The Culture of Content

What Happens When Seesmic Kills Video?

Rob Blatt — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:44:32 +0000

It’s clear that Seesmic is one day going to kill off their video service. They’ve demoted the video site from their main page to video.seesmic.com. Seesmic changed their focus as a company, has a nearly all new staff from 18 months ago and I think will be ending their video conversations over time.

I’m not too worried about the death of the video site, as most of the content as little value as time goes on and the community has all but died and splintered towards 12Seconds, TokBox and meeting in real life. What I’m curious about is the video comments. I know that people like Sukhjit relies to some degree on video comments for her blog. If Seesmic flips the kill switch, she loses her video comments.

This makes me wonder about how we store the content we think of as belonging to or associated with us. Seesmic might have allowed you to embed videos from their pages into your comments, but the video was always theirs. There is no button to download the videos to your server. I have a similar issue with my commenting engine Disqus, but there’s a backup. While the comments that you leave go to the Disqus servers and not the server that robblatt.com is hosted on, it’s also backed up to my servers. If I choose to uninstall Disqus, the comments won’t disappear forever.

Has the “free” economy hampered our ability to depend on the services that we use? Seesmic for video comments, Disqus for text comments, WordPress.com for blog hosting, BlogTalkRadio for audio hosting, blip.tv for video hosting, etc. What damage can these companies do to us if they decide to close shop? As unlikely as it may seem, it’s still possible. 18 months ago I wouldn’t have guessed that Seesmic would have put video on the back burner either, but it still happened.

While a white label solution or paid account might seem like the expensive route, it is the route that offers peace of mind and customer support. Is that a worthwhile trade?

Finally, Some Real Twitter Research

Rob Blatt — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:30:50 +0000

Last week, the 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) was the epitome of the social media echoplex. We were underground, talking about ourselves and the impact that we one day might have on the world. Very often inside the echoplex you’ll hear people talking about doing “Twitter research”. Usually that research entails looking at their feed of their friends or an RSS search for a hashtag.

Today, the Web Ecology Project has blown every single one of those “research” reports out of the water. “The Iranian Election on Twitter: The First Eighteen Days” is a scientific look at two million plus messages produced by Twitter users.

One thing that would have been interesting would be to see messages per location and how that information spread, but the users of Twitter were poisoning that well of information by changing their locations to and/or from Iran in a futile attempt to stop the Iranian government from finding them. All this did was potentially spread misinformation about what was actually going on.

Regardless, click the image to read hard facts about the Iranian election and Twitter.

The Worst Type of Exploitation Spam

Rob Blatt — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:30:38 +0000

As you probably know, I’m looking for work. One of the things I do on a regular basis is to post my resume to the resume section of NYC Craigslist. As a result, I get a lot of false promises in my inbox, but today I got the absolute worst kind of spam.

Greetings,

I’ll keep this short and sweet.

I am writing to you with regards to your posting in the resume section on Craigslist.

This may no be exactly what you posted for originally, but it is an opportunity to join one of the fastest growing companies in Texas, Illinois, New York, as well as America.

“This is spam.”

Our company enjoyed an unheard of 500% growth rate last year right in the middle of our current economic situation. In the years to follow, our company will become a household name. You can start part-time and eventually work this full time.

Here’s the fantastic claim. 500% growth? Where did they start? If I made $1 last week and made $5 this week, I made a 500% jump in sales.

I am an established businessman, and an officer in the US Army Reserve, located in NY. If you are friendly, open minded, enthusiastic, coachable, and trainable, I may have an opportunity for you. If you are not, kindly ignore this one time email.

Interested in learning more? Simply send me a reply to this email, and I will send you a few links to browse.

No pressure or drama, just information for you to decide if our opportunity might be a good fit for you.

If you are not interested, no worries, I sincerely thank you for the time you took to read this, and wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.

This is a bit of a masked man fallacy. Because we’re lead to believe that US Army officers are trustworthy, we should place our trust in this guy. He plays the nice guy card and tells me that I can ignore this email if I want to.

-Regards,

Ash

Regards,

Spammer.

I have such a problem with this kind of spam because it’s praying on people who are putting themselves out there to be found. Instead of the intended audience, they have to deal with sorting through this garbage. Hopefully someone who gets this email and searches parts of it will find this post and realize that they are being swindled.

If you’ve been sent some spam that is over the top and should be exploited, I encourage you to post it online to help others out.

Spam with Cheese by kris247

The High-Cost of Accurate Information

Rob Blatt — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:26:47 +0000

How many games long was Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak? What state is Kansas City located in? What’s the record for the most times someone has been struck by lightning? And what does the bar bet have to do with your content strategy?

The bar bet has evolved over time. Traditionally, a bar bet was settled by the bartender. Bartenders are trusted to know weird information. As an example, head over to the Roger Smith Hotel on 47th and Lexington Ave in Manhattan when Paul is behind the bar at Lily’s. Ask him nearly any random fact or plot from the movies. Most likely, he’ll have your answer. He’ll also make you one hell of a Bloody Mary if you ask for one. In “the olden days” you’d ask the bartender and he or she would tell you that Joe DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games, Kansas City is Missouri or that Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times.

Bar bets and random information became so popular that Guinness made a book of those records. Now, if someone wanted to settle a bet, they could ask the bartender or look in the book. The book was much more comprehensive than any bartender’s knowledge and more importantly it was relatively accurate. For a long time, the Guinness book seemed to be the standard way to settle these kinds of bets.

In 2007, my family went on a vacation to Disney World and we had lots of questions. Instead of asking a tour guide or someone who worked at the park, my family turned to me and asked questions that I would then look up using my iPhone and Wikipedia. We found out all kids of things about the attractions and the grounds of Disney. How many square miles is Disney World? When was the Haunted MAnsion made into a ride? Did anyone ever die inside of the Magic Kingdom? We answered those questions waiting in line for rides and on the various buses around Disney. The amount of information at my fingertips was staggering. I could answer any question anyone had about Disney World. There wasn’t much conversation about possibilities, just questions and immediate answers.

Knowing everything sure gets old quick. There’s no purpose in having a conversation about when Kurt Cobain died or how many gold records Elvis has sold. The answers are available with a few keystrokes. There’s no fun in debating history or facts anymore when we live in a connected society. What’s Shaq’s free throw percentage? Who needs to talk about how bad Shaq is at free throws? Just answer the question and move on to the next topic.

Turn the information gun onto social media for a moment. I am the community advocate for Blubrry and as such, I represent the company on social networks and do my best to spread accurate information across the ‘net about how awesome our podcast hosting, WordPress plugins and statistics are. I respond to most people who are asking questions or talking about similar products on Twitter using @blubrry, but in the “real time” world the question that I often ask myself is “when should I interject?”

If I jump in too soon with an over abundance of information, then the case is closed. The authority on the subject has spoken and the subject is dead. There is no conversation, just a question posed and an answer given. If I don’t jump into the conversation right away, the information might not be totally correct, but there’s a conversation happening. As an example, one of my goals is to convert people to our WordPress plugin over an older plugin. If two people have been going back and forth about which is better, what’s the benefit of jumping in mid-stream? Yes, I’ll answer the question, but at the cost of allowing the community to bring someone in on their own.

It gets into the bigger question of what your role is when you are on Twitter. Are you there to answer questions or facilitate conversation? With Blubrry, I do my best to promote podcasts in the Blubrry community, give accurate information about our products, provide tech support and give people insight into our company to feel more connected with us.

Jumping into conversations with information feels too much like answering settling bar bets with my iPhone or answering trivia questions with Wikipedia while walking around Disney World. The magic and the wonder of the conversation are gone.

arguing about YUI by Frances Berriman, rob’s brother and dad by the amber show & Greeks always argue about facts by greekadman via flickr

A URL Shortener Lesson Learned

Rob Blatt — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:02:47 +0000

Wow. I made a big mistake.

Over on the site forCreate Consume Delete, we had been tracking people who clicked on the “Subscribe in iTunes” link with a shortened URL. When people click on the link, it goes to an address at the URL shortening site we were using to, then it forwards people to the page in the iTunes Store for Create Consume Delete. The shortening service tracks how many people clicked on the link and it was one big happy ecosystem of traffic forwarding and statistics gathering.

