I was a guest on last night's edition of Dave Wallace and Mike Seyfang's The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show podcast.  The show is up and available.  Go give us a listen!

We talked about blogging, networks, music, RSS, Facebook, MySpace, podcasting and all sorts of other interesting topics.

I really enjoyed it, and would welcome the opportunity to guest on more podcasts.

I enjoy memes, because they are a way to find out about others - and sometimes yourself - in an interesting way, without having to write or read a boring autobiography.  I also think answers to questions are more revealing than prose, because they elicit specific information rather than whatever the writer consciously or subconsciously wants to present.  Having now mounted my defense of memes, let's get to the business at hand.

Chip Camden tagged me in Randy Morin's bullying meme.  So here we go.

Am I a bad person, if I'm happy to know that the bully did not live a full life?

I believe people are generally good or bad based on what they do, not what they think.  Having said that, it depends on the level of bullying and what is meant by "live a full life."  There are certainly some things that a bully could do that would lead me to be happy if he shuffled off this mortal coil, but outside of murder, rape, etc., I would not wish death on someone.  I would, however, be happy to learn that karma or the law acted to cause a serious bully to have a bad job, go to jail, become homeless, etc.  I might want to forgive and forget, but I am an imperfect person and would be perfectly happy to hear of a little cosmic payback.

Were you bullied as a kid?

Not generally.  There were a few times I was treated badly by some older kids, but it was more of a stop following us around thing than a bullying thing.  My dad told me to avoid a fight when possible, but that there are times when there is no other way to resolve something.  I tell my kids, in cases of physical aggression only, to ask the person (be that a sibling or third party) to stop twice, and only if that fails to respond in kind (or "do what you gotta do").  It is a hard line to draw and to walk, but I simply do not believe anyone has to accept physical abuse without defending themselves.  Of course most of my wife's friends think I am a caveman (and not the Geico kind) in this regard.

Was bullying as rampant in your schools, as they were in mine?

Probably, although I was largely oblivious to it at the time.  If I bullied people in any way, it was by being unaware of their suffering at the hands of bullies that I may have been hanging out with.

What happened to the bullies in your school?

A couple of them are in jail, actually.  None of my close friends were bullies, so I don't know about the rest of them.

Was it just the boys, or did the girls bully too?

I don't know about at my school, but as a parent of girls, I am convinced that bullying by girls against other girls is much, much worse than between boys.  It's verbal, as opposed to physical, and much harder to detect.  If two little boys are fighting on the playground, it's obvious, and they generally forget about it by the time school's out.  If you see one little girl whisper something to another, you have no idea what she said.  And the adverse effects seem to linger longer.  I think schools need to be much more proactive where girl to girl bullying is concerned.

Were you the bully?

Not to my knowledge.  I have generally taken up for people when I feel they are being taken advantage of.  When I was younger, I was less aware of that sort of thing, but the older I get the better my bully radar seems to be.

Now to tag some bloggers.  I'm going to dive into my new reading list, along with a few long time pals.  Bob Meets World, Nick O'Neill,  D'Arcy Norman, Nancy White, Blonde 2.0, Dave Wallace, Steven Streight and Thomas Hawk (who I think got beat up unfairly in the comments to a recent Scoble post).

There's a new version of Windows Live Writer available for download.  Lots of new features.  Kevin Briody likes it.  Why in the hell does it flash every time I add a link to a post?  It's User Account Control (which I long ago disabled) all over again.

Mahalo launched today.  Steven Streight has a good write up on it, as does Mashable.  Mahalo says it's:

the world's first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven't yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.

There's a page for Scoble, one for Guy.  None for Seth.  Or me.  Seems oddly familiar....  Anyway, why does a search for wolves return NOFX (whatever that is), Kevin Costner and Instapundit as 3 of the 4 links?

Scott Karp has a good summary of the CBS/Last.fm business.  It's about the declining radio ad dollar.  One of these days someone is going to start looking for a return on all this money old media is tossing around trying to become new media.

I was a guest on Dave Wallace and Mike Seyfang's The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show podcast tonight.  It was an absolute blast!  I'll link to the episode when it's up.

Fred Wilson is fired up about HD Radio.  He applauds Sony's entry into the HD Radio market with the soon to be available XDR-S3HD (an inspired name, for sure), a $200 table top HD radio.

