In Praise of the Left Column

Dave and Scoble have been chatting up a storm about all of the things wrong with Memeorandum.

In last week’s episode Scoble takes a hiatus and Dave says stupid newbies have ruined the Memeorandum club.

Now Dave says he has figured out how to save Memeorandum. He wants to get rid of the left column, where all the topics and discussion clusters are located, and make the right column, where the new primary story links are, the focus. He wants the new links to flow by like a river. Like a river, hmmm.

Then he says a couple of things that I find interesting and contradictory. The first:

Today I want my meme-tracker to get less discriminating. I don’t want to only see the stories that most people are interested in, I want interesting stories. More offbeat stuff. And I want much more than what I’m getting.

Immediately followed by:

I want the right column to move into the middle, and get rid of what’s in the left column. Once a day is enough to know what the top stories are. That’s why newspapers evolved that way because when you get a newspaper everything in it is new.

Here’s the problem with that. The right column that Dave likes only shows the primary story links, and none of the discussion links. The alternate viewpoints and offbeat stuff show up in the discussion links.

Under Dave’s plan, you’d have to make a choice from two bad options. Maybe you take away the discussion links and you have nothing more than a rotating list of links to the same stories that currently appear in the right column- like an automated Delicious links list. That would certainly look more like a river. A boring river that has no fish in it or boats floating by. Just some links you can click on as they scroll by.

What it would also do, of course, is get rid of those pesky newbies who show up first in the discussion links.

Or perhaps all of those discussion links go into the river too and we have one huge list of links flowing by in a random and chaotic fashion. I would never read such a page, but maybe others would dig(g) it.

What makes Memeorandum work is the very thing Dave and Scoble want to get rid of- the clustered, conversational organization that allows you to find and follow many perspectives at a central, intelligently filtered location. If there are a hundred links about Origami, that’s because a ton of people are talking about it.

So what’s really going on here?

First off, I see very little of all the flaming Dave keeps talking about. I’m starting to think flaming might be a secret word for the rising voices of the unwashed masses who don’t know enough to sit back and let the gurus run the show.

There seems to be a hidden conversation inside of the conversation. Manifest and latent. Like a dream. A dream of the good old days before the newbies started showing up.

Note to Gabe. If you want to destroy Memeorandum quickly and irreparably, Dave gives you the roadmap:

Flatten it out, get less picky, turn the ladder into a river, and I bet some of the magic comes back. I’m not sure it’s right, but the only way to find out is to try it.

I defended Scoble when he got flamed. I defended Dave when he says people are mean to him because he is a celebrity (his word, but I don’t quarrel with it).

But I’m starting to think a lot of this is because the voices that used to have the microphone all to themselves don’t like sharing it with the rest of us.

Google Office: Fear Trumps Free in Corporate America

Rick Mahn has an interesting post on the whole Google Office thing we’ve been talking about.

I think he’s spot on that there will be a market for Google’s office productivity applications based on cost alone. It’s hard to beat free, and if I weren’t in a profession largely based on pushing paper, I’d certainly consider using a cheaper office suite. I haven’t used Writely, but Steve Rubel likes it, so it must be a good product.

But there are a couple of other issues lurking out there.

First of all, I don’t think it’s as much of a cost thing as it is a browser based online thing. If you only want close to free, there’s StarOffice. If you want totally free, there’s OpenOffice.

If you want online, there’s Google now. More players are on the horizon.

Sure, there is a slight movement towards online web applications, lead by email, online music services and, most importantly, online banking. I say most importantly because the banking industry has spent millions and made progress convincing people that they can bank online without getting robbed blind.

riskaversion But here’s the thing. Until corporate America decides that it can create and perhaps store all of its important and confidential documents online, online word processing and storage isn’t happening. Not in the business world.

Add to that the strict confidentiality requirements imposed on doctors, lawyers and bankers and the market continues to shrink.

So while Google will get some mindshare because it is Google, I don’t see many businesses moving all of their document management online. For security reasons. Because of inertia by risk aversion. And because they would have to retrain all of their people.

That’s not to say this won’t hurt Microsoft, because the home and educational user base is important to Microsoft. Should some computer maker start giving Google Office as a cheaper alternative to Office or Works, then Microsoft will feel a little pain. Remember the Dell deal to put Google bloatware on new Dells?

