And the Grammy to someone in Nashville other than Taylor Swift goes to

Posted on Monday, February 13, 2012 by Rex Hammock

As the 12 readers of this blog know, I’m not a music blogger, except when I am.

Those 12 readers also know that while I’m not a big fan of the type of music produced in Nashville (my home) for suburban soccer moms and their pre-teen daughters, I am a fan of lots of Nashville music that you don’t hear on “country” radio stations owned by large conglomerates.

If that makes no sense to you, let me make it simple: Nashville is home to music other than that created by Taylor Swift and men who wear cowboy hats. I am happy Taylor Swift and men who wear cowboy hats are in Nashville and I greatly appreciate those individuals, especially Taylor Swift for her entrepreneurship and embrace of creative marketing approaches. But personally, as much as I applaud them and like that I can sometimes catch a glimpse of them in a Starbucks or the Apple Store,  I just don’t listen to music created by Miss Swift and men who wear cowboy hats.

However, at last night’s Grammy’s there were some awards given to Nashville musicians who I do enjoy that I thought I’d give a little shout-out this morning. (Thanks to WPLN’s Bradley George for keeping up with this, as I’m not a big awards show watcher.)

The Nashville Symphony has become a regular winner of Grammys since moving into their incredible new home and hiring a conductor who is so dynamic and entertaining, even I am a fan. This year is no exception: Symphony conductor Giancarlo Guerrero and percussionist Christopher Lamb picked up an award for their recording of Schwantner’s Percussion Concerto.

Only recently did I learn about the duo, Civil Wars, when my niece and her husband expressed amazement they were telling me about the act. Turns out, I did like them, despite their name sounding like something that would telegraph their being a more mainstream country act. However, they won two Grammys last night, including one for best folk album, a genre that, roughly translated, means, “country music that doesn’t suck.”

The other Nashville Grammy winner who is worthy of her annual RexBlog shout-out is Allison Kraus, who with Union Station, won their bazillionth Grammy for best bluegrass album. (The only time they don’t win is when they don’t release one.) By the way, her Grammy this year means she has won 27 Grammy Awards, making her the most awarded singer, the most awarded female artist, and tied (with Quincy Jones) for second most awarded artist overall in Grammy history. (The late Georg Solti, who was conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, won 31.)

There were many other Nashville connections at this year’s Grammys, but I’m not a soccer mom, so you’ll have to track those down yourself.

[Note: If any links in this post go to Amazon.com/mp3, they are affiliate links. Commissions I earn from your purchases go into a fund that in a good year might be as high as $10.]

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Why the death of a celebrity lights up Twitter

Posted on Saturday, February 11, 2012 by Rex Hammock

I used to blame the vacuous nature of a pop-culture-obsessed society for why we all seem so pre-occupied with the death of celebrities. But when Michael Jackson died, even I felt a little saddened — and frankly, the guy creeped me out.

I thought about it and determined that Jackson’s era roughly matched up with my teenage years through the day he died, so what I decided I was feeling was a little mourning for my life’s playlist.

I guess that’s why, when I tweeted a similar feeling about Whitney Houston earlier this evening, so many people re-tweeted it (25+ within a few moments of it being posted). Her family and personal friends are probably the only ones who actually lost Whitney. But with her death, I lost a little piece of me.

I really, really hope she finds peace on the other side.

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Just because you can make money from something doesn’t mean you should, and other rules of the web

Posted on Wednesday, February 8, 2012 by Rex Hammock

Here are a few things I’ve learned from 20 years of living online, developing or managing online things and using lots and lots of things others have developed. I’ve learned them by writing and by reading about those online things. I’ve learned them through personal successes and personal failures. I’ve learned them from watching others succeed and fail. I’ve learned them by using this blog to chornicle what I’ve seen flow by me since August, 2000, when it was created.

I’m going to number them, but they are in no particular order. I will note at the bottom what the current context is for me writing this post, however, they are rather universal lessons. Each one of them could be a book, but you’re lucky, I only had about 30 minutes to devote to this.

1. On the internet, when you think you are using a “free” service, it is only a perception. Like your parents told you, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

2. If you create a service on the internet and you want it to succeed, it’s okay to make money any way you can as long as you tell your users what you are doing and your users agree to that method.

3. If you are a user of a service on the internet that involves you sharing, friending, following, pinning, writing, networking, book-marking, checking-in or dozens of other versions of expressing yourself, managing your identity or building connections with people, you are not only adding value to that service, you are that service. And when I say you are “adding value to that service,” I mean just that, even when I describe it in positive terms (editing an open-sourced encyclopedia of knowledge) or when I describe it in negative terms (hampters in a cage or share-cropping).

4. There’s an unwritten pact that says everything’s okay when it appears there’s equilibrium in the value accruing to the creators of the platform and benefits being recognized by the users of the platform. However, at different points along the evolution of a platform, the balance of perceived value can seem out-of-synch. At those points, the creators better respond with humility and respect to the users and remember the old saying, “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.”

5. If you create a platform on the internet, if your users start screaming in rage on Twitter or in their blogs about something you’ve done, rejoice. You matter. You are successful vs. your 50 potential competitors who no one cares about enough to complain. Now, listen. Respond. Fix it.

6. If you are lucky enough to be this week’s obsessed new thing, use the spotlight to show how humble you are. Apologize for anything and everything. Even when every fiber in your being says, “I’m right and they’re wrong.” Do not try to convince a mob they are wrong. Kill whatever has enraged the mob and then figure out another way to do the same thing later in a way that appears to be dreamed up by the mob.

