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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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January 31, 2003
Video snips
: Adam Curry is putting up a video snippet a day, but he's doing it as a part of an XML/RSS feed (not that he couldn't just put the links up on his web page, but this is cooler right now). Nevermind the delivery. Note the medium: video.
Curry has material to work with because he created a Dutch Osbournes starring his family.
One clip here.
I'm linked, therefore I am
: Marc Canter gives us a very good and simple chart outlining the possibilities and for online digital identity. Your ID stands at the center of:
1. My communication: email, IM, phone...
2. Shared community spaces: forums, groups...
3. My people: friends, family, colleagues...
4. My workspaces: projects...
5. My personal expression: weblogs, photos, vlogs...
6. My media: music, video, photos...
7. Apps and services: tools, catalogues...
8. My events: calendar, alerts, meetings...
9. My hardware: machines, networks, locations...
There has been a great deal of very smart chatter of about identity (led by Doc) but if, like me, you come late to this party, it's hard to pick up a cocktail and a weenie and join in the conversation. Thus, Marc's chart is terribly helpful to lay out the land. And here's his visual wishlist for an application built around this identity.
It's all about using our world's new omnipresent network (omnetwork?) to get us what we want and who we want whenever and wherever we want.
The lazy man's Trackback
: Blawgistan Times (an automated aggregation of law blogs) has created an elegantly easy version of Trackback: LazyBlawg reads your RSS feed. In future incarnations, we'll also be able to read your website and generate the RSS feed for you, if you don't have one. We then parse your feed for:
: Postings in the category "Blawgistan" or "Lazyblwg"
: or (if you don't have categories) postings with "BLAWGISTAN" or "LazyBlawg" in the Title Thus, one could start a blog aggregation for consumer complaints with the only requirement being (see post below) that "SUCKS" has to be in the title or the topic.
It's XML without the XML. Purists are puking, of course. But the people set the standards. And this is sure easier than either XML or Trackback.
New Google trick: Google consumerism (aka the Google "Sucks Index")
: I have a bad host, Featureprice. I got it through an ad on Google.
Stupid me. I should have used Google to check them out.
Searching on "Featureprice sucks" brings up all kinds of results from disgruntled customers who posted their complaints on web pages far and wide (and even a site about nothing but terrible Web hosts). If only I'd made the "Featureprice sucks" search, I would have been warned off.
And so I realize that this is a new and terribly efficient way to protect consumers: Just type in any BRAND SUCKS and search you will learn a lot.
"Sony sucks" gets some complaints.
"Panasonic sucks" gets more.
"Sears sucks" gets tons of angry posts packed with bile (and for good reason; I hate Sears after an unbroken string of horrid experiences; I have ruled that we shall never buy from Sears ever again).
"Citibank sucks" brings up Nick Denton's many complaints about the bank on all his sites.
Be careful: Don't just count the results and take that as a numerical scale of suckiness. I searched on "Hostingmatters sucks" and got results about people finding that other services (e.g. Blogger) suck and thus they were switching to Hostingmatters (Glenn Reynolds' host, by the way). The results can be both positive and negative.
So there is no neat mathematic formula that lets you translate BRAND SUCKS into an automated web-consumer-acceptance score.
But it's not hard to look at the Google abstracts and get the context in a screen or two.
So this yields two...
RULES OF GOOGLE CONSUMERISM:
1. If you hate a brand, put in on your web page in the phrase "BrandX sucks."
2. Before you buy from a major brand, search on the phrase, "BrandX sucks."
And we are empowered, we Googled consumers.
Links
: I had messed up Howard Sherman's link (on the right); too bad, for his blog keeps getting better and better. I was one of many who told him he had to blog; didn't know how right that was.
That giant blowing sound is the bubble still bursting
: Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, lawyers to the dotcom elite, pulling in the shingle, going out of business. [via Werblog]
Animated photos
: Some wonderful, cool photoblog work at Meine Kleine Stadt: Scroll to the right until you see the jazz musicians or, best yet, the subway scene at Berlin's Potsdamer Platz. It's a simple matter of shooting multiple images in sequence and then tying them together in an animated gif ("if it's so simple, simpleton, why don't we see you do it?" OK, simple for others, for smarter people).
This beats video for the right image: light and easy to view.
It beats photos on paper: they move; they tell a story over time.
I love it.
Metamorphosis.com
: The Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper [via Bloghaus] asks: Would Kafka be a weblogger today? "Went to the movies. Cried."
We copy edit your ass
: I had a typo in the item below. Aaron (601am) Bailey was kind enough to point it out. Typo no more.
I'm ashamed to admit that I have frequent typos -- doubly shameful because I've done time as a copy editor. But the problem is: I think fast. I talk fast. I type fast. I publish fast. Too fast, perhaps, but that's the joy of weblogs: speed.
Webloggers can beat big guys to the punch because they're light and fast and cheap. If we get something wrong, other webloggers will likely fact check our ass. If we mistype, other webloggers will be kind enough to point it out (and readers will forgive the occasional stumble). The community is the editor.
That's what makes nanomedia cheap.
January 30, 2003
Yawn.com
: Boy am I unimpressed so far with Tony Perkins' Always-on. Pontification without links; I can find that in lots of old-media places already, thanks (and at least the old-media joints have real reporters).
Lending libraries, via mail
: The Netflix model is spreading -- that is, the borrow-something-through-the-mail-and-never-pay-late-fees model. Lots of people tell Matt Haughey about such services for games. And Booksfree is a similar service for books (I just got that for my father for his birthday... today... happy birthday, Pa!). Is there such a service for music?
I can't think of any other recyclable-consumables that would lend themselves to this model (I'll use a hammer for two weeks and then send it back?)
Note that all of these can be replaced easily by digital delivery. They are only temporary consumer reactions to the inconvenience and high price of acquiring these things at retail today.
Or like a Big Mac without the special sauce
: Industrial Technology and Witchcraft says (complaining about William Gibson's linkless blog): Ein Blog ohne Links ist wie ein Butterbrot ohne Wurst."
Translation: A blog without links is like a roll without sausage.
January 29, 2003
Blogging for fun (and profit)
: A good story about trying to make blogging profitable in the Guardian. Focuses on Denton and Copeland. Quotes me. (For folks coming across the ocean from the Guardian, if you're curious about the reference to video blogs, click here.)
: It has become tradition among bloggers who are interviewed (as if that were not ego gratification enough) to put up the entire transcript of the interview. Now just the other day, I poo-pooed a journalist putting up all his interviews, arguing that the value he added was NOT overloading us like that. But who am I to sabotage tradition? If you care -- and you shouldn't, really, you shouldn't -- you can click on the "more" link below (for those reading a direct link to a post on the archives page, just scroll past all this blather):
Q: What got you interested in blogs – when did you start blogging and why?
A: Two answers here -- one work-related, one personal.
For work (I am in charge of content, technology, and strategic development for the newspaper- and magazine-related online services of Advance, the Newhouse media company): We are enamored of audience content. Forums on such topics as recipes and high-school wrestling bring in up to a third of our traffic. So we value this content. We saw blogging, early on, as a potential for new audience content, and so we invested in Pyra (which created Blogger) and another weblog company. So we watched blogging for a long time and are now beginning to try incorporating some weblogs into our sites.
Personally: I started my own weblog (www.buzzmachine.com) only when I had something to say and that came after September 11th, when I survived the attacks in New York (I was on the last train into the World Trade Center and stayed to report the story for our sites and papers; I was a block away from the south tower when it collapsed; I put my story up online). I could not let go of the story and since I no longer report for a living, I started my weblog. I reported more memories and observations from that days but it quickly expanded, as weblogs do, into a broader range of the things that interest me. I also quickly found that I was meeting people and making friends around this weblog. Before long, it was an addiction -- or perhaps the better metaphor was this this was a cult and I was now a member -- and so I have not stopped.
