New Technorati

Check out the new " www.technorati.com " Technorati a . It seems like they have made some really good improvements. I haven;t checked the result sets yet and I am sure that there probably are continuing problems in that area, but I am excited to see where they go.,

Rabble in New York Times

We had a really nice write up here today.

Triplet Baptism

It's Friday and still no podcast. Maybe tonight. This weekend every relative on the planet is descending on our house to witness the baptism of our triplets, Mallory, Tucker and Brit. It should be great fun. I'll definitely post a bunch of pics.,

Silicon Valley

Spending the day traveling again.,

Schiavo and Liberty

I was glad to see that the husband of Terry Schiavo was vindicated in the autopsy results. Whether or not the results had come out the way they ultimately did, I still find myself terribly disturbed by the erosion of personal liberty in this country and the apparent lack of a voice standing up for personal liberty. I say to the government, I will pay my taxes and obey the laws. Just stay out of my house and my personal matters. Does anybody else miss this emphasis? Democrats? Republicans? Somebody?

Painfully Busy

Unfortunately I have been so busy with Rabble that I haven't been blogging regularly or reading my feeds or even letting a podcast fly. I expect that I will get a breather soon, but in the meantime I definitely plan to put out a new $250 Million Radio Show today or tomorrow. More commentary on Edge of the Network media very soon.

Travel Log - Redmond

The rain cleared and revealed a gorgeous day for Seattle. I spent the morning in town in meetings and headed out to Redmond for our afternoon meetings. Redmond has such a weird vibe. A beautiful setting which is the headquarters of the most successful company in the US in the last 30 years or so. Its amazing to see the lush malls popping out of the forests. It feels like today is going to be a good day. I fly home later tonight.

Rain?

I am in Seattle. I was shocked when I landed. It was raining a little bit. Hmmm. Seems unusual for spring. Oh well, I love this town. I'll forgive it...

Product Launches

Product launches are really cool. I guess I mean objectively cool because something came from nothing. The hardwork and time and all the stress and other stuff isn't very cool. But it's clearly a part of the process. Rabble turns a week old in a couple of hours and it has been an awesome week for us at Intercasting. I fly to Seattle tomorrow for a couple of days of meetings and hope to blog about some of my normal stuff during the downtime.

Channel Derrick

I forgot to say, if you are on Rabble subscribe to me on Channel Derrick. Shortly we will be rolling out integration from Rabble to Blogger and Live Journal, so look for some Rabble posts here later.

Seattle

I am spending a couple of days in Seattle this week for meetings. More later.

Mobile Homesteading

When we set up the Intercasting site I had intended to start migrating more of my posting to our company blog. I think I am going to try to do that more and more when talking about our specific company issues that may bleed over into the usual stuff I like to blog about. So without further to do, my first Intercasting post can be found here. Please check it out - a small slice is below:

"With that in mind, we embarked this week on the creation of a mobile community built around the premise that at the intersection of all types of user generated content and sophisticated personal media devices are the elements of a new and exciting community of users willing to create and share their media."

Rabble

Rabble launched on Verizon earlier this week on a subset of our handsets. You can see the information on our site. More to come this week! Check out What's New or Get Messaging to get a copy of the application.

A little news...

We launched. We are keeping it a bit quiet because we haven't rolled out all of our handsets (11 of 22). We will make some noise next week. Have a nice weekend.

Rabble at BREW

We are showing people Rabble at the BREW Conference in San Diego yesterday, today and tomorrow. If you are in town come by and check it out.

Travel Log - SF and Silcon Valley

Got back last week on Friday from the East Coast. It was a great trip despite the horrible weather. We have been doing a quick and dirty VC trip in advance of our launch and it has been a generally fun experience getting to know a bunch of smart people and trying to understand how you would include them in your company.

The weekend involved a lot of family time as my wife is returning to work after six months at home with the triplets. We spent a lot of time with the kids and took the triplets out to their first party at our friends Bruce and Darcy.

We spent the last day running around SF and Silicon Valley for part of our west coast trip and again really enjoyed the conversations and the people. Somewhere in the middle of this I got a nasty cold that isn't helping considering how busy we are.

Today is BREW conference which should be really interesting as we have a lot of interest in our product.

Podcast Wars

Don't miss the latest installment of the Podcast Wars between Dave Winer and Adam Curry. In this episode Dave gives his side of the behind the scenes dealings between the two of them.

Travel Log - Boston

All in all a great trip so far. I am sure I will have some good reflections on the flight home. One problem though...

in·som·ni·a (n-smn-)
n.

Chronic inability to fall asleep or remain asleep for an adequate length of time.

I have had a historical problem with this when I travel. It seems over the last six months or so it hasn't been an issue, until today. After getting to bed at just before midnight, I woke up wide awake at 4 AM. Several hours later here I am. Fortunately today is a bit light, but I can't tell you how nasty it is to be tired and not able to sleep.

In Boston

NYC was fast and furious. Got to hang out with Eli Chapman one night which is always fun. We got into Boston late and got to hang out with CC Chapman who is a damn fine podcaster and a great guy. The next two days will be busy before we fly back home. Two Chapman's in as many days. Funny.

Dallas Skylink

54LI0067.jpg,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

The DFW airport finally got rid of the Disneyland era Peoplemover with the cool and quick Skylink. Now you can make those really short connections in Dallas. It's a big upgrade.

