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| Thursday, March 6, 2003 |
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Boo to Moo 
| | The people who make the cash decisions need to know that charging into our arena expecting it all for nothing is a very bad idea. |
| | This is a rare chance for us to play the game on our terms. To change the rules. If people want to reach us, they need to know that it's going to be on our terms, and that we will not be insulted by offers of cheap freebies. |
| | Commercial influences will always be a part of life, but this kind of campaign sets a very dangerous precedent - and a very low price on our complicity (if, indeed, any is forthcoming). |
| | A smattering of worth and intelligence wouldn't go astray, either. Nobody wants a repeat of the AllAdvantage debacle. |
| | However... if there's cash to be made from weblog marketing, I personally would like to see a fair share of it going to the bloggers themselves. |
| | Kinda looks like the antidote to viral marketing, no? |
| | Me, I just think it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Anybody tasted the stuff yet? |
| | By the way, who's "Farmer Bob" on the Raging Cow "blog?" And why doesn't the author have permalinks, even though it's a Moveable Type blog? |
DXing with time
| | Doing research for an LJ piece, I ran across Hard-Core-DX.com, which modestly calls itself "Probably the best DX site in the world." DX, for the majority of you who don't know, stands for distant listening. Broadcast freaks who like to fish for faraway signals are DXers. Can't help it: I'm still one of them, even though the practice has lost some of its charm since the broadband Internet has reduced practical distances to zero, and interference along with it. Old passions die slow. |
| | I found Hard-Core-DX from Static in the attic, written by Eric Shackle of New Zealand, whose Life Begins at 80... On the Internet is something of a blog. If I have my math right, the tireless Mr. Shackle is several years north of 80 at this point, and still going very strong. |
Customerism
| | Because that's what we were before producers required rhetorical reciprocals at the far ends of their distro deltas. |
| | Consumers, as Jerry so perfectly put it once, are living gullets who live only to gulp down products and crap out cash. |
| | Customers are real human beings with whom companies actually relate. |
| | Companies also have a priori respect for customers. Look at all the lip service companies put into "serving our customers." Ever hear a company say We're just here to serve our consumers? |
| | The problem is with business categories such as comercial broadcasting, whose consumers and customers are different populations. There we have another challenge: To make them stop referring to demographic clusters of (literal) consumers as "markets" when they are anything but. |
| | Ah, but that's a whole 'nuther rant. |
It had to happen
Buzz's buzz
| | So Buzz: Fire up that blog again, dude. Might be what puts this thing over the finish line. |
Flash flash?
| | I have an email here that suggests a large differential between mainstream press coverage of a "critical" security hole in Macromedia's Flash player... |
| | ... and what we're seeing in the blog world where such news might more quickly spread. The mail provides links to Macromedia-related blogs here, here, here and here. |
| | The writer suggests that this story isn't getting the attention it deserves, from anybody: |
| | Amazingly enough, For now, it seemes no one pays attention, or worse - no one givesa damn about the users. So, besides its being an issue which justifies invoking the blogosphere power of distribution and awareness-raising, I belive we've encountered a "Cluetrain issue"... (not to mention a situation which may emphasizes (or at least raises a new perspective of) the difference between corporate-affiliated blogs, and totally independent ones...). And that's why I've decided you're the one I should bother... |
| | So I'm passing the bother along. |
| | I know almost nothing about this issue, by the way. This is the first I've heard about it. |
| | I'm also not trying to give grief to Macromedia or its bloggers. I have another agenda here — a journalistic one that surely matters no less to Macromedia than to the rest of us. |
| | We live in an era when more of us rely progressively less on mainstream media for our news. Many of us (100,000, at least) rely on bloggers, at least to some degree. So the question becomes, What are our responsibilities as journalists, amateurs or not? |
| | What should Macromedia have done here? How about the rest of us? |
| | What is the right way to yell fire these days? |
Be a CamHo
I'll hate missing it
| | If you're within visiting distance of Baltimore next week, go see Fanto: A Mysterious Vaudeville, which was created and directed by my firstborn, Colette Searls. |
Just a thought
| | Hey, don't just vote losers off. |
Two party system, visualized
| | The first two shots were taken inside and outside the men's room at the Madonna Inn, which is a required stop on Highway 101 about midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The second one is of writer and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who was speaking to a herd of democrats in the basement there. |
Blog early, blog often
| | Mike Sanders has been exploring habits of highly effective blogging. The series starts here. |
Making a different extinction
| | Dan Shafer: Now Doc Searls comes along and sort of blithely suggests that there's no real conservative or liberal bias to the media, that there are plenty of both opinions to go around, thank you very much. |
| | What I said was it occurs to me that the blog world doesn't suffer the kind of political problems that afflict The Media. |
| | The Blog World vs. The Media. I'm making a distinction here. And I'm not the only one. Just try, as a blogger, to get a press pass into an industry event. |
| | For what it's worth, I think The Media are full of all kinds of political bias. Hey, that's one reason we have blogs. |
| | Typing in "Martin Sheen blog" in Google's search brought up a panoply of blogs from the left to right. Sure, some of them were old, but one of the best commentaries I found was from Brad Wellington, a post titled "Limousine Liberals," where he blasts Sheen for saying he has intelligence sources as if he were president. "Martin, you are not the president, you are an actor," Wellington deadpans. |
| | I found Glaser's piece in a Google News search for "weblogs." There's not a real blog in it. See, Google News only searches The Media, which includes newspapers, magazines, and Slashdot. |
| | Google News sees nothing I write here. But it sees everything published online at Linux Journal. Clearly they're not the only ones making the same distinction. |
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