Q: In general, people blog because they have something to say – they’re driven by passion, not the profit motive. Consequently, some people have suggested (Clay Shirky) that no one will ever make any money from blogging on its own, that the only bloggers who make money will be those with a foot in the old media world, who may make money indirectly (I’m thinking of his essay on the mass amateurisation of publishing). Do you agree with this line of argument – or do you think there is money to be made from blogging?
A: In one sense, weblogs are merely a tool. Quark brought professional publishing to the masses (but you still had to know how to write and design and distribute professionally if you were going to make money using that). Weblog tools bring online publishing to the masses (and here we do not need to worry about printing and distributing to newsstands to publish). I'm also very high on new video tools (to create what I call vlogs on my site) that similarly bring the ability to create TV commentary to the masses. So Clay is absolutely right: weblogging does lead to the mass amateurization of media -- but I applaud that, for, again, I know how valuable the audience's content can be.
You're right that most weblogs are products of passion rather than profit. But that need not be the case. As you know, Nick Denton is starting weblogs with profit as his goal and that influenced the subject matter. Gadgets on Gizmodo.com will draw high audience interest and there's a way to make money through affiliate sales, advertising, and syndication. There's money there. There just doesn't happen to be money in political punditry.
I think there will be other ways to make money in and around weblogs when they reach a critical mass of audience. I can see marketing specific products to specific audiences through them, for example.
Q: The blogosphere has got so big now, it’s hard for mainstream business/media to ignore it. What do you think they could learn from bloggers.
A: Big media can learn a number of skills from bloggers: namely, that brevity is a service; swiftness adds value; and voice and opinion make media interesting.
I'm fond of saying that The Week magazine is a weblog (without links); that's why I am a fan of the publication. It is not afraid of being brief (while other publications think they add value by adding words -- which really only adds to the audience's exhaustion); it is quick; it has a voice. I believe we will be seeing this influence spread through other publications and media products (including TV).
Big-time publishers can also learn from the size of these efforts. Media (and entertainment) have to get smaller to succeed in the future (when more products compete for smaller slices of the audience and of marketing dollars). I created Entertainment Weekly and I was very proud that I started it with a smaller staff than any other magazine in Time Inc., smaller even than the company's monthly magazines. I had 60 on the content side. Now compare that with The Week in the U.S. with 24 on the entire staff. That is a good trend.
Q: Do you think the thin media/nanopublishing idea being explored by Nick Denton will work in the long term?
A: Yes, I believe it will work. At moments such as this, someone always asks whether something new will replace something old and the answer is almost always no; nanopublishing will not replace magazine publishing or mass media. It is a new opportunity. It won't make money for political punditry or for the diaries of college students. But it will work for gadgets and sex and special interests such as disease (imagine a great weblog for diabetics). It will work because it is so cheap to publish.
Q: What about the blogads idea – won’t advertisers want to get their ads onto the big blogs and not be too bothered by the smaller operations – in other words can this ad-supported model really work for bloggers who don’t have huge traffic levels?
A: Yes, this is an issue. I threw out a trial balloon many months ago suggesting the idea of starting a foundation to create a network of weblogs of sufficient size to interest advertisers but I quickly realized that this would work only in a for-profit company and the effort that would go into starting it simply would not pay off today. Hell, the Internet is still too small for some (unenlightened) advertisers; weblogs are molecular compared to that. A few things will be required for advertising to work: Weblogs would need to create an efficient ad sales and serving network and they would need to create profiles of their audiences for targeting. I don't see that happening anytime soon for the reason above. Instead, I think there is a possibility that direct marketing will work with weblogs (note Amazon sales through them).
Q: On a related theme, this whole idea of setting up ad networks for blogs reminds me of other operations that were set up back in the early days of the personal homepage boom. Are we in danger of re-running a lot of ideas that were tried and failed back then? Or are people older and wiser now?
A: I answered the first part of this above. As to the second: No, I think we have learned a great deal. We're no longer pouring millions into (and expecting billions from) such ventures. They are appropriately small now.
Q: In the end, what did you think of Andrew Sullivan’s Pledge Week – you were quite critical of it, but it seemed to do the business – he didn’t quite hit his target but he got enough. And he did establish the idea of readers paying for blogs they like. I have my doubts about whether anyone apart from superstar bloggers can make this model work. What do you think?
A: More power to him for eeking out some bucks. But clearly, this is no way to make this medium work. Perhaps it's cultural: We are not accustomed to paying licensing fees for our TV; public-TV pledge weeks grate our senses; we are more accustomed to for-profit media making a profit; that's how we pay for our media. I think begging is a bit unseemly. Either your content is unique and worth money and you can charge for it and do or not.
Q: Most of the questions so far have focused on the idea of blogging as online media/publishing. But blogging is changing now – moving on from the initial idea (filtering the web, providing an easy to use platform for personal expression) to something that has more to do with letting groups form, share ideas, build some sort of shared culture – via things like Moveable Type’s trackback and various variations on it. Is this something you can see the business world getting interested in?
A: Perhaps. From the perspective of audience and present blogs: The metaproduct of blogs will probably be data about buzz: What is the audience talking about? What do they care about? Who are the influencers? What are the trends? Bloggers already influence Google; their links are a measure of buzz. I think there will be more sophisticated means of measuring that buzz.
From the perspective of the tools: See my answer to your next question.
Q: I’m planning to speak to John Robb about the k-log idea – which is about using the weblog form to help corporations pool and manage this knowledge, I guess – do you think it will catch on?
A: I've done a lot of thinking about weblogs and corporate knowledge management (spurred in part by Denton) and though I think weblogs could be of value (to better package corporate content and information, to capture expertise, to publish easily within the corporation, to publish the company line), I doubt that they will be used widely because this would require a sizable change of habit inside companies, because most corporate citizens are not writers and in fact fear writing (while bloggers clearly relish it), and because corporations and their managers are (necessarily) control freaks and they will not want spontaneous publishing happening under them.
What is more likely, I think, is what you see from some law firms and from Jupiter recently: People in the knowledge business (as someone I quoted on my blog said recently) will use weblogs to show off their own knowledge. It makes sense for a consultant or attorney or accountant or analyst to create a blog to share and comment on information. But that's very different from internal knowledge management....
Q: On the subject of big businesses getting involved in blogging, do you know anything about AOL’s plans to enter the area?
A: Evan Williams of Pyra said on his blog that AOL is definitely sniffing here. I believe that AOL will offer blogging tools because it's just the next generation of what they already have: personal home page tools. When AOL does do this, I think the end result will be less like the weblogs we see publickly and more like LiveJournal, which is really a closed community of online friends who use weblogging tools to communicate.
Beyond that, however, I do think that there will come a day when everyone will have a weblog of sorts: that is, a place to store links, information, photos, and anything we'd want anyone to see. I also think that people will start adding metadata about themselves to their weblogs (there was a recent riff among webloggers about adding tags such as $single or $seeking job or $seeking programmer to their weblogs or personal pages so that search engines will allow us to create dynamic directories of people who have or want what we want; see that discussion here: http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2003_01.html#000564)
Priorities, people!
: The Bloggies "controversy" is getting out of hand. I just thought they were lame, that's all.
Warblogs, the sequel
: Glenn Reynolds gives you a terrific warblogroll as we roll into battle, at GlennReynolds.com.
