About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
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.
Oh, sorry I forgot to tell you, in just about 9 hours I’ll be speaking on a panel at the Minnesota Association of Community Telecommunications Administrators‘ annual conference.
General Session – IP Enabled Services
“The internet has catapulted a plethora of innovations in communications. It will continue to be an exciting ride both in technology and regulation. This panel will highlight webstreaming, the basics of mesh technology, incident area networking, pod-casting, and the regulation that may be following.”
Speakers: Charles Blanchet, Brian Grogan, Jason Prock, Garrick Van Buren
Should be interesting.
“I’m so excited we’re getting out of the country.”
Yeah, me too. What fun is the Amazing Race if you’re only touring the east coast (midwest *cough* midwest). Then again, the Amazing Race producers have double the people this season – so much higher airfare costs. But here’s the real reason families haven’t left the US yet:
“Hable inglés?”
“A little”
“Burrito.”
My favorite thing about the Amazing Race is how a multiple-hour lead can evaporate waiting for an airplane or the next destination to open. It keeps things interesting for everyone.
Detour: Rhythm or Coos?
Coos – spying fake birds seems more interesting than running around town collecting instruments. I think I’d find a greater sense of progress with the birds.
Based on the edit we watched, the fake birds in the trees we in the same position as their representation on the sheet-of-birds. Position seemed like at least as effective way to identify the birds as color – though color is probably easiest to communicate to someone else.
How do you dress for a non-elimination round? Let’s have Phil respond,
“Did you know it was illegal in Panama to wear underpants on top of underpants?”
Current Standing of Garrick’s Favorites:
Yesterday, A List Apart, Signal vs. Noise and Coudal announced a new ad network in the vein of John Grubers’ Daring Fireball sponsorhip model. Limited capacity, reasonable rates, blah, blah.
Yes, all 4 of these blogs are extremely popular, and I can’t say enough good things about Daring Fireball. John is frank, curt, and snide on Apple – and I think it’s fantastic. The point is, I don’t read them for the banner ads – I read them for the posts, the commentary, the stuff I don’t know yet.
I don’t remember the last time I clicked on a banner ad (I’m blind to them, and they don’t come through in feeds), I do remember the last time I used a new product or service because I read about it at SvN (The fantastic CampaignMonitor immediately comes to mind).
So, why are blogs selling banner ads when they should be selling product placement?
An artificial separation between editorial and advertising? Transparency solves that problem.
Watch this space throughout the day there’s more behind this that I don’t have time to write down yet.
If you’re on the Work Better RSS feed, expect this entry to flip back to ‘unread’ throughout the day. Until then, remember RSS is an ad.
UPDATE 29 Oct 2005:
Back in my college speech classes, I’d play an informal product-placement game. Just before my speech, I’d have another student pick an unrelated concept or product to work into the speech.
If non-banner-ad, paid advertising were to work in weblogs, this is how. Counting click-through – not impressions – on links using the NoFollow tag inside posts.
This week’s triple play goes out to all the lost California Dreams.
Earlier this week, Lori and I were talking about the crazy $500-$1,000+ ticket prices for industry conferences. Considering the you’d have to block the time off your calendar, close up the shop, and book travel, the additional admission cost seems like a good way to artificially prevent people from showing up.
At every professional-related meeting or conference I’ve attended, the best parts were between the formal, scheduled sessions. The hallway conversations, the happy hours, the lunches. The one-on-one with other attendees. Even at the local MIMA Salons, there’s a part of me that curses when the formal session begins.
With the MNteractive Information Architect Coffees and the PodcastMN Meetups, we pick a place, a time, and whoever makes it, makes it. Usually, it’s 80% the same core people and 20% new voices. Then again, there’s usually wireless – so if no one shows up – you can still get some work done.
All this is leading up to an emphatic ‘Damn Straight’ in response to Dave Winer’s Like a BloggerCon post – on the inherent costs of participation:
“Even so, there is a price of admission. To get to the BBQ, or the Homebrew Club, BMUG or BloggerCon, you had to have a ride. To get on the web you have to have a computer and a net connection.”
The best part of Winer’s post is (emphasis mine):
“My experience with these shows is that if you trust the universe, it will take good care of you.”
Elsewhere: 17 April 2007
“How much do conferences cost?” – Eric Rice