I have a new post up on the Soapbox comparing the statements that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have issued following the news that John Edwards is dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination.
Naturally, both of them are intent on scooping up as many Edwards supporters as possible. Both have issued gracious statements saluting John and Elizabeth. But Obama's statement is masterful in its ability to both echo and embrace John's language, his passion, and his cause.
Mickeleh's Take: Dave Winer has latched onto a comparison that Chris Matthews used last week on MSNBC: Clinton is Salieri—a workmanlike technician; Obama is Mozart—an inspired master. Comparing what Clinton and Obama have to say about Edwards is yet another example of how apt the comparison is.
(Tags:Edwards, John_Edwards, Barack, Obama, Barack Obama, Hillary, Hillary Clinto, HRC, Campaign, Democratic, Primary)
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
MacBook Air: John Mayer Nails the Positioning
Just before he stopped blogging and deleted his archives, John Mayer posted a one line review of MacBook Air which nails the product's positioning:
When I lived in L.A. I was shocked that for somepeople "working on my tan" is considered a career. But that career is just a by-water of the larger industry, "working on my lifestyle."
By calling it a lifestyle workstation, Mayer captures the essence of MacBook Air. It's executive bling. It's what every consultant would like to whip out at a client meeting, what every status junkie would like to brandish at a conference or executive airport lounge. So what, if features and functionality are compromised to squeeze it into a lust object? "You can't be too rich or too thin." (Google tells me that might have been said by the Duchess of Windsor, but it isn't sure.) Now that there are millions and millions of iPhones out there, you need something to turn heads.
Mickeleh's Take: I bought a New Beetle the first week they went on sale in 1998. It was fun to take a hot and rare product out in public. I'm still driving it and somehow it's not drawing quite the same crowds. But I have my memories. Do I really have to purchase another dose of coolness? I'm cool enough. I'd have thought Mayer was too. Maybe that MacBook post triggered a shock of sanity and he got out of the blogging business and back to work.
(Tags:MacBook Air, John Mayer, New Beetle)
"Macbook Air... Yes, it really is as cool as it looks. Lean, mean lifestyle workstation..."(As of this writing, there's a clone of Mayer's site still available on honeyee.com)
When I lived in L.A. I was shocked that for somepeople "working on my tan" is considered a career. But that career is just a by-water of the larger industry, "working on my lifestyle."
By calling it a lifestyle workstation, Mayer captures the essence of MacBook Air. It's executive bling. It's what every consultant would like to whip out at a client meeting, what every status junkie would like to brandish at a conference or executive airport lounge. So what, if features and functionality are compromised to squeeze it into a lust object? "You can't be too rich or too thin." (Google tells me that might have been said by the Duchess of Windsor, but it isn't sure.) Now that there are millions and millions of iPhones out there, you need something to turn heads.
Mickeleh's Take: I bought a New Beetle the first week they went on sale in 1998. It was fun to take a hot and rare product out in public. I'm still driving it and somehow it's not drawing quite the same crowds. But I have my memories. Do I really have to purchase another dose of coolness? I'm cool enough. I'd have thought Mayer was too. Maybe that MacBook post triggered a shock of sanity and he got out of the blogging business and back to work.
(Tags:MacBook Air, John Mayer, New Beetle)
Such A Review! Newsweek's Steven Levy Starts with a Mohel Metaphor
Three of the four popular press computer mavens have just published their reviews of Apple's MacBook Air. Surprisingly, they say more or less the same things that the bloggers said right after the keynote based on the specs. Go figure.
I'm sure that Ed Baig (USA Today) and Walt Mossberg (WSJ) have valid points of view on Apple's oh so thin sub-notebook. But only Steven Levy (Newsweek) is worth reading. Because only Steven starts his review with a mohel metaphor (Mohel is Hebrew term for ritual circumciser). I believe this is unprecedented in tech reviews.
Mazel Tov, Steven. I'm kvelling here. I want to give your cheek such a pinch.
Update, Turns out the fourth pezzonovate reviewer was actually first; David Pogue, devoted a piece of his Macworld Keynote roundup to MacBook Air last week. See comments.)
Mickeleh's Take: I know this is a just a short post. But if you rub a little...
(Tags:MacBook Air, Apple, Steven Levy, Circumcision)
I'm sure that Ed Baig (USA Today) and Walt Mossberg (WSJ) have valid points of view on Apple's oh so thin sub-notebook. But only Steven Levy (Newsweek) is worth reading. Because only Steven starts his review with a mohel metaphor (Mohel is Hebrew term for ritual circumciser). I believe this is unprecedented in tech reviews.
Mazel Tov, Steven. I'm kvelling here. I want to give your cheek such a pinch.
Update, Turns out the fourth pezzonovate reviewer was actually first; David Pogue, devoted a piece of his Macworld Keynote roundup to MacBook Air last week. See comments.)
Mickeleh's Take: I know this is a just a short post. But if you rub a little...
(Tags:MacBook Air, Apple, Steven Levy, Circumcision)
Monday, January 21, 2008
Dave Winer and Jason Calacanis at Gnomedex. Again.
Dave Winer today revisited his clash with Jason Calacanis at Gnomedex last August. I'll take that as an excuse to revisit it myself.
