I’ve been running an interesting (to me) experiment with the two, along with INRIX traffic on my phone. I haven’t had to use Google Maps much yet for directions, but I have used it on my commute to tell me how the traffic is and when I might actually pull into my parking garage and get into the office.

And so far – Apple Maps is killing Google when it comes to giving me the right time when I am farthest from the office – and in fact, Google has been nothing short of atrocious.

Wednesday morning, leaving my house, I was informed slightly depressingly by Apple that I was going to be at my office 1 hour, 1 minute later. INRIX was less optimistic, at about 1 hour, 3 minutes. But Google had me panicking by letting me know that actually we were looking at a 1 hour, 24 minute ride – to the point where I considered adding about 10 miles to my ride as it suggested to take a route that would get me down to 1 hour, 10 minutes.

But I stayed the course, and lo and behold, as I got closer to Boston, the time improved on Google, all the way to, wait for it, 1 hour, 1 minute when I was about 2 miles from the office. (Of course, at that point, I didn’t need an app to tell me how much longer it would be.

So I scored a victory for Apple and moved on. But on the reverse ride, it happened again. Apple was almost on the mark and Google was about 15 minutes off in its estimate. And Thursday AM. And Thursday PM. And Friday. And Friday night, going to a different destination – same result.

The old Google Maps didn’t have this issue. But then again, maybe Google is thinking like the restaurant maitre d’ who tells you it will be 30 minutes for your table and seats you in 15. You feel like you saved time and it makes you happy. If this is a feature, I’m not sure I’m a fan.

Or maybe they’re just wrong.

But as it is Cyber Monday, it is a busy shopping day and there are opportunities to save money. By all means – take advantage of those offers. But maybe this year you have a chance to do something different with the savings.

Share them.

It’s as simple as this. As you shop this Cyber Monday, keep track of the amount you are saving in your purchasing. Then, share the savings with your favorite nonprofit or community organization.

Save $200 today? Give $100 to your favorite organization. The nonprofit sector is embracing Giving Tuesday tomorrow as an opportunity to make this a real season of giving, with many groups having lined up matching gift programs and other incentives for the day, so there are chances to make your money go even further.

For those of you looking for nonprofits with a Massachusetts focus, the Boston Foundation’s Giving Common is a wonderful portal for learning more about more than 500 Mass.-based nonprofits, and you can give to your favorites right from the platform – one-stop shopping for your philanthropic dollar.

Happy savings – but please consider sharing the wealth. It’s a way to get into the true spirit of the season.

I blame it for not seeing my daughter as much as I would like.

I blame it for my inability to find time to exercise.

I blame it for not eating better, since it’s less possible for me to get home in time for family dinner, and gives us less time to cook and eat healthy foods.

While I am working to address each of these issues, rather than simply living with the excuses, the hour to 1:30 I spend in transit, twice daily – nearly 10 percent of my life – is something I have to accept, and use more effectively.

So this weekend I thought, “Maybe it would be a good time to blog?” At least a few days a week, I will use the ride home to put together my posts for the Yankee, and maybe, just maybe it will provide the structure I need to think, gather, share and start discussion.

Hoping to take this blog in a new direction as a way to get it going again. Not sure if this strategy means I’ll stick to it, but it’s worth a shot.

Have a blog? What are your strategies for getting it done?

Call it culture shock. After 17 years in news, I was in a new world, and really needed time to adjust. I still do. But I’m getting a better sense of one part of the cultural difference. It’s the difference between good and evil.

And I don’t mean that I was among the evil before, or that I am surrounded by evil now. But the reality is that the news is about evil. As the great Gerry Brooks at WVIT in Hartford pointed out repeatedly, news is about bad things happening to good people. No one watches a newscast that tells you the airplanes all landed safely today.

You can say all you want about the quality of the media today, but the premise has generally been the same. Wars, crime, corruption, all the things that people need to know about in the news (and a lot of why they watch) is inherently bad. Even the weather… When the weather is bad, people love to watch the reporters out in the storm. Think they’d do that on a cloudy day?

