Apperceptions

Les Blogs or Less Blogs?

Is it just me or did the whole Les Blogs thing fizzle big time (at least to North Americans)?  Sure there's lots of news about it, but it seems like the whole thing made no real splash at all.

I think the problem is the so-called "A-listers".  Not blogging.

Lately, I have been moving more and more "A-list" bloggers into my "zzzzzzz" folder in Thunderbird.  This is where I put the ones that I used to like, but am finding less and less relevant each day.  I only check the "zzzzzzz" folder once a week or so and clean it out about once a month or so.  Everyone else, I keep up with.

Sometimes I get so fed up with a blogger that I actually enjoy booting the feed into the "zzzzzzzzzz" folder.  Take that!

I really love it when I can pull someone out of there (Paolo is the only one so far).

I keep wanting to take Joi Ito out of the "zzzzzzz" list, but can't seem to justify it.

Zawodny seems to have lost his cool back at the sky gliding camp.  Now he just bitches half the time and makes excuses for Yahoo and himself.  To the "zzzzzzz" list.

I'd take Dave Winer out if he'd just stop putting markup code in his titles.  Jeez.  What a geek! (he sent me an invite to Yahoo! 360 though - thanks Dave - I like your writting when it's legible).

Now I guess I'm bitching.  Oh well, you can always put me on your "zzzzzzz" folder or just hit delete.

I hope BlogNashville goes better (it should, there are better people there, like Jay Dedman - oops, Dave Winer is presenting at the same time) but I think the "blogging" thing is over (not writing them, just the "real" conferences).  $50 says that even the 2006 SXSW will be so "last year".  Any takers?

Addendum₁: Jeez! Some jerk weenie jerk left a trackback, linked here, misquoted this blog and then credited the wrong person.  Apparently this is the organizer for BlogNashville!  I hope he/she handles details better in the real world than they do in the blogosphere.  Trackback deleted! I'm not even gunna link to the offending page :P

Addendum₂: I changed "jerk" to "weenie" because they apologized and corrected the name, but only put quote marks over a single word I said, taken out of context.  Jeez!  I hope this guy checks out some of the journalism vs. blogging sessions.

Addendum₃: Now he's complaining that I called him a "jerk" inspite of his self-admitted lack of attention to detail.  He does have excuses though.  ("Excuses? Reasons? They are all the same to me." - General Arturo Salazar)  On the other hand, some of his other readers are also complaining about his misrepresenting their words too.  So I gues he's promoted back to "jerk" again.  I still hope it's a great conference for all who go.

Addendum₄: I'm standardizing on seven z's in "zzzzzzz-list'.  I added a new category.

Seth Godin

I had been meaning to write a post about a Seth Godin experience that I had recently, but one of his blog posts today gives me a second reason.  Regarding today's post:

Interesting Question: what happens in viral marketing when people identify with the wrong brand? 

Case in point: The Beverly Hills Hotel is a venerable institution that can be identified with bungalows, whereas the Beverly Hills Hilton is just a big brand hotel chain down the street that nickles and dimes you for every little "service".

Moral: we're not all mavens with respect to everything.

Especially me...

I have been enjoying Seth's newsfeed and blog for some time now and his name and work has become a familiar one to me.  I have even mentioned him to others and have certainly emailed links to his posts to old school marketing folks I seem to constantly meet (my favorite is "shortcuts").

Much of what he and Malcolm Gladwell have written has resonated with me.

The recent "Seth Godin" experience that I referred to was this...

The other day, I was thinking about something pretty deeply and my vision fixed on a point ahead of me.  I have a small rack of little reference books on my desk, filled mainly with those O'Reilly quick ref's and a gadget manual or two.

All of a sudden it occurred to me that I was staring at the words "SETH GODIN", running sideways down one of the books.  I thought "What is this doing here?" and suddenly I remembered that "Unleashing The Ideavirus" was one of those Amazon "Better Together" offers back last year when I pre-ordered Gladwell's "Blink".