That changed today. I got an email from someone asking if I was intentionally forwarding people to “cakefarts” (WARNING: DON’T GO THERE) instead of iTunes. Sending people to watch a woman fart on a cake isn’t exactly what I want when they want to subscribe to my show. hint: I want them to go to iTunes.

Clearly something has gone wrong here. What happened? I imagine that in order to keep URLs short, shortening services eventually rotate out old URLs, and my URL was rotated out for this lovely site featuring the lady with the flatulence. Instead of people subscribing to the podcast, I likely offended them. That’s awesome! What’s a better brand building exercise than “You want to subscribe to my show? How about this porn instead!” Wrong.

What’s the lesson? Don’t use URL shorteners when the link is important. Bad things happen to URL shorteners and putting an unnecessary step in the process means there’s one more thing that can go wrong.

URL shorteners were meant to save characters when using Twitter or making Google Maps directs easy to send using a URL that’s easy to remember. Shortened URLs are like directions you might scribble onto a piece of scrap paper or the back of an envelope to go to the house of a friend. Once you’re there, forget about it. It’s trash.

“Boredom” originally by ttcopley via Flickr

Did I Just Call A Microsoft Product “Sexy”?

Rob Blatt — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:01:54 +0000

Oh no. I’m pretty sure that I just saw the new Microsoft Zune HD and immediately thought “that’s a sexy PMP.”

It seems like everyone is trying to get their announcements in about their personal media players and smart phones before Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference. Palm will put their Pre smartphone on sale a few days before Apple’s WWDC and now, Microsoft has announced their next generation media player, the Zune HD.

First off, I haven’t read anything about any changes to the podcasting side of the Zune. Aside from supporting it, I’m not sure there’s anything left to do. The Zune has supported podcasts for a while now and the Zune HD will be no different. What will be cool about the Zune HD is the support for HD video, and the HDMI output on the optional (and at an extra cost) TV dock.

Microsoft is looking to bridge the gap between the personal and home media players. I like the idea of watching a TV show, movie or podcast on the subway, walking into my apartment and connecting the Zune HD to a dock that will play whatever I was just watching on my home theater in 720p. It’s something that I haven’t really seen mastered by any media devices. I’m not sure that Microsoft will get it right, but it’s awesome in theory. Speaking of HD, the Zune HD will include an HD radio receiver. While this a relatively trivial addition, I think it will go a long way to keep people using the Zune HD. If the Zune HD is your primary media player, then imagine a scenario of going from your house listening to HD radio, grabbing the Zune HD and popping it into the car to continue listening to the radio.

Microsoft has the potential to be the best handheld internet experience out there. I doubt it will happen, but a mobile version of IE specifically built for the device (that would include Flash and Silverlight) with a touchscreen could be just what the doctor ordered for the mobile web. Microsoft doesn’t have a great track record with the mobile web, but it’s a possibility.

The people upset about the Apple iPhone’s lack of a keyboard aren’t going to be pleased with the Zune either. It’s headed down the software keyboard path as well. The people who weren’t keen on the original iPhone design won’t like the Zune HD’s design either. It’s go the same aluminum style body with the (assumed) black plastic strip on the bottom to allow radio and wifi signals into the device. It’s a design element Apple left behind with the second generation of iPhone. This already makes the Zune look dated in my eyes. Microsoft is trying to keep up with the Joneses, and in this case Apple is the Jones family. They also announced that the screen will be an organic light emitting diode (OLED), which will give the Zune HD some potentially great battery life. Too bad the rumor is that Apple will announce the same thing with the new generation of iPhone. I haven’t heard anything about games or apps or an app store, but time will tell on that. It’s going to be running on a custom Windows CE OS, so I suppose it’s always a possibility.

One hurdle for me is a lack of access to the Zune software. Microsoft doesn’t make it available for the OS X operating system, which leaves me in the dark for the most part. It’s possible to sync a Zune with Songbird, but according to the page on Get Satisfaction the podcast support in Songbird isn’t the best. A way around the hurdle would be the ability to download music to the device straight from an XBox 360. Microsoft is changing the name of the XBox 360 Marketplace to the Zune Store. This adds movie and television downloads to what the Zune HD is capable of.

The Zune HD has the potential to be a pretty powerful device, but at the same time, Microsoft has a bad track record with the Zune so far. Time will tell.

Which Shirt is Funnier?

Rob Blatt — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:59:46 +0000

VS.

Leave your vote in the comments.

Put It In Your Ears April Statistics

Rob Blatt — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:38:16 +0000

After posting Put It In Your Ears March statistics I figure it’s only proper to continue updating publicly on our progress. April was our second month of tri-weekly podcasts.

Stats:
Across our episodes, we had 1,862 downloads. This is an increase over March’s number by a small margin of 100 and change. Numbers stayed constant across all shows with an average of 81 downloads per show. Each of the shows in the archive was accessed about 25 times. It varies per show, but the highest downloaded of the April shows was Now on RadioExile.com with 121 and 2guys1podcast was the most popular with 250 downloads. This is down from March’s 250. It’s good that our numbers have still gone up despite that episode’s monthly downloads going down.

Usage Stats:
Nothing new to report from last month. 71% podcatchers, 50/50 split between Macs and PCs and a predominantly US based audience.

Rob and Gavin vs. Dana vs. Music
Last month I alluded to a change in the music shows, and change they did. We partnered with Radio Exile to cross post our music episodes. You can check out our first Radio Exile episode on April 10th. The music episodes are our most popular shows. I’m not sure what traffic we’re driving to Radio Exile or if we’re keeping people on their pages, but we continue to cross post and over time hopefully that relationship will continue to be beneficial. This time around I don’t have anything specific in mind for increasing our stats this month, but if you have a site that you’d like to see our content posted to, contact us.

Episode 41 – Discussion Pages

Where’s the line between fan fiction and official Star Wars fiction?

A show that’s half about absurd things on the internet (and our lives), you know we had to talk about the Star Wars universe and the fictional universe that surrounds it. We learned a few things that we did not really want to learn. What was the name of the Stormtrooper who was told “There aren’t the droids you’re looking for?” Both the actor AND the Stormtrooper. How many people died on the Death Star? Why does Han Solo understand Wookie and not speak it?

Microsoft’s Stupid Argument

Rob Blatt — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:33:00 +0000

Microsoft started a new advertising campaign for its Zune media player with the focus being on buying music in iTunes to fill an iPod vs subscribing to the Zune service. Take a look:

A quick look into my iTunes library reveals 71 GB of music, and that doesn’t include I would argue about half of of the CDs that Amber and I own. Before a hard drive crash a few years ago, we had over 12,000 songs in the collection and well over 100 GB of data in there. The argument that Microsoft and Wes Moss present is useless to me. Why would they make the assumption that someone is staring with no music collection? Even my father owned music before we purchased him an iPod (and it hasn’t been synced with his computer since that first time).

Another thing that annoys me about this commercial is Wes Moss. I’m happy that they found a real financial planner instead of hiring an actor to pretend to be one. If they are appealing to people with disposable income who buy music who don’t want to pat a lot of money for music, there’s only one group that comes to mind: college students. I’m not sure, but I don’t think that I’d listen to some douche in a suit about music if I were in college.

I think James from the New Media Update said it best on twitter when he said Would love to see Microsoft innovate with the Zune, instead of imitate and denigrate. This doesn’t sell me on anything the Zune has to offer, just what makes it different from the iPod when it comes to putting music on it.

In the comments for the video on YouTube, some people have figured out that if you were to fill a 120GB Zune would actually cost $44,700. Once you stop paying the $15 a month fee, you’re left with the 10 songs a month that you can download without DRM attached. After Paying $15 for 10 songs a month, you’re left paying nearly $45k to fill a Zune vs their estimations of $30k with an iPod. Conversely the Pirate Bay can help you do it for free.

There probably around a million things wrong with this advertisement and these are just a small number of gripes I have. While their Laptop Hunters campaign put Apple users on the defensive about why their computers cost so much money (answer: because they are better), this campaign will not have the same effect. Yes, my music collection cost a few thousand dollars overall, but I accumulated it over the course of a decade and change and I own most of the plastic discs that the songs came on.

