Can Tumblr Be My New Blip.fm?

Assuming the ominous signs are correct, and Blip.fm is about to go from cool music sharing and discovery service to an RIAA-ravaged skeleton of its former self, I need a new music site to take its place. There aren’t any obvious candidates, so I have been looking far afield in search of a new music hangout. While I post regular music-related content here at Newsome.Org, it’s not the best place for frequent video posts and short links to good public MP3s.

While it’s not perfect, I think I may have found my new thing. Tumblr. Sure, I’ve known about Tumblr for a while, but until this past weekend I hadn’t used it. I signed up on Saturday and spent a little time creating my Tumblr page.

Let’s take a closer look.

Registration is easy. Afterwards, you can choose from a ready-made Theme or write (or hack) your own, via a small but functional custom HTML box.

It’s a pretty simple exercise to customize your Tumblr page, and add whatever links and other information you want to display. After you get your layout the way you want it, it’s time to add some content. This is where Tumblr really shines.

Via the Tumblr Dashboard, from which you manage your Tumblr page layout and content, there are forms to upload or embed text, photos, quotes, links, chat transcripts, audio and video. The cornucopia of sharing options reminds me of all the reasons Pownce was a vastly superior content sharing platform compared to the more popular and celebrity-infested, but feature-challenged, Twitter.

The audio and video forms allow you to either upload an audio or video file or to embed a file hosted elsewhere. Particularly helpful is the ability to embed a YouTube video merely by pasting the URL into the form. The process is as simple as it could be.

An even better way to add YouTube videos to your Tumblr page is via the Tumblr bookmarklet. When you share content with the bookmarklet from a YouTube page, the video is automatically embedded in your Tumblr page, along with a descriptive caption. This is a really cool feature. If Tumblr could add the ability to do the same thing with audio links, perhaps via a right click, Tumblr could take media sharing to a whole new level.

There’s a very neat iPhone app, a Mac Dashboard Widget (which I haven’t tried) and the ability to add audio posts via your phone, which might be cool to do from a live performance. You can also add posts via email, or IM. And there are a ton of third party apps to explore and experiment with.

One of those third party apps adds one very important feature– the ability to play all of your audio posts in a playlist equivalent.

Once you add some content, you can also edit or delete posts via the Dashboard.

At the end of the process, you get a really cool page with mixed media in one handy place. There is an optional Twitter integration, that will post links to your posts to your Twitter account, and there is the ability to add up to five RSS feeds to your Tumblr page. One thing I do not like, is the layout of the archive page. It’s ugly and, well just ugly. And I don’t see any way to customize it.

Tumblr also lacks to built-in audience and sharing features (props, listeners, re-blips, responses, etc.) of Blip.fm. This is a big drawback, but if the empty bag holding RIAA is determined to kill the cool services like Blip.fm and all the music sales they promote, it may be that non-centralized locations may be the only way to go if you want to remain relatively unshackled.

While Tumblr has more than enough features to serve as the sharing equivalent of Blip.fm, it does not yet provide the same discovery function. I’m not sure how to address that problem. One idea would be to collaborate on and post a shared Tumblr blog roll of similar music pages (the Tumblr directory doesn’t seem to serve a close enough function). A better idea might be to share a Tumblr page with a group of like-minded music fans. That’s something I will probably explore if I can find some other folks who like a good mix of alt. country, country rock, classic rock and blues.

In the meantime, check out my Tumblr page for some good music. And if you’re an artist doing that sort of music, send me an MP3 file or link and I’ll see about adding it to the playlist.

Evening Reading: 5/17/09

How Not to Catch Tigers: You need to see this video of a tiger turning the tables on some park rangers who (a) captured her cubs and then (b) decided to ride around on elephants nearby. Maybe I’m a sissy, but if I’m out trying to catch a tiger, I want to be on something a little faster than an elephant. Like, say, a Land Rover. Or a helicopter.