In that moment I realized that I must have accepted the additional book (probably because I was gunna have to wait several more months for Blink and probably because I had just finished the Tipping Point and wanted more viral marketing exposure).

I recall browsing Seth's Ideavirus book when it arrived and liking a lot of what it had to say.  I must have then placed it in the reference rack with the hope of reading more later and then forgot about it (and him) for several months (it's probably better to keep a book like this in the john, it will get read much faster).

So, here's a case where the author's blogging did not cause me to purchase the book (but I'd love to take a look at his "liars" book - i have too much to read these days and so I don't just order everything I think I want like I did back in the boon days).  But Seth's blog (blogs actually, I think he has at least two) certainly do promote Seth and his ideas.  And now I can't wait to read more of Ideavirus.  It's a wonderfully vicious cycle.

I love finding treasures already in ones own library.

Finally, the pieces fall together.  I need to pay more attention to people's names, especially in this attribution crazed world.  I had a professor in college (Ky Fan) who used to hammer us about that.  We could often state and prove very complex theorems, but couldn't tell you who first wrote them and when.  In spite of my rigorous academic upbringing, I still wonder sometimes how important this really is.  We all stand on the shoulders of giants, but then, so do they.

We live in a world gone "attribution" mad.  There's even a licence for it now.  I wonder what would happen if, as a University instructor, I were to license all my handouts and materials (and even the course content itself) with a Creative Commons "attribution-shareAlike" license and then sued all my students that did not adhear to the licence over the course of our lives.  What would happen if I added the "non-commercial" or "no derived works" options?  Personally I am beginning to think that "intellectual property" is an oxymoron, but this is a subject for another post.

At least now I know who wrote "Unleashing the Ideavirus". 

Thanks Seth!

Wireless p2p & Flocking

Rocketboom has a great little video about some fascinating wireless and true p2p experiments at Parsons School of Design. 

Subjects use wireless p2p devices (bluetooth?) to communicate using vibrations in order to produce a bird-like flocking behavior.

Interesting and fun, but my question is: why would a bunch of people willing choose to follow a "lead" bird?  Wait a minute.  Never mind.

Click the pic for more flocking info.

Carry a camera, go to jail?

"What is The Law?  The Law says:"

Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005 or ART Act - (Sec. 102) Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit the unauthorized, knowing use or attempted use of a video camera or similar device...

... Sets forth penalties for such violations, which may include imprisonment for not more than three years for a first offense. Considers the possession of a recording device in a movie theater as evidence in any proceeding to determine whether that person committed such an offense, but shall not, by itself, be sufficient to support a conviction for such offense.

...Authorizes, with reasonable cause, the owner, lessee, authorized agent, or employee of a movie theater to detain, in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable time, any person suspected of committing such an offense for the purpose of questioning that person or summoning a law enforcement officer...

(Sec. 103) Establishes criminal penalties for willful copyright infringement by the distribution of a computer program, musical work, motion picture or other audiovisual work, or sound recording being prepared for commercial distribution by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if the person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
 
Link: Bill Summary & Status.

So now theatre ushers are cops?  That should be good training for when they grow up and become Homeland Security agents.  What's next? Camera registration?

Spam

My apperceive.com mail server is getting a flood of undeliverable address error messages from various servers that have been spammed by some butthead that used my domain in the reply-to field.

It's pretty simple to set up a filter for this in Thunderbird, so no big deal - just annoying so far. It's also a form of identity theft.

Have to wonder why (1) hosting services allow email out from domains that they do not host and (2) why people bother sending error messages when the reply-to is obviously bogus (just look in the header).

I was thinking that I should create a database for the spammers that contains all the bad address info.  This may seem odd, but I guess if they are going to spam, it is better if their lists are more accurate.  Maybe someone should setup a central "bad address" repository.  Can't say I've given it much thought.  Probably a stupid idea.

