Like MTV, Radio Doesn’t Find Music Valuable

Long ago, broadcast radio gave up with introducing their audience to new music. I first became aware of it sometime during the summer of 1996 [1] , I’m sure the tipping point occured long before then.

Between Cumulus Media president/CEO Lew Dickey, Jr. promoting the talk radio proliferation on the FM dial, my conversation about Broadcast Radio and Podcasting with Noah Lamson, and the frequency of MTV actually showing a music videos, musicians are in a pickle.

Their traditional distributors aren’t interested in distributing music anymore – let alone new music.

This is unfortunate because I’m more reliant on and interested in new music in the past 6 months than the 6 years before.

[1] My first full-time job in UW-Stout’s tech department. The same radio station was on in the office throughout the day. Because radio listenership is measured by the quarter-hour, after an hour in the shop, you knew the playlist for the next hour – and every 15 minutes thereafter. A painful way to spent 8 hours in a college town

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.”