a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
This seems like a natural extension for the blog publishers like Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc Network… wonder if/when Jason will counter.
Nick Denton has informed me that Gawker Media has launched a custom weblog publishing service for advertisers called Gawker Media Contract Publications. Their first project – a weblog sponsored by Nike. [Micro Persuasion]
Turns out many of emails troubles are just from carelessness (aside from poor technique and targeting) and the findings show Format Errors, Compliance Errors, Unreadable Emails, and Re-direct Errors. If you don’t want people to be able to respond these are all great ways to assure that’s to happen.
A big part of declining click-through numbers might not have anything to do with lack of interest in the offers people are receiving, but of the atrocious quality-control practices and poor re-direct procedures used by many email campaigns. And there is absolutely no reason for it. [MediaPost]
Great piece on Craigslist at Online Journalism review by Mark Glaser… Thanks to Sandro for the tip.
Craig Newmark started the community site as a hobby, but it soon became a San Francisco area institution for selling cars, getting jobs and finding sex. But just how much has it eaten into newspapers’ traditional classifieds business, and can they win that back? [OJR]
Leander Kahney of the The Cult of Mac Blog points to an article in Metropolis Magazine which highlights supposedly unintentional design elements of Apple’s Retail stores and it’s hardware. Apparently it’s just a coincidence… part of following what you love but results in MetaBranding, which seems in this case to be a subliminal similarity and passion of detail and design esthetic. Check out the full article for details and pictures.
Daily Wireless called my attention to a new group blog from Kevin Werbach, David Isenberg, Andrew Odlyzko, and Clay Shirky. Looks like a good one…
Current wireless regulation actually prevents communication from taking place. Even in prime low-frequency spectrum, vast amounts of capacity lies idle due to old rules and old thinking. With the support of Microsoft, we have come together to advocate freeing up this un-used capacity. Over the next few weeks, this site will serve as a sounding board for ideas and discussion. [Wireless Unleashed]
I checked this out and it looks good though these types of services have yet to prove too successful. Yahoo has had Games on Demand for a while now… Not sure if the twitch gamer really wants this or if services like this cater more to a casual gamer who might prefer a single choice subscription to some card or board game.
Comcast today said it will soon begin offering on-demand game downloads to subscribers of its cable Internet service. For an additional US$14.95 per month, customers will be able to choose from a library of over 60 PC-based games. New releases will be added on an ongoing basis, so the library will continue to grow in size. [Ars Technica]
Google Groups do Atom and now Yahoo does RSS. Syndication all around…
I noticed that Yahoo is now including an RSS 2.0 feed with every Yahoo Group. Nice. It even includes an orange XML icon. [John Robb’s Weblog]
Web design from Scratch looks like a great write up in simple terms for you or your clients.
So perhaps it’s not the worst offense, but it is quite surprising that I received an email with a 60 Day free offer to .sign up for .Mac as an existing customer! I don’t need and probably can’t even use the 60 day free trial to extend my account as the link bypasses my stored cookie.
I expect Apple to know better and to be able to perform some basic list segmentation against their customers… this is not the way to build loyalty for paid services. If you’d like to join, perhaps this is your chance to do it.
Comcast, the largest US cable operator with 21.5 million subscribers, said on Wednesday it will offer telephone service to more than 40 million households by 2006 (where it’s getting the other 18.5 million households is unclear). Comcast said it would begin an aggressive roll-out of VOIP, or Voice-over-Internet protocol using cable modems. [Daily Wireless]
Reading this article (below) from Rolling Stone really just pisses me off and makes me want to find other more direct ways to support artists I like rather than going through the main commerical channels. Somehow, Clear Channel’s moves are not considered anti-competitive or under any anti-trust scrutiny, but this move is clearly a way for them to control every aspect of the music experience — radio airplay, concerts and now live recordings.
The music industry needs an open source solution to enable real-time recording and burning of music so that artists can profit from touring the way they should, rather than continue to be crippled by ridiculous regulations like this. With the appropriate software and hardware, perhaps off the shelf systems bands or venues would be able to produce rapid copys of performaces for fans to buy on their way out the door.
The more we go forward, the the more the recording industry goes backward… I can’t understand why you would limit access to a product from people who not only are interested in purchasing, but are actually right there with money in hand!!
I thought that Phish had a system to do just this, but apparently not in real time… recordings produced a few days later are ok according to CC…
In the past few years, fans leaving some concerts have discovered a souvenir far better than a T-shirt: a live recording of the show they just attended. Bands including the Allman Brothers, moe. and Billy Idol have sold instant concert discs, and the Pixies and the Doors plan to launch similar programs this summer. The recording-and-burning company DiscLive estimated on April 12th that it would gross $500,000 selling live discs this spring alone.
But in a move expected to severely limit the industry, Clear Channel Entertainment has bought the patent from the technology’s inventors and now claims to own the exclusive right to sell concert CDs after shows. The company, which is the biggest concert promoter in the world, says the patent covers its 130 venues along with every other venue in the country.
“We want to be artist-friendly,” says Steve Simon, a Clear Channel executive vice president and the director of Instant Live. “But it is a business, and it’s not going to be ‘we have the patent, now everybody can use it for free.'”
Artists net about ten dollars for every twenty- to twenty-five-dollar concert CD that’s sold, no matter which company they use. But with Clear Channel pushing to eliminate competition, many fear there will be less money and fewer opportunities to sell live discs. “It’s one more step toward massive control and consolidation of Clear Channel’s corporate agenda,” says String Cheese Incident manager Mike Luba, who feuded with Clear Channel last year after promoters blocked the band from using CD-burning equipment.