It may even be forced to scrap the faux Office Live and do a real one.

This deal is going nowhere as far as business users go. But it will sting Microsoft a little bit.

And maybe that was the point all along.

This is Not the Summer Camp I Remember

Deconstructing Dave

So Dave and Scoble (still on his Memeorandum hiatus) were talking. They agreed that the blogosphere has become as flammable as mailing lists and usenet newsgroups. I don’t really agree with that, but this isn’t a poll.

Dave says there are some topics that you can’t talk about without inciting a flame-war, and he does his best not to incite one by not mentioning what those topics are. At least not directly.

Then he says there aren’t many people doing the flaming, but that they control discourse because they control who gets to “speak at the conferences.”

Ah, conferences. Camps, mashups, gatherings, happening, Techcrunches. We’re back on the “my nerd camp is better than your nerd camp thing,” with an ironic twist of Gatekeeping thrown in for good measure.

I have some questions about these conferences that I hope someone will answer for me.

Maybe these Conferences are…Different

But let me digress just a little. I typically give between 15-20 speeches a year. Not in Mike Arrington‘s back yard- I’ll never make it on that invitation list. Rather, I speak at conferences, seminars and conventions about boring things like real estate development and the music business. These events are attended by people in the business, but not really because they are the place to be seen or because they are more fun than a party at Mike’s place.

The truth is that people attend them primarily to meet the continuing education requirements mandated by their licensing state. Sure, there’s a lot of networking at some of the big ones, but most of the time getting required continuing education hours is the focus.

Of course, this guarantees an audience as people who would prefer to be elsewhere have to get so many hours of continuing education a year.

I speak at these events not because I think they’re more fun than Disneyland, but because sometimes people hear me speak and then hire me to do their legal work. It’s marketing, plain and simple.

The Cost of Being Seen

Which brings me back to the conferences Dave is talking about. Since he is talking about flaming in the context of the blogosphere, I assume these conferences are related at least in some material way to blogging and the blogosphere.

Who goes to these things? Do they pay lots of money to attend? Is it like a geek Oscar party where it not the party but the being invited that counts? Are there actual customers in attendance or only vendors and journalist types? Who are the customers of a conference about blogging? Isn’t it a little like preaching to the choir?

How many people attend these things? Is there a big group of people who travel from one to the next like some sort of Grateful Geek nation? Are there Daveheads? Is Dave a bigger celebrity than Ken? If they played checkers, who would win?

Do the people who attend these conferences have jobs? Is going to these conferences a part of their job? Do their companies pay for them to go to these conferences? Can I get a gig like that?

OK, so a lot of that is tongue in cheek.

But I don’t get the turf wars that seem to be ongoing over these conferences, camps, mashups, whatever the unnecessary synonym of the day is. What is the turf that someone is trying to protect? And why?

And One More Thing

And here’s another thing, what kind of conference lets somebody flame someone else from the podium without giving the recipient a chance to respond? I’ve never been to nerd camp but I have logged hundreds of hours behind the podium and I have never once witnessed anything like that- and if you think the egos at nerd camp are bigger than the ones at law or music camp, think again.

In fact, I have seen sponsors make time for someone who wasn’t on the agenda to present an opposing view point. How can we triangulate from a single data point?

Unless these conference are more cage match than college, anyone who lets people stand up and trash someone else just because they don’t get along isn’t doing a very good job of running a conference.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

I don’t understand about 80% of what Dave and Scoble were talking about that got distilled into Dave’s post, but I still agree with Dave that once the issue becomes one of personality instead of issues, the conversation has been irreparably tainted and it is time to find someone else to talk to.

I enjoy the conversational nature of the blogosphere, and I particularly enjoy hearing someone explain why I need to rethink my position about things. Otherwise it’s just one big echo chamber. But some people just can’t handle disagreement, and so anyone who disagrees must be stupid or evil. I just tune those folks out, which makes them even madder. Shake the scorpion a little and it will sting itself to death. And all that.

So Give Me the Goods

What am I missing about these conferences that gets everybody in a tither?

UPDATE: Christopher Carfi taught me most of what I have been able to gather about these conferences via this excellent post, which I came across just now. I still don’t really know what an unconference is. Is is like 7-Up?

Web 2.0 Wars: Round 11

It’s time for Round 11 in Newsome.Org’s Web 2.0 Wars. The contestants and rules are here.

