News: Firefly fans turn up anyway. Hero tag: And so do the actors

Date: December 9, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Thanks to work, I missed the entire first and only season of Firefly. Since then I have seen the motion picture and checked out some of the fan stuff (always love it when people who are passionate about a story keep it alive) – but I could never get into the whole ‘browncoat’ thing.

It becomes interesting when the stars get into the act. Firefly’s fans helped push the studio to make the movie. They pushed to get the show released on DVD. The stars always suported the fans (isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?)!

Check out this link to see the next sement of this story – seems like there was a Firefly conference set up for this weekend.

It was cancelled at the last minute.

The fans still showed.

The actors still showed. And signed autographs, and gave gifts to the people who same from the UK and Australia for the con and were simply amazing from the reports.

A recurring theme at bloggercon and gnomedex this year was about how the users were in charge – we are taking more control, talking back to the marketers, making our voices heard. We are interacting with brands and products and experiences on our terms – sometimes to the pleasant (and unpleasant) surprise of marketers and advertisers.

These actors could have bailed or bitched, or split for home or the next gig. They stuck around. Hung out. Signed autographs. Nathan Fillion handed out gifts to the poor folks who came from across the Atlantic and Pacific.

But this shows that respect and admiration is a two-way street. The show had quality and charm and earned the love of the fans. The fans returned the love by making sure the show didnt die unknown. The fans kept it going and touched something in the actors – who returned the love to the fans.

I love stories like that.

Additional links:

http://melodies-of-you.livejournal.com/290484.html

http://embers-log.livejournal.com/134391.html

http://whedonesque.com/comments/12002

Sad day… Calacanis leaves AOL?

Date: November 17, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

First the Gang ends, now it seems like Weblogs Inc founder and Netscape Czar J Calacanis is leaving AOL. When he sold his company to AOL (one of my former clients) I was psyched – someone who really got it was joining the largest online community out there.

Now it seems that with the exit (ouster) of Jon Miller, Jason is moving on. I’ve been saying this a lot lately (Dave Winer, Salim, Steve Gillmor, Chris Pirillo), but the interesting thin about this story is what he will work on next.
Story here:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/16/jason-calacanis-resigns-from-aol/

Nicholas Reville comments on online video and how RSS is a big part of that future

Date: October 29, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

From Nicholas Reville’s post from Sept 14, where he writes an essay that started as an email to BlipTV about why they need RSS:

http://www.getdemocracy.com/articles/future_of_video.php Nicholas Reville

Putting viewers at the center means giving everyone who wants to watch video a homebase where they can access videos from any hosting service or website. For miscellaneous videos, like the ones that have made YouTube so popular, this means a search engine that gives results from any service and let’s you watch what you find without jumping around from site to site.

For more serious videos– stuff that’s produced by known creators on a regular basis (like a daily or weekly show)– the best homebase is an RSS aggregator. The can be a desktop application (like the one we make) or a web-based aggregator. The important thing is that viewers can pull together video from anywhere on the web.

A. I am a huge fan of the Democracy player and the team behind it. It is almost exactly what I am looking for from a media aggregator (includes bittorrent-y goodness!) – channels, rss feeds, bittorrent integration.

B. RSS has been a game-changer in the social media space for a while now (driving content syndication, blogging, podcasting and videoblogging), and it is still in the early part of the adoption curve (but podcasting and video blogging are the kinds of things that have been increasing adoption recently). If we accept the idea of giving the users what they want on their terms (their chosen device, their favorite medium, timeshifting, placeshifting, etc) then RSS is the magic bullet. It not only meets the needs but it exceeds the needs. It requires users to do little more than discover and attach the feed to their aggregator – a not-to-insurmountable learning curve. For publishers it means being more open with their content (in this case video) and letting the work out there.
C. Broadband is more accessible now than every before. It is getting cheaper. We have more choices.

The best part of this article (and I can’t believe it took a month for me to find it:

Promoting your RSS feeds is counter-intuitive: why would you encourage users to leave your website? You should, because small services can’t and won’t beat YouTube and Google and MySpace at the web game. Those companies are too big, too well funded, and have hired too many talented people that will continue to improve their service. You are better off getting your viewers to subscribe to your content while you have them. In this way, video RSS lets hosting services innovate to attract publishers.

Now this was written before the YouTube purchase, but it is even more relevant now. Asa follow up, Mike Hudack at Blip.tv wrote a response to Nick’s post where, with a few execeptions, he is almost completely on the same page.

It’s incumbent upon the Internet community to prevent any one corporate interest or collection of like-minded corporate interests from controlling independent Internet video. Independent Internet video should be outside the control of the FCC and the giant media conglomerates of the world. The artists and the viewers should be making the decisions. That means that artists and viewers should embrace open standards, distributed technology and open platforms. We’ve done our best to make blip.tv the best choice for those who want Internet video to be open and free. Hopefully Nicholas agrees, and I’m really looking forward to working together with Nicholas, the Participatory Culture Foundation and the Web at large to make sure that we stay at the cutting edge of open media.

