Tam Harbert

It’s scary enough that technology, specifically the Internet, makes it easy for publishers to replace U.S. journalists with low-cost writers from developing countries. Reuters, for example, uses staff in India to write financial news reports. Now comes the next wave: software that might just replace journalists entirely.

A couple of weeks ago, The New York Times ran a story on Narrative Science, a Chicago startup that has written software that takes data like sports stats or earnings numbers and churns out articles. Then last week, Slate.com, ran a series by Farhad Manjoo titled “Will Robots Steal Your Job?” The series describes how artificial intelligence is starting to do the work of highly-skilled professionals, including pharmacists, doctors and journalists. To top it all off, the New America Foundation here in D.C. just hosted a panel discussion, led by Manjoo, on the same topic.

At least two companies are developing such technology: Narrative Science and
Automated Insights in Durham, N.C. Both companies seem to be targeting the market for local sports reporting, such as high school football games. Publishers can use the software to turn game stats into news reports, effectively covering hundreds of local games that they never had the time or staff to cover before. It’s like a “robotic sports writer,” said Robbie Allen, Automated Insights CEO and founder, at the New America Foundation event.

The software could be a useful tool. I’ve done my share of stories on economic data, earnings numbers and market statistics. The work of sifting through all the numbers trying to identify the important trends is time-consuming, mind-numbing and depends on a certain amount of luck and intuition. Why not use this software to do in a split second what teams of journalists working for years could never do – analyze terabytes worth of numbers and identify trends and nuggets that are worth noting and digging into?

There’s plenty of data that publishers could feed into such software. In some cases, the publishers would get stories that would not otherwise get written. In other cases, they’d identify interesting trends that real journalists can use to develop in-depth articles.

In an example of the former, trade publisher Hanley Wood is using Narrative Science to provide monthly reports on hundreds of local housing markets on its website, something that it did not have the manpower to do before, according to the Times article.

As for generating story ideas, no one seems to be using the software for that, yet. In fact, these companies sometimes sound like they intend to put journalists out of business.

“In five years, a computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize — and I’ll be damned if it’s not our technology,” Kris Hammond, a founder of Narrative Science, told the Times. The comment is particularly disheartening because Hammond is a professor of journalism as well as computer science.

I doubt his claim. These products lack the creativity and imagination that professional journalists add to the equation. And I don’t think they’ll ever have that, because they are not human. People’s eyes glaze over when a story just reports numbers, even if those numbers are analyzed. Try reading an economic report from the federal government sometime.

This software may replace some reporters, and legitimately so, because some reporters don’t add any value. Writers, for example, who simply gather information, get a few comments from people and then regurgitate it onto the page, should probably start looking for another profession. As James W. Michaels, former editor of Forbes, was known to bellow: That is “not reporting, it’s stenography!”

These programs can even do sophisticated analysis that can match, or far surpass, our brain power when it comes to crunching numbers. “We can analyze and access more data than any one writer could ever do,” according to Allen.

What they cannot do, however, is include the human element. As every good journalist knows, a great story is just that – a story. About real people. Not about numbers. It includes the shades of gray that people must deal with in life. It illustrates their weakness and the pain of failure, the thrill and glory of achievement, the fear and depths of depression and disappointment.

The best business stories are not about how much profit a company made, but about the smart people that made the company so successful. The best sports writing is not about who won or lost the game, but how they did so and how the players and their fans reacted. Take a look at this piece from the Boston Globe, for example. Could a software program write this?

Can software conduct an effective interview? Good journalists ask probing questions and observe peoples’ reactions. They notice whether an interview subject is defensive, they sense when he may be lying or hiding something. They can get swept up by the excitement of an athlete describing how he pushed himself across the finish line, or feel the pain as a mother talks about how disease ravaged the health of her child. This affects not only what journalists write, but how they write it, in many subtle ways.

Maybe technology will ultimately be able to describe our complicated human condition as well as it crunches numbers. But for now, I think the journalism profession is relatively safe. Let’s welcome this software as another great tool in our toolbox, and use the extra time to concentrate on what we do best: telling great stories.

I’ve often wondered whether it would be more equitable, and more profitable, to be paid based on the number of people who read, “like” or “recommend” my stories. Among those clients who share these numbers with me, my articles rank consistently high.