This is as Messed Up as Messed Up Can Be: So this lady’s diabetic daughter can’t see a doctor, but she gets the vapors at her resulting trial and they call 911? I would have suggested she say a prayer or something. I’m a pretty religious guy, and this sort of nonsense really chaps my ass.

Technowhat: Steven Hodson on Technorati’s efforts to stay relevant, or at least alive. Technorati had a chance back in the Dave Sifry era, but the train left the station while Technorati was looking for a ticket.

Tis But a Decade: Lost in LaMancha is a very interesting documentary about Terry Gilliam’s previously unsuccessful effort to reinvent the Don Quixote story, originally to star Johnny Depp. Now, probably thanks in part to the legitimization of time travel via Lost, it looks like he may one day succeed.

Comcast Complaint Department: For the past week or so, my Comcast broadband connection has become spotty, fading out regularly for short periods. Anyone else having a similar problem?

Science Fiction (Ooh Ooh Ooh) Double Feature Department: Here’s Someone’s List of the 50 Essential Sci-Fi Films.

King Kahn Department: Any time the king has a new song, you can count on hearing it here: 69 Faces of Love. Yeah, that’s pretty tame for the king. If you want less normal king, try Land of the Freak. Buy King Kahn and The Shrines records at Amazon. (via Hear Ya)

At the Edge of the Tech Universe: If just converting LPs to MP3s is not fringe enough for you, here’s how to rip a 78 RPM record to a Mac. Unfortunately, the only guy who’d ever want to do that is the dude who wrote that article.

Whose Line Was that Anyway: 100 of the best movie lines in 200 seconds.

Star Trek Department: Popular Science asks if Warp Speed is possible. If not, there’s always Ludicrous Speed.

Speaking of Ludicrous: Here’s some more ludicrous jargon, courtesy of ReadWriteWeb and its beloved semantic web. I just don’t understand how smart people can react so reverently when they see something like this:

If that was coming out of a horn, it would be perfect for a Monty Python movie. Honestly, I think if someone expressed this lint in a complex mathematical equation, some of these folks would literally faint from excitement. Forget all that nerdery, if they want to be all academic and whatnot, RWW should focus only on answering this question. Maybe it will help that the word Harvard appears in the first line.

Let’s Kill the Monster Before it Takes Over the World: As much as I fervently wish the Semantic Web concept would disappear off the face of the earth, like most of the other Web 2.whatever concepts, I would be even happier if retweeting was banned by Twitter. Or Congress. Or God. Retweeting is the bastard offspring of three horrible things: laziness, spam and cronyism.

Meanwhile, Back on this Earth: ReadWriteWeb also takes a look at the Feedburner problem. Google is gambling with a lot of goodwill, with the way it continues to ignore the epic problems with Feedburner. Yes, I know there are alternatives, but I also know that a lot of people have built their subscriber numbers using (and in spite of) Feedburner. Google should spend some of the fortune it made on the back of the publishers who rely on Feedburner and fix it. Just fracking fix it.

Department of Photographs: Today’s installment in my quest to become an average photographer includes 14 Great Photography Tips and a primer on shooting portraits on a budget.

Snowmen in the Sun: the End of Blip.fm?

blipfm I have written favorably about Blip.fm, the web site and application that lets you share music with others in a Twitter-like fashion. I’ve been a regular user for several months, and until now have been putting together an awesome A-Z new wave playlist. As with any fun online music service, however, there’s always been a concern in the back of my mind that, like Frosty the Snowman, Blip.fm was too good to last. And it looks like the melting has begun.

Jeff Yasuda, the head of the Blip.fm development team, has announced that some changes are coming. And none of them are good.

First of all, the music available at Blip.fm will soon be coming almost exclusively from Imeem, another music discovery service. I’ve never used Imeem, but a quick look tells me we are talking about a severely reduced universe of songs. A search at Imeem returned exactly one Star Room Boys song, compared to the twenty or so you used to find at Blip.fm. And not a single Steve Pride song. How can you consider yourself a music service and not have a single copy of, say, Welcome to the Big Time? If you want to hear the best alternative country record ever made or ever to be made, go buy Pride on Pride.

