Why Backfence Tells Us Nothing About the Viability of Citizen Journalism

Rafat Ali reports that Backfence, once the poster child for aggregated citizen journalism, is shuttering all 13 of its local-news based web sites.

citizenjournalismYou remember Backfence.  It is/was, to quote the American Journalism Review, “a series of hyperlocal, news-oriented web sites whose tone and content – news, commentary, blogs, photos, calendar listings – would be supplied primarily by the people who knew each community best, its residents.”  It was one of 6 citizen journalism ventures that were mentioned in a December 9, 2004 article in the Washington Post that said:

Several notable ventures have launched or raised money this year to create local news sites online in which readers contribute all or most of the news. The big idea is that citizen-generated content lowers costs and creates more loyal audiences.

Of the 6 notable ventures mentioned in that article, here’s how they fared in the ensuing two and a half years:

Three of them: iBrattleboro.com, NorthwestVoice and Wikinews are still in business.  The first two have overcome My-Space-like design problems and are still accepting submissions.  Wikinews doesn’t seem all that local to me, unless North America is local, but is still going strong.

Advance Internet seems to have evolved into merely a directory of NJ-related blogs.  I can’t tell if there is a more formal relationship between the blogs, thanks to a most unhelpful About page.

GoSkokie seems to have joined Backfence in the deadpool.

Which translates to a 50% survival rate.  That’s probably better than the survival rates for a lot of other businesses over the same two and a half year period.  And, unlike Backfence, many of those businesses didn’t have $3M in venture capital funding to work with.  That fact being the epitome of both a blessing and a curse.

More significantly, I don’t believe the failure of Backfence or the survival of iBrattleboro.com and NorthwestVoice says anything one way or the other about the future or viability of citizen journalism- at least not the way I view true citizen journalism.  All of those web sites, as well as more than a few others that have attached themselves to the citizen media movement, have the very distinct look and feel of old media- old media that is still not entirely comfortable with the whole online thing.  Sure, accepting submissions for publication is a neat idea (and no doubt helps lower expenses), but lots of old media offline publications do that.  True citizen journalism the way I view it is journalism by citizens, for citizens, published by citizens and controlled by citizens.

Not so much people writing and submitting articles to the online editions of a dying newspaper industry.  Or to web sites that look more like a newspaper than a blog.  Everybody always blows right past this point, but the citizens who create the journalism should demand the right to serve and control that content from their own platform and for their own benefit.  Not from some online quasi-paper, not behind the walls of some ad-happy social network and not for the pecuniary benefit of third parties.  A story submission button and a comments section does not equate to citizen journalism.

It’s the combination of content creation and aggregation that mucks everything up.  Just like musicians don’t need the record labels any more, journalists don’t need the newspaper platform- or a semi-collaborative photocopy of one.  The aggregation of content is better left to the Diggs, Techmemes and blog comments.  Or even better, to feed lists tailored to the interest of the reader.

Let me say it again.  If you are are a citizen (as opposed to a member of traditional media) working your tail off to create content to then turn around and give that content to others who control its distribution and/or make all or most of the money off of it, you are neither citizen nor journalist.  You are at best an employee and, more likely, an indentured scribe.  You are an ant in another’s farm.  Why do people not get this?  Someone queue that Apple commercial.

Rather, the true citizen journalism is occurring simultaneously on distributed blogs of thousands of learned bloggers out there.  Bloggers like Scott Karp, Phil Sim, the guys and gals at Mashable, Nick CarrDonna Bogatin, Mathew Ingram,  TDavid, Tony Hung, Twangville, Don Dodge, J.P. Rangaswami, Jeff Pulver, Stereogum, Rex Hammock and Rafat’s PaidContent.Org.  And those are just a few that I noticed when glancing at my feeds list.  There are easily a hundred more on that list.  Maybe two hundred.

The future of citizen journalism is in the hands of people writing the blogs about the events that are happening around them.  The path of citizen journalism will be mapped starting from the citizen/blogger side of the phrase, not from the journalism/old media side.  At its core, citizen journalism is about learning how to distribute reliable information without being chained to a platform or gateway.  It’s equal access reporting where the readership picks the winners.