Meanwhile, after having watched the explosion of digital publishing over the last year, I’ve increasingly wondered whether I might be able to publish and sell my articles to readers directly.

After attending the Maryland Writers Association (MWA) annual meeting in early April, I’m convinced that at least some journalists could do this and make more money than the typical freelance fee for any given article. The MWA is primarily for fiction writers, and the panel discussions focused on book publishing, but what I heard there only reinforced my belief that an exciting new publishing and distribution model is opening up for writers of all kinds, including journalists.

More and more authors are publishing e-books through companies like Amazon and Smashwords, and making good money doing it. The poster girl for this is the young writer Amanda Hocking, who has made more than a million dollars publishing her short novels on the Kindle. After slowly creeping up on them for years, disintermediation has finally hit the “legacy publishers” (as the participants of one panel at the MWA meeting insisted on calling them) hard.

This entertaining (but very long) discussion of e-book publishing between authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath lays out the reasons behind the self-publishing stampede. You don’t have to read the entire 13,000 words on the business reasons, including an explanation of the revenue math, to be convinced that self-publishing is at least worth a try. These quotes reverberate in my head:

On distribution of stories: “Print is just a delivery system. It gets a story from the writer to the reader. For centuries, publishers controlled this system, because they did the printing, and they were plugged into distribution. But with retailers like Amazon, B&N [Barnes & Noble], and Smashwords, the story can get to the reader in a faster, cheaper way.”

On the worth of writers, aka content producers: “We provide the content that is printed and distributed. For hundreds of years, writers couldn’t reach readers without publishers. We needed them. Now, suddenly, we don’t. But publishers don’t seem to be taking this Very Important Fact into account.”

I heard variations of these themes all over the MWA conference. One panelist predicted that within five years, more than 50 percent of all books will be e-books. How much journalism is already consumed digitally today? Probably well over half. And with the iPad and other tablets starting to breathe visual life into digital newspaper and magazine stories, it should increase astronomically.

Why not package and sell single articles? I’m aware of at least one experiment in selling digital long-form journalism singles: the Atavist. The articles are by well-known journalists, of course, to appeal to the general public and attract as many buyers as possible.

Would this work in trade journalism? One of the literary agents at the MWA meeting, Jessica Sinsheimer of the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, encouraged authors to aim for niches rather than the mass market. The more narrowly defined the market, she said, the easier it is to sell the story. That’s the whole idea behind trade publishing: niche audiences – CEOs of technology companies, for example – want articles that deal with the issues and events that are most important to them.

Would they pay for that? What if a journalist wrote an article of 5,000 words that brought them new, useful information that could make a real difference in their life, career or company? Going the traditional route, that journalist might expect to make $5,000 to $7,500 for that story. What if she published her own e-story and charged $10 a pop? Based on Konrath’s figures that an author can keep 70 percent of the revenue when publishing on Kindle, she’d have to sell at least 1,000 copies to reach that $7,500. Just as important, however, is the fact that she would retain the rights to that article. Maybe she could later sell it to a couple of “legacy publishers,” or publish it as part of a longer book.

Effective social networking could be the key. If a writer is to have any hope of selling her own stories, she has to have developed a personal readership – people who know her and want to read her stuff. Another publishing agent on the panel, Jason Allen Ashlock of Movable Type Literary Group, stressed how important it is for writers to build and grow their reputation and relationship with readers. Not only does it help promote the writer, but it also feeds the writer good ideas for future stories. By communicating with readers, a writer can learn what her audience wants. And if her stories deliver what her audience wants, she should be able to sell more of them. It becomes a virtuous cycle. When readers are being overwhelmed by the vast universe of digital information, hitting a reader’s sweet spot becomes very valuable. “Where there’s an abundance of content, then quality content becomes your marketing strategy,” said Ashlock. “Business models can be built around good content.”

The next few years will tell whether and to what extent individual journalists will be able to profit more directly from their work. Regardless of what happens, the “freelance” in freelance journalism is starting to take on a whole new meaning.

Last week I bought my first smart phone – an iPhone 4. I had been holding out for years, using a prehistoric LG Electronics flip phone circa 2005, on a pre-paid Verizon plan of $15 a month, because I don’t make many mobile phone calls. Most of my work is done at my desk in my home office. And even if I am on the road, I prefer to use a landline for phone interviews because the sound quality on most cell phones is crummy.