While you may not have to visit Imeem to stream the songs via Blip.fm, the interface at Imeem is about as fun as a root canal. Compared to the simple elegance of the Blip.fm site, it is a chaotic mashup of train wrecks. In sum, I have zero interest in Imeem as a service, and the resulting reduction in available songs will materially diminish the fun factor at Blip.fm, especially for users like me who look for old or obscure music.

Adding to the pain is a new limitation on adding songs from public locations. Currently, if you know the URL for an mp3, you can easily add that song to your Blip.fm playlist. Under the new plan, public mp3s will be limited to “legitimate bands and labels approved in our systems.” There’s a sign-up form at Blip.fm where I suppose labels and perhaps independent artists can sign up to get their music included in the new database.

There are other changes. The Blip.fm widget, which was crappy already, will only list the song but will not generally play it.

And, as the biggest bummer of all, current songs on your playlist will be replaced, where possible, by content from the Imeem catalog, and any song not in that catalog will “temporarily” cease to play. I don’t know what that means for songs that aren’t and won’t be in the Imeem catalog, but it doesn’t sound good for my new wave playlist.

There are promises about forthcoming new partnerships that may allow additional content, and I hope that happens.

But until the music industry as we have known it dies and is reborn as a direct artist to consumer market, the Blip.fm’s of the world are like snowmen in the sun. You better enjoy them while you can, because it’s only a matter of time before they melt.

Evening Reading: 5/12/09

Mashup Department: Kill fire ants by turning them into a horror movie. I wonder if Lou Diamond Phillips is in it?

Literary Acumen: Impress your friends by interpreting nursery rhymes for them.

What’s a Blog, Again: Prob Logger (I know, but that’s a cooler name) has 10 ways not to promote your blog.

This Reminds Me of Something: Task.fm looks like a neat little Twitter inspired idea that takes more time than, say, adding the event to your calendar. But these days, it’s all about the 140.

Fancy Jargon Department: I’m over Wolfram|Alpha before I even see it, simply because it calls itself a “computational knowledge engine.” One thing I’ve learned in my 15 years or so online is that really cool stuff doesn’t need fancy jargon. There is generally an inverse relationship between fancy jargon and usefulness. The (ugh) “semantic web” is the best example of this. If you want to feel semantically smart, here’s more on the so called Google killer.

Nerdywood Squares: Google took a quick break from being killed by Wolfram to work on Google Squared, which extracts data from web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. Here’s a news flash- for 99% of the population, Google search works just fine. There are far too many people trying to fix what ain’t broken. Here’s a screen shot, which doesn’t really get me all that excited.

See Google Blogoscoped for more

It Just Does Department: Popular Science looks scientifically at just exactly why shit happens.

Keep Photography Beautiful: Tintii looks like a cool application for photo manipulation.

Department of Musicology: The “B” Side did a cool thing for Lattimore Brown. You need to read that story, and watch the EconoLodge & Holiday Inn rehearsal videos. And especially the video of his appearance at the Ponderosa Stomp Music Conference.

That Micro-financing Sound: Linda Thompson is using micro-financing to raise money for her next record. You can get a free MP3 if you’re willing to give out your email address. I donated a little bit. For $5000, she’ll actually record one of your songs. I wish I could afford that. I’d ask her to record When You’re Sitting at the Bar (which she could clobber).

Evening Reading: 5/10/09

Department of Holidays: Happy Mother’s Day to Raina and all the other moms out there. Here’s my post from two years ago about my mom.

Dollhouse Department: I was pretty underwhelmed by the first few episodes, but the show really grew on me. I thought the season (and likely series) finale was excellent. io9 has a good recap, an argument that Dollhouse is Joss Whedon’s greatest work, a theory on why everyone in the Dollhouse may be a doll, and a faint hope for a spin-off. I still prefer Firefly, another great show canned too early by Fox, but I hope we see more Dollhouse.