I love music, and I particularly love high fidelity music.  Currently, I get my car music via XM Radio, and while I am generally pleased with the selection, I find the audio quality to be a notch or two above two tin cans and a string.  Anyone who says XM is CD quality hasn't listened to many CDs.

On the other hand, there's a very good reason why XM has grown so fast and why networks are looking for creative and technological ways to keep people from skipping ads.  People simply don't like ads.  In this era when everyone is jumping on the ad revenue bandwagon, radio advertising has been on the decline.

People tolerate online ads because they are relatively easy to ignore.  Ads on the radio are impossible to ignore.

Sure, I've never heard HD radio.  And the experience might be so amazing that all those radio ads I haven't missed in the years since I've listened to one second of over the air radio will be like, well, music to my ears.  But I've had HDTV for a few years, and I can tell you this - I've never once watched the ads.  I record the show and fast forward through every ad that doesn't have cavemen.

I hope HD radio takes off, mostly because it will put competitive pressure on XM to sound better.  But a higher sound quality won't be enough to lure me back to traditional radio.

Variety is reporting that ABC is "hoping to reinvent the newsmagazine for the YouTube generation with a show produced by ABC News but based on user-generated video." 

i-Caught, a new show with a Web 2.0 worthy and grammatically challenged name, will get a six-week run on ABC starting August  6.  If it does well, it might return midseason.

It won't do well for one reason.  ABC, and the other TV networks, are superfluous to the user generated video movement.  YouTube, Google, the blogosphere and hordes of other online media hubs already constitute a distributed video on demand system that exists without the need for a traditional broadcast medium.

ABC brings nothing to the table users can't get elsewhere, whenever they want it, and generally without all the advertising.

This is an update on my swivel feeds experiment, in which I ask bloggers I read to help me rebuild my reading list.

Here are the swivel feeds recommendations so far from the first group.  Note that, when possible, I designate blogs by the name of the blogger, because I like to know who I'm talking to.

Anne Zelinka
Ballastexistenz
Bob Meets World
Bonnie Staring
Chris Brogan
David Rothman
Deborah Schultz
Engtech Lite
f8d
Heise Security
Hilary Talbot
Ian Forrester
IT|Redux
J.A. Konrath
John Tropea
Les Orchard
New Scientist
Nick O'Neill
Phydeaux3
Quasi Fictional
Reg Braithwaite
Robert Andrews
The Struggling Writer
Tresblue
Tricks of the Trade

Participants Blonde 2.0, Mike Miller, Amyloo, Assaf Arkin and Improbulus round out the first edition of my new reading list.

So far, we are off to a good start.  I have subscribed to all of the recommended blogs, and all of them are new to me.

No suggestions yet from A Consuming Experience, Amy Gahran, Amyloo, Assaf Arkin, Ben Metcalfe or Ben Werdmuller, but there's plenty of time to get them in.

Now for the next 8 bloggers (whose additions will be listed in the next update):

Bill Liversidge: Bill is a writer, like several of the swivel feeds recommendations above.  I have been reading his blog for a long time, though he does not post as much as he used to.  I hope he sees this.

Brad Kellett: One of my core blogging pals.  He's one of my mobile tech gurus, though he writes well about a lot of other topics too.

Chip Camden: Another of my core blogging buddies.  He's a software developer who, like me, blogs about all sorts of things.  One of my long-time reads.

Christopher Carfi:  Chris is an entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Cerado.  I've been reading his blog since I found out what blogs were.

Claus Valca: Another Houston blogger, who writes detailed and very informative posts about software, among other topics.

Corey Clayton: A relatively new read who I met via Twitter.  He's a tech writer and a podcaster.

Craig Newmark: The founder of Craigslist needs no introduction.  The first time he commented here, I actually called my wife from work and told her.  That's the only thing about this blog she actually thinks is cool, as opposed to, well, nerdy.  I enjoy Craig's political and social activism posts. 

Dave Rogers:  Dave is a retired navy commander from Florida, whose blog I have read for a year or two.  He writes well about all sorts of stuff.

That's the second group of bloggers I'm asking to help rebuild my reading list.  If you're willing, please give me 5 recommendations to add to the list.  Use the comments, your blog or email, whichever you prefer.

Here's some pretty amazing YouTube activism by Greg Hewlett, a blogger, Texan, amputee and, by all accounts, fine blues singer. 

Link for feeds.

