A ghost story

Three years ago today, I wrote a fun front-page story about ghost hunting in the middle of the night in one of Charlotte's oldest houses. But I did not tell the entire truth, and never have. Until now.

The entire published story appears below. At the time, the most unusual thing about the story was that I filmed a video of objects moving inside the historic Rosedale Plantation home. That was an amazing thing to witness, and I remain convinced it was in no way a trick. But in the time since that latenight phenomenon, other things have transpired, things that have made a much more startling impression upon me. For reasons you are about to discover, I have never spoken about this.

It all began happily on a crisp fall day that seemed impossibly innocent and light. I was sitting at my desk that October afternoon in 2006, when I received a phone call from someone telling me something fun: Things were moving inside the Rosedale house near NoDa, which was built in 1815. I'm a newspaper columnist, and, sensing a Darren McGavin "Nightstalker" story, I jumped at the chance to investigate.

A crew of us assembled to investigate: A docent of the plantation, a writer about ghosts, a psychic, a couple who like to chronicle such things, and myself. We met at a nearby pizza place late that night. The docent told us there was rumored to be a ghost named Cherry in the home, a woman who had run the kitchen, and that she was beckoning someone for help. Something horrible had happened to innocent children on the top floor of the house, it was said. Cherry wanted help to set those children's souls free.

We grabbed our flashlights, and headed into the darkness.

We walked past the outline of a faded corral, up the cold steps, and into the darkest place I have ever been.

The small door of the large, empty home swallowed us in.

There was, of course, no electricity in the house, and we huddled together so that we comically bumped along like the cartoon cast of "Scooby-Doo." The old wooden floors creaked beneath us, and our shoes scratched along in the dust until I began to believe that the familiar tingling along my spine had always been there, and always would follow right behind me, from now on, a chill that had attached itself permanently to me.

Up the steps, to the top floor we climbed, closer to a low ceiling that pressed down upon us, pushing us into a presence that contracted my chest and widened my eyes. In the top room, where the children were, where the horrible crime took place, we felt a numbing headache, all of us, as though a great bell were ringing. In the corner: A dense black hole splashed into the room, a crawlspace that emitted such pain, I could not look into it. My throat seemed to echo a moan in the air. I was so oppressed by this that I gasped that I needed to leave. It was not so much fear that caused me to flee as a kind of pressure, the sheer force of 200-year-old crime never reckoned, of innocence tormented and brutalized, and a sustained despair with nowhere to turn.

I stumbled down the stairs, dizzy and fraught with the stunning torment above me, and my cohorts followed me down into the kitchen -- where we found ... comfort.

Kindness, even. A feeling of love. Cherry was here, the psychic told us. She was glad to see us. She had called us here, to help the children.

Then the psychic absolutely stunned me by asking something: Would I like some proof of Cherry's presence? If so, Cherry was happy to provide it. Yes, I said. I want her to move something, as has been rumored. Very well, the psychic responded. What?

Herbs hung from the ceiling in large bunches. Move those, I said. And I watched as the herbs, which had been still, twisted in the air. Now this one, I said. But turn them this way. Now this one, but not that one. Every request I made was met. And I caught it on video.

The psychic climbed the stairs again into the top room, to relieve that centuries-old burden, and free souls both tragically young and terrifyingly old. She performed a rite, burning herbs and throwing open the windows, and I can sincerely report that the pain in the top room seemed pacified. There was relief.

We said goodbye to Cherry's presence, who seemed grateful and even more kind. And we left.

I went into work the next day and told my editor I did not want to write the story. Why, she asked. Because I believe I saw ghosts. And I have a video. That's not the kind of thing a newspaper reports.

The features editor disagreed: That's exactly what a newspaper reports, in a tongue-in-cheek way, on Halloween. On Halloween, everyone knows, or should know, not to take a scary story too seriously. The story ran on the front page. The video of the herbs twisting in the air received hundreds of hits.

All of this you can read below, from The Observer archives. The video, sadly, has been lost.

But there is something you can't read there. There is something from that house that I have not revealed, and that has traveled from that blackest crawlspace into me and as a part of me since that time. That tingling energy unexplained, and uncontrolled, marshaled not by laws or men, which climbs my spine and will not release me.

I know what that is. I have known since that night.

The story was published. Readers joked with me about it. Thanksgiving came and went.