The reign of the stupid
: As it turns out, the biggest loss in the history of American business and the worst deal in the history of American business and the fall that will mark the end of an era in American business -- the vaporizing of the bubble that symbolized the previous era -- are not the result of vain greed, as we've been saying about Silicon (Death) Valley. No, AOL Time Warner was the result of stupidity, plain, old, simple, avoidable stupidity. It was stupid to think that AOL was going to keep growing. It was stupid to believe that AOL was making as much money as they said. It was stupid of AOL to mistreat its customers for so long. It was stupid of Time Warner to think that its customers would give an F about a holding pen for its brands called Pathfinder, which resulted in the strategic panic and aggressive stupidity that led to the AOL deal. It was incredibly, terribly, destructively, monumentally, historically, shamefully stupid to let themselves be bought by AOL. It was just plain stupid, that's all. At least the greedy fools of Silicon Valley were smart. The fools of AOL Time Warner were just dumb.
Free!
" I just signed up for a free trial subscription to the LA Examiner. You should, too.
Naked Canadians, pasty white
: Marc Weisblott sends us news of more naked Canadians (following word that Naked News will air on Canadian TV): An almost-naked cooking show: There's a new show on the block that promises to entertain as well as...enlighten. Enter the world of cooking with two pairs of chefs, Murray Bancroft & Dena Ashbaugh and Gennaro Iorio & Eva DeViveiros, who will alternate hosting duties each week. Clad only in "strategically placed" aprons, they'll explore the relationship between sex and food in a playful, sexy, adult way -- Food as Aphrodisiacs, Breakfast in Bed for Two (or More), Dinner as Foreplay...it's all here. Move over Emeril! Pass me the oysters.
: And through this, I learned that Canada has a SexTV cable channel. Who'dathunkit?
The new boss
: An interview with the new boss at MSNBC.com, Dean Wright: More broadband, more useful news; smart on both counts.
Gray on gray on gray
: A New York winter day.
: A very nice photolog from Germany (don't worry about translating; it's all about the photos. Just click on anything that says "mehr" or "weiter"; that means more).
Freeing Iraq
: A new weblog on Germany's view of America and vice versa, Amiland, finds this eloquent quote: At a ceremony on Sunday, Paul Spiegel -- the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany -- criticized the German government's position on Iraq. "One can't be a priori against war," he declared. "The concentration camps weren't freed by demonstrators."
One more thing... Your blood type, please
: Glenn Reynolds whines about sites requiring registration. I agree. He's not saying it's all bad; he understands we folks have to make the money to buy our suits; he's primarily complaining about sites that ask you two dozen dumb questions (to which you will give two dozen lying replies) and then still give you a bad site. When you get right down to it, some sites need to know just a kernel of information to serve ads more efficiently (and thus make money). A local site needs to know where you're from (thus what content and ads you need to see). A b-to-b site wants to know that you're in the industry. A little goes a long way.
The reviews are in
: The LA Examiner, from Ken Layne, Matt Welch, Dick Riordan, et al, got a good review from its whipping boy, the LATimes: Graphically, the new weekly's 52-page prototype is a handsome, highly readable package with a promising and intelligently arranged editorial format....
Taken as a whole, the Los Angeles Examiner wants to be something novel in the alternative press, what might be called the voice of the beleaguered former majority, an insurgent establishment.
Dear Scumbucket,
: Former TV critic Gary Deep is selling celebrity letters to him on eBay. But it's a real D-list list -- all Chicago radio "personalities," like Larry Lujack.
I can beat that from my days as a TV Critic at People, TV Guide, and Entertainment Weekly.
I have hate mail from Bill Cosby. He hated it when I said his sitcom went downhill and he regularly sent nya-nya mail.
I have a whining letter from Alan Thicke begging me to lay off him; must have been his therapist's idea.
I have a letter from Pat Sajak pissed off that I didn't like what they'd done to Wheel of Fortune.
I have thank-you notes from Rosanne [Barr]; surprised she's so well-mannered.
And I have a nice letter from David Letterman, thanking me for my support, signed, "Your friend, Dave."
Sorry, not for sale.
But I will be happy to sell you autographed first editions of Entertainment Weekly. I'll sell you lots of EW launch swag.
And I'll sell you that hat (below) worn by a former TV critic who may look down on his luck -- bad enough to sell old letter from the star -- but isn't... yet. [via Romenesko]
Pop culture jury psychographics
: They're doing strange things to pick juries these days:
: A friend tells me his panel for a criminal case was asked what bumperstickers they had on their cars. American flag? Fine. Police Benevolent Association sticker? Defense says, good-bye.
: In a New Jersey criminal trial, the defense laywer wanted to ask prospective jurors whether they listened to Howard Stern. He didn't want any Stern fans on his jury. The judge said he couldn't do that.
: The judge did, however, allow the lawyer to ask whether jurors watched CSI or NYPD Blue.
Work: The Ultimate Reality Show: The Sequel
: When I pitched work as the Ultimate Reality Show, I forgot to link to the best cast you could imagine: Just read Nick Denton's tales of ex-colleague Julie Meyer (and links to her alleged memo writing on f'd company). You know that people in that office ask themselves every day: What's worse -- this or poverty?
 How cold is it
: Cold enough that I don't care if I look like a dork in that hat. Colleagues dared me to put this picture up. So there.
January 28, 2003
Xeno
: Nick Denton came to hate San Francisco. He came to hate London. He's running a site that loves New York. I want to see him spend a week in Indianapolis.
Urban paranoia
: Steven Cuozzo was right on target taking on the way-over-hyped Liebeskind design for the World Trade Center: It's overblown; it's architectural show-off; it turns a huge hunk of our city into a grave; it thumbs its nose at commerce and life; it's not human. I hate it, too.
But then he takes that one step too far.
Why does he have to turn this into another "leftist" conspiracy?
Why does it have to be "leftist"?
Can't it just be stupid?
Can't it just be wrong?
: Meanwhile, Steven Johnson was about to be swayed by the Liebeskind wind (says he: "I generally change my opinions about these things based on what the cool kids are saying") but he's bending under the weight of the NYTimes enthusiasm for the THINK proposal.
Whitewash
: All New York is white but it's not snow and it's not virtue, it's salt.
Every street looks like the Bonneville Flats; I expect to see a rocket-powered car (yellow, with off-duty sign lit on top) zipping past any minute.
I'm fearing that we will soon have health-impact studies looking at what will happen to us after we have spent a frigid month inhaling salt dust: We will turn into tuna.
White, white, everywhere. It's the only time when New York looks clean: when it has been attacked by Morton's.
Gawd, I want to defrost.
Rescue me from my sucky host!
: It's not the last time you've heard that request.
I use a sucky service called featureprice -- terribly unreliable and terribly unresponsive service. I've had it.
The only advantage is that I get to host four domains (thus including my kids') for $16.95/month with lots of storage.
I've emailed nothingspecial, used by Welch, Layne, et al; and Hosting Matters, used by Reynolds.
Any other recommendations?
And here's a weblog wish: I wish someone would compile hosting recommendations and warnings so we can at least pool our buying power and what little clout we have to get decent service!
: Update: Denton's compilation of recommendations. See also the comments.
January 27, 2003
Work: The Ultimate Reality Show
: They haven't yet invented the perfect reality show. Here it is:
Work.
There is no better venue for venality, greed, cruelty, and all the qualities that make reality TV such a success.
And there is no better time, for with the economy in the dumper, you can bet that every office across the country is becoming meaner by the day. We'll all relate to Work: The Ultimate Reality Show.
