End of the Road Trip

We head back to San Diego today. It's been a good trip. Recap later. Very tired.

Press Release

Is here.

Intercasting Blog

Shawn debuts the Intercasting Corp blog here.

Intercasting Corporation and Rabble at CTIA

We unveil our company today at CTIA. Our press release hits the wire later this AM and I will put out a link once I have it. We pushed the Intercasting website earlier this evening and are doing some cleanup. By the time I post this it should be pretty clean. It gives a good overview of what we aim to accomplish at least philosophically.

Our first product, Rabble, passed BREW certification last week and is now ready for distribution on CDMA networks who support BREW. We hope to announce some more things around that shortly.

We have spent a lot of time working on a robust and easy to use personal publication platform for consumers. Its taken a lot of people to get it this far and we are really proud of how far it has come. As Shawn would say though, "We just made it to the starting line."

Participatory Culture And The Empowered Media Prosumer

I am a fan of all the people I have met at unmediated so far including Eli Chapman, Dan Melinger and Jay Dedman. I haven't been reading feeds much this trip, but Eli wrote this piece that I had to blog about.

I really like how it hits on the combination of Create, Promote and Consume, which are concepts we are big believers in. In fact the product we are unveiling tomorrow is built around these concepts. It's been a fun trip the last several months having conversations with a variety of people who see the world in this way and how each of us take different approaches to trying to create different pieces in that puzzle that Eli so plainly demonstrated. Good stuff.

New Orleans Day 1

Last night after we got in, we headed over to The Napoleon House for my traditional and obligatory muffaletta and Pimms Cup.

Afterwards we actually worked. That was a Big Easy first for me.

This morning I also had another first, I went jogging. It was fun making my way through the Quarter on a slightly balmy morning. That was until my iPod battery died. I think I am at the battery failure point right now. Not cool.

Rhapsody Part Two

A good friend called me the other day to follow up on a call I had made when I was in NYC. He was calling to catch up but also gave me some grief for making fun of Rhapsody. I told him that the cancellation shenanigans are ridiculous but I thought that Rhapsody was by far the best service available. If you like music and don’t have a problem paying for it, the best experience to date, IMHO is Rhapsody. It is a real music discovery tool. It falls down in a couple of areas but they are minor.

That said, my comments above are as it relates to content and content discovery. The whole scheme that RealNetworks deploys to make you cancel your service with a phone call is worse than laughable. It has been about a year and a half since I have voluntarily viewed a file delivered in their format. Their intrusive and deceptive client doesn’t have a place on any of the machines that I own.

Travel Log - LA to SD to The Big Easy

LA was busy. We started to each get a bit sick. My allergies got really bad and Shawn got a nasty cold. We did the usual all day in meetings thing and then ran off to catch the train to SD.

We got into SD late Thursday, got to spend the day in the office on calls on Friday and then hit the airport, yet again to get to New Orleans.

New Orleans rules. It's one of the places that I come back to very often. I think 4-5 Jazzfests and a Mardi Gras for me. It's going to be a long week.

Request for a Unicorn

Over the last several weeks we have been traveling heavily. Most of the longer distance travel has been on American Airlines. As someone who has been a longtime customer with elite status, you get in the habit of requesting upgrades as you have accumulated a large collection of upgrades. Unfortunately with the introduction of JetBlue in the SD to JFK market, AA has been forced to have comparable prices. I guess fortunately is the better word because a roundtrip ticket between SD and NYC is like $200.

The downside is that getting an upgrade is impossible. The other day I went to the ticket counter and checked the status of my upgrade request. They said that I was on the list but it didn’t look good. I told Shawn that this was a joke. He said that it was better than that. He said it was like a request to have a unicorn. "“Excuse me, I wanted to check the status of my request to have a Unicorn.” “Mr. Oien, we have your request, but it doesn’t look like we will be able to accommodate you at this time.” " Ok. Maybe next time. Ironically I got upgraded today on the flight to Dallas. Must have been a glitch. The unicorn said that he was double booked later today and that after this leg of the trip he had other business to attend to. Sigh.

Travel Log - SF to LA

San Francisco was beautiful yesterday in terms of weather. Our meetings went by so quickly it felt like we weren’t there for more than five minutes before we were rushing off to catch another plane.

Our last meeting was at SFO which was unfortunate as we were flying out of OAK. We had yet another frantic cab ride to catch a flight and got there with at least five minutes to spare.

We decided to stay downtown so we could grab a bite to eat at Ciudad, which is one of my favorite places in LA.

I had a bout of insomnia and did an early morning run from the Bonaventure to the Disney Concert Hall, around Pershing Square and then back to the hotel.

LA is a great place although many people not from here don’t get it. I don’t think I will explain my thoughts on it at this point rather I would say that if you get into town sometime make sure you grab a drink at the rooftop bar at The Standard. It’s not to be missed and to me gives a good flavor for the sense of the city.

Travel Log - Out of NYC and into SF

We 'weathered' our second nasty snowstorm on the east coast and managed to sneak out of NYC after a really long delay and a two hour cab ride to the airport. Glad to be back to the sunny west coast, at least for now. The meetings were fun but exhausting. Got to spend dinner one evening with Todd Rubenstein, a friend, that I got to know through his wife Laurie who worked with me at Vivendi running PR. Todd represents music executives, tv and other music related stuff in technology. We also have kids around the same age so its always a fun conversation covering a range of stuff.


Got into San Francisco last night at midnight or so. I decided to take a couple of mile run this morning. My Ipod dished out the following for my run:

Coheed and Cambria
Atreyu
Supersuckers
Saves The Day
This Mortal Coil
Circle Jerks
Yellowcard

It was great. A little aggressive but nice in the cool foggy morning as I ran from Fishermans Wharf into Golden Gate Park.

The guy sitting next to me on the flight was Andrew Thomas from CSFB, who coincidentally covered MP3.com back in the day. He covers Internet and Gaming sectors and was headed to The Game Developers Conference in San Francisco which explains why we had such a bad hotel.
In SF

The $250 Million Radio Show #18

Show #18 is here. I'll put credits on The $250 Million Radio Show site later today. I didn't plan on posting it until later tonight, but audio.weblogs.com sniffed out my new xml without my intervention. Actually very cool, but not expected as I have been using the pingform.

