Monday, February 21, 2005

The Next Big Thing After Podcasting Mmmm Bacon. BaconWhores.com Because the only thing better than bacon is someone to cook it for you. [MetaFilter] 10:43:53 PM

PodJay Mondays iPods Get the Party Started at an Iowa Pub. Kyle Munson writes for the Des Moines Register, "PodJay Mondays essentially set up digital players as the new icebreaker [at Lift pub]. People program a playlist with 15 minutes or so of songs from their music catalog, then hand their players over to bartender Clint Curtis who treats the entire room to their musical tastes." [Feb 21, 2005] [Apple Hot News] 9:52:33 PM

Wikipedia Down Wikipedia, the Free Encycolpedia http://en.wikipedia.org/ is down at the moment. A definite learning experience for the site administrators I imagine. Let's hope they get up and running soon. 9:46:54 PM

Tribune Article by Mike Hughlett The Movie Blog in The Chicago Tribune. I almost forgot about this. A couple of weeks ago I did an interview with a reporter from The Chicago Tribune about blogs and business and stuff like that. Anyway, the article was published in the big Sunday Edition of the newspaper this weekend. You can read it online here if you're interested. [The Movie Blog] 9:12:15 PM

Weblog by California Governor & Oakland Mayor - Jerry Brown Oakland On the Rise. My first post also appeared as a letter in the San Francisco Chronicle. One point that should be emphasized is that the curfew is imposed only on those who are convicted of a serious night-time crime in Oakland and who... [Jerry Brown] 7:43:25 PM

Settling Up Man pays $1 parking ticket from 1954. FLINT, Mich. - Jack Cramer was rummaging through piles of old stuff recently when he ran across a $1 parking ticket he received while he was a college student. [azcentral.com | thebuzz] 6:35:19 PM

I Overheard a Conversation About Podcasting The reason you've heard of podcasting is because no one first "demo'd" it at a conference and no corporate marketers were involved. The reason you've heard of podcasting is because no one first "demo'd" it at a conference and no corporate marketers were involved: No offense to VCs and the people who try to get their ideas in front of them. And no offense to big corporate marketers who are somewhere creating the next great gizmo. And no offense to the bloggers and journalists who serve as the acolytes of VC-funded start-ups and consumer electronic marketers... But, when something is going to be big. Really big. You rarely see it demo'd. Usually, when something is big, it's, well, boring and obvious...and, at first, not cool. And, rather than an innovation, it's usually a hacked-adaptation of existing, widely available, easy-to-understand -- and freely available -- concepts and technologies. And almost always, there were no meetings involved in its development. But then, someone looks at that hack and thinks about it. And then, they come up with an inspired metaphor to describe it. And then, well, that's where the fun begins. And it's fun because no one is in control except people who understand how metaphors work -- and "experts" rarely do. Case in point: podcasting. About 20 weeks ago, on September 28, 2004, I heard the term "podcast" for the very first time when Doc Searls explained it on his "IT Garage" blog. He said then that the word podcast returned 24 results on Google. After reading the long, long NY Times piece yesterday on podcasting, I wondered how many results the word would return. Yesterday, it was 687,000, today it is 1,700,000. A rather wide range, but the point is, it's a big number. Twenty weeks. That's 140 days. Can you imagine how far along Podcasting would  be if it had been a corporate idea: An idea some media company or technology company developed and "brought to market"? Or even some hot shot start-up? Here's a long list of hot new products that were being "DEMO'd" in 2004. Some are on their way to greatness.  But as a movement and as for being "big, really big" are any close to podcasting? If a big corporation marketing team had been charged with rolling out podcasting, they would still be sending out memos setting up the first meeting to discuss it. Teams of lawyers would just be entering the picture explaining why the concept would violate any number of regulatory guidelines and international laws and trade agreements. Corporate communications and marketing types would be debating "branding" issues and who could speak for the company. IT departments would be the scenes of shouting matches over interoperability and feature sets. And the lawyers at Apple would be debating whether or not to sue someone over usage of the word "pod." Thank god podcasting was not a corporate idea. And not even an idea of the Silicon Valley tech intelligensia. (Although open-source alpha-geeks jumped in fast and furious.) The podcasting horse left the barn too fast for anyone to make up rules about what it should or shouldn't be...except that there are no rules. It took off too fast for anyone to claim it (although Dave Winer and Adam Curry get my vote), brand it, define it or even explain it. Now. Please. If you're a podcasting pioneer. Don't go screwing it up by thinking that what you've done in the past 140 days is to establish some sort of dogma and chissled-in-granite paradigm as to what is -- and what is not --podcasting. Just keep doing what you're doing and stop reading any NY Times articles explaining things you already know. Podcasting is bigger than that. (Flashback:  On October 6, a week after I first heard the term "podcast," I had these things to say about podcasting. On October 11, I observed there was a mad rush by some to claim they were the first podcasters by claiming that Marconi personally taught me how to podcast. (Which led to a nice, who is "Marconi" discussion. And somewhere -- I can't find it -- I think I got into a friendly debate with my friend Steve Rubel on whether or not the word "podcast" could be changed to something else.) [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog] 6:08:00 PM

