Our Year of the Blog

Blah, blah, Blogs: Probably the most hyped online development in 2003 (along with growth in site registration), but will these self-important online journals actually change the way newspapers do journalism on the Web?

Editor & Publisher's 2003 in Review

SeattlePI.com went blog-happy in 2003. That's really the only way to put it.

The war got the ball rolling, spawning five blogs covering various angles from the views of ordinary people on the streets of Puget Sound, to the daily experiences of a photographer embedded aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

In the months since, blogs -- or "online journals," as they were usually billed in the print edition -- became a standard part of the storytelling toolkit for staff visiting remote and/or exotic places. Foreign editor Larry Johnson recounted the trials and tribulations of life in post-war Iraq. Reporter Mike Lewis sent daily dispatches from on board a fishing boat during the crab-fishing season in Alaska's Bristol Bay.

Blogs also became part of our daily repertoire. The Mariners Weblog, maintained chiefly by Mike Thompson and Shannon Fears, is now a popular forum for discussion and dissection among online M's fans. Reporter Todd Bishop's blog on all things Microsoft has been a hit since its September launch.

All of that came to mind as I thought about the rather cynical quote from trade journal Editor & Publisher above. I don't think there's any question that our blogs have changed -- and enhanced -- how the P-I "does" journalism. They flesh out our coverage, adding both nuance and context that you can't pack into the inverted pyramid structure of traditional newswriting. (A good example is the "backstage" report The elusive Jeffrey Parson from Todd's blog.) They've also made SeattlePI.com more participatory, sparking lively discussions and debates between readers that are sometimes more interesting than what we have to say.

That's not just my opinion. My blogging colleagues made similar points when I asked them the same question. Here's what Shannon had to say:

It's like a new level between the common fan (such as we have on our forums) and the beat reporters, and it strengthens the web of information that was always disparate and somewhat hard to find (if not impossible) before. Essentially our blog expands coverage of the M's from the two-reporter, three-columnist realm to the entire world of Mariners influence, including what's thought of them back east, among the farm teams, etc. Mike has broadened that even further by encouraging discussion on roster moves and salary offerings, so now our coverage is also interactive as well.

Todd, whose main gig is writing for the newspaper, says blogging has affected how he does that job as well:

I can understand why people would see the weblog phenomenon as hype, because really it's just one more method of publishing information. But as a reporting tool, it's especially effective, because of the high degree of interaction it encourages. In particular, it's a good way of developing a beat -- floating ideas that could turn into stories, discovering which issues are most likely to touch a nerve, communicating with people about various subjects, and sometimes even developing sources.

On the last point, I had a situation earlier in the year where someone who e-mailed in response to a post on computer viruses ended up being the person responsible for patching his company's computers, giving him a unique perspective on the situation. I asked him if I could call him the next time a story like that came up. He agreed, and I called, interviewed him and used a comment from him in a story a few weeks later. In that way, the weblog isn't a replacement for traditional forms of reporting or journalism, but it's an enhancement, one more trick in the bag.

So, what do you all think? Have our blogs made SeattlePI.com a better news source?

How to save the Net

Paul Boutin pens an amusing and pointedly snarky list of 101 Ways to Save the Internet for Wired magazine.

By my count, 13 of the items have to do with spam; eight with security and privacy issues; seven with copyrights -- with four dealing specifically with P2P/music downloading issues -- and four with expanding the reach of Wi-Fi networks. (Some items fell into more than one category.)

My personal favorite idea is on a sub-list of suggestions for Microsoft:

54 Ship antivirus wizard Why can't the paper clip guy tell us something important, like "This message is infected with Sobig"?

Strange notes to end the year

The last week of the year is usually pretty quiet as far as news goes. 2003 has obviously been a notable exception, with the mad-cow scare and the earthquake in Iran, among other stories.

Not all of the year-end news has been serious, scary or tragic. There's also been an unusually large number of bizarre stories the past few days. Some highlights:

• A naked man was rescued from a chimney on Christmas Day (he said he was trying to retrieve dropped keys)
• A Bronx packrat spent the weekend buried under a pile of books and magazines that tipped over. The landlord says he heard the man calling for help but didn't pay attention because "he's always talking to himself."
• Tip: If you're a rogue cop who breaks the rules, don't brag about it on your blog.
• M&M's candies will be available only in black and white in the United States for the next several months. Part of a big contest. Whatever.

