Nick Carr has a post today asking if the whole social application thing is a phenomenon or a passing fancy. In sum, he argues that it is cyclical and somewhat of a fad. Just because all the geeks on the net are vigorously adding links to Delicious doesn't mean that anyone in the real world even knows what Delicious is. A few people in a small room can make even a casual act look like a trend.

On the whole, I completely agree with that. After I read Nick's post I asked a few people in my office if they'd ever heard of Flickr, Netvibes or Delicious. One thought Netvibes was Netflix and none of the others even ventured a guess. These social applications are enjoying the same loud voice in a small room effect that I have written about in the context of blogging.

But there are two areas in which I disagree with Nick.

First, Nick couches the discussion in terms of getting things done and social production. He says social applications are extremely inefficient ways to get things done. In the context of applications designed specifically for productivity, that's a fair way to look at it. But I don't think you can ignore the social part of the application. I don't think the mostly young people who use some of the social applications think in terms of efficiency when it comes to social interaction. Delicious may be about personal productivity, but Flickr and certainly MySpace are more about social interaction and the human need to connect and share.

When it comes to social applications, efficiency doesn't always matter.

For example, it's faster to push a speed dial button on your cell phone and talk to a friend about where to meet for dinner than it is to email, IM or SMS him, particularly on a phone or PDA. And even though many thought IM was a fad, it has become an integral part of the communication system for an entire generation. Granted, I never SMS or IM, but just about everyone I know under 30 does it all the time. I can't put it in scientific terms, but there is something about sending IMs that is appealing to people- notwithstanding its empirical inefficiency.

Secondly, I think you have to distinguish between the social applications designed for computer geeks and those designed for the larger population. Certainly Technorati, Netvine and the like are largely the playground of the smallish tech crowd. Take one stroll through MySpace, however, and you'll notice right away that the horrendous looking pages designed there are not the work of coders and geeks.

The secret to success for social applications is to achieve penetration into the non-geek population.

When I asked the same group at my office if they'd ever heard of MySpace or YouTube, all had heard of MySpace and most knew about YouTube.

MySpace (which is an evolutionary successor to Geocities), or it's yet to be hatched evolutionary successor, may very well become a central repository for social resumes and affiliations. YouTube is well on its way to becoming the central archive for videos. The trick will be to figure out a way to grow up with your user base. If MySpace can make it cool for people to keep their MySpace pages after they pass 30, get married and start a family, I can see MySpace becoming a part of the online infrastructure the way eBay and Craigslist have.

It's not about productivity as much as it's about longevity.

The challenge for these applications is to stay relevant and fun enough to get an allocation of a user's leisure time- because they are largely within the leisure sphere and outside of the productivity sphere. On that, Nick and I agree.

Mathew Ingram says that to measure the cultural effect of these social applications, you have to look at them as a group, and not just individually. He also believes that some of the parts of these applications, such as tagging and sharing, will eventually find their way into mainstream applications.

Nick says about social applications, in a quote that many would apply to blogging, "it's a fun diversion for a while - and then it turns into drudgery."

It's drudgery if you have a task to complete and the application doesn't assist you in completing that task. But social interaction is not always goal driven. The stuff that provides fun and connectivity has a good chance to become a permanent part of online life.

The other stuff may very well be the new pet rock.

Rogers (via a comment and this post) and Stowe disagree with me about Foo Camp.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am deeply anti-gatekeeper and highly interested in inclusion for all in the blogosphere. Some tease me that I am talking my position, and that's both fair and funny. But my position has been generally consistent regardless of my position on blogger's hill.

Having said that for the record, Rogers and Stowe make some good points that I want to address.

My comment this morning was not intended to be a defense of Dave Winer specifically as much as a denunciation of cliques and exclusionary tactics that I honestly believe are better suited for kindergarten playgrounds than a medium populated by right-thinking adults. But Rogers' explanation and Tim's prior explanation make sense to me- at least with respect to Dave. I'm sure Dave would tell a different version of the story, but thus far I have not been able to get Dave's side of the story beyond what he posted in the open letter that kick-started this conversation.

I would point out, however, that you can exclude a troublemaker without making your party an invitation only event. The exclusivity issue and the Dave issue are connected, but distinguishable.

Nevertheless, Stowe makes a good point:

"But, candidly, I don't get it. Why can't we have closed meetings? Can't a company like O'Reilly invite a bunch of people to get together and talk about issues that are important to the company's future business? Does everything they do have to be open to the public, just because they are influential?"

My answer is yes they can, as long as they don't embrace, directly or indirectly, the implied flag of importance and exclusion that some attendees will proudly fly. To put it in another context, I am perfectly fine with the fact that rich people belong to exclusive country clubs, at least until they wave that fact in my face over and over. At that point the value of the club is not that they are in it, but that I am not.

When a Foo Camp invitation becomes the Black American Express Card of the blogosphere, then something is amiss and needs to be fixed. The card members don't see it as a problem and so the criticisms have to begin from without. Can that sound like sour grapes? Absolutely. Is it? Probably yes in some cases and no in others.