But suddenly, at the Boston Foundation, my job is to spend more time seeking out the good. Who are the good programs? What can people do to make a difference? Who is making our schools better, our arts stronger, our streets safer? Those are the people I’m looking for now.

And the cool part? They’re out there. They’re being written about, blogged, discussed, highlighted, and recognized. And of course, part of my job is now to get them in the news. And frankly, they shouldn’t all go there. There are a number of niche publications that focus on good stories, and they have great value. But for all that people say they want “positive news”, repeated efforts to produce a positive mass audience newscast have been doomed to commercial failure.

But if you feel like all you hear on the news is too negative – look around, in your neighborhood, or online. There are a lot of positive things happening. You just have to decide, or get a new job, to get inspired to seek them out.

Maybe that’s something I’ll be sharing more of here.

via bostinno.com

So, Mike Troiano has me thinking. In his post on BostInno, he suggests that maybe if you aren’t a blogger, you shouldn’t blog. Instead, work the networks you are involved with and stop wasting the brain cells you are wasting on blog posts.

In my case, that’s not many brain cells, but he may have a point. Yankee 2.0 has been a bit dormant for some time, and maybe just a Posterous or Tumblr plus my other social networks would suffice.

As it is, I have taken his advice to set up an about.me page – at about.me/tmcenroe – I kinda like it.

Posted via email from Yankee 2.0 on Posterous

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Boston, and clearing the mental decks for a big change. One week from now, I’ll be joining the Boston Foundation as their Director of Public Relations.

If you’re like many people, your first reaction will fall somewhere between “That’s great!” and “What is the Boston Foundation?” Or both.

The Boston Foundation is one of the largest community foundations in the country, doling out about $80 million each year in grants – a mix of funds allocated by donors for their favorite causes and money controlled by the Foundation at its discretion. The Foundation has a very active community piece, and also a more and more active role shaping research and policy in the Greater Boston area, to tackle tiny little issues like education, housing and health care.

When people asked me what I wanted my next job to be, my sort of snarky answer was that it didn’t matter exactly what it was, as long as it was communications/media related and I had to care about the content. TBF fits on both those levels like a glove.

Of course, there is a lot I don’t know. I haven’t spent that much time “on the other side of the ball”, to use a quality football analogy. And I haven’t spent that much time working with people who type for a living, as NECN reporter/Boston Globe expat Peter Howe puts it. That is creating the healthy tension for me between excitement and terror that is healthy in any new position. It tells me I know just enough to realize I’m going to grow like kudzu to keep up.

But I can’t think of a place in Boston with more stories to tell than the Foundation, and they are important stories, based in research and reality. There will be some sleepless nights for me, but I’m hopeful and confident that this brave new world will be a beautiful place to hang my hat.

And after two decades in windowless corners of newsrooms… I finally get might get an office with a window. (Or near a window. See the comments. Still a step up.)

Feel free to share your advice in the comments. What’s the most important thing I should know and do as I cross over to the other side?

She’s been going through a transition of her own – moving from the infant room to the toddler room, which is probably the biggest transition of her young life. (Except for well, being born. That was a shocker.) It’s something that we’ve all been a little sad about. Her infant teachers were about as awesome as we could possibly imagine, and we were all tearing up a bit at the thought of the move, and bracing for her reaction.

But here’s the thing – two days into her new world, she’s handling it fine. In fact, it’s changed her attitude at home – and I think it’s because she’s embracing the new experience.

My theory is this – Kate loved the infant room, but as one of two older kids in the room, there weren’t a lot of things to challenge her. She wasn’t unhappy – at all. But she wasn’t overly stimulated, either. Now, it’s a new world, and each day begins with the tears of discomfort as she gets dropped off in this still largely unfamiliar place. But she settles within minutes, and when she comes home, she’s like a different kid.

Previously, she’d come home after a day and she’d be curious but sometimes cranky. More than anything else, she wanted to eat. It was totally fine. She was fun and great – and hungry.

But this week, something different has happened. She’s happier. She’s even more engaged. And food is fine, but she wants to laugh and explore even more. She runs and smiles and listens and communicates and connects.She’s motivated when she comes home to learn even more.

