I'm starting to get the hang of my new camera. It's a slow process, but I'm getting there.



I learned code back in the day by looking at other programs and seeing how they were written. I found that approach a lot easier than just reading books (I read plenty, but it was the hands on stuff that got me over the hump). I've discovered a similar way to learn photography.

I explore on Flickr and when I find a photo I am interested in (such as brightly colored night shots, etc.) I look for the "More Properties" link in the "Additional Information" column on the right hand side. Via that link I can see all of the settings used for the particular shot. Over time I start to see patterns that lead to a better understanding of the interplay between ISO, aperture and shutter speed.

The shot above is of Aidan, who is becoming quite the swimmer.

After sitting by what they thought was their daughter's hospital bedside for weeks after an auto accident, a Michigan family learned today that she was not their daughter, but another blond-haired young woman injured in the same accident. Their own daughter, it turned out, was dead and buried.

Here is the report from the blog the family kept to update their daughter's progress.

The girls were students at Taylor University in Indiana and were in an accident while preparing for a banquet for the inauguration of the new school president.

I have a good friend from Bellaire who went to Taylor, as did one of my good friends from high school.

I can't imagine the grief this family must be going through.

I love lists and PC World keeps bringing them. The latest is their list of the 100 Best Products of the Year.

Here are some notes for each grouping of 10.

1-10

Lots of dual core chips, which I haven't used. Craigslist, the newspaper killer, is a well deserved number 3. Google Earth seems a little high at 6. Mine and Doc's new camera comes in at number 8. YouTube is 9, which sounds about right.

11-20

Photoshop Elements is too high at 11. Give me a program that edits like Paint Shop Pro and organizes like ACDSee 8 and I'll be so happy. Firefox is 12, but that seems too low. Google is 17.

21-30

Photoshop CS2 is number 22, proving that somebody at PC World has the Adobe love and a fat wallet. The new Yahoo mail (still in beta) is about right at 30.

31-40

TIVO, my dying on the vine favorite, is 31, which would have been too low two years ago and is too high today. Blogger gets some AOL-like bring the masses to the party love at 33. The Thinkpad X60 (I like the tablet model) is also about right at 37.

41-50

Opera, which is the new Firefox, is number 48. Vonage, which is to IPOs as Brittany Spears is to parenting, rolls in at a generous 50.

51-60

Scads of devoted fans will rejoice at seeing StumbleUpon at 51.

61-70

Rhapsody, which would be fine if not owned by Real Networks comes in at a DRM infested, must telephone to cancel, never again for me number 69. I know zip about any of the others in this group.

71-80

Flickr comes in at a far, far too low 78. It should be way higher. Likewise, Nero should be teens higher than 79.

81-90

Other than the Xbox, which I've never used, and EvDO, which I use all the time, I haven't heard of anything in this group.

91-100

Del.icio.us squeaks in at 93. Because most people have never heard of it, that's probably about right. If the list was blogosphere-oriented, it would be in the top 10 for sure. Wordpress (95), Greasemonkey (98) and FeedDemon (99) demonstrate a desire to appease the tech savvy with some toss-ins at the end.

Outside Looking In

Where is Digg, Techmeme and Technorati? For that matter, where's MySpace?

No Treos, no blackberry devices?

No Feedburner or Odeo or Audacity? No Skype?

Roy Blumenthal is an incredibly talented artist from South Africa who paints portraits on a TabletPC. I saw this very cool drawing of Dave Wallace on Dave's blog.

More of Roy's amazing work can be seen on his Flickr page.

I've been doing a lot of work around the house this holiday weekend. Changing light bulbs, cleaning out the garage, fixing the gate so Lucky Dog can't poop on the soccer field. That sort of thing.

As I work, I have been thinking a little about the blogosphere. I still enjoy blogging, but I've been doing it long enough to see the little flaws and imperfections that I would fix if I could do the same sort of fix-it work in the blogosphere that I'm doing around the house.

Here, in no particular order, are 5 things that would make the blogosphere a better place.

1) If Steve Gillmor and his buddies would be happy just being a part of the crowd and stop trying to separate themselves from the rest of us.

I've said all I need to say about Steve's attempt to toss up walls around his so-called blog by declaring that he won't link out to anyone. As I have said before, that merely turns back time by making what was an interactive blog into a 1996 era personal home page, neighborhood newspaper, mini-magazine sort of thing. There's nothing wrong with that- we all had them back in the day. The problem is that, unfortunately, Steve is associated with blogging and all of these grand plans to recreate the blogosphere into a caste system where he writes and the rest of us read is wholly inconsistent with the conversational nature of the blogosphere- which is what brought most of us to blogging in the first place. It also ignores the indisputable fact that none of us were born with an innate knowledge of Steve's URL and thus has to get it from, yes, a link (props to OmegaMom for pointing that out via a Comment).

