Month: March 2009

Losing on the Field, Old Media Tries to Change the Rules

Everybody agrees that it’s best to win the game on the field.  But for some teams, that plan just doesn’t work out.

Take old media, for example.

For years and years, links have, for lack of a better objective measure, been the de facto measuring stick for online content.  Inbound links have played a major role in search engine results.  More links result in a higher the placement on search result pages.  It’s not a perfect system, but it’s all we have.  And there are no built in advantages that favor one content producer over another.

But now some old media want to change the game.  They think their content should be favored over blog content.  Ignoring for a moment the very important fact that the distinction between blogs and other content platforms has largely disappeared over the past few years, this is one of the most ludicrous things I’ve read in months.

For starters, isn’t it odd that big, resourceful, rich old media is asking for a handicap when playing an online scramble against what old media has long viewed as amateur publications?  Isn’t this like Michael Jordan asking to start with 10 in a game to 21?  Or like the New York Times asking that a high school newspaper be printed with invisible ink?  I mean, come on!

Just because what started out as weblogs and evolved into a new form of media- a form which, interestingly, has been appropriated by lots of old media- is beating some old media publications at their own game is no basis for a rule change.  This smacks of the same logic vacuum evidenced by the record labels when, after realizing they couldn’t monopolize it, they tried to kill digital music distribution.

The fact that old media shot itself in the foot by electing to give away- and thereby devalue- its product is a little sad.  Maybe it would make a nice movie on the Lifetime Channel.  But in no way, shape or form should Google or anyone else rewrite the rules to favor those who don’t want to compete on the merits.

Sure, search results aren’t always perfect.  But anyone who uses Google or any other search engine more than infrequently knows how to instantly zoom past the static and zero in on the best results.  The fact that I and many others look for the Wikipedia link says tons about who does and does not get the web.

But there is a lurking point to be made by old media.

What is slightly less absurd and much more interesting is the effect of republishing or discussing content, even with attribution.  Here’s what I mean by that.  Despite his social media-frenzy-induced abandonment of his blog for the so called social networks, Steve Rubel still has a lot of readers.   I saw the link above in my feed reader this evening, and first read about this issue on Steve’s blog.  Nat Ives wrote the original story at AdvertisingAge.  Through Steve’s link, I ultimately made my way to Nat’s story (see link above).  But many people will probably first see the story at and link to Steve’s post.  If Steve gets more links to his post discussing Nat’s post, who deserves the most Google juice?  If I understand the argument, old media is saying the publication that wrote the original story, in this case AdvertisingAge, should get the most Google juice.

Nice idea in theory.  But there’s no algorithm in the world that can effectively parse where an idea started.  And let’s be real for a moment- the AdvertisingAge piece didn’t create the issue.  It merely reported what was said by other people at other places.  It’s not like every news piece is a novel.

Old media needs to worry about winning on the existing field and by the current rules.  Not trying to create an artificially uneven field and a new set of self-serving rules.

The Short Happy Life of the Infinite Advertising Theory

It was now crunch time and they were all sitting under the soft white glow of their computer monitors pretending that nothing had happened.

Eric Clemons sums up the obvious to many but ignored by some flaw in the Infinite Advertising Theory, the somewhere between a wish and a belief idea that online ads can pay for everything forever:

Pushing a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the consumer is in the midst of something else on the net, will fail as a major revenue source for most internet sites.

Amen, brother.  The word in that sentence that I want to focus on is “most.”  Because that one little word is responsible for the mass denial that propagates the hopelessly broken revenue model that is rampant on the internet.

In any statistical model, there will always be examples on the edges that can be misused to support an invalid argument.  When Wake Forest flames out again in a post season basketball tournament, some overly optimistic fans will cite the fact that one or two other highly ranked teams also flamed out, ignoring the painful fact that other than Wake Forest the list of underachievers changes every year.  This attempt to wrap oneself in the false blanket of statisticulation may make the non-mathematical reader feel better.  But relying on that placebo not only does nothing to fix the problem, the head in the sand passage of time makes the problem bigger and harder to fix.  And it doesn’t make anyone any money.

