Back in the day, after I developed the original ACCBoards.Com (which later became a part of and was merged into what is now the Scout network of sports sites), saw my traffic shoot through the roof, partnered up with a TV network and a major cable company, and started getting some serious checks in the mail, I decided that I was an expert in all things communal.  And that I should expand my empire accordingly.

I started with SECForums.Com, an SEC sports site.  It never took off, and I don’t own that domain any longer.  Then I developed AVBoards.Com, for audio-video enthusiasts.  It started off strong, based almost solely on traffic diverted from ACCBoards.Com, then died almost as quickly.  I let that domain lapse last month.

Others followed, and while a few of them survived, none of them were a fraction as successful as ACCBoards.Com.  Why?  Because I didn’t have the passion, the industry connections or- most importantly- the timing that I had with ACCBoards.Com.

I was neither good nor lucky, and to be successful on the web, you have to be both.

Pretty quickly my little web empire became diluted, scattered and lost in a sea of existing, entrenched alternatives.  I stopped doing one thing well and started doing a lot of things poorly.

There was a lesson there, and it’s one I learned, albeit at some significant opportunity costs.

In light of all that, I was a little dismayed this week when I read that Facebook was launching a full-fledged email client, and it was soul-crushing to learn that Google is going to add Twitter-like social network features to Gmail.

A little dismayed over the Facebook thing, because I am a light user of Facebook, so nothing that happens over there is going to materially affect my life.

Completely bummed out by the Google thing, because I use Gmail every day, and whatever happens there definitely affects my life.

Here’s the thing. . .

Facebook, you can’t invent Gmail because Gmail already exists.  Do what you do.  Let Gmail do what it does.

Google, you can’t invent Twitter because Twitter already exists.  Not to mention that there are a thousand better ways your development time and money could be spent.  Like improving the spotty integration of Google Apps, so they actually look and feel like a suite of apps, and not a bunch of unrelated products crammed ineffectively together.

Either make Google Apps a robust, business-ready tool, or make it an awesome toy.  Don’t create some crappy combination of both.

Google and Facebook, more than their peers, have a good track record of staying on course, even if that course isn’t readily apparent to the rest of us.  I’d like to believe there is a brilliant master plan in play here.

But I don’t.  I think it’s just a case of mass me-too-ism.

Today is the 100 year anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America.  Wired has a very interesting article asking if the Boy Scouts are still relevant.

That’s a fair question.

I was a Boy Scout.  In fact I am an Eagle Scout, having obtained that rank in November of 1973, at the ripe old age of 13.  Two years later, I went to the Scout World Jamboree in Lillehammer, Norway.  When I got home, I retired from Scouting, at the top of my Scouting game.  Sandy Kofax-style.

I learned a lot from Scouts, and my love of the outdoors was certainly nurtured by the many campouts and other outdoor activities provided by Scouting.  I had some cool Scout Masters, and made some good friends via my troop (long live the Err Bear Patrol!).

But even then, in the midst of it, I remember feeling just a little like a nerd.  I hate to admit that, given my general tendency to embrace the trappings of my simpler past.  But I’m not going to lie.  My love of the outdoors, my competitive nature that led me to work to become an Eagle and some of the contraband that we smuggled into camp, kept me involved.

But, again, under no one’s definition was I ever a gung-ho Boy Scout.

Only much later did I come to really appreciate the experience. 

Me (on the left) at the 1975
Scout World Jamboree

Much like I came to appreciate some (though not all) of the at-the-time-hated so-called great literature that was forced upon me at school- because I came to realize that it was good for me.  So when I try to assess Scouting in 2010, I have to do it from both the perspective of the active Scout (is it fun?) and the adult ex-Scout (was it good for you?).

I’d have to say sort of and yes.

Let’s start with the yes.  Scouting was definitely good for me.  I don’t volunteer the fact that I was a Scout, but when people learn I am an Eagle Scout, they are generally impressed.  Many of my outdoorsman skills were learned through Scouts.

Was it fun?  Yeah, mostly.  More importantly, is it fun now?

Like many parts of life, the Scouting experience has been politicized and watered down to the point that, I suspect, the Scouting experience now is very different from the one I had.  For one thing, as I understand it, entire families now go on Scout campouts.  Sorry, but I think that’s odd.  I go camping all the time with my family.  But Boy Scouts should be a different experience.  How can you really learn to get along outdoors if dad and mom are in the tent with you?

Perhaps these rules are mainly for younger Scouts, but still.  I remember when I was initiated into the Order of the Arrow.  They made us work like dogs for 14 hours clearing trees from a future campsite.  Then they gave us a sleeping bag and an egg, and dropped us off in the woods for the night, each of us alone.  That was the high point of my Scouting experience, even if I never did get that egg cooked.