Neb. nips nude Netizen

There's no law against posting nude photos of yourself on the Internet. But you can still break the law when you're taking the photos offline, as Melissa Harrington of Lincoln, Neb., discovered. KETV-TV reports that she was ticketed by police for violating Lincoln's anti-nudity law. (The Register has details on Harrington's site.)

Who all is online?

In Zeroing in on the Net Population, iMedia Connection profiles eight archetypes that purport to encompmass "pretty much the entire Internet population."

Lingual shifts

This item may not be of much interest to most, but the Associated Press put out an interesting story today about how Chinese communities in the United States are gradually shifting away from their traditional Cantonese vernacular toward Mandarin, the official dialect of mainland China and Taiwan.

The main reason AP cites is a change in demographics among Chinese-speaking immigrants. The first waves came from southern China, where Cantonese is spoken. But many immigrants now come from Mandarin-speaking regions.

I've seen that divide illustrated sharply here in Seattle. In the International District and nearby Beacon Hill, areas settled by those early immigrants, Cantonese still seems more common. But around the University of Washington, whose Asian studies programs have drawn many students and visiting scholars from abroad, Mandarin is what I hear.

Another factor in the rise of Mandarin, which the story doesn't mention, is that many of the children and grandchildren of Cantonese-speaking immigrants no longer speak their ancestral tongue fluently, or at all. (Yours truly belongs to the first group.) Add in the fact that Mandarin is generally the dialect taught in public-school and college classes, and it's easy to see how it might come to eclipse Cantonese in the not-too-distant future.

MPAA won't be RIAA II

It's far from clear that the music industry has learned anything from its war against illicit file trading, but the movie industry has certainly learned a lot by watching the RIAA's missteps and the resulting fallout. The New York Times does a good job of summarizing the lessons it's picked up.

Among them: Don't sue your customers and don't bury your head in the sand, hoping that the disruptive technology will go away.

Still, several tech execs tell the Times that Hollywood isn't learning nearly fast enough and isn't moving aggressively enough to secure its future:

... the biggest challenge for the video industry lies not with pirates, but with bytes, cash and lawyers.

What the industry needs, technology executives say, is to look harder for tools and contracts that allow people to get the movies they want at a competitive price, rather than concentrate on actions that restrict access.

"The film industry has a tremendous opportunity in front of it, and the bar is very low," said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, a company that tracks file-trading activity for the entertainment industries.

Movie companies can prevent the free swapping of their wares from mushrooming into a mass phenomenon, Mr. Garland said, by offering easy-to-use services with broad selection that will shape the consumer experience, instead of trying to change bad behavior after the fact.

The movie industry, he said, has to ask itself what the music industry should have asked years ago: "Why do they want to steal from us?" The answer, he said, is simple: "Because you won't sell them what they want." The technologists say that what went wrong with the music industry can easily go wrong for movie companies, too.

I have to agree: merely avoiding the mistakes made by someone else don't guarantee that you'll get it right. The movie industry's moves to adapt to a digital marketplace remind me of what wireless companies were saying three years ago, during the peak of the "wireless Web" hype. Carriers, manufacturers and vendors all seemed determined to avoid repeating the mistakes made when the wired Web was built during the 1990s. That meant agreeing on standards early, tackling regulatory and privacy concerns proactively, lining up premium content and charging users for it from the start and, above all, refusing to let Microsoft get in on the action.

Overall, I think they largely succeeded in those goals. But do you use your cell phone to access the Internet?

Background on Bam

If, like me, you're not familiar with the historical and cultural significance of Bam, the ancient Iranian city devastated by this week's earthquake, the San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent primer.

You write like a ...

The Gender Genie is an interesting tool that tries to predict the gender of an author based on a writing sample.

It claims a 66 percent accuracy rate, based on passages online users' submissions. I decided to put it to the test by running through writing samples from my colleagues at the Post-Intelligencer. Result: It properly identified all the male writers as male ... and most of the female writers as male, too.

I chalk it up to the staccato, "just the facts, ma'am" style of newswriting.

One reader of Dan Gillmor's eJournal tried a more amusing test, using speeches by presidential candidates. Apparently, President Bush and John Kerry come across as slightly feminine.

Who'll fight the RIAA?

Last Friday's appeals court ruling barring the music industry from forcing ISPs to disclose subscribers' identities via subpoena may be small consolation to people who've already been fingered and sued for trading copyrighted songs.

