BIT320 Guests — December 2005

December 1, 2005

Digg vs. Del.icio.us

By marc

Interesting that the curves fit so well.

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Free Giveaways at Free Money Finance

Just a quick note to tell you that our sister blog, Free Money Finance, is giving away five personal finance books to celebrate 100,000 visitors at the site. Check out this link if you'd like to enter.

Congrats to FMF!!!

Posted in Denali Flavors on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Amazon Light 4.0

By tim Alan Taylor's "enhanced" Amazon tool. Used to be "lite" (google-like interface), now adds mashed up services from many other sites to Amazon, and easy access to many Amazon services...

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

When Is A Market Really A Market?

We have heard that the “online advertising market” will be a $12.3bn business this year.

But is “online advertising” really a “market” in the truest sense of the word?

When I think of a market, I think of wall street and the trading of stocks and bonds.

That’s a market in the truest sense of the word.

You’ve got massive liquidity.

You’ve got true price transparency.

You’ve got open exchanges where anyone can trade with anyone.

And the result is the confidence to trade to your heart’s content.

Now let’s look at online advertising.

When compared to offline advertising, online sure looks like a market.

You now have significant liquidity.  You even have substantial arbitrage which is always a sign that there is a healthy market at work.

Prices and performance are certainly a lot more transparent in the online ad market than the offline ad market.  Overture did us all a huge favor by creating the paid search market where ad buyers could come and bid for ad placement and pay per click (ie pay for performance).

So, yes online advertising is a marketplace and its working great.  That $12.3bn number was around $9bn last year.  Any market that is that big and growing at 30% per year is super healthy.

But there are some things that aren’t yet right about this market.

For one, there really isn’t true price transparency.  And there isn’t true performance transparency.  It’s not like anyone in the world can look at the xbox 360 ad campaign that Microsoft is running, chart it, see how it is performing, understand how it is being priced in the marketplace, and step up and say “I’ll take some of that”.  I can do that with MSFT, the stock.  But I can’t do that with Microsoft the advertiser.

And as I alluded to in the previous paragraph, it is not yet possible for any publisher to run any ad as long as the price and terms are acceptable to both parties.  There are a few places where this happens in the online advertising market, like affiliate networks and paid search (sort of).  But there are many more places where the advertisers and publishers are contained in walled gardens.
So, I believe that right now, we have a marketplace, but it’s a nascent marketplace.

The thing that gets me so excited, though, is that is so clear where all of this is headed.

Toward massive liquidity

Toward total price and performance transparency

And toward a completely open marketplace where anyone can run anyone’s ad campaign.

And in the process, we will build something that is easily a factor of 10 and maybe a factor of 100 of where we are today.

So, let’s make it happen.

Posted in A VC on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #90: December 1, 2005

Content summary: British Airways catering problems, New Daimler Chrysler CEO, an RSS tutorial, Firefox 1.5 is out, Blogspotting’s first podcast-focused podcast, iPod synching problems, Corante network launches, GM Fastlane takes on marketing discussion, IBM’s first external jam, interviews from Eric Schwartzman and David Jones, lots of listener comments on the Sony BMG rootkit crisis, new media in Asia, crisis communications, and way, way more.

Show notes for December 1, 2005

download mp3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 98-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and almost live from Paris, France.

Download the file here (MP3, 35MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free Juice (previously known as iPodder), DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

OPML
[Show notes OPML file to come]: Get the show notes on your own PC, Mac, PDA or other device. To use this file, we suggest trying Dave Winer’s OPML Editor (for Windows).

In this Edition:

Detailed show notes to come.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are now posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the home page for info.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222-2803. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Monday, December 5…

< ?php include("http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/rss_comments/996/"); ?>

Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #90: December 1, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments discussion (changing intro music for FIR book review podcasts; working on new H&H Report intro music for show #100; World AIDS Day; Blog Marketing book for review; tapping into FIR; Sony BMG going down the drain; two sides of crisis communication; new media tools not so effective in parts of Asia; blogs and HR communication; experiences with Google ads; not good PR by China); moderating a panel at IABC Europe conference; British Airways catering problems continue; new Daimler Chrysler CEO and culture change; a new RSS tutorial; Firefox 1.5 is out; Blogspotting’s first podcast-focused podcast; iPod synching problems; Corante Network launches; GM Fastlane takes on marketing discussion; IBM’s first external jam; interviews from Eric Schwartzman and David Jones.

Show notes for December 1, 2005

download mp3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 98-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and almost live from Paris, France.

Download the file here (MP3, 35MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

In this Edition:

Intro:

  • 00:28 Shel introduces the show; future of PR discussion now on Monday’s show; what’s in today’s show’s; how to comment

Listeners’ Comments Discussion:

  • 04:10 Sally Goetsch wonders if she got under Shel’s skin; and suggests a change of intro music for the FIR book reviews podcast
  • 07:17 Lloyd Grosse is working on some ideas for new H&H Report intro music for the 100th show; and offers some personal thoughts on World AIDS Day
  • 09:34 Jeremy Wright is glad Shel’s now got Blog Marketing for review
  • 10:22 PR grad student Luke Armour’s glad he found FIR and would like to tap into us
  • 12:36 Pat Wayne asks if anyone knows how to stop Sony BMG going down the drain over the rootkit nightmare; and worries about the two sides of communication at companies in crisis
  • 20:14 Vishnu Mahmud says new communication tools like blogs and podcasts aren’t so effective in parts of Asia where teledensity is low and PC penetration even less; and some thoughts on the controversial Volkswagen suicide bomber ad early this year
  • 27:37 Mike McClary asks if we know of any organizations that use blogs in the HR communications mix?
  • 30:20 Bryan Person offers congrats on Shel’s and Neville’s participation in the Corante Network; a plug for Eric Schwartzman’s On The Record Online podcast; experiences with Google ads and the difficulty in filtering out adult-oriented material; and compliments to the Aussie cricket team
  • 37:55 Marshall Kirkpatrick wanted to make sure we saw a post and discussion of the Chinese government’s terrible PR around the recent
    Harbin chemical disaster

News and Features:

Outro:

  • 92:49 Shel wraps the show; where to send comments; where to find show notes
  • The music - Daybreak by Craymo via the Podsafe Music Network


Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are now posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the home page for info.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Monday December 5…

< ?php include("http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/rss_comments/996/"); ?>

Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

MAKE's Mostly Under $100 Gift Guide 2005!

By marc I'm biased as a contributor and employee, but on the other hand, we make it because we like it. There are some great ideas for giving people tools for making Radar blips in here....

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Girly Girls and Auto Shop

I received a coupon special from a neighborhood auto shop that's just joined a national car care organization. As part of the special, the shop would do a complete car preventative maintenance check. I called and asked if performing an analysis of a Check Engine Light would be part of this effort, and they said [...]

Linked in this story:

article on the DPFE sensor
brake fluid should be checked when brakes are checked
recommend flushing the system if it's dirty, period
a filter
racing intake system
Check Engine Light

Posted in Burningbird on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Girly Girls and Auto Shop

I was able to do all of this because I decided long ago that unless you're using your penis as a dipstick replacement to check oil levels, you don't need one when it comes to understanding how your car works.

Linked in this story:

article on the DPFE sensor
brake fluid should be checked when brakes are checked
recommend flushing the system if it's dirty, period
a filter
racing intake system
Check Engine Light

Posted in Burningbird on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Congratulations

To Danny Ayers: first on the newest member of his family (Eric?), and also on being invited to participate in the new Corante Hubs. Congratulations also to Euan Semple for being awarded the Information Professional of the Year at the International Information Industry Awards ceremony. That is a very nice looking award, and you're allowed [...]

Linked in this story:

Danny Ayers and the Corante Hub
Euan Semple

Posted in Burningbird on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Congratulations

I see famous people.

Linked in this story:

Danny Ayers and the Corante Hub
Euan Semple

Posted in Burningbird on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Congratulations

I see famous people.

Linked in this story:

Danny Ayers and the Corante Hub
Euan Semple
Elaine Nelson
College Web Editor

Posted in Burningbird on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Congratulations

I see famous people.

Linked in this story:

Danny Ayers and the Corante Hub
Euan Semple
Elaine Nelson
College Web Editor
Eric?

Posted in Burningbird on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Five Ways to Get on the del.icio.us Home Page

Merlin has outlined a how-to that will surely get him on the del.icio.us home page. It covers five ways to get on the del.icio.us home page! I can tell you from experience his ideas do work.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Please: Have an edit war

"I don’t want to get into an edit war" Quick, Duck! Incoming!

Linked in this story:

History section of Podcasting at Wikipedia
Kevin Marks

Posted in Burningbird on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Please: Have an edit war

"I don’t want to get into an edit war" Quick, Duck! Incoming!

Linked in this story:

History section of Podcasting at Wikipedia
Kevin Marks
Howitzer

Posted in Burningbird on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

MSNBC Launches NBA Rookie Blog

MSNBC has launched a blog written by NBA rookie Nate Robinson, who plays for the New York Knicks. The blog has comments turned on and so far it seems active. Nice idea. Hey Calacanis, how come you didn't think of this? Mark, hope this doesn't mean that the Knicks will open a bigger lead on your team - at least in the  conversation standings.

Picture 1-32

Technorati Tags: ,

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Links: Dec 2, 2005

By nat

I had about thirty-five Firefox links saved, then upgraded to Firefox 1.5 (go fighting ... foxes) only to find that the SessionSaver extension didn't work in 1.5. So with a clear conscience I now resolve to post fewer links at a time, but hopefully post more often as a result.

  • Hear From Your MP: I'm just grooving on the great work that the mySociety folks are doing. I moved back home and feel the urge to rark up our political system like this.
  • Gaze: a gazetteer web service from mySociety. Very cool! I love the new population extensions. It's interesting to compare the population density (people per square kilometer) of ">my New Zealand town vs that of my former American town.
  • More Over Here: dig for more information on the topic of a page. Built out of Y! Term Extraction API, Flickr, Technorati, Y! News, Delicious, etc. Currently it only has a one-term idea of what the page is about, so doesn't work too well with multitopic sites, etc. The author posted an explanation of how it can be used.
  • Silk: open source collaboration framework, like Microsoft SharePoint. Built by Akiva, whose CEO I spoke to at great length today about their open source strategy. I'm really impressed with their thinking and the way they went about preparing, deciding, and implementing their open source move.
  • GPL v3 Process Definition: the long road to GPL v3 is underway. Expect it to be a topic at OSCON.
  • Glitches Galore in VoIP: Business Week article on service problems with VoIP. "On average, VoIP call quality is worse than cellular, according to research by Internet performance consultancy Keynote. Audio delay (the time between when you speak and the listener can hear you) is often unacceptably long, leading to overlapping conversations. Keynote also found that about 3.1% of all VoIP calls made don't go through at all." Fodder for ETel, whose Early Registration period ends Monday 4 December.
  • Early Geek Radio: pre-podcasting Internet-offered interviews and radio shows. Features Tim and Dale c. 1994, as well as a pre-Internet Archive Brewster Kahle and Tim Berners-Lee before he was Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Anyone want to volunteer to work with them and write some Perl+LAME so they can offer MP3s as well as wave files and Real Audio?
  • Oregon City Builds A Reputation as a Hub For Software Revolution: want to guess which city? Hint: we have OSCON there. Need another hint? "Portland - a city where T-shirts on college campuses are more likely to sport Firefox than Che - is now seeing venture capitalists descending upon it, proof that all the heavyweight open-source talent here may indeed power the local economy."
  • MapServer Foundation: open source product partners with AutoDesk (I believe it's mandatory for me to add "makers of AutoCAD" at this point) to start a non-profit governance organization. AutoDesk open sourced one of their products (now branded "MapServer Enterprise") while the original open source MapServer is now branded "MapServer Cheetah". They're still in the early days of building the non-profit. Background: Tyler Mitchell's blog, the press release, the open letter to the community, and upbeat Directions magazine coverage.
  • NEXT 2005: awesome Danish conference I just missed. Would love to get there next year. They had, among other things: digital rocking horses, DJ robots, a programmable climbing wall, edible interfaces, 10x10 helium balloons functioning as pixels and the EyeD Concept car directly from Nike’s TechLab.
  • GTalkr: Flash-based client for Google Talk, so you can voice chat from any Flash-capable computer. Brilliant!
  • Jookster enters Beta: no longer requires a toolbar install. Thumbs-up sites, find the sites your friends like, use friends to filter classifieds, etc. delicious + orkut. I like the tip of the hat to the teens: "Easy to find and share cool bands and music with friends".
  • Skype Videophone Coming: it'll be interesting to see whether I can use it from NZ. I think my DSL provider must have crappy upstream bandwidth because I can't videochat from my house using iChat. Skype's codec is good for voice, I wonder whether they've worked similar magic for video?
  • WiPro Creates Linux-Based Phone Platform: lots of activity in this area. See OSDL Mobile Linux Initiative and TrollTech's VoIP Framework.
  • Why Linux on X-Box 360 Will Be Hard: there's nothing like a challenge. Glad to see Microsoft is intent on making it fun for people to hack their boxes.

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Links: Dec 2, 2005

By nat

I had about thirty-five Firefox links saved, then upgraded to Firefox 1.5 (go fighting ... foxes) only to find that the SessionSaver extension didn't work in 1.5. So with a clear conscience I now resolve to post fewer links at a time, but hopefully post more often as a result.

  • Hear From Your MP: I'm just grooving on the great work that the mySociety folks are doing. I moved back home and feel the urge to rark up our political system like this.
  • Gaze: a gazetteer web service from mySociety. Very cool! I love the new population extensions. It's interesting to compare the population density (people per square kilometer) of my New Zealand town vs that of my former American town.
  • More Over Here: dig for more information on the topic of a page. Built out of Y! Term Extraction API, Flickr, Technorati, Y! News, Delicious, etc. Currently it only has a one-term idea of what the page is about, so doesn't work too well with multitopic sites, etc. The author posted an explanation of how it can be used.
  • Silk: open source collaboration framework, like Microsoft SharePoint. Built by Akiva, whose CEO I spoke to at great length today about their open source strategy. I'm really impressed with their thinking and the way they went about preparing, deciding, and implementing their open source move.
  • GPL v3 Process Definition: the long road to GPL v3 is underway. Expect it to be a topic at OSCON.
  • Glitches Galore in VoIP: Business Week article on service problems with VoIP. "On average, VoIP call quality is worse than cellular, according to research by Internet performance consultancy Keynote. Audio delay (the time between when you speak and the listener can hear you) is often unacceptably long, leading to overlapping conversations. Keynote also found that about 3.1% of all VoIP calls made don't go through at all." Fodder for ETel, whose Early Registration period ends Monday 4 December.
  • Early Geek Radio: pre-podcasting Internet-offered interviews and radio shows. Features Tim and Dale c. 1994, as well as a pre-Internet Archive Brewster Kahle and Tim Berners-Lee before he was Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Anyone want to volunteer to work with them and write some Perl+LAME so they can offer MP3s as well as wave files and Real Audio?
  • Oregon City Builds A Reputation as a Hub For Software Revolution: want to guess which city? Hint: we have OSCON there. Need another hint? "Portland - a city where T-shirts on college campuses are more likely to sport Firefox than Che - is now seeing venture capitalists descending upon it, proof that all the heavyweight open-source talent here may indeed power the local economy."
  • MapServer Foundation: open source product partners with AutoDesk (I believe it's mandatory for me to add "makers of AutoCAD" at this point) to start a non-profit governance organization. AutoDesk open sourced one of their products (now branded "MapServer Enterprise") while the original open source MapServer is now branded "MapServer Cheetah". They're still in the early days of building the non-profit. Background: Tyler Mitchell's blog, the press release, the open letter to the community, and upbeat Directions magazine coverage.
  • NEXT 2005: awesome Danish conference I just missed. Would love to get there next year. They had, among other things: digital rocking horses, DJ robots, a programmable climbing wall, edible interfaces, 10x10 helium balloons functioning as pixels and the EyeD Concept car directly from Nike’s TechLab.
  • GTalkr: Flash-based client for Google Talk, so you can voice chat from any Flash-capable computer. Brilliant!
  • Jookster enters Beta: no longer requires a toolbar install. Thumbs-up sites, find the sites your friends like, use friends to filter classifieds, etc. delicious + orkut. I like the tip of the hat to the teens: "Easy to find and share cool bands and music with friends".
  • Skype Videophone Coming: it'll be interesting to see whether I can use it from NZ. I think my DSL provider must have crappy upstream bandwidth because I can't videochat from my house using iChat. Skype's codec is good for voice, I wonder whether they've worked similar magic for video?
  • WiPro Creates Linux-Based Phone Platform: lots of activity in this area. See OSDL Mobile Linux Initiative and TrollTech's VoIP Framework.
  • Why Linux on X-Box 360 Will Be Hard: there's nothing like a challenge. Glad to see Microsoft is intent on making it fun for people to hack their boxes.

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Links: Dec 2, 2005

By nat

I had about thirty-five Firefox links saved, then upgraded to Firefox 1.5 (go fighting ... foxes) only to find that the SessionSaver extension didn't work in 1.5. So with a clear conscience I now resolve to post fewer links at a time, but hopefully post more often as a result.