The fact that the top microscopic percentage of web sites have so much traffic they can make money by tossing ads in a reader’s face and waiting for him to accidently click on them is utterly and completely irrelevant to the validity of the Infinite Advertising Theory.  For every TechCrunch and Mashable, there are thousands of other web sites that may be fooled into thinking that they too can make money via ads.  To base your web site on advertising is like basing your income on the lottery just because you read stories in the paper about people who won millions in the lottery.

All we need to fix this problem is the one thing we don’t have.  A time machine.  All of this happened because of one bad decision.

When it became clear that the web was going to be a giant, less expensive distribution channel, old media, in a land rush brought on by greed and fear, tossed up its content on the web in a mad rush for eyeballs.  The people that ran old media didn’t really understand the web.  They were afraid of it, but they were at least smart enough to realize it couldn’t be ignored.  Everyone else was rushing to stake out a claim on the net and so old media did too.  Everyone confused eyeballs with subscription numbers, and decided that whoever had the most eyeballs would win the game.  In that death race for eyeballs, content producers soon upped the ante by giving their content away.  Even those holdouts who felt that hundreds of years of business theory dictated that giving away your only product is a bad idea were forced by momentum and customer alternatives to capitulate to free.

Surely if everyone is doing it, it must not be a horrible idea, right?  And if we get lots of traffic, we can monetize that traffic, right?

For a while it actually worked.  The perfect storm of a booming economy and the newness of and investor uncertainty about the web allowed people to make money for a time almost solely based on eyeball traffic.  When I founded ACCBoards.Com you got paid by impressions, meaning you got paid based on how many people saw the ad.  It didn’t matter so much that they all ignored the ads, because they were there to read about college sports- not to buy something they weren’t looking for just because someone tossed an annoying ad in their face.

Another problem is that advertising in general is based on the gullibility and suggestibility of the target audience.  The fact is, however, that the online audience, particularly the early adopters, is likely lower than the traditional old media audience on both scales.  Plus, unlike pre-TIVO television, you don’t have the benefit of a captive audience, when leaving is just a mouse-click away (stupid, irritating and ineffective mousetraps notwithstanding).

Eventually, the web matured as a distribution channel, and advertisers and investors had to start looking at scary things like click-throughs, sales figures and attributable revenue.  Which caused the online advertising gravy train to slow down significantly.

So online content producers now find themselves trapped in a paradox of their own creation.  They gave away the only thing they have to sell, in an effort to increase traffic, which costs money to serve, while ad dollars are not as infinite as they thought, but because they gave their product away for so long no one believes it has any value.  How’s that for a mess?

I don’t really see an easy way out of this mess.  But I can tell you one thing:  the fact that a few web sites can make good money via online ads does not mean that yours or mine or some desperate to survive newspaper’s can.

We need a new plan, but first we have to admit the old plan isn’t working.

Eat at Twitter: Preserving the Customer Experience

Twitter is a fun and interesting place.  I haven’t been posting there as much over the past week, as I try to map out its place in my online genome, and my place in its.  But there is no arguing the fact that Twitter has momentum, and a big chunk of the public mindshare.  Like any public place, be it a park, library, beach or restaurant, the question becomes what will Twitter evolve into over the coming months and years.  And how the operators and users will protect- or not-  the experience that led them there in the first place.

wfucsufail Clearly Twitter has to make money to survive.  There are operational costs, and there’s the occasionally overlooked fact that the people who created Twitter weren’t looking solely to create a new age chat board where we could all debate whether Kara Thrace was or was not an angel (I say she clearly was) or bemoan our college choices.  They started it as a business venture.  To get rich.  Or richer.

