This is part two of my A-Z review of Scoble's feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

First, some housekeeping. I have decided that Bloglines is worthless. Most of the posts in the feeds I imported there appear to be months old- even though most of the blogs have many newer posts. For some reason, Bloglines is not picking up all the posts in a feed. So I dumped Bloglines and imported Scoble's OPML file into FeedDemon. Hopefully this will work better- it can't be any worse. I'd prefer a web based reader for this task, but if Bloglines is representative of how those work, I'll pass.

Now, for my favorite feed from the B's:

Bernie DeKoven's FunLog (RSS Feed)

Bernie DeKoven's FunLog is a blog about fun. It's that simple. With a world full of blogs about technology, politics, music, Web 2.0 (whatever the hell that is) and other "important stuff" it's refreshing to find a blog about origami, croquet, cubicle bowling and other "fun" stuff.

Honorable Mention:

Blog Maverick (RSS Feed)

BoingBoing (RSS Feed) (ineligible because I, like everyone else, already read it)

Blog Consulting & Professional Blogging a View from the Isle ( RSS Feed) (Might have warranted a tie, but got a much deserved too long name penalty)

Technorati Tags:
scoblefeeds, blogs, rss

As I have mentioned before, blogging software represents an evolutionary leap in web site content management. The right software and the right template make adding, editing, archiving and removing content a whole lot easier than it used to be. It also makes for a visually appealing and well organized web site.

So, given all of that, why does the Drudge Report still look like this? I used to start there first for breaking news, but good blog layouts have spoiled me and now I find his page to be very hard to read. A good blog makeover would do wonders for that page.

I would actually prefer a current RSS feed, but even if that's not going to happen, a new layout would suffice.

Drudge, you're still the man, but you need to fix your page in a big way. Set up a blog format, with sidebars and archives. Heck, do a podcast if you're so inclined. You've got good content, but it's just too hard to access and read.

Blog and blog now.

Technorati Tags:
drudge

To be very careful who you buy from on the internet.

I don't want to scare my friends who, despite all of my work here and over dinner, continue to believe that the internet is merely a large scale scam populated only by people who want to rob you and steal your indentity. Some of my friends place bungee jumping and internet buying in the same risk category.

Having said that, one of my long-standing rules is to either buy from a known entity like Amazon, Newegg, etc. (even if the item costs a few more dollars there) or do an extensive Google and Newsgroup search on the seller. In fact, I feel much more comfortable buying something from a high feedback (number and percentage) seller on eBay than from some company I've never heard of.

Technorati Tags:
scams

As may be evident by the fact that my oldest child is named after one of their songs, I have always been a huge Grateful Dead fan. For as long as I can remember, fans have been able to freely tape Dead shows and many, many concert recordings have been freely and legally available on the net. In particular, Archive.Org has been a great place to find live Dead shows.

Now comes news that Jerry Garcia's widow and perhaps another living band member have required that the live recordings of Dead concerts be removed from Archive.Org. Audience recordings will be available in streaming format (meaning you can listen but not download). The generally better quality soundboard recordings will not be available (except presumably at the offical Dead site where downloads of live shows are for sale).

John Perry Barlow, one of the coolest people on the planet and the co-writer of many great Dead songs, had this to say about this recent turn of events:

You have no idea how sad I am about this. I fought it hammer and tong, but the drummers had inoperable bricks in their head about it.

What's worse is that they now want to remove all Dead music from the Web. They might as easily put a teaspoon of food coloring in a swimming pool and then tell the pool owner to get it back to them.

It's like finding out that your brother is a child molester. And then, worse, having everyone then assume that you're a child molester too. I've been called a hypocrite in three languages already.

How magnificently counter-productive of them. It's as if the goose who laid the golden egg had decided to commit suicide so that he could get more golden eggs.

This is just the beginning of the backlash, I promise you.

This is worse than the RIAA suing their customers.

Rolling Stone reports that there is a movement afoot to boycott the Dead (i.e., not buy any CDs or tickets to concerts by the surviving members). Boycott and Grateful Dead are two notions that should never have crossed paths.

Taking the other side of the argument, David Gan, host of The Grateful Dead Hour, says that the marketing arm of the Dead organization is not making enough money to support itself and that taping shows was never intended to result in the high-speed, mass distribution of recordings that until now was possible via the internet.

My take? On one hand, it is almost unbelievable that an organization as forward thinking as the Dead is taking such a huge step backwards. On the other hand, with no further ability to create new product, the Dead has a vested, though doomed to failure, interest in trying to control the product that's out there. I think I come down on the Dead's side with respect to the soundboard recordings, but not with respect to the audience recordings.

I suspect that the problem is that Jerry's widow and perhaps others within the organization are getting some different, and in my opinion, shortsighted, advice from someone. There may be a little money to be made by trying to recall these recordings from the internet. The public (read fan) relations cost, however, will be greater than any money that might be made. And of course those recordings are on the hard drives of thousands of people and will continue to be available somewhere- even if not at Archive.Org.