  • Hear From Your MP: I'm just grooving on the great work that the mySociety folks are doing. I moved back home and feel the urge to rark up our political system like this.
  • Gaze: a gazetteer web service from mySociety. Very cool! I love the new population extensions. It's interesting to compare the population density (people per square kilometer) of my New Zealand town vs that of my former American town.
  • More Over Here: dig for more information on the topic of a page. Built out of Y! Term Extraction API, Flickr, Technorati, Y! News, Delicious, etc. Currently it only has a one-term idea of what the page is about, so doesn't work too well with multitopic sites, etc. The author posted an explanation of how it can be used.
  • Silk: open source collaboration framework, like Microsoft SharePoint. Built by Akiva, whose CEO I spoke to at great length today about their open source strategy. I'm really impressed with their thinking and the way they went about preparing, deciding, and implementing their open source move.
  • GPL v3 Process Definition: the long road to GPL v3 is underway. Expect it to be a topic at OSCON.
  • Glitches Galore in VoIP: Business Week article on service problems with VoIP. "On average, VoIP call quality is worse than cellular, according to research by Internet performance consultancy Keynote. Audio delay (the time between when you speak and the listener can hear you) is often unacceptably long, leading to overlapping conversations. Keynote also found that about 3.1% of all VoIP calls made don't go through at all." Fodder for ETel, whose Early Registration period ends Monday 4 December.
  • Early Geek Radio: pre-podcasting Internet-offered interviews and radio shows. Features Tim and Dale c. 1994, as well as a pre-Internet Archive Brewster Kahle and Tim Berners-Lee before he was Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Anyone want to volunteer to work with them and write some Perl+LAME so they can offer MP3s as well as wave files and Real Audio?
  • Oregon City Builds A Reputation as a Hub For Software Revolution: want to guess which city? Hint: we have OSCON there. Need another hint? "Portland - a city where T-shirts on college campuses are more likely to sport Firefox than Che - is now seeing venture capitalists descending upon it, proof that all the heavyweight open-source talent here may indeed power the local economy."
  • MapServer Foundation: open source product partners with AutoDesk (I believe it's mandatory for me to add "makers of AutoCAD" at this point) to start a non-profit governance organization. AutoDesk open sourced one of their products (now branded "MapServer Enterprise") while the original open source MapServer is now branded "MapServer Cheetah". They're still in the early days of building the non-profit. Background: Tyler Mitchell's blog, the press release, the open letter to the community, and upbeat Directions magazine coverage.
  • NEXT 2005: awesome Danish conference I just missed. Would love to get there next year. They had, among other things: digital rocking horses, DJ robots, a programmable climbing wall, edible interfaces, 10x10 helium balloons functioning as pixels and the EyeD Concept car directly from Nike’s TechLab.
  • GTalkr: Flash-based client for Google Talk, so you can voice chat from any Flash-capable computer. Brilliant!
  • Jookster enters Beta: no longer requires a toolbar install. Thumbs-up sites, find the sites your friends like, use friends to filter classifieds, etc. delicious + orkut. I like the tip of the hat to the teens: "Easy to find and share cool bands and music with friends".
  • Skype Videophone Coming: it'll be interesting to see whether I can use it from NZ. I think my DSL provider must have crappy upstream bandwidth because I can't videochat from my house using iChat. Skype's codec is good for voice, I wonder whether they've worked similar magic for video?
  • WiPro Creates Linux-Based Phone Platform: lots of activity in this area. See OSDL Mobile Linux Initiative and TrollTech's VoIP Framework.
  • Why Linux on X-Box 360 Will Be Hard: there's nothing like a challenge. Glad to see Microsoft is intent on making it fun for people to hack their boxes.

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Two Tiered Airport Security Is Wrong

Brad and I arrived at O'Hare this afternoon, on our way back to NYC, to find a huge security check line.

As we waited patiently in the line, an American Airlines employee came by and asked if we were flying first class or belonged to American's top rung of their frequent flyer program (I can't recall what they call it).  We said no.  But a few people said yes and they were escorted to a special security check line with no wait.

I have no issue with American Airline's desire to serve their best customers with premium service.

But airport security is a federally mandated effort. The public is making a sacrifice of our convenience for collective safety.

And I find the idea that a public utility like airport security can be tiered in some economic way really upsetting.

It's as if there were a first class section on the NY subway system.

I think it's wrong.

Posted in A VC on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Firefox Seeks Consumer Generated Ads with New Campaign

Picture 2-18

Mozilla tonight is launching an innovative customer evangelist marketing campaign called Firefox Flicks that will run on the Spread Firefox web site. The campaign supports the launch of Firefox 1.5, according to Rafael Ebron, product marketing manager. The site will incorporate a tool that Firefox users can use to capture video from their webcam and share their love for the browser. All videos will be vetted by Mozilla before they appear on the site. Ebron himself demonstrates the concept here on Google Video!

More importantly, Mozilla is also launching a contest seeking the best consumer generated Firefox ads. According to Ebron, the best ads may eventually appear on TV. “We already had one guy do a firefox commercial and then other ads,” Ebron said. Full details for this promotion will be released on December 13th. Here are some screens from the new site ...

Picture 3-7

Picture 4-3

As Ebron explained to me in an IM, after Firefox ran its popular open source New York Times ad last year, “folks were coming up to us saying hello, I'm in that ad and they pointed their names.” He went on to add: “We took photos and then we thought this is cool; (we) want to meet everyone. So we thought let's get this tool built where folks on the web can video themselves talking about how they've spread Firefox - kind of a live new york times ad.” The videos will look like these found on Google.

Clearly this grassroots campaign demonstrates that the appetite for rich media advertising is not limited to the AOL Videos of the world. With the tools to create video content now in many individuals' hands, it's quite possible that some of the most creative advertising work in the years ahead won't come from the agencies, but from the consumers themselves! This campaign could become a model for others. Don't bother coming up with the big idea yourself - tap your customer evangelists and see what they do. This is one to watch.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-02

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/01/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 2, 2005

Skype thoughts

Skype updated its Mac client today with some new user interface features, improved call quality, and some additional member information. I like the small touches such as the new blue dock icon and the ability to automatically pause iTunes when you receive a new incoming call.

I just realized today that Skype works over local Bonjour networks. The feature has been around for a few months, but none of my coworkers knew about it either.

Om points out that many of the Skype 2.0 features were previously available as plugins from third party developers. I have not used any of the plugins, but I think the features demanded by users should be rolled into the core service offering and hopefully it is possible to hire some people from small plugin development shops who are already passionate about the technology. I think video was a question of when, not if, and any developer of a video plugin would have opportunistically entered the market to gain some revenue and experience before making its move.

I've been thinking about using SkypeIn combined with Skype voicemail for podcast listener questions and comments. I am just deciding on a call-in number, but I think it's a good idea. Area code 763 spells "pod" is available for call-in numbers. I've been waiting for Skype to add numbers in Ireland but I might crack and add a U.S. number for the show.

Tags:

Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Moose Goes to Russia and China, Ostrich Farm

Ir244539Stop laughing. You're just jealous because you've never been to an ostrich farm in China!

(Click picture to enlarge.)

Posted in Denali Flavors on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Nuggets

Ted got me reminiscing about my high school days at West Point, a subject I intend to post on a bit more this morning, and that took me back to the basement of our house at 69 Schofield Lane. The basement was where we listened to music back then.

And there is one record that comes to mind vividly from those days.

Live_bootleg It's called Live Bootleg and its from Aerosmith, pre drug problems, pre MTV.  My Aerosmith.

Songs like Dream On, Back In The Saddle Again, Sweet Emotion, Walk This Way, Toys In The Attic.

They were a great hard rock band.  Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. The Glimmer Twins part two.

And this record captures pretty much the end of that band, during the Draw The Line Tour.  The band was already coming unglued and you can hear it at times on the record.

But there are three songs at the end of this record that make it a Nugget,  I Ain't Got You, Mother Popcorn, and Train Kept A Rollin (which is abbreviated).

Mother Popcorn, a James Brown tune, is a super fun listen.  Apparently this version was recorded in 1973 at a WBCN event.  Tyler goes nuts on this song.  It's a lot of fun.

Sadly this record is not available on Rhapsody or iTunes.  It should be. Why don't bands put their back catalogs up online?

You can get it at Amazon though in CD form.  If you like old Aerosmith and haven't heard this record, I suggest you do that.

Posted in A VC on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

James I. O'Neill High School

That's the place I went to high school.  I can't recommend it to anyone as I thought it totally sucked.  But that was my experience.  Others I know feel differently.

But it was a fascinating place for one reason, it was a mashup of four completely different communities.  I'll let Mike Doughty, who also went there, about ten years after I did, tell the story, since he already did on his blog:

There were four towns feeding our high school's student body; West Point, where I lived, was generally the obsessively high-achieving, secretly-haunted kids of Army officers. Highland Falls and Fort Montgomery were, respectively, lower-middle and working-class towns characterized by extreme resentment at living in West Point's shadow.

Garrison was where the rich kids lived. On that side of the river--the East--was the commuter train to New York, Grand Central Station. This was an extreme demarcation--the West side of the Hudson is forever the thrift side for lack of of this pipeline. Garrison kids tended to wear clothes bought at Canal Jean in the city, had excellent multicolored Vans shoes, and good cars.

That was James I O'Neill High School and I was "the obsessively high-achieving, secretly-haunted kid of Army officers".

My niece Julia goes there now.  I think she likes it a bit better than I did.  I sure hope so.

Jackson and Tony Alva, well known to the commenters on this blog, went there.  I think they liked it better than I did.  They can do what they always do and let you know in the comments.

I doubt Mike Doughty reads my blog, but if he does, I'd love to know what he thought about O'Neill.

I did get an email about six months ago from a woman I knew in high school named Betsy who happened upon my blog.  She said, "are you the Fred Wilson who graduated from O'Neill High School in 1979".  I replied "yes, that would be me, the arrogant punk know it all kid".  She replied, "yes, that's how I remember you".

Now with my oldest daughter in high school, I am reliving through her all the messed up emotions of those years.  Sucking In The 70s.  Exactly.

Posted in A VC on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

James I. O'Neill High School

That's the place I went to high school.  I can't recommend it to anyone as I thought it totally sucked.  But that was my experience.  Others I know feel differently.

But it was a fascinating place for one reason, it was a mashup of four completely different communities.  I'll let Mike Doughty, who also went there, about ten years after I did, tell the story, since he already did on his blog:

There were four towns feeding our high school's student body; West Point, where I lived, was generally the obsessively high-achieving, secretly-haunted kids of Army officers. Highland Falls and Fort Montgomery were, respectively, lower-middle and working-class towns characterized by extreme resentment at living in West Point's shadow.

Garrison was where the rich kids lived. On that side of the river--the East--was the commuter train to New York, Grand Central Station. This was an extreme demarcation--the West side of the Hudson is forever the thrift side for lack of of this pipeline. Garrison kids tended to wear clothes bought at Canal Jean in the city, had excellent multicolored Vans shoes, and good cars.

That was James I O'Neill High School and I was "the obsessively high-achieving, secretly-haunted kid of Army officers".

My niece Julia goes there now.  I think she likes it a bit better than I did.  I sure hope so.

Jackson and Tony Alva, well known to the commenters on this blog, went there.  I think they liked it better than I did.  They can do what they always do and let you know in the comments.

I doubt Mike Doughty reads my blog, but if he does, I'd love to know what he thought about O'Neill.

I did get an email about six months ago from a woman I knew in high school named Betsy who happened upon my blog.  She said, "are you the Fred Wilson who graduated from O'Neill High School in 1979".  I replied "yes, that would be me, the arrogant punk know it all kid".  She replied, "yes, that's how I remember you".

Now with my oldest daughter in high school, I am reliving through her all the messed up emotions of those years.  Sucking In The 70s.  Exactly.

Posted in A VC on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Morningwood

Mike Doughty, who keeps a fantastic blog, recommended this NYC band, Morningwood.

I liked their new song, Nth Degree.

Check it out on MySpace.

Posted in A VC on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Gcast. Make your voice heard.

By tim Free hosting for podcasts -- they get the ad revenue. Run by the same folks who do garageband.com...

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

HD Radio's Big Month

Hdradio_1 I haven't blogged much about one of my favorite topics lately, that being HD Radio.

As many readers know, through Flatiron, I am an investor in and board member of iBiquity Digital, the creator of the HD Radio technology that the broadcast radio industry is using to go digital.

However, I feel the need to point out what a big month November was for HD Radio.

In the middle of November, iBiquity announced that Intel has made a strategic investment in iBiquity and in that announcement, Intel said:

“This investment signals Intel Capital’s support for HD Radio,” said Sriram Viswanathan, Managing Director for Intel Capital’s Mobility investments. “We view HD Radio as an exciting new addition to the digital media landscape and look forward to evaluating a host of exciting opportunities to enable affordable, portable and low-power digital media devices that include HD Radio.”

"Affordable, portable and low-power digital media devices that include HD Radio".  HD is not your mother's transistor radio for sure.

Then, later that week, Clear Channel announced that it had already converted over 200 stations to digital broadcasting.  That's in less than a year.  And that is just one station group, although the biggest station group.

Then at the end of November, Boston Acoustics announced that it is shipping a great new table top HD radio. I am getting one for my office so I can show off all the new free multicast channels that are going to be coming on air.

It's been a long haul making HD a reality, but it sure feels real now.

Posted in A VC on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Enable Your Podcast for Searching

Podscope has launched a new tool that podcasters can use to create a searchable full text index of every word in their audio and video podcasts. The first Web site to use the Podcast SearchBox is Podcast 411. In addition, you can now set up RSS feeds for searches. For example, here's a feed I created for a search for Dell.

Both of these services are invaluable for marketing communicators, although they're far from thorough. While there's so much innovation in blog search, there needs to be more innovation in audio search given how podcast content is mushrooming. Right now very few individuals can track if they are mentioned in a podcast. How long until Google gets into this game?

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

PR Pitching via Blog Comments

Loren Baker is frustrated with one company that has been trying really hard recently to get his link love by posting misinformed comments on his and other search blogs. He breaks down the incident in great detail while also offering some helpful advice.

This opens up a whole host of questions. Is it appropriate for a PR professional to pitch a blogger by leaving comments on his/her blog? My gut reaction is that it's ok to do so minimally and only if it's on topic and transparent who you are. For example, if when I wrote about my scratched up iPod nano I got a pitch from an accessory manufacturer in a blog comment that would have been ok by me and probably my readers. Had this make-believe person left multiple comments, they would have gone too far. That, however, is just how I feel about it. Others would react differently.

I think the short answer here is that PR pros need to take this on a case by case basis depending on the attitude and personality of the blogger and its readers. It's a vast gray area. What do you think?

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Friday Fun

Go flying through the clouds in your Web browser.

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Maps + Mobile + Mashups + Social Media = Kmaps

KMaps is an Ajax-based site that aggregates Google Maps mashups for viewing either on a Treo smart phone (and soon a Blackberry) or a web browser. What's unique about it is that it's location-aware, social and that you can publish a Kmap using a smart phone. For example, here's a Google Maps mashup of celebrity sightings. It's empty right now, but if you had it installed you could publish a sighting using the KMaps service while you're on the go. They offer a “where is” location service as well.

In addition, KMaps offers a tool called KMaplets that you can use to create and share location-aware, mobile map mash-ups (say that ten times fast!). You can really get a sense for how powerful this might be when you look at this mashup of celebrity addresses. For more information, visit their wiki.

Picture 1-33

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Odeo Studio released

Odeo Studio

Odeo just released their online audio recording software called Odeo Studio. Odeo Studio was previously available to a limited group of users. The new version 0.14 is the first public release of the software.

Giving people the ability to record content via a web page or telephone takes away a lot of the complexity of podcasting or casual voice message creation. No worries about getting the proper recording software, encoding the audio, uploading to a server. Now all you have to do is hit record on a web page and everything is done for you.

Recordings are limited to only 3 minutes so Odeo is not yet a realistic tool for full podcasts. It's just the right amount of time for podcasts listeners to leave comments on shows. Yep, I'm requesting features already!

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Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Wikipedia Plans API, WYSIWYG Socialtext Interface

Jimmy Wales, President of the non-profit Wikipedia Foundation and creator of Wikipedia, spoke at a Brookings Institute event yesterday and revealed some interesting news about the open source encyclopedia, according to one observer. According to Mike Lee, you can listen to a related podcast recorded in September here (MP3). Here's a summary...

* Wikipedia gets 2.4 billion page views monthly. It has over 120 servers, which are mostly in Florida

* Over half of all edits to the English version are done by 0.7% of its users, or 615 users

* They are working on a WYSIWYG interface so more newbies will feel comfortable. It is being built using SocialText and should be ready for wide release in January. It will become the default UI for MediaWiki.

* Last but not least, Wikipedia has early plans to open up their API

(Via the Wikipedia Blog)


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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

A Deadhead Carole

Bobby Scrooge Weir decides that trading in live bootlegs over the Internet is no longer cool and sends poor Cratchet out to shut down downloading on The Live Music Archive.

The Ghost of Dead Shows Past (aka Jerry) appears in Bobby's dream and takes him to Fillmore West in 1969 and they jam to Dark Star.

Then they go to Hartford, CT in 1983 (I was there for that one) and do the classic Scarlet/Fire combo.

Finally, they go to the Boston Garden in 1991 and end the show with Eyes of the World.

Bobby Scrooge sees the light and gives the Live Music Archive the greenlight to keep the bootlegs up.

The story ends happily except that Jerry is a stil a ghost.

Posted in A VC on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-03

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/02/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 3, 2005

But They is Us

Susan Mernit pointed to an SF Weekly article on Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Though she liked what the author, Ryan Blitstein, had to say, Susan expressed concern that he did not mention any women in the article--especially among the media critics. I'll get into Susan's concern later, tying it into something else I'm writing. For [...]

Linked in this story:

Susan Mernit
SF Weekly article
Jonathon Delacour
Drunken Blog
Party like it's 1999
Tim Blair
Open Source Media
Spot On
definitive history books
Dave Winer
Bayosphere

Posted in Burningbird on 12/03/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

But They is Us

Susan Mernit pointed to an SF Weekly article on Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Though she liked what the author, Ryan Blitstein, had to say, Susan expressed concern that he did not mention any women in the article--especially among the media critics. I'll get into Susan's concern later, tying it into something else I'm writing. For [...]

Linked in this story:

Susan Mernit
SF Weekly article
Jonathon Delacour
Drunken Blog
Party like it's 1999
Tim Blair
Open Source Media
Spot On
definitive history books
Dave Winer
Bayosphere
Little Green Footballs
Roger Simon
Philly Future
Buzzmachine
Open Source Media holders

Posted in Burningbird on 12/03/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

But They is Us

At one time, I think we truly were a citizens media. But then we got big, we got important, we started making millions of dollars and appearing on CNN. We gave all authority to a few, and then we formed legions of fans as barriers around them. If I’m critical of, say, Dave Winer, he doesn’t have to defend himself–someone else will do it for him. As such then, he never has to give notice to the critics coming from the ‘masses’. The same applies to Jeff Jarvis, Dan Gilmore, Jay Rosen, Chris Nolan, and the others held in esteem. Those who set themselves up as critics of the old media are themselves impervious to critics of the new media.

Linked in this story:

Susan Mernit
SF Weekly article
Jonathon Delacour
Drunken Blog
Party like it's 1999
Tim Blair
Open Source Media
Spot On
definitive history books
Dave Winer
Bayosphere
Little Green Footballs
Roger Simon
Philly Future
Buzzmachine
Open Source Media holders

Posted in Burningbird on 12/03/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

I Thought The Web Was The Platform

I remember the tagline for Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle's first web 2.0 conference.

Web 2.0 - "The Web As A Platform"

We've seen the definition of Web 2.0 change since then and become so hyped up that its borderline worthless as a term now.  But when I first saw that phrase, I really liked it and I still do.

So when I happened upon Jeremy Zawodny's blog post on "Platforms, Mashups, and Markets", I read it three of four times to try to understand the point he was making.