That’s the way businesses work.  When a new restaurant opens, we don’t give the owner the key to the city for feeding us.  We know he or she is trying to make a living by creating a place we can go to have fun and eat good food.  The restaurateur is neither entitled to make money nor criticized for trying to do so.  He or she makes money or not, based on the customer experience he or she creates and manages.  It’s the same for online interactive sites like Twitter.  People will try lots of things once or twice, but you have to provide a superior, consistent experience to create a critical mass of loyal and regular customers.

The customer experience becomes the most important and valuable asset.  And one that must be managed carefully.

But what about all the other people who help create and manage the restaurant experience?  The waitstaff and bussers are integral to the experience, and they too are trying to make a living.  But much, if not most, of their pay comes in the form of tips from diners.  How does this analogy translate to Twitter?

One way or another, I think it has to.  Why?  Because there are lots and lots of waiters, waitresses and bussers on Twitter.  How do they get paid?  Are they entitled to get paid?  How is this going to work?  Are they going to improve or destroy the user experience?

I don’t know all the answers, but what I do know is that everyone who hopes to make any money via Twitter should be very concerned with preserving the experience for the users- those rare diner-equivalents who come not to sell, but to eat.  Imagine how fast you’d be out the door if instead of taking your drink order, the waiters at your favorite restaurant immediately began to badger you about tips.  When something like that happens, the user experience turns negative, the word spreads, the restaurant is doomed.  And nobody gets fed or paid.

And it’s not just outright badgering we have to be concerned about.  Very few marketers are as subtle or value-additive as they think they are.

Let’s say it again:  very few marketers are as subtle or value-additive as they think they are.

I worry about all of this, because it seems like 8 out of 10 people who follow me on Twitter are waiters looking for tips: marketer, consultant, PR representative, SEO expert, etc., etc. (and that’s not even counting the outright spammers and get-me-rich quick schemers).  Based on their profiles, all of these people are, at least nominally, on the clock when posting at Twitter.  Sure, they’re taking drink orders and not immediately negotiating for tips.  But if they are on the job, they must expect or at the very least hope for a payoff at some point.  How is that going to happen?  If my little slice is representative, Twitter is overrun with marketers, consultants, PR representatives, SEO experts and other forms of the same animal, all in search of what looks to me like a pretty small tips pool.

Which raises another interesting point.  While I don’t do it online, a significant portion of my job involves building my company’s brand and selling our services to clients.  It’s subtle- like Twitter today- but subtle or not, I’m brand building and, indirectly, selling all the time.  Every print article I write.  Every speech I give, etc.  And one thing that anyone who has ever sold anything knows is this:  it is very hard to sell something to someone who is trying to sell you something at the same time.  Some of the couldn’t sell water bottles in the desert marketers may disagree with this, but anyone who has spent a day in the trenches knows it’s true.

When someone calls me and asks to meet with me, I try to figure out what they’re really after.  Sales calls are like dreams- there is a manifest purpose and a latent purpose.  Sales people sometimes stupidly try to get in front of me by pretending that they want to hire me.  Once we get in a conference room or sit down for lunch, however, it quickly becomes clear that they are trying to sell to us, not the other way around.  We call this getting sold by the buyer.  Usually these people have no need for our services.  And even if they do, they either don’t know it or are so intent on getting through their sales pitch, they wouldn’t hear a word I said.  If I said any words.  I completely disengage when this happens.

So if all these people are flooding onto Twitter trying to sell their services, how are we to we preserve the good restaurant experience, and avoid a giant flea market where everyone is trying futilely to sell to the seller?  And destroying the user experience in the process.

I don’t know, but we better find a way before it’s too late.

Newsome Kids in Print

Bellaire Eaxminer 0309a

Cassidy, Delaney and Luke are on the front page of the printed and online editions of the Bellaire Examiner, our local newspaper.  Raina is the chair of a fund raising event for the local parks.  Here’s the full story.

