smays.com

Google Audio: About Your Ad form

In another lifetime I wrote radio "spots." A lot of 'em. So please feel free to skip this "shop talk" post.

TechCrunch is getting reports from advertisers that Google Audio Ads have been added as an option to their Adwords accounts. Interesting to see the data collected  with the "About Your Ad" form (Goal of ad; target customer; key messages; call to action; etc.).

And this from the comments on the post: "I’ve been using Audio Ads for months now. I like how you can listen to the actual snippet of your ad being played on the station. I don’t like how you can’t choose a specific radio station, only the type of format and DMA."

Wonder how they're getting the mini-air check? I can see how advertisers would love that.

Bonus link: "Analysts Peek Into Google's Pitch to Radio" (Radio World)

YouTube coming to Apple TV

Beginning in mid-June, Apple TV will wirelessly stream videos directly from YouTube and play them on a user's widescreen TV. [gismodo]

I bought Apple TV "on the come." It did cool stuff right out of the box but I had a hunch there would be more down the road. Like this. I'l let you know how it works.

"We're hearing that a lot."

The following telephone conversation took place earlier today:

Caller: "Hi, this is Kevin with Dell and I'm calling about your Dell Dimension 100. Your three year warranty expries this month and I'm calling to see if you'd like to renew... and tell you about some of our special offers."

smays: "Uh, I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you, Kevin."

Caller: "You've switched to Mac."

smays: (surprised) "Yeah, I have. Uh, how'd you know?"

Caller: "People always say, 'We've got bad news...' just before they tell us they've switched."

Back to Niketown

Except they don't call it Niketown anymore. It's now "NIKE iD" but you can still design your own sneakers. I still get compliments on the kicks I designed a couple of years ago but, every now and again someone will ask "...but why'd you get the old person style?"

So I tried for a little more "street" this time around. I'm gonna strap these babies on with my Tactical 5.11's, buy me a case of Krylon and go nuts.

Smile

Barb always gets better pix than I and brought back some nice ones from her recent trip to Destin. This is my favorite.

Somewhere out on the web there's a photo of Barb taking this picture of the man taking the photo of the family on the beach. [larger]

If you're still looking for a place to vacation this summer, she has some new pix of Amberjack Landing.

A different war

Republicans and Democrats

I do love a Lucas Davenport novel. Nothing heavy, fun read. The latest --Invisible Prey-- includes a brief exchange between Lucas and his boss, Rose Marie, on the difference between Republicans and Democrats:

"Wonder why with Republicans, it's usually fucking somebody that get them in trouble. And with the Democrats, it's usually stealing?"

"Republicans have money. Most of them don't need more. But they come from uptight, sexually repressed backgrounds, and sometimes, they just go off. Democrats are looser about sex, but half the time, they used to be teachers or government workers, and they're desperate for cash. They see all that money up close, around the government, the lobbyists and the corporate guys, they can smell it, they can taste it, they see the rich guys flying to Paris for the weekend, and eating all the good restaurants, and buying three thousand-dollar suits. They just want to reach out and take some."

-- Invisible Prey, John Sandford (page 141)

Apple gets retail

Roger points us to this New York Times story on the success of Apple's retail stores:

"Mr. Jobs understood, however, that his stores would sell not merely products but also gratification. He told the trade magazine Chain Store Age Executive in 2001: “When I bring something home to the kids, I want to get the smile. I don’t want the U.P.S. guy to get the smile.”

Customer response is told in the numbers. Last month, Apple released results for the quarter ended March 31. More than 21.5 million people visited its stores, which now number more than 180. Store sales were $855 million, up 34 percent from the quarter a year earlier, and they contributed more than $200 million in profits."

If you decide it's time to buy your first Mac, take the time... make the drive... visit an Apple store. It is a unique retail experience.

PS: Received this little reminder while posting this from the home office Dell.

Time to send in the Branch Dividians

Last week I stumbled across an interesting (and lengthy) 2006 Rolling Stone article by Janet Reitman ("Inside Scientology") that takes a peek behind the curtain of "America's most mysterious religion."

I'm not sure how someone could read this and not be convinced L. Ron Hubbard (the guy that came up with Scientology) was a wacko con man. Try to imagine convincing a new convert of the following:

"...75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this corner of the galaxy, each of which was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and "implanted" with a number of false ideas -- including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists later learn that many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day, creating not just the root of all of our emotional and physical problems but the root of all problems of the modern world."

