Monday, March 26, 2007 2:49:38 PM

It’s a beautiful day. Blue skies. The Dashboard widget says 77°F. Our home weather station says 80°F. That aggregation project I’ve been working on since last fall is coming along nicely. Some big, pleasant surprises this morning. Still miles to go, but it’s fulfilling the vision – even at this early stage. Yes, it’s still my only aggregator. The hardest thing about making the switch – breaking the habit of launching NNW.

Rocketboom’s Andrew Baron: Advertising Doesn’t Work

“The point I was making is that we are not happy with advertising right now.” – Andrew Baron

If anyone was going to figure advertising-on-serial-media out, I was sure Andrew would. Not that I think it makes sense or is even a good idea.

From my post on the Ze Frank / RocketBoom geek fight last October:

“…there are many other ways to make a living than advertising. Sure, none of them are fashionable, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

That said, I think the RocketBoom team has already figured out how to make money with their daily video blog. The same way I make money from this blog and the First Crack Podcast:

“…the video blog has become kind of a loss leader and a promotional device for the real money.” – Frank Barnako

Now, I’m not doing work for Nokia or John Edwards, but, on a blog, the author is the advertisement still stands. 😉

ELSEWHERE:

“What I do know is [Earthlink] had a lot of opportunity to inform me, and by going with that vague and horrible spot they did, they pissed away their money on warm fuzzies instead of telling me something I could act on.” – Dave Slusher

Maybe that’s the real reason advertisers aren’t excited about podcasting.

WordPress-to-WordPress Import Tip: Delete Spam Comments First

I’m doing some blog consolidation (“finally”, I can hear you say). I’ve been trying out WordPress’ new import feature.

It hung, stalled, or timed out every time, either on initial import or on Step 2 when I assign the post author.

After peaking into the WXRSS file, I noticed all my comments were in there (yeah!) including the spam (booo!). After I deleted the spam, re-exported, and re-imported, everything worked slick as can be.

Ad Standards for Newspapers?

“Several wondered if the ad met the Star Tribune’s standards for acceptable advertising or if it was a mistake.” – Kate Parry, Star Tribune’s ombudsman

Here’s our panel’s reaction to the issue:

  • Snarky Garrick: “Until readers directly provide the Strib with enough revenue that advertising isn’t needed, their complaints should go in the recycling bin with the paper itself.”
  • Intrigued Garrick: “I doubt either answer will satisfy those that asked.”
  • Media Mogul Garrick: “Send me the names and contact info of the people with complaints, I have a few other brands I’d like to expose them to.”

RELATED:

“What confuses people is that ABC News logo screaming “official journalism!” – Chuck Olsen

Nope. Didn’t confuse me.

Of all the parties involved, the only person I might sometimes expect hard-question-asking “official journalism” from is…not Amanda Congdon, not ABC News, and not DuPont…but Chuck Olsen himself.

Advertising on the other hand is a completely different topic. I expect it from everyone I’ve listed above and I prefer Chuck’s.

Still Lusing

“I’m thinking that there is something inherently subordinate to the term ‘user'” – Prof Mary Wong. via Doc Searls

The term “user” has bugged me since I worked at “HannaHodge: User Experience Architects” 8 years back.

A couple Octobers back, in First Crack #2 [mp3], I declared “There are no users”.

“‘User’ is a term from the system perspective…it most accurately describes someone that has no effect on a media…this may have been accurate for the long slow feedback loops of last century’s media….”