Sadly, I sent the Xbox 360 Santa Claus gave us for Christmas back to Microsoft today. I should be more angry that it came with a wonky disc drive. I've become pretty addicted to Guitar Hero III the last few weeks, Merilee has played Catan about a million times, and Lincoln keeps getting Lego Star Wars tips from his friend at school. But I'm not getting too bent out of shape because Microsoft said they'd fix it for free, no questions asked, and I need the time away from video games to get my semester started right.

I still worry about what I'm going to fill the time. How can I continue to hone my GH3 skillz without the game? How can I get the little multi-colored circles out of my brain every time I hear a song on the radio? How can I stop my mind from thinking, "Hey, they should make a pop, folk, or even country guitar hero!"? It's going to take something drastic. I think I'm going to buy a CD.

Yes, the genius of GH3 is not the addictive gameplay. It's not that it has brought casual game players to the hardcore console. It's that it might actually be a great way to sell music in the digital age, and as someone trying to understand the future of media, it's a perfect example of some of my ideas at work.

In an age when CD sales are down, MTV and VH1 no longer play music videos, and radio stations play the same three songs over and over again (Sorry, Jason Mraz. I love you but the next time I hear "I'm Yours" on the radio I'm going to crash my car into a pole.), artists and their labels need to embrace the new media like never before. GH and all of its sequels and clones represent a vibrant opportunity.

Take me, for example. I thought I knew all the progressive heavy metal bands there were. OK, I knew three - Dream Theater, Queensryche and Savatage - but I was pretty satisfied. Then I completed GH3 on easy and was introduced to the metal onslaught amid fantasy themes that is Dragonforce. Admittedly, I still fail their song "Through the Fire and Flames" in easy mode, but I loved it so much I bought their extra track pack for the game, and I'll probably buy their CD from Zune marketplace. (I have a Zune. I know. I'm a geek.)

I've also found new dimensions to bands I thought I knew. I've always liked Weezer, for instance, from a distance. They were always just the cool band whose Happy Days-inspired video came with Windows 95 and whose latest single "Pork and Beans" features recreations of all the coolest Web videos. Now, however, I think I have played their song "My Name is Jonas" so many times that I've come to appreciate their actual music, and their CD is next on the list. I've also developed a new fondness for Muse and Priestess, and the Kaiser Chiefs "Ruby" is almost as fun to play as it is to listen to.

I know I'm behind the curve here. GH3 is an old game. Hey, it was all I could afford after plunking down $260 on a 360. I hear GH4: World Tour is even better, and Rock Band 1 and 2 are not just pale imitators. I have to think, however, that if someone who tries to stay young and up-to-date with the new media is just finding this, I might need to evangelize. And as tired as it may sound, I may need to hold up Guitar Hero as an example of thinking outside the box with interactive technology.

We all still struggle with a way to make the Internet pay for the news business, and we probably won't do it with downloadable music. But are there ways we can use the same thinking that powers rhythm games online to find a viable online news model? Could we have news track packs - say, if you like a story about health care, you can spend a few points to get an interactive map? In other words, would an a la carte pricing structure work with the news as long as the media can provide enough stimulating content to get people to care?

It's a question that needs answering, and I hope I can soon enough. But right now I've got some guitar battles to dream up.

BTW, the remixed video of "Pork and Beans" is even better. Check it out.

I entitled this blog "giving the Internet too much credit," because honestly, that's what I tend to. I latch onto something and end up attributing everything to it. I expect sometime soon you'll see posts arguing the Internet promotes world peace, ends racial tolerance and opens a wormhole into the place where all your missing socks go.

In reality, there are some things the Internet can't do, but after spending last week remodeling our downstairs bathroom, I'm not sure what. We turned to the 'Net for just about everything. When we needed a refresher course on how to lay tile, we watched YouTube (even though I'm still wondering why the guy in the video we watched didn't drag the slotted end of his trowel through the mortar before laying the tiles.) We found the owner's manual for our water softner online after I soaked the original one. We even found a replacement shower online, even if it was one we had to have my brother, the plumbing firm vice president order for us.

