Thursday, June 17, 2004
Spacing out
I'm seriously considering driving up to the Mojave early Monday to see history made.
A head of his time
In Wired News, the piece is When Will Old Media Grasp the Revolution. The story offers a balanced, rational, and coherent view of the collision between old and new media, from inherent culture clashes, to perspectives of new and old media writers, to an understanding of the ways in which technology is transforming the relationship between sellers and users of media.
One piece of quotage from the story:
...old media's practice of top-down, father-knows-best journalism is tired, clunky and obsolete.
The time: eight years ago, in 1996.
The writer to which the piece refers: J.D. Lasica.
Ships passing in the weekend
Britt's going to be out here, when I'll be gone, next weekend. This almost coincides with missing a conference I'd love to attend that's also local. It even has an affordable price. The host is KCSB/91.9 from UCSB, an excellent college station that now covers much more of the South and Central California coasts, from its upgraded transmitter. When I moved here in 2001, KCSB had lots of reach, from atop Broadcast Peak, on the crest of the Santa Ynez mountains — but not much power: just 59 watts. That was later cranked up to 620 watts, on a new tower. At that height, coverage is pretty good.
It was nice being a guest on one of the station's shows a few Mondays back.
Rapture
Welcone news from Dave, Rogers and Steve: Transition plan for hosted sites. Assuming we complete this transition by Monday, your site will be hosted, at no charge, through September 18.
Took names too, probably
THespos: Said blog kicked ass and was one of the best performers on the campaign.
All the branding power of a bar code
I've given "branding" a hard time over the years. But I'll tell ya, some companies could at least do with a little bit of naming, at least where multitudes of products are involved.
The practice of naming products as if they were just SKUs is often infuriating. I just had to take my Nokia 3360 phone apart, and remove the battery, before I could find out exactly what model it was.
Russell Beattie puts a sharper point on the the barb:
I am the biggest Nokia nut around and I can't remember the damn numbering. Nokia handsets need to have names. The iPod wouldn't be so amazing if it was named Apple's 8833 would it? Give the phones names based on their class and functionality, for god's sake. I can remember that the v300 is less-powerful, but cheaper than the v600. I can remember that the T600 came before the K700. NO ONE can remember that the 6260 is the new Series 60 flip phone and the 6630 is the 3G phone. No one. How about some basic marketing and design on the handset names instead of the wacky keypads?
On the keypad issue, Russell adds,
For the last time, leave them alone. Don't make them rounded, or warped, or clicky, or flat, or hidden. Just make them useable. How hard is this?
Those crazy keypads alone have kept me from even thinking about a new Nokia.
Bonus link: Building the Perfect Beast: The Igor Naming Guide to Creating Product and Company Names, from Steve at Igor, Wordlab and SnarkHunting.com, where a post yesterday said,
The key to any effective naming, branding or marketing effort is to change and take ownership of the conversation.
Democrazy
The headline doesn't really mean anything. It just came into my head. Never waste a good pun.
Anyway, as long as we're on the subject of elections (sort of)...
Chris Nolan points to Draft Bruce for what is currently called VoteAid: "Concert for Change", to be held in the (held, but not yet reserved) Giants Stadium in New Jersey on September 1st, to coincide with the Republican convention across Da Riva in New Yawk. Behind the idea is Andrew Rasiej of the Personal Democracy Forum.
Woven among the links above is Camworld, where Cam Barrett recently announced a discussion forum for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
Lest this post look like a lefty linkfest, I hafta say I'm no fan of Michael Moore. Or rather, I'm an ex-fan. I loved Roger & Me and TV Nation. But what he did to Charlton Heston in Bowling For Columbine (an otherwise mostly interesting movie) fully exposed him (to me, at least) as a grandstanding sucker-puncher who uses noble ends to justify nasty means. I'll probably see Fahrenheit 9/11, but I expect it will be an anti-Bush infomercial — a 110-minute negative campaign ad. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.
Brilliant as usual
Dr. Weinberger's latest JOHO is out. Great stuff about pacifism, flaming, and more.
Good news
We now have a transition plan for the corner-turn, and have implemented most of it. The plan exceeds the commitment I made, by quite a bit; and will be implemented much sooner than promised. I'm writing the heads-up statement right now. The outage should be, Murphy-willing, completely cleared by the end of the weekend.
Bonus linkage: Tom Matrullo's "interim" blog, where he waxes thoughtful about all this. Included are his contributions to an eWeek story that failed to make the cut. Handy how blogging allows that.