New SpinFlow.org Posting

I posted a new feature article to SpinFlow.org.  This time it's about my friend Daniel Duerr. 

Dave Toole introduced us some time back, up in Tiburon (click pic to see Flickr slideshow) and I think Daniel is a great guy.  He's on top of so many things.  He's the one who truly got me thinking that content was really far more important than applications.  Although I remain the "app man", (now and forever), I do truly see that content is king. 

Anyway, check out Daniel's story.  Our marketing consultant Liz pulled together the rough copy on this and then I hacked her marketing hype into something a little more suitable for SpinFlow.  I think it makes for a good story.

Of course, this knocks my videoblogging friends from the top of the SpinFlow feature articles, but I'm hoping they will turn up with another SpinFlow oriented video again real soon.

Next up is the fascinating interview I had with the digital artist Metrov.

Drupal

Ok, look out! The soup is starting to bubble.  The SpinXpress.net url is now pointing to BlueHost and we are up and running with Drupal.  This is too cool.  I'm already thinking about the ties to SpinXpress.  The potential is awsome.  Clearly the first big issue will be to tie users in SX to users in Drupal.  This is the problem that OurMedia has not solved yet with respect to the Internet Archive.  There is a clear opportunity here for SX to act as a smart "router" in our secure personal networks.  These networks will connect many (possibly Drupal powered) services and sites.  The goal is to make these "plug and play" into SpinXpress.  As with Tribe, "plug-in" will mean XML feed (RSS feed?).  The trick will be to let SpinXpress handle all the logging in and sync'ing of SPIN objects (people, members, owner, group, resource, file, url and comment) with Drupal objects (user, moderator, page, story, forum, post, survey, etc.).

The first order of business is to get to know Drupal.  So far we are getting along great.  I have a million questions.  For now, I am playing with a test installation to learn Drupal.  When it's soup, I'll move it to the root and then anyone with SpinXpress installed will be able to access the site.  It will probably be sometime before this happens (weeks?)

What to work with me on this?  Know Droupal?  Want to learn Droupal? Send me an email or leave a comment and I'll set you up a "beta" "alpha" account.

Laurie Kurilla

One of the great fortunes of my life has been my friendship with Laurie Kurilla.  Like, my good friend Dave Toole, I met Laurie at UCSB back in the 70's.  That's a few days ago.

I've been so busy that I had not seen Laurie for quite a while and we finally got together for lunch yesterday in Ventura.  It was a beautiful day for a drive down the coast in the convertible too!

We chowed down at Aculpulco's.  She was running a 5K that evening and so she gleefully polished off all the carbs at the buffet.  Me, I don't need a reason, but I actually hardly had time to eat, what with all the things to katsup on.

Laurie has recently started her new job as GIO for the County of Ventura, where she says she has a great staff and is looking forward to the interesting projects ahead.  I told her about Jon Udell's GoogleMaps screencast and about the potentials for leveraging some of these new Web 2.0 tools.

Of course, I told her all about SpinFlow - that's almost all I ever talk about now.  She had some fantastic project ideas.  I also told her about the Creating Passionate Users weblog; I find it more inspiring every day that goes by (I think I've fallen for Kathy Sierra - just kidding Alicia!).

Laurie emailed today to say that she always feels inspired after we get together and I feel very much the same.  Even though I dragged her away from work for a loooong lunch (to Americans, but not to Europeans), it was not near the time I would like to spend with her. 

Besides being a dear friend, Laurie has been a student, boss, mentor, co-teacher and even client.  I hope we get to "work" together again soon.  She rocks!

Here's a photo I took at the resturant with my iPaq.

Bye Bye Brinkster

Well, I finally got around to setting up some new hosting on BlueHost.com.  It comes with more goodies that I know what to do with.  I've aready setup Droupal and some other tools for use with Apperceive's sponsored projects like SpinFlow and app.etitio.us.