My 8 year old daughter and her friends went through a phase this past school year where they began setting up little secret clubs and then inviting those of their friends who were currently in favor to join. It's human nature to want to affiliate with others, but this behavior was detrimental to the classroom and so it was rightly discouraged. The same thing should apply in the blogosphere.

Looking down your nose at those who disagree with you and calling them "trolls" is a recipe for the summertime blues. The cure might be to take a long look in the mirror and then embrace the blogosphere that exists instead of trying to recreate it to your advantage.

We should resist any attempt to build walls and work to nurture the flattened earth policy that allows everyone to participate equally - without trying to promote new and unnecessary concepts in the name of personal gain.


2) If old media people and new media people would focus on the commonalities and stop fighting for perceived blog superiority.

This is a battle that can never be won or lost. It just goes on and on. Old media writers have years of training that cannot be cast aside just because they write a blog. New media bloggers have a lot to say and the fact that they don't have journalism degrees doesn't make their writing frivolous or pedestrian. If we focus on the common ground, there will be less of a need for Nick Carr et al. to make extreme statements and talk about how dumb the rest of us are merely to generate readers (which is an old media trick that many new media writers also use), and there will be less of a need for new media writers to defend themselves in the face of what they rightly or wrongly believe is a claim of journalistic superiority. We're simply talking about topics that interest us. If I am a dummy or if you are Hemingway, people will figure that out on their own. We don't have to keeping trying to convince them.

While I am by no means old media, I have co-written several books and a lot of newspaper articles over the years. I don't mention it here every time one gets published for the same reason I don't mention it at dinner- it's not really relevant and to do so would seem immodest. But the fact that I have written for traditional media doesn't make traditional media better or worse than blog writing- they are different animals.

Blogs are the offspring of the personal web page and the internet message board. They have little to do with traditional newspaper, other than the fact that some old media has smartly embraced blogging. The fact that the traditional newspaper is in trouble has more to do with Craigslist and eBay and CNN and Yahoo than it does with some blog. Stated another way, while blogs may not be old media-friendly, they are not the biggest enemy of old media.

If we put the differences aside and focus on what we have in common, we can get back to the conversation. It's always better to learn from each other than to fight with each other. That sounds trite when I read it, but so do a lot of the blogospats that keep popping up in the blogosphere.


3) If Technorati would work the way it's supposed to and Share Your OPML would be embraced by the masses.

I still use Technorati as my primary method to find new blog content and to listen for cross blog conversation. Sadly, it still seems to suffer from growing pains. At least once or twice a week, I come across links to Newsome.Org via my reading list that never show up in Technorati. Additionally, my link count seems to change only rarely and when it does, it goes up and down like the temperature. I still find Technorati to be incredibly useful, but it would be so much better if it were more reliable.

Dave Winer's Share Your OPML (a perfect example of an application that does what it is supposed to do without a bunch of needless fluff) has a ton of potential to supplant Technorati as far as blog rankings go, but in order to do that, it needs to be promoted to and embraced by more and more people. If you haven't explored Share Your OPML, go take a look. You'll like it.

We still need a way to track inbound links to specific posts and to search for content. A working Technorati and a widely used Share Your OPML would be a great combination.


4) If people would fight the urge to try to make a quick buck every chance they get.

I wrote about the sportsification of the internet last week, and my sermon about the dangers of greed and avarice on the internet can be found there.

Human nature applies to the blogosphere just like it does to the rest of life. And one thing you can be sure of is that someone will try to make money off of anything that happens. Care must be taken, however, in the context of collaborative creations like the blogosphere to make sure that the first person to break ranks and try to monetize the creation doesn't succeed in co-opting the work of others for personal gain.

Because just like in the case of Stowe Boyd's brilliant no-assholes rule, once the first person succeeds in doing so, there will be a mad rush to the bank and chaos will ensue.

Blogs started out as more interactive personal web pages. Soon someone tossed up some ads to help a little with the expenses. Before you know it, someone decided that blogs, in and of themselves, could be a business and the race for the almighty dollar was on.

Making money from blogs is not the problem. But treating the entire blogging experience as a way to make money is like the neighbor who treats every acquaintance as a prospective tupperware or Amway buyer. It's OK to make money in the right context, but treating all of blogging as a money making endeavor is wrong and destined to failure.