The Pixies, who are booking a fall reunion tour with several probable Clear Channel venues, say Clear Channel has already told them DiscLive can’t burn and sell CDs on-site. “Presuming Clear Channel’s service and product are of equal quality, it may be best to feed the dragon rather than draw swords,” says Pixies manager Ken Goes. “Still, I’m not fond of doing business with my arm twisted behind my back.” [RollingStone.com]
Thanks for the Tip JD!
If you are connecting through Comcast running Windows, you might want to “batten the hatches…”
Comcast’s high-speed Internet subscribers have long been rumored to be an unusually persistent source of junk e-mail.
Now someone from Comcast is confirming it. “We’re the biggest spammer on the Internet,” network engineer Sean Lutner said at a meeting of an antispam working group in Washington, D.C., last week.
Lutner said Comcast users send out about 800 million messages a day, but a mere 100 million flow through the company’s official servers. Almost all of the remaining 700 million represent spam erupting from so-called zombie computers–a breathtaking figure that adds up to six or seven spam-o-grams for each American family every day.
Zombie computers arise when spammers seize on bugs in Microsoft Windows–or from naive users who click on attachments–to take over PCs and transform them into spambots. [CNET News.com]
Not getting full feeds… do you unsubscribe or stick it out? I keep them only because I want to know about updates, but find it very annoying and rely much less on the sources than those who provide the full article.
I guess JD is right. Making your RSS feed only have headlines does reduce bandwidth? How? Cause people unsubscribe. [Scobleizer]
Good pointer from Micro Persuasion…
Alex Barnett, an Online Customer Experience Manager with Microsoft UK, has posted a matrix that compares the use of email and RSS for marketing. The chart links to many related articles and blog postings. [Micro Persuasion: Email v. RSS in the Marketing Mix]
RipeTV coming fourth quarter 2004 to broadband and VOD for 18-34 year old men….
Ripe Entertainment is introducing a free “on-demand” cable network, called RipeTV, which will have advertising embedded into its shows. It has seven different types of advertising that will not be able to be fast-forwarded through when recorded on a PVR. RipeTV’s CEO, Ryan Magnussen, calls it “TiVo-proof.”
New ads include a 3-D animated advertiser logo or graphic to open and close the show, an animated logo occupying the lower third of the screen, a “video skin” or graphic frame with the advertisers brand framed around the show, video billboards in the lower third, strategically placed spots and long-form commercials. The ads are more like magazine advertisements, in a video magazine setting.
Consumers might not like a “TiVo proof” TV network unless the content is truly fantastic. Much like Internet surfers can block pop under ads, TiVo users feel it is their right to skip commercials. [AudioRevolution]
Similar to Communicator but enhanced…
The product, called “Fanfare,” is essentially an updated version of Communicator with new features such as media playback, a calendar and spyware protection. Fanfare is similar to Communicator but with more options on the navigation screen. For instance, a user can pull down a panel with Radio@AOL and its video player next to e-mail messages and instant-messaging “buddy” lists.
While Fanfare pulls more features from the AOL proprietary client onto Communicator, the company said the enhancements do not signify any changes in priorities for AOL. [CNET News.com]
Regardless of what they are saying this is a shift in play at AOL…
Fewer people want to play in proprietary places online… AOL has already started to push it’s own content out and is going to use more web based standards within to make it easier to move out when they want/need to.
IMAP support has been rolled out to allow people to use their AOL mail in the mail client of their choosing, but this is beyond Communicator, which already lets you use AOL Mail and Messenger without fully being logged into the service. Fanfare is pushing additional content features to the lite client which may indicate the beginning of a major change. Frankly I am not sure people really want this kind of email client, though I guess AOL won’t want it to be seen as just email plus features.
PVRblog points to an article in the LA Times on how TiVO and DVRs are changing the way Networks have to think about programming. It seems a fair number of DVR users (among other watchers) are no longer interested in watching re-run after re-run and choosing other options like cable or even… no TV at all.
Without reruns, networks are trying out new shows in the same slot, or repeating the previous week’s episode in a new slot in case you missed it (long a staple of cable TV). Smaller networks like the WB and Fox are promising to change the schedules to new shows this Summer instead of waiting until the Fall season. There’s also the lucrative DVD market that is saturated with pretty much every show ever made, and reruns would cut into that business. [PVRblog]
Seven tricks that Web users don’t know is a good piece at IBM in which Carolyn Snyder points out details many developers take for granted based on their level of expertise compared to the average user.
Rather than even try to pull highlights from this talk, I’ll just point to it.
Amazing stuff… Be sure to keep the audience in mind — CEOs of major companies. They are not as focused on tech gadgetry and services as some of us, and Bill is able to distill things into simple bits for people to get very excited about. Windows fan or not, this is a must read!
Bill Gates’ Web Site – Speech Transcript: Microsoft CEO Summit 2004
Let me state clearly: these are not things that will happen in one or two years. These are things that over the rest of this decade, through the technical advances that have taken place this last year and will take place in the next couple of years, these things will move into the mainstream, and you’ll really see the impact there that we’re talking about. Very ambitious things, but if you think about it, over the course of the next six years we’ll spend over $40 billion in R&D, so that’s $10 billion per pillar. It seems like for $10 billion we ought to be able to achieve those things. At least that’s what I tell our programmers.
Comcast is testing it all out it seems…
First Moxi, and now Microsoft. Guess we’ll see what works better in the trials and what people seem to want.
Comcast, the largest U.S. cable TV operator, has agreed to use Microsoft’s set-top software for up to 5 million users, the companies said on Thursday. Philadelphia-based Comcast, with over 21 million subscribers, agreed to extend an existing licensing deal with Microsoft, although it did not say when it would roll out services. [Daily Wireless]
eHomeUpgrade has some good detail as well.