Month: April 2007

Rod Stewart

We went to see Rod Stewart tonight. I knew I liked his early stuff, particularly his work with Faces- a very under-appreciated band. What I had forgotten was how many other good songs he has recorded. I like his early stuff (pre-1980) better, but I enjoyed some of his newer stuff more than I thought I would- particularly his excellent cover of Cat Stevens’ Father and Son.

It was a very good show. My favorites were Dirty Old Town, from his first solo record (1969), and Stay With Me, from Faces’ A Nod is as Good as a Wink (1971). He played for a solid two hours, and did most of his big hits as well as a few covers, most notably Tom Waits’ Waltzing Matilda.

Good stuff.

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Thinking Blogger Awards

Mike Miller over at the excellent Be a Good Dad blog tagged me in the Thinking Blogger Awards meme.  Thanks Mike.

Here are 5 blogs that make me think, with a little commentary on each.

1) Nick Carr.  Nick was like beer to me in the blogosphere.  At first I didn’t like him at all.  But because all my friends read him and I thought it made me cool, I kept reading him.  Then, all of the sudden, I really started digging him.  Nick can turn a phrase like Cormac McCarthy.  Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, no other blogger writes as well as Nick.

2) Seth Finkelstein.  I admire people who show you how smart they are, almost as much as I dislike people who tell you.  I concluded a long time ago that Seth is smarter than just about anyone else.  And he is spot on most of the time.  No one listens to him, because they don’t like his message.  But he stays the course.  I really enjoy his blog. 

3) Susan Getgood.  When something brilliant or stupid happens in the blogosphere, Susan’s blog is one of the first places I go for a reasoned, well considered reaction/discussion.  Take this post, for example.  Plus, she is a sci-fi fan.    

4) Wally Bangs.  If Nick Carr is the blogosphere’s Cormac McCarthy, Wally is our William Gay.  He is a great southern writer, and as a musician who lived in Nashville back in the 80s, his stories about that era’s Nashville music scene are of great interest to me.

5) Doc Searls.  This may come across as pandering to an A-Lister, but I can’t do this list and not include Doc.  He is the most insightful tech blogger to ever pound out a post.  And as good as his tech stuff is, his life stuff is better.  Doc has changed my opinion about something in a single post more times than I can count- and those who know me will tell you that my mind is not the easiest thing to change. 

For those of you I tagged above, here are the rules of participation, should you wish to do so:

  • If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
  • Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
  • Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).
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Twitterage

Twitter-Logo-150x150

Here’s a little link love for my current Twitter list:

BlogBloke
Brad Kellett
Corey Akula
Chris Carfi
Gabe Rivera
James Kendrick
Martin Gordon
Mathew Ingram
Miles Evenson
Randy Morin
Ric Hayman
Richard Querin
Rick Mahn
Steve Gillmor
Stowe Boyd
Susan Getgood
Warner Crocker

People I’d like to add
(If I knew their Twitter ID)

Chip Camden
Dave Wallace
Dwight Silverman
Earl Moore
Ethan Johnson
Frank Gruber
Fraser Kelton
Karl Martino
Mike Miller
Nick Carr
Seth Finkelstein
Steve Newson
Tom Morris
Tom Reynolds
Zoli Erdos

Removed per my Pink Floyd Policy:***

Dave Winer
Fred Wilson
Hugh Macleod
Robert Scoble
Steve Rubel

*** I still subscribe to all of these blogs and, with the exception of Scoble’s self-Trumanization, I enjoy them.  As I discussed the other day, I want my Twitter experience to be different from the larger blogosphere- I don’t want anyone talking to me unless I have the ability to talk back to them.

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Google Gets Clear Access to the Airwaves

Google has signed a deal with Clear Channel Communications that will allow Google to place ads on Clear Channels’ radio stations.

Drew Hilles, Google Audio’s national sales director says:

This radio partnership with Clear Channel is a pretty big statement that Google is in the radio industry to stay and have a big impact.

Google has extended its online ad dominance by purchasing DoubleClick, and recently reached into the satelitte market via a deal with EchoStar.