Jeremy starts with mashups and observes (with the help of Greg Linden) that mashups may be nothing other than free R&D for the large portals.  Jeremy assets that the big guys will watch what you build on top of their platforms and copy the best of them.

Then Jeremy goes on to say that "The platform is what you must build today in order to create a new on-line market."

In the process of making this argument, he links to my post on an open market for online advertising.  Which doesn't make much sense to me, because in that post I was not suggesting the creation of a new platform.

I believe the web is a platform. And that everything we need for an open ad market, or an open data archticture, or frankly most anything else, is available on the "web platform" today.

This may be nothing more than semantics, but when I hear people use the word "platform" I often think proprietary.  And I believe that "proprietary platforms" aren't going to get us where we need to go.

A commenter in Jeremy's post clearly identifies me in that camp and says:

This is not 1995, you need to have lot of IP (Entire IP Portfolio of GYM) in order sustain as a business. Most of the web 2.0 companies are noice in IMHO. Building a web platform is not an average startup model. This is the model where VCs like Vinod Khoslas and John Doerrs of the world will thrive and Others ( Like Fred Wilson of the world ) will miss it because they wont see the value immediately. Iam yet to see a company currently out in the market which can survive as a stand alone business.

Being mentioned in the company of John Doerr and Vinod Khosla is always nice even if the point is that they are smart and recognize the value of IP and I do not.

It's not that I don't recognize the value of IP, its just that I don't think IP is what this is all about. As Paul Graham said in his essay on Web 2.0:

Web 2.0 means using the web as it was meant to be used, and Google does.  That's their secret.  The web naturally has a certain grain, and Google is aligned with it.  That's why their success seems so effortless.  They're sailing with the wind, instead of sitting  becalmed praying for a business model, like the print media, or trying to tack upwind by suing their customers, like Microsoft and the record labels.

Google doesn't try to force things to happen their way.  They try to figure out what's going to happen, and arrange to be standing there when it does.  That's the way to approach technology-- and as business includes an ever larger technological component, the right way to do business.

It's a great observation.  The Web is a Platform and you must build on top of it and you must be open and you must not try to lock people in.  If you do, you are eventually going to regret it.

Posted in A VC on 12/03/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Seasons Celebration

Short season.

Posted in Burningbird on 12/03/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Matinee Movie of the Week

Wouldn't you rather be at a movie?

Linked in this story:

conservative writers
Poseidon Adventure
song
review of The Calimari Wrestler
review of The Calamari Wrestler
Variety

Posted in Burningbird on 12/03/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-04

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/03/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 4, 2005

Target's Weekly Newspaper Ad Goes RSS

Target has started an RSS feed for the on-sale items in its weekly newspaper ad.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Target's Weekly Newspaper Ad Goes RSS

Target has started an RSS feed for the on-sale items in its weekly newspaper ad.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Visa USA Blogs the Torino Winter Olympics

Screenshot 1-2

Visa USA has launched an ambitious new TypePad-powered blog around the 2006 Winter Olympic Games called The Journey. What's unique here is that they invited Olympic athletes, coaches, fans, journalists covering the upcoming Torino games, and Visa employees and representatives to contribute.

Heading up the effort is Chief Blogger, Michael Rolnick, who works at Visa on its Olympic sponsorship program. Also of note is its “rules of the road” that, among other things, points all blog-related media inquiries to Fleishman Hillard.

Visa's adoption of social media doesn't stop with a blog. They have a podcast and a Flickr Photostream as well. The are also linking to independent blogs covering the games. There's a placeholder on the blog for video so it appears as though some vidcasting could be in the cards soon. Last but not least, comments and trackbacks are turned on too. Nice job gang! (As an aside, I'd love to know who designed this blog. There could be some work for you from us.)

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

People Don't Know Wikipedia's Solyent Green is People

Rex Hammock advises people not to take what they read in Wikipedia - or anywhere for that matter - at face value. Rex, I agree, but I have a feeling most people who visit Wikipedia have no idea that it's Solyent Green is made out of people. They stumble upon it through Google and think it's managed by a scholarly body like Britannica. Hopefully this will change as more people realize they are the next Google.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

People Don't Know Wikipedia's Solyent Green is People

Rex Hammock advises people not to take what they read in Wikipedia - or anywhere for that matter - at face value. Rex, I agree, but I have a feeling most people who visit Wikipedia have no idea that its Solyent Green is made out of people. They stumble upon it through Google and think it's managed by a scholarly body like Britannica. Hopefully this will change as more people realize they are the next Google.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Tom Raftery Interviews Me for a Podcast

I spent some time yesterday talking with Tom Raftery from Ireland via Skype and he has posted the podcast on his blog site (click the play icon to hear the show or download the MP3). If you're not listening to Tom's podcast, start. He has had some great guests on his show, including Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. Full show notes are posted after the jump.

Who is Steve Rubel? - 0:33
Why use social software in traditional PR campaigns? - 1:07
How do you qualify which companies should blog and which shouldn’t? - 4:42
What size organisation is Cooper katz? - 5:23
How does that compare to the rest of the PR industry? - 5:35
Are more and more PR firms following your lead into blogging? - 6:16
Do you know how many subscribers and unique visitors you have per day? - 9:19
Why should businesses in Ireland blog? - 11:42
If a company is thinking about starting a blog, how should they start out? - 14:38
How do you see RSS changing the face of business in the coming years? - 18:39
How many feeds are you subscribed to? - 21:59
Why did you decide to branch into podcasting? - 25:18
Podcasting and blogging are very different media - do you need to take a different approach to their creation? - 26:32
What podcasts do you listen to? - 29:11
Do you unplug from technology at all, do you have any non-tech hobbies? - 30:30
Do you not think that blogs are just a tool in a PR practitioner’s arsenal rather than a replacement for people given that some people will just use the Internet for email and not for joining in on the online conversation? - 34:51
What are your predicitons for the PR industry, traditional media and social media for 2006? - 36:31
Do you think that vlogging (or what ever video blogging will be known as) will be the next big thing next year? - 42:13
Are you going to the Les Blogs 2.0 conference in Paris - 48:50
What do you see coming down the line as the next big thing? - 49:32
Mac or PC? - 47:37
Why the Mac? - 48:48
What is your favourite gadget? - 50:54

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The Future Ends at the Firewall

By tim Great article in the Financial Times about the reversal that has occurred in the past few years, in which richer and more powerful services are now available to home users than to office users: :
New services from companies such as Google and Skype and the spread of domestic broadband access have created a new generation of digitally aware consumers. Having access to free video conferencing, or being able to examine the world in exquisite detail on a programme such as Google Earth, has awakened home computer users to the expanding possibilities of life on the web.
 

When they get to work, however, these same computer users are starting to find that many of the digital goodies they have come to expect are out of reach. That is more than just a frustration for individual workers: as more technology innovation shifts to the web, it could slow the pace at which many new technologies are adopted and prevent companies from reaping the full productivity benefits....

"In a lot of companies, the desktop is locked down - only the IT department has access to it," says Dave Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise division. "There's no question that consumer technology is racing ahead at a breakneck pace. Enterprise technology kind of slogs along; the adoption rates are much slower."

The title of the article, "e Firewall" reminds me of the dire prognostications on internet mailing lists when firewalls were first introduced, that by breaking the network, they were the wrong approach both to security and the ultimate health of the network.
 

Firewalls are only part of the problem dissected by the article. It also talks about IT policies that limit the grassroots technology adoption that has been one of the source of IT innovation since the PC first invaded the workplace, and the lags in bandwidth that make some technologies unusable.

Of course, the office firewall and desktop lockdown are only part of the problem. The US as a whole lags in broadband adoption, due to the shortsighted policies of the telcos. A reminder that the line between the digital haves and have-nots may end up being drawn in unexpected places, with enormous consequences not just for businesses but the economic health of nations.

(Via Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed blog.)

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Podcasting History

I can't stand the history section of the Podcasting entry at Wikipedia. It's horribly written and full of accusations and people's names inserted just to mark themselves into the story. I was only half joking about editing the section, but I'm not now. I have no part in podcasting so I have nothing to win [...]

Linked in this story:

draft proposal submitted by Tristan Louis
Adam Curry
adding a new element
audio-blog
audioblog
RSStoiPod
February 12, 2004
history section

f='http://weblog.burningbird.net/photo.php?postid=2774'>Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Podcasting History

I am rewriting the history of podcasting (Initial Development section) at Wikipedia. It is now popular to be critical of Wikipedia. We forget in our glee at kicking the giant, tripped and brought low, is that anyone, anyone, can edit or add or remove material from the database. You don't need to have permission from the elite; neither do you need to go through a gatekeeper. Your request to edit doesn't have to be syndicated in fullfeed, or appear in an aggregator such as tech.memeorandum.com. You don't have to be interviewed at CNet; nor appear in the Technorati 100. All you need to do, is your best.

Linked in this story:

draft proposal submitted by Tristan Louis
Adam Curry
adding a new element
audio-blog
audioblog
RSStoiPod
February 12, 2004
history section
Initial Development history section

f='http://weblog.burningbird.net/photo.php?postid=2774'>Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Snowy Sunday Morning


Snowy Sunday Morning
Originally uploaded by fredwilson.
We woke up to a couple inches of snow on the ground this morning.

Very nice.

We are off to buy a christmas tree and put it up.

Getting into the holiday mood.

Posted in A VC on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Mangled

I killed Christmas. I'm now working on Valentine's Day.

Linked in this story:

What?
Pen the tale on the wonkey

Posted in Burningbird on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Zoo Lights

Story and photos from a visit to the zoo yesterday.

Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

My Dad did not make history

My Dad served during World War II. He was in the 82nd Airborne as a paratrooper, and was injured twice while on duty. Through merit and field promotions, he achieved the rank of Captain by war's end. During the war, he took flying lessons in Seattle. While he was out on a solo flight, he [...]

Posted in Burningbird on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Hasbro Shuts Down a Google Maps Mashup

John Robinson reports that Hasbro has shut down a site that mashed up Google Maps and the Risk board game.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Either Or

There are times when I feel either I will have to give up my career in technology, or give up weblogging--or at a minimum, not write about technology in my weblog, not read about technology in other weblogs; not allow any association between the two. Luckily, these times don't happen often, but when they do, [...]

Posted in Burningbird on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Positively 10th Street

Our new weekly podcast is up.

Img_1471 We did this show after we bought a christmas tree, put it up, and decorated it.  We talked about going to the opera, staying up late and partying with our friends, girls basketball, and the middle school dance.

Here's the song list:

Jessica's Song - Handle With Care - Jenny Lewis (with Ben Gibbard, M. Ward & Conor Oberst)
Emily's Song - Shut Your Eyes - Shout Out Louds
Josh's Song - Fell In Love With A Girl - The White Stripes
Joanne's Song - We - Neil Diamond
Fred's Song - Circles - Soul Coughing

Listen live here.

To listen in iTunes or on your iPod, get iTunes (version 4.9 or higher), then select Advanced, Subscribe to Podcast, and then enter this into the box:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Positively10thStreet

Posted in A VC on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Does Firefox 1.5, or the World, Really Need Animated Favicons?

By marc

After upgrading to Firefox 1.5, I noticed an animated favicon in a tab (the favicon being the small image shown in the tab to the left of the title, and also next to bookmarks). Other people report seeing the same thing, also after upgrading to 1.5. Draw your own conclusions.

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Does Firefox 1.5, or the World, Really Need Animated Favicons?

By marc

After upgrading to Firefox 1.5, I noticed an animated favicon in a tab (the favicon being the small image shown in the tab to the left of the title, and also next to bookmarks). Other people report seeing the same thing, also after upgrading to 1.5. Draw your own conclusions.

UPDATE: A reader reports that he also sees the animations on Firefox 1.0.7/Linux. Is this a relatively new feature, or have designers just discovered it, or am I just noticing an old feature?

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Google total information awareness possibilities

Google is gathering as much information as possible about our online activities in the interest of serving up more targeted ads across more and more locations. Google continues to introduce new services limited only by what can have an advertisement placed alongside the content. Future products might include data gathering and targeting as a primary business goal with the intent of collecting higher advertising revenues elsewhere on the network on a future visit. Yahoo! just announced they will serve advertisements based on surfing behavior. Where does Google stand in its behavioral targeting?

Google is already well on its way to building an information awareness network on its own sites as well as the sites of hundreds of thousands of willing webmasters and millions of desktop clients. What is the current state of Google's information network?

  1. Google has the ability to track and analyze every web search query, news request, and television or video browsing.
  2. Google Alerts send strong signals about your interests and help focus advertising relevance.
  3. Every e-mail sent, received, or drafted in Gmail or every instant message or voice conversation delivered through Google Talk increases the intelligence of the advertising machine as it learns more about your casual interests.
  4. Social networking services such as Orkut analyze your friends and their interest to better understand your potential influences.
  5. Google Analytics and AdSense tracks your movement on every site with the service enabled, creating a behavioral profile.
  6. Webmasters can verify their domains of control using Google Sitemaps. Reviews and other Google site content can easily be associated with a Google account.
  7. Google Toolbar picks up every site you visit, regardless of the site's participation in a Google supported tracking program.
  8. As an Internet service provider blanketing entire cities with free wireless access, Google will have access to the full online activities of entire populations.
  9. Not on a Google network? That's OK, just route all your traffic through Google Secure Access.
  10. Not online? Google Desktop will index all of your files and connect to the central database once you connect to the grid to update your advertising profile.

All that is missing right now is all these different data collection tools talking to each other to create one large profile per user. Microsoft could compete in the space by recording every web action on a computer running Windows but such actions would most likely be seen as abusing a monopoly. Google has the ability to silently deploy cross pollination of its advertising platforms across a multitude of services whenever it would like to flip the switch.

Scientia est potentia. Knowledge is power.

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Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Lighter Side

Sheila Lennon has been coming up with wonderous links. First there's a link to the Poetry Archive. This site contains recordings made by poets of their own works, including several readings by the likes of Kipling and Alford Lord Tennyson. To satisfy the tweaky types, there's tag clouds for both theme and form. Most of [...]

Linked in this story:

Sheila Lennon link to Poetry Archive
Poetry Archive
Carols of the Chins
Ugly Christmas Lights site
Ken Camp
Wonderful photo
photographer's work
photographer's work
this

Posted in Burningbird on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Lighter Side

Sheila Lennon has been coming up with wonderous links. First there's a link to the Poetry Archive. This site contains recordings made by poets of their own works, including several readings by the likes of Kipling and Alfred Lord Tennyson. To satisfy the tweaky types, there's tag clouds for both theme and form. Most of [...]

Linked in this story:

Sheila Lennon link to Poetry Archive
Poetry Archive
Carols of the Chins
Ugly Christmas Lights site
Ken Camp
Wonderful photo
photographer's work
photographer's work
this

Posted in Burningbird on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-05

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/04/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 5, 2005

Denali Covered in Corporate Blogging Story

Denali_ice_cream_news_blue_2_4This story is a bit dated (from this summer), but I just remembered to post on it and wanted to share it with you anyway. It details some corporate blogging practices of various companies, one of which is Denali. The article is attached below as a PDF (see the bottom of the front page for the story that includes Denali).  Download denali_corporate_blogging.pdf

Posted in Denali Flavors on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

If Wikipedia is Open Source, Who is Red Hat?

There has been so much written about the "character assassination" of John Seigenthaler Sr. in the false Wikipedia entry about him that alleges, among other things, that he was involved in the real assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy.

It has led a number of people to suggest that the Wikipedia model is badly flawed.  I know a number of people who have gone to wikipedia and were stunned to see that there was an entry about them and then horrified to find out that it was all false.  Character assassinations in Wikipedia are not new.

But the reality is that Wikipedia suffers from the same curse that all user geneated content services face, and that is when something is truly open, people will abuse it.  The Internet itself is the proof that that.

So I believe that Wikipedia is a great resource and is one that should remain open in its present form.  Many others have blogged the same thing in the wake of the Seigenthaler fuss.

But the most interesting idea coming out of this fuss comes from Jeff Jarvis.  He suggests that someone can build an edited version of Wikipedia on top of it and make it commercial.  I wonder if Wikipedia should be the "open source" encyclopedia and if there should be a Red Hat like company that builds a "commercial version" of Wikipedia that has advertising on it, but also has editors who vet all the entries.  It's an interesting idea and I like it.

Posted in A VC on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

MP3 of the Week

I go through periods where I just get totally into a band, artist, etc and it's all I listen to for a week or so.  I am in that way right now with Mike Doughty and his previous band, Soul Coughing. I have been listening all week to his three solo records (four if you include Smofe and Smang which I can't find) and the three Soul Coughing records.

Although I love his new record, Haughty Melodic, which will surely be on my top ten of 2005 list, I think I may like his first solo record, Skittish, even better. This record was recorded while he was still in Soul Coughing and its just awesome.  It starts with one of my favorites, The Only Answer, it's got Real Love and Shunned and Falisified and a bunch of other good songs.  You can only get Skittish in combo with his second solo record, Rockity Roll, in a double record combo on Amazon.  That's an awesome deal.  Two incredible records for less than $14.  Read the reviews on Amazon if you don't believe me, 18 out of 19 people took the time to give this double record five stars.

My favorite song on Skittish is called Looks and its my MP3 of the Week.

I need to say one more thing about Mike Doughty before I quit. He is a real blogger, not an artist who keeps a blog because he's supposed to.  He posts at least once a day, often more frequently, and his posts always include a cool picture and some short musing that is always entertaining. This guy is the real deal and authentic as hell.

Posted in A VC on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Some Excellent TypePad Hackery

I've added an "email this post" link at the bottom of each post.  I use the delicious for: tag to send links around to my friends, but since not everyone is on delicious (yet), an email link seems like a smart idea.

If you like one of my posts, you can just click on the "email this post" link and send it on its merry way.

Thanks to Charlie who figured out how to do this.

Posted in A VC on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0 Feed Readers

Screenshot 1-3

Two new Web 2.0 RSS readers recently crossed my radar. One, pictured above, is called Protopage. This is a free start page that you can customize with RSS news feeds, sticky notes and bookmarks. It's akin to Goowy, except that it's quicker since it does not require Flash. Another is etamp.net.

Both these sites demonstrate there's a lot of room for innovation in the RSS aggregation space. What they have in common is that they are built with Ajax (defined). This technology enables rapid reading because you can skim feeds without having to reload pages or frames (a Web 1.0 model).