This is the final heat of the first Round. The playoffs will be next.

Other Rounds:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Here are the contestants for Round 11:

Streamload
Ta-da Lists
Feedsky
JellyBarn
Nativetext
Congoo
Podzinger
RSS Mad
FeedTier
Phanfare
Wikipedia
Fruitcast
PubSub

Streamload is a place to store, orgianize and share audio and video files. It also provides a way to backup files and access them from any internet connected computer.

Ta-da Lists is a place to make and share to-do lists. I hope my wife never finds out about this site. There’s a free version and a more powerful one that’s part of the Backpack service.

Feedsky shows up in gibberish on my computer. It looks like it uses a font I don’t have or something.

JellyBarn is a photo sharing service. It’s still in invitation only beta.

Native Text translates RSS feeds and podcasts into foreign languages. The main page says the translations are done by humans. It’s not yet open to the public, so no RanchoCast in Russian.

Congoo says it is a premium content search engine. It looks like it will index subscription content. Neat idea if the publishers will go for it.

Podzinger is a podcast directory with a twist. Podcasts are transcribed and searchable by word. The transcription is not perfect, but it’s good enough to be very useful. I’ve used Podzinger for a while and really like it.

RSS Mad is an RSS feed archive and an online feed reader. Looks sort of interesting, but no Newsome.Org in the database.

FeedTier says it generates web feeds for web pages without existing syndication. This is a great idea and I’d use it all the time if it worked. I couldn’t get it to work, but I will certainly go back and try again.

Phanfare is a photo and video storage and sharing site. It allows you to make online photo and video albums. $6.95 a month after the free trial.

Wikipedia is a free, collaborative online encyclopedia. I use it and link to it all the time at Newsome.Org.

Fruitcast is a podcast advertising network. This is the first one of those I have seen and, sadly, ads in podcasts are probably inevitable.

PubSub is a content matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription.

Before Today I’d Heard of:

5 out of 13.

And the Winner of Round 11 is:

A very hard draw, as there were number of good contestants. I really dig Podzinger, but you just can’t not pick Wikipedia

Technorati Tags:
newsome.org web wars, web 2.0

Writely or Wrongly, Google Takes Aim at Microsoft

Om Malik reports on rumors that Google is in talks to buy Writely, an online word processor. Acquisition of Writely would give Google another arrow in its quiver of applications aimed directly at Microsoft Office.

Om has a chart in his post that compares the prospective office productivity offerings of both Microsoft and Google. The only one that matters is the bottom row which is the price:

Microsoft $350-$499……Google Free.

I know Google has a ton of money. I know they have to find a way to justify the still lofty stock price. I know they are building internets, giving ad-serving computers to the economically disadvantaged, and tossing $90 million of chump change at a click-fraud lawsuit.

But what I really, really, really want to know is how Google intends to make money off of this stuff.

Because I’ll tell you what. If the only revenue stream they can come up with is selling more ads, there’s a world of hurt waiting out there somewhere. The online ad game is cyclical, fickle and cannot support the billions of dollars of capital investments that Google is making.

The whole free web application business is becoming a dangerous house of cards based on a faulty premise- the continued flow of online ad sales.

So I’d like to know exactly how Google expects to make money off of this stuff. That’s all that matters.

Traffic without revenue is meaningless.

Triangulating Around the Flattened Earth

Jim McGee talks about triangulation and the citizen media movement represented by the blogosphere.

I have always tended to believe the consistencies that arise among competing forces, particularly when those forces are non-cooperative with each other and have non-parallel goals. Jim talks about how a wide and diverse collection of viewpoints can help you navigate through the often noisy and conflicting blogosphere.

Jim’s post is thought provoking, and the article he wrote for the Enterprise Systems Journal (linked in his post) is as well.

Testing a New Sprint Phone

sprintphone-737183 I got my Sprint phone in the mail today. Sprint is running a marketing campaign that involves handing out a free phone and 6 months of free service to selected people in certain cities. Since I am aware of several other bloggers who were asked to participate in this program, I imagine Sprint got my name via my blog.

The phone is a Sprint Power Vision phone, model A920, manufactured by Samsung. It comes with a charger, headphones, a USB cable to connect to your computer and a 32MB memory card (the phone has a slot).