Let me say once again, this sounds like a load of horse shit. But why am I more skeptical of these "teachings" than the miracles of the Christian faith? The Bible is the literal Word of God and Dianetics is science fiction? That works for a lot of people.

Not sure where this post came from, maybe all the killing and dying in the name of religion.

Speaking of Holy Wars, maybe we should send the members of our most fanatical faiths (Scientologists, The Jonestown Brigade, The 101st Branch Davidians, etc) to mix it up with the extremists of other religions. If the other team is playing 12 year old suicide bombers... we send in some grandmothers willing to drink poison Cool-Aide. Let's out-crazy them.

Life after MSM

Former Missourinet (one of the news networks operated by the company I work for) anchor/reporter Laura McNamara left us recently to pursue other interests. That's often a cliche but not in this instance. Laura is young and wants to travel and do about a hundred things and decided to take some time to figure it all out.

In the meantime, she has hooked up with Chuck and Cindy at AgWired. Chuck's business has grown to the point he can't keep up and he's been on the prowl for people who know what to do with a camera and microphone.

I think we'll see a lot of MSM reporters migrating into New Media gigs like this.

Missouri Lottery blogging

The Missouri Lottery is blogging. According to the release, you can "ask questions about games and promotions, watch videos from the new Reel Lottery video series, get updates on Lottery winners, and read posts from Lottery employees and players."

Chief Blogger in Residence is John Wells. He's been with the Missouri Lottery for some time as Videographer/Satellite Coordinator. John has been wading in the blog pond since October of 2005 and has managed to turn it into his day job. Good for him. From time to time, John does part-time work for The Missourinet (a Learfield company).

The lottery should have been blogging years ago, but for many (most? all?) state entities, the blogosphere is a mysterious and scary place. I have to believe that John lobbied long and hard to help make this happen. On the other hand, it's getting harder and harder to ignore the Power of the Blog. Good luck, John.

Destin Florida Podcast

Harley Van Hyning has been producing the Destin Florida Podcast for the last six months or so. I just listened to the latest podcast and it was pretty good. He plugged a couple of upcoming events; reported on beach restoration; some new bars and general interest news about the area. I thought he was right on the money.

People like us with a second-home in the area, or people planning vacations, will find the Destin Florida Podcast informative and interesting.

The podcast isn't over-produced but the production is clean and audio quality is very good. I liked Harley's style, too. Harvey didn't sound like a frustrated DJ but did include a song by a local band (Polyester Pimpstrap singing Serve It For Dinner).

I've subscribed to the podcast (iTunes) and will mention it here from time to time and give Harley a link at AmberJackLanding.com.

The podcast website isn't trashed up with a bunch of ads and it sounds like Harvey does this as a labor of love, although he might have plans to monetize the effort and why not.

When I come across something like this, I can't help making New Media/Old Media Comparisons. Why, for example, wouldn't a Destin radio station (or TV station or newspaper) produce a podcast like this? And they might, for all I know... I didn't look. But, if not, what a missed opportunity. Could "professionals" bring the same authenticity and passion to the effort? Maybe.

Haley, if you're reading this... how about a Google Map showing some of the locations you mention in the podcast? And maybe some photos on flickr?

The Basement Diaries back online

I still have several hours of work to resurrect The Basement Diaries, but have the site back online. It has been something of a nostalgic deep dive in that I created the site in 1998 (almost ten years ago) about events that took place in 1968 (almost 40 years ago).

Most of the work involved rescanning images. We had really crappy cameras in those days and I did little to optimize the scanned images back in '98. So I rescanned about 100 photos, but this time I parked them on flickr. I still have a good bit of caption'ing and tagging to do. Basement Diaries alums might enjoy the slideshow of our Halloween party pix.

This rehab has moved me a little closer to my goal of 1,000 images on flickr. A target I'l easily reach when I get around to KBOA830.com.

SWAT Britches

I hate to shop for clothes and don't do it often. When I do break down and buy some new duds, I usually hit one of the mail-order places. I just don't have a sense of style but do notice when others are wearing something I like.

I've been admiring Andrew's pants for some time now and recently asked where he got them. From the Missouri State Troopers Association (outlet?) store. Civilians like Andrew and I can purchase cool cop stuff like the 5.11 Tactical Pant. Although I think of them as "SWAT Britches."

Mine came in today and I'm going to wear them tomorrow. The plan is to rappel down the side of the building and crash through my office window (a la Bruce Willis).