7. Always be aware of the existence of what I call the Scoble 24-hour Rule, based on a quote from the omnipresent ubber-blogger Robert Scoble: “Never expect bloggers to do fact checking or original reporting. But if a blog (post) survives 24-hours without anyone refuting the facts? That’s when rumors turn to belief.” (Today, Robert would probably say that about Twitter, Facebook and Google+ rather than a blog, but the principle still applies.) In other words, unless you are Apple, you have to respond to rumors and mis-interpretations of what you do immediately, or you are implying that the rumor is factual.

8. If your platform is enjoying rocket-like growth in buzz and user adoption, don’t waste your time on trying to defend a controversial practice. Dump the practice and focus on growth. Don’t get sidetracked on defending how you can make pennies when you have the opportunity to make dimes and quarters. Just because you can make money from something doesn’t mean you should.

Be like Matt Mullenweg back in 2005, before you ever heard of WordPress and he was 21 years old.

Read this post written by Andy Baio in March, 2005, about the early, early days of WordPress. Especially focus on this quote that Matt Mullenweg, who is today an internet demigod (but, again, he was 21 at the time) said about a practice he was using to bootstrap WordPress (no need to go into it here, you can read about it on Andy’s post):

“(It) isn’t something I want to do long term but if it can help bootstrap something nice for the community, I’m willing to let it run for a little while.” He added that if the user community didn’t like it, he’d end the program. “Everything we do is user driven. If it turns a lot of people off I definitely don’t want it. At the same time, if you think people don’t care, it provides some flexibility in setting up the foundation.”

Hey, in 2005. Link spam was new. Matt killed the practice immediately and the rest is history.

9. I could go on and on, but I must stop.

Why I wrote this: A controversy over what may or may not be a practice of this nano-second’s darling of the social web, Pinterest, is allowing some real-time study of the points I’ve written about above. Personally, my thoughts on Pinterest and this controversy are this: They should find ways to monetize the site other than skimming links* and converting them to affiliate links (if you don’t know what this means, read the post I linked to). They should view the platform as a common carrier that users can use to express themselves. I believe such a neutral stance will protect them from the obvious copyright battles they will face if they take actions that will make it appear they are benefitting financially from something that could otherwise be labeled “fair use.” One area that I think is clearly a bad move by Pinterest (and something I’ve seen them accused of, but haven’t seen a response within 24 hours, so I’m about to consider fact) would be converting user affiliated links (links to the affiliate accounts the users have set up) to Pinterest affiliated links. That, to me, is a clear violation of the un-written pact between hampsters running on the wheel and the owner of the cage.

Final note: I like Pinterest. I’m using the Pinterest account, Pinterest.com/Smallbuiness to show it’s not just a “girl” thing (like when Twitter was a “what are you doing?” thing), but is a great platform of curragating (curating, aggreagating?) and organizing any visual ideas or topics. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t take the time to complain.

*I don’t find the practice of skimming links evil. However, I think that it’s a practice best used by publishers who are clearly presenting content that they own or create or have an implicit and transparent control over. In other words, “common carriers” or hosts of user-generated content might want to steer clear of it for legal or user-perception reasons.

Posted in blogging, blogging & bloggers, internet, observation, social media | Leave a comment

@AmazonMP3s very smart use of Twitter during Superbowl XLVI

Posted on Sunday, February 5, 2012 by Rex Hammock

If it works like it’s supposed to, this post will be an embed from Storify.com as that service makes it a snap to repost tweets in a situation like this. If you see something below (it will take a few seconds to load), it works. If you don’t see it here, click over to Storify.com/R.:

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What time is the Superbowl and thoughts on Facebook and why I blog

Posted on Sunday, February 5, 2012 by Rex Hammock

[Warning: This is a long and rambling post that may or may not make a point.]

Superbowl XLVI (46 for you non-Romans) starts at 6:30 p.m. eastern time on the NBC television network. The teams playing are the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. You may be wondering what the heck I’m talking about, but I’ll get to it in a moment.

But first, a few thoughts about blogging. Some people who know the most about the social part of the web, the individuals who helped conceptualize and role-model what can be done when everyone is wired, networked and has a simple-to-use publishing system, are using the IPO of Facebook as a reason to revisit some of the central themes that have concerned them (and me) since the days when we still said “web log” instead of just blog.

That Facebook is the launchpad of another round of meaningful debate (hidden under a layer of invectives, navel-gazing and trolling) does not surprise me.

In my 2012 prediction post, I wrote:

“The IPO of Facebook will be the focus of a discussion of the value of relationships vs. products and we will hear lots of laments from the pioneers of online community over what has been built on the foundation they laid. (The laments will be deserved.) The IPO of Facebook will be a milestone, however, not the finish line. As we learn more and more how certain companies view us as hamsters in their cages, we will start to think more-and-more about how our role as customers should evolve. (But again, others started thinking about this long, long ago.) That topic will be explored in a book by one of the Cluetrain Manifesto authors, Doc Searls, that will be published in May, The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge. Like I said, this is not a new topic for a lot of people — but it is a very new topic for the vast majority of people who think Facebook is the Internet.”