Six weeks after that night I received a phone call from an unfamiliar number. On the other end of the line was Catherine C., the psychic who led us that night. I do not know how she got my number, yet I was not surprised to hear from her. C. was no kook; she was calling from Detroit, where she'd flown to help a Fortune 500 auto company (they had those in 2006). A top executive needed to make a decision, and was struggling to get in touch with his intuition after all the reports and analysis.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," she said. "With your experience." Her voice in my ear stopped me from what I was doing, and I struggled to swallow. "You don't have to be alone with it. You should be flattered that they came to you."

"I know they won't hurt me," I said.

"They won't," she agreed. "I knew that you saw them. Why didn't you talk to me about them?"

I did not know what to say. "I can always feel them," I told her. "They come to me anytime." A tingling chill at my side. An unstoppable energy that flutters through me and won't let me be.

"They like you," she said. "They do."

"I know," I said. "I know."

C. has checked in on me again, several times, and I appreciate that. I have grown accustomed to the added buzz of the companions at my side.

But on murky autumn nights, when we play at ghosts, when shrieking and laughter dispel any respect for the unearthly, when all is a joke, and you cannot see what is more than real, I do feel fear. Not of the friends I made that night. They will never hurt me. When I watch you pretend, I see my friends again, and I fear what they could do. They do like me.

But I am afraid you will soon discover that they do not like you.

A HALLOWEEN GHOST STORY
SADNESS PERVADES THE DARK QUIET, THEN LIFTS WITH THE SCENT OF AN ABSENT FLOWER. SILLY, SPOOKY IMAGININGS - OR SIGNS OF AN UNSEEN POWER?

Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Section: MAIN
Edition: THREE
Page: 1A
JEFF ELDER, JELDER@CHARLOTTEOBSERVER.COM

On these autumn nights, as branches claw the moonlit sky

and leaves scrape the cold sidewalk,

do you ever feel the looming of a quiet presence?
Even the most reasonable among us can shiver

when a steely chill scurries up the spine.

You must come to where the spirits linger to feel them

tingle in your bones. Into a Charlotte house built in 1815, where

sadness dwelled, and slaves were kept. Into the dark. Into your fear.

I got a call last week from my friend Debby, who mentioned there'd been ghost sightings at Historic Rosedale in NoDa. I called Andrew King, a member of the board of the old plantation, and asked if I could visit the house. He arranged for a Charlotte intuitive (many dislike the term psychic), Catherine Crabtree, to come along. Stephanie Burt Williams, the author of "Ghost Stories Of Charlotte And Mecklenburg County" and "Wicked Charlotte," happened to be available. Radio personality Anthony Michaels from 107.9 the Link, and his wife, Melissa, also came along.

At 11:30 p.m., we drove through the gates and up to the old white house on North Tryon Street, where three stories of dark windows peer over the deserted grounds.

We huddled on the porch as King unlocked the door. "Are you ready?" he asked. "Let's just all stay together."

Inside it was dark and cold. Most of the house doesn't have electricity. We all followed the path of King's small flashlight.

There was a hollow darkness at the top of the stairs. A void into which we climbed. On the top floor was a schoolroom with slates set out on benches.

Slave children had sometimes been taught here - which was against the law. But children also had been treated badly, Crabtree said. "You can feel the heavy sadness."

"I have a headache," said Williams, the author. We all did. It was stuffy, confining.

In the corner was a crawlspace. A small double door opened out. Inside was a despairing depth of black.

"There is such sadness in there," whispered the intuitive.

"Yes, you can feel it," said King. "Like a moan."

"I want to go," said Williams.

"So do I," Anthony Michaels said.

Our heads throbbing, we descended the stairs. But we were met with the oddest thing:

The smell of jasmine. A light, floral fragrance that hadn't been there when we went upstairs, and there was no jasmine to be seen.

"That's not unusual," Crabtree said. "Someone may be trying to comfort us. Because of upstairs."

We had one more room to visit. In the white-walled basement is the old house's kitchen. It is a warm room, where generations of meals were cooked. Here slave women cared for children, black and white.

"Cherry's here," said the intuitive. Historical documents show that Cherry was a slave woman, a nursemaid who helped run the house for decades. As much as anyone, she cared for Rosedale.

"What would you like as documentation of her presence?" Crabtree stunned me by asking.

I didn't know what to ask for.

King was at the ghost sighting I'd been called about a few days earlier. He said, "The bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling turned last week. Ask her if she will do that again."

