CBC led its hourly radio newscasts this morning with a headline touting the release of the Apple iPad. Well, so did Contrarian; No complaint there. But it turns out the headline was only a teaser. Listeners had to wait 'til the last item in the newscast before hearing about Steve Jobs's latest gift to early adopters. And before getting there, they had to sit through a one minute-40 second "news story" about a CBNC contest to pick Canada's most hockey-crazed town. The humiliating chore of filling, oh, 20 percent of the radio service's flagship morning newscasts with this witless advertorial fell...

03 April, 2010

April 3:  Is this the transient alcoholic flicker on a too sweet rum cake, or a nuclear flash that will mark April 3 as a milestone we'll observe 20 and 40 years from now? According to David Pogue and Leo LaPorte, techies are scornful and users are awestruck, in which case, the smart money will be on the users. But there’s a big problem. To some, Jobs and Apple are a modern version of Bauhaus: elegant utilitarian design with fascist undertones. Apple’s singular control over what media its machines can play, and what machines can play its media, represents a giant backward...

03 April, 2010