Maybe Backfence was a pioneer and, as the AJR article says, destined to be the one with arrows in their backs. And maybe Backfence led the way for a segment of the trip.  But the journey has just begun and citizen journalism as it looks today is merely a working sketch of what citizen journalism will become.

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New Music: Great Lake Swimmers, Ongiara

Great Lake Swimmers are a Toronto based folk/rock band led by singer/songwriter Tony Dekker.  Their self titled first record was recorded in a silo in Ontario.  This sounds like my kind of band in more ways than one.

Their newest record, Ongiara, was released in May.  One look at the people and instruments on the album tells me I’m in for a treat:

Tony Dekker (voice, guitar), Erik Arnesen (banjo, electric guitar) and Colin Huebert (drums, percussion, glockenspiel, timpani), guest appearances by Serena Ryder (backing vocals, autoharp), Bob Egan of Blue Rodeo (pedal steel and dobro), Sarah Harmer (backing vocals) and Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy and Arcade Fire (string arrangements). Mike Overton (upright bass), Darcy Yates (electric bass), Mike Olsen (cello), and Mike Bonnell (organ).

glsong The first song, Your Rocky Spine (MP3 clip), is a mellow mid-tempo number with a great banjo track.  Backstage with the Modern Dancers is a melancholy masterpiece that I can’t get out of my head.

Catcher Song is a Byrdsy number, and my favorite song on the record (which is saying something). A 10 on the first listen.   

Changing Colours reminds me of a combination between Steve Goodman’s Yellow Coat (perhaps the most wistful song I’ve ever heard) and America (the band) at its most melancholy.  It’s hard to find anything not to like on this record.

The middle of the order is There is a Light, Put There by the Land and I Am Part of a Large Family (Mp3 clip).  The first two are fine songs, damned perhaps a little being on the same record as several 10s, including the latter.

Where in the World Are You is beautiful with great strings.  Passenger Song is another well written mellow number.

The last song the record, I Became Awake, is a pedal steel driven number that made me wish the other songs had more steel.  It’s my second favorite song on the record.

This is an excellent record, highly recommended for those who like mellow, reflective, well written music.  It’s not a record that will have you tapping your foot or dancing, but it will have you thinking…and smiling.

Rating (5 point scale): 4

Declaration of Blogging Independence

When in the Course of online events it becomes necessary for alienated and isolated bloggers to dissolve the existing blogging hierarchy and exclusionary behavior which have disconnected them from the A-List and made them feel even more nerdy, and to assume among the multitude of powers they wish they had, the equally unattainable station to which the Laws of It Ain’t Fair entitle them, a decent respect for The Onion and Al Gore requires that they should write yet another post no one will ever read to declare the many real and imagined causes which impel them to the third party affected and now ironically embraced separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evidently pie in the sky, that all bloggers are created equal, that they are endowed by their Computers and iPhones with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are lots and lots of Links, Thoughtful Comments and the pursuit of AdSense Dollars. – That to secure these rights, lots of Wailing and Moaning is inserted into Blogs, deriving their literary powers from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical video-blogged nerdathon, – That whenever any Ze Frank or Ze Frank equivalent becomes destructive of these ends by monopolizing all the viewers who would otherwise be watching videos of Star Trek impersonations, it is the Right of the Bloggers to use their webcams, lightsabers and YouTube to alter or to abolish it, and to achieve new levels of self humiliation, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their rapidly diminishing Technorati Ranking and Google Juice. Technorati, indeed, will dictate that the Blogosphere long established months ago should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that new bloggers are better suited to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to deny the A-Listers the celebrity to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the Mythical Endless Ad Dollar and a link from Om evinces a design to reduce them to absolute Isolation and Silence, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw another Blogofit, and to demand a new relational structure for their future security. -Such has been the patient sufferance of many Bloggers; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to start posting cat pictures with misspelled and allegedly funny cat quotes. The history of the present Gatekeepers is a history of repeated exclusions and the turning of deaf, furry ears, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the Blogosphere. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a sleepy world.