In New York

We have a full day in NYC and I don't expect much blogging this week, although I am sure something will strike me along the way. At any rate there should be some pics occasionally here.

BitTorrent economics

Check out the following article entitled Mindjack, Is Piracy good? The story highlights the BitTorrent release of the new version of BattleStar Galactica and how a time gap between the UK and the US created intense interest that made the debut of the show one of the most highly watched things on the SciFi Channel in the US.

The author also briefly touches upon how scarcity has created the control necessary to prop up the legacy economics of television, which is something I like to comment on frequently. Its almost funny when they speak of how broadcasters are barriers rather than conduits for the flow of content, which is painfully true but also understandable given their business model.

The author goes on to highlight how use of on-screen icons may be a good way to capture value for advertisers. This is definitely one way to deal with capturing value in a world of distributed hyperdistribution, but I don’t think that the multiple models required to create the necessary economics for big media content are imminent or practical at this point. Rather I think that the pattern of lawsuits initiated by the RIAA will be continued in the near term by the MPAA while producers of content at the edge of the network will try to create economic value for ‘right priced’ content through low cost production, hyper-distribution and the development of audience on a scale that supports their endeavors. Periodically big media will see the value in this edge generated content and will try to re-purpose it in ways such as Adam Curry broadcasting podcasting, or in harvesting the seeds of this content and putting the big media stamp on it for a increasingly departing audience.

Bayosphere

Dan Gillmor announced the birth of Bayosphere this week. Dan wrote the great book We the Media which I enjoyed a lot. I was excited to see what he was going to do, and I guess I expected something a little more broad than a grassroots site focusing on the Bay area (hence the name). I guess you have to start with what you know. I am assuming he is going to use the parent company to branch out after they get started ala Craigslist.

TMobile Voicemail Upgrade Problems - Part Two

I have been getting a lot of hits on my blog recently for people searching for a variety of problems with their TMobile voicemail. When the upgrade happened, I actually called customer service to ask about the problem. I was told that there weren't any problems and they weren't getting any complaints. I think the 10 or so hits I am getting each day for search strings like "Tmobile Voicemail Upgrade" or "Tmobile Voicemail Problems" says other wise. I think I am going to throw in another call as I missed two voicemails last night...

FireANT

Hey if you want a taste of podcasting for video go out and download FireANT. Jay Dedman & crew have released the Windows version of their ANT software. I've been anxiously awaiting this to rekindle by earlier toying around with videoblogging. I have to say that the formatting issues of video are still a real big pain in the butt, much more so than podcasting which still has a ways to go for the non-techie.

The $250 Million Radio Show #23

A very rocking version of the $250 Million Radio Show can be found here. Credits here. Please do yourself a favor and check out the first two tracks by Scarlet Symphony. These guys are going to be huge!!!!!

User Generated Content: Ego Surfing and Media Networking

I meant to post this last week but got really busy with our "any day now" launch of Rabble.

One of the keystones of our company is the idea of Location Aware Media Networking. Shawn wrote this piece that talks more in depth about the concept.

Practically speaking though, what does media networking look like?

Blogging on a consistent basis creates a lot of media. In the last year I think I have posted on average a post a day or something north of 300 - 500 posts. Originally my intention was to take more of an essay approach or a long form approach like Russell Beattie and some others including Shawn. In practice I have found that I write the occasional essay or long form piece ("Of Note" posts on the sidebar) and more often than not write short pieces that hit highlights of things I have encountered or things that reference back to the longer pieces I have written in terms of subject matter. Not quite link blogging, but somewhere in the middle. Sometimes I write about the little personal things in life that are important to me because that's what I want to do.

Because I have had several pieces picked up on some other blogs, I have had a couple of good traffic spikes associated with this blog. When you combine that with a large volume of media created from the smaller posts, you get some interesting effects that are reflected in search engines. I think it is interesting to point out this effect and the implications in the future as more people become active creators of content.

Ego Surfing

I have seen others like Stowe write about ego surfing the search engines. When I first read these posts I thought they were kind of funny and kind of silly. Over time however there is an interesting impact that I have noticed as I saw my result set rise in the rankings.

In my personal example of ego surfing my ranking as the most relevant "Derrick" on the some major search engines is as follows:

Google - 14th result
Yahoo - 3rd result
MSN - Nothing in the first 5 pages in the recently changes search engine.
Hot Bot - 14th result
Altavista - 7th result
Clusty - 42nd result

As for "Oien" I get pretty high in all of them either 1st or 3rd in all except MSN where I again am not in the first 5 pages of results. I need to go spend some time understanding their result sets as they are so different that the rest. I am sure there are some good reasons for that.

So what? I agree, short of some self centered view of fame this doesn't have any obvious value, but underneath the surface the value is more powerful. A review of people who have come to this blog over the weekend reveals some interesting data. Some examples include:

1. Somebody looking for the term "user generated world map" on Google (8th result)
2. Somebody looking for the term "tmobile callertunes verizon" on Google (6th result)
3. Somebody looking for the term "neil berkman echo" on Google (3rd result) (Neil is a friend)
4. Somebody looking for the term "voicemail doesn't work tmobile" (1st result)

At any rate on any given day something like 10-15% of the traffic to my blog is coming from these searches that may have relevance but may not either. In the above example #3 is from a mention of a friend that may or may not be useful to the person searching and #4 is about a specific post about the problem I continue to have with TMobile. The other posts are of marginal relevance, but the important thing is that I have posted a lot, and I have used some of the words they are looking for. And because of that, they might be reading this post, or something else that doesn't really answer their question.