Like every reality show, you need to find a way to level the playing field and make it interesting. I say you pick an office of a small company that's doing OK but just OK and you pit the classes against each other -- the bosses vs. the midmanagers vs. the drones. You toss an impressive winning pot of money onto the field that resets all the rules, so the lowest drone can end up earning more than bosses or the bosses can have a record year even now. And you reset the rules of winning so profit isn't the gauge (too often, it isn't anyway) but instead, politics and deceit and popularity determine the winners. So you test the workers to see whether they will tell stories on each other (employee A is nipping office supplies; do you tell?) and you have the audience vote on the winners: American Idol meets Fortune.
I'm telling you, this will be huge. Huge.
: Work is already entertaining. This morning, Howard Stern played with his station's general manager, Tom Chiusano, like a rat on a string. Their radio company just named a regional boss and Tom didn't get the job. Howard told Tom that he was passed over, that he was a loser, that he could not tolerate another GM being his boss, that he was going to end up quitting. With every detail, it got worse: Tom didn't even have the chance to pitch for the job. He was passed over. Twenty-three years invested in the company go pffft. That's office politics. It's every bit as dramatic as The Practice.
: Now see the popularity of the BBC series The Office in Britain, as reported by Gawker. It's a mock documentary about office intrigue and stupidity; it is the fictional version of the reality show I want to see. I tried to buy it at Amazon.co.uk but that wouldn't do me any good, because UK DVDs are coded so U.S. players can't play them. Drat. I want The Office! And then I want a U.S. version (because Americans fight and politic differently from Brits; they debate for the sake of debating; we fight for the sake of fighting; we're blunter).
: Finally, go watch Terry Tate: Office Linebacker at the Reebok site. It's an expanded version of the brilliant Super Bowl commercial: A big, mean linebacker tackles office workers to make sure they put their cover sheets on their forms and and don't steal pencils and don't play games on work time. I guarantee that every worker in every office in the country watched that commercial in hysterics and knew exactly whom, in their offices, Terry should tackle.
: Work may not be fun these days. Work may be hard. Work may be mean. But work is entertaining. Work is The Ultimate Reality TV.
: Update: The Reebok Office Linebacker spot was the most-watched among Tivo users and more than 140,000 users downloaded the expanded four-minute version by noon Monday. Hit a nerve, this did.
Grouch
: Richard Bennett proves my point, brilliantly.
Seeing double
: Kottke has a plot to make you all cross-eyed.
Reality journalism
: A nice Doc riff inspired by the success (in ratings and economics) of reality TV: Think of blogs as reality-based journalism. Like all these TV shows, they cost relatively little to produce, they're done largely by amateurs, and they threaten Business As Usual, with its large paid staffs, etc.
It ain't quite the same as TV, because most magazines and newspapers have paying subscribers, meaning that advertising isn't their only business (just the way they make most of their money). Commercial TV still has no direct market relationship with viewers (who pay cable and satellite companies, not show producers or networks, with the minor exception of premium channels like HBO).
So I think big-J Journalism is still safe.
But it kinda makes you think, no?
Once burned...
: The new head of media whopper Bertelsmann says: "For our business, the Internet has no meaning." [from Dienstraum]
January 26, 2003
A day in the life...
: Of a (writer/essayist/blogger) caterer Rossi.
Cue the National Anthem
: Celine Dion sings God Bless America at the Super Bowl. A Canadian?
Ah, now the National Anthem comes from the Dixie Chicks.
That's more like it.
Cue the Internationale
: Aardvark reports that the Communists made a surprising surge in the elections in Graz, Austria.
January 25, 2003
Sauteed blog
: I just discovered the Julie/Julia project blog and if you haven't, head over there and pull up a chair now. In it, one Julie Powell, a sef-described government drone (for renewnyc) decided to take on the challenge of cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the 40-year-old classic from Jula Child et al -- the book and the woman who taught American how to cook (and eat). She chronicles the project in her blog -- and what a perfect venue the blog turns out to be.
Enough already
: Many folks are rightfully impressed with J.D. Lassica's experiment with what he calls "transparent journalism." He put up all his interviews for a story on syndicated news feeds (see his links here). Dave Winer says: Someday all reporters will do this. Hey maybe they'll skip writing the polished piece, esp when the article isn't appearing in print. ARRRGH! Noooo!
I look at J.D.'s voluminous interviews (oh, boy, did he do his homework) and I have a very different reaction: I thank God for reporters and writers who distill all this into a brief story that tells me what I need or want to know and little more. That is the value they add and I hope they never stop adding it.
When I started online news sites, lo, eight years ago, the reflex that came out of many print editors was: Gee, we can put up all the stuff we didn't have room to print; at the end of every story we can have a line that says "for more, go online..."
Well, that didn't work for two reasons: First, and most important, if you're doing your job as a reporter or editor, then you should have told most people most of what they want to know in the story you just published. If you didn't, you did it wrong. I never finish every story in the paper and I leave informationally sated; I rarely read a whole story and remain hungry for more. The second reason this didn't work is that it takes effort to put all that material online (and also worry about whether there's anything libelous or wrong in it).
I'm fine with reporters who have the time putting up their interviews and notes for those who really want more. But I warn you: Those will be few -- often too few to justify the effort.
Citizen Layne
: Ken Layne et al just published their prototype issue of the LA Examiner. This is huge. The only new papers starting in this country (besides the NY Sun) are ones in other languages; here's one I can read. I can't wait to see it. I wish they'd put up a few PDFs of pages so we can all bask in the glory of a newspaper launch.
Wear just the facts, maam
: Lost Remote reports that Naked News -- the web show that is just that, naked people reading news -- will now get on the air at Toronto's CityTV, a real innovator (they created the Speaker's Corner, in which people off the street record snippets -- opinions, songs, jokes -- and the best get on the air). Note a few trends here, born of the Internet: This is a show created on the Web that will now be on real TV. And this indicates a loosening attitude toward nudity (at least in Canada).
: Update: Cory Doctorow reports that CITYtv visionary -- and I do mean visionary-- Moses Znaimer may retire. He launched community station CITY-TV in 1972, creating a blueprint for interactive TV that has spread across Canada and the world. He has been the on-air host of several series and specials, including The Originals on specialty channel Bravo and TVTV: The Television Revolution.
The accompanying ego is as monumental as his legacy. His west-end Toronto backyard was rearranged in the eighties to accommodate metre-high letters spelling out "Moses."
January 24, 2003
The Museum of Spam
: Der Schockwellenreiter has put together a complete collection of Nigerian spam letters. Somebody, somewhere, is spending his days writing: In view of your profile I was mandated by my colegues to contact you immediately for this mutual business relationship which involed a transfer of the sum of USD18,300,000.00 (Eighteen Million, Three Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only.)into your personal or company`s bank account for safe-keeping and subsequent dibursement among us. : BBC: The most annoying spam of 2002.
January 23, 2003
 Screw the envelope... Here are the winners...
: Since there is a popular uprising against this year's Bloggies, I decided to put my taste where my mouth is and award my own favorites:
THE JEFFIES!
They are just as meaningless as any other award, just as capricious and random and political and spiked with favor. But, just like my copyright, they are mine, all mine.
The nominees? All those guys on the right.
And the winners are (in a break with Academy tradition, I'll start with the most important first because I have a point to make and this is my show)...
: BEST BLOGGER: Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and now MSNBC because he gives us so much -- so much information, so much entertainment, so many links, so much traffic. Yes, he's the obvious choice and that's just the point: Blackballing him from the Bloggies was the best indication of their utter bogusness. A lot of my choices are obvious -- and in this new medium, that's also the point: Awards can point to quality; they can guide newcomers to the best we offer; they can reward the leaders. That's what a credible blog award should do -- but that's not what the Bloggies are doing, for they're trying to be too hip by half, too cute by the other half. Note that I avoid the cutsy categories of the Bloggies; my categories are just as obvious -- thus, useful -- as my awards. [Note also that at most awards shows, the acceptance speeches go on forever. Here, the presenter never shuts up. But on with the show...]
