June 1, 2008
Geekin' on the wireless ...
Lara went to Memphis this weekend, leaving me with too much time on my hands and an excuse to spend an overcast afternoon tweaking my wireless network.
My Macbook Pro is still pretty retarded where wireless is concerned. It must be something with the card since Admiral Higgins had perfect reception out on the porch while my computer bricked. Same machines, purchased within a month or so of each other. Overall, the wireless works fine, but the range is lacking, forcing me to use a Verizon Wireless card when I'm surfing on the porch. Annoying, and not as fast as it would be if I were connecting through the network.
So, I pulled an Airport Express that went haywire out of the drawer and started monkeying around with it, hoping that if I could revive it I could use it as a way to extend the existing network's signal out onto the porch. (Of course, I could just take the laptop to Apple's alleged Genius Bar, but that would require a trip to the mall and the possible loss of the machine for a few days ... and an admission that I couldn't fix it myself.)
But I wasn't having much luck. The Express wouldn't take a firmware upgrade, and I couldn't get into it at all using the Airport Utility. Then I found this post on the Airport Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow 4.2.5 (I found this solution by searching for the specific error number I was getting ... -6765.) Downloaded it, upgraded the firmware and was able to access the Express' setting. I used a direct Ethernet connection rather than try to do this magic act via wireless.
So now I needed to figure out how to make my Linksys WRT54G router and the Apple Express enter a meaningful and lasting relationship, the kind that would make any conservative Christian proud. More Googling turned up this post on the dd-wrt open source operating system I use on the Linksys router. (Switched to dd-wrt in an attempt to boost the router's signal strength, but that didn't do much good though I liked dd-wrt and kept it on the router anyway.)
Now some tweaking and a few adjustments to accommodate the fact the dd-wrt directions are for the Airport Admin utility and I was using a variant version, and viola. I know have the Express set up next to the kitchen table, the outer reach of my laptop's current range and just around the corner from the deadspot on the deck.
I took the laptop out there and got a strong signal off the Express. Now I can roam the whole house without having to pop in the Verizon card.
So why the mind-numbing detail in this post? I figured that someone somewhere might be able to use this info. Might as well detail it. But most importantly, it's a testament to how innovative and sharing people can be. In the end, I got this up and running because people had not only figured the problem out ahead of me but also were willing to take time to answer other people's questions about it and give details on how they set it right. Consider it my contribution back into the Google well of soul.
At some point, though, I'm still going to have to break down and visit the damn Genius Bar ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 6:36 PM | Comments (0)
April 8, 2008
Looking for an angry fix ...
OK. Now I know I have an addiction.
I've often heard the Blackberry referred to as a "Crackberry," to the point where it got a little old. Then my Blackberry died a horrible, unfortunate death. And I came to realize what an utter, hopeless junky I've become.
I was on the porch last night trying to kill a wasp that had wandered in. I took a mighty swing ... and missed, leaving a pissed off wasp streaming toward me. My survival instinct kicked in and I started hopping around, trying to get out of the way.
That's when my Blackberry popped out of my breast pocket, flopped through the air and crashed onto the wood decking.
I picked it up, praying it would still work. And it did. Or so I though. But it wasn't able to find the network. I was cut off. No e-mail. No calls. Just a constant, nagging "Searching for CDMA" note on the phone.
I knew I had to go to Atlanta the next day, and the thought of being out in the world without the cool comfort of my Blackberry really rattled me. I started to twitch. I called Verizon and begged them to show mercy on me. Their advice was to take it to the nearest Verizon store and see if it could be resurrected.
So this morning that's what I did. But by that point, I was sweating profusely and I kept looking at the Blackberry's screen in the hope of seeing some sign of life ... a new message, a Facebook alert, a Gmail notice. Nothing.
The Verizon folks were great. I think it was refreshing that I actually admitted the Blackberry's demise was my own doing. Or maybe they saw what a mess I was and realized it would be better to feed my jones than deal with the consequences. They offered to replace it for 50 bucks, which I eagerly agreed to. Phone service restored, I sped home to re-establish my Blackberry's intimate relation with the Maroon Ventures Exchange Server. Mission accomplished. And in crisis, as is often the case, I came to self-awareness. I'm an addict. And maybe the stupid Crackberry joke isn't so stupid after all. Just make sure I have my fix and there won't be any trouble ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 4:28 PM | Comments (3)
March 8, 2008
Innovative approach to iPhone growth ...
I was pretty geeked to see that Apple intends to create a much more seamless integration between the iPhone and Microsoft's Outlook. That's the one thing that has stopped me from trying an iPhone. I'm a total Outlook junky. It rules my life, and the Blackberry works it better than any other mobile device I'm aware of.
But buried in the news was something even cooler. Apple announced a partnership with the VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which is creating the iFund, a $100m vehicle that will focus on iPhone software startups. What a great idea. This giant carrot is now dangling out there, encouraging developers to create the next great iPhone app. Brilliant.
How long till I can trade-in my Blackberry?
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:00 AM | Comments (1)
December 19, 2007
Taking the Kindle for a test drive
In the mid-'90s, I moved to Denver to work for the Rocky Mountain News. I loved the paper, but when I first moved to town I gravitated toward its competitor and mortal enemy, the Denver Post. And it was entirely because of format. I'd always read broadsheet papers like the Post. The Rocky's tab format just seemed odd and different.
But within weeks, my Denver Post was going unopened each morning as I went straight for the Rocky. I grew to love the tab format. I could put it on the breakfast table while I ate, and I didn't have to wrestle with it as I turned pages.
As I play with Amazon's new electronic reader, the Kindle, I wonder if the same type of thing is occurring. It arrived yesterday, and I plugged it in last night, expecting it to take an hour or two to configure. I'd already purchased a European e-reader called the Iliad that took almost an hour to get on my wireless network and generally left me underwhelmed.