This is coming from someone who wants to try a Zune player. Not enough to buy one, but enough to enter some contests to win one.

Edison Defines the Word “Podcast”

Rob Blatt — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:57:32 +0000

Edison Research releases a presentation each year about digital media. The most interesting to me, of course, is the podcasting aspect of the studies. While the Association for Downloadable Media has not yet defined what a podcast is in their Glossary of Terms, Edison clearly defines what a podcast is.

Audio podcasting does refer to the download of program-oriented online audio (such as a talk show or a hosted music program), usually as an automatic download that can be listened to at the user’s convenience.

They also say that podcasting doesn’t refer to downloading individual files or songs. I assume that means they are not including individual downloads of podcast episodes. That removes people who are snacking on showing here and there but not committing to subscribing.

Do you define a podcast as something else? I gave a talk at PodCamp Montreal about how we use the word podcast, and Edison is the first group to step out and make a clear definition like this in their research.

Quoted in “Shedding Light on Twitter”

Rob Blatt — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:10:22 +0000

If someone is in doubt that I may know what I’m talking about online, I’ll forward them to Heather Whaling’s (@prtini)presentation on learning to use Twitter. I’m quoted in one of the slides repeating my “Be a person, use a tool” mantra.

Shedding Light On Twitter

Featured on the Disqus blog

Rob Blatt — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:38:24 +0000

A while ago I installed Disqus into my WordPress install at robblatt.com and liked the results. It handles my spam, allows me to email replies to comments and in short, gets the job done. In general, robblatt.com is my testing grounds for new WordPress related technology and the implementation of Disqus was no different. If one site of mine is going to be borked, I’d rather it be my blog than one of my podcasts. Disqus was stable, so I went about implementing it across all of my different sites.

Last Friday I was interviewed on the Disqus blog by Giannii as one of the co-hosts of Create Consume Delete, and I think the interview went pretty well. You can read about how I got started on the internet, Create Consume Delete, what I feel is the most important thing and my thoughts on Disqus and comments at the full interview.

Featured Friday: Rob from CreateConsumeDelete.com

LaidOffCamp New York

Rob Blatt — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:58:44 +0000

It’s no secret that the last company I worked for full time set a trend of newspapers closing shop for good. When the opportunity to help with LaidOffCamp New York came up, I jumped. The team running the event is great and I think it’s shaping up to be an event that can hopefully change some lives. Tickets are now available. There are two options, a free ticket, or a ticket that is accompanied with a donation.

You can find out more about the event at the official site for LaidOffCamp New York.

How to Use Your mp3s to Stand Out

Rob Blatt — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:30:04 +0000

Could you imagine if you had your music or show on a cassette tape, would you label the tape before handing it out? Not filling out all of the information on an mp3 is the digital equivalent of that. My mp3 collection spans hundreds of artists and tens of thousands of songs. If those songs or albums were tapes, how could I tell your blank tape apart from all the others that I’ve been given over time? In order to stand out, you have to optimize your use of ID3 tags.

I was looking through the music on Free Music Archive .org for more podsafe music. I downloaded a few dozen tracks and loaded them into a folder. There was only one track stood out.

As musicians or podcasters, we have an opportunity to make an instant impact the moment our content is downloaded onto someone’s computer or personal media player. If you leave the artwork empty on that file, you’re missing out on an opportunity to stand out amongst a sea of blank files.

The files I downloaded were from a high level collection on the Free Music Archive’s pages. I downloaded most of the two volumes of the WFMU curated collections. I’m not sure if Clockcleaner completely understood the impact that they would have on me when they included some simple album art in the ID3 tags, but they made quite an impact. Everyone should go check out Caliente Queen by Clockcleaner for their efforts.

A little about the Free Music Archive: All of the music in the collection there is licensed for redistribution in one way or another. The Clockcleaner track from the album Babylon Rules is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. For the most part, this site seems like it has all the shiny sparkle that I hoped Muxtape would employ.

Next time you release something publicly, stop and make sure that every piece of information that can be filled out, is filled out. Each podcast I release had every possible piece of information filled out. Lyrics, comments, and everything else that you have the option to fill out NEED to be filled out. Leaving out information is leaving money on the table.

image by CoreForce via Flickr

Magpie Lessons

Rob Blatt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:37:25 +0000

A few weeks ago I set up an account with a service that puts advertisements into your Twitter stream. The advertisements offered there are, for the most part, useless. Magpie opened up the door to affiliate sales and everything seemed to go downhill. I don’t have time or care to try to sell someone a MacBook Air for a 7.5% commission. I wanted to be detached from any advertisements that would wind up in my stream and I wanted to label them clearly. When they slipped affiliate links into my stream without my realizing it, I started to have serious doubts about my involvement with them. You can take a look at a search for #ad-space to see what a douche I looked like. These were the advertisements that I ACCEPTED. Could you imagine how stupid I would have looked if I didn’t pre-approve advertisements? Look at a search for #magpie to see.

Who wouldIf you’re not sitting on top of your email waiting for Magpie emails, you’ll likely miss out on the “per view” ads that are offered. When I got offers that weren’t offensively stupid or looked like personal endorsements, I would approve them only to see them end up in an expired queue because I clearly was not on the ball in checking my emails.

If you really want to make some money off of your work on Twitter, use your account to establish your expertise in your field of interest. Earn whuffie and make money off of your reputation for being a smart person instead of 140 character advertisements. However, if you’re looking for a way to make a quick buck off of Twitter, here’s an idea for you to take. Find a clever account name like “newalbums” and talk about new CD releases each week and fill the account with amazon affiliate links. Focus on providing people an easier way to find about what CDs are being released that week. All your discovery work is already done for you. All you have to do is be the curator of the account. It’s not as simple as allowing someone else to have access to your Twitter account, but then again, you’re not spamming your friends either.

Who would Magpie work for? The account I maintained for the New York Sun while it was still around would have been a good candidate. The account had very little besides headlines and links. We were already spamming our followers with headlines, so a few ads along the way wouldn’t have made a big difference.

Listen to the talk that Merlin Mann and John Gruber gave at SXSW (HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbo Charge Your blog with Credibility) and I think that you’ll come to the same conclusion that I did about how useful Magpie really is.

Needless to say, Magpie is now disabled on my account.

If you wind up using my idea for the newalbums twitter account, let me know how well it works. I think it could take off for the right person, but I’m not that person.

UPDATE: Looks like Read Write Web also noticed some of the affiliate sales that are going on in their post How to Sell Your Soul on Twitter and Who’s Buying

photos by zzzack and Kris Taeleman via flickr

Put It In Your Ears March Statistics

Rob Blatt — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:07:48 +0000

Back in November, Gavin and I started a daily podcast with Dana. We got through seventeen episodes of immature humor and gave it a rest. We recorded new shows and decided to continue with the show three times a week. March was our first month back.

Stats:
Across our episodes, we had 1,750 downloads. Each new episode was downloaded approximately 80 times after release. The NaPodPoMo archive saw about 30 or 40 downloads per show. Our first episode (2guys1podcast) proved to be the most popular episode with 309 downloads. Second favorite was the Slightly Used Eggplant episode.

Usage Stats:
71% of all our downloads are coming from podcatchers like iTunes. Our listeners are split almost exactly 50/50 between Apple and Windows users. iTunes is the most popularly used method of downloading the show, with Firefox, Internet Explorer and the iPhone following behind. 78% of our audience is United States based with the UK and Canada comprising less than 12 percent between the two of them.

Other info:
Our site had 2,073 page views and 1,409 visits. We’ll be trying to pump this number a little bit with some polls and bonus material. It worked with episode 29 (Eight is Enough) and traffic to that episode page was 4x our usual episode pages get. Google continues to be our top referrer, but with such heavy SEO for “2girls1cup”, “mfx-media” and “hungry bitches” we expect that. Wikipedia comes in at number two. We are referenced in the 2girls1cup Wikipedia page in the “Reactions” section. About 350 came to the site from that link. I’ll speak more about referencing content from Wikipedia in a later blog post.