Unfortunately, Greg reports that the bill amendment that would have forced insurance companies to provide better prosthetics coverage was stripped from the bill.

While unfortunately not successful in this case, this video is a great example of the sort content activism that can reach a lot of people in a short time.  I probably wouldn't have read a letter about this topic from someone I didn't know.  But I watched this video 3 times.

Good pickin', effective message.  Rock on.

We've been talking a lot about social networks lately.  I've said many times that I don't get MySpace.  A few folks have tried to explain it to me.  Nevertheless, when I look at MySpace, I still see the worst of ugly Geocities and walled-off AOL all rolled into one.  It's worse than Prodigy.  It's GEnie on crack.

It's a gallery of bad web design, user unfriendliness, intrusive advertising and dead end links.  I don't care if the whole world is there, it's ugly.  Horrible, I tell you.

And I ought to know.  I just got back from wandering around MySpace for a couple of hours.  My header hurts, my feed stinks and I most certainly don't love MySpace.

Here's how it started.

I noticed the other day that a musician buddy of mine has a MySpace page.  His looks like everyone else's, so I'm not picking on him when I use his page as an entry point to the many things I dislike about MySpace.  Go to any MySpace page and you can follow along, because they all look the same.  Bad. 

First, music starts to play automatically.  If it were a MIDI file instead of a good song (my friend is a great songwriter), I'd think I was back in the nineties.  It's the same on the MySpace pages of two other people I used to know, whose MySpace pages I found in the chaos that passes for Friends and Comments at the bottom of my buddy's page.

There are blog-like elements to a MySpace page.  Clicking on "subscribe to this blog" is not one of them, however, as that leads to yet another page stating that you have to be a "member" to do that.  Stalwart potential subscribers can click over to the "View All Blog Entries" page where there is an actual RSS link- where you get short partial feeds.  A lot of work for very little return.

Friends and Comments.  Where to start.  There are a ton of pictures at the bottom of the page.  Some of them are called Comments, but the format screams Guestbook.  Then there are the Friends, that mythical connection that is supposed to make MySpace the great community.  Leaving the cubist-like formatting aside for a moment, you can only have Friends who have MySpace accounts- a symptom of the AOL-era closed system.  And based on the lists I saw on the pages I visited, the only requirement for Friendship is fame or asking to be listed.

Jimmy Buffett has 106,637  MySpace "friends."  If that's a social network, then the phone book is a social network.

It makes Twitter seem like a family reunion. 

I also spent some time on the MySpace pages of another songwriter I know.  His page is slightly less ugly and less user friendly.

There's a pictures link.  That leads back to the main MySpace page.

There's a videos link.  That leads to an empty page.

There's another jumble of Friends and Comments.  For me to poop on.

Let's summarize the devastation.  Horrible layout. Ugly design.  Music playing automatically.  Hundreds of so-called Friends, many of them famous people who happen to have a MySpace page.  I'm not feeling the community.

Particularly when you can go to any number of blogging services, get a free blog with a template that is not migraine producing and be up and running within minutes.  No html required.  And if you want to link to famous people, you can still do it.   Here's a link to Roger McGuinn.  Here's one to Lloyd Cole.  Here's one to Steve Rubel. 

I think the social networking closed site as online Mecca story is a myth driven by people who want to keep the content producing public behind the walls so they can make money off of the content they produce.

Jay Neely follows up on our conversation about blogs and social networks and the differences between the two:

What's the difference between a social network and blogs or a blogging service? One is for your friends, the other is for your audience. The key difference is that one group already knows you (it's easy to replace "friends" with "coworkers", "family", "neighbors", etc).

As I mentioned the other day, there is logic to that distinction.  But the more I think about it, I don't believe it's as clear-cut as that.

Jay says bloggers write for their audience.  Clearly some do, like Guy Kawasaki, the folks at Mashable and other bloggers with one foot remaining in the old media pool.  But lots of other bloggers are writing not merely to have a soapbox, but for the multi-way conversations that are a central part of the blogging experience.  Robert Scoble is the best example of a popular blogger who, it seems to me, approaches blogging from this perspective.  Doc Searls is another.

There are other reasons why Jay's line of demarcation sometimes breaks down.  Take connecting with old friends, for example.  Very few, if any, of my real world friends even know what Facebook is.  None (to my knowledge) use it.  As a result, I will have a much better chance connecting with people I know by nurturing my web site and waiting for people to Google me.