But the Kindle was a breeze. I plugged it in, paged through a few screens of the manual and quickly downloaded the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, beginning free trial subscriptions to each. My home network was irrelevant. The Kindle connects directly with a cell network, and it did so flawlessly. After browsing through thousand of books on Amazon's store, I decided to wait a bit before making a purchase. I wanted to see if I liked the Kindle.
At first, it was sort of like the experience with the Rocky Mountain News. A bit foreign. But I got over that quickly. At breakfast this morning in the Cincinnati airport, I cruised through the Wall Street Journal while I shoveled my Southwestern Omelette into my mouth. This was much easier than juggling a paper, even a tabloid. I'd already started reading the paper on the plane on the way up. (I looked in my mailbox at 5 a.m. to see if the local paper and my print version of the Journal were there yet. No way. I'm lucky when they arrive by 7:30 ... but the Kindle version of the Journal had downloaded automatically overnight.)
I've seen a lot of the digital hipsters pan the Kindle over flaws ranging from the way it manages digital rights to the look and feel of the thing. There's merit to some of these complaints, but overall, I really like it and think it's a big step forward. Wireless and ease of use make it a device that has me geeked.
Here's a running list of what I like and don't like about it. I'll be updating it as I use it more ...
I like
-- The size of it. It's really no bigger than a folded up newspaper. After watching my boss stagger onto airplanes in an eruption of newsprint from the multiple papers he's juggling in his computer bag, I'm thinking this is a big upgrade.
-- The wireless functionality. I realize the Sprint network has gaps and that will pose problems for frequent travelers like me, but the wireless set up flawlessly and it was a breeze to download books and newspapers. I also like the way you navigate through newspapers with it.
-- Being able to store books and newspapers on a single device. For travelers, this has major appeal.
-- While it's not designed for web surfing, the "experimental" web browser isn't too bad overall. It's really no worse than surfing the web on my Blackberry.
What I don't like or want to see changed
-- I keep accidentally hitting the previous page/next page buttons when I don't intend to. There must be a way to stop that from happening or mitigate it somewhat.
-- The keyboard. It's OK, but I want it to adopt some of the features my Blackberry has (i.e. hold down a letter to capitalize it, etc.) It's not something I want to type on at length, but it's better than most of the keyboards I've seen on gadgets of this type. (The hunt-and-peck stylus approach totally sucks.)
-- I'd like to be able to e-mail articles to myself in addition to clipping them and saving them within the Kindle.
-- The cover it ships with completely, totally sucks. I've resorted to using it more as a case that I put on the Kindle when I tuck it back in my computer bag. Trying to use the Kindle with the cover on is pretty much a waste of time. I'm sure they'll come out with a better one ... for about a hundred bucks ...
-- The general look. Photos of it make it look much clunkier than it really is. It would be fun to turn Apple's design team loose here, but the functionality of the device belies its looks.
-- II'm wishing it had a quick, easy notebook you could call up to take notes in. It does allow you to annotate and make notes, but I was wantin something more akin to a file system that would let me collect notes in docs that I could later open in Word. This might even be in there, but I haven't found it yet ...
-- The price. It will need to come down before there's any chance of mass adoption. Free would be about the right price point (the way cell phones are "free" or low cost when you sign up for a plan; maybe it's free with $200 worth of purchases from the Amazon store or a two-year subscription to a newspaper.)
-- It's yet another gadget. But so far, I'm justifying that by the fact that I wouldn't have to carry books or newspapers around with me. Plus, reading is a substantially different experience from web surfing. I can surf and scan on web info on my Blackberry, but reading on it leaves a lot to be desired. The Kindle really is a much better experience for longer format reads, and I think I'll be willing to carry a Blackberry and a Kindle for that reason. If the Kindle gets better at web surfing and e-mail, I might even revert back to a more basic phone and let the Kindle pull double duty ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:05 AM | Comments (0)
January 7, 2007
Tivo goodness ...
Via PVRBlog, I stumbled upon what I believe to be the coolest Tivo-related gadget yet to enter my arsenal. It's called TivoDecode Manager, which bills itself as being "for Mac users stuck using third-party workarounds."
In short, this allows me to move shows recorded on my Tivo to my Mac, and it also has an option to format them for viewing on my video iPod. Best of all, it worked flawlessly. Once I downloaded it, I just entered my Tivo's IP address and Media Access Key. It instantly found the Tivo on my wireless network and got it talking to my Mac.
To test it, I downloaded a copy of a Monty Python episode (the one featuring Dinsdale, the thuggish Piranha brother who is terrorized by Spiny Norman, a giant hateful hedgehog. I'm not sure exactly how long the transfer took since I walked away from my computer, but when I came back an hour or two later, the Python episode was in my iTunes library and ready to be moved to my iPod.
Very cool. Very, very cool. This will make Travel Bob very happy.
Now playing: No More Buffalo from the album "Live In Aught-Three" by James McMurtry & The Heartless Bastards
Posted by Bob Benz at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2006
Apologies to the Mac Whore ...
To the office Mac Whore, I apologize. I apologize for taunting you and your Cult of Apple ways. I apologize for all of my crimes and insults against the Mac. And I apologize for my slurs against St. Steven Jobs.
I just purchased a Mac mini (the 1.66GHz version, with 1 gig of RAM). Wow. It's freakin' awesome. And I really haven't even done much with it yet.
The setup alone was a study in ease and elegance. I wanted to transfer all of my settings from a Powerbook that has anchored my home computing. In a little more than an hour, I'd transferred all the files and settings with no problem. Even when I thought I might have problems because I use a wireless keyboard and mouse, the Mini detected each during setup and sucked it into the new world.
Best of all, it's blazing fast. Major improvement over the Powerbook I was using. I can't wait to get my Stubbs the Zombie game to really put this machine through its paces. Time to eat some brains.
