200 new car models satellite ready in 2006

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Michael Endelman gives us one more look at what’s happening in the radio business in a piece called “Lost In Transmission” (October 21, 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly – Registration required). Nothing regular visitors to smays.com haven’t seen before. My favorite factoid: “In 2006, satellite radios will come factory-installed in nearly 200 models of new cars — up from just two models four years ago.” For those with a power-to-the-people bent: “Ten years ago, you needed millions of dollars and and FCC license to go into the radio biz. Now all you need is a laptop.”

Steve’s Weird Media Moment for 19-Oct-05: I was driving to work listening to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code on the nano and reached over (to my car radio) to turn the volume down, only to discover my radio was not turned on (shudder).

Weblog Usability: Top 10 Mistakes

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Online usability expert Jakob Nielsen gives us The Top Ten Design Mistakes for Weblog Usability in this weeks Alertbox:

1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

I sometimes get a little too cute with my post titles (#3) and I struggle to keep my focus narrow (#8) but, all in all, I’m giving smays.com high marks. He explains each of these and I urge my blogging friends to take 5 minutes to read and heed what Uncle Jakob has to say.

MothBoard

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I just came across the coolest thing while reading the Library Thing blog:

“MothBoard allows you to create simple, private discussion boards for free, and without registration. Boards normally expire in two weeks, but you can extend their life indefinitely.”

I’m gonna try this here at smays.com as soon as I think of the right topic. Unlike complex, threaded forums, MothBoard just goes two deep (topic & reply). No endless replies-to-replies-to-replies. And if there isn’t sufficient interest to keep a topic alive, the board dies. As it should. Neat idea, stay tuned.

The challenges of getting big

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I’ve always blogged with an awareness that the people I work with (and for) might be reading what I write. In fact, I know that some of them do pop in from time to time. Hi, guys.

While I post with some frequency on radio, media, blogging, journalism, podcasting and such… I rarely write about our company specifically. For lots of reasons. Today we’ll get close to the line and try not to step over.

Our company has gotten big. Not General Motors big or Microsoft big, but a lot bigger than when we started, 30 years ago. Back then, it was Clyde and Derry (and a few others) making it up as they went along, breaking all the rules, trying and doing all kinds of things that Big Companies said you couldn’t or shouldn’t do.

And, as the name suggests, the company has always beeen about communications. First as a wired (telco lines) network delivering farm news and markets to a handful of radio stations. Very few people were doing that back then because it was damned expensive and nobody really saw the need or the opportunity. Clyde and Derry did.

In the early 80’s, Clyde figured out having his own satellite uplink would allow him to reduce costs and control a powerful distribution channel. We could ‘communicate’ programming (content) to listeners (via the radio stations) in a way that others could not. More on the satellite/distribution thing in a minute.

So we have our own satellite uplink and channels and things start to take off. We build/acquire lots of radio networks. We’re scaling nicely and the company is growing. And it continues to grow. We still feel like and –in many ways– operate like a much smaller company. Handful of smart guys running the company from the top of a very flat org chart. But we’ve gotten big. And we have some big cash cows that we love very much.

You see where I’m headed with this, right? How do you get big (which has lots of advantages) without losing the Small Company “bag of rice and an AK47” flexibility and attitude? Because if the next Clyde and Derry are out there in the bushes (and you know they are), they have The Mother of All Networks at their fingertips and it doesn’t cost them the millions our Clyde paid for his first uplink. It’s virtually (get it?) free. And far more poweful because it’s global and two-way and blah, blah, blah, blah. You’ve heard it all.

Big is good. The Queen Mary is a very comfortable ride. And as long as we don’t have to make any sudden turns, we’ll be fine.