Way back in the early, early days of blogging, most people who blogged spent at least part of their time blogging about blogging. I tried my best to avoid that topic, but it was impossible. I look back now at some of those early blog posts about blogging and find some of them prescient. Others were clueless.For example, while I predicted early that some great B-to-B companies would start on the web and grow big, I never dreamed there would be some that, within so brief a period as a decade, would grow in size, value and importance that they would be perceived as being more important and valuable than legacy players in their vertical industries.

I never imagined that the New York Times would lose the battle for the Internet. It seemed so obvious that they had everything they needed to win. But it also seemed obvious to me that a world as large as the internet should have room for everyone to win. While I obviously thought there would be robust and large communities online (I had already attempted a startup based on that assumption even before I started blogging), I never imagined that in 2012, there would be a company that packaged up all of the things one can do with blogs and would make something out of that bundle that would ever appeal to a generation who we thought was smarter than those of us who had broken free from AOL. I could never see so-called “digital natives,” or members of a “digital generation” give up the ability to create their own web and settle merely for a web created by Facebook. And what I really didn’t think I’d ever see was some smart people express a belief that whatever seems on-top and unstoppable today (Twitter, Google, Facebook) has some sort of power that will make them unstoppable forever (Dell, Tiger Woods, Network TV).

While I have yet to hear a stock analyst employed by a Wall Street investment firm provide any over-the-top exuberance on Facebook’s prospects (Wall Street analysts have the ghost of Henry Blodgett’s exuberance keeping them in check), there is no shortage of arm-chair punditry that is over-hyping Facebook’s prospects. The most mysterious punditry (to me) is that like Robert Scoble’s mash-up stock valuation with how much time people spend on Facebook, how many people comment on his Google+ account and debates over “the open web,” which in this case, means lots of different things to different people, but for this post, let’s just say it’s everything that’s not branded by Google, Facebook or Twitter, et al.

I could understand the debate if it were focused on the nuances of whether or not an individual or corporate entity should anchor their web residence in something they can own and control, like RexHammock.com or be a share-cropper on some real estate like Facebook.com/rexhammock.

I think my use of the term “share-cropper” reveals my prejudice.

But to take that argument beyond a debate over identity, privacy and the role of the individual in a world run by corporations, and attempt to suggest that Facebook can be the most valuable company in the world in three years, as Robert Scoble does in that post, takes the debate into la-la land. Robert is a great evangelist for tech startups, but predicting the future market capitalization of a company based on how many people follow him on Facebook is lost on me.

But I think I started this post somewhere else, oh, yes: What time is the Superbowl?

Back when I started blogging, I never imagined in a million years there would be something like the Huffington Post or Business Insider (unintended second swipe at Henry Blodget) or Demand Media — types of companies and business models that are variations on the theme that news is whatever people happen to be typing into Google at the time as that’s where the clicks are.

SEO-driven news is what many people call it. Pathetic is my term.

For instance, on the Huffington Post every year before the Superbowl, they have a story with the headline,  ”What Time is The Superbowl?”

I never saw that coming. Blogging was, and is, something different for me than a lot of things people have created, using the technologies and approaches of blogging — things that are worth billions today.

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, is a consistent and prolific blogger (and sometimes a controversial one, so don’t view my quoting him as some endorsement of some whacky theory he may have expressed in the past, that I’m unfamiliar with.)

Here’s something he wrote on his blog earlier this week:

“The main reason I blog is because it energizes me. I could rationalize my blogging by telling you it increases traffic on Dilbert.com by 10%, or that it keeps my mind sharp, or that I think the world is a better place when there are more ideas in it. But the main truth is that blogging charges me up. It gets me going. I don’t need another reason. As soon as I publish this post, I’ll feel a boost of energy from the minor accomplishment of having written something that other people will read. Then I’ll get a second cup of coffee and think happy thoughts about my tennis match that is scheduled for after lunch. With my energy cranked up to maximum, I’ll wade into my main job of cartooning for the next four hours. And it will seem easy.”

Hey, that’s the reason I blog also — or, at least, that’s the outlook about my blog that has kept me blogging consistently for over 11 years.

I will never blog if it’s solely about helping me get clout or links or follows on Twitter or Google+ or Facebook. If people want to follow me, I’m flattered and I appreciate them and I’ve found many, many friends that way.

But I don’t have the energy to make all of this a game — especially if it’s a game designed to turn the internet into nothing more than Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Blogging gives me energy. And I love helping create the web with my own little website here.

Using Facebook or this or that because it can help me get more likes or comments (or, any comments, in my case) zaps my energy.

And I bet I’m not a lone.

Posted in blogging, identity, internet, observation | Leave a comment

Web companies discover a century-old corporate media tradition that’s always new

Posted on Thursday, February 2, 2012 by Rex Hammock

Poultry Tribune, July, 1942

An article by Brian Stelter in today’s New York Times (temporary non-punitive URL: http://nyti.ms/xmYt1L) reports that Tumblr is hiring editors and writers to cover itself.*

Quote from the executive editor Tumblr has hired:

“Basically, if Tumblr were a city of 42 million (the number of Tumblr blogs that exist) I’m trying to figure out how we cover the ideas, themes and people who live in it.”

According to the article, Facebook and Twitter have recently announced efforts with similar goals. In my opinion, the mother of all “reporting about ourselves” has to be, collectively, the blogs Google maintains. However, in a nuanced way, those blogs are more neo-press release, than corporate-reportage (two terms that may already exist, but I just made up).**

Two things of significance to the 12 readers of this blog about Brian’s article (Brian, by the way, is the subject of several posts on this blog.):

1. The quote from the Tumblr editor reflects precisely the kind of point-of-view of what the internet is that I explained in the blog post immediately preceding this. The internet is people and place. (Because that post is a Rexplanation, I don’t have to repeat what I mean – you can read it there.)