They have refused to respond to conversational overtures, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

They have ignored posts of immediate and pressing importance, unless emailed till their Attention should be obtained; and when so emailed, they have utterly neglected to reply.

They have called together ludicrously entitled conferences and unconferences at places unusual and uncomfortable, for the sole purpose of fatiguing us into believing that they were right not to invite us.

They have refused for a long time, to cause others to be admitted to Techmeme, whereby the Aggregating Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the Bloggers at large for their exercise; the Blogosphere remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from cat blogs within, and convulsions of laughter from little old ladies without.

They have made all of Web 2.0 dependent on Advertising alone for the tenure of its offices, and the amount and payment of its salaries.

They have combined with others in formal and informal affiliations to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our desires to be popular, and unacknowledged by our moms.

They have plundered our right to bigger feed counts, ravaged our prospective link counts, burnt out our minds, and denied us links from lots of other people.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Posted for Redress in the most irritable terms: Our repeated Posts have been answered only by repeated silence. An A-Lister, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a meanie, is unfit to be the ruler of a utopian and unrealistic blogosphere.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Old Media brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their laid off and soon to be reporters to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here at the end of the long tail. We have appealed to their journalistic standards and arrogance, and we have conjured them by the hair of our chinny chin chins to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our reader counts and inbound links. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the so-called New Media, Enemies when they ignore us, in Linkage Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the New Blogosphere, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Scoble of the internet for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the solitary bloggers, solemnly publish and declare, That these disjointed Blogs are, and of Right ought to be Free and Incoherent Blogs, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the old Blogosphere, and that all  connection between them and the old Blogosphere, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Incoherent Blogs, they have full Power to converse with each other, conclude open and free blogging Alliances, establish Cross-Blog Conversations, and to do all other nerdly Acts and other geeky Things which Independent Blogs may of right do. – And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of our day jobs, we mutually pledge to each other our Blogs, our Links and our sacred Attention.

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8 Things Meme

Steve Spalding tagged me in the 8 Things meme.  So I need to come up with 8 random things about me…

1) I am left handed, but I write with my right hand because when I was in kindergarten, the teachers made me.  They thought that writing with your left hand was abnormal.

2) I am very impatient in most situations, except fishing.  I am a very patient fisherman, which I why I catch more fish than most people.

3) My first job was as a bag boy at IGA.

4) I love card and board games.  We played Euchre with our friends the Clarks last night.

5) I am profoundly apolitical.  Almost everything about politics and politicians bores me.

6) I was once on the cover of Money Magazine.

7) I think Spaceballs is one of the funniest movies ever made.

8) My cars in order are: 1972 Chevelle Malibu; 1978 Camaro; 1986 Saab 900; 1989 Jeep Cherokee; 1992 Ford Explorer; and 2001 Ford Expedition.

I’m going to follow Steve’s lead and tag only 4 people (instead of the statutory 8):

Be a Good Mom: Because Mike already had his turn and I’m all about girl power.

Warner Crocker: Because, like me, he lives in the overlap of tech and the arts.

Dennis the Peasant: Because I can’t imagine how funny 8 random things about him will be.

Bill Liversidge:  Because I enjoy his writing, and now here’s something he’ll have to write.

If you have already answered this meme, feel (somewhat) free to ignore this tag.

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Evening Reading: 7/3/07

Chris Kasten on FolderShare.  I use FolderShare all the time, and have written about how underutilized it is many times, including here and here.  FolderShare could be the backbone behind some really useful technology, if Microsoft would just pay a little attention to it.

All FeedBurner features are now free.  UNEASYsilence has a summary of the new free features.  Unfortunately, I only got to read about 50 words of the post because they are doing partial feeds.  What is up with that guys?

InstaBloke on blog coaches: “On the face of it the term is self-explanatory, and the long and short of it is they are recruiting minions to click on their ad-laden blogs or hire them as consultants / speakers to make them rich.”  The problem with the blogosphere is the same as with email, faxes and the telephone- those looking only to make a quick buck screw it up for the rest of us.  The blogosphere is Deadwood, full of prospectors and prostitutes.  Yet, like Deadwood, it is also full of adventure and potential.