Lately I feel like Newsgator and Bloglines - while innovative last year - are starting to fall way behind readers that are based on Ajax. Some of these - like Windows Live and Google Reader - are from the big boys. However, Ajax seems to be leveling the playing field, leaving room for sites like Netvibes to become popular. Thanks to the wonders of OPML, I have pretty much abandoned all Web 1.0 feed readers for Web 2.0 aggregators since they streamline my RSS reading. This is essential once you have hundreds of feeds.How about you?

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #91: December 5, 2005

Content summary: A special edition: Neville and Shel discuss the future of public relations and the skills communicators will need to succeed in a forever-altered communication environment. The discussion includes listener feedback.

Show notes for December 5, 2005

download mp3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 75-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 35MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

In this Edition:

  • Detailed show notes to come.

http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?pagename=" resources.firshownotes??>FIR Show Notes links
Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are now posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the home page for info.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Thursday, December 8…

< ?php include("http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/rss_comments/997/"); ?>

Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The future of intranets

There are all kinds of intranets. Good ones and bad ones. Intranets that are strictly communication vehicles with maybe a smattering of other content. Intranaets that are nothing more than static repositories of policies and handbooks. Others are mostly application-driven, loaded with tools like benefits enrollment, budget planning, expense reimbursement, and the like. Some are balkanized fiefdoms of departmental sites that have little relationship to one another. Many began as grassroots efforts that were later cobbled together into a sort of federation of sites. And some have been carefully planned as the hub of an employee’s workday.

Whatever shape they take, intranets are, at their core, the Internet captured behind the firewall. That definition embraced the suite of TCP/IP protocols, not just the http protocol that drives the web. It also allows the intranet to perform all manner of functions, from communication to collaboration, from streamlined online work processes to the archiving of static information in a hierarchical, navigable format. No single platform can contain all of the purposes a class-A intranet can fulfill.

I mention this because of a podcast I heard the other day. I was catching up on a backlog of podcasts and blasting through the always-worthwhile Blogspotting show from Stephen Baker, the BusinessWeek reporter who also co-authors the blog of the same name. One of the sessions featured an interview with SocialText CEO Ross Mayfield. It was a solid interview with some great information. Mayfield is a savvy guy and always worth listening to; I’m a regular reader of his blog. But I stopped short when Mayfield talked about one SocialText client who was so enamored of the wiki technology that they were in the process of converting their entire intranet to it. The suggestion was then made that all intranets could migrate to the wiki platform.

Tell it it IBM.

The notion of wiki-as-intranet is based on ease of publishing. It’s the same motivation that leads the folks at some blog software companies to claim an intranet could be reconfigured 100% on blogging software. Both suggestions come from the “selling hammers” school of business solutions: If you’re selling hammers, every problem looks like a nail. But intranets are more complex beasts that cannot be supported by either platform alone. At least, not if they’re good intranets. For example…

  • Applications—I’ve maintained for years that few employees will visit an intranet just to read the company news. They’ll read the company news when they visit the intranet to do something work-related. On the best intranets, that includes streamlined work processes that have been webified. At a basic level, this includes interactive forms, calculators, data lookups, and the like. As noted earlier, benefits enrollment is a standard element of many intranets, and we’re not talking about just the form, but the ability to match healthcare providers to zip codes and a host of other functions. Expense reimbursement, performance evaluations, procurement, the job interview process, and a host of other work processes that have been moved online require some sophisticated programming.
  • Portals—The move to a portal environment is based on the idea of “portlets,” little self-contained windows into which data of just about any type can be piped, whether it’s static HTML content or current sales figures streamed in live from a database. While many portal initiatives have failed, many companies have terrific portals that allow employees to tailor the content they see to their work needs. Given the average of a year and $1 million to implement a portal, I can’t see many companies sacrificing the benefits to move to a blog or wiki environment.
  • Static content—Some static web content requires some serious thinking around its navigation. Consider employee benefits information. Wikifying or blogging this content makes no sense, since there should be some hierarchical navigation that includes multiple paths to the same content. For example, you should be able to view medical benefits as a category and navigate quickly to the benefit you’re interested in; you should also be able to view a “Life Events” listing and see links to all relevant benefits, which may include some medical benefits. It should be the same block of copy; nobody should have to alter content twice when a single benefit changes.
  • Interactive content—I recently saw an intranet that contained a drop-dead fabulous marketplace section. Here, employees could interact with data using a variety of technologies (including a rare brilliant use of Flash) to learn about competitors, customers, the regulatory environment, and a variety of other aspects of the market in which the cmpany operates.

ll suggest that all these things can be done on a blog or wiki, but I would maintain that these aren’t the best ways to provide the content or applications in order to make the intranet as easy to navigate and use as possible from the employee’s perspective. Getting a portal onto a wiki, for example, is a sterling example of pounding a round peg into a square hole.

None of which means that blogs and wikis have no place on intranets. Much of what’s on intranets today can migrate to these platforms. But the effort should be strategic, identifying content that is best served by an underlying blog or wiki. 

< ?php include("http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/rss_comments/998/"); ?>

Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Eric Schmidt's rules of management

Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Berkeley professor Hal Varian wrote an article in the latest issue of Newsweek about Google's approach to managing the knowledge worker. Google's extensive perks program is their way of removing things that may get in the way of their employees.

Schmidt admits Google's problems of "techno-arrogance" and "the not invented here syndrome." The company also needs to adjust to a workforce of varying ages and motivations as it looks towards long-term growth.

One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures to the next killer app.

I like the idea of having somewhere to throw out ideas and know everyone on the list wants to hear your new ideas.

{N]obody throws chairs at Google, unlike management practices used at some other well-known technology companies. We foster to create an atmosphere of tolerance and respect, not a company full of yes men.

Obvious poke at Microsoft and Ballmer supposedly throwing a chair across his office when researcher Kai-Fu Lee left Microsoft to work for Google.

Google has remarkably broad dissemination of information within the organization and remarkably few serious leaks. Contrary to what some might think, we believe it is the first fact that causes the second: a trusted work force is a loyal work force.

Good to hear! Google should encourage more employees to blog and make intelligent decisions about information that could be proprietary to the company.

Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Ask My Friends

Charlie O'Donnell has an interesting post on a business plan he'd like to see.

He calls it "Ask My Friends" and it's another take on the various business plans we are all seeing that relate to local search, reviews, social networking, etc.

My experience with this category of web service goes back to Abuzz in the mid 90s. And we've looked at a lot of things since that operate in this general category.  Some have been successful, but many have not.

Charlie observes that a big problem with many of these services is that they require people to commit to a single destination to post reviews and search.

Charlie asks if it wouldn't be simpler to let people use the tools they use in everyday life; email, sms, im, blogs, etc to solicit the reviews and then log them as a byproduct of the query so that others can benefit from the reviews/answers that are provided.

Some of these concepts have been tried before with resutls that have been less than inspiring.  But I agree with Charlie that the single destinations are tough to make work and that what we all want is a distributed approach that let's us operate in the most natural way possible.

It's a thought provoking post for anyone who is trying to build a service based on harnessing user generated content for location based services.

Posted in A VC on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Ask My Friends

Charlie O'Donnell has an interesting post on a business plan he'd like to see.

He calls it "Ask My Friends" and it's another take on the various business plans we are all seeing that relate to local search, reviews, social networking, etc.

My experience with this category of web service goes back to Abuzz in the mid 90s. And we've looked at a lot of things since that operate in this general category.  Some have been successful, but many have not.

Charlie observes that a big problem with many of these services is that they require people to commit to a single destination to post reviews and search.

Charlie asks if it wouldn't be simpler to let people use the tools they use in everyday life; email, sms, im, blogs, etc to solicit the reviews and then log them as a byproduct of the query so that others can benefit from the reviews/answers that are provided.

Some of these concepts have been tried before with results that have been less than inspiring.  But I agree with Charlie that the single destinations are tough to make work and that what we all want is a distributed approach that let's us operate in the most natural way possible.

It's a thought provoking post for anyone who is trying to build a service based on harnessing user generated content for location based services.

Posted in A VC on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Ads in SMS RSS Feeds - Don't Go There

Chris Thilk over at AdJab thinks that ads in the feeds delivered by Yahoo's new RSS SMS alerts are a good idea. Chris writes...

If a user is able to subscribe to an RSS feed from, say, General Motors, they could have those updates appear on their cellphone. The follow-through rate on that would likely be high because it's advertising that the user has chosen to allow and which they had to take positive action to receive

Imagine how much of a boon it would be for both advertisers and Yahoo if all these companies suddenly started adding “Add To My Yahoo” chicklets on their sites that would power these SMS updates? The company would be able to tell exactly who was subscribing, Yahoo would gain loyal users and the end viewer would get only those messages relevant to them. Even better for the company involved is that the cost of delivering these would be almost nothing.

Chris, that's all well in good but I think you're missing a big point. People don't want marketing on their wireless devices - period. It's the one place they feel safe from ads.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Why Can't We “Claim” Wikipedia Articles?

Responding to recent criticism, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales told CNET that to avoid future problems, the open source encyclopedia will bar anonymous users from creating new articles; only registered members will be able to do so. Anonymous users will still be able to edit articles. More importantly, Wales said he's not sure how to approach the question of whether people should be allowed to post on subjects in which they have a personal interest.

Here's an idea. Individuals and companies should have the right to “claim” articles that are entirely about them. Right now, if I am a podcaster, I can “claim” my channel on Odeo. If I am blogger, I can “claim” my feed on Feedster. If there's an article about me or my company on Wikipedia, there should be a mechanism that allows me to do the same on Wikipedia.

Now claiming an article on Wikipedia, if that feature were available, doesn't mean the subject would own it. However, it could allow people to have a more prominent say in what they feel is accurate in an entry that's about them and what isn't. Wikipedia is now growing into a cultural force, whether it likes it or not. With this comes some responsibility to put systems in place that help those who question it's accuracy have a more “visible” say in response to what the masses are saying, while being careful not to override it.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Why Can't We “Claim” Wikipedia Articles?

Responding to recent criticism, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales told CNET that to avoid future problems, the open source encyclopedia will bar anonymous users from creating new articles; only registered members will be able to do so. Anonymous users will still be able to edit articles. More importantly, Wales said he's not sure how to approach the question of whether people should be allowed to post on subjects in which they have a personal interest.

Here's an idea. Individuals and companies should have the right to “claim” articles that are entirely about them. Right now, if I am a podcaster, I can “claim” my channel on Odeo. If I am blogger, I can “claim” my feed on Feedster. If there's an article about me or my company on Wikipedia, there should be a mechanism that allows me to do the same on Wikipedia.

Now claiming an article on Wikipedia, if that feature were available, doesn't mean the subject would own it. However, it could allow people to have a more prominent say in what they feel is accurate in an entry that's about them and what isn't. Wikipedia is now growing into a cultural force, whether it likes it or not. With this comes some responsibility to put systems in place that help those who question it's accuracy have a more “visible” say in response to what the masses are saying, while being careful not to override it.

UPDATE: Wikipedia already has these boxes on its talk pages that indicate when a subject has edited their article. This is similar to “claiming.” They should be on the article pages too.

Picture 1-35

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Syndicate Conference San Francisco

I am a panelist for Searching the Syndisphere at next week's Syndicate conference in San Francisco. The panel will discuss different approaches to indexing and surfacing syndicated content, business models, emerging trends, and other topics chosen by the moderator.

If you would like to attend the two day conference you can save 30% using a discount priority code of SPKDEC. A two day pass is $836.50 and a one day pass is $437.50 with the discount code applied.

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Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Rhapsody for the Mac?

I wrote a post in May asking when Rhapsody would be available for the Mac.

Well the answer is today.

But it's even more exciting because Rhapsody is now available on the WEB!!!

I hate client software and wish I could live in my browser.  Slowly but surely the word is going that way.

Rhapsody is one of my all time favorte apps.  Music dial tone.  The way music should be served up.

My family are Mac users.  They could never use Rhapsody.  Now they can.  In fact, it's already on one Powerbook in the house and I suspect it will be on all of them before the night is over.

So this is a big deal in our house.

Theoretically, this is going to make it easier to share music via weblinks, but I am not sure about that part yet.  First, you still have to download the Rhapsody Music Engine to listen to Rhapsody music.  For Firefox users, that's just a Firefox extension so that's pretty simple.  For Safari users, its tougher. You have to download a file and install it.  I suspect its the same for IE, but we don't use IE in our house so honestly I don't know. So not everyone will be able to simply click on a link and listen.

And then when you do link to a song or a playlist on Rhapsody, it still takes you to the old "launch Rhapsody" page, so they have to fix that. I am not going to link to Rhapsody music until it takes you directly to rhapsody.com and starts playing a song.

Anyway, this is a big step forward.  For Mac users, this is a really great development.

Posted in A VC on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Rhapsody for the Mac

I wrote a post in May asking when Rhapsody would be available for the Mac.

Well the answer is today.

But it's even more exciting because Rhapsody is now available on the WEB!!!

I hate client software and wish I could live in my browser.  Slowly but surely the word is going that way.

Rhapsody is one of my all time favorte apps.  Music dial tone.  The way music should be served up.

My family are Mac users.  They could never use Rhapsody.  Now they can.  In fact, it's already on one Powerbook in the house and I suspect it will be on all of them before the night is over.

So this is a big deal in our house.

Theoretically, this is going to make it easier to share music via weblinks, but I am not sure about that part yet.  First, you still have to download the Rhapsody Music Engine to listen to Rhapsody music.  For Firefox users, that's just a Firefox extension so that's pretty simple.  For Safari users, its tougher. You have to download a file and install it.  I suspect its the same for IE, but we don't use IE in our house so honestly I don't know. So not everyone will be able to simply click on a link and listen.

And then when you do link to a song or a playlist on Rhapsody, it still takes you to the old "launch Rhapsody" page, so they have to fix that. I am not going to link to Rhapsody music until it takes you directly to rhapsody.com and starts playing a song.

Anyway, this is a big step forward.  For Mac users, this is a really great development.

Posted in A VC on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

'Podcast' Is Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year

According to this press release, “podcast” is the New Oxford American Dictionary's word of the year for 2005!

“Only a year ago, podcasting was an arcane activity, the domain of a few techies and self-admitted 'geeks.' Now you can hear everything from NASCAR coverage to NPR's All Things Considered in downloadable audio files called 'podcasts.' Thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store, and websites such as iPodder.com and Podcast.net track thousands more. That's why the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have selected 'podcast' as the Word of the Year for 2005. Podcast, defined as ”a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,“ will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.”

“Podcast” beat out sudoku (!), bird flu and others. The publishers of the Oxford Dictionary, by the way, have a blog but no podcast.

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

J&J's ACUVUE Sponsors a Teen Podcast

Johnson and Johnson's ACUVUE contact lens group is sponsoring a teen podcast called Download with Heather & Jonelle. It's unclear (pun intended) if these are real people or just teen actresses playing a role. Either way, again, I feel this approach is suitable for a podcast but not for a blog because it's unidirectional. Still, I wish they were a bit more transparent about who Heather and Jonelle are.

Screenshot 1-4

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Edublog Awards Nominees!!!

Wow, it is soooo hot up here in Brissie… and thought I’d wear strides for my presentation too which isn’t helping!

The wireless has also been on and off so I haven’t had much of a chance to do anything really - and of course the interesting sessions don’t help either ;)

But I did get to see that Josie has posted the nominees for the second edublog awards and it’s very cool to see that edublogs.org blogs Smelly Knowledge and Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search together with uniblogs.org blog Beyond the Adventures of the 14 days thesis have made it onto the nominations for best newcomer, best librarian and best newcomer respectively.

Oh yeh, and edublogs.org got nominated for most innovative edublogging project, service or programme :) Although there’s some pretty darn tough competition from Elgg (who’ll probably get my vote to be honest), EdTechTalk and the ever excellent Stephen’s Web (”He’s my god” an attendee at this conf. told me before lunch)

Posted in incorporated subversion - social software, online education and james farmer on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Edublog Awards Nominees!!!

Wow, it is soooo hot up here in Brissie… and thought I’d wear strides for my presentation too which isn’t helping!

The wireless has also been on and off so I haven’t had much of a chance to do anything really - and of course the interesting sessions don’t help either ;)

But I did get to see that Josie has posted the nominees for the second edublog awards and it’s very cool to see that edublogs.org blogs Smelly Knowledge and Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search together with uniblogs.org blog Beyond the Adventures of the 14 days thesis have made it onto the nominations for best newcomer, best librarian and best newcomer respectively.

Oh yeh, and edublogs.org got nominated for most innovative edublogging project, service or programme :) Although there’s some pretty darn tough competition from Elgg (who’ll probably get my vote to be honest), EdTechTalk and the ever excellent Stephen’s Web (”He’s my god” an attendee at this conf. told me before lunch)

UPDATE: Voting is now open here so go and, um, vote!

Posted in incorporated subversion - social software, online education and james farmer on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-06

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/05/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 6, 2005

Rich RSS beyond text

I just posted the latest episode of Om and Niall PodSesssions to our podcast site. This week Om and I talk about the possibilities of RSS beyond text and blogs as content such as photos, music, movies, and more are delivered using RSS and other syndication formats.

TiVo single podcast screen

I have been playing around with some of the new broadband RSS services on my TiVo and thinking about new methods of content delivery to the home. Broadband access has been sold as an instant-on service available anytime you wish to interact and retrieve information. I believe the next wave of services will deliver information directly to you on a variety of devices throughout your life including your mobile devices and home entertainment center. Media and information will be waiting instantly consumable in a variety of formats. I think syndication technologies such as RSS can deliver this new content on a regular subscription basis.

The RSS beyond text podcast is 21 minutes and 23 seconds in length, a 9.9 MB download.

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Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Bloggers Sniff Out Google's Rumored Calendar

One blogger cleverly found a way to pull at least one screen grab from Google's upcoming calendar site. It doesn't show much other than to demonstrate the integration of Google Maps. Follow the conversation here.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Capital Punishment Is Barbaric

I am not a fan of capital punishment.  In fact, I find it abhorrent.

I know I am a minority in this country (as I am on many social issues these days).

But I am in the "turn the other cheek" camp instead of the "eye for an eye" camp.

I certainly find murder and terrorism and other forms of crime that are punishable by death as abhorrent as capital punishment.  But I don't feel the need to continue to cycle of death beyond the initial crime.

So why am I saying this now?

Because the state of California is planning to execute a once awful criminal named Stan Williams next week.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will make the final decision this Thursday on Stan's life.  I hope and pray that he doesn't feel the need to live up to his Terminator nickname.

If Nixon could go to China, maybe Arnold can grant a stay of execution.

If you want to weigh in with Arnold, here is a page that tells you how to call him, email him, or petition him.

