Retention is a Measure of Motivation

Ron Baker’s ‘Your Employees are Volunteers’ is a much needed post. It includes gems like:

“Today, knowledge workers themselves own the firm’s means of production in their heads.”

“In fact, your people are actually volunteers, since whether or not they return to work on any given day is completely based on their own volition.”

Thanks Ron. The attitude that employees need employers isn’t limited to the legal profession.

Postel’s Law Asks, What Are You Ignoring Today?

There are quite a few memes circling this week I’m actively ignoring. Things where this sentence is exactly the amount of energy I’m giving them. If you also follow Doc Searls, these are snowballs I don’t think deserve pushing.

This is where the attention metadata stuff gets mushy. I’m talking about the triangles in the corners of the Attention Pyramid, the delta between attention & importance, between impression and click-through, between reading and writing, between Postel’s Law. The things I deem important should be associated with my identity, not the super-set of things I’ve given some acknowledging amount of attention to.

Question is, which is more valuable to snowball pushers; people ignoring them or people in their way?

Something In the Weather or the Genes?

Cooper didn’t sleep very well last night. Up every hour and some change. For a kid that’s been sleeping (or at least lying quietly) 12 hours at a stretch for the past month, this has been unfortunate change.

An even more unfortunate change, I was up – wide awake for way too long. Got a call from my dad (hundreds of miles north) first thing in this morning- saying he wasn’t able to sleep last night.

This afternoon, the green grass in the yard was covered with a fresh layer of snow.

Zillow.com First Impressions

Zillow.com launched today, and since our place is still on the market, I thought I’d check what Zillow’s estimate for 2701 31st Ave NE was. Huh, Zillow puts the marker above the 189,900 we started the listing at. Cool.

Overall, the site is zippy and filled w/ ajax-y goodness (and I can therefore forgive the initial Safari incompatibility). The maps draw fast and come up with more info that I expected.

Outside of finding and refining the value of a house – I’m not sure what else I’d do here – explains the text and banner ads sprinkled across the site.

Of interesting note, I can update house data, add improvements, and choose comparable properties all without creating an account or logging in. The numbers are in Zillow’s terms, “your own private worksheet”. Nice way to provide value without the irritant of another login/password.

The real estate industry is ripe for reform, and Zillow is a much needed start in the right direction of transparency and immediacy. Speaking of transparency, yes, Zillow has a blog.

My Four Favorite Raintribe Songs

Michael Koppelman recently finished uploading Raintribe‘s chantmoansingwhisperscream album. I’ve really enjoyed the tracks and thought I’d share my favorites with you:

Give ’em a listen, and if you like them, drop him a couple bucks a song.

RocketBoom Ads Not Worth $15,000

I wasn’t surprised to hear RocketBoom is pursuing a sponsor (via eBay even), nor was I surprised they want to keep full creative control (they should).

I was surprised that the high bid (as of this writing) of $15,099.99 hadn’t passed their hidden reserve.

Now, I know you need 10x that for a decent music video, but it makes me think RocketBoom doesn’t really want advertisers. Maybe they just wanted to see what their market valuation was.

At this moment in time, the market says 15 seconds in front of the RocketBoom audience is worth a hair over $3k (winner gets 5 ads).

I predict they’d get more from product placement or some other more persistent branding ad form more compatible with the medium. Yes, something closer to NASCAR drivers or superheros sponsorship.

Update 20 March 2006: Mark Pesce agrees – bugs, badges, and other screen tattoos are the future of advertising in a bittorrent world

Auction ended, $40,000 final bid and yes, the reserve was met.

Update 14 March 2006. I caught the first RocketBoom ad for TRM this morning. It was exactly what I expected it to be. A short video a la BMW’s the Hire.

Three Thoughts on Demand Supplying Itself

“So what do you do when the deer have guns, You get into the ammunition business.” – Gordon Borrell

“Attention tuning will reduce RSS overload but not noise to signal.” – Steve Gillmor

“[Real Estate] Sellers and buyers can figure out pricing via Zillow; they can bid via Redfin; they can list via PropertyShark or Craigslist.” – Jeff Jarvis

Shop Vac in the Suburbs Music Video

Almost 50 years ago, Redbook magazine and On Film made In the Suburbs, a promotional video for suburban life.

A few weeks back, Jonathan Coulton released “Shop Vac” a catchy little theme song for suburban life.

I wondered what they’d look like together.

Behold the power of Creative Commons and archive.org:
Shop Vac in the Suburbs [quicktime]