Gary Reid: “Why there is no room for tech blogs is because they are eating each other, there’s no real news, any scoop one gets the rest have blogged 5 minutes later. It’s become a place of ‘brands’ [and] there’s no real difference between any of them, so you read the brand you like.”  This is about the best summation of the blogging problem I’ve ever read.
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I already created me as a Southpark character.  Here’s me as a Simpsons character (get yours via the link).

Jeremiah Owyang on the sustainability of Digg traffic spikes.  Organic growth is really hard to achieve in the blogosphere.  I am convinced that a little traffic from a lot of places is better than intermittent traffic spikes from one place.  But that’s easier said than done.

It’s not surprising that the Sci-Fi Channel is reaching out to bloggers, but it’s smart nonetheless.

This should go over like a lead balloon.  Here’s my special offer: I can print, stuff, stamp and mail all by myself, thank you very much.

Note to Mashable:  I dig your blog, but Pownce isn’t a Pownce rival.  Otherwise, they have a good read on the so-called “mini-blogging” applications.  Here’s my take: the blogosphere is on the verge on self-imploding thanks to the collective attention span of a gnat and the resultant attention dilution.

Note to the guy/gal with the flashing MyBlogLog icon.  I’m blocking you here, and I suspect others will too.  Flashing graphics were annoying in the nineties.  They still are.

Pramit Singh has a really interesting idea for Michael Moore’s next movie.  I think the privacy angle is the most compelling one, and I continue to be amazed that hordes of people are not demanding that Google stop sticking its nose (and its ads) in our business.

I would never have believed this is real, but Rob Gale and Snopes say it is.

@Scoble: The problem with Twitter is that the archival features of a blog post are absent.  It’s like writing in invisible ink.

Valleywag has an update on the latest Federated Media conversation, advertisement, money making thing.  I really don’t see the value to the advertiser in this, and I see no value whatsoever to the readership/public.  I predict this little experiment will die quietly on the vine.

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New Music: Steve Forbert, Strange Names & New Sensations

wakeforesttangerine I remember the first time I heard Steve Forbert‘s Romeo’s Tune (off of his 1979 release Jackrabbit Slim) in my mom’s old LTD on the way to the 1979 Tangerine Bowl.  My buddies and I were driving towards Florida drinking Coor’s beer we couldn’t afford (this was back when it was an import everywhere but Colorado).  I was wondering how much trouble I was going to be in when I returned home with a beer smelling and generally trashed car, when that song came on the radio.  I loved it from the first listen.  I bought the LP when we got back home, and I’ve been a fan of Steve’s music ever since.

I saw him live a couple of times at the Mucky Duck, and up until a few years ago when a series of live records were released, I bought most of his records.  Last week, he released a new studio record, Strange Names & New Sensations.  This past weekend, I gave it a listen.

The first song was clearly written to my generation.  It’s called Middle Age.  I thought I was back in 1979 for a second when I heard those 1979 televisionsfor theme-like horns, but things quickly got a little better (horns are like Tobasco Sauce– they can make the right song much better and the wrong song much, much worse).  Middle Age contains some truth about the losing battle against time, but it’s not particularly compelling.  Strange Names is sort of clever, but can’t decide between being a Romeo’s Tune folk/pop number and a quasi-novelty tune.  Brian Burns’ retelling of I’ve Been Everywhere (in Texas) (Mp3 clip) sets a high standard for city names songs, that Steve’s northeastern counterpart can’t match.

I didn’t know who Spaulding Gray was before he died.  Steve’s tribute is probably wonderful (bag pipes and all), but neither the lyrics nor the arrangement moves me beyond the generally sympathetic place I start.

Man I Miss that Girl has a countryish arrangement, with a wistful vibe.  Since that’s my menu order for a good song, it’s my favorite cut on the record.  I give this song at least a 9.  Maybe a 9+.  This one is a good ‘un.

You’re Meant for Me is a mellow love song, which is not my preferred kind of song.  Not bad, just a little boring.  Same with Something Special and My Seaside Brown-Eyed Girl.  If I want to hear love songs, I generally opt for the Loudon Wainwright III variety (that record is one of my all time favorites, and highly recommended).