What I finally realized, however, is that I didn’t need the smart phone for the phone part. I needed it for the “smart” part, the computer capabilities that it provides. When I’m on the road, or even across the street shopping for groceries, I need to be available to my clients. If someone sends me an urgent e-mail, I need to respond right away.

The single most important reason I finally took the plunge is that a smart phone is a good backup system when my power goes out. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I live on a weak part of the electricity grid and am the victim of frequent power outages of fairly long duration. Short of getting a generator, the next best solution was to upgrade my phone so that I could continue to access my e-mail and the Web even if my lights went out. Since this access was the primary force driving me to upgrade, I wanted the most reliable wireless carrier. When the iPhone finally came out on Verizon Wireless, I decided the time was right.

What I didn’t expect was how useful the iPhone would be in so many different ways. For example, it not only serves as my most reliable connection to e-mail and the Internet (assuming I keep it charged), but it also may become a key component of my computer backup system. By using the cloud and the phone, I can have access to just about any file I need even if my power goes out. By storing my files and notes online at Dropbox, which provides a basic amount of storage for free, I still have access to them even when the power goes out. Granted, I can’t exactly edit and write stories with my thumbs on the iPhone keyboard, but I can at least send a story to an editor if need be.

The phone also gives me a great way to save not only files but also story ideas. I get these ideas all the time, but if I don’t write them down (and I almost never do) I forget them quickly and usually permanently. Now I can use the iPhone’s voice recorder to take note of that great idea and what sparked it.

I also didn’t realize how useful this pocket computer would be in my daily life. Using the Notes app, I keep a running list of things I need to pick up, such as office supplies and groceries. Now as long as I have the phone with me I also have those lists available, so when I happen to stop at Staples or the local grocery store I’m not wracking my brain to try to remember that I needed an HP 901 printer cartridge or a package of Shiitake mushrooms.

My iPhone also serves as my brag book about my son. Rather than pulling a three-year-old school photo out of my wallet, I can show people the latest pictures of him on Facebook, as well as some of his latest performances (he’s an actor and singer) on YouTube.

And he, an iPhone user for years, has turned me on to Pandora, an app that lets you build personalized music channels and also recommends new music that its algorithm says might suit your taste. So now I’m broadening my musical horizons while on the treadmill at the gym.

After resisting mobile phone technology for years, I’m now hooked. And I haven’t even made a phone call.

If you’re a freelancer and you’re not familiar with Demand Media, then you haven’t checked the listings on JournalismJobs.com and MediaBistro for years. If you’re not a freelancer, you’ve seen lots of Demand Media’s products, although you probably haven’t realized it. Do a Google search on just about anything, and you’ll find them. Go ahead and search on “best way to wash a dog,” right now. See the results that come up from eHow.com (two of the first four listings)? That’s just one of the sites owned by Demand Media.

Demand Media, along with other companies like Suite 101, Associated Content and About.com, is a content farm, a new type of media company that bases its business model on search engine optimization (SEO). Most freelancers don’t like these companies and their business models. First of all, they pay a pittance, usually $15 to $20 per article. Many of the people who write for these sites are novice writers, not journalists, willing to take such low wages just to get published. Second, these companies don’t value good writing nor do they offer good service to the reader. The content farm’s chief aim is to mass-produce chunks of text designed to rank highly on Google. The higher an article ranks on Google, the more readers it drives to Demand Media sites, thus generating large numbers of page views, which means more advertising dollars. It doesn’t matter whether the information is accurate or useful, whether the article is written well, or even if it makes any sense whatsoever. What matters is that the article is stuffed with key words and that the writer uses other tricks that will get the article ranked highly in Google search results.

This is known as search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a trend that prickles the skin of good journalists everywhere who are under pressure from the bean counters to “optimize” their articles. “Building Web traffic through ‘search engine optimization’ has become a major part of a journalist’s job,” writes The Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro in a recent column. It’s a symptom of the fact that most publications haven’t yet figured out how to make money by publishing quality editorial on the Web. It’s a desperate attempt to prop up their advertising revenues.