Google reaches out

Okay, make of this what you will. A few days ago I posted a couple of lines about having a problem with the "Share" feature in Google Reader. I did not report the problem to Google. But within about 24 hours, I received the following email:

"Hi Steve, if you send me your email address I'd be happy to take a look at your account to see what's going on.

Justin Haugh
Google Reader Engineer"

Justin subscribes to a search feed for "google reader" at blogsearch.google.com, saw my post, and reached out to see if he could help. (The issue had already resolved itself.)

Think about it. There must be a bazillion people using Google Reader. I didn't ask for help, but someone at Google took watch for users needing help and take time to offer. Does your company go that far? Does mine? Do the Google Fan Boy T-shirts come in medium?

Niche thyself

Interesting post on the importance of finding a niche for your blog ("Ideally, you create something that is both of high value to customers and that few others are doing.")

Two close-to-home examples of that are what Barb is trying to do (when Florida getaways' don't interfere) with her blog on long term health care law; and Henry's blog on health care fine art.

Both expressed some of the concern referenced in the LexBlog post that such niche focus wouldn't attract any readers. Still early in the game for these two bloggers, but I'm confident time will bear out the Power of the Niche.

Blogs and Google rank

If I understood this, I'm sure I'd be less amazed by it. Someone reached smays.com by way of a Google search on "debt personal responsibility" (quotation marks mine). Of the 1.2 million results for that search, my blog post is #2 #32. Think about it. That is not a totally obscure search phrase. How many companies, consultants and experts deal with "debt personal responsibility"? And my little blog post outranks them all a bunch of them? Like I said... I'm probably missing something here.

Correction: Thanks to JW for catching (see comments) my error. My post ranked (at the time)  #32 out of 1.2 million results. Not #2. My bad.

Is there a prize for Most Ungrateful Prick?

Michael Moore (anonymously, to a point) donates $12,000 to aid the sick wife of an anti-Moore website host. The host, after taking great pains to identify the anonymous benefactor (albeit under reasons of security), proceeds to write a rigid tirade explaining how the act won't "buy [his] affection". 

This is a pretty amazing story, whatever your opinion of Michael Moore.
 

De Niro and Pacino reunite in $60 mil indie

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino will team on-screen for just the second time in "Righteous Kill," a $60 million indie production in which they play cops chasing a serial killer. The script is by Russell Gewirtz, the guy that wrote "Inside Man."

De Niro and Pacino had just two scenes together in "Heat" but will be on-screen together pretty much throughout this new flick.

With that budget... and these two movie greats... I have to wonder how you could make a shitty movie. Let's hope they don't.

Greetings from the Deck

This is one of those frivolous things Mac users do because it's easy and --that word again-- fun. Ripley, Lucy and I sat on the deck this afternoon, watching the birds stuff themselves at Barb's new squirrel-proof feeder.

The Mac Book is there. The iSight camera is already focused on me. Why not hit the record button?

Seth Godin: "Blow up your home page"

"Do you really need a home page? Does the web respect it?

Human beings don't have home pages. People make judgments about you in a thousand different ways. By what they hear from others, by the way they experience you, and on and on. Companies may have a website, but they don't have a home page in terms of the way people experience them.

The problem with home page thinking is that it's a crutch. There's nothing wrong with an index, nothing wrong with a page for newbies, nothing wrong with a place that makes a first impression when you get the chance to control that encounter. But it's not your 'home'. It's not what the surfer/user wants, and when it doesn't match, they flee.

You don't need one home page. You need a hundred or a thousand. And they're all just as important."

This post by Seth Godin perfectly says what I've struggled to communicate to clients and friends as I try to steer them away from traditional "home page" websites... and toward blogs. It's a hard sell because it's easy to throw up some bull shit copy from those old corporate brochures we spent so much on, and really hard to engage with your customers in a fresh, timely and relevant way.

The First Tech President

The Personal Democracy Forum lists six requirements for the first "tech president": [via Buzz Machine]

1. Declare the Internet a public good.
2. Commit to providing affordable high-speed wireless Internet access nationwide, along with protecting and expanding unlicensed spectrum for public use, and make the Internet a reliable part of our infrastructure….
3. Declare a “Net Neutrality” standard forbidding Internet service providers from discriminating among content based on origin, application or type.
4. Instead of “No Child Left Behind,” our goal should be “Every Child Connected.”
5. Commit to building a Connected Democracy where it becomes commonplace for local as well as national government proceedings to be heard by anyone any time and over time.
6. Create a National Tech Corps….

