Cherishing the Unrecorded Moments

As many photos we take of the little guy, none of them capture his laugh. As many times I try to record his laugh, it never captures the joy in his eye. Handing him the phone to talk with Grandma is the surest way to make stop talking.

I have a memory of playing with a reel-to-reel recorder as a kid, maybe 6 or 7. Just the memory. Not the tape or the player.

Perhaps all our recording devices are really good at is capturing the special moments, the big moments, the when-we-know-something-will-happen moments. Freeing us to really enjoy the wondrous banality of the unrecorded moments – when things really to happen.

Inspired by: Eric Rice’s chilling thoughts.

Rediscover Your iTunes Library with Tangerine

Like everyone else, my podcast listening (and publishing) has an inverse relationship to how busy I am at work. I’ve cut back to only the gPod – bookending the day – with music in the middle.

A couple weeks back, I found Potion Factory’s Tangerine, a great little app that generates iTunes playlist based on BPM and beat intensity and a handful of different patterns (think treadmill workout patterns).

I’ve got 5 Tangerine playlists right now – each a couple hours long with a different random selection of music that falls within specified BPM and beat intensity ranges. I’ve found it a great way to shake up my favorite tunes with others that I’ve neglected for too long.

Joe Urban on Denver’s Public Transit

“The bottom line is that good transit is frequent, affordable, easy to use and takes you where you want to go.” – Sam Newberg

Sam really likes Denver. Unlike some other friends of mine.

Personally, I’ve never been. Just around. Airport, Boulder, Broomfield. Though I’m always happy to hear when public transit works. I’m optimistic, but walking or bikes always seem to make more sense.

(disclosure: Sam’s a friend/client)

Doc and Hugh, To the Rescue

Because I’m such a Doc Searls and Hugh MacLeod fan, I re-subscribed to a podcast I long ago dismissed (only because I couldn’t download the individual files from the podsh** website.)

Looks like I’m not the only one regretting this decision:

“Attention Doc Searls: if you ever create your own podcast, please let us know. I’d take an hour of you reading recipies from a cookbook over listening to the roundtable from hell.” – Craig Maloney

Same goes for Hugh Macleod.

Tip to everyone else in this situation: the roundtable from hell starts after the 4 minute mark.

In Need of a Rural Internet-ification Administration

This country is vast. “Miles and miles of little more than telephone line”, I wrote last summer after half-cross country road trip.

The costs of providing and maintaining that infrastructure miles and miles between neighbors is baffling to me. Let along the fact we electrified the cornfields 70 years ago.

But, unlike energy – we can’t get broadband internet access from the wind and water around us. Something has to literally connect us to the rest of the world – and fast (in both senses of the word).

Internet access has an interesting potential to revive dying rural towns – for the exact same reason it’s helping India, China, Brazil, Russia, and Eastern Europe – people can work worldwide, get paid worldwide-ish wages, and maintain a lower cost of living.

This is why customer call centers are in the Dakotas.

50 years ago – electricity and telephone service meant survival, today – it’s high-speed internet access.

Compare this from the Wikipedia entry on the Rural Utilities Service:

“Many were critical of the decision, in particular private electricity utilities, who argued that the government had no right to compete with private enterprise (though many of those utilities refused to extend their lines to rural areas, claiming lack of potential profitability as the reason)”

And this from With a Dish, Broadband Goes Rural in the New York Times:

“Roughly 15 million households cannot get broadband from their phone or cable provider because the companies have been slow to expand their high-speed networks in areas where there are not enough customers to generate what they regard as an adequate profit.”

The mindset of the incumbents hasn’t changed in 70 years – we need a Rural Internet-ification Administration to bring new life to our rural areas.

Thanks to PFHyper for the pointer

Measuring What You Can’t Automate

“[I] think how much better it would be if we could just measure how much people care.” – Dave Slusher

Like Dave, I don’t understand the fascination with measuring downloads. Well, I take that back – I understand it for producers trying to woo advertisers. I don’t understand why advertisers would want to base their ad buy on download stats. Downloads don’t equal listeners, fans, or impressions.

Requests for downloads are not full downloads.
Full downloads are not plays.
Plays are not listens.
Listens are not engaged.
Engaged are not customers.

And as Dave points out, download requests can be automated.

Kris Smith’s CastLock application provides unique feed urls and could be spun out to deliver a custom, complimentary ad (or other) message to individual subscribers – based on some measure of engagement (i.e. some bastardized quantification of caring).

As early-stage as it is, it still provides more useful metrics than download stats. Mapping individual listeners to customer purchases still needs some work, but the gap would be shorter.

The real question is – what’s the Effort/Engagement ratio of a publication like a podcast or weblog. I’m glad you’re reading this, and I’m glad you know who I am. That’s return enough for me.

ELSEWHERE:

“Any website that attempts to improve time spent on every page (or pageviews for that matter) is just wasting time. What matters is intent. Permission. Action. Retention. Likelihood that ideas get spread. Clickthroughs.” – Seth Godin