My prediction? Someone will give the decision-makers some better advice and a compromise will be reached. The Dead is not Sony. Let's give peace a chance.

Technorati Tags:
grateful dead

If somehow Barbara Streisand wins this contest then everything I fear and loathe will be rolled into one horrifying musical. (fn-1)

It seems that Andrew Lloyd Webber has signed on with the BBC for a TV talent show to play the Julie Andrews part in his stage version of The Sound of Music.

I don't have the words to describe how urgently I hope my wife doesn't find out about this and try to make me go.

Link

Footnotes:

1. While in my commited opinion all musicals are horrifying, some are more horrifying than others. The Sound of Music being by far the most horrifying of all.

Technorati Tags:
horror

Every time I promise myself to abandon my TIVO deathwatch, something else ludicrous happens.

Since it's been awhile, let me say again that I love my HDTV DirecTIVO. Even though many of them fail early and often (one of mine included), TIVOs are great. But once DirecTV needlessly abandoned it in favor of its own branded box, TIVO has been running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to make deals to save itself.

Some of the deals make sense, some don't. But nothing, perhaps in the history of space and time, is as dumb as this- TIVO is all fired up about its upcoming ad search service. That's right, soon we'll be able to search the ads we bought our TIVOs to avoid. TIVO thinks advertisers will engage in a lucrative bidding war for the most desirable keywords. Maybe we'll even get to search for our favorite infomercial. Dionne Warwick will rocket (back?) to stardom. Maybe next week TIVO will announce a searchable spam index (normally I would consider that humor, but in this case consider it a prediction).

Does anyone, anywhere think this is a good thing? I wish Steven Hawking would write a series of books on how TIVO went from the best digital product of the past 10 years to a company that believes ad searching is a good feature.

More evidence that TIVO has lost it:

1) According to Tom Rogers, President and CEO of TiVo, ad searching is a new and innovative advertising solution that will result in a better user experience for the viewer.

2) TIVO's much discussed (and sleep inducing to me) deal to make content available to video iPods might just get it sued by one of the networks TIVO has been catering to by adding all sorts of DRM features to the content we record. You can't please all the people all the time, but can TIVO actually manage to displease all the people all the time?

3) The photos of TIVO's other new deal (with Yahoo, Fandango (whatever that is) and Live365 (which hosts Rancho Radio)) look like the rebirth of WebTV, only without Microsoft pushing it. If TIVO wants to make a deal that just might save it, go do a Media PC-like, HDTV-inclusive deal with, that's right, Microsoft.

Marketwatch has an article that basically says TIVO is doing too many deals and too little thoughtful planning. I've been saying the same thing (though less eloquently) for some time. Maybe it's too late for TIVO. If not, it will be soon if it doesn't stop thrashing around for a life saving deal and decide what it wants to be and to whom.

Technorati Tags:
tivo, directv

PC World has an article on the upcoming improvements to Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. While not my primary email application, I use both services for one thing or another and am looking forward to the upcoming improvements.

Along with Gmail, these are the most popular web based email services. I never managed an invitation to beta test either service so this is the best I can do for a report.

It's a little hard to tell so far, but it looks like the new Hotmail (renamed Windows Live Mail) will strongly and naturally resemble Outlook. That will be convenient for those of us who use Outlook for email.

The main feature that I will be looking for is the ability to check email from the web based service via Outlook when I'm at home. Right now I do that with both Gmail and Hotmail. Currently, you have to pay for an upgrade to Yahoo! Mail in order to have Outlook access. I don't know if that will change with the new version. If it doesn't, that is a significant disadvantage.

While I like most things Google, including Gmail, its unusual (perhaps evolutionary, perhaps not) folder and inbox structure would make me hesitant to use it as my primary email application. Given all of the above, my money is on Hotmail to win this race.

The bottom line is that we have 3 major web-based email providers engaged in a feature and service war for our business. That is a very good thing for consumers.

Technorati Tags:
email

I mentioned yesterday that Scoble has updated his blogroll, and that I was looking forward to mining it for new blogs to read.

I have decided to A-Z it sort of like I am doing with my songs on the Err Bear Music page. Once or twice a week I'll post my favorite feed from a letter of the alphabet. There may be ties and there may be some letters with no selection.

A couple of rules:

1) I am going to skip all blogs with names that begin with a "." the same way I skip all the aaa whatevers in the Yellow Pages.

2) I am looking for blogs that interest me, and I am not interested in all things. I am not a coder (anymore), I don't use Linux (anymore) and I care nada about politics and cellphones. I like personal tech, music and a bunch of other stuff. Accordingly, there will be some great blogs I skip over solely because of the subject matter and some lesser known blogs I select for the same reason.

3) If I already read a blog daily, it is ineligible, though it will get an honorable mention inclusion. This is about mining new blogs.