The new deal calls for Google to sell a guaranteed portion of the 30-second spots available on Clear Channel’s 675 radio stations in top U.S. markets.

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Just Nod if You Can Hear Me…

justnodOne negative thing I have noticed about Twitter is that my Twitter page is filling up with conversations I can’t participate in because I follow people who don’t follow me.  Sort of like the blogosphere all over again.

My new policy: I’m going to remove people from my list who don’t reciprocate.

We already engage in one-way conversations in the blogosphere.  I want my Twitter experience to be better than that.

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The New P.T. Barnum

First of all, I agree with everything Stowe writes about Andrew Keen.

But by giving that egghead our attention, we are doing one of two things, both of them bad.

If Keen believe the condescending psycho-babble that comes out of his fingers, then we are helping to prove his point by focusing so much attention at him, while he sits naked on the throne of claimed superiority.  I’m not dumping on Stowe here- I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone.  Keen should be ignored.  Maybe Tim O’Reilly should add an ignore Keen provision in his new web constitution.  That would be enough to get my vote.  Not really.

If Keen doesn’t really believe the stupid shit that he writes, but is merely brand building by typing stuff so irritating to regular people that it can’t help but get him noticed, then we are pawns in the creation of the new P.T. Barnum.  Personally, I don’t think he believes a lot of what he writes, any more than the average science fiction writer believes in dragons.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Keen launch a traveling cybercircus with juggling bloggers and a dancing Scoble.

When people become so joined with their philosophical positions that discourse becomes impossible, the only remaining option is to ingore them.  That’s why I ignore anyone who is a zealous republican or democrat.

It’s why we need to ingore Andrew Keen.

That’s why I shouldn’t have written this post.

Has anyone seen my unicycle?

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Flags, Banners and the New Networks

Fred Wilson says Google’s $3.1B purchase of Doubleclick signals the return of banner advertising.

He’s absolutely correct that banner ads have much more branding value than text ads.  The question for website developers is what will advertisers pay for that value.  Billboards along real highways command top dollar- particularly in the growing number of cities that have tried to limit or eradicate them.  I know of people who live very well off of a couple of billboards- the three-sided one at the intersection of the Southwest Freeway and 610 in Houston being perhaps the most valuable billboard in the country.

But advertisers have traditionally wanted to quantify the success of banner ads by tracking not only impressions (the number of “drivers” who pass by the billboard), but also click-throughs (the number of people who “call the number” on the billboard).  This serves to shift the risk of a bad billboard and/or a bad product from the advertiser to the the billboard owner.  Good for them, but bad for us. 

So like real world real estate, it became all about location.

CNN and Yahoo may be the Southwest Freeways and 610s of the internet.  But what about the back roads and side streets?  Will banners get sold and placed there at an acceptable rate?  It all depends on how the advertisers view the traffic that drives those roads.  And whether they agree with Fred that the branding benefits change the mathematical expectations.  My hunch is that like everything else, a small percentage of the sites will make a large percentage of the money.  That’s life, both in the world and on the internet.  So I don’t think the return of the banner ad is going to be the panacea for Web 2.0.

But I do think banner advertising is due for a resurgence, if for no other reason than Google’s war chest and its desire to own the internet and all the data on it.  There are two proven ways to make money on the internet: content and advertising.  Ironically, the one that the hardest to make – the content – is almost universally free.  That leaves advertising.

The internet has become the new CBS, ABC and NBC.  You don’t pay for the content in cash.  You pay by watching the ads.

And on the internet, there’s no TIVO.

Yet.

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Oh, the Irony

ironyI think it is hugely ironic that a company that makes its money running fan message boards is threatening to sue Mike Arrington partly because of what some commenters said at the end of one of his posts.

I know a lot about message boards.  I know a lot about sports message boards.  I know that the last thing I would ever do as a message board owner is take the position that an interactive site operator is responsible for content posted by its users.

I wonder if anyone ever said anything nasty about someone else on one of Rivals’ message boards?

All of this, of course, is only my (constitutionally protected) opinion.

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