One residue of the long long years and late, late nights I spent trying to learn stand-up comedy is that I rarely take sides with a heckler. Except when it's a really good heckle. And last August at Gnomedex Dave Winer popped off with a pretty darn good heckle. Dave's timing was perfect. And he caught a good laugh. Jason was rocked back, but recovered well.
What followed was a heated series of back-and-forth blog posts between Dave and Jason that made it clear this was much deeper than an off-hand heckle. The ripples spread in one of those weekend Techmeme kerfuffles. In the aftermath, Dave and the TechCrunch20 conference parted ways, and then it died away.
Until late September, when Gnomedex host Chris Pirillo posted video of the Jason's session. With the video online, I've been able to confirm my memory—and my point of view—about the event. Here's how it played out for me:
Jason clearly created the opportunity for the heckle by mislabeling his presentation.
The title of the presentation was, "The Internet's Environmental Crisis." The description read:
The first eight minutes of content matched the labeling: a straight-forward historical review and a problem statement about how various Net applications were hijacked by marketers who polluted them with spam--beginning with email and moving through blog comments and search. What Jason called "selfish polluters" were folks who intruded on the user's intent to blast through their own message.
Up to that point, title, blurb, and speech were entirely congruous would have been a great setup for calling us to the barricades in some generalized solution: a movement, a technology, a platform that could end spam in our time (You know, "taking a stand against those spammers.")
But without warning, the grand cause of "taking a stand against those spammers" suddenly devolved into OK, now let me tell you about my new project, Mahalo." Maybe folks who know Jason, guessed that was coming. I don't. And I didn't.
I can't know if Dave was lying in wait for that pitch (pun intended), but he knocked it out of the park. The instant Jason made his left turn at Albequerque, Dave popped off, "what about conference spam?" Boom! there it is.
I thought was both funny and insightful (good funny is insightful, bad funny is just inciteful). From the laughs, the line clearly resonated with others in the audience. (I don't have polling to know how many others.) From the gasps, some folks were annoyed.
Jason seemed stunned and deeply wounded. Or as he put it in a post the next day, he felt "thrown under the bus."
I think I get why Dave's wise-crack hit him so hard. As he recounted, he had given this talk, in pretty much the same form many times before, but only when he had Dave Winer in the audience did he get slammed for it.
Except this wasn't a controlled experiment where Dave Winer's presence was the single changed variable. The context of Gnomedex was an even larger difference, as Jason acknowledged when he first took the stage. At a venture or press conference everyone would have gotten from the purpose of the event that Jason is here to pitch us.
And even at Gnomedex, had the talk been billed as "Here's Jason to tell us what he's been up to lately." or "Successful serial Web entrepreneur recounts his quest for the next big idea". or even "Jason talks about Mahalo, a new, spam-proof approach to search," we in the audience would have been fully immunized against Dave Winer's objections. I can't say Dave would have liked the talk any more. Given what he has consistently said about the product (including today), he would not.
But, he'd have been out of bounds to call it spam.
Mickeleh's Take: The lesson Jason took away was don't speak when Dave is in the audience. The lesson I wish had taken away was be upfront and call a pitch a pitch.
(Tags:Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis, Gnomedex, Mahalo, spam,)
One residue of the long long years and late, late nights I spent trying to learn stand-up comedy is that I rarely take sides with a heckler. Except when it's a really good heckle. And last August at Gnomedex Dave Winer popped off with a pretty darn good heckle. Dave's timing was perfect. And he caught a good laugh. Jason was rocked back, but recovered well.
What followed was a heated series of back-and-forth blog posts between Dave and Jason that made it clear this was much deeper than an off-hand heckle. The ripples spread in one of those weekend Techmeme kerfuffles. In the aftermath, Dave and the TechCrunch20 conference parted ways, and then it died away.
Until late September, when Gnomedex host Chris Pirillo posted video of the Jason's session. With the video online, I've been able to confirm my memory—and my point of view—about the event. Here's how it played out for me:
Jason clearly created the opportunity for the heckle by mislabeling his presentation.
The title of the presentation was, "The Internet's Environmental Crisis." The description read:
"The internet is being destroyed by selfish polluters and we can stop them. Jason talks about all the garbage that is being thrown into our internet, and taking a stand against those spammers putting it there."When Jason took the stage, he amplified that by saying he had asked Chris for the opportunity to speak because Gnomedex was not venture-capital-driven or press-driven event, but people-and-idea driven. (implication: I'm not here to pitch, but to share a POV). OK, I'm naive. And I don't know Jason Calacanis. So I took his title and description at face value.
The first eight minutes of content matched the labeling: a straight-forward historical review and a problem statement about how various Net applications were hijacked by marketers who polluted them with spam--beginning with email and moving through blog comments and search. What Jason called "selfish polluters" were folks who intruded on the user's intent to blast through their own message.
Up to that point, title, blurb, and speech were entirely congruous would have been a great setup for calling us to the barricades in some generalized solution: a movement, a technology, a platform that could end spam in our time (You know, "taking a stand against those spammers.")
But without warning, the grand cause of "taking a stand against those spammers" suddenly devolved into OK, now let me tell you about my new project, Mahalo." Maybe folks who know Jason, guessed that was coming. I don't. And I didn't.
I can't know if Dave was lying in wait for that pitch (pun intended), but he knocked it out of the park. The instant Jason made his left turn at Albequerque, Dave popped off, "what about conference spam?" Boom! there it is.