Cassidy and Delaney are old pros at the paper thing.  They’ve been in papers and magazines numerous times.  In fact, Cassidy’s first media experience was when she was one.  On the cover of Money Magazine, thanks to one of her daddy’s bad investments.

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Tech for Grownups: My Online Toolbox (Part 1)

OK, so you’re a relative grownup, aren’t trolling the internet looking for chicks or dudes (let me say again how thankful I am that I got through school before Al Gore and Mark Zuckerberg invented the internet), but would like to use the vastness of the web to find, manage and organize data.  And maybe have a little fun in the process.  Here are the tools I use to do that, from the baby step of a web browser, to the giant leap of a central online data repository.  I’m going to do this in two parts, and I think I’ll stay inside the box and start with Part 1.

First Things First, the web browser.

You are almost certainly reading this on a Windows based machine, which means you are probably using Internet Explorer as your web browser.  That’s messed up, but it’s easy to fix.  You need to download and install Firefox.  It’s free, easy and quick.  And your efficiency and coolness factor will get a huge boost.  Why? Because of the many add-ons that are available for Firefox.  Basic installs of Windows Explorer and Firefox are a wash (particularly the newest version of Internet Explorer), but Firefox with the right add-ons is still a superior experience.  There are hundreds of people who use other browsers like Opera and Chrome, and there are teens of people who use something called Flock.  Unless you drive a Smart car, make all your own clothes and grow all your own food, you don’t need to worry about those.

And of course, those on Macs and iPhones use Apple’s Safari.  You can and should get Firefox for a Mac, and we’ll deal with Safari on the iPhone later.

Now, let’s improve the Firefox experience with some of those add-ons.

Here are some of the ones I use.

AdBlock Plus, to remove ads.  This one is a little controversial, since lots of people are trying to make money on the internet and unless you actually have something to sell (most of them don’t) the only legal way to make money on the internet is to put ads all over your page and hope someone accidently clicks on one.  We need to help these people get real jobs by blocking the ads.  Trust me, this is positive social activism.  We’re doing them a favor.

BugMeNot, to anonymously log in to free web sites that insist on making you register.  Many of us use fake names anyway (I was Antigone Tellyeaux (get it?) at the Houston Chronicle site for years; I was William Frawley during the glorious Napster years).  This is also positive social activism by demonstrating that you don’t really need my name and email address to let me read your news stories and accidently click on your ads.  BugMeNot does not provide credentials for paid sites, which is good since we’re all law-abiding grownups.

Foxmarks, to synch bookmarks on all your computers.  I keep separate bookmarks on my work computer, but synch them across my home computers and laptops.  One caveat: Foxmarks is changing into something called Xmarks and will start offering suggested sites to visit.  This sounds to me like a social networking hysteria induced attempt to be something I don’t want, so who knows what the future holds.  But until they screw it up, Foxmarks rocks.

TinyURL Creator, to make web links smaller, so we can use them on social networks and whatnot, which we will get to below and in Part 2.  In the meantime, you need to practice using the words “social networks,” “Facebook” and “Twitter” in every sentence to show everyone how hip you are.  “Hey, Junior, if you don’t change your Facebook status to finishing his homework, I am going to come up there, delete all your social network accounts and then talk about it on Twitter.”  See, it’s easy once you get the hang of it.

Photobucket Uploader, to easily upload photos to your Photobucket account.  Photobucket’s interface is a train wreck, but combined with this add-on it makes grabbing and sharing photos very easy.  I don’t use it to share my personal photos- I use Flickr for that, but Photobucket is great for uploading stuff I want to use on my blog or on one of the social networks.

Evernote Web Clipper, so we can easily add content to Evernote, one of our primary tools, that we’ll get to in a moment (I have mad love for Evernote).

These are just a few of the plug-ins I use.  There are thousands more to choose from.  You can browse and search for them here.  Here are the ones “recommended” by the makers of Firefox (at the moment, I don’t use any of the ones at the top of that list) and here are the most popular ones.  The point is that you can tailor Firefox to your needs via the selective installation of add-ons.

