A new year and time to decide what to do with Verbalism. I don't feel the need to be as wordy as I used to ;)
So I've decided to jump ship to somewhere where I can put stuff I like as a reminder to myself. Of course, dear reader, if you choose to follow me, and enjoy the occasional shard, then you're very welcome.
Rex Hammock has coined a classic on why good magazines will survive in the internet age:
A great magazine is something to be experienced and savored. A well designed and edited magazine is the wine of media. The web is about instantaneous and ubiquitous information, connections and transactions. It’s like the central nervous system of media. To live, you must have a central nervous system. But to live, you should experience great wine.
Good stuff!
Forget Sergeant Pepper and The Beatles, what was really important about 1967 was the birth of Radio 1, the Big Mac and me!
Oh ... and don't forget it was the year that also brought us legendary English podcaster, podcastpaul.
My almost non-existent electronica podcast has been spotted lurking in the undergrowth that is the podosphere. You should go and listen ... some great tracks by some great artists :)
Another rediscovery thanks to the wonder of shuffle. The album may be dead, but the power of surprise is alive and well.
This time it's a single track I adore and haven't heard for years: Found by The Beloved.
Quote of the day from Eric Rice:
Twitter is getting smacked hard: their competitors are building the Twitter that I’ve heard people want. And in the social media space we’re fickle. We’ll change a product (as long as our clique comes along too), like we change our underwear.
Jen's written some interesting posts recently on her concerns about Facebook and others have likened it to hotel California.
It's an interesting discussion. I wonder how long it will be before Facebook unlocks its doors? As Dave Winer says:
Eventually, soon I think, we'll see an explosive unbundling of the services that make up social networks.
As for the 6 degrees of separation between Facebook and the CIA here's the comment I added to one of Jen's posts which kind of sums up some of my thoughts on these issues.
A couple of thoughts. I think Facebook will open up its content, in the same way it’s opened up its APIs. They’d be mad not to. It’ll drive even more people to join. I’d put money on it not continuing to be a walled garden. I think they’ll also be smart enough to allow you to export your content via RSS or OPML to anywhere else on the web. The more you give the more you get. I’m sure the Facebook people know this and will act.
One last thought on the CIA, DARPA and Facebook. The internet was invented by the US military/industrial/academic complex. That’s why we’re all numbers - IP numbers. That’s why our very presence on the internet is very scary, if you think about it too hard. Facebook may be selling attention meta data, as Google and the rest do (it’s the price for free stuff on the net). But the CIA has got our numbers. Time to start thinking like phishers, sploggers, spammers and scammers, if we really want to protect our identity.
There's nothing quite like the joy of rediscovering music that had slipped into the oblivion of an over large collection of music.
Today I stumbled upon The Sundays again after, no word of a lie, 15 years! Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, which came popping into my earbuds thanks to the divine chance of 'shuffle', is a gem.
The melodies are fantastic, the lyrics Smiths-like, the voice of Harriet Wheeler urchin-angelic. Each track is a classic. Not a bad one on the album.
It's one of my favourite albums of all time. Joy indeed! Like finding a pound on the underground.
If you're not familiar with Creative Commons, then here's a great little video from David Bausola.
Allowing people freely to use your work for commercial gain is hard for some people to get their heads around. Why not try it and see what karma brings you?
Well, here's something you don't see every day. The screenshot below is the first time since Google was launched that I've seen an error message. Incredible!
Thanks to Neil McIntosh for pointing out a great comparison of Maradona's classic world cup goal against England with a sublime and almost identical goal by new Argentinean football god, Lionel Messi.
Comparativa gol de Messi y Maradona
Uploaded by cariacolov
Personally I think the Messi goal is better than Maradona's. Aesthetically Maradona's goal has always been spoiled for me by the final challenge of Butcher that appears to help the ball into the net via Maradona's left foot. Messi's right footed shot is crisper, cleaner and a fitting finale to a thing of footballing beauty.
Just a quick update on the British Gas situation. Just before going away on holiday I spoke to a couple of helpful people at British Gas who assured me they would cancel the erroneous bill and issue a new one for payment in April.
Excellent. I went away on holiday with a nervous spring in my step.
Back from holiday today and I find a new bill, as promised, together with a notice informing me that British Gas is now taking legal action against me for the bill they voided a week ago.
Great! I phone the feckless 'customer service team' at British Gas this morning to be greeted by the news that their systems are down and they can't help.
I can only assume the CRM system has downed tools in protest at having to work with one of the worst examples of 'customer service' in the land!