Rob and Gavin vs. Dana vs. Music
The episodes that feature Dana have been some of our most popular, but we’re seeing those numbers start to even out. Episodes with Dana are downloaded on average have 10 more downloads than episodes with her and 20 more downloads than the music shows. The music episodes are the least downloaded, but that’s going to change in the coming weeks. I’ll write about how we’re going to do that when we are closer to announcing something.

Episode 31 – Very Special Episode

Today’s Songs:

Anni Rossi – Wheelpusher
Arms and Sleepers – Butterflycatcher
Department of Eagles – No One Does It Like You

Twitter Followers Is The New BMI

Rob Blatt — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:30:50 +0000

I’ve been playing a lot of Wii Fit these past three days (Check out my Wii Fit Experiment archive) and getting a bit depressed about how I’ll never see myself get out of the Obese range. Now, I know that Body Mass Index is bullshit, but I still can’t help that feeling of seeing that tubby little Mii walking around my TV screen.

Later, I was thinking about how many people were following me on Twitter and how many of those people were actually paying attention. Back when Twitter wasn’t discussed on CNN or Ellen, your follower number was a representation of hoe many people were listening to you. Now with Follow Friday, company, celebrity and political Twitter accounts, we know that the number no longer represents who is listening.

BMI is an antiquated way of looking at your health, just as Twitter followers are an antiquated way of looking at your reach. Instead of BMI, people rely on fat index and hip to waist ratio and physical condition. Maybe it’s time to look at how many people are talking back to you, or sharing your messages with their friends. Twitter has taken steps to shift the conversation in that direction with changing “replies” to “mentions” and shutting off auto-follow accounts.

Just like BMI, we’ll continue to talk about the number of followers we have. Everything else is so “touchy feely” for the numbers guys anyway. and I’m not saying this because I’m obese and only a few people follow me either.

By the way, do YOU want to tell Batista that he’s obese?

image by jomind via flickr

The Fearless Lovers

Rob Blatt — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:02:42 +0000

My buddy Gavin (who is also my co-host for the show Put It In Your Ears) is releasing some music today over at The Fearless Lovers. Right now the site’s offering a download of the song “satellites” but there will eventually be a full site.

What are you waiting for? Go to The Fearless Lovers now!

itpc:// A Podcaster’s Best Friend

Rob Blatt — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:09:12 +0000

I’ve been launching podcasts like it’s 2005 lately, and one of my biggest frustrations is not being able to launch on the net and in the iTunes store at the same time. Apple reviews each podcast feed submitted to the store and it takes a few days to be accepted into the cool kids club. There is a work around.

Find the address of your RSS feed. For instance, the RSS feed for Create Consume Delete is http://createconsumedelete.com/feed.
Create a link on your page and replace the “http” protocol with the “itpc” iTunes protocol.
Profit!*

When your audience clicks the link, they will be automatically subscribed to your RSS feed in iTunes, if they have it installed. The users who don’t have iTunes installed will see a broken link. Go ahead, give the link a try, it’ll open your iTunes and subscribe you to Create Consume Delete. If you’re already subscribed, you’re my hero. If you click a link to a podcast that you’re already subscribed to, you won’t subscribe again. iTunes will recognize that you are already subscribed and do nothing. You can also use “pcast://” to accomplish the same thing, but I haven’t seen it used very often.

There is a downside to doing this. If you lust after the iTunes top podcast list, these clicks won’t register with iTunes. Because people are subscribing through their browsers and not the iTunes store, Apple doesn’t register it.

I’ll go into this a bit more on Create Consume Delete this week (episode 19). Our topic is “Start Your Podcast Today”.

*profit not guaranteed

Ask Rebecca: New Podcast Announcement

Rob Blatt — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:31:30 +0000

Got a question burning in your mind? Why not ask Rebecca?

A few weeks ago Rebecca put out a call for some help with starting a podcast. After a meeting for PodCampNYC at the Roger Smith Hotel, we headed to Brooklyn to record some audio and take questions from Twitter. I’m proud to announce that our first show has been posted today and you can find it at http://www.askrebecca.org. The format is simple. Three segments, separated by music. The segments each contain a question from the @askrebecca Twitter account. Each show is short and week. They’ll be released on Thursdays.

As usual, I don’t have an official iTunes link for the announcement, because it takes a few days once you submit it to Apple, but if you click here and that will auto subscribe you in iTunes. If you’re a rare person who has a Zune, you can auto subscribe by clicking here.

Our first show focuses on three topics: Booty Calls, Guinea Pigs and the Rainbow Connection. Listen below.

Fiesta Movement Entry: In My Fiesta (Long Hair and Beard)

Rob Blatt — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:47:04 +0000

Check out the video and download the song. It’s upposed to be on YouTube, but for whatever reason, YouTube is not showing the video properly. Every other site has no issues at all with it. Just YouTube.

Blip:

Download “In My Fiesta (Long Hair and Beard)” in mp3 (audio) form – 2.9MB
Download “In My Fiesta (Long Hair and Beard)” in mp4 (video) form – 101 MB

It was all recorded (except the video from WI, NJ, OH and PA) edited and mixed on 03/23/09. Hope you like it. The song and video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

We’re Worth More

Rob Blatt — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:24:49 +0000

I just finished reading this horribly depressing, but appropriate piece by Bob Garfield on AdAge (rumored to be closing a Washington bureau) titled Future May Be Brighter, but It’s Apocalypse Now and it reminds me of the last few months of working at the dead and gone New York Sun’s website.

Despite have a larger audience, online advertising just isn’t worth the same as print advertising. How is it that the same person’s attention is worth less online? Is it the pretty colors on glossy paper you can get in a magazine that makes it valued so much higher? Is it the “advertorial” sections of newspapers and magazines? While Craigslist has eaten up classified advertisements, even Craigslist undercut newspapers to gain that control.

At the New York Sun we relied on Google to provide most, if not all, of our advertising. We were willing to accept any advertising provided there was money associated with it. Get rich quick? Done. Persian dating? Check. Sugar daddy dating? Sure. Spammy election online voting? Homepage, please. e lowered our standards as low as possible, which also meant less money for that advertising. We dug ourselves into such a giant hole that the guy in charge of online advertising couldn’t seem to get out. We would suggest that we raise our CPM (cost per thousand page views) up from under $2.00, but we would be told that we would “lose our advertisers” if we did that. The advertisers we had weren’t loyal to the Sun’s neo-conservative cause, they were just paying the lowest possible amount of money and he couldn’t see that.

Is what makes online advertising worth less the sheer volume of it? The pages of Perez Hilton’s website is viewed approximately ten million times a day. On the other hand, the pages of The New York Sun’s website was viewed three million times a month. He has a staff of one, we were a staff of over 100. Over the course of a month, perezhilton.com serves up around TWO POINT SEVEN BILLION ADVERTISEMENTS. Yes, you read that right. Nearly three billion advertisements. When you deal with advertisement views in the billions something has to give, and it’s the price of each ad.

Perhaps we can blame bad design for the volume of advertisements. MySpace was designed to make someone see the most pages possible while surfing the site. This affected the site in two ways. The first was that it drove up the number of page views the site had, and with each page view the site was able to serve up a few more advertisements. The second was that people were so used to navigating the site and having to click five things just to see their most recent messages, they started to ignore the advertisements. That’s why the advertising on MySpace got more intrusive. You can’t ignore an advertisement that is one entire page, right? Look at Gawker’s advertising. It’s almost as intrusive as it can get.

At what point does digital media stand up for themselves and say “we are worth more than this” and raise their rates across the board? Yes, current advertisers might drop out with a rate hike, but wouldn’t finding the tipping point of online advertising eventually pay for itself? If you think your site is worth it, find the tipping point of advertising. Maximize your dollars because your community is valuable. You’ll lose money short term, but in the long term you’ll wind up with much more than you would have going down the rabbit hole of “more, more, more”.

Photo credits: “The End is Near by delayed gratification , The Sun Wont Come Out Tomorrow by vidiot and Ms. Oregon International Website by dklimke

More on the Quick Fail

Rob Blatt — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:03:52 +0000

When I posted about failing quickly, someone brought up a recent article written about Pure Digital, the company behind the Flip Camera (which was recently bought by Cisco for nearly $600 million).

