“Blogs let you remember what you think, what you feel, what you say, how you say it, what you care about and how you live in this world actually matters. Blogs remind us we matter.”
–Halley Suitt (2004)
Why Mobile Phones are Annoying
Bystanders rated mobile-phone conversations as dramatically more noticeable, intrusive, and annoying than conversations conducted face-to-face. While volume was an issue, hearing only half a discussion also seemed to up the irritation factor. [Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, April 12, 2004]
Lucy: 13 weeks
Beautiful spring day. Barb’s 500 tulips are up and looking fine. Lucy and Ripley are old buddies now and play together just fine. Everything is a game to a Golden Retriever puppy, including a drink of water.
Prayer from School of Rock
All right, let’s pray.
God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass.
We are your humble servants.
Please give us the power to blow people’s minds with our high-voltage rock.
In your name we pray.
Amen.
Now, let’s get out there and melt some faces!School of Rock
Thinkpads Forever
I bought my first IBM Thinkpad in 1996. That was the year IBM introduced the 560 model, the first “ultraportable.” The little bugger is still working. In December of 2000 I replaced the 560 with an A21p. I told the IBM rep on the phone to give me “the biggest, baddest box you have.” The warranty on the A21p expired in later February and the mother board expired last weekend. A brand new Thinkpad R40 left Hong Kong overnight and is heading my way.
Thought about buying a Mac (for about 30 seconds) and decided to stick with what I know. Thinkpads are a little pricey but looking at the 10-year-old 560 over there on the couch reminds me why I keep coming back.
Show Biz Moms & Dads
Show Biz Moms & Dads premiers Tuesday, April 13th, 8 p.m. Central, on Bravo. I’m not a fan of reality TV but must confess I’m looking forward to this one. Watching the promos, it seems obvious to me that the parents don’t know that the hook on this show is how pathetic they look, trying to live through their children.
The Nutters mom, dad and seven kids who relocated from a rural home in Vermont to a tiny two-bedroom apartment in New York so the whole family could pursue acting careers in the big city.
Four year-old pageant participant Emily Tye, whose mom Debbie spends upwards of $20,000 a year to keep her young daughter competitive.
Aspiring teen actor Jordan Barron and her mom Tiffany, who struggles with a demanding schedule of holding down a job, raising two kids and shuttling Jordan to auditions and acting classes.
Dilbert: Motivational Posters
Applicant: How do you reward your top performers?
The Boss: I keep increasing their workloads until their performances become average.
Applicant: So…why would anyone try to excel?
The Boss: I use only the finest motivational posters.
Network 23
Reply
I mentioned in an earlier post that our company operates networks that provide statewide news to radio stations (Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nebraska). The thing we do best is covering state government, with an emphasis on the legislature. And because our medium is radio, we do a lot of sound. Here’s the way it worked in 1975:
Our reporter covered some event at the state capitol. Debate, a hearing, news conference…whatever. They recorded the event, asked some questions and returned to the newsroom where they wrote their stories and edited the audio. Once an hour, they produced a five minute newscast and “fed” it to affiliated radio stations over phone lines (later, via satellite).
We provide stations with programming (we’ve started calling it content) and they “pay” us with commercials on their stations which we, in turn, sell to advertisers. It’s been a good business model. It’s still a good model. But I wonder how current technology might affect that model. As silly and pointless as it sounds, let’s forget the economics for a moment and think about how this process might work in a broad-band, wirelessly networked world.
Our reporter (we’ll call her Lois Lane) is sitting in the back of a hearing room at the state capitol where a heated discussion on same-sex marriage is underway. She’s connected to the Net and posting almost-real-time updates on what’s happening to her network’s weblog. When a fight breaks out between two of the state senators, she snaps a picture with her Treo 600 and posts it to the weblog. Things heat up, security is called. Lois IM’s the webmaster and says she wants to stream live. Takes only a few minutes to get the encoders going. Order is restored and the hearing adjourned. In the hallway, Lois interviews the participants and records it on her small, hand-held video camera. She Blue Tooth’s it over to her laptop…does a quick edit…and zaps it straight to the website. Scattered across the country (and in a couple of other countries)…a few thousand folks receive a fresh RSS feed on their news aggregators. Holy shit! A gay activist kicked the shit out of a state senator in Missouri. And there’s video!
I’m not sure, but I think all of the technology for the above exists. We’re just not there on the business model. Yet. Oh, and there were no radio stations in my scenerio. Will there ever be a time when people can receive text, audio and video on some mobile device that is not a transistor radio? Uh, yeah. We call it a mobile phone or PDA today. I’m not sure what we call it tomorrow but it probably won’t be a radio. Before you start looking for a rope and a limb, know that I love radio. I grew up in a radio family. But I don’t believe the essence of radio is transmitters and towers and FCC licenses. It’s music and news and sports and interesting people with interesting things to say. How it gets from A to Z is less important every day.
Celebrex, Nexium, Prevacid.
Why are the big drug companies advertising on network television? In many instances, they don’t tell you what ailment the drug is supposed to help, and you can’t get it without a prescription anyway. One of the hosts on the new, “liberal” radio network, Air America, offered a theory last week (I think it was Randi Rhodes).
If Pfizer or Eli Lilly is spending millions with your network, you’ll be less likely to report negative stories about them. The purpose of the ads is not to move product, they’ve got that covered. It’s to keep a leash on the news departments. I’ve been thinking about that for days, asking myself if it could really work. Of course it could. It has. It does.
Then I asked myself if it could happen at our company. We operate several radio news networks and during my 20 years with the company, there have been several instances where a big advertiser threatened to pull business if we didn’t lay off or change a story. The owner of our company, who started as a reporter, didn’t hesitate. Advertisers don’t control editorial content. That happens in the newsroom. Period. Everybody back to work. It still gives me goose bumps to recall those very brief meetings in the corner office.
But the last few years have been a little tougher for our news networks and some of the players have changed. Would we take the same ethical/expensive stand today? Or would we try to find a way to “keep the business?” Search for a compromise. Would our news directors risk their jobs for this kind of journalistic principle? They’ve got house payments. What would I do?
It saddens me that I even wonder about these things. Ten years ago I could have said, with absolute certainty, we would tell the advertiser we would not, could not, be pressured. We’d stand by the story and live with the consequences. And it might still be true today. I hope so.
He has better haircut, I have a nicer shirt
During the first season of Seinfeld, one of the ladies at work kept telling me I looked a little like this guy on TV. I never thought so until I came across this lovely snapshot from the mid-70’s. I know it’s a stretch but it’s either Jerry or Carrot Top.