2. Brian’s article, while appearing to some to be about a new phenomenon, fits into a century-plus old tradition that I have constantly blogged about for the past decade: Companies serve audiences called customers. Those audiences can be passionate about the products those companies provide and can create communities surrounding those shared passions (or work-related topics in the case of business-to-business companies). Creating media to serve and tie-together those audiences is something companies have done since at least the 1890s. I have now declared a 2011 post on this topic the Rexplanation on this topic, so if interested, please go there.

In other words, as I’ve said many, many times: What Tumblr is doing is not new. It is smart, but it is not new.

*Self-serving asterisk: They should have outsourced it to a company like Hammock.

**I’m considering a longer post on the topic of what I’m going to call “the press release parenthesis” in which I will explore how the advent of public relations as a “profession” (see: Ivy Lee) ushered in a period that the internet is now ushering out during which journalists who worked for corporations that made money from selling advertising were deemed ethically and professionally superior to journalists who worked for corporations that made money from selling airplanes or paper clips.

Related posts:

 

Posted in Content Marketing, Custom Media, marketing, media, publishing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Rexplanation: The internet isn’t just technology. It’s a place and people.

Posted on Monday, January 30, 2012 by Rex Hammock

Partial map of the Internet based on 1/15/2005 data.

[Note: This post is a Rexplanation.]

In my opinion, there are two ways people understand the internet.

The first way is to understand the internet as something to use.

The second way is to think of the internet as something you not only use, but something people are and a place people live and work.

Those who use the internet understand it with metaphors related to legacy media and channels of communication or different types of utility and tools. To them, the internet is about reading, viewing, listening, looking-up, sharing, calling, sending, buying. Even those who use the internet’s tools of social media still think of it in terms of legacy metaphors: friends, following, hanging out, chatting.

Those who’ve reached the understanding that they are the internet are similar to those who have reached an understanding that any organization or institution is both a structure and a collection of people. It’s the same dynamic that enables the Supreme Court to rule that corporations are people. Special interests describe their special interest as people (I’m the NRA- well, not actually me, but those guys holding the gun are). Cities are streets and buildings, but cities are also people (after the May, 2010, flood, in my hometown we used the slogan, “We are Nashville” to declare our can-do spirit). In the New Testament, the greek word ekklesia that we translate into the word church refers to an assemblage of people who are “called together” — in other words, a church is people, like the internet is people.

So, viewing the internet as more than something to use, but as people and place is not a radical concept — indeed, it should be a rather simple concept to grasp.

Yet some very smart people just don’t seem to get it.

One of my favorite very smart people to use as a punchline for not getting it is Malcom Gladwell who plays school marm whenever he explains the internet as only a user could.

The recent SOPA/PIPA battle demonstrated the divide between those who understand the internet as people and those who perceive it as technology. Earlier this month, I wrote about visiting my congressman regarding SOPA and suggested then (before the legislation cracked under the pressure) that the internet had not yet demonstrated what could happen if it brought its power to the debate. It was clear to me that those who backed SOPA understood the internet as being “technology” used by people — and not as a place that people inhabit. That was their downfall.

A few days later, in a comment thread on Dave Winer’s blog, I wrote, “The tech blogosphere is filled with people who have broken through some barrier of comprehension one needs to experience the internet as a place, as well as a platform for all sorts of media and utility. So much of politics — at least at the traditional activist level and the way the US representative system is set up — is tied to an understanding of place in exclusively geographic terms. While traditional media and the political blogosphere is focused on what’s happening in some county in northern New Hampshire, the tech-blogosphere is wondering how lawmakers can be so clueless in understanding the ramifications of the entertainment industry’s power grab through SOPA — a global issue. I remember Tip O’Neill’s line, “All politics are local.” But for those of us who live on the internet, I’m not sure I know what local is anymore.”

Today, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote about a similar disconnect in the understanding politicians have of place, compared to how businesses view it — and I would argue, the way that people who understand the internet as a collection of people view it:

“Politicians see the world as blocs of voters living in specific geographies — and they see their job as maximizing the economic benefits for the voters in their geography. Many C.E.O.’s, though, increasingly see the world as a place where their products can be made anywhere through global supply chains (often assembled with nonunion-protected labor) and sold everywhere. These C.E.O.’s rarely talk about “outsourcing” these days. Their world is now so integrated that there is no “out” and no “in” anymore. In their businesses, every product and many services now are imagined, designed, marketed and built through global supply chains that seek to access the best quality talent at the lowest cost, wherever it exists. They see more and more of their products today as “Made in the World” not “Made in America.” Therein lies the tension. So many of “our” companies actually see themselves now as citizens of the world. But Obama is president of the United States.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not ready declare some New World Order exists because Al Gore invented the internet because the Trilateral Commission put him up to it.

However, it seems clear to me that it is time to start seeing the internet for what it is — and that’s lots more than a platform and technology.

