Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Nothing personal
Om Malik in End of the Personal Blogger: In last six months, something strange has happened in the blogsphere — the increased marginalization of the individual blogger.
There's much interesting stuff there. Have to admit, I hadn't thought about any of it, in spite of being listed by Om as one of the individual bloggers getting a short shrift here. He does provide two bonus links to conversations on related subjects. All three make even more sense out of what Dave's been saying too.
The latest corollary
Denise Howell: I guess on the Internet nobody knows you're a Nobel laureate.
No shit
43 Folders: Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make. When I followed the link, I thought If they don't say Stop the Flash, they'll miss the #1 problem. Lo, the first mistake listed is,
Too much Flash
Okay, I get it. You’re creative. Awesome. But you’re totally wasting my morning as I helplessly wait for your designer’s dancing sausages to finish loading. Perhaps worst of all, most all-Flash sites prohibit your fans from creating deep links to artist, album or song pages. Your fans are trying to drive people to the cash register, but you insist on making them watch a puppet show before they can even enter the damned store.
The other four are just as right-on.
Thanks to Heiko Hebig for the pointer.
Bonus link: Musicians 'upbeat' about the Net. Thanks to Euan for that one.
3000 Beeb jobs, down the tube
Radar
The situation in Falloojeh is worse than anyone can possibly describe. It has turned into one of those cities you see in your darkest nightmares- broken streets strewn with corpses, crumbling houses and fallen mosques... The worst part is that for the last couple of weeks we've been hearing about the use of chemical weapons inside Falloojeh by the Americans. Today we heard that the delegation from the Iraqi Ministry of Health isn't being allowed into the city, for some reason.
Chiris Albritton on December 1:
I returned to Baghdad on Monday. The city is as chaotic and choked as ever, but the level of violence in the last few days has been less than I expected. I’ve only heard two explosions near my house in eastern Baghdad, and they were far away. I get the impression that the Green Zone is not attacked as much. Perhaps I was wrong to pooh-pooh the Fallujah offensive… Or perhaps the insurgency has just gone to ground for a while.
Global Guerillas on December 6:
the global guerrilla campaign in Saudi Arabia is in motion. The insurgent "chatter" in the country has been at a minimum since this summer, which presaged new violence this winter (and not that the Saudi counter-terrorist operations were successful). The attack on the US consulate is part of a psychological "shaping" operation by global guerrilla groups in the country. It is important for the guerrillas to frame this conflict in terms of a war against the US and the Saudi Royal family (the "apostate kleptocrats") prior to full-scale systems disruption (think in terms of methods that route around the highly optimized tolerance of current Saudi systems).
Just three views. Judge for yourselves.
He's not going to stop
Jeff Jarvis continues to stand foursquare (this time with Fox!) against the FCC's insistent nannyisms:
I am honored to officially stand between the FCC and the First Amendment, even if only in a minor supporting role...
The FCC is enforcing an indecency standard that the Supreme Court specifically rejected in the Communications Decency Act.
The FCC's rules are unconstitutionally vague.
Tuning in
New technology poised to redefine radio's existence, by Elyse Ashburn in the Greensboro News-Record, covers many bases, including podcasts. A sample:
The sophistication of the offerings runs the gamut, and the tech-savvy even have the option of becoming “podcasters,” or iPod broadcasters, themselves. For those who aren’t interested in do-it-yourself radio, accessing both the professional and amateur work of others is pretty simple.
Mentions iPodder.org, too. Good piece.
Past and Future
The latest Gillmor Gang is up. It's a big one, too. Celebrating 20 years of Lotus Notes.
More podfodder: Future of Digital Media interviews by Ernest Miller with Jeff Jarvis and Tim Wu.
Except for the losers
Long Live the BlogAd is interesting stuff. But here are the most interesting items, at least to me: 1) Political ads accounted for 40% of BlogAds revenue in 2004; and Site Meter reports that traffic to top sites like DailyKos and Instapundit has dropped by half since October. Not surprising, but interesting.
Shows the power of The Story. Without exception, all stories are about conflict. This election, even if both Kerry and Bush by themselves bored your ass off, was a great conflict. A great story. Meanwhile none of the issues that mattered during the campaign matter any less today. In fact they matter more. There's just no one story going on to bring all of them back into play.
The game is over, but the brands live on. Some of them, anyway.
By the way...
... gets my vote for the ugliest, and certainly the lest brand-like, logo, in the whole world. Which goes to show (or to sell) doncha think?
Thanks to Micah for the pointer.
Beside the prices
Forbes on Costco: It must be one of the only big-cap ($23 billion) companies with no public relations department.
I knew there was a reason I liked that place.