Quarter-Power Scaling Laws A Master Equation for All Life Processes?. In "Life on the Scales," Science News recently wrote that some simple mathematical equations, known as quarter-power scaling laws, can explain the metabolic rates of living organisms. For example, "an animal's metabolic rate appears to be proportional to mass to the 3/4 power." And this "3/4-power law appears to hold sway from microbes to whales, creatures of sizes ranging over a mind-boggling 21 orders of magnitude." The ecologists, physicists and chemists behind this research are now successfully applying this equation to plants, fish, full ecosystems and even biology and genetics, by adding a new key parameter: temperature. Please read this fascinating article for many more details and references. But save some time to read another long article, "Ecology's Big, Hot Idea," published by PLoS Biology, which states that "the way life uses energy is a unifying principle for ecology in the same way that genetics underpins evolutionary biology." Read more... [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends] 5:48:30 PM

parsing the copy A magazine about blogging? No thanks. A magazine about blogging? No thanks: I've been asked by Robert French about some spam he received for a magazine about blogging. A magazine called, "Blogging! Magazine." (Not to be confused with a great new weblog from magazines.com called Blog Magazine that's a blog about magazines, not a magazine about blogs.) I haven't been spammed, but here's what Robert says he received in what was a pitch for advertising in the new "magazine": We are announcing an opportunity to advertise your business in theupcoming debut issue of blogging! magazine. We are offering incrediblyaffordable advertising for the March 2005 issue. This is asubscriber-based magazine that is provided online in .pdf format thatwill be very affordable, selling for nearly $1.00 per issue.The advertisements are $100 per full 8[product] X 11 (1275 X 1650) page with alink to your business site, or $50 for a half page (1275 X 825) adincluding your web link. We are offering a special price for a bannerlink within the magazine at $20 per banner. Advertisements will onlybe accepted through the close of business at 5:00 p.m. CST on February26, 2005. So, from parsing this copy (admittedly, I didn't see the rest of the e-mail, so this may be clear), the "magazine" is not really a print magazine but a ".pdf" document, which I've said many times on this weblog, makes little sense to me as a media form. (The page-rate sends off other red flags, but I won't discuss that other than saying, buyer beware.) However (and believe me, I'm wrong all the time), I think a magazine about blogging is about as appealing as a magazine about talking on the telephone. Or a magazine about using a fax machine. But then, there are countless magazines about knitting and scrap-booking, and owning a dog in New York City and some of them thrive as a niche play. But if I were investing, I'd choose a knitting magazine over this idea. If the magazine is "about blogging" then there is absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, one can achieve in a magazine (especially a PDF magazine) that could not be better achieved in a blog. However, I think such a magazine idea is a trap that is fairly typical when "old media" types encounter a new media: let's do a magazine about it is a fairly predictable reflex. Sometimes it works (TV Guide), but more often, it fails miserably: Yahoo! Internet Life. Now, if blogging further develops as a stand-along industry (which I doubt will happen), I think IDG or others will successfully launch a business-to-business title that will include tradeshows and books and other properties built around it. If the audience for this magazine is bloggers, I think something built on an RSS-enabled platform that is designed to be read in a newsreader would be a more appropriate medium. You know, something like a blog. That said, as a magazine wonk, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog] 5:41:20 PM