Now you need a war chest to buy the cool stuff you find while surfing around on your tricked-out Firefox.

Paypal is the only way to go here, for a couple of reasons.  Lots and lots of places take Paypal; it’s owned by eBay, which is a huge company that has lots of legal and business incentives to make it safe; and most importantly, you can use it to keep your credit card information off the big scary internet.  I just keep money in my Paypal account to use when I need it.  You can use a credit card or your bank account as a back up source of funds, but either way, Paypal can serve as a buffer between you and all those people trying to steal your money on the internet.  I don’t really believe all that but it’s amazing how many of my real world friends are still terrified by the internet.  I have one friend who will clutch her purse to her chest and tremble if she hears the word internet.

One caveat: If you get an email from Paypal, asking for your password, don’t give it to them.  It’s not Paypal.  Delete that one and move on to t
he
one from the brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate of some dead African president who needs a little help moving some money around.

Now we need to find some places to store, organize and access our data.

For my personal photos, I use Flickr, because I like the interface and the iPhone integration via Mobile Fotos.  Plus, you can determine who can see each photo you upload- everyone, people you designate as friends or only you.  There are other options, like Picasa (owned by Google and integrated with other Google applications), SmugMug and, as noted above, Photobucket.  I think Picasa is a decent alternative for very basic photo sharing and SmugMug has a lot of non-geek traction, but most of the others are either feature or interface challenged.  In other words, they are too hard or not as good.

For online file storage (or the Cloud as the cool people call it), I prefer Dropbox.  You get 2 gigabytes of free storage (that’s a lot if you aren’t a hardcore geek), a good web interface, and the ability to direct link to your files, including music files (here’s why that’s important).  The only criticism I have of Dropbox is that it currently lacks an iPhone app.  Box.Net and ZumoDrive are other similar, but not quite as good, alternatives.

The most wonderful, Evernote.

For note taking and general data archival, I use and highly recommend Evernote.  It has a great desktop application, a decent web interface and a very good iPhone app.  You can add, sort, synch and access your saved data from any computer.  Evernote is so important and so hard to explain without pictures, let’s take a look at how I organize my data in Evernote.

evernote1

I have Notebooks (think of them as folders) for various types of information.  The one highlighted above is where I list songs I come across on Blip.fm that I may want to later add to my Blip.fm page.  I also have folders for Web Code I use regularly (so I can copy and paste it), Software Licenses, Home Improvement projects, etc.  With the Evernote plug-in (see above) I can easily add information, web clips, etc.  Let’s look at one more example.  Here’s a clip from my Mobile Tech Tips Notebook on how to connect to ATT hotspots via my iPhone.  Through the Evernote iPhone app, I can access this information whenever and wherever I need it.

evernote2

Evernote makes it easy to accumulate, manage and access all sorts of information.  The premium (e.g., not free) version even allows you to add and synch files and documents.  I don’t use Evernote for that yet, but if it ever catches up to Dropbox, it would present a compelling case for one-stop shopping.

That’s enough to get you started.  We’ll cover the rest of the stuff you need soon in Part 2.

If you have questions or other ideas for the perfect online toolbox, let me know in the Comments and I’ll address them in Part 2.

When Did Online Journalism Go Full Enquirer?

When I see people post stupid headlines, like, say, this one:

Facebook Could Kill Google,

it infuriates me and makes me laugh, at the same time.  When did the entire internet go full Enquirer just to cobble together a few extra page views?

Henry Blodget, editor of the semi-ironically named Silicon Alley Insider, wrote under that headline based on some comments by some cat named Ross Sandler (or maybe it was Adam?) of some outfit called RBC (maybe the Bebo one?) about how Facebook is a major traffic source for Google.  How, exactly, this means that Facebook may one day murder Google is not clear.  To give a morsel of credit where a morsel is due, Henry does point out the important little fact that “Facebook does have a big problem relative to Google, which is that it doesn’t have a business model.”  Surely a little thing like a business model won’t keep Facebook from ending the life of a $105B company. 