Legal experts canvassed by Wired News say that while the defendants in those suits could hypothetically argue that they were identified unjustly, there's no accepted legal theory for doing so. More importantly, it's unlikely anyone has the resources to mount a prolonged legal challenge.

Big Brother in your pocket

A few years back, wireless companies were trumpeting the potential of "location-aware" technology that could target content to consumers based on exactly where they were. Stores would send coupon specials to the cell phones of passersby and so on.

Yes, I know that it sounds hideously annoying; probably one reason it hasn't happened. Location-aware cell phones, however, are a reality now. And there are new services that take advantage of them -- but the killer app so far has been personal surveillance, not hyper-commercialism.

The New York Times looks at early adopters and the broader implications of the technology:

Driven by worries about safety, the need for accountability, and perhaps a certain "I Spy" impulse, families and employers are adopting surveillance technology once used mostly to track soldiers and prisoners. New electronic services with names like uLocate and Wherify Wireless make a very personal piece of information for cellphone users--physical location--harder to mask.

But privacy advocates say the lack of legal clarity about who can gain access to location information poses a serious risk. And some users say the technology threatens an everyday autonomy that is largely taken for granted. The devices, they say, promote the scrutiny of small decisions--where to have lunch, when to take a break, how fast to drive--rather than general accountability. ...

Critics of the new technology do not dispute its usefulness, but worry that it will become ubiquitous before legal guidelines are established.

Single woman = sane woman

Staying single leads to better mental health in women, according to a new study conducted in England, reports the Evening Standard. Just the opposite is true for men, who do better when they're in a relationship.

Indeed, BBC News emphasizes, "men who stay single are most likely to suffer from depression."

Men and women whose first relationships turns into a lifelong one suffer the fewest mental problems, while the more breakups people have, the worse off they'll be.

More ammo for those who think that anyone who goes on a TV dating show has to be nuts.

The big stories last week

Maybe it says something about our readers' priorities, or just about the fact that in the end it wasn't that big a surprise, but our exclusive early announcement that Boeing had picked Everett as the final assembly site for the 7E7 didn't draw nearly as much traffic as Mariners contract news. Or, for that matter, our coverage of the new "Lord of the Rings" film.

And the week's other theoretically big story, the emotional sentencing of convicted serial killer Gary Ridgway, didn't even make the list.

None of those, however, was the actual No. 1 story on seattlepi.com ...

Top clicks (most read articles):

1. Highway workers lament increase of human waste
2. From book to movie: Changes made in the translation
3. Lord! We love this movie
4. Agent: Garcia probably gone
5. Million-dollar Army mom sounds off about her 'Survivor' tour of duty
6. Lewis will give strained shoulder time to recover
7. M's cut deal with Spiezio, trade Colbrunn for McCracken
8. M's continue to attempt winter deals
9. M's call off Vizquel deal
10. Everett lands 7E7

Top picks (most e-mailed articles):

1. Highway workers lament increase of human waste
2. State jobs moving to workers overseas
3. Cold Heat comes up with a hot new way to solder
4. Generation Y needs new business model
5. Lord! We love this movie
6. Everett lands 7E7
7. We'll all recycle or else, City Council decides
8. Feds claim adopted 'orphans' had parents
9. From book to movie: Changes made in the translation
10. Senseless gunfire changes a young life

Big Music's bad day

News.com has the most comprehensive coverage I've seen on the RIAA's big setback in court Friday. A federal appeals court ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not give the music industry group the power to subpoena ISPs for the identities of subscribers who are suspected of illegal file trading.

It's still illegal to download copyrighted songs -- unless, of course, you're in Canada -- but it's now harder for the RIAA to finger who's doing it.

The three-judge panel's reasoning: the DCMA was passed before the advent of file-sharing networks and therefore does not apply to them. (You can read their entire opinion in this 55K PDF.) Although the music industry could lobby Congress to revise copyright law and give it the extraordinary subpoena powers it wants but for now, a major piece of the RIAA's legal strategy looks like toast for the moment.

News.com's John Borland points out that copyright-holders' battle to stamp out illegal file trading holds "broad implications for individual privacy, due process and technology policy," and the issues deserve a wider debate.

Google taking on Amazon?

Two months after Amazon introduced full-text searches of more than 100,000 books, Google is quietly testing a similar feature that searches book excerpts.

