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| Wednesday, July 13, 2005 |
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Pro and Conferences 
New rules at work
| | Newsnig8t and Balance Sheet of the Blog: We did not so much break the BBC rules when setting up the blog but shimmied through them like Tana Umaga. And, The core concept was the fuzzy relationship between my writing, the programme and the BBC brand. |
| | Read the whole thing. Go back in time. Read more. Outstanding stuff. One more sample: |
| | The BBC is having a discussion about what it should do about blogs. This takes place in the wider context of the breakup of the broadcasting model. People are reporting stories for themselves using blogs and mobile phones (with the 7/7 bomb, not the G8, being seen as a tipping point). The Guardian's foray into blogs has been impressive but seems to me the wrong track: trying to weld a corporate identity onto the content and capture it within a corporate system on their own platforms. A blog is the free and individual writing of a single person, or group of people, untrammelled by rules or a given "mission statement"; the blogosphere is a series of communities of blogs, where what is of value comes to prominence because of self-selection and word of mouth rather than promotion: in other words, because enough people believe it helps them get to the truth. |
| | Blogs are acting like the ibis on the shoulder of the buffalo to mainstream journalism right now. I do not predict the demise of the broadcasting model but I can¹t see a linear progression for it either. How it interacts with blogging, and mobile content, is not the interaction between two technologies but between two kinds of content. The challenge for broadcasters is not to produce faux blogs; ditto the challenge for journalists. It is to respond to the content need, indeed the content gap, demonstrated by the existence of blogs. The problem is: maybe it can't respond fully. The added hitch is: it is going to be more difficult for public service broadcasters to engage in this because we are hidebound by extra rules on impartiality as well as fairness and accuracy. It seems to me that the world right now, for good or ill, is craving partiality...or at least honesty about one¹s stance. The popularity of Fox News is testimony to that: Fox and blogging are part of the same phenomenon and it is not totally welcome to traditional journalists in the UK. But that is not a reason to stop experimenting with blogging. The whole reason I was keen to do this was to emulate some of the people I worked with during the time large corporations were embracing dot.com. There would be policy papers, theology, huge diagrammatic expositions but nobody was actually doing it. The people who made it through the dot.com transition were the people who adopted the JFDI principle, where the JDI principle stands for just do it: even if you fail you will accumulate intellectual and moral capital. |
A good example of itself
Air pains
| | The competition ended fast when the drips from USAir bought PSA and thought they could improve on what wasn't broken. |
| | Right after PSA was bought I asked one of the stewardesses about the sudden disappearance of the announcement jokes. "USA Air killed it," she told me. "They thought it was unprofessional. It's OUT!. And they removed the smiles from the planes too." They also changed the color schemes from bright and lively to dull and depressing. |
| | PSA went from fun to dreary in less than a year. In no time the dipshits from USAir had ruined the carrier and then bailed out from the routes they so badly wanted. Essentially Delta did the same thing with Western Air and American seemed to keep some presence but nothing like the promises. The ease of traveling from SFO to LAX (many $29 flights) on the cheap with flights leaving constantly ended with a thud. Worse, we lost the excitement too. |
| | Southwest waltzed in and took over the business. |
| | Not that Southwest is a bargain. Or anything much more than a bargain: |
| | I loved the MD-80, especially when equipped with those silent P&W engines. It was the smoothest quietest ride in the sky. A dream. Alaskan moved to the 737, a hellish cramped plane. If I want to be in a 737 I'll fly Southwest. |
| | Southwest uses the plane as designed: a crappy bus. First come first serve. All that is missing are straps and standing passengers. |
| | And I dig what he says about the airline I usually fly: United. |
| | United isn't much better. But they did keep some PanAM routes they bought after that poor company, one of the greatest carriers in history was mismanaged to dissolution. United never really made the botched buyouts the other carriers did. The United mistakes are still coming in the future. They do not want to be left behind in the bankruptcy derby. United's Ted is a perfect example. Ted is the el cheap-o JetBlue clone that is anything but a clone. I have never in my entire life run into such a surly cabin crew. It's essentially United on the cheap with pissed off underpaid workers wanted to be on the UAL planes. If given a choice I will not fly Ted. |
| | There isn't much choice. If you book through United, you often don't know if you're on a Ted or a United plane until you're in the cabin. |
| | At the end of one Ted flight I asked a pilot what the difference was between United and Ted. I forget his exact response, but it was something like, "One class, less service." As John said, the guy didn't seem happy, either. |
| | John's is a West Coast story. But there's an East Coast parallel: Piedmont Airlines. It wasn't quite as charming and edgy as PSA, but they worked very hard to please their workers and customers. Which is why customers loved them. Then USAir, formerly Allegheny Airlines, bought Piedmont at the same time they bought PSA, and for the same reasons: to get the routes. And with the same results. |
| | A joke went around at that time: |
| | You know what USAIR stands for? Unfortunately Still Allegheny In Reality. |
| | I was recently on a plane from Chicago to Raleigh. Next to me sat a guy who was actually flying to Charlotte. He worked for a bank there. But it was cheaper for him to fly United out of Raleigh than to fly US Airways out of Charlotte, which is a US Airways hub and the former headquarters of Piedmont. Raleigh is about 180 miles from Charlotte. On arrival he had a 3+ hour drive home. |
| | Anyway, PSA, Western, Horizon and Piemont were enormous losses. Imagine if Delta bought JetBlue and made everything but the routes disappear. That's what happened. And it still sucks, almost 20 years later. |
Shoot the messages
| | Says here in the Register that Dell has shut down its Customer Support Forums: |
| | While all the other equipment forums are still working - last time we looked - the areas where you could vent your anger or delight about Mikey Boy's company were shut with a peremptory notice (http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=cc_pre_sales&message.id=13394) saying that "The Customer Service boards on the Dell Community Forum will be retiring at 3:30pm this Friday, July 8th. ... Customer Service FAQs will still be available to help answer your questions. If you need further assistance, you may contact our customer service team via Chat for any non-technical issue you may have." |
| | That link no longer goes anywhere. |
Radio 2.0
| | Apple could sign up content providers (including both KQED, Doug Kaye and NPR), support the various access control policies and user fee collection options, manage the annual subscriptions, etc. - and collect a sliver of the revenues along the way. Ideally, it would also manage the fee distribution splits among the various parties involved in bringing all of this content to life in my earphones - at a time when I want to listen to it. |
| | Potential future metaphor: |
| | iTunes is to podcasting as PayPal is to eBay. |
| | I think he means analogy, but still: a good point. It's not for nothing that Apple stuck its podcast directory in its music store. Apple will sell podcasts the way Linspire sells software (among the free stuff it gives away) through its CNR (Click 'N Run) service. Props to Linspire for pioneering the system. |
| | One of public radio's biggest problems on the Net is channel conflict. NPR and its competitors wholesale programming to the local stations, which sell it retail to listeners. Yes, the stations have other ways of making money; but that's the base system. If you're wondering why NPR can't just podcast everything out for free from the mother ship, that's why. |
Fulfillment
| | now I can say with confidence that while today's OPML Editor isn't all that 1986's MORE was, in many ways (networking and blogging) it's much more (pun intended). |
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