I’ve used Macs for many years, and I’ve been lucky: never had a hard drive crash, or a problem installing a software update.

Until yesterday

I purchased the $29 Snow Leopard update, and tried installing it yesterday.

Midway through the installation, the installer choked & said it “could not change the contents of my hard drive.”

Then my mac would not reboot.

I packed everything up and went to the Bay St Apple Store (Emeryville, CA). They said it was most likely a pre-existing problem with my hard drive, and the OS update pushed it into failure. (this is plausible, my machine would often suddenly start thrashing, one reason why I wanted to do this update).

My mac was under warranty, so they replaced my HD for free. I renewed my ProCare subscription to make it happen that day. The Apple store also installed Snow Leopard on the brand new drive. They noted that they were unable to install the iLife suite on Snow Leopard, but said I should be able to install those programs from my original install discs.

I took home my brainwashed mac. I booted it up, it was like a brand new machine. After I established am admin acct, I was able to run a restore from my latest Time Machine backup.

The restore took 3 hrs, and appeared to go well. I watched the files copying onto the new drive.

When it was done, I was amazed to see that I could not access my restored data and apps. It was like the restore never happened.

I was stunned. Tom Vilot was available to help me troubleshoot. He shared my screen over iChat and investigated further, but we both ended up stumped.

Here’s his assessment:

“Attempting to do a Time Machine restore last night succeeded, but confusingly there are two entries in /Volumes:
- Macintosh HD
- Macintosh HD 1

“Everything restored to “Macintosh HD,” but it appears the system is running off of “Macintosh HD 1″ and I can see no way to reconfigure it to run off of “Macintosh HD.” There is only one entry in the System Preferences -> Startup Disk panel.

“Why are there two entires in /Volumes like this? How do we tell the machine to use “Macintosh HD” instead of “Macintosh HD 1″ and how do we get rid of “Macintosh HD 1″

….I really need help here I depend on this computer. If you have ideas or can help, please comment below. Thanks.

pmc-meeting

Scott Rosenberg, Susan Mernit, and lots of other smart people chatting at the Mar. 11 Public Media Collaborative meeting, Berkeley.

Last night I attended a meeting of the Bay Area Public Media Collaborative. I’m impressed by how this group is pulling together significant and diverse energy and talent.

The point? To “bring together bloggers, journalists, technologists, media and environmental justice folks, community organizers and activists from around the Bay area to explore and discuss social justice and emerging technology issues in a way that links theory and practice.”

One nonprofit group represented there last night, Independent Arts and Media, is planning a Journalism Innovations Expo II. Collaborative members discussed tacking a social/online media train-the-trainers Barcamp-style event onto the beginning or end of the expo.

I live-tweeted last night’s meeting. Here’s what I posted…

• #PMC meeting is now starting, track the action on Twitter Search
• Pretty powerful group of media people & community organizers at #PMC meeting tonight.
• @susanmernit: #PMC is starting to get interest from people outside journ/media world: geeks, community organizers, etc. Cool!
• The building where the #PMC meeting is tonight also houses Causes.com and an association of photojournalists.
• #PMC meeting: Time for attendees to talk about projects they want to do, so we can organize ourselves so we help can do them.
• @JoyceKim suggests Literacy Bridge talking book project that could use some help from #PMC community.
• @joycekim says Literacy Bridge needs investors/donors, grantwriters, fundraising, product specification developers for its device.
• @marcsmolowitz says Full Circle Fund wants to map Bay Area nonprofit closures. Needs tech help #PMC
• Independent Arts and Media is organizing Journalism Innovations 2 event, May 1, USF. Needs help with organizing, exhibitors, donors #PMC
• @jdlasica “Screw the big cos/foundations, local public media needs to be done by grassroots” #PMC
• @beandy: Redefining Progress techpopulism project: how-to wiki for noprofits using social media, and mapping out new net tools needed
• Barry Brilliant at #PMC meeting looking for help with designing net-enabled devices for seniors.
• #PMC nonprofit looking for help with independent Sacramento news coverage (statehouse)
• #PMC Friends Committee on Legislation of CA is doing advocacy/citizen journalism on CA prison system. Hiring development/outreach person.
• #PMC city of oakland marketing dept is looking to learn more about how to use social media to market the city, needs people.
• @boothism’s org is working with organization that helps Oakland youth. (Need org name, URL)
• @maiki’s new company is developing a toolkit for microblogging, wiki, soc. media #PMC
• Oakland Clean and Safe Ports needs help to draw attention to Oakland port issues prior to big vote coming up #PMC
• @susanmernit #PMC community is gelling due to compatible interests/needs.
• Public Media Collaborative wiki is where #PMC community will coordinate on resources, needs.
• @susanmernit likes Barcamp training model. Would like #PMC event to train the trainers for nonprofit/community orgs to learn soc. media
• @susanmernit would like #PMC train-the-trainers event to have followup mentoring to make the info stick
• #PMC Attendee would like training workshops to be cumulative, so past workshop participants can help out future ones.
• @marcsmolowitz would like #PMC train-the-trainers event to be smaller and more about discussion than lecture.
• @joycekim suggest that #PMC train-the-trainer workshop attendees should commit to being a trainer in later workshops
• #PMC attendee suggests train-the-trainers events involve decisionmakers from org, not just training implementers
• I’m witnessing a culture creating itself at #PMC meeting: ideas for how to use events to both train and solve social/online media problems.
• @boothism “I know some grassroots people, no budgets, not nonprofit org yet, who have really basic needs for blogging/soc. media skills” #PMC
• @joycekim suggests doing training at house parties where #PMC goes to people who need media help, not expecting them to come to us.
• @beandy: “Are nonprofit orgs merely clients of #PMC or can we offer something to this process? I do clever policy design. Will that help?”
• #PMC Wiki should include not just what our community needs, but what members can give.
• @maiki “I see social media as connection not broadcast. Anyone #PMC touches, we should connect them with everyone else we’re talking to.”
• @susanmernit is concerned w/ #PMC: balancing democratic process with making stuff actually happen, acting on ideas.
• #PMC meeting is breaking up now. I’m liking this group, looking forward to participating more after I relocate to Bay Area in May.