At this point in time where there are arguably a handful (ok a REALLY big handful) of people blogging on a frequent basis, there is an inordinate amount of skewing of the result sets on most of the search engines towards results that have an intersection with these content creators who are blogging and the information people are seeking. I guess you could argue that there is some relevance based on that, and I know that I have had more than a couple of conversations with people as a result of these sort of random intersections, but generally to me these types of results miss the mark.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the impact of this and would make the following observations:

1. Increasingly in a world of decentralized media production and consumption we will find each other through the content we create, for better or worse. As things become more and more decentralized the way people will find us will be either through a direct existing relationship, a referral, or serendipity.

2. There will be a skewing of results in the various methods of finding people whether it is through search engines or blog specific engines towards people who create a lot of content. The body of work created by bloggers becomes self perpetuating and I am not entirely certain how you balance out volume versus quality as more and more bloggers are created. I would also say that some of the most articulate and bright people I know aren't blogging. Are those voices less interesting than those who have been blogging for several years?

3. Although most of the bloggers I read blog based on an interest area or some other outgrowth of their other efforts commercial or otherwise, I believe that there will be an increasing view that blogging is at a fundamental level a personal marketing platform rather than a method of self expression. I don't think that this is necessarily an intended consequence, but is a outgrowth of the explosion of information and the use of search engines as a means to give you what the TV Guide, the library, or friends used to be able to give you, i.e. information. Sure we want to chronicle our thoughts or start a conversation, but if you actually connect with people or have your content syndicated then people will find your writings whether they are your target audience or not.

4. Rich media will undergo a similar effect when we are able to index audio and video in a comprehensive way similar to what we have with full text search and blogs. Clearly doing that is no small feat, but imagine how powerful that will be.

I'd love to hear some thoughts on this or some pointers to other discussions of this elsewhere if you have any. I am sure this will be a topic I revisit often as I think the implications are extremely profound.

Gardening Thoughts - Heirloom Tomatoes

For Mother's day last weekend, Tate and I planted a garden. We had a section of the backyard that wasn't doing much of anything so Jess had a terraced section put in to set up a pretty good sized garden. Back in my early 20s I tried my hand at growing some things and found that when I didn't kill the plants I enjoyed spending a little bit of time doing the gardening thing.

Our local market has an awesome selection of heirloom tomatoes in the summer but they usually have a pretty obscene price tag. So I decided to dedicate a big chunk of space to trying some different heirlooms. We planted Bradywine, Chiant Rose, German Green, Yellow Pear and a couple of others. I'll put some pics up later if I manage to get the to grow. If I get it even close to working I expect to have some really tasty treats this summer.

The interesting thing with this is how we as a consumer society have gone from variety to mass homogenization back to variety. We have bred the flavor out of food to make sure that they are exactly the right size and last the perfect amount of time, and look what we think they should look like. When you contrast that with the bizarre shape of heirlooms complete with imperfections and a flavor that can't be beat, I'll take the weird ones everyday. Same with my music, same with my media.

The $250 Million Radio Show #22

The show can be found here. The credits here.

This show features some neo-psychedelic, reggae, progressive, surf-american and Celtic Rock.

WMG IPO

I am kind of bummed for some of my friends at Warner Music Group. I don't pretend to understand where the music business is going, but it appears that the marketplace doesn't have high hopes for the traditional music business given the downward pricing pressure of the WMG IPO pre market debut and the subsequent tumble to under $16 right now. I don't get the sense that UMG would have the same experience given their commanding market share, but until the larger issues get sorted out it seems that being exposed to the pressures of the daily market swings can't be a good thing for a business that has to invest in the future to make money. Especially when that future doesn't seem obvious to anyone.

Dodgeball

Google gobbled up Grad school thesis project/company Dodgeball. Good news for us companies in the Mososo world and the larger social social software world.

Digital Music Take 35 or is it Take 2? Yahoo!

Yahoo got into music. In a serious way. So rather than just another partial step, this may be the start of the serious development of Digital Music. I can't wait to see how this shapes up.

Blogging Birthday

Today it has been a year since I started blogging. It's been quite a journey for me.

I've found old friends, made new ones, started podcasting, played a little bit with video, and found myself doing something I hope to be doing years from now. I'd definitely recommend it to others.

Scarlet Symphony

Last Friday night during the triplet health meltdown, I snuck away to hang out with Mike Halloran. Mike is a radio god of alternative and indie music. Here is a cool blogspost that talks about the format Mike helped to pioneer.

I wanted to talk with Mike about podcasting and Rabble and other assorted stuff. I got to hang out at the radio station he is currently at 94.9 in San Diego. I didn't know it but Mike is a big fan of Shepard Fairey so the office was very decorated and I was able to get some pics for my Flickr collection.

We talked and Mike was insistent that I go out with him that night to see a band he was raving about. Now Mike isn't one to rave, but I sat with him literally 4 years ago and he told me that emo was the next big thing in music and that Dashboard Confessionals had a good chance at being the big hit of the genre. Arguably he was right on both counts. Mike was also one of the big early boosters of Blink 182. So when someone INSISTS and they have a track record you go along.

The band we saw was Scarlet Symphony. I was floored. The band was just amazing and this is coming from someone who has seen hundreds of shows and am very infrequently impressed at live shows. I don't think that the tracks they have on their site do the live show justice but I guarantee that when they get the right producer, these guys have a chance at being enormously successful. You heard it here first. Now I need to get them on my podcast...