This is how computers should work. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to run Windows on this machine, but I know this much: My next work computer will be a Mac. The only thing that really has held me back is that so many of our applications are Windows-centric. Now that I can run either system on a Mac, I'm there ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:31 PM | Comments (2)
January 18, 2006
Basking in a little vendor love
A vendor just sent me an iPod Nano. I've already set it up. It's totally blowing me away. Damn, it's tiny. Perfect for those quick trips to Cincinnati when I don't want to take the video iPod. I'll probably also make it my new gym companion. We're now a four iPod family. Just call it technical ecstasy ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:46 PM | Comments (1)
December 9, 2005
The need for speed ...
Gizmodo has a great guide to radar detectors, a subject near and dear to my heart. Even better, they rave about my radar detector of choice: The Valentine V1. It's awesome and already has paid for itself several times over in averted tickets ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
Tivo and Yahoo -- two great tastes come together
I just discovered that I can now sync up the TV listings in MyYahoo with my Tivo. This is immensely cool and utilitarian.
When I see a program in MyYahoo that I want my Tivo to record, I just click a link and it programs my Tivo to record the show. Before, I'd see the program in MyYahoo, then hop over to the Tivo site to set up the recording. Now it's one-stop shopping. Another cool touch: When I set this up, Yahoo asked me if I wanted to sync up my Yahoo program guide with my Tivo program guide. Yup.
I also saw that Tivo is planning to allow recorded shows to be easily moved to a video iPod. (I just hope they do a Mac version; the currently don't offer very good Mac support.) I also hope they ignore the whining and moaning rising up from the TV industry and follow through with this. This is the kind of stuff that will give Tivo a competitive edge over those generic cable company DVRs ... and it's the kind of utility that will make it indespensible.
Posted by Bob Benz at 3:17 PM | Comments (3)
November 18, 2005
Video iPod (reprise)
So after seeing our Mac Whore's video iPod, I rushed out and bought the 60 gig version. I opted for the black version. All I can say is that it's astoundingly cool.
The first thing I did was checked out the music videos and TV shows available in the iTunes store. I downloaded several videos (Mazzy Star, U2, Everclear, Velvet Underground, among others) and then downloaded the two pilot episodes of Lost, a TV show that I'd heard a lot about but never bothered to Tivo.
It's massively, mind-bogglingly phenomenal.
During my gauntlet of business trips this week, I put the video iPod through its paces. As soon as the airplane's wheels went up somewhere above Memphis, I started watching the first episode of "Lost." It works. Really well. The small screen is very crisp, and when you wear headphones, it really pulls you into the movie. It's a great way to endure a flight when you're too tired to read and too cramped to pull out your computer. (And "Lost" is all that; I'm downloading the first season as I write this. I love the fact that there are no commercials and wonder if there's a business model here for people who are willing to pay for commercial-free content.)
The one thing I'm tripping on is ripping DVDs to my computer so I can put them on my iPod. I downloaded Mac the Ripper and, as the Mac Whore suggested, Handbrake. Both are cool and work well, but I think my G4 Powerbook just doesn't have the huevos to do this work. Ripping a DVD is mind-numbingly slow (like, all night). So now I'm toying with an upgrade to one of the G5 desktops ... Funny how technology has that domino effect.
Now I just need the iTunes store to expand its horizons and start offering A LOT more stuff to chose from -- at least until I get a Mac fast enough to rip DVDs for viewing on my iPod.
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:06 PM | Comments (3)
October 22, 2005
Video iPod
Our resident Mac whore at work already has one of the new video iPods. I was pretty dubious when I first heard about it. Who would want to watch video on that tiny little screen? But when he showed it to me, I was blown away. The video quality is really sharp. Might be a nice way to kill time during plane flights.
I've added it to the Gadgets I Gotta Have List ... I guess my only concern is the battery life. There's apparently a program that will allow you to rip DVDs to the device, but I'm wondering if it will have enough battery life to get through an entire movie. Guess I'll find out. I just downloaded the latest iTunes update and the store now have videos you can buy and download. This could get interesting.
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:24 PM | Comments (3)
February 17, 2005
A heretic changes his ways ...
During a conference on emerging technologies, I played the role of reigning heretic on things RSS and blogosphere. But since I returned, I'm becoming a convert to the ways of RSS.
My first step was to find an RSS aggregator that would meet my somewhat peculiar needs. I wanted something that would work on all three of my computers -- a Dell laptop, a Dell desktop and a Mac G4 iBook.
Software solutions weren't cutting it. I found several that looked promising, including FeedDemon, which Howard Owens recommended, but I really wasn't finding anything that would run on both platforms and allow me to keep all of my feeds in synch.
So I started looking around at Web-based solution. My first attempt was Feedster, which just didn't do it for me. I found the interface to be somewhat cumbersome and confusing, and I was having a tough time setting it up.
Then I turned to Bloglines, which recently was purchased by Ask Jeeves. After a few days using it, I'm hooked.
It was relatively easy to set up, though I have to admit I struggled figuring out how to get the feeds from some of my favorite sites. Most of that was my refusal to use the help files. But after some tinkering, I have it set up so I can now monitor the sites I use most frequently much more easily than I did when I was hopping randomly from site to site each day.
I set it up so I can easily add feeds (Bloglines has a bookmarklet that's pretty easy to add to IE, Firefox and Safari browsers. That makes it really easy to add feeds. It also has a few other cool features, including the ability to make your RSS subscriptions public. I'm planning to add that to my site this weekend.
I already have 25 feeds set up that I monitor regularly, and Bloglines makes it easy for me to see posts I haven't read yet. It also makes it pretty easy to create a hierarchy so you can categorize feeds.
