Podcasting: Hot or Cool?

…in the McLuhan sense.

“Hot media are high definition (“well filled with data”) and demand a relatively passive audience; cool media are low definition and require intensive audience participation to fill in the blanks. Hot media intensely engage a single sense; cool media loosely engage multiple senses. According to McLuhan, movies and radio are hot media while television and conversation (on the phone or in person) are cool ones. Print is generally a hot medium (the eye must closely follow a linear arrangement of symbols) but can be cooler depending on context.” – Cecil Adams

From this (I don’t have McLuhan’s Hot & Cool within reach) I say cool – require intense audience participation and are low definition.

For reference, television and phone conversations are ‘cool’ – while movies and radio are ‘hot’.

Security is Really Customer Service in Disguise

A confused, elderly woman with a full, knotted, plastic shopping bag was in front of the scanner. The security checkpoint line out of Minneapolis stalled as I put all my stuff in multiple bins.

When a uniformed TSA person asked her if she had a boarding pass, she mumbled the need for help getting a ticket for Transworld Airlines.

“I can’t help you ma’am, I’m the supervisor and I could lose my job if I left my post.”

After a couple exchanges identical to this, the supervisor thankfully handed the woman off to another TSA person.

Reminded me how customer service is smarter, cheaper, more effective, and generally happier than level-orange security.

Reminds me, why are airports so dreary and generally unhappy. Thankfully, Ze Frank gave me the airport smile I was looking for.

Computers and Cars – Both Need to Be More Efficient

Rex pointed me to the NYTimes article on Google’s energy efficiency proposals.

I’ve been reading so much Jonathan Schwartz (“Value of Being Green“)lately that I’m happy to see another big player talk about improving the energy efficiency of computers.

The energy efficiency issue made sense to me when explained it this way:

“But you know how your laptop warms your lap? Or your PC heats up your den? Multiply that a few thousand times over, and you have a problem faced by most datacenters – power draw and heat dissipation. Map that challenge to every business on earth, and you have a global power crisis as the network is built out.” – Jonathan Schwartz, CEO Sun Microsystems

Sending Static to the Satellite

“It’s only a matter of time until this content is free, FCC-filtered, and ad-supported.” – Mark Ramsey

Ramsey’s talking about Sirius’ new Internet Radio offering. While I’m not a big fan of the satellite model, the strength of satellite is that it’s an alternative to the AM and FM dials.

Admittedly, I’m coming at this from the listeners perspective. Not the spectrum owner, or the advertiser.

Then again, as a listener I prefer having control of when and what I listen to. As such, I’ve got everything in iTunes.

I’m rooting for Sirius. This is a great move on their part – be available anywhere. In fact, I’d love to see them increase their monthly subscription fees. More power to the listener.

Put a Hold on Your Real Estate Agent License

“The National Association of Realtors report on existing home sales showed that the median home price in August was $225,000, down 1.7 percent from a year earlier.”

“It was the first year-over-year decline in median prices since April 1995, when that measure slipped only 0.1 percent. And it was the biggest year-over-year drop since the record 2.1 percent decline recorded in November 1990, when the nation was in recession.”