Here’s a nice mellow vibe for a Saturday morning. I really like this video.
Great song too.
Author: Kent
Reader, writer, arithmeticer. Proprietor of Newsome.Org, a tech, music and life blog.
Like Rustlers, Like Outlaws, Like Thieves
I was in San Antonio yesterday, living the blessed life, on what would have been Woody Guthrie‘s 100th birthday. It was a great time, particularly since I didn’t turn on a TV, radio or computer the entire time, thereby getting a respite from the everybody hates everybody else spinfest that passes for news in our hijacked culture.
On the way out, we stopped by The Cove (highly recommended; best fish tacos I’ve ever tasted) for an excellent gospel brunch with Miss Nessie & the Ear Food Orchestra (as an aside, why can’t they play music like this at church, in lieu of those spirit killing, hundred year old, so-called hymns?).
One of the many, many great songs they played was Give God the Blues:
God don’t hate the Muslims
God don’t hate the Jews
God don’t hate the Christians
But we all give God the Blues.
A-frickin’-men.
Here’s the thing. The Republican Party isn’t going to save us. The Democrats aren’t going to save us. God knows (I believe this, literally) exclusionary organized religion is not going to save us. Hating someone who doesn’t look like you or believe what you believe sure as hell isn’t going to save us.
The only thing that might save us is ourselves. By understanding and embracing the fact that we are all people. And realizing that life isn’t about just taking as much as you can from everyone and everything you can.
Here’s a fantastic cover of a great Woody Guthrie song to help us get started.
Carry on.
Is the Demise of iGoogle an Opportunity for Yahoo?
I’ve been a proponent and user of internet start pages for a long, long time. My primary start page is a handmade one here. All of my desktop browsers are set to start and open new tabs there. I even have a mobile version, which I rarely use, simply because almost all mobile computing is done via apps (no one surfs the web on a phone; those who claim to are kidding, confused or lying).
I also use a third party start page for news, weather, sports, stocks, etc., because it is much easier to add widgets to third party start pages than to write them yourself. I used My Yahoo for years. Eventually, Yahoo’s neglect of My Yahoo (as a part of its apparent overall policy of neglecting every useful part of its web-based assets) and my growing dependence on Google, led me to largely abandon My Yahoo for iGoogle. Just in time for Google to announce the discontinuance of iGoogle, in what I interpret to be another doomed attempt at forcing users to embrace Google+.
Is this an opportunity for Yahoo?
There are a few alternatives out there. Netvibes is one that people are talking about. I’ve had a Netvibes account since the early beta, but I had to recover my credentials to see what my page looks like (e.g., I never use it).
Netvibes
That page screams 5 years ago, but with a little effort I could make it look and work OK. But My Yahoo could be so much better, if Yahoo would spend a fraction of the time nurturing it that it spends hiring and firing CEOs.
My Yahoo
My biggest criteria for a third party start page used to be which one was better. Now, it’s which one will likely exist longer. On the one hand, any start page could be trashed or bought or ignored into complete obsolescence at any moment. On the other, sometimes a market that everyone is abandoning is an opportunity in disguise.
Particularly if you have a built-in advantage.
Neither Google nor Netvibes is a content producer. Thus, most content they serve up is third party content. Yahoo, on the other hand, seems- at least at the moment- to be interested in producing content:
Levinsohn also will expand Yahoo’s effort to create its own news coverage of big events, such as the Olympics and national elections.
That fact, combined with the ad-serving potential and stickiness of an online home-base, sounds like an opportunity. Create a place people will actually want to use. Fill it up with your content and that of your content partners, sell some ads. Make some money. Reclaim your mojo. And so on.
For this to work, Yahoo has to (a) be paying attention, (b) recognize this opportunity, (c) seize the opportunity now, not months from now, and (d) allocate the resources to make it awesome. Sounds like a long shot, but that’s better than no shot. I hope Yahoo gives it a try. I’d love to love My Yahoo.
Again.
