Steve Rubel lists five ways in which he is simplifying his technology:

1. Eliminating any bookmarks, software/webware that I haven’t used in the last seven days
2. Cutting back to two devices for everything – a laptop and a cell phone. Period, end of story
3. All critical data seamlessly syncs between these two devices. If a service doesn’t allow me to sync stuff via the cloud and access it both online and off, it’s toast
4. He’s dumped tons of of stuff: RSS feeds and virtually every email newsletter
5. Setting up lists on Friendfeed to help me find signals in the noise

That sounds really good to me. I’m feeling more cluttered every day. Too many atoms, too many bytes (bits?)

• #1 will be a snap for the bookmarks. I’ll have to nut up to kill some of the software I’m not using. Wish me luck.
• #2 is equally appealing. I could get by with my MacBook and my iPhone. But the big iMac at work belongs to the company, so… and the Mac Mini at home really gets very little use.
• #3 The whole Mac/Mobile Me experience has made me very reliant on sync’ing. I have a couple of apps that don’t but not many.
• #4 is pretty easy to do. Got my RSS subscriptions under 50. If I add one, I’ll try to find one to delete
• #5 I’ve never been able to get with the Friendfeed thing. I’ll take another look but…

This post by Jeff Jarvis raises a number of interesting questions –and what he calls myths– about the role of journalists in the ever-changing media world. Here are three nuggets (not contiguous) from the longer post:

“In an offhand reference about the economics of news, Dave Winer wrote, “When you think of news as a business, except in very unusual circumstances, the sources never got paid. So the news was always free, it was the reporting of it that cost…. The new world pays the source, indirectly, and obviates the middleman.” This raises two questions: both whether news needs newsmen and whether journalists and news organizations deserve to be paid.”

“The (printing) press has become journalism’s curse, not only because it now brings a crushing cost burden but also because it led to all these myths: that we journalists own the news, that we’re necessary to it, that we decide what’s reported and what’s important, that we can package the world for you every day in a box with a bow on it, that what we do is perfect (with rare, we think, exceptions), that the world should come to us to be informed, that we deserve to be paid for this service, that the world needs us.”

“And that’s what Winer is trying to do when he reminds us that the important people in news are the sources and witnesses, who can now publish and broadcast what they know. The question journalists must ask, again, is how they add value to that. Of course, journalists can add much: reporting, curating, vetting, correcting, illustrating, giving context, writing narrative. And, of course, I’m all in favor of having journalists; I’m teaching them. But what’s hard to face is that the news can go on without them. They’re the ones who need to figure out how to make themselves needed.”

I’ve been to our nation’s capitol a number of times over the years but somehow never found time to visit sites like the Lincoln Memorial. I was moved by the monument and what it represents. And read –for the first time– Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

“Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”

Can our country still produce men like Lincoln? I hope so.

[By way of Podcasting News]

I came this close to getting a tattoo while in D.C. last week. Changed my mind at the last minute and knew immediately it was the right decision. It wasn’t the permanence of a tattoo that changed my mind. Rather, the insight that tattoos are not permanent.

Oh sure, that ink will be beneath your skin for a lifetime, but how long is that, really. A blink of the Cosmic Eye. Is there really that much difference between a child’s lick-it-and-stick-it tattoo and an some elaborate kanji that translates to: “I’m a dip-shit who thinks this is ‘Bad Ass’ in Japanese?”

If you’ve stayed with me this far, you can understand why the Sharpie-drawn fez by the talented Mr. Roe has the same metaphysical lifespan as any other tattoo.

Remember those early Web 1.0 home pages with the navigation buttons and long “Welcome to our Website” paragraphs? Which eventually morphed into more dynamic content, maybe even a blog? How about just making YouTube your home page?

In a recent conference call I cautioned against being “a PowerPoint company in a YouTube world.” I’m guessing the kids at Boone Oakley don’t do a lot of PowerPoint presentations. [By way of Planet Nelson]

The National Air and Space Museum was one of the more interesting places we visited in Washington. The original Wright Brothers plane, the Apollo 11 command module… a lot of history. Would take days to see it all.

During the cab ride back to the hotel, we struck up a conversation with the driver and asked about celebrities-he-has-driven. His list included: Telly Savalas, Senator James Lugar and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Best tipper? Telly. Gave the guy a $50 on an 8 dollar fare. Worst? Jesse stiffed the guy. Not a penny. Our driver still can’t believe it. About 4 our of 10 fares do not tip. Amazing.

Our friend –and DC local– Dianne took us to a hole-in-the-wall BBQ spot that was pretty damned good. Then a stroll in Georgetown. Somehow not as sexy as it seems in all the spy novels.

It’s been a good trip but we’re both ready to see our dawgs, deal with our dead refrigerator and get a cup of Rocket Fuel.

Telling someone how to be creative is like explaining how to wiggle your ears. But Hugh MacLead’s little blog-to-book (Ignore Everybody – And 39 Other Keys to Creativity) has some useful insights. Here are my favorites:

• The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.
• Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted.
• The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.
• It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to have some sort of commercial angle, for a change.
• Doing anything worthwhile takes forever.
• Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
• Like the best jobs in the world, it just kinda sorta happened.
• Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring.
• The only people who can change the world are the people who want to. And not everybody does.
• Selling out is harder than it looks (It’s hard to sell out if nobody has bought in)
• If you’re arranging your life in such a way that you need to make a lot of fuss between feeling the (creative) itch and getting to work, you’re putting the cart before the horse. You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.
• The best way to get approval is to not need it.
• Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom.
• The size of the endeavor doesn’t matter as much as how meaningful it becomes to you.
• If you are successful, it’ll never come from the direction you predicted. Same is true if you fail.

Mindy McAdams (Teaching Online Journalism) points us to a speech by David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief for Reuters News, to the Intl. Olympics Committee Press Commission (June 23, 2009).

“We in the traditional media … must concentrate our efforts on defining and developing that which really adds value.

That means understanding what really can be exclusive and what really is insightful. It means truly exploiting real expertise.

It means, to my earlier point, using all the multimedia tools available and all the smart multimedia journalists to provide a package so much stronger than any one individual strand.

It means working with the mobile phone and digital camera and social media-enabled public and not against them. Working against them would be crazy.”

The last few days playing with the iPhone, Twitter, Posterous and YouTube make his last point really hop off the page.

I think the long-term success of our news networks –of everyone’s news networks– will depend on understanding and implementing these ideas. Okay, maybe the short-term success.

After four days of playing with the new iPhone, Posterous, Twitter, YouTube and Mobile Me… here are a few thoughts.

Hard to beat the iPhone for audio and video if you want immediate and easy upload to YouTube. The stills are not as good as the Casio delivers. (Can you guess which took the photo below?)

Posterous is fun and easy but not sure that it gives me much that Twitter does not, especially since YouTube now talks to Twitter. There is something about seeing the media nicely presented, in-line on the Posterous page, but you have to get folks there.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Tweetie gets video from the iPhone to my Twitter stream.

After comparing the quality of still images emailed to my Mobile Me account, to those emailed to Posterous, the Mobile Me images look much better (despite the issues Apple has had with Mobile Me).

It all gets a little confusing with literally too many choices. But I do like being able to share the media quickly, even a some sacrifice in quality. I’m guessing I’ll wind up using Twitter, YouTube and Mobile Me for on-the-fly. The blog will get posts like this, after I’ve had a time to reflect and look more closely at the available media.