside of my door. It was epic.

For the first two weeks, I didn’t have any grades in my classes, but four of my classes have quizzes this week. The quiz in orgo was pretty good; I think I’m getting the hang of resonance structures. I’m not quite used to nucleophilic attack and Lewis acids/bases, but we’ve just started that unit. The math quiz was easy, the video game quiz will be easy (as it is open book, open notes, and open internet), and the Scientific Revolutions quiz can’t be too bad, eh?

Last night was the first of the ten swing dancing lessons I signed up for (“for which I signed up”). I’m actually okay, I think, as much as could be expected from someone who’s only tried swing dancing for a total of one and a half hours. At the rate the lessons are going, I can actually imagine myself being good by mid-November.

I’ve been listening to music a lot lately, while hanging around or reading the New York Times (another habit I have picked up). I can’t fail by turning on Foo Fighters or Green Day, though I’ve come to rather like KT Tunstall. Her new album, Drastic Fantastic, is rather catchy, especially the first single. (Whoops, is it not yet legally available in the U.S.? Scratch that statement.)

Anyway, it does feel good to read the Times every day and know what’s going on in the country and world. I do read BBC News online, but that’s just not the same as coming across articles in the Times I would perhaps not read if I only glanced at online headlines. Besides, I get to work on the crossword every day. I’m at the point where I can finish Monday and Tuesday fairly handily, and can complete Wednesday with some trouble. Friday still kicks my ass, but I guess that’s to be expected.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6979292.stm

Goats sacrificed to fix Nepal jet Nepal’s state-run airline has confirmed that it sacrificed two goats to appease a Hindu god, following technical problems with one of its aircraft.

I am not sure how to react. This is certainly one interesting juxtaposition of “technology.”

I went to the football game against Indiana State yesterday with Emma and Caitlin. The competition was not especially exciting from either side, even though we won rather…convincingly. (It ended 55-7, 14-7 of which was in the first eight minutes.)

And I realized that, if I don’t attend sporting events with sports fans (i.e., Nick), it actually appears like I know a little bit about sports.