Bob Cauthorn goes all priggy on us: Amen, brother Jeff Jarvis. I think this is one of the most unfortunate inaugural weblog posts I’ve ever read. In it, Bob Cauthorn uses several thousand words (I’ll admit, he lost me on about the 600th) to lecture (nay, pontificate) who should and should not blog - specifically, old-media types should not.
I’ll confess, I’m a die-hard old-media guy and, frankly, the only thing I know about blogging comes from making a few thousand posts on this weblog since 2000* and reading, perhaps, a few hundred thousand posts on other blogs during that same time. But despite this limited knowledge, my brief foray into the whole blogosphere thing has taught me this: The first rule of blogging is, “never attempt to make up rules about blogging.” The second rule of blogging is, “if you think God has called you to be the Moses of blogging, please wait a few months after coming down from the mountain-top before issuing your commandments.” And the third rule of blogging is, never use the word “jiggy.”
*I first said 1990, but decided that was only amusing me and was adding to the widely held notion that I’m going senile in my old age.
What teenagers think e-mail is: (According to a Pew-funded survey) “It’s something used to talk to ‘old people.’”
I couldn’t agree more.
(via: iwantmedia.com)
Pay to play: (From: Economist.com) “I’ve paid payola,” admits one music executive. “I couldn’t get through to the key radio stations, my band made difficult music and now they’re a household name.”
Observation: I say podcasting won’t officially be mainstream until it has its first payola scandal.
Obvious: Only 2% of survey respondents said “yes” when asked “Do you use RSS?”
Here’s a suggestion to display how ridiculous it is to ask a layperson
anything like, “Do you use RSS?”: Walk up to someone on the street and
ask, “Hey, do you use the Interent?” When they say “yes,” ask, “So, do
you ever use HTML?”
Why not ask, “Would you like to have a page set up, say, on Google / (http://www.google.com/ig) or
Yahoo or AOL, where on that one page all the news from sources you want (and
on all the topics you’re interested in) will automatically appear as
soon as the news-source releases it — so you will never again have to
surf around to a bunch of websites looking for the information
important to you?”
(via: Steve Rubel)
What David Pogue said: (In the NY Times, after a few weeks of iTunes 4.9) “In One Stroke, Podcasting Hits Mainstream.” (Come to think of it, I said it first.)
Another offline day: Sorry I’m not going to be able to supply any entertainment news today. Can’t wait until this afternoon to see what new weekly celebrity magazine will be announced while I’m away from my computer. Also, I’ve got to craft my entire afternoon around the possibility that the cable guy will call me on my cell-phone to let me know I must dash home so he can re-connect me to the E! Channel. (Wow. In re-reading this post it sounds like I’m blogging.)