The new service is $6.95/mo and has over 20 times the storage of my current Brinkster account (Brinkster does offer more to new accounts, but refused to upgrade existing accounts when I asked - not too smart - bye bye).

BlueHost also allows for more domains than I already have where as Brinkster charges $1.95/month for each additional domain.  After transfering 4 domains, I was already saving more from Brinkster than I was paying for the new BlueHost account.

That just leaves a few small ASP domains to convert before transfer and then it's "PHP, here I come!"

Brinkster Bouncing Mail Again

And then there are those who grow and their service just goes down the tubes...

Well, another great day on Brinkster.  People are calling and telling me that emals to the Brinkster based account are bouncing.  I can see it here too.  Luckily, I've started to migrate to some better providers, but it will take a little more time (I've decided to try multiple providers, they are getting so cheap and I have enough domains and paranoia to warrent it).

The great quote of the day from Brinkster support monkey Jason (do you think they use they're real names?) was:

"We work constantly to resolve any known issues with the email services."

They must have they're hands over they're eyes, ears and mouths.

Growing with Style

I got this email from the folks at Flickr last night.  Now this is what I call showing a little style:

You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in the early days. Well, it's true! And since you're one of those lovely people, here's a little something to say YOU ROCK!

1. Double what you paid for!
   Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to
   2 years, and your new expiry date is Mar 21, 2007.

2. More capacity!
   Now you can upload 2 GB per month.

3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends!
   This won't be activated for a day or two, but when it
   is, you'll see a note on your home page telling you
   what to do.

Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth is and supporting us, even while we're in beta. Your generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are today.

Kind regards,
The Flickreenies.

Videobloggers Project

I've been fortunate to work with some very talented people lately.  Here is a post on SpinFlow that I wrote about one of their projects.  Watch the video they made about a videoblogging workshop that they gave in NYC.

OurMedia

Oh boy!  I owe Marc Canter a drink dinner at Guaymas (let's invite Dave Toole too!).  I finally got a chance to upload one of my videos to the Internet Archive via OurMedia.org.  It was really simple, quick and easy.  Thank you Marc!  I'll write up a more complete description of the process in SpinFlow.  Here is a link to my OurMedia blog.  Now, if I could only upload by simply dragging and dropping my files into SpinXpress...

Collaboration Stories

Here's a short story (3 minutes) about true collaboration, Kathy Sierra and SpinFlow.  Click the pic to view.

Obviously I am way too close to the camera in this one (I thought I'd try something different - you should see the failed swimming pool experiments from earlier in the day!), but this is how I learn - by doing.

Also, it's like 1am after a looooong day and I was about to call it a night, but I had just taken the freevlog pledge and so I thought I should shoot another vid as promised.

SPIN

Big news related to SPIN (that's secure personal internets)...

First, Outhink's SpinXpress is now FREE!!! WooHoo! No more trial period, no more subscription for the base product which let's you collaborate with anyone across the net securely.  You can create invitation-only groups where you can share files with others in private.  Serve content securely from your desktop.  Transfer and backup files between computers.  Outhink intends to make money by offering add-on services for hosting, registration/notary, etc.  Smart!  Built with open source tools. Works on Mac or PC. 

Second, the new version of the Outhink sponsored SpinFlow site is up and running and ready to begin it's transformation from a simple weblog to a great community for creative professionals centered around moving digital media.  Come and join us!  Help make SpinFlow be to digital media production and distribution what Archive.org and OurMedia are to digital media storage.

I'll be contributing to SpinFlow and evangelizing the fine art of digital media movement (think Tai Chi meets Darknets here - did you hear the gong?). Come and join me.  Send me your project ideas and let's change the world.  Got something to share?  Need something?  Let's talk about it!  Let's all practice the art of SpinFlow!

Disclosure: My company benefits from a generous Outhink sponsorship.

Workshop Memories

Something triggered an old memory and I felt I should vlog it.  Sorry if it's a bit long (6 minutes) and I know I have to get all this down better, but the important thing is to get the vids out there. 

