Blogging Frio

Cassidy and Larsen flying around Frio

We’re back on the Frio River, for our annual summer camping, tubing and fishing trip. 6 families, 11 very happy kids.

We tubed for about 4 hours yesterday. We’ll go back to the river today for some more tubing. Tomorrow we’ll go on a trail ride in the morning and find somewhere to fish in the afternoon.

Cassidy, Delaney and some of their friends got to ride around in the helicopter on Sunday afternoon.

Light blogging this week, as Verizon cannot hear me now from here- though people on Cingular have stong service.

Movie Recommendation: Monstertorsdag

monstertorsdag I didn’t get this great Norwegian film from Netflix- my TIVO recorded it for me. It doesn’t seem to be available at Netflix, but you should be able to find it on the Sundance Channel or the IFC. It is listed under it’s translated name: Monsterthursday (spelled as one word).

I generally stay away from foreign films, because the requirement of reading the subtitles makes it hard to watch them while you’re doing something else. I watch most movies in my study, where the ability to multitask makes it seem less like I am sitting around wasting time.

I figured I’d watch a few minutes to see what a Norwegian film looked like. I got hooked and watched the entire thing in one sitting.

The vibe of this movie grabbed me from the first scene- a surreal wedding scene where the ex-wife of one best friend marries the other best friend. The ex-husband/best man is in great dismay over the wedding, but after an uncomfortable toast, he soldiers on- mostly. It gets better and darker after that, as the new groom leaves town on an extended business and/or surfing trip and the bride and her ex-husband explore their past, present and future.

Surfing becomes the measure of success and monster waves the demons to be faced. This is in no way an action movie, feeling much more like Lost in Translation than your middle of the road Hollywood drama. And I mean that as high praise.

Surfing, relationships, drinking, and the hatred of golf all play important roles in this film. Pretty much everything required for a good movie.

It’s a pretty somber film, but not totally dark.

Highly recommended.

Anti-Intellectualism

I came across an interesting post on anti-intellectualism, courtesy of Tom Morris, one of my daily newspaper-substitutes.

Having read a little Ayn Rand and found it profoundly boring, notwithstanding its cultural value as a cocktail party badge of literary intellect, I’m not sure I’m qualified to talk about either intellectualism or stupidism. But there were two passages in the post I want to address.

First, one on Presidents as men of the people:

“Incidentally, it’s likely that one of the reasons America currently has one of its worst presidents ever is that, by being less educated and articulate than Gore or Kerry, he appeared ‘more in touch’ with the common man (of course, one should then wonder if you really want the village idiot in charge of the most powerful nation in the world… but I digress.)”

I’m no Bush fan, nor am I am Bush basher. I think he could do a lot better and I think he could do a lot worse. I will admit that he has moved towards to bad end of the scale as Iraq starts looking more like Vietnam II than Falklands II.

But Bush is not the best example of the common man in the White House. That would be Jimmy Carter. And while Jimmy Carter appeared to be a peanut farmer from Georgia, he also may have been the most intelligent president of my lifetime (I am a big Jimmy Carter fan).

So being a man of the people is more about your demeanor than your IQ. You can be brilliant and a man of the people- it’s just that the navel gazers can’t get past your accent to see it. You can also be a complete dumbass and come across as erudite.

I happen to believe that, while you certainly don’t want the village idiot to be your leader, you also don’t want the guy with a pocket protector full of slide rules.

And then one on religion and the educated:

“There are several sources of anti-intellectualism. Religion is an obvious one, of course, since being intelligent and learning makes one less likely to accept arguments from authority, and to question unproven assertions. An intelligent, learned man has no need for religion – therefore, we don’t want any intelligent, learned men (to paraphrase The Fountainhead’s Elllsworth Toohey).”

While that was a quote from a book that I described above as boring, I feel compelled to point out that I don’t buy the fact that intelligence and learning are inconsistent with religion and faith.

The essence of faith is to believe what you cannot prove. If you question it, if you can make the argument that it is logically impossible, yet you still believe it- that is faith. The more capable you are to question it, the stronger your faith is when you conclude that you believe it anyway.

According to this Pew Report:

“Secular individuals – those who say they are agnostic, atheist, or say they have no religious affiliation – are a significant portion only of Liberals: 22%. They include 12% of Bystanders and 9% of Disaffecteds, but otherwise constitute no more than 6% of the other groups.”

That’s a lot of educated people, both liberal and conservative.

Techcerpt: Extreme Political Correctness in the Blogosphere

In last night’s podcast I talked a little bit about the marginal utility of extreme political correctness and how unchecked political correctness can cause too much focus on the small stuff and not enough focus on what really matters.

If you don’t want to listen to some great music before and after, you can just listen to the techcerpt.

Dave Winer, who I talked about in the techcerpt, has some similar thoughts, having had a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to correct his politics lately. Time that could have been spent on something far more important.

RanchoCast – August 4, 2006 Edition

I did a new podcast last night.