"Can we have the herbs move, please?" Crabtree asked. A large bunch of rosemary turned, slowly, but quite noticeably.

"What about this one?" I asked. The rosemary stopped moving, and a different bunch of herbs turned. The others bunches of herbs were still.

To see the herbs turn, go to charlotte.com, click on Charlotte.com/news

"Why is she here?" the author asked.

"Cherry wants the house to be well taken care of. She's cared for it for a long time. And she would like the children in the attic to be freed."

Crabtree climbed the dark stairs back up to the attic, and burned sage in a large clay saucer. She closed her eyes and told the children it was OK for them to leave. And, she said, they did.

"A huge whoosh of pain seemed to flow up and out of the house," she said.

The intuitive suggested that was it: The reason we'd been called.

"Will Cherry leave now?" Williams, the author, asked.

"Cherry would like to stay a little longer," the intuitive said. "She loves this house. She likes it when other people do, too."

That night I returned home with a tingle inside: A feeling that I was not alone.

I stretched out on my bed, and slept better than I had in months.

Jonathan Woodlief, 14, leads Facebook revolt

Nearly a million and a half angry Facebook users are protesting recent changes to the Web site. The leader of the furious online mob? A smiling eighth-grader from Apex who wears his baseball cap backwards and likes to play FarmVille.

His parents were not aware of this.

“He's doing what on Facebook?” asked Jonathan Woodlief's father when the Observer called their home near Raleigh on Tuesday night. Then David Woodlief and his wife, Claire, got Jonathan, 14, out of bed. He came downstairs and explained just how he happened to become the leader of one of the fastest-growing viral movements online. The group was booming by more than 100 new members a minute on Wednesday.

Adding a twist, Jonathan Woodlief just happens to be a dead-ringer for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, another social media whiz kid, who is only 11 years older than Jonathan.

Jonathan is the administrator of the Facebook group CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!!, which has exploded over the past six days in response to unpopular changes the site made to its News Feed feature. The feed now shows only those friends Facebook deems “important” to you.

Maybe innocence helps a cause. Jonathan added a note to the side of the group page that reads:

Lets try and get 10,000,000 people to join! :)

Jonathan did not start the group, but joined it a day after it was started because he dislikes the changes. Poking around on the page, he noticed that the group had no administrator, the person who configures the page, allows posts, and makes rules for the group. Believing in the cause – and perhaps sensing an opportunity – “I clicked a button to make myself the admin, and that was it,” he says. Since then he's been inundated with messages and friend requests from around the world.

“We had no idea,” David Woodlief said after the situation became more clear. “He's a smart kid.”

How Twitter is about to botch retweets

Project Retweet is set to roll out, and it's gonna be ugly.

In the next few weeks, Twitter will add a streamlined retweet function that you can click on, as when you reply to a tweet. You just click a button and the retweet is added to your stream, and your icon is added to a little gallery of other people who've retweeted it. (See the mockup provided by Twitter, above.)

The really bad news: You can't add a comment to a retweet -- and the commentary of why you're retweeting something has been a major part of Twitter's group conversation.

The new retweet will be strictly a thumbs-up, like clicking "Like" on Facebook.

Twitter has always been snarkier and more opinionated than Facebook. Retweets are a way of furthering the conversation by adding your thoughts. When you pass something along, you like to say why you're passing it along. You might even be retweeting to argue against the tweet, or to differ on part of it.

Sorry, Twitter: I'm not clicking Like. (You can manually retweet the old way, of course.)

Claire Cain Miller of The New York Times missed this point in a story today mentioning Project Retweet. In a glowing company profile, the NYT stressed how much Twitter lets users guide development. But there has already been significant discussion on Twitter about what a fundamental misunderstanding of Twitter's user interface this is.

The good news? You can now retweet longer tweets, because you don't have to add the RT and name of the tweeter. And you can't fake retweet someone, by making it look as though someone else said something ridiculous, and you're just passing this along.

(Although I have seen that done with hilarious results.)

Why Faceberg has its pitchforks out

In Faceberg, the people are up in arms over the new, improved Newsfeed, which seems to choose for us what we see about our friends. The goal is to help filter the "social utility," and the New York Times writes a jaw-stroking think piece about how it represents an important new direction online. Hmmmmm...

