Help build my self-esteem: Last week, my #2 advice for maintaining a blog was to never use Technorati features to judge your self-worth. That was before I discovered the follow link: The “If you like me, click here” link. If you click it, I will be added to your Technorati favorite list. Or, as I call it: The Sally Field list. The Technorati favorite lists make me feel so young: like junior high young.

Technorati Tags: technorati

Sorry for this empty post: Somehow, I double posted.

Bose vs. Apple: Wonder what those Bose folks are thinking about Apple iPod Hi-Fi? FYI: Bose Sound Dock - $299 (I have one at home and it has a great sound), Apple iPod Hi-Fi - $349. Several other competitors exist from Altec Lansing and others. In fact, I’ve found sub-$100 powered speakers (with sub-woofer) from Altec Lansing pump out a decent small-room-filling sound from an iPod in my office and two dorm-rooms I’m familiar with. (However, knowing my weaknesses, I predict there’s an iPod Hi-Fi in my future.)

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod

Blogging for Business: From Small Business Computing, a nice profile of how the 8-person design firm Coudal Partners use their weblog as a business tool.

Quote:

But the blog was really an exercise in industry networking — and only later about building an audience for the spin-off businesses. Coudal.com talks about the things design and creative professionals care about. All eight firm members write to it, posting as many as 25 usually short entries a day, often simply pointing visitors to something interesting spotted elsewhere on the Web, along with a brief comment.

I have CP as an RSS feed in a folder of fun stuff I look at evenings or weekends.

No words: I was offline most of the weekend and missed this video of a CBS news report about an amazing high school basketball player. I just got around to watching it before leaving the office…now I must dry my eyes. Amazing.

Update:  Bad news: Staci Kramer at PaidContent.org says CBS has asked YouTube to remove the video from its site (after 1.3 million views).  Good news: You can view it at CBSnews.com.

Then call me a “music snob”: (From today’s Tennessean) “Music snobs might see Trace Adkins’ latest hit, Honky Tonk Badonkadonk, as little more than a marketing-driven party song, shamelessly fusing together redneck and urban slang in a not-so-subtle sweep for lowbrow listeners.”

The story goes on to suggest that the success of the song is a “ray of hope” for Nashville record labels.

Despite the coincidence of me living and working in Nashville and sharing the same work address as Trace Adkins’ record label, I have nothing to do with the music industry in Nashville except loathing crap like the aforementioned tune. If this is the best the “industry” of commercial music in Nashville can do, then I celebrate their demise. Bring on MySpace or whatever can replace artificial scarcity tactics that allow “hit-making” based on the redneckification of hip-hop exploitative misogyny and calling it “a ray of hope.” This stuff is crap and surely even Capitol Records and the Tennessean reporter Ryan Underwood know that.

There is some great music created in Nashville. Strangely, it’s easier to find in a Starbucks than on the radio dial. Here’s a suggestion for someone looking for good country music from Nashville. Go to Pandora.com and create a radio station based on the artist “Tim O’Brien” and see where that takes you. I have no idea where it will take you, but I’ll guarantee you it will be a better playlist than any “Top 40″ commercial country radio station in America. It won’t be crap. And I won’t be embarrassed to say it was created in Nashville. And I think that’s a “ray of hope.”

Update: Philip Woodgate (see comments) followed my Pandora-Tim O’Brien suggestion and likes what he heard. For a great list of such musicians, I suggest looking through the archives of Candace Corrigan’s podcast, “The Nashville Nobody Knows,” including this interview with Tim O’Brien.

Technorati Tags: nashville

Jason Fried: “If you are trying to build a business, money matters. Profit matters. Longevity matters. So don’t build a product, a team, and a company if you can’t support them. And yes, there are cases of free products that turn into very profitable products, but that’s just a lucky lottery ticket.”

I am pointing to this post because my company is one of the growing number of small businesses that are paying Jason’s company up to $1,200 per year for Basecamp. And because, I find myself now “living” in Basecamp, I think that’s a deal.