I played some great songs by Jonathan Edwards, the Reivers, Jethro Tull, Jesus and Mary Chain, Leslie Gore and a 2-fer by the best blues singer ever. The finale is a blues jam by Albert Collins.

I also talked a little about the marginal utility of extreme political correctness in the blogosphere.

Blogger's Challenge: Who Do You Write For?

Who are we, as bloggers, really writing for? Have you ever asked yourself that question?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

The knee-jerk answer, of course, is that different people write for different reasons. Some write for their real world customers. Some write to attract eyeballs attached to fingers that might click on an ad. Some write as a way to market their online products. Some write for themselves. Etc. Etc.

But I am asking the question at a more fundamental level.

Who are the readers of our blogs? Not the intended audience. The actual audience.

Who do we really write for?

My answer: mostly for each other.

I’m just not convinced that blogs have much penetration into the general reading population. Stated another way, I suspect that the large, large majority of readers of any blog, save and except the TechCrunches and Techdirts of the world, are other bloggers and maybe the occasional relative or curious friend.

Even the mega-blogs, whose traffic the rest of us stare at in jealous disbelief, have subscriber numbers in the tens of thousands. TechCrunch has 92,854 subscribers. That’s an incredible number until you consider the fact that there are 300 million people in the US and 6.5 billion worldwide. In context, even TechCrunch’s penetration into the real world is less than insignificant. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have circulation numbers in excess of 2 million, and that doesn’t count tons of people like me who read those papers online or who grab a colleague’s copy after he or she is done with it.

The number of bloggers competing for attention makes it seem like the blogosphere is a huge, chaotic place. But it only seems that way because we have all ended up in a small room at the end of the hall. When people refuse to converse with me or go out of their way to link around me, it hurts a little. Until I remember that while they aren’t listening to me, no one in the real world is listening to them either.

I have been told by a couple of buddies in old media that old media tech writers tend to write for each other as well, so my theory is not limited exclusively to bloggers.

But the more I think about it, I think most bloggers write primarily for each other.

Don’t get me wrong- I enjoy writing. But sometimes it feels vaguely depressing to write something, put it up and wait anxiously for someone to reply via comment or link.

The problem, it seems to me, is that we often overstate the interactive nature of the blogosphere. Sure, blogs are somewhat interactive, but there is still an effort hurdle to be crossed to converse. You have to invest the time and effort to make a comment or write a responsive post. And with everyone talking at once, a lot of things get lost in the static.

And, of course, the rock stars who refuse to have cross-blog conversations with anyone other than other perceived rock stars make blogs seem even less interactive (and more silly) than they really are.

The whole system just seems really inefficient to me.

Which is why we need to ask ourselves why we write and who we are writing for.

So here’s my challenge. Write a paragraph that explains why you write a blog and who you write for. Think about it for a moment first. And be honest. I’ll compile a list (with links), and we’ll see if there are any patterns. Maybe we’ll learn something.

Here’s mine (I trashed and completely rewrote the following paragraph four times):

I write as an outlet for the creative energy that I used to use writing songs, and to initiate conversation with people who share interests of mine that are not generally shared by my real world friends. I write because I like to build things and to see if I can become meaningful in an area other than the one in which I make my living. Fundamentally, I write for the people who will allow me to become part of their conversations, either because they like what I have to say or because they are willing to try to change my mind. And, to be honest, I write to show some of the people who believe they are tech stars that some middle aged ex-farmer from Texas can compete with them on their field, on their terms- and win.

More on Contacting Other Bloggers

TDavid makes some excellent additions to my earlier emailing etiquette post.

His suggestion to make sure the blogger you are emailing hasn’t already written about the same thing is spot on. If you haven’t read their blog, how can you expect them to read your blog?

He also makes a valid point that I assumed emailing is the way to go. Some folks prefer being contacted other ways- IM, Skype, a comment, etc.

Check out his other thoughts about making contact. Good stuff!

The Most Persistent Mail Server Ever

Remember the other day, when I mentioned that I got joe jobbed?

Well all of the related bounces, spam notices and complaints have finally tapered off to nothing. Except one. The most persistent mail server in the world continues to try to deliver the spoofed email to one last non-working email address.

Here’s the text of the most recent of many updates this dedicated server sent me:

“This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.
A message that you sent has not yet been delivered to one or more of its recipients after more than 528 hours on the queue on dime81.dizinc.com.

The message identifier is: 1G0qnh-0008Mz-Is
The date of the message is: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:13:41 +0400
The subject of the message is: Re: your letter

The address to which the message has not yet been delivered is:

save to /
generated by lam@iconmedia.com.hk

No action is required on your part. Delivery attempts will continue for some time, and this warning may be repeated at intervals if the message remains undelivered. Eventually the mail delivery software will give up, and when that happens, the message will be returned to you.”

528 hours later? Are you kidding me?

