I was playing hooky from school, which I was apt to do from time to time. I was consistently on the honor roll in class – yet never did homework and only haphazardly showed up. A combination of boredom, social awkwardness, and lack of supervision drove me to cut class and do a rather odd thing with my time – explore the city. The year was 1985 and I was 13.

Getting around Philly was an amazingly cheap thing to do for someone so young and so small. Timing your run under the turnstiles for the leaving of an El, just before its doors were to close, or blending into the flow of passengers crossing between shuttle busses and trains, or entering thru the back exit door on certain busy bus routes – it was easy. No one stops a 13 year old kid in a crowd who looks like he knows what he’s doing and casts an innocent glance when looked at. They think your parent must be somewhere.

I loved people watching and one of my haunts was Wanamaker’s on Market Street. Wanamaker’s was a very upscale department store, still is in its current incarnation as Lord & Taylor’s (the renaming is a crime I tell ya). Folks who shopped here were of a different world then mine – the pace was slower and the faces brighter – yet they did not notice me as I passed thru, while I munched on a soft pretzel with mustard.

They had opened a display on one of the upper floors for the Apple Macintosh. Ten of them arrayed in a semi circle, in a darkened atmospheric alcove. A chair invitingly in front of each. The upper floors of Wanamaker’s by day were pretty empty. Quiet. And seeing that display – well it was like I was suddenly presented with the entire Star Wars action figure collection… well close. That might be going too far.

I remember the walk to a chair and sitting down. The effort it took to be nonchalant – important if I wasn’t to raise a stir with staff and get thrown out – was very hard. It had to be only around five paces for me yet it felt like forever. I remember sitting down. I remember taking the mouse and opening up MacPaint – and I remember drawing! A couple of store hands came over to watch – one clearly said – “he seems to know what he’s doing – I think it’s OK” – and let me go. I felt empowered. I knew nothing of computers yet here I was manipulating one and folks observing asking “hey, how did you do that?”. I think I sat there for a couple hours. I recall a tutorial to familiarize yourself with the Mac that I took. I headed out when the major shopping crowd started to shuffle in.

I wouldn’t own a computer for a couple of years later – it was a Commodore 64C since the Mac was way out of reach. But it’s impact on me was undeniable.

Rafe, I hope you don’t mind me riffing off of one of another of your posts again, but I found myself in the same situation as you over the book post – there were no books that got me inspired about computers – it was the computers themselves that got me hooked.

Read all about at it Read/Write Web. Missing Firefox support is frustrating. The previous version worked fine with it.

These four sites are just terrific and I end up visiting them whenever I am stuck with something Flash related:

kirupa.com
ActionScript Toolbox
Actionscript.org
Macromedia’s Developer Central
chattyfig email lists

There’s a lot to check out at FreeFlashTutorials as well.

The Media Center lists the top news sites for April.

From Editor & Publisher: New Desk in the Newsroom: The Citizen Editor’s

Clear out some more office space in the newsroom. Knock out a wall. Buy some new desks.

Make room for the new citizen editor(s).

We have a bona fide news-industry trend in “citizen journalism” — the notion that it’s an admirable thing and in a news organization’s self-interest to encourage members of the public to participate in news publishing. News Web sites and initiatives in newsrooms are asking citizens (that is, the audience) to contribute not only their opinions but even to submit their own personal “news.” The theory is that this citizen content and enhanced interaction complement professional journalism.

Citizen-journalism initiatives are popping up over the place at newspapers. And even if those publishers plying these uncharted waters are still a small minority, the trend is unmistakable.

Ergo, there’s a new position opening up in some newsrooms: the citizen editor.

…At the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, a Scripps newspaper, a citizen-journalism site debuted about a month ago. YourHub.com is comprised of about 40 Web sites, each covering a city or town in the Denver metro area. Content is a mix of contributions from community members, the occasional staff-written story, and hand-picked links to other publications’ articles about YourHub.com cities.

What may strike you as remarkable (it did me) is that in these early days, the site has a staff of 11 full-time editors. Led by managing editor Travis Henry, YourHub employs one “community editor,” one “producer,” four “community journalists,” and four “community assistants.” They are responsible for producing not only the 40 community Web sites that are part of YourHub.com, but also 15 zoned print editions featuring the best content from the sites, which are inserted into the newspaper.

Henry says the staff is a mix of seasoned journalists and recent journalism graduates. Some have worked for daily and weekly newspapers, in radio, and in media/public relations. Community assistant Kevin Hamm, who has a journalism degree, has a resume that includes bookstore manager, mortgage banker, ski bum, and stay-at-home dad. Everyone on the staff has some sort of journalism background.

Henry acknowledges that the jobs in his department are different than the traditional, and describes them as a cross between doing journalistic tasks like editing and design and marketing the site in order to recruit community content contributors.

A big part of working for YourHub.com is acting in an “ambassador” role, he says, not solely as a journalist. That means encouraging people to submit content. For example, an editor might note that a community event is taking place and contact the organizers to urge that they submit text or photographs (or request that of event participants). A story might run where a community journalist or assistant adds a call for readers to add what they know about the topic or event, expanding on the original story.

YourHub.com editors also write for the site on occasion, acting as “citizen reporters” themselves (albeit paid) — even using the same publishing interface to file a story as do community members. It might surprise you to know that such staff articles are edited before publication. Citizen articles, on the other hand, are left untouched — except for some minor spelling and grammar editing (or occasional cuts due to space limitations) on articles to be included in the zoned print editions.

YourHub.com is very interesting indeed.

Joel on Software: Book Reviews: “the short list of all the books that I honestly think that every working programmer needs to read, with my own book hidden in there in case you didn’t notice because I get about two bucks if you buy it.”

I’ve read four of the books on the list already. Good to know my reading tastes are on the right track 🙂

DevX: Loading External Assets in Flash with Transitions. Gotta get around to reading this tutorial.

If time allows, I have some interesting ideas for Philly Future to apply this Engadget piece to.

Big news if true from Wired – “Salon’s Balancing Act”.

More at Philly Future on two related Jeff Jarvis posts in which he defines the news editor “of the future” (hint – it’s already here!) and of possible business models to support news reporting.

Relevant quote from Wired article:

…whether there is a subscription requirement or a Site Pass, there is still a wall around Salon’s content — and that means the blogosphere ignores it. Without this persistent cross-linking, relatively few read its words, and as history is being made — or Googled — every day, Salon’s footsteps in cyberspace become fainter and fainter.

Salon’s experience is important to this discussion. Once you lose mind share – people stop talking about you. Salon needs to get it back somehow because the digerati are overlooking what are probably a host of lessons already learned. At least their stories don’t fall into a for pay archive and break permanent URLs.

OJR included Salon in a roundtable on the future of magazines. via Jeff Jarvis.