(George, this is the perfect follow-up post to our three hour chat this morning.) For those of you that weren't there, this morning's topic was: "True or False: Sometimes We Are Better Off Not Knowing."

Google Reader not sharing

I might have gushed too quickly regarding the share feature in Google Reader. Neither my sidebard widget no my "Steve's Shared Items" page is updating. I'll give it a day or two before I yank it. Anyone read anything about this issue?

www.creedthoughts.gov/www.creedthoughts

The Office is a comedy. And a love story. And probably the funniest thing on television since Seinfeld. And I'm not sure it isn't the equal of Seinfeld.

Here's a little shout out to bloggers from last night's season finale. Here's what I could make out (freeze frame) of Creed's "blog" post:

"Hey-o, everyone out there in SyberWorld. It's old Creed Bratton coming at your again, here from my perch as a Quality Assurance Manager at Dunder Mifflin paper. Just a few observations on the world around me.

What do you guys think is the best kind of car? To me, you can't (off screen) motorcyles. They're small and dangerous.

I go..."

Did one of the writers compose that post? Did they let the actor who plays Creed write it? Did that someone know some blogger/fan would go to the trouble to post Creed's post? Am I the only person on the planet to do so? Is there another Beck's in the frig?

PS: Holy shit! The actor who plays Creed (Creed Bratton) was a member of the 60s rock band The Grassroots. I'm the only one that didn't know that, right?

I have the con

Barb and some of her pals are in Destin for a few days of R&R. Which means I am in charge of dog biscuits, the pooper scooper and early morning feedings. Which puts me at the outer limits of my ability to handle responsibility.

How advertisers view consumers

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager

Beyond blogging with TypePad Pages

smays.com is hosted by and managed with TypePad, a blogging platform. I've been a happy camper since making the switch from Blogger. The ONLY thing it didn't offer was the ability to create individual pages (as opposed to a blog post). And this morning I see they've added a "TypePad Pages" feature. Yessss.

I've been steering clients to TypePad for the last year or so and the inability to add "static" pages has been an issue. I'll add a page or two here at smays.com and let you know if this is as handy as I expect it to be.

Open letter to Gonzales from the Harvard Law class of 1982

This ad ran in the Washington Post today, signed by all of Gonzales' classmates from the Harvard Law class of 1982. It chastises his reckless disregard for the constitution for the wire tapping, suspension of habeas corpus, and the recent politically motivated firings. Here's the full text (digg) and a PDF of the ad.

Alberto will be the guy wearing the Groucho glasses at the next class reunion.

Bringo: Talk to a real human

Call a customer service phone number and end up in automated operator hell. With Bringo, you don’t even need to dial your phone. Just find the company you want to talk to in their directory, type in your phone number, and a couple of minutes later Bringo calls you and connects you to an operator at that company. [via Tech Crunch]

Yes, I do have something to share with the class

I am a Google Fan Boy. I can't help it. I love most of the Google services I've tried. And I keep discovering new ones. The "Share" feature in Google Reader is not new, but I just got around to playing with it and I love it.

I frequently come across a story that I'd like to share. I'll sometime email it to friends and --if I have the time-- post on it here. But there are times when I just want to point you to the story and have nothing to add. With one click in my Google Reader, I can add the story to a public page ("Steve's Shared Items"). The five most recently "shared" stories also appear in the sidebar here at smays.com.

This simple tool extends my role of "who asked you?" editor/aggregator. While I cannot post on everything I find interesting, Google Reader has made it easy to share.

"Child-safe and Disney-friendly"

Mark Ramsey (Hear 2.0): "the future of any audio entertainment that is financed by advertisers is a future where the content is child-safe and Disney-friendly - a future specifically monitored by agents with agendas to ensure that the inoffensive, the harmless, and the docile float to the top of what's "acceptable."

Which only means that we'll have to pay for the good stuff.

BasementDiaries.com

I've had a couple of people ask me why I haven't been posting. As I mentioned last week, I'm putting most of my spare hours into rebuilding The Basement Diaries, the website I deleted a couple of Sunday's ago. It's far from done, but if you were "there," you might want to follow along and tell me what I've missed. Comment link below.

