Backyard + Laptop + DVD = New Drive-in

It was such a gorgeous day here in Minneapolis, I moved my home office into the backyard. Aside from a curious squirrel it was very peaceful day.

This evening, I returned to the backyard and, as Jen and I have done so many evenings this week, turned on the Powerbook’s DVD player.

The drive-in’s of yesterday knew this – there’s very little better than watching a movie outside. No matter how small the screen.

It’s both fortunate and unfortunate we can do this in our own backyards. The community of a drive-in movie, like the St. Paul, Vali-Hi, is something magical.

Take Control of Your Reputation – Blog

Though my blogging roots can be traced back October 2000 I started blogging regularly about a 18 months ago because I wanted my Google presence to be more than a handful of stale message board postings.

If there’s any single reason to blog, it’s to take control over your online reputation. This goes for businesses, professional organizations, and individuals. Search engines bias websites that change frequently and have keywords in the right places. Weblogs fit both those criteria.

I’ve written about how not having an RSS feed is like not having a business card. Consider this the prequel to that post.

Without frequent posts to a weblog, your reputation is at the mercy of others. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes bad, and sometimes both. With weblogs, you actually take control of the conversation – it’s your business, shouldn’t you be the one talking about it. GM’s blogs have proved a valuable tool in responding to criticism in the open. Just to prove my point, at the time of this writing, Gary Grates’ Clearing the Air post was #2 in Google for ‘gm blog’.

On a smaller scale and less positive note, my less than stellar experience at Punch Pizza ranks higher than I’m sure the proprietors would like. By default, because they don’t have anything to compete with it.

Peter Cooper (via Gaping Void) talks about how the transparency of blogs benefits the hiring process. Yes, seems to me, reviewing their weblog one of the most quickest, effective ways to determine if a candidate is a hiring fit. As Alan Gutierrez states in the comments at Peter’s site:

“Without a blog you’re forcing yourself to be a surf.” [sic]

FeedJ – Is “Feed Jockey” Dorkier than “Blogger”?

If disc jockeys combine pre-record music into a playlist to improve the mood of their audience, can the same be true for weblogs and RSS feeds?

The right aggregation of websites into a single feed, with everything you want and nothing you don’t, seems akin to the work of a good DJ.

A good weblog is a nice mix of pre-recorded and impromptu thoughts. Suppose it’s just a matter of deciding which is a dorkier term and sticking with it.

Software Distribution History: Shrinkwrap to Download to Appcasting

NetNewsWire, my preferred RSS reader, isn’t particular about the file type within a given podcast. Audio (podcasting), video (videoblogging), images, pdfs (like 101sheets), torrents, or even applications (appcasting?).

As you can tell from the appcasting link, Fraser Speirs was the first I knew of using an RSS feed to distribute his excellent iPhoto Flickr plugin. More recently, the new version of Coding Monkeys’ SubEthaEdit came through their News feed.

Brilliant, this makes RSS 2.0 is the universal format for distributing updates of anything. Ultimately, I’d like to see the SubEthaEdit feed integrated into SubEthaEdit, same for all my other apps. Then we can get rid of those ever awkwardly implemented ‘Check for New Version’ menu items.

Bonus link, WP-GotLucky, another WordPress plugin I spun together, turns Google referral queries into an RSS feed. Making search engine performance more real-time and more visible than my server log analysis program supports.

Reflections on Northern Exposure

“Football’s a good enough sport, but can you die playing it?”

More than a decade ago, while flipping channels, I was first exposed to Northern Exposure. Maggie asked Joel to have dinner with her football-loving father under the pretense Joel was her extreme sports-loving boyfriend. (Not sure I got the above quote right, and google wasn’t helping. Found it.). As soon as Joel spoke that line, I was hooked.

In an effort to actually track down that scene, Jen and I are watching the series via Netflix. About a disc and half into Season 1, and I’m impressed how all the characters (except Joel) are so fully formed even from the pilot. Unlike other shows where all the characters are developed as you watch, the citizens of Cicely, AK are already mature – like old growth timber.

It’s Joel that is formed and molded, epsisode by episode, by his interactions with the other characters.

Also, feels like the exchanges between Joel and Maggie – especially in “Dreams, Schemes and Putting Greens” – seems unnecessarily antagonistic. Hopefully that’ll turn down just a notch or two as the season progresses.

Worst We Can Do is Go Bankrupt in the Morning.

I’ve mentioned this before in Job Security is the Ability to Get a Job, there’s a line in the Princess Bride that I think accurately describes the modern day employer-employee relationship:

“Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.” – Dread Pirate Roberts

Today, Seth Godin said the same thing while channeling Tom Peters:

“Almost all organizations spend their time and energy looking for security and stability. This is nonsense. The only security you have is in your personal brand and the projects you’ve done so far.”

Fix the Employee Cafeteria and You’ll Fix the Customer Relationship

Rob over at Business Pundit posts on How Broken Windows Can Kill a Business. As always, insightful.

I’m a big fan of fixing the small things. Not only does it make a change easier to implement, all big things are made of small things, so the big things start to take care of themselves.

The first comment, from David Lorenzo offers insight as compelling as Rob’s original post:

“When I was in the hotel industry and I was faced with a troubled property I would always clean up the ‘back of the house’ first. I would scrub and paint all the areas that the guests wouldn’t see. I would upgrade the meals in the employee cafeteria and I would re-stripe the employee parking lot….I would explain that we were going to improve every detail of our hotel guests’ experience and we were going to start from the inside out.”

Podcasting Rewards Good Conversation, Not Celebrity

Greg Lindsay over at Business 2.0 linked to the Working Pathways’ economics of podcasting post in his Podcasting’s Nonstar System article.


“An unknown number of those Apple-made microstars will convince themselves that they hold a first-mover advantage in an untapped medium…Eventually they’ll fail, and they’ll fail faster than ever before…For the first time in the history of the Net, big media showed up early to play.”

The big media podcasts on iTunes main page are in direct competition with your best friend’s podcast, the podcast on your favorite avocation, and your own. In that list, who’s the star?

This weekend, I discussed podcasting with someone in the public radio business. As much of a win podcasting is for public radio to maintain the relationship with members (it’s the only way I can listen to On the Media) it very directly pits WNYC against KCRW against WBEZ against KNOW against the local NPR affiliate in your neighborhood. Now when I’m driving through Wisconsin, I can get my public radio fix without listening to Calling All Pets.

I’m excited for public radio to podcast more, their experience in donation collection could be extremely helpful to podcasters interested in covering their costs. I also think it’ll be a great way for some of the smaller affiliates, like Wisconsin Public Radio to attract members outside the reach of their broadcast antenna.

There’s very little preventing listeners rewarding all the public radio stations I listed above with membership. Though, the rewarding will be in response to a specific program that resonates with a specific listener, not just because the station exists.

The playing field is level, so this is true for all podcasts – big media, public radio, and 8,000+ others.