That hasn't stopped 700,000 people from joining groups -- in just the past three days -- protesting the change. The biggest affront? Facebook only allows the 250 friends it deems most important to you (algarythmically, of course) to be listed in the feed. After that, the filtering philosophy says, you don't really care. (NYT glosses over this point.) Here's a link explaining how to remedy this.

Do people care in Charlotte? Uh, yeah. I posted two items about the changes on my wall and received more than 40 responses in two days. (And remember, only 250 of my closest friends could see this, at least when clicked on the new, default Newsfeed.)

Over on Twitter, everyone's favorite annoying little bird has been crowing about its new searchability, thanks to Bing, the greatest search engine no one uses. (And, apparently by design, a very economical porn search engine.) Google is huffing and puffing its way up behind the Bing deal, and all this was announced at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where there was so much tweeting about tweeting that 50 tweets simply announced Twitter CEO Evan Williams was taking the stage.

Here's just a really radical idea: Why don't you guys stop twisting the dials long enough to make a little money? I agree with the NYT that filtering is the next big thing in cyber-communications. But Facebook friends lists, the simple way to filter that most users won't take the time to set up, does this pretty well.

Over here in the cobwebbed corner of what my friend Andria Krewson calls "legacy media," we do something pretty well: Hit people's seasonal needs. Halloween is Saturday. Facebook is the biggest photo-sharing system in the world. How'sabout a cheap way to share via family, age groups around the country, topics of costumes, with a paying prize for best costumes? Thanksgiving will be big-time photo sharing on Thanksgiving. What about a nonprofit tie, or a way to support the troops? Christmas might have a few Facebook and Twitter holiday e-card possibilities. Hello?

Twitter is already searchable. Sure, incorporating tweets into search engines is intriguing for all its possibilities. But let's work on some standardized hashtags first. And I want to get updates on my NCAA bracket this year, telling me exactly where I stand after each game. I want Election Night tweets that aren't all over the map.

Instead of giving us "the next big thing" every few months, why don't you guys just give us better platforms for our real lives? In other words, we're your customers. Act like companies, not messengers of the gods. Follow our needs, and stop leading us into "the future."

Social media's breast implants

They look really good, from far away, that is. But there's something phony about this pair that we've been admiring for two years now:

Facebook and Twitter are breast implants.

There's a round perfectness to the idea of each, but it's phony, and that causes some consternation within the companies and among investors: A tempest in a D cup.

There's something each company doesn't want you to see. A number that exposes their seeming size and beauty:

• Facebook can't make money. Now boasting 300 million users, worldwide, the Giant Peephole will make about $500 million in revenues this year. That's weak. A buck seventy-five or so per customer might be OK profits for a hot dog vendor, but not for the portal that is transforming communications. Facebook ads are impressively targetable, but people don't think about Facebook as a place to spend money. It's the good, clean fun of the recession. A free mall where we can hang out. And virtual goods are just not a solid business plan. (Despite the success of Farm Town, a company this big cannot be run like a cartoon farm.) Last year Facebook insiders admitted to me the company was still figuring out the money thing, only to have an investor angrily refute that later. Uh, sorry moneybags. I'm guessing a top executive is telling the truth.

• Twitter is a small community. Everyone's favorite annoying little bird doesn't even pretend to know how to make money yet, as Evan Williams admitted yesterday. But that's not the problem. The problem is that Twitter is just not that popular. Seventy-five percent of Twitter accounts are dead. And 10 percent of Twitter users account for 90 percent of tweets. What does that add up to? According to Nielsen Online, bout 2.5 million actual dedicated tweeters. There are more active knitters in the United States than twitters. But Time magazine didn't do a cover story on How Knitters Are Changing The Way We Live. Walker Smith, head of Yankelovich Worldwide Marketing told me, "Twitter gets talked about a lot, but it just hasn't captured the public imagination." Chuck Schilling, head of Nielsen Online, echoed his comments: "Twitter seems to be relegated to a certain upper echelon of media-savvy people."

Nice pair. Not real.

Next time: The good news.

Get a little weirder, Charlotte.

Charlotte BarCamp 2, the Geek-stock that huddled happily against Saturday's chill in Area 15 near NoDa, pointed and clicked in an important direction for Charlotte business. We used to be Cash 'n' Crash -- banking and NASCAR. And the business environment seemed contentedly divided between power suit and fire suit, the Benjamins and the Earnhardts.

That's changing.

