RE: The debate about the worth of podcasting

I’ve yet to hear of success stories of sustaining a podcast with outside advertising (in contrast to using an internally produced podcast as marketing).

It doesn’t surprise me – in fact, it’d surprise me if ad-supported podcasts were repeatable. The economics just don’t make sense to me (but neither do the economics of discount retail).

I’ve got some ideas for re-energizing my podcast. These ideas were inspired by a commercial entity, but there’s no contract or CPM behind it, and I’ll be mentioning their name when I hit record.

Is it an ad?

“But let’s be clear blogging and podcasting exist independent of a professional’s ability to eek out a living using the tools of blogging and podcasting. ” – Dave Winer

Feed Aggregation is Like Water

While catching up on my feeds between diaper changes, I caught the news that NewsGator dropping the price of their client apps to $0.

According to the announcement, it’s a ubiquity play. Be everywhere, while focusing revenue-generation efforts on the server side by incorporating (and selling?) “attention” or activity data1. Congrats to them to be able to make that move.

NetNewsWire was my primary feed reader for years, but about a year ago, we stopped getting along. I wanted more than straight feed aggregation and reading.

Aggregation, like water, is everywhere – it’s easy to do. Ping a handful of feeds and present them together. Cheap, easy. It only gets interesting and valuable when there’s something more happening. Filtering, sorting, discovery, integration, sharing are just a few of the places where there’s work to be done.

And money to be made.

Again, think about all the places in your home that dispense water and the corresponding price tag.

1. Personally, I’ve yet to be sold on the usefulness of attention data in general and APML specifically. I’m looking for compelling examples of it though – if you have some, please share. Thanks.

Cullect.com – Read, Write, and Get Out of the Way

Last night, I pulled the ‘secret knock’ off cullect.com. To me, that means it’s stable and reliable enough to use as a primary feed reader and I know a few people that have left their previous reader.

“Cullect is one application that gets out of my way and lets me do what I came do, read feeds.” – Arik Jones

That’s the idea.

RE: Starbucks Might Be Helping, Not Hurting, Independent Coffee Shops

“‘Anyone who complains about having a Starbucks put in next to you is crazy. You want to welcome the manager, give them flowers. It should be the best news that any local coffeehouse ever had.'” – Martin Diedrich, coffeehouse owner in Orange County, CA.

Competition increases demand and you can succeed by outsourcing your marketing to your competition?

What a wonderful world we live in.

The War That Wasn’t

In addition to the the BBC’s editorial policy promoting using terms more accurate and less loaded than ‘terrorist’ the UK government has declare the “War on Terror” non-existant.1

“‘The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers,’ Sir Ken Macdonald, Director of Public Prosecutions, said. ‘They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way.'”

Another great high note to end the year.

Who else is declaring war on fear?

1. via boingboing. Thanks to the collaborative nature of cullect.com, I’m reading and enjoying Boing Boing again. Yes, I’m just as surprised. Still can’t read slashdot though.

Drive Vague

There’s something appealing about removing complexity – and the costs to maintain that complexity – to more effectively improve the behavior of a complex system.

“The assumption is that drivers are accustomed to owning the road and rarely pay attention to speed limits or caution signs anyway. Removing traffic lights and erasing lane markers, the thinking goes, will cause drivers to get nervous and slow down.”

“‘Generally speaking, what we want is for people to be confused,’ said Willi Ladner, a deputy mayor in Bohmte. ‘When they’re confused, they’ll be more alert and drive more carefully.'” – Craig Whitlock, WashingtonPost.com

Looking Up

“…the number of people in households that bring in more than $100,000 also rose from 12 percent to 24 percent. There was no increase in the percentage of people in households making less than $30,000. So the entire ‘decline’ of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder. For married couples, median incomes have grown in inflation-adjusted dollars by 25 percent since 1979.” – Stephen Rose, WashingtonPost.com

Another gem:

“…54 percent of households had no credit card debt after paying their monthly bill and that the average household credit card debt was just over $2,300.”

Sharing is Caring

Like yourself, I travel in a number of personal and professional circles; dad’s open gym night, neighbors, this project team, that project team, peers via podcasting, peers through information architecture, peers through visual design, etc. Each circle has different values and finds different things relevant. The chances of something I find interesting being relevant to more than one of these circles in almost zero.

Preschools and potty-training schedules are off-topic in a project meeting.

Separate but equal.

Overarching tools with a ‘share’ gesture but lacking a notion of these distinct circles is simply rude. A privacy concern? Maybe – in the same way sharing anything on a publicly accessible URL is a privacy concern.

A complete disregard for how real people live multi-faceted lives? Absolutely.

A Christmas to Remember

I just finished shoveling the last couple inches of the light, fluffly snow that’s been steadily falling this past week. A perfect end to the best Christmas I’ve had in two decades.

Some highlights:

  • Having my immediate family all in the same room at the same time on Christmas day. This in itself made the day. To my mom, dad, sister, and Bob: Thank you for making the drive, for spending the time, for being together on Christmas. Let’s not wait 15 years to do it again.
  • Teknikal Diffikulties Advent Calendar Day 22: Happy Solstice[mp3]. While each piece of Cayenne’s Advent Calendar is enjoyable, this installment felt so perfect and comforting I stopped shoveling to appreciate the significance of the shortest day of the year.
  • Taking a day-long break from 5 months of heavy programming (in addition to podcasts, email, and the internet as a whole).
  • Jeremy’s fantastic home-made butternut squash ravioli on Christmas Eve dinner
  • Cooper making a bee line for the simple wooden train under the tree on Christmas Day.
  • Assembling Cooper’s new trike.
  • Cracking open a Wake-n-Bake Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout from Athens, GA’s Terrapin Beer Co. last night after the day was done. A tasty, frothy brew, paired well with 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream. Thanks Pat.
  • Only a single holiday-related dramatic incident that sorted itself out quite neatly once the moment passed.
  • As I write this, Cooper is sitting in the tallest snow bank in the yard. Content as can be.
  • The entryway shelf overflowing with holiday greetings, cards, photos, and letters.
  • Me: “Cooper, What does Christmas mean?”
    C: “Um…People come over.”