The Baghdad Dream rocks a little, but you have to seem convinced to pull off a protest song.  I like this one a little, but if you want a war protest song listen to Chairmen of the Board‘s Men Are Getting Scarce.  It was overlooked at the time, but man is it powerful.

Thirty More Years has a nice folksy arrangement with a Halloween connection.  I like it, but, again, the best Halloween song (and one of the best songs ever written) is Richard Shindell‘s Are You Happy Now.  The instrumental Around the Bend is my second favorite cut on the record, with a nice violin track and an engaging melody.  I bet he has some unsung lyrics to this one.

The last cut is a new version of Romeo’s Tune (see above).  My old friend Mickey Newbury (God rest his soul) had a habit of putting his more popular songs on multiple records, but that was because he was in a battle for the rights to his earlier recordings.  Who knows, maybe that’s why Steve did it.  The new version sounds more “mature,” which is fitting.  But I still like the original version better.

All in all, this is not a bad record.  But it’s not as good as some of Steve’s earlier work.  That’s not terribly surprising, as we all suffer from the passage of time.  It’s just good to hear another middle aged guy still doing his thing.

Rating (5 point scale): 2.5

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Pownce: Initial Thoughts and Invites to Give

I finally got a Pownce invitation tonight (thanks Miles!).  Installation of both Abobe’s AIR (a requirement to run the Pownce software) and the Pownce software itself was quick and easy.

pownce Here’s my Pownce page.  My user name is Kent N.  If you’re one of my blogging pals, add me as a Friend and we’ll put Pownce through its paces.

So far, it looks like it combines a web-based, Twitter-like conversation page with an IM-like application (pictured to the left) that allows you to send and receive messages, links, files and events.  The first three are self-explanatory.  Events are messages with associated dates- good for letting people know about, well, events.  You can send any of the foregoing to the public, all of your Friends (the Web 2.0 word for contacts), or just a specified Friend.  You can group your Friends into sets, which seems very handy for project collaboration, etc.

You can send files of up to 10MB.  For $20 a year (Paypal accepted), you can send 100MB files and have an ad-free experience (though so far I haven’t seen any ads).

I sent my Friends an MP3 of my blues song Departing Passenger.  Lucky player3231 fellows.  The file uploaded reasonably fast and, presto, it was there on my Pownce page.  There is a player application that loads a tad slow, but sounds good.  The navigation below the player is a little jumbled, probably because of my monitor size and resolution.  A lot of pages have this problem, including both Morningstar and CNN, which is surprising to me.

Finding friends is similar to Facebook.  You search for them and then send a Friend request.  The recipient can accept or decline.  If the recipient declines, you become merely a Fan of that person.  I’m going to apply my Pink Floyd Policy to Pownce, which means that I shall be merely a fan to no man (or woman).

Of all the times I have experimented with all the various IM and IM-like programs, right now and Pownce seem the most compelling to me.  Twitter brought a lot of folks into the collaborative IM space and Pownce may just be the next evolutionary step.  Stan Schroeder says Pownce may, in fact, be the Twitter killer (at least it isn’t Quixotically aiming at YouTube like everybody else).  I think there’s room for both, though Twitter is clearly behind in the feature race.  It’s too early to tell how well Pownce will scale, though it did have a short outage earlier tonight.

If Pownce wants to seep deeply into the IM space, it will need to address the same incompatibility problems the other IM applications face.  As I have said before, IM needs to be like the telephone.  Not like a series of tin cans tied to a proprietary string.

Now what I need is some Friends to use it with.

I have a few Pownce invitations to hand out.  I’ll send them to the first 5 people who leave a comment asking for one, on the condition that everyone who gets one agrees to return to the comment thread here and send invitations to others in the queue.  I am particularly interested in getting my core blogging buddies signed up.

You know who you are, so let’s get started.

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Annoying Windows Vista Problem Solved

Ever since I installed Vista on KN-1, my home built computer, I have had one extremely annoying problem.  After my computer runs for a while, the toolbar gets all out of whack.  Like this:

mess 2

The buttons get all jumbled up and stop responding.  It is very, very annoying.