I still think RSS is a jargony, geeky world that will seem impenetrable to the "average" web user, but that can be overcome with good, clear directions and a little research. The other thing that's really needed is a good recommendation feature that guides people to feeds worth adding. There's a lot of noise out there. There are several recommendation features out there, including one on Bloglines, but I think this is something newspapers and other traditional news sources could provide for readers. I'm also curious to see how some of the branded readers work for media companies. I know the Guardian is about to launch something like this, and I think CNet is, too.
NOW PLAYING: In India You from the album "Their Satanic Majesties Second Request" by The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:00 PM | Comments (2)
February 13, 2005
My, those Blogospherians have a long tail
I went out to Palo Alto last week for the Media Center's Technology, Business and Policy for Senior Executives conference. Overall, it was fascinating and informative. Maybe a tad frightening, too.
There was a lot going on there and I made a lot of notes. My main concern is that the folks in the room might be drinking a bit too much of the RSS/Blogosphere/User Generated Content Kool-Aid that was being passed around. While I see the value and importance of all these memes, I'm also not convinced they're as widespread or popular as the Blogosphere seems to think.
I created a few posts that try to pull things together. One lists worthwhile sites/concepts that I made a note to check out once I got back. Another lists cool quotes from the conference, and the last is a glossary of interesting jargon I picked up.
The highlights, by far, were presentations by Dan Gillmor, former columnist/blogger for the San Jose Mercury News, and Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief at Wired magazine.
I think I betrayed myself as something of a heretic during Gillmor's talk when I called him on a few things, particularly his belief that the masses are ready to rise up and start creating their own content. I related our experiences trying to get football coaches and other community group leaders to update sites with information. Some do it with a religious fervor. Others (most?) get abandoned quickly and turn into cyber ghost towns rather than online communities. While I really see the importance of user generated content and think the media should be providing opportunities for people to create their own content, I also think we need to be aware that creating content is a lot like, well, work. Most folks would sooner leave it up to someone else. I also thought it odd that Gillmore seemed to want to blame Lauren Rich Fine (Wall Street analyst who follows the newspaper industry) and her ilk for the media's slow move toward user-generated content. I told him I don't think Fine gives a flip about that. She's certainly not discouraging it. She's watching our business and analyzing its potential for profit and to grow audience. Maybe he'd be happier if she were some sort of cheerleader? Not certain. I just don't see how she's in any way, shape or form stopping the media from embracing grassroots journalism. If there's a barrier there, it's the media's long (often arrogant) tradition and resistance to change.
The comments were part of a thread of corporate media bashing that ran throughout the conference. It came to a head when Brad deGraf, founder of Media Venture Collective, droned on about how all that's evil emanates from corporate news companies, “the Wal-Mart of our media landscape.”
Disruptive technology will save us, he argued.
Uh, maybe. But I'm thinking that the things disrupting big media look a lot like, well, the thing they're disrupting. At least structurally. Think Yahoo!, Google, Ebay, Amazon. These aren't grassroots organizations by any stretch. They might have started small, but so did E.W. Scripps, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst once upon a time.
Despite all that, I really liked Gillmor. He's incredibly sincere and genuine, and he didn't get defensive at all when I asked my questions and challenged him. He's quit the Merc and has struck out on his own, though he's still casting around for a business plan and how he intends to turn his call to grassroots journalism into a self-sustaining business. I hope he succeeds. There's plenty of merit in his ideas.
As for Chris Anderson, I first heard about his work during the Online Publishers Association conference last fall. I had quit reading Wired (I think the straw that broke the camel's back was their long treatise during the dot com surge on how the so-called new economy might keep rising, playing by a new set of economic laws that would break out of the traditional cyclical nature of economies), so I hadn't seen Anderson's original piece when it was published. But it already was causing a buzz at OPA. And it's absolutely fascinating.
In a nutshell, Anderson argues that if you chart entertainment sales (think CDs or DVDs), there's a fat part of the graph that represents the popular, blockbuster type of stuff. But there's a long tail of more obscure material that emanates out from this fat part. Brick and mortar stores, limited by shelf space, focus on that fat part of the tail, knowing they can turn inventory and make a profit that way. But with the dawn of the Internet and the ability to offer limitless inventory, consumers will dive down into tail and make a lot of purchases. More, in fact, than are represented by the real popular stuff.
Now he's working on a book, trying to extend his findings to other aspects of culture and media. It's really pretty revolutionary, and I think it's what was fueling a lot of the optimism in the room re: we're on the cusp of a consumer and media culture that no longer panders to the lowest-common denominator. Even this premise makes me wonder, though. People still tend to move in masses and packs, and while this opens up a lot of great alternatives, will we still, in aggregate, bow to the hit makers? Does it matter if we do? Now the non-hits can have as much economic impact as the hits. And that's pretty revolutionary.
So overall, the conference was invigorating. And a bit frightening in two respects:
1. The corporate media have a long way to go to leverage the power of the tail and the blogosphere. Our very survival might be at stake. But I think we also need to make sure we don't lose sight of our role as filter and information provider. No one wants to drink from a firehose. Newspapers can and should be doing what they've always done best -- help people get at what they really need/want in this flow of grassroots information that's surging across the Internet. We just need to make sure we're not looking soley to traditional sources of news and information while we're applying the filters and generating our content. In fact, Anderson says a critical component of the long tail is and will be recommendations. People will act on recommendations from blogs, their friends and peers and, if we do our jobs, the media.
2. There was an evangelical feeling in the room, especially among some of the startups, that reminded me hauntingly of the stuff I saw during the dot com, pre-bomb. The half-baked business plans. The wide, sweeping declarations that everything is changed. The folks who are blogging, even if they are in the millions, are still a small percentage of the population at large. And while they are becoming major opinion makers, they're still more of an interesting trend than a watershed event -- so far. The vast majority of people don't even know what an RSS feed is, yet along how to manage dozens of them to get the information they want. The most telling moment came when, in a moment of candor, one of the vendors in the room admitted to me that his business plan was to be acquired by a Google or a Yahoo! or an Amazon. (In fact, Mark Fletcher of Bloglines, which was just acquired by Ask Jeeves, was one of the speakers.) While this is an interesting approach, I'm not sure it constitutes a sustainable business model.