It's the same with new friends.  No one will ever accuse me of being shy, but at the same time, I'm not big on chatting online with people I don't know.  That's the reason Second Life lost its appeal to me.

On the other hand, I have made a bunch of friends via cross-blog conversations- many of them from other states, countries and continents.  Chip Camden, Earl Moore, Randy Morin, Blonde 2.0, Brad Kellett, Dave Wallace, Ethan Johnson, Frank Gruber, Hugh MacLeod, Nick Carr, Martin Gordon, Mathew Ingram, Susan Getgood, Mike Miller, Ric Hayman, Richard Querin, Rick Mahn, Seth Finkelstein, Steven Streight, TDavid, Tom Morris and Warner Crocker are just a few of the people I likely would never have become friends with if I had set up camp in Facebook.

Plus, the community that develops via cross-blogging is so much more meaningful than merely adding a few hundred "friends" to the botton of your butt ugly MySpace page.  When I visit MySpace I see very little that looks like a real community.  Mostly, I see a gallery of bad web design.

Granted, the cross-blogging community is distributed, inefficient and sometimes impolite.  But it exists, and without walls.

I think Jay is onto something, and I hope he keeps writing about it.  But at the moment, we're all standing on the tip of the iceberg.  Below the surface are a lot of other forces at work.

These lines that seem bright and pretty today may disappear completely tomorrow.

Or they may begin to look like walls.

I got a lot of great feedback on my Facebook question.

Jay Neely of the Social Strategist says I am focusing on services when I should be focusing on people.  In other words, that in the blogosphere, it's what you say that matters, whereas with Facebook and the other social networks it's who you are that matters.  That makes sense to me, though I wish the blogosphere was a little more people-centric than it is.  If you read Jay's entire post, you'll see that the gatekeeper business, the community concept and Web 2.0 applications are all driving the evolution of, and distinction between, the blogosphere and the social networking sites.  Here's my follow up question to Jay (and everyone else): to what extent, if any, do you think this evolution is really being driven by developers who want to make money off of the content created by users on the social networking sites?

Mike Miller says the social network sites are about community, and ease of use.  Community, in the sense that people want to be where their friends are.  Dave Wallace agrees that the ready-made community draws people in because of the pre-existing population and the fact that making connections is technologically and socially easier.  Dave then sums up the essence of a community beautifully, by quoting Adam Fields:

There's really only one rule for community as far as I'm concerned, and it's this - in order to call some gathering of people a "community", it is a requirement that if you're a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will come looking for you to see where you went.

I built several large communities around message boards back in the nineties, and that definition is perfect.  I have said before that I thought blogs were the new message boards.  Maybe these guys are right, that the distributed nature of blogs makes it too hard.  Maybe Facebook and MySpace are really the new message boards.

Richard Querin, like me a Facebook skeptic, says that Facebook and blogging are separate animals altogether.  He sees Facebook as a way to connect with people you've lost touch with- a better version of Classmates.com (but perhaps not as good as Ethan's Google/blog post approach).  Richard says that, while blogging is a lot harder than opening a Facebook account, it also has more potential- both technologically and socially.  I suppose it depends on what you're looking for in a service, but if I ever use Facebook, it will be for the reasons Richard outlines- a way to find people I want to reconnect with and then direct them here.

Amy says we're better off pulling content from the web onto our sites via APIs and widgets than we are "cramming more stuff into somebody else's big hermetically sealed office building with windows you can't open."  She says content is flowing the wrong way.  While I have a greater appreciation for the benefits of Facebook after reading everyone's responses, I still agree with Amy.  I totally get Facebook for those who don't have blogs and/or are looking for people, be they old friends or potential new ones.  But if I am going to work my tail off to create content, I'm going to do it here and in comments to blogs I read.

Thanks to everyone for responding.  I'm still in learning mode, so if you have thoughts or other perspectives, please keep 'em coming.

Movie Recommendation: if you like scary movies, rent The Gravedancers.  Very creepy.  Netflix link.

Louis Gray on the aging of a beloved pet, and a happy update.  We lost Virgil and Beanie within a few months of each other back in 2003.  Beanie (18) was my cat before Raina and I got married.  I still miss them.

Even birds are crapping on President Bush.

Zenhabits tells us 10 benefits of getting up early, and how to do it.

I never would have guessed this.

