February 2008
10 posts
Twitter Down Art Collection
Alot of people are talking about Twitter being down.
I have recently called for Twitter to decentralize, I believe the features of Twitter can be covered by Tumblr, and now I realize that I’m a dedicated Twitter user and plan on staying that way. I cant explain all of the reasons why, but I am sure that its really great and I love it. So I thought it was a great time to finally bust out...
January 2008
52 posts
The Reblog Button →
“But the thing that had the most powerful effect on me and may be fundamental to the future of media is the reblog button on Tumblr.” (by Fred Wilson) — desaturated
Crisis in Kenya
I spent some time today reading through several Kenyan blogs on the election crisis and have added more resource links to our Wiki. Have you been following the events? Our field correspondent Ruud Elmendorp has been stationed in Nairobi so we have been keeping close tabs on the region. Consider having a look and perhaps contributing in some way. Even just a link from your blog can be really...
NYC Videoblogging Meet-Up
On Thursday, January 24th from 6pm to 8pm sharp, we will meet at the Rocketboom studios for presentations. This month we will kick off a guest series with one of the main producers of Wallstrip, Jeff Marks. Jeff will talk to us about his start with Wallstrip, their CBS acquisition and now their new projects underway. Host Lindsay Campbell may also be in attendance to share the floor. Everyone...
Sun, Sun, Sun, Here it Comes
My voice here on Dembot has recently been pretty disparaging and desolate, I must say. It seems I’ve shifted away from focusing on the wonderful experiences and observations I’ve had with Rocketboom and the healthy space around me to analyzing the likely flaws of the new players that enter in seemingly unwittingly. I was just trying to help. Starting today, I’m going to make a...
Tay Zonday U.S. Tour?
Neato, it looks like Tay Zonday may be headed out on tour soon. I checked his website and didn’t see any mention but just ran across some performance info in a NYC event listing. Maybe he’s getting his feet wet live in a few clubs before going all-out. ‘Should be a lot of fun and could make a lot of $ in tix and merch sales. From “What’s Up: NYC:
US President George W. Bush leans over to talk with a girl (R) after participating in a lesson for young children on the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day during a tour of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC, 21 January 2008. By Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty. (via Andrew Sullivan)
NBC On It's Way to Becoming Smaller
According to FT, NBC’s Jeff Zucker is making big changes at the TV studio including getting rid of pilot season and up-fronts. While I agree this is a very good idea, I would suggest this is not a result of any clever thinking at NBC. This is a result of not having any content to sell this upfront season (Duh?) The writers strike has now completely ruined any expectations the studios may...
The Big Range Austin Dance Festival is being put on in June by my good friend Ellen Bartel. Before moving from Austin to NYC, I created music for a few of Ellen’s Austin dances (performed with live ensembles and prerecorded music) some of which is documented here. If you are a dancer or composer, the application deadline is Feb 15th.
New Revision3 Show Faulty
I just wrote a long email to the Revision3 folks to tell them privately the extent of my feelings about their content offerings and especially their latest show, The Digg Reel. This show is designed to give a rundown of the top videos on Digg and is meant to appeal to the people who use Digg, as well as represent Digg to the outside world. Clearly the best place to gauge the success of the show...
Joost Bytes Dust?
I’m glad Mathew Ingram came out and said it. When I heard the news this week about the shake up at Joost, I also immediately wondered what was up with the company. I had a look at the compete trend data at the time and assumed that it was doing okay, the graph shows an upward movement. But now it’s occurring to me that the upward trend is probably not steep enough considering a...
Lorelai on speed
A lot of TV shows when run in syndication are sped up slightly and voices pitch corrected to sound normal (this lets the station get more commercials in). We observed that this is an unwise techinque when applied to the fast-talking Gilmore Girls.via neonmarg who is living it up at Sundance right now, being mistaken for Michael Moore. — lonelysandwich
How to Kill Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Google...
Ive been drinking espresso shots from Starbucks.
Seriously though, they are desired as platforms - its just that now may be the perfect time to take our data back.
First Ill start with a question and this is addressed directly to Dave Winer and of course everyone else as well. Would it be possible to extend RSS with a rel= specification in the same way that the rel=enclosure spec led to...
Gizmodogate
Reblogged from Yatta for RB: Richard Blakeley and Joanne in Madison Park. Richard is the infamous Gizmodogate blogger. **spoiler alert!** He stopped by the studio the other day to talk to us about the CES incident. I believe his appearance on Rocketboom will be his first interview since CES. **end spoiler alert!**
While we’re on the topic of pranks, be sure to check out Sarah’s...
How To Keep Twitter from Crashing in a Crisis
Use Tumblr! :P Seriously though, this is important. The answer is to make Twitter a noun. This is accomplished by decentralization. Decentralization of the servers is a good idea and will help the system from crashing but there is another kind of decentralization that must be in place in order for Twitter or any other platform to be reliable during a crisis: The decentralization of the entire...
'Just got off the phone with Podtech - It's a...