Hopefully this has better compression. I followed Michael Verdi's great compression tutorial notes and it looks like I got at least 20% smaller files. 

The start up still seems a bit slow to me - bear with me please as I figure this out and try to keep up with all the pros.

Anyway, here is a little story about the early days of teaching desktop publishing on the first Macintosh's.  Click the pic and enjoy!

Katsup

Just a short 'katsup' note.  I'm so busy with SpinFlow related projects that I have little time for blogging.  Things are definitely starting to spin and flow with respect to our Outhink sponsored projects.

I had a great interview with Metrov on friday.  He's a multi-talented and insightful digital artist living in Goleta, California.  He graciously invited me over to his studio and we had an interesting conversation about his work and moving digital media.  I'm putting together a complete writeup for SpinFlow.

I've also been trying to get back into the groove with Internet Archive Tonight and have been adding significantly to the playlists at WebJay.org.  Check out the new Lounge playlist.

Speaking of music, hop over to Hideout for a great source of legal tunes.  Hideout is a radio show with "drops of 30 minutes of music featuring selections made by Brazilian DJs".  Don't expect too much Samba here, the last show highlights some hot rock and roll bands.  This is a nice Blogger site and you can use your own favorite media player or the embedded flash one if you are player-less.

I took a walk with Alicia yesterday in the Ventura River Preserve and just got so fired up by all the sounds that I have started to play more with my old Olympus D1000 digital recorder so that I can start an "Ojai Sites and Sounds" weblog (anyone want to help?) where people can visit to just take a break and listen to birds, horses, streams, parades, children's laughter, etc.  Click the picture of horseback rider to view a Flash-based slideshow of the pics.

The good news is that the D1000 seems like a great little portable recording device.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a driver for the Olympus CA1 PCMCIA flash card reader that works with Win2K (this is weird, as I have another, similar, reader for my camera and old pda flash cards that works fine without installing any special drivers).  Oh well, I can always go from recorder's mono headphone out to a computer's stereo line in.  Joy.  Sort of defeats the point of capturing things digitally.  Anyone know how I can make Win2K recognize the Olympus CA1 flash card reader?  Does it work under XP?  I guess I can look into buying a new reader that handles flash memory cards and the newer and smaller SD ones used in my new iPAQ pda/phone.

Ok, back to work.  I have aggregators to tame and lots of video tasks to get to (I learned how to do pic-in-pic and simple text videos in Quicktime last night - fun, but it takes way too much time from my programming).  I need a 40 hour day, not week. 

SpinFlow Approaches

I've been busy on the SpinFlow site.  We're getting ready to start engaging with people.  Lot's of cool things being preped.  I've had the pleasure of talking with some very special people (hint: audio and video folks) and they are getting ready to contribute to the flow!  Any day now.  Watch for it.  I'll make an announcement here soon.

RSS Feeds for Videos

Hmmm.  I just tried to see if the RSS feed for this blog would work in ANT.  Nope.  Ant indicated an error downloading and parsing feed.  I've done this before successfully for webjay feeds, but not a TypePad blog. 

I was thinking about using Feedburner anyway as it will be useful for the new SpinFlow site.  Perhaps it will work better.  I notice it's use on other sites and I hear you can get good stats too. 

Ok, so more stuff to learn and do trying to get my message about SpinFlow out to you. I'll make notes here as I resolve things.  I'll probably have to learn more about RSS enclosures or something like that.

This is what SpinFlow is all about: helping to remove the barriers to self expression.

SpinXpress

I also have invites to SpinXpress too.  Just ask.

Yahoo! 360

Dave Winer was kind enough to pass on an invite to me and so I'm checking out this new Web 2.0 service.  It has mail, blog, photos, contacts, friends, calendar, IM, etc.  Anyone want an invite?