I've started a Google map of places we partied and hung out and even added pix to some of the pins. A nice little feature. I've still got a couple hundred Halloween Party pix to re-scan but there's no reason you can't follow along. (I'm amazed at how poorly I scanned images when I created this site back in '98).

flickrvision

flickervision lets you see photos as they're uploaded, with geographical location. Hard to stop watching. Like channel surfing but better. And at the risk of getting all "We are the world" on you... it reminded me that there are people just like me in every country, taking pix and putting them up for the rest of the world to see. Thanks to J. T. for the point.

Objective: 1,000 photos on flickr

That's my goal. And I'm about half-way there. I'm using flickr to host images for the rebuild of The Basement Diaries which should be far enough along for a link by next weekend. A lot of the prints are 40 years old and weren't great to begin with. But I'm not trying to win a contest, just share some memories with old friends.

And there is something so satisfying about getting these images out the shoe boxes and up on the web where anyone can find them. That means a lot of scanning (I might try one of the services I've read about). From now on, if  the image is worth keeping... it goes on flickr.

Couch Change: 05.12.07

:: Sheryl Crow's Mother's Day announcement
:: If Bullwinkle and Pegasus mated... Disturbing photo by Charles Jolliff
:: There are people who take pictures... and then there are photographers.
:: Missouri River flooding along KATY Trail (video)
:: Search the globe for a clean restroom

What I do

I hesitate to post this because there's no way to do so with modesty. So I'll do it anyway.

Because my job has evolved and morphed over a number of years, it's been a struggle to describe what I do. No longer. I stumbled across a job description at LexBlog that is pretty much spot-on. I am a Project Manager. I can probably tack "Online" or "New Media" to the front of that, but it's what I've been doing for the last seven or eight years. And, yes, I am aware that you did not ask.

Journalists: How to feed the blog beast

Amy Gahran (The Right Conversation) offers some useful tips for reporters who are asked or required to blog. The first one is the best one: Don't use your blog to post stories. Instead, use it to post complementary content around your stories.

Other nuggets from Ms. Gahran:

• Blog as notepad. If you're following an issue (maybe a local Superfund site) and you come across an interesting angle or tidbit that is relevant but doesn't warrant its own story, instead of just jotting yourself a note about it, blog it. If possible, create a category or tag in your blog so interested community members can easily track that issue through your blog. That also makes it easy for you to find that note when you are ready to do a followup story.
• Distributed reporting. So many meetings, so little time. Let's say you can't get to a public meeting about that Superfund site. So you post a blog item to let the community know the meeting's happening and why you think it might matter. Toss out a couple of questions you'd ask if you were going. Invite your readers to attend the meeting, and maybe pose those questions. Ask them to post their notes -- and the answers they received -- in the comments. More fodder for you.
• Community outreach. Pose open questions to your blog audience: What are their top concerns about that Superfund site? Agenda-setting works best when it works both ways.
• Buzz builder. You're working on a big investigative feature about that Superfund site. It'll take you months to pull it together. You can drop hints about how that project is progressing -- without giving away the farm or totally blowing it with your competition or sources.
• Cutting room floor. Did your editor cut a particularly poignant anecdote or pithy observation from your latest story simply for space? Blog it! It's already written, so why not make it work for you? Make sure you always link to the published story, of course.

Amazon launches podcast network

Amazon.com today officially launched the Amazon Podcasts network, an original podcast offering that features four channels of free content: Amazon BookClips, Music You Should Hear, Significant Seven and
Amazon Wire.

• Amazon BookClips – A weekly podcast offering customers a free sneak peek at some of the most popular soon-to-be-released audiobooks.
  
• Music You Should Hear – A free, weekly MP3 podcast whereby customers receive an MP3 recording featuring complete songs from developing and indie artists, selected by Amazon’s music editors.
  
• Significant Seven – A monthly podcast in which book editors from Amazon.com talk about seven of the most exciting upcoming books before they are released.
  
• Amazon Wire – An exclusive, biweekly podcast featuring interviews with some of today’s hottest authors, actors, directors and musicians.
  

All of these sound like something I would listen to regularly. Will the typical podcaster get rich? No. Will companies like Amazon find creative and profitable ways to use podcasting? Wait, wait... I know this one... [via Podcasting News]

Lassie, where are you?

A voice-enabled, waterproof, GPS-enabled cell phone from Pets Mobility tracks your dog's location. It's also a two-way cell phone, with an auto-answer feature that puts your voice on speakerphone. You can talk to your pup and he can respond with a bark. The doggy phone has a "call home" button so if anyone finds him, they can use the phone to contact you.

