Month: April 2006

Friday, 28 April 2006

Thursday, 27 April 2006

American Children Helping Uganda’s Invisible Children

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on American Children Helping Uganda’s Invisible Children

Jen found out about the horrid plight of Uganda’s night walking children via Daily Candy featuring The Name Campaign.

Hell yea we supported the effort – and got the dog tags to prove it. Mine reads:

Yakobo Atidi
Age 12

To raise more aid money and expose this global atrocity to more Americans, our own children will become night walkers this Saturday, April 29th.

Tim Stay’s 12 year-old son gets it. That’s important.

Might be the most effective use of MySpace I’ve seen.

Wednesday, 26 April 2006

First Crack 78. The Trouble with Business Models

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on First Crack 78. The Trouble with Business Models

As I promised, here’s the second half of my conversation with J Wynia on geeky stuff. (The first half is at GlassTooBig.com)

Here, we talk about making money, keeping overhead low, income diversification, and making sure an idea needs a business model.

Listen to the Trouble with Business Models [39 min]

Monday, 24 April 2006

Duh. Advertisers are the Customers, not Viewers.

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Duh. Advertisers are the Customers, not Viewers.

Listening to Tod Maffin’s latest Todbits (made my Podcast Picks as well) and pondering his bit about American Idol running 3 minutes after the hour to thwart PVR-watchers and encourage live-TV-watchers.

Honestly, I feel a little silly. All this time I was wondering why it felt like broadcast media outlets despised their customers. Switching up schedules, starting programs late, splicing them into a million pieces between commercial breaks. Follow the money. It stops long before it gets to the viewer or listener or reader.

I still don’t get why newspapers, radio, and television aren’t 100% ads. The honesty would be easier on everyone.

Wanted: Recommendations on 32″ LCD HDTV

by Garrick van Buren 3 Comments on Wanted: Recommendations on 32″ LCD HDTV

We’re moving into a new house this weekend and we’re pondering an upgrade to a wall-mountable, LCD, HDTV, 16:9, something reasonable like 32″, and somewhere south of $1500.

If possible, I’d like something with an HD-tuner already built-in.

Any thoughts?

Here’s what I’ve found thus far that looks promising:

Jen and I stopped by the Roseville Circuit City to take a look at some of these. Justin (Senior Sales Something) walked us through HDTV technology, wall-mounting techniques, over-the-air antennas, even how to connect our Tivo. Rock on.

Even showed us this Magnavox 32″ HDTV that we quite liked. Though it’s his least favorite.

UPDATE 02 May 2006:
We picked up the Magnavox last night. We’ve very happy with it. Though, I’m far less happy with Tivo right now for two reasons:

  1. Tivo freaked out because it couldn’t call home and I’m pretty sure we lost everything in our queue. Though, we won’t find out until we get DSL installed later in the week.
  2. Tivo doesn’t see the .# channels (i.e. 11.1, 17.5) that our HDTV can receive. Meaning, we’re stuck with the standard definition resolution for Tivo recordings. So, Tivo went from very useful to nearly useless in 48 hrs.

UPDATE 12 May 2006:
The Digital Tuner on the Magnavox died after just a couple days. We brought it back to Circuit City and swapped it out for another one. Fantastic experience. When I mentioned the problem to the sales guy, he replied, “That’s not uncommon.”

Podcasting is Still Underestimated.

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Podcasting is Still Underestimated.

Jim Cuene asks:

[Is podcasting the] Next shiny new object or real game changer?

It all depends on the game in question – and how long the game is (the future takes a while).

For existing ad-supported broadcast radio – yes. The game is over.

Case in point – this weekend we drove 6 hrs listening to podcasts through the car stereo. Some Croncast, some BBC Naked Scientist, some Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, some On The Media.

A year ago, we may have been lucky to listen to 2 of those programs during that drive. Today, these are the most “main stream programming” in my podcast backlog.

For the geographically-specific radio broadcaster to survive – they need to offer something the portable mp3 players can’t: Hyper-local and hyper-timely programming.

In addition, I don’t envy the marketing and customer acquisition teams for HD Radio, XM or Sirius satellite radio. Their job will only get more difficult as podcasting gets easier.

If the game is internet publishing – eh. Podcasting rounds out the capabilities. It’s now as easy to deliver audio, video, documents, and other files, as easy as it is to deliver text to a passionate, niche group of individual customers.

Sunday, 23 April 2006

Friday, 21 April 2006

On a Blog, the Author is the Advertisement

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on On a Blog, the Author is the Advertisement

It’s not a question of making money via an online publication (aka “blog”, “podcast”) directly or indirectly.

All money-making via distributing words, audio, or video is indirect. All of it.

Newspapers, magazine, radio, and television all make money indirectly – selling advertising space. Blog publishers like Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Kathy Sierra, Hugh MacLeod, Chuck Olsen, Kris Smith, and even Mark Cuban (and me) make money indirectly as well.

In their case (and mine), the blog is promotion and advertising for them and the other things they do. The things that bring in the bigger bucks.

UPDATE 28 April 2006:
This is what Jason Fried is talking about when he says, “It’s all the same.”

UPDATE 10 May 2006:
There’s something in here about standing on the wrong side of the binoculars.

Thursday, 20 April 2006

NetGear Skype WiFi Phone Available for Pre-Order

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on NetGear Skype WiFi Phone Available for Pre-Order

I’ve been anxiously awaiting something like the NetGear Skype WiFi Phone. The potential is huge – if only to un-tether me from the laptop for podcast calls. This’d be great for taking calls around the house, out in the garage, or chilling in the backyard.

UPDATE 18 May 2006: Linksys just announced their WiFi Phone. Not specifically for Skype. Looks like any other SIP 2.0 protocol