That’s what a new experience can do. It challenges you in new ways. It stretches your horizons and taps into new parts of your brain. And if it clicks – that exhilaration carries over to the rest of your life. For the kid, it was time to move up. And it was for me, too. I hope I get half of the boost from the change that she has seemed to get from the move to toddler.

What about you? Is it time for you to step up to the toddler room?

But as I was watching the game last night, I can’t help but be struck by what is a colossal failure of leadership. Here’s my take:

Sure – blame the usual suspects.

The Sox front office – There is no question that the Boston mantra was to buy the next title. In a perfect world, another Series regenerates interest in the club, and the added TV and merchandise revenues easily exceed the additional payroll. It’s pure business, and it backfired because baseball isn’t pure business. Good teams on paper don’t always win. The most expensive teams don’t always equal the best teams. And in the end, if it makes you feel better, the team dumped millions of new dollars into the club and actually find themselves losing money and finding themselves now having to work even harder to win back the fan base. (See my post from the beginning of the season: “A team that’s tough to love.”

The free agents – OK. Carl Crawford didn’t live up to expectations. He was never dynamic. He never took over a game. In short, he was closer to Paxton Crawford in terms of impact. John Lackey: You didn’t really expect much better, did you? J.D. Drew? Ditto. And Adrian Gonzalez, for all the gaudy numbers, failed last night to step up and take the blame:

“God has a plan,” he said. “And it wasn’t God’s plan for us to be in the playoffs.”

I respect his religious beliefs, but that’s a cop out, Adrian, unless you’re about to add, “…and I didn’t help.”

All three of these highly paid athletes have not stepped up and said, “Hey, I am sucking wind.”

That’s part of leadership – owning up to your own mistakes.

But the biggest hole in the Red Sox heart? Leadership in the clubhouse.

And I’m not talking about Terry Francona. Firing Terry Francona would be an easy way to overlook the bigger problem. A lack of leadership from all the Red Sox fan favorites. Youk. Pedroia. Lester. Ortiz. Beckett. Varitek. Papelbon. These are the seven guys who are supposed to be the fire for this team. Terry Francona ripping this team in the clubhouse would have blown it up, and Francona knew it. This wasn’t a failure of strategy, and the biggest fires burn from within – from the players themselves.

So where was it? Where was Pedroia? Playing his heart out, sure, but not ripping other guys to do the same. Where was Youk? Again, on a personal level, he was showing fire and gutting it out, but it wasn’t inspirational, because he’s not the kind of guy to rally the team around him. Papi? Great year, but he’s never been someone to lead in the clubhouse. Not his style. As for the pitchers, it’s tough for guys who aren’t there every day to lead in an everyday capacity – but all three could have done more to inspire a bullpen that needed a little team spirit. And ‘Tek? When the C is on your shirt but not next to your name in the lineup card, it’s tough to inspire.

Put it another way – this team needed the kind of player you look at and say, “He’d be a good manager someday.” The only one of the seven you might say that about right now is ‘Tek. But it’s the 2004 and 2007 model, not the current one.

Bottom line – this team had skills, but it lacked leadership. It didn’t need a third starter (OK, it did). But it really needed leadership – Mike Lowell. Victor Martinez. Varitek the Younger. And yes, even the King Idiot, Kevin Millar. The 2011 Red Sox tried to rally as individuals. They never rallied as a team.

Many posts have been very positive, filled with excitement, inspiration and idealism for the future.

This is not really one of them.

That’s not to say I didn’t leave with a lot of inspiration and excitement. Ethan Marcotte, who helped the Boston Globe build its responsive design for the new bostonglobe.com website, gave an inspired and brilliant talk. I saw cool new augmented reality apps, one of which, Aurasma, rocked my world when it comes to creating new ways to distribute journalism to commuters, etc. There was lots of talk about the changing role of brand which big media companies should be paying attention to. And I may get to writing all those posts later.

But my initial takeaway is that the ad-driven model for web news content is dead, and it’s not coming back. Ever. For anyone except the broadest of aggregators, it’s a non-starter, and the companies who can profit are the kinds which can drive 10 million monthly pageviews with a staff of 5. In other words, they aren’t journalism organizations.