4) My descriptions of the blog will be intentionally short. You can learn more by subscribing to the feed than you can by reading what I think about it.

So without no further adieu, the A pick(s).

There are lots and lots of A's so we're going to start out with a tie:

A blog doesn't need a clever name (RSS feed)

Ask Dave Taylor! (RSS feed)

A blog doesn't need a clever name covers a lot of stuff: tech, music, politics, etc. I'm not interested in all of it, but even the stuff I don't care about is packaged in a way that makes it readable. I think I will learn some stuff I don't know here, as well as more about stuff I do know.

Ask Dave Taylor! is exactly the kind of blog my 'Tweeners should read. He answers questions about tech stuff in a way that's easy to understand. I'm going to refer a lot of my 40 something friends to this site as a way to begin the journey from luddite to geek.

Honorable Mention:

A VC (RSS Feed) (ineligible because I've read Fred's excellent blog for a long time and this is a blog mining experiment).

A Welsh View (RSS Feed) (for the same reason)

Addicted to Digital Media (RSS Feed)

Technorati Tags:
scoblefeeds, blogs, rss

It's hard to promote your blog to the right people without seeming pushy or arrogant. More on that later, as my year-long 2006 project gets firmed up, named and announced here.

But it's also pretty hard to find good blogs to read. I am constantly looking for interesting and informative blogs to read. I have about 20 in my Onfolio feedlist, and I'd love to have about 30 more, as I once again reconsider my prior position and find that I get the large majority of my web content via newsreaders.

Lucky for all of us, Scoble has updated his blogroll. He posted his OMPL file which will allow you to import his feeds into your newsreader. I want to keep my Onfolio list smaller, so I imported Scoble's entire list into my Bloglines account. Now I have a ton of feeds to review at my leisure and I can import the ones I really like into my permanent Onfolio list.

As I go through the list, I'll post notes about the ones I like the most.

The fact that A-Listers like Scoble are out looking for new blogs to read is encouraging. The fact that he has compiled a list of feeds is also encouraging. More chances to get read and more chances to read.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, rss

One of the primary purposes of Newsome.Org is to introduce and explain computer-related programs and features to other in-betweeners like me- people who are the parents of our children to whom computers and the internet are as integral as the telephone and the children of our parents who will never fully embrace technology.

I've posted before about my transition to a Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC and how much I like it. My conclusion is that a convertible Tablet PC will do virtually everything a traditional laptop will do, so why not chose one that does both- like the excellent Thinkpad X41.

JKOnTheRun posted an excellent Tablet PC buying guide the other day. There are various types of Tablet PCs available and his post does a great job of helping you decide which one is right for you.

My Tablet PC selection came down to a couple of decisions:

1) Convertible vs Slate. For me having a keyboard is simply a must. I tried it the other way, and it was just too hard to be really productive on the road. The one without the keyboard is great for checking email by the pool, but was not good for writing or editing documents.

2) Weight vs Extras. This was harder for me, as I am not bothered by a few more pounds if I can get extras like a DVD burner, more ports, etc. I ultimately chose the X41 (lighter with no DVD drive) because a lot of my work on the road is done in airplanes and the X41 is the perfect size and weight for easy airplane use.

I chose a lighter, convertible model, for the reasons stated above. But before you run off and buy one read and consider the issues and tips in JK's post.

Technorati Tags:
tablet pc

I don't see many movies in the theatre. Other then the kids movies that we see as a family, I normally don't see a movie until it comes out on DVD. Sometimes I don't get around to watching a movie until long after it is released.

That's why I just watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night.

This is a perfect movie. Excellent performances all around. I like every single thing about it. Clever, interesting and thought provoking, but not pretentious. I watched this movie carefully and really got a lot from it. I am sure, however, that there is more that I missed. Unlike 99.99% of the movies I have watched, I'll watch this one again.

Definitely one of my top 10 all-time. Definitely.

Technorati Tags:
20 second movie review

Today is Raina's birthday. Cassidy and I got up early and went to the store. We bought a big balloon, a cake, some flowers and some cards. She and Delaney wrote notes and signed their cards and we called Raina downstairs for her surprise.

We hope she has a great birthday!

I mentioned the other day that I was going to try Movielink when traveling with my new Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC. I hope that it will allow me to "rent" movies to watch on the airplane and in the airport when I'm on the road.

Well, I tried it last week when I went to Dallas to give a speech. The verdict: so far so good with one glaring exception- the Movielink web site does not support Firefox. The page states unapologetically: " We do not support Mozilla or Netscape. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." I'm not sure how any commercial web site thinks it can force its users to use a particular browser, but my need for movies trumped my annoyance so I fired up Internet Explorer.