: BEST LINKS: Boing Boing -- specifically Cory Doctorow's contributions. It's remarkable how a person's selections -- rather than his writing -- can have such voice and authority. He puts the H in HTML.
: MOST CURMUDGEONLY BLOGGER: Richard Bennett. Bark=bite.
: BEST NEW BLOG: Gawker. OK, so I know its founder, Nick Denton; everybody in Hollywood knows Michael Caine and they vote for him anyway. I award Gawker because it raises the bar on blogging to a professional level.
: MOST USEFUL BLOG: Gizmodo. What, two awards for Denton? That's not fair! Right. Life is unfair. So are awards.
: BEST POLITICAL BLOGGER: There are so many to choose from (about 95 percent of all bloggers). But I give the nod this year to Josh Marshall for pursuing stories with dogged determination.
: BEST LIBERAL BLOGGER: Atrios.
: BEST CONSERVATIVE BLOGGER: Kaus.
: MOST FEARLESS BLOGGER: Little Green Footballs. Love him or hate him, he's a dog with a bone.
: BEST OLD-TIME BLOGGER: I say Doc. Others would say Dave or Dave. But I say Doc.
: BEST BLOG DESIGN: Dean Allen's Textism. The man respects type in a medium that does not.
: BEST PHOTO BLOG: Quarlo.
: BEST RELIGION BLOG: HolyWeblog. (And yes, there are a surprising number of religion weblogs).
: BEST FOOD WEBLOG: The Red Kitchen.
: BEST LAW BLOG: LawMeme from Yale.
: BEST LITERARY BLOG: Woods Lot.
: BEST BLOG WRITING: Lileks. (I'm surprised I didn't have more nominees in this category but that's probably because most bloggers, real bloggers -- a club in which, admittedly, Lileks is an honorary member -- type before they write or get their writing jollies elsewhere).
: BEST MEDIA BLOG: I Want Media.
: BEST TV BLOG: Lost Remote.
: BEST MARKETKING BLOG: Marketing Fix.
: BEST BUSINESS BLOG: Corante's many-headed blog.
: BEST MEDIA COMPANY BLOG: The Guardian's Online Blog.
: BEST CORPORATE SUPPORTER OF BLOGGING: MSNBC.com.
: BEST STUDENT BLOG: Matthew Yglesias from Harvard.
: BEST GOVERNMENT BLOG: The Shifted Librarian. OK, it's a stretch to call this government work -- but then again, it's not. See what a creative and dedicated public servant can do with few resources but lots of energy.
: BEST BLOG PERSONALITY: Oliver Willis. You simply get to know the guy. He is what he blogs.
: BEST FOREIGN BLOG -- GERMAN: Der Schockwellenreiter.
: BEST FOREIGN BLOG -- JAPANESE: Joi Ito (not that I can understand the rest of them).
: BEST SEX BLOG: Raymi. It's personal.
: MOST CREATIVE BLOGGING: Tony Pierce. Sometimes, I can't figure out what he's doing. Sometimes, I can't get enough of it. But he always surprises. Always.
: BEST NEW BLOG TOOL: Technorati Link Cosmos (here's mine).
: BEST VIDEO BLOGGING (VLOGGING): Still waiting; too new.
: BEST BLOG THAT SHOULD BE BUT ISN'T: Clay Shirky -- start blogging.
Thanks everybody. Good night. Drive safe.
Sorry we had no pre-show fashion fest; bloggers are bad dressers.
And if I offended anybody by leaving you out, I apologize.(Layne and Welch: I disqualified you because you took long vacations; and Locke: I disqualified you because you are still MIA).
If you hate my list, well, then make your own. Please, make your own. That is precisely what makes blogs blogs: we pick the best; we link.
The truth is, we create our own awards shows every day with every link.
Aliteracy
: A sad but true observation on Sand in the Gears: I'm disturbed, when I fly or ride the train, by the number of people who willingly embark on a trip of an hour or more without anything to read. I read a wonderful essay once by someone who referred to such people as "aliterate." I see many of the same people every day, just sitting and staring at their hands, out the window, at their fellow passengers. Not all of them get motion sickness. I have the suspicion that some of them simply do not read.
Brian Eno and the Microsoft sound
: Rand discovers that Brian Eno wrote the "Microsoft sound" you hear upon the launch of Windows 95. [via Monoklon]
January 22, 2003
And the winner izzzzzzz
: If I ever run a newspaper, I'll have a few new rules but one of them will be: No awards. No Pulitzers. No AP awards. No prizes. Nothing. I'll tell my staff: We create this newspaper for our readers, not for fellow newspaper people with prizes in their hands.
I bring that prejudice to the Bloggies.
The other night, I watched the Golden Globes and, as always, couldn't believe that fewer than 100 foreigners are voting on awards that are causing all this ruckus.
I bring that prejudice to the Bloggies.
The Oscars are bull. Ditto the Emmys, the Grammies, the Nobel.
I bring that prejudice to the Bloggies.
So I decided not to bother with the Bloggies. I'm not boycotting. I'm not bothering. I didn't nominate. I won't vote. I don't care.
But that's nothing. You should read Dawn on the awards. She's on a tear.
Richard Bennett suggests in her comments that she/we should start a real award with real categories (instead of the ludicrious Bloggie categories ... Europe/Africa: Huh?)
I'd trust Bennett and Dawn.
But I still have a prejudice about awards.
Unless you're going to show up on a red carpet wearing skimpy nothing for Joan Rivers and her cameras, what's the f'ing point?
: And anyway, if bloggers are going to start an award, wouldn't they automate it to let the entire audience vote with their clicks and links? Which blogs in which categories got the most links last year? They're the real winners. Proof in the pudding. Cream rises. All that. (And, yes, Glenn Reynolds quickly gets promoted to Hall of Fame so everyone else can play.)
Intellectual property as property
: I'm a fool to engage a very smart attorney in a discussion of copyright, but as I said, I'm a fool. Ernie "[the other] attorney" Miller from Yale -- a ringleader of the Revenge of the Blog conference up there -- sent me thoughtful email on copyright. Click the "more" link below to see what he said and how I respond, if you wish...
Ernie's email to me:
I disagree strongly with the arguments claiming that copyright is "stealing" (though I think retroactive term extension, aka "rent seeking," is pretty darn close). Those that call copyright in and of itself theft are foolish.
However, the idea that copyright is "property" the same as any other form of property is deeply and equally flawed. It is this idea of creative works as property like any other that many rebel against, and rightly so.
Here are a few ways (not exhaustive) creative works are not like other forms of property:
1) Non-rivalrous: If I consume an apple, you can't consume the same apple. Consuming apples is a rivalrous use. However, if I have a song in my head, it takes nothing away from my use of the song for you to have the same song in your head. The use of the song is non-rivalrous.
This one difference alone throws a whole monkeywrench into our assumptions about what "property" is, since standard economics and common perceptions are based on our understanding of rivalrous goods.
Property is not property. Some property is rivalrous and should be covered by one set of rules. And some property is non-rivalrous and should be covered by another set of rules. To acknowledge this difference is not to be a communist, but a rationalist.
2) Non-excludable: This varies depending on many factors, but to a large degree, creative works are non-excludable. You can't really stop people from doing what they will with a work they have been exposed to. Once given, it cannot be taken back. I give you a car, I can take it back. I give you a book, I cannot take back your act of having read it.
Again, this changes many of the assumptions underlying traditional notions of property. Should we ignore these differences and maintain, nevertheless, that "property is property."?