I thought was both funny and insightful (good funny is insightful, bad funny is just inciteful). From the laughs, the line clearly resonated with others in the audience. (I don't have polling to know how many others.) From the gasps, some folks were annoyed.
Jason seemed stunned and deeply wounded. Or as he put it in a post the next day, he felt "thrown under the bus."
I think I get why Dave's wise-crack hit him so hard. As he recounted, he had given this talk, in pretty much the same form many times before, but only when he had Dave Winer in the audience did he get slammed for it.
Except this wasn't a controlled experiment where Dave Winer's presence was the single changed variable. The context of Gnomedex was an even larger difference, as Jason acknowledged when he first took the stage. At a venture or press conference everyone would have gotten from the purpose of the event that Jason is here to pitch us.
And even at Gnomedex, had the talk been billed as "Here's Jason to tell us what he's been up to lately." or "Successful serial Web entrepreneur recounts his quest for the next big idea". or even "Jason talks about Mahalo, a new, spam-proof approach to search," we in the audience would have been fully immunized against Dave Winer's objections. I can't say Dave would have liked the talk any more. Given what he has consistently said about the product (including today), he would not.
But, he'd have been out of bounds to call it spam.
Mickeleh's Take: The lesson Jason took away was don't speak when Dave is in the audience. The lesson I wish had taken away was be upfront and call a pitch a pitch.
(Tags:Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis, Gnomedex, Mahalo, spam,)
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Good Career Move. It is So Scoble To Explain It All In Depth
Robert Scoble announced and explained his next career move: heading to Mansuetto Digital to serve as Managing Director of a new venture, FastCompany.TV.
Having spent more than a year at PodTech doing video interviews of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Robert chose not to start a new company but to continue being a wage slave.
What is most valuable about what he shared on his blog is a frank analysis and explanation of why he chose to hire on rather than strike out on his own. Mazel Tov, Robert, on the move. And thanks for the insight into how you thought it through.
Mickeleh's Take: To spend more time with my family" is usually the lie that accompanies a resignation. To say it and mean it in connection with a new job is very menschy. The lure (and lucre) of the startup is so dominant in Tech culture, resisting it in favor of just getting a job is sometimes the braver choice. "
(Tags:Scoble, Scobleizer, Careers)
Having spent more than a year at PodTech doing video interviews of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Robert chose not to start a new company but to continue being a wage slave.
What is most valuable about what he shared on his blog is a frank analysis and explanation of why he chose to hire on rather than strike out on his own. Mazel Tov, Robert, on the move. And thanks for the insight into how you thought it through.
Mickeleh's Take: To spend more time with my family" is usually the lie that accompanies a resignation. To say it and mean it in connection with a new job is very menschy. The lure (and lucre) of the startup is so dominant in Tech culture, resisting it in favor of just getting a job is sometimes the braver choice. "
(Tags:Scoble, Scobleizer, Careers)
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
A New Apple Pricing Firestorm? $20 to Upgrade Touch
Keynote Good News: iPod Touch has five strong new applications which were previously iPhone exclusives: Mail, Google Maps, Weather, Notes, and Stocks. They're included, with a bunch of other enhancements, in all new purchases.
Bad News: If you're an early adopter, hand over twenty bucks to get the new apps. I'm picking up a little grumbling out there. Clint Ecker on Ars Technica says the crowd went wild--and not in a good way. "A unified gasp was let up as well as a rowdy round of jeering." Uncle Speedo on Twitter just gave Steve the Cheney salute. The comments on Engadget are seething.
Look, there's always an early-adopter tax in tech. Moore's law forces it. But with the iTouch app fee coming on the heels of the iPhone price drop, isn't Apple learning to be extra abrasive about irritating its fan base. I wonder if they could have skated with $10?
Mickeleh's Take: Don't gloat, fellow iPhoners, about having these apps for free. We're already paying Apple a monthly tax through AT&T. And we'll get our app fees for sure when the third party apps show up.
(Tags: Pricing, Apple, iPod Touch, iPhone, Keynote)
Bad News: If you're an early adopter, hand over twenty bucks to get the new apps. I'm picking up a little grumbling out there. Clint Ecker on Ars Technica says the crowd went wild--and not in a good way. "A unified gasp was let up as well as a rowdy round of jeering." Uncle Speedo on Twitter just gave Steve the Cheney salute. The comments on Engadget are seething.
Look, there's always an early-adopter tax in tech. Moore's law forces it. But with the iTouch app fee coming on the heels of the iPhone price drop, isn't Apple learning to be extra abrasive about irritating its fan base. I wonder if they could have skated with $10?
Mickeleh's Take: Don't gloat, fellow iPhoners, about having these apps for free. We're already paying Apple a monthly tax through AT&T. And we'll get our app fees for sure when the third party apps show up.
(Tags: Pricing, Apple, iPod Touch, iPhone, Keynote)
Monday, January 14, 2008
Macworld Predictions: What's in the Air?
So, Apple put up a banner in Moscone Center with the line: Something in the Air. In a refreshing blast of sanity, Macworld is still only number six on a Google search of the phrase (as of now, anyway). It's still beat out by an Australian soap opera and songs by Thunderclap Newman and Tom Petty.
Meanwhile, the blogosphere is buzzing with speculation about Wi-Max... really, really light PowerBooks... untethered services and movie downloads for Macs, iPods, and iPhones, and AppleTV.