I rented an old Lon Chaney movie for $1.99. The way rentals work is that you select a movie and download it using Movielink's download manager. Then you have 30 days to start the movie and 24 hours after you start the movie to finish it (or buy another 24 hours for, at least in this case, 99 cents). The movie downloaded easily and the Movielink download manager is easy to use and intuitive. I watched half the movie on the airplane and the other half that night before bed. The picture was excellent, even in full screen mode, and the sound was fine. In sum, I liked the process and will definitely use it again on trips. Assuming there will be a steady stream of new movies to rent, Movielink will greatly mitigate the lack of a DVD drive on the X41.

Kevin Maney posted about Movielink the other day, saying that Movielink is "crippled" by the lack of titles and the restrictions imposed on the movies after you download them. I enjoy old movies, so it will take a while for me to work my way through the catalog. When I do, however, the lack of new titles will be a problem. As anyone who reads this blog knows I am not a fan of DRM of any kind. When I rent movies or watch them on pay-per-view, however, I accept the greatest restriction of all- you have to pay by the day (for traditional rentals) and you can only watch it once (for pay-per-view) so I don't find the restrictions to be all that troubling in this case.

I hope Movielink will make it. It is far preferable to watching the highly edited and often lame movies shown on tiny screens and with overpriced headphones in airplanes.

Technorati Tags:
movielink, tablet pc

We set up a soccer field in the new yard and Cassidy, Delaney and I have come up with a way to play one on two (old slow daddy against young and tireless Cassidy and Delaney). Here's how it works. Cassidy and Delaney can run anywhere on the field, but I have to stay within around 12 feet from my own goal (we use one of the trees as the marker). This means that all of my shots are long distance shots, which makes it hard to score. In fact, I am 0-5, having lost 3-2, 5-2, 2-1 and, in a couple of one-sided marathons, 20-8 and 20-9. During the last couple of games, Cassidy actually concluded that I couldn't score on an open goal and that there was no real need on her part to play hard on defense.

It's amazing how much the kids get into it when they think it's playing instead of practicing. Cassidy has already figured out four things on her own that she never learned at soccer practice:

1) If I get the ball, either by stealing it or after she scores a goal, she runs back to her goal and guards it (more casually now than at first since she thinks correctly that I can't kick the ball straight). Since I am kicking from the other end of the field, I cannot (and probably never will) score a goal if she gets back into position. My only chance is to kick it around and past her while she's running back. This is hard to do, which is why I have lost 5 straight games.

2) If she's dribbling towards my goal and I challenge her, she turns around and kicks the ball back out to mid-field, beyond the tree- where I cannot go, and starts over.

3) If she gets close to my goal and kicks it hard, most of the time the worst thing that will happen is the ball bounces off my leg and she gets another shot. If she kicks it hard and repeatedly, she often scores, since I can only block so many shots in a row.

4) She and Delaney have learned to work together. One of them gets on one side of my goal and one on the other. When they do this correctly, it is almost impossible for me to stop them from scoring.

If we'd had this yard when she was 3 years old, Cassidy would be a good and interested soccer player. I don't know if it's too late to get her interested in it, but I'm going to try. Delaney may actually become a good player by the start of next season.

This is the first sports game we have come up with where I can try as hard as I want and it's still competitive and fun. It is a whole lot of fun, especially for them. It's easy to have fun when you're clobbering your daddy.

Here's my update on the redesigned, very busy and ads aplenty Houston Chronicle web site. Part 1 is here.

One of the guys at the Chronicle has a blog about the Chronicle. He asked "How Do You Like Us Now?" and based on the comments to that post, I'd have to say not too much. The complaints range from too many ads, to too little content, to too darn slow.

Dwight Silverman posted yesterday and (a) confirmed (in my mind at least) the "community building" objective I mentioned in my prior post by announcing a bunch of tech-related reader forums (reader forums equal more page views which equal more potential ad revenue), (b) said that the problems that were making the site so slow have been resolved (it has seemed faster the last day or so) and (c) said that he thought we'd like the redesigned site once we get used to the change (perhaps I'm looking for my cheese, but I don't think I'm going to learn to love the new layout).

I know that the whole newspaper revenue model is going up in flames as people move towards free web content in lieu of papers in their yard every morning (we haven't subscribed to a newspaper in many years). And I applaud the Chronicle for trying to get out in front of this problem while there's still time. And I even understand the need to sell ads to pay people like Dwight to write the content we want to read. What I don't like is having the Chronicle's front page try to push me toward those things (e.g., classifieds, job listings, etc.) that still generate revenue. I have never used that stuff and I never will. I want news and commentary. If I have to work too hard to find it, then I'll get it someplace else.

I also don't think all of these reader forums are going to turn the Chronicle web site into the page viewing, ad-clicking cyber-community they're hoping for. Lots of media (read TV stations, radio stations and newspapers) have tried to build internet communities and most have failed. Here's why.

