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Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Yes 
| | Cicero at Winds of Change: The Rope Bridge. The world will not be saved by either conservatives or liberals. It will be saved by a strong sense of common ground and new thinking from both sides. It will be saved by reducing the gap that this little bridge must span. Is this remotely possible? |
Deep podlinking
| | Me, I'd like time-coded and time-markable (and therefore linkable) MP3/Ogg players. In fact, I'd like that a lot more than I'd like an iPod that shows photos (can't find a link to that, but it's around here somewhere). |
| | Related: I want comments, in blogs, that are linkable too. They're linkable here on this blog, but not on most others I've noticed. |
| | It got me to thinking. Podcasting may be the market bridge webcasters have needed to ultimately get into your car radio. Many listeners have commented that they wish they could listen to Whole Wheat Radio in their car or on the beach. Now they can, sort of, via the podcasts we're posting. But it's not even close to the experience of listening live. And podcasting is painful in terms of time and bandwidth consumed on both ends to send and receive data. As Rod K. points out: "The next step is to skip the whole download and iPodder step and get to wireless broadband iPods so I can just stream the audio/video directly from the net to my iPod." |
| | Ah, but that won't be so easy. Why? Because podcasting isn't streaming, and therefore isn't subject to the RIAA-mandated streaming rules. Not directly anyway. More about all this in Thursday's SuitWatch, at Linux Journal. |
Fasten your fear belts
| | Mr. Shelby stated that on 09/13/04, US Attorney General John Ashcroft had a conference call with all 93 US Attorneys, an event which is extremely rare. The US Attorneys were informed that without a doubt an attack was going to be perpetrated in the US within the next 6 weeks, prior to the elections. |
Down Underblogging
| | Warning: registration required. |
Beyond politics
| | When Howard Stern is the nation's leading defender of the First Amendment, you know something has gone horribly wrong. But with the FCC seemingly determined to wash his mouth out with soap, it's no wonder the King of All Media has added freedom of speech to his usual repertoire of pan-anal sex patter. During the summer, Stern and Clear Channel slapped each other with multimillion-dollar lawsuits over the $1.8 million in fines the radio empire has racked up on his behalf and its subsequent decision to drop him. At the same time, the Senate voted 99 to 1 to multiply the fines against errant broadcasters tenfold. Now Congress is trying to neuter the likes of Comedy Central and F/X by extending the rules against violence and indecency to cable channels. |
| | Until now, the government's censorship powers have been limited to the airwaves, on the grounds that they alone use spectrum. But with politicians left and right in a mad scramble for "decency," the increasingly flimsy technological rationale that allows the government to intrude on broadcast content is being conveniently forgotten. |
| | Adds J.D., Couldn't agree more. It's all about politics. |
| | My response: No, it's not just politics (though of course those are involved). As I just said in the comments to J.D.'s post (scroll down) |
| | The first amendment ends where the shipping system we call "media" begins. Speech is protected, by clear inference, in public *places". The media have from the beginning been conceived not as places, but rather as shipping systems for "programs" and other forms of what we now generically call "content," which is the equivalent of container cargo. That's why the FCC sees no contradiction between the first amendment on one hand and huge fines for "indecency" on the other. The former protects "speech." The latter protects sensitive "consumers" from receiving the wrong "content" from a shipping system. |
| | Here's a useful rule of thumb: Every time you slap the label "content" on your speech, your writing, or your performance, you move it outside the protective cover of the First Amendment. |
We(ird) the Media
| | ...In today's ecosystem of news, the greatest sin is to cut oneself off from the conversation. Both the Economist and the Journal have done that. |
| | So what is to be done? My suggestion is simple: Take the plunge and allow deep linking. Notice I did not say abandon paid registration, in fact, I support it. Publishers can let the bloggers link to any story they post, but limit further consumption of their site to paid subscribers. |
| | I'd be willing to wager that the benefit of allowing the blogosphere to link to you will more than make up for potential lost subscribers. First off, if you as a publisher do not offer additional paid subscription benefits beyond the articles themselves, you're not paying attention to your community. And in any case, many folks will pay to subscribe to a site which is continually being linked to. In fact, I'd wager that the landing pages from blog links might be the most lucrative place a publisher can capture new subscribers. It's a massive opportunity to convert: the reader has come to your site on the recommendation of a trusted source (the blog he or she is reading). It's pretty certain that if you make that page inviting, and use it as an opportunity to sell the reader on the value of the rest of your site, that that reader will eventually feel like the Journal is worthy of his or her support. |
| | Why? In short, if a reader finds him or herself pointed to the Journal on a regular basis, that reader knows that by subscribing to the Journal, he or she would be more in the know. After all, all of the blogs read and point to the Journal, the reader thinks, so perhaps I should read it too. Before subscribing, the only time a reader might find out something in the Journal is if someone points to it (a far sight from where things stand today, by the way). But if they subscribe, they can get their own RSS feeds, and be first to know something. And, in the end, isn't that what drives subscription sales? |
| | Net net, I think allowing deep linking will drive subscription sales, rather than attenuate them. |
| | Maybe now, methinks (or mehopes — this awakening is going reeealll slow), the bigpubs will listen to what Dave, Dan, J.D. and so many others have been recommending for years. |
| | Here's how I put it in January, 2002: |
| | The Times, like all papers, is worth full value on the day it is printed. After that it's fishwrap. |
| | Still, it's hard for publishers to get their heads around the fact that what makes their 'content' valuable isn't its nature as a commodity (which the contemptible term 'content' implies), but its timeliness, its authority, and its expression (on paper, today, on doorsteps and on newsstands). That's it. Everything else is gravy. The Times will be worth more as a paper if its archives are exposed on the Web — far more, even in the $millions, than the paper is making by selling old stories for $2.95 apiece. |
| | Here's another reason: The "membership" shit doesn't work. This morning I wanted to see something online that I'd read, in ink on paper, in the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times, to which I am a "7-day" subscriber. First it tells me |
| | The content you requested is reserved for calendarlive.com members only. Membership is FREE for Los Angeles Times 7-day newspaper subscribers. |
| | The boldface is theirs. So I log in. Now I get a little black box that says "Hi, (my login)," above a logout button. Below that is a "search calendarlive.com" box. When I search, I get results, which is fine, as far as it goes. |
| | But it goes no farther. When I click on the link to one of the results, I get sent back to the same calendarlive.com members only message. |
| | Thus the LA Times achieves customer piss-off and lost authority where dumb policy, pointless greed and bad Web design fortuitously, but predictably, meet. |
| | Thanks to J.D. for the pointage, and for staying doggedly on the case. |
Loose links, cont'd
| | Jane Galt: ...we'll all have a much better discussion if we stop throwing the candidates' talking points at eachother. |
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