I'm constantly surprised at what I find online. When Santa got me an Xbox 360 that wouldn't read discs for Christmas, I found complete instructions on how to take the sucker apart without voiding the warranty (The trick: Using a hair dryer to dissolve the glue on the warranty sticker.) From Ken Jennings, one of my favorite bloggers, I found a listing of classic Lego set instructions. This was a particularly convenient find because Lincoln dragged a bunch of my old sets out of my closet at my Mom's house and we shipped them home. They're probably in a million pieces now.

All this recent web finding has made me question my title. Can I really give the Internet too much credit or am I not giving it credit enough? Maybe the real question is to whom does the credit belong? Is it really the Internet that makes vast stores of information available to me or is it the people online? Did the Internet contract out the filming of tiling videos? Did it frequent enough garage sales to find thousands of vintage Lego sets and the accompanying instructions?

In other words, the Internet is great and maybe it deserves some credit for making it easy for people to come together, but in the end, it's the users who make all the difference. So thanks to all of you who are willing to share. Here's to another great year together. I promise I'll do more of my part to add something to the storehouse, even if it's insane ramblings on how great everyone else is.

I hate admitting this, but the thing I missed most during my time away from home over the Christmas break was the Internet. I didn't log in for more than a week during one particularly painful stretch, and once I did finally get on, it was for less than an hour to enter my final semester grades.

The strangest part about it all, however, is that I learned to live without it. I watched a lot more TV. I played a lot more board games with family. I even got out of the house and went sledding with my son and brother in law, and I had a really good time (Thanks Robbie!) By the end, I almost didn't even miss it. We've been home almost a week now, and I think I've only logged in four or five times. I'm sure once classes start again, I'll be back to checking my e-mail three times an hour, but I'm glad for the respite because it has made me realize what I really need - and it's certainly not more time online.

I used to ask myself a similar question as I struggled with daily newspaper deadlines. Would our readers really miss much if we didn't come out with a newspaper one day? I was almost positive they especially wouldn't notice on Monday, where we ran 16 almost ad-free pages. They probably wouldn't notice on Tuesday and Wednesday either because they were most likely waiting for the buildup of movie ads Thursday and car ads Friday and Saturday.

But I never had the guts to find out, and the more research I do on online news and the profit/loss structures needed to make online news pay for itself, I wish I had. I don't have to wish anymore. The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News announced that in May they will only print papers on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Some people, including the Detroit Examiner, are upset, and I can understand why. It might look like this move is another cost-cutting effort that will dilute the news product and deprive readers of the news they need to be free and self-governing. It might signal the end of the print paper era, especially if the Detroit papers turn a profit and other Gannett papers follow suit.

However, I can't be as pessimistic, because as much as I like reading a printed newspaper, especially in a nice little sandwich shop during lunch, I know I can learn to live without it, and I think other habitual news readers can too.

NPR's coverage of the Detroit cutbacks features an interview with Kate Knight, a stay-at-home mom, who said home delivery is a big part of her family's routine.

"I grew up fighting for the Free Press with my three siblings, and my kids fight over it too, so it's a great tradition," Knight says as she sits at the kitchen table with her 4-year-old daughter, the newspaper sprawled out in front of them. "In fact, whoever goes and gets the Free Press in the morning out of the driveway can pick the section they want to read first."

You know Kate, I fought for the paper too, but not with my siblings. I fought with my father, a Swiss-born immigrant who spent almost an hour with the Deseret News every day. He and mother even claim they learned English from the daily newspaper. But as nostalgic as remembering that makes me, I still can't see what advantage daily delivery has.

News is a universal need - that cannot be disputed. Some researchers claims its hardwired into our brains because as cave men we learned that the more we knew about threats, the more likely we were to avoid being eaten by dinosaurs. But knowing the dangers at a specific time and in a specific format each day is NOT part of the need. In fact, if the Internet has taught us anything, it is that this information need is something best fulfilled immediately when we need it.

As Kate describes her newspaper habit and I reflect on my own, I realize it has little to do with news. It's mostly about routine. I never got all the information I needed from the time I spent with the paper. Especially when something was breaking, such as when I passed a dozen police cars parked on the freeway, I turned to other more immediate sources. I even flipped on the TV every once in a while.

That's why I think Gannett's experiment in Detroit could work and might even provide better news coverage. Printing three days a week will give the papers the advertising appeal they need. It will also provide visibility for a news organization that the Internet can't. It might also give the talented writers and editors at both papers a showcase for their best work, the kind of stories and photos that I might actually want to spend an hour or so reading, not the kind I just flip through because it's habit.