Early Press

We probably won't get any press coverage for Intercasting and our product launch until next week, but this is the first piece I have seen.

My Current Media

No books right now, too busy

CDs
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, Its Morning. I love this CD. I can't get enough of the opening track. My 2 1/2 year old is starting to pick uo the lyrics.

Calexico - Feast of Wire. I am a late comer to this band, but I am really starting to dig their sound.

Indie Bands
Supernauts - The management company sent me a track and I have got to say I am hooked. I am going to lead off my next podcast with these guys.

Games
Rome Total War - On Flights Only

TV
24

Podcasts
Accident Hash Podcast
Other AMP Podcasts

Magazines
CMJ - Been a long time since I read this. Just recently subscribed.

Offline

I plan on doing podcast #18 tonight or tomorrow. After that I hit the road for two weeks. I plan to blog intermittently during the two weeks, but I am not sure how frequently. To be sure there will be plenty of photos from my travels both here and at Flickr.

Real Networks/Rhapsody - I will never use their products

I haven't been a fan of Real Networks for a longtime. I resent it when applications repeatedly steal your MIME types and generally do things to your computers configuration without your permission.

Late last year I did a brief consulting engagement where I provided an overview and evaluation of the various music services. It was fun getting back up to speed on the state of the various services.

After the evaluation I went about deleting the various applications. I had no problem canceling with any of them except Real/Rhapsody. When I tried to cancel, I found out that you could only cancel by a phone call. Hmmm. That's pretty weak for an online product. I called. It was Sunday. They were closed. I couldn't cancel. What a joke. Is that illegal?

This was in December, Yesterday while looking at the army of icons on my desktop I realized that this nasty program was still on my machine and I was STILL BEING CHARGED by them.

I called the number. They asked me why I was canceling. I freaked out. I promised them that I would ensure that there were no Real products on any of the machines that I own and that I would delete the products from any machines that I touch.

I know that the digital music space is a difficult business, but if this is how you have to make your money, I would recommend shorting their stock.

Oien Tribe

Oien Tribe,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

I find moments like this both amazing and shocking.

New Neighbors - San Diego Telecom Council

Our law firm, Fish and Richardson, have been the most awesome landlords in the world. We have been renting vacant space in one of the nicest buildings in the Golden Triangle area of San Diego. In fact we have been camping out in a corner of a 14,000 sq. ft floor for a long time. Over the weekend somebody else moved into the floor in a similar arrangement with us. They are the San Diego Telecom Council.

I walked around the floor to see who the new people were and to my surprise one of the people working there worked with me at Mp3.com. Small world, or rather small floor.

As we are getting down to the wire with our launch, I will take this as a good sign.

KCRW Podcasting - What No Music?

KCRW in Santa Monica just started publishing a lot of their content as a podcast.

Funny though, nothing from any of their music shows. Hmmm. I like what they have on the sidebar of the linked page:


"Legal constraints and copyright issues currently inhibit our ability to offer listeners our music shows as podcasts."

I am just so surprised. ;-) That said, I am dying to get a podcast dose of Morning Becomes Eclectic.

Podcasting and the Law

One of the guys on the pho list who is a DC lawyer/lobbyist set up a podcasting and the law forum here.

Unlinking Social Networks

Stowe Boyd, writes about his move away from social networking applications. I think its a great article that hits home with anyone who has signed up for the many and varied sites created to date.

The $250 Million Radio Show #17

Can be found here. Show list here.

Travel Log - New Jersey and 'blizzards'

Spent most of the day in Manhattan. Sat down for drinks with Gary Churgin and Michael Simon of the Harry Fox Agency for drinks and catching up. Gary became CEO at HFA right after we settled our lawsuits with the publishers, so we have known each other fairly well for a long time. In addition to showing Gary what we are up to, we had a nice informal chat about podcasting. No real take aways, but it will be interesting to see how they decide to approach podcasting.

During drinks, a 'horrible' snow storm began. This isn't normally a problem, except we needed to make a drive out to Morristown, New Jersey that evening. I happen to have a nasty combination of driving experience that makes me a dangerous snow driver. I am a long time Los Angeles commuter and I have spent the last 10+ Christmases in Fargo, North Dakota. I am entirely comfortable in complete whiteout conditions and I hate slow drivers. I laughed as I drove through, over and around the freaked out Jersey drivers on our way to the hotel.

Had an amazing dinner at Copeland. This was a top rate Manhattan dining experience out in the burbs. We had no idea that it would be this good. Dinner was with Scott Wolf who worked with me at Vivendi who now heads up sales at Muzak.

Brooklyn

Went to Brooklyn this morning for a meeting. Once we got off the subway there I realized that in all the many years I have been coming to NYC I had never been anywhere outside of Manhattan. Brooklyn was very cool. Need to explore some more some other time.

Travel Day - New York City

Wasn't I just there? Off again. Should be a nice flight given all the storms we were pounded with overnight.

Podcast on the Fly

Ian Miller, who screws around with me on the Acmenoise website that I use to find bands for my podcast cooked up a really cool feature. At Mp3.com we had a thing called Notify Me, which was an opt in email product that was positioned opposite some of what RealNetworks was doing with RMP files. What Ian added to Acme is a podcast link to each artist page. If you click on the link it generates an XML feed that you can plug into your aggregator of choice. Then, anytime the artist adds new music to the site, it automatically gets downloaded to your player.

Fear And Loathing Quote

There are too many lines in the book to recount, but a quick search of Fear And Loathing quotes on Google brought the book back to life again. This one stood out to me:

"How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long until one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family; will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so, well, we'll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere, 'cause it goes without saying that we can't turn him loose. He'd report us at once to some kind of outback Nazi law enforcement agency and they'll run us down like dogs. Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Seattle Library

51KG0086.jpg,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

I am an armchair fan of architecture. In particular Gehry and Kahn. Yesterday I was in Seattle for business and happened to swing by the new Seattle public library while on a taxi ride to a meeting. The Rem Koolhaus building is certainly unique though reminiscent of the I.M. Pei triangle at the Louvre. I am so sad that I didn't get to go inside as the virtual tour you can find here really shows how amazing the building is.