Posted in internet, observation, Rexplanation | Leave a comment

Advice of the day: Stop waiting for your ship to come in (illustration)

Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 by Rex Hammock

Posted in observation | Leave a comment

Apple, China and the Curse of Living in Interesting Times

Posted on Sunday, January 22, 2012 by Rex Hammock

[Note: Not that this blog has a topic, but if it did, this post is way off it. I apologize to those who have figured out this blog's topic and I promise I'll get back to it right after I post this foray into the topic of international trade, manufacturing and globalism -- a topic that I was  surprised to discover that I can only write about while watching six hours straight of NFL conference championship games.]

According to Chinese lore (or something sounding like Chinese lore), there are three phrases that seem like well-wishing toasts, but are actually a three-part “Chinese Curse.” The three are, in increasing severity:

  • “May you live in interesting times.”
  • “May you come to the attention of important people.”
  • “May you find what you are looking for.”

You can find several versions of the wording of these toasts/curses, but you get the idea and the irony: Things that seem positive and enticing tend to have some inevitable, hidden costs or unintended consequence.

Today, the New York Times had a front page story that examined the way in which Apple Inc. works with Chinese companies (the primary focus was Foxconn) that have (1) Revolutionized the supply chain and manufacturing process and  (2) Have lots of skilled employees who are willing to work and live in a relationship with their employer that is much like serving in the military, including living in barracks and sleeping in bunks.

If you read the article pre-disposed to a flat world globalized point-of-view, you’ll marvel at how the Chinese government has put into place a system that has trained a vast army of engineers who can work at private companies (owned or financed by the government, but “private”) with an incredibly flexible work flow and the  management finesse super chops necessary to solve any manufacturing challenge within 24 hours.

Read it with the point-of-view that the adjective “Red” should come right after the adjective “Communist” before anytime you say the word “China” and you’d think the China-way is lipstick on a pig that looks like a West Virginia coal-mine company-town in the 1930s. And you’ll wonder where the part is about how bureaucratic and bloated the Chinese government is.

The reactions to the story (and there are lots) that follow the “flexible China is going to bury us” narrative, seem written by pundits who are convinced that China is on an inevitable course to world economic domination (like where Japan was heading in the early 1990s when Michael Creighton wrote the book, Rising Sun that ends, if I recall correctly, with a rogue Japanese airline pilot flying a 747 into the U.S. Capitol during a State of the Union Address — oh, wait, no, I’m sorry; that was Tom Clancy’s “the Japanese are going to dominate the world’s economy” novel, Debt of Honor. )

I feel bad for those who have to write with the “China is winning” point of view, as it is challenging for writers like Sarah Lacy and others who are in the “wow, China!” camp. She is burdened with the requirement of having to bury, somewhere in her Times-reaction essay titled, “Why China Wins,” this caveat: “…take away the emotion of workers rights and patriotism for a moment….”

Huh? Take away the emotion of workers rights? How can you take away the foundation on which the entire system is built? Such a quote reminds me of the old line, “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

But there you have the essence of the Chinese Curse — actually applied to China: They are “living in interesting times, finding the attention of important people (Steve Jobs) and are getting what they want.”

So what is the curse? The reality of China is not just the anecdotes of today’s NYT story. It is also the type of reality that bogs down American companies in red-tape and ownership restrictions when they don’t have the clout of Apple. It’s the reality of internet censorship (and every other type of censorship) far beyond anything an American can comprehend. China’s treatment of workers is probably progressive compared to its treatment of the environment or its treatment of entire races of people — Should I mention Tibet?

But we’re all grownups here, so I’ll admit it. Just like the ambiguity I have to face in all facets of living, I’ll accept that we live in a large inter-dependent world that, despite the beliefs of a lot of folks in America, we don’t control.

Frankly, even when I am opposed philosophically to the way China is, or the way it treats its people, I realize and accept the fact that I benefit in all sorts of ways from how China works. So do you. So does the New York Times and anyone who is spending today slamming the system.

And I do know this. China is an amazing place. It’s people are amazing. Its resources are vast. I don’t believe they are evil. I don’t believe they are my enemy. I may not like their lack of a first-world point-of-view or policies. But I’d rather be partnering with them on how to make better and cheaper gizmos, than competing with them on who can make the bigger and more accurate intercontinental missiles like we did with the USSR during the Cold War.

We may not agree on how people should be treated, but I’m convinced that it’s a good thing to have the type of trading relationship we have with China. Making iPhones with China is a good thing.

I hope, however, that one day soon we arrive at that point where our relationship with China is uninteresting (as in, the opposite of the “Chinese Curse”).

 

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Inst@Review: iBook Author isn’t just an ebook authoring tool

Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 by Rex Hammock

[Note: Shortly after I posted this, I edited it to remove a rant I had that I've since discovered was misinformed. I've explained it at the bottom of the post.]

Apple introduced an incredible product today called iBooks Author.

Apple describes the product this way, “iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.”

Now, it may be strange to some of the 12 people who read this blog that I’d be saying that an eBook authoring tool that does anything beyond making text more book-like and readable is “incredible” as I’m on record many times as saying how little I like things called books or magazines that are crammed with interactive goo-gahs. And I’ve written that book and magazine publishers have wasted their time on developing such interactive apps and calling them magazines or books. (Ironically, I wasn’t writing that about Apple, but about the Kindle Fire and Amazon’s aggressive push into children’s books.)

But I’ve also written that when apps are not called “books” or “magazines” or when the interactive goo-gahs help explain or entertain or add-to a story or the experience, I’m gung-ho.

