I got the evaluation summaries today from a recent speech at a conference here in Houston.  My favorite evaluation of all time: "Scary, country boy lawyer.  But I will read every word he writes."  I don't know if that's a slam, a compliment or both, but I wish I could change the name plate on my office door from "Kent Newsome" to "Scary Country Boy Lawyer."  Maybe I'll legally change my name.

I just came across a recent concert film of REM on DirecTV's channel T101.  They still rock.  Check it out.  It's free.

Pandora added classical music to its library.  That's too bad.  I hate classical music.  And I rarely use the word hate.

Lifehacker has started a series on digital photography.  More than just the basics you already know.  Looks very promising.

Even better, WikiHow has a tutorial on folding a towel elephant.  I'm going to put one in my kids' bathroom and see if they notice.

Cracked has 9 words that don't mean what you think they do.  I had non-plussed backwards. 

Farmgate, one of my daily reads, has an agricultural forecast for 2008.  Generally good news.  Need more farming karma?  Granny J has tractors.  I could drive a tractor well before I ever tried to drive a car.

Newsome.Org got linked in a CBS story about keeping teens safe online.

Steve Spaulding does Zager and Evans, with a little help from the Discovery Channel.

Up until I read this, I didn't care a whit about the writer's strike.  If I need to go somewhere and picket to get one last ride with the best show (recently) on television, then picketing I will go.  On a happier note, I just noticed that Love American Style, one of my favorite shows when I was a kid, is out on DVD.  I have Disc 1 in my queue.

I'm going to do the wrap-up for my swivel feeds experiment over the long weekend.  And then I am going to unsubscribe to a lot of blogs.

Ayelet on one of the reasons I am not drinking the social network kool-aid.  There is far too much self-promotion in these social networks (and Twitter), and far too little value or entertainment.  There are too many different motivations for social networking, many of which are at cross purposes.

On the other hand, if you need a good reason to join Pownce, meet Mustard Empire.  He/she has single handedly revived my long buried and presumed dead interest in hip hop.  This song by the Winnie Coopers (great name) is a 10+.

Chris Brogan on passion in personal branding.  I've been including personal branding concepts in almost all of my recent conference speeches.  Even the scary country boy lawyer one.

PulverTV (sorry, I don't do the non-initial caps thing unless I'm talking about eBay or an i something) looks very interesting.  I'd love to do some content for it, if I had more time.  Somebody in a comment to Jeff's post said "live is where it's at."  Personally, I don't believe that's true.  I think interesting and archivable is where it's at.  Neither of those require, and one is inconsistent with, live.  Live is hard for professionals.  It's nearly impossible for the rest of us.

What I'd rather have than either an eBook reader or an iPod Touchbook:  a nice, solid paperback of another installment in the Hyperion series.  I'm well into the fourth and final book, and I think it may be the greatest series of books since the Lord of the Rings.  Nobody other than hard-core gadget freaks wants to read books on an eBook reader or an iSomething.  Could we possibly get any nerdier?

Seth has an interesting twist on the blogosphere caste system.  I don't have any paid links.  The A-Listers won't have anything to do with me.  And I think the entire SEO thing is somewhere between sad and irritating.  In fact, I think most of the internet and the entire blogosphere are rapidly disintegrating into a scene from Escape from New York.  Paging Snake Plissken.

If some alien traveler landed at an intersection in any decent-sized town in America, wandered into any of the four Starbucks there, borrowed the barista's laptop to tap into the internet and read the first six blogs he came across, he would instantly conclude that social networking is more important to Americans than work, family, religion, sports and all three Elvises combined.

But like the blind fellow who happens to grab the elephant's tail, he wouldn't have the whole picture.