Song of the Weekend: 6/15/12
This weekend’s SOTW is Come Back by The Go.
Love, love, love that bass track.
The Go is an American rock & roll band from Detroit, Michigan. Their sound has evolved from garage punk to a blend of 1960s and 1970s influences, most notably The Beatles. The Go is composed primarily of Robert “Bobby” Harlow (vocals), John Krautner (guitar, bass), Marc Fellis (drums), James McConnell (lead guitar), and a rotating cast of other band members, including Jack White (later of The White Stripes, The Dead Weather and The Raconteurs), who was with the band from mid ’98 to early ’99.
Come Back is from their 2003 self-titled record (Amazon, iTunes, Spotify).
I heard this one at the end of Asylum Blackout, an OK, but nothing special, horror film I watched on Apple TV last night.
Why I Love Reddit
I can take or leave Facebook. I think Twitter is largely a spam-fest. Google+ is a beautifully designed, empty place. But let me be clear about one thing: I love me some Reddit.
For those about to be rocked, Reddit is an online community:
known for its open nature and diverse user community that generate its content. Its demographics allows for wide-ranging subject areas, or main subreddits, that receive much attention, as well as the ability for smaller subreddits to serve more niche purposes. The unique possibilities that subreddits provide create new opportunities for raising attention and fostering discussion across many areas. In gaining popularity in terms of unique users per day, Reddit has been a platform for many to raise publicity for a number of causes. And with that increased ability to garner attention and a large audience, users can use one of the largest communities on the Internet for new, revolutionary, and influential purposes.
Think of it as a very active message board populated, largely, by tech-savvy and knowledgeable users.
Enough nerd-talk. Let me show you why I love it.
Today, I came across an article describing a guy’s 10-year old Civilization game:
The world is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation. There are 3 remaining super nations in the year 3991 A.D, each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands.
I was a huge fan of Civilization for a long time. So this was something I was very interested in reading about. And of course it originated on Reddit. Not only is there a great write-up by the player himself, there are (as of this moment) 3000 comments.
Even better, there is now a subreddit dedicated to ending the 1700 year war between the Celts, the Vikings and the Americans.
Nowhere on the internets is the potential for interesting reading higher than at Reddit.
If you are just learning about Reddit, go check it out. You can thank me later.
Winter is Coming: And Here’s a Great Song to Prove It
So we all know that Game of Thrones, books and TV show, are just about perfect. To say I am immersed in George R.R. Martin‘s expansive world is an understatement. In fact, I have dreamed on more than one occasion that I was in Westeros. Those are my third favorite dream topics, behind only the times I’ve dreamed I was a member of the Grateful Dead and…. Well, other stuff.
While we wait impatiently for the next book in the series and season on TV, here is one of the most rocking songs I’ve heard in a long time.
I was previously unfamiliar with Dominik Omega and The Arcitype, but if this is indicative of their work, they should be performing in stadiums full of crazed fans. This is really good stuff.
OrvilleCopter: I Know It’s Wrong, So Why Can’t I Stop Laughing
OK, I am a cat person. I like them, and always have. I even re-captured one who ran away. He’s sitting in my lap as I write this. And even he’s laughing.
Some dude’s cat gets run over. Rather than bury him in the backyard, he turns him into some sort of flying machine. I guess it’s an act of love. A tribute. Or something.
I’ll probably be a little uncertain about this whole thing until PETA (this one, not that one), starts acting like it’s a capital offense, at which point I’ll conclude that the OrvilleCopter is awesome.
Cult of Mac Doubles Down on MacKeeper Craziness
My once favorite blog, Cult of Mac, has responded to the predictable outcry over its hawking of the extremely controversial MacKeeper software. Did they respond by actually installing, using and (this is important) trying to uninstall the program? Nope. They just did some Google searches and concluded, mostly, that it’s all good.
Except it ain’t.