Drag and Drop Encoding to Go: EncodeHD promises a simple drag and drop application to encode your video for playback on your device of choice. iPhones are supported, of course.

MediaSmart Server Department: Thankfully, HP has decided to do the right thing and push the new software to the first generation servers, like mine. No space shuttle required.

Blip.fm Department: Thanks to @accepta for being the first (to my knowledge) to blip of one of my songs. Lots of my songs are available via the Blip.fm search box, so please blip away!

Department of Stupidity: I have and will continue to raise a vigorous defense against those who continually criticize everything Christian, but crap like this does not help my cause. It’s important to remember that there are extreme views in every organization and in every faith and those at the edges do not represent the generally quieter and more rational majority.

Speaking of Church: The United Methodist Church has smartly adopted a social media approach to its web site.

Cool Video Department: Here’s a neat time lapse of a ship moving through Houston at night (via A Welsh View).

Photography Workflow: Thomas Hawk describes how he manages his massive photography jones.

More Awesome Photography: I can’t describe how much I dig Joshua Hoffine’s horror photography. You have to check this out.

Publish or Perish Department: Here’s a list of 20 top print on demand services. And here are 6 ways to publish your book.

Hunting for Real Men: I have no respect (to put it mildly) for those dudes who go to Africa and shoot lions and elephants and whatnot. They should stone up and do it this way.

Is It Time to Put Sirius XM on Deathwatch?

One of my primary online pastimes is watching technology I like go through agonizing death spirals. TIVO is still twitching a little, and I had hope that the not-so-forthcoming new DirecTV box was going to spur a comeback of Billsian, if not Biblical, proportions. I’m in a wait and see mode, but not as hopeful as I’d like to be.

Another technology I have enjoyed is satellite radio. I’ve been an XM subscriber for years, and the merger with Sirius gave me the improved Classic Vinyl station, and the far too Americana (I greatly prefer alt. country) Outlaw Country. And I lost track of Bill Anderson‘s excellent talk show (which should be released on a CD boxed set). But overall, I thought the merger was necessary and, at worst, a wash for listeners.

Yet the combined Sirius XM continues to lose subscribers. My personal view is that they way overpaid for the Oprahs and Howards, which I have no interest in, and sports, which I have interest in, but not via radio. As a result, they have to charge me more to subsidize those who care about that stuff. But that may not be what’s really hurting Sirius/XM.

I think it might be iPhones and other almost as smart phones. Here’s my theory.

First, I am convinced that the lion’s share of satellite radio listening is done in the car, a theory which has some support in the details regarding the subscriber loss. I have logged maybe two hours of in the house satellite radio listening over the years. Previously, the amount of daily time I spend in my car combined with my well documented aversion to ads made satellite radio worth the money, in both hardware and monthly costs.

But lately I find that I am getting the large majority of my music from Pandora and Slacker Radio. The depth of programming options are simply greater there. I have a deeply targeted alt. country station on each, as well as a blues mix that plays the sort of blues I like, without most of the stuff I don’t. I like early ska and reggae- I have a station for that. I like zydeco- yep, I have a station for that. In sum, I can fine tune my preferences much, much better with Pandora and Slacker Radio than I can with Sirius XM. In fact, I’m finding myself listening to my online options even more than I listen to songs on my music server at home- and I have a ton of music on there.

Plus, online stations allow me to access my music more easily and from more places. When I’m at a computer, it’s easy to tune into one of my Pandora or Slacker Radio stations. No additional hardware needed. Both services have excellent iPhone apps (Sirius XM doesn’t have one). Lately, when I’m in my car, I have found myself plugging my iPhone into the auxiliary input on my audio system and listening to Pandora or Slacker Radio while I’m driving. Better mix, no ads.

