Dan Gillmor

Others have been more eloquent, of course. But allow me to join those who mourn the death of this great journalist.

I grew up in an era when Walter Cronkite told us that’s the way it was. It usually was, and he and his CBS News team earned a nation’s trust.

Many people think of the Kennedy assassination when they remember Cronkite — his moment of visible pain after announcing the president’s death. It was, indeed, one of those moments that stays forever in one’s mind and heart.

I prefer to think of him from the day that brought the greatest joy to an American generation: the first moon landing in 1969. Like so many others, I was watching CBS. The landing was a closer call than most of us knew at the time. Clearly, in retrospect, Cronkite understood how close the lander came to running out of fuel. The relief and happiness on his face after the Eagle settled onto the moon’s surface was a great moment, helped along by a great journalist.

Walter Cronkite was, as we all are, partly a product of his own times. There won’t be — there can’t be in a media ecosystem like the one we’re creating — another like him.

Today, on Ada Lovelace Day, I’m supposed to write about a woman in technology. I’m breaking this rule a bit, to write about my mother. She was not a technologist, though she was certainly an avid user and early adopter of technology in her career as a film translator (subtitles and dubbing).

We grew up with the tools of her trade in the house: film projectors, editing systems and more. All this was before personal computers and the rest of the increasingly ubiquitous digital technologies arrived. There’s no question, however, that she would have instantly grasped the value of what came later and would have adopted it long before most others, because she understood how good tools help make good work.

But her influence on me, which has been powerful, has more to do with her other qualities. She laughed at limits, and frequently at rules. She was a perfectionist and a rebel, with a powerful and stubborn intellect.

Her subtitles were poetry when the film in its native language (or languages, as was often the case with European films) was poetic. They were hard prose when that was the tone of the original. Her faith to the director, and to the audience, was paramount.

She revolutionized dubbing in her day. She literally wiped away a movie’s soundtrack and then rebuilt it from scratch, adding voices, background and music to recreate the original in English, and with such precision that many American viewers, who’d been taught to disdain subtitles and properly disdained the crappy voiceovers that had passed for dubbing, didn’t realize they were watching a foreign film.

I can remember her spending several days on a single line of dialog, running a clip of film back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth…) in the Moviola (and later KEM) editing machine. She’d test one idea after another until she’d found a translation that was faithful to the meaning of the original and which an actor could speak in a way that would provide such accurate lip synchronization that the words would seem as though they’d been spoken in the native language.

I’m pretty tough on myself when it comes to getting things right. But I don’t begin to have that kind of persistence.

When I was playing music for a living, years before I went into journalism and tech, she visited the studio on Vermont where we were recording our first album. She was a musician herself, and must have been tempted to offer detailed advice. She didn’t. She offered, instead, her presence — and a jug of staggeringly smooth and powerful apple-based liquor she and a neighbor had distilled back in Woodstock, N.Y., where I’d spent much of my childhood. I suspect Ada Lovelace would have approved.

The estimable Carl Malamud has launched a campaign — Yes We Scan! — to become America’s public printer — head of the Government Printing Office. He has a platform that’s not only sensible but important.

Go Carl…

I’m delighted that Marko Ahtisaari, a founding investor of Dopplr (I’m a co-founder) is coming aboard as CEO. Lisa Sounio has done a fine job in that role and will now chair the board of directors. Great news for Dopplr and our community.

Here’s Volume 01, which contains interviews with several friends and colleagues including Joi Ito, Ethan Zuckerman and Henry Jenkins. Take a look.

CNET: iPhone 3G queue forms in Manhattan.

Doc Searls has been in the hospital for a week, and many of us have been following the saga via his blog. Happily, as I learned during a visit yesterday in Cambridge, he’s seeing “light at the end of the digestive tunnel” and is back on real food as opposed to feeding tubes.

Doc is a treasure — to his family, his colleagues and his friends, and a guiding light in so many ways. To be his colleague is a constant pleasure and learning experience. To be his friend is a joy.

A good man has died. You can read about Utah Phillips, who influenced several generations of singers and activists, by clicking through to the link above, which goes to his official website. Or you can look at his Wikipedia entry, which as far as I can tell is quite accurate.The obituary and stories will tell you a lot, but as always in such circumstances they can’t capture the full essence of a life.

I met him in Vermont, when he was living in a reconditioned train caboose next to the recording studio, known as The Barn, where he and many other people (including me) recorded their music. Those days are a bit, uh, blurry — but I’ll never forget his humor and kindness.

When I moved to California, I helped put together what remains one of my most memorable evenings — a living room concert at the Saratoga home of Tom and Carol Lustenader. He came down from Nevada City in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where he’d settled later in life, and regaled us with stories and songs. I hadn’t seen him in more than 20 years at that point, but as in the old cliche we seemed to pick up our conversation pretty much where we’d left off back in Vermont.

Although he sang wonderful songs, his most indelible piece of work is unquestionably his funniest. Have a listen to Moose Turd Pie (MP3), and you’ll have a sense of this man and his times.

Rest in peace.