It's no secret that I've been a little bored with some of my feeds lately.  So it's time to launch a grand experiment that will provide lots of good, new blogs to read.  I'm going to dump a lot of my feeds and ask bloggers I enjoy reading to help rebuild my reading list.

And I'm going to compile the list and share it with everyone.

When I logged on today, I had 147 feeds in my feed reader.  Some of them are news sites and blogs that I view as the functional equivalent of news sites.  They will remain in my feeds.  This group consists of Blogspotting, C|Net Alpha, C|Net News, Digital Markets, Download Squad, DPR, eHomeUpgrade, Engadget, Fark, Farmgate, Gizmodo, HD Beat, InsideMicrosoft, Lifehacker, Mashable, Obscure, Photography School, ProBlogger, PVRblog, Steve Gillmor, TechCrunch, Techdirt, Techmeme, TV Squad, Valleywag and ZDNet Blogs.

Next, there are quite a few blogs that I am going to drop, because they have fallen into near abandonment or otherwise don't interest me for one reason or another.  No need to list those.

Now for the fun part.

Then there are the rest of my feeds.  This group consists of the bloggers who interest me the most.  I have a lot of interests, so these feeds cover a lot of ground.  And I want these folks to help me reseed my reading list with blogs they like and/or think I'd like.

I'll update both the list and my feeds as we go, and when we're done, I'll post the entire list and an OPML file for anyone who wants it.

So, once or twice a week, I'll list several of these blogs, describe briefly why I enjoy them and ask each of the writers to add 5 blogs to the list.

That's about it.

So let's get started with the first 8 bloggers.

A Consuming Experience: I learned a lot of the technical stuff I do with my blog template from Improbulus.  Her blog is a living resource for blogging and technical tips and how-tos.

Amy Gahran: She was the first person who got me thinking about blogs as conversations, which became my core blogging philosophy.

Amyloo: Amy blogs on a lot of topics that interest me.  A great blend of tech, politics, music, philosophy.

Assaf Arkin:  He's one of my favorite software reads, and the Tom Clancy of the blogosphere.  Lots of hard, but understandable, tech.  Very little "me too" posts about the latest bookmarking application, etc.

Mike Miller:  Mike is one of my core blogging buddies, and someone I discuss stuff with almost every day.  He's already led me to lots of good reads and several people who'll appear in this series, but I want more.

Ben Metcalfe:  Ben is a social media commentator and developer.  Thus, I learn a lot more from him than a lot of the social media bloggers who merely regurgitate what they read on TechCrunch.

Ben Werdmuller:  I realize that Nuclear Sledgehammer is a group/company blog, and I mean no disrespect to the other writers, but Ben was the one I started reading first, so he gets the recommendation request.  Good, thoughtful writing about the blogosphere, social networking, etc.

Blonde 2.0: Ayelet came out of nowhere to quickly become one of my favorite bloggers.  If she posted a little more, she'd be in the Technorati 100 within a year (Steve Rubel once said that about me, but I didn't quite make it).

So there are the first 8 bloggers I'm asking to help rebuild my reading list.  If you're willing, please give me 5 recommendations to add to the list.  Use the comments, your blog or email, whichever you prefer.

Also, if you are a blogger I don't know about yet, feel free to tell me about your blog, and it may make the list too.  And if you're one of the rare non-blogging blog readers, please give me your list too.  I am very interested in recommendations from non-bloggers.

I am really excited about this.

I have seen a lot of concerts.  Cream is one band I've never seen live, and if they play anywhere near Texas, I'll fix that.  We saw Eric Clapton not long ago, and he was great.

Here's a link to the embedded video for feeds.

Now, if the remaining members of Led Zeppelin would tour again, I could plug the other huge whole in my concert portfolio.

On the other hand, I'm not all that stoked about this.

I have a genuine question.

What is so much better about Facebook (and MySpace and other similar platforms) than an ordinary blog on a popular platform- say WordPress?

I would love it if someone could explain this to me.

To this point, I've always felt like the blogosphere is the only social network that matters, and that Facebook, etc. are the dilutive sandboxes of the new Geocities generation.  But I am obviously missing something.  Just look at tonight's Techmeme.

I understand how it's better for the owners of Facebook, because they can sell ads and leverage off of the content and traffic created by users.

But I don't get it at all from the user's perspective.

Can somebody help me with this?