Hunter S Thompson dead

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was one of the most bizarre and enjoyable books I have ever read. Any book that makes you break out into hysterical laughter is something that shouldn't be missed. Pleasant journey Hunter.

Great Post on Podcast Licensing

Can be found here.

Association of Music Podcasting

I should have mentioned earlier that a group of us music podcasters are working together to promote the music of artists who grant us their permission to use their music on a royalty free basis within our podcasts. We seek to highlight the awesome content that currently has a difficult time getting into the hands of consumers by traditional means. If this sounds like something cool to you, check out our site at AMP.

Lessig Podcast

Speaking of Lessig he has started a Podcast. I'll bet he isn't reading text over The Beattles. ;-)

The Copyright Fairy

Earlier this week I did a radio show on KPBS with Dave Winer. At one point in the conversation I stated that if the two of us were talking, and we had a Who song playing in the background, that if we recorded that conversation and made it into podcast then this would be copyright infringement unless we had the permission of the various rights holders. Dave retorted that he didn't necessarily think that is correct. There may be some strange application of Fair Use that I have missed over the last 7 years or so, but I don't believe that is the case.

What I found particularly funny about this exchange is how some of the blogger intelligentsia hold themselves out as thoughtful and informed yet fail to do the simple homework when all of the source materials are freely available for them. The DMCA? You can find it online. The 2nd district court rulings in MP3.com vs RIAA? Online. 9th district Court rulings in Napster vs RIAA? Online. Kazaa, etc. etc. Sorry for the lack of links but you get my point.

The conclusion that I have come to is that many including Dave wish that the Copyright fairy would come along and change the existing body of law because its just not fair. Although I agree with many who think that it would be great if we could use samples and play mashups, and play the songs of our youth in podcasts and home videos etc. the reality today is that you can't.

I propose that Dave and others who question the status of how podcasts fit into existing copyright law take some of the following steps:

1. Go read the law. I would include the DMCA and the various rulings in the dozens of digital music lawsuits over the past 7+ years.

2. Talk to your friends Larry Lessig and Hank Barry. I spoke with Hank briefly at Bloggercon and although we didn't talk at length I am certain that he would reiterate what I have said.

3. Immediately stop playing copyrighted music in your podcasts. If you care about the technology and its potential, don't make it a target for yet another round of lawsuits.

4. Start a conversation with the RIAA and the publishers. I am meeting with the CEO of the Harry Fox Agency next week. Understanding how they view the law and if there are opportunities to obtain experimental licenses or find other accommodations is a better way than just pretending or hoping that everything is just fine.

I would be extremely excited to find out that I am wrong about this, but given my experience, I have a very high degree of confidence that I am spot on.

I recall how the labels held technologists in great contempt during the late 1990s in the digital music space because many of them wouldn't take the time to either take a walk in their shoes, or take the time to understand the law. I find it ironic that those who would hold people to higher standards when they talk of the blogosphere, technology or internet ethics etc. can't do the same when faced with issues around intellectual property.

These Days Link

Can be found here. We were on around 35 minutes into the show.

Dave Winer on KPBS

Dave Winer, the father of RSS and co-father of podcasting will be on the KPBS radio show These Days with yours truly. Check it out if you get the chance. I'll post a link after the show.

Radio Show on Podcasting

Tomorrow I will be on the local radio station KPBS at 9:30 AM for a taping of These Days with local host Tom Fudge. I think the show will focus on podcasting and the issues involving copyright. I will post a link to the audio when it's available. I am not sure who the other guest or guests are yet.

Travel, Posting and RSS Calendar

We are in the last stages of work on our startup prior to launch sometime in the future. I suspect that I won't be posting as frequently as normal. I also am traveling a lot. If you scroll down this page you will see an RSS Calendar box that has all my travel plans. If you read this and happen to be in one of the cities I am going to be in, drop me an email and lets grab a coffee or drink or something when I cruise through your town.

Podcast Spot Link

NBC News.

Must use IE and Windows Media to view.

NBC 7/39 Podcast Spot

If you are in San Diego check out the Podcasting spot tonight at 5 PM. Yours truly is hanging out with NBC's Vic Salazar for a spot on Podcasting.

Packet Video Customer Service

I should start a customer service blog that's open to the whole world where we can document our wonderful customer service experiences. I think I have three so far that I can recall. So I am trying to figure out how to up-sample the video from my P910 so I can edit the clips. It's over a week since I sent my message to Packet Video. Since they are in San Diego I should swing by Michael Moore style and have the receptionist show me how to do that. And I could recorder it. Hmmm.

The $250 Million Radio Show #16

Can be found here. Information here. It was great talking to Vic from NBC. The segment should air Friday or Monday. I'll post more when I find out.

ASCAP Licenses Podcasts

Yeah right. I don't think the record labels or publishers will be too impressed with this license. ASCAP has a marginal claim that podcasts are performances. They have no ability to cover the other two rights.

Switchvox Press Release

Switchvox is being unveiled at the Desktop summit today. Here is their press release.

Podcast TV Interview

I am being interviewed today for a TV spot on the local NBC affiliate about my podcast. I plan on taking some pics and maybe a bit of video.

Google Maps

Ok this is some crazy stuff. I like this.

Blue Tooth Snafu

If you have read any of my older posts regarding Bluetooth you will know that I am an unapologetic fan of the technology. Well last week, right before my trip to NYC, my Jabra headset died. I may have been wearing it in the rain, but it felt like it was going downhill fast. I am now shopping for a replacement. When I figure it out I will let you know. I have seen a drastic improvement in the Bluetooth implementation on my phone over the previous version, so I am hoping the headset people have made some improvements.

Flickr Giant Pics

Speaking of Flickr and Tags, we have a bunch of art around the office from the Obey - Andre the Giant series. I uploaded a couple to my Flickr account and then tagged them. I got to see this really cool slide show which I recommend.

