Happy 4th of July

Delaney, Evie and Cassidy on the swim team float

Don’t forget to check out our latest podcast for some 4th of July music.

Finding the Right Water Cooler: Credibility in the Blogosphere

Stephen Baker over at Blogspotting makes a very good point about the blogosphere and its credibility, or lack thereof.

Steven Streight commented to another post on Blogspotting, saying that the blogosphere is losing credibility. He compares the expanding blogosphere to the over-expansion of radio and TV stations that led to a decline in the quality of content.

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To an extent, I agree with that analysis. I get well over a hundred stations via DirecTV, but there are close to a hundred that don’t interest me at all. I probably do 85% of my watching on 10% of the channels. While I don’t listen to traditional radio anymore because of the ads, I only listen to around 10 of the 100+ XM Radio channels. The rest of those channels and stations either don’t interest me or, in some cases, annoy me.

But just because I don’t listen to the other channels doesn’t mean they have no value. It just means that they attract a different audience. My kids barely tolerate my TV shows and have a limited tolerance for my music. They like some of those channels and stations I would never watch on my own.

I think watching people play poker on TV is about the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard of, but since there are 80-90 poker shows on at any given time, a lot of people must like it. On the other hand, I find Survivor to be compelling television, but many people look down their noses at any sort of reality TV.

Different strokes and all that.

It’s the same with blogs. While I tend to agree with Steven’s description of MySpace as the toilet of the blogosphere, I also know there are millions of young people who love MySpace but would find my blog to be the cyber equivalent of watching paint dry. Or even worse, watching golf on TV.

The blogosphere is merely an extension and expansion of the water cooler and dinner table conversations that are held all the time in all sorts of places. Some of those conversations would bore me to death. Others I would find very interesting. But my circle of interest is not the benchmark for worth- either for the water cooler or the blogosphere.

Saying that the blogosphere is losing credibility is like saying the spoken or written word is losing credibility. It’s not the medium that matters- it’s the person at the other end of it.

If somebody has opinions, mannerisms or agendas that bore me, I simply turn the channel or click away. I may doubt that person’s credibility, but I know that somewhere someone is saying, writing or blogging something that I would find more compelling.

I just have to find the right water cooler to fill my cup.

Stuck Inside of Blogger with the WordPress Blues Again

“Will my links lay in shambles
Where the inbound traffic comes
They all work perfectly now,
To change them seems so dumb
So here I sit impatiently
Just waiting for the day
When I can move to WordPress
Without my links going away
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Blogger
With the WordPress blues again”

I continue to struggle with all of the things I’d like to do on this blog that are as impossible via Blogger as they seem simple via WordPress.

My files, etc. are hosted on my server, but I use Blogger to create and manage them. In many ways Blogger works fine, and I have created work-arounds for most of the stuff I want to do.

Except for the recent inbound links thing. I have not figured out a way to fully automate a the list of inbound links in the right column on the main Newsome.Org page. I currently handle this by tagging inbound links “inbound” via Delicious and then running my Delicious RSS feed through an RSS to HTML program and then including the resulting page in my main page via a server side include. That’s a lot of old school brain damage just to get a nicely formatted recent inbound links list.

And the hardest part is that I have to manually tag my inbound links, and when I forget, like I have the last month and a half, the task becomes insurmountable and a lot of links never make it to the list, since they will have rotated off at the same time they are added.

Whew. It was exhausting just to write that. Imagine living it.

I see inbound links lists all the time that seem automated and look nice. Steve Rubel has a nice list (though I want the link title and link only- without the excerpt) and Dave Sifry has exactly what I’m looking for (I spent some time trying to figure out how to create a Link Cosmos like Dave has, but I gave up when I got here). My way is hard, but not as hard as that looks.

As many of you know, I strongly considered moving to WordPress, but gave up in the face of the URL problem.

It just shouldn’t be this hard.

RanchoCast – July 4, 2006 Edition

I did our July 4th Edition podcast last night.

We played some July 4th related songs by Bruce Springsteen, Pete Droge, Lonehawk, Three Finger Cowboy, Galaxie 500 and others.

I ended the podcast by playing 6 great songs in a row called 4th of July.

Scoble’s Senseless Tea Party

I don’t understand what Scoble is trying to prove by continuing to break Second Life‘s no-kids rule, this time from the podium at some conference.

All he managed to accomplish was to get himself kicked out of Second Life.

With all the issues and criticism surrounding MySpace and all of the problems that arise 100% of the time you mix children and grownups in online interaction, I would think Scoble would applaud Second Life’s attempt to actually do something meaningful to protect kids by creating a teens only version of Second Life. That may not be enough, but it is light years ahead of the meaningless jargon tossed out by MySpace in the name of doing as little as possible while placating the non-tech masses.