Blogs can be a very effective part of your business (see Steve Rubel for a great example of this), but they cannot be your business. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before the forces that lead to the decline of the traditional newspaper (primarily the fact that people won't pay to read online content and that there's nothing other than ads to sell) will find their way to the blog as a business arena.

Now comes CMP Media trying to trademark the slogan "Web 2.0" for conferences purposes. Are you kidding me? First of all, there is evidence that the slogan was used prior to the O'Reilly conferences in question. Secondly, as Cory Doctorow points out, the slogan "Web 2.0" is used by so many people for so many different purposes that, from a trademark perspective, the cat has long since left the bag.

Again, every single thing in our lives does not have to be about money. We need to collectively draw the line around parts of the blogosphere and refuse anyone who tries to hijack our collective efforts for personal gain.


5) If bloggers learned how to listen as well as they talk.

As I have said many times, I am thrilled by the great content I find via my reading list, cross blog conversations and links people email me. The blogosphere allows me to converse with and become friends with people from all over the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and many other places. It's like a virtual watercooler where we gather once or twice a day to share information and discuss topics of mutual interest.

Part of sharing, however, is listening to what others have to say. Bloggers talk with their posts and listen with their links. Talking comes natural, but it takes work to become a good listener. I have given lip service to being a good listener in the blogosphere, but the truth is that I could be a lot better at it.

Listening is something I am going to work on over the coming weeks and months. We should all work on it, because a watercooler without listeners can turn into a cacophony of noise that drives interesting voices, both old and new, away.


That's my 5 step program to improve the blogosphere. I'd love to hear yours via Comment or Trackback.

Doc Searls has been looking for a new camera and decided on the Canon EOS 30D.

He made a good choice, in my opinion.

The more I use this camera, the more amazed I am by what it can do. My newest addition is a Canon EF-S 60mm macro lens, which lets me take close up pictures of small things, like this orb weaver who has a home outside my study window.



I have a lot more to learn about photography, but the more I learn the more I like the 30D.

My deepest sympathies to Robert Scoble, whose mom died this week. Losing your mom is one of life's inevitable heartbreaks that you can't prepare for, even if you have time to prepare for it. Back in 1998, I wrote about the last 5 days I spent with my mom. It was a time of great sadness, followed by a time of even greater sadness once she was gone.

Upon the reflection that follows the death of a loved one, Robert writes one of the most thoughtful and reflective posts I have ever read about life perspectives and priorities.

It's a must read for everyone on this Memorial Day weekend.

PC World has an article ranking the worst tech products of all time.

Here are my thoughts about the ones I used.

15. Iomega Zip Drive

My intense dislike for zip drives has been well documented. 15 is too low. I'd rank zip drives a strong number 2.

13. IBM PCjr

I didn't have a PCjr, but I had one of its many clones. I used that computer from 1986 to 1990 and it served me well.

12. Pointcast

I actually think the Pointcast screensaver back then was better than anything similar we have today. It was push technology a little before its time.

4. Windows ME

I thought ME was pretty awful as an upgrade, but I didn't have the massive problems with it that others experienced.

5. Sony BMG Music CDs

Sony did a stupid thing and got rightly trashed for it.

2. RealNetworks RealPlayer

This is my least favorite software of all time. 2 is too low- it should be number one by a mile. Bloatware that is hard to get rid of. It's better to never install it.

1. AOL

This is a choice engineered to gain approval by the technical elite. AOL has lots of problems, but it has also helped bring millions upon millions of people to the internet. AOL is the bunny slope of the internet ski mountain. I don't use it, but I recognize its value, particularly historically, to lots of people.

Stowe Boyd's blog is like golf or photography. There are some good shots, a few bad ones, and then, every so often, the magical, perfect shot that keeps you running back for more.

Not too long ago, he nailed the noisy blogosphere thing so well, I quoted his post like scripture.

Today, he talks about the downside of Advisory Capital and in the process gives a sermon that applies just as much to business, relationships and life. Much of what he says is completely consistent with my experience with business, both big and small. And much of what he says is equally consistent with encounters we've all had in conference rooms, board rooms and our neighborhoods.

Here's the part that made me stand up and shout Amen this time:

"[O]nce rule #1 is broken -- the "No Assholes" rule -- then there is no hope. People can learn to moderate their behavior, but never their basic psychological makeup. Once they start [screwing] you over, there is no end, because if they rationalize doing it once they will always be able to go through the same thinking process again and again."