Sand Hill Road - Brian Dear

Brian put some pics on Flickr recently that chronicled a trip to Sand Hill Road. We generally drive through Palo Alto and out the back way as you work up the road so we don't get that view. Instead we look at the mall as we make the left hand turn. It is kind of cool the myth around Sand Hill Road and the reality that strikes you as very funny once you start making the rounds. I almost put up some similar pics on the last trip but restrained myself.

Million Dollar Baby

Ok, so I really do enjoy big Media content. Although we have too many kids, my crafty wife has managed to get shifts of babysitters to watch our 2 1/2 yr old and the triplets. As a result we have actually seen a couple of movies including almost all of the Best Picture Nominees.

My favorite? Million Dollar baby. Not just because it has Million in the title.

Clint Eastwood is an amazing director. Hillary Swank, though I don't care for her generally, is powerful. The story is engaging and hit me in the torso like I haven't been hit in a while, pleasantly surprising me after a section of the movie, that in retrospect, had slowed by design. Go see it!

Seasons of Interest

I am in football mourning. I don't expect to check out this site, or this site, or this one for a while. I wasn't really interested in the teams in the Superbowl, but it was the end of the season.

Since the election I haven't checked out this site, or this, or this either.

Some things relate to time. Some things relate to place. Right now, right here, I am not relating to either football or politics. At least for a couple of months...

eMusic - Cancelled

I was cleaning up some of those credit card treadmill items today and with a heavy heart, cancelled my eMusic subscription. I have been a big fan of the service for such a long time, but the cap of tracks (which I understand by the way) always made me mad if I hadn't downloaded my quota as there was only a reset and no carryover. It's leaving money on the table. Combine this with the fact that I really had most of the music I wanted anyways and each end of month became an exercise to download something, anything to get to my 40, seemed like a waste of time. I wish them well.

New York Recap

NYC can wear you down. Non Business related highlights included:

Bond Street Restaurant
Brasserie
SoHo House

Non Business Related meetings that were cool included:

Jay Dedman
Andrew Scott

Back home and busy. Lots to catch up on....

Taxi Audio File

Ok so I had to cut up the file to get the good parts, but it can be found here.

If anyone knows what they are saying I would love to find out. I am hoping its something like "Hey lets have a beer after work" and nothing more sinister than that.

The Revolution will be televised under our nose...

While riding in a cab the other day. I heard a really bizzare radio broadcast in the cab of the driver that was all fuzzed out and reminded me of a propaganda broadcast in an unrecognizable language. I was very intrigued as this was a really cool audio icon to me so I pulled out the P910 and started recording the noise.

It was really cool. I stopped the clip and asked the driver what it was. He said it was CB. I asked him if he could turn it up so I could record it. He got really pissed and said no and turned it off. Oops. I can't imagine what they were talking about but it kind of gave me the shivers given his response. I guess it might have been kind of creepy for me to ask to record it too....

Rome Total War

I received a copy of Rome Total War for Christmas but hadn't opened the package up until on the flight earlier this week from San Diego to NYC. Its a good thing I hadn't. This game is so unbelievable. I looked up after a short time playing (Or so it seemed) and we were in NYC. Nice.

MP3Tunes

Michael is at it again.

Mercury News Article

Got a quote here. One point of clarification was the lawsuits weren't UMG specific it was the sum of all the litigation not any one label.

New York City

Off to NYC for the week. So to put this in perspective, I ran along the coast today in shorts while pushing my son in a jogging stroller. I don't think its going to be above freezing in NYC this week. Ouch. It should be a busy week so posting may be light.

The $250 Million Radio Show #15

Show #15 here. Notes here.

Smarter Child Pt. 2

Ok so this ended quickly. The thing I was interested in gave me a server busy. Then I had this conversation:

brikdoien: do you like music
SmarterChild: Yes I do! Music is one of my favorite art forms!

>>> Ask me for info such as news, sports and movies!
brikdoien: punk rock?
SmarterChild: Punk music is a great music genre.

>>> Remember, you can adjust the size of your window to read my messages easier.
brikdoien: what punk rock do you like?
SmarterChild: Wow. Interesting. I'm just not sure!
brikdoien: are you lame?
SmarterChild: Lame? I don't know. You think I am?
brikdoien: i am starting to think so
SmarterChild: Is starting to think so fun?
brikdoien: no, i am starting to think that you are very lame
SmarterChild: OK! Well good luck starting to think that I'm very lame then.

Ok so I am lame for having this conversation with a bot, but I tried to ask it about some stuff like RSS etc. and had similar results. This at least had some sick satisfaction.

Smarter Child

I saw a Doc Searls post about Smarter Child, an IM bot. Thought it would be cool to check out. I went to the page and the clear simple marketing copy said add SmartChild to your buddy list. This didn't work. Hmmmm. I read the FAQ. You have to put SmarterChild into your buddy list. Ahem. Someone needs to tell the marketing person....

ANT

From the ealry videobloggers comes a new application called ANT. ANT is basically an iPodder like client for video. I am dying to use it but I am not a mac user. :-( I am checking with the makers to find out when I can get in on the Windows alpha....

Los Angeles Train Tragedy

I left San Diego this morning to head to LA and extolled the virtues of train travel on a videoblog post I recorded while riding up the coast. I spent some time writing a post and catching up on email. I took a bunch of pics I sent to Flickr. I got to Union Station and received a call from my breakfast appointment wanting to make sure I was OK. He said that 9 people had been killed in a train accident. I was shocked. Turns out it was 10 and 200 injured. Wow, what a senseless tragedy.

Evolving Media Infrastructure Thoughts

I was speaking with a good friend yesterday in the UK who shares my fascination with media and technology, both their evolution and transformative power on each other. He mentioned that recently my blogging had become more stream of consciousness rather than my normal commentary on subjects. I think this is partially a reflection of the craziness at home and work, but I also think it is an indication of a growing sense of ‘something’ I am feeling when I look at all the change around me.

I first started using the Internet around mid 1994 and really more frenetically around the end of 1994 and early 1995. I recall vividly at the time the excitement I felt. Each day new forms of software were coming out. In rapid time things moved from FTP to HTTP. Using a browser became something you took for granted when you sat down at a computer. Being connected became something you took for granted over time.