The other, perhaps unavoidable, problem is once you decide that only certain people get invited based on subjective criteria, someone has to (or more often, gets to) decide who's in and who's out. It's another example of the "who decides who decides" dilemma that I have written about. With the privilege of deciding comes both the responsibility to decide fairly and the opportunity to not.

The question becomes, given the theoretically open nature of the blogosphere and the potential for misuse, is it wise or even acceptable to continue to have exclusive conferences, or should the conferences be open to the public, with the adoption of rules to prevent disruption.

Stated another way, is it better to throw out the bathwater with the baby in the name of a cry-less experience for the lucky invitees, or is it better to address the baby and the bathwater separately?

Thomas Hawk begins a living post about computer problems.  This is a good idea and it's comforting to know that I'm not the only geek who gets whipped by his computer every now and then.  My personal burden is the power supply that is happy one moment and dead the next.  It's especially fun when that happens on Friday night of a three-day weekend.  My solution- I have a spare power supply sitting in a box in my study.  In fact, at one point I had two spares.

I have longed for the union of Blackberry and Treo for so long that somehow this seems anticlimatic.  Why is this limited to the Treo 650?

 More RIAA foolishness: a suit against a woman who alleges she "has never even used, or even turned on, a computer."

Rogers Cadenhead on a rumor that Warren Buffett got married. The Omaha World-Herald confirms.

This won't be of interest to many, but it will be beloved by a few.  I came across a fantastic series (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) last night on the Nashville Rock Scene, post 1978.  People outside of Tennessee don't realize it, but Nashville has a tremendous rock scene.  Of the bands mentioned, I watched Jason and the Nashville Scorchers, the Dusters, Raging Fire (the talented and delightful Melora Zaner worked for Microsoft last I heard), the White Animals, Web Wilder, and John Jackson and the Rhythm Rockers.  Others I would have mentioned include Dave Olney and John Scott Sherrill.  Wasn't there also a band called the Shades that played at the Villager a lot?

Dave Winer posts on Foo Camp.  If people were really interested in effecting positive change, the blogosphere would get together and boycott invitiation-only throwbacks like Foo Camp.

Tags: kents news, links

Download Squad is reporting that YouTube, taking a page out of Google's playbook, has launched a service to compete, at least on some level, with Facebook.

Colleges on YouTube is a closed community for college students. You must have an .edu email address to join. College students who are already members of YouTube under another email address can confirm their .edu address and gain admission to the community.

The list of colleges is limited at the moment, but more colleges will be added soon, according to a note on the Colleges on YouTube page.

What remains to be seen is what features other than uploading and commenting on videos will be offered by YouTube. If the college site looks like the rest of YouTube, then it will be more of an addition to Facebook than a direct competitor. If more features are added, it may be game on.

I think it's a clever move on YouTube's part to try to expand its reach into the social networking space, particularly for college age kids and recent graduates, almost all of whom seem to have some online networking presence.

I suspect more will be revealed about YouTube's new venture in the coming days.

Tags: youtube, facebook, social networking

Shel Israel posted 9 random thoughts about blogging the other day. It's an interesting list. Here are some thoughts.

1. Law of Diminishing Share

I hadn't thought of it like that, but at first blush, this makes sense. Maybe that explains why some of the big fish keep trying to recreate the blogosphere in a manner than protects their position. On the other hand, my guess is that if you break the blogosphere into major interest groups (tech being the one most of us reside it), the law of diminishing share is mitigated. Yes Scoble and Mike and all those guys will reach a smaller percentage of the entire blogosphere over time, but the people who end up in the tech corner will still eventually find those guys. The bigger question is whether Scoble and Mike and all those guys will be able to capture the same percentage of new arrivals as subscribers.

2. The Buck's Not There

I gave AdSense a try for about a month, and what I found is that it takes a buttload of pageviews to get a handful of clicks. I have been consistent in saying that trying to make money blogging is like trying to play in the NBA. It looks like a sweet gig, but very few people make it. In the blogosphere, unless the bloggers who control the mega-blogs get behind you and toss you a rope, you're going to be, at most, a quick detour on their way to the bank.

3. Size Isn't Relevance

I agree that who your readers are is more important that how many you have. One Om Malik is worth a thousand MySpace users. The fact of the matter is that, just like MySpace, the blogosphere depends on connections. All the talk about who links to who sometimes overshadows the more important function of links- serving as evidence of a mutual interest and the shared blogging experience. It's hard not to view links as valuable in and of themselves, but I'd rather have one link from a dedicated blogger or journalist than 1000 from splogs and other non-conversational sites.

4. Give to Get

I think Shel's three sentences sum up the process of building a blog as well as any I have ever read. Having said that, I think some of us could work a little harder at recognizing the contributions of newish bloggers. It takes about 5 seconds to add a relevant link to a post. People can say what they want, but too many people are far too stingy with their links. When you think about it for a second, that is both self-defeating and silly.