SearchEngineWatch has details on Google Print Beta while P-I reporter Dan Richman explains how it could signal another escalation in the ongoing war over who will be the No. 1 gatekeeper to the Internet.

But the dominant search engine isn't playing up its book search. Its logical URL points to an intentionally blank page and even the FAQ page provides just a general Google search box. It's even not listed on the Google Labs page, where the company usually highlights new tools under development.

You need to use a special search syntax to try out Google Print -- or you can use this form I just wrote:

RIAA changes society again

Just because you have nothing to hide doesn't mean you don't want the option of being hidden.

Litigation by the music industry may finally achieve what all the badgering by technotopians and privacy buffs could not, notes Clay Shirky: Push the online masses to start encrypting their data and communications.

The federal government spent most of the 1990s fighting that possibility, arguing that routine use of encryption would hinder law enforcement. That never happened, Shirky says, because most computer users don't want to go to the trouble of encrypting anything: "The most effective barrier to the spread of encryption has turned out to be not control but apathy."

Enter the RIAA. In order to sue illegal file-traders, it has to identify them. And it has successfully forced ISPs to disclose the identities of subscribers so they could be sued. The lawsuits are unlikely to stamp out file-trading, but will force those who continue to take extra steps to protect their identities since they can no longer rely on their ISP to do it for them. Encryption is one solution.

The obvious parallel here is with Prohibition. By making it unconstitutional for an adult to have a drink in their own home, Prohibition created a cat and mouse game between law enforcement and millions of citizens engaged in an activity that was illegal but popular. As with file sharing, the essence of the game was hidden transactions -- you needed to be able to get into a speakeasy or buy bootleg without being seen.

This requirement in turn created several long-term effects in American society, everything from greatly increased skepticism of Government-mandated morality to broad support for anyone who could arrange for hidden transactions, including organized crime. Reversing the cause did not reverse the effects; both the heightened skepticism and the increased power of organized crime lasted decades after Prohibition itself was reversed.

As with Prohibition, so with file sharing -- the direct effects from the current conflict are going to be minor and over quickly, compared to the shifts in society as a whole.

'Death By Rice Paste'

Every New Year's Day, gooey balls of mochi take the lives of several people in Japan, who choke the pasty substance in miso soup, Jeanne Sather notes in Seattle Weekly.

Mochi is consumed in Seattle, too, but has caused no known fatalities here.

Online scam du jour

Reshipping fraud is the Internet scam du jour, reports MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan. An international crime ring is hiring unwitting online job seekers to receive merchandise -- often purchased with stolen credit card numbers -- and forward it to crooks elsewhere, in return for a small cut.

Put simply, the employees are used to move merchandise or money out of the United States.  But behind the scenes, the organized crime ring is using a variety of confusing tactics.

One flavor of the scheme is designed to circumvent fraud protections at mail order companies and Web sites while stealing popular items such as handheld computers, digital cameras and DVD players. To avoid raising suspicion, the con artists make sure the shipping address -- the address of the "recruit"  -- is in the same state as the billing address on the stolen credit card. To do so, the con artists have a wide variety of employees and stolen credit cards to choose from. They have also managed to change billing addresses on stolen credit cards so they match the recruit's locale. Some 1,300 accounts were updated with new billing addresses at one credit card company victimized by the con artists, [Barry Mew, spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service,] said.

Auction bidders ... are also targeted. Con artists impersonate a recruit and place auction items for sale. They then tell the winners to wire funds to the recruit's U.S. bank account, avoiding any suspicions aroused by the mention of overseas wire transfers. The recruit, of course, is then instructed to wire the funds overseas. ...

Recruits are also at risk of identity theft, since they usually give the con artists their bank account information and other critical data while signing up for the job. 

Dinnertime evolves, too

American families are sitting down for dinner together more nowadays, but the evening meal sure isn't what it used to be, the New York Times reports:

Although the number of families who eat five or more meals together during any given week has grown to 79 percent this year from 73 percent in 1996, their dinner table probably does not resemble the Cleavers'.

In 20 percent of American homes, there were at least two main dishes on the dinner table, according to the 18th Annual Eating Patterns in America Report from the NPD Group, the market research firm, while the total number of dishes served at dinner has steadily declined.

In many homes, dinner is a flexible concept with an increasing number of variables. In some homes, the first round of dinner is prepared by a baby sitter and the others ramble through the evening, as family members trickle in from soccer practice, music lessons and work. In others, democracy reigns and everyone, toddlers and parents alike, chooses his meal and where he wants to eat it.