When you get past the idiotic headline, the point of the story is that Facebook is growing faster than Google.  Of course a seedling is also growing faster than a massively larger ancient redwood, but who wants to get hung up on the math.  Nevertheless, there is some semblance of a point and purpose to the article, all of which is of course secondary to and nullified by the attention grabbing headline.

But everybody knows you never go full Enquirer.  Check it out.  Jason Calacanis, “Mahalo,” look Enquirer, act Enquirer, not Enquirer.  Bulldog obesessed, stupid Twitter offer.  Narcissistic, sho’.  Not Enquirer.  You know Guy Kawasaki, “Alltop.”  Self-promoter, yes.  Enquirer, maybe.  Spam on Twitter. But he charmed the pants off Metacafe and ran a book cover competition.  That ain’t Enquirer.  Robert Scoble, "Video Blogging."  Nerdish, yes.  Enquirer, no.  Henry went full Enquirer, man.  Never go full Enquirer.  You don’t buy that?  Ask all these sites, "Deadpool."  Remember?  Went full Enquirer, went home empty handed. . .

Evening Reading: 3/17/09

iPhone Love Fest:  So the iPhone OS 3.0 preview happened, and in general it looks pretty good.  I still don’t know whether the tethering feature will be in this release or not.  There was a question about it, but the summary of the answer I saw was vague.  I don’t give a hoot about background processing, but I really want the tethering feature.

Devolution Department:  Speaking of that preview, here’s how to live blog.  And here’s how not to.  I do not like that little box with all the comments and whatnot.  Everything is not broken.  Newfangled does not always equate to better.

Deal Stopper Department: I have been experimenting with Ustream and thinking about doing a weekly video feature.  But what in the wild, wild west is the deal with those pop-up ads Ustream puts in the video stream?  That is an absolute deal stopper for me.  Are all Ustream videos like that?  That is horrible.  I can’t believe anyone would use Ustream if that’s how all videos are presented.  What am I missing here?

The Blogosphere Needs More Seth:  Seth Finkelstein on the Wikipedia oligarchy.  While I find Seth to be one of the most logical thinkers on the internet and generally agree with much of what he writes, I have to admit that I dig Wikipedia and use it all the time.  Granted, I wouldn’t write my dissertation based on research done there, but I think it has a tremendous ease of use advantage over most of the other alternatives.  And I don’t see the problem with taking money out of the pockets of the big companies that once had a virtual monopoly on the writing and selling of encyclopedias and spreading it around a little.  It’s sort of a Mozart/Ramones thing for me: I’m sure Mozart was a more talented composer, but I’d rather listen to the Ramones.  Seth’s undoubtedly accurate description of Wikipedia also describes every one of the so-called social networks: “cults where idealistic unpaid acolytes work themselves to burn-out, while a few people at the top benefit enormously.”  Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen Seth on Twitter.

Underwhelming:  I want to hear from someone who thinks the newly released Dell Adamo is worth $1,999 for the entry level model, with its 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2GB memory and a 128GB solid state drive or $2,699 for the upgraded model.  Underwhelming is right.  I don’t think I’d pay half that price for either of those models.  PC World has a closer look.

Mass Stupidity Department:  The Sci-Fi channel, one of my favorites, is changing its name to SyFy.  Have the idiotic Web 2.0 naming conventions evolved into mass hysteria.  Did I say that was a stupid name change?  A dumb name change allegedly done for a dumb reason.

Interesting iPhone app:  JotNot turns your iPhone into a document scanner.

Interesting blog department:  Seth points me to this as a possible Web 2.0 Jon Stewart.  Funny and interesting.