Here’s the article at TechCrunch: Flip Video: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong And Then So, So Right. by Michael Arrington.

Pure Digital got it wrong to start with. I can’t remember how long those cameras were on the shelves at CVS, but it wasn’t long. They were a cool idea, but an instant failure. The company gave up on the idea of “renting” cameras for $20 a pop and started to sell them like hot cakes for $99 and $150 each. It was only after they gave up on their idea of rental that they were able to excel selling the cameras.

On Twitter, Phil Thomas DiGiulio had this question:

Short story, I think it’s the complete opposite. Sometimes, ‘Just a little patience’ is in order no?

I would argue that the company didn’t have patience for the first business model and moved on to something else. They had no patience for a product people were unenthusiastic about and were hacking to circumvent bringing the cameras back. Instead they embraced the Pirate’s Dilemma model and enabled everyone to own the cameras and record video to their hearts content.

In Pure Digital’s case, it wasn’t about their idea being a failure, just their implementation of that idea. Had they stuck to their guns and continued to be a disposable digital video camera, they might have wasted their early investments of $28 million. Instead, they switched their focus, had some early success and sold to Cisco for $590 million. Pretty good for an early failure, right?

A Quick SXSW Lesson

Rob Blatt — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:13:23 +0000

I spent a week trying to absorb everything I could at SXSW.

I took in quite a bit from my friends. I learned from Derek Overbey, Morgan Brown and Sukhjit Ghag how to gather an obscene amount of content in a few days. I learned from Dan Patterson that once you have someone’s feet to the fire, you don’t take them out until you smell something cooking. My wife showed that me that slow and steady wins the race (more on that later).

From the panels, I took in one clear lesson. If you’re going to fail, fail quick. There’s no time to waste anymore continually pushing a square peg into a round hole. Oddly enough, I had Seth Godin’s “The Dip” in my bag most of the time, but never looked at it.

SXSWi 2009

Rob Blatt — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:03:23 +0000

I’ll probably be off the blog during south by southwest, because I’ll be focusing on actually meeting people, filming for What’s It All About and helping out with 100 Interviews.

I encourage you to keep an eye on my Twitter account, which is where I’ll be posting most of what’s going on. Rob Blatt on Twitter

Who Owns Blog Comments?

Rob Blatt — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:48:12 +0000

If you leave a comment on my blog, who owns the rights to that comment? Do I own it? You’re submitting a comment to me. You’re leaving a comment, which would imply it’s mine, right? Do you own it? You’re the one creating the content in the first place. You’re writing it, and if you choose to be, you’re getting a byline for writing it.

Things get more complicated when you implement a system like Disqus or Intense Debate. In these cases, there is an assumption that as a commenter, you are giving me a perpetual, irrevocable license to your content. I, having a license to use your content, license it to Disqus or IntenseDebate, granting them a license on my license. Now all three parties are free to do what they wish with the content produced by one.

There’s a problem in this system. If you assume that your comments are yours and your alone to own, and I don’t have a terms of service on my website stating otherwise, I would be violating your copyright by using Disqus. Perhaps this is why blogs like Mashable and the Huffington Post clearly state that they have a perpetual, irrevocable license to all the comments left on the site.

But what about this blog? Everything here has a Creative Commons license associated with it. By leving a comment, you have a license to use your comments, I have a license to use your comments, you also agree to release them with a Creative Commons license, AND Disqus has a license. That’s four licenses on every comment that you leave on the site. Okay, and one more wrench to throw in. BackType is also taking your comments and putting them on backtype.com. BackType’s agreement says that you also give them a license to the content. That makes five entities (not counting anyone using them for CC purposes) who could claim a right to your comments.

Photos from 917press and foko_madagascar

What’s It All About

Rob Blatt — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:33:39 +0000

First, the announcement. I’ve got a new video show that I am producing, and I’m really proud of the finished product. It’s the video embedded in this post, so take a look.

Two weeks ago I jumped in over my head on a new project. Sarah Cooley had approached me about helping out with her show What’s It All About on the producing level. I was just finishing up redesigning New York Tech Scene and looking for a new challenge, so I agreed. I had tentatively agreed to re-design the site for the show, produce the show and edit the show. It’s a tall order, but I’m very happy with the results.

We film the show at the Ambush TV studio. Ambush just made a splash for producing Gary Vaynerchuk’s new show Obsessed with Samantha Ettus. Tim Kress-Spatz has been working with us to get the show off the ground and is an all around great guy to work with. Tim has made the production of the show a breeze, and I’m looking forward to doing more with with Ambush and Tim in the future. I’d also like to acknowledge Stephen Klenert and the company Atlantic Metro for hosting the site adnd helping us get running using WordPress mu. Without Stephen’s support, I’d still be confused about how WPmu is set up.

In the future I will go over the challenges that designing a video theme for WordPress presents, but for right now I just want to announce that the site is done and the first relaunched episode is complete. Check out What’s It All About for the full effect.

Digidesign and Pro Tools’ FireWire400 Problem

Rob Blatt — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:02:23 +0000

Digidesign has a giant problem on their hands. What you see above is Digidesign’s highest end recording system using the Pro Tools LE software, which is the most popular version of the Pro Tools software made. Normally, you could pair this piece of hardware with a Mac Pro and have a seriously strong audio setup, with no worries about the limits of your computer hardware. This is the setup I use to produce my podcasts, record my music, and it’s what I run my studio with. Now, virtually all Apple systems will not work with the standard in professional audio out of the box*.

Take a look to the right and you’ll see the ports on Apple’s recently released Mac Pro. Take a look at the ports offered for input on the Mac Pro and look at the ports offered for output on Digidesign’s hardware. Nothing matches.

Apple has recently all but killed the FireWire400 ports on all of its machines, save the white plastic MacBook. They’ve upgraded their machines to FireWire800 and left the old standard in the dust. I have long criticized Digidesign for their lack of updates to their hardware and not keeping up with Apple’s operating system updates, and this doesn’t hurt my argument. Each time a new version of OSX is released, audio engineers who want to be using the latest and greatest have to walk a delicate line to determine if it’s safe to upgrade my systems without completely killing the software that allows me to make my living.

I’m not sure who to blame for this. Digidesign has always been behind the times when it comes to its hardware. The Rack 003+ is the only piece of hardware that is forward thinking in my mind. Apple seems to be pushing everyone off the FireWire400 standard, which is annoying, but it’s been happening for a long time. The iPods were the first to go from the FireWire train, and next they removed it completely from the aluminum MacBooks. The MacBook Pro redesigned with only a FireWire800 port. that should have been a giant red flag to Digidesign, because that means that they were locked out of the Apple laptop market with their higher end Pro Tools LE systems. I have checked the Pro Tools product news, but there’s no announcement being made. Apple’s to blame for removing the ports, but ultimately having a better standard is a good thing. Digidesign doesn’t change very often because their hardware just works. They tend to not mess with it very often, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

The bottom line is that no matter who is right or wrong, Digidesign needs to play catch up to Apple’s hardware. Until then,

*There are two Pro Tools LE systems that work using USB. Those systems are the MBox Mini and MBox Micro, and I would not consider either of them production hardware.

Continuing the “Blog as a Hotel” Idea

Rob Blatt — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:54:15 +0000

Yesterday I wrote that you should be thinking of your blog or site as a hotel. Today I’m going to expand a little bit.

It’s important to know what kind of hotel your blog is because of expectations; the expectations of both you and your guests. If you’ve been putting out a continental breakfast every day and no one has eaten anything from it for the last four years, you would want to know, right? Similarly, if you’ve been putting a lot of time into creating content for a part of your site that no one has clicked on in weeks or months, you’d want to know, right? Once you arm yourself with the knowledge that something you are providing isn’t being used, you can either stop offering breakfast every day or you can put a big sign that reads “CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST” with an arrow in the lobby. To the same effect, you can put a link in your header or write a blog post about your super awesoe section of your site that no one visits.