The only solution I could come up with was to reboot, which was very disruptive to whatever task I was working on.  The problem was even more irritating because when this happens, the restart button stops responding, and I have to do the control-alt-delete thing just to restart.  This mess has been a major drain on my efficiency and I had even begun to consider trashing my computer and starting over- in a desperate attempt to solve this problem.

Weekends in the Houston language translates to “rains all day.”  So I decided to use my forced indoor time today to see if I could find a solution to this problem.  Of course, I started with the answer machine- Google.  After running down a few wrong trails, I came across this inviting Microsoft Knowledge Base page.  I first tried the work around:

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL.
2. Click Task Manager.
3. Click the Processes tab.
4. Click the explorer.exe process.
5. Click End Process, and then click End process.
6. Click the Applications tab.
7. Click New Task.
8. Type explorer in the Open box, and then click OK.

Lo and behold, that fixed the problem.  At least now I wouldn’t have to control-alt-delete and restart every hour or so.

Next I installed the hotfix from that page.  It installed.  I was hopeful.  I rebooted, even though I wasn’t prompted to.

Four hours later, I am still working and my toolbar looks normal.  And the buttons work.

I can’t adequately explain how happy I am to (cross my fingers) have this problem solved.

If this post can help one other person solve this problem, it will be worth it.

Evening Reading: 6/30/07

It seems Twitter, which granted is a neat little application, is out looking to turn that neatness into cash.  Download Squad reports that Twitter is trying to raise its first round of venture capital funding, and then wonders if the old standby, getting bought by Google, may not be the answer.  As Download Squad says in the article: “Twitter is extremely focused on growing their network of users before making money, and they really don’t have an evident business model as of yet.”  There is a universal assumption by those looking to make money on the internet that traffic can always be monetized.  I don’t think that’s always the case.

JPEG Enhancer is a free application that promises to help clean up old blotchy photos from your first digital camera.

Martin Gordon does a mini-review of Lifehacker’s Top10 iPhone Applications.  He found some usability issues.

Mashable has a feature by feature comparison of 14 personalized homepages.  God, I hope social networking isn’t really “the next evolution of the start page concept.”  The more I see these start pages try to be average at everything instead of excellent at one thing, the more I think making your own start page is the way to go.

Dave Wallace has created a History of Disability in South Australia website that tells stories of Australians involved with disability issues.  Here’s Mike Seyfang’s review.

This guy’s baby book showed up on eBay.  Being a second child, I never had much of a baby book.  Delaney (our second) has a sparse one.  Luke (our third) doesn’t have one at all.  We promised ourselves we wouldn’t do that.

@Seth: I agree that marketing by fear in a way that benefits only the marketer is bad.  I really don’t like it.  But, as you mentioned, CNN and every other news organization do this all day, every day.  When all that matters is attention, what better way to get it than to shout danger at every opportunity.  It is a corruption of the preservation instinct in the name of a dollar.

Everyone may be gunning for YouTube, but the war is over.  All that remains in to see who gets the most scraps.

Techdirt, which has always been at the forefront of the music industry debate, has a must read post about the record stores doing their part to keep the industry screwed up.  I used to enjoy going to record stores…back in the 80’s.  If I can browse music from my desk, hear clips without having to use waxy communal headphones, click a button and have the CD show up two days later, I don’t need a music store.  Particularly if it’s going to take a page from the RIAA’s empty book of logic.

Thomas Hawk on iPhonestock.  I don’t know how you can read Thomas and not pull for Zooomr.  I guess that means he’s doing he job.  I just wish they’d make the sign-in process easier.  I signed up back when it first launched, lost my credentials and am caught in OpenID hell.

Donna Bogatin takes a look at iPhonestock too.  Justine has a post on the Summer of Phone.  Meanwhile Scoble has lost his buzz and noticed that he has a mild headache.  But at least he’ll be able to tell his grandchildren he was there, and be telling the truth.

Jeff Balke on mixing his band’s new CD and the loudness problem.  I’m not generally in the studio when my songs are recorded (being solely a songwriter at this point), but I have always felt that far too many records are mixed too hot.  The video Jeff found is spot on: when there is no quiet, there can be no loud.

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