Let’s hope not: Patrick Ruffini asks, “Are we on the verge of a dot-blog boom? (and subsequent bust?).

Quote:

A market-fueled dot blog boom may strike many as overdone, much as the original dot com boom was — but we have to remember this: it’s bigger than us now. The blogosphere is becoming a proxy for the reinvention of the Internet because it offers something the original didn’t: personalized two-way communication. The Internet’s initial innovation was to offer impersonal websites to substitute for the often cumbersome, but more personal, ways we gathered information before — talking with salespeople on the phone, or going to the library. People now want something that’s at once personal and information-rich. Power users don’t want to go to Microsoft’s corporate web site. They want to go to blogs written by Microsoft programmers where they can interact directly with the company and others like them.

Since his post is in the form of a question, here’s my answer: No and yes. I do think we’re on the verge of something very big, but I don’t think it will be the boom-bust, going-public, fooz-ball start-up, repeat of the 90s. I’m hoping we’re on the verge of something where this time, we get to do it right. However, I do sense one of those subtle shifts in the air when fear starts being replaced by greed. I guess it doesn’t help that we’ve already had our first example in 2004 of a person going from a start up blog venture (I won’t mention names but the initials are E-V) to sailing the seas with a rumored (I have my sources) few tens of millions.

More thoughts on this later.

More from Bill on the Gallatin church fire: Earlier, I posted an e-mail from Bill Hudgins regarding the first last night at the historic building of the First Presbyterian Church of Gallatin, Tennessee. He just e-mailed me the following update.:

A clear cold morning revealed the true extent of the previous night’s fire damage to First Presbyterian Church in Gallatin, TN. Actually, the morning started with a scare, because around dawn, it was clear that some part of the roof was still burning. The stream of smoke, backlit by the sun, whipped away in the breeze behind a TV reporter who was doing a live remote from in front of the church. I was home watching, and wondered if she was going to stand there and comment while it burst into flame again. Fortunately, the fire station is a block away and they had been checking, too, and were there as the reporter was signing off and before I could think to grab the phone.

They were still there an hour or so later when I arrived to see what was happening. It’s a good thing to have builders and contractors and construction company people as members of your church. A generator was going, powering up lights and a shop vac. A couple of kerosene heaters were blasting away. I was assigned mop detail, to push water out of the ground floor. Anyone who has ever run a mop or a squeegee knows that you lose as much as you move, but if you keep at it long enough, dry spots start to appear. And so they did-we mopped below as, above and off to one side. firemen sprayed more water and hacked glowing chunks out of an ancient poplar beam that had resisted wind, rain, hurricanes, snow and ice storms and time itself, and now appeared reluctant to give up the last remnants of the fire.

Our sheriff had offered the aid of a group of trustys, from the jail just a block or so away. They pitched in with vigor, bringing ash and moisture damaged hymnals and Bibles out of the sanctuary, boxing them up and loading them on a pickup. I was packing the boxes in the pickup and wound up being interviewed by another TV team doing the follow-up story. We drove the books about 100 feet to another door and the trustys and others carried them upstairs to the relatively unscathed library where Servpro would take them to be cleaned. A funny story - one of the women of the church was determined to find something to do to help, and grabbing a broom, proceeded to sweep in front of us guys as we labored up the steps with the boxes of books. Someone gently directed her to another place to sweep so we didn’t have to stand there while she cleaned the path for us.

Our aged pews were recently restored by a master craftsman here in town. Most escaped water damage, because the fire was concentrated at the front of the sanctuary, but they had soot and ash all over them. As some guys who work for a local contractor unbolted pews, the trustys carted the pews out, to be taken to Cresent Furniture’ warehouse here for storage and cleaning. I spotted one pew outside in the sun, waiting to be moved. Someone had left a book on the seat, and the clean rectangle of rich red plush upholstery shone in the sun, surrounded by gritty grey.

Before noon, the fire finally appeared to have given up, and the hoses had been coiled and stored. I heard the siren go off down the block - another call, elsewhere. I hoped it was a false alarm. All this time the temps had been in the mid to upper 20s. That’s cold, and I realized I was suddenly very chilly, but it could have been worse if the temps had dropped just a few degrees further in the night, to the teens as they were over Christmas weekend. The sun was out, and salt lay everywhere, and our footing was pretty decent.

Another funny story. My wife came down and saw the interior damage for the first time. She was talking with one of the church trustees, praising the job the jail trustys were doing. He misunderstood and thought she was complimenting him and his two equally elderly colleagues. He did think it was pretty funny when she explained.

By a bit after noon, the trustys and the Servpro guys were carrying out bags of insulation, soaked ceiling tiles and debris, plus rolls of drenched carpet. The contractor and his crew were bracing up the roof over the organ at the very front of the sanctuary, to allow them to place tarps over the hole. The blackened walls of the sanctuary gave off a fine rain of dust and soot, caught in sunbeams streaming through the roof. We had a brass cross mounted in the center of the organ pipes, and it was still there, stained, wobbly, but otherwise undamaged. A blackened glass cup on a shelf in the back held 40 cents, someone’s honor contribution for a copy of the “Upper Room” of which four more, sooty copies lay on the shelf. We’re going to have a prayer meeting at 6 in the parking lot, and a meeting of the church membership afterward to discuss the future. As our minister said, the church building burned but the church is undamaged, and goes on.

