iPad

Beyond the incalculable blunder of the name (yes, our office jokes about this are the same as yours):



UPDATE: Thanks to Rob Koberg who sent this link, that point has been illustrated humorously by someone. Gotta love the web when it reacts fast and with the right spirit.

I've heard the cooing about consumers of books. I don't need it. I don't read that often.

I've heard the speculation about audio/midi. Thanks, I've got lots of those.

I've heard the games-du-jour rants. Thanks, I don't play games.

It's very cool. No thanks. I hate my cell phone.

You can watch hi-rez movies. No thanks. I have a Very Large Flatpanel for that and I can't drive and watch dinky 4:3 TV.

You're not our target demographic. Oh thank God for that.

$499 is CHEAP. Maybe, but only $999 is functional and I don't need a cute paperweight with hi-rez sparkles even if it sparkles for ten hours.

Arlo and Felicia are getting one. Good. She can ride on the back of his Indian and read to him. He'll like that.

YAG (yet another gadget). As the fellow said at CNet, iPass.

Twitlebrity and the Suck of Locale

Scanning topics of interest, I see Dave Winer is complaining about agism, Jon Taplin is extolling the virtues of the grassroots bottom up governance style, and some bloggers are still trying to figure out how to get the most out of the Vanity Fair 6 kerfluffle.

The bottom up decentralized means devolves quickly into the attention seeking means that shuts down criticism to enhance page views against other sources that make snark a policy as a means to enhance page views. It becomes an age of celebrity, of image over substance, but worse, lots of little mobs claiming hegemony: in short, high school.

Information (data in play) has an aspect similar to gravity: all locations pull against all other locations for attention. Some call it ego. When you consider that blogs, feeds, Twitter etc. are giving rise to the dominance of the attentivores (thanks to John Cowan for that term), maybe this is just devolution doing what it does best when provided a means and opportunity.

The problem of the network community is the Panglossian notion that given means and opportunity, people tend to do the right thing. People tend to do the selfish thing if that is what the market is buying. Consider that in 1988, use of the Internet email for private messages and jokes was harshly frowned upon and even a firing offense in some companies. In 1995, we worked a discipline of parsimonious texting such that one scoured each email for excess verbiage.

Then came RSS, feeds and broadband and the war for attention was on. RSS, BTW, is Winer's creation.

In 2010, it is about the Twitlebrity, the attentivore, the world where cred is obtained by having the most followers despite adding no contribution intellectually or otherwise. It is the age of the hot chick geek and the guy who made millions spamming the system. Sure everything else is out there, but it is undifferentiated.

All networks start as flat democratized systems. Over time the importance assigned locales and topics result in attention flowing into these sinks and as a result, controls and filters emerge to direct traffic, say attention. Right now the system is in a stage of puberty where trivia reigns supreme and efforts to change that will be dismissed as unhip, old media against new, old people against the young and so on. IOW, we’re having fun so don’t be a