Videos

I got some emails (thanks!) that indicated that some people could not see all the videos and so I tested them in various browsers and did find that things are horrible in IE/Windows (not so bad on IE/Mac).  Of course, things seem to work great in Safari and Firefox.

I'll look into this some more as soon as I can and report back.  I hope the solution does not involve multiple formats (e.g., a WMF version? ugh!).  I sure could use a hand here (hint, hint to Ryanne).

In the meantime, IE users might try saving the video first (right click on the picture in IE and select "Save Target As..." from the content menu and then play the video from your desktop). 

Might I also humbly suggest that IE sucks (sometimes).  I still can't believe that Microsoft has filed a patent on "tabbed" browsing.  Jeez!!!

This is all part of SpinFlow (or the lack of it in this case, thanks to Microsoft).  Getting your media from here to there with the least hassle is what SpinFlow is all about. 

Spring Forward from VlogWeek2005

Don't forget to set your clock ahead if you do that sort of thing.  Click pic to see how it's done.  Cheap thrills.  Wait for it.  2AM on the first Sunday in April.

Post 7 of 7 for videobloggingweek2005 (it's still Saturday in the Pacific). Man, am I tired.  Whew!

VlogWeek2005 Inspiration

All week long this song has been in my head.  When I got home from my trip to Outhink, I had to listen to it several times.  The voiceover adds so much. I love it.  So will you.  Click to play.

Post 6 of 7 for videobloggingweek2005.

More on SpinFlow and Moving Media

I was asked today what I meant by "moving media".  Click the pic for a short discussion between me and Jimmy on this interesting topic.

Post 5 of 7 for videobloggingweek2005.

Public Service Announcement - Now Hear This

Does the power of this go to everyone's head?  I had to do this for some silly reason. 

I actually recorded this a few weeks ago when I got the iSight webcam, but I did not finish editing and producing until tonight. 

Does that still count for for videobloggingweek2005? Here's 4 of 7.  I promise to get back to more serious stuff soon.

Kanoe Kam

Ok, so I have to make one with a cat.  Here's 3 of 7 for videobloggingweek2005.

Kanoe is a very clean cat.  She takes a bath before going outside in the rain.

Our first "mobile" video and a little drama.

Compression and Decompression

I've uploaded new versions of the videos from the last two posts with better compression (I hope -- I will test in  a moment). 

Today has been a great day.  So many things have happened.  I got up early Friday.  It's 3am. I need to sleep.  Can't wait for tomorrow (er, today).  So many great things are happening.

Addendum:  Ooo, much much better video startup.  Thanks again Ryanne. I had recently read how to set compression and was in too much of a hurry to post for you.  You caught me right away and so I just had to fix it right.  This is great: reading knowledge is one thing, doing is another entirely.

I finally made a few posts to my WebJay playlists and now I can finally go to bed.  I wonder if Jay is still up looking at ourmedia.org videos.  Hey, maybe I should post these!!!

SpinFlow Vision Part I

While hoping and waiting to hear from Ryanne, I decided to make another video.  Have I joined for videobloggingweek2005? Only time will tell.  I'll need another five more videos.

This one begins to explain the vision for SpinFlow, a community that we want to build to address "moving media for creative professionals".

Ryanne sent back the nicest email.  I'm stoked.  This may seem redundent now, but what the heck. Click to play.

Ryanne

Ok.  Ryanne has prompted me to post my first video to reach out and see if she will come work and play with us.

Buddy, my cat, walks through the shot right at the end, of course.

Lucky the phone didn't ring.  Lot's to learn here.  Click picture to view.

Dead People Web Usage Is Up

I noticed an ad the other day for a Beatrice Woods' website.  A true Bohemian (and the "Mama of Dada"), she called Ojai her home for many of her 105 years.  She claimed that she owed her longevity to "young men and chocolate".  Apparently her artwork is selling well on the site.  I wonder how many dead people have websites. Obviously, there usage is increasing.  I wonder how they pay for hosting.