Triplet Disease Experiments

One of the triplets, Brit, took a trip to North Dakota. He came back a week ago Sunday with a bit of a cough the following Monday. By Wednesday it was pneumonia. By Thursday/Friday the cold had spread to the other 2/3s. By yesterday his identical twin Tucker had pneumonia and Mallory was on her way. Today Brit seems to be around the bend and everyone else seems to be at the apex of the disease and are starting to improve. WOW. What a week!!!!!

Podcasting Legal Primers

As more people play around with podcasting, more people are becoming aware of the potential legal issues. Chris from Indiefeed posted a link to this article from the Collegiate Broadcasters in the AMP forums. It's good to see continued education about not getting sued. Getting sued sucks.

Cellphedia

Unmediated had an article the other day about a new service called Cellphedia. It sounded interesting to me as it has some of the attributes that we think are found in Rabble. I signed up for it. The process goes something like this. You sign up for the service. You pick several categories of expertise to answer questions. You set a limit to the number of SMS inquiries you will get a day.

Seemed easy enough. The first day I got two messages that I didn't have time to respond to.

The second day I received 5. This wasn't so bad, except, two of them came across as MMS messages. You know, MMS like $.25 a message. Boy that ticks me off. So let me get this straight. I offer help to the 'community' and for the 'privilege' I get to pay to see the questions and possibly respond. No thanks. Sorry. My unlimited SMS subscription meant that you are taking a small slice of my time. The MMS meant you were ripping me off.

Blog Clutter

I saw a friend had put a Feedburner banner on their blog showing the number of readers they have. I like stuff like that as I am a data junkie. The more data the better. I love that about Bloglines. I have 57 people who have subscribed at one time or another. I don't suspect many of them read on a frequent basis, but it's an interesting number to me for some reason.

I also really like the HitMaps thing at the bottom of this page that I was intrigued by when Stowe put one on his site. There are people in places where I have never been that have read my blog at some time. It could have been the accidental "Next Blog" on Blogger or I might have actually said something interesting somewhere. I am guessing that it's 50/50.

All of this got me to thinking that I have a ton of crap on my blog. I like the Flickr bar, but I think I am going to be using Phlog and Zoto more, or in addition to Flickr. Hmmm. I don't listen to any of the podcasts I have links to other than AMP links, which I am listening more and more to.

I think its a good time for some springtime blog cleaning... Oh that reminds me, those Google Ad words, I think I am up to like $5.93. This one hurts me. Do I eliminate the beer money banner at the top cuz it's really not something I ever plan to make money on, or in a nod to my free hosting it's something I should have because I am a supporter of capitalism? The hard choices in life...

Intercasting Corp Blog Update

If you haven't had a chance to check out our company blog come on over and check out the writings of my business partner Shawn Conahan. The topics are familiar to readers of this blog. You can find the IntercastingCorp blog here.

The $250 Million Radio Show #21

After a long podcasting break, show #21. You can find the file here. Credits here.

Sirius Thoughts

Dave Winer wrote this post about the Adam Curry/Sirius deal. I commented with the following:

When one thinks about the media forces that emanate from either the edge of the network or the center of the network, this is just one more example of the center of the network finding something valuable at the edge. This has happened many times before for example, Beavis and Butthead, South Park, CounterStrike (gaming), etc.

As we increasingly develop ecosystems at the edge of the network, big media will increasing look to the edge to find content that it can plug in to fill the constrained capacity that they own.

Scarcity creates the value of content in the big media world. In the world where there is no scarcity of distribution, content becomes inexpensive. This is our world.

The story is good news for those who are going to make money on it, but the real heavy work and hard lifting that will create the REAL ecosystems will continue on as it has over these last hectic months.

Adam Curry and Sirius

Adam Curry inked a deal with Sirius. Four hours of podcasting a day! Hehe.

Traveling

We plan on doing some extensive traveling starting the week of May 23 and continuing into the next week. Cities should include SF, Boston and NYC. If you are a friend and want to hang out when I am coming through drop me a line. Once the schedule is set I'll post it on my RSS Calendar on this page.

Skype - Out, In, Etc.

I have found myself in the last several weeks using Skype a lot. We have had a couple of conference calls for AMP(Association of Music Podcasting) where I am President and I have been working with someone who is spending time on Acmenoise who will be working remotely with a distributed group of people. So I decided last night to take the big time Skype Plunge. I am going to ad a link to the blog, I bought a Skype In number I am going to publish and really want to see how far they can take this.

Edge of the Network Propaganda - Welcome to the Future

This is an incredible piece of videoblogging edge of the network propaganda by Chuck Olsen from Minneapolis. Do yourself a favor and check it out! Its witty and poignant. Cameraphones have replaced lighters at concerts. Classic.

The Scooter Diaries

Che Guevera rode a motorcycle through South America, as chronicled in The Motorcycle Diaries, and ended up departing his career as a physician in favor of becoming a revolutionary in the 3rd world. As we look to the mobile world and the incredible opportunities in edge of the network content we derive some of our inspiration from our scooters.

Podcast Broadcast

Infinity is creating an all podcast radio station called KYOU. More thoughts later...I've been aware of it for a little while and am curious to see what the execution is like.

Tate near San Jacinto

Tate near San Jacinto,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

Having a great vacation.