In all, it was time well spent. It definitely got the wheels turning ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:55 PM | Comments (7)
February 12, 2005
Quotable
Here's a sampling of random quotes and comments I picked up during the the Media Center's Emerging Technology, Business and Policy for Senior Executives conference in Palo Alto this week.
“They want to take your classified business.”
-- Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson, on comments made by a Yahoo! executive while Anderson was having dinner with him the previous night. Anderson suggested the wine might have loosened that Yahoo! exec's lips. In vino veritas?
“We’re all using open source. Cost infrastructure is going to be based on that. If yours isn’t, it better be.”
-- Scott Rafer, CEO Feedster
“He just doesn’t get the blogosphere.”
-- Overheard snarkiness from one of the Blogospherians … It must be excruciating to be so much hipper, so much more in the know than the rest of Wal-Merica
“I move to another hot topic.
-- Muniwirless.com’s Esme de Guzman Vos, commenting on what she’ll do when she gets bored tracking municipal wireless and broadband issues.
“11 guys and less than a million bucks.”
-- Feedster’s Scott Rafer, describing his organization
“I’m feeling really good this morning because I’ve been drinking Dan Gillmor’s Kool-Aid.
-- Ron Williams, president and CEO of Dragonfly Media
“I can’t think of any (examples of conservative grassroots successes) offhand, but I can’t say I’ve studied it that much.”
-- Brad deGraf, founder of Media Venture Collective
Large scale corporate media are “the Wal-Mart of our media landscape.”
-- Brad deGraf, founder of Media Venture Collective
“(Google Chief Executive Eric) Schmidt is a fan of a concept, popularized in a Wired magazine article last year, called the ‘long tail,’ which says that a large number of products with low sales volume can collectively make up a sizable market. For Google, the long tail includes the tens of thousands of businesses not being served by conventional means of advertising. Schmidt believes Google has an opportunity to appeal to those businesses by offering them the ability to create highly targeted ad campaigns.”
-- San Jose Mercury News coverage of the 2/9 Google analyst meeting
“You can compete with free. Convenience is worth paying for.”
-- Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief, Wired magazine
Now sing with me y'all,
one world, one world (we only got)
one world, one world (that's all we got)
one world, one world
and something's wrong with it (yeah)
something's wrong with it (yeah)
something's wrong with the w-w-world
We only got (one world, one world)
That's all we got (one world, one world)
-- Black Eyed Peas, "Where is the Love?" (extended version)
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:56 PM | Comments (0)
Site seeing
This is a selective list of the folks/readings that really impressed me during the Media Center's Emerging Technology, Business and Policy for Senior Executives conference in Palo Alto this week. I tried to distill it down from everything that was presented to the items most worth checking out (from my admittedly biased perspective):
“All Social Networking Panels are the Same,” David’ Hornik’s post on VenturaBlog. Hornik, a strange cross between Neal Fondren and Buddy Hackett, was one of the most amusing speakers at the conference.
Esme de Guzman Vos’ blog on municipal wireless and broadband projects. She was one of the better, thought provoking speakers there she’s an advocate of Hot Topic Publishing.
Grouper: This software lets you set up a closed peer to peer network. As I started thinking about it, the potential for newspapers really bubbled up. For instance, what if 21 daily papers used this to share sound clips, video, pictures and stories? What if you expanded it beyond the 30-user limit it currently has and created a peer-to-peer news service with it, giving each participant the ability to upload and download news and information for use on their respective websites. This could completely disrupt something like, say, the Associated Press …
The Long Tail: Chris Anderson’s seminal Wired magazine piece that identifies and explains the long tail.
The Long Tail – the blog Chris Anderson is using to collect his thoughts and do research on his upcoming book about The Long Tail.
Dan Gillmor's blog: Dan is a former business columnist for the San Jose Mercury News who also wrote We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People, a seminal work on user-generated content. Dan spoke during dinner one night, and while I really admire his work, I'm not completely sold on his seemingly absolute belief in user-generated content and the inherent evil of "corporate" journalism.
Rojo, “a web-based service dedicated to helping Internet users efficiently manage online content and information flow.” This is a Beta product, but there was some buzz about how great it is. I made a note to myself to check it out …
Yelp.com, a recommendation-based local search engine. You create a profile and look for recommendations within affinity groups that you belong to.
ANT – RSS reader for videoblogs.
iPodderX – RSS reader for Podcasts.
PubSub. According to the vendor’s hype, “PubSub will dominate the Internet in the next 10 years.” Yes, and the Cuecat was “the biggest computer innovation since the mouse.” Might be best to wait to see if PubSub is all that, but the idea is intriguing if not terribly unique. This really is a sort of AdRover for the Blogsphere. Type in your search terms and get a notification when some blogger somewhere posts a match. Interesting.
del.icio.us – This is “a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.”
Flickr and mappr – Flickr is photo sharing software with an open API, which allows Mappr to use it to create “an interactive environment for exploring place, based on the photos you take.”
Wikipes – A wikipedia approach to recipes, a “global cookbook.”
Feedster jobs: An RSS approach to job searching that Feedster offers. Feedster CEO Scott Rafer says 5,500 job listings are being added each day via RSS. If anything, though, this might show some of the limitations of RSS, which often was extolled as the Internet’s holy grail during the conference. Compare Feedster’s jobs to something like Indeed.com, which spiders every job it can lay it’s nasty little spider legs on. The results are much deeper at Indeed.com.
