Radio’s Age of Desperation

Stern finally moves to satellite radio on Monday and I was reminded in the Neal Justin’s The New Golden Age of Radio.

Problem is….satellite radio is boring (coincidently, Sterns departure makes the FM dial even more boring). Removing the regional limits of the FM dial is something Clear Channel has already been doing for years. I’ve got more than 4 days (down from 6) of unlistened, FCC-free, cost-free, region-free, audio of exactly the things I’m interested in sitting in my iTunes library right now. No need to wait until Monday.

In the age of on-demand video (Netflix & ‘on-demand’), knowledge (Google), news (Google), audio (podcasts). Pushing a format listeners can’t rate, fast-forward, or re-listen seems like a step backwards.

In the end, I predict in the next couple years XM or Sirius will sell their satellites to the other and distribute all their programming over the internet. It has all the benefits of satellite distribution (infinite channels, outside of the FCC’s jurisdiction) with little of the overhead.

“I believe that people will pay for radio, it’s everything iPod can’t be. IPod can’t give you content and we can” – Howard Stern.

Could someone please introduce Howard to a podcast. I have a show to record.

Disc Drives to Go the Way of Disc Drives

I predict in 2 years, Apple will start shipping computers lacking CD/DVD drives.

Why Apple? They were the first to drop 3.5″ floppy drives, Zip drives, and modems.

So, how will big, heavy software installs (like OS’s) be shipped? I’m thinking USB flash drives or network connections. What else is the .Mac storage and a NetBoot good for?

Maybe they’ll get real crazy and ship an OS X install on all iPods by default.

No, I’ve got nothing more than a hunch on this. A hunch and a more discs than I’ll ever need.

UPDATE, 22 months later:

“How’s Apple making it so much thinner than current MacBooks? By eliminating the optical disk drive” – John Gruber

Yes, A Juicy Lucy Is All That

When Jen asked me to pick up cheese for burgers tonight, it wasn’t on my mind at all.

At some point, I was inspired. Perhaps Scott and Dave‘s quest finally got to me.

Before I knew it, there was two slices of medium cheddar between two quarter pound patties squeezed together and slapped on the grill. Yep. Despite being in NE Minneapolis – we was grilling up Juicy Lucys.

Yeah, tasty. Best way to have meat and cheese and cheese and meat.

Definitely worth an ongoing quest.

What if Your Customers Took Over Your Company’s Blog?

The Work Better Weblog is 2 years old this month. To celebrate, I’m starting an experiment in multi-author business blogs, community-building, and transparency – each Working Pathways client gets posting access.

That’s right – if you’ve hired Working Pathways, you automatically receive a login and password to publish whatever you’d like to the Work Better Weblog.

As I stated in the invitation email:

“Post anything you’d like. Yes, anything – your thoughts on the internet, work process, whatever’s on your mind, even about working with me, and this experiment. Everything’s fair game.”

The first batch of invitations has gone out.

There’s a good chance there’ll be some new voices here in the coming months. Keep an eye on the by-line.

First Crack 69. Garrick Talks About Attention, Advertising, and Interruptions

Just me today to kicking off the new year with a new mic – Sennheiser e816S, a simplified production process, and a glass of Armagnac.

Things on my mind:

  • Cooper’s crying is like interruption-based advertising is like a Vonnegat story.
  • Distribution is Advertising.
  • Removing distraction for the New Year; moving status indicators to my dashboard and unsubscribing from yahoo podcasts, ruby on rails, and a pile of rss feeds.
  • Errol Morris’ First Person
  • Special thanks to Dave Slusher for remembering the story was Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron, Lewis for the bottle, Sam for the delivery, and Jeremy Piller for the theme music.

Listen to Garrick Talks About Attention, Advertising, and Interruptions [10 min]

Reasons To Not Listen To Coldplay

Fresh off the Sony rootkit fiasco, EMI/Virgin Records has commanded that no one listen to the new Coldplay album – but they won’t tell you that until after you’ve given them money.

“This CD can’t be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor can it be converted to an MP3” and “This CD may not play in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players, all PCs and Macintosh PCs.”

via BoingBoing

From what I can tell, the album is available from within the iTunes Music Store – seemingly defeating all those restrictions. Wondering if ‘digital booklet’ is the same list of warnings.

Phew, good thing it wasn’t on my shopping list.

New Years Productivity Tip – Removing On-Screen Distraction

While getting a few things done this holiday season I paid special attention to what was keeping me from staying focused, on-task. To kick this year off right, I’ve made some dramatic changes to my OS X desktop.

From the menu bar, I’ve removed applications that change just enough to distract me. Including:

In addition, I’ve removed all the applications from my dock and ‘turned automatic hiding on’.

All of these small changes make the PowerBook a quieter place to work.

Update 6 Jan 2006: Sam asked for a screenshot of the menu bar

TiVo’s Future is in Videoblogs Not in Network Television

We’ve been a TiVo household for about a month now. Excellent service, I’m glad we got it. What we don’t have is a satellite or cable service. As I mentioned on my other blog, this omission is very challenging for TiVo.

To me, the most interesting television isn’t on television. It’s the videoblogs or video podcasts or vlogs, or video clambakes, or whatever you like to call them. After watching a handful of TiVo recommendations, I’m confident in saying anything you can do with a video camera and iMovie is on par with most over-the-air offerings.

Right now, TiVo is only recommending programs based on what it can see with the decade-old rabbit ears on the top of my non-HDTV. But it’s artificially handicapping itself. The TiVo is on my home network – so its recommendations should be based on all the video across the internet.

This means because I prefer watching video on my TV rather than my computer, I’m way behind on Minnesota Stories, RocketBoom and without an incentive to dig deeper into video.

Now, despite the TiVo being a Linux box and hooked up to my network – I can’t easily send video to it. To be clear – I don’t want to get video off it – I want to put video on it. Easily. As easily as setting up a Season Pass. This seems to be completely outside current capabilities – these are the capabilities keeping TiVo alive, out from under the thumb of television advertisers, and provide a reason to accelerate the TiVoToGo rollout.

Just as Apple has embraced podcasting as a way to sell more and bigger iPods, copies of GarageBand, and podcasting servers, TiVo could do the same and one better – put a recommendation layer on top of all this video, a la AmigoFish.

Let’s take this one step further: Each TiVo is a Linux box, with Apache running and a Firewire/USB2.0 port in the front – it provides an easy way for people publish their video to the rest of the world. Turning TiVo into a social medium and a full-fledged citizen of the Read/Write Web.

In early December, TiVo started a very slow rollout of Online Services – including podcasts. Baby steps to their survival. But, my box hasn’t been upgraded for the TiVo Online Services yet. So it remains less used that it could be.

Blogging – Your Business’ Back Porch

Yesterday, I had a great conversation with Matt and Jon about the benefits blogging for business. Out of it Matt brought up the very attractive ‘blogging as business backporch’ metaphor. I’ll attempt to paraphrase:

Let’s say a business is a house, and the website is it’s front door – the formal method of greeting visitors – strangers or customers.

The blog then is the backporch. More informal. Probably can’t be seen from the street. Lots of voices and lots of conversations. A place where friends, customers, and colleagues all hangout together.

Yes, some people with come through the front door – and become customers – on their way to the grill. Others, the people in the know, will come around the side yard, straight to the conversation. These people might not be customers. That’s OK.