Steve Rubel says the portals - AOL (does it even exist anymore), Yahoo, Google and Windows Live (OK, that one's a stretch) - will win the social networking wars.  I'm not sure what that means, other than they will give away more stuff for free to more non-paying customers, but I digress.  Steve says, correctly, that every site on the net is adding social networking features.  That's because 99% of the internet is one giant, reactive momentum play, but I digress again.  Clearly, every site in the world is trying to become Facebook Jr., which from a design and usability perspective is like every NFL team trying to become the Dolphins.  But since the entirety of Web 2.0 is ad-based, all that matters is where the herd is grazing at any given moment.  Steve's point is that we jump frog-like from one social networking site to the next, but rely on the trusty old portals to manage our online experience.  I tend to agree with that, for a couple of reasons.  One, my personal experience.  I use My Yahoo to get my news, weather and sports and my personal portal to manage my web surfing and research.  Two, logic (a concept rarely featured in the Web 2.0 mania).  Everyone who fires up a web browser has to start somewhere, including the billions who have never heard of Bebo.

I think there is an implied assumption in Steve's post that people want more data, information and interaction, when I believe most working adults want less.  But between whatever social application is plastered all over Mashable and the old, boring, Web 1.0-associated portals, the portals will always have the superior numbers.  Some say that the teens of today will bring the Facebooks of tomorrow to main street and corporate America.  I don't think so.  When those teens get kicked out of the nest, get a job or two and a family of their own to worry about, keeping up with what some online "friends" they've never met had for dinner is going to lose its place in the sphere of concern.  A lot of younger guys I know used to have MySpace and Facebook pages.  Few use them anymore.  My theory, which I can't footnote with empirical data, is that they used the social networking sites primarily as a means to meet and advertise themselves to girls.  Once they got jobs, wives and joined the rat race, they no longer had a need for the new-personals service those sites provided.

Now comes Stowe Boyd, who's selling something, although what it is isn't exactly clear ("As we catapult headlong into a social revolution...").  Stowe says that Steve is wrong.  He says because the newspapers and magazines didn't own Web 1.0, it's wrong to think the dusty old portal sites will own Web 2+.  Maybe, but old media didn't own Web 1.0 because they threw it in the dumpster, thinking it was of little value.  Now that all of those ad dollars that used to support so many more magazines and newspapers have migrated to the web, you can be sure old media will follow them like cavemen followed wooley mammoths- and likely with the same result.  If there was any doubt of that before yesterday, the crumbling of the Wall dispelled it.

Sure, the distribution of information changes reasonably fast.  Sure, a lot of the social networking slag tossed up by web sites will be poorly thought out and terribly executed.  But the herd that Stowe is tracking is the loud but smallish herd of technophiles and prospectors.  The ever increasing number of substantially similar social networking sites and the chaotic bloat at the hands of unnecessary features will drive the larger herd - those billions of users who don't care what song you're listening to - back to places they know.  Places where the idea is to manage your information, not merely to open your online experience to the unfiltered, irrelevant and often adolescent mosh pit.  Adults, both today's and tomorrow's, want less data.  Not more.  The assumption that people want more is the biggest fallacy of the Web 2.0 mania.

Ask yourself how many mid and senior management people in corporate America are actively using Facebook or MySpace as their primary online management tool.  For one thing, those sites are blocked at many companies.  For another, there are better alternatives.  More does not always translate to better.  Sure, there are corporate Facebook users.  But compared to the millions of corporate users who click over to Yahoo every morning to read their news or get stock quotes, the number would surely seem miniscule.  Remove the tech industry, the marketing industry, the recruiters and those with skin in the game from the list, and it becomes even shorter.  LinkedIn has some corporate mindshare, but anyone who's paying attention can tell that, for better or worse, LinkedIn is very different from MySpace.  I suspect it is also much less sticky, which is why its greater utility plays second fiddle to Facebook's greater page views.  The fact that LinkedIn can't decide if it wants to be a roadmap or a destination at least gives it the chance to make the correct decision.

Another factor?  Portals make it easy to aggregate your data and your communications.  No need to install a widget to get the weather if it's already there on your My Yahoo page.

I think Stowe is spot-on about one thing:

The network -- the Web -- belongs to us, the indigenous people of the Web: the Edglings.