This precipitating event for the violation of the "No Assholes" rule (a first cousin of my long held and often applied "That Just Ain't Right" doctrine) is when someone has to choose between doing the right thing and the easy thing. Between telling the truth and saying what they believe is in their best interest. Some people will make the right choice, but many won't.

And someone who lies about one thing is a sure bet to lie about the next thing, and the thing after that.

Stowe is generally correct that suing someone over a resulting breach of a contract is generally a waste of karma that only enriches the lawyers (of which I am one). Unless there is a lot of money at stake, our legal system often doesn't provide realistic options for the wronged.

All you can do in that case is, as Stowe suggests, avoid the offenders like the plague. I have walked away from some big clients over the "That Just Ain't Right" doctrine, and I have let budding friendships die on the vine for the same reason.

It's not a perfect solution, but the more people who demand compliance with the "No Assholes" rule and the "That Just Ain't Right" doctrine, the better off we'll all be.

Farmgate, one of my daily reads, reports mostly good news about the condition of family farms.

According to the 2005 Family Farm Report, most U.S. farms - 98 percent in 2003 - are family farms, defined as "operations organized as proprietorships, partnerships, or family corporations that do not have hired mangers."

While small farms with annual sales of less than $10,000, very large farms, and non-family farms have increased in number, the number of small farms with annual sales between $10,000 and $249,999, which is where most farmers I know fall, declined.

The report also confirmed what anyone with significant farming exposure already knows:

"Small-farm households typically receive substantial off-farm income and do not rely primarily on the farms for their livelihood. Most off-farm income is from earned sources, either wage-and-salary jobs or self-employment."

While not an entirely rosy picture, it is reassuring to read that the family farm is still alive and somewhat well in the country that has eaten at its table for hundreds of years.

My law school buddy and current Texas attorney general Greg Abbott has turned his attention to MySpace.com in the wake of another arrest of an internet predator.

From the Houston Chronicle article:

"Abbott said Web sites like MySpace - a social networking hub with more 72 million members - should make it harder to find profiles belonging to underage youth and should use software that automatically scans all uploaded photographic images and blocks those that are pornographic."

As more and more governmental officials begin to take a hard look at the social networking services, MySpace and its kin should take meaningful and significant action to address this problem, even if it means a loss in user numbers. Because if they don't address the safety issue in a meaningful and effective way, someone is going to do it for them.

Smoke and mirrors and baby steps aren't going to satisfy the watchdogs much longer. And once the government gets into your business, it's hard to get them out. Just ask Microsoft.

OK, I still own too much Second Life land, which costs me money since your Second Life monthly fee is based on how much land you own. I'm going to give away three tracts of land and here's how it will work.

I have three tracts of land that I am going to give away.

Tract One

The first tract is a 3,872 square meter tract, with roadside frontage. It has a castle on it that I built myself (thus it's unique). You can keep the castle or trash it and build something else.

This tract is located at Sabine 191,173,65 and is just up the road from my house and the other tracts I am giving away.

Tract Two

The second tract is a 2,496 square meter tract that is beside my house and behind the third tract described below. It has no improvements on it and is located at Sabine 215, 147, 63.

Tract Three

The third tract is a 2,240 square meter tract, also with roadside frontage. It has a house on it, which you can keep or trash and build something else.

This tract is located at Sabine 145, 123, 60 and is right beside my house.

The Rules

If you'd like some free land and even a castle or house to go on it, all you have to do is link to this post. I will gather the entries from three sources: Technorati, Google (see the "Other Blogs" links in the left column) and Trackbacks (as shown below). To be eligible, a trackback must actually link to this post (no nofollow tags).

On Monday, May 29, 2006, I will put all of the entries in a shoe box, shake them up and ask Cassidy, Delaney and Raina to close their eyes and pick one. Tracts 1, 2 and 3 will be given away in that order.

You can enter for yourself or a friend. Only one entry per blog, but if you have more than one blog, you can enter once with each. I just want to get this land off of my books and maybe gain some good neighbors in the process.

As a bonus, I'll pay the first month's land use fee ($25.00) for the first winner picked who doesn't already have a Second Life account.

This is the another installment in my series of favorite records. The list so far is here.

We're into the G's, which means that I'm faced with which Grateful Dead records to put on this list.

I am a long, long time Grateful Dead fan. I own most of their studio records and many of their archive releases. I saw them in concert numerous times and named my oldest child after one of their songs.

So which records should I pick for this list?

