About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
I got word this weekend that Mike O’Connor has closed up shop on this community podcasting site – Sex and Podcasting. I’ll miss S&P – haven’t listened to the Geezercast, and love the premise. This means there’s an opening on my gPod.
No worries, it was quickly filled by Merlin Mann’s 43Folders podcast. Merlin had me laughing with tears while on the freeway this afternoon with his Telephone made of Human Ass and Weekly Wrapup 2005-10-21.
We all know them, we all love them, this week’s triple play goes out to your favorite unstable girlfriend.
On a cool October day, while on my quest for some independent Twin Cities music, I sat down with John Ostby formerly of SpyMob. He had an acoustic guitar, I had a mic. We talked a little about the Twin Cities music scene, but mostly he played. Enjoy.
Listen to John Ostby and His Guitar [24 min]
The Star Tribune’s Jon Trevlin writes a FUD-mongering piece on “the City Pages’ parent’s possible merger“. In his first 2 sentences there’s; an ‘if’, a ‘may’, and two ‘mights’.
As a sign of things to come, Rex at MNSpeak pointed me to the online article. I read MNSpeak 2-3 times a day, during my regular NetNewsWire skimming. Don’t remember the last time I picked up a City Pages. I do remember that the last time I did, the entire second half was page after page of phone sex ads. Didn’t inspire me to pick it up again – no matter the investigative cover articles.
We went to a movie this weekend – historically, we would have gone to Citypages.com to check their listings. This time we decided their site was far to difficult to navigate and we hit imdb.com instead. Ended up at the Hopkins $2 theater for the Wedding Crashers. BTW – It’s one of the best movie theater-going experiences I’ve had in a long long time. The staff was friendly, the seats comfortable, the audience quiet, the tickets reasonably priced.
If my current habits are any indication, as long as the City Pages is a printed publication – it doesn’t matter who owns them. As long as they have a printing press, MNSpeak.com will eat their lunch, and review it.
There must be something in the air, Seth Godin picked up the ‘who’s the audience when everyone publishes?’ argument.
Seth is of course right – the cost of the production is quickly reaching zero. Fantastic blog software like WordPress is free – just the cost of implementation. Other hosted services are free. Once a blog is up, it’s one step away from offering audio or video. Hurrah.
I’m unclear about what Seth is asking here:
So there’s more, but is there better?
Better than what? Than mass-media? Than what doesn’t exist today?
From my perspective, having more voices is better than having fewer. Knowing that everyone I have a personal relationship with can share video, audio, or text with me (and everyone else in their circle) easily is better than not. I’m recalling Dan Gilmor‘s quote,
“Everyone will be famous for 15 people.”
A while back, Eric Larson from the Ericast asked what his niche was. I responded, the niche was him. If people want to hear what he has to say – there’s only one place to go.
Coincidentally, I think Godin proves this point in his last paragraph.
“It didn’t matter if it was the best movie Walt [Disney] ever made, because it was the only one right now.”
Replace “Walt” with your nephew, with your best friend, your sister, with Seth Godin, Dave Slusher, Garrick Van Buren, or anyone you’d like to hear from regularly. It doesn’t matter if anything from them is the best ever (on any scale) it’s the only thing from them.
In the choice between an expensive, high production-value, special-effects laden, movie and one from someone I have a personal relationship with like Chuck Olsen, I’ll pick Chuck every time. If I’m looking for tips on choosing a good bottle of wine, I’ll choose Tim Elliott over Wine Spectator every time.
The bar is a lot higher – for movie studios, broadcast radio, television networks, and newspaper companies. For now they’re competing with your nephew, your best friend, your sister, and everyone else that doesn’t have to make millions of dollars in profit to continue – just something to say and people that care about them.
So, yes – More is Better.
On tonight’s SNL Weekend Update, Tina and Amy were trying to prove their Chicago cred with someone from the Sox (this is me, not a sports fan).
He was kind enough to donate the World Series win to all Chicagoans. Southside, Northside, Skokie, Evanston, Wilmette, but not Schaumburg.
Ha.
(For the Minnesota readers unfamiliar with Chicagoland geography: Schaumburg = Bloomington.)
The MACTA talk was interesting. I sat next to tech lawyer, Brian Grogan. He explained the regulatory difference between cable companies and phone companies in this age where everyone is offering video over IP.
I believe the difference came down to whether the video was offered exclusively on the proprietary network or available on the public Internet. He used the example of a music video. If the video was watched on MTV’s television channel via coaxial cable, the service provider was regulated. If the video was downloaded from mtv.com, the service provider was not.
To me that feels like an microscopic hair-splitting. Though, I’m sure when the laws were originally written the public internet was non-existent and production tools like digital video cameras were extremely expensive.
Either way, today a portion of your cable bill (not your phone or satellite TV bills) pays for the public access channels. These legislated-into-existence channels great way for citizens to create media and for a community to distribute city council meetings and other governmental events easily.
In 2005, when media production tools are inexpensive and everyone with a website can be a television or radio channel, public access television channels should shutter their studio doors. For any moment now, Comcast or TimeWarner could decide to deliver all video programming over the public internet and POOF – no legal requirement for a public access channel.
Now, I believe, all government meetings – at all levels – should be podcast (audio or video, though audio is preferrable). This transparency currently provided by public access channels is of utmost importance to our democracy, but cable television is the wrong delivery medium for five reasons:
This puts cable access channels on the same list as record distribution companies – the endangered species list. If either of them want to stay in the same business, they need to offer bandwidth. Lots and lots of it, with BitTorrent thrown in. Otherwise in 5 years, they’ll be footnotes the technology history books.
Yesterday, my trusty 128MB USB Flash keychain drive gave up the ghost. Dead. Unrecognized by any machine. I originally picked it up a couple years ago to transfer a large number of files too big for email, yet passed back and forth too frequently for the slow mount/unmount of the iPod.
It’s served me well.
After the moment of mourning, I still had this problem of 30MB of files needing moved from that machine to this machine.
For whatever lame reason, the Powerbook isn’t aware of the SD/MMC card in the Treo. So, when I picked up the card, I also picked up a USB Memory Card reader from OfficeMax.
After I tossed the Flash drive, I popped the memory card out of the Treo – into the Reader, plugged the reader into that machine and grabbed the files.
I love when technology works. Oddly, this solution feels more flexible, more secure, and more portable than the keychain drive. I’m sure that’s because around the house, almost every device has a SD/MMC slot (cameras, Palms, Rios) – and only the computers have USB ports.
Funny you should ask. I’ve added a new page to the site – gPod – Garrick’s Must Listen Podcasters. These are the podcasters that make my day. The ones that work my braincells, get me thinking, and remind me why podcasting is so much better than broadcast radio.
Like the other pages on this site, this one will probably change with my mood and theirs. Though, if you’re looking for a good tried-and-true listen – you can’t go wrong with someone in this list.
Thanks go out to Julio Ojeda-Zapata for Podcast People, the most comprehensive article on the Podcast Minnesota community to date.