Rent movies on iTunes, watch on Apple TV

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Apple is in talks with the Hollywood studios to make new movies available for rental on iTunes, with titles to rent for $2.99 for a set number of days before expiring. It is unclear which studios might participate. [WSJ.com]

I hope –and expect– this to come together. Netflix is great but there’s still some lag time. And I can’t recall the last time I bought a PPV movie from DirecTV. Selection pretty much sucks. As Barb and I have less and less time (or so it seems), the convenience and choice of on-demand becomes more and more important.

Tony will live. Completely alone.

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It seems The Big Question of the last few days is: Will Tony Soprano be alive or dead at the end of the season/series finale this evening? So, for the record, here’s my prediction:

He survives. But he will be completely, existentially alone. No friends. No family. No one. I have no idea how this happens plot-wise, but that’s my guess.

This series –and I was a fan– should have ended a season or two ago. I hope Mr. Chase and the writers can find a way to end it with the same class it began.

Update: I was wrong. Not about Tony being alive at the end, but about being alone. The family was all together, eating onion rings. So what’s David Chase telling us? You can be a self-centered, lying, murdering son of a bitch and live out your life without retribution? Who knows. And it’s his call. He gave us all those great stories for eight years… if he wants to leave it hanging at the end, he’s earned the right.

Building your personal brand through your blogging

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Darren Rowse (Pro Blogger) offers tips on how to build your personal brand:

  • Build trust. Talk both about your successes and failures.
  • Be personal. Show something of who you are. This doesn’t mean blogging about your personal life, but show you’re human.
  • Use story. Stories of my own experience, stories of other clients (shared with permission as case studies) etc.
  • Establish expertise. Show what you know, show how you apply it and be a thought leader in your niche.
  • Establish relationships in your niche.
  • Be consistent. Every time you post you have the opportunity to add to or take from your reputation and brand

While reading Darren’s tips, I mentally scrolled through the last five years of posts here at smays.com, and –more by luck than design– I think hit most of these. And a week doesn’t go by that my blog doesn’t come up in conversation with current or prospective clients (from them, not me). I’m not sure how valuable smays.com is as a brand, but it’s out there.

Start building your brand. Your company is not and cannot do it for you. [via LexBlog]

NYT: Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine

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This story appeared last week in the New York Times and is one of the best I’ve seen in a while on Google. Posted here for future reference.

“Google does more than simply build an outsized, digital table of contents for the Web. Instead, it actually makes a copy of the entire Internet — every word on every page — that it stores in each of its huge customized data centers so it can comb through the information faster.

As Google compiles its index, it calculates a number it calls PageRank for each page it finds. This was the key invention of Google’s founders, Mr. Page and Sergey Brin. PageRank tallies how many times other sites link to a given page. Sites that are more popular, especially with sites that have high PageRanks themselves, are considered likely to be of higher quality.”

Missed opportunity

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Missed Opportunity

Please tell me I’m not the first person to see this mural (radio station in Chillicothe, Missouri) and not want to go inside, sneak upstairs, remove my shirt and lean out the window (closest to the street) and scream “Help! Help!”

The Soup: “festering petri dish of celeb culture”

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Talk Soup was a television show on E! from 1991-2002, featuring selected clips of the previous day’s daily talk shows, surrounded by humorous commentary delivered by the host. This is where I first saw Greg Kinnear, who hosted the show from ’91-95.

Somewhere along the way, E! changed the name from Talk Soup to The Soup and the current host is Joel McHale, who looks like a cross between a young Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Seacrest.

And he’s damned funny. Funny in the way David Spade wants to be. Funny in the way Dennis Miller was before he went right-wing nuts. Funny like Jon Stewart with a dash of Matt Frewer.

Podcast Audience Continues To Grow

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The Diffusion Group reports that, based on their latest research, 11% of adult broadband users (some 12 million US consumers) listen to podcasts at least once per month. They also predict that the podcast audience will more than double in the next five years, to 24% of broadband users (38.5 million Americans) by 2012. [Podcasting News]

How important is local news on the radio?

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Mark Ramsey says (Hear 2.0) his research repeatedly shows that once you get beyond traffic and local sports headlines and weather, "local news" per se is one of the things (radio) listeners – even information listeners – want least.   

And that’s fundamentally because information fans tend to be interested in one of two things: What fascinates or entertains them and what impacts them personally. And neither of these things are explicitly "local."

Is this true? Hmm. I’ve lived in Jefferson City for more than 20 years and I don’t know the name of the mayor and have very little interest in what’s going on "locally." Until, of course, something doesn’t work.

I listen to our state news reports on our local affiliate but can’t remember the last time I listened to the "local" newscast. But I’ve always suspected –and hoped– I was the exception.

eBay to auction radio advertising

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eBay is ready to begin auctioning advertising airtime on 2,300 participating U.S. radio stations. The venture –which puts eBay into competition with Google– includes both conventional terrestrial radio and Internet radio advertising. Stations in all of the 300 top-ranked radio markets are covered. Advertising inventory includes primetime spots with 90 percent in morning drive, midday or evening commute hours from Monday through Friday.

How (if at all) will this impact companies like ours that barter our services for radio station commercials? When you finish the quiz, close your Blue Book and raise your hand.