Maybe. But I'm betting on one of these:
1. Steve Jobs will not appear in person onstage for the Keynote, but will webcast live from overhead as he buzzes San Francisco in the Gulfstream V that the Apple Board of Directors gave him in 2000.
2. Apple will finally offer an aerosole version of Steve Jobs's legendary "Reality Distortion Field." Spray it and get people to believe anything and buy everything.
3. Apple is going to bring us the great Tesla promise of electrical power transmitted through the air. We'll never again have to change or recharge a battery in any remote, phone, camera, toy, or iPod.
4. Apple will announce a strategic alliance with Wham-O to deliver MacBooks shaped like Frisbees. Steve will launch 50 of them out into the keynote audience. One will be caught by a German Shepherd.
5. Steve will have a vegan meal served to folks waiting to get into the keynote which will later induce the entire audience to re-enact the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles.
Mickeleh's Take: In the savviest co-branding stunt since he brought the iTunes store to Starbucks, Apple will join with Cirque du Soleil to replace all the Mac Geniuses with flying trapeze artists who will offer service and support while dangling upside down.
(Tags:Steve Jobs, Macworld, Apple, keynote)
Meanwhile, the blogosphere is buzzing with speculation about Wi-Max... really, really light PowerBooks... untethered services and movie downloads for Macs, iPods, and iPhones, and AppleTV.
Maybe. But I'm betting on one of these:
1. Steve Jobs will not appear in person onstage for the Keynote, but will webcast live from overhead as he buzzes San Francisco in the Gulfstream V that the Apple Board of Directors gave him in 2000.
2. Apple will finally offer an aerosole version of Steve Jobs's legendary "Reality Distortion Field." Spray it and get people to believe anything and buy everything.
3. Apple is going to bring us the great Tesla promise of electrical power transmitted through the air. We'll never again have to change or recharge a battery in any remote, phone, camera, toy, or iPod.
4. Apple will announce a strategic alliance with Wham-O to deliver MacBooks shaped like Frisbees. Steve will launch 50 of them out into the keynote audience. One will be caught by a German Shepherd.
5. Steve will have a vegan meal served to folks waiting to get into the keynote which will later induce the entire audience to re-enact the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles.
Mickeleh's Take: In the savviest co-branding stunt since he brought the iTunes store to Starbucks, Apple will join with Cirque du Soleil to replace all the Mac Geniuses with flying trapeze artists who will offer service and support while dangling upside down.
(Tags:Steve Jobs, Macworld, Apple, keynote)
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Turning off the Screens, Accoustic Version
Walking in the neighborhood, I saw an acoustic version of the briefly famous stunt blacked out some of the HDTV displays at CES.
My local prankster used hand-cranked methods to flip a bunch of bulletin-board postings face to the wall.
Mickeleh's Take: Not famous, but funny. BTW, the next day all the notices were facing out again.
(Tags:Gizmodo, CES, TV-B-Gone)
My local prankster used hand-cranked methods to flip a bunch of bulletin-board postings face to the wall.
Mickeleh's Take: Not famous, but funny. BTW, the next day all the notices were facing out again.
(Tags:Gizmodo, CES, TV-B-Gone)
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Last Word on Gizmodo v. CES
Acres of big shiny glass—in the form of large-scale high-definition video displays—are the visual signature of CES.
If you were an anti-consumerist or environmentalist group looking to lodge a protest, make a statement and gain attention, contriving to turn that glittering glass black might get your cause some attention. Of course, you'd be ready to take the heat and proud to stand in the long tradition of civil disobedience running past Martin Luther King, Jr. through Gandhi, to Henry David Thoreau.
Oh wait... they opposed government actions. Never mind. Okay then, the short tradition of Robert Scoble scraping Facebook for email addresses of his friends. ("Mr. Zuckerberg, tear down this wall.")
But if you're a reporter for Gizmodo, you do it for the comedy and the bragging rights. If you're the editor of Gizmodo post video to the Web and wait for the laughs and applause. Some laugh. But the grownups are appalled. If you're the publisher of Gizmodo, you tut-tut the whole thing.
The Gizmodians pulled a dumb, hurtful prank that embarrased presenters, devalued the investment companies made in CES, and, naturally, sparked a Techmeme-storm that's now subsiding.
Shout out to Rafe Needleman and Shel Israel for getting the public shaming going... to CEA for responding well--reported by Rafe: No collective punishment for bloggerville. They guy who did it is banned... to Dave Winer for reminding us that the bozo pranker isn't a blogger but a reporter working for a publication. (He was right. Turns out Gizmodo actually had business-class press credentials, not the coach credentials afforded to bloggers.) For those who were alarmed that the stunt tarnished bloggers everywhere, I say, "Huh?" Might as well say it tarnished twenty-somethings everywhere.
Mickeleh's Take: For those who say, lighten up and get a sense of humor about a dumb prank, I say this: I'll tell you what it was. It was heckling, that's what. Two Gizmodians walk into a club—comped no less—and try to impress their dates by talking back to the comics. As Lily von Schtupp said in the old west, "Are you in show business? Then why don't you get your fwiggin' feet off o' the stage." (Madeleine Kahn, I miss you. Mel Brooks, please stick around.)