I know I’m going to confuse some people (Reader #8), so maybe I should just say this simply: iBooks Author is not merely an ebook authoring tool. Indeed, it could have been easily called iGames Author or iInteractive Presentation Author or iInteractive Training Author or (here’s the take-away part) iApps Author.

Let me point you back a few weeks to my recap of predictions for 2011 in which I explained why I was wrong about a my prediction that, “Apple will mashup features of Keynote and iMovie and create a program called iAnimator.”

I take it back. I was only wrong about being wrong. iBook Author is what I was talking about. (As is, the software from some Apple alumni who don’t mess with the ebook metaphor, called Tumult Hype.)

iBook Author is a recognition of what I’ve been trying to express for over a year (and is one of the wish-list platforms of Hammock Labs): If you start with the suite of tools that creative-oriented (designers, illustrators, audio-types, film-makers, web-developers, etc.) Mac users already understand: Keynote, iMovie, GarageBand — and then, you start tweaking the methaphors and beef up the animation tools so that creating interactive experiences in HTML5 is the technical outcome (great content is the non-technical objective), you’ve developed a platform that is going to make Adobe squirm and free the results of a lot of content creation from the web (as in, websites can easily be morphed into offline, iPad native apps, as well).

If you are a power-user of Keynote or any of the Apple iWork or iLife products, iBooks Author will look familiar (I’m looking at it now). Right now, however, everything about it says, “this is a tool for creating text books.”

That is a trojan horse! (The ancient Troy kind, not the computer virus kind.)

That’s sort of what Apple did when they first came out with the iTunes Store. Recall it: It was a means to buy and organize record-label music (and, oh, you could put all that other music you had just lying around your computer on the desktop software version of iTunes).

Only later, did iTunes become a massive commerce marketplace for the distribution of paid and free software apps and video and podcasts and university lectures and streaming TV shows and movies that you can view on your TV.

And only later, did Apple realize they could tweak the metaphors of Garageband to be a podcasting tool. And only later, did they realize that Keynote is an incredibly popular web development and app prototyping platform. (Or do they even realize that now?)

So, today, there’s a Trojan horse product called iBooks Author. And for a while, you will think it’s about creating text books and, no doubt, interactive books that few people will care about reading. The whole textbook and interactive book thing may succeed or not — Apple doesn’t bat a thousand on business verticals, but the one they’ve competed in best is the education market, so it’s a good place for them to start.

But if you step back and see that this is actually an App creation platform that is going to allow you to create things that look a whole lot like something that you don’t think of as a book, but more like a videogame or sales presentation or whatever app you can dream of, you’ll start seeing how the iBook Author is more than textbooks, or books.

This is just the beginning. Watch this space.

Note: Shortly after first posting this, I removed a section that complained about Apple only allowing iBook Author projects to be distributed via the iBook Store. I can show you in the Apple user instructions where I found that, but I’d rather just say I was wrong and leave it at that. Bottomline, there is a way to distribute iBooks with the interactive goo-gahs to users without going through the iBooks Store. It’s a bit clunky, but I’m sure it will get easier. The document has to be free, which is fine, as my complaint was focused on such free documents.

Later: This post can give you an idea of what I was ranting about earlier. Although, I believe his beef is a bit broader than mine.

Later: Let me note the following for the record: It is difficult to locate the how-to directions for sending someone an iBooks Author created document via email. I couldn’t find it on the Apple.com support site, however, it is on the Help Center that’s associated with the program, itself. Here are the directions, just in case I forget them:

Note: You have to use the  Apple OSX Mail application for this to work

  • With the book open, choose Share > Send via Mail, and choose an option from the submenu:
    • iBooks Author for Mac: Creates an iBooks Author document (with the extension .iba). Your recipient needs to have iBooks Author installed to open the file.
    • iBooks for iPad: Creates an iBooks document (with the extension .ibooks). Your recipient can open the book by tapping the file in Mail on an iPad, or by importing the file into iTunes (by dragging it to the iTunes window) and then using iTunes to sync the book to an iPad. The recipient must have the iBooks app and iOS 5 on his or her iPad.
    • PDF: Creates a PDF document (with the extension .pdf). Hyperlinks work in the resulting PDF, but other interactive media, such as movies and 3D objects, might not work as expected.
  • A new mail message opens with the version of your book attached.
  • Edit the email message and click Send.

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Scott Adams on IP theft: “It feels like a compliment”

Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 by Rex Hammock

Recently on Twitter, I confessed a personal concern with my growing realization that the only economist who makes any sense to me is not actually an economist, but is Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip.

I’ve never been much of a reader of newspaper comics (even those online), so I’ve never been much of a fan of Dilbert. (I do have a personal Dilbert spotter who forwards me links whenever the strip makes fun of something that might be, uh, like me.)

While Dilbert, the comic strip, may be off my radar screen, I am very much a fan of Scott Adams’ blog at Dilbert.com. I don’t always agree with what he writes there, but even then, I appreciate the logical and witty, approach he takes in presenting his points of view.

Yesterday, he wrote one of the more sane and rational pieces I’ve read on SOPA and the impact of the internet on intellectual property rights. As Adams is a person whose signifiant wealth has come from intellectual property he created that generates revenues from Dilbert licensed products — revenues equivalent to that of a mid-sized third-world country — I thought his blog post is worth more consideration than, say, another post on this topic from a mere theorist like me.

