Author Archives: Steve Mays

Google spreadsheets

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When I bought the MacBook, I decided not to purchase Microsoft Office. I can’t remember the last time I felt the need to write something in Office. And few things make me go nuts faster than getting an email that says “see attached Word doc” in the body…and the Word doc has two lines of crap that could just as easily have been written in the body of the email (Get a clue you ignorant hillbilly!). What was my point? Oh yeah, MS Office…

Don’t need it. Don’t need Powerpoint. And –as of tomorrow– I don’t need Excel.
Google is set to launch a Web-based spreadsheet program that will allow people to view and simultaneously edit data while conducting “in-document” chat and supports the import and export of documents in the .xls format used in Excel and the .csv (comma-separated values) format.

I’m not a heavy spreadsheet user and I’m guessing the folks in our finance and accounting department couldn’t get by with the new Google spreadsheet. But I’m doing fine without Office and finer tomorrow.

Mark Cuban: “Blogging is personal, traditional media is corporate.”

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“Traditional media has become almost exclusively corporate while blogging remains almost exclusively personal. (People in traditional media) get hired for a specific job and they have to do that job. They get hired by a corporation that is most likely public, which means their senior management , the people they ultimately report to, have to put getting the stock price up above all else. That is really what blogging vs traditional media in 2006 has come down to. Bloggers drive blogs, share price drives traditional media. Blogging is personal, traditional media is corporate. Which is exactly why blog readership is going up, while traditional media is consolidating, if not contracting. Traditional media goes to work, bloggers live their work.”

I encourage you to read Mr. Cuban’s full post. Say what you will, Mark Cuban has always been about five minutes ahead on the old “Information Highway.” And he understands blogging as only a blogger can. [via Scripting.com]

WSJ’s Walt Mossberg on Internet and Radio

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One of the highlights of this week’s NAB 2006 Las Vegas convention was the keynote speaker at Tuesday’s Radio Luncheon, the Wall Street Journal’s technology columnist, Walt Mossberg. Some of his comments, as reported by Kurt Hanson:

“Internet” won’t be an “activity” in a few years. Currently, we talk about ‘surfing the Web’ or ‘being on the Internet’ or ‘I’m going online tonight’ as a discreet activity we perform on a PC, but in ten years, those phrases will sound absurd. When you watch TV, you may be on the Internet; when you listen to radio, you may be on the Internet. The Internet will not be an activity you do on a PC – it will be like the electrical grid. It will be all around you! I predict that talking about the Internet will fade, as we talk instead about devices, about software, and about services and content.

On the effect of iPods on radio:

“We passed a milestone: There are now 50 million iPods out there. My music tastes don’t fit into the little boxes that Clear Channel in my market has decided I need to fit into. Your job is not just to string together a bunch of songs in a row, but to put on exciting new programming to attract new listeners and beat the iPod.”

I wonder what Walt would say to the upcoming meeting of StateNets, the trade group that represents state networks (like the ones Learfield owns). A co-worker in the office next to mine helps organize the event. I’ll ask if they have a keynote speaker. Props to the NAB guys for inviting Mossberg.

Always connected

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Sitting in the Coffee Zone, slurping some Rocket Fuel, connected to the world. The way it was meant to be. In all fairness, I rarely lugged my Thinkpad around. Just too heavy. Not IBM’s (at the time) fault. I bought one of the heaviest models they offered. No idea why. But on the few occasions I took the thing on the road and attempted to connect wirelessly, it was usually something of a chore. Again, probably not the fault of Microsoft or IBM. I just never took the time to learn how to make it all work. It was too much trouble.

This morning I fired up the new Mac…it saw the open hotspots…I picked one…and here we are. All things in life should be so easy. Why wouldn’t a boy just keep his laptop with him all the time? Stay tuned.

Posted by Clyde

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It’s a little too early to say that our company is blogging (corporately). But there’s a teensy, weensy spark that could become a flame. Clyde Lear –our CEO/President/Founder and All Around Good Guy– has dipped his toe in the blog pond. Several us always thought he’d be a natural and today’s post would seem to confirm that. For reasons known only to him, he asked a few employees at random what they were reading and posted the results. Why do I think this is worth a mention?

No news release. Nothing about our company’s growth. Just a little nugget about the people that make up our company. He didn’t ask the senior management staff what they were reading. He walked down the hall and asked the folks in the cubes. Clyde was once a journalist and has always been a good writer. I hope he becomes a regular blogger. He’ll have interesting and important things to say.