3) Limited Times: What is up with this? Why, property is property, you don't call for a perpetual term? It is an affront to traditional notions of property law that ownership not be perpetual. Why do we tolerate this state of affairs? What is theory behind the difference?
4) Fair Use: I don't have a "fair use" right to borrow your car. Why do I have such a right to "borrow" your writings? What traditional notion of property supports such a broad grant of rights?
I could go on but, not all property is the same. In fact, I hesitate to call intellectual property "property" at all - it seems to me to be more of the form of a government license - similar to the way government licenses many other resources.
A sincere non-communist,
Ernie
And I responded: - First, regarding time: There clearly are different classes of property. A piece of land with a building on it is permanent and scarce and our treatment of it depends on those facts. On the other hand, my vintage 1991 Macintosh -- equally real -- loses value over time; it is a different class of property in our treatment and valuation of it. My ideas and creations are another class; their value is affected by time and distribution but not scarcity (in fact, in Hollywood, the more your property is "like" another, the better). Time, production, scarcity and other factors (e.g., the new concept of a network becoming more valuable the more members it has) all have an impact on the value of the property. They are all property, nonetheless; they all carry rights for their owners. Just because property is not permanent does not mean it is not property and does not mean that its owner does not have rights to that property. Those rights are still a fundamental, even sacred tenant of American society.
- Second, I disagree about the nonrivalrous nature of intellectual property. If I have a song I've written and I want to sell it to you but you don't buy it because you already bought it from somone else (or got it free!) then I have lost the rivalry for you and thus my property is worth less (or ultimately worthless). The apple that is eaten in this case is not the song but the consumer and once it is eaten it is eaten.
- Third, I would say that both cars and intellectual property are excludable. If I drive a new car off a showroom floor, it loses value. If you already saw my creative work before I get to sell it to you, it loses value.
- Fourth, fair use is a different matter altogether at least as far as I am concerned. It is a First Amendment issue: Fair Use allows me to quote and comment on creative works. It is the lifeline for both journalism and criticism as well as academics. If I cannot quote from Kangaroo Jack, I cannot fully demonstrate what a piece of shit it is. As a former critic, I hold Fair Use dearly.
I think we probably agree in many areas. As I've said, I don't defend Disney -- but I do defend the primary owner and creator of intellectual property and I defend their right to maximize the value of that even if it means selling to Disney. I don't necessarily defend the current time frame of copyright -- but I do want to see a counterweight against those who would reduce that time to a minimum and thus devalue all the creative works covered by it for their creators. And I'm delighted to see you say that you repudiate those who call copyright holders thieves; it is absurd (and offensive) on its face.
Now I am sure you will have many rational, logical, fact-filled, and quite correct answers to all my amateurish points but that's why I decided not to go to law school and instead because a media hack!
best,
jeff In the end, Ernie and I do clearly disagree about one point, the essential point: I say that intellectual property is property. The person who creates it has the rights of an owner and those rights -- and their value -- are diminished if limited. We agree to limit them but we must recognize that price. If we do not recognize these rights, then we will lose creation. I will chose not to share my creation because it's not worth my while; I will share my creation elsewhere in the world; I will work in Starbucks instead.
In no way is creation a public asset to be licensed like radio spectrum. The government NEVER owns what I create; I do. Creation is the property of its creators. If we lose sight of that, we lose creation and creators.
A conspiracy of the libertarian right
: Shhh. I think Glenn Reynolds is leading a conspiracy. He's trying to convince us that there's a groundswell for Gary Hart in the hope that the guy actually gets into the race so (a) they can make fun of him, (b) so they can make fun of Democrats, (c) so they can remind us of his sex life, (d) so they can remind us of Bill Clinton's sex life, (d) so George Bush can win again.
Gary Hart?
Yes, and Pee-Wee Herman's going to be his running mate.
January 21, 2003
New at The Week
: Long ago, I told you why I love The Week magazine. A few changes to report: They have switched to a slick paper stock, making the magazine look more American and less European (or less pulpy); a good change. Also, they have put one of the best features online: the always pithy, two-paragraph, to-the-point editor's letters by William Falk.
Waiting
: I can't wait for the weblog here.
The reviews are in
: The Shifted Librarian points us to Google Movies: Using Google's API, they find reviews and intuit the rating. It's the automated Rotten Tomatoes.
Republican babe?
: Also from the Presurfer (and I'm ashamed to say that he found it in my own backyard, in Jersey): The Republican Babe of the Week. I'm planning to submit my virtual model, below, to the contest for Centrist Populist Guy of the Week.
Baring all
: That's the virtual me. Add a gray beard. Add gray chest hair. Add glasses for bad eyes. Add ear hair (no, I shaved that). Add flat feet. Add knock knees. Add crooked teeth. Add wrinkles and worrylines. Add assorted moles. Add socks. And that's me. [via the Presufer, who looks just like me!]
Vlog: the road movie
: Justin Katz makes another vlog. Haven't had the chance to watch yet (work, you know); so beat me to it.
January 20, 2003
Vlogs go pro
: A TV pro is just as impressed with the vlogging tools from Serious Magic as I am.
Blog swarm
: JD says a producer wants to meet bloggers and wonders where they'll be gathering. Said producer wants to go to a conference. But it's far easier than that: Invite us to a cup of coffee and we'll be there. Invite us to a glass go half-decent wine, and you'll be stampeded. I suggest coffee at 13th and 6th...
I'm not joining the content collective, comrades!
:
I say that the copyright backlash is beginning; the era of Lessig worship is near an end.
Let's start our tour here, with Aaron's tips for authors, No. 5: Once you've recouped the cost of creating the book (and potentially the cost of writing your next one) please donate it to the public domain (i.e. give up your copyright). The copyright system was created only to increase the size of the public domain; please don't cheat the public by taking more of it than you need. "Cheat the public"?!? Anil doubted, in a comment here, that such rhetoric is swarming across blogs, but it is. And it raises my dander. Cheat, indeed. This is perverse. If I don't give you what I own, then I am the thief? No, you are the thief for demanding it.
Next, read the eloquent reply of Jonathan Delacour [via Haiko Hebig]: I can't fathom this. People who would be outraged if employers suggested basing salaries on the cost of rent, food, clothing, and utilities, plus a small entertainment allowance, blithely demand that authors work for cost....
This utopian idea that authors should write for love, not money, probably reflects the majority belief that writing a book is no more difficult than baking a cake. Yet I'm reminded of a New Yorker cartoon showing two people at a cocktail party. One says, "I'm writing a novel." The other replies, "Neither am I."
Delacour calls the copyright mob "accidental socialists." That echoes my sentiments, below, that all this clamoring to take copyrights away from their creators (and those to whom those creators sell their rights) is not about the creative commons but creative communism.
Now even Dr. Lawrence Lessig is getting the point. It took Doc to show him what the Eldred copyright case is really about, and that, in a word, is:
Property.
Well, duh, professor.
Yes, this is about a creator's right to own his property and to sell it to whomever he chooses -- even a big, evil corporate beastie. And that sale has more value if that corporate entity can make more money from that property for more years. It's called capitalism.
Says Lessig: Copyright is understood to be a form of simple property. The battle in Eldred thus sounded like a battle between pro and anti property views. On that simple scale, it was clear how the majority of the Court would vote. Not because they are conservative, but because they are Americans. We have a (generally proper) property bias in this culture that makes it extremely hard for people to think critically about the most complicated form of property out there — what most call “intellectual property.” Well, yeah. Property is property -- all the more if I create it. If I own and exploit the property I create, it's capitalism. It's American. If you make me give up my creation, my grain, my property, to the collective, it's communism. Moscow, 1918.