Posted in A VC on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Pointers (12-6-05)

AOL at work onpodcast search engine

Podscope sets up podcast keyword RSS feeds

iPodder changes its name to Juice

US government podcast and RSS feed links

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Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Apple Adds NBC, SciFi, USA Shows to iTunes

TUAW: Apple has added a ton of new shows to the iTMS from the likes of NBC, USA, SciFi and Disney.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The HD Radio Alliance

Hdradio_2Today in NYC, seven of the largest radio broadcasters announced the formation of the HD Radio Alliance.

According to Radio World, the HD Radio Alliance will be run by Peter Ferrara, formerly a VP at Clear Channel.

The Alliance's major efforts will include "the coordination of formats on a new multicast channel, as well as working to secure digital automotive receiver designs and lower the price points of digital receivers."

Apparently this is a significant cooperative marketing and programming effort.  The prepared statement says that "Member companies will devote air time and dollars to promote HD Radio and the new multicast channel."

I blogged last week that November was a great month for HD Radio.  Well this announcement means that December will be even better.

This announcement is important on multiple levels:

1 - it shows that the major broadcasters are united in their effort to make HD radio work and they now have a coordinating entity in place to do that.

2 - it shows that multicasting (new free stations) are going to be the lynchpin of their marketing efforts

3 - it shows that the broadcasters are going to spend a lot of on air promotion to drive adoption of HD radios and the new multicast stations that will only be available on HD.

4 - it shows that they are also going to work agressively to get the price of HD Radios down to a mass market price and that they are going to work to get the auto manufacturers to put HD radios in cars.

That's a winning formula if you ask me.  It's taken the radio industry a while to get behind HD, but 2006 may turn out to be the year that HD Radio finally becomes real.

Posted in A VC on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Kanoodle cookie bounty

Advertising network Kanoodle will now pay webmasters for planting a cookie on a visitor's computer without ever showing an advertisement. Sites placing a cookie classifying a user's browsing habits into one of 7,500 contextual ad categories. Publishers in the program will be paid 5% of the revenue earned when an advertisement served on the Kanoodle network is triggered by a cookie generated on the publisher's site.

Kanoodle advertisements are an integrated option for TypePad Pro users. Bloggers could profit from distributing cookies on their own personal weblogs for later monetization on a TypePad Pro site with advertising or other blogs using Kanoodle's advertisements.

I am not a fan of third party cookies and block all cookies that are not served from the site I am currently browsing. Most users won't even know the extra cookie has been added to their system and with no screen real estate lost I expect many publishers may experiment with this new cookie bounty.

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Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Podcast conversations

On the Frappr map for our podcast, one of the contributors offered this comment: “Love the show! Thanks for including us in the conversation.”

A conversation in a podcast? Not according to Steve Rubel, who comments about the possibility that a product-focused podcast is co-hosted by two fictitious characters: “I feel this approach is suitable for a podcast but not for a blog because it’s unidirectional.”

I disagree on a number of levels. In a nutshell:

  • Not all blogs are mutlidirectional.
  • Not all podcasts are unidirectional.

variety of definitions for the word online. The one I like is the simplest: “Talk between people,” although “the use of speech for informal exchange of views or ideas or information etc.” isn’t bad. The best conversations take place in real time, face-to-face or, at least, voice-to-voice. Instant messaging and SMS also fit the bill for real-time conversation.

Beyond these approaches, however, every online conversation is asynchronous, which simply means not synchronized. Both dimensions of blog conversations are asynchronous. They do not occur in real time.

The first dimension is contained within the blog. I write my post, log out, then dash off for a client meeting. You decide to check your RSS feeds, read my post and, after deciding you want to comment, visit my blog and contribute your thoughts. I don’t see your comments until I return that evening and, because of time zone differences, you’ve already gone to bed by the time I get around to answering you. The second dimension is blogospheric. You write a post. I read it and write about it myself on my own blog. You check your trackbacks the next day and see that three or four of us have written about your posts. By tomorrow, 20 more people may have written about my original post. It’s easy to monitor conversation in the blogosphere with tools like Technorati and Blogpulse.

In both cases, a real-time (or synchronous) conversation would have wrapped up in anywhere from a few minutes to a couple hours. In the online world, it can drag on for days. For all the discussion about the speed of the blogosphere, it’s relative. Compared to a real-time conversation, it moves at a glacial pace. Of course, the notion of drawing an audience the size of the blogosphere into a real-time conversation is absurd, hence the growth in the popularity of asynchronous channels over the last 20 years or so.

Once we understand that conversations slow down when they’re not in real time, the extent to which this channel or that one facilitate conversation is only a matter of degrees. Blogs may be slower than traditional bulletin boards as a conversation channel for a defined group of people, but they’re faster than podcasts. Podcasts are probably faster than other channels, like static web pages with feedback buttons. And where do wikis fall on the spectrum?

“The Hobson & Holtz Report” most definitely encourages conversation through a variety of channels, including the podcast blog and audio comments our listeners email to us. The pace of the conversation is slow—Monday and Thursday—because that’s how often we address the feedback we get. A-list podcasters like Adam Curry engage in even hotter conversations that transcend both media. Consider Curry’s current controversy over his efforts to alter how he was represented in the Wikipedia entry on podcasting’s history. The conversation about Curry’s actions began on blogs, but he responded on his podcast; his podcast explanation was a clearly defined element of the conversation. His earlier dialogues with listeners on topics such as biodiesel represent other examples of podcast-driven conversation.

Podcasts even spark conversations of the blogospheric nature, with one podcaster playing a clip of another’s show in order to comment on it. I’ve done this with Rubel’s show, for example.

To complicate matters, let’s consider blogs that are unidirectional. Randy Baesler’s Boeing blog comes to mind. Comments are turned off, and while other bloggers could certainly reference it, they don’t. It’s not even ranked on BlogPulse, and Technorati shows only 20 posts on other blogs in the last 241 days that reference “Randy’s Journal."

One last consideration: Podcasting is 16 months old. Given adequate time, the medium will probably develop even more efficient means of building conversation.

Ultimately, it’s a vast oversimplification to suggest that blogs are multidirectional and podcasts are unidirectional. The notion of podcasts as a one-way medium is based on the the fact that they are recorded audio files to which listeners can only listen. But audiences can do more than just listen, and a blog post is, at the end of the day, nothing more than an archived bit of text that a blogger wrote and that readers read. The difference between them is based only on the sense (sound vs. sight) used to absorb the message, not in the audience’s ability to offer feedback to it.

Our listener who thanked us for including our audience in the conversation is exactly right, then. It’s not either-or; it’s just a matter of degrees. 

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Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Cingular HSDPA 3G data network

Cingular Bay Area 3G coverage

Cingular just announced 3G data access throughout the entire San Francisco Bay Area and 14 other metropolitan areas across the country. The new network uses HSDPA technology that currently supports average connection speed of 400-700Kbps but can technically support up to 10Mbps.

Merlin U730 wireless card

Cellular data networks allow you to be online in more places than you can find a public WiFi hotspot. You can even use it in your car or on the train to get some work done while commuting. These new cards support seamless handoff between cell towers and downgraded non-3G data connections. It's nice to know that no matter where you are you can easily get connected to the Internet even if it's not at the broadband speeds you are used to.

The data plans are a bit expensive at $60 for unlimited access but everyone I know that has a high speed card raves about it. It's the new geek bling.

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Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Carnival of the Vanities #168

Welcome to this week's edition of the Carnival of the Vanities and Denali Flavors, the blog of Moose Tracks ice cream. I was going to create some fancy, ice cream-related evaluation system for this carnival (like "vanilla" for the plain entries, triple chocolate for the great ones, etc.), but since people tend to get a bit upset when you evaluate their posts, I decided to stick with my original strategy of posting by day and time the post was received. Yes, here at Denali Flavors, the early bird gets the ice cream (and a top listing in this post).

Before I begin, here are a few comments about the posts below:

1. Everyone who submitted before the deadline got in. I'm more of a "the more the merrier" type of blogger, so if someone took the time to submit, I put them in.

2. If I got your submission after the deadline, you didn't make it in. Everyone had a whole week to submit their posts, so I feel no sympathy for the late comers.

3. I'm not a big believer in long-winded intros to posts. You came here to read what the submitters wrote, not what I did. In addition, I'm a believer in making sure the reader knows what a post is about. As such, my entries are short and to the point -- with their introductions taken from the posts themselves or from what the author emailed me. After all, who better to intro a piece than the author?

With that said, here we go!

Tuesday, November 29

6:01 pm -- Having the advantage of being our sister site, Free Money Finance, got his submission in one minute after the deadline for last week's Carnival and thus gets our coveted top spot.

Post: Where the Pros Stash Their Own Dough

Summary: "Want to invest like the pros? Well, this piece from Money can help you do so by giving you the secrets used by several investment pros when handling their own money."

11:37 pm -- Coming in with an honorable mention on timing is me-ander who was the only other entry in on the first day.

Post: The Right to Know

Summary: "Recently I wrote about the results of sperm donors and the dangers of secrecy. Now in The New York Times there's an op-ed by a woman who was adopted and suddenly needed family medical records. This can also happen to someone conceived as the result of donor sperm."

Wednesday, November 30

4:42 am -- Post: Menstruation: why is it so hard to say the word?

Summary: "Condoms", "anal sex", all sorts of previously banned terms are regularly bandied about by the mainstream media with scarcely a wince to be seen. Yet how often do you see the word "menstruation"? Nothing (necessarily) to do with the sexual act, so, you'd think, less likely to be taboo, but somehow it is still seen as something not to be mentioned in polite company, or "family newspapers".

12:54 pm -- Post: Will Americans Spend the Wealth Created by the Housing Bubble Boom?

Summary: "Many of our nation's home owners have been the recipient of a financial windfall. The question of the day is, 'What will Americans do with this new found wealth?' "

Thursday, December 1

3:30 am -- Post: The DNC's "Sounds of the Season"

Summary: "In an effort to raise funds for their diminishing coffers, the folks at the DNC have introduced a 'seasonal' recording featuring some of your favorite Jackasses and Moonbats singing some familiar (if somewhat altered) tunes, as well as one or two originals."

6:23 pm -- Post: Things I've Learned

Summary: "My father suffered a massive heart attack on November 15. He died, without regaining consciousness, on November 16. We buried him November 21. I've learned many things since then."

Friday, December 2

2:28 am -- Post: Hitler Reincarnated as an Arab

Summary: "A terrorist known in his hometown as "Hitler" – both for his physical resemblance to the German dictator and for his policies – has swept local primaries and will represent his district for the ruling Fatah party in upcoming Palestinian legislative elections, according to Palestinian sources."

8:52 am -- Post: Neil’s Hayek Lecture

Summary: "The EU is stuffed in the long run and the UK will be as well if it does not wake up and smell the realities of the world in which it lives."

9:02 am -- Post: Confessions of a Comment Whore

Summary: "I love comments, but sometimes it's hard to keep up. I reply to all my comments, but sometimes not for days. When I leave comments and go back to see if the blogger left a comment to my comment, I often get confused about whether I left a comment in the first place. Since I've started blogging, I have no life. Being a comment whore has ensured I never have one again."

9:10 am -- Post: 100 Years Old Today

Summary: "Today my Grandmother is 100 years old. Think of that - she has lived an entire century. 100 years. What an amazing thing. The world was a completely different place when Maybelle Barcelo was born."

10:17 am -- Post: John Bolton is Further Confirmation of Bush as the Best Appointer in History

Summary: "John Bolton is on fire at the UN. The "controversial" Bush appointee recently pushed through the first-ever condemnation of Hizballah for attacking Israel. Today brings news that he is the first reformer to attempt to scale back the UN's obsessive focus on Palestinians to the exclusion of all other refugees and to the exclusion of most other world problems as well. He is turning out to be a typically excellent appointee for the first MBA president. I believe history should judge Bush as the best president in terms of selecting subordinates."

10:18 am -- Post: Media Blackout of Lieberman and the Israel-Jew Equation

Summary: "The 3 major networks have blacked out the Lieberman op-ed in the WSJ discussed a few posts below. Given our nightly reports on anything done by the allegedly corrupt war-hero Murtha and the geopolitical genius Sheehan, shouldn't the former VP-candidate and senior senator from Connecticut get some national face time?"

11:57 am -- Post: U.S. Turkey Production

Summary: "What would any discussion of the Thanksgiving holiday be without the centerpiece of the celebration that it is built around: the turkey? In just looking at this one item in the period from 1989 through 2004, we can see the phenomenal growth of U.S. productivity – particularly in agriculture."

3:22 pm -- Post: Gripy Whiny Pissy People

Summary: "OK, I'll admit I forgot the prime rule of workplace survival... never volunteer for anything! Still, I've not yet managed to crush the last surviving specks of optimism and goodwill out of my soul yet, so when the request went out for people to plan and organize the departmental Holiday Feast at the last staff meeting, I was somewhat amazed to see my hand raise up in the air as if possessed...It seemed simple enough. Organize a sit-down meal for 35 people, find a caterer, get a quote, then collect the funds. On the appointed day of the event, sit back, let the caterer do the heavy lifting, give him/her a nice tip, then accept the laurel wreath of praise for a job well done! Heh. Yeah, right."

3:42 pm -- Post: Large Portfolios Benefit from Technology, Experts

Summary: "Today, my company, BentleyForbes announced that we’ve retained Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP to handle our national legal needs. Part of the growing pains of maintaining a national portfolio of high profile commercial real estate has been that we need the sage counsel of a large law firm like Pillsbury Winthrop that can deploy wherever we own properties."

9:21 pm -- Post: The Greenies and Their Beliefs

Summary: "Because environmental causes have been turned so adroitly by left-wing and activist demagogues as quasi-cults of government and animal worship, the single issue on which us libertarians tend to get lumped in with the lunatics in the right-wing is the environment. It makes me depressed that so many people smash real science together with plutocratic Christian lunacy, just because we disagree with them."

9:37 pm -- Post: Unspoken Assumptions in Denying Free Will

Summary: "The denial of moral responsibility in materialism is not restricted to the Christian worldview. Secular or religious, deniers often try to undercut free will as their starting point. In the latest assault on moral responsibility, so-called psychologists Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen argue that, because the brain determines everything we do, we are not responsible for our actions, and that the law should not be punitive but rather be consequentialist."

11:21 pm -- Post: Debunking The Fallacy of Index Funds

Summary: "It seems I can't hardly turn around in the investment world without a paean to Jack Bogle, who preaches the advantage of the index fund. Mr. Bogle's reasoning goes something like this: Looking at the world of mutual funds, relatively few funds beat the S&P 500 Index, so why not just buy the whole S&P Index? This is nothing short of the most successful sales pitch based upon a straw man argument in history."

Saturday, December 3

9:54 am -- Post: Show Us Your Papers

Summary: "The quintessential image of totalitarian societies is that of the police officer with the ability to stop any citizen on a street corner, at any time, for any reason, and demand to see 'their papers.' In the Soviet Union, that meant showing the passport you needed to carry with you at all times even if you were only traveling between Moscow and the thankfully now renamed city of Leningrad. In post 9/11 America, it sometimes seems as if we are moving closer to that kind of society, as this story out of Denver demonstrates."

10:54 am -- Post: Bruce Willis to Play Cindy Sheehan in Upcoming Film!

Summary: "What caught my eye originally was his raving about how Bruce Willis is planning on making a movie about the forgotten G.I. in Iraq. Apparently, Bruce is upset, downright furious at how we’ve forgotten about them."

1:19 pm -- Post: I Have A Plan!

Summary: "If I’m reading this correctly, Kerry is saying he and his party are not seeking an artificial date for withdrawal so long as the withdrawal begins before Christmas. I’ve got to say that’s even worse than 'I voted for it, before I voted against it'."

1:38 pm -- Post: Objective?

Summary: "A big complaint by Americans exposed to Israeli journalism is its lack of objectivity. There's no fine line and not even a fuzzy one in Israeli news reports, whether print, radio or television, between fact and opinion. It's blatant editorializing, propaganda."

4:12 pm -- Post: Personality and Objectivity

Summary: "A criticism of Wikipedia, not because anyone can edit it, but because its staff buys into the myth of objectivity.  This results in stale articles with an abundance of uncontextualized information."

9:43 pm -- Post: Not Just Another Pretty Snowflake

Summary: "This is a profile of a local artist who creates snowflake designs. From a distance, it looks like just another pretty snowflake, but if you take a closer look, it's actually six angels rising from the center. Les Barker's work is often like that. It's ideal for a lobby or waiting room. When you're just passing through, you get a vaguely pleasant feeling from the pretty pictures. But if you have some time to spend, there are serious details to appreciate."

Sunday, December 4

1:40 am -- Post: Bloggers are Readers: Blooks are Us

Summary: "Discusses the relationship between bloggers and books, both as authors and as buyers."

1:41 am -- Post: Elijah and Mike Episode 1

Summary: "This is the first of what I hope will be many comic strips written by Barb Gigamaster and her friend J.D."

7:52 am -- Post: I Really Could have Lived without Knowing This

Summary: "Susan and I spoil Judge and Salem. Given the amount of money we spend on dog toys, we ought to be on some company’s Christmas card list. After much searching, we found something that the dogs love. I just wasn’t prepared for what it is that they’re actually chewing on…yes, that’s right, y’all; freeze-dried bull penises."

1:06 pm -- Post: Global Language Monitor Watches Political Correctness

Summary: "The language police at Global Language Monitor have named the Top Politically (in)Correct Words for 2005."

1:08 pm -- Post: The Alternative Minimum Tax: Be Afraid, VERY Afraid

Summary: "Do House Republicans harbor some sort of deep rage against moderately affluent families with lots of children? Mind you, the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) has been around for some time, but Andrews is referring here to changes to the tax law that overwhelmingly favor the rich and essentially stick it to the non-rich, which in this case includes not only the poor but those who on the whole are doing alright for themselves without being necessarily 'rich'. The current tax bill extends Bush's tax cuts for dividend income and capital gains, but does nothing to change the AMT, which is beginning to reach into the pockets of the not so rich, something it was NEVER intended to do."

9:29 pm -- Post: No Nuclear Taboo for Terrorists

Summary: "This article was written by my friend and DSS classmate Kip Holdridge, and is an excellent rebuttle of the idea of nuclear deterrence with rogue states and terrorists."

Monday, December 5

3:06 am -- Post: Keep It Simple, Stupid

Summary: "Suddenly everyone thinks the United States needs comprehensive immigration reform. The Bush Administration, the New York Times, Tamar Jacoby, Tom Tancredo, Ted Kennedy, the National Council of La Raza, Jim Gilchrist and Mexican President Vicente Fox all agree. Of course, among that group there’s substantial disagreement about what the comprehensive reforms ought to be."