Picking up on my post yesterday, Univ. of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams challenged me (and her other readers) to translate my quick list of what j-schools should be teaching into a something more testable and measurable that could be translated into a curriculum.

Here’s my first shot at that:

• Content management systems (including blogging tools): First, I’d have the students run a group blog on a topic of their choosing for a year to get comfortable with the content and commenting apects of blogging. (A group blog is likely to get more activity and discussion than individual blogs.) This blog should be based on an expandable, customizable tool like WordPress. Then the students should be taught the basics of information architecture, and from that figure out how to expand or customize their blogs to deliver or integrate new kinds of content or services. This could be as simple as finding and installing WordPress plugins to add features, or integrating content from other places (such as Flickr or del.icio.us). The goal would be to get them to not just understand, but demonstrate that on their own they can envision, research, evaluate, and act upon options to do more with their content online. There’s a lot you can do without getting too geeky. They need to gain the confidence that many options are within their personal grasp — they don’t always need to get permission or beg someone else to do things for them.

There’s a lot more on my list, of course…

• Mobile tools and mobile media strategies. These students all have cell phones anyway. Require them to subscribe to mobile news and information services, and critique the quality of the service and user experience. Also, require them to create whatever kind of content their phones support (photos, video, audio, GPS data, even just SMS to Twitter, etc.) and post or stream it from their cell phones. Include participatory exercises based on SMS or MMS to include students who don’t have data plans on their phones. Free services like NowPublic, Flickr, Qik and CNN’s iReport could be especially helpful and even fun for your exercises.

• Social media. The point here is to help students learn a key tool for engaging communities, while also gaining experience with how influence works and information travels through social media. I suggest starting with whatever social media services most of the students are already using (like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter) and explore both the one-to-one and group interaction options through exercises. For groups, it’s probably better to get them involved with existing, active groups on these services — rather than try to start a new group from scratch. Where possible, use both web-based and mobile options for these services. They should learn to use these tools for community outreach, story/issue research, and promotion of their work.

• Economics and business theory/models. Journalism students should be taking courses in the media business that offer the fundamentals of historical, current, and emerging media business models. They should learn what budgets and balance sheets look like, how grant funding and investment works, and how to evaluate the economic environment they’re operating in — including how it’s changing. Get them used to seeing the big picture and looking ahead. Practical skills could include analyzing the economic environment of the local community, spotting emerging trends that could offer journalistic or other media opportunities, and writing a basic business plan to capitalize on those opportunities.

• Business skills. This could involve evaluating and estimating revenue options from grants to investors to advertising to subscriptions to partnerships and more, as well as knowing what steps to take to pursue that funding. Example exercise: Develop a strategy and action plan for increasing online revenues for the campus or local daily paper — including calculation of expenses and revenues, and a timeline for implementation. In addition, they should be aware of what it takes to start and run a business — requirements for taxes, healthcare, getting SMS shortcodes, working with advertisers, etc. No part of the business that supports their journalism should be alien to them.

• Management skills. I’m envisioning this both from an entrepreneurial and organizational perspective. In all exercises, put the students in a decisionmaking role and guide them through learning how to manage time, resources, and people — whether employees, collaborators, or community members. For instance, if a class project is increasing online revenues for the campus paper, divide that mission into sub-tasks, assign someone to manage each part of that project, and require them to make decisions and delegate. Teach them how to use tools like Basecamp to coordinate team efforts. In fact, it might be a good idea to coordinate projects with other j-schools around the country or world, since increasingly in the media business project teams are widely distributed. The point is to encourage them to take charge of the process, not just to pigeonhole themselves as content creators.