The good professor bristles at the fact that his movement -- movement: his word -- is being "described as 'countercultura,' 'radical,' and anti-corporate." Well, comrade prof, that's because that's exactly what you sound like.
And I'm not joining your content collective.
I own what I create. I get to sell it to whom I want. I get to exploit it as I want. Unlike all other property, I eventually do have to hand it over to society and that's fine. But the less time I have to exploit my property, the less it is worth. It's really quite simple. And Prof. Lessig is only now beginning to understand that.
Thus, I predict that we are at the beginning of the backlash, the end of Lessig worship.
: Mind you, I admire and appreciate those who hand their work over to the commons. Linux is spectacular; I run my business on it and we have added to the open-source movement there.
But note also that Linux is not a consumer product. I can't effectively run my own computer (or my kids' or my father's) on Linux. There are not nearly enough good consumer products to run on it. Why? Because the creators of such products cannot make enough money to make it worthwhile to create them.
This is not some right-wing screed (from a left-winger). Try going to the Author's Guild or the various collectives representing photographers or screenwriters or directors or artists and get them to hand over their rights. Good f'ing l uck. Pitchforks through the hearts, that's what you'll get, my friends.
The bottom line:
Capitalism works.
Altruism works sometimes.
Communism doesn't work.
We learned that lesson in the world. We should not forget it online.
: See my new copyright notice. Feel free to steal it. I hereby donate it to the copyright commons.
Wacky German collectors, Chapter 89
: The keychain museum. [via der Schockwellenreiter]
Knowledge
: Martin Roell notes Jupiter starting weblogs and says any company that sells knowledge should follow.
Privacy
: I don't plan to join GEOurl. I don't want people to find me.
January 19, 2003
Fence
: Rossi speaks for many, sitting on the fence over war.
Anti-anti-anti war
Atrios and Glenn Reynolds get personal (not in a bad way, in a smart way) over war protest.
Says Atrios: We should not judge a movement or an opinion by the least of its adherents.
Blog bits
: I added some new links (under "new" and "deutsch") to the blog-roll. Right face. Harch.
: Ross Mayfield has lots of great stats from LiveJournal here and here. But in his comments, I caution: I wouldn't conclude that "blogging is young" on the basis of LiveJournal stats. LiveJournal is unquestionably powerful and huge but it is an internal phenomenon; it is a community that links within and not much without (with not many links to it from without). Other bloggers -- call them "unaffiliated bloggers" -- are all about external links, both ways. Yes, it's all blogging (just to be clear I am NOT trying to draw some snotty distinction about what is "real" blogging). But LiveJournal is something more: It also holds a strong similarity to AOL's forum communities (or those on my work sites); I would expect AOL's upcoming (rumored) blogs to be more like LiveJournal's (and huge). I would say that LiveJournal is more of a community and unaffiliated blogs are more about publishing. All of which is to say: the statistics of one should not be extrapolated to the other. : Industrial Technology & Witchcraft calls Radio and antville (and Blogger) pret-a-porte blogs. Self-made systems, like der Schockwellenreiter's (and Dean Allen's, I assume) are haute couture.
: Jim Treacher is hanging it up. Sounds ominious.
: Ben Hammersley catalogues the definitions of TrackBack and its variants.
January 18, 2003
Mine, I tell you, mine... all mine!
: I've put up a new copyright notice, just to irritate the copyright mob.
: Just for the record, since I am baiting these folks, I'll repeat here what I said in a comment below: I don't defend Disney (having covered entertainment and come up against them at their control-freak worst). I also don't necessarily defend the exact number of years now given to copyright.
But I do defend copyright holders against the arch language I'm reading everywhere: That by holding onto their creations, they are thieves. Bullshit. Creation itself is generous. Creation deserves compensation. Creation has value. Authors are copyright holders, too. They are not thieves.
Blog heresy
: I'm sorry, but I just have to ask:
Is Lawrence Lessig overrated?
Well, the truth is, he has to be. Like Mother Theresa, he has been put up on a pedestal at nosebleed altitude. The blog admiration is blushworthy. No one is that brilliant. But Lessig doesn't blush. He has someone maintain a third-person blog (in addition to his first-personal version) covering of all his personal happenings, like a year-round Christmas letter.
Of course, he's a smart man and earnest.
But he lost the Eldred case, big time.
He was kept away from the Microsoft case for good reason; Microsoft was perfectly justified objecting to him advising the judge (and we now know what a bozo that judge was).
Now here's Lessig proposing a ludicrious and unworkable copyright tax that would unfairly burden copyright holders and their heirs and create a gargantuan federal bureacracy and, by the way, offend American First Amendment sensibilities (let's bring back the stamp tax!).
I've admired the guy but I fear that others admire him too much and I'm overdosed on the Lessig-worship. He's mortal.
Bar none
: Great poster-art with sly bar-code jokes from a Russian agency.
And keep it holy
: I hope (and pray) that we are beyond the day in America when being Jewish could hinder an American from running for the White House.
If Joe Lieberman has religious problems in his race, they may not be with his faith but with his orthodoxy. We are not an orthodox nation; we don't understand orthodxy; we don't trust it.
So it's helpful to read a definition of Lieberman's own "Modern Orthodoxy" at the always-enlightening Jewsweek.com: Modern Orthodoxy aspires to strict adherence to traditional Jewish law (keeping the Sabbath and kosher) while fully engaging in secular society...
Rabbi Barry Freundel, the spiritual leader of Georgetown's Kesher Israel and Lieberman's rabbi, believes that his congregant is fully ensconced in both worlds. "He has a willingness to fully engage modernity," says Freundel. "I don't think you could have a president from the more right-wing Orthodox camp because they don't fully embrace modernity."
The fact that he doesn't stick out may not only place him in a position to teach America what it means to be a Jew, but will teach Jews what it means to be Jewish in America. "So on Shabbat he'll walk to synagogue, there'll be kosher food in the White House," says political analyst Norman Green. "He'll be forcing a lot of conservative and reform Jews to reconsider their Jewish practices."
George's game
: I was giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking that he and his team were strategists. But look where we are now:
We're in a political and diplomatic (remember this word, bloggers) quagmire in Iraq. Now we have to wait -- how long? a year? -- until a gun is found with sufficient smoke to choke the objections of the world and meanwhile, the economy and the Bush presidency slide and slide more.
In North Korea, Bush has ignored the most basic lesson of parenthood that anyone learns when managing a 3-year-old: Be consistent and do what you say you're going to do. Or else you lose all your authority.
He's no strategist, I fear.
Chess is not his game.
Checkers is.
Always On
The Portland Business Journal [via I Want Media] reports on the start of a tech biz gang weblog under Red Herrings' Tony Perkins called Always On. It wants to be a Gawker of technology and it may grow into that but thus far, it's a bit awkward.
A pissing contest
: If I'm translating this correctly (and there's always a good chance I'm not) there has been a rousing media feud going on in Germany:
A writer for the "taz" newspaper reports in May that Kai Diekmann, editor of the very-tabloid Bild, had an operation to lengthen his penis (it's more poetic auf Deutsch: he had einer Operation zur Penisverlängerung") -- but that it failed.
Then Diekmann sued, seeking 30,000 Euros. I'm not sure whether he was suing because they said (a) he had the operation, (b) he needed the operation, (c) it failed. I'd love to read that brief.
Next, a judge ruled that the penis reportage was satire.
But it's not over. Now Diekmann is going to appeal and the headline writers are having fun with the words "penis" and "extension." [via Monoklon]
January 17, 2003
Microsoft bigots
: So Microsoft announces a dividend of $0.16 a share and the stock goes down more than 25 times that amount today alone. Can't win. Can't win.
Whatever happened to...