There are two kinds of web site readers. One, people who either don't know how or don't want to get interactive. They just want to come to a site, get the information they want and leave. All of the reader forums in the world are not going to entice these folks to start debating school revenue or the latest Lost episode on some message board. Two, people who have the desire to be interactive and the knowledge to do it. Those folks generally choose their ultimate internet community (by ultimate I mean their internet "home base") based on relatively narrow shared interests like hunting, sports, photography (think Flickr) and other shared passions. They may initially be drawn to all these reader forum links the Chronicle is putting out there, but eventually they'll find a more comfortable niche elsewhere. A community built on a city or a newspaper is too broad. There's no glue to hold people there.

So where does that leave us? The pages load faster. That's good. The content is still there somewhere- I just have to click around to find it. I don't care a whit about the reader forums or the classified ads. Don't get me started about the polls (another doomed to failure attempt at creating interactivity). At least the lottery numbers seem to have been relagated to a link as opposed to a real estate hogging list.

It's not horrible. It might even be getting slightly better. But it's not good either. And it needs to be good.

Technorati Tags:
houston chronicle

One of the primary purposes of Newsome.Org is to introduce and explain computer-related programs and features to other in-betweeners like me- people who are the parents of the youngsters to whom computers and the internet are as integral as the telephone and the children of our parents who have no intention of ever using computers.

I have a pretty extensive home network. Most rooms and all bedrooms have wired network access leading to a Linksys 10/100/1000 Router. I also have a secured wireless network with access points upstairs and downstairs. It works fine except for one thing: backup.

The computer in my home office is so loud that putting another computer in there for backups simply isn't an option. Raina's office is too small (and chaotic) to accomodate another computer. The kids don't and won't have computers (or TVs) in their rooms. With the pending arrival of child number three, we're down to one guest room that cannot double as my backup server room. Even when I had my backup server in that room, it was not a good solution. Everytime we lost power and often when we didn't, that computer would be down or inaccessible over the network for some reason- requiring me to trudge upstairs, reboot and hope.

So, I decided to find another solution. After considering and quickly rejecting online backup, I elected to try network storage- specifically Maxtor's Network Storage drive. Here's the skinny.

Basically, a network storage device is an external hard drive that has a network connection and can be accessed from other computers on the network. After installation, it appears as a hard drive just like the other hard drive(s) on the computers.

The Maxtor drive was a breeze to set up and install. You take the drive out of the box, plug it in, attach the included network cable to the drive and then to your network outlet, and turn the unit on. Then you insert the included CD on each computer you want to access the network drive and follow the step by step instructions to set up an access ID and password. It is that simple. Without cracking the instruction manual, I had the drive up and running and accessible by three computers in under 15 minutes.

The drive has a USB port that supposedly allows you to connect additional drives and increase the capacity. I haven't tried that, but if it works it's a very nice feature.

My only mild complaint is that the software you install on each computer to allow access to the network drive automatically creates a bunch of folders on the network drive (My Documents, My Music, etc.). I am not a big fan of the "My" naming convention. Fortunately, it was easy to rename or delete the created folders.

So what does this do for me? It gives me the very important backup capability without the necessity of maintaining a second computer. Plus, the network drive is much smaller and easier to place than an entire computer, monitor, keyboard, etc.

This is a great product.

Technorati Tags:
network storage, backup

Kevin Maney, USA Today's tech writer, is also a songwriter. He has posted a couple of his own tech-inspired songs on his blog, including the excellent Found It On Google.

The other day he posted in search of tech-related songs. I emailed him a link to Lost in a 403, a song Ronnie Jeffrey and I wrote a couple of years ago. He mentioned it in a post today. Many thanks, Kevin, for the link.

Look for more Tech Songs every Tuesday on Kevin's blog. It's one of my daily reads- for the tech and the music.

Technorati Tags:
songwriting, tech songs

Well, after this post I guess I can stop hoping for a link from Dwight Silverman. The Houston Chronicle unveiled its new web site design today. To put it diplomatically, the new front page is not very good. To speak frankly, I really don't like it. The jury is out on the rest of the redesigned site.

While it was certainly not cutting edge, I liked the old Chronicle page because there was a lot of news on the front page. You could scroll down the front page and see links to most of the stories in all of the sections. Not any more. Not by a long shot.

My rough estimate of the real estate allocation of the new front page:

Menus/Site Info: 20%
Photos: 8% (including a tiny live traffic map- are you kidding me?)
Third Party Ads: 25%
Chronicle Ads: 5%
Polls/Forum List/Lottery: 10% (again, are you kidding me?)
Blog list: 5% (this is a good addition)
Classifieds/Jobs: 12%
News: 15% (that's right- very little news content)

Lots of ads. Not much news. As bad as it looks in a regular browser, I can't imagine how bad it will look (and how hard it will be to find the content) on a handheld.

There is some sort of a flash-looking thing that purports to provide "easy access to popular features," but I find it to be exactly that- a lot of flash. If I want to see little boxes with little snippets of information, I'll go back to AOL.

