Van Buren Family Christmas Card 2005

van buren 2005 christmas card

I thought you’d all like to see our holiday card for this year. As always, It’s Jen’s concept and my typography. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. It feels very Classic 1940s Christmas to me. Sure, there’s more to it than this image – Jen did some very cool stuff that doesn’t translate well digitally. If you find one in your mailbox let us know what you think in the comment.

Deal? No Deal.

I’m not a big fan of games of chance and tonight’s debut episode of Deal or No Deal confirmed it. The promos declared this most pointless of all game shows is sweeping the globe. Yes, that’s the same sales pitch used with Big Brother and the Weakest Link.

Premise in a nutshell: 26 briefcases held by 26 models (America’s Next Top Model rejects?). Each briefcase contains an amount – from a penny to a million dollars. Pick a case. We find out the amount in your case through the process of elimination. As you open up the cases, a shadowy man in a skybox calls Howie Mandel. Shadowy Skybox Man declares a number to make you stop opening briefcases. You take the money or not (that’s the deal or no deal).

So, no trivia questions, no feats of skill, nothing but opening random boxes for way too long.

It was boring tonight. It will be boring tomorrow. I’m pretty sure the contestants on the debut episode were plants. Their enthusiasm didn’t smell right. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t replaced before the holidays were over. Sorry Howie.

On the plus side, 30 minutes into it, the Tivo asked us if we’d like the channel changed. Yes. Thank you, Tivo.

Update 27 Dec 2005: Bob at TV Squad feels the same way.

Fast Forwarding Through the Funny Parts

“What’s the value of that laugh to someone selling something associated with that laugh?” – Ron Bloom

I’m all for commercial messages in podcasts. I’m all for companies using podcasts as part of their ongoing marketing efforts. Done right – along the lines of what Whirlpool is doing – it’s a great way to reach customers with more on their mind than you. Directly. More deeply than any other medium allows – aside from living with a product.

When it’s expensive to publish (traditional media) marketers have to fight for column inches with real news… or at least the society pages. In the mind of the reader, the advertisements are noise and the column inches are signal. For the marketer – it’s flipped.

Today, it’s cheap to publish. For pennies a bit you’re reading this now. There’s no reason for editorial and advertisement to be delivered in the same package. Delivery is cheap, time is expensive. When I want commercial messages I’ll ask for them. When I don’t – get out of my way.

How many times have you gone to a website hoping for a specific banner ad to be there so you could click through?

Right, you’d just go to the marketer’s site. Directly. Duh.

Chances are someone in your organization is podcasting in their off-hours – might even be a customer.

  1. Find them.
  2. Pay them to produce your company’s podcast.

This is smarter than advertising on an existing podcast for three reasons;

  1. If your product isn’t interesting enough to talk about for 20 minutes why are you selling it?
  2. Your customers are not the same as anyone else’s.
  3. Everyone has a fast forward button.

Thanks to Dave Winer for the pointer to the Business Week podcast. If you listen to it, I recommend Mark Ramsey’s conversation with Douglas Ruskoff as a chaser.

Happy Holidays from St. Anthony Village

L1030402

This is the second winter we’ve spent in the house and the second winter somebody covered a city firetruck in lights, turned the carols up to 11, strapped a sleigh on the back, threw Santa in it, and drove around the village spreading holiday cheer.

Like the summer’s helicopter ping-pong drop – it makes both Jen and I smile for living here.

The Most Desperate Tivo

“Want to watch how the FBI uses math to solve crime?”

“The Tivo’s so desperate, it’s probably recording it for us right now.”

We’ve had the Tivo for about a week now. Yes, we’re still getting over-the-air broadcast television with our trusty rabbit ears – half-dozen channels depending on weather conditions.

This means Tivo is trying really, really hard to show us how smart it is. Unfortunately, there’s not much for it to impress us with. So far, its offered; religious programming, old Cosby reruns, Conan, Will & Grace, and a bunch of daytime talk shows.

Like a new puppy bringing home a dead bird.

No, it didn’t record Numb3rs for us. Guess the bird was too dead.

The Problems with Podcast Directories

I had a great lunch with Paul Cantrell today at Sushi Tango. Oh, and if you need an idea for lunch, ask Paul. He listed off a half-dozen other places that sounded just as fantastic.

One of the many things we discussed was the problem of podcast ratings and categorization – i.e. the problem of finding interesting podcasts.