ArtWalk

We came home early a day from vacation and decided to take a quick run down to the Little Italy section of San Diego to check out ArtWalk. It had been a number of years since we had been to this event as we try to go to Jazzfest in New Orleans on the same weekend most years. I was blown away. It had been a number of years since we had been there and it has grown substantially. In addition to the volume, the quality was awesome. Too many of these types of shows are heavy on the arts and crafts category. We picked up two small things by Grant Pecoff and Cynthia Colis. We had seen Grant's work for many years hanging in our favorite sushi bar in Solana Beach and couldn't walk away with out something small.

Mt. San Jacinto

Mt. San Jacinto,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

We took a break from the poolside for a quick trip up the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. At the top we were six miles from the peak of Mt. San Jacinto. It was gorgeous. It reminded me of how much I miss hiking, which was something Jessica and I did a lot when we first started dating and well into the years before kids. I can't wait until I can make them march up with me. We had climbed this peak from the South Side probably 7+ years ago. 15 miles roundtrip. That's a good hike.

Google Video Upload Part Three

I got back from vacation and was anxious to check out my video that I uploaded on Google. Um, its still not there. Strange, but then it's free right? Its going to be really cool when putting video on the net is easier than configuring Trumpet Winsock to surf the Internet.

Lexis Nexis

Got back from vacation refreshed and ready to go. I had one interesting piece of welcome mail that I thought I would share. A couple of weeks ago when I heard about this story on NPR, I chuckled. Unfortunately for me I had two pieces of mail from Lexis Nexis when I got home. Ok, so I guess it wasn't that funny any more. I am going to be spending some time with them on the phone today and since I am a California resident I am "freezing my credit file". I'd recommend that if you live in California you should look into it.

Palm Springs

Each year around this time for many years my wife and I take a quick break by hauling out to Palm Springs and spending a little time by the pool on days where the temperature is between 90-100 F. This year we decided to take the brood.

All in all its been a good trip so far. I planned on not blogging or working or really doing much of anything. Today on a whim I fired up the laptop and found some free wifi. This from a house on a golf course. I guess that makes sense but in years past my cellphone barely worked.

I try to use this break to decompress and always try to read something I wouldn't normally read. (I normally read business and technology books). I think last year I was reading Free Culture but that might have been around July.

This year I am reading "From Jesus to Christianity" which is unlike anything I have read since Guns, Germs and Steel. I found myself slightly interested in the papal succession and had some lingering issues from reading The Da Vinci Code so the Michael White piece seemed like one of the better books on early church history. I have a friend Copil Yanez who undertook a study of the transformation of the Mormon Church as it achieved it's amazing current growth rates and began to smooth out the rough edges. Reviewing the foundations of early Christianity seems as interesting a topic. I'll let you know later.

Google Video Upload Part Two

Still can't find the file. Guess I'll try again...

Blogging, Riverside and Ned Cooney

I think that as you continue to blog, you increasingly understand the power of information and networks. Several months ago a friend from high school sent me an email as she had discovered my blog and wanted to see if I was the same Derrick Oien.

Recently I noticed a person from the City of Riverside had been reading my blog. Nobody came to mind, then I recalled that a friend I hadn't seen in like 10 years was the head of a non-profit in Riverside County. Rika Dotson, who was the other person mentioned previously was a friend of this person Ned Cooney as well. I emailed her to see if she knew his email address. I got it and sent him an email asking him if he was reading my blog. I didn't hear back.

We recently hired a system administrator who worked with us at MP3.com who is based in Montana. Scott comes down once in a while but generally overseas our managed hosting group here in San Diego from afar. Yesterday I got a call from Montana and I answered the phone, "Yeah Scott"
"Hey Derrick"
"This isn't Scott?"
"No it's Ned Cooney"
"What the hell are you doing in Montana?"
"How did you know I was in Montana?"
"My System Administrator lives there."
"Weird"

We had a great chat. I still don't know who in Riverside is reading, but it was great getting in touch with Ned.

Ourmedia Vs. Google Video

I have had a couple of hiccups getting my podcasts over to Ourmedia. I think they are going to figure it out soon, which will be great. I like the Ourmeda Publisher tool so far as it is really feature rich as far as metadata for content. I am a bit bummed that the files are getting stuck at the Internet Archive, but hey its almost there right?

So the Google Video tool is even easier. Except it doesn't really have any other information other than the file name. Hmmm. Ok. So I sent a file to the Google servers and guess what? It's not in my account. Maybe this whole video thing isn't so easy. I know when we did Mp4.com several years ago we realized that there is a lot to chew on here. The good news in all of this though is that hosting really heavy content on the Internet just got a whole lot cheaper. I mean free. The question I have to ask myself is what are the hosts going to do with it? It will be interesting to see.

TMobile Voicemail Upgrade Problems

I just searched around the web and I guess I must be one of the only ones, but I have to say that the new TMobile voicemail upgrade has driven me to the edge of my sanity. I have phones from just about every carrier (surprise, surprise) but TMobile is my primary carrier. Recently they took the voicemail program that they have been using for the last several years.

Aside from major changes in how the voicemail works, I have had a number of really cool new features like missed voicemails, voicemails that mysteriously appear hours or days later, voicemail icons that wont go away - or wont appear. I can't take it. So I can understand that as a user I have to change how I use my voicemail if they change software providers. What I don't understand is why it doesn't work. That's not good.