It’s also important to know what kind of hotel you’re running so you can manage your own expectations. Jen Sadler had an interesting description of her blog:

My blog is like an aging motor inn in a remote small town: poorly maintained with tacky decor, long overdue for an update, and seldom sees any visitors besides the nuisances who come by on a regular basis peddling sex and cheap drugs.

Aside form the fact that her description is awesome, it paints an accurate picture of what it’s like to be fending off spam in the real world. Nianya described her blog as

my blog is a safe house for parents of special needs children; meant to provide support, information and great links

which gives me an idea of what her content and her guests are.

Your Digital Front Desk
If you haven’t signed up for a service that will tell you who is visiting your site, you should. I personally use Google Analytics and Lijit to measure my visitors. Lijit replaces the search feature at the bottom of the page with a customized search, but it also provides me with accurate numbers of guests to the site. There’s also Get Clicky, Site Meter, Woopra, Wordpress Stats and others. It tells me how many people have come to robblatt.com, how many pages they looked at etc. It was one of the reasons I decided to focus on my blog content. I also didn’t want to run anything besides a nice motel because I have so many other podcasts and sites I maintain.

If you didn’t answer yesterday, what kind of hotel are you running with your blog or website?

photo comes from heartonastickvia Flickr

What Kind of Hotel is Your Blog?

Rob Blatt — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:01:32 +0000

Last December I went on a family vacation Puerto Rico and stayed at a resort hotel, which got me thinking about websites and content. Before I rant about anything, I just want to state that I had oodles of fun and really enjoyed myself.

The El Conquistador had a private beach, a water park, a casino, restaurants, pools, bars, a nightclub and a convention space. It was overwhelming. There was all of this space, and so much of it seemed empty to me. The nightclub was empty every night, but they were still playing the music as loud as possible to try and attract people. Their guests just weren’t the nightclub type. The average guest was older, or part of an extended family. Not the booty shaking crowd. The restaurants were managed by the hotel, not independantly, and suffered because of it with inexperienced waitstaff and poor service. This got me thinking about blogs and websites.

What kind of hotel is your site? Do you have many topics that have little to no content, like the El Conquistador? Holiday Inn Express gives you a room and continental breakfast and promises nothing, but occasionally comes up with something extra like a pool. The W Hotel will give anything you want for the right price. I know that my site is similar to a motel. I have blog posts and very little else on the site. A site like Smashing Magazine contains more content in a different fashion, and perhaps is a Marriott, offering a pool, gym and room service on top of a room. Savvy Auntie has a mall attached to her hotel.

Take a look at your site, see where the people aren’t going and figure out if you should beef up your services in that department, or perhaps it’s time to discontinue a service you provide in order to focus on what you’re good at.

Going to SXSWi

Rob Blatt — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:28:39 +0000

GOING TO SXSW on 12seconds.tv

It looked like Amber and I weren’t going to be able to make it to SXSW, but thanks to our American Express Membership rewards points, we are able to get dirt cheap flights. With the right planning in advance, I think we can get our plane tickets next year for free.

In celebration, I downloaded about 5GB of music from the music festival that’s happening. Despite the fact that I’m not going to the music portion, it’s still cool to have over 1,000 mp3s of bands that are converging on Austin for five days. Here’s a link to a writeup I did about it:

Got 65:40:22? The 2009 SXSW Music torrents are here.

ps. If you’re headed to SXSW and want to help someone go, Nadia has set up a blog SXSWi or Bust where she is raising money to send her to SXSW for as little as $2 at a time. She’s a smart person and deserves to go, so help her out if you’re able to.

Fixing 404s in WordPress

Rob Blatt — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:18:15 +0000

Whenever someone comes to your site and gets a 404 error, it means you’ve potentially lost a reader for good. Custom 404 pages can help in guiding someone in the right direction, but it’s more likely you’ve lost them for good. I track whenever someone gets a 404 error on robblatt.com with interest for this reason. I’ve always had trouble creating 301 redirects, because I know enough to only be dangerous.

I use Alex King’s 404 Notifier to create an RSS feed of all the 404 messages that readers of www.robblatt.com see. This morning I saw this happen:

This was just some of about 75 or 80 messages that looked similar. I can’t find where it’s linked to on the site, but it’s happening somewhere.

This is where the Redirection plugin comes in. The URL that is creating the 404 goes up top, the correct URL goes on bottom. This plugin will create a redirect for people who have no idea how to create one.

On UStream and Business Models

Rob Blatt — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:39:10 +0000

By the looks of things, UStream finally figured out how they are going to make money. This morning UStream announced Watershed, a white label video streaming solution that uses the UStream technology to stream video, but custom to your needs and branding.

UStream has proven to be smarter than the average bear. Since March of 2007, the general public has been their guinea pigs. Awesome people like the Orchestra Kid Walt Ribeiro have made a name using the service, and they also provided live coverage of each stop while President Barack Obama was attempting to become president. All the while, their service was becoming more stable, more dependable and the users were beating up on the code so the development team could make improvements. Essentially, we were all involved in a two year beta test for this new service and I think it’s awesome.

How smart is it to make a white label enterprise version of a commonly used platform? Ask the team behind Yammer, the Enterprise level Twitter clone that won the $50k prize at TechCrunch50 last year and raised a $5 million dollar round of funding last month.

The business model of pay-per-user or hour seems to be popular these days. Yammer’s model is $1/user/month. Watershed is $a/user/watched hour of video and a free storage limit of 500GB and a minimal fee thereafter.

What does the money buy you besides custom branding?

Support.

To those people who have worked for larger companies and attempted to convince their boiss to go with a free web service, there is the painful answer to the question of “who do we talk to when something goes wrong?” Usually the answer is “I don’t know.” With Watershed and Yammer, support is part of the equation of implementation. Even Automattic woke up to this reality and began to offer support for WordPress.

I think that there are other sites on the net with no discernable business models (Twitter and Seesmic come to mind right away) that could go down this road quite easily. Of course, both services would need to be stable, which is something that I haven’t encountered just yet. Perhaps announcements are coming our way down the road.

A New Podcast Announcement

Rob Blatt — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:17:08 +0000

I did a lot of brainstorming when I used to commute two hours each way to and from work. One of the ideas that I had was a low maintenance podcast I could do with my friends. I came up with the idea to call a podcast “Interviews with Friends” and it would be just like the name suggests.

Three episodes in, I can confidently announce the start of a new podcast. Check out Interviews with Friends for fifteen minute interviews with people who are friends of Amber and I. In the first episode, I interviewed Amber, second Amber interviewed our friend Dan and third I interviewed our friend Chris. I can see building out to accept user submitted interviews, but for right now I’m interested in recording more interviews and posting them once a week.

For those interested, we’re recording interviews with Shure SM7B microphones into a Pro Tools system. The site is built on WordPress, the super awesome Blubrry PowerPress plugin is in charge of producing the podcast feed and inserting the flash players on the site, Disqus is handling our comments and Lijit is handling the search. For the most part, those companies and tools help me build everything I do, but I think it’s worth a mention here.

Selling Out with Magpie

Rob Blatt — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:50:15 +0000

The short of it is that I’m going to start experimenting with Magpie advertisements in my Twitter stream. Yes, I do feel a little dirty.

The longer version is that this is something that I’ve been curious about since it was first released. How much is someone willing to pay to put their message into my twitter stream? I suppose I’m going to find out. I’ll be documenting my side of the process as I go. Signing up was the usual information you’d give to a social network with the addition of my mailing address. I used TweetStats to figure out how many twitters a day I have on average. The answer is around 32. For that reason I chose to put one advertisement in every 20 twitters. Next I got a flood of emails from Magpie asking for approval of certain tweets that would end up in my Twitter stream. I’ll be pre-approving all of the messages that go out so I know that I’m not advertising some dick cream or stupid bullshit like that.

One option you have is to insert something before or after the ad. I would have selected #advertisement” but they don’t allow you that many characters. Instead I opted for “#ad-space” to be 100% clear about what’s going on. I felt that “#magpie” was too vague for those people who are not sure about Twitter in the first place.

That’s where I am now. I’ll let you know what the backlash will be, because I know that there will be a backlash.

