Monday, May 2, 2005

Pamela Anderson's Blog, Stacked Pics New Pics. Hey there, here are some new pictures from filming last week that Bart gave me. Enjoy!!!... [Stacked] 7:41:34 PM

kittenwar.com kittenwar.com [Daypop Top 40] 7:09:32 PM

Go Ahead, Say It...'Shockpodder' Adam Curry Signs with Sirius. Howard Stern, move over. Shockpodder Adam Curry is coming to Sirius. Actually, there’s nothing shocking about Adam Curry; I just wanted to type “shockpodder.” Curry, widely credited with inventing podcasting, and certainly the person who made it easy, is set to host a daily, four-hour show about podcasting on Sirius satellite radio. Yikes, four hours—good luck with that grind. Presumably, Curry will lean on podcasters for content. This makes the second highly publicized instance of radio reaching into podcasting for material. At this rate, podcasting will become the fastest developing new road to stardom in history. Ads by Google [The Digital Music Weblog] 7:03:29 PM

On Saturday The Time Travelers' Convention. There's a Time Traveler Convention at MIT on Saturday. Tell your time traveling friends. Great idea, I'd love to... [Tech, Knowledge, and Community] 6:37:36 PM

21-87 21-87: George Lucas Under the Influence. "When George saw 21-87, a lightbulb went off". "21-87" is an experimental film made in 1964 by Canadian avant-garde director Arthur Lipsett ,who committed suicide in 1986. "George" is George Lucas, who was obsessed by underground movies until "a little movie called Star Wars lured him to the dark side". (more inside) [MetaFilter] 6:34:26 PM

Jon Gagan on Steinberg How Rock and Roll!. Impromptu performance in the Lucasfilm cafeteria sometime around 1991. Jon is playing my brother's Steinberg bass. Davo went into the kitchen and fashioned drums out of pots and pans. Afterwards we got to see a scene from T2 which was being mixed at Lucasfilm and met James Cameron. By (Ottmar). [Ottmar Liebert] 6:27:47 PM

From Wi-Fi Networking News Muni Round-Up: Cities Want Broadband--in Various Ways. A plethora of municipal broadband news, as seems to be increasingly typical: Let me run you through the latest stories. Now this might be a little churlish: why no major operators? Did they say no?: The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the upcoming Digital Cities Convention in the city in which liberty was forged runs today through Wednesday, but doesn't include any of the incumbents who have been fighting municipal broadband. It's a curious omission but they may have said, no, thanks. San Francisco gets more free hotspots paid for by AnchorFree: The company has found a great PR vehicle for gaining attention while providing a service for free through its SF hotzones. (Note to self: It's not Frisco, but "ess eff.") While the city of seven hills considers whether to build its own network, the legislature considers blocking publicly funded Wi-Fi networks. The article notes that MetroFi, a private firm, has managed to build networks that span Santa Clara and Cupertino with Mountain View and Sunnyvale to follow. (Any users out there? How's the service?) The article quotes David McClure of the US Internet Industry Association. I have found that I like a fair amount of what he says about implementation, but not about public policy. The association doesn't disclosure membership (only founding members) nor funding. Verizon is on its board. McClure notes that taxpayers shouldn't bear financial risk for municipal networks; the latest city proposals take note of that and offset risk to private or non-profit entities. Texas Senate to review municipal broadband bill...eventually: The bill approved with one "nay" vote in the house offered a lot of sops to those who complained about its total ban on municipal networks--a ban that would have probably led to airports dropping Wi-Fi service (but not cellular contracts, which would still have been allowed). The Senate might allow competition over municipal power lines. Senate hearings haven't been scheduled. Dallas wants to bring free hotspot zones online that are primarily focused on public safety and secondarily offer outdoor-only Wi-Fi service. Down the road a piece from the State House in Austin, Michael Dell is backing municipal broadband: Dell knows that the bill is apparently lobbying directly to legislators. Leading pro-municipal advocate Adina Levin says in the article that the currently approved House Bill would damage Texas businesses' ability to compete. A spokesperson for the cable association in Texas says, "We're concerned about using taxpayer money to compete with private businesses." I would still like to see an accounting of taxpayer dollars paid to cable and telco firms as well as tax relief given them to build their networks. This statement also ignores the variety of models that have emerged to avoid using taxpayer money. [Wi-Fi Networking News] 6:20:38 PM

Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, 25 Apr - 1 May 2005. sponsored by: This week: Google turns up the heat, Yahoo burns to be a media bigco, Microsoft's 64-bit light at the end of the tunnel, blogging media empires warm their hands by the advertising fire, Craigslist - GoogleMaps make a combustible combo. Google's Preemptive Strike In the Mojo Cold War, Yahoo took the initiative from Google at the start of 2005 and the propaganda machine has been in full force since then (backed up by solid products, it has to be said!). This week Google released two major updates to their online advertising services, which account for 97% of Google's revenue. This no doubt launched a rocket up Yahoo! i) Firstly Google gave advertisers more control over their ads. Advertisers can now select which sites get to carry their ads (Google calls this "site targeting") and advertisers can make better use of graphics. Some punters took the latter to mean Google is becoming a banner advertising company. Google is also introducing an auction-style system for determining what advertisers pay to have their ads shown. While the changes obviously benefit advertisers the most, small niche-focused Web publishers may find it increases their revenue too. Probably the group with the most to lose is big publishing and media companies, because advertisers can now bypass the bigco sales reps and buy site-specific adverts direct from Google. ii) The second big Adsense news of the week was that some sites are now testing Google Adsense in RSS feeds. Ironically a Microsoft Longhorn blog was the first on board, but blog-publishing company Weblogs Inc wasn't far behind.  Advertising in RSS feeds is a contentious issue. Some people don't want RSS feeds to be sullied by capitalism, while others think RSS Aggregators will enable users to filter out ads anyway. My own view is that RSS feeds are a first-class content citizen on the Web, like HTML, and so essentially there's no difference between putting ads in RSS and putting them on a webpage. Yahoo Eyes Media Market As well as competing with Google for online advertising business, Yahoo is busy on another front - Hollywood. In a recent interview with MediaPost, ex-Microsoft MSN honcho and now VP of "content operations" for Yahoo, Scott Moore, outlined his vision for Yahoo Media. His job is to develop content strategies for Yahoo, under Lloyd Braun, so what he says is a good indication of where Yahoo is headed. Moore pinpointed storytelling and user-generated content (e.g. blogs) as two key areas of Internet media.  Moore talked about harnessing such content "in a way that allows the highest-quality content to rise to the top." That's consistent with my own (market) view of blogs and user-generated content, so I'm encouraged to hear this coming from a media executive!  Microsoft Hypes 64-bit Computing, Longhorn Lately the Microsoft PR corps has been wheeling out its big tech guns, Bill Gates and Jim Allchin, in order to hype up Longhorn - the next generation Windows OS. Allchin mingled with bloggers a couple of weeks ago to preview Longhorn. And he recently fronted a press release that waxed lyrical about 64-bit computing, Longhorn, and the history of Windows.  If you're curious what 64-bit computing is... don't be. It basically translates to enhanced computing performance, which according to Jim Allchin "makes a big difference for digital content creation and editing scenarios."  Media Empires I feel a bit guilty for focusing so much on the Big Internet Companies (Google, Yahoo, MS). There's so much great innovation happening in Web 2.0 currently. From now on I will try and pick a 'niche' in Web 2.0 and highlight it in my Weekly Wrap-Up. I'll start with an easy one... blogging media empires. PaidContent.org mentioned a slew of them in a recent post - and not just the usual suspects (weblogs inc, gawker, etc).  One thing PaidContent.org didn't mention though was the humble individual Blogger, many of whom are making a decent living (usually via online advertising) and building their own solitary brand of "media empire". Darren Rowse from Australia is one of the more successful of that breed. It's similar to the Stand Alone Journalist concept that Chris Nolan wrote about recently in PressThink, which Pressthink owner Jay Rosen defined as "the self-sufficiency of the individual provider, made plausible by the Web." If that isn't Web 2.0 (Web as Platform), I don't know what is...  Techie Post of the Week: Craigslist - GoogleMaps combo  You've gotta love the enthusiasm in Josh Porter's post about Paul Rademacher’s Google Maps and Craigslist Combination (which btw needs a funky name). Waxed Josh: "This could be the most important interface we’ve yet seen in the early Web 2.0. While the APIs created by Amazon, Google, and eBay are cool in and of themselves, it’s combinatory interfaces like this that really shine. Note that anybody could have done this!" All I can add to that is: Holy Remix Culture, Batman - you're right! ;-) One More Thing Happy 50th birthday to Dave Winer! Dave was probably my biggest inspiration when I started Read/Write Web, his Two-Way Web theory in particular. So enjoy today Dave :-) [Read/Write Web] 6:15:00 PM

Sedona, AZ New header graphic. Sedona, Arizona. [Scripting News] 6:06:12 PM

Podcasting News Sirius to Offer 'Podcast' Show Published: May 2, 2005 Filed at 12:44 a.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. is latching onto the ''podcasting'' phenomenon, launching a show later this month that will feature a daily selection of the increasingly popular do-it-yourself audio programs. The move by Sirius comes just days after Viacom Inc.'s Infinity Broadcasting unit said it would convert a struggling talk radio station in San Francisco to an all-podcast format. The show, which Sirius was expected to formally announce on Monday, will begin broadcasting weekdays on May 13. It will be hosted by Adam Curry, the former MTV personality who helped create the technological tools that allow podcasting to work. The show will be broadcast on Sirius channel 148, a talk-radio station that does carry commercials, unlike Sirius' all-music channels. Advertisement Podcasts are essentially audio files made by amateurs and uploaded to the Internet where they can be shared with other listeners, either at their computers or on portable digital listening devices such as Apple Computer Inc.'s hot-selling iPod -- thus the name ''podcast,'' a combination of ''pod'' and ''broadcast.'' Podcasts are less than a year old but have become popular with the booming use of iPods. They include music and random musings on things like wine, pop culture, politics, hobbies and sports. Some radio stations have offered podcasts of selected shows to listeners to download, but so far it's very unusual for radio stations to play podcasts on their air. Infinity claimed its station in San Francisco, KYCY-AM 1550, will be the first to adopt an all-podcast format. The radio industry, which has already been facing sluggish growth in advertising in recent years, has been watching the booming use of iPods with growing concern. Hoping to bring more listeners back to radio, industry giant Clear Channel Communications Inc. has been reducing the amount of commercials on its air and Infinity has been investing more in marketing and programming. Infinity parent Viacom took a $10.9 billion charge in February to reflect the declining value of its radio stations. Sirius is the smaller of the two players in the satellite radio field after XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. Sirius reported this week that it has 1.4 million subscribers, while XM has 3.8 million. Both are hoping to lure in enough customers paying $12.95 per month to become profitable, though for now both are losing large amounts of money. Both deliver dozens of channels of commercial-free music andmany other channels with sports, talk and other programs. 7:28:46 AM