Google Video Upload

Been trying to try out Google Video Service. The tool is really straightforward, but I can't seem to get past the login screen. Must be really busy right now. It's hanging or something. Can't wait to see what they are doing. Oh, I am so thankful for that Gmail invitation that allowed me in. Anyone need one? ;-) Right.

Triplet Spotting

I was driving in heavy traffic tonight northbound in between meetings with our developers and our CFO. The car in front of me had a license plate frame that said "I used to have time...Then I had triplets." I quickly pulled alongside him and honked my horn while rolling down my window.

"Hey, I have triplets too!"
"Yeah, how old?"
"Four Months"
"Mine are 10 years old, there is hope, don't worry."

I waved and continued on.

The New Office Toy

53BN0059.jpg,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

Someone is going to get hurt on this. We have two for racing...

AMP - Association of Music Podcasting website

The AMP website went up over the last couple of days. It looks awesome. Check it out!

We went to Fry's today

Can a trip to Fry's ever really be satisfying? There are too many things to buy and not enough time or money to ever make it feel as good as you think it will feel before you go in. That said, we bought the following:

An Apple Ipod Mini for Jessica. Blue. 4Gig

I bought a Ramsey's Electronics FM Stereo Transmitter. Back in October I wanted to do a little broadcasting from a low power transmitter. So after I lean how to use a soldering iron and I can find a couple of hours to spare, I'm finally going to give it a try.

Two Electric Powered Razor scooters. The office was feeling a little stark and Fry's didn't have any beanbags. I am sure these are going to be a lot of fun. I'll post a picture or a videopost soon.

Copyright and Grouper

Neil Berkman, who worked with me at Echo sent me this link to an LA Times story today about Grouper and pushing the boundaries of intellectual property law. Neil said it reminded him of what I was writing about in The Copyright Fairy pieces.

There is no question in my mind that there are opportunities to make money for those who can solve the technological and intellectual property issues around media. As I have said before I think the best way to facilitate that is to work with people who openly embrace the interaction between consumers, technology and media. Any other hair splitting approaches such as limiting to a certain number of people, or streaming not downloading, seems destined for litigation. Litigation as a component of a startup's business plan is generally not advised. Rare cases like Lindows aside, I think that staying clear of the controversy is the best path.

On the Media - MP3 and Podcast Link

Nick corrected me and pointed out that the link to the MP3 and the link to the podcast. Very cool.

My Ipod dilemma

Actually my wife's Ipod was purchased several years ago when Apple first released the Ipod. She used it a little bit but then it sat on the shelf for a while. I picked it up periodically as my running was sporadic. When the podcasting thing burst on the scene, I adopted the device as mine. I actually really got to like it as I have also been running regularly. Until recently. You see, my battery is finally dying. It started out as strange outages when there was still a charge left and just continued to get worse. I'd say at this point its pretty much toast.

My wife has decided she is going to train for a half marathon and wants the device back. Of course I am more than happy to give it back as it doesn't work. She probably wont have a sense of humor about it and the whole flawed battery thing might be lost on her. Because of this I guess I am going to buy her a new Ipod. The dilemma is what should I do. I could buy my own mini. Or another Mp3 player like the iRiver. Or I could get a PSP, but I don't think that is very practical. Choices. I'll report back on my shopping field trip later this week.

An Impending Period of Transitional Chaos For Media

You know what, I may not have heard the show Nick mentioned. I think I actually heard this one. Either way, if you like this kind of stuff I would check them both out.

On The Media - The Chaos Scenario

Nick sent me this link. The show entitled The Chaos Scenario is what he pointed out to me. I had actually heard a part of the show when I was taking my morning ride out for Starbucks/Heroin for me and my wife. The parts that I heard were really fascinating and in the middle of it I heard JD Lasica opining about the fate of traditional media. The really scary piece was the comment by Proctor and Gamble that media isn't working for them anymore. Ouch. When the worlds #1 advertiser isn't happy a change is on the way. Unfortunately the link is in a Real Networks format, so I won't be listening to it. Maybe I can find an MP3 out there somewhere...

Venture Money Flowing into San Diego

Tom Ryan sent me this link, which I read in the LA Time over the weekend that there is a significant influx of venture money into San Diego. It's great to see some recognition of the developing community of innovation that is popping up in our neck of the woods.

The $250 Million Radio Show #20 - The Best of Show

If you haven't bothered to listen to any of my podcasts, give this one a try. I think it is a great collection of bands that is both fresh and accessible. The Mp3 file is here. The credits are here. The podcast feed is here. If you have listened, please keep on listening.

Hunter S Thompson's 21 Gun Salute

It appears that even in death Hunter is a man of amazing originality. He is going to have his ashes shot out of a cannon.

Harvard Preschool

Full disclosure - I didn't go to preschool. Hell, I went to an inner city suburban high school. Worse than that, I briefly attended a private liberal arts school in Oregon before completing my accomplished education at the prestigious California State University, Los Angeles (Magna Cum Laude no less) while working a full time job at Sony Pictures.

So my son Tate is supposed to be entering preschool we are told at the ripe old age of three. Now I am sure that my parents, who must have been clueless, or aspired to my spending my early years in oblivious play, didn't know any better. We on the other hand were vaguely aware of these horror stories about putting your kids on the waiting list of these schools soon after they are conceived. I found this to be ridiculous and waited (gasp) until he was 1 1/2. Since that time we have been begging, pleading, and doing whatever we can to get him into the preschool near our home that does seem like a great place.