One expert interviewed by the Times attributes the evolution of dinner to the "24/7 nature of modern life."

We're on the bandwagon

Washington state officials seem to be firmly in tune with the zeitgeist on a pair of hot-button issues: outsourcing jobs overseas and creating audit trails for electronic voting machines.

• State lawmakers plan to introduce a bill that would keep state contracts from being awarded to companies that would ship the work overseas. Turns out that some agencies have already done that in a bid to keep costs down.
• Secretary of State Sam Reed wants to require a paper-based audit trail for any e-voting machines used in Washington.

Bodily fluids by the road

Apparently, Adams County in Eastern Washington has a big enough problem with containers of human waste being left on the side of the road that authorities have resorted to taking out newspaper ads telling people to cut it out.

(All together now: Eeeewww!)

Even more disturbing: The problem is apparently common enough elsewhere that the state Ecology Department saw the need to print up posters based on the Adams County ads and offer them to other counties. And yes, they had takers.

If you're still curious, you can see a PDF of the poster on the Ecology Web site.

(Update: Needless to say, this has proven to be one of our most popular articles of the week.)

Offshoring contrarians

In Outsourcing's offshore myth, consultants George Gilbert and Rahul Sood argue that shifting tech jobs overseas could actually save the U.S. software industry.

In a nutshell, their argument is that domestic software houses devote most of their resources to fixing bugs and other maintenance tasks. R&D budgets are shrinking and many of a company's brightest minds are wasted on routine housekeeping work. Moving that work to cheaper overseas workers would free up resources for "real innovation."

As a company matures, innovation tapers off and grunt work multiplies. The fact is that U.S. development shops do not find grunt work appealing. And why would they? American developers have a passion for innovation. They are more interested in pushing the state of the art in design and functionality. Because these housekeeping activities are less creative and have more-defined processes, they lend themselves better to a standardized development process methodology--something that offshore companies have invested in perfecting.

In addition, using offshore labor can help control the overgrowth of grunt work by improving the quality of the code itself. U.S. companies are forced to compromise on quality to meet deadlines and to focus on more creative tasks. The result is a surge of post-release bugs discovered by customers. Offshore companies, who have grown up testing other people's code, have invested in more advanced testing methodologies than most U.S. companies. That improved, offshore-led quality can not only free up R&D resources for new development, it can make it easier for customers to absorb innovation by lowering the cost of operating companies' software.

R.I.P fax? Hardly

Why isn't the fax machine obsolete yet? BBC News says that it's because the Internet, ironically, has given it new life as a more or less equal peer in today's digital communications infrastructure.

The fax machine has insinuated itself into the world of digital communications to such an extent that the distinction between a fax and an e-mail is increasingly blurred.

Why Apple 'gets it'

Ad Age named Apple Marketer of the Year -- and thoroughly dissects the storied company's uncanny ability to tap into the zeitgeist. Even if you're not an Apple fan, this piece offers some intriguing insights on just why tiny-market-share Apple is arguably more culturally significant than Microsoft. (Do you really think the folks in Redmond could have convinced makers of everything from microwaves to staplers to redesign their products in colored translucent plastic?)

Another music rights mess

Wondering why your favorite TV show still hasn't come out on DVD? Very likely, it's because it would cost too much to license the rights to songs woven into episode soundtracks or used as background detail.

Even in the early years of this century, TV producers often didn't have the foresight to obtain rights to use popular songs on future video and DVD releases, buying them just for broadcast use. Rights owners are willing to license their music for DVDs, but the extra cost would boost the final package price, cutting into potential sales.

That's kept music-heavy shows such as "Miami Vice" and "Beverly Hills 90210" from being released on archival DVD sets. Even series that you don't normally associate with music, such as Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle," have been held up by the music issue.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune published an excellent round-up of the current situation. Some producers have worked around the problem by replacing expensive tunes from "name" artists with generic songs, others are selectively licensing some music while replacing others, and still others are just plain stymied. (Don't hold your breath waiting for "WKRP in Cincinnati," a sitcom set in a Top 40 radio station.)

Free shipping for just $10K

If you want to go online to get a copy of the world's largest book, Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom -- it measures 60 by 44 by 6 inches and weighs a hefty 133 pounds -- you have to buy from Amazon, the only e-tailer carrying it. Sure, it costs $10,000 but it does qualify for "FREE Super Saver Shipping." (Better hurry: Only 500 copies will be printed.)