The Chamber Of Commerce and main Rotary used to be a Who's Who of Charlotte business, but events like BarCamp 2 might be a Who's New. And we need new. The banks have been pummeled, and many NASCAR revenues are down.

The recession came down like a wedge between old Charlotte and new Charlotte. The old power base of established money lost some hold on techie new transplants -- in part because some lost their jobs. But also because that old Charlotte's hold on things -- and the banks' towering command -- was show to be vulnerable. Saturday's "unconference" was the new: Geekier, weirder, not-so-Southern, happily nerdy. The offbeat Texas music center has a longtime movement: Keep Austin Weird. And Charlotte can borrow the idea: Make Charlotte Weirder. (Burn your khaki pants!) Why? Because innovation is weird. Charlotte, like the rest of the world, needs to keep reinventing itself to emerge from the recession.

Programmers, search engine optimization professionals, online marketers, bloggers and -- gulp! -- artists convened for BarCamp (named after a programming term, not a tavern). Many were networking out of necessity: The self-employed, underemployed, unemployed -- familiar shades of a gray economy -- were there to bootstrap new careers. But there was also bankers and even a politician: Republican City Councilman Warren Cooksey.

Ecommerce businessman Jon West, sportscaster-turned-social-media guy Corey Anderson, social media maven Jenifer Daniels, innovative blogger Matthew Vincent and web designer Heather Murphy were a few of the 200 in attendance. Corey Creed, a consultant and teacher in SEO and social media, preached to find your niche and create content that you love. That's a new concept for a city that has previously embraced big companies, and the big-tent of the established business world. See a snippet of Creed's talk, below.

The free event featured giveaway T-shirts and coffee mugs, and lunch thrown in, too. (Sponsors are listed below.) So what's the only reason not to go? It was a little weird. A kid led one session -- on balloon twisting. An artist led another, in which he took participants down the "rabbit hole" of his studio in Area 15.

But, considering the economy, and strait-laced Charlotte's struggles, maybe that was the best reason to go.

BarCamp 2 sposors: Area 15, netphase, russ communications, Counter Culture Coffee, Amelie's French Bakery and heels.com.

Live from BarCamp 2

Charlotte BarCamp 2 is huddled in Area 15 near NoDa today, for the Charlotte Area's chic-est geekfest, an "unconference" that develops as it goes. We're kicking off this morning with what looks like about 200 in the lofty, artsy space. It's a different crowd for Charlotte -- geekier, friendlier, not-so-Southern, happily nerdy. SEO man Corey Creed, massage therapist/geek Summer Plum, former Observerites Crystal Dempsey and Andria Krewson and, of course, Justin Ruckman, the boy hero of CLT Blog -- and one of the organizers -- are just a few faces in the crowd.

Watch live on http://cltblog.com/live

The topics for the seminars will be pitched in a moment. "And hopefully they're not all about Twitter," joked one of the organizers.

Balloon Boy, internet sensation

Yesterday afternoon, seven of Twitter's top 10 trending topics were related to a the "Balloon Boy" story out of Colorado, which made for riveting TV until it turned out the Jiffy Pop popcorn-looking homemade spaceship actually had nobody inside.

It was enough to make you miss the innocent, bygone days when you knew there really was a kid stuck down in a well and could get good and justifiably worried sick about them.

In case you just stepped out of a spaceship yourself (and if so, you really should post to YouTube immediately), much of the nation watched on live television yesterday as a weather balloon zipped around Colorado, supposedly with 6-year-old Falcon (really) Heene in the payload. It turns out that young Falcon hid in a box in the attic while the nation hoped and prayed he would not crash into power lines on live TV. Spicing up the story is the fact that the family appeared on "Wife Swap," an ABC reality show with -- despite the title -- not near the ratings of the balloon escapade. Then young Falcon threw up on the "Today" show this morning as father Richard insisted he and his wife were not in on any kind of hoax. (And authorities now say there is no evidence the parents were involved. Making Falcon the king of all 6-year-old pranksters.)

You just can't make this stuff up. By the time it was all done, even Middle East news service Al Jazeera was coving the story. There must be an easier way to become an internet star, but effectively viral this spectacle has certainly been:

Huffington Post is aggregating the best Balloon Boy jokes online, so you don't have to chase him all over creation to get the goodies inside.

On Facebook, folks are writing a folk song for the new folk hero, set to the tune of the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme. New groups are popping up like crazy. And (lame) Balloon Boy T-shirts ,as well as other products, are for sale.