Many of my colleagues – both staff and freelance – are experiencing this to some degree. The good news, however, is that older, established publications – ones that existed before the Internet – are more discerning about it. They want high-quality editorial first, then they tweak it with SEO.

“My editors are very sensitive to anything that looks or feels like whoring out a story,” says one client. “Yet at the same time you want your work to be seen, so it’s yet another one of those fine lines. We aren’t putting EgyptKatyPerrySarahPalinViagra in the first line of every story (or in the keywords, which some even respectable publications do) but we did have a two-hour edit seminar from an outside firm on SEO tactics.”

On the other hand, a freelance colleague who experimented with Demand Media gave up after she tried to both write a good story AND adhere to the company’s editorial guidelines. “You’ve only got, like, 250 words, and here they are telling you what words to use,” and where, she says.

Demand Media’s recent initial public offering seemed to be a vote of confidence in the SEO-based business model. As of Feb. 7, the share price was $19, giving the company a market capitalization of around $1.6 billion. However, Demand Media has yet to turn a profit. For the first nine months of 2010, it lost $6.3 million, according to Folio.

Meanwhile, Google is taking aim at these companies. As content farms have emerged, they’ve flooded the Internet with crappy articles, which makes Google’s search service less useful. Consumers are not finding the information they want and need, and they are complaining. “We hear the feedback from the Web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content,” blogged Matt Cutts, Google search engineer, in January. The company plans to adjust its algorithm to try to strip out some of this drivel.

Think about this for a minute. The content farms use a business model that generates articles that people don’t like, even though these companies are targeting topics that people are interested in. It’s an SEO shell game of keywords that leaves readers dissatisfied and frustrated. It’s not making money. And it’s in Google’s crosshairs. Does this sound like a recipe for success?

I hope the next couple of years brings the failure of these farms and proves that to grow good content, you need to start with good ingredients.

I’m probably one of the only people in my neighborhood that hasn’t upgraded to a flat-panel TV. There, taking up a good portion of my living room, is the big-old-honking Sony.

Why haven’t I gotten rid of the beast? For one thing, it still works fine. And besides, I don’t watch that much TV.

OK, the real reason is fear. Setting up a new TV has become more complicated and intimidating than setting up a computer. I remember the days of having to reinstall software, update drivers, and doing dozens of other things by trial and error to get PCs to work. It didn’t take hours; it took days. But the computer industry has improved the process immensely. It’s still not idiot-proof, but at least I don’t need a degree in computer science to do it.

Meanwhile, TVs have moved in the other direction. Rather than just plugging them in and turning them on, you have to be an electronics engineer to get everything connected and playing well together.

My sister’s experience is a perfect example. Last spring, she and her husband bought a 46-inch flat-screen HDTV. With a beautiful picture like that, of course they wanted to complement it with the best audio and video components. But integrating all the components – Blu-Ray player, stereo receiver, CD player, cable and Internet – turned into what she calls her “high-end nightmare.”

The Best Buy salesman assured them that the Geek Squad could do it all. The Geeks came, they installed and connected everything, quickly demonstrated how everything worked, and then they were gone. But the head geek reassuringly left them his card, so they could call him personally if they had any problems.

An hour later, they had problems, and thus began “six months of hellish trial and error.” There was finger pointing between the Geek Squad and Comcast, then the head geek simply ignored my sister’s voicemails. Comcast came and switched out the cable box several times before one of the technicians finally admitted that the Comcast remote didn’t communicate with several of the new components. My sister and brother-in-law were on their own.

Once they got the BluRay player hooked up and tried to play a BluRay disc from Netflix, an error message popped up on the TV screen saying the BluRay player required a software upgrade. They hadn’t planned to connect the TV to the Internet yet, but now they had to in order to get the upgrade they needed. But the TV wouldn’t connect with their WiFi network. They had to call in a home multimedia specialist, at $140 an hour, and even he had trouble making it work.

Now, six months later, they’ve mostly figured it out. But they need four different remotes, depending on what component they’re trying to control. They keep notes near the TV so they can remember how to turn various components on and off. And they can’t play a simple audio CD without the TV monitor booting up and running rhythmic patterns of color to illustrate the music.