At the bottom of each post here on the Work Better Weblog (and many of the other sites I contribute to) you’ll see a star rating. Click it if something I say resonates with you – don’t if it doesn’t. I offer it as a low-investment feedback mechanism. It’s cheaper than writing a comment and only slightly-more expensive than reading the post itself.

Like all feedback mechanisms – those most likely to bother are those at the poles (polls) – why speak up if you’re not the choir or in the wrong church altogether?

The number to pay attention is the number of votes – not the rating itself. So yes, an overall rating of 2.5 with 10 votes would be a good thing. In the end, our individual rating criteria are very different. Is this rating in comparison to the previous post? Another post on the same topic on a different weblog? How well my writing went with your morning coffee? Is 5 good or is 1 better?

The star is only a single indicator. Top rated posts on this blog will be different than top rated posts that I’ve written, than, well, you get the picture. How does a 4 at podcasts.yahoo.com compare to a 5 at Podcast Pickle to a 0 at Podcast Alley? Given how niche anything in a weblog or podcast is – the qualifiers of what these ratings mean are a mile long.

AmigoFish has promise – its collaborative filter + RSS feed sends new stuff directly to my feedreader – based on what I and others have rated – then provides an easy way to go back and finish the loop. Problem is (like all the directories) ratings are applied channel-wide and there are a lot of open loops.

I’ve got a channel over at GigaDial – Garrick’s Podcast Picks. It’s an on-going list of podcasts that I’ve found exceptional (35 as of this writing). Here’s the 9-step process for a item to get added to the list:

  1. A podcast finds its way into my feedreader
  2. It gets transferred into my iTunes’ Unlisted Podcast smart playlist
  3. It comes up on shuffle
  4. I listen and don’t hit ‘next’
  5. It resonates with me
  6. I remember I liked it the next time I’m at my computer
  7. I click the ‘add to podcast picks’ bookmarklet in my browser
  8. I search for the specific podcast in their directory (not everything is in there)
  9. I find the podcast and add it to the list

I gotta wanna – I’m just saying. So, this means something and I’m only going to do it once. Now, unless I take the extra step of telling the publisher I’ve added them – they’ll never know they connected. Same is true at all the other directories. That sucks. More than Earthlink advertisements in podcasts.

Within the RSS 2.0 spec, there’s an optional category tag, at the channel and item levels. It’s a free-form field – can be anything you’d like. Anything. If it’s a series of characters – it’s a category. And it can be different item to item, podcast to podcast.

Reminds me of a scene in a quiz show sketch from MTV’s 90s comedy show ‘The State’:

“Name a type of car.”
“Blue.”
“Yes, blue can be a type of car.”
Applause.

So, why are all the directories shoehorning podcasters into 15 main, meaningless sections when each podcaster could declare their own unique categories – plural – and standout?

A single-dimension directory is like trying to make money hosting podcasts or sanitizing telephones – it’s only fulfilling at the most cursory level. This is why Google is still the best podcast directory – it takes very specific queries, ones with multiple qualifiers. Then returns fulfilling results.

Bringing me to the podcast directories splogging up the search results. Yes, podcast directories are guilty of the same crime as the the other PageRank-loving sploggers – taking an RSS feed and republishing it for higher placement. 6 of the 10 items on the first page of Google results for “first crack podcast” are directories echoing one another. This redundancy makes each result less valuable.

Update: 9 Feb 06, If you’d like a more colorful read of the same issues, The Bman at FalconTwin.com delivers

Karaoke Gone Very Very Wrong

Sinéad O’Connor’s classic song “The Emperor’s New Clothes” came up on my iTunes this morning. This happens fairly often because its in my ‘Getting Things Done’ playlist.

Anyway – this particular time I was inspired to sing along – inspired to sing along as Garrick channelling Jimmy Fallon channelling Barry Gibb channelling Young Fine Cannibals.

I’d be happy to share it with you if someone wants to pick up the licensing fees 😉

First Crack 68. Dan Carroll Talks about the IMP Media Player

Dan Carroll and I grab lunch at Joes Garage and we talk about IMP – his music and movie distribution platform currently in beta.

We talk about how it benefits independent artists, how it’s different than iTunes, the decision to go with BiTorrent, and who this platform is intended for.

We start off with a bit about Attention and then get down to business.

Listen to Dan Carroll Talk About the IMP Media Player [18 min]

More about IMP over at the Minneapolis Observer