Five days of The Daily

If you're in the news business, the big industry buzz of the past week was the launch of The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's new iPad-only news app. Even those who don't have iPads were chiming in on The Daily, good or bad. I can't recall this kind of interest in a news product in a long time.

If you're a regular reader of this site, you know I posted back in November that I was tired of pre-launch hate for The Daily, which only picked up steam with Wednesday's launch. I thought some of that post-launch criticism was justified (particularly with technical issues and thin hard-news report) while much was blind hate toward Murdoch and something different. After Day 1, I shared a quick update to that November post and said I'd follow-up after a few days of thorough review.

An iTunes-style story carousel is a great way to scan storiesAnd?

I feel like a piece of swaying seaweed writing this but I after 5 days of reading, I have a love-hate relationship with The Daily. One minute I'm thrilled, the next I'm shaking my head in disgust.
An iTunes-style story carousel makes it easy to skim topics.

I understand The Daily is not supposed to be The New York Times or even Huffington Post -- it's a tabloid for tablets. "The Daily" is not a publication of record. It skims the news and makes no bones about ignoring important news that for whatever reason doesn't make the cut.

Presentation is frequently striking, which is magnified on a high-resolution platform like the iPad.But too often The Daily seems thrown together, with digital tricks often inserted at the expense of relevant information.

I think The Daily is a product with tons of promise that surprises me enough each day to keep me coming back. But there are some flaws that I consider serious in light of The Daily's $25 million pre-launch costs and $500,000 per week operating costs moving forward.

So, follow me as I run through some highlights and lowlights, as well as a few suggestions:

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'Goon Squad" is a great novel - and stretches traditional storytelling techniques

I read mostly non-fiction but try to get through at least one novel per quarter. My most recent conquest is  "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan, a book that succeeds on many levels in stretching storytelling in new directions.

"Goon Squad" popped up on many "best of 2010" lists, and deservedly so. It's a book full of richly developed characters and oddly disparate but interwoven chapters presented in a variety of tenses and story forms (including PowerPoint and clipped speech, ala SMS shortcuts).

The “powerpoint” chapter is especially riveting. It’s hard work to wade through each slide and the presentation style gives the reader many different paths for interpretating four troubled lives, one of whom is a child fixated on pauses in rock songs. But like most of "Goon Squad," the extra effort makes for an  exhilirating ride.

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Where's the beef in business books?

I've been trying to fight through writer's block to post a review of the book "Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age" for weeks. (I even took a few stabs at a video review but have been unable to get the compression right when I post it to YouTube or Vimeo). So, back to analog, so to speak.

 "Hamlet's BlackBerry" (sample chapter below) aims to make sense of the 24-7 onslaught of communication brought on by technology. The title plays off the fact that throughout history, people have felt overwhelmed by changes in communication, be they technical or sociological, and sought any number of solutions to find a sense of peace.

In Shakespeare's day, circa 1590, the intelligentsia could buy almanac-like tables whose specially coated paper allowed a person to write notes using a metal stylus, and erase them with a sponge. Hence, an erasable notepad, presumably invented to help one counter the growing demands on brainpower.

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