That's undoubtedly true.  And while there are other issues for the Edglings - such as the conscription of their creation by others for a profit - there is a segment of the population that will never return to AOL.  Just like there is a segment of the population that thinks using Linux is more efficient than using Windows.  But those folks will always be in the minority numbers wise.  And many of them will capitulate to the inevitability of Windows as they get older and busier.  Much like many of them will capitulate to a portal when they want to stem the flow of information they suddenly discover they don't really need.

That poor alien sitting in Starbucks, reading those blogs and wondering why all those people sitting around talking on their iPhones aren't at work may conclude that Facebook is the future.  But it's not.  It's just the present.  For a loud but mobile herd.

39 years ago today

History News Network has the Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving.

The dogs all get prettier at cursing time.  Scott Adams has some thoughts.

TDavid looks at captchas and their effect on the number of comments.  My sense is that captchas on my blog reduced spam by around 80% and comments by around 20%.  I'll take that trade.

I liked Kill Point.  And like every other show I like, it got canceled.  Meanwhile, somebody somewhere is about to launch Dancing with 70's Era Let's Make a Deal Contestants.

If you've been sitting around wondering who owns the Yellow Pages business in Russia, Blognation has your answer.  To anyone who says Yellow Pages, I simply say Google.  I don't think I've opened a Yellow Pages book in years.  I've never been to an online edition.

Will Truman on pet fanatics (among other things).  Here's my thing with pets.  You have to hit the sweet spot.  I absolutely do not trust people who have no pets.  On the other hand, I am absolutely terrified of people who are obsessed with their pets.

I have many Pownce invitations.  If anyone wants one, leave a comment.

The (formerly) Walled Street Journal is going to stop charging for its online content.  The WSJ has enough mindshare in the financial and business news arena that the advertising model will probably work.  Having said that, I don't see why the same sort of analysis shouldn't apply to the print version- at least to the extent required to permit a significant reduction in the print subscription cost.  Jeff Jarvis has some interesting thoughts.

Looking to get a head start on your holiday shopping?  Here are the 25 most baffling toys from around the world.

Mashable asks the perfectly rhetorical question.  Isn't that sort of like asking which one of the Victoria's Secret models is the prettiest?

Dwight has the scoop on the new Zunes.  PC Magazine says they're more fun than iPods.  Maybe, but nobody cares.

In the interest of being fair, Bloglines is much faster today.

Sandy, which happens to also be the name of my secretary, is your personal email assistant.  It looks promising.

I just love it when the app de jour starts to redefine the future of the world.  The same world that is populated with people, 97% of whom have never heard of said app de jour.  Personally, I think the future will be modeled on the iPhone.  Or maybe on a Kit Kat.

Amy Gahran rediscovers Twitter.  I run hot and cold on Twitter, but one thing I do not like is when people use it largely or solely merely to point to their blog posts.  I find that spam-like.

Cool New Blog Alert: Jeff Balke is now doing a blog for the Houston Chronicle about the music industry, from a musician's perspective.

Mike Arrington seems to be once again in mid-tantrum, this time punishing us all by canceling all his speaking engagements.  Let's take a brief reality check.  I speak at 10-20 real-world conferences a year.  I was introduced recently as the "best ethics speaker in America" (I don't think I'm even close, but nonetheless that's what the moderator said).  In other words, I have a lot of conference experience- both the getting booked part, the saying no thanks part and the showing up part.  Never once has there been any confusion between me and a conference organizer as to whether I was or was not going to speak.  On one hand, I don't think conference organizers can rightfully assume that someone has agreed to speak based on some email "maybes."  On the other hand I find the "I don't read my email" excuse to be ludicrous on its face.

Bloglines is really slow lately.  Lots and lots of URL freeze with lifetimes spent "waiting for www.bloglines.com..."  I guess I am going to have to capitulate to the inevitability of Google Reader.

I'm further into Endymion now.  I was premature in my criticism.  It's very good.

The most unintentionally hilarious post title of all time.

Ars Technica (I always want to scream Battlestar Galactica over and over every time I see that) has the top Windows 7 feature requests.  I didn't see "dump UAC" on the list.  Too bad.

Mario Sundar has clips from the fake Steve Jobs deal.  Guy thinks he was awesome and offers outsiders joke support on the inside jokes.

