It really bothers me that the definition of success has changed from profits to followers, friends, and feed count. This crap doesn’t mean anything. Kids are coming out of school thinking, I want to start the next YouTube or Facebook. If a restaurant served more food than everybody else but lost money on every diner, would it be successful? No. But on the Internet, for some reason, if you have more users than everyone else, you’re successful. No, you’re not.

The full article is here.

It’s been ages since I posted anything even vaguely unique or substantive – something that wasn’t a just quick snippet, photo, video, or link. Which is why I have found myself moving more towards posting shorter, more frequent items to Twitter and Flickr, and finding a lot more satisfaction in doing so (though this wasn’t always the case).

Paul Boutin said it well in a recent Wired article:

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

I think this is pretty dead on, particularly the last line, and so from now on, this site will mainly lay in state, and my new short-form world will exist on AndrewTeman.COM. Be sure and update your RSS feeds here if you want to follow along. It’s riveting I know.

The new site, as I said, will mainly be Twitter updates, Flickr photos, and some ancillary info pulled from my Delicious, Yelp, and Last.FM feeds, nice and simple. Granted there will still be things that I want to get out there that just won’t fit neatly into JPG format, or in 140 character strings, and for that, the blog will remain here in it’s current form, but with grossly sparse updates at very best.

It’s been a good run. Since May of 2004, there have been 815 posts, over 1,200 comments, and well over one million visitors.

See you over at the new place.

I love all of these songs, but I think I am partial to Little Saint Nick from The Beach Boys (just something about surfin’ Christmas music), and Run Rudolph Run from Chuck Berry. But as far as the best pure Christmas song, I think the Brenda Lee version of Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree is hard to beat.

As was the case with the cocktail party mix, this is in descending alphabetical order by song title. Also, there are two versions of Santa Clause Is Comin’ To Town, because both the Sinatra and the Springsteen versions are both fantastic….and different enough to appear on the same mix without being annoying.

Enjoy!

Whole bunch more here.

From today’s news, Somali pirates hijack Saudi oil tanker.

From the NY Times a few weeks back, Somalia’s Pirates Flourish in a Lawless Nation .

A map of worldwide piracy, from the ICC.

From NPR, working as a pirate in Belakang Padang, Indonesia.

And a good robust section of information here at the NYTimes website.

Uncensored crime scene photo here.

Still others like the worlds largest free online dating site, PlentyOfFish.com (POF) are perhaps beginning to hit a wall. Here is what CEO Markus Frind said recently, “The problem with free is that every time you double the size of your database the cost of maintaining the site grows 6 fold. I really underestimated how much resources it would take, I have one database table now that exceeds 3 billion records. The bigger you get as a free site the less money you make per visit and the more it costs to service a visit.

Never really stopped and thought about the point of diminishing returns that happens at a certain point when you are running a free (ad supported) service.

As most indie rock bands, they are liberal leaning and have had politics and political themes creep into their songs and lyrics more than once. First with 16 Military Wives, and now with their latest Valerie Plame, these songs end up coming across as kick-ass songs first, and political messages a distant second.

Have a listen to the ode to Valerie Plame here, and be sure and hang on to the end, where the “Hey hey Valerie Plame” sing-along gets a bit “Hey Jude-ish”.

Also, a good interview with lead singer Colin Meloy on NPR here.