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:19 PM | Comments (1)
Jargon watch
Cool words and phrases that I picked up during the Media Center's Emerging Technology, Business and Policy for Senior Executives conference in Palo Alto this week. I'm not saying the folks quoted coined the terms, and I’m not even saying the terms are terribly new. Just that it was new to me …
Prospective search – mining for information that hasn’t happened yet. Casting your search net into the future. Similar to the AdRover feature that newspapers use in their classifieds or the PubSub product that was discussed during the conference.
Retropsective search (i.e. Google) – searching the past, things that already have been on the web. Often takes quite a while for these items to be indexed.
Hot Topic Publishing – finding a hot button, a rising meme, and covering it with a saturation blog. In Esme de Guzman Vos' case, it’s a blog on municipal wireless networks and the legal and social issues surrounding them, especially telcom efforts to suppress governments from setting up free or competing wireless clouds in towns.
CGM – Consumer Generated Media
Brand Pulse – Intelliseek’s software, which “helps marketers, market researchers and product developers measure and track the pulse of consumer ‘buzz’ about any brand, company, or emerging issue.”
Internet – “The water cooler on steroids.” Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer for Intelliseek, which is based in Cincinnati. Blackshaw is a P&G refugee.
PlanetFeedback.com, he was involved in this. Apparently, Seth Goldstein helped fund it.
BlogPulse – using early monitoring of the Blogosphere to predict how a meme will rise and get a pulse of certain topics popularity.
Dog whistle – a marketing message isn’t audible to a product’s main consumers but is designed to be heard by a new, Katherine Von Jan of Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve gave this example: Tylenol wanted to draw a younger demographic to its product. While continuing marketing and advertising aimed at their traditional audience, they also sent out a dog whistle campaign designed to win over youth. The key was in “brailing” youth to find out what makes them tick, how they perceive pain and pain relief and to market along those lines. While this campaign is largely invisible to their core consumer (since it’s being focused at, say, skateboard parks, it comes through loud and clear to the youth demographic.
Brailling– Another term dropped by Katherine Von Jan of BrainReserve. This is ethnographic research, really digging in to try to figure out what makes a given demographic tick. Rather than observing them from above and outside, the marketer gets right down at ground level with them and works on their terms.
Podification – another tidbit I picked up from Von Jan. Essentially, the niche-ification of society. While the Media Center’s Andrew Nachison shows his slide show with the extended version of the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is the Love” in the background, featuring the “one world” riff. Von Jan noted that the trend really is toward podification, not unification.
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:34 PM | Comments (1)
January 29, 2005
Getting answers ...
Walt Mossberg's review of Answers.com caught my attention in the Wall Street Journal, especially when he noted that Answers is a product from GuruNet.
I purchased GuruNet when it first came out and really liked it, but the computer I was using at work was RAM challenged. It took forever to boot up, and I pulled GuruNet out of the startup menu to speed things up. It lost a lot of its value then, since it really needs to be running all the time to be valuable.
I'm already impressed with Answers.com. Just bunking around, I searched for "Jerry Garcia." It brought up several bios, ranging from very short to a Wikipedia entry. It also offered several worthwhile links, including a link to a 1972 Rolling Stone article that I spent about an hour reading.
Then I decided to try something a little more obscure, typing in the Irish bluesman "Rory Gallagher." Information was more sparse this time. All it had was a Wikipedia entry.
And finally, I picked out a name in the Gallagher Wikipedia entry, Richard McCracken, highlighted it and hit the hot key combo (comand-option-g is the default). A message came up saying:
"Richard McCracken is not one of the 1 million AnswerPages at Answers.com. Answers.com has AnswerPages for most words, phrases, places, famous people, companies, and more.
We suggest that you:
• Check the spelling of your term.
• Try a similar or related word or name.
• Click here to use Google to search for web pages containing the word(s) Richard McCracken.
Click here to view our directory of over a million topics."
That's where Answers.com's weakness is exposed. Its strength is that its not Google and doesn't flood you with links that may or may not be relevant. The info is presented quickly and in an easily digestible form. It's weakness is that it's not Google and doesn't flood you with links that can lead you to obscure info.
What I really like, though is that there's a Mac version, and when I downloaded it to try on my Mac, it appears to have all the same functionality as GuruNet -- without the fee. Basically, you underline a word in any document or web page, hit a hot key and get a definition, bio, etc.
Definitely worth trying ...
Now Playing: Nobody's Spoonful Jam from the album "Aoxomoxoa" by Grateful Dead
Posted by Bob Benz at 12:22 PM | Comments (3)
January 8, 2005
Control your contacts
I've stumbled across a cool tool for moving contacts and meeting dates from e-mails directly into my Outlook contacts and calendar with minimal keystrokes.
It's called Anagram. No Mac version, but if you're using PC Outlook it's definitely worth checking out. When you come to a meeting time or a sig in an e-mail, you highlight it, hit control-c twice and it automatically moves the meeting or contact info directly into your calendar or contacts. It does a really good job of fielding the data. You just have to make a few minor tweaks on occasion. It sounds like a small thing, but for someone who lives or dies by his e-mail, it's a godsend.
Posted by Bob Benz at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)
October 31, 2004
Stupid Bob tricks ...
The comments on my blog have been getting hit pretty hard by spammers. I guess they think people across the Internet will flock to play Texas hold 'em if they just post comments in enough places with links to their fine site.
After a little research, I found a very cool Movable Type plug-in that allows you to block spammers and clean up spam-infested blogs. It was so slick and easy to set up, I sent the developer a bit of cash via PayPal for his efforts. Nice work.
Emboldened by my success against the spam villains, I decided to finally get around to importing all of my old Greymatter blog posts into Movable Type. That, too, proved to be much easier than I could have hoped. My MT blog now has posts all the way back to May 2002. While I realize that's more Benz than anyone should suffer, I really like having it all under one roof.
Posted by Bob Benz at 6:27 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2004
TV-B-Gone
This is a very cool gadget that lets you turn of TVs anywhere you stumble across them. Think about it. You're in a restaurant trying to eat, and a TV is blaring over in the bar.