A Calorie Counter has comparisons of nutrition facts for fast food restaurants.  Scary.

Some funny quotes from our President.  My favorite: "For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings.  And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it."

Someone please invite Dave Winer to Davos, whatever the heck that is, so he can stop fishing for an invitation and continue being fame-averse in peace.

So I went on my first photo-walk the other night.  As I mentioned earlier, it was fun.  Now that I'm back on my computer where I can actually get Live Writer to work (and thus avoid having to write posts via the Blogger interface), here are a few more impressions.  As mentioned, everyone was nice and very willing to give me photography advice, which, having seen some of the photos taken by other participants, I clearly need.

Dave Sifry is a cool guy, much as I would have expected.  I enjoyed hanging out with him.  He's also a heck of a photographer.  I was right beside him when he took this photo.  Suffice it to say that the ones I took don't look anything like that.

I don't think Thomas Hawk had the slightest idea who I was, even though I thought we knew each other a little from cross blogging, etc.  I thought I might get a little run for coming all the way from Texas and all.  He did give me some good night photography tips, and he did a great job of leading us to interesting shooting opportunities and to a good dinner.  His wife is very nice, and I enjoyed talking with her at dinner.

Robert Scoble was also cool, and did remember me from last year's Web 2.0 deal, blogging, etc.  His producer, Rocky, was probably the most interesting guy in attendance.  I really enjoyed talking with him.  He told me some great stories, but he left out that he is a guitar player.

Fresh from my photo-walk, I went down to Mountain View Tuesday night to see Guy Kawasaki interview Dan Lyons, the fake Steve Jobs.  Dan comes across as a humble, thoughtful and funny guy.  I didn't read his blog previously, but I have subscribed now.  I briefly met Guy, who didn't seem to know who I was either, even though he has sparred with me on this blog a few times.  He didn't seem too interested in chatting, so I just shook his hand and moved on.

Brad Stone, who outed Dan as the man behind the fake Steve Jobs blog, was also in attendance and described the process that led him to conclude Dan was the fake Steve Jobs.  All in all, it was an interesting conversation.

They took questions, both good and bad, from the audience and answered a few that were submitted via email.  Some of the questions were interesting.  Some of them painful.  Most were somewhere in between.

It is a very expensive cab ride from downtown San Francisco to Mountain View, so I don't know if I'd make the trip again.  I did get to meet a few blogging pals in person, so that was an added bonus.

It was sheer coincidence that I was speaking at a conference in San Francisco on the day in between these two events.  I'm glad I took the time to attend them both.

Even if I'm not certain I'd do it again.

I participated in my first photo-walk tonight. I joined Thomas Hawk, his lovely wife, Dave Sifry, Robert Scoble, Ian Crane and a bunch of other nice folks in a trek around San Francisco.

We shot several places in and around the financial district, and had dinner at Osha.

It was fun, and I learned a lot by watching some of the talented photographers in attendance.

Amid the never ending and ultimately futile efforts of the record industry to stuff the cat back into the bag and drag us all back in time to the halcyon days when they controlled the gateway to music the way Scoble used to control the gateway to blogging comes word that a government study has found that peer to peer downloaders actually buy more, not less, music.  So what if the government is Canada.  Canada gave us Neil Young and Rush.  We won't mention Celine Dion or Bryan Adams. 

The finding that most people are talking about is this one:

Among Canadians engaged in P2P file-sharing, we find a positive and statistically significant relationship between the number of music tracks downloaded via P2P networks and the number of CDs purchased. For an increase in the average number of P2P downloads per month of 2.718282, the number of CD purchases per year will increase by 1.212. For an increase in the average number of P2P downloads per month of 1 (ie., 2.718282/2.718282), the number of CD purchases per year will increase by (1.212/2.718282 =) 0.44. This suggests that there is some form of music creation effect derived from P2P file-sharing, discussed below.