5. It's the Conversation

I agree with the first part- I became a devotee of the Amy Gahran school of thought a long time ago- blogging is all about the conversation. Having said that, the fact that I live in Texas and not on the west coast shouldn't be a huge impediment to becoming friends with Shel and other bloggers. Of course I'd like to see some of these folks in person, but that's not always feasible. On a related note, I'm going to be in San Francisco in early November. I'd love to meet some of the guys I blog around with while I'm there. It will be interesting to see who takes me up on it (more about the trip in a later post).

6. Blogging is Multi-Sensory

I didn't believe this for a long time. Now I do. Podcasting and other audio-video blog content are big now- and I'm convinced the trend is just starting.

7. Blogging is Like an Elephant

There's no doubt about this. Sometimes I feel like the blogosphere is a warm and embracing place and other times I feel like it's a club that I wouldn't want to join even if I did get an invitation. The one thing I have concluded about the blogosphere is that, just like in real life, there are a lot more good talkers than good listeners. A good listener is a rare and wonderful thing.

8. ROI is Priceless

Like we talked about in my Who Do You Write For series, bloggers write for different reasons. I still contend that acceptance is a common denominator for all measures of success, but I fully agree that you can get a good return from blogging that doesn't appear in link counts.

9. Any Blogger Can Be Heard

I don't completely agree with this. I think the return on content investment in blogging is pretty low. Sure, if you are determined and patient, you can get a seat at the table, but it still strikes me as harder than it ought to be. Seth Finkelstein is probably the smartest person blogging today (forget about whether you agree with him and just look at the way he writes), but he has a hard time getting involved in day to day conversations. I have been blogging hard (hard, I tell you) since June 2005 (before that, I was merely using a blogging platform to manage content on my web page) and while I have scratched and clawed my way to decent link and reader numbers, I still feel like an outsider in the tech space. Most people will respond if I put a worthwhile post right in front of them, but I'm still not really part of the club. And, candidly, if I haven't completely earned my stripes after all this time, is is reasonable to think that a brand new blogger could waltz up blogger's hill and take a seat at the table without a lot of help from established mega-bloggers? Sure, it's possible and it may happen, but the odds are strongly against it.

Those are my thoughts. What do you think?

Tags: blogs, blog building

There's a lot of good conversation going around today about eliminating the echo chamber- the blogosphere phenomenon where one person says something and tons of others more or less repeat it back to her in a responsive post, like some geek chorus. Chris Pirillo started things off with his 10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber. Mathew Ingram, Darren Rowse and others added their thoughts.

Avoiding the echo chamber is a blogospheric phrase than means write good, original and interesting content. It means doing more than just tossing up a link and saying "me too." It's the same principle that applies to old media writing- what's interesting in print is interesting online, and vice versa.

But as many of the commentators point out, it's hard.

It's hard mostly because it's just hard to write what I call the 10/90 post every day, or even every week. Additionally, a little echo is inherent in the written word. Unless you are writing a completely original thought, something inspired you to write your post. Since the person reading your post may not have read the post that inspired you, good writing skills and fairness require that you summarize and attribute your starting point.

The trick is to do it briefly, without making the summary the principal part of your post. It's not always easy, but I try to summarize and attribute in no more than a few sentences. The first paragraph of this post is 3 sentences and 61 words long- and that might be stretching it. The important part is that, after the summary and attribution, you go on to add a new thought or perspective to the conversation- one that goes beyond restating what has already been said.

It would be a mistake, however, to take echo-avoidance too far, since doing so could lead to a failure to recognize those who laid the foundation for the discussion. It could also play into the hands of those who try to pervert the conversational nature of the blogosphere for their own purposes. It would be easy, as well as dishonest, for those who argue that links are dead to appropriate echo-avoidance to further their hidden agendas- which generally involve self-aggrandizement and control. Believe me, my children don't fight over their favorite toys the way some of these people fight to maintain their self-proclaimed status in the blogosphere.

More importantly, links and affirmation are the way we listen to each other in the blogosphere. And for the new bloggers out there, the best way to get inbound links is to link like crazy to other good content.

The take away is that you can join existing conversations, link, summarize and attribute without creating an echo if you do it correctly. In fact, if you don't try it, you have jumped from the echo chamber onto the island.

While I agree with much of Chris's advice, I am troubled by his advice to stay away from your RSS feeds. For me and many others, the beauty of blogging is the distributed conversations it engenders. Don't confuse conversation with echoes- they are not the same thing.

On the other hand, Chris's advice to step outside your comfort zone is great advice. I can't tell you the number of times I have made last minute edits of my posts in the name of comfort. While you need to be logical and at least somewhat consistent, the posts that make you the most uncomfortable are often the ones that generate the most conversation.

But there's another aspect of the echo chamber that I find even more troubling- when the voice that comes back from the cave is not your voice, but that of someone else repeating what you said without attribution.

Shelley Powers has a post today about this very issue, in the context of that blogosphere country club equivalent, Foo Camp:

"I read in comments this week about how a recent attendee at Tim O'Reilly's FOO camp was the originator of all the discussion about there not being enough women in tech conferences such as Tim's camp. I was surprised, and yes, hurt to find out that it only takes about 6 months and 100 weblog posts or so to wipe out all I've written on this issue. It's humbling to realize how easily you can be forgotten; humbling and clarifying because you realize that history in weblogging is fluid, and always being re-written; usually by the same proponents of how honest and decent this all is."

