What? No banjo questions? Rafat Ali interviews Bob Carrigan, president, IDG Communications, the alpha-b2b media company. Bob is a get-it guy. But then, I’m biased, because (you heard it first here): he’s also a hardcore bluegrass fan who does a little picking himself. I don’t know: there’s just something about knowing the CEO of the biggest tech media firm plays the banjo that helps me believe all is right with the world.

Technorati Tags: magazines

How much do I love my magazine? (From a series Hershel Sarbin is posting) “To me, “trust” is a key term here, and it’s a place where magazines shine.” (Previous post — while I was offline — in his series.)

Technorati Tags: magazines

Heather Green interviews Terry Heaton for a BW Podcast: Terry tells how WKRN-TV in Nashville got started working with local bloggers.

Technorati Tags: blogging, nashville

Apple makes “volume limit” a part of iPod software: (From USATODAY.com) “Apple Computer, facing complaints and a lawsuit saying the popular player can cause hearing loss, made a maximum volume setting available as part of a software update Wednesday. The free download applies to the iPod Nano and the iPod models with video-playback capabilities.”

I guess all the rest of you can just go deaf. Also, see earlier rexblog post: “The truthiness of iPod ear“

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod

No, really. This time they really, really are: (From the WSJ – free feature) “WSJ.com – Time Inc. Makes New Bid To Be Big Web Player: Time Inc. is in the midst of another major effort to turn itself into a leading Web player. And this time, there is evidence that the publisher’s management is willing to fundamentally alter the way the magazines are run to make the Web push work.”

Is this 1995 and they are announcing Pathfinder (which, I’m amazed to see is still a working-URL with the heading “Time Inc. Portal”)? Has there been a month in the past decade when someone at Time Inc. was not saying they were trying to be a big web player? Did chasing this dream not lead this company to dive off a cliff before?

It’s painful watching this train wreck.

Technorati Tags: magazines

Rafat Ali asks a radical question: “M&A is not the sole purpose of the digital media industry, or the entrepreneurs, but that seems to be prevailing wisdom now. Where are the companies being built to last?”

Technorati Tags: media

What the heck is a blog portal? These folks want to sell magazines blog portals. A what? That was my first head-scratching question, also: Apparently, here’s the concept (direct quotes): If you have a magazine, you want to set up “a stand alone blogging community portal to compliment your existing online magazine. You want to let your readers talk amongst themselves, automatically growing new advertising real estate…”

Can there be a more oxymoronic phrase than blog portal? Blogs are about personal expression and individuality. Portals are about, well, trying to jam together and own everything and everyone you can. Besides, offering someone help to create a portal sounds about as anachronistic as offering someone help to create a steel mill.

I’m going to stop there. I’m trying to stay positive. I’m trying to be a portal of positivity.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Random things I’ve learned by blogging:

What Shel Israel said: “Business that comes from the blogosphere comes because of the trusted friendships you make. These days, marketers are coming in droves to this new medium, and they are missing the fundamental importance of the Personal Web.”

Technorati Tags: boston, businessblogs

Mac users must not be very geeky: On MSN.com, tied in with a Newsweek cover story package about Web 2.0 is a test called, “How Geeky Are You?” However, on my Mac, I don’t have the correct browser extensions or plugins to get the test to work — and I’m not geeky enough to know which of them I don’t have. I can’t get it to work in Firefox or Safari, however, I can sorta get it to work in an antique and now unsupported version of IE for Mac. After the first couple of questions, I could see it wasn’t worth tracking down what the problem is.

Technorati Tags: apple, mac

In Chicago Monday: I’m on a 10:45 a.m. panel at Monday’s Association Magazine Day, one of the pre-conference activities at the Folio: Summit. Most of the rest of the day, I’m spending with the folks at Southwest airlines.

My thoughts after spending time volunteering on the Mississippi gulf coast: Last week, my 15-year-old son and I spent a couple days doing some volunteer construction work on the Mississippi Gulf coast in Pass Christian, near Gulfport. I posted a set of photos on Flickr. (Update: Dave Winer visited the same area in December and posted a Flickr set then.) Below are some observations that together can be summed up this way: I was inspired by the volunteer efforts of people pouring in from all over the country; and by the spirit of the people I met from the area. I was overwhelmed by the degree of devastation and all that has to be done. I was struck by the thin line between devastation and normalcy, at some places a matter of inches separate the two. I’m concerned with the decisions being made by competing interests in the region.

Observations:

I really enjoy hanging out with my son.

There is no way to comprehend the coastal devastation of Katrina without seeing it. There are times when I’m frustrated with TV coverage of a “crisis” news event because a tight shot of fire damage, for example, can make it appear that an entire city has gone up in flames. In this case, despite endless hours of TV coverage, the extent of the damage cannot be conveyed. It was like being on the set of some sci-fi post-nuclear war film.