Blogtrepreneur (that's really hard to spell) has a list of 101 Essential Blogging Resources.

eMoms at Home tells work at home parents how to keep kids busy during the summer.

Ethan Johnson smartly end-runs around Classmates.com.  This is a good idea, and I may do something similar for all the other geezers from Cheraw High School, Class of 1978.  Any of my classmates who read this blog, let me know what you think.

I'm going to try some of these on Luke.  Up until now, I've been satisfied with saying "look at the giraffe" every time we see a horse.  Just kidding, eMoms.

An exclusive interview with Jackson Miller.

One of these days I'm going to start a 5 questions series where I ask regular bloggers 5 questions.  Like what's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?  You're young and you got your health, what you want with a job?  That sort of thing.

Reason number 187 not to play golf.

Rogers Cadenhead on the RSS Advisory Board.  This is the 7th time I've linked to Rogers, not that I'm keeping score or anything.

On that note, Scoble says his link blog isn't getting enough return links.  Sometimes I think he writes stuff just to irritate me.  It's a real shame you have to be sycophantic or bombastic just to get included.  I like Randy's plan better- and it obviously worked.

TVSquad on the future of Lost.  I really liked the season finale.

Thanks to Mike, Penelope (author of the book I was discussing) and Ayelet for commenting on my recent posts.

Doc Searls likes his news the old fashioned way.  He says:

So here's a challenge to the daily papers: stop giving away the franchise. Make daily editorial available online only for subscribers. Charge for the fresh stuff, online as well as off.

In a perfect old media world, that's exactly how it would work.  But this ain't a perfect old media world, and if the papers start walling their fresh content off, a hundred online-only publications will happily take their place.  Everyone- bloggers, new media, advertisers- would benefit from the trickle down news effect, except the papers.

I haven't subscribed to a newspaper in almost 10 years.  By the time I see it in the paper, I already know it.  I don't watch the local news on TV anymore for the same reason.

We live in an accelerated world and news via old media is in slow motion.

Guy Kawasaki asked Penelope Trunk, the author of a book on career advancement, for her 9 biggest myths of the workplace.  I've spent a lot of time in the workplace, a lot of it hiring and managing people.  Here's the list, with my thoughts (and these are only my personal thoughts).

1. You'll be happier if you have a job you like.

There's logic (and condescension) to the garbage man in love story, but this is not a myth.  Being a pessimist can ruin any job, but the fact is that those who do what they do only for the paycheck are generally going to be less effective and less happy.  I'm not saying you have to love it so much, you'd do it for free.  But, within the context of a job, it really helps to like what you do.

2. Job-hopping will hurt you.

I think most folks have 2 maybe 3 hops.  After that, it becomes a red flag on a resume- as does missing years in the timeline (which often hide more jumping).  So it's a matter of degree.

3. The glass ceiling still exists.

I don't know if the glass ceiling in the traditional sense still exists or not.  But I completely agree that lots of people are stepping off the ladder and looking for life balance.  But there will always be a segment of the population who is scrambling up as fast as they can.  The important thing is to figure out where your personal sweet spot is and work towards that.  It may be to make the most money possible, or it may not.  I hope it's not.

4. Office politics is about backstabbing.

Interestingly (at least to me), I agree that this is largely a myth.  What backstabbing remains is much more subtle, but the ones who do it are generally found out and controlled.  If you have good and attentive managers, it's not much of a problem.

5. Do good work, and you'll do fine.

I agree with this, but not the toot your own horn every chance you get part.  You have to do good work, period.  Then, you have to try to get others to toot your horn for you.  If I tell you I'm good, it means nothing.  If others tell you that, it means a lot.  People don't like self promoters because people don't like to be sold.  They like to make their own decisions.

6. You need a good resume.

This is not a myth- at least as far as content goes.  Sure, blind resumes don't get you the job.  But once you've left the interview, a good resume helps you beat out the competition.  By good, I mean content.  I agree that the form and font and whatnot don't matter.  I wouldn't pay some so-called expert a quarter to write my resume.

7 People with good networks are good at networking.

I totally agree that this is a myth.  People who are sincere and likeable are the best at networking.  Because to them, it's not networking- it's living.  Nothing turns me off faster than someone who wants to get to know me mostly to leverage off that relationship for personal gain.