An echo chamber is one thing, but assuming someone's position in the debate is something else entirely. The former is not ideal. The latter is simply wrong.

Adding insult to the injury is when the assuming voice the tries to exclude the original voice from the conversation. Shelley continues:

"I also had to face this week the fact that my views are unwelcome in several weblogs and by several webloggers. It bothers me less to not be linked than to not be part of a discussion."

It's not gatekeeping- it's worse.

I don't know the specifics of the Foo Camp business because I don't get invited either, but I have seen this sort of thing happen many times in the blogosphere. Sometimes it's inadvertent, but sometimes it's not.

So while I'm all about good writing and avoiding unnecessary echoes, let's be thoughtful about it.

Fred Wilson on Spiral Frog: "I actually don't want free music, I want to pay for music without copy protection on it."  Marshall Kirkpatrick's take: " SpiralFrog will offer free downloads wrapped in a still undisclosed form of digital rights management technology. How tired."   Amen brothers.

Finally, a thesis (and prize-winning at that) someone might actually read. (via John Dvorak)

From the Perky Little Article Department: 20 things you don't know about death.

Here's the 2006 Ultimate Developer and Power User Computers Utilities list.

URL Investigator looks like a pretty cool service.  Page ranks, whois, link counts and more.

LibraryThing- catalog your books online.

Zoli Erdos on the Wikipedia Enterprise 2.0 debate.

Tags: kents news, links

Dave Taylor and Amy Gahran are thinking about how and to what extent bloggers should edit or update blog posts when subsequent events cause the posts to be incomplete or inaccurate. Dave call this OBE, or overtaken by events.

Dave uses a timely example- yesterday's news that the blogosphere's favorite whack-job, John Karr, did not kill JonBenet Ramsey. Granted, it was obvious to many that he was very likely lying just to get attention long before yesterday. But at first the breaking story sounded promising. Dave wrote an early post about it that was later picked up by a newspaper. Once it was clear that Karr was not going to be charged, the question became what to do about the original post.

The accuracy of original posts is important, since many older posts continue to draw get traffic thanks to inbound links and search results. For example, my post on deed copy scams still gets a lot of traffic because of its place in search results.

Dave suggests adding an update to the bottom of the original post, with a link to a newspaper article or other content explaining the new developments. Amy reminds us that the blog's feed will pick up the edit and republish the original post and suggests that to make it easier for your feed readers you put the update at the top. Everyone agrees that the changes should be made via an "Update" with an explanation, and not by simply editing the post to correct the content.

I think it's a very good idea to edit stories that are still ripe, much the way Dave suggests. While I understand the logic behind Amy's suggestion to put the Update at the top of the post, I think most people are conditioned to expect an update when an old post it republished in a feed. When I see a post for the second time, I scan down the page for an update. If I don't see one, I assume it was a feed glitch or merely an edit to correct a typo (like I did yesterday when I was embarrassed to notice that I have been spelling Hugh's last name wrong).

I agree with Amy that traditional news stories are not as cast in stone as they might have appeared in the past. This blurring of the line between traditional and distributed media will continue as more and more old media embraces blogging, both as a platform and method of distribution. As such, I agree that traditional news stories, at least the online variety, should be updated as circumstances dictate and retitled as "Updated:" when republished. At a minimum, news stories, both the online and print versions, should have a list of edits at the bottom, ideally with a brief explanation.

It is harder to keep up with older posts, that are no longer ripe. In fact, when I look through my old archives, I often come across posts that I don't remember writing. In those cases, I rely on the publication date and the intervening time period to lead the reader to understand that the article, while hopefully accurate when written, has been affected by subsequent events.

In order to promote and encourage the acceptance of distributed media, there needs to be some sort of de facto standard for editing and updating articles.

I'm glad people are thinking about it.

Mike Miller at Be a Good Dad has a post today about kids and music. Specifically transitioning kids from kids music to non-kid music. He talks about a new CD that, he says, has Metallica songs done in a more kid friendly manner. I'm not a Metallica fan, but I have tried, and mostly failed, to introduce my kids to the music I enjoy.

When I was a kid, I thought most of the music my parents listened to was horrible. I remember records by Johnny Mathis, Vic Damone, Perry Como, etc. I still think that stuff is horrible, so it wasn't purely a parent/child issue. So how do you expose your kids to your music in a way that minimizes the chance they will write all of it off as music for old fogies? In other words, how to you keep the Allman Brothers from becoming your kids' Vic Damone?

I've tried a few approaches. Initially, I would occasionally call one or more of my kids into my study and play selected songs for them- Grateful Dead, Beatles, Muddy Waters, etc. Other than briefly making my oldest a James Brown fan, this plan didn't work. They viewed it as a chore and couldn't wait to be freed to resume playing, etc.