Personally, I took this up a notch from where CEA had it. I've unsubscribed to Gizmodo in my reader. Brian Lam, I'll miss you. Not as much as I miss Madeleine Kahn, but I'll miss you.
Related: an acoustic version of this prank.
(Tags:Gizmodo, CES, blogging, TV-B-Gone)
If you were an anti-consumerist or environmentalist group looking to lodge a protest, make a statement and gain attention, contriving to turn that glittering glass black might get your cause some attention. Of course, you'd be ready to take the heat and proud to stand in the long tradition of civil disobedience running past Martin Luther King, Jr. through Gandhi, to Henry David Thoreau.
Oh wait... they opposed government actions. Never mind. Okay then, the short tradition of Robert Scoble scraping Facebook for email addresses of his friends. ("Mr. Zuckerberg, tear down this wall.")
But if you're a reporter for Gizmodo, you do it for the comedy and the bragging rights. If you're the editor of Gizmodo post video to the Web and wait for the laughs and applause. Some laugh. But the grownups are appalled. If you're the publisher of Gizmodo, you tut-tut the whole thing.
The Gizmodians pulled a dumb, hurtful prank that embarrased presenters, devalued the investment companies made in CES, and, naturally, sparked a Techmeme-storm that's now subsiding.
Shout out to Rafe Needleman and Shel Israel for getting the public shaming going... to CEA for responding well--reported by Rafe: No collective punishment for bloggerville. They guy who did it is banned... to Dave Winer for reminding us that the bozo pranker isn't a blogger but a reporter working for a publication. (He was right. Turns out Gizmodo actually had business-class press credentials, not the coach credentials afforded to bloggers.) For those who were alarmed that the stunt tarnished bloggers everywhere, I say, "Huh?" Might as well say it tarnished twenty-somethings everywhere.
Mickeleh's Take: For those who say, lighten up and get a sense of humor about a dumb prank, I say this: I'll tell you what it was. It was heckling, that's what. Two Gizmodians walk into a club—comped no less—and try to impress their dates by talking back to the comics. As Lily von Schtupp said in the old west, "Are you in show business? Then why don't you get your fwiggin' feet off o' the stage." (Madeleine Kahn, I miss you. Mel Brooks, please stick around.)
Personally, I took this up a notch from where CEA had it. I've unsubscribed to Gizmodo in my reader. Brian Lam, I'll miss you. Not as much as I miss Madeleine Kahn, but I'll miss you.
Related: an acoustic version of this prank.
(Tags:Gizmodo, CES, blogging, TV-B-Gone)
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Bush Admin To Remake U.S. Currency
Ron Paul wants to return us to the Gold Standard. Bush & Halliburton have a better idea, move forward to a new monetary standard
Mickeleh's Take: Hats off to the folks at blimptv.net. And to Scott Beale at Laughing Squid for Tweeting about this.
(Tags:Bush, Halliburton)
Mickeleh's Take: Hats off to the folks at blimptv.net. And to Scott Beale at Laughing Squid for Tweeting about this.
(Tags:Bush, Halliburton)
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
What's in the Daily News? Or Any Other Paper?
Kara Swisher, today, says farewell to print and embraces an online-only future. She explains that it's not just about saving trees, but embracing the virtues of the new medium of online journalism.As if to underscore that drain-circling status of print journalism, there's an online access point for local newsapapers that calls itself a Newseum. (Images flash of Carl Akeley's exhibits of dead animals in The American Museum of Natural History. So lifelike. Except for their stillness.) Joni Mitchel said they put all the trees in a tree museum. Maybe this dead tree museum is it.
Coolest part of the Newseum is an interactive Flash map that lets you see the front page of newspapers around the country and around the world. (There's a faster but less cool list interface as well).
Mickeleh's Take: There's huge diversity in local papers. That diversity is on the endangered species list in the accelerating rush to consolidation. But if Kara is right--she usually is--we might have to file Newseum under "Last chance to See."
(Tags:Kara Swisher, News, Newsapers, Media Consolidation, Online, bloggin)
Monday, December 31, 2007
What Did the RIAA claim about ripping?
There was another dustup this weekend over RIAA. It was originally spawned in early December by this Slashdot post which found this gem in a lawyer's brief:
As I (a non-lawyer) read the excerpt from the brief, the issue is not simply ripping the files as mp3s, but ripping them and storing them in a shared folder. Can someone take a deep breath and put those two clauses together? Is the loathesome RIAA really arguing against ripping, which surely comes under Fair Use, or against sharing what you've ripped, which in RIAA's view, is simply inviting people to steal it.
Mickeleh's Take: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance but the surcharge of freedom is not crying wolf every time the RIAA sneezes.
(Tags:MP3, RIAA, Sharing, Ripping)
Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies...Is the RIAA really claiming what most of the commentariat has written: "illegal to rip CDs" and "personal compies are illegal," etc.?
As I (a non-lawyer) read the excerpt from the brief, the issue is not simply ripping the files as mp3s, but ripping them and storing them in a shared folder. Can someone take a deep breath and put those two clauses together? Is the loathesome RIAA really arguing against ripping, which surely comes under Fair Use, or against sharing what you've ripped, which in RIAA's view, is simply inviting people to steal it.
Mickeleh's Take: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance but the surcharge of freedom is not crying wolf every time the RIAA sneezes.