Oh Lordie. So Robert Scoble announced that he would announce announcing his move to Fast Company today. This will be great for said company, and great for Robert, congrats!
Where does this leave Podtech? Without a face. We have not heard from Podtech publicly since before the news of Roberts departure last month. The last words I heard about the company being a shitbag salad were not part of an...
How to kick-start TV over IP
I originally posted this article exactly one month ago and today it seems to finally be a go:
“Lets look back to see ahead.
The implications of podcasting are AWESOME. Didn’t you think that the first time you became aware of it? The application to video and TV to me is relatively SUPER AWESOME (a level of awesomeness much greater). My all time favorite aggregator, Fire-Ant, hit the...
English 1050 - Thought & Writing
Google alert! Today we got hit with another school assignment. We usually show up at the beginning of the semester in Journalism class - Is Rocketboom journalism? Tonight, it’s English 1050 and the question is regarding “Fake News”.
This will be an easy one for me but I’ll wait and see what the other students have to say before weighing in. I will note however, in case...
Twitter is Dead, Weep!
I am SO sorry for writing this, I L-O-V-E Twitter. Love it! I’m just so sorry to say, Tumblr replaces it. It’s that simple. Tumblr is to the iPhone what Twitter is to the pager. I know, I know. I love Twitter and I have been obsessed with it for almost a year now so I KNOW what Twitter is supposed to be, thank you - it’s SUPPOSED to be like a pager, that’s the DNA of what...
^^^^above=new-------below=old
The ROCKETBOOM Tumblr Blog is kicking so I’ll be pointing to the whimsical kind of stuff
(like the recent posts before this one), over there. Every time I sit down to write a news script for Rocketboom, I find all kinds of awesome stuff that never makes it in. Ellie is also contributing a huge amount to the RB Blog.
CES vs. Macworld
From a year ago today. In retrospect, I think more people are feeling the CES burn this year than we were feeling last year. Archive link.
Virtual Artists Seeking to Raise $30M →
An original online content company started by WGA member Aaron Mendelsohn. — jaboud — rocketboom
Black Friday at ABC Studios as writers erased from... →
Force majeur ax falls. — jaboud — rocketboom
Evolution of the TiVo Subscriber
Read into this what you will (Thanks for the screenshot, George!)
The [mini] debate about the worth of podcasting →
See also commentary on blogger vs. publication.
TV-B-Gone at CES = TVs Gone at CES →
Don’t forget that Gawker now pays extra for page hits.
Trent Reznor: Why won't people pay $5?
There is an update to my last post on Trent Reznor’s online record sales experiment: He appears to be disappointed that more people did not buy the record and asks why. I would suggest its simply because he offered the album for free at the same time. Most people dont give a single cent towards high-end audiophile sound, there is no reason - they have crappy earphones and use MP3 players...
The Top Two Ways To Protect Your Video Copyrights
I think (I hope!) I’ve done a pretty good job at protecting the copyrights of the video content for Rocketboom. For us, “protecting” does not mean preventing people from getting a copy, it means protecting ownership and rights for the future because who knows what will happen then. Its kinda of sad but most people are not thinking so much about the implications of their future...
Stay Away from Online Video for Henry
I was EXTREMELY surprised that Henry Bodget now has his own online video show. From TechCrunch: “The show will be hosted by Henry Bodget (Silicon Alley Insider), Sarah Lacy (Business Week columnist) and Paul Kedrosky and will have 10-20 original segments per week day, focusing on financial news and the CNBC crowd.” I have been following Blodget’s blog for the last few months and...
Katrina Victim Sues U.S. for $3 Quadrillion →
“For the sake of perspective: A mere $1 quadrillion would dwarf the U.S. gross domestic product, [which was] $13.2 trillion in 2007.”
Number of Women at Video Sites Doubles →
TiVo to open up to all RSS Feeds, finally!
Podcasting News reports, ”The new feature, announced Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show, will let users apply their “Season Pass” recording capabilities to video content available via RSS feeds. Users would need to use TiVo’s software on PCs for the feature, though TiVo said it will provide a guide within its TV-based menu system to record select Web video sources as...
Ogilvy to Layoff
Don’t get me started on the problems media buyers have to face for being in major middle-person type companies. One of the many major internal problems have to do with the competitive nature of the isolated department structure within the companies and the desire for each department to grow and compete against the others. For example, imagine the representative from a major car company who...
Simple Representations of the Complex
A great video was posted on the evolution of Techmeme over time. We were talking in the studio the other day about the difficulty in archiving the history of Techmeme in a meaningful way for this very reason. When you click on a particular time on Techmeme, it’s not nearly as dynamic as the video portrays. Well that got me thinking about something that I have never really been able to...
The Never Ending Data Storage Problem
A big discussion on the adoption of the new Blu Ray Disc format is happening with Time Warner now on board with the format. This is the kind of technology that I think is important and I’m glad someone is worrying about it, but it doesn’t interest me at all. It’s very clear that very soon after the adoption of Blu Ray, Blu Ray will become obsolete. Its a hang-me-tight...