On top of all that, it’s cheaper. Why buy special hardware and pay through the nose for a satellite radio subscription – for each device, no less – when you could pay much less for a premium online radio subscription that you can take with you anywhere? It sounds like a no-brainer, because I think it probably is.

For the moment, I have both. But if I had to choose one or the other, I would quickly choose Pandora/Slacker Radio over Sirius XM.

And I suspect that trend will continue to work against satellite radio.

Steve Gillmor & RSS: Out of Chaos and into Absurdity

I remember the beginning of Out of Chaos, a book I read over 30 years ago. There was a passage about the worldview of a tiny insect on a leaf, and how to that insect the leaf, and at most the tree, was his universe. I can’t remember much else from that book, but I remember that part.

Because I keep seeing the same thing happen over and over on the internet. Take some new online application, toss in a celebrity or two, get some venture capitalists to bait their greater fool hooks with some fuzzy math and, presto, the world is suddenly turned on its side.

Except it isn’t. At least not for anyone who doesn’t live on that same leaf, in that same tree.

Even online applications and protocols that have been around a long time and could make life easier are often ignored by the general public. Take RSS, for example. I can count on two hands the number of people, of any age, I know in the real world who use RSS. Heck, most of the people I know don’t even use the internet all that much for news. Sure, they check their newspaper’s web site and maybe CNN for breaking news and they may check their stock quotes on Yahoo or Google, but they still get the lion’s share of their news from the paper. You know- that wad of dead trees that some dude tosses at your porch every morning.

And now comes Steve Gillmor trying to argue, presumably with a straight face, that RSS is dead and everyone should get all of their news from Twitter. From freaking Twitter, for crying out loud. Why not from a Ouija Board? Or a mood ring? Even though I can’t get him to converse with me on said Twitter, I have met Steve and he’s a smart guy. So maybe his article is satire and I’m not getting it. But I don’t think so.

While RSS may very well be dead to most of the real world, to suggest that people are going to go from a technology they barely, if at all, grasp (RSS) to one they know absolutely nothing about (Twitter) is perhaps the most optimistic bit of navel gazing in the history of the typed word. People might go look at Twitter because Oprah talks about it, but that’s a far cry from relying on it as a primary source of information. Shoot, I go to the circus every year or two, but I don’t live there.

Not only is no one who matters going to treat Twitter as the new CNN, anyone who wants anything resembling reliable information in anything resembling an organized fashion is not going to rely on Twitter. For one thing, no one- and I mean no one- is going to read, much less rely on, the Twitter public stream or topical word searches that capture ten spam posts for every legitimate one. The signal to spam to noise quotient on Twitter is simply off the scale. Just to make Twitter enjoyable, you have to manage your follows zealously. And of course there are no archival features on Twitter. You can only see what’s been posted recently.

It’s going backwards. Like watching the news at 10:00 on live TV.

Let me say it again, Google News has folders, archival features, add-ons to improve those archival features, etc., etc. Twitter has none. This, in and of itself, is one of the fatal flaws in Steve’s illogic.

I agree- and have said so over and over here- that RSS is not perfect. Google has tried to single-handedly kill RSS by acquiring and then completely ignoring Feedburner. And I have said many times, that RSS needs to get a lot closer to real time. But real time, filtered poorly can be very noisy. If I see yet another stale post about some beat to death topic in my RSS feeds, I’ll see it five or ten or twenty-five times on Twitter. The echo chamber in Twitter is deeper and more resonant than in Google Reader, or even the blogosphere as a whole. Steve may not know that, because I really don’t think he uses Twitter for broad interaction. I think he uses it as a platform for a written version of his podcast, where others get to observe him talking to a few selected people.

But he’s far from alone. I think Steve and many others have fooled themselves into thinking that their leaf on the big old celebrity infested Twitter tree is representative of the larger world. But it’s not.

Thankfully.