It’s a pretty compelling deal. They gave me 6 months of free voice and data service, including web access, music downloads, etc. This will allow me to really put this phone through its paces and write about it a little bit. After 6 months, I get to keep the phone, but I have to buy service if I want to use it.

I will be comparing it to my current phone, which I bought the day before I got the email from Sprint (I’ve always been a master of bad timing).

So here are my initial impressions.

It’s a good looking phone, with a big, bright colorful screen. Other than figuring out how to turn it on, I haven’t had to consult the user manual at all. It came all set up with a new phone number (Missouri area code) and email address (ambassador7365@sprintpcs.com – feel free to drop me a line- no spam please – but I haven’t tried it so I can’t guarantee I’ll get it).

So far here are the cool things I’ve discovered. The phone is connected to a music store, where you can buy a wide selection of songs. I downloaded The Rolling Stones’ Monkey Man, and the sound is really good, even without the headphones. I’m not sure I’d pay the usual $2.50 for a song, but thankfully I didn’t have too.

The web access seems pretty fast, maybe even faster than my current phone, which uses the Verizon wireless broadband network. More on this after I experiment a little.

I have only begun to explore the media features. Movies, TV shows, Sirius radio and a ton of other stuff is available.

And it has a camera that seems to work really well (this is my first camera phone). I haven’t tried it yet, but you can send your photos directly to supported third party photo sites. Flickr doesn’t seem to be supported yet (that will be my first feedback), but you can email your photos to Flickr. Here’s my first camera phone photo ever.

firstphonephoto

Like my 7130e, this phone can also be used as a modem to allow your laptop to access the internet over Sprint’s wireless broadband network.

So far I’d have to say I’m pretty impressed. I suspect using all of the features would be a little costly if you had to pay for them, but so far, so cool.

My Favorite Records:Gerald Collier – I Had to Laugh Like Hell

This is the another installment in my series of favorite records.

There’s nothing I like better than well written, dark and brooding songs. No one does this better than Gerald Collier. The former frontman of the Best Kissers in the World (a fine band in its own right) has four released and a couple of unreleased records that are uniformly excellent. By excellent, I mean dark and brooding. With great writing, playing and singing.

But the best and most brooding of them all is his first one, 1996’s is I Had to Laugh Like Hell.

There are 12 songs on this fine record, from the downward spiral of Boozin’ Time and the biting I Ain’t the One You Hate. This is good stuff to listen to in an empty house, with all the lights turned off, the windows open and a bottle of whiskey in your hand.

I know Gerald a little, via email. He lives in Austin now, and normally you can get more of his music, including an excellent unreleased record and a great live one, via his website. He told me last week that his web site is down, at least temporarily. I hope Gerald gets another record deal and I hope his website comes back online, because he’s one talented dude.

Technorati Tags:
top 50 albums, record reviews

Web 2.0: Why the Buy Me Exit Strategy is Flawed

Phil Sim, one of my favorite bloggers, has a great and accurate article today about the Web 2.0 madness. His post ought to be read as a companion piece by anyone who remotely agrees with my Play Dough theory on Web 2.0.

Among Phil’s points is that Google Calendar will simultaneously take away a preferred exit strategy and strike a deadly blow to many of the hundred thousand or so Web 2.0 online calendars (many of which have been contestants in my Web 2.0 Wars series). Moreso, but similar, to how GDrive will strike a blow to any unestablished online storage service (Box.Net being one that may have enough legs to outrun the bullet).

We ran into some of this back in the day with ACCBoards.Com as we sought out big media partners. We’d get asked “why should I pay you to run an interactive site when we can do the same thing you’re doing and pay you nothing?” My answer, of course, was that we had all the traffic. We partnered up with Cox Cable and Jefferson Pilot Sports for years.

These Web 2.0 companies don’t have the traffic to trade for a purchase price.

That’s the biggest flaw in the sell yourself to Google as an exit strategy.

We are getting closer and closer to a Web 2.0 shake up. It’s coming.

ScobleFeeds A-Z: The T’s

This is part twenty of my A-Z review of Scoble‘s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

Lots of T’s and here are my favorites:

Things that Make You Go Hmmm (RSS Feed)

This is Jordon Cooper’s Weblog (RSS Feed)

Things that Make You Go Hmmm is a great tech-oriented blog. Very interesting and informational content.