I’m not the first person to write this, or even close. But in a two-week period at the FutureM conference and ONA11, here were some key takeaways.

At a FutureM retail media panel, this: Major retailers are creating their own media and ad networks for the products they carry – and getting results because they reach the consumer right at the point-of-purchase. Those efforts and dollars come straight out of current media buys.

At the all-day ONA “News Entrepreneuring 3.0″ session on Thursday, the predicament of the local online news site was illustrated all too clearly. Even some of the best-known local online news sites – barista.net in New Jersey, the Next Door Media network of sites in Seattle, and others, are paying low wages to freelancers and may or may not be paying their owners because they just can’t generate the revenue. They are often profitable, but they are far from rich. (And let me be clear – they are doing awesome work. This has nothing to do with the quality of journalism.) The most optimistic view of the hyperlocal online news world came from the New Haven Independent, but there, their $575,000 budget is not ad-supported. It uses donations, grants and fundraising to cover costs.

And later in the conference, the online ad dilemma was illustrated further by examples from the tech blogs “Silicon Prairie News” and “Technically Philly”. Both of these organizations derive less that 3 percent of their revenue from online ad sales.

For these small companies – two things of note. The lack of ability to pay good salaries is scary and not sustainable in the long run. That’s the bad news. On the plus side, these small firms are much more likely to be nimble, know their communities and tolerate the discomfort than larger companies in the same predicament. Each of the companies I mention above had speakers who unquestionably believe in their missions, have new and innovative ideas and see opportunities for growth.

And let me be clear. News isn’t dead. Far from it. But I can’t help but think if I was currently at a big traditional news company, it would be budget time. And I would be trying to estimate my traffic for 2012 and making that the centerpiece of my annual budget. The numbers would be ugly, and we’d be trying to figure out how to make them look better. I wouldn’t be looking at conferences (like Silicon Prairie, which generates “90 percent” of its annual revenue from the annual ‘Big Omaha’ conference), or whether we could create an events business (like the Texas Tribune) or if we had a web consulting practice we could set up (like Technically Philly). We wouldn’t be able to seek donations (like the New Haven Independent), and I don’t see a TV station in the country with the power to set up a paywall of any kind (like the Boston Globe – and who knows what that will actually do for revenue).

But these last questions are the ones we need to have – where we break away from “How do we build traffic so we can sell more CPM ads?” and discuss “How do we build real value for consumers?”

Most big news companies still may not be ready to have that conversation. And until they do – it won’t be pretty.

I spent part of Wednesday at a FutureM session on “Retail Media”, which encompasses retail companies’ efforts to create media and media partnerships to leverage their own site traffic for further reach and profits. Among the concepts, for companies like CVS to partner up with suppliers to advertise and provide on the CVS.com site – and create new health content for consumers.

Translation for traditional media organizations – not only are companies like CVS (who had a rep on the panel) taking their advertising spend online, they’re becoming content creators who can appeal to their suppliers as a media entity. And as that happens, media organizations face a real uphill fight.

Typically, the way news organizations have tried to appeal to say, health care companies, is by creating or selling their health sections to a sponsor, who gets display space, perhaps widgets to provide content, etc., on the host organization’s site. It’s not a bad deal for the advertiser, but they are a bit at the mercy of the news organization to provide content and drive traffic, through promotions, search and so on.

Retailers, on the other hand, have the advantage of being able to reach an audience looking for health information with a likelihood of purchase. Instead of general health information, they are seeking specific information and are often ready to purchase a product or service. For an advertiser, a message at this moment has a much greater opportunity to make an impact.

There are drawbacks here – as one of the panel members noted in the discussion, retailers are looking to get customers to buy what they want them to buy, so there is a vested interest in skewing the information toward the advertiser – and not the same expectation of unbiased analysis. It is, after all, paid programming. But in an era where there is growing skepticism about the trustworthiness of the traditional media, that may weigh on consumers’ minds less than journalists might like.

As retailers become media creators for an audience at the point of purchase, traditional publishers may find themselves aced out of those ad dollars. And at a time when retailers are already trimming their own traditional ad buys, it’s a double whammy for an industry under pressure.