As I noted before, I’ve never used MacKeeper and I never will. I don’t need to test my suspicions about it, because the marketing strategy alone (pop-unders, ripe for abuse affiliate program, etc.) tells me all I need to know.
Here’s MacKeeper’s PR manager’s explanation for that strategy:
We believe that we have a great product and we want people to know about it and the only way to do this is to explore every medium of advertisement.
What they want is to make money. Cash. Bucks. A desire they seem to share with Cult of Mac. If the program is so awesome and this is all about informing the unsuspecting masses that their Macs are in great danger, there would be no need for sketchy marketing and ineffective uninstallers. It’s not even about whether MacKeeper is good or bad; it’s the way they go about it.
But I don’t really care about MacKeeper.
What I care about is the fact that I can no longer trust Cult of Mac. If I have to wonder whether every app or service I read about on Cult of Mac is a great benefit or disguised malware, Cult of Mac is useless to me. If Cult of Mac’s response to that question is a Google search and some second hand anecdotal gibberish, in lieu of first hand analysis, then it’s not just useless- it’s dangerous.
I hope Cult of Mac made a butt load of money selling MacKeeper to its readers. Because they paid a big price in the process.
Risky Business: The Windows 8 Story
I’ve been reading a lot about the forthcoming Windows 8. I’ve used the Developer’s Preview a little. There’s a lot to like about it. And there are some problems. I haven’t written much about it, simply because I can’t decide if Microsoft’s Windows 8 plan is brilliant or idiotic. It’s clearly one or the other.
There’s no middle ground. That’s for sure.
Here’s what I think I think. So far.
One, Michael Mace has a fantastic write-up on the state and prospects of Windows 8. Literally one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time. In any medium.
Two, I’m just about certain the bolted together combination of the new Metro interface and the more traditional Windows interface is not going to make anyone happy. Will people suffer through it as an interim step into Microsoft’s mandated future desktop? Maybe. Maybe not. If I were a Windows user, I would. Because I’m a computer nerd. Those who don’t care about anything other than finding, starting and using the programs they need to do their work? That’s a tougher call.
Three, I think it is very risky for Microsoft to bet the farm on a mobile-first computing experience. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I simply don’t think anyone is going to use a Windows tablet, when the iPad is so clearly the established, preferred and beloved brand. Even dedicated Windows computer users have embraced the iPhone and iPad. I don’t see that changing. At all. Even if somehow Windows tablets turn out to be significantly cheaper (and I doubt this will be the case, especially when you add next to latest generation iPads into the mix), then there’s Android to deal with. It seems like Microsoft is aiming for the lower end of the market. Or at least drifting that way.
Fourth, pigs will fly before corporate America makes its change-resistant and outspoken workforce retrain under Windows 8, and Metro. My company is moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 (a tiny step at most), and you’d think they were moving from an Abacus to a Cray. The IT folks are, rightly so, very worried about the potential hue and cry from the people who create content. The jump from Windows 7 to Windows 8 would be seen (rightly or wrongly) as an invitation for mutiny. I think Paul Thurrott may be onto something, when he wonders if Microsoft has already given up on business adoption for this release.
If so, that is straight up crazy.
Fifth, while not specifically Windows 8 related, if I were running Microsoft, I would absolutely, without a doubt, nurture my last remaining monopoly by releasing Office apps for iOS. As fast as I could. The iPad experience has conclusively demonstrated that users will not forego a better tablet simply because Microsoft Office isn’t natively on it. There are multitudes of third party developers standing by to implement work-arounds.
Sixth, Microsoft’s inability to deliver a clear and concise marketing message is catching up with it. Need some examples? Well, there’s this. And the never-ending branding/naming changes. It seems very haphazard. Maybe it’s not, but nothing coming from Microsoft proves it. As much as anything, Microsoft needs someone to step up and become the spokesperson for- and face of- its strategic plan.
In sum, I want Windows 8 to be a roaring success. For a lot of reasons. I’m by no means certain it won’t be. But I am by no means certain it will be either.
Scary times for Microsoft.
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