The total cost of the TV, components and fees for various technicians: more than $2,500. The time spent tinkering in frustration and chasing after the Geek Squad, Comcast and other technicians: 50-plus hours. “The sheer mental anguish – priceless,” my sister deadpans.

Who needs that? That’s why I’m buying a new computer this year. In fact, I may even throw out the old Sony and put the new PC in the living room. After all, with the PC, it’s easy to watch movies and TV shows, listen to my music and tune into the radio. Oh, and did I mention it can access the Internet, too?

My days of working in a bathrobe are numbered.

One of the joys of freelancing is that I don’t have to get dressed up to go to work. In fact, I don’t even have to get dressed. I do, of course, eventually. But when I have loads of work or a pressing deadline, I stay in my pajamas. All in the name of efficiency, of course. Why spend time on clothes, hair and makeup when nobody’s going to see me anyway, except maybe the FedEx man?

But now that integrated webcams have become a standard feature in most laptops, rudimentary video conferencing through services like Skype and Google video chat are becoming more common. I started to realize this when my son went off to college this fall. He was amazed that he couldn’t video chat with me. (I was amazed that he wanted to. It was probably just a momentary lapse caused by the novelty of the webcam on his college-issued laptop combined with a golden opportunity to make me feel clueless.)

Initially I thought maybe we could keep this Skype thing just between me and family. Then in October Cisco introduced Umi Telepresence , a video conferencing system for the home. The system, which retails for $600, includes a camera that connects to a high-definition TV to become a video-conferencing system that shows everything. With this technology, you’re no longer just a talking head at the computer, but a full person, head to toe, with a picture “so clear, natural and lifelike that users will see . . . the twinkle in your eye.” Or, in my case, the stain on my bathrobe and the fuzzy slippers on my feet. Wonderful.

I’m hoping this won’t catch on. But the monthly subscription cost – just $25/month for unlimited video calls and storage of up to 100 minutes of video messages – is going to be attractive for businesses that till now have been priced out of the high-end videoconferencing market. And there’s going to be lots of competition that will drive those costs down further. Skype, for example, just hired away a senior vice president of Cisco’s, Tony Bates, to become its CEO. It doesn’t take a high-definition picture to see what’s going on there.

My five-year-old computer is about ready for retirement. But I keep putting off shopping for a new one, because I probably won’t be able to avoid buying one with integrated webcam and microphone. Which means this time around it’s more than the hardware and software that requires an upgrade. Bye, bye, bathrobe.

Every now and then, I hear a tech executive say something so astonishingly oblivious to what’s going on in the rest of the world – the world of us average, common people – that at first I think he’s kidding. Then my jaw drops as I realize that he is completely serious. He’s certainly not stupid. In fact, most of these people are very smart. But the tech cognoscenti can get so wrapped up in their insular world of cool inventions that they don’t see obvious problems and dangerous pitfalls.

Case in point: At Forrester Research’s Content and Collaboration Forum, held last week in Washington, D.C., a Microsoft executive described how the company’s employees use their in-house podcasting platform, called Academy Mobile. The platform is like a “private YouTube network,” where employees can post video clips to share their knowledge, said Christian Finn, director of SharePoint at Microsoft. To demonstrate, he showed a webcast created by a Microsoft salesman to share tips on demonstrating and selling a particular product. There is the intrepid salesman, greeting us from behind the wheel as he drives at a speed of probably 65 mph down a busy interstate highway somewhere in North Carolina. Speaking to a webcam mounted on his car’s dashboard, he introduces the other sales reps in his car – taking his right hand off the wheel to move the webcam and show his passengers – and tells us how the three of them are going to share some of their most effective techniques.

The clip isn’t long, probably about 30 seconds. But it’s long enough to show that the driver is paying much more attention to the camera than to his driving. Already alarmed at what I saw, I was horrified when I heard Finn joke about the fact that they were webcasting while driving. He warned the audience to watch out for these guys. “If you’re driving down in North Carolina,” he chuckled, “be careful!”

Apparently neither Finn, Microsoft’s marketing team nor the traveling salesmen saw anything wrong with a) a driver conducting a webcast from a moving vehicle or b) Finn using this as an example in a public presentation of the technology. Multi-tasking while driving is so common, acceptable and probably even expected in the technology world that they either forgot about or decided to ignore the mounting evidence that distracted driving is killing people. In 2009, 5,500 people died and 450,000 were injured in America because of distracted driving, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. That represents 16 percent of the total deaths on U.S. roadways. And that’s considered a conservative estimate because many police reports don’t document whether driver distraction played a role in the crash.