In other words, on the average a user who downloads two extra CD's worth of music will purchase roughly an extra CD.  This is an interesting finding that certainly supports the position that music sharing is not the prime evil the record industry says it is, although the study also found that people who download songs because they find CDs too expensive buy less CDs.  I suppose that means those who actually buy CDs after downloading songs are subsidizing the cheapskates.

The more interesting finding is that, when looking at the entire population, the study found no evidence that peer to peer file sharing has any effect whatsoever on CD purchases.  That's the only finding that should matter.

My personal experience with web accessible music (I don't use peer to peer applications for reasons that don't involve fear of the man) is similar to Rex Hammock's:

I can look back over the last five years and point to literally hundreds of dollars of purchases I've made because I can sample music in new ways via the web. In my case, I am sampling music via Last.fm or the massive sample file the SXSW folks put together each March. So, while I do not actively participate in anything that can be construed as an "illegal" file-sharing network, I can understand how having more exposure to an unlimited supply of music will result in the increased purchase of a small sub-set of that music.

Much like the global warming debate, opponents will attack and dissect this study, and spin it to their position.  But it's one more brick in the wall of arguments that scream for the record industry to quit grieving for its deceased business model and focus on the future.  The cat's out of the bag and he's not coming back.

It could be worse for the record companies- they could be polar bears.

Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.

I'm heading to San Francisco Monday to speak at a conference on Tuesday.  I'll be there Monday and Tuesday nights.

On Monday night, I'm going to join Thomas Hawk and friends on a photo-walk.  On Tuesday night, I'm headed down to Mountain View to see the Guy Kawasaki and Dan Lyons Q&A.  I'm looking forward to meeting a bunch of folks I have blogged around with through the years.  If you're a blogging pal and will be in San Francisco, drop me an email.

It should be a fun trip.

Halloween was big fun this year.  We went to a block party, and later some friends came over and the kids went trick or treating together.

We carved a jack-o-lantern, baked some pumpkin seeds and are having a pumpkin growing contest.  Delaney and I are a team, Raina and Luke are a team, and Cassidy and all the pets are a team.  Delaney and I are going to win.

Cassidy was a witch, and Delaney was Hannah Montana.

Luke was a cowboy.

Everyone had a great time.

I'm back home briefly after business trips to Boston, San Diego, Dallas and Austin (twice).  October was a crazy month, with little time for blogging or blog reading.

Here are a few things that caught my attention during my travels.

San Diego is a beautiful town.  I was there just before the fire became an issue.  I'm certain I couldn't afford to live out there, but it is pretty.  I had dinner at Osetra.  It was OK, but not as good as its reputation.  The hostess told me she was the highest paid hostess in San Diego.  So there you go.  I spoke at a conference at the W Hotel.  That place is about 3 notches too hip for me.

I read somewhere that Google is trying to get some phone company to agree to put Google bloatware on its phones.  I don't want that crap on my phones any more than I want it on my computer.  Note to Google:  it's pretty easy for people to install stuff they decide they want.  You don't really have to force it on them.  Or do you?

Congrats to Mike and family!  I am sorry I was off the grid for the big event.

I think Deadstring Brothers is one of the best bands working today.  Hear Ya has the scoop on their new record, and an MP3 to sample.

Some asshole spammed my comments repeatedly while I was off the grid.  You know who I hate more than asshole spammers?  The stupid  f***kers who buy enough stuff from spammers to keep the system from self-imploding.  Spam has already made email worthless.  Are blog comments next?

Steve Rubel says in one post pretty much everything I believe, and have been writing for a long time, about Web 2.0.  It's been very obvious for a very long time that almost everything related to the internet is about money.  Which is why so much of it bores me to tears.  Dwight has a great take on it.

Sympathies to Karl Martino.  I still grieve for my mom, and it's been over 9 years.  It gets easier, but it's never going to be OK.

Raina got an iPhone.  It is beyond cool.  If it could pull my corporate email, I'd pay to get out of my Verizon contract and buy one this second.

I'm finally getting around to reading the last two Hyperion books.  The first one is one of my all-time favorite books.  The second one is just as good.  So far Endymion is not doing it for me, but it's early.

I saw Knocked Up.  Hilarious movie.  Highly recommended.