: Michael Palmer has a great idea: He's looking for an old friend and colleague; can't find him; so he's typing his name into his weblog in hopes this old pal will Google himself, find the mention, follow the link, and send an email. Simple, elegant, brilliant.
If it works, it will qualify as a new Google hack.
Call it "Google Calling."
I'll join in. I was cleaning out my basement the other day and was reminded of all kinds of names of old college and high school friends I've lost. So I'll mention their names here just to Google Call them: Jim (James) Herlihy, Steve (Steven) Paulson, Marki (Margaret) Kimble (Street), Charles (Chuck) Larrabbee, Linda Graefing, Allen Barr, Lee Fawkes, Riley Atkins, Janice Rosenberg, Linda Kattwinkel...
If you're one of these folks and you knew me: Hey, what's new? Click on the email link on the right.... [via Lockhart Steele]
: Update. In the comments, Anil points to earlier efforts to do the same thing, efforts that reach back in history before weblogs -- notably Andy Baio's page. Mazeltov.
I still say that weblogs have a role here. Weblogs tie many disparate functions and trends on the web together. A weblog becomes your representation of you on the web -- as Chris Pirillo said just today: Blogging is your chance to show the world what you're like. It's your own. It's nobody else's... it's life. It's life online. There comes a time very soon when your blog represents more than your opinion. It holds your links to others; your photos and videos; and the metadata for your life (you don't have a soul, you just have metadata). It is you, just you online. Importantly, this will be true not just for web sophisticates but for the masses.
Anil also scolds me (I'm used to it by now) for tying this, like too much else, to both Google and blogging. Tough cookies. A Google search is something everyone but everyone understands today -- better than "metadata" or "tags." As a card-carrying populist, I'm adamantly unapologetic about putting things into popular terms. I'm also not going to take a demerit for acting as if this is new. Of course, nothing is new. But we're all allowed to discover and share things that are new to us; that is what makes blogs and the blogging community generous and enjoyable.
Remember Pointcast?
: Seven years ago, Dave Winer reminds himself, he loved Pointcast.
I hated it: an unnecessary application with unnecessary complication that caused unnecessary traffic with a bad business model (remember: it was the screensaver with content and advertising; it was going to be talking to empty chairs while its consumers were away from their desks sitting on a toilet).
After watching a demo, in a fit of technology hubris (remember those days?), I said, "We can do that with nothing but a browser and a refresh." And we did.
It was a lesson we all had to learn the hard way: Take what you have and use it to the max before you go building the next thing.
Which is to say that there are ways to use the blogging tools (and video, audio, photo, and data tools) we already have that we cannot imagine yet.
Cold and wet
: Bare people spell out p-e-a-c-e. Well, that was useful. [via Presurfer]
January 16, 2003
Colors
: A nice view of winter's colors in Sweden.
: Also see a tap that spills light.
Cue the theme music
: It's not exactly a video weblog; it's a video introduction to a weblog (auf Deutsch). I grant, this is about as useful as a Flash intro (read: not at all) but it's kinda nice. I could see a photo blog giving us a vidsnippet a day.
Blog as starmaker
: Everybody go to Ken Layne and convince him to put a few chapters of his latest novel up online -- not so we can read them but so some wise publisher will spot them and give him a very big contract. It has worked before -- more than once.
War gaming
: The Iraqi war, in Flash.
January 15, 2003
Major media launch
: Big media news: Glenn Reynolds launches a new site -- GlennReynolds.com -- on MSNBC.com.
He won't be leaving Instapundit; that remains. He now writes some items each week at MSNBC... and who knows what else will sprout from this.
Read the exclusive at Kausfiles.
(Pardon me for crowing about this but I'm honored to say that I was honored to be in the right place at the right time at the genesis of this, introducing Glenn to the wonderful Joan Connell, czar of interactivity and opinion at MSNBC.com. These two good guys were meant to work with each other.)
Watch that space... for soon, Glenn will be experimenting with some new things.
Creative commons or creative communism?
: I'm struck by some of the rhetoric following the Eldred defeat (and, no, I won't name names or link links so as to avoid an ideological pissfest). All the haughty talk about how copyright holders are stealing what the people own... It sounds like Moscow, 1918, folks. The Internationale is playing on Real Audio. The masses are marching with pitchforks and MP3 players. The armies of the people are massing at Sunset and Vine.
I'm sorry, but I do not object to the concentration of intellectual capital almong its creators and supporters and owners. It is their right. The people do not -- the audience does not -- own what I think up or my publisher pays to publish or my producer pays to produce; we do. You have to pay for it. It's only right.
Have we not learned at least that from the Internet thus far: Content that is not valued is valueless.
Yes, the "commons" is a wonderful arena and much can be produced through sharing there and through the generosity of those who create in and for it. I support that commons. But not by force. Contributing to the commons is still the choice of those who do. It is not the right of the consumers to expect that they should own that which they consume without paying for it.
Communism's dead when it comes to steel or words or pictures or thoughts or sounds.
Devil's advocate
: I hate to be a contrarian on this, whistling as the long funeral cortege for the Lessig Eldred copyright case passes my way -- and I grant my conflict, being an employee of Big Media -- but I just have to say that as someone who creates for a living, I do see value in creation and in allowing me and my heirs to retain that value.
If -- if, indeed -- I ever wrote a successful book, I would want my children and grandchildren to be able to benefit from it the same as they would if I instead put my effort into buying land or a building or a company. My heirs could hold onto those forever; they can hold onto my creative legacy (whatever it is worth) for only a limited time.
Of course, I favor the notion and practice of intellectual property passing into the public domain. But I think it's wrong to portray copyright holders as thieves. Without generous protection, these creators -- and those who underwrite them by publishing and producing them -- might as well go into real estate instead.
Legal hubris
: Lessig today: What the Framers of our constitution did is not enough. We must do more.
Third legal posting in one day
: Jack Balkin, the very smart law guru at Yale, now has a blog. At the blog conference, we all worked on him and apparently, it worked.
Cable Noose Network
: It was no surprise to me that Walter Isaacson left CNN. Walter's a smart guy with that touch of cockiness that Time Inc. adds to even a Rhodes scholar. Like his colleagues, he's essentially a snob.
The Times story says that at CNN, he was frustrated with TV's concentration on ratings (well, that means you're frustrated with serving your audience, doesn't it?) and negotiating with stars (he was the one who switched to a star system from Ted's anonymous newsreader system) and allegedly shallow TV news (he was one of those guys who wanted to bring major reporting to Time -- when, as far as I'm concerned, Time was best when it was the precursor to The Week magazine and weblogs too: namely, a summary of others' reporting).
So why did he take the job in the first place? Got me. You should love TV and TV's audience if you're going to work in TV -- and if you don't, it will show. And it showed. CNN is dull. FoxNews isn't.
Now let me be really unfair to the guy and suggest that if Isaacson had not also muffed Pathfinder -- and with it, an online strategy for Time Inc. and thus Time Warner -- they never would have felt the need to go out and get in bed with -- and F'ed by -- AOL.
Walter's going to go to Aspen to think big thoughts. That is where he belongs.
East meets West; East wins
: When Reynolds referred to "coastism" tonight, I thought he was talking about this. He wasn't.
Where to invest (the money you no longer have)
: Nick Denton has some visionary advice on where to invest for Management Today:
: Outdoor advertising. I would broaden this to include any place-based advertising. Nick notes LCD and e-ink technology to change displays. Note also that there are now changable posters in movie theaters (I lost the link to that story). Add to this, importantly, new connectivity and networking: You can change the message anytime anywhere (that is, not just on billboards but also in stores and at checkouts and in store windows and in public places of any | |
