Month: June 2005

Sunday, 26 June 2005

Sharks Stun But Pigs Kill

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Sharks Stun But Pigs Kill

“More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.” – Bruce Schneier author of Beyond Fear.

Seth Godin’s recent Shark Attack! post reminded me of the Bruce Schneier quote above. Schneier’s ITConversation’s interview is a fantastic discussion on risk and decision making.

His point and Seth’s are the same – it’s not the infrequent and spectacular events that will impact us the most. It’s the common and banal ones. The old frog-boiling myth comes to mind here.

Part of the issue is one of storytelling. Shark attacks, because of their infrequency, make good stories. Stories that spread quickly. Stories worth a couple of news reports and least one theatrical release. Unfortunately, the educational value (“how is my life better now that I know this?”) is proportionally inverse. As always, there are a couple exceptions.

Going back to Seth’s analogy, here in the upper Midwest, we do have a fair number of Deer Crossing signs on our back roads. I suspect a deer accident story wouldn’t be met with cries to blockoff the roadways.

RSS Feeds to Replace CDs

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on RSS Feeds to Replace CDs

To this point, musicians need to press bits of plastic (records, CDs) each time they want to share music with their fans. This means, enough music has to be ready to make pressing bits of plastic worth the cost. These bits of plastic are then shipped at an additional cost to stores where hopefully the fans, after hearing about the new bit of plastic via the marketing campaign, will purchase it. Passing little bits of money back to all intermediaries on the return trip to the artist.

I see two weak links in that process;

  1. Musicians needing to have a number of tracks ready at once.
  2. Fans paying musicians at the end of the process.

With a podcast, musicians can release whatever they’d like, whenever they’d like; demo tracks, rough tracks, experiments, final edits, interviews, conversations about the song writing process, anything their fans would enjoy. All of it delivered automatically to their biggest fans.

To access the podcast feed, fans pay up-front, or along the way, or at the end. Doesn’t matter. Passionate fans will pay for access to an empty RSS feed, thereby financing new work, while new fans pay for access to previous feeds, just as they do with previous albums today.

Faster publication and distribution helps musicians refine their work more quickly and gives fans a sense of being involved in the creation process. Two big wins.

What do fans lose when RSS feeds replace CDs? Aside from the physical artifact and the costs of designing, creating, moving, and storing the physical artifact? Very little. Cover art and credits are in the ID3 tags and the feed itself.

Friday, 24 June 2005

Thursday, 23 June 2005

Saint Paul the Auto Repairman

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Saint Paul the Auto Repairman

Record highs today in Minnesota when I pulled over for an en route police car complete with lights and sirens. As I stopped, the tire jumped the curb. I didn’t think anything of it until I couldn’t move after the squad car passed me.

Now, I’m stranded yards from one of the busiest intersections in Minneapolis on the hottest day yet this year with a dead front passenger wheel. Completely unresponsive to the steering wheel.

After calling for a tow truck (“all my guys are pretty busy right now”) and pondering my next move, a mechanic from the near by semi-truck repair shop stops by.

“Hi, I’m Paul. It looks like you popped a tie rod end. I think I can pop it back into place.”

He came back with a hammer and got the wheel back on. Then, he blocked traffic as I slowly backed up into his parking lot.

After we’re safely out of traffic Paul continues, “if you can pick up a right tie rod end by 3:30, I could probably install it for you.”

Jen picks me up, we run over to a car parts shop, pick up the part and give Paul my keys, phone number, and the new tie rod end.

A couple hours later, Paul calls and I ask him what I owe him.

“Whatever you’d like.”

When we exchange car key for check, he shrugs, “the Lord told me to fix your car.”

Thank you Lord and thank you St. Paul.

Listen to the podcast

Wednesday, 22 June 2005

CPB – Subsidizing American Culture or Unnecessary Intermediary

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on CPB – Subsidizing American Culture or Unnecessary Intermediary

Should the CPB continue to receive tax payer dollars?

On one hand, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds some of the most well known American culture icons – Sesame Street, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Nightline, among them. Programs and lessons that shaped my childhood and the childhoods of everyone I know.

On the other hand, the CPB is structured in such a way that the reigning administration pulls the purse strings. As Mike O’Connor has stated repeatedly, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

This begs the question on the definition of “public”. Are we talking “publicly funded” or “created by the public”?. Tax dollars are public monies funding all sorts of services only a subset of us (the public) agrees with at any given time; highways, Medicare, Iraq War, education, parks, space travel. Seems to me, financing extremely large projects that none of us can accomplish individually is what governments and taxes are for. Whether we as individual investors fully appreciate them or not. Does the CPB’s mission fall into the ‘bigger than all of us’ category?