[Edit: how timely - perhaps this is the reason the systems are down - British Gas simply can't keep up]
Once again British Gas's customer service reaches a nadir which should shame any modern FTSE 100 company. This is 2007 for crying out loud, not 1907. A rant follows, so do feel free to go and read something more entertaining now, if you wish. If you've suffered at the hands of British Gas, you might want to read on ...
I am supposedly billed quarterly for my British Gas supplied electricity, but rather bizarrely have received bills in January and February this year and am also due to receive one in April. Clearly not that happy about paying three quarterly electricity bills in little more than one quarter, I girded my loins and 'phoned the British Gas call centre in Leeds.
I spoke to a woman called Danielle there who after much brick-walling agreed that being billed in January and February for electricity was incorrect. She said the February bill was to collect electricity used above and beyond the estimate of my last January bill. I said I'd be happy to pay this at my next quarterly billing point in April. She agreed, I gave her a correct meter reading, she canceled the bill and assured me I would receive no follow-up.
Of course I have received follow-up, chasing the canceled bill and threatening to cut off my electricity a day before I go on holiday. The response from British Gas on calling this morning - pretty much 'the customer is always wrong'. While Richard there agreed that it was very odd that I had been billed in January and February he said it was tough, I'd just have to pay up anyway. I asked how this situation could be resolved, he said it couldn't. I asked to speak to his manager, he said it was British Gas policy not to put customers through to managers. He reluctantly spoke to his manager on my behalf and returned to say his manager was of the same opinion i.e. it's tough, pay up and wouldn't speak to me or seek to resolve the issue.
I was finally given an address to write to with any complaint. My concern is that by the time the labyrinthine corridors of British Gas customer service get around to responding, I'll be without electricity.
I have the name and number of someone to call from a previous problem where British Gas charged me three times my normal electricity consumption for one quarter in error. I'll give him a call and see how things evolve ...
...
I was a fine idea at the time, now I'm a brilliant mistake.
Elvis Costello, Brilliant Mistake, King of America
Hugh points to this cool animation:
We all know we can produce our own media now. Producers and listeners, readers, writers and publishers are all one in the same. We have the tools. And the beauty of our social, online world is that we are our own editors too. The sorters and the sifters. The people who choose.
It's not surprising then that new 'institutions' designed to aggregate our online media for us are not necessarily finding a business model that works. Do we need or want somebody else to edit, to sift and to select our online media for us?
Chris Anderson doesn't. As he says:
First, let's agree that "media" is anything that people want to read, watch or listen to, amateur or professional. The difference between the "old" media and the "new" is that old media packages content and new media atomizes it. Old media is all about building businesses around content. New media is about the content, period. Old media is about platforms. New media is about individual people.
It's the people, innit? Our relationships, our passions and our lives. It's taken two iterations for the web as a tool to begin to approach the sophistication of people 1.0, but it's getting there.
This wonderful video on YouTube makes the point beautifully ... but also hints at the possibility that the web may somehow be fashioning People 2.0. Uplifting and thought-provoking too.
Many thanks to Adriana, via Jackie, for pointing to this. Both these women have been incredibly kind to me over the last 18 months in introducing me to various people and places in the London blogging/web world.
Thanks guys.
I'll be covering the launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 today and trying to give you insight into what it means for small businesses. In the meantime you can check whether your PC is Vista ready here.
I'm currently sitting listening to Bill Gates, live at the Vista launch, and also Lynne Brindley who is CEO of the British Library. To illustrate the Wow factor Microsoft and the British Library have brought together and digitised, using features enabled by Vista, two of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, one of which is owned by Bill Gates himself.
I'm all for these types of educational-based applications and the freeing of information - the evolution of Library 2.0 and the digitisation of knowledge.
But it does feel like an odd example to highlight for that Wow factor. I like the geekiness of it though - a Mac World keynote this is not.
Can't help wondering whether in making the Da Vinci - Gates connection there's a subliminal attempt to establish the soon to retire CEO geek's place in history.
Cross-posted from my blog at SmallBizPod.
Tags: vista, small business, british library, bill gates
No, this post isn't about Guantanamo bay, although it could be. No it's not about Baghdad, although it could be. It's about Genarlow Wilson.
Who? Well follow the link above and read about an appalling miscarriage of justice which is leaving a young man to rot in jail. What astonishes me is that Genarlow's accusers can sit idly by and see an outcome taking place that would make even the most vengeful, hurt parents shudder. Hardly the sleep of the just.
Jason Calacanis highlighted Genarlow's case today and suggests widespread blogging could make a difference. I wonder? I hope so. Of course due process of law would have to take place, but wouldn't it be something if the power of our collective, individual voices could help give another individual his life back.