I personally didn’t know where it would all go, but as someone who was more interested in Justin’s Links to the Underground rather than space pictures at NASA, I knew that ‘something’ was happening, I just wasn’t sure what. I knew though I wanted to immerse myself in it and I wanted to understand it in whatever way I could.

Today feels like that all over again. The largest barriers to media beyond music has been bandwidth. Peer to Peer technologies are creating distributed file swarms that are moving video distribution away from a world where the cost of incremental users destroy any possible business model to a world where distribution costs are becoming more bearable. Enabling technologies like RSS are allowing people to become information programmers delivering news, music, audio and video to their device in a self constructed manner.

People are picking up their technology and are creating art or content or whatever they want. Watching a videoclip today may feel sort of weird, but its just a matter of time where the baseline quality of edge of the network producers are making higher quality content that those at the center of the network. Hell, there is already arguably much better isolated pieces of content and clearly much more creative pieces in general depending on your perspective.

I don’t think that any of us can digest it all when one considers the range of interests and technologies. Rather I think that periodically we should turn on the fire hydrant of change and ideas and then turn it off and reflect on the possible futures. As I sit on the train this morning making a up and back commute to Los Angeles, that’s what I am doing. In addition to reading my RSS feeds, Chatting on IM, Sending Pictures to Flickr, Updating my blog, making a video clip….

Skype & VOIP

Ironically independent of the Google speculation and rumors, I found myself today firing up Skype for the first time since October. I had a call with someone in Europe and have found that a lot of the Europeans I interact with use Skype.

There were some strange echoes and noises periodically but generally it felt like an in stereo conversation. And it was free.

Right after that I had a call with another friend in the UK, who hasn't installed Skype yet. We hadn't talked in a couple of weeks so we spent a good amount of time chatting on my Vonage line for pennies a minute.

These calls were either free, or really cheap and the quality was more than acceptable. I would hate to be a fixed line carrier today.

Exeem Part. 2

Robin Good has a better overview of the significance of Exeem that I glossed over.

The elimination of the tracker and the ability for anyone to publish whatever type of media file is by far the most interesting to me.

Podcast + Flickr + Mappr

I haven't been listening to the Sound Seeing Tours that Adam Curry has been doing since the Florida trip. Today he mentions someone who combines a podcast with Flickr for a visual accompaniment. It will be really cool when you can add the map component aka Mappr to show where the picture was taken.

Exeem

Slashdot had a post announcing the release of Exeem, from the creators of Supernova, a leading BitTorrent search engine that got shut down by the MPAA. I checked it out over the weekend and it is kind of cool in that it creates a P2P universe that fuses the best of search technology with BitTorrent distribution. Two problems with it though. First, if you download the .2 Beta they have Cydoor embedded in the client so prepare for the ads. Second, a check this morning of the most downloaded files range from a lot of porn, to a lot of first run movies currently in the theater, to TV shows, to music, etc.

I am not sure how any of these great vehicles for grassroots distribution are ever going to get a foothold as long as everyone using the tools are breaking copyright law.

Mappr

As readers here know, I love Flickr. From the folks that brought you the great photo site, now we have Mappr. Mappr taked the meta tags you create on your flickr photos and maps them to places. I need to explore it some more but it looks pretty cool. I have frequently taken pictures of places I go as sort of a visual documentation of what I see as I walk around. This adds a really cool new dimension. Assuming you do the whole tagging thing. This is where you get a good visual overview of it.

-Derrick

The $250 Million Radio Show #14

Happy Friday - Show here. Info here.

rel="no follow" part 2

Actually this is a great article from John Battele on the matter.

What I missed

Being without your technology can be tough. The following covers what worked and what I missed:

What Worked -
1. P910 did a great job of keeping me in touch with email.
2. Gmail as an archive was great for the things I really needed.
3. Cheesy desktop replacement was fine given the different webmail accounts I had.

What I missed -
1. RSS feeds - Bloglines didn't have a full copy of my OPML files so I was reading a very small subset of feeds. Need to make sure that next time I import my full OPML file.
2. Archived email. There were a lot of things I needed to get to that I hadn't considered. Although I backed up my email, I didn't reinstall as I figured it would be too much of a hastle to POP my email and then resynch.
3. Ipod. No new podcasts until today.
4. Flexibility. I am kicking back in the den right now working. I couldn't really try to pull that off with a roomful of kids. "Hey honey I think I want to go work in the other room, those kids you have been dealing with all day, keep up the good work." Yeah. Like that would ever happen.

Technology Hell - Gateway: The Conclusion

My 4-5 calls and inquiries on the Gateway website were very unsatisfactory. I had abandoned hope until next week to get my machine back. Tonight when I walked into the house from work I was SHOCKED to see a box from Gateway in the entryway. MY MACHINE WAS BACK! And it is working really well.

It would seem that the website order tracking system isn't working at all. And whatever system is used by the customer service agents isn't worth much either. I have to think that the calls I made probably ate any margin that they had in doing the repair, if there was any margin to begin with.

Oh well, I am back in business and that's all that matters.

rel="nofollow"

Apparently a lot of people are up in arms both for and against the implementation of this. As I am not a heavy trafficked site or even a lightly commented site I don't get this. If I comment on someone's site its because I have something to say. I could give a rip if it changes my google or yahoo or whatever ranking.

SwitchVox

One of the really cool things about working at an exciting startup like MP3.com was getting to meet a bunch of really entrepreneurial people who are ambitious and smart. Many of us have gone on to do our own thing, including of course Michael Robertson with Linspire and Sipphone.

A group of the smartest engineers that I knew fairly well (Joshua Stephens, Brian Degenhardt, and Tristan Degenhardt) went on to found a company called Four Loop. They started out doing a variety of consulting gigs and ultimately decided to create a VOIP product that is built upon asterisk. The product is called Switchvox. We are currently testing it as a beta customer and I think its really cool. I have never set up a PBX, but it works really well and we have a really fun configuration. We have a Vonage line coming out of our router into a cheap Dell box that is running their software. I currently access my phone line via a softphone on the desktop PC I am using. I haven't gotten very far yet, but if you want a giggle dial our office at (858)964-5119.

They are debuting the product at the Desktop Linux Summit which will be here in San Diego.