That said, it is amazing that outside those areas that have been wiped out, life goes one: Look one way, and it’s flatlands – wiped out down to the sand — except for some massive, now leaning, trees. Look the other way and there’s a suburb with yards’ full of azaleas in full bloom.

There are armies of volunteers from churches, colleges, civic groups from all over the country. We passed by staging areas of Baptists, Methodists and were working with a group from our church, Westminster Presbyterian in Nashville, that is coordinating its efforts through national denominational channels. I was also impressed with the massive support of the volunteers through a effort called God’s Katrina Kitchen. We ate lunch there one day with hundreds of other volunteers. The food was prepared by a group of Mennonite volunteers and others. They must serve thousands each day, and charge nothing. I enthusiastically left a donation for their efforts — and the food was hearty and tasty.

Despite the legions of volunteers, the sense I felt when we were back at the house we were working on was one of futility: of being a drop in the bucket of endless need. Our church does one or two Habitat for Humanity houses each year and I enjoy the progress one senses when the house goes up and the neighborhood emerges. Despite enjoying being with my son and other volunteers, I felt little sense of progress being made in rebuilding a neighborhood or community, rather it was more overwhelming what has yet to be done — how what a small dent is being made. Fortunately, there are thousands of other efforts underway making little dents — they’re just so spread out, my personal sense of what needs to be done drowned out the sense of progress made — also, I was not there to see how the massive debris removal process had to precede the rebuilding.

I had the fortune of having names and faces to connect with the two houses I worked on. I got to meet family members and work with the people who live in the homes. I’m into the people-to-people approach of solving things.

On the macro level, I kept looking around, thinking, what a great opportunity to start all over: to be able to reboot a whole region, neighborhood by neighborhood. With what is known about urban planning and zoning and engineering today, the chance to rebuild water-front neighborhoods could only enhance the quality of life of residents of the region, at many levels of the economic ladder. However, it looked to me that there is a mad dash by some to throw back up what was already there. In ten years, will this stretch of the Mississippi Gulf Coast look like a re-creation of what was there before, complete with a water-front Super Wal-Mart? Will the potential for some smart zoning be trumped by the desire by some rich folks to re-create faux-antebellum mansions with modern plumbing and Internet access?

I feel certain the locals will resent any suggestions from “outsiders” on how they should rebuild the area, but as long as we all are subsidizing the insurance system and the post-disaster management infrastructure and systems that enable houses to be rebuilt in flood and hurricane zones, all U.S. tax-payers are insiders.

I can’t imagine how many decades it will take to sort out all of the conflicts among governments, insurance companies, corporate interests and individuals. There are young lawyers, associates in law firms in the region, who will spend their entire careers following the threads of Katrina.

Did I mention that I really enjoy hanging out with my son? (I also love hanging out with my daughter, but while her brother and I were in Mississippi, she and my wife traveled to another corner of world).

Technorati Tags: katrina

Pre back-to-blogging post, #2: This post is proudly from the shameless self-promotion department. After a two-year stint playing the role of Susan Lucci in the same category at the Jesse H. Neal Awards, the editorial team from MyBusiness magazine, published by Hammock Publishing, won a Neal for best magazine department. Now in their 52nd year, the Neals are the top editorial honor in the business-to-business publishing field.

Technorati Tags: magazines

Pre back-to-blogging post, #1: I returned to the office to discover I have been scheduled for two travel days in the coming week. So, returning to this whole blogging thing will be sporadic. Thought I’d start off by cranking up the old RSS news reader and see what I’ve missed in the past week. First, I’d like to thank people for not posting much earth-shattering stuff. What I discovered by scanning headlines for five minutes: The old controversies are still the current controversies, the old cool things are still the new cool things, the old gossip is still the new gossip, Google still launches stuff everyday — and Microsoft is still going to launch Vista sometime in the future of mankind.

Three highlights from glancing through a gazillion blog posts in five minutes:

Advice from Mark Cuban on what to do with DRM on the media you purchase: “Any and all digital content that you purchase and OWN, with any sort of copy protection, crack it, and make a backup copy for your own personal storage.” (rexblog flashback: “Burn a backup CD of tunes you purchase from the iTunes Store“)

Stephen Baker asks (and answers) an interesting question: “If advertisers are rushing into media that can measure the reach and effectiveness of their ads, what does this mean for (magazines)?”

The ‘Freemium’ Business Model: First, Fred Wilson describes it: “Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base. And then Jarid Lukin gave it the name, Freemium.

I’m not retiring from blogging, just taking a spring break: Among the things I’ll be doing in the coming days, the 15-year-old and I will be honing our hammering skills as we venture to the Mississippi coast for some post-Katrina volunteering. I’ll post photos when we get back. Also, I’m unplugging my RSS newsreader for the next 10 days, so, please, no one post anything interesting. Also, as I will not be online to clear out comment spam, I’m disabling comments until the day I expect to resume blogging, Monday, March 27.

In the meantime, please note that I have moved my RSS feeds to Feedburner, so please update accordingly. (The full feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/rexblog_all. The old feed will continue to work.)