I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it’s like that now.

I’m going to intentionally leave aside the issue of gays as Scout Masters and atheists being oppressed by the Scout Oath, and whatnot.  I see both sides of the former issue (though if pressed I will always end up on the pro-gay-rights side), and I am bored by the latter.

So is it fun?  Is it relevant?

At the end of the day, I have to say yes.  I come down on the pro-Scouting side largely because I think the Scouting experience, however diluted it may be, is better than just about any of the alternative ways for a boy to spend his weekend.

A campout, even one that everyone and his entire family attends where people tip-toe around on eggshells to avoid offending the ready-to-be-offended, has to be better than sitting in front of a computer or TV.  Learning to build a fire (assuming they still allow fires), has to be better than learning how to frag some other kid in some super-violent online, inside Xbox game.

It ain’t perfect.  Maybe it’s a little nerdy at times.  But it’s an existing framework that allows kids to get outside.  Maybe learn a skill or two.

That’s got to be OK.

Was definitely this one for Flo TV.  This pretty much was my generation.

Cool.

My dad was a Ford dealer.  Until I bought my Toyota Tundra a couple of years ago, I was a loyal Ford customer.  When I bought my Toyota, I felt a little guilty.

No more.

This week, in the wake of the Toyota recalls, I received a very official looking envelope, with a large, ominous message on the front” “IMPORTANT TOYOTA RECALL INFO ENCLOSED.”

So I put it aside, and opened it today.

Much to my surprise and Ford-hate inducing irritation, it was not a letter explaining how to get my truck fixed.  It was an ad from a Ford dealership trying to get me to buy a Ford.  Look, there is one reason and only one reason they dressed-up the envelope like this.  To get me to open some paper-spam that I would otherwise have immediately tossed in the trash.  I don’t know if this is illegal, but it should be.

Candidly, I hope Freeway Ford never sells another vehicle if this is the way it tries to attract customers.

Guess what Freeway Ford?  We are shopping for a car for my wife right now.  Guess what else?  We’re not going to buy a Ford.

So here I sit in a fancy hotel room in Austin, watching Paranormal Activity, which is shaping up to be a scary movie, and feeling irritated that the supposedly world-class fitness center in this hotel closes at 9:00 p.m.  Meanwhile people in Days Inns across America are happily running on lesser treadmills in non-world-class exercise rooms.  That are open.

Compounding my irritation is the fact that after deciding to freeze my butt off and run outside, I found the nearby trails to be pitch black- not a light anywhere.  It was hard to stay upright and on the trails walking.  Running would have been impossible.

It’s annoying.

Sort of like reading and responding to email on my laptop.  It’s too small to create a desktop monitor or keyboard experience, and too big to easily place in my lap or use as a quasi-handheld.  It’s just not a fulfilling experience.

I wonder if the iPad will fill this gap I have fallen into?

It could.  After all, much of the work we do on laptops- reading email, surfing the web, listening to music, etc.- doesn’t require a desktop-like experience.  And, again, how much worse could it really be than trying to hold this laptop and deal with this tiny keyboard?  I can tell you this- I can type emails much faster on my iPhone than this tiny, non-ergonomic keyboard.

For me to fully embrace the iPad, I need three things to happen.

One, I need Microsoft to recognize the huge market for Office applications.  As I have said a million times, Google Docs suck epicly.  Document intensive users are still bound to Word.  Microsoft should not give conflicted users another reason to try to free themselves of Office.  Rather, make it easy to stay hooked by creating some sort of Word app for the iPad.

Two, I need the iPad (and ATT) to permit the iPad to do what the iPhone still can’t do- tether.  That way I can dump my ATT wireless broadband card, and apply that money to 3G service on the iPad.  The lack of standard ports on the iPad doesn’t bode well for this, but I can hope.

Three, I need the rumors about a camera on the iPad to, miraculously, be true.  Maybe I won’t use the camera that much, but philosophically I can’t get past the lack of one.

If that happens, I’m in.  What are your must-have features?

By the way, Paranormal Activity is seriously scary. . .

We have numerous handcrafted Pandora stations to choose from. Start with our Country Rock Station, our Alt. Country Station,  or the Jukebox DeLuxe for a broader mix.

Newsome.Org Country Rock Radio
Newsome.Org Alt. Country Radio
Newsome.Org Blues Radio
Newsome.Org Jukebox Deluxe Radio
Newsome.Org Zydeco Radio
Newsome.Org Early Reggae Radio
All Station QuickMix

You can easily access these stations via the menu in the right hand column of these pages.  Enjoy!