Aoxomoxoa, with St. Stephen and China Cat is great. Workingman's Dead is an acoustic masterpiece that cemented the love that Europe '72, my initiation to the Dead, began.

Mars Hotel has three of my favorite Dead numbers: China Doll, Scarlet Begonias and Pride of Cucamonga. Blues for Allah is an improvisational masterpiece.

Reckoning has my favorite version of Dire Wolf and the version of the song that I named Cassidy after.

It's a really tough choice.

I'm going to swallow hard and pick just three.

Blues for Allah
Europe '72

And the one that if you made me pick would be my favorite-

American Beauty

If I was in a fantasy record league, I'd start American Beauty every game. I challenge anyone to find a record with stronger songs from beginning to end. I can honestly say that there's not a song on the record that I'd rank less than a 9.5 on a 10 scale, and there may just be 10 straight 10's on this record.

I could easily add several more Grateful Dead records to this list. Then you add all of the archive recordings which have been released over the years and you end up with the most impressive collection of music ever assembled by a band not called the Rolling Stones.

If I had to pick only one band to listen to, the Dead would beat out the Allman Brothers based partially on a larger catalog. Almost every Grateful Dead record is a magical experience. Add in the live recordings and you have a lifetime of great music.

I found another gem on YouTube.



A live one from 1978 by one of the best live bands ever. If you were lucky enough to see Mother's Finest live, you know what I'm talking about.

I came across this neat site (but they need to lose the lame pop-up ads), which tells you the top rated TV shows for any year from 1950 to 2000. I was born in 1960, which seems to have been the year of the western. Maybe that explains why I like them so much.

Here are the top 6 shows from 1960:

Gunsmoke
Wagon Train
Have Gun Will Travel
The Andy Griffith Show
The Real McCoys
Rawhide

Here are the top 6 from 1966, the year Raina was born (the year of the somebody show):

Bonanza
The Red Skelton Show
The Andy Griffith Show
The Lucy Show
The Jackie Gleason Show
Green Acres

And finally from 1998, the year Cassidy was born:

ER
Friends
Frasier
Monday Night Football
Veronica's Closet
Jesse

Delaney and Luke came along after 2000, so no lists for them- at least not on that site.

When I was a kid, long before they were almost good, I was an Atlanta Braves fan. I remember watching Hank Aaron, Dusty Baker and Ralph Garr in the outfield. I remember Jerry Royster, Biff Pocoroba and Phil Niekro. I followed their batting averages and ERAs by reading the newspaper and listening to the radio, often with an earpiece after I was supposed to be asleep. After TBS launched in 1976, I watched a lot of games on TV.

Baseball is a great game, because it is all about the stats. I kept a little handmade chart with my favorite players' names, positions and stats. Throughout my youth I knew the stats for a lot of players.

It never even crossed my mind how much they got paid.

Now, everything about professional sports is all about the money. Every time a professional athlete is mentioned, his salary follows like a Sr. or Jr. Cal Ripkin, Jr. has turned into Chipper Jones, $13M.

It's not just baseball. The important golf stats used to be stroke average and tournaments won. Now all they show in the papers is how many millions the player has earned this year. Tennis is the same way. The NFL is just as bad. Don't even get me started on the NBA.

The evolution of professional sports from pastime and passion to business and bling bling turned many ardent fans into bored cynics.

Now the same thing is happening to the internet. Go visit any of the popular sites that track and comment on the internet and internet related applications. While lip service is, for the moment, still given to how cool or useful an application or service is, the focus is clearly and quickly shifting to how much money someone has, will or might make off of that application or service.

Read TechCrunch for a week and you will see this trend. Look at how many of the posts on Techmeme (nee Memeorandum) have to do with money or the prospects thereof. In this age where every application developer and his dog are trying to live off of ad revenue and every consumer and his dog are buying TIVOs and XM radios primarily to avoid ads, more and more people and trying to stuff more and more advertising into their applications and content streams.

The mindset that made geekdom cool is dying in favor of the talk that made Wall Street insiders rich. It's almost like the "if you build something cool, it will sell itself" approach has been forgotten and people are trying to reverse engineer from the other end of the rainbow- the much coveted IPO or sale to Yahoo.

Don't get me wrong, money is good. Our economic system is based on people making money. Like everyone else with a real job, I spend a lot of my time trying to make money.

But every single thing in our lives shouldn't be about money. Those parts of our lives that don't involve money are shrinking rapidly.

We need to protect those parts of our lives the way we protect other things that are valuable to us. For two reasons. One, it's important for our spiritual and physical well being and it helps give our kids a balanced view of the world. Two, for those less idealistic, reverse engineering a made fortune is no substitute for good business.