If every mail server was this persistent, the entire internet would crash under the weight of undelivered spam.

Deja Vu All Over Again Department

“Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is once again catching the imagination of the venture capital community in Silicon Valley.”

– Om Malik talking about the humorously named SkyRider.

The parallels to Bubble 1.0 are getting downright uncanny. The fact that somebody tossed $8M at a company named SkyRider is equally hilarious and frightening.

As long as we don’t start hearing about a SkyRider IPO, there’s still hope.

It’s About Revenue, Not Growth

That’s the lesson I feel like screaming at all the people acting like AOL’s much anticipated decision to “go free” and to give 5GB of storage to its users is a brilliant idea.

Growth without revenue or a realistic plan to generate sustainable revenue is nothing more than a way to create additional expense. It ends up on the wrong side of the ledger. Granted, this sort of charity will generate some headlines, as Marshall Kirkpatrick points out:

“From giving away many previously paid services free to broadband users (yesterday) to hiring away top social bookmarkers (first 10 announced today) and now throwing free storage at anyone who wants it – AOL is certainly making a lot of plays to revive itself.”

But it’s a clever head fake at best. If I started a business that gives away $20 to every person who walks by my house, I too would have a fast growing business, and I too would get lots of headlines. Perhaps even a link from Om. I would also run out of money pretty quickly.

AOL hopes all those users will click on ads and buy stuff so the loss of subscription revenue will be offset by more ad revenue. Nobody clicks on ads and nobody buys stuff because of all the ads people stick in front of their face. Entire industries are being built around ad avoidance (TIVO, satellite radio, etc.) at the very same time AOL is betting its future on the success of ads.

This move by AOL smacks of desperation. It is going to stop selling its service and climb on the back of the ad dollar along with 95% of the rest of the Web 2.0 world. In effect, AOL has just become an online newspaper, fighting for the same ad dollars as the rest of its Web 2.0 brethren- and the rest of the online and offline newspapers. In an effort to be like Google, it has put itself in the same predicament Google is in- the frantic search for eyeballs in the hope that somehow a little alchemy can turn those eyeballs into cash.

The myth of the infinite ad dollar is a house of cards I tell ya. And it’s going to implode one day.

Annoyingly, existing AOL users have to navigate through a maze to find out how to turn their account into a free account, and even at the end of the maze, you’re required to make a phone call and enter an even bigger, more frustrating maze. If free is so good, why are they making it so hard for people to be free?

Ted Leonsis of AOL does his best to spin this news like its some brilliant new strategy, as opposed to a recognition of the inevitable fact that the market for AOL’s paid services is shrinking. Mr. Internet chimes in with his take as well.

I can’t blame them for trying- they’re trying to make money, after all. But let’s take a closer look.

Ted Says:

The new plan is about growth. It is about changing the focus of our teams and resources. It is about having a green thumb and showing the world that we have green arrows pointing up in all of the key metrics that are important to our business. It is about a simple and logical statement of fact – AOL should never lose another customer to a competitor, and we should be able to expand rapidly on a global basis as the high-speed free Internet gains even greater momentum.

Mr. Internet Says:

Yes, yes, yes… it is so hard to run a business that has two different focuses. In our case the focus was keeping the dialup subscribers and building free services. These collide all the time. For example, today’s free 5 GIG of storage–the boldest move AOL has done since buying Weblogs, Inc and moving Netscape to social news–would have been a service reserved for our paid members. Then Google would offer it for free and our members would be paying for something they could get for free–again (just like email and IM). This constant back and forth is really draining for the members and for the executives. Smart people can make both arguments (free vs. paid), but at the end of the day you have to pick where the ship is heading and we’re picking free.

Common Sense Says:

If Dell started giving away its exploding laptops, it wouldn’t lose many customers to competitors either. Didn’t these guys take Economics 101? Picking free is only a good choice when no one wants to buy what you’re selling. And if no one is buying what you are selling, you aren’t a business. I’d change the word boldest in Mr. Internet’s post to most desperate.

Revenue, revenue, revenue. Sustainable revenue. Say it with me.

That word revenue is mentioned a total of 4 times in Ted and Mr. Internet’s posts. Four times in 2319 total words. And except for one vague mention of multiple revenue sources, it always follows closely behind the word ad or advertising.

Speaking of multiple revenue sources, I wonder how AOL’a dial-up customers feel about the fact that they get to keep ponying up their subscription fees while broadband users get the goods for free? I understand the logic behind this, as the demand for AOL from broadband users is likely small and getting smaller. But it still sounds like AOL is sticking it to the people who, AOL believes, don’t have as many options as broadband users. Many of whom are likely some of AOL’s oldest customers.

Like most, I learned the internet on AOL. I have been a defender of AOL in the past.

But this move looks like the desperate act of a desperate company.

Update: Dwight Silverman reports that you can now switch to the free plan online. I just did it and it was very quick and easy. Now at least I’m not paying for the AOL account I never use.