Over on YouTube, there are more than a dozen videos of young Falcon throwing up on the "Today" show this morning. (I kid you not, people want to watch this. Forgive me for not providing a link.)

I couldn't find a Balloon Boy presence on LinkedIn (proof again that it is the most reasonable of social media platforms). But if he's smart young Falcon will slap up a resume, pronto, before his star fades.

Question: Can you really blame a kid whose parents appeared on "Wife Swap" for thinking it's cool to grab attention?

Should you think we're done with this, just look ahead to Halloween, coming up in two weeks, and all the balloon boys who will be competing for attention then.

Grammar and bacon Bloody Marys

"What is Twitter doing to our language?" a CPCC prof asked from the audience of a talk on Wednesday evening. To which I replied: "OMG, Gr8 question!!!"

It is a great question. Students in the audience piped up that it can be hard to shift away from text shorthand when they put down their phones (intermittently) to write papers. I'm going to throw it out to you, and write my own paper (excuse me, my phone...) about it soon. In the meantime, I thought this piece by Greg Downey was interesting. He argues that texting and Twitter are indeed a kind if pidgin, but that their own rules, conventions and even witticisms are developing. I agree. Inspired Twittercisms can be quite charming, to my writing ear. It's also kinda cool that @grammarcops on Twitter have more than 4,400 followers.

The bacon Bloody Mary, which could play a key role in bringing us out of this here recession, is of course garnished with a social media tie. Join the Terrace Cafe's Facebook fan page, get a bacon Bloody for two bucks. And you get a secret code word, too. Pretty fun stuff from the stylish eatery near SouthPark. Wouldn't everything be better with a piece of bacon stapled to it and a secret code word whispered on the side? There is, BTW, a big daddy version of this porcine beverage, at 750. That's grams of fat. Kiddin'. $7.50.

More Twitter links go to news sites than anything else, a new survey from Chitika marketing research shows. Then movie sites, and tech. Facebook users are less newsy. They go to tech, then lifestyle (wow!), then news. Twitter is a better headline service. Interesting, though, that Facebook is more tech. I think of it as less so.

Still interested in how nonprofits are using social media, and whether its working to bring in money. For a story in The Observer coming soon. Holler at me.

Free talk, wild football video

I'll give a free talk Wednesday evening at Central Piedmont Community College on "Social Media: The Truth Behind The Hype." The talk is at 6:15 p.m. in Halton Theater (map here). Click here for more details. I'm going to talk about three things:

• What Facebook is like up close, and the "big number" the company doesn't want you to look at.
• What Twitter is like in person, and the "big number" that company doesn't want you to look at.
• The phenomenon of the "social media expert," and the "big number" that new profession doesn't want you to look at.
  

I'll also have Richard Brasser, a top social media and marketing consultant who's worked with big companies give a brief talk and field questions. My boss, Steve Gunn will talk about social media projects at The Observer.

We will have a long Q&A period after the talk, and I'd love to hear your questions.

And now for an amazing video. High school football team blocks a field goal to apparently win the game. But watch what happens afterward.

Cockroach comedy with video.

Giving cockroaches the slip from Cambridge University on Vimeo.

Researchers at Cambridge University, England's 800-year-old bastion of dignified academia, have developed a substance that makes cockroaches slip and fall down.

Insects secret a sticky fluid that allows them to walk on almost anything. Three zoology researchers at Cambridge have developed a formula that soaks up the water in that secretion, leaving only an oil behind. They say it could represent a breakthrough in pest control, by preventing bugs from crawling into homes.

Free talk at 6:15 Wednesday at CPCC's Halton Theater on "Social Media, the truth behind the hype." Click here for details.  

“It can be entertaining,” Jan-Henning Dirks told The Observer in a phone interview Monday. “We had fun watching them in the lab. It is a little like slapstick.”

This video shows a cockroach easily walking up a little pole coated with Teflon. Then the roach tries to climb up a pole treated with the new substance, and the results might remind one of gym-class rope-climbing trauma.

Dirks developed the substance with Christofer Clemente and Walter Federle. He told me they are exploring commercial applications. The substance does not yet have a name.

Suggestions?

Web 3.0 and journalism

Google Wave represents a new opportunity for print journalism. Wave itself is still a buggy, empty platform, and it might never succeed. But it represents a potential new approach for journalism: Bringing readers and citizen journalists into the process, and making the developing story a product.