They should know better. Microsoft’s own home state of Washington is one of eight states that prohibit drivers from using handheld mobile phones, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. (North Carolina is not among the eight.) Even if these laws don’t ban webcasting while driving (yet), how can these guys be so tone deaf? Just last month, the Department of Transportation held the second annual National Distracted Driving Summit in D.C. Ironically, DOT Secretary Ray LaHood talked about the joint efforts of the government and the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety to get U.S. corporations to adopt policies to discourage distracted driving among their employees. Apparently, Microsoft didn’t get the memo.

Just because drivers can use these products in their cars doesn’t mean they should. Rather than encouraging us to take our hands off the wheel, tech executives had better put their own ears to the ground. They just might hear the rumblings of an oncoming public relations crash.

Twy as I might, I can’t figure out what to do with Twitter.

I’m not exactly on the cutting edge of social media, but I do use Facebook, have my own website and blog, and pride myself on being an early and fairly sophisticated user of LinkedIn. I find all of these platforms useful – either professionally, personally or both. They each have their learning curves, but they aren’t so steep that they keep moderately intelligent people away.

Twitter, on the other hand, baffles me. Its content is neither relevant to my life nor useful in my work. The top Twitter trends last week – the NCAA and Justin Bieber – don’t interest me. Every time I see an article on how to use Twitter, I scan through it eagerly, hoping that I’ll find the key to make sense of this confusing world. So far, nada.

Typical tips for how newbies can get started on Twitter:

1. Share URLs. We’re already overwhelmed by stuff to read, see and hear on the Internet. Unless it’s really important, why would I want to add to that burden? And if it is really important, why would I rely on Twitter – where it will get lost in the great galaxy of tweets (except of course for those people who’ve mastered the Twitter universe and can filter out the critical news from the mundane I-just-spilled-coffee-on-my-keyboard drivel)? Having said that, I have tried to use Twitter to market myself. Each week, I dutifully tweet the URL of my blog post. Google Analytics tells me it draws very few readers. (It’ll be interesting to see the stats this post generates.)

2. Retweet information. If I don’t understand the usefulness of tweets, why would I want to retweet and just add to the cacophony?

3. Directly message friends and colleagues. I already can’t reach them by phone, e-mail, texting or IM. Now I have to add tweeting to that list of futile attempts? Sometimes I suspect it’s all a cosmic joke by the gods of the Internet, who laugh as we all run circles around each other online.

4. Search for friends and colleagues. See non-reason #3. Besides, when I try to search for people, I either come up with complete strangers (with similar names), I can’t tell which of the people listed are my friend/colleague (most don’t have photos), or I locate the right person but find they haven’t tweeted since 2009. (There’s a lot of us newbies who tweeted once or twice, then gave up.)

I’ve also tried some of the desktop clients, such as TweetDeck, which are supposed to make all those tweets manageable. I couldn’t figure out how to use them. It probably had to do with the fact that I didn’t even know what it was I was trying to manage . . .

So, why twouble myself? Give me a good reason – in 140 characters or less – why I should tweet.

I used to think I didn’t need a mobile phone because – frankly – I’m not very mobile. But as phones become smarter they are becoming the prime line of communications for most people. I’m finding it’s increasingly difficult to function without an up-to-date phone.

My primary reason to have a mobile phone was always so I could be reached in an emergency. I never liked the quality of cell calls, and much preferred to do my talking on a landline. A couple of years ago I got tired of being locked into contracts that made me pay for minutes that I never used, so I’m now on a pre-paid option of Verizon’s. I bought my own phone – one of the cheapest available at the time – and I buy minutes in increments of $15, which covers about a month’s worth of my calling and texting.

I do virtually all of my work in my home office, which is equipped with two landlines and a broadband cable connection. With all these lines of communication in my home and office, why would I need to use my mobile phone as well?