Then I bought them some "transitional records," like any of the excellent records by former Del Fuegos frontman Dan Zanes. Dan calls his records "family music," and that's a great description. Other great transitional records include Jerry Garcia and David Grisman's Not For Kids Only and Jonathan Edwards' Little Hands. (Warning: if you have daughters, you better have a crying towel or two ready the first time you listen to the title track on Little Hands).

While I got some good new music out of the deal, that plan didn't really work either, as my kids are much more interested in the Cheetah Girls, Hannah Montana, High School Musical and the other music they hear on the Disney Channel, etc. In other words, they are interested in music being made by kids- not so much music made by grownups for kids.

All of which led me to my current approach. Other than pointing out the occasional guitar riff or piano solo, I don't try to teach them about my music. I just play it and hope they'll come to appreciate it via osmosis.

Only time will tell if it works, but it's the only chance I have to save the Allman Brothers.

Flickr now has geo tagging. I'm not that excited about it for my photos, but it could do wonders for guided tours of cities and other attractions. Zooomer has had geo tagging for some time. The next big feature should be audio tagging- hosted or linked audio files describing the photo or the location.

My dog has been after me for years to give him driving lessons.

Jeneane Sessum on the Attention Deficit Economy.

Dave Rogers and Seth Finkelstein on the divine right of kings.

Jim Thompson mines a YouTube gem. Someone should start a movement to get as many WWII veterans as possible to record their stories.

Tags: kents news, links

Dave's response to my why question.

I agree that blogging from a handheld via email is not a perfect solution either, which is why I rarely do it. For one thing, I don't trust the email post to show up on my blog the way I intend it to. Plus, like Dave, I like to edit my posts, add links, etc. It's hard to do that via email on a handheld. I suspect it's also pretty hard to do it via blogging software on a handheld (maybe that's why Dave didn't link back to my post when answering my questions). In sum, neither posting via email nor posting via a handheld is anyone's idea of a great time.

With one notable exception, I don't generally share the need to blog in line at the store, on ski lifts, in restaurants, cabs, buses, etc. Having said that, if Blackberries had decent cameras, I can imagine posting interesting photos from time to time.

The bottom line is that I'm all for increasing the internet and blogging functionality of my Blackberry. I'm just not convinced that it's something I'll use much.

On the other hand, anything that can be done to allow easy access to text based content via a handheld will be appreciated. Getting quick, text based content via a handheld is a lot harder that it ought to be.

I'm sure Dave is hard at work on a Newsome.Org river. We'll see how that looks and take it from there.

Two more questions for Dave:

First, I note that at 2:06 p.m. (EST), the most current story on the NYT river is from 10:38 a.m. Is this a time zone thing and, if not, is there a way to make the news river update faster?

Second, the top two posts are links to audio content, which I'm pretty sure you can't play on a Blackberry. Is this just because those items happen to be in the NYT feed that feeds the river or are you adding audio content by design?

While I love the show, I too was disappointed in the Deadwood season finale.

According to Download.Com, Yahoo Finance now has free streaming stock quotes. Note that streaming does not equate to real-time- they are still delayed by 15 minutes.

Jeneane Sessum to Robert Scoble: "Close the Dave Winer playbook and be yourself." Sounds like good advice to me. Follow up.

And on the topic of Scoble, this post criticizing him for not allowing his content to be stolen and reused without attribution is either a weak stab at satire or the most ridiculous post ever. James Robertson agrees. Scoble responds. Thankfully, the offending blog seems to have been suspended by its ISP.

I missed the whole Lonelygirl15 debate, but Mathew Ingram has a good primer on it, including links to a couple of others speculating on whether this is a real person or some sort of viral marketing. I watched about 10 seconds of one episode on YouTube, and lost interest- in the video itself. But it does occur to me that too much artifice in the name of viral marketing would dilute the beauty of video blogging as a medium.

Tags: kents news, links

Dan Farber reports on tomorrow's release of Google Apps for Your Domain, a grouping of online applications Google hopes will allow it to compete with Microsoft's highly entrenched Office suite.

The initial package will contain email, calendar, IM, and web site creation applications. Obviously missing are word processing and spreadsheets, which Google plans to add later this year when Writely and Google Spreadsheets will be added to the mix. Like everything else Google-related, the applications will be ad-supported.

Google is smartly couching its package, at least initially, not as a replacement for Microsoft Office, but as a way to add collaboration features.

While it seems odd that Google would push its package out the door now, without the most important applications, word processing and spreadsheets, the forthcoming upgrade to Office promises better collaboration features. Google probably figured it was better to get its product out the door now and generate a little buzz (and likely a bit of second guessing) than to wait and be drowned out by the buzz that will erupt when Office 2007 is released.

As I have said many times, corporate America is not going to embrace online applications and storage for a long time- privacy, security, fear of a bad decision, and confidentiality requirements ensure that. But the more individuals and small businesses that opt for Google's free alternatives, the bigger Google's toehold is- both in the office productivity space and in connection with its master plan to be the keeper of all of our data.