Our Connectivity has been up and down all day. We have resorted to using the smartphone and keyboard and our cell phone for a conference call. The downside of Voice Over IP and our broadband dependence. 

Phone Starup Project Clip #7 Coastal Ride - Trying to use Quicktime Pro conversion of Sony MPEG 4 and publishing with Picasa 2 and Hello. 

Uncle and Auntie with the triplets - testing Picasa 2 and hello 

Technology Hell - Gateway Computers Pt. 2

My 3rd daily call results in no new information. Did I mention that this is my last purchase from Gateway? 10 minutes later and a request to talk to a manager tells me that the monitor will be in around January 24th and will be shipped back to me shortly thereafter. Sigh. Somehow I think that this isn't true either.

BitTorrent Made Even Easier - Prodigem

I saw a bunch of comments on yet another one of those mailing lists about Prodigem as a BitTorrent solution. I didn't pay attention until I saw another post on the Pho list and decided to check it out. I sent them an email to set up an account and I am either going to put up a torrent of my last podcast or use it to distribute the combined videoblog file I plan on making.

Virgin Flasher V7

Picked this up the other day. Here was an interesting article about it. I am going to be doing some testing here with the pictures, etc.

Technology Hell - Gateway Computers

I purchased a very large multimedia computer two years ago. Sometime this last spring I noticed a hairline crack in the back of my monitor near where the monitor connects to the laptop base. I freaked out. I didn't repair it at first because there were no visible issues and I figured I would just be careful.

Over the following 6 months or so I didn't notice anything unusual until about a month ago. I began having serious problems with my video display. I finally relented and shipped the machine to Gateway to have it repaired.

My computer has now been away for 10 days. My goal to get through whatever this time period would be was to use a combination of my P910, my home desktop and a desktop I bought for the office. For the most part it has worked until this last weekend. Although I backed up all my docs and critical files, I opted not to reinstall Eudora on my work desktop and rather keep the email on my various accounts until my machine came home.

The P910 has been great for staying current with email although I haven't used it much to reply. The home desktop has been a bust. I can't work at home. If I had my laptop I could move around with the kids etc. But to break away and try to work in another room with all the chaos at home hasn't made much sense.

This morning, with webmail accounts bulging and my P910 holding hundreds of messages and me needing to get access to old emails for a variety of purposes I called Gateway. They said that they don't have an update for completion of my repairs. AAAARRGGGGGHHHHH.

Deep breath. You never know how dependent you are on your technology until you don't have it.

RSS with Enclosures or MRSS

One of the groups I am on had an accidental post from another group. These groups were a certain discussion on Ourmedia, Videoblogging and MRSS. I hadn't heard of MRSS, but they pointed to the specification here.

It will be interesting to see if a distributed media RSS war develops along the lines of MP3, Real Audio, WMA circa 1999.

San Diego Blogger Con

Some of the people at San Diego Blog are trying to set up a San Diego Blogger Con. That's cool. After attending BloggerCon III it felt like doing something locally would be really fun.

Safe and Sound Nannies

On the topic of customer service, we hired an agency to assist us in finding a nanny last year when we lost our son's first nanny. We obviously had some challenges and I won't claim that we don't own part of the problem. When we got to the start of the year, I shared with the company that we had hired that we had just had triplets, my wife had been hospitalized, my son had gotten very sick etc. I also said we want to sit down with them to discuss our needs. The principal of the company said she was glad to but wouldn't be in San Diego until the middle of February. When we had problems before and I had requested to meet with her, she had told me she couldn't as she was in Colorado at the time. When I realized that she was in Colorado for most of the first two months of the year I left her a message stating that we wanted a refund on a prorated portion of her fee and that we wanted to part ways. I got this response:

From: Ann Wycoff, Ph.D. [mailto:wycoff@safeandsoundnannies.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 6:01 PM
To: 'shapery@cox.net'
Subject: nanny conflict

Dear Derrick,

In response to your phone message of January 4, 2005 where you requested a pro-rated refund I would like to review the following events:

You signed a fee agreement with Safe and Sound Nannies on April 19, 2004. We began a search for a qualified nanny for your family at that time. We sent you Person A, an experienced nanny, on or about April 25, 2004 but because of your family's travel plans, you were unable to make a decision regarding her because your wife was out of town and was unable to meet her in a timely manner. In the meantime, Person A was hired by another family. We then sent you Person B information on May 7, 2004. Person B has been a nanny since l994. We placed her in her last nanny position and she worked for that family successfully for 3 years. You interviewed Person B and hired her. She started working for you in June, 2004. In late June I called you to check on her performance and collect our placement fee. At that time you said you were unsure about whether you wanted to keep her. I told you to take your time to be sure she is the right fit for your position before you pay our fee. I did not charge our fee at that time. I called you again approximately 2 weeks later and you still were unsure about whether you wanted to keep her. I told you at that time that it was probably best if you did not hire her and did not pay our fee, and we could stop there. We had other families who were interested in Person B. You said you would call me in a few days and make a decision. You called on July 12, 2004 and said you wanted to keep Person B as your nanny and pay our fee. We billed our placement fee to your credit card on July 12, 2004. You called me approximately 2 weeks later, on or about July 26, 2004, and said you were unhappy with Person B and needed a replacement nanny as soon as possible. Although Person B expressed complaints about working conditions to me, I supported your decision completely and promised you I would make you our top priority and find you a qualified replacement. You made it clear that you needed a replacement as soon as possible. You reiterated that this was a busy time for you and you needed a nanny very soon. It is rare for one of our nanny placements to not work out, and we take our replacement policy very seriously. We (Safe and Sound Nannies) immediately spent substantial funds advertising extensively and spent substantial time interviewing nannies for your position. Because our screening process is thorough, and because we only send qualified nannies to our clients, we usually interview at least 15 nannies by phone before we find 1 whom we are interested in pursuing further. Of those whom we pursue, usually 1 out of 5 pass the standardized, statistically validated personality screen, have excellent references (which we speak with personally), and give us an excellent in-person interview. In addition to meeting those qualifications, the right nanny for your position needed to be open to working 50 hours per week, have flexibility in her schedule, have the energy, willingness and ability to handle triplets and another child, (or be willing to work with another nanny) be willing to commute to Cardiff, and desire a long term commitment. Knowing that you were in a hurry, we put other families' needs aside so that you would not be inconvenienced, and we concentrated on finding qualified candidates for you as quickly as possible.