9:33 am -- Post: Condoleezza Rice Supports Internet Grassroots Activities

Summary: "Microsoft finds Internet grassroots activities somewhat threatening but the US Secretary of State seems to feel they're a very good thing."

11:52 am -- Post: How Islam Treats the Dead

Summary: "The act of leaving Islam is called ridda. The one who does so is called a murtad. Let's take a look at three inter-connected Islamic institutions that systematically unravel the life of a murtad."

1:16 pm -- Post: Pity the Monsters! - The Monstrous in the Law - A Proposal for a Utopian Essay

Summary: "This is a the first in a series of posts that proposes an essay or book on how the law makes monsters out of the image of justice."

2:05 pm -- Post: Winning Against Big R&D Spenders

Summary: "Are you the owner or manager of a company that competes with larger companies fielding R&D budgets that are at least 10 times bigger than your best ever revenue attainment? Do you find yourself awake late at night obsessing about taking your company to the next level of growth against these bigger companies? Have no fear...there's good news."

2:54 pm -- Post: A Consequence of Giving Schools too Much Power

Summary: "A New Jersey high school student got suspended for something she wrote on her MySpace page -- outside of school, not on school time, not on school property.  Shouldn't it be up to the parents to decide what to do, not the principal?"

4:55 pm -- Post: One More Way to Mainpulate Your Blog Traffic

Summary: "There are a variety of new and automated ways you can get referrer links and the associated traffic. It seems like an 'artificial' way to generate traffic...not that there's anything wrong with that!"

5:03 pm -- Post: I'm back from New Jersey, God's Country

Summary: "Driving back from NJ is incredibly boring. From Exit 8 of the Turnpike to the end there is nothing but monotonous, humdrum landscape. I'm not talking oil refineries here. They are comparatively interesting. No, no, this is scenery designed to calm the mind of the most crazed motorist and lull him to sleep. Not that it works, they are still crazy."

8:37 pm -- Post: Top 9 Other Saddam Prison Complaints

Summary: "Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein complained to the judge during the second session of his trial on Monday that he had to walk up four flights of stairs because of a broken elevator in the courthouse. We here at TNOYF know how frustrating that can be. We are also worried that Mr. Hussein is not getting a fair chance to have his cares heard. With that in mind, our Senior Middle Eastern Correspondent was able to acquire a list of Mr. Hussein's concerns. Hopefully this will shed a little light on the other horrors that are being perpetrated behind closed doors."

9:41 pm -- Post: Druids, Pagans Protest Naming of Christmas Tree

Summary: "A group of pagans have appeared in front of Rideau Hall to protest the naming of a tree. 'In ancient Celtic practice, the evergreen tree is a symbol of rebirth, and should not be connected with a Christian religious holiday,' Lugh Fripwhipple, spokesperson for the Gargantuan Organization Devoted to Lovers of Earth, Spirits and Society (GODLESS) told The Skwib."

11:33 pm -- Post: Evil and Treason

Summary: "Just in case there was ever any question, there are evil people in the world.  They choose to be evil for ther own reasons, and I therefore cannot excuse them for 'difficult childhoods' or any other such folderol.  The vast majority of people who grow up under deplorable circumstances choose, rather, to overcome the temptation to turn evil.  I'm not saying it's easy—I am saying it's possible, even the normal thing to do.  It certainly is the civilized thing."

11:57 pm -- Post: Who Really Wrote the Harry Potter books?

Summary: "It took a few obscuring centuries from the time of Shakespeare's death before cranks could even hope to convince people that the Earl of Oxford really wrote his plays. But here in the Oliver Stone Age, a Norwegian film director has already come up with a theory that the Harry Potter books weren't actually written by JK Rowling -- that Rowling is just an actress playing a part devised by a publishing house, like the fictitious Carolyn Keene on the cover of every Nancy Drew book, a series actually written by a variety of hands."

Tuesday, December 6

1:36 am -- Post: Leftist Historians Skewered Again

Summary: "Leftist historians caught lying in Australia."

1:41 am -- Post: Irish Nun Cleared of Rape

Summary: "Former nun Nora Wall, who was wrongfully convicted of raping a 10-year old girl, was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday certified that there had been a miscarriage of justice in the case of Ms Wall, formerly Sr Dominic, who was sentenced to life imprisonment six years ago."

3:55 am -- Post: The Blogging Epic, Part One

Summary: "In this post I take on my anti-blogger, Russ, in a full-fledged fisking that covers gay marriage, abortion, whether the religious right could change America into a theocracy, whether there's a living Constitution, etc. However, its all in bite sized chunks, so you can read one piece and come back for more later."

8:05 am -- Post: Fight Terrorism — Meditate

Summary: "If we all meditate real hard, then we can get the evil Islamofascist terrorists to see the error of their ways and go back to herding goats or harvesting dates or working in the international IT industry."

1:09 pm -- Post: New Form of Business Enterprise

Summary: "Thoughts on starting a small business in Sweden."

1:22 pm -- Post: Azeri Elections

Summary: "A dispatch from our friend Mr. Democracy!  Concerning the poor prospects for an 'Orange Revolution' in Azerbaijan."

2:29 pm -- Post: How Islam Treats the Dead

Summary: "This is the second of a four part series about the difficulties faced in reforming Islam."

4:55 pm -- Post: A Dubious Execution...

Summary: "There have been many opinions published regarding the use of the death penalty in the United States. Passionate condemnations, and just as passionate supporting statements have been made, and both sides have their merits. This week, with the knowledge that the 1000th execution since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 has occurred, I will keep my opinion to myself, and present only facts regarding the methods used for injection, along with a list of executions that did not go off according to plan."

6:39 pm -- (LATE! LATE! But I'm cutting her a break! Suggestion: Maybe a post on "the value of being on time" -- or how to tell time -- would be suitable for Mensa Barbie) Post: Pyroclastic Avalanche

Summary: "Ever evolving land changes continue to remind us of the power and majesty of nature, and how infinitesimal we are within her scope."

6:44 pm -- (LATE #2!!! This is the LAST ONE!!!!) Post: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Summary: "Today and for the next few days, we are setting the guidelines and planning the details of the first significant company-wide layoff in some years. There is much at stake, starting with our principles." (Suggestion: In the midst of the firings, please hire someone who can read a clock.)

Ok, so I was a bit harsh on those last two. But I did include them. ;-)

That's it! Thanks for visiting Denali Flavors!

Posted in Denali Flavors on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Venezuela Open Source

By nat

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Bruno Souza and other Brazilian activists, the great work going on in Brazil has been widely talked about. I hadn't heard anything about Venezuelan open source, though, until Jeff Zucker dropped me a line. He'd just returned from a conference there and was blown away by the magnitude of the whole country's focus on free and open source projects. Jeff has kindly written a Radar guest blog entry about what he'd seen and why it should be on your radar. --Nat

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

iTMS has Monk! Oh, and Battlestar Galactica too

By rael The iTunes Music Store has added NBC, USA, and SciFi shows to their TV lineup... Anyone have a hack to control my iMac with my (soon to be repurposed) TiVo remote?...

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Submit site feeds to Yahoo! Search

Yahoo! Search allows any user to submit a list of pages for submission in Yahoo!'s search index. You may submit site feeds to Yahoo! formatted as RSS 0.9, 1.0, or 2.0, Atom 0.3, or a text file with one URL per line.

You can automate the process if you would like with just a few simple steps.

  • Start with the base URL of http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request?pass=1&class=1. Parameters pass and class are required.
  • Add a url parameter, setting the value to the URL-encoded location of your feed. Example: http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Ffeed.xml
  • Submit via HTTP post.

Sending a ping to blo.gs might eventually accomplish the same thing but until then you can be sure your content is available in Yahoo! Search results as soon as possible by sending a ping with each content change.

Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Five Blog Reading Hacks

In continuing my hacks package, here are my five favorite blog reading hacks! (I couldn't come up with 10 for this one - go easy on me.) You can collect all five collector's edition cups in my hacks series at a Burger King near you: RSS, Technorati, Wikipedia, blogging and Bloglines.

1) Build Your Own Blog Category Feeds
Bloggers don't have hard edges. Some bloggers blog about their cats, others write about world affairs and some blog about their cats AND world affairs. So what if you just want to follow what a blogger is saying in one of his/her categories. Are you stuck? Uh, no. I told you this post is about hacks, right? For many bloggers you can build your own custom RSS feed that will stream only what a blogger posts on certain topics.

This works on all blogs powered by Wordpress or Moveable Type, including TypePad weblogs. Using IceRocket, construct an advanced search as follows - tag:“[blog category]” author:“[blogger's name]”. Each of these persistent searches generates its own RSS feed, accessible on the right hand side of the IceRocket results page. Here are some examples.

All posts by BL Ochman about Alternative Marketing (RSS)

Picture 1-36

All posts by Joseph Jaffe categorized under “Creativity” (RSS)

Picture 2-19

All (Howard Stern-free) posts by Jeff Jarvis tagged newspapers (RSS)

Picture 1-37

Special thanks to Mark Cuban for teaching me about this hidden IceRocket feature (He's not a billionaire for nothing you know).

2) Highlight All Words on a Blog Site with a Single Click
Let's say you want to find all mentions of the word hacks on a blog page you're viewing. Well, if you drag this link to your bookmarks folder and then click it a prompt will come up. Type in the word you're searching for and hit enter. They will all get highlighted. I tested this on Firefox but not IE so I don't know if it works in all browsers.

Picture 2-20

3) Talk a Walk Down Blogosphere Memory Lane
The blogosphere may feel new for most of us, but really it's not. It's been a force for awhile now. Even a couple of years ago then there were so-called “A-listers.” There was also an emerging upstart called Technorati tracking them. Thankfully, it's not too late to take a walk down blog memory lane. Using the Internet Archive, I have unearthed for you the top 100 blogs wayyyy back in 2002 and in 2003. My how the list has changed! The fun doesn't stop there, however. Add this bookmarklet to your browser toolbar. Click it when you're on a blog and you can surf like it was 1999! It's Macarena time!

Picture 3-8

4) Size Up a Blogger's Footprint
So you stumbled upon a blog in Google. Congratulations. Now say you want to know just how “important” the Web thinks he/she is. There are two ways t do this. Be forewarned that some think these methods are dubious. Where I think they can be helpful is in sizing up two blogs in the same category.

The first method involves using the Google Toolbar. When you install the toolbar it gives you the option to turn on a button that gives an indication of a blog site's Google PageRank. PageRank is the importance Google assigns to a page. It runs on a scale from one to 10. Note the green bar in the toolbar when you're on different blogs. For example, you can see below how Dave Winer's site has a PageRank of eight, while my site ranks a seven. Now you know who's Daddy (as if you didn't already!).

Davewinerpagerank

Stevepagerank

The second method involves using Alexa data. Again, take this with a grain of salt but use the tool to size up two different sites for relative girth. Drag this bookmarklet to your bookmark toolbar. The next time you're on a blog site, click it and you will be redirected his/her Alexa profile. More information is available here.

5) Elevator Up
Sometimes you get so buried in a site, you lose your way. That's certainly true with blogs. What I suggest is that you add this bookmarklet to your browser bookmarks toolbar. The next time you get immersed in a blog, click it and you will go up one level in the site's directory. For example, click one will take you from http://www.acrossthesound.net/2005/11/giving_thanks_t.html to http://www.acrossthesound.net/2005/11 (all posts for November). Click it again and you're at http://www.acrossthesound.net/2005/ (all posts for 2005), etc.

Special thanks to Karlheinz Dobler for some of these awesome bookmarklets.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-07

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/06/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 7, 2005

Breathe

My new Powerbook and a growing love affair with widgets.

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

tagging on the rocks?

In How Tagging Could Gain Ground, Philipp Keller laments a lack of "new, visionary, inventive articles on tags."

Keller argues that he's missing a "middle-distance" view of information, somewhere between folksonomic free-for-all of tags and the hieratic temple of DMOZ. His graph puts Google at the far-left, on the assumption that the search engine rewards recognition rather than novelty searches:

I have a few resopnses to this argument:

First, I think the results of Keller's quick survey of Google vs. Del.icio.us (using the search term cryptography) aren't representative. Del's audience skews heavily geekward, so it feels natural that links about math, technology and secrecy would be represented well. Picking another topic out of a hat, the results aren't so clean-cut. Google's results for organic farming lie at about the same level of generality as its results about cryptography. There are a lot of them, many fairly basic. Narrowing searches by adding terms (e.g. politics, how-to) helps squeeze the volume down a bit. Meanwhile, Del returns just 10 links, total. Hope they're good. Conversely, the quality of results for terms like web or blog in Del.icio.us is also generic and fairly undifferentiated. Google maintains a middle-distance from the user in more situations, while Del.icio.us swings wildly based on the composition of its user base.

Second, I'm losing faith in the potential for staying informed from tagged web content alone. I've been subscribed to several Del tag searches via RSS (e.g. attention, maps, infographics), and today I unsubscribed from the last of them. The data was far too general: I was either getting a very slow trickle of information, or a torrent. Attention in particular picked up sharply from fewer than a half-dozen items per day a few months ago, and accounted for a substantial percentage of my RSS volume. Many of these items were repeats or pointers to the Attention gang's own writings. Interesting, but I get this stuff via other channels, and wasn't learning enough new stuff.

Third, I think these two points show that a social bookmarky whatchamacallit like Del.icio.us has a population sweet spot. The quality of the links was highest when the system was populated by hardcore early adopters, and dropped when middle of the bell curve moved in. In particular, the quality drop was characterized by echoes and repetitiveness. I would argue that Folksonomy Helps Me Stay Informed On a Given Topic best when the diversity of a given tag/user/resource population is high and the headcount low.

Fourth, Keller is seriously on-target when he says that the "missing in-between view can be won by analyzing tags" - his love cluster example is like a textbook example of aspects in linguistics, showing the nuances of social meaning in a term as general as love. I expect that Del.icio.us could do something like this too, but the API terms are too limiting for external experimentation, and the math is hairy. If anyone had the gall to do this on a large scale, it'd be Google - they're already treating link text as a de-facto tag on a page, so they're arguably the oldest tagging outfit on the block.

In general, I don't think that tags as a concept are sliding into irrelevance, as Keller seems to suggest. I think the bigger picture is that tags are (currently) one kind of intentional choice that can be expressed digitally. There are other such choices that may aid in search, and I imagine they won't be called "tags". There is also the approaching time when tags stop being reflective of human choices, as automated others-tagged-this-with schemes become prominent, and spammers decide that Del.icio.us Popular is a good place to be.

Posted in tecznotes on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

VC Cliche of the Week

Less and less is secret in the world we live in today.  Certainly in the technology business it is hard to keep something under wraps for long.  There is just too much liquidity of information flow that goes on.

But most companies still believe that their core assets, their business strategy, their technology architecture, their key people, their customer list, etc is valuable and should not be made public.  And so it isn't.

But every once in a while, an opportunity comes along that requires that the company provide someone (an investor, a potential hire, a potential merger partner, a potential acquirer, etc) a look inside the company.  The cliche I like to use to describe that process is opening the kimono.

I honestly don't know where I got this phrase and when I started using it, but I've used it for a long time now.  Clearly there's a sexual/sexist origin to this phrase and one would think it originated in Japan.

The Microsoft Lexicon says the following about it:

Open The Kimono: A marvelous phrase of non-Microsoft origin, probably stemming from the rash of Japanese acquisitions of American enterprises in the ‘80s, that has been adopted into the Microspeak marketing lexicon. Basically a somewhat sexist synonym for "open the books," it means to reveal the inner workings of a project or company to a prospective new partner.

It's so funny to read that coming from one of the all-time most famous kimono openers.

I was in Chicago last week and stopped by to see my friends at Feedburner and happened to use this phrase in that meeting.  Dick Costolo told me that I owed him $1 because that phrase had been so overused by a former colleague that payment of $1 was now required by anyone who uttered it. 

I didn't pay him the $1 but we all agreed that it is a really good and descriptive cliche.

Entrepreneurs open the kimono when they talk to VCs and must be careful about that.  VCs are, by nature, opportunitic investors who like the see the entire market when they invest.  So they will want to meet with everyone working in a particular market space before they make an investment.  We do that at Union Square Ventures to the degree that we can, and we make our approach very clear to everyone who walks in the door.  We also have a reputation to protect so we are careful what we do with that information.  We use it to inform our investment decisions, but we don't share it outside of our firm.  It doesn't take too many situations of information leak to sully a firm's reputation.

There are times in business when you must open the kimono. But just be sure you know what you are getting into when you do that. There are companies out there, such as Microsoft and Google, who love to get you to open your kimono but also have reputations for one night stands.

Posted in A VC on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Country Honk

The WSJ today has a story on the HD Radio Alliance that I posted about yesterday (no link love for the WSJ unless they free their content).

In the story it says:

Mr. Field (CEO of Entercom) said the industry group will roll out a substantial number of new stations to fill in gaps in existing offerings in each radio market. For example, he says New York City will get a country music station, which it currently lacks. There and in other cities, radio companies will offer stations devoted entirely to niches such as reggae, blues and comedy. The group plans to announce specific plans early next year.

I don't love country music, but I am sure there are literally tens of thousands of New Yorkers who do.  HD is bringing the music they love to the free airwaves.  Nice.

Posted in A VC on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Backchannel is back

Backchannels, assholes, and the ultimate attention getter. The Burningbird method to ensure people pay attention during your conference session.

Linked in this story:

backchannels
Ben Metcalf
transcript of the backchannel
Tara Rogue
Elisa from WorkerBees
view on backchannel
Mena Trott

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Backchannel is back

Backchannels, assholes, and the ultimate attention getter. The Burningbird method to ensure people pay attention during your conference session.

Linked in this story:

backchannels
Ben Metcalf
transcript of the backchannel
Tara Rogue
Elisa from WorkerBees
view on backchannel
Mena Trott
Les blogs

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Backchannel is back

Backchannels, assholes, and the ultimate attention getter. The Burningbird method to ensure people pay attention during your conference session. Even works in web 2.0 conferences.

Linked in this story:

backchannels
Ben Metcalf
transcript of the backchannel
Tara Rogue
Elisa from WorkerBees
view on backchannel
Mena Trott
Les blogs

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Cymfony Nails Nail

Cymfony, a company that mines blogs and the MSM for PR professionals, has hired Forrester's Jim Nail as its first chief marketing and strategy officer. Congrats to Jim. There's a lot of attention paid to the free blog search sites, but don't overlook a dogfight heating up on the high-end as well between the vendors who provide paid services. This group includes Intelliseek, Buzzmetrics and Cymfony.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Neutrogena wouldn’t do that

Riding the clueless train.