Evening Reading: 5/4/09

So Now I Actually Know What They’re Talking About: I’ve seen all these articles about waterboarding, without really knowing what it is. Some reporter bet he could withstand 15 seconds of it. Think he made it? Take a look.

Girl Power Department: Dr. Isis at the Science Blogs is doing a really cool series called the Letters to Our Daughters Project, in which accomplished female scientists write letters of advice to young women considering a career in science. As the father of two daughters who would be thrilled to see them pursue and enjoy a career in science, I think this is interesting and worthwhile. Here’s a excerpt from the first one:

About a year later a classmate turned to her and called her a bitch. She thanked him for noticing, and then related how she had not reached her mother’s level of “bitchdom” yet. He said nothing more, and did not try to insult her the rest of the year. She came home from school empowered rather than insulted.

Here’s an excerpt from the second and most recent installment:

Fortunately for me as a smart girl, my family and my teachers never told me that I could not be who I wanted to be when I grew up.

Amen. I have consistently told my girls they can be anything they want to be when they grow up. They aren’t going to (and shouldn’t) choose a career just because I want them to, so they might as well do something that makes them happy. I like to expose them to stories about smart, cool women who chose their path, as opposed to having it chosen for them.

We Came to the Pyramids: Speaking of Isis, there’s this on the day before the 5th day of May:

Isis, oh, Isis, you mystical child.
What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin’ rain.

If Kafka Did Airports: This is really funny (via Will Truman):

Do Bears Poop in the Woods Department: Yes, yes a million times yes. Like every other thing in the Web 2.0 space. But as far as I can tell they haven’t sought out the overhype.

Burma-Blog: I would’ve guessed it was Texas. Oh, that’s right, we’re still a state.

Writing blog posts
Well you can dream
That they’ll be
On Techmeme
Burma-Blog

Caveman General Says: That some dinosaurs survived the asteroid cataclysm. I wonder if it was Space Invaders that got ’em. Or maybe this:

dinosaurs

Speaking of the Surgeon General: Just remember that “the Surgeon General has one lung and a voicebox but he could still kick your sorry ass.”

Mythbusting Department: I love the epic battles between fairy tales and scientists.

Deep Art Ment: I go to great lengths to avoid all ads. DVR, XM Radio, Adblock Plus, you name it. Yet I like to read old Sears catalogs (I bought two from the 60’s off of eBay a few years ago) and old print ads. Here are some ads you won’t see anymore. And here’s a neat list of vintage illustrations.

Now I Can’t Eat that Either: Want to know how much sugar is in that healthy dish you’re about to consume?

Nice Monkey: On the other hand, some teas allegedly increase your metabolism. I’m not sure I buy it, but it makes me feel better about the Arizona Diet Peach Tea monkey I carry around on my back.

Good and Bad News for Old MediaSmart Servers

I was a very early adopter of the HP Media Smart Server. I bought an EX475 model, upgraded the storage to 4 terabytes and haven’t looked back. Until, that is, I noted that the new version of the MediaSmart Server software (which includes the iPhone media streamer among other goodies) was not compatible with the older models.

That was a bummer.

But today I noted in my feed reading that someone has hacked a way to install the new software on the old machine. I’ve built computers from parts, and I hacked my Mac Mini right after I bought it. So I figured I was good to go.

Until I saw the required steps.

Are you kidding me? That’s looks about on the scale of building a space shuttle in your garage.

I don’t really need the software update. But if I did, I’d buy a new server from Amazon for $585, and move my bigger hard drives to that box. Compared to all that work, $585 seems like a great deal.

Evening Reading: Rational Swine Flu Edition

One of the most annoying problems of modern journalism is the trend, born out of competition for attention, to overstate everything. To create some headline that stands out from the crowd, and as a result occasionally stands out from the truth. The result is that headlines that used to read like encyclopedia topics now read like used car ads. That’s annoying enough when it concerns the newest Web 2.0 application that is somehow going to “kill” Google. It’s inexcusable when it involves a strain of flu that could kill a bunch of people.