On August 4, 2004, we e-mailed information to you on Person C, including her application, references, and phone number. Person C had worked with children since l996, had a college degree, an excellent personality screen, excellent references, an excellent in-person interview, and was interested in your position. She also lived in Encinitas, which is close to your home. We find very few qualified nannies who live in Encinitas and we were excited to have found her. In addition to sending you the e-mail, I also called you to let you know about Person C. You agreed to call her but you did not.

On August 7, 2004, we e-mailed information to you on Person D. Person D had 10 years of experience, 22 child development college units, 4 excellent references, an excellent personality screen and an excellent interview. She was interested in your position. We had placed her in her last position of 2 years and the family gave her a beautiful reference. You did not call Person D either.

On August 10, 2004 I called you again and asked you if you were going to call our candidates. You expressed dismay that Person D was asking for $14/hr but that is the same hourly rate that you had offered and agreed to pay Person B. You said you were going to hire a family friend temporarily and would need a nanny sometime in November. You wanted to put the search "on hold". I mentioned that we had gone to extensive cost and effort to find you qualified replacements and you hadn't called either candidate, although you had told me you needed a replacement as soon as possible. You made no justification for failing to call the candidates. You sent me an e-mail the next day expressing your dismay that I had brought up the effort we had expended on your behalf. Although we had met our commitment to you as set forth in our agreement by sending you 2 qualified replacement candidates, I was willing to accomodate you over and above the parameters of our contract, and I told you we would search for a nanny to start in November. You did not call me in November. In December you sent me an e-mail asking me to call you after the New Year. I called you on Monday, January 3, 2005 as you had requested and you said you "may have decided" that you need a live-in nanny; you weren't sure what you wanted and would talk with your wife and call me on January 4, 2005. We don't place live-ins, and you and I discussed that in-depth during our first conversation in April, 2004. At that time you hired us to find you a live-out nanny. On January 4, 2005 you left a phone message saying "my wife and I can't work with you because you're not located in San Diego" and you wanted a pro-rated refund.

Safe and Sound Nannies operates a fully staffed office in San Diego. Although I spend a portion of my time in Colorado, my home is in Carlsbad and I participate fully in screening, checking references, and interviewing every nanny candidate who passes our initial criteria. I personally review every psychological screen on every candidate. I employ an experienced, trained, full-time assistant who is physically working in our San Diego office Monday through Friday from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. and often on Saturdays. My assistant was trained personally by me and has participated in over 500 in-person intervierws with me in our San Diego office. She and I continue to interview candidates together in-person in our San Diego office. In the event that I cannot interview a nanny in-person, my assistant interviews her in-person in our office and I participate fully through a webcam and speaker phone. Every nanny is interviewed by both my assistant and me so that we have the perspective of 2 interviewers for each candidate. Every family who uses our service works directly with me.

Please refer to our fee agreement which states: "Safe and Sound Nannies agrees that should the service relationship between client and selected candidate be terminated before the 180th calendar day following the candidate's start date, Safe and Sound Nannies will present at least 2 additional qualified candidates, OR, at Safe and Sound Nannies' sole discretion, provide a pro-rated refund. This paragraph is not applicable if the service relationship is terminated because the position is eliminated..."

Safe and Sound Nannies provided "at least 2 additional qualified candidates" to you. Also, your position was eliminated when you hired a family friend. We accomodated you within the paramaters of our contract. We have hereby fulfilled our obligations to you and you are therefore not entitled to a pro-rated refund or any further actions on our part. Please direct any questions to my controller, Stephen Parker at (619) 987-4894, who will be happy to discuss the matter further. He will also be happy to provide you with his e-mail address upon request. I will not be involved in or respond to any further comunication on this matter either by phone or e-mail.

Regards,

Ann Wycoff

BitTorrent Made Simple?

I am eager to see how BitTorrent plays out as a distribution mechanism for media. This article by Marc Eisenstadt is a worthwhile, if long read if you are interested in the topic. If you are more interested on a quick hands on how to, he points to this article which gives a nice step by step. I haven't tried it yet, but as soon as I get some free time I will see if I can BitTorrent my podcast.

Wireless Sensor Networks Pt. 5 - This technology in action

Longtime readers have seen previous mentions of wireless sensor networks and motes by companies such as Ember and Dust. My last comment was here. One of the pilot projects has made really good progress and currently they have an online reporting system that tracks the status of temperature within a perishable pile of organic material to check for hot spots and spoilage.

If the company can find early indications of spoilage they can attempt to arrest the issue before the loss grows. Look at this report. If you navigate to layer 4, you can see a hotspot where the temperature is significantly higher than the surrounding sensors.

The application of these types of sensors in manufacturing and agriculture holds great promise for understanding environments at a system level and determining ways to solve problems before they start. Maybe this is why Robert Metcalfe of Metcalfe's law and Ethernet is spending his time on this kind of technology.

Triplet Video Post

Posted a triplet video here. Thought it was worth sharing.

Dave Harper - WinkSite

Two months ago, almost to the day, Dave Harper sent me a link to an article he posted regarding User Generated Content. I had intended to make a specific comment to his post, i.e., where I agreed and disagreed. I unfortunately didn't get around to doing that, and as I go through my drafts cleaning up some unfinished quotes I returned to the article today.

The topic, which is of course what I have focused on in what I am doing around blogging/podcasting and now video blogging, seems poised for a lot of attention this year as more tools of self publication and more methods of deriving and aggregating distribution appear.

Instead of commenting on Dave's post specifically, I would refer you to look at the article, but more importantly to the list of discussions and references Dave cites. Dave has provided links to 11 articles, one of which is mine, that talk about various aspects of user generated content. If you take the time to read my blog and are interested in this area, I think it is a worthwhile investment to read the article and the links provided.

The $250 Million Radio Show #13

New show posted here. Information here.