The only true roadmap to wealth is to do something really well. Build something people want or need. Provide a service that people will pay for. Shortcuts generally either implode on their own or end up as part of some greater fool exit strategy.

I hope we can stop all the madness before new social networking applications start showing up on The Ocho.

Luke was baptized during our church service today. Gigi and Papa were there, as were his Godfamilies the Clarks and the Veldmans, and Delaney's Godfamily, the Fenrichs. We had a big crowd and Luke handled it like a champ.

Afterwards, everyone came over for a fajita lunch and swimming. Cassidy, Evie and Rachael wrote and have been practicing a musical about owls, based on some baby owls we saw in our yard the other night. They prevailed on me to make a stage out of the deck in the new yard, complete with offstage areas behind some camping air mattresses, on which they performed their musical to thunderous applause.

The kids practiced their swimming strokes a little, played games and took turns jumping off the big wall into the pool. I got some good shots, including this one of Larsen, Evie and Cassidy. After cake and ice cream, the kids each recorded a message in an audible photo book for Remy, who is moving to Michigan in two weeks (this being a profoundly sad thing for us). Afterwards, the kids went to Rachael's dance recital and Evie's piano recital.

Between getting up at 6:30 a.m. for swim practice yesterday and the busy day we had today, everybody is pretty wiped out. I think it's time for Daddy to take a little nap.

Unless, of course, the kids want to play a little soccer.

OmegaMom leads me to PAgent (now subscribed there) who leads me to YouTube in search of music videos.



So. Central Rain, one of my favorite REM songs, from 10/6/83.

I hadn't thought of YouTube as a place to mine for music before, but now I do.

Stay tuned.

Richard Querin makes an excellent rebuttal to Steve Gillmor's non-linking mania.

Sadly, all of Richard's logic and common sense will be for naught, since the whole non-linking business is nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt on the part of Steve and a couple of his pals to separate themselves from the blogging community by declaring that they are blogo-stars and don't need to be bothered with interacting with the rest of us. The reason Steve writes in indecipherable paragraphs is because if he said it in a way that people could actually understand, he would be laughed out of the room. By using big words and long sentences, he can pretend that if we were smart enough to understand him, we'd all fall in line.

On the last Gillmor Gang podcast I will ever listen to Steve actually said that he goes out of his way not to use significant content and ideas from other bloggers in his posts so he won't have to link to them.

This cat thinks he's special. And that's fine. Go be special, but do it over there where I can't see you. Because if I can see you, I will feel compelled to try to get you to see things logically and realize that these are blogs were are talking about here- not some secret path to fame and fortune.

Not engaging in the cross blog communication, which occurs via linking, is completely inconsistent with the purpose and beauty of blogging. It's like turning the web back to 1995 when everyone had their little self-contained Geocities web page. It's backwards thinking pretending to be forward thinking.

But blogo-stars don't listen. Listening is for the rest of us.

I'm really digging my new camera.

Am I the only one who thinks all of these "me too" services being thrown up by AOL lately are tokens of desperation and a lack of vision?

TechCrunch reports that AOL is about to release a "YouTube clone." This is on the heels of AOL's recent launch of a MySpace competitor.

It looks to me like AOL is thrashing around in search of something to grab hold of as the walls around its closed system crumble and fall.

I don't know if AOL can save itself or not, but I don't think trying to become a Web 2.0 company is the most promising way to try.

I used to be amazed at the degree to which Dave Winer would go out of his way to fight with people. As it turns, out Dave is minor league when it comes to fighting. The King of RSS has lost his blog-fighting title to the ZDNet Zinger.

After first deciding that links are no good and then writing some of the most indecipherable words ever put together, Steve Gillmor carps at Richard Querin and gets irritated at his pal Mike Arrington on the latest Gillmor Gang podcast. I got frustrated with Steve's pissy demeanor after part 1, so I missed all the barbs I expect he flung around in the rest of the podcast.

Steve also managed to make Nick Carr sound like a down to earth, logical and reasonably friendly guy in the process. In fact, I got the impression that more than one of the other gang members were put off by Steve's demeanor.

Thank goodness Doc Searls is still in the gang to provide a voice of reason to the podcasts.

I think what was initially a fun and interesting free-for-all debate has devolved into a soapbox for Steve to pick fights and act superior, and I find that boring. The spirited debate is what attracted me to that podcast, but lately, as old what's his name points out, Steve just sounds angry at everybody.