Bold but troubling is word via InformationWeek that "Google's plans include prompting people who send Microsoft Office documents using Gmail to translate those files into Google's formats for editing on Google.com, presumably in a forum where ad space is up for sale." One of the great and valid fears of IT managers is data spread- when your data is spread all over the place, it becomes harder to protect and manage.

Which is not to say that Google's package won't one day be a legitimate option for individuals. An open question is whether the almighty ad dollar Google is chasing will be content to hawk its wares to personal users.

The obvious criticism of Google's offering is its patchwork origins, as the Information Week article points out:

"The Google solution is what I'd call patchwork, or Frankenstein, software," says Tom Rizzo, a director for Office SharePoint Server at Microsoft. "You have to put it all together yourself."

Will Google succeed in wrestling the office productivity crown away from Microsoft? Not a chance.

But as Dan points out, there is "disruption in the air." The unanswered question is whether mere disruption is the goal.

Or something bigger.

Tags: google, microsoft, office applications

Om Malik talks about Dave Winer's recent obsession with surfing the net, setting up news river feeds for his buddies and doing blog posts on Blackberries and other handheld devices. Dave even has a video that shows how he does it (sort of).

I'm now on my third Blackberry, so I know Blackberries. They are great phone/PDA combinations. And my new one doubles as a wireless broadband modem. I use it all the time to access the internet- with my laptop. Blackberries are woefully behind the curve as far as media goes, but there are new models on the horizon that will hopefully close the gap a little.

So I understand how to do a blog post on a Blackberry. Well, actually, you simply do it via email. But it's certainly possible to do it the hard way like Dave shows in his video. I'm OK with all of that. Really.

What I don't understand is why you would want to surf the net, read your news and write blog posts on a Blackberry?

I assume no right thinking person would if they were at home or at work, where there's always a big, visible computer nearby. With a screen you can read, a keyboard, and a fast internet connection.

When traveling? Well maybe, but wouldn't anyone who has a blog also have a laptop with them?

The true mobile computing value of a Blackberry is its ability to serve as a wireless broadband modem and allow you wider access without high hotel and airport day rates. But oddly that angle isn't part of the new push.

I think people are treating this Blackberry as a web surfing and blogging tool the way mountain climbers treat a mountain. They move right past the why and just start climbing. Because they can, because it's cool, or because they're bored. Or maybe so they can try to convince more people to use their mobile computing products.

Perhaps it's just that Dave has a new toy and he's putting it through its paces. Like the way we used to make choppers out of our bikes.

People will fall all over themselves trying to rationalize it away, but everyone who is actually trying to get content, as opposed to push content, knows that other than text based headlines and the occasional weather forecast, surfing the net on a Blackberry is sort of like running a race in wooden clogs. You can do it, but it's slow and painful.

Creating web content on a Blackberry? Surely you jest.

Until someone addresses the why, I'm going to sit here in front my computer and watch- with amusement.

Tags: blackberry, handhelds

Following the trail blazed by Kiko, Stowe Boyd has put the podosphere.com internet domain up for sale on eBay.  Domains have been available on eBay for years, but thus far eBay has not really achieved any traction as a domain auctioneer.

In the wake of the Kiko buzz, that might change, at least as it relates to techy sounding domains.  Stowe's experiment will be interesting to watch.

At least one savvy podcaster has already bid $17.95 :)

Tags: podcasting, domain name

Kiko sold for $258,100, therby validating my belief that eBay is a legitimate exit strategy for Web 2.0 companies.

Rahul Sood, the president of Voodoo PC on his email conversations with Michael Dell (good stuff in the comments as well).  (via Dwight Silverman)

Psychology Today on the Hidden Side of Happiness.

Make a paper star and throw it at somebody.

This might be the funniest site on the internet. I'm laughing so hard I can barely type.

Tags: kents news, links

I mentioned the other day that I bought a USB turntable and have started coverting some old, out of print records into MP3s and putting them on my music server.

Tonight I converted two records by the great Tompall Glaser. Tompall is the father of the outlaw country movement, and it's a crying shame that more people don't know and appreciate his music.

One of the records I converted tonight was Tompall Glaser and His Outlaw Band, from 1977. On this record, more than others, the conversion was hard due to scratches and mixing issues. But if you want to understand why I go to the effort, just listen to Tompall and his band stretch out on I Just Want to Hear the Music.

I realize that the sound, on this record in particular, is a far cry from CD quality. But it's such a treat to be able to queue up some of these old records that I don't even care.

Fine music by an American master.

Tags: saturday night music, tompall glaser

Steve Rubel likes Original Signal, an aggregator of the 15 most popular Web 2.0 blogs.  I prefer Techmeme where the coverage is broader and more inclusive.

Mashable has an interesting and comprehensive history of Facebook.  We didn't have computers, much less the internet, when I was in college, so I know nothing about Facebook other than what I've read, but I like the fact that Facebook is limited to students.

Dave Winer responds to the recent river of news criticism.  I like the last part, where he talks about working with Josh Bancroft.  I hope he does.  Meanwhile Scoble gushes over Dave, compares him to Douglas Engelbart and apologizes on behalf of all of us for doubting him.  Wow, even The Commander and Jetstream never had Hero Support like that.