Linked in this story:

What do geeks do in paris
L'Oreal

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Pedia Pother

I expect over time the podcasting history section will gradually grow, though I hope it doesn't end up peppered with the same names repeated over and over. Seeing that happen again would be like golf--it might be fun to do, but sucks to watch.

Linked in this story:

initial development section
suggestion
Scott

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Squidoo Goes Live

Squidoo_2 My friends Seth and Tommy have been working on this project for at least six months.

I've watched them at work and have given them my feedback along the way.

And now I can blog about it.  Because Squidoo went live for the public today.

I built two lenses a while back.  They need work, but here they are.  I hope you like them.

My Venture Capital Lens

My Music Lens

If you are an expert about something, care about something, make money at something, go build a lens about it and let me know about it.

Posted in A VC on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

More Congrats

A priestly anniversary, bubbles, and protected sex

Linked in this story:

blogging strategist
priest for nineteen years
priest for nineteen years
writing about soup
Stavros the Wonderchicken
BubbleShare
priest for nineteen years
priest for nineteen years

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

More Congrats

A priestly anniversary, bubbles, and protected sex

Linked in this story:

blogging strategist
priest for nineteen years
Stavros the Wonderchicken
BubbleShare

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

About.com switches from MT to WordPress

Matt Mullenweg just posted the news that About.com is switching all of its sites from Movable Type to WordPress. About.com is owned by The New York Times and has the largest public-facing blog installation of any company I know. Pretty big news for WordPress as they add another big name media site to their list.

Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Another city, another slam at PR

Here we go...the third incident I’ve reported recently in which a local entity has come under fire for the egregious sin of investing in public relations. This time, the culprit is Springfield, Massachusetts, where the Finance Control Board spent $10,000 to contract with one Paul J. Robbins to “chip away at the city’s image as a dangerous place,” according to a report in the Springfield Republican.  Outraged by the expense were City Councilor Rosemarie Mazza Moriarty and the police patrolman’s union.

A better use of the money would have been to pay overtime for a police officer or a civilian dispatcher, Councilor Rosemarie Mazza Moriarty said Friday. “To be able to hire a ‘public relations’ employee to spin the bad news is absolutely ludicrous,” Mazza Moriarty said.

I doubt the engagement includes a requirement to “spin” anything; instead, reference to the PR perjorative is Moriarty’s own spin. (WWLP, the NBC affiliate in Springfield, had a different take on the arrangement.) But again, the situation symbolizes the PR profession’s image problem when the natural reaction to such a hire is that the city simply wants to spin situations rather than actually address them.  Are the professional associations that represent the profession paying attention to these incidents?

< ?php include("http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/rss_comments/1001/"); ?>

Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Gawker Launches Blog for Disgruntled Customers

Look out retailers, Gawker Media has launched a new blog called The Consumerist that tracks “the delinquencies of retail and service organizations.” Every retailer in America should be reading this blog. My question is who will want to advertise on it?

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Time Off

Still, many of my code examples, tutorials, and writings do need to be updated, or at least, wrapped in lime green and sky blue curvy cornered goodness so they look new (not to mention marking them as ‘beta’ to them so that people will know they’re supposed to use them for production work; stamping them ‘web 2.0′ so that folks know they’re supposed to get horny at first glimpse)

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Time Off

Still, many of my code examples, tutorials, and writings do need to be updated, or at least, wrapped in lime green and sky blue curvy cornered goodness so they look new (not to mention marking them as ‘beta’ so that people will know they’re supposed to use them for production work; stamping them web 2.0 also helps folks know they’re supposed to get horny at first glimpse)

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Time Off

Someone had described my cross-browser DHTML objects recently as old code that bends over backwards to be compatible with old crusty browsers..., when compared with up-to-date and well maintained modern libraries. I found it odd that objects that have managed not to break for six years of DHTML generations are 'bad' where new ones, barely [...]

Posted in Burningbird on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Squidoo Opens Public Beta

Squidoo is now open to the public in an open beta program. This is the brainchild of Seth Godin. Squidoo is like a blog. It's an online platform that makes it easy for anyone to build and share lenses on topics they are passionate about and establish thought leadership. You can explore lenses here. For example, this is a sample lens that Lynn Sherr of 20/20 built during the private beta. Every lens carries Adsense ads that are shared with the individual publishers and charities.

I really don't see what the big deal is about this product. I tried it during the private beta and found it very confusing. I recommend having your own blog instead - at least for now. If the Squidoo network grows and becomes important then I might change my position.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Ruby Book Sales Surpass Python

By tim I was just looking at our BookScan data mart to update a reporter on Java vs. C# adoption. (The answer to his query: in the last twelve weeks, Java book sales are off 4% vs. the same period last year, while C# book sales are up 16%.) While I was looking at the data, though, I noticed something perhaps more newsworthy: in the same period, Ruby book sales surpassed Python book sales for the first time. Python is up 20% vs. the same period last year, but Ruby is up 1552%! (Perl is down 3%.) Perl is still the most commonly used of the three languages, at least according to book sales, but Python and now Ruby are narrowing the gap.

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

ETel: You Talk, We Listen

By nat

It turns out that closing the Emerging Telephony (ETel) early registration period in the first week of December isn't a good idea--a lot of you wrote in and said "but we'll have money in January from the new year's budget!" Never let it be said that we're deaf to your pleas--we've pushed the end of early registration back to January 9th. O'Reilly: You Talk, We Listen. (The exact opposite of Bill O'Reilly, in fact--heh heh).

I've also made a commando-style mission to the North Pole, infiltrated Santa's sleigh, and come back with a 40% ETel discount for you (yes, Virginia, 40% discounts do exist!). Register with the code etel06fnf and soak up the early Christmas present bliss. Batteries not included, not suitable for small children or voice recognition experts with irritable vowel syndrome.

We're still packing in the content so you'll come away not just saying "wow, I didn't know you could do that!" but also "I can't wait to add that to my app!". Some recent additions to the ETel program: YackPack (web app sensibilities with a voice component), Voxeo (IVR systems vendors with an eye on the small developer), and LiPs forum (Linux phone standards). Enjoy!

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

JotSpot Tracker Puts Excel on the Web

JotSpot just hatched a new service called JotSpot Tracker that puts Excel spreadsheets on the Web for sharing with just a copy and a paste. Combine this baby with JotLive or Writely and not only are you this close from being liberated from Microsoft Office, but you gain very powerful collaboration features as well.

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Study: 'Dell Hell' Had a Measurable Impact on the Dell Brand

A new white paper unleashed today by Response Source revealed that that blogging has a direct influence on corporate reputation. The white paper (PDF), ‘Measuring the Influence of Bloggers on Corporate Reputation’ scientifically measured Jeff Jarvis’s criticism this summer of Dell. It found that the rants Jeff started had a lasting, negative impact on Dell's brand.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

NY Times Ed. Says Blogs Are Just Technology

Jon Dube says The New York Times is launching several blogs as part of its new Red Carpet entertainment awards site and, in that context, Deputy Managing Editor Jonathan Landman sent a memo to the staff about the paper's approach to blogging. “A blog is nothing more than a piece of technology... We’ll use the technology our way.”

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

A Camera That Has It All? Well, Almost

By marc Here's a wish for the holiday season: that the Sony DRM rootkit story drives away exactly the same early adopter consumers who might otherwise be excited by this camera. Come on, alpha geeks, punish the companies that dump toxic code...

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

HBO Adds Podcasts, Including Bill Maher

HBO has added a bunch of audio podcasts to iTunes including Rome, snippets of Curb Your Enthusiasm and full episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher! (All links require iTunes. The podcasts are not on the HBO site right now.)

Picture 1-38

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-08

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Across the Sound Podcast #12

A special show dedicated to your feedback and questions!
Length: 1:03:50

Download the mp3 (or click the play icon)

Show notes:
* Steve ribs Joe over the music in his podcast
* Debbie Weil's email feedback
* Jeremy Hague on Waxmail buttons
* Tucker Smith says we should change the name of our show
* David Jones turns into a mini celebrity
* Alex Wunschel's podcast survey
* Sallie Goetsch's comment on the bit rate of our podcast
* Piers Fawkes comment on the iPod video
* Joe impersonates Nelson Mandella * Bert Van Wassenhove on "getting a public", ipods, how the MSM uses new marketing
* David Wang on one band's use of PostSecret in their video * Stephen Verveen from Accenture in the Netherlands on how they blog

Next week's theme: Going the Distance

References: American Copywriter, Manager Tools, M-Show, The Google Story, Philip Lenssen, Jeremy Wright, Shel Holtz, Sqoop, Montage a Google, simplicity article in Fast Company, 37 Signals, Virtual Reach, Greg Galant, RadioTail, Podsafe Music Network, Rob Costlow, Lascivious Biddies.

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/07/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 8, 2005

A Review of "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks With Geeks"

By marc

This afternoon, I wound up more fried from project-switching than I'd been in a while, so I sat down with Aardvark'd:12 Weeks With Geeks, which arrived in my mailbox this week. A documentary about a group of interns developing Copilot, a new software product, at New York's Fog Creek Software -- would that be like watching paint dry? or Revenge of the Nerds V? or Apollo 13 Takes Manhattan? or Deliverance II: The Golden Master? Just the sort of question I was equipped to answer today.

The film is definitely more interesting in concept than actuality -- any one of the essays from Fog Creek CEO Joel Spolsky's blog, Joel On Software, will tell you more about software development, or Joel or Fog Creek, than the movie will. (In fact, Joel's relative distance is one of the film's biggest faults, since he is the most engaging interviewee in it. Maybe, as the company financed the movie, this was a deliberate choice, a sort of modesty, or a desire to make a movie more about the interns than him, but I wound up wishing for more.) As a result, the film isn't really for fans of Joel On Software and its author's point of view on development. The opening title sequence shows views of New York reminiscent of or directly mirroring Joel's photography, which he often uses on his blog, but you don't hear about photography as an interest of his, or for that matter anyone else's interests outside of work. While I'm sure Joel had the interns coding on a whiteboard during their interviews, we don't see that, nor any of the other Joel On Software tactics that might make this software project different from other software projects. The topic isn't discussed, but it's interesting to see Joel's "bionic office" in everyday use (though the stars of the film, the interns, apparently don't rate private offices). You get some good hints and clues about what makes software development interesting, though, and a few of the sequences are either directly engaging as documentary or useful as engineering practice.

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

subverted links

Posted in incorporated subversion - social software, online education and james farmer on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Some Lens Love

I posted about Squidoo yesterday and asked the readers to go create some lenses and send me links to what they built.

Thankfully a few people did just that.  And I'd like to highlight four that showcase the power of Squidoo.

Fabulous Shopping - This is simply an amazing resource for online shopping from a woman's perspective.  Well done Gina!

Boulder Dining - I've got this one saved for the next time I go to Boulder on business.  Thanks Neil!

Microfinance - I give all the money I make on this blog to the Grameen Foundation, a leader in the emerging microfinance effort. This lens tells you a lot about this important category of for profit philanthropy. Thanks Ken!

Wakeboarding - Jessica can do this but I can't. Thanks Pat!

Go check these lenses out, and talk them up. That will raise their lens rank and get them on the Top 100 (where I've got two lenses this morning!).

And if you find some good lenses you want to remember, post them to delicious and use the lens tag.  Here is my lens tag on delicious right now.

Posted in A VC on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Paranoia

Matt Blumberg (who is CEO of one of Flatiron's portfolio companies Return Path) has been doing a counter cliche post to most of my cliche posts.  They are very good.

Yesterday's counter cliche post was about paranoia (in response to mine on opening the kimono).

Matt subscribes to the most famous quote on paranoia, Andy Grove's "only the paranoid survive" but he also talks about the limits of this approach.  Here are his four recommendations regarding paranoia:

1. Being "open book" with employees is essential.  Your people need to know where the business stands and how their efforts are contributing to the whole.  More important, they need to know that you trust them. 

2. Using some key metrics to promote your company can be very helpful.  I challenge you to show me a marketing person who doesn't want to brag about how big you are, how many customers you have, what market share you have.

3. There's no reason to worry about Venture Capitalists.  Sure, they can fund a competitor, but they'll do that without knowing exactly how much revenue you have, how quickly.  The good ones are good at sniffing out market opporunities ahead of time.  The bad ones, you care about less anyway.

4. All that said, you can never be paranoid enough about the competition.  Assume they're all out to get you at every turn, that they're smarter, richer, quicker, and better looking than you are. Live in fear of them eating your lunch.

Nice post Matt.

Posted in A VC on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

PixPulse

Here's a new moblogging site I just spotted in my del.icio.us inbox. It's called PixPulse. It's similar to Flickr except that it caters to sharing information person-to-person via mobile phones. You can upload photos, videos and blogs from your camera phone, tag them and then stream these via an SMS to your friend’s mobile devices if they opt in.

Picture 1-39

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Hire Him, Google

Someone is trying to increase his chances of ever getting hired by Google by blogging about them and writing small apps that utilize their API. His URL: HireMeGoogle.com. Clever!

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Gmail Adds RSS 'Web Clips' to All Accounts

Gmail has added a mini RSS reader to all Gmail accounts. It was previously in a limited beta. I am going to use it for my five most important feeds - once it's in my account. For some reason, it's not in the settings panel yet. Speaking of RSS, hey Google, can we get a feed for this page please now that we have a place to put them in Gmail? (Via Googling Google)

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

First Snow

We're having our first snow of the season today. The level is already at 2 inches and could reach 4. We won't get what the Northest is expecting to get tomorrow, but I like levels of snow that dust your toes, rather than dust your nose. The first snow of the year always cheers me [...]

Linked in this story:

Major snowstorm expected

f='http://weblog.burningbird.net/photo.php?postid=2787'>Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

First Snow

Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow!

Linked in this story:

Major snowstorm expected

f='http://weblog.burningbird.net/photo.php?postid=2787'>Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

MAKEbot Launched

By nat

The crew at MAKE just launched MAKEbot, an AIM bot that can send you new stories and search the MAKE archives. I love the idea of an alternative conduit for RSS-style updates of blog content, and the real-time nature of IM gives this an added "hot off the presses" feel. And it works on phones! Way to go, Phil and Sergio!

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Bear Storm Aggregates Bloggers

Picture 1-40

Bear Storm is another in an emerging group of sites that aggregate blog commentary into some sort of a zeitgeist. The site - most of which is open to paid subscribers only - aggregates 116 of “the best news and opinion writers in the world.” I'm not sure why just 116, but ok, I'll go along with that. If you subscribe you gain additional benefits, including a personalized reading experience and access to tags and search.

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Slingshot

Slingshot: A Y-shaped stick having an elastic strap attached to the prongs, used for flinging small stones.

Linked in this story:

concensus
comments
Dave Rogers
Ian Forrester
Liz Lawley
Blog Herald
Don Park
slingshot
Salvor Videoblogging
one of the keynote speakers sleeping
video here
backchannel
Marc Canter's reactions
Wood s lot

Posted in Burningbird on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Slingshot

Slingshot: A Y-shaped stick having an elastic strap attached to the prongs, used for flinging small stones.

Linked in this story:

concensus
comments
Dave Rogers
Ian Forrester
Liz Lawley
Blog Herald
Don Park
slingshot
Salvor Videoblogging
one of the keynote speakers sleeping
video here
backchannel
Marc Canter's reactions
Wood s lot
Mena Trott's

Posted in Burningbird on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Jots - Another Social Bookmarking Site

There are lots of goodies in my refer log today. Just as I was uploading my last post on Bear Storm, I saw a link from Jots - yet another social bookmarking site. Like del.icio.us, you can use it to upload and tag links either for yourself or to share. Programmers might be interested to know that they have an API too.

Ok, so now as we have our dozenth social bookmarking site - or something like that. There's Spurl, Furl, Simpy, BlinkList, Connotea, My Web 2.0, de.lirio.us, del.icio.us (the pioneer), MonkeyBreath (fooled ya) and now Jots. Is anyone making money yet? Why is it that none of these sites carry Google Adsense? They're walking away from free money!

Fred, don't all these sites concern you? What is the competitive moat around del.icio.us? I love what Josh Schachter has built. I live on his site and I believe in its network effect. However, it seems like someone can come along and replace it if they institute some killer feature.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Google Video to Become a Content Marketplace?

Pete Cashmore found word that Google may be trying to build a marketplace on Google Video where consumer-generated videos can be bought, sold and licensed. As I've said, this is just one part of Google's efforts to be the Long Tail's best friend.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

A Proud Owner


  SANY0098 
  Originally uploaded by ceonyc.

I got a Boston Acoustics tabletop HD radio today.

It supports multicasting so it can pick up all the new HD1 and HD2 channels that the broadcasters will be rolling out next year.

Apparently these new HD1 and HD2 channels will be commercial free for "an extended period of time".  Sounds like these channels will be positioned directly against XM and Sirius.

Although I have owned an HD car radio since last fall, this radio gets me a lot more excited because of the new programming that will be available on it.

Ba_radio Here's a photo of the radio when I got it out of the box.  There is a supplemental speaker that isn't in this photo.

If you want to get one of these radios, you can get them at online at Crutchfield.  This is the start of a bunch of new HD radios that will be coming into the market over the next year, driving volume and lowering price points.  It's about time.

Posted in A VC on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

That's Not The Answer

I spent some time on Yahoo! Answers today.

It reminds me so much of Abuzz, the question and answers service we invested in at Flatiron in late '97 or early '98.  I suspect that the culture of the Internet has changed a lot since then and hopefully this time, a service like this can get the kind of traction that makes it really useful.

But one thing really bugged me.  I went to sign up and like most of these services, there was an option to upload a picture.  I do that all the time.  But in Yahoo! Answers, the only options you have are to go without a picture, use your Yahoo! 360 picture, or a Yahoo! Avatar.

I have no interest in Yahoo! 360 or a Yahoo! Avatar.  So I have to go without a picture? 

That's stupid.

Posted in A VC on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #92: December 8, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ audio and email comments (a proto-vlog in Australia; the future of newspapers; IBM’s podcasting guidelines; what’s the best tool for starting an electronic conversation?; PR and propaganda; offending employees with guidelines for personal presentation; how HR can use blogs; more on the future of PR to add to show #91) Wikipedia dust-ups; reflections on Les Blogs 2.0 conference and the notion of blogger civility; European publishers attack Google; upcoming FIR interview; the music.