I'm not sure I see the value of talking to my dog, but the rest of it makes sense.

How to Write for the Web

From Cory Bergman's (Lost Remote) Guide for TV Newsrooms. He offers 11 tips that apply equally well to radio newsrooms. My favorite was the one on writing headlines:

"The trick is writing headlines that not only compel people to click, but also show up in search results. It should be simple, straightforward and active. It should emphasize a twist or compelling fact in a story, such as “buried alive” or “gasping for air.” It should contain search keywords. And it should attribute when necessary."

Flood images: YouTube and Flickr

People in the midwest (Iowa and Missouri) affected by the flooding wasted no time in posting video to YouTube. Here's some footage from Washington, Missouri.

Missouri Valley, Iowa got 5-7" of rain in a very short period of time, which resulted in three levee breaks. This clip is part of a series ... this guy (I don't know why I think it's a guy) decided to go with a rock video treatment ... and here's one from Wyeth Hill in St. Joseph MO. (Across the river, Elwood Kansas was in the process evacuating.)

A Flickr search for "missouri flood" pulled up 490 images. I'm sure I missed some good ones. Go ahead and post them in Comments.

The Basement Diaries Redux

I'm committed to the do-over for The Basement Diaries but I'm quickly discovering it's going to take a lot longer than I anticipated. I keep discovering pages that had fallen behind the digital chest of drawers. I'm starting with just recreating all of the pages and getting them linked. I don't want to think about re-scanning hundreds of photos. This is the signature image for The Basement Diaries. Everyone has a snapshot like this, that captured a time and place.

Next summer will be the 40th anniversary of "the basement summer," so I'll have to have the site back up before then. Which means even less blog time for smays.com.

NHL Capitals make news by reporting it

The Washington Capitals, a National Hockey League team, plan to send four reporters to Moscow to cover the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship (underway). The Capitals will partner with Clearspring Technologies to deliver audio, video and text content to their site for Caps fans, as well as to local, national and international media outlets via a specialized widget.

The local medea elected not to cover the event so the Capitals decided the could and would. And share the news with new and traditional media outlets and syndicate it far and wide. [E-Media Tidbits]

My mind reels at the implications of this.

Let's say the Pooterville Drum and Bugle Corps make it to the national finals in Bangor, Maine. The local radio station can't afford to send a broadcast crew but the kids could throw up a blog and go crazy posting video, audio, stills, minute-by-minute reports... all brought to you by the Pooterville Sports Boosters Club. Does anyone doubt that a couple of passionate, knowledgeable fans can provide better, more complete coverage than the local radio station? And if the local station wants to air some of their stuff...great.

If I were running the local radio station (or newspaper, or TV station)... I think I might encourage this and provide the tools, training and web-hosting.

I am an "information omnivore"

Podcasting News posts on and points to a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, that highlights the fact that most Americans are not participating in blogging, podcasting or Internet media sharing sites like YouTube. While 85% of Americans use the Internet or cell phones, only 8% are what the study calls information “omnivores” - people that fully participate “in cyberspace.”

The report highlights that activities like podcasting and video sharing still pose significant usability barriers for most people, that there’s tremendous opportunity for people that can create better solutions for Internet media and that there’s a huge untapped audience for podcasts and Internet media.

This is really good news for those of us (the report calls us "information ominvores") that know how to do some of these things.

What are we going to build?

Seth Godin: "A huge portion of our lives (as marketers, as consumers, as voters, as citizens) has been dominated by the fact that there were three or twenty TV networks. That this was a scarce resource. It's not. Not any more. So, if there's unlimited real estate, what are we going to build?"

During my years doing affiliate relations for our news networks, most (all?) of our programming decisions were based on what we thought we could convince radio stations to "clear." Coming up with an idea that 30 or 40 radio stations (out of 60) might agree was worth putting on the air was daunting. Mr. Godin's post brought this to mind:

"Why not start the Debate Channel? 20 hours a week of live debate available online. Get a cable network to run three or four hours of highlights every week as an inducement to the candidates, but it will really be about the Net. If a candidate doesn't show up, the others get more time to talk."

We still have to program for our affiliates but we are no longer limited by that. So, what are we going to build?

Daddy needs an upgrade!