Scoble posted critically of the Second Life policy back in early May. I told him then why he was wrong and I feel the same way now.

Scoble admits he has been warned and that he saw this coming.

Here’s my question to Robert: Are you really saying that all parts of all of the net should be open to people of all ages? Surely you don’t believe that, and surely you aren’t suggesting that the application providers have no duty to at least try to make their services kid-safe?

I don’t really think Scoble’s doing his kid any good by publicly flaunting this rule, and I’m certain he’s not doing kids in general, many of whom have univolved parents, any good.

I just don’t get the point of this little tea party.

Doc's Pet Roll

Doc Searls is doing a series on the pets he has had in his life.

I think that is an really interesting idea, and even though he is only on pet number three, I have already noticed commonalities in our pet experiences- particularly the surreal experience of burying your first pet. We had a pet graveyard behind our house, where many dogs, cats, rabbits and ducks were buried. It was all good until I read Pet Cemetary. That book scared me in a big way- and I was in my 30’s when it came out.

I suspect that pet ownership and loss may be a universal experience that many of us share.

It’s good reading. I am going to read Doc’s series and then do something similar.

Pet Rolls- a good read and an interesting exercise.

Hey Doc- how about some photos to go along with the stories?

Has Google Had Its Last Original Idea?

For some reason it makes me a little sad every time I read that Google has tossed out yet another me-too service aimed at nibbling at the market share of entrenched rivals who got there first. It’s like watching a once unbeatable fighter staggering around hoping to land a wild punch in a vain effort to regain his former glory.

And it reeks of vision by proxy.

The latest me-too service tossed up by Google is Google Checkout, which optimistically hopes to compete with market leader Paypal. Google, trying to be at least a Web 1.5 company, weaves some advertising pixie dust into the service by associating AdWords ads into the equation. If a business is registered with Google Checkout, its AdWords ads will have a shopping cart icon, which arguably makes them stand out from the competition. Of course to be registered with Google Checkout requires a Google account.

Google Checkout has lower fees than Paypal and while competition is a good thing for the consumer, this seems to me like another example of Google using its money to hurt its rivals more than help itself. Will there be another secondary offering soon so Google can open a bookstore and sell books below cost just to cause a little pain to Amazon?

Of course most people use Paypal in connection with auctions and online stores for individuals and small businesses. If I were the head bottle washer at Google, the fact that eBay owns both Paypal and the online auction and store market would be enough to deep six this idea. That doesn’t seem to bother Google. Rumor has it that Google is going to enter another mature market by trying to compete for the auction market. Great.

BusinessWeek Online has an interesting article about Google’s struggles in this “me-too” world.

Originally, when Google announced a new service, rivals, users and the press would jump to attention and wait for the Google product to change the landscape. Recall the loud buzz that accompanied the release of Google Talk, Google’s instant messaging system? After the initial hoopla, Google Talk promptly faded only to suffer relentless CPR at the hands of its cousin Gmail. Google Talk is currently the number 10 IM service. I can name around 5 IM services, which means that some I can’t even name are ahead of Google Talk, notwithstanding Gmail’s persistent life-saving operations. It’s like those TV shows where a passionate (or job-insecure) doctor keeps putting the paddles to a patient who is long gone.

Google Finance, which also got a lot of buzz, is the 40th most visited financial site. I doubt it has a bullet.

All the fear rivals once felt upon the release of a new Google application is slowly being replaced by anticipation of the crash and burn.

The Business Week article is a must read. Here is the part that sums up my biggest concern:

“[T]he company’s struggles with expansion raise long-term questions about whether it can eventually diversify revenue away from the small text-based ads that now constitute 99% of sales. ‘This is still a company that derives almost all of its revenues from one business,’ says Scott Kessler, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s.”

Read that again. That is an amazing and frightening fact. It is exhibit number one in the argument that we have found our way back to the bubble. The people who think they are going to make some greater fool money before it pops don’t want to talk about it, but yonder stands the bubble. And it’s getting bigger all the time.

Google has had some success with non-search products. Gmail has some market share and Google Maps, while in need of more customization features, is my map service of choice.

But like an aging rock band, the hits are not as easy to come by these days. Too much of Google’s work seems to be based on following and not leading. Perhaps the fact that Google followed the pack into the search space and won has resulted in a corporate belief that the same thing can happen elsewhere. I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.

There is no recipe for timing and luck.

I want to see an original idea from Google.

I just wonder if they have any left?