(Tags:MP3, RIAA, Sharing, Ripping)
Friday, December 28, 2007
How to User FlickrFan with iPhone
Open iTunes, Select iPhone from the sidebar and then follow the same steps as outlined in my post on using FlickrFan with AppleTV.
Mickeleh's Take: Apple. Consistent U-I pays off.
(Tags:FlickrFan, Dave Winer, Flickr, iPhone)
Mickeleh's Take: Apple. Consistent U-I pays off.
(Tags:FlickrFan, Dave Winer, Flickr, iPhone)
How to Use FlickrFan with AppleTV
I had a couple of inquiries about how I set up FlickrFan to work with AppleTV. Here's how:
To use Photos on AppleTV, you need to sync it with with one of the computers on your home network. I'll assume you've done that.
From the computer that is sync'd to AppleTV launch iTunes. (This is counter-intuitive for many. You'd guess that you'd manage the photos in iPhoto. But it's iTunes that is the master ap for AppleTV. It's a similar U-I to sync'ing with iPhone)
In the iTunes sidebar navigation, select AppleTV and then select the Photos tab. (By the way, you can select iPhone from the sidebar and follow these steps to sync your FlickrFan feeds to your iPhone. It's a tethered update, not a wireless sync, but still... it's cool.)
There's a pop-up menu that manages which photos get downloaded from your computer to your AppleTV. The two choices are to select some albums from iPhoto, or to point AppleTV to a specific folder on your hard disk drive. Select Choose folder...
Then navigate to screenSaverPics inside your Pictures folder. This is the folder where FlickerFan places the photos it downloads from Flickr and the AP.
Each feed appears in its own sub-folder.
Click the button for Selected Photos. Check the ones you want on your AppleTV. In the lower right of iTunes click Apply, then Sync. (The other choice puts all of the photos into one collection. Using this choice lets you be selective in your viewing. And you still get the option to view all.)
Allow a few minutes for the transfer (depending on the speed of your local network). and Voila!
The feeds are there ready for TV viewing. You can look at the whole collection or any individual folder.
Mickeleh's Take: So easy, even a marketing dink can do it.
(Tags:FlickrFan, Dave Winer, Flickr, AppleTV)
To use Photos on AppleTV, you need to sync it with with one of the computers on your home network. I'll assume you've done that.
From the computer that is sync'd to AppleTV launch iTunes. (This is counter-intuitive for many. You'd guess that you'd manage the photos in iPhoto. But it's iTunes that is the master ap for AppleTV. It's a similar U-I to sync'ing with iPhone)
In the iTunes sidebar navigation, select AppleTV and then select the Photos tab. (By the way, you can select iPhone from the sidebar and follow these steps to sync your FlickrFan feeds to your iPhone. It's a tethered update, not a wireless sync, but still... it's cool.)
There's a pop-up menu that manages which photos get downloaded from your computer to your AppleTV. The two choices are to select some albums from iPhoto, or to point AppleTV to a specific folder on your hard disk drive. Select Choose folder...
Then navigate to screenSaverPics inside your Pictures folder. This is the folder where FlickerFan places the photos it downloads from Flickr and the AP.
Each feed appears in its own sub-folder.
Click the button for Selected Photos. Check the ones you want on your AppleTV. In the lower right of iTunes click Apply, then Sync. (The other choice puts all of the photos into one collection. Using this choice lets you be selective in your viewing. And you still get the option to view all.)
Allow a few minutes for the transfer (depending on the speed of your local network). and Voila!
The feeds are there ready for TV viewing. You can look at the whole collection or any individual folder.
Mickeleh's Take: So easy, even a marketing dink can do it.
(Tags:FlickrFan, Dave Winer, Flickr, AppleTV)
Thanks to Dave Winer, my TV has a New Channel
My TV has a new channel this morning, thanks to Dave Winer, the Associated Press, and a bunch of my friends on Flickr. The channel shows photos—from the news and the lives of my friends. (In case you're wondering, that's a news photo above. Not from the lives of my friends. Back off NSA.)
As timing would have it, the debut of this channel today is dominated by distressing images from Pakistan related to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. (but without the inane gibbering of the cable news anchors.)
After a teasy weekend of buzz building, Dave Winer released the beta FlickerFan, a neat new product that will download photo albums from friends on Flickr and/or the news photo feed from the Associated Press—or any other RSS photo feed.
First round is Mac only and pre-wired to work with the Mac OS Screen Saver. There's huge potential beyond that, which, no doubt, will keep Dave and other clever coders busily digging for a while.
I like the promise of FlickrFan. It's built on a solid, stable code base and web standards, that Dave has been refining all century. I'm having fun with it. I wish Dave much success with it.
That said.
FlickrFan had one of the most bizarre intros I've ever seen--Robert Scoble webcast the first authorized demo from his Qik channel (is that pronounced kick or quick?) from his magic telephone—you heard me. His telephone. Amazing audio quality. Pretty darn good video quality. Another miracle of modern technology.
Gathering an audience with breathless hyperbole on his blog that promised a TV revolution, Robert launched into what seemed like an unplanned, unrehearsed demo. FlickrFan was not well served by being munged in with a bit of AppleTV, Media Center, and Xbox bashing, countered by the promotion of Mac Mini, browsers on TV. All of that is what politicians call "off message." It does nothing but provoke an audience to take issue with you.
Making things worse, the Qik channel had a come one, come all, anonymous chat widget that unleashed the evil wise-cracking gremlins lurking in many visitors. The chat got ugly fast.