Boo Berry and the Power of Community

Rob Blatt — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:01:25 +0000

Cereal. on 12seconds.tv

Ever had a craving for some BooBerry? Bat Eats Bat did. At 10:33 pm she left the grocery store disappointed she couldn’t find any BooBerry cereal, so she posted a video to 12Seconds showing her disappointment.

Fourteen minutes later StarWarsDork posted this awesome link:

General Mills Product Locator

It’s not fancy or shiny, nor does it have an open API or a Twitter account, but it gives you the location of the nearest Boo Berry or Frankenberry. Not only that, but the response was wicked fast from SWD.

I think this little story sums up why I love the communities that I’m a part of.

As a side note, if you think ahead you can order BooBerry on Amazon.

Taking Small Bites. The Earbender Meetup

Rob Blatt — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:00:29 +0000

Have you taken a small bite lately? Have you done something that is a low investment with a low risk, but a potential for a high return?

A small bite could be launching a site redesign, an ebook or perhaps hosting a meetup. Last night I went to a meetup hosted by Earbender.com’s John Rosenfelder. It was John’s first meetup and it was at the low key Emerald Bar in Manhattan’s upper west side. The bar wasn’t very wide, so our relatively small group was packed together and everyone was forced to be a little more social. It was a fun time.

Here’s John’s description of the event from the Facebook page:

earbender brings together old and new media on a daily basis. In our first “meet-up,” I aim to create a networking opportunity for music business veterans and new media people who are interested in sharing info and techniques with each other.

As one of the “new media people” I was excited to attend to meet a network of people who don’t run in my circles. The music business folks were nice people and I felt like it was a great blend of people talking about two of my favorite topics, music and media.

Like I mentioned, it was John’s first meetup, and I think it was a smashing success. We celebrated Dan Patterson’s birthday and the 30th anniversary of the Waylon Jennings’ Dukes of Hazard soundtrack. It raised awareness of what Earbender is doing with SonyBMG Legacy and everyone in attendance got a Waylon Jennings album courtesy of SonyBMG Legacy. Who doesn’t love Waylon Jennings? According to the Earbender blog, even John Lennon liked Waylon.

Is there a small bite that you can be taking? Even if it’s just inviting some people over for dinner, out to drinks or asking someone to be a guest on a podcast, you can be making small bites that make a big difference. If the meetup hadn’t worked out John would have been at a bar with one or two people and had a stack of leftover CDs. Instead, the front half of the Emerald Bar was full of people talking and having a good time thanks to Earbender.

If you’ll excuse me, I have a Waylon Jennings CD to listen to…

Analog Equivalents for Social Networks

Rob Blatt — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:49:14 +0000

There’s an ongoing joke in my family when it comes to the internet. I won’t let my mom be my friend on Facebook. I’ve connected to everyone else in my generation that’s in my family, but I won’t break the generational gap when friending people. On the flip side, I don’t connect to friends and people I don’t have a professional relationship with on LinkedIn and I won’t accept anything anymore on MySpace.

I have rules about my social networks because I think of their analog equivalents.

Facebook is my address book. There are people in there that I never call, but I have their numbers and contact information just in case. People I went to school with, people I met socially and some of my family. I don’t put my mother or father in my address book because I know their numbers by heart. I used to live in that house. Facebook lets me keep current with the people I don’t speak to every day.

LinkedIn in my Rolodex. I don’t talk about my dogs on LinkedIn, I don’t talk about going to Otto’s Shrunken Head and drinking 4 or 5 of the drinks with the glowsticks, little umbrellas and plastic monkeys on them, and I don’t want the people who I’m connected to on LinkedIn to know about that stuff. I want them to know that I was the technical director of the Women Respond to Palin webcast. I want them to know that I’m looking for work as an audio producer, audio engineer or project manager. I don’t need my former boss seeing the videos I post to 12Seconds.tv or to see my Daily Mugshot. I have a different kind of relationship with them.

MySpace is my VCR. I still have it. I wouldn’t know how to get rid of it, so it sits in the closet with all of the tapes (friends) that I had when I boxed it up. I’m not going to get new tapes, but it doesn’t hurt to keep the ones I have. Besides, no one wants them at this point anyway. Even my Grandma has moved on from having a VCR.

Do you treat your networks differently?

Slow hosting from GoDaddy

Rob Blatt — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:53:14 +0000

The past few days this site has some to a crawl for what appears to be no reason aside from GoDaddy’s hosting. I’ve heard similar complaints from people on Twitter.

Despite this not being my fault, I’m sorry. This is supposed to be a simple blog (take a look at the design) and it’s not supposed to be the kind of site you go get some hot chocolate while it loads. I’m going to ry and resolve this soon or I will just wind up leaving GoDaddy. Not having the latest PHP isn’t going to make me leave the service, but serving a WordPress blog that is using Super Cache and has a low amount of traffic is enough.

I’ll give GoDaddy until the Super Bowl to get their shit together or I start migrating.

Update:Looks like GoDaddy is blaming Lijit for the issues. I’m not 100% convinced that this is the issue, as much as it still might be GoDaddy’s fault. The Lijit folks don’t deserve any blame in this case, they’re an awesome company. For the moment, I’m search-less on the blog while I work these issues out.

A Fluid PeopleBrowsr

Rob Blatt — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:28:04 +0000

My friend Sukhjit became one of the product managers over at the company PeopleBrowsr. PeopleBrowsr is a social network dashboard for Twitter, Seesmic, YouTube, FriendFeed and other social networks (but not yet 12Seconds.tv, which is my absolute favorite).

I’ve used TweetDeck up until now for my Twitter stream. The reason was because it doesn’t rely on a browser. I tend to crash browsers by having too many windows and tabs open. PeopleBrowsr’s downfall was that it wasn’t an application, but only a website.

There’s a solution for OS X with Fluid.app. Using Fluid, I’m able to keep PeopleBrowsr as an application of it’s own. I’ve uploaded the application I’ve made using Fluid for OS X.
Requires OS X 10.5

PeopleBrowsr for OS X (3.4 MB download)

Update: A plus of using this app of PeopleBrowsr is that you can have it be your desktop background. Background Twitter ftw!

Writing a Professional Summary

Rob Blatt — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:16:56 +0000

I’ve been writing resumes for what seems like forever, and I’m doing my best to write templates for different includeed sections. Here’s where I am with professional summaries.

[DESCRIPTION] [JOB TITLE] with [experience] in [TYPE OF COMPANY]. [ACCOLADE] in [QUANTIFYABLE JOB SPECIFIC TASK]. [proficient] in/with [LIST OF JOB DEPENDANT APPLICATIONS AND TASKS].

The italicized words can be substituted for synonyms of those words. Perhaps I should write out a whole resume’s worth of these. It might prove helpful to someone.

Podango Is Going To Die, Run For Your Files

Rob Blatt — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:30:00 +0000

Podango is giving a few days warning before it blinks itself out of existence, but don’t be fooled by any optimism coming from the company. When a company starts to crow about being unsure about sustainability, it’s time to run away with your intellectual property. Here’s the Podango dispatch:

We at Podango believe that you, our customers, are our most valuable asset. Given this belief, we have always done our best to be honest and forthright in our dealings with you. The current uncertainties of the financial market has affected many of us in this nation. As of this morning, Podango is no longer immune to it’s effects. Our ability to continue operations past the end of this year (2008) is in question. We do not want any of you, or any of your shows to be negatively affected by this uncertainty and so we are encouraging you to begin taking all necessary steps to secure your data or begin moving to another hosting provider. On Monday we will have a more definitive direction. As of today, the last day to move or secure your data is December 31st. RSS feeds will need to be redirected by this date as well. It is our hope that the events of the next few days will allow us to continue providing you a service based upon a subscription fee. Again, we will know more on Monday and you will be notified of any changes to the above plan as soon as we are made aware of them.
…
Again I personally apologize for this notice of caution. We truly appreciate your business.

Sounds familiar to me.

This morning I write to you about the future of The New York Sun, which is in circumstances that may require us to cease publication at the end of September unless we succeed in our efforts to find additional financial backing. The managing editor, Ira Stoll, who is one of the founding partners in the paper, and I have shared this news with our colleagues, and we would like our readers as well to be aware of the situation.