Also, Bill says for you Nashvillians and folks who get it via satellite (lots do, it seems), he’ll be on WKRN’s coverage tonight.

Jingle, jingle: Amazon.com said today that consumer electronics was its best selling product category this Christmas season, surpassing even books, the products most associated with the company.

And what were the leading consumer electronic items sold? The Apple 20GB iPod, the Apple 4GB Silver Mini iPod, the Phillips DVP642 DivX Progressive Scan DVD player, the iTunes $15 prepaid Card and the Canon PowerShot SD 110 3MP Digital Elph camera.

Coming later: Apple’s secret sauce: Why I believe no iPod killer will soon kill the iPod.

(via: MacDaily News)

Brain dead: I just heard some record industry geek on NPR whinning that too much of the music available online is still pirated. That made me look at my iTunes account and see how much I had spent (not including two teenagers in my house who each receive a small iTunes allowance from me each month) on legal downloads in 2004. My research of one consumer, me, reveals that the record industry’s sales are up about a gazillion percent this year. Because I was not that big a music purchaser (or pirate, either) previously, I probably spent more in 2004 than in any five-years-combined before (but still, I wouldn’t be in anyone’s “heavy user” customer list).

Later this week (perhaps even today), I plan to post a very long iTunes/iPod related piece that is a collection of thoughts I’ve been jotting down for a few months related to this topic.

Amazon.com’s top selling magazines, 2004: Amazon.com has two lists of “top magazines of 2004″:

Top 10 magazines (customers):

1. Wired
2. People
3. Sports Illustrated
4. Sports Illustrated for Kids
5. O: The Oprah Magazine
6. InStyle
7. Cosmopolitan
8. Newsweek
9. Smithsonian
10. Cooking Light

Top 10 magazine (editors):

1. Shop Etc.
2. Cargo
3. Low Carb Living
4. Tracks
5. Men’s Health Best Life
6. One2One Living
7. Bantanga Magazine
8. Snowboard Journal
9. Suede
10. Cottage Living

The most discouraging piece of information found in the links to those magazines is that it will take up to 16 weeks for some of the subscriptions to kick in.

(via: MediaPost.com and the incredible list of 2004 lists being compiled by Rex Sorgatz.)

Disaster relief: The Red Cross international disaster relief fund has an online way to make a contribution. I’ve made one this morning.

Gallatin church fire report: One of the seven readers of this weblog just e-mailed me about a fire tonight at a historic church building in Gallatin, Tennessee, a community northeast of Nashville. Bill Hudgins, my friend and co-worker for the past 17 years (and who is a regular commenter here), is a longtime member of the church and has been on the scene for much of the evening. He was nice enough to e-mail me and some others the following:

There was a fire at First Presby Church in Gallatin Sunday night, the church we go to and where we were married 25 years ago this coming Wednesday. It apparently started in the audio system near the front of the sanctuary, over on the right side as you face the building. Burned part of the organ and that front part of the sanctuary, the ceiling fell in over the choir and pulpit area, the heat broke out or at least something destroyed, a stained glass window the Dodsons bought in memory of Wilda’s brother, Frank, who died a few months after we were married.

There’s smoke and water damage in the new part of the church
behind the sanctuary, there was fire in the roof as well, and of course
smoke throughout the sanctuary. But they said the pews back from the
pulpit didn’t get wet, and we were able to salvage a lot of records and
items from the study and office and other parts of the building. It was pretty moving to see everyone pitching in to move things, older members struggling to carry speakers, books, chairs, and younger members stepping in to take the things and caution everyone about the ice that was quickly overtaking the parking lot.

People kept, well, sneaking is not quite the right word, but taking every opportunity to try to enter the sanctuary and other parts of the building to assess the damage and bring out more stuff. The baptismal font came out eventually - it narrowly escaped being crushed by the falling ceiling.

There’s a Dairy Queen just down the street a block, and they sent coffee and burgers up to the firefighters. Good thing there wasn’t another call tonight, as they had fully committed all their resources to this. We stayed about 90 minutes and when we left, they were still watching some hot spots in a roof area. I suspect they will be there quite a while yet to make sure it doesn’t flare up again.

A friend called us and we raced up there - a passerby had seen the smoke
and flames, and called the FD, which is just a block away. I got a
glimpse inside the sanctuary, and could see the damage to the organ, the
ceiling and walls. General consensus is that it is not as bad as it
could have been. The organ came from the old downtown Nashville Presby
church, so no knowing how old it is. Amazing that with all the old wood
trusses and organ and everything else, that it didn’t just go up in flames.

They had been talking about an addition, but the newest part design was
making it awkward to come up with a workable design. So this might turn
out to have a silver lining if they decide to tear down some or all of
the new part and rebuild the whole thing.

We will know more in the morning - I plan to go up there and see if I can help. The sheriff has offered us lots of trustys to clean, carry, etc. as well.

According to a story posted in the past few minutes on the website of the Gallatin News Herald, the church building is registered “by the Historical Society of Philadelphia as an American Presbyterian and Reformed Historical Site. It is the oldest church building in continuous existence in Gallatin and was first organized on Oct. 25, 1828. The building was erected in 1836-37.”