Christopher Carfi has a great series about getting found in the long tail.  Read the whole series, because it is good stuff.

When I hit 60 I hope I don't start having stupid ideas like this.

I told you the real world doesn't view the internet through tech colored glasses.

Karl Martino on influence in the blogosphere.

Tags: kents news, links

Earl Moore posts about the difficulty of finding time to blog amid life's larger responsibilities- like the job, the family, the outdoors and having fun. Richard Querin adds his thoughts as well. It's a challenge for sure. While I don't always do it well, here's my approach to blogging, which shares much in common with Earl and Richard.

Early in the morning, before work, I read my RSS feeds (via Bloglines), Techmeme, my personalized My Yahoo page and my personalized Netvibes page. If I see something I want to write about, I'll either begin a draft post and save it to finish later or, if I'm in a hurry, bookmark it via Del.icio.us.

My ability to read or post from my office depends entirely on my schedule for that day. If I'm in the office, I can generally finish and publish a quick post over lunch. Because I often have lunch meetings, I try to have several posts finished and in the queue to be published, so all I have to do is take a few seconds to publish them during the day. At any time I generally have 5-6 completed or nearly completed posts sitting in my queue for this purpose (a series, like my Web 2.0 Wars, is very good for stacking your queue). Writing a bunch of posts in advance sounds like a pain, but since I do a lot of my writing late at night on weekends (after the kids go to bed), it happens naturally.

If I'm in the office all day, I try to read my RSS feeds over lunch and then again near the end of the day. One thing I regularly do throughout the day is tag things, again using Del.icio.us, that I might either respond to that night or include in the next day's morning reading post. At night before I go to bed, I do a draft of the next day's morning reading post so all I have to do in the morning is add any new items that I come across during my morning read.

Late Friday night, after the kids go to bed, is generally devoted to doing my weekly podcast. I keep a mental list during the week of the songs I want to play. The tech talk is generally ad libbed, based on whatever I'm writing or thinking about at the time.

It's not a perfect system, and sometimes I get woefully behind. But the more I write, the easier it is to keep things moving along.

I really like Richard's notebook (the non-computer kind) idea. I may give something like that a try.

How do you manage your blogging?

Tags: blogs, blog building

I did a new podcast tonight. The Gram Parsons Edition.

Inspired by a great new documentary on Gram Parsons, I played great songs by the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and both of Gram's solo records.

Click here to listen or download. Or just click this play button for a quick preview.

Podzinger users can get it here.

Mike over at Techdirt has a very interesting read about the music business. As a long-time musician, songwriter and, most importantly, music fan, the parade of bad decisions made by the music industry over the past few years has just about driven me nuts.

As Mike points out, a large part of the problem is that portions of the music industry, primarily the record label cartel represented by its henchman the RIAA, is trying desperately to hold on to what is quickly becoming an obsolete business model. Beginning with the re-examination of industry economics that led up to Courtney Love's excellent piece in Salon back in 2000 (which proves either the value of ghost writers or that Courtney isn't the complete nincompoop she generally appears to be), through the emergence of online distribution as the channel of choice for the new generation, and up to the current spate of lawsuits against children and dead people that have coalesced all manners of opposition into a line of defense that is starting to turn the tide of battle, the music industry has struggled to figure out a way to preserve what has long been the highly profitable role of both gatekeeper and banker to the music.

The music industry in general and the record labels in particular have not faced the fact that the world has changed- and all of the lawyers in the world can't change it back. The bag is empty and the cat hasn't been seen in years.

Which leaves the music industry with two choices, and only two choices: find a new business model or hold on as hard as you can until the cash pipeline dries up. The smart choice is to take some pain now to become a part of the new world order. The dumb choice, which seems to be the way the industry is going, is to sue everybody in sight for moving your cheese. Those lawsuits work on underfunded individuals who have no choice but to capitulate. They don't work on an entire movement or on moms from Oklahoma.

Other than the fact that you can't turn back time, the most aggravating and self-destructive part of the record label's strategy is that it is attacking the very people whose goodwill is a requirement to sell records. It takes biting the hands that feed you to a new level. No one would complain too loudly if the RIAA sued people who share thousands and thousands of songs with anyone who wanders by. But the RIAA decided early on to sue all comers, thus the public relations war was lost at the first battle. Sometimes it takes more than money to prove you're right, and sometimes even the Deathstar blows up. I don't think that ever occurred to the record label executives, even though the automated voice has to be saying in the back of their minds "auto-destruct sequence initiated, this ship will self destruct in 4 minutes."

In my opinion, driving force behind the record labels insistence in trying to stuff the cat back into the bag is that the record labels historically made so much of their money via the creation and distribution of the media (meaning the actual CDs and before that LPs and tapes, as well as the album art, etc.), and they know that the margins of old are not going to be available under the new distribution system.

When your entire industry is based on huge margins, it's not surprising that you'd resist anything that threatens the status quo. Additionally, if songs are sold online for a buck a piece, the artists are going to quickly realize that it's cheaper for them to rent some studio time, pay a producer and take the finished product directly to the online distributor.

