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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.

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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.

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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.

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East meets West; East wins
: When Reynolds referred to "coastism" tonight, I thought he was talking about this. He wasn't.

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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 definition) based on the time of day; the crowd (hey, the flight from New York just came into LAX: push those I 'n' Out burgers); changes in your business (H&M and other companies change their fashions almost weekly; they could change their promotion and pricing hourly).... I have an idea for a business in this sphere but I'll save that.
: Escapes -- new pretty places for travel.
: Old skyscrapers.
: Online media. Don't laugh. Nick points out that the costs to create nanomedia are now nano; the audience is definitely here; advertising is growing.
: And short telcoms because VOIP is coming. Absolutely.
: I would add that storage technology of every description will grow (as it becomes cheaper), for we will be storing music and movies and pictures in our pockets and we will be storing our lives online. EMC rises again? And networking technology will be added to everything encased in plastic. Buy Linksys.
There will also be more freelancers and second-careerists, boosting schooling (of the vocational sort) and the companies that prepare you for it (Kaplan, et al).
And I'd keep my eye out for new food trends to steal market share from McDonald's, Burger King, et al (see my fast food vlog). Wish I could tell you what companies those are; it's not Ranch One (a good concept ruined); it's not XandoCosi (a good concept that's too expensive); you can't buy Pret a Manger (which is too bad, for I think ready-made fresh sandwiches will become standard buy-it-before-boarding fare at every airport in the country).
I'd say cable's going to do well (see Nick's telecom point above); see also whether Time Warner Cable's IPO goes well.
But what do I know? I own too damned much AOL.

: More place-based, dynamic advertising: in cabs.

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Why Layne should move East
: And I mean East, not east.

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Content is crap
: A contrarian and thoughtful column by Arnold Kling at TechCentral Station argues that the Creative Commons is not the be-all and end-all of future media; quite to the contrary:

Creative Commons is based on a naive ideology that believes that raw content is gold, which then gets stolen by the evil media companies. In reality, the economics of content are that most of the value-added comes from the filtering process, not the creation process. If you want to overthrow incumbent publishers with Internet-based alternatives, you are better off starting from the assumption that Content is Crap.

The middle of the column is a technical plug for Bayesian filters as a technical means to add value to online content -- enhancing the filtering weblogs perform manually -- but on the top and bottom of that is an argument in favor of big (if evil) media.

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Yo, yo, yo Times
: There's a touch of rhetorical whiplash in the Observer's interview with Howell Raines at the Times regarding his cultural ambitions. With one breath, he says:

"I posit our readership as being the most sophisticated in the country and having a Renaissance-like appetite for information"...

I haven't used "posit" in a sentence -- with a straight face -- since freshman philosophy.
In the next deep breath, Raines says:

"When [Run-D.M.C.’s] Jam Master Jay was killed a few months ago, I had been following the debate in rap music about Snoop Dogg trying to revive his career by insulting Suge Knight."

I love a doughy White Southern intellectual Yankee liberal newspaperman talking about how he follows hiphop.
Word, Howell! (But the word isn't "posit.")

: Now that I have that cheap shot out of the way..... No, this isn't another blogging exercise in Raines bashing. Overdone. A cliche already. Boring. Besides, I like the Times and I mostly like where it's headed these days.
And I'm delighted that the Times is putting more emphasis on cultural coverage and criticism again. It is of more everyday interest to more people than politics. Word!
I just hope that they don't just concentrate on performance art and ballet and that they pay attention to what America -- yes, even New York -- is watching: TV (and online).
Once, a long, long time ago, the then-editor of the Times called me about being media critic there. They never had the gumption to create that job.
They should now.
And they'd be wise to start covering online as a cultural entity: weblogs, yes, but also new design, movies of the people, language, photography, music.... We spend more time online than we do sitting in movie theaters -- or certainly sitting for ballet performances.
So I'd combine the two: Media critic and new-media critic.
Oh, that would be fun.

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About about
: There's a trend-a-popping here. Watch how all these elements add up to 3-D Googling:

: First, David Galbraith suggests a standard for about-me bios on sites that can be added to blogrolls, so those often-numbing listings can have the smell of substance about them. A great idea. (Though I'm a little too stupid to know exactly what I'm supposed to do on my template and I'm too embarrassed to ask.)

: Next, Heiko Hebig takes it a step further and suggests that he add a <bio:marital status> field and, zap, we have an XML dating game.

: Haiko Hebig (no relation, I now discover) also summarizes posts about a proposed Internet Topic Exchange, which is related to where I'm going here, for it enables the creation of dynamic directories of posts/people/sites with similar interests.

: Now see Dan Bricklin's vision of a standard for a small- and medium-business metadata file that allows a business website to describe itself in a standardized way.

: I'll take this all a step further and suggest that David et al expand these standard fields to let people find each other or find the things they want: -- e.g.,
[freelance:writer], [freelance:designer], [jobsearch:editor], [expert:php]. That's the sell-side. The buy-side: [hiring:programmer], [buying:antiques]. Then there's the two-way conversation: [interest:diabetes], [learning:german], [teaching:german].

This doesn't replace classified ads (remember: I'm a newspaper guy) for you still need a marketplace where buyers find sellers and vice versa with maximum efficiency and currency; it doesn't replace the Yellow Pages, for they are formatted reliably and are complete; it doesn't replace eBay, either, for it doesn't bring purchasing functionality.

But it does allow you to create directories of interest or need.

It finally uses XML the way it can be used.

: This quickly becomes 3-D Google. Start listing the kinds of quality searches you can make: I want to find all graphic designers available in San Francisco. I want to find all online marketers of cameras. I want employers to find me. I want to find people who are also interested in 9.11 memorials. Whatever. Searches become focused and valuable.

Searches build instant networks.

: Updates: First, note that if this competes with anything, it's Ryze and its successors. The connections it makes can happen out on the network, in the open.

: Another update: I got email from Heiko Hebig (above) explaining that he's not the same person as Haiko Hebig (also above). They're used to this. "i know this must be confusing for everyone out there - haiko and i are (as far we know) not related, but we both live in germany, we both ended up in the field of IT and are both happy"bloggers"."

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Separated at noon
: For just this post, Glenn Reynolds sounds like James Lileks -- a day in the life of a pundit. But, of course, Reynolds does it in just a paragraph.

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