Saddam and Safeway

This headline at Forbes.com, topping a story on how the Financial Times Stock Exchange index opened the day, puts the weekend's big news in perspective: FTSE buoyed by Saddam capture, Safeway takeover.

Press '1' for 'useless'

Voice-over-IP is a hot technology. Wi-Fi is a hot technology. And, of course, everyone loves mobile phones.

So what do you get when you combine all three? Perhaps the most pointless gadget since the Internet-enabled toaster.

Credit Japanese ISP Livedoor with introducing the first mobile phone that works only on W-Fi networks.

Carlo Longino does an excellent job of outlining its pitfalls for TheFeature:

It's about as mobile as a normal phone with a 100-foot cord. Sure, you can use it at any hotspot, but if you're considering it as a mobile, it's got the worst coverage of any provider in Japan. It's got myriad other drawbacks as well -- it can't do data at all, nor can it receive e-mail, which would seem to doom it in Japan. In addition, what good is a phone that nobody can easily call you on?

To be fair, a networked toaster might not be completely useless. A model designed by someone in England could burn weather forecasts onto your bread. That's almost useless, but not completely.

(Via Wi-Fi Networking News.)

Most popular, Dec. 8-14

Top clicks (most-read articles):

1. M's land Twins closer
2. Truth about 'Survivor's' lying Jon: He's good TV
3. Ex-boyfriend blew whistle in vice case
4. M's ready for Tejada sweepstakes
5. Mariners re-sign Winn, Franklin
6. Shiggy stays with M's
7. Nudity, sex articles in Abercrombie & Fitch 'magalog' draw fire
8. Mom, daughter arrested in alleged prostitution ring
9. New reliever, new intrigue
10. M's, D-Backs talk trade

Top picks (most e-mailed articles):

1. Truth about 'Survivor's' lying Jon: He's good TV
2. In The Northwest: TGIF -- it must be time for Bush policy changes
3. Mysterious ice balls falling from heavens
4. Seattle is becoming a new center for global health research
5. M's land Twins closer
6. Roommates discover a bond going back to Lewis and Clark
7. Give the gift that unwraps you -- a DNA family tree
8. Wamu plans pilot project to outsource IT work
9. Researchers link mental distress with Alzheimer's
10. Ex-boyfriend blew whistle in vice case

All hail VoIP

Making phone calls over the Internet is hardly a new idea -- it's been a niche technology for years -- but now Voice-over-IP (VoIP) is suddenly exploded into the mainstream.

Major telecoms are falling over each other to start offering consumers cost-saving VoIP services enen though they could undermine traditional business models. (Glad to see that someone's learned something from the RIAA/Napster/P2P debacle.)

This month's buzzword technology is also getting plenty of media attention these days, including these pieces from our business section:

• Reporter Dan Richman penned a great primer on VoIP that explains why you might want to hop on the bandwagon.
• Columnist Bill Virgin explained why VoIP might just be one of those Internet technologies that really does revolutionize the world and forever change life as we know it.

Munchausen in the office

Do you have a co-worker whose specialty is offering everyone else "a heroic rescue from a noncatastrophe"? It's a common problem, writes Wall Street Journal columnist Jared Sandberg:

As if there weren't enough problems in the office, the hissy-fitters see in every routine glitch a calamity, and in every delay disaster's brink. Some people seem to be misfortune magnets. Some use it to ward off work. The worst of them do it for the glory, advancement and a sense of accomplishment, not to be confused with actual accomplishment itself.

This office Munchausen will regale colleagues with breathless tales of how he moved heaven and earth to summit a molehill and brace the falling sky. ...

The bad news is the tactic works better than the practitioners do. "There are organizational climates in which these behaviors can be reinforced," says Richard Kilburg, senior director of the Office of Human Services at Johns Hopkins University. "People will get away with this stuff."

The good news is: Not for long.

People who have exploited this method face a tougher audience. "The higher up you get, the more political it is and the more political it is, the less this type of behavior is likely to work," says Dr. Kilburg. "In the end, you may think it increases your power, but it decreases your power."

Plus, your co-workers start to ignore you after a while, Sandberg notes.

Cam phone backlash

One of our most popular articles yesterday was about a local man charged with voyeurism for taking photos up a woman's skirt -- with his cell phone. And if our admittedly unscientific poll is anything to go by, many of our readers are at least somewhat concerned about the privacy risks posed by the new gadgets.