Several recent events have shown me why. For one thing, more and more people consider mobile phones as the primary means of reaching someone. In fact, young people text and Facebook on their mobile devices far more than they talk. So much so that my teenage son rarely checks his voice mail, or even his e-mail for that matter. And he assumes that everyone else is like his crowd. Last week, for example, he didn’t come home at the time he was expected. After an hour of worry, I finally called his mobile phone to make sure he was OK. He was surprised to hear that I didn’t know he was running late. He had texted me earlier to let me know. Since I was at home, I wasn’t checking my mobile phone for messages.

Recently, our region had widespread and lengthy power outages caused by a thunderstorm. With no power and in most cases no broadband, I saw how critical having sophisticated mobile broadband can be. I called my dog groomer about an hour before our appointment to make sure she had power. She had e-mailed me earlier that day to cancel. When I pointed out to her that I couldn’t get e-mail because the power was out, she expressed surprise that I didn’t get e-mail on my mobile phone. That same power outage threatened to cancel a swim-team banquet because the power was out at the building where it was going to be held. But the pool itself had power, so the coach e-mailed everyone an hour before the event, telling them we were changing venues. The presumption was that everyone had a phone or a Blackberry that could pick up e-mail.

As these phones get smarter, I’m missing an important communication channel. It’s time for an upgrade. And yet, I still don’t like the voice quality on mobile phones, and I find it hard to justify the expense when I probably won’t use it often. If anyone can recommend a good compromise between expensive, cutting-edge technology and your basic mobile phone, I’m all ears

I remember how excited I was when I first read about Verizon’s FIOS technology. The company intended to blanket the country with fiber-optic lines, bringing lightning-fast Internet, wonderful high-definition TV and low-cost, reliable phone service to millions of homes. I was especially thrilled that I’d finally have another Internet service option besides Comcast and the phone company’s DSL service. I could hardly wait.

That was nearly five years ago, and I’m still waiting for FIOS (the F surely stands for fiber, but no one’s very forthcoming about what the rest of it stands for). It was introduced in Keller, Tex., in September 2005. Reading about it, I felt like the people in Keller were taunting me. “It’s been the most incredible service I’ve ever had,” one Keller citizen was quoted as saying. “You’re either part of the technology revolution or you’re not, and I wanted to be part of the cutting edge.” Uh – me, too.

By June 2007, Verizon’s FIOS was available in 12 states and had more than 500,000 subscribers. Although my state, Maryland, was one of them, my neighborhood was not.

I started checking Verizon’s FIOS locator page regularly. Every time I entered my address and phone number, it responded with the message: “We’re sorry. FIOS is not currently available in your area.” As if I didn’t know that. It also gave me the option to add my name to a list so that I’d be notified when the service was available. But they never wrote, they never called. If they had, I would’ve been deluged with voice and e-mails – that’s how often I added my name to that list.

Meanwhile, FIOS was growing up all around me. In Northern Virginia. In the District of Columbia. In several parts of Maryland. But not in my neighborhood.

Then, last summer, glimmers of hope. FIOS trucks were spotted in our neighborhood. Then, our homeowners’ association newsletter announced that, indeed, FIOS would be coming in the summer of 2009. But it turned out that Verizon was leading me on yet again. FIOS was installed in the next neighborhood over – about six blocks away. It did not come to my street.

As of the end of the second quarter of 2010, Verizon FIOS was available to 12.9 million “premises,” according to its financial reports. And I was pretty sure that mine would never be one of them.

Finally, this summer, along came a crew of subcontractors – digging holes and trenches every 10 to 20 feet, laying fiber, putting stinking port-a-potties at the end of our street. And Verizon started teasing me again with flyers left on my front door and brochures in the mail. “FIOS is coming soon to your neighborhood!” they said.

It’s been about six weeks now. The construction crews (and the port-a-potties, thank God) are gone. All is quiet. Including Verizon. I haven’t received a flyer in awhile. Tonight, I checked the FIOS availability page again. It still tells me that the service is not available in my area.

As far as I’m concerned, FIOS stands for “forever imminent online service.” Before I’ve even had a chance to try it – and regardless of how wonderful the technology may be – I’ve soured on FIOS. If Verizon does ever offer to sell it to me, it’s hard to imagine that it could be so incredible as to make up for these repeated disappointments. Besides, I bet that the next new, and even better, technology is right around the corner. I’m so good at waiting, I just might wait for that one to arrive.