Three new Mac ads. Choose a Vista, Genius and Party is Over. Am I just missing the Vista ads or have I developed some sort of "Windows blindness?"

Update: Thanks to Andrew for pointing me to a couple of Vista ads.

Another Update: "In the first three months of 2007, Mac sales jumped 36%, to 1.52 million units. That's more than three times the industry's growth average of 11%." Might be several factors but a good ad campaign didn't hurt. (BusinessWeek, May 14, 2007)

Branding Yourself

Neil Patel at Pronet Advertising: "Personal branding is something I get a lot of questions about. People often ask me what they should do in order to get an established name out there and be seen as a major influencer in their industry. The reason they want this is because the second you accomplish this, the opportunities will come your way and you'd be amazed at the kind of business or money that just lands in your lap."

I don't remember hearing much about "personal branding" before blogs and podcasting. But if there is an "smays brand," you'll find it here.

I had lunch today with Chuck Zimmerman and it would be hard to find a better example of this concept. He and his wife Cindy work too hard to say the money "just lands in (their) lap," but they've certainly created a unique brand in the world of agriculture marketing. I'd love to share some of Chuck's amazing success stories but before he pays for lunch, he makes me sign an NDA.

What's your brand?

The Basement Diaries. Deleted.

"The Basement Summer was 1968. Some of us had been off to college for a year or two but gravitated back to Kennett, Missouri, as young people from small towns often do. This web site is about those people and that time.

This would have been a lot easier if I had actually kept a diary or journal thirty years ago. But I didn't, so the only record I have is a few thousand photographs and a lot of fuzzy memories. The time frame is roughly 1966 -1976. If you were there, no further explanation is necessary... if you were not, none is possible."

That was the intro to one of the first websites I created (March, 1998). I say was because this morning I deleted the entire site. How I managed to do this is of no consequence. I believe I have a back-up in our safe deposit box, but can't find a copy among the countless CD's and external hard-drives that clutter my home office.

Given the sentimental importance of this site, I'm surprised by how calmly I'm dealing with this. I spent hundreds of hours creating the site but I didn't know what I was doing in those early days and the tools weren't very good. And the resulting site looked like what it was, an early effort by an amateur.

And I have all of the images. Digital and prints. I can do a much better job the second time around.

I don't think I could/would recreate the copy. So I'm hoping I have that back-up. And I feel bad for anyone that might have linked to the original site. Those links are dead. If you were among those immortalized in The Basement Diaries, watch this space for updates.

Update: Seems I did have the foresight to tuck a copy away at the bank. I'll start rebuilding immediately.

This Perfect Day

If you're familiar with Ira Levin at all, it's probably through some of the movies based on his novels (Rosemary's Baby, The Boys from Brazil, The Stepford Wives, Sliver). My favorite Levin novel, This Perfect Day, hasn't (to my knowledge) made it to the big screen. It describes a scary future:

"Uniformity is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called "The Family". There are only four personal names for men, and four corresponding names for women. Instead of surnames, individuals are distinguished by a nine-character alphanumeric code. Everyone eats "totalcakes", drinks "cokes" and wears exactly the same thing - every day.

The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp which has been programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check. People are continually drugged by means of regular injections so that they can never realize their potential as humans. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce, and which job they will be trained for. Everyone is assigned a counselor who acts somewhat like a mentor, confessor, and parole agent; violations against 'brothers' and 'sisters' by themselves and others are expected to be reported at a monthly confession."

I read This Perfect Day in 1970 (the year it was published). The telecomps used by counselors to remotely connect with UniComp sound remarkably like wi-fi enabled laptops. Fortunately, instead of connecting with a single all-powerful computer, we're connecting with lots of little ones...and each other.

On a more metaphysical plane, This Perfect Day poses the question: Are we really as "awake" and "conscious" as we think we are? My latest re-read reminds me --once again-- trust yourself, don't trust governments.

Ira Glass on storytelling

Thanks to David for pointing me to this series of interviews (YouTube) with Ira Glass. His weekly program, This American Life, is the best example of what radio can and should be. But that doesn't sound quite right to me any longer, since I began listening to the program via podcast.

So let's call it the best example of what storytelling can and should be. "Radio" makes it about the medium. And it never was, not really.

My take-away from the first segment of the interview is that it takes as much time to find a good story, as it does to write and produce the story. He says the TAL team spends about half of their time searching for that good story to tell.

PS: I had never seen Ira Glass and he looks exactly like he sounds.