There is a News link at the top that takes you to a page with a lot more news content/links on it. This page, if it stays flash and ad-overfill free, may be the one to link to. I wish this News page was the front page.

It is obvious to me that the redesign has 3 purposes: first, to generate more page views (e.g., potential ad revenue) by making you click around to find the content you want. Second, to try to build some sort of community by adding blog listings and reader forums to the front page. Third, to highlight those parts of the site that make money (classifieds, etc.).

The bottom line is that the Chronicle dumped a useful design in favor of one that is less informative, less useful, too busy, and with a bunch of useless stuff on the front page.

Maybe this is a work in progress that will get better. But if the current design is any indication of where they're headed, I am not hopeful that the end result will be an improvement over the old design.

Technorati Tags:
houston chronicle

The Newsomes, Clarks and Veldmans went to the Texas Renaissance Festival today. This was the 6th straight year we have been and, as always, it was great. The kids had a blast.

We rode elephants, camels and llamas. The kids rode the merry-go-round, the spinning cups and the big swing. Cassidy did the bungee cord/trampoline thing and loved it- she was higher than the top of our house!

We dug in the rock mine and found some really cool rocks.

We ate some good food, saw some jousting and watched a funny mud pit show. Mostly we just walked around and had a great time.

On the way back we stopped at a Greek restaurant and had dinner. My sister won't believe it, but I actually liked the food. Mercifully, there was not a grape leaf in sight.

Technorati Tags:
family fun

(1) I went with my grandfather to Houston to see a baseball series between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros. It was my first time on an airplane and my first trip to Houston. Little did I know that I would end up living here. After the game, we got a bunch of autographs from the Houston players.

(2) I started the fifth grade. That was the first year my school was integrated. It seems surreal to me now that before that white kids and black kids went to different schools. We had no problems at all at my school. In fact, my teacher that year, Mrs. McIver, who previously taught at the black elementary school, became and remains one of my favorite teachers ever.

(3) I remember seeing reports about the Kent State shootings on TV. I was too young to be as outraged as I should have been. Neil Young wrote a phenomenal protest song about that horrible event.

Technorati Tags:
3 things project

Now that Project Flickr has proved to be a complete failure, I need a new experiment. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go internet fishing for some old friends of mine.

When I started this blog I figured by posting here, sending some emails, sharing photos, etc, I'd create a happy little cyber-community and all of my current and past friends would join me in an in internet reunion and love-fest. Well, that didn't happen. While Newsome.Org has a bunch of readers, my record as a poor correspondent who has lost touch with a lot of his old friends remains mostly intact.

Everyone who uses the internet does a Google search on himself or herself from time to time, so I'm going to cast some lines in the great Google lake and see if I can catch an old buddy or two. My bait will consist of occasional Friend Fishing posts about people I haven't heard from in a while. Maybe some of these folks will find a link to a post about them and find their way here. I'm sure they won't sign up for Flickr (I'm not bitter, really. I just sound that way), but maybe they'll send an email or leave a comment and tell me what they've been up to.

I'm going to start with the infamous Pud Man. My old friend Kevin Morris is, like me, originally from Cheraw, SC (now a Google search for Kevin Morris and Cheraw will pick up this post).

Pud Man, as we called him for reasons I can't recall, drove a yellow car we naturally called the Pud Mobile, until he wrecked it on Highway 9 one day. He was a good basketball player and a very smart dude. He had a very strict mom and didn't start partying until around our senior year of high school. He made up for lost time though- I remember one night he and I got all liquored up at Pizza Inn after we got off work. He spent the night with me the night of our Senior Prom and we drove around drinking before and after the dance with our highly irritated dates. I'm pretty sure that neither of those too-nice-for-us girls ever spoke to us again.

I last spoke to Kevin in 1998. He was living in Charlotte, NC and working for a bank. He has a daughter close to Cassidy's age.

Pud Man is the Kevin whose yard was the target in my factually accurate song, The Kansas Reflector Incident.

He is the guy making the "err" face at the far left in the photo. It's not really possible to explain "err" after all this time, but that very important word was the inspiration for the name of my publishing company, Err Bear Music.

I'm going to toss this post in the water and see if I get a bite.

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friend fishing

You know the drill. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play. Each week, I add a little commentary about some of the artists, songs, albums, etc.

Maman Rosin - Beausoleil (Vintage Beausoleil) (1)
Papa Gene's Blues - The Buckets (N/A) (2)
Let's Live Together - Robbie Fulks (Country Love Songs) (3)
Moonrise - Charles Brown (The Classic Early Recordings) (4)
Boot-Leg - Booker T. and the MGs (Stax Set) (5)
4th of July, Asbury Park - Bruce Springsteen (The Wild, the Innocent...) (6)
Bungle in the Jungle - Jethro Tull (War Child) (7)
Standin' - Townes Van Zandt (High, Low and in Between) (8)
Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac (In Chicago 1969) (9)
One of a Kind - Moe Bandy (Honky Tonk Amnesia) (10)


(1) I rember going to hear Beausoleil at the Bon Ton Room back in the eighties. I also saw them at the Festival Acadians in Lafayette, Louisiana in 2003. Great cajun band- a little better live than on record.