Here’s a quote from it:

I have one of the most widely stolen intellectual properties in the history of the world. Emotionally, I’m okay with that. It feels like a compliment. Financially, I have no idea if piracy has hurt me in any meaningful way. I made the decision years ago to make Dilbert available on the Internet, including the entire archive. To the surprise of most observers, sales of Dilbert to traditional newspapers continued to grow briskly.

Bottom line: As a creator, my bias is in favor of protecting intellectual property. But in my specific case, SOPA probably wouldn’t have any impact on my life or income.

Scott Adams could easily do the math in a way that would suggest that every un-authorized use of a Dilbert image is piracy and theft. No doubt, he could use the same types of fake-math the music and movie companies use when making up statistics related to “piracy.”

But the creator of Dilbert is too smart for that.

Note: I’ll be writing more later about my “final” thoughts on SOPA and PIPA (including an explanation of what I mean by the word “final”).

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Evangelicals, Catholics & Politics

Posted on Monday, January 16, 2012 by Rex Hammock

JFK, as presidential candidate, addressing Houston Ministerial Association, September 12, 1960.

Over the weekend, a group of politically-active evangelical leaders gathered in Texas to determine who they would jointly support among the candidates seeking the GOP presidential nomination. According to reports, the two finalists were Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. From those choices, the evangelical leaders decided to endorse Rick Santorum, despite knowing his chances of beating front-runner Mitt Romney are a long-shot, at best.

Hearing about this gathering of ministers in Texas reminded me of a bit of presidential election trivia involving a gathering of protestant ministers (mostly Southern Baptists) in Houston to hear a speech delivered by Preisdential candidate John F. Kennedy in 1960 (Note: While, yes, I was alive at the time, I learned about it from books read many years later). For several reasons, the 1960 speech has been judged by historians as one of the most important of Kennedy’s career.  For example, on the website of the JFK Presidential Library’s section titled Historic Speeches, the speech he delivered that day is listed second.

Here is some context for that 1960 speech provided by the JFK Library:

“Anti-Catholic prejudice, the fear that a Catholic president would “take orders” from the Pope, insured Smith’s defeat. John F. Kennedy quickly discovered that many Americans were still worried that a young Catholic candidate for president would be under the influence of the Catholic Church and that the nation would ultimately be run by the pope in Rome rather than the president in Washington. Some Americans vowed not to support John F. Kennedy for the presidency for this reason. Fear of a government unduly influenced by religious interests was real and seen as a distinct liability for this Catholic candidate. John F. Kennedy finally decided to try to defeat the issue by meeting it head-on, and on September 12, 1960, he spoke before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in Houston, Texas.”

It is truly an incredible speech, and I encourage you to read it all. But here’s an especially significant quote in light of the weekend gathering of evangelical leaders who met to endorse a candidate for the GOP nomination:

“I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.”

I don’t know what’s more amazing. That a half-century after Kennedy narrowly squeaked into office by holding on to electoral college votes from some deep-south Southern Baptist states (four years later, they were the only states LBJ lost), a group of evangelical ministers in Texas would gather together to practice bloc-voting and partisan politics. Or that, in some strange and beautifully ironic (miraculous?) way, the evangelical leaders passed-over Rick Perry, a member of an independent evangelical congregation and Ron Paul, a Baptist, to choose between pledging their bloc-support to Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich,* both of whom are Catholics. And then choose Santorum. Apparently, being governed by the Vatican doesn’t seem to scare evangelicals anymore.

But stick around for the real show, the one that will require those evangelical leaders to endorse a Mormon. My prediction is this: Not going to happen.

*Frankly, Newt Gingrich would have been near impossible for the group to support as they may believe while God can forgive certain sins, they don’t have to. And Gingrich has some doozies.

[Update: Despite the focus of news coverage of the gathering being "evangelicals," apparently there were also 'Conservative Catholic activists' taking part, as well. And, despite me not being able to follow exactly what went on, apparently there was an attempt to reenact the Reformation during the meeting.]

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SOPA & PIPA Update: How the entertainment industry is losing the narrative

Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2012 by Rex Hammock

This is war between two ideologies that don't have the time nor desire to sing together Kumbaya while holding hands and trying to come up with a way to help the entertainment industry legislate away reality -- even when it means turning their fans into felons.

I think people who say, “I don’t like to say ‘I told you so, but…’” are precisely the kind of people who like to say, “I told you so.” So I’ll try this another way: I don’t like being that guy who can’t wait to say, “I told you so,” but sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t help myself.

Last week, after a meeting with my congressman to discuss the legislation I oppose (and he co-sponsors) that is known as SOPA, I wrote a long post in which I included my prediction (or, more precisely, my hunch) for what would happen to the legislation.

Here’s an excerpt from that post that included my hunch:

I came away from the meeting thinking (however, this is a very personal opinion that was not stated or implied by anyone) that as SOPA’s critics turn up the heat (and the general population has seen nothing yet as to what type of heat its opponents can apply to demonstrate what some of the obvious unintended consequences could be if SOPA became law), members of Congress will look for ways to make SOPA go away, while appearing to make it look like they are doing something. Already, the bill’s sponsors have watered it down considerably from its original form. Water it down enough and it may as well be one of those Congressional proclamations declaring “National Anti-Piracy Week.”

Today, (I first saw it reported on the website arstechnica), the White House did one of those “smoke signals” things regarding SOPA (and its Senate twin sister, PIPA) when “three senior White House officials wrote that the administration ‘will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.’”