The New York Times surveys the building backlash nationwide and finds a very complicated situation, with ambivalent consumers, legislative bans that are probably enforceable and a general state of unpreparedness for dealing with the whole subject.

A 'poster child' speaks

This isn't the kind of thing I normally write about in Buzzworthy. But then, it's not every day that a friend makes the cover of Seattle Weekly because of her iconic status.

Jeanne Sather is, as she readily admits, "a breast cancer poster child." She chronicled her disease, treatment, recovery and relapse in a memorable online diary for now-defunct OnHealth.com. She became a cause celebre after OnHealth abruptly fired her, and the P-I told her story, unleashing what she calls "a tsunami of bad publicity" (actually something of an understatement).

Jeanne's cancer has gone into remission three times, and it's come back three times. In a powerful piece for the Weekly, she writes about how she's learned to live with it, about her fears and about why pink ribbons and well-meaning advice aren't helpful at all:

My disease has reached a stage where there is little hope for a cure. This is not your grandmother's breast cancer—in those days, either you were cured, crudely, by the surgeon's knife, or it killed you fairly quickly. This is a new disease, a chronic disease, made possible by advances in medicine.

Metastatic cancer, for those of us lucky enough to have a type that responds to treatment, is a chronic disease that can be managed, like heart disease, for example. I have periods of treatment, followed by periods of remission, with fairly good quality of life throughout.

If you met me on an airplane or at the grocery store, you would have no idea that I am sick. I'm plump, not gaunt. I have hair. I work, mother my two teenage boys, and enjoy every day that I am alive.

Sounding off on Bill G.

We've just finished publishing a special report looking at Bill Gates' philanthropic global health campaigns. It showcases and explores a part of the Microsoft chairman's life that gets relatively little press around here.

In his blog, my colleague Todd Bishop writes about how readers have responded to the series. It would appear that many people question or even dismiss Gates' efforts to improve health care in developing nations.

Ultimate graffiti

If there's a message that you've just been itching to broadcast to the world in 500-foot-high, glowing letters projected onto a national landmark, you're in luck.

The Hello World Project will let you do just that during this week's United Nations World Summit on the Information Society.

Send a short message by Internet or SMS and you can have it projected on a major landmark in one of four cities around the globe: the UN headquarters in New York, a fountain in Geneva, a mountainside in Rio de Janeiro or a skyscraper in Bombay. Seven languages are supported.

The project's Web site says it's "an invitation to deliver a message, take a stand on an issue, make oneself heard. So expect funny messages, sharp comments, questions, love poems, messages with social or political content."

Wired News explains the fascinating backstory.

My blog, myself?

We blog, therefore we are. Sounds extreme (or cute) but there may be something to it, according to Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine:

MIT and others are starting to analyze personality and opinion based on writing and a weblog is a good sample. What a great blog tool: Analyze my blog and analyze me. Analyze my blog and really make good Amazon recommendations. Analyze my blog and recommend friends. My blog is my avatar. My blog is an expression of the essential me.

That's just one of several interesting insights that he gleaned from a recent MIT Media Lab session.

He also mentions an interesting experiment which suggests that although Net users may say that they're interested in buying content on a case-by-case basis using a micropayment scheme, it's all-you-can-read subscription schemes that they really go for.

Starbucks: A human thing

What is the secret of Starbucks' success? Paul Williams at FastCompany says that it's the people connection:

Someone could eventually develop a vending machine that would produce a great latte, but that wouldn't be as appealing as going to your favorite cafe where you can customize your beverage to the nth degree. Or linger and chat with a friend. And, in the very same space, visit if you want to be with others OR visit if you want to be alone.

Mental health alert

Don't worry: it could give you Alzheimer's.

Whither Watterson?

Whatever happened to Bill Watterson, the creator of the hit comic strip Calvin and Hobbes? He's been living quietly in his hometown in Ohio, trying hard not to be found, reports Cleveland Scene.

Mean streets of cyberspace

MSNBC's Bob Sullivan introduces a gift-guide for PC backup and security products with this poignant summation of the status quo:

"Cyberspace: It’s a jungle out there. Once upon a time, the Internet was a relatively benign, simple place to track down information or contact friends. Today, it’s more like a dark alley you have to walk down to get to your favorite bar."

