BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

July 04, 2005

Dell hell: Where's the flack when you need him?

: Steve Broback at the Blog Business Summit looks up Dell's PR company's web site on blogs and it says:

One refers to an ancient (feb 2003) Fortune article with blog in the headline, and the other assures clients that OutCast is on top of the whole crazy, kooky blog thing:
Blogger Relations
Here’s what every technology vendor fears about blogs: they don’t know what they don’t know. OutCast navigates the confusing world of the blogosphere on behalf of our clients so they can focus on their business. There are an estimated 9 million blogs today, but which ones matter to you? It’s our job not only to tell you, but to help you negotiate that terrain. How do we do this? Remember when News.com was new? Remember when Usenet mattered? We do. So relax. Breathe. Whether it’s radio in the 1920s, TV in the 1950s or the Web in the 1990s, new media is new media.

Except when it's not media, when it's customers talking. Download asus V9520 inf

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Variety, spice, and all that

: I should add to the points below that I'm looking to try out Word Press not out of any problems with Movable Type. In due course, I want to try various of the tools; I started on Blogger and moved to MT (but did not upgrade to the latest version because it was likely beyond my own IQ) and now want to try WP. There are lots of great tools enabling this new medium and I don't mean to slight any of them. Besides, my son is my webmaster and he says he'll support WP. Gotta do what the boss says. Download asus V9520 inf

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Conversation stoppers

: Continuing the theme of technological dependence and addiction... Since I have given tough love to Technorati over time for not being able to constantly update its counts, I should in the spirit of equal opportunity lament PubSub these days: I haven't seen updated links there in days. Wazzup? I depend on these services to find out what people are saying. When they don't work, it's like losing my cell phone. Download asus V9520 inf

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Broken type

: This weekend's burp in Movable Type installations -- which came because of a conflict in an update of the Control Panel that controls many web servers -- reveals an odd vulnerability of citizens' media. No medium before could be so handicapped by a single bug or glitch (or virus or spam attack). Of course, in blogs, we're used to it; Blogger used to go down all the time and with it half the Blogosphere then . But what's oddly unnerving in this case is that an external change could have such an impact. Then again, because this is a community, people shared symptoms and then solutions with dispatch. Download asus V9520 inf

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The fake war

: Jay Rosen on the fake war media has declared over the Supreme Court nomination. We hear anchors and morning-show gabbers talk about this as if there is breaking news, as if the fighting is going on now. But the truth is, of course, that we're just waiting. Says Jay:

Meanwhile, I do think "the armies of ideological activists from both sides" now gearing up for the battle royale are embarking not on a rational exercise in political persuasion--a battle for hearts and minds in proper terms--but an absurd and wasteful media campaign that will probably have little effect on the nomination itself, yet serve perfectly the purposes of those for whom culture war is way of life.

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Slippery devil

: David Carr in today's NY Times on podcasting (full disclosure: he quotes me with a full disclosure):

For the time being, podcasting is a cipher, a technology that seems to further threaten established media's stranglehold on public consciousness, but offers little opportunity in the way of a real actual business. Big media are aggressively attempting to get their arms around the next big thing. But it remains elusive, a medium that is viral and uncontrollable by nature, and that does not threaten to become a business any time soon.

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The new, improved Buzzmachine

: I am not ready to pull the switch just yet, but here is a preview of the start of a new Buzzmachine on Word Press. (Don't use that address; it will take over the buzzmachine.com address when I'm ready.) I will leave the old, Movable Type site up forever as an archive. I have more to do on the new but my amazing son set it up in no time tonight.....Download asus V9520 inf

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