8. Work hard and good things will come.

I agree that this is a myth.  Hard work is a requirement, but there's a lot more to it.  Having said that, it's not this: "Make sure you're not the hardest worker. Take a long lunch. Get all your work done early. Grand thinking requires space, flexibility and time. So let people see you staring at the wall. They'll know you're a person with big ideas and taking time to think makes you more valuable."  Because if you do that, people won't think you're a person with big ideas, they'll think you're a slacker.  Period.

9 Create the shiny brand of you!

This sounds like a clip from some Powerpoint presentation, but I agree with this passage: "Offer your true, good-natured self to other people and you'll have a great network. Those who stand out as leaders have a notable authenticity that enables them to make genuinely meaningful connections with a wide range of people."

I think people tend to over analyze job advancement.  It's really simple.  Be smart.  Be honest.  Be kind.  Work hard.  Live good.  Manage priorities.  Find your balance.

And as Webb Wilder says, wear glasses if you need 'em.

Looks like Google is, in fact, going to buy FeedBurner.  That makes me sad.  Google is trying to corner the market on information.  Like when someone shoots the moon in Hearts, it may be too late to do anything about it when people realize it and start to care.

Now cola has gone open source.

Kodak is getting out of the "low end" digital camera business.  Hmmm.

My home state gets serious about beer.  When I lived there we were happy to get our hands on PBRs and Falstaff.  I even had a taste of moonshine a time or two.  Anyone drinking those high falutin' beers would have been beat up summarily.

The Civil War in 4 minutes.  This is a great video- watch it before they take it down. (via Kevin Briody)

Tris Hussey asked the $64,000 question, and then deleted it.  Here's a clip from my reader.

Scott Karp is a blogging buddy, but when I see both "disruptive" and "disintermediated" in the first 13 words of a post, it's time to mark it read and move on. 

My funny line of the day, from a TechCrunch story on some scheduled Second Life downtime: "Second Life entrepreneurs are particularly unhappy with the downtime, after all, if you're trying to make a living from Second Life this downtime affects the bottom line."  That's what I tell my wife when she makes me and the kids stop playing whiffle ball and come inside for dinner.  "Honey, I'm going to get rich playing whiffle ball one day...."

Blonde 2.0 on brand building via social media. 

C|Net reports that the music industry is offering "small" webcasters the option of paying "below market" royalty rates on the songs they play, keeping the required royalty rates essentially the same as they are under a 2002 law called the Small Webcaster Settlement Act.

It's not known what the cutoff for "small" would be, but the SaveNetRadio coalition argues logically that almost all webcasters should be considered small by broadcast standards.  Once they get more popular, however, they might very well grow themselves out of business under the proposed plan.

While I'd love the ability to stream some MP3's from Newsome.Org, the bigger issue is not helping bloggers put a few streaming MP3's online, it's ensuring the viability of the places most of us go to get new music- the Pandoras and Rhapsodys of the world.

 As Techdirt points out, this is likely an attempt to distract the growing number of politicians who have been looking at this very important issue.

While I'm happy to see the music industry negotiate a little, there's a lot more work to do before we're done.

Randy Morin is 100% correct.  Those on the outside looking in could easily change the game by linking to each other.  For me, it's a matter of recreating the blogosphere or leaving it altogether.  Once we get a collective voice, the blogging elite will let us in the club, and we can all blog together.  It's not about pulling the A-Listers down, it's about pulling ourselves up.  Scott Kingery agrees.

Google declares Google Office victory.  Maybe, if victory means being used by non-corporate cheapskates.  I don't know a single person who uses Google Apps in lieu of Office or Works.  Not one.

Karl Martino makes some good points about online news, and expects to be ignored.  See item 1 above.

Darren Rowse, who I consider an un-A-Lister even though he never answered my question, has a good post on growing a blog.

Random blogs I like: Ben Metcalfe, Brad Kellett, Craig Newmark, Greg Hughes, Jeremy Zawodny, Kevin Briody, Ric Hayman, Richard Querin, Steven Streight and Zoli Erdos.

Amazing rumble in the jungle between lions, crocodiles and buffalo.  (via Rob Gale)

Robert Scoble says he's in a blogging malaise.  That's sort of like those celebrities who complain about all the fans asking them for autographs and whatnot.  Robert should be thankful for his blogging fame (which he deserves and earned through hard work).  So I'm not going to shed too many tears for him.

Seth makes a good point in the comments to my unblogosphere post.