There are at least four deliverables from a transparent, collaborative reporting process: The immediacy of tweets and other social media updates; incremental short pieces in a Wave-like approach; what we now consider to be the finished product; and a kind of scrapbook of the pieces that is archivable.

Here's why journalists should care: It can make money.

By aiming this process-is-the-product strategy to mobile, we can hit a marketplace and audience that is willing to pay. It took many big companies years to make money online, but consumers have been far more willing to spend money on the devices and services associated with the mobile Web.

But they won't pay for tweets, which are free and omnipresent. And they won't pay for what print journalism has always considered to be our final product, because years ago we committed ourselves to the philosophy that information is free online.

They will pay for incremental breaking news multi-media stories that come in waves from events that they care about. It's a product they've never seen on their mobiles, and they can take part with social media. Web 3.0's geo approach can target users, and pair mobile advertising with stories.

This would look like a user in Chicago getting an alert on their mobile that the Olympic Committee was about to announce the selection of 2012's host city, with a short video, print story, photos, and the ability to share the story with friends, and an ad from Olympics sponsor Bank Of America.

The user could be updated every 15 minutes, and share the story while commenting. If they committed to the developing story, location-based ads could be attached to the story. ("Sad the Second City didn't get the Games? There are beer specials right around the corner...")

There are many moving pieces, but this pulls together some promising strategies. Journalism needs to take on the challenge.

How much time on social media?

How much time do you spend on social media? Too much?

Nielsen Online reported over the summer that Americans people spend more time on Facebook than any other Web site. The study noted that 87.25 million U.S. users visited Facebook during June, and each of those spent an average of four hours, 39 minutes and 33 seconds on the site during the month.

More recently, Nielsen reported that time spent on social network and blogging sites accounted for 17 percent of all time spent on the Internet in August, nearly triple the percentage of time spent on the sector a year ago.  

"How do people work a full-time job and manage all their social media accounts?" an old-school communications guy asked me recently. It's a good question. Social media users might argue that the sites make them more productive, helping them quickly gather information, connect with colleagues and stay plugged in. But there's some goofing around that goes on, too.

Here are my opinionated suggestions for how to limit your social media time to a well-spent hour a day:

Direct messages: Whether on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, read and respond to these as they come up. These are like answering the phone. This isn't so much social media as direct communications. If you get dozens of these a day, you're either so successful that you need a personal assistant, or you're a teen-ager. Either way, I don't feel sorry for you. Time spent: 10 minutes, as needed.

Twitter: Tweets are like Tic Tacs. You always have time for one, and they can be refreshing and fun. But if you're popping a Tic Tac 30 times a day, do you have a problem? Your mobile device should be your main Twitter interface, and you should tweet, and post pics, as they come up. If you see something or hear something great -- and especially if you witness news -- whip that phone out and tweet. (I enjoy people's mobile tweets far more than the jabberers who sit home or at work and post all day long.) Twitter is also the ultimate dentist-office time filler. When you get a break in your day, nothing wrong with checking Twitter. (I've wondered recently if Twitter users would have been heavy smokers in a previous generation.) Time spent: 15 minutes in the form of daily gap fillers.

LinkedIn: I think you should check in with LinkedIn for 10 minutes every day. That is, unless you're rock-solid confident about the economy, your job and peace and prosperity in general. Work today is all about networking. LinkedIn is not a place to park your resume. Drop a key contact a message, reach out, and see what colleagues are doing. You might need their help someday soon. Think about LinkedIn as like watering a plant or brushing your teeth. It's a healthy habit that pays off. Neglecting to do this has sad results. Time spent: 5 minutes in the morning. 

Facebook: Biggest time suck in the universe right now? Nope. Not even close. Nielsen reports that the average American TV consumption remains at an all-time high of 141 hours per month, more than 30 times the average time spent on Facebook. But I think a good way to think about Facebook is like your favorite TV show. If you sit down for a half-hour in the evening and check out what's going on in your friends' lives, you'll catch many of them at prime time. If you have friends lists, which I highly recommend, you can sort of DVR your experience by focusing on separate areas of your life. Time spent: Half-hour in the evening.

Please understand me: I am NOT recommending everyone spend an hour a day on social media. If you spend less, or don't use these sites at all, more power to you. But if your time on the sites is growing, and you're not evaluating or monitoring it, I hope this helps provides some perspective. 

Now get back to work.