Click.
It's off. Life is better.
Posted by Bob Benz at 5:26 PM | Comments (7)
October 3, 2004
The high-wireless act
During another travel binge last week (NYC,
Cincinnati, Corpus Christi), I was staying at the Athletic Club in New York. They supposedly have wireless. But the signal was scant, and I wasn't able to get much done.
So I started walking around the hotel with my laptop, fishing for a stronger signal.
I found one. On top of the armoire. So I'm standing there, with my laptop at shoulder height, answering e-mail and surfing the web in spurts, until all the blood would run out of my hands and I'd have to take a break.
The next morning, my back and shoulders were sore from my high-wireless act. But the pain was nothing compared to the grief I would have suffered using a dial-up connection ...
Now Playing: Broken Hearts Are For Assholes from the album Sheik Yerbouti by Frank Zappa
Posted by Bob Benz at 5:33 PM | Comments (2)
September 18, 2004
Wireless tunes ...
I finally broke down and bought an AirPort Express, Apple's cool little wireless base station. I put it off for a while because I bought an AirPort Extreme that I was never able to get to work properly.
This was a completely different story. I purchased it so I can stream music from my computer to our stereo. The setup went flawlessly, and now I'm listening to the new CDs I purchased and loaded onto the computer. It's much cooler and easier to access music through iTunes and stream it to the stereo than it is to sift through hundreds of CDs and load them into a CD player. My iTunes music collection is now more than 4,600 songs (about 14.5 days worth of music), and I have quick and easy access to all of it.
During a recent flight, I listened to CSN&Y's Deja Vu through my iPod and was floored by what an incredible CD it is. It had been a while since I'd listened to it. That's put me on a CSN&Y binge, during which I purchased:
-- "If I Could Only Remember My Name," a solo album by David Crosby that includes most of the members of the Grateful Dead, several folks from Jefferson Airplane, Neil Young and Graham Nash. It's awesome. I'd never heard of it until I caught a tune from it on WDVX. It's now on regular rotation.
-- Manassas by Stephen Stills. I've only listened to it once, but I like it already. I really wanted a copy of Super Session with Mike Bloomfield but CD Universe didn't have one (is it even out on CD? If not, it should be. Their version of Donovan's Season of the Witch is incredible.)
-- Four Way Street by CSN&Y. Another great purchase.
And one departure from my binge:
-- "Shuffletown," by Eric Taylor. He's right up there with Townes Van Zandt in my book. Incredible songwriter.
Now Playing: Cowgirl In The Sand from the album Four Way Street (Disc 1) [Live] by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Posted by Bob Benz at 2:13 PM | Comments (3)
April 25, 2004
The epistolary novel goes 21st century
This is very interesting. Haven't had a chance to really look it over yet, but it mirrors something I was toying with attempting for the Homestead novel I'm kicking around.
I've signed up to be a beta tester. Hope the pick me ...
And speaking of things literary, heard an NPR interview with Pulitzer winner Franz Wright yesterday. His father is James Wright, one of my favorite poets. The selections they read from Franz's "Walking to Martha's Vineyard" were really powerful. So much so that I jumped over to Powell's and ordered a copy.
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:58 PM | Comments (1)
February 26, 2004
Building an empire ...
I recently picked up a copy of Civilization III, a computer game that allows you to build an empire. It didn't take long for me to get addicted. My fledging Roman empire already has wiped out the hated Egyptian and I'm now battling Greece. Those bastards. They sacked and pillaged one of my southern cities, took my catapults and used them against me and have cavalry units that are causing me no end of pain. I become so obsessed that I'll sit down and start playing and realize several hours have passed.
It's really a mix of chess, Risk and Dungeons and Dragons without all the tedious dice throwing. Some of the subtleties they've built into the game really are impressive. Attacking armies gain advantage based on the terrain they hold, and units gain power with each victory they score. It also allows for building monuments and other features that add a neat dimension.
I learned quickly that it's important to build features that help ensure domestic order or your cities will dissolve into revolt and disorder. After a few failed attempts, I built my next city near vineyards and immediately built roads to them, giving my Roman citizens an ample supply of wine. That's keeping those suckers happy while I wage war against Greeze.
Apparently, you can take a civilization all the way up to the modern day. I've never been much into computer games. Until now.
Today, Greece. Tomorrow, the world.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:01 PM | Comments (0)
February 8, 2004
Driving all night ...
I spent 15 hours in my truck during a recent two-day trip to and from Ohio University, which gave me a chance to test my iPod's FM tuner gizmo. It worked very well, better than I expected. There are a few spots where I was catching a bit of fuzz, but overall, it was clear and made the drive much more bearable.
It plugs into your cigarette lighter and allows you to listen to your iPod on one of four FM frequencies. It also keeps the iPod charged.
Driving home Friday night reminded me of several of the long-haul late-night trips I made in my younger days. Driving back to Edinboro from a 1981 Dead show at the Capitol Center in D.C. only to run out of gas at daybreak a mile from our exit. Driving from Birmingham to Destin in the middle of a muggy summer night in 1986 and freaking out at the stars and insect accordion hum during a piss stop somewhere south of Montgomery.
And this time, driving through rainy central Ohio swarming with swollen creeks, hoping the temperature wouldn't drop below freezing and having my entire CD collection at my fingertips. Loading all my CDs into the iPod has given me a chance to revisit stuff I haven't listened to in a long time. Returning home, I listened to Mazzy Star, the Breeders, Natalie Merchant and Phish. The more I use this thing, the more I love it. I'm now into the "S" CDs in my collection (Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys ...) and think I'll have the whole thing loaded on the iPod within another week or so.
Here's a link for iPod freaks with too much time on their hands ...