Technorati Tags: smallbusiness

Roberta Flack moment: When I read this Jason Fry piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, I felt as if he was killing me softly with his song, telling my whole life with his words. In other words, “what he said…”

Quote:

“But blogging will no longer be a phenomenon. When people talk about it, they’ll often be referring to tools for putting up simple Web sites easily, or a certain style of Web publishing: brightly written, frequently updated and inviting reader conversation.”

Technorati Tags: blogging

The Okay Dave resumeme: Geez. OkayDave.com is just a little design portfolio. Like, say, Star Wars is a little film. Can something be too good? (sorry, I’ve lost the thread that led me there.)

Technorati Tags: meme

What really rich guys do for kicks: Billionaire blogger Mark Cuban tells Howie Mandel, the host of Deal or No Deal, if he can get Donald Trump to pull a rubber glove completely over his head and blow it up, he’ll donate 1 million dollars to the charity of Howie’s choice.

Is the Pink Panther (2006) the worst movie ever? I am a Steve Martin fan and enjoyed the Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther series. So I’m at a loss for words to describe just how incredbily bad the Steve Martin remake of the Pink Panter is. Maybe it’s so bad that it will gain cult status, like Rocky Horror Picture Show or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. But I doubt it. It’s not even a good bad movie like, say, The Jerk, my favorite good bad film of all time.

Some thoughts after a weekend bender: (Actually, there is no truth to that “bender” part, but read on…) Forget why business people and those with a political or hobbyist passion, or those with an illness or interest in some niche topic like local history are blogging; what the folks at the Washington Post want to know is why do some people keep public diaries of their personal lives?

That’s a valid question, I guess, but then the reporter careens off into another direction and claims that an unnamed group of individuals called “some internet experts”:

“…fear that young bloggers don’t fully grasp the public nature of all the information they are disclosing. Things that seem cool and fun to write about when you’re 23 — a weekend bender, a bacchanalian ski trip — can digitally live forever and follow you into adulthood.”

While my experience as a blogger and a reader of blogs has little to do with keeping a public diary of personal activities (although this weekend, I did see maple syrup being made while hanging out with some “young internet users” and will post photos later), I do agree in principle with that group of “some internet experts.”

However, I don’t think it’s just a “blogging” thing that young people need to be grasping when it comes to the internet. They need to grasp that “emailing” or “IMing” or “making dumb decisions about who to hang out with” or a wide range of other online and offline activities — both digital and analog — can live forever and follow them into adulthood.

I wish it were as simple as telling young people not to blog about their indiscretions. I wish it were something that simple — so simple that mere Internet experts could solve it.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Blog lite: Not that anyone’s keeping track, but I’ll be away from the blogosphere until Sunday. Also, I wanted to try out my new “travel” graphic on the left.

Jon Friedman on Jeff Jarvis: In a glowing profile of Jeff Jarvis, that even Jeff has to be blushing over this morning, Jon Friedman makes this random observation that is now going to be running through my mind every time I see Jeff of TV or talk with him: “Jarvis’s speaking voice bears an uncanny resemblance to that of basketball announcer Bill Walton.” Yeah, but can he shoot?

Technorati Tags: blogging

Olympic observations: I haven’t tried to avoid watching the Olympics — I’ve avoided them effortlessly. As this is the first time I’ve viewed the Olympics in the age of DVR (at least in my home), I discovered that I’m watching so much less of “the games.” And what I am watching, reminds me why I only watch these sports once every four years: it takes me that long to remember how few of them I actually enjoy watching. Other observations:

Scott Adams: “I think if I spent my entire life preparing for the Olympics, at the expense of developing any marketable job skills, and then because of a shoelace failure I took a digger on live TV and came in last, no curse words would be sufficient….That’s why I think cursing should be an Olympic sport.”

Frank Deford (NPR): “The Winter Olympics is the “Miss America” of sports.“ (As in, “it’s run its course and seems headed for cable.”)

Technorati Tags: olympics