And then Mark chimes in (far more eloquently than I – especially ’cause I left out the media copy-pasting that is needed to take this to the next level – arrggghhhh) . It’s funny because this is just the sort of thing Ze Frank does with his intros, Jaffe does with his Across the Sound podcast (which is frakkin awesome) – the idea of consumers becoming producers… not just listening to podcast, but sending in an audio file as viewer mail, or sending a little snippet of home made video for the introduction

Dave wonders about people – I’m wondering about companies, governments, alumni, charities…

Date: October 27, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

On Wednesday Dave Winer posted something interesting about Google and its search services.

Something that’s missing in Google’s repertoire of information searching tools. It’s something between Technorati, Google News, and Google itself. Think of it as the old-girlfriend query tool. Let’s say I used to date a woman named Tammy. From time to time I wonder what’s up with her. So I do a search, and find the same old links. I want to find all the new stuff. I don’t just want to search blogs, so it’s not what Technorati does. I don’t just care if she makes the news, so it isn’t what Google News does. For extra credit, I’d like it to come in RSS format so I can teach my aggregator to do this for me automatically.

BTW, once we get this feature, I predict the same kind of backlash that came when Facebook added rich RSS support. All of a sudden lurkers will have a new advantage, and the lurkees might not be happy about it.

I agree that it does touch the creepymeter for lurkers (although some folks who live in digital and celebrate it might not mind at all). But Dave hits the nail on the head with both the usage and the fact that it is missing from the market.

What I want is the unholy mashup of google/googlenews/technorati for corporations, governments (local, national, international), non-profits, etc.

I want an RSS feed for JetBlue (a former client, and my all-time favorite airline). And I want to see all of the news stories (thanks googlenews), blog postings (technorati/icerocket/whoever is next) and new content found by the googlebots about JetBlue. It becomes a clipping service on crack – a lot like what PubSub was offering (although only RSS) before their demise.

Transparency is good for companies. Transparency is good for governments. Transparency is good for non-profits/NGOs/Organizations, etc. It may not be so great for individuals who want more privacy. What Dave is describing is the ability to look/watch/catch up with someone – its the root of something cool. I want to keep an eye on the people/groups/structures who affect our lives (governments), our well-being (HMOs, Hospitals), our finances (companies we invest in, the IRS, the Federal Reserve). If I trusted them all, they could put out their RSS feeds and I would watch.
It applies to pretty much any niche (woodworking, democratic politics, people, NY Yankees, Classic Chevys, Gourmets, Real Estate, etc.).

I love my aggregator because it pulls from the affinity groups/communities (blogs, news organizations) that interest me. Take Dave’s idea a step further, and give me a web/blog/news aggregator that pulls all of the video and audio clips that fit my criteria (let’s say, a local election):

a soundbyte from the radio
a clip from cnn
a video blogger who does an interview about the candidate
blog posts from folks who live or work on the campaign

Put it in RSS and it plays through my video aggregator as a channel (WHoooooooHOoooo Democracy Player).

We are becoming the editors (blogs), radio personalities (podcasting), video stars (video blogging) and network programmers (RSS, Aggregators, The Democracy Player).

This is Fun.

Somebody hire this guy…

Date: October 18, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Not everybody loves the guy, but he is smart and uncompromising when it comes to his beliefs. Blogging, RSS, Podcasting… he has either been in the center or the start of a lot of the social media spaces that have been developed since before the last bubble. For a while I have wondered what he was going to do next, and then he announced he would stop blogging… so it sounds like Dave wants to grow outsider ideas from the inside of a major pub.

Disclaimer: I am looking for a job as CTO or Chief Scientist at a professional publisher that wants to make a strong transition to the new environment. So here I practice what I preach, I’m floating ideas in advance of using them.

–Dave Winer

Wonder if he ever thought of going back to WIRED. Especially now that the magazine and WiredNews are one group again.

Social Media Club – Fun Event

Date: September 19, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Got the chance to hang out this evening with the crowd for the first meeting of the NYC chapter of the Social Media Club (whose tagline is “if you get it, share it”). Chris Heuer (founder of BrainJams, Media Literacy advocate and Bloggercon/Gnomedex attendee) and Howard Greenstein (ex-member of the WWWAC, NYNMA, and all-around evangelist of the NYC Media scene pre-bubble) led the discussion.

.
I showed up late, but got to participate in the discussion of podcasting (“the term podcasting is the biggest thing holding back podcasting”) and a short discussion about microformats as well as XPRL (XML Press Release microcontent format).

All in all, it was a fun event (even though I showed up late). Some of the usual suspects showed up (HI Steve and Annette), and the discussion was fun, if not a little short (will not be showing up late again). It was a lot like one of Isabel’s dinners – not as intimate, but some great conversation with cool people.