I live about three blocks from the (now temporarily closed) school attended by the girl (thankfully recovering) who had Houston’s first confirmed case of Swine flu. All three of my kids go to a school that is literally right beside that school. So, yeah, I’m pretty interested in getting reliable information about the Swine flu.

There’s a lot of bad information flying around out there. Here’s where I’m getting my Swine flu information.

First, I ignore 100% of the stuff I see on Twitter. All that talk about Twitter as a reliable source of breaking information has been debunked. Photos of planes in a river, yes. Information about a developing public health hazard, not so much. Unfortunately, Twitter is not the only place to see panic-inducing reports. Major media is doing its part too. In fact, I completely tune out, figuratively and literally, the TV coverage.

The first place I look, and probably my number one favorite daily read even before the Swine flu story, are the Science Blogs (About page; RSS feed). I enjoy their scientific topics all the time, and I find the various science blog writers to be generally level-headed, informative and super-smart without being eggheads. And in at least one case, super-smart and pretty (Good heavens Miss Sakamoto – you’re beautiful!).

So what have the scientists taught me so far. . .

First, that it is always better to be safe than sorry:

By raising the pandemic threat level to phase 5 have done something very important: served notice that it’s time to mobilize resources in the event this virus shows sustained transmission in several countries. The severity of the disease it produces doesn’t have to be extremely serious or lethal for a widespread outbreak of flu in a community to do a lot of damage in productivity, economic loss and quality of life. It’s the job of public health agencies to warn communities this might happen and so they can prepare to manage the consequences.

They’ve taught me what the WHO pandemic levels mean:

Phase 5: characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short. This is the key–Phase 5 is a signal to governments to get their act together, because the shit is about to hit the fan.

More, including a handy chart, here.

And that it’s not a good idea to start tossing antibiotics at everyone at the first sign of trouble:

We wouldn’t want to resistance to evolve when, overwhelmingly, most cases will resolve on their own (and without extensive hospitalization).

I got a little background on the name thing. As an aside, those who are getting their panties in a wad over what we call this disease are, in my opinion, idiots. Period. It’s not about pork, it’s about people. And do those dumbasses really think it’s ever going to be known by any other name?

I’ve learned why this variant is resistant to certain antiviral drugs. I’ve read a little about the genetic history of the virus, and why that is important. And I learned about the Flu Wiki, and about a 2007 outbreak in Ohio.

I read a legitimate reason not to panic, but to be a tad nervous:

The real bad news is that since this is a new flu part of which (flu has different parts that may have different histories) only recently entered the human environment, there might be a slightly higher than we would like to have chance that this flu, while it swaggers around the human population making people sick, will recombine with one or more other flu viruses that are already out there with very nasty results.

As a bonus, they sometimes call an appropriate bullshit on other media sources:

As my readers know, I hate the Huffington Post’s “science and health” reporting. The main reason is that they approach health and science the same way they approach politics: ideologically. I have no problem with people holding particular political ideologies. My medical partners and I have very different political views, but we all practice the same science-base medicine, and that’s what unites us (that, and our daily kumbaya sessions). But science in service of ideology is always problematic.

Here’s the latest- on the questionable benefit of travel and border restrictions.

Another good source of information is Harvard Medical School (even if for some insane reason they want you to buy their full report):

The initial symptoms of this flu virus are like those of the regular, annual flu viruses: fever, muscle aches, runny nose, and sore throat. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may be more common with this swine flu than with the regular flu. If this epidemic hits your community and you develop flu-like symptoms, it is likely your doctor will take samples from your throat or material you cough up and send them to the
st
ate public health laboratory for testing.

Of course, the CDC’s web page is also a reliable source of information, that is updated regularly.

We need to have reliable information about the Swine flu. Rather than extreme headlines from both ends of the spectrum, we need reporting right down the middle. The sources that do that will do better in the long run than those who toss up used car ads in the name of attention. We deserve better than that.