• Marketing, advertising, and SEO. In addition to taking a marketing basics class oriented toward media products and services, j-students should learn the basics of search engine optimization — since findability generally translates into traffic, engagement, and revenue for most media ventures. Exercises can include learning to use Wordtracker to optimize headlines, stories, and metadata to increase both traffic and relevance; using Google Analytics to analyze traffic patterns to a news/info site (such as for the campus paper) and suggest strategies to boost traffic and engagement; developing and running Adwords campaigns (with a modest budget) to promote a class project; researching niche ad networks that might help support various types of coverage or beats, etc.

• Community engagement and management. This is perhaps one of the most marketable skills any journalist can have for the next several years or decades. The point is to get them used to creating news as part of a conversation, rather than simply as a one-way product for publication. It’s about promoting constructive public discourse through active engagement. Exercises could include participating in an active community forum; working as a volunteer moderator for an active forum where contentious topics arise; taking and active role in editing and discussing a Wikipedia page of interest; helping to coordinate (not just cover) local events like town hall meetings, conferences, or festivals; participating in or running local meetup groups, etc. These experiences tech how to handle conflict, foster consensus and diversity, produce events, and demonstrate respect and understanding for communities in order to build credibility. In this respect, working through local government, advocacy groups, social service agencies, neighborhood associations, and ethnic or religious groups could be as valuable (maybe more valuable) than working through journalistic or media organizations.

…I realize that my list sounds like a hell of a lot of stuff, but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what today’s journalists really need in order to take advantage of current opportunities, spot emerging opportunities, and take charge of their own destinies (rather than relying on a paternalistic news org to shelter them while they write, write, write).

I realize also that there may be resistance in journalism schools to much of what I propose, for reasons ranging from “we’re not a vocational school,” to IT staff resisting implementing the kinds of tools I’ve mentioned, to the need to integrate curricula more closely with business schools, to the tenured faculty who must teach at least some of these topics not knowing or caring much about them.

I’m not saying this would be easy. But I do think what I’ve outlined, in addition to teaching core journalism skills and values, is what today’s j-students really need to prepare for the kinds of careers they are most likely to have — and the kinds of media they can play a key role in inventing or developing.

Thoughts?

(And thanks, Mindy, for making me think this through more.)

Lately I’ve been learning more about, and getting quite intrigued by, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. Yesterday I listened to an IT Conversations podcast talk by Michael Evans, VP of corporate development for Redhat, one of the leading producers of Linux and open-source technology. That really tied together for me why this project is so compelling.

Originally I’d thought this project was interesting but rather frivolous. I mean, when millions of kids are dying around the world every year from malnutrition, dirty water, preventable diseases, and toxic environments — let alone the lack of energy and communication infrastructure in many populous parts of the developing world — a laptop sounds a bit like like Disneyland.

But now I think I get it. Here’s what I find so compelling and significant about OLPC…

1. It aims to give human minds a chance to grow and connect – especially in places where they’ve been actively thwarted from doing so, well, forever. Creating more smart, literate people who can talk and create together is the most fundamental step toward addressing killer thorny issues like food security, endemic violence, energy production and distribution, environmental degradation, public and personal health, and more. It also has the potential to topple oppressive power structures (social, economic, governmental, ethnic, religious, gender-based, etc.).
2. It’s become a kind of high-tech Apollo project. Several major players in forward-thinking technology companies and from the education world have devoted some of their top minds to this nonprofit collaborative effort. Like the “man on the moon” effort of the 1960s, this can lead to many kinds of tech breakthroughs that have diverse applications.
3. Shedding old tech baggage. The target market for this project are kids — even as young as four or five — who have never used a computer and therefore have no assumptions about how it should look or work. This allows freedom to completely rework basic ergonomic, networking, and user interface issues; which kinds of software and features to include; and generally how to make technology conform more to developing human minds (instead of the reverse, which is how we’ve ended up saddled with many of the more limiting aspects of current computers, like the desktop metaphor).

I’ll be following this project more closely — especially because I think some cutting edge minds from the media and journalism world could, and should, get involved.

This project could open the minds of an entire generation to a world of information. And they won’t be simple audiences, they will be content creators who will form collaborative communities. How are they going to perceive all that information, and what will they do with it? They’re going to need something that goes beyond “media literacy.” My colleague Justin Crawford suggested yesterday that they’ll really need “information literacy.” I think that’s a great idea, and I plan to explore it further.

Of course, altruism is combined with self-interest, or at least survival skills. Look at it this way: If this project (or something like it) takes off, it could represent a fundamental shift in what future markets for news and information (i.e., future generations) will be like, what they will want and expect, and the role media organizations and professionals can play in meeting those changing demands.

I suspect this shift will go far, far beyond trying to save print newspapers. It’ll probably be more about shifting from the publication concept to building new businesses around creating relevance, supporting discovery and collaboration, and enhancing public conversations. Just a guess.

…I’m not saying OLPC is a perfect project. It has its detractors, and its schisms. But it definitely seems, to me at least, to be less of a misbegotten boondoggle than “No Child Left Behind.” It’s worth a look, and media folks probably should be paying attention and getting more involved. We have a role to play here, too.

To get started, here’s the OLPC project overview, and the OLPC wiki.

What do you think? Please comment below.