I am really looking forward to the next meeting.

New Design, New Committment

Date: September 17, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Thanks to the J O B I have been neglecting the blogging again. This has to stop. The good news is we have a new NA Director of Technology, my current client is ramping up for a big launch in the coming months, I have made some decent progress on a project I started for Owen (and screwed the pooch because of the job), and I have been playing with SL a LOT.
I have selected a new theme for the blog, added some photos from my trips to Seattle and SF, and will be posting at least once per day.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I will be adding some video and podcast content to the mix (learning the audio and video stuff the hard way – Eugene and Perre make it look too easy 🙂

LA Times launches its own aggregator…

Date: September 1, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

PaidContent.org (required reading) is running a post about how the LA Times is rolling out its own RSS newsreader. The paper, which has about 5.2 million unique visits monthly, is calling this aggregator NewsPoint.

The newsreader has LA Times feeds pre-loaded, includes Video from a local partner and it is open so the user can add other feeds. Its the kind of thing that a big pub can do to spread RSS adoption, give users a managed experience (not training wheels) with syndication and subscription (on their terms) without having to go through GYMA.

I love the fact that they are using RSS as the foundation for the newsreader. Now I havent downloaded it yet (I will tonight), but I will post my thoughts after I get it running.

I do wonder about the LA Times mobile strategy (dont read the paper, not a resident) will be going forward. Dave Winer has been working on the ‘River of News’ features lately, and local content is a no-brainer for the mobile market. We want to access our content on our terms/time/device. I wonder with the newer phones coming on the market, could there be a river of news for video? (kicking myself for not trying out fireant earlier).

Farewell to InfoRouter

Date: July 30, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Seems that Steve Gillmor is closing down his ZD blog and is getting to work on Gilmor3.0 (pardon the pun). He is required reading and listening (Gillmor Gang) for me. While I am going to really miss his commentary and observations, it is very cool to see him coming out to NYC to meet with the Root guys, and pound away at the attention opportunity (wanna grab lunch while you are in town?).

Links are dead. Office is dead. TV is dead. Page views are dead. Inforouter lives on in the cache.
Best of luck…

Eric Rice discusses blogospheric PR problems and Second Life

Date: July 26, 2006 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Eric Rice is one of the interesting folks I met at Gnomedex this year. Very cool guy. Doing a TON of stuff – podcasting, Hipcast, and a lot of work in Second Life. I am still trying to figure out how he does all of this on a daily basis. We actually participated in a podcast while at Marc Canter’s party during Gnomedex (thanks CrapMonkey).

Tonight he posted a pretty thoughtful post about Second Life and Linden Labs and their users/partners and some blogospheric pr issues. First Phil Linden used a blog post to talk about how great a place LL is to work at while there are problems with downtime and bugs/exploits, and then a major member of the community was banned for 3 days for pointing out a bug (the rules say you cant post an exploit – he was pointing out a problem and seems to have been wrongly punished).
As an outsider, SL/LL seems to have a huge amount of momentum right now. Tons of press, subscriber growth and and conversation-equity. Large corporations (including a couple of clients I know/had) are taking a close look at SL as an example of yet another space to connect with their customers. They have an active community of Makers who, for both fun and profit, are as invested in SL as the folks who work for Linden Labs. Tons of potential.
SL/LL has a community that is developing and tweaking and taking its platform places that werent imagined by the LL team who built and maintained it. Users want to push the envelope (especially when they are making money doing it). SL/LL, while it is open for users to affect their environment, has a platform that needs lots of TLC, maintenance and upgrades.Users want stability, uptime, bugs fixed and exploits crushed.

LL has upgrade cycles, fixes to push, prioritized buglists, and naughty users to punish, etc.

SL is growing damn fast – one estimate has the userbase growing to 1 million users by this time next year. It can grow too fast: have servers crash and die, bugs left unfixed, ticked off long-term users and totally confused or disappointed newbies. Or it can listen to the users, reward those who catch bugs/exploits (bughunt anyone?), spend a little more time talking about _how_ SL is growing (adding new servers, etc). Transparency for the users is as important as transparency within the company. Manage the growth.

As a young lad I worked at a dotcom in Silicon Alley. early in the last boom. We were hip. We were public. We were Macromedia’s Shocked Site of the Day a buncha times 🙂 We were growing damn fast. My old CEO used to call it ‘hypergrowth’. When I naively asked him what was wrong with hypergrowth (Thats good, right?) he said –

“if we dont manage it we are f*cked”.

SL has a chance to manage it now. Passionate users are giving LL a reminder – ignore us at your peril.

The real PR problem occurs when the folks _stop_ talking about them. And seeing as I just started exploring – that better not happen.
(disclaimer – i have only been on SL 10 times – way noob)