That said, I can't believe that our generation, who I believe generally didn't attend preschool can be so caught up in the insanity of trying to get our kids into this school or that school at such a young age. So on with the school. Apparently we made it just by the skin of our teeth. Or so it seems. I am waiting with great anticipation to have a discussion of quantum physics or trends in non representational art in the early 20th century with my son sometime around the age of four. I am certain that it will be an engaging discussion. Oh, and when he is five, he is going to public school.

Handsets, Handsets, Handsets

53500041.jpg,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

Too bad handsets aren't as easy to work with as PCs...

Google Map Part 2

My office is here. This is a super cool way to take maps to a new level. I'm not sure what the utility is yet, but the cool factor is off the map. :-)

U2 in San Diego

52U50030.jpg,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

I was amazed by the number of camera phones and actually camcorders at the U2 concert. Here is one I snapped. I have more over on Flickr.

My Current Media

Not much really because we are so busy. That said there are a couple of things:

U2 Concert: We caught the second night of the opening dates of the U2 Tour at the San Diego Sports Arena. It was a great show and IMHO was better than the last tour although I have to admit I have spent next to no time with the new CD so far. The show was a nice mix between intimacy, which my wife liked, and the hints of big media from the Zoo TV era, that I enjoy. I definite must see.

Music: Mars Volta - Francis The Mute. I had heard that this was the new Pink Floyd, etc. etc. I grabbed a copy the other day when I was making one of the only vehicle trips to Los Angeles in the last year (I almost exclusively take the train). So armed with the CD, I headed out. I was blown away. This is an awesome album. At times it is very inaccessible, but if you wait through the really strange parts you are totally rewarded with amazing sections. I think this is a really cool trend in hipster music away from some of what has become formulaic emo punk and towards something that is progressive revival / psychedelic revival. This CD and the Coheed and Cambria CDs are both examples to me of an interesting new chapter in new music that I hope takes off quickly.

Dirty Windows & Butterflies

My car, which is usually in bad need of a car wash anyways, is currently coated in the remains of many dead butterflies. Apparently the largest heard of butterflies in recent memory has been created by the record rainfall in San Diego and Mexico and literally tens of thousands of them are flying north to Oregon. Why I am not sure. It really is an amazing site though. I'll have to whip out the camera this afternoon.

Info World "Outs" my blog

Here. Ok, so if you've never been here, welcome. The stuff on the right entitled Of Note is some stuff of substance. If you want more, check out our Intercasting Blog.

Intercasting and Rabble in The San Jose Mercury News

We had a nice write up in the Mercury News here.

EVDB Live

I saw from Brian's blog that they went live last night. Check it out here. I set up an account but won't be able to play with it until tonight.

Intercasting Blog - Goodnight Gracie

In a business you bring different skills to bear. I'm a sponge for information and have a strong technical orientation and am steeped in content. Shawn on the other hand has a lot of talents but foremost among them is his writing talent. If you enjoy my nonsense, you are in for a treat. Check out Shawn's latest post here. It recounts a bit some of the good times that were our journey at Vivendi.

Yahoo 360

Sander hooked me up with a pass. I started to set it up. It looks pretty comprehensive. I gave a heavy sigh when I started filing out the About me and the Linked in section and the Friendster section. Does FOAF just suck really bad? I'll try it later. The groups thingey is cool but it is taking me awhile to get used to it. I never really did Yahoo! except for a spam catcher so I am not sure what I am getting here. I need to give it a real test drive before I have an opinion, but thank heavens it didn't require I use my MS.passport decoder ring thing to get the privilege to use the service. The secret admission stuff is a little tired too. Anyone need in? Send me an email...I'll be your friend.

The Copyright Fairy – Part Two, Well Everybody is Doing it…

In my last installment of The Copyright Fairy, I was concerned with how people would rather not investigate how the law is constructed when there are a variety of resources available to inform them of the state of copyright law, and by extension how their actions, could put them in hot water, especially if they are a high profile figure.

This post was inspired by my comment to a post by Russell Beattie regarding his PSP and his use of BitTorrent to put an unreleased movie onto his device, which is very cool, but not legal. I like Russ and his blog is a daily read for me. My comments to him were partially tongue in cheek as he currently works for the would be Media giant called Yahoo. I think that it’s problematic to work at a company that makes a living off of helping to promote to consumers the valuable intellectual property that media companies create and then post on a highly trafficked blog that you use BitTorrent to get the movies that you want.

It’s totally Russ’s business to do whatever he wants in his home and as the Libertarian that I am, I salute him for exercising that right. I also like the brashness of his comments. It’s good entertainment and I plan to read on in the future.

So after Russ slapped me down for my negative tone and condescending preachy post…

It got me to thinking about two issues. The first is BitTorrent. I love Bittorrent. I sent the guy money and I proudly wear my BitTorrent T Shirt to the gym often when I work out. I make a BitTorrent version of my podcast The $250 Million Radio Show as often as possible even though the majority of the people who get my show download it directly from my servers. I think its an important technology that you should support provided you are using it in a legal manner. Back to my previous post, The beauty of BitTorrent, and the reason that the Grokster case isn’t going to help out people who use BitTorrent is that everyone has to upload to download. This puts you in clear violation of the DMCA as rendered through the various decisions in the various cases adjudicated to date. Lots of legal stuff can be found on Google, I mean Yahoo.

