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| Monday, May 22, 2006 |
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For Avery Johnson 
| | I am the teacher of atheletes.
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own.
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
— Walt Whitman |
is amazing
| | That I can't get the music for this one out of my mind |
O what a fangled Web you heave
| | If you're one of the approximately zero* readers of this blog who also subscribe to the Santa Barbara New-Press AND have survived the registration process (so you have access to all the current stories, though not for the archives which cost $2.50 per story, even for subscribers), AND you do a search for "Searls" in "today" (because it's not otherwise published), you'll find Connecting to the Net's Live Wire, by Michael Todd, the paper's business editor. It's a story in today's Business secition about a talk I gave last Thursday evening, fresh off a plane (well, two planes) from New York, where I had given a talk at Syndicate the day before.** |
| | Michael attended the talk (sponsored by the good folks at Mac Mechanic), and conducted a probing interview with me afterwards. He did an excellent job of both understanding what I was talking about (not easy, because I'm not always clear, and lots of what I said is stuff almost nobody else is saying), and reporting it accurately (and, in some ways, flatteringly). So, a big thank-you for that. |
| | Still, I can't help heaving a sigh in the general direction of the News-Press, which I am sure makes approximately no money by selling the stories it locks up. Meanwhile, there's no way to measure lost exposure and authority on Google and Yahoo, when subjects like "Santa Barbara" get looked up. |
| | Let's see... On Google, "Santa Barbara" gets 113 million results. Add news-press and it drops to 459 thousand. That's 40 thousand fewer results than for ugliest dog santa barbara. That's because none of the hundreds of thousands of stories (each good for at least one link) from the News-Press archives are exposed where Google can find them. So the paper occupies a kind of negative space on the Web. |
| | I would love to come down to the paper and inveigh on behalf of opening those archives. I'd also love to see the paper's radio station, KZSB/1290, which airs news programs all day, run those programs as podcasts — and stream its programming in .mp3, rather than Windows Media, so everybody could get it. (Including every computer with iTunes, which equals the number of people with iPods.) Also, it would be nice for the radio station to have its own website. As it stands, the station (which gets better every day) has no web presence other than a link to the audio stream. Even though the paper publishes a nice large program guide for the station ever day. |
| | Here's a list of all the radio stations (and translators for stations) in the Santa Barbara area. KZSB is one of only four (out of twenty-two) without a website. (The others are Spanish, hip-hop and religious.) I'll bet it's the only news station in the entire country without a website. |
| | If they make the station's Web presence a blog, rather than a site — live, rather than static (a distinction I made in my talk) — the labor involved in running it would be minimal. It would be nice to talk to them about that too. |
| | * Seems there are at least a few, 'cuz I heard from 'em.
** The paper has since moved the story to the front Web page. (Unfortunately, I can't seen to get past the Login or the Activate Account stuff on the Register to Access Subscriber Content page that automatically comes up sooo ... I'm not sure what to tell ya.) |
Boomer makes Rocket
| | I've heard, from 10+nth sources, including people in church yesterday morning, that I was on Rocketboom, somehow, last week. |
| | This was where. I'm on for about 10 seconds around the halfway point, looking gratefully much younger than I really am, in silhouette against the blue-ish projection screen. I'm miked from the audience, so you tell as much about what I'm saying as you can about my eye color. But I seem to be taking my subject, whatever it was, seriously. |
| | Best part: Jeff Jarvis, running around (f)unconferencing the audience. |
Go Clips
| | Tony knows how important it is for the Clippers to win tonight. One reason (for me) is that three of the Clips (Brand, Maggette, Ewing) are ex-Duke players, and a fourth, Shawn Livingston, would have been a Duke player (as would have Kobe) if he'd not turned pro out of high school. |
| | I became a Duke basketball fan in the 1977-78 season, when Bill Foster led a tem with Jim Spanarkel, Mike Gminski, Gene Banks, Kenny Denard, John Harrell and Bob Bender all the way to the national championship game, only to lose when Goose Givens of Kentucky went nuts and banged 40 points or something on them. That was one of the most warm, interesting and likeable teams I've ever seen. Also the subject of a John Feinstein book. I believe John was there then as a student. |
| | Back then Duke was a decade or two away from being the dynastic institution they are today. I think Foster only lasted two more seasons, before Mike Krzyzewski came along. I once said about the sour, ref-baiting Krzyzewski that "There's nothing about him that a blow-dry and a sense of humor wouldn't cure." Coach K's first three seasons were sucky, but then History began. Still, I wish to declare that I got into Duke when the team was not the Team To Beat it eventually became. |
| | Anyway, years before that I got into the Buffalo Braves, who weren't a bad expansion club, until they became the San Diego Clippers. |
| | I liked the Braves because Bob Kauffman played for them. Bob was one class ahead of me at Guilford College. Back in the early '70s, the Braves had a roster that also included Randy Smith, Len Elmore and Bob McAdoo. I'd listen to Van Miller do the play-by-play on WBEN/930, which I could pick up at night where I lived in Greenwood Lake, New Jersey. |
| | But Clips became underdoggies and underinteresting when they reached San Diego — and remained that way for a turtle's age. Now it's time for them to break loose. |
| | Trivia: Bob Kauffman was the head coach and general manager of the Detriot Pistons, when he named Dick Vitale to take over the coaching job. Both men failed at both jobs, but we won't hold that against them. |
A breadth of fresh hair
| |  I was power-paging through the customarily massive Sunday Los Angeles Times last night, wondering if I could find a story that would work with the headline I'd just thought up (above), when I ran into this cover story in the Calendar section: 'Podfather' plots a radio hit of his own. The subhead reads, Brash Adam Curry is betting on the podcast as he tries launching a nation of DIY DJs. |
| | Actually, Adam's hair is smaller these days (though the print story does feature a shot of the big guy at maximum coiffage); but still, it's a big piece. It starts on Page 1, takes up all of Page 15, and continues onto Page 16. On the web it's in three sections. Check 'em out before the Times scrolls them behind a paywall. |
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