All too true, alas. I still remember the innocent days when everyone on the Internet -- i.e., college students and scientists, for the most part -- posted not only their e-mail addresses but phone numbers, office hours and sometimes home addresses in their finger files. (OK, that really dates me, doesn't it?)

Errata on edibles

Did you know that the Salvation Army was once synonymous with doughnuts? Neither did I, but P-I reporter Bill Virgin says that it's getting back into the business. He gives a fascinating history lesson, too.

If your sweet tooth runs more toward chocolates, Christine Frey reports that the Frango Wars are heating up again.

Licensed to calculate

Ever wonder just how Washington state comes up with your driver's license number? Alan De Smet explains. He even wrote a tool to generate them (and a warning to anyone contemplating using it for fraudulent purposes).

Obits galore

The sad truth is, it's often hard to keep track of all the famous people who die. Fortunately, The Blog of Death can help.

Inside the iPod mystique

Trying to figure out what's cool is one thing.

Trying to understand why something is cool is more complicated.

Exhibit A: In a lengthy piece for the New York Times Magazine, Rob Walker tries to dissect the mystique, the allure of Apple's iPod music player. In the two years since its debut, the iPod has become a pop-cultural icon, and its distinctive white earbuds are marks of style.

What exactly led to that? Is it the sleek design, the intuitive software, the inside workings veiled in secrecy, Steve Jobs' audacity in remaking the music business just to sell a $300 appliance? Walker considers all those possibilities, and more.

Are we 'inappropriate'?

Did AT&T Wireless block employees from reading online a recent P-I story about the company's plans to outsource jobs to India? WashTech reported last week that it had, but the company told our business department that it had done no such thing. One employee who tried it noted getting a warning about viewing "inappropriate" content.

The middlemen cometh (again)

The latest turf war in e-commerce isn't between online merchants per se, but between sites that help shoppers figure out what they want to buy, and where to go buy it, Wired News notes.

The objective is to become "the definitive source of product information -- and thus a gateway to transactions."

Looking back at last week

Many people were out of town, or otherwise occupied, during the Thanksgiving holiday, so I'm going to start off by recapping some of the more interesting/important news before going on to the lists:

• Boeing fired chief financial officer Mike Sears for ethical misconduct. Ironically, Sears is co-author of a forthcoming book on management that, among other things, discusses how to be an ethical business leader. The book's release has been "postponed," according to the publisher.

• Gary Ridgway's wife told detectives that she suspected nothing, according to newly released documents. On a related matter, a former FBI profiler tries to explain why he originally dismissed a letter Ridgway wrote to the P-I, declaring it not the work of the Green River killer.

• Declaring that she found him "amazingly arrogant and not contrite," a federal judge sentenced Znetix founder Kevin Lawrence to 20 years in prison for his role in the largest stock swindle in state history.

• Two men accused of murdering three members of a Bellevue family in July 1994 finally went on trial.

• Local law enforcement agencies are developing a system to facilitate the exchange of information that might be useful in fighting terrorism, raising alarm bells from some quarters.

• On the lighter side, we also examined the recent influx of homeless people to Ballard (basically, it's a good neighborhood, even for the homeless), and how more people are trying to get rid of those tattoos that seemed like such a good idea back in college.

Now, onto the lists of most read and most e-mailed stories -- which, for the most part, include very different stories:

1. Life with Gary Ridgway: Police reveal wife's story
2. Under doctor's care, tragedy strikes a woman and her family
3. Play under the pile leaves Hasselbeck fuming
4. The bottom of the barrel is depressing to see
5. 'Huck Finn' a masterpiece -- or an insult
6. Go 2 Guy: Bowing down getting routine
7. Deputy's ex-wife who sought protection order denied pension
8. In statement game, Seahawks left speechless
9. College Football: Beating WSU puts false glow on poor season
10. Huskies, Bruins battle for bowl

1. Dell to stop using tech support in India
2. Under doctor's care, tragedy strikes a woman and her family
3. Tragic end to a life devoted to helping
4. Frosty and the TV holiday gang are all here -- ah, it's a wonderful life
5. 'Huck Finn' a masterpiece -- or an insult
6. Physicists push for lab under Cascades
7. Jones' Turkey & Gravy Soda to be sold online only
8. 20 years in prison for Znetix chief
9. Saddam/al-Qaida connection exposed
10. Deputy's ex-wife who sought protection order denied pension