Russ said something to the effect that everybody is doing it and not talking about it isn’t going to help. You can find his direct smackdown in the comments to the post. Well, that may or may not be true, but it is illegal. Period. I may do some things in my house that are illegal, but I am certain that I am not going to post about it on the Internet. That just seems to make sense to me.

The second thing was the conflict between technology and media that is at the heart of what many of us have been working on for a lot of years now. Because I highlight the issue some think that I am stung by the copyright issue and that I hate content companies, etc. That couldn’t be further from the truth. For most of my professional career I have worked for big media or companies that supported big media. I am certain that I will quickly pass that as I have spent a lot of the last several years working in small media and technology. Those of us who play in these waters are aware that you have to walk a fine line. There are some who take an extreme position on either side, but the vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle hoping that the content companies wont quash technology, while enjoying and wanting to find new ways to help traditional content reach new and broader audiences.

The important point is to know where your bread is buttered. When I was in my early 20s I worked at Sony Pictures and managed to get into a preview screening of Johnny Mnemonic. At the same time I was marginally active on the alt.cyberpunk list on Usenet. I naively posted a review and had a conversation with Amy Harmon who is now at the New York Times. She published my comments out of context in the LA Times on opening day. The head of the studio called my boss early Monday morning screaming for my head. When I saw Russ’s post I could see Terry Semel (Former head of Warner Bros.) reaching through the Internet to grab him by the neck. As he clearly pointed out its not really any of my business, but I thought that a word to the wise would be time well spent.

Working with Sriram.

Easter Candy

Dirty Face,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

I DID NOT eat Easter Candy. I swear.

Dave Winer on Copyright and the EFF

Interesting to see this. Maybe the implications for blogging as it relates to copyright is providing some thoughtful commentary. I do actually agree with his critique of some of the large media companies, but copyright law cant be situational.

Intercasting in Time Magazine

We made it into this weeks issue of Time magazine! The article is here.

AMP on Ipodder

The Association of Music Podcasting is now listed as its own node on the ipodder.org directory. Very cool!

Glenn Reynolds - Instapundit and Liberty

I never thought that I would quote Glenn Reynolds on anything. Its good to see here that Glenn believes in personal liberty. I am just in shock that so few are screaming that this whole nonsense over this poor woman in Florida is about personal liberty. I say to the government, don't come into my house. I respect you laws when I leave it. You respect mine by not coming into my house.

Content Is Queen

Shawn put up our second post on the Intercasting website today. We don't have the RSS feed button up yet, but if you want to subscribe the link is this. Shawn is doing a lot of the heavy lifting on that blog right now, but I will also jump in later.

Association of Music Podcasting (AMP) Part Two

If you like independent music and are into podcasts, come on over and check out the Association of Music Podcasting. We have been working on forming a lasting organization to promote music podcasting in a way that highlights great artists who support new distribution technologies. We have recently started admitting members to the original group of 6, and today bumped the number to 13 with many more to come.

We think that this is the highest quality selection of shows produced to date that all have music where we have the permission of the rights holders.

Prodigem Vs. Our Media

I created a Bit Torrent for my Show # 19 Podcast using Prodigem which you can find here. At the same time I uploaded the file to Ourmedia. I think I screwed up and didn't use the Publisher tool, cuz its still doing something, although what I am not sure. I need to let it run for a while and see what happens. I'll do a review of the publisher tool later. It could also be the massive amount of traffic too.

The $250 Million Radio Show #19

Is available as an Mp3 file here. Show credits here.

EVDB - Part Two

Jason from Weblogs Inc. had some more about EVDB.

Spell with Flickr

This is really cool. Type in a word or a series of words and get the word in images. Here is what I got with Rabble:

Zoominfo

Check out Zoominfo. Doc Searls had a link to it. Kind of cool, and kind of creepy at the same time. It creates an Internet orginated bio. Mine is here.

SMS.AC

This is too bad. I keep hearing this from a variety of people and have started to see a number of posts like this. I know a number of people over there including Greg, who used to do PR for us at MP3.com. Pull messaging is the only way to go.

EVDB

Brian unveiled his new company yesterday at PC Forum. Haven't seen any coverage other than this. A couple of awesome engineers are working with Brian on this business. I can't wait to see what they have built.

OBEY

Obey March 18,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

I have been trying to accumulate as many of these pics as I can. One of the very coolest things of sites like Flickr is the ability to check out slideshows of Tags.

Ourmedia

Ourmedia has launched today. If you are interested in the idea of open source media, you have to check it out.

Congress vs. The People

I haven't followed the Terry Schiavo case closely. I generally don't like the tough issues around things like capital punishment, abortion, etc. It gets messy really quick and it's too easy to demonize either side or take a position that can be misconstrued later.

That said, as I understand it, this woman expressed to a number of people that she didn't want to be kept alive on life support machines. I haven't heard this disputed. As a Christian, I can't see how people can view being kept alive on a respirator or any other machine as complying with God's will. If God wants you to live without a machine, then you will live. If not, then your time has come. This whole matter is unfortunate and kudos to her husband for trying to let her decision on this subject supersede the grossly intrusive episode we see unfolding. As a believer in personal liberty, and as someone who respects the tenets of faith, I can't understand how anyone could support the interference of people who have such a clear agenda to have their way and prolong the life of someone against their wishes and against what would result in her passing without outside intervention.