More ads flowing to blogs?

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The Society for New Communications Research is a think tank on new media. They recently asked a couple of hundred advertising agencies about their plans to advertise and market in “conversational media” (blogs and podcasts and such). Among the findings:

“In the next five years, a majority of advertising and marketing professionals expect to spend more money on so-called conversational media–or online media that encompasses things like blogs and podcasts–than on advertising through traditional media such as newspapers or magazines.

Today, a majority of these agencies said that they spend about 2.5 percent of their total budgets on conversational media, but by 2012, they plan to tip that percentage to more than they spend on traditional media.”

From a post by Stefanie Olsen over at the C|Net Blog (Thanks to Kevin O’Keefe at LexBlog for the pointer.)

As one who has made his living from “radio spots” for 30+ years, this is hard to imagine. But five years isn’t that long. I guess we’ll see.

Band of Bloggers: War Through A Soldiers Eyes

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Watched a really interesting program on the History Channel last night about military bloggers (milbloggers) in Irag:

“For the first time in history, modern technology is enabling viewers to experience war as it really is… directly from the battlefield. An ever growing band of military bloggers are using the internet, video cameras and cell phones to deliver honest, powerful and uncensored content. Band of Bloggers will be the site that will collect this raw and riveting “soldier generated content.”

Remember the early day of the war when network reporters (and anchors) were “embedded” with our troops, reporting from “the front lines?” Well, a lot of those reporters have got the fuck out of Dodge or been forced to do their reports from the basement of the Baghdad Hilton.

Questions of objectivity aside, you can’t get much more “front line” than these men and women. Some of them have even rigged cameras to their helmets to record video.

If Vietnam was our first televised war, Iraq is our first blogged war. If you’re a blogger or read blogs, you’ll want to watch Band of Bloggers.

Ubiquitous computing, blended reality

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“Totally ubiquitous computing. One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn’t cyberspace is going to be unimaginable. When I wrote Neuromancer in 1984, cyberspace already existed for some people, but they didn’t spend all their time there. So cyberspace was there, and we were here. Now cyberspace is here for a lot of us, and there has become any state of relative nonconnectivity. There is where they don’t have Wi-Fi.

In a world of superubiquitous computing, you’re not gonna know when you’re on or when you’re off. You’re always going to be on, in some sort of blended-reality state. You only think about it when something goes wrong and it goes off. And then it’s a drag.”

— From Rolling Stone interview with William Gibson

Let Larry King keep driving, but take away the show

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On Thursday’s "Larry King Live," the King asked Jerry if "Seinfeld" was canceled back in the day, and Jerry seemed genuinely shocked that Larry didn’t know. "You think I got canceled?" Jerry shot back. "I was the number one show on television, Larry … 75 million viewers in the last episode."

As Larry played it off and went to commercial, Jerry threw in one last zinger: "Can we get a resume in here for me for Larry to go over?"

Okay, Jerry’s probably a bit frazzled from the endless promotion of The Bee Movie. And taking a (verbal) poke at an old man is never cool, but come on!

You can’t remember if Seinfeld got canceled?! Time for some shuffleboard, LK. Watch the video at TMZ.com and judge for yourself.

Mac OS X Leopard Installation

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I remember when installing a new operating system took a huge stack of 3.5 inch floppies (or 5.25 inch floppies!). And a lot of time. But what was really needed back then –at least by me– was patience and courage.

You knew to a near certainty that your computer wouldn’t work at the end of the process. Or some of your applications wouldn’t work or you’d spend hours tracking down and installing drivers.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped upgrading my computers with new operating systems and just purchased a new computer with the newest OS already installed. An expensive solution.

Osx
So I have had mixed emotions about the new release of Mac OS X (Leopard). Lots of new features I’m eager for, but trepidation. My plan was to wait until my Mac sensei, George, had time to do the installation.

On Saturday he informed me that this was something that I could do. Back up my data, and stick in the installation DVD.

I took the added precaution of burning my photos and music to DVD and then (with hunched shoulders and squinted eyes) slipped in the installation DVD for Leopard. Less than an hour later, the new OS was running and –so far– nary a problem.

I won’t bore you with my early impressions of the features of this new system. The web is swarming with those. I will share one thing…

Time Machine is the new backup/restore application that comes with Leopard. So I bought a new external HD, plugged it in, and let Time Machine make another full back up of my computer. It will update that back up every time I connect the laptop and the drive.

The real test of any such app is the restoration. When the time comes I need to recover a file or –god forbid– the entire contents of my computer. Let’s hope that’s off in the future. But it’s a pretty slick tool and so easy to use, I will.

But the installation was as advertised: slot the DVD and take a nap.