On that note, I have lately forgotten to implement my new policy, so thanks to Seth, Barbidoll31, Mike, TDavid, Richard, Louis, OmegaMom, Ethan, Susan, Holly, DeeJay and Kelly for commenting on my recent posts.  Please keep 'em coming!

Dave Winer points out that some conferences he recently attended were not unconferences.  He says "people don't seem ready yet to accept that knowledge is distributed through the room."

I agree that the structure of an unconference is a better way to learn about a lot of stuff.  But I sort of feel the way Dave felt at those conferences every time I fire up my feed reader.

If we want to promote unconferences, first we need to promote an unblogosphere.

I've noticed that some people are starting to combine partial feeds with a big ad banner at the end of each partial post in said feed.  I will unsubscribe to any feeds that do that.  Bye bye to two long time reads, Blog Herald and PC Doctor.

If this becomes the norm, it will spell the end of my blog reading.

UPDATE: Adrian (the PC Doctor) emailed me and said the banner ads at the end of every feed post was a technical glitch.  I have resubscribed.  Thanks to Adrian for emailing to clear that up.

So The Pirate Bay is going to launch a YouTube Killer.

That's sort of like a company called "Bank Robbers" launching a Bank of America Killer.  "The Pirate Bay" translated into any language means "Please Sue Me, I Dare You, You Pansy."

I mean, come on.  I think that's a hilarious name, and part of me is pulling for them just because I bet they like Monty Python too.  But there's a little more to slaying YouTube than a waiving a funny name and a middle finger at big media.

Ask Yahoo how they did slaying eBay.

The only way anyone is going to put a material dent in YouTube's stranglehold on the streaming video market is by putting up a bunch of copyrighted stuff and somehow making it stick.  Granted, The Pirate Bay (arrgg, matey) is at the front of that line, having grown out of the Swedish anti-copyright organization.

But as AllOfMP3.com found out, an offshore address is no panacea for legal troubles.

The Pirate Bay has been on the run from the get go, with allegations that U.S. political pressure forced Swedish police to raid them once already.  I certainly don't think that's the highest and best use of U.S. foreign relations, and while I've never used The Pirate Bay, I can see why people pull for them.

But popularity is one thing.  YouTube, well that's something else.

Either way, it should be fun to watch.

Arrgg!

I continue to be amazed at Google's ability to effectively play the underdog card.  Somehow Google is able to look and quack like Mr. Drysdale and yet get treated like Jed Clampett, pre shooting at some food.

I don't know if it's brilliant marketing, Microsoft hate or some combination of the two.  But it seems to be working.

Google has a market cap of $146,000,000,000.00.  That's $146 billion.  An insane figure for a company that basically has no tangible product to sell.  A company whose revenue stream is closer to media than tech.  A company whose stock price is $470 and whose trailing P/E ratio is above 40.

How does Google pull it off?

Maybe it's the collective "I can't believe this is happening to me" effect.

Google went public on August 19, 2004 at $85, via a dutch auction.  I bid 60 something dollars, fully expecting not to get any, but thinking wrongly that anything higher was too much.  Those who bought just 100 shares at $8,500 at the IPO now have stock worth $47,000.  A $25,500 investment is now worth $141,000.  If I had bid higher and gotten a few hundred shares, I probably wouldn't write anything relating to Google but thank you notes.

Somehow, Google is able to play the little 'ol me card while simultaneously nipping at the heels of the Fortune 50.  Here are the U.S. companies with a larger market cap than Google: ExxonMobil, GE, Microsoft, Citigroup, AT&T, Bank of America, P&G, Wal-Mart, Pfizer, American International Group, J&J, JP Morgan Chase, Chevron, Berkshire Hathaway, IBM, Cisco and Altria.  Pretty nice company.

Or maybe Google just knows how to throw a pep rally.

Today Donna Bogatin writes about Google's coach-like fear of the opponent.

Microsoft (DISCLAIMER: I am a Microsoft shareholder) has set its sights on Google's sacred online ad dollar, buying digital marketing (read advertising) company aQuantive, Inc for $6B.  Plus, Microsoft has lots of money and employees.  And Bill Gates.

Google says it's worried.  You can almost hear the clanging of locker room chairs as its employees gather round to listen.

"Win one for the Brin-er!"

Meanwhile, in the other locker room, Donna quotes Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's Gates Lite, t