Now Playing: From Gagarin's Point Of View from the album Somewhere Else Before by Esbjorn Svensson Trio
Posted by Bob Benz at 3:53 PM | Comments (7)
January 14, 2004
You ship it, they rip it ...
Interesting business model that's being spawned by the iPod/portable digital music craze. These guys offer to burn your entire CD collection and send it back to you so you can easily put it on your iPod. Cool idea, but I'm not sure if the pricing is quite there. At about $1/CD, that adds up if you own a lot of music.
Then again, I'm still transferring my CDs to my computer after several days, and I'm only in the C's.
Now Playing: Elube Changó (Son Afro) from the album A Toda Cuba Le Gusta by Afro Cuban All Stars
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:52 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 5, 2004
Bruising the Apple
Despite my glowing (fawning?) posts on all things Apple, Mock sees fit to diss the iPod. He raises some valid points, worth checking out. Here's my response to him.
In defense of the ipod
Just read your savaging of the ipod.
http://www2.mocktech.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=13
Overall, I see your point. But I still have to point out the advantages to it. At least for some users. Mainly: I'm not as focused on "on the go" music as I am portable music. I like the idea of having my CD collection available in the office, in my car and anywhere else that I can plug in. My 40 gig ipod does just that, plus it serves as a secondary backup for my Apple computer. 256 mb isn't what I'm chasing here. I want multiple CDs available. I played my ipod all day at the office today on battery power, which impressed me. And I intend to get a power adapter so I'm not limited by battery life.
I am worried about the reports that the battery craps out after 18 months. But it's not the first time a product has shipped with flaws. I'm on my third Tivo. First one had a bad modem, which I had to replace. Then I bought a series II. The hard drive died on it so I had to have it replaced. But I love the technology so much I'm willing to take that risk. Being an early adopter can be painful sometimes ...
As for the Mac vs. PC debate. I realize it's akin to a religious war. But I started on Mac, shifted to PC for about 8 years and have just gone back to Mac, at least at home. It has flaws, but it's so much easier to use and so much more fun than the Dell that I'm dumping that I suspect I'll be bi-technical from here. I need the PC for work, etc. But when I'm looking to have fun, I'll be using my Mac.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)
January 4, 2004
An Apple a day ...
My Mac continues to astound me. I've started moving my digital photo archive into iPhoto, a very cool database approach to storing digital images. It also has a feature that makes it easy to publish a slideshow to my .Mac account. Here's my first test, using, of course, photos of my Big Green Egg. It couldn't have been easier to publish the photos. I need to geek around a bit to see if I can adjust a few things, but I'm impressed.
From a business perspective, Mac also gets it. They have managed to sell me a .Mac membership, and I've already downloaded numerous CDs and songs from their online music store. I'm buying gadgets and add-ons for my iPod. This stuff is like crack. And it's legal.
My one disappointment was the Apple Airport Extreme wireless base station. I couldn't get it to work in a reliable manner with my PC/Mac network, and I'm going to sell it.
Posted by Bob Benz at 3:51 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2003
Lost in wireless hell
My obsessive side came out big time during the past week. My cable modem fried, pushing me offline for several days, which made me pretty damned jittery. Think cigarette addict miles from the nearest smoke. I finally picked up a new modem from the folks at Comcast and hooked it up. Nothing. My wireless network was dead as Michael Jackson's career.
So I started tinkering. I was getting a signal from my Apple Airport Extreme. I could see my computers on the network. But I could break out to the Internet.
And I tinkered some more. I found a note in the modem documentation saying I needed a crossover cable to connect the modem to the wireless access point. Went out and bought one. Still couldn't get out ot the Net.
I could, however, hit the Net when I ran a cable straight to my computers. I just couldn't get it wirelessly. So I tried another wireless router I had in a closet. Then another.
After a day and a half, it finally started working. I have no idea how or why. I was tinkering. I rebooted and bang. The deus ex machina of technology made everything right. I'm now using a Linksys setup instead of the Apple Extreme. But I don't care. My Tivo can talk to my Mac and my Mac can talk to my PCs and everyone can romp around on the Internet.
Posted by Bob Benz at 10:03 AM
December 23, 2003
Something new ...
I'm thinking about switching this blog to Movable Type. Here's an unformatted test copy I've been playing with. Let me know what you think. Just to entice you to click, I've put a post there about zombies and Cuban cigars.
Posted by Bob Benz at 5:58 PM | Comments (1)
December 22, 2003
Every dog has his day ...
Yesterday was one of those rare days when everything I did worked on the first try.
-- My Big Green Egg was sick, and I needed to replace a carriage bolt that holds the lid on. I went to the hardware store, bought numerous variations of carriage, nut, bolt, washer ... you name it ... expecting to have to do a lot of slogging to make it work. When I got back, the first one I picked out worked, and I was eating mesquite smoked trout within a few humble hours. Praise the Big Green Egg.
-- I needed a few screws for the hot and cold water knobs in the shower above the garage. Again, I chose several variations of screw, hoping to stumble upon the right one. When I got home, the first package I opened worked perfectly.
-- After considerable debate at the hardware store, I picked a tarp to cover my woodpile. Would 20x12 be big enough? Yup. Perfect.
-- The furnace stopped working yesterday. After much fretting and swearing, I broke down and checked the air filter. Dirty. Clogged. After I cleaned that sucker, I said, let there be heat. And there was heat.
-- Joanne sent me a "God" detector, a small, compass-like device that measures god's presence. As soon as I pulled it out of the package. The dang thing went nuts. Hmmm.
-- And finally, I fixed this blog this morning. After I upgraded my server plan, nothing worked. After a bit of tinkering this a.m., I figured out the problem. Some root paths had changed in the migration. The path to perl had shifted. And bang. It was fixed.
Today I'm going to build a fire, read James Joyce and hide. Nothing good can happen after yesterday's windfall ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:25 AM | Comments (0)