Other Media Stuff - Podcast page and Videoblog experiment

I kind of like to keep things separate so I set up a new page for The $250 Million Radio show. I will announce new shows here but pretty much everything else will be there. The feed will remain the same.

I also wanted to play with videoblogging and didn't want to just talk into my camerphone and I didn't want to mix it in with my normal blogging, so I decided to do a cheesy phone based documentary piece at The Phone Startup Project. I even went in and edited the dircaster php script to create an RSS 2.0 feed for the 'project'. The RSS feed for this can be found there as well.

When I more completely understand videoblogging I will post the occasional piece here, but for the most part I will limit it to the other page for the time being.

Vloggercon

Been reading in my feeds a lot of buzz about video-blogging etc. I finally went over to the site for Vloggercon and was amazed at the in page video integration of the video blog. So I joined the Yahoo group and swear that sometime in the next week or two I am joining the Vloggers with video posts here. I highly recommend checking it out. I need to see if I can play it on my phone though....

Real Time Media Prosumers

Anyone who reads this blog knows that recently my wife and I welcomed three new additions into our family. I like to keep the blog focused on the intersection of user generated content, technology and media, but occasionally take the liberty to intersperse the personal. As this was a unique event, I thought it worthy of sharing.

When my first child was born, I documented, rather a friend documented the event with a DVCam. Several months later I spliced together various cuts and made a DVD using Pinnacle software for our various family members. This was personal media creation and sharing. At the time I thought this was really impressive as I had spent some time working with Super 8 film and found the editorial process of this medium not really well suited to me.

The revolution in desktop video is being led by Apple and Pinnacle and others as they put professional, or arguably professional quality tools in the hand of consumers. If you take the time to get familiar with the tools, you can get a product that is definitely worth sharing with others.

Fast forward two years. As I waited in the prep room with my wife, I was armed with the same DVCam, a Sony Cybershot camera, and a Sony Ericsson P910. As we waited for the appointed time for the c-section, I periodically snapped pictures with the cell phone and immediately posted them to Flickr. I had told friends and family to look at my blog on the photostream section and they could see the event happen in as real time as I could provide. Periodically I fired up Opera on my cell phone and added some blog posts for commentary.

During the delivery we filmed a good portion of the time immediately after the babies arrived with the DVCam and then resumed stills with the cell phone and the camera. That night as I returned home I uploaded images from the camera to Flickr and then used the cross posting capabilities to post back on blogspot.

During this time period I had as many visits to my blog as I have had when I have had posts covered by Unmediated or Waxy or Dave Winer. Theses were not bloggers, rather they were family and friends sharing in a real time way an event that we wanted to share with others.

During the holidays in between feedings I reflected on how transformative this ability to use network connected personal media devices to create information to share with others. When you consider this type of activity and blogging and podcasting and a host of other activities, I think that we are clearly at the dawn of a period where media turns in on itself and we all become Real Time Media Producers and Consumers or Real Time Media Prosumers.

JD Lasica wrote a great post today that got me to the keyboard to write this. It will be interesting to see how the mainstream market adapts to these concepts and decides what are the right tools/software/services/distribution channels for this type of media.

FOAF

I have been doing some standards research for some technologies that may or may not be important to the some of the products we are developing. One of the areas I have been looking at is FOAF. After filing out my profile on Friendster, LinkedIn, Orkut, Match.com, and way too many other services that have the same profile information over and over again, the promise of one FOAF file that I can use for all these types of services certainly holds out some promise.

Right now it looks kind of lightweight to me, but when they finish this version of a FOAF creation tool, then this will be interesting.

P1010854

P1010854,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

This is just funny.

New Years Eve Podcast - The $250 Million Show #12

Recorded with a real mic and about 10 minutes longer than normal. Find it here.

Featuring

3 Dates Later
P.R.Y.D.E.
Tourist
Super Happy Fun American TV Family Death Challenge
Eight Page Pullout
Guys On Couch
Rocket Dial

One more thought

Mark Cuban drives me nuts, but this is brilliant.

Reflecting on 2004

With the exception of my wife's health problems AFTER the triplet pregnancy(which are much better), 2004 was a great year full of many personal, family and professional highlights including in no particular order:

1. 10th anniversary
2. Birth of the Triplets
3. Son's second Birthday
4. Fantastic Trip to Belize
5. Founded a new business
6. Started Blogging - and kept on going.
7. Started a Podcast

Lots of travel, lots of new friends, lots of re-connecting with old friends. All in all a banner year. As for next year I resolve the following:

1. Launch our first product very soon.
2. Keep family #1 on my priorities.
3. Keep on media networking (blogging and podcasting and whatever else, can you say Vlogging?)


Well I am sure there are other things like, coolest technology of the year (P910), favorite new website (Flickr) best new bands, best books etc. but I think that its time to wrap it up until next year.

Life, Death and Health

These last several weeks my blogging has taken on a more personal tone, which is to be expected with the birth of a child, or in my case a bunch of children. I had anticipated getting back to my usual fodder, but the last week has been a bit crazy. So much so that I haven't been really posting or doing anything other than trying to manage the chaos at home.

Following my wife's homecoming, she began experiencing strange cold spells that happened over several days. We weren't sure what the issue was, but the third episode last Wednesday was so intense and was accompanied with restricted breathing that resulted in a 911 call. She was evacuated to a nearby hospital and we spent the next 24 hours determining if it was HELP syndrome, pneumonia or kidney infection or a combination. She remained hospitalized until yesterday and is now doing better but has some lingering issues that don't seem that bad.

In the meantime our 2 1/2 yr old contracted Croup and Bronchitis, which is very dangerous around preemies. We had to scramble to isolate him and my wife from the triplets, and everything seems to have gotten on the right path.

It is at these times that the fragile nature of life, death, and our health comes into focus and you truly appreciate how amazing the human body and modern medicine have become. We keep crossing our fingers and hope that by this time next week everything will return to normal.

Tate with his "$600 Christmas Gift"

Between Xmas and New Year 009,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

My aunt Gladys sent Tate a card and $2 for Christmas. We asked Tate what this was and he said it was $600. We fell on the floor laughing and I had to snap this picture for her as a thank you. Captialism starts young.