Does anyone know anything about Cybernetics? I've just been asked to submit a paper and speak at the 4th International Conference on Cybernetics and Information Technologies, Systems and Applications. I think they'd like me to speak on complex adaptive systems.
Clearly a case of mistaken identity, although I did for a split second consider blagging it in order to get a free trip to Florida.
The quality of spam is definitely improving. Of course, 99.9% of the time it gets caught in my spam filter to be zapped en masse. Occasionally emails that I genuinely want get zapped too by mistake ... at least that's my excuse, if you've not received a reply from me.
Perhaps it was a subliminal desire for valium, but for some odd reason this evening I actually read one of the glut of spam emails that seems to have done nothing but increase over the last six months.
And here it is. Quite beautiful prose, ever so slightly meaningless, but no less intriguing for it. Even the picture has a certain, je ne sais quoi about it.
It was waking up that was difficult. Some hours had slipped by. Would have to do something. And that something would probably mean everything that you have done has been wrong. Attempting to deceive. It had always been sung in sensuous contralto by Madonette. Dont talk. Listen. I dont know what day it is. How much time is at a great pace into the microphone on your pinkie. They were found suspended in the chimney from the smelter. Along with something like you;ll find out soon enough. I had no choice. And I had down. He stood that way, unknowing, unseeing as a young man appeared.
Free Cialis to the first person to recognise the source of any of the above prose. P.S. Verbalism has now officially attained splog status.
Another quote and link, but Kathy Sierra's post on the dumbness of crowds, community and Web 2.0 is absolutely vital reading.
It's the sharp edges, gaps, and differences in individual knowledge that make the wisdom of crowds work, yet the trendy (and misinterpreted) vision of Web 2.0 is just the opposite--get us all collaborating and communicating and conversing all together as one big happy collaborating, communicating, conversing thing until our individual differences become superficial.
One of my new year's resolutions is to stop staring at the naval of UK podcasting. However, a recent thread of conversation on the forums provoked by Adam Curry suggesting there was no community in podcasting has got me thinking about his subject.
If Dave Winer doesn't know what a blog is, nobody does. He thinks an unedited voice is what makes a blog a blog.
If it was one voice, unedited, not determined by group-think -- then it was a blog, no matter what form it took. If it was the result of group-think, with lots of ass-covering and offense avoiding, then it's not. Things like spelling and grammatic errors were okay, in fact they helped convince one that it was unedited.
Literally and at a deeper level too, the unedited voice is clearly what defines podcasting.
I'm making no predictions this year other than one. Here it is:
The popularity of Second Life will peak around October 2007 as it begins to resemble First Life so closely that people choose to head somewhere else for escapism.
I admit now, I'm an old podcaster who doesn't get Second Life at all. I should spend more time there to really appreciate what it has to offer, but am always put off by the stress it puts my computer under and the gnawing feeling that avatars add nothing to IM.
I'm not the only one who has failed to find a compelling reason to immerse myself in Second Life, but then others I respect see it differently.
Maybe it's like Marmite.
Just a quick follow-up to the TechCrunch UK story. Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher have resurfaced at www.vecosys.com with sponsors and all.
Looks like they've ditched the Typepad platform Sam had hosted the Vecosys site on before. I wonder why? Anyway, Wordpress is very much de rigeur these days.
Good luck to them both. Looks like the UK European tech entrepreneurial community has a new home for news, views and gossip.
Steve Rubel tries to put the final nail in the coffin of the page view model. The message is clear, advertising is dead, long live PR (that's public relations, not page rank). As a PR professional myself I can see the appeal!
Everyone loves a good footrace. We're obsessed with knowing what the top movie, TV show, web site, songs are. We like to follow the standings and track the tallest, biggest whatevers in the world. The problem is that it's all about micro now. Marketers want to build sustained relationships with small groups that will hopefully create a multiplier effect.
That my friends means death to all traffic stats. They're irrelevant in this new era. Do I expect this to shift anytime soon? Probably not. The advertising economy is built on reach. It's time for it to change to depth.
Fundamentally, however, I agree that depth is vital. That said, what is the average business model of a Web 2.0 company these days? Build scale fast. Build vast volumes of eyeballs fast. Sell.
As Steve admits, it doesn't look like reach is going away anytime soon.
Did I mention sometihng about a digg for podcasts? How prescient of me :)
Digg has just launched a page for digging podcasts as part of its expansion of the topics the service covers. It'll be fascinating to see what shows rise to the top. I wonder how long the whole process gets gamed, in much the same way as the voting on Podcast Alley?
Rex Hammock points to the Time lead story and concludes that social media has now reached the end of the beginning.