For more great music try:
Errbear Music: Kent Newsome’s original songs (RSS)
Goodsongs.Com: Newsome.Org’s music recommendation page (RSS)
Kent’s MixCloud page: Great, themed, streaming playlists (RSS)

We’re really getting back into the rock and roll of things tonight.  I even did a new RanchoCast.  This edition has some great southern rock, with some deep cuts by the Allman Brothers, the Outlaws, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Grinder’s Switch and more.

Rock on.

In honor of the (mostly) success of my WordPress assault, I think it’s time for an Evening Reading post.

What Dwight Said: “In this battle between giants, readers will be collateral damage.” Amen.  Books are the new IM.  Everybody wanted to control the channel, and eventually people just gave up and moved on.

Meanwhile: Scoble displays his love (and hype-susceptibility) by burning his eBook in the name of Apple-love.

Forget Book Fights: JooJoo fights are where it’s at.  I want to interview someone who is buying a JooJoo, and ask one 3-letter question.

Speaking of Tablets:  Why do I have a lurking feeling that Dell is now working on a iPad competitor to be sold in third world countries?

WordPress Question:  I need an iPhone app.  What’s better WordPress or Wordpress 2?

Speaking of IM:  Is there really a market for this?  Seriously, who really relies on IM?  I really want to know.

Lost Turkeys of the New World:  This almost makes me want to be in a band again, so I can name it that.

WordPress Tip:  Very timely advice.  I am fighting a losing battle trying to get my WP permalinks to be the same as my 1600 or so imported-from-Blogger ones.

Yes, But:  So do all ads.  I work hard to have an ad-free existence.  I record all my TV shows.  I listen to radio via XM (until I can get Pandora in my truck).  I have ad-blockers installed in Firefox.

The Deleted World: Here’s a site that helps delete social networking accounts.  It ought to have a function to search via email address, etc. so you can find ones you want to delete.

The Freed Feed: Here’s how to get your Facebook status updates into an RSS feed.

The Day the Music (Label) Died:  If this is right, there’s just depression and acceptance to go.  In 7 years, there will be no record labels, the way we currently think of record labels.  Not a moment too soon.

The WordPress Process is a series of posts at Newsome.Org, documenting my forced march from the comfort of Blogger to the uncharted territories of WordPress.  Parts 1 & 2 are here, Part 3 is here, and Part 4 is here.

Wow, the support I received in response to my last post was amazing.  A million thanks!

The header is a work in progress, but I have fixed the page tabs.

I’ve fixed a lot of the embedded videos that got messed up on the import.  I’ll finish the rest as I work my way through the tagging and categorizing process.

I’ve already been though about a quarter of my old posts and added tags and categories.

Other than the header work, all I have left is to preserve permalinks (probably going to have to pay someone to do that for me) and figure out how to get Disqus comment and reaction numbers to show on the main WordPress pages.  Disqus is a great commenting platform, but this should be part of the plugin installation and/or options.

I have configured Live Writer to work with my WordPress installation, and this is a test post to see how it does.

Update 1: Pretty darn well.  I love the integrated Categories and Tags support.  Once again, I love Live Writer!

More as it develops

This post comes with a bounty.  Design experts can make an easy $200 by fixing some annoying glitches I am struggling with (one payment per problem solved; email me first).

The WordPress Process is a series of posts at Newsome.Org, documenting my forced march from the comfort of Blogger to the uncharted territories of WordPress.  Parts 1 & 2 are here, and Part 3 is here.

I have all posts imported.  Except as noted below, I have a handle on modifying my theme to make things the way I want them.  I have my Twitter widget installed, and I have installed a Feedburner plugin and updated my Feedburner feed.

Here are my theme-related issues:

1. Why does my theme resize up my logo/graphic in the header?  I have looked everywhere for this code to fix it, and I can’t find it.

2. I need to fix the greenish background around the page tabs in the header.  Again, I can’t find this in the files.

Any WordPress designers want to make a quick $100 (via Paypal) by fixing these problems and generally improving my header?

3. I note that my YouTube embedded videos didn’t make the transition. That’s going to be a pain to fix by hand.

I also ran into trouble importing my Disqus comments.  I have Disqus set up for new comments (though I want the number of comments and reactions to show at the bottom of posts on all pages), but I can’t get my existing comments to show on my imported posts.  Another $100 (via Paypal) to anyone who can fix this.

I installed an AddtoAny plugin to allow items to be shared.  It seems to work pretty well, but I absolutely hate the fact that it appends a note to the end of shared Tweets.

I need to lose that somehow.  I tried to hack the php file, but didn’t see the code that adds this.

Overall, things are coming along.