Focusing on the Internet the rest of the time will allow the Detroit papers to do what they do best in the best format for readers. They can cover breaking news as it happens without having to wait for a basically arbitrary press deadline to publish it.

Just as I learned to break my Internet addiction over the holiday break, I know others can learn to live with a newspaper every day, and like me, they might find they are a bit better off because they've learned to use their time wisely.

One of the greatest challenges facing news organizations today as they shift their operations to the Web is figuring out how to make it pay. What's most frustrating for me, as an Internet researcher and a proponent of online innovation, is that some of the best online presentations aren't automatically those that make the most money. In fact, some of the most interesting online news sites, those that seem to embrace the three principals I think are the most vital online - interactivity, connecting with the audience and understanding a medium's strengths - almost always fail. And it usually occurs just after I have written about them or showed them to one of my classes. In fact, I may be an online innovation jinx!

It just happened at Yahoo! News. I had Robert Padavick, one of the site's senior producers, speak to my class remotely. I wrote about him on this site. I used Yahoo!'s People of the Web series during BOTH of the teaching presentations I gave while I interviewed for jobs. From Robert's Facebook page last week, I learned he had been a victim of ]Yahoo's most recent layoffs. I'm not sure about the rest of the news division, including Kevin Sites, but I'm not hopeful if they laid off someone as talented as Robert. Out of all the references I found on Yahoo's layoffs, there was no specific mention of what happened to the news division.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Roanoke.com used to feature TimesCast, a funny and inventive online news broadcast, created by their Web staff. I really liked it, not because it was the most professional piece of work ever, but because it wasn't as uppity as everything else you see on TV or even the Web. It seemed to really be speaking to its audience instead of over them. But that show hasn't been online for more than a year. It has been replaced with a sports and entertainment broadcast, which while innovative, isn't quite as fun.

The most glaring example from the Cyberbrains standpoint has to be Backfence.com. While we didn't always agree with their no-holds barred approach to citizen journalism because they did not actively edit or solicit contributions, we appreciated them for investing money in communities and offering a much more democratic news product. I also appreciated their loving embrace of hyper-local news. They had no pretenses about not running cute kitty pictures, local restaurant reviews, or dead deer pictures. This is rare in professional journalism.

But Backfence, as a citizen journalism forum, lasted only about a year. Now it's trying to be a local, online marketplace. According to this post from one of its co-founders, I think Backfence still has a lot to teach online news professionals.

The question remains what can Yahoo's cuts teach us about making online news profitable, and more importantly, why is no one else, at least that I can see, writing about this. Yahoo! published some high profile features and signed some even higher profile partnerships that should have given it some leverage as an online news provider. I sure the 60 Minutes clips and extras remain, but what about the elements of People of the Web or Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone? What about the revolutionary ways Yahoo decided to cover the 2008 presidential election with annotated interviews of each candidate and instant opportunities to comment? What about the news blog that didn't talk down to the audience? What about the site's entire philosophy not just to aggregate news as Google does, but to give it perspective and analysis?

I'm sad not just for a friend who is on the market in a difficult time. I'm sure Robert will land on his feet. I think he join me at his alma mater and get his Ph.D. Students need to learn the skills he has, and I don't think many of us can teach them. But more I'm sad that it seems Yahoo! had turned its back on an ambitious journalistic mission to "focus on the bottom line." That's not what journalism, but especially online journalism, should be about. What happened to allowing a site like Amazon.com run a deficit for more than five years in order to build it into the powerhouse it is today?

A quick update to explain why I was misting up in the Reynolds Journalism Institute open conference room earlier this afternoon. My class introduced me to a a new blog which I've added to the blogroll on the right. NerdWorld, from Time magazine online, is co-writer by a Simpsons' executive producer. Give me one good reason why I wouldn't like it.

But that wasn't what had tears leaking from my eyes, and I'm really not exaggerating here. If you don't believe me, watch this video.



I found it scrolling through Time's Top 10 lists for 2008. This was No. 1 on the Top 10 viral videos, and the wellspring of emotion it elicited in me explains why. It also represents to me the power the Internet has in bringing people of different cultures together. We all just want to dance together, don't we?

Anyway, the rest of this and the other lists provide a good excuse not to work on your last class paper EVER! Ha ha ha ha!