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| Tuesday, November 14, 2006 |
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RIP, CoolPix 5700 
| | I shot the picture above (part of this tabblo and this photoset), and dozens of thousands more (including the vast marjority of photosets here), with a 2002-vintage Nikon Coolpix 5700. I bought it in April 2004, on discount, as it was being discontinued. |
| | In many ways it was a frustrating camera to use. The anti-intuitive UI took months to master. Its processing was often slow (though I learned ways to shoot moving subjects in an instant — Barry Bonds hitting a baseball, for instance). And it had all the compromises you'd expect from an all-in-one 10x zoom. |
| | But it took some great pictures. It was light and easy to lug around. It had a flip-out viewer that was perfect for taking sneaky candids, as with this tabblo here, mostly shot at waist-level, with the kids unaware that they were being shot. The sunset shot above was taken through a chain-link fence that would have posed a challenge to my Canon 30D SLR. |
| | Anyway, yesterday I decided to take the Nikon instead of the Canon on my flight to Denver, for shooting pictures out the plane window. On the very first shot out of Santa Barbara, the camera crapped out. After 2.5 years of heavy use, something bad happened with the autofocus, the exposure system and whatever it is that turns what you see into what you get. Every shot became a strange abstraction of the subject in the viewfinder, rendered as scary-looking bent venetian blinds. |
| | The cost of fixing the thing runs around $170 each time I bring it in, which I've done twice before. The camera's not worth that, and I'm sure it's just plain worn out. |
| | Looking at what's on the market now, I think I'll opt to replace it with a used Coolpix 8700 or 8800. Not sure. I might rather get better lenses for the Canon. Although the good ones start at 2x what I paid for the Coolpix in the first place. Recommendations welcome. |
The hole truth
Google unter alles
| | wanted to figure out a way to manipulate Google's complicated search engine to put the information he wanted people to see at the top of his results. |
| | "On search, you want to be on that first page," Leonsis said. "You don't exist from Page 3 on." |
| | A key was using celebrity names that Web surfers would link to. According to Leonsis, there are three major factors in Google's algorithm: The more popular a Web page is, the higher it ranks. The more a Web page is linked to other Web sites, such as other blogs, the higher it ranks. More recent entries also boost rankings. |
| | Leonsis started to post several times a day. Then he added links to lots of other bloggers, including those talking about local sports and that of another team owner and blogger, Mark Cuban. Those blogs, in turn, link to his blog. He also linked his site to the Capitals'. |
| | He added lots of tags to his blog posts, dropping names of famous people he dealt with. Nothing happened for a few weeks. But as months went by, the rankings began to change. "Ted's Take" moved up the page of search results, and now Leonsis says he has an audience of 800 or 900 on a bad day, 12,000 to 15,000 on a good one. |
| | "There is something very powerful about self-expression, adding your own voice to the loud choir happening out there," Leonsis said. Also, he said, he needed to build up his Web 2.0 street cred. "I honestly wanted to have the moral authority with employees and people in industry that I wasn't just talking about Web 2.0, I was living it." |
| | The point wasn't as much vanity (well, maybe a tad) as it was an exercise in understanding how the mysterious Google algorithm works. |
| | As of Friday, a Google search for "Ted Leonsis" brought his profile from the AOL company Web site, followed by a page from "Ted's Take" and then his biography on the Washington Capitals Web site. |
| | "A few weeks ago, I e-mailed some people I told I would do this in a year, and I wrote, 'My job is done!' " Leonsis said. |
| | Leonsis is what you might call a defensive blogger. His main goal isn't to enter into a "conversation" with the AOL "community," but just to gain more control over the results that show up when people google him. In fact - and this really turns the whole corporate blogging ethos on its pointy little head - Leonsis is blogging not to increase the flow of information but to narrow it, for his own professional benefit. |
| | Now I realize that a lot of people out in the blogosphere will take offense at what Leonsis is doing. He's not exactly taking a ride on the old cluetrain here. But you have to admit that from a business perspective it's a brilliant strategy. It's exactly what Machiavelli would have done if there'd been a blogosphere around back in the early 16th century. Other executives that want to gain more control over how they're portrayed on the Net are going to have to give this idea a hard look. The best defense may be a good blog. |
| | Doesn't always happen with me and Nick, but I couldn't agree more. Though I'd add that Ted is being both Machiavelli and Cluetrain compliant. (It isn't like the guy isn't getting clues, is it? He's not bunkered down in what Dr. Weinberger aptly called Fort Business.) |
| | The empires of the future are the empires of the mind, Churchill said. |
| | And where do our minds go first when they want to know more? |
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