I'm too bored with Steve's act to even get into the merits of his argument, but I will say that if you make outlandish statements like this whole non-linking business and then get irritated when people react negatively, you are going to be mad a lot.

I continue to think that Twangville is the best music site on the internet. If you don't know this site, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Jason Kottke posts a list by film critic Jim Emerson of 102 movies someone ought to have seen to be considered movie literate. I suspect my list and that of just about everyone else would be different, since we all like and dislike different things, but here's the list.

An asterisk means I have seen it.

* 2001: A Space Odyssey (overrated)
* The 400 Blows (pretty good)
8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien (defines the modern alien genre)
* All About Eve (good)
* Annie Hall (other than Tiger Lilly, I find Woody Allen's movies boring)
* Apocalypse Now (great movie)
* Bambi (I liked it and my kids do too)
The Battleship Potemkin
* The Best Years of Our Lives (great movie)
* The Big Red One (pretty good)
The Bicycle Thief
* The Big Sleep (OK, not great)
* Blade Runner (one of my all time faves)
Blowup (never seen it, but would like to)
* Blue Velvet (great movie)
* Bonnie and Clyde (OK, not great)
* Breathless (nah)
Bringing Up Baby
* Carrie (good scary movie)
* Casablanca (as good as its reputation_
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
* Chinatown (pretty good)
* Citizen Kane (great film)
* A Clockwork Orange (famous for being weird, but still pretty good)
* The Crying Game (great ending)
* The Day the Earth Stood Still (great sci-fi)
* Days of Heaven (fantastic movie; a must see)
* Dirty Harry (great Clint)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
* Do the Right Thing (good movie)
La Dolce Vita
* Double Indemnity (one of my favorite of the film noir genre)
* Dr. Strangelove (great film)
* Duck Soup (I actually get the Marx brothers)
* E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial (great at the time)
* Easy Rider (good, but Wild Angels was better)
* The Empire Strikes Back (masterpiece)
* The Exorcist (great horror film)
* Fargo (great, but Raising Arizona is better)
* Fight Club (OK, not great)
* Frankenstein (masterpiece, if he's talking about the 1931 one)
The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II (should have added III too)
* Gone With the Wind (I liked it the first few times I saw it)
* GoodFellas (great film)
* The Graduate (great film)
* Halloween (maybe the best modern horror film)
* A Hard Day's Night (good because it's the Beatles)
Intolerance
It's a Gift
* It's a Wonderful Life (my favorite holiday film ever)
* Jaws (how in the world has Jason not seen this!)
* The Lady Eve (good, but not great)
* Lawrence of Arabia (great epic film)
M
* Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior (great post apocalypse films)
* The Maltese Falcon (great Bogart)
* The Manchurian Candidate (OK, not great)
* Metropolis (never understood the big deal about this one)
Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the funniest movie ever)
* Nashville (good, not great)
* The Night of the Hunter (great Mitchum)
* Night of the Living Dead (one of my all time faves)
* North by Northwest (my favorite Hitchcock)
Nosferatu
* On the Waterfront (Brando when he wasn't a cartoon character)
Once Upon a Time in the West
* Out of the Past (Another of my favorite film noir movies)
Persona
* Pink Flamingos (great, but I like Hairspray better)
* Psycho (good)
* Pulp Fiction (one of my all-time faves)
Rashomon
* Rear Window (good)
* Rebel Without a Cause (OK, but not as good as its reputation)
* Red River (great movie- there should be more westerns on this list)
* Repulsion (weird, but with Catherine Deneuve)
The Rules of the Game
* Scarface (pretty good, but Casino's better)
The Scarlet Empress
* Schindler's List (masterpiece
* The Searchers (another great western)
The Seven Samurai
* Singin' in the Rain (a rare musical I like)
* Some Like It Hot (OK, not great)
* A Star Is Born (the original is bearable; I hated the remake)
* A Streetcar Named Desire (great movie)
* Sunset Boulevard (another great film noir movie)
* Taxi Driver (great movie)
* The Third Man (great Orson Welles)
Tokyo Story
* Touch of Evil (definitely in my top 5 all time)
* The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (great movie)
Trouble in Paradise
* Vertigo (more great Hitchcock)
* West Side Story (didn't like it)
* The Wild Bunch (great western)
* The Wizard of Oz (speaks for itself)

I've seen 78 out of 102.

