It Is Not

Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

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From LAist (JetBlue Comes to LAX!):

JetBlue announced this morning that they will begin offering two daily nonstop flights each way between LAX and JFK in New York City and Logan International in Boston. Tickets will go on sale February 4th with flights beginning on June 17.

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I don't know about all of you, but when a long-lost someone from out of the blue friends me on Facebook, I usually drop them a message saying something to the effect of, "Hey, it's been a long time. Great to hear from you." Usually I attach a message like that when I am the one doing the "friending" as well. Maybe I am old fashioned, but I think it's polite to respond, particularly when someone is clearly excited to be back in touch with you. But I can't help but get the feeling that somewhere along the line, "friending" someone became a substitute for communicating with them directly. I write a message to someone, and their response is often simply to "friend" me back.

Should I be flattered? Thankful?

Have we really gotten to the point where communication with someone is defined as "allowing them access to your social network profile?"

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Over the past couple of weeks I've been following the progress of The Printed Blog, a publication that looks to combine the immediacy and good content of blogs with the portability, adaptability and appeal of a newspaper.  I downloaded the first issue this afternoon (because New York City is not one of the test markets) and was pleased and surprised to find one of my tweets on page 6. (See image. I'm @notclam.)

I definitely like what The Printed Blog is trying to accomplish. One side of me is an old fashioned fellow who laments the reduced size of the New York Times and the advertisements on the front page, and enjoys few things more than a morning with a newspaper and a few cups of coffee. The other half of me loves the speed with which information makes its way around the Internet and resents reading day-old news. (For example, I learned of John Updike's passing within minutes of the story breaking thanks to Twitter. Sure beats a next-day obituary) What's more, the world of blogging (and podcasting, too) allows anyone with a computer to instantly become a journalist. The consumer alone is left to decide what content is important and valuable, cutting out middle-men and making a world of great information available to skillful searchers. With all this in mind, The Printed Blog seems like a great idea. Time will tell whether people respond well to the idea. Until then, I'll simply enjoy having been involved in the publication's beginning, even in such a small way.

To take a look at the first issue, head over to theprintedblog.com and grab a download. San Francisco and Chicago residents may have already snagged a copy if they were at the right train stations.

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I found Posterous about a week ago, and had been doing various things to test the service. Finally, last night, I decided to jump in head first and linked up my blog, Twitter, and other sites. But this still begged the question: Do I need another blog?  I admit that there was a honeymoon period initially. When I first discovered Posterous, I was delighted by the simple design and the way I could easily post to other services, not to mention the so-simple-it's-practically-nonexistent process for uploading videos, pictures and other files. But, at the end of the day, all of the simplicity and utility in the world doesn't mean anything if there isn't a good use for it.

I've been writing my main blog for a few years now, and though it lacked focus at first, it's eventually turned into a place for me to post memoir-type essays, reviews, and thoughts on current events and other issues. But lately every post has taken on the length and scope of an article, with much attention paid to detail. I usually spend about an hour on each post. But what if I want to type out just a paragraph or so to get a thought out there that's been bugging me? Here's where a mini-blog comes in. Posterous offers a simple way for me to expand slightly on the type of content I'd normally put in a Tweet or Facebook status update. Although some entries here will be cross-posted to the main blog (while many things will be posted there and not here), I find that this format allows me to be a bit more informal than I am comfortable being on the other site.

Beyond all of this is the fact that as my posts on my main blog have become longer, they have also become less frequent. The simplicity of Posterous will, I hope, encourage me to blog more often, and perhaps eventually follow up a number of projects (both online and off) that I've long thought of but have never taken the time to realize.

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I'm a huge Clint Eastwood fan. As an actor, yes, but primarily as a director. The question of what my favorite film is, though not one I like to answer, has been replied to with Unforgiven more and more frequently over the years. I've come to expect great things, for the most part, when going to a one of Eastwood's films, and between Million Dollar Baby and Letters From Iwo Jima, he's produced two of the strongest films of the decade.

But he slips up sometimes. Blood Work was almost unwatchable, and Flags Of Our Fathers was well-intentioned, but muddled and forgettable. So I'm aware that Eastwood is capable of failing to meet up to his own potential. Unfortunately, Gran Torino does not continue the high standard of his better recent films. This surprised me, because it's actually been very well received. The American Film Institute named it as one of the ten best films of the year. After seeing the film, I'm really not sure why. The script reminded me of a cross between the worst aspects of Crash paired with the aforementioned Blood Work, a mash-up of tired jokes about getting old and a shallow exploration of racism. The relationships in the film are poorly developed, and some of the characters are written inconsistently. The worst example of this dynamic would be the character of the priest, inserted into the story seemingly to provide moral and thematic balance, but instead muddling and confusing the film.

Despite all of these factors, I recommend the film because it actually works, and the reason for this is Clint Eastwood, and him alone. His performance is layered, deep and emotional, a big surprise when weighed against how sparsely the character is written. Along with his emotion comes a surprising amount of humor, and it surprisingly serves to enhance the rest of the film rather than distract from it. This performance combines with skillful direction to make the film turn out to be slightly more than the sum of its parts, even though those parts don't add up to very much in the first place.

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