You'd think Scoble would have absorbed the basics of how to do a good demo by now.Show the product... what it does... why you'd want it. Above all... plan and rehearse. What will you show? What will you do? What will you say? In what order? It can be loose. It can be off the cuff and conversational. But it can't be chaotically random.
The way Scoble pitched it, the price of admission was--trash your Xbox, put your Apple TV on eBay, buy a Mac mini etc. All for a free download that shows photos. Hmm.
At one point Dave called in to offer some live demo coaching. He didn't seem happy.
For what it's worth, I haven't trashed my AppleTV. I'm synching it with a folder on my G5 where FlickrFan is running. I set it up in about 8 minutes. I'll be sending Dave lots of feedback.
Mickeleh's Take: FlickrFan is a simple free download (for now), easy to install. It adds a bit of a good and a nice to my life. I'm a FlickrFan Fan
(Tags:FlickrFan, Dave Winer, Flickr, AppleTV, Mac Mini, Scobleizer, Robert Scoble)
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Super Cool Saudi Arabia
So, I log on to Facebook and see that my Saudi friend, Essam Al-Ghalib as joined a group called "Super Cool Saudi Arabia." For a minute, I thought it was about the hip side of the kingdom. Turns out that Super Cool is a distributor of window films and coatings that help insulate automobiles and homes against the hot climate.
Mickeleh's Take: If global warming continues, we all may be looking to join the cool kids.
Mickeleh's Take: If global warming continues, we all may be looking to join the cool kids.
Monday, November 19, 2007
PR Gaming that Still Works: The eBook Fifteen Years Ago
Fifteen years before Steven Levy had his exclusive with Jeff Bezos and gushed over Amazon's Kindle for Newsweek, Phillip Elmer-Dewitt in Time bowed to some nifty demos and exclusive PR access to a pair of CEOs, resulting in some unskeptical puffery on Voyager Expanded Book series for the Apple PowerBook in 1992:
BTW, Brian Caulfield in Forbes, and Seth Weintraub in 9to5Mac both compare Kindle unfavorably to iPhone as a platform for eBooks. The sharpest comparison —with the zingiest headline— is from John Paczkowski at Digital Daily.
Today, there's another company called Voyager. This one's in Japan. Guess what they're selling? Ebooks for iPhone and iPod.
Mickeleh's Take: I was at Apple when Expanded Books was launched for PowerBook. Neat idea. Good feature set. But you had to work hard at really liking the experience. PR can get you only so far. It's really up to the customer experience to deliver. Wait patiently for customers to report on the experience of Kindle.
(Tags:Voyager, eBook, Kindle, Amazon, Time, Newsweek, PR, Apple)
... makes the experience of reading a book on a screen amazingly close to reading it on paper. "It's the first thing I've seen that I could curl up in bed with," says Nora Rawlinson, editor in chief of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly.Here come those same features and bennies again in Kindle (plus some substantial new ones thanks to the networking and Amazon's back end).
... displays the text on clean white pages that replicate the design of the hardback rather than using the scrolling strings of text so familiar to computer users. A touch of a button turns the page or allows the reader to flip back and forth. Users can dog-ear the corner of a page to mark their place, or attach an electronic paper clip for easy reference. Passages can be underscored or marked on the side, and there are generous margins for putting down notes.
The computer also brings benefits not offered by ordinary books: a backlit screen that permits reading in a darkened bedroom without disturbing a spouse, the option of enlarging the type to reduce eyestrain, the ability to copy passages onto a "notebook" page, and a search feature that displays occurrences of any chosen word, name or phrase. This last option could prove handy for, say, recalling the identity of an obscure Dostoyevsky character who suddenly reappears after 100 pages.
BTW, Brian Caulfield in Forbes, and Seth Weintraub in 9to5Mac both compare Kindle unfavorably to iPhone as a platform for eBooks. The sharpest comparison —with the zingiest headline— is from John Paczkowski at Digital Daily.
Today, there's another company called Voyager. This one's in Japan. Guess what they're selling? Ebooks for iPhone and iPod.
Mickeleh's Take: I was at Apple when Expanded Books was launched for PowerBook. Neat idea. Good feature set. But you had to work hard at really liking the experience. PR can get you only so far. It's really up to the customer experience to deliver. Wait patiently for customers to report on the experience of Kindle.
(Tags:Voyager, eBook, Kindle, Amazon, Time, Newsweek, PR, Apple)
Amazon's Shiny New Thing: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
This year in tech started with Steve Jobs eclipsing all the news from CES by cranking up the reality distortion field in a rocking demo of the iPhone at Macworld. Result: instant off-the-charts technolust, teaser ad at the Oscars, anticipation, brilliant PR and advertising buildup, lines around the block, and last week's cover in Time as Invention of the Year. (Yes, and a healthy dose of carping about closed-system, locking to AT&T, bricking, etc.)
As the window for this year's new products closes, Jeff Bezos snags the cover of Newsweek with a Steven Levy exclusive that goes ga-ga for Amazon's new electronic book reader, Kindle. (That's, of course, the gold ring in the tech PR game: offer an exclusive to an A-list mainstream writer in exchange for a cover and hope for a gushing preview.)