Show notes for December 8, 2005

download mp3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 92-minute conversation recorded live from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and almost live from Washington, DC, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 37MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

In this Edition:

Intro:

  • 00:28 Neville introduces the show; Shel‘s travellling and Neville’s back at base
  • 01:40 What the show’s about; how to contribute your comments

Listeners’ Comments Discussion:

  • 03:57 Peter Chen with an example of a proto-vlog in Australia
  • 05:28 Sallie Goetsch finds it hard keeping up with FIR’s ‘phenomenal output’; on names and spelling; working on the present state of PR, never mind what the future looks like; the future of newspapers
  • 09:01 Ron Shewchuk follows up with additional comment to the future of PR discussion in show #91
  • 11:35 Mike Strock asks if we’re aware of IBM’s podcasting guidelines
  • 13:02 Luke Armour enjoys FIR and asks what’s best for starting an ‘electronic discussion’ - a blog, wiki or something else?
  • 18:51 Howard Harawitz asks what’s the difference between PR and propaganda with a story on US government use of PR to support the war in Iraq
  • 23:22 Les Posen recounts the story the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s guidelines for personal presentation which offended many employees
  • 28:09 Andrew Marritt suggests a good approach for how HR can use internal blogs
  • 31:36 Rob Safuto adds some thoughts to the discussion in show #91 on the future of PR re skills communicators will need
  • 35:49 Mike Soulier thinks podcasting is great; he’s interested in PR even though he’s not in PR; and some opinions on Lookout! and Internet Exploder ;)
  • 41:02 David Jones says show #91 was fantastic, summarizes one of that show’s sentiments - let’s not fall in love witb the tools - and comments on how he sees the future of PR and skills develoment in PR
  • 45:35 Trackbacks to show #91’s post, from Eric Eggertson and Kami Watson Huyse

News and Features:

Outro:

  • 82:44 Neville wraps the show; upcoming interview on Tuesday December 13 with Rick Klau, VP Business Development, FeedBurner
  • 83:44 Both of us live on next Monday’s show; how and where to send your comments; only two weeks until Christmas; where to find the show notes
  • 86:17 Outro podsafe music via PodcastNYC - Forward Motion by Jamie Leonhart

FIR Show Notes links
Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are now posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the home page for info.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Monday December 12…

< ?php include("http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/rss_comments/1002/"); ?>

Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #92: December 8, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ audio and email comments on the future of PR and more; Wikipedia dust-ups; Les Blogs conference and the notion of blogger civility; European publishers attack Google; upcoming FIR interview; and much more.

Show notes for December 8, 2005

download mp3 podcast

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 93-minute conversation recorded live from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and almost live from Washington, DC, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 37MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

In this Edition:

  • Detailed show notes to come.

FIR Show Notes links
Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are now posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the home page for info.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Thursday December 8…

< ?php include("http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/rss_comments/1002/"); ?>

Posted in a shel of my former self on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Imitation Is Not A Strategy

We spend so much time thinking about, talking about, fretting about the fast follower, particularly the big company who sees what the little guy is doing and then knocks it off.  The theory is that many of the new companies that have been started in the past couple years are subject to this risk.

Umair weighs in on this debate with the observation that imitation is not a strategy and he levels his criticism squarely at Yahoo!

I am not going to get into who is an innovator and who is a copycat.  I will leave that to others to discuss. 

But this is an important point that we should all get our heads around.

Is imitation a strategy and does it put the innovators at risk?

Historically, I'd say that is the case.

What's different now?  I am not sure.

But Umair's a smart guy and when he says it ain't gonna work this time around, I pay attention to that.

Posted in A VC on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Google Christmas treat

Google has decorated its advertising sidebar with a strip of peppermint candy cane for certain holiday searchers. Try a search for Christmas, peppermint, or candy cane to see the modified search results page.

Tags:

Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

TV Execs Need To Read This Post

At the risk of turning AVC into Bubblegeneration, I am going to do back to back posts on Umair's insights.

This time, its his post on The Future of TV.  He calls the disease that hit the music industry and newspaper industry in the past several years "strategy decay".

And he says that unless the TV industry addresses its strategy decay directly and totally, it's in for a world of hurt.

Umair is way smarter than I am but he's also a lot longer winded.

As I told Erick from Business 2.0 in a recent interview, it comes down to four things that TV industry needs to do.  And you've heard this list before:

1 - Microchunk it - Reduce the content to its simplest form.
2 - Free it - Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it.
3 - Syndicate it - Let anyone take it and run with it.
4 - Monetize it - Put the monetization and tracking systems into the microchunk.

The bottom line is centralized control is waning and edge control (read consumer control) is gaining.  Get on that train of thought and you can reinvent the industry and win.

Posted in A VC on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Request: Open Source in London

By nat

Nikolaj Nyholm will be co-chairing EuroOSCON with me in 2006. Part of chairing a conference is meeting everyone involved in the field. He'll be in London, Dec 14-15, and is interested in meeting open source and emerging technology people. He'll also be at 22c3 in Berlin at the end of December. If you fit the bill, or know someone who does, drop him a line: nikolaj AT oreilly.com. Nikolaj's part of the team behind the fabulous Reboot conference and an all-round stellar guy. If you can catch him when he's in town, he's worth making time for.

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-09

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The Guardian Launches a Feed Reader

The Guardian, one of the largest newspapers in the UK, has launched a branded feed reader powered by Newspoint. More info in the quick guide.


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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/08/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 9, 2005

Sucking In The 70s

Sucking_in_the_70s A throwaway line at the end of my post on James I O'Neill High School has stuck in my brain for the past week.

Sucking In The 70s.  The name of one of the worst Rolling Stones compilations. And also the tagline to my high school experience.

But for whatever reason, a time in my life that has been stuck way back in the recesses of my brain is coming to the forefront and I want to blog about it.

So a new category has been added to this blog.  I hope you enjoy my occasional trips down memory lane.  I'll try to make them enjoyable.

Posted in A VC on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Ice Cream Facts, Dec. 9

According to the International Dairy Foods Association website:

Nearly 80% of supermarket ice cream sales are packaged in half-gallon containers.

Source: IRI, 2001* Novelties

Posted in Denali Flavors on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Nuggets

The Rolling Stones are the greatest rock and roll band for three reasons;

1 - The Glimmer Twins - Mick and Keith - the second best songwriting duo in rock music (after John and Paul).

2 - The Rythm Section - Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman - never did a rythm section set a better beat with such little effort

3 - Jimmy and Little Mick - Jimmy Miller and Mick Taylor were the additions that took the Stones to another level in the late 60s and early 70s.

I was reminded of Jimmy and Little Mick's contributions when a friend I made via this blog came to visit me this week and gave me a copy of a live recording of a stop on the legendary 1973 European Tour (Goat's Head Soup tour).  The record is called Brussels Affair 1973.

It's hard to call this a Nugget because I've only owned it for a couple days, but every Rolling Stones fan has to own this record.  It captures the Stones at the height of Mick Taylor's prowess and he is all over this record.

If you like Get Yer Ya Yas Out, you will love this one.  It is honestly one of the best live recordings of the Rolling Stones I have ever heard.

So how do you buy it?  Well, I am not sure.  There is a page on Amazon for the record, but it's not available. There is a CDDB entry (and iTunes recognizes it when you put it in your computer) but again no links to where this can be bought.  I guess its a bootleg, but a very popular one.  If any of my readers know where this can be purchased, let me know and I'll add it to this post.

Jimmy Miller's last contribution was Goat's Head Soup and Mick Taylor left one record later, after It's Only Rock and Roll.  They have been missed.

But we can always go back to those records, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, and Goat's Head Soup, and hear the greatest version of the greatest rock band ever.

Posted in A VC on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Comment Spam

I know that this blog is getting filled up with comment spam (and track back spam). 

I've asked TypePad for some help and they are working on it.

But for the time being, my readers are going to have to live with it because I can't spend all my time deleting this crap.

But I would like to call all the assholes out who are sending this shit my way.

You know who are and you suck.

Posted in A VC on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

It's a Bird, it's a Plane, it's a Vodcast

PodGuide.tv reports that the director of the upcoming Superman Returns movie is video podcasting.

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Rich Media Advertising Hits Blogs

Vive Network today announced a new way for bloggers to make money from rich media advertising. They launched an ad network that has two different revenue shares. One is per-click and the other is a more traditional CPM model. You need to opt into both to participate. There's a demo up here.

This is welcome. Bloggers need more rev shares like these. However, I don't see a list of advertisers who are participating yet. This might be a chicken and egg situation. Also, the video ads come up as soon as the blog is loaded in the browser. I doubt that bloggers will really want to include such obnoxious ads for fear of offending their readers.


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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Google Transit

By rael Google Transit maps out your route from A to B by bus, train, subway, and streetcar. It's only Portland, Oregon right now (they must be repurposing trimet.org's data), but that'll be useful for OSCON this year....

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

RocketBoom Lands on TiVo

This is an important moment for citizen's media. Rocketboom, a daily video weblog produced by individuals, is now available on TiVo as part of the TiVo Video Download Trial. Here's how TiVo describes the program...

Rocketboom differs from a regular TV program in many important ways. Instead of costing millions of dollars to produce, Rocketboom is created with a consumer-level video camera, a laptop, two lights and a map with no additional overhead or costs. Also, Rocketboom is distributed online, all around the world and on demand, and thus has a much larger potential audience than any TV broadcast. However, Rocketboom spends $0 on promotion, relying entirely on word-of-mouth, and close to $0 on distribution because bandwidth costs and space are so inexpensive.

The next American Idol is not going to come from what we call the small screen (TV) - but the wifi-connected RSS-enabled one!

(Via Podcasting News)

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Google Ups Adwords Font Size

Google has increased the type size of the headlines on the contextual Adwords ads that show up during searches. Google needs to help searchers separate ads from results. Many still don't know the difference and this does not help. The "Sponsored Links" label still remains grey. This is the copy they they should make more noticeable.

Picture 1-41

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Yahoo Buys del.icio.us

There's been rumors that big news was brewing with del.icio.us. Well now Josh Schachter announced on his blog that Yahoo has purchased del.cio.us. I conducted a brief iChat IM interview with Josh, which I have published below. The key news is that del.icio.us and Yahoo My Web 2.0 for now will remain separate products with cross-polination in the future. For more, see the YSearchblog, which for some reason doesn't have trackbacks anymore. Congrats to Josh and del.icio.us!

Screenshot 1-5

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

A Delicious Eight Months

Delicious announced today that it has been acquired by Yahoo!

We've got a post up on the Union Square Ventures blog on it.

It's been a delicious eight months and we enjoyed every minute of it.

Posted in A VC on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

del.icio.us: y.ah.oo!

By marc I can think of no better way to link to this than through Radar's del.icio.us integration....

Posted in O'Reilly Radar on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us

Yahoo del.icio.us logo

Yahoo! has bought social bookmarking site del.icio.us for an undisclosed amount. Joshua Schachter posted an announcement to the del.icio.us blog and mentions Yahoo!'s ability to help del.icio.us scale and keep pace with it's growing user base and site usage. Jeremy Zawodny welcomed the del.icio.us team on the Yahoo! Search blog and notes Yahoo! properties My Web and Flickr are natural matches for Joshua and del.icio.us.

Del.icio.us is based in New York and received its first round of funding in April 2005 from a variety of investors including Amazon.com. Del.icio.us is the third small tagging company acquired by Yahoo! this year, joining photo sharing site Flickr and events site Upcoming.org. Both Flickr and Upcoming's staff relocated to Silicon Valley after the buyout but today's announcements from Yahoo! and del.icio.us do not mention any moving plans.

Del.icio.us will most likely be integrated with existing Yahoo! Search property My Web. My Web allows Yahoo! members to tag search results for discovery through a defined social network (Y!360) or all Yahoo! users. Yahoo! will use del.icio.us bookmarks to better inform personalized search results throughout its services. Its ability to combine signals of relevance from search result click-throughs to a listing of sites bookmarked and classified will lead to increased use of Yahoo! Search and its related services while driving more targeted advertising, demanding higher advertising rates.

Caterina Fake of Flickr was integrated with the Yahoo! social search team following her company's acquisition. I expect Joshua Schachter will play a similar role within Yahoo! meeting with various teams across multiple products to discuss how tagging and other community-powered technologies might be used in Yahoo! products.

Hat tip to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch for letting me know about the announcement.

Tags:

Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Blogs Note Mac Version of Google Earth Leaks Out

Gary Price says that the Mac version of Google Earth has leaked out before the official release. It runs fine on my PowerBook so go for it. Gary has a download link and The Tao of Mac has a screen grab.

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Del.icio.us becomes Del.icio.us!

del.icio.us becomes del.icio.us! and one damn punctuation mark too many.

Linked in this story:

del.icio.us!

Posted in Burningbird on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Scuttle: open source social bookmarking

I use open source project Scuttle to manage my bookmarks on my server with full control over all my information. Scuttle uses PHP and MySQL to create a multiuser environment for storing bookmarks for public or private consumption.

Anyone is welcome to join my social bookmarking tool on NiallKennedy.com. The API is a del.icio.us clone and open for import and export of your bookmarks if you try it out but don't like it.

Tags: ,

Posted in Niall Kennedy's Weblog on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

a yahoo! company

Jealous? Get in on the action!

Posted in tecznotes on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

She loves me She loves not

Zoë has a new place to sleep, against a pillow covered in flannel underneath the heat vent in my room. She snuggles in between the wall and the humidifier, under the table which holds my television, stereo, internet router, and various speakers. She's out of the way but still near me, and warm against the [...]

Linked in this story:

MessyBeast site
cats and grief

f='http://weblog.burningbird.net/photo.php?postid=2790'>Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

She loves me She loves not

Do cats experience embarrassment?

Linked in this story:

MessyBeast site
cats and grief

f='http://weblog.burningbird.net/photo.php?postid=2790'>Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

She loves me She loves not

Do cats experience embarrassment?

Linked in this story:

MessyBeast site
cats and grief

rences:

MessyBeast Cat Resource Archives

Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

She loves me She loves not

Do cats experience embarrassment? (Now translated to English)

Linked in this story:

MessyBeast site
cats and grief

rences:

MessyBeast Cat Resource Archives

Photo Detail including location and camera data..

Posted in Burningbird on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

links for 2005-12-10

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Find Top Podcasts by Category on iTunes and Review Them

iTunes has added two new podcast features to iTunes. First, it has extended its new customer reviews feature to podcasts (note the link in the purple part in the first screen grab below). For example, click this iTunes link to the Across the Sound podcast to review it! Previously you could only review music and audiobooks.

Second, it now lists the top 100 podcasts by category. This includes the top business podcasts (iTunes link), technology podcasts and more. (See second screen grab)

Screenshot 1-6

Topbusiness


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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Find Top Podcasts by Category on iTunes and Review Them

Apple has added two new podcast features to iTunes. First, it has extended its new customer reviews feature to podcasts (note the link in the purple part in the first screen grab below). For example, click this iTunes link to the Across the Sound podcast to review it! Previously you could only review music and audiobooks.

Second, it now lists the top 100 podcasts by category. This includes the top business podcasts (iTunes link), technology podcasts and more. (See second screen grab)

Screenshot 1-6

Topbusiness

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/09/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

December 10, 2005

The New York Times Podcasts Columns

The New York Times continues its push into social media. It has launched two podcasts. One is on science and its widely available. The other highlights Op-Ed columns and is available in two editions. Every Monday, an audio version of one Op-Ed column from the previous week will be available via podcast for free. However, individual columnists' podcasts, are also available to TimesSelect subscribers in podcast form through a partnership with Audible. The latter features professional announcers.

Picture 1-42

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Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/10/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

The Costs and Benefits of Anytime, Anywhere

I am going to cite two Matts in this post.

First Matt Richtel in a front page story in today's New York Times starts out with,

Most Americans carry cellphones, but many may not know that government agencies can track their movements through the signals emanating from the handset.

It it true that the carriers, and increasingly software products you install on your cellphone that are carrier independent, can tell you and others exactly where you are.

While this may be problematic in certain privacy respects, it is hugely beneficial in most respects.  Do you want to know where your teenage daughter is at 11pm after she fails to call you as she promised?  Do you want to know where the nearest Starbucks or Jamba Juice or subway stop is? Would you like to be able to text message your buddies the exact location of the cool bar you are hanging out in?  I think you get the picture.

This leads me to my second Matt, Matt Blumberg, who wrote a post called The New Media Deal in the spring of 2004 which remains in my mind one of the most important posts I have read in blogs in the past couple years. 

In this post, Matt describes the new deal consumers are making via technology.  We are consciously or subconsciously sacrificing absolute privacy in return for anywhere, anytime, my way content and communication.

As Matt says in his post,

But I think it's becoming increasingly clear that we have a New Media Deal, which is that people are willing to sacrifice their anonymity in a heartbeat if the value exchange is there.

So we can wring our hands all we want about the privacy issues with respect to geolocation on cell phones, or behavioral targeting on the web, or saved search history on Google, but my feeling is that the benefits of these technologies will vastly outweigh the loss of privacy for most people most of the time and that's really all that matters.

Posted in A VC on 12/10/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Opposing Teams


  Jess and Em Playing Against Each Other 
  Originally uploaded by fredwilson.

My girls have been playing organized basketball for six years and for some reason they had never played on opposing teams in a real basketball game.

Until today.

Fortunately Jessica's team (in red) won in a blowout so I didn't have to choose who to root for going down the stretch.

It was actually nice to go to a game and not root for anyone.

Posted in A VC on 12/10/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Opposing Teams


  Jess and Em Playing Against Each Other 
  Originally uploaded by fredwilson.

My girls have been playing organized basketball for six years and for some reason they had never played on opposing teams in a real basketball game.

Until today.

Fortunately Jessica's team (in red) won in a blowout so I didn't have to choose who to root for going down the stretch.

It was actually nice to go to a game and not root for anyone.

Posted in A VC on 12/10/2005 | Permalink | Post to del.icio.us

Blog Content Theft

Two weblogs are republishing my content without permission. One is called “Advertisging, News & Information.” This site is profiting off my content by running Adsense. The other is called Podcast Rebroadcast.

This appears to be a common problem. Jason Calacanis wrote in June that we should call these people out. I am doing my part. Beyond going to partial text RSS feeds - which I am loathe to do - I have really no other course of action right now other to email the site operators, which I have done.

This problem is only going to grow over time. Perhaps some digital watermarking technology needs to come into play here. Or, once again, Google needs to step in and shut down all Adsense sites that are deliberately spamming the blogosphere and bloggers. Anyone have other ideas?

Posted in Micro Persuasion on 12/10/2005 | Permalin