(2) My friend Ray sent me some MP3s a couple of years ago. They were supposed to go on his band, The Buckets, second album. Their first record is available from Amazon. Unfortunately, the second one never got made. Another great alt. country, slightly Byrds-like song, from one of my favorite songwriters.

(3) An original that sounds like a classic country number from his first record. I like most of his songs, including this one. Some of his satirical, trying to be funny, songs miss the mark a little with me. But at least half the songs off of any of his records will be excellent.

(4) Charles Brown is one of my favorite piano players, behind my all-time favorite Otis Spann. This is an old, old song and it sounds like it. But even your grandfather's Charles Brown is good stuff.

(5) Booker T. rocks on a lot of stuff, including this one. Folks that only know him from Green Onions should check out more of his stuff. Funky, funky, funky.

(6) I just wrote about this record as a part of my Favorite Records series. Great folky, funky sound.

(7) I really like Jethro Tull. Raina says they were by far the worst concert (out of many) that I've drug her to. This one, while a little tired from too much airplay on the classic rock stations, has everything that makes them a fine band.

(8) I bought every one of his records, until he died and people started repackaging and rereleasing records that may or may not be previously unheard stuff. High, Low and in Between was the second Townes record I bought, and its a good one. This one gets lost in the shuffle among the many excellent songs on this record, but it shouldn't because it's a fine song.

(9) Most people don't realize that before they became a gigantic rock band, they were an awesome blues band lead by the great Peter Green. Well they were and this record is proof of that. Recorded with blues legends like Otis Spann and Willie Dixon. One of my top 10 blues records of all-time.

(10) I grew up listening to country music before it became the regurgitated pop music that it is now. This is a great cheatin', drinking, honky tonker that makes me remember why I love country music.

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jukebox annotated, music reviews

I've got 3 potential new bands to add to my good list.

The other night I was driving home and listening to XM-12- the mostly but only in a real middle of the road kind of a way alternative country, Americana station on XM. I listen to it a lot, mostly because I can't map out the difference between Lucy, Ethyl and Fred (Lucy seems to be the best, but only on some days- it's very confusing to me). Anyway, they had this live show thing on and the band was Cigar Store Indians. They were recorded, as far as I could tell, playing live in XM's studio in front of little or nobody. Anyhow, they were really good. And then they played a "love song" the singer wrote to his kids that really blew me away. Two things: (1) having written songs for both of my kids, I dig songs about kids, and (2) this song (his, not mine) is a damn fine song. The first time I heard the line "You're gonna try to live your life kind of like a script, like you're in a movie, like your watching it," I literally teared up. So I bought the record from CD Baby (sorry, baby, but only because Amazon didn't have it- I dig the Prime). I sampled some of the other songs and they sound really good. I'm a little worried about the rockabilly references, but the sound was more alternative country than rockabilly and that's what I'm hoping for.

I also heard a really good song by a band called Bucktown Kickback on XM-12 the other day. So I bought their CD too. More on both after they arrive in a week or so (more than the 2 days it takes to get stuff from Amazon thanks to the Prime). I really dig the Prime.

CD Baby, here's what you do. Get some shipping thing like the Prime going, and then allow me to download MP3s of the records I buy. That and the pay by Paypal option would lead me back to CD Baby. Also, get better servers- your site is slow, slow, slow. But you're supporting the starving artists and I'm one of those, so you're still good with me.

Finally, I got exactly the kind of email an artist should send if he or she wants me to listen to their stuff.

I got an email from one of the guys in Chuckanut Drive. First of all, the email had a link to a page where I could hear full versions of all of the songs on their new record. Second, he described the band as "a mix of Exile Era Stones/Gram Parsons with the Byrds and a touch of Stax Soul thrown in for good measure." So either he's been reading my blog and has condensed my musical taste into 22 words, or this is my kind of band. I listened to a few of the songs, and they are very, very good! My favorite so far is Pittsburgh (I put it on my server to keep the location provided to me private and so I wouldn't be stealing bandwidth). This is a mighty good song that will be in the Rancho Radio rotation next time we update. It might even get on the upcoming City Names edition of our RanchoCast. I'm looking forward to hearing all the songs over the next few days.

As a songwriter, musician, sometimes entertainment lawyer and Grammy voter who has an internet radio station and does a podcast, I get a lot of music sent to me. Most of it is of less than Uncle Tupelo quality (to put it delicately) and some of it is too hard to access. Within about 3 seconds of reading this email, I was listening to some mighty fine music.

Anyhow, check out Chuckanut Drive. I'm going to.