Without the ability to serve as the gatekeeper, the record labels recognize that their position in the entire process is precarious. That's why the RIAA isn't going to buy into Mike's plan of artist promotion, more product and resulting loyalty. Which means that the only alternative is to take the record labels out of the equation- their own short-sighted actions in effect becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like it or not, the world has changed. While the change was bad for the record labels, they should have known the gravy train wouldn't last forever. And over time this change will prove to be very, very good for artists and consumers.

It's time to clean up the milk and go back to work. Let the record labels keep searching for the cat.

We know they'll never find it.

I'vee been reading about MySpace's plan to launch a magazine.

I've missed reading Yahoo! Internet Life ever since it folded back in 2002. I long for the good old bubble days when I could curl up with a Buy.com magazine or eBay magazine. Add to the mix the fact that nobody clicked on my AdSense ads during the 30 days I had them up, and that 2 out of 3 people surveyed believe that diversity in revenue is a good thing- and what you have is a recipe for an idea.

Which leads me to my big announcement: Newsome.Org, the Magazine. No longer will I allow old media to invade our precious blogosphere. From now on, we'll fight the battle on their turf. With a little work I'm sure Newsome.Org, the Magazine will drive Time and Newsweek to their knees.

I've already hired dozens of Pulitzer Prize winning writers to churn out the first edition. Subscribe today, as I'm sure most of the copies of our inaugural edition will one day end up in protective sleeves under locked glass and for auction on eBay- for big bucks. Paypal accepted.

Here's a preview of some of the things we'll cover in our first edition...

One Man's Triumph: The story of how Om Malik learned that there was more to the blogosphere than just Newsome.Org and started his own blog empire.

Personality Matters: Dave Winer on how to win friends and influence people.

Sweepstakes: Win backstage passes to the next blog-star party and a burned $100 bill autographed by Mike Arrington.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Sycophantic: Exclusive interviews with all 3 people Steve Gillmor doesn't think are assholes.

Game On: Hugh, Seth, Jeff and Cory play hide and go seek. Seth wins because the others couldn't see him.

On Blogging: Guy Kawasaki on the challenges of going 239 days without linking to Newsome.Org.

VC Corner: Fred Wilson on the top 10 reasons VC's should fund blogazines.

And an editorial by Robert Scoble on how podcasting is better than Microsoft.

As you can see, this is going to be huge. Click here to subscribe today!

(Cover photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)

Update: Steve Newson has launched his own blogazine.

Pluto got voted out of the planet club.  No word yet if its position in the Disney club is in question.

From the TIVO Deathwatch Department: all that flailing around looking for partnerships, any partnerships, finally paid off as Cox Communications has agreed to administer a little CPR.

Fraser Kelton on branding.

TechCrunch reviews four file sharing programs.

Mathew Ingram gives a business lesson to C|Net and any number of other bubble blowers.  As he correctly points out, the mad money that Sony threw at Grouper was more about the technology than the number of users.  Sometimes it amazes me how little business sense seems to be applied in the Web 2.0 space.  That's reason number one why much of the real world is profoundly disinterested in Web 2.0.

New York City wants CBS to pull the upcoming season of Survivor.

A blog covering Windows Live Writer plugins. (via Kevin Briody)  I just wish there were more of them to cover.

Tags: kents news, links

So what's next, the U.S. Government putting ads on dollar bills? Maybe hospitals could add interactive ads to x-rays and sonograms. Consumer reports dumping its virus-writing magazine and starting a social networking site?

Jeff Chester reports that PBS has decided to run online ads this fall at PBS.org and PBSkids,org.

Why? You know why: "to benefit from the 'explosive growth and rising demand' of interactive advertising." Oh, and because it is "a response to the demand of the market." Right.

Jeff sums up this mistake nicely:

PBS should not be seeking commercial opportunities in the broadband market. Instead, it should be pioneering new forms of non-commercial content readily available throughout our ubiquitous digital system. PBS must recognize by now that online and TV (as well as mobile) is merging. The distinction about whether content is delivered via any platform no longer matters. But what does matter is that PBS, and its stations, don't attempt to replicate what commercial media companies are doing online and with mobile networks. It will be a U.S. media universe saturated with advertising.

The reason that most people support PBS is because it offers programming that they cannot generally get elsewhere. Granted, the hundreds of channels available via cable and satellite have blurred the distinction a little. And as we all know, PBS has nosed up to, but not yet crossed, the line by adding sponsorship messages at the beginning and end of some shows. But adopting the mercenary and short sighted approach of the mainstream media (as well as all of Web 2.0) is inconsistent with the history and mission of PBS. If any of this online mistake creeps onto the television, I suspect many of PBS's supporters will cry foul when they get the letters and phone calls about donating to the cause.

You can't act like Fox and expect to be treated like the neighborhood co-op.

What disappoints me the most is that I would have expected the brains behind PBS to see through the advertising hype and avoid the temptation to make what is clearly a momentum play.

I wonder what Louis Rukeyser would say about this investment?

Tags: pbs, advertising