All in all, a fairly good list. I would certainly add The Birds, Suddenly Last Summer, Summer of 42, The Last Picture Show, and A Place in the Sun. I would seriously consider adding Full Metal Jacket, the remake of The Thing, Belly of an Architect and the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Om Malik says that the thought leaders (a new "pre-owned car" word for my dictionary of needlessly fancy terms), along with investors and pundits, have lately begun to wonder about the whole Web 2.0 business.

Proving that thought leaders have been reading blogs for months, a "well known angel investor," which I believe is a nice word for a rich guy who swoops down like an angel from heaven and tosses some cash at whatever science project turned business grabs his fancy in exchange for the possibility to get even richer by later selling said project to either Yahoo or some poor smuck in an IPO, wrote, according to Om, "that many of the Web 2.0 companies that were cropping up were targeting a niche audience. He found that many were me-too or forgettable permutations of some of the more established players such as Flickr, You Tube or Digg."

Ya think? I and a bunch of other average Joes must be thought leaders too, since we have been saying that for months.

Om, who is generally on the money about things technological, goes on to talk about scalability and Web 2.0, arguing that eventually some of the advances that are being made in the Web 2.0 arena will find their way into the enterprise applications that run big business, sort of the way NASA's velcro found its way onto my 4 year old's tennis shoes.

Maybe. Eventually. But most big business is running enterprise applications that are 2 or 3 versions old, so Om and I will be retired before the benefitted versions find their way onto most corporate desktops. By then my grandkids will be hoping to get links from Om's grandkids.

I continue to think that too many people are trying to stuff business, hobbies, old media and blogs into the same bag. I don't know if it's a mass scam in the making or if people who are used to writing about business and old media are just writing about what they know.

What I do know is that to judge success you have to start with perspective.

As Dave Winer points out, TechCrunch's 53,000 or so subscribers is huge in blogosphere terms. 53,000 viewers would be a gigantic bomb if it were a TV show, which is measured in old media terms. Similarly, a Web 2.0 application that has a million users at $0 a month makes a lot less profit than my blog, which makes very little, but costs almost nothing to operate.

You can't measure success in raw numbers. And you can't judge a blog by old media standards.

Blogs are not businesses, no matter how many people try to pretend they are. A part of a business, yes. The business, no.

Similarly, most of these Web 2.0 applications are not businesses. A part of a business, yes (thus the sell to Yahoo business plan). But still not the business.

I think there are a lot of people trying to stuff a lot of square pegs in the old and familiar round holes.

As soon as they realize that won't work, we'll step back, get some perspective and see where we are.

The Web 2.0 Wars season has come to an end. The list of winners and playoff brackets were posted the other day.

Here's how the playoffs will work. After taking a look at my prior commentary about each application, I'll revisit each application and see what, if anything, is new. I'll add an update for each contestant and pick the winner.

We are now in the quarter-finals and have already had Round 1, Round 2 and Round 3. It's time for the fourth and final round of the quarter-finals.

Here are the contestants for the fourth quarter-final round:

Digg
Basecamp
Backpack
Technorati
Mercora

Digg is a wildly popular, user driven site that allows users to link to and vote on internet blog posts and news stories. It has huge mindshare and I greatly admire the technology, but as I've said many times I don't like the news by contest process. There is also the potential for gaming which stories get top billing.

Basecamp is a web-based tool that lets you manage and track projects. Prices range from free to expensive. I like the fact that I haven't seen a million of these and they actually charge for the service, thereby at least giving a nod to a legitimate business plan.

Backpack is an online information collection and storage application. Sort of like a turbo-charged on-line Onfolio or One Note.

Technorati is a blog search and tagging service. It has huge mindshare, and I've called it the backbone of the blogosphere- when it works. Unfortunately, it has regularly occurring hiccups.

Mercora is a music search service that stumbled across the finish line first in a weak heat. I got flamed for not picking StumbleUpon.

And the Winner of the fourth quarter-final round is:

This is also a hard round. I have been a devoted user and defender of Technorati, and I still like it, but my link numbers go up and down in a random fashion and I know for a fact (via trackbacks, etc.) that a lot of blogs are not being tracked correctly. Digg is a technological juggernaut, but I just don't like news by contest. Basecamp has a business plan, but plays to a niche market. Backpack is cool, but in a crowded field.

Most people would give it to Digg in a landslide. But I'm going with a fading Technorati.

Technorati joins YouTube, Memeorandum (now called Techmeme) and Myspace in the Final Four.

Look for the semi-finals shortly.

If I'm to be your camera,
then who will be your face?
-REM

After researching cameras for a while and considering the various alternatives, I bought a new digital camera. I wanted a digital SLR that would allow me to take photos semi-automatically, like