That was a portion the letter printed on the front page of the New York Sun, a newspaper in Manhattan that employed me for the last year of its publication. We shut down a month later after not a dime of money was invested into the company.

The letter from the New York Sun wasn’t intended to let the readers of the newspaper know what was happening. It was a plea for help to Rupert Murdoch, Sam Zell or anyone else who owned news media outlets. The New York Sun was for sale. I feel the same is going on with Podango. They have a lot of intellectual property and technology as a company, and it’s for sale while the company goes down in flames. They have a studio in San Francisco that was probably way too big and expensive for their needs, they purchased the GigaVox Audio Lite software from GigaVox and have a back end that is powering their servers. Does anyone want to buy a podcast hosting company?

And people scoffed at me when I said podcasting is dead at PodCamp Montreal.

DMC-LX3 video test

Rob Blatt — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:16:39 +0000

I wanted to test out my Panasonic DMC-LX3’s video abilities, so what better test subjects than my dogs playing. The test consisted of picking up the camera and pressing the shutter for a few seconds while the dogs wrestled. I’m pretty happy with the results. I’m embedding the YouTube video, but I’m also including a link to the raw video from the camera, as I can not seem to YouTube to play it back in HD.

DMC-LX3 video test – Matty and Leeloo play

12 Videos about 12 at 12Seconds.tv on 12/12

Rob Blatt — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:50:55 +0000

I love plays on numbers. I’m especially fond of palindromes in my odometer. Today (12/12) I’ll be posting 12 videos on 12Seconds. If I can remember, I’ll post on on 12:12 as well.

12Seconds.tv has developed into a site and service that I love. It’s a video sharing site with a twist. When you record or upload your videos, you can only record or show 12Seconds of it. There is a daily challenge, in which you are asked to answer a question, and there is a winner declared daily.

Today’s challenge is It’s 12/12! Record a 12 about 12 and win a special 12/12 award! So if you want to win a challenge and get something special, today’s the day to sign up. A player with my channel in it is embedded below so you can get a feel for just how short the videos are.

robblatt on 12seconds.tv

BlogWorld acquires the New Media Expo

Rob Blatt — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:22:33 +0000

BlogWorld and the New Media Expo will happen as one happy conference/expo this year.

I’m not sure if this is a sign that the two shows could not compete against each other any longer, but I think it’s good news. I’m sure it’s a bitch to the companies that want to be involved in both to trek out to Vegas twice in two months. It doesn’t sound like a burden until everyone gets back to their respective homes and has to return to work.

This means there’s one major event to attend, which is a good thing for the industry and it’s a good thing for both conferences. Had it not been for the merger, I would have expected to see attendance drop off heavy this year, and with it sponsorships and exhibitors. Everyone was talking about how this years events were on a smaller scale, and this will help draw interest in what would have been a down year.

Now if we could only move this thing out of Vegas.

Selective Listening (or a Twitter Feature Request)

Rob Blatt — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:49:49 +0000

When my brother was little, he had his hearing testing many times because he couldn’t “hear her”. I had my vision tested because I had “trouble reading”. Neither were true. He didn’t want to stop playing and I thought what we were forced to read at school was dumb. I’d love to have that option on Twitter.

Currently, you have one global set of options: Show me all @ replies, @ replies to the people I’m following and no @ replies. For those not on Twitter, an @ reply is a message you send to someone publicly. I’d like those control for each person individually. That way if I choose to follow someone like Brand Yourself I can tune out the replies and only get the actionable tips but also choose to hear that everything that Dan Patterson says to everyone because his conversations are worth listening to.

I think that Twitter could implement this without adding clutter to the interface, but then again, there’s something to be said about the simplicity of universal settings too.

Helping Out Friends

Rob Blatt — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:49:10 +0000

Big Paw Designs is donating 25 “Rescue Mom” stickers to a deserving pet rescue. I’m entering our little Tino and the rescue that saved him – Manos Por Patas.

Here are the rules:

- Please send an email to rescue@bigpawdesigns.com with CHRISTMAS RESCUE ENTRY in the email title.
- Include your email address, your pet’s name and photo, the rescue group’s name, location and website (if avail) you adopted from, and a 25 word story.
- Submissions will be accepted November 15th – December 25th 2008.
- The pet photos and stories will be posted here and select entries will also appear on www.bigpawblog.com

The Problem with Twitter and Blog Comments

Rob Blatt — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:44:06 +0000

I have a problem with Twitter in relation to my blog comments. I post links to my blog comments on Twitter as they are posted to the blog. Usually I’ll find that people will read the post and then comment on Twitter instead of the comment section of the blog. This might sound like a bit of a whiny complaint, but why is the conversation not happening in context with the original content?

I obviously appreciate any discussion around my content, but how do we solve the problem of not being able to post to both Twitter and make a blog comment. To some degree, Mashable has put a merger between the two by allowing you to post to Twitter that you have commented on a blog post, but it doesn’t allow you to continue the conversation in both places. It just sticks a flag in your Twitter stream stating that you’ve been to Mashable and have commented.

Is this a problem that BackType is supposed to solve? Maybe it’s a Data Portability or Open ID or Open Social issue? Gogle Friend Connect? Facebook Connect? I know that Twitter has not jumped on board with any of those initiatives.

Here’s what I’d like to see happen (are you listening Disqus? CoComment? Other comment companies/plugin makers?)

I’d like to see a WordPress plugin that gives an option to use Twitter credentials to post a comment on the blog comment that will cross post the first characters to their Twitter account in response (@robblatt) to me, also giving a tinyurl back to the blog post. Is that possible?

Have you seen more discussion on Twitter about your posts than in the comments of your blog lately?

Creating for Library vs Creating for Release

Rob Blatt — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:08:04 +0000

Next time you’re about to release a new podcast, post something new to your Flickr account or blog or make a new product available on Etsy, take a look at your archive immediately afterwards. Did you just create something that is in line with your back catalog or did you just create something that stands out on its own?

When AC/DC releases a new album, you can bet your life on the fact that it was written and recorded for their library. There hasn’t been an AC/DC record that has taken liberty for decades. Each song that’s written and each sound that’s recorded is done so in a way as to give the fans more of what they love and want. It makes your rabid fans happy (or your “tribe” if you’d like), but it doesn’t do anything to draw new fans in. Why do you think that the new Guns N’ Roses record took so damn long? Axl was writing a record that needed to stand against the Guns N’ Roses library. It’s why Wine Library TV hasn’t made any dramatic changes in hundreds of episodes. Is making your fans happy always priority #1? If you do it to death, you risk becoming a parody of yourself.

On the other side of things, if you create for today, you can reinvent yourself and hopefully take your audience with you. Madonna’s done it her whole career, and with success nearly each time. She has a deep catalog to reach back into and her past changes has allowed her to release whatever kind of music that she wants. It doesn’t always work for mega-artists. Ask Garth Brooks about Chris Gaines. Ask Metallica about their lowest rated album on Amazon.

So take a look at your latest creation before you open it to the public and ask yourself “Did I write this for my library or did I write it for right now?” The right answer could be different with each release.

Axl Rose from http://flickr.com/photos/26332149@N07/

Limitations to “Get More Episodes” from iPhone firmware 2.2

Rob Blatt — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:35:23 +0000

I was pretty happy to see an iPhone update waiting for me this morning because I wanted to try out the new feature to download more episodes of podcasts while on the go. Here’s the write up from Engadget: iPhone 2.2 firmware update available now, Google Street View and plenty more. Here are two reasons not to get excited just yet:

Downloaded podcasts do not sync back to iTunes
If you download any podcast episodes, it stays on your iPhone/iTouch and does not get transferred back to you computer like your purchases would. Thanks a lot jerks!
Apple checks the iTunes store instead of an RSS feed to download. If you’re not in the iTunes Store (Door From Hell Off-Ramp or Mashtuptown) your podcast/feed can’t be updated on the go.

My buddy Cliff has pretty much the same complaints as I do and has made his gripes public with his post iPhone 2.2 – Podcast Download Feature Seriously Flawed.

I’ll say this though, all my podcasts are in the iTunes store and are generally up to date, but the update makes the feature more involved than it has to be.