Technorati Tags:
music reviews, alternative country, cd baby

Thomas Hawk has a good post today about the Record Label Cartel's never-ceasing effort to Stuff the Cat Back into The Bag.

I stood up and shouted Amen when I read this passage from his post:

What the media companies need to understand is that for years and years they gouged us over and over again. And now they are still trying to gouge us and at a certain point the anomosity that they have deservedly heaped upon themselves turns into outright hatred. So when the RIAA sues their customers, pouring even more gasoline on the fire, it's amazing that they cry foul when people shun them altogether and pursue the free and illegal routes.

As I've said over and over, there's a way to defeat the Cartel without stealing anything. Some smart person needs to create a company that duplicates CDs and creates and duplicates the associated packaging the way Qoop produces photo books. The same company could distribute the music on CD either by itelf or via Amazon and other online stores. The same company, or even the artist himself or herself, could distribute the songs electronically via MusicMatch, Yahoo Music, etc. Take out the middle man, and all the right people benefit.

Let the cat run. Down with the Cartel. Death to Videodrome! Long live The new flesh. And all that.

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digital music, music industry

I posted the other day about a couple of sites that seemed to be ripping off other sites. I also talked about some of the experiences I had when developing ACCBoards.Com and the other commercial web sites I created. Here's the so-called final update on those stories and some of my thoughts about winning the blog wars.

In the prior post I said that I was looking forward to the war of words between Jason Calacanis and the guy Jason says ripped off the look and feel of Weblogs, Inc. There were some words exchanged but not the shootout at the not-OK Corral that I was expecting. Today, Jason posted a "final update" on his blog. He has nothing good to say about the other guys, so I suspect this story isn't over.

The other story I mentioned, involving JKOnTheRun and a site he was formerly associated with, seems to have been resolved satisfactorily. JK emailed me that the other site changed their slogan shortly after he posted the story. There was some heated discussion in the comments to JK's original post, but as best I can tell, the only argumentative comments were from someone who seems to be going out of her way to take shots at JK. One thing I learned from developing message board sites is that there is always (and I mean always) someone who sees it the other way. That makes for a lot of carping, but it also creates the back and forth that message board sites and blogs need to thrive.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the "borrowing" of ideas and design from blogs is going to be a continuing problem as the blogosphere expands and matures. I don't know what the answer is, but I suspect we will be better off policing ourselves that letting the lawmakers and lawyers do it for us. Here's why.

The blog situation will probably follow the same pattern as the message boards did 5-6 years ago. After I founded and developed ACCBoards.Com into the most popular ACC sports site on the net, lots of people tried to copy the idea. At least one group rippped off the entire look and feel. It pissed me off greatly at the time. But because I had the traffic and, at that time, a partnership with JP Sports (who televised most of the ACC football games) and Raycom Sports (who did the basketball games), those copycat sites didn't appreciably impact our business. But imagine if I had been a little slower to line up the deals- imagine if I was still in the early growing stages of ACCBoards.Com when someone ripped off the concept and design. Then I might have been royally screwed.

And here's the problem. There's just not that much to be done about it. There is a very low barrier to entry for web sites, message boards and blogs. It is cheap (sometime as cheap as free) and relatively easy to create a web site or blog. It's even easier when you begin with the idea of replicating a concept. If your name is relatively unique, you can often stop someone from using your name (assuming you have perfected the intellectual property rights to that name via prior use and/or appropriate trademark and other similar filings, which most people have not done). You can probably keep someone from completely recreating your site (though they can come pretty close if they are careful- think generic soda, etc). But after spending thousands (at least) in legal fees, all you've accomplished is to force them make minor revisions to their web site which remains, in all substantive ways, a copy of yours.

So what do you do?

1) Get there first. Once the need has been filled, it takes an evolutionary advance to get people to move. Flickr is one example of such an advance (at the expense of Shutterfly, etc.), but those are few and far between. It's much easier just to be first.

2) Market and market well so (like JK and the phrase, OnTheRun) people associate a phrase with your site and you. I didn't realize this at the time, but the fact that people associate me with ACCBoards.Com and, accordingly, with sports web sites was very helpful to me in protecting ACCBoards.Com and launching other sites.

3) Make the deals with other vertical sites that embed you as the leader in the area (my JP Sports and Raycom deals created a barrier to traffic growth that otherwise would not have existed).

It's hard and expensive to win by lawyer. It's cheaper and better to win by planning and execution.

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blogging

The Onion is sort of like Monty Python. All of it is amusing, but some of it is hilarious.

This is hilarious.

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humor

This is the ninth part in my series of favorite records. The list so far is here. Yes, I know that I am still in the Bs and that my final list is going to have a lot more than 50 records on it, but what can I say. I keep finding excellent records on my music server.

I remember the first time I saw Bruce Springsteen in 1975. I didn't know that much about him prior to the concert, but afterwards, I knew I had discovered something special. Almost any of his records could make this list, but I'm goung to