Rhetorical question of the day:  If some unknown person was behind Alltop, would it get a tiny fraction of the coverage it gets?  Non-rhetorical answer: of course not.  Whatever it was that made Guy Kawasaki such an internet celebrity (it had something to do with Apple, beyond that I have no idea), I think getting Alltop the coverage it gets in the blogosphere is a much bigger accomplishment.  Imagine what Guy could do with something really cool.

One more time:  If you’re interested in free, easy to use online storage, give Dropbox a try.  If you sign up via the above links, both you and I get a little extra free storage for the referral.

Hanging by an iPhone

beach0309 We spent the weekend and today down in Galveston, celebrating the first weekend of the kids’ spring break.  It was my first trip to Galveston since the hurricane, and things looked about like I expected.  There is a lot of damage yet to be fixed, and quite a bit of damage that doesn’t look likely to ever get fixed.  For example, there’s one house nearby that has an entire exterior wall missing.  You can literally see entire rooms, with furniture and all.  It looks like a dollhouse someone left out in the rain.  On the other hand, most of the obvious parts of the city are open and appear to be engaging in business as usual.  Casey’s had a big crowd tonight, and though there was a long wait, there were unused tables in our room.  Maybe this was a Monday night staffing issue, or maybe it was because the people at a nearby table came absurdly close to getting into a fistfight with a waiter.  I was like a little slice of the blogosphere, island style.

Because I was only there for a couple of days and because the local unsecured wi-fi quotient is painfully low post-Ike, I decided to leave my laptop at home and rely on my iPhone to keep me connected to the office and the internet in general.  It worked reasonably well, but a few things were very apparent to me.

One, email, including corporate email, is a lot better via the iPhone that on a Blackberry.  Blackberry lovers will freak out over this, but it’s true.  Email is easier to read and write, and the handling of attachments is better than it was a year ago (when I last had a Blackberry) and at least as good as on a Blackberry today.  I carried Blackberries for years, and the simple fact is that the iPhone is a far superior device, even for business stuff.

But, there is room for improvement.

When I tried to write this post from the island, it again became clear to me that there is no decent blogging software for the iPhone.  I again beach0309a tried to use iBlogger and again I gave up in frustration.  I wish Microsoft would release a Live Writer iPhone app, but I’m not holding my breath.  In the absence of that unlikely event, the space is wide open.  If someone released a reasonably full featured blogging app- that would support photos and maybe a Photobucket integration, they could own the space from day one.  The fact that there is not a single decent blogging application for the Mac, however, does not bode well for the iPhone.  It also became painfully obvious to me that the iPhone really needs the tethering feature, so you can use it as a wireless modem to connect your laptop to the internet.  That was, by far, the most useful feature of my last Blackberry- and a feature I miss dearly.

Some iPhone apps work great and almost circumvent the need for a laptop, but sans wi-fi some of them are pretty spotty.  Tweetie worked the most consistently, though my partially self-imposed Twitter exile did not allow me to take advantage of it (unlike the hand picked music I used to manually post there via Blip.fm, Live Writer automatically Tweets my new blog posts, so for the time being I’ll just use it as a billboard, like everybody else).  On the other hand, neither of my RSS readers (Feeds and Byline) worked worth a crap over the telephone network (about half and half between 3G and Edge in the Beachside area of Galveston).  I got so frustrated trying to read my feeds, I thought about giving up the internet altogether and subscribing to a newspaper for the first time in a decade.  We can huff and puff all we want, but until those who aren’t in the heart of a big, big city can access online content reliably, online content will continue to be a luxury and not a necessity.  Dropbox, which despite being my online storage service of choice, still inexplicably lacks an iPhone app, worked pretty well via Safari.  I was able to access data over both the 3G and Edge network.

The camera, with a little help from Darkroom, also worked reasonably well, though the iPhone desperately needs a flash.

Make no mistake- the iPhone rocks.  But take it or any other mobile device to the edge of the grid, and things get a little dicey.