But if Bezos is checking Techmeme or his opening share price this morning, he may be disappointed. The shiny-new-toy crowd is raining skepticism and scorn (Scoble calls it "hate") on the product even before it's official announcement. Jeremy Toeman predicts failure in a well-argued piece, calling it a solution in search of a problem. Many folks pronounce it ugly. (Levy blogs that it doesn't really look as bad as the photos suggest. File that under faint praise.)
Here's my take on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
The Good:
- The Amazon brand will put the category of ebooks into play more effectively than any other current player. It's already interrupting us on the way to buy books the old-fashioned way. You can't buy that much exposure.
- The always-on networking (they call it Whispernet, in honor of the stereotypical shushing that librarians are lampooned for in cartoons?) makes it ideal for subscriptions to newspapers, periodicals, and blogs—and impulsive shoppers who need instant access to books. (I need a couple right now, and Kindle would save me a trip to the library or the local Barnes & Noble). It's an on-demand world.
- The hygiene factors seen about right: size, weight, screen brightness, battery life.
- If you rely on a suite of specialized reference books, you can have them always at hand.
- Another thoughtful and practical instantiation of concepts from Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson, and Alan Kay can make books more useful with personal annotations, cross-referencing, and community commentary.
The Bad:
- DRM will lock your purchases to the device. Can you share books with family members? Pass them on to friends? Re-sell them?
- With the New York Times dropping the pay wall and Wall Street Journal about to, isn't it swimming upstream to sell newspaper subscriptions for an ebook?
- Where iTunes and iPod made it easy (if a bit tedious) for me to capture the music from my CD collection, I cant digitize my existing library. The only way to get books into the Kindle is to buy them again from Amazon. Publishers will love this. Amazon will love this. I won't.
- The price ($399) is high. And this unecessary object falls pretty low on the list of unecessary toys that I lust for–especially for an object whose main purpose is to insert another siphon into my bank account.
- That name. Kindle? Books and Kindle don't go together. Sorry.
The Ugly- An iPhone, it's not.
UPDATE: Joel Johnson offers some useful information on Boing Boing. The system isn't as closed as I feared. There are a number of ways to get files onto it besides just buying them from Amazon.
But books—physical, dead-tree books—are just fine. And very hard to beat.
Mickeleh's Take: Ebook readers are inevitable. But they will be slow in coming. Most of the early Kindle-bashing (including mine) is just hypothetical. The proof will be in the U-I and the experience. Ignore everything you read today about Kindle—including this. Tune in again next week for real experience. But not here—I'm sitting this round out.
(Tags:Amazon, Kindle, Amazon Kindle, Bezos, iPhone)
Sunday, November 18, 2007
KIndle? As in Farenheit 451? Pollution-free bookburning
Hey, Bezos? You're calling your e-book reader Kindle? As in book-burning? Fast-forward to when the fascists take over. Oh wait, maybe that's happened. OK. Fast-forward to when the fascists can drop their mask. My library is DRM'd. I have an always-on connection to Amazon headquarters. Book-burning can be replaced by pollution-free book-zapping.
Mickeleh's Take: Memo to self: stop blogging like a paranoid nerd. You're already on that list. But seriously, folks: is naming an electronic book reader Kindle, a) arrogant, b) brilliant, c) clod-headed, or d) daring?
(Tags:Amazon, Amazon_Kindle, Bezos, e-book)
Mickeleh's Take: Memo to self: stop blogging like a paranoid nerd. You're already on that list. But seriously, folks: is naming an electronic book reader Kindle, a) arrogant, b) brilliant, c) clod-headed, or d) daring?
(Tags:Amazon, Amazon_Kindle, Bezos, e-book)
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Will Open Social Beat (or even match) the User Appeal of Facebook
To many folks open equals good and closed equals evil. So the news that Google will promote an open API for social media across the web, is quickly short-handed to "Google unleashes Facebook killer."
Not so fast, say I.
Don't lose sight of the strong user appeal of Facebook--a large part of which is predicated on the fact that it's a walled garden--simple, neat, cozy, consistent. And Facebook is where my friends are. Not just my geeky friends who fly mothlike to any new shiny thing that launches on the web, but my tech-laggard friends, too.
The open question on Open Social is what user experiences will developers create? Will they appeal to and resonate with a broad public?
Open Social may have more potential than Facebook. But whether that potential is realized will depend not on what developers and advertisers see in it, but what users see.
When social is everywhere, will social be special? Or just the price of admission.
Mickeleh's Take: Remember when Zune was touted as an iPod killer? Remember that iPhone, (closed, locked iPhone) is a runaway hit.
(Tags:Google, Open Social, Facebook)
Not so fast, say I.
Don't lose sight of the strong user appeal of Facebook--a large part of which is predicated on the fact that it's a walled garden--simple, neat, cozy, consistent. And Facebook is where my friends are. Not just my geeky friends who fly mothlike to any new shiny thing that launches on the web, but my tech-laggard friends, too.
The open question on Open Social is what user experiences will developers create? Will they appeal to and resonate with a broad public?
Open Social may have more potential than Facebook. But whether that potential is realized will depend not on what developers and advertisers see in it, but what users see.
When social is everywhere, will social be special? Or just the price of admission.
Mickeleh's Take: Remember when Zune was touted as an iPod killer? Remember that iPhone, (closed, locked iPhone) is a runaway hit.
(Tags:Google, Open Social, Facebook)
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