The fact you’re reading this weblog means CPB’s current model is expiring. As Jeff Jarvis states, It’s time to..

“Reexamine the mission of public broadcasting in an era when the public can broadcast.”

The no-barrier-to-entry of weblogs, podcasts, and videoblogs has caused an explosion in self-publishing. All produced independent of CPB funding. From this public is “created by the public” angle KYOU – a Clear Channel AM station – may actually be more public than NPR.

If I’m reading CPB’s site accurately, a full 26% of their funding comes from memberships. Less than 15% of their funding is from Congress – about $370 million dollars. If as Evol mentions, $370 million breaks down to $1.25 per year per American, then we need to find a way for each American to easily – and independently – invest $12.50 to continue supporting public broadcasting. Making it easier for citizens to become customers as Doc Searls states. Ideally on a per-production basis rather than at the network level. This will transform the “money sucks but we need to pay the electric bill” fund drives to an actual marketplace where Americans have direct control over what’s called “public broadcasting.”

With this, I challenge PBS to change the “take action now” link at PBS.org from “call your congressman” to “give us $12.50”. Same challenge for NPR. Hell, I’ll happily flag my $12.50 for experimental and new programs.

Otherwise next year, it’ll be deja vu all over again.

Tuesday, 21 June 2005

Anonymous Responses Are Useless

by Garrick van Buren 3 Comments on Anonymous Responses Are Useless

One of my current projects has a major survey component. The survey ends with:

“If you’d be open to follow up questions, enter your email address below.”

There’s about a 60 / 40 split on responses with emails and those without. The responses without email addresses have skipped questions, irrelevant answers, and are generally unusable. This is so much the case, that I’ve found it a better use of time to check for an email address first – then read the response.

It’s interesting that people comfortable with being contacted give useful answers, while those providing non-useful responses don’t provide a way to be contacted.

Conventional wisdom on requiring accountability has it backward. Accountable people want to be responsible for their actions. Those that aren’t don’t. Forcing it doesn’t change anything.

On a related note, perhaps my observation is related to Ben Hammersley’s explanation of why wikitorial died.

Customers are Cheaper than Ad Agencies

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Customers are Cheaper than Ad Agencies

When people are sharing more and more with each other and strangers, when audiences are splintering, when the relationship between a company and it’s customers is far more measurable, spending millions of dollars on “brand awareness” would seem hilarious – if it wasn’t sad.

In other words:

“You don’t want the kind of high-production stories that come out of ad agencies- you want the kind of stories that ordinary people can tell.”

Thanks to Hugh for sharing.

Solving PowerBook Trackpad Dead Zones

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Solving PowerBook Trackpad Dead Zones

For about a week, the half inch on the far left and far right of my Powerbook’s trackpad were completely dead. Basically, it turned my 17″ Powerbook trackpad down to a 12″ Powerbook trackpad. These dead zones caused extremely flakey and erratic cursor behavior not to mention my mental image of the trackpad’s size was all messed up.

I was using SideTrack to add trackpad scrolling and had grown accustomed to placing my finger on the far left border (I’m left-handed) of the trackpad to scroll. These dead zones rendered that action completely useless. Thinking it might be SideTrack freaking out, I installed iScroll2. I got scrolling back, but only when my fingers were in the exact center of the trackpad. Way to awkward to actually be useful.

James from the Foundation suggested I open up the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences Pane and uncheck “Ignore accident trackpad input.” After un-checking, the entire trackpad became active again. Thanks James.

I think that option should be re-labeled “make trackpad smaller”.

Monday, 20 June 2005

How can Podcasting Help an Art Museum?

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on How can Podcasting Help an Art Museum?

One of the exciting podcasting-related conversations I mentioned in an earlier post was with Brent Gustafson over at the Walker Art Center.

We grabbed a coffee at the newly renovated Loring Park Dunn Bros and discussed some podcast-related services the Walker Art Center could offer.

As expected, some interesting projects came out of our time together. Brent mentions one of them in a recent post at the Walker’s New Media Initiatives Blog:

“The other thing Garrick and I talked about was user tours. The idea is you could comment on an artwork after you hear about it when you dial Art on Call. It would save this as a voicemail, which automatically archives it to MP3, and we could pick the best comments to create user tours. This would allow people to choose multiple “versions” of the same tour. You could pick from the artists tour, the Teen remix, or the user tour of the same show, each having a different perspective on the work.”

To me, podcasting gets interesting after the part about it being an alternative to broadcast radio – where it starts to extend and enhance a business in a way radio can’t.