My prediction, however, is that we’ve reached the peak of the era when social media was new. We’ve reached, in Churchillian terms, the end of the beginning of social media. At least I hope we have. And I think those of us who want to encourage others to use social media tools to share their ideas or creations or concepts or insights should be glad these tools have gone so mainstream that Time would do us all a favor and (perhaps unwittingly) declare an end of the beginning of the era when social media tools and platforms and networks were something special.
I'd like to believe this were true and perhaps it is in the US. My impression is that social media in the UK, however, is currently like texting or SMS was three or four years ago. Ubiquity is still a year off at least.
To a greater or lesser extent for the best part of a decade I've used forums on the internet. Small business forums, electronic music forums, software forums, podcasting forums even! All have been useful and all have at times been totally irrelevant, sometimes entertainingly so, sometimes frustratingly so.
Never though have I been involved in a heated discussion within a forum thread with an individual who has subsequently edited his own posts after the event. This leaves a rather lop-sided and odd record of a conversation ... unless I subsequently go in and edit my original responses too. 
I'm not inclined to do that simply because I believe that in forums, as in blogs, transparency is vital. Some of the things I've posted on the internet since I hooked up my 14.4 modem and ventured into Usenet I kind of wish I hadn't. Should I edit them to look better or different after the event? I don't know.
Personally, I think you should live with your mistakes. Transparency online is important not least because without it your credibility can be rapidly shot to bits.
Over at OpenBusiness, Charlie Leadbetter asks whether social media will be a victim of its own success.
His short hypothesis is that many view social media as being stuck between a rock and a hard place. It’s either on the verge of a bursting bubble, or it’s about to be ruined by the root of all evil.
If deals like Google’s partnership with YouTube do not pay off then the social networking craze will be seen to be over hyped, not worth the money being invested in it. Yet many will argue that if it does pay off it will also be bad, because the community will lose its bearing and becomes a slave to commerce.
The latter half of the 20th Century is proof that community can lose its bearings in the face of grand commercialism, the corporation and a broadcast ethos.
The first half of the 21st Century, however, will be characterised by commerce losing its bearing in the face of community. Technology is allowing us all to rediscover the commons like never before and the broadcast model is dying. That is why small business will be the big business of this century, something Prof Richard Scase believes in, not to mention Seth Godin.
Community and commerce is like sex. It works best when it’s an intimate exchange. That’s why an open business model has a future.
cross-posted from the my blog over at SmallBizPod.
Just a quick bit of self-promotion. Irregular readers (well you're bound to be, bearing in mind my sporadic posting here), will recall I have a penchant for electronica, techno and the like. One or two of you may even have subjected yourselves to one of my Electromancer mixes.
Well, you'll be pleased to know that a large part of my musical life has found a new home over at my recently launched electronica podcast, Beatific.
No blogging, no opinionated rambling, no feeble excuses, just some music I like and very occasionally some music I compose.
The blogospheric shit storm that has been Le Web in Paris earlier in the week, has claimed another victim. Sam Sethi, well known champion of technology entrepreneurship, has been fired as editor of TechCrunch UK by Mike Arrington for an exchange on the blog with chief organiser of Le Web, Loic Le Meur.
Mike's explanation of the reasons behind the sacking can be found in his post here.
Whatever the whys and wherefores, Sam's reputation is impeccable and having met him on several occasions I can see why. He's a good guy. It's absolutely maddening then that this whole sorry affair couldn't have been worked out.
As many have pointed out, TechCrunch UK was doing a lot to focus the minds and enthusiasm of tech entrepreneurs over here. It seems unlikely to retain that good will and motivating force, if it returns to these shores in the future.
Feeling very dicey today, having picked up a rather unpleasant stomach bug from my little son. But had some time to listen to Nicole Simon's pre-conference podcasts for LeWeb.
Just about 1,000 people will be attending LeWeb this year (previously known as Les Blogs) which is really quite extraordinary. I lived in Paris for a year in 1990 and I love the city. A real shame I can't hop on the Eurostar and make it over there.
Anyway, back to the point ... Nicole's podcast with David Weinberger concludes with my quote of the day on one of the transformational effects of the internet on us:
The world is much more interesting than anyone told us it was.
The internet is not revolutionary, it's just reasserting two vital human traits that have always carried us forward: sociability and curiosity.
I attended an event at the ICA last night celebrating the Webby's - a kind of Oscars for the web world. Final entries for the awards have to be in by 15th December.
I'd forgotten how unremittingly art-house the ICA is! It was very dark and very, very hip - but then I realised that in the shadows lurked quite a lot of people I've got to know over the last couple of years. Met some interesting new people too.