And yesterday, also as reported by arstechnica, after the users of Reddit displayed how they could raise $15,000 in 48-hours for an anti-SOPA candidate for congress, there is a growing number of Senators and Representatives who are asking for their leadership (from both parties) to give them cover by not bringing up the legislation for any types of votes that will put them on record as being for, or against, SOPA.

Seeing White House policy people and members of congress head for cover is a clear indication that we’ll be one day celebrating National Anti-Piracy Week instead of turning over policing the internet to Time-Warner.

However, let me be emphatic:  I’m not declaring victory, nor should anyone else on the anti-SOPA side. 

One of the points that I made during my meeting with my congressman — a point that he dismissed — was that issues like SOPA end up having only two narratives — and the entertainment industry had control of the early narrative, but ultimately would lose. My congressman disagreed, saying there are many narratives on an issue as complex as this. As it was a group meeting and I was trying to be polite, I didn’t say, “This is not a complex issue, this is a war over whether or not the entertainment industry should control the internet — and by the time it’s over, nothing more nuanced than that will matter.”

The entertainment industry’s (and the coalition it has been able to enlist) narrative is this: “Piracy, piracy, piracy.” After first being caught flat-footed and far behind, the internet industry (and the coalition it has been able to enlist — for example, everyone who uses the internet who doesn’t work in the entertainment industry*) is this: “Censorship, censorship, censorship.”

Despite the desire of my congressman to turn the SOPA debate into a graduate seminar on intellectual property, this is war between two ideologies that don’t have the time nor desire to sing together Kumbaya while holding hands and trying to come up with a way to help the entertainment industry legislate away reality — even when it means turning their fans into felons.

Nor is there time for those of us who have spent the past decade actually experiencing what reality-changing benefits come from an internet that’s truly open (even more open than many of the tech companies against SOPA want it to be), to delve into the nuanced and intellectual arguments that would take apart the entertainment industry’s lies (although, this post on Freakonomics.com is a good place to start).

So “no-censorship” is the narrative of the anti-SOPA side (my side).

Of course the entertainment industry knows this isn’t just about piracy. Of course the tech industry knows this isn’t just about censorship.

But those are the narratives. And in the end, anti-censorship will win.

Frankly, I wish the anti-SOPA narrative was something more along the lines of an anti-corporate-controlled internet, but I doubt Google and Facebook would go there.

And I wish that songwriters in Nashville and elsewhere would recognize they are being dupes of the record companies and music publishers and performance-rights groups by agreeing to be their poster-children on this issue.

But none of that will happen, so Happy Anti-Piracy Week.

*Slightly exaggerated even though I know pro-censorship** advocates won’t get it.
**Those who call 14-year-old fans of Taylor Swift “pirates”

Non-pirated Bumper music available at Amazon MP3: Kumbaya, performed by Joan Baez

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Introducing a new type of RexBlog post: Rexplanations

Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2012 by Rex Hammock

For a long time, as a service to the 12 readers of this blog, I’ve wanted to start using the label “Explanation” on certain types of expository RexBlog posts. That way, I can refer back to them whenever that topic recurs. So I created what WordPress calls a “category” and thought to myself, “hey, you’re a branding kind of guy,” so I changed the category name to “Rexplanation” and slapped together the accompanying graphic. This is my first officially labeled Rexplanation as I needed a post to explain what they are. By the way, I have an even better idea for organizing such contextual content (note to self: do a Rexplanation for the term “contextual content”) but it’s called “a wiki” and I’ve got too many projects happening now to tackle that one. If you’d like to see a list of Rexplanations, you can find one at the URL, http://www.rexblog.com/category/Rexplanation. (Note to people who read this when I first post it: There won’t be a list at that category link, as this is the first and only post I will have written using that category tag.)

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The frightening future of the entertainment industry

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2012 by Rex Hammock

In light of last week’s posts  about the entertainment industry’s effort to enact the legislation called SOPA (here and here), I saw a couple of items early this morning that reminded me that much of the reason that industry wants to out-legislate what it can’t out-innovate is the frightening future they face. And I’m not referring to the intellectual property they own being pirated. I’m talking about the way in which the talent that creates that intellectual property is, more and more, going to jump ship (to continue the pirate metaphor) from companies that attempt to hold on to business models created in the age of I Love Lucy.

Here are the items: First, an article in this week’s New Yorker about YouTube developing new “channel” relationships with content companies — a strategy that is laying the groundwork for original programming from artists, online news organizations and others who can provide a  steady stream of content appealing to a niche audience. According to the author of the article, when the studios and others wouldn’t work with YouTube for existing content (ala Netflix), YouTube developed a strategy to provide creators of programming access to unlimited airtime, rather than the scarce airtime provided them by traditional network and cable channels.

“But what’s the big deal?” you might ask. People are still going to want to watch programming on their big HD TVs and for that, you need cable and networks and the quality they can provide — not YouTube (he said, rhetorically).

Well, according to a worldwide study by Accenture released today, the number of consumers who watch broadcast or cable television in a typical week plunged to 48% in 2011 from 71% in 2009. Accenture says TV is losing ground to other devices – mobile phones, laptops and tablets. (And besides, you can stream video onto those HD TVs in dozens of ways, whenever you want the big-screen experience.)

Bottomline: When it comes to what video programming and distribution will become in the next decade and beyond, we’re about where network TV was when I Love Lucy debuted.

It’s a scary time for the entertainment industry. No wonder they’d like to put off the future as long as they can.

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