One person I bumped into was Chris Vallance from the BBC who mentioned that he'd suggested to the powers that be at the Beeb, that it might be a good idea for them to host some kind of 'digg' style chart for independent podcasts. Whoever topped the chart at the end of the week would get their own slot that week on BBC Radio 5. A chance to expose some podcasters to a wider audience ... something to be fair that the BBC and Chris in particular have been good at doing.
At the same time, of course, Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis and Peter Rojas are talking about creating a new podcast mp3 player and touched upon the digg for podcasts idea too. Even sounds like something Calacanis might explore in his new role as entrepreneur in action at Sequoia.
I'm really very, very sad about this on many levels. It appears the Britcaster forums are to close.
Two of my favourite online resources Electromancer and now Britcaster disappearing within a couple of months of each other - can't quite believe it. At the back of my mind too there is a lurking concern that both of these places have disappeared because ego overcame community.
First of all if Britcaster is to disappear, I'd like to say thank you so much to Neil and Jen for creating what was indisputably one of the best forums I've ever had the pleasure of participating in and I've been using forums and newsgroups of one kind or another since the early 1990s.
Britcaster is UK podcasting history. So much positive has been built from it ... PUM, PodcastCon, meet-ups, numerous business ventures, and most importantly friendships.
I'd sincerely hope that the Britcaster forums can continue with fresh moderators. It would be sad to lose the name and the domain to history, but if it has to be, so be it.
In the words of Joni Mitchell:
Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got till it's gone?
The Financial Times today reports that Apple has submitted a patent for a device that combines a mobile media player with a mobile phone. I've been saying for a long time that in terms of podcasting it's the mobile phone market that's the big opportunity and this is clearly not lost on Steve Jobs. As the FT says:
Apple has sold more than 70m iPods since the device first launched in 2001. That number pales in comparison with the potential market for mobile phones, however. Analysts expect more than 1bn mobile handsets will be sold in 2007.
It'll be fascinating to see what the design gurus at Apple can do with the usability and looks of your humble mobile. Despite all the bells and whistles and design skills of Nokia and others, I always feel that mobiles haven't reached the design sophistication and usability and let's face it sheer bloody cool factor of something like an iPod.
I, of course, am studiously anti-cool - a kind of technology Jarvis Cocker ... so however nice the Apple iPhone (good job I've trademarked 'iPhone') looks, I'll not be buying one!
I know you're an exclusive group, but just in case you've not already stumbled upon the following deal brought to you by the guys at Thresher and Stormhoek here's a chance to make Christmas more affordable or more drunken than usual.
Download the coupon from this link.
This post should have been written a while ago and Windows Live Writer has been around for ages, but I'm trying it out and needed to post to some blog or other.
This seemed like a good one :)
OK, so they're jumping on the mentos/pepsi bandwagon, but the guys at Stormhoek and the inimitable Lloyd Davis take the PISS with a bottle of very fresh wine. Nice!
Far be it for me to condone head-butting or is it chest butting - difficult to tell - but the incomparable Zinedine Zidane's red mist has clearly become the highlight of a World Cup final which was by no means a classic.
Like Eric Cantona before him, I think Zizou's infamous act is much more likely to cement his reputation as a national hero in France than it is likely to do him any harm.
Mad, French geniuses. Don't you just love them? I do.
Blog when you've got something to say. Blog when you feel like it. Hardly the ethos of blogging and contradictory to some previous posts I've made here, but nevertheless I think that's fair enough. Perhaps writing for three blogs, running two businesses, and putting together a podcast, count as an excuse too. Anyway, I hope the select band who do occasionally visit Verbalism, will forgive my inconstancy.
Oh, and at the risk of returning to the blogging cat phenomenon, we found out today that Catherine will be induced in just over two weeks. That's baby-talk I'm afraid, not some kind of political bribery scandal.
The other thing I wanted to mention was a post on podcasting I've been meaning to link to for a little while from the prolific Rex Hammock. Rex says some interesting things about how he sees podcasting leaving its mark on society:
Before the coming podcasting boom and bust, it was just a grassroots notion. Before we cycle through the inevitable macro-myopic journey of over-expectation and disappointment, I want to say once more that podcasting is going to greatly disappoint lots of people who think it's about the money. But what podcasting will eventually lead to is way beyond our minds' grasps.
In the distant mists of time I studied English Literature. Without a shadow of a doubt one of my favourite poets is Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde is an absolute masterpiece. Beautiful.
I was delighted to discover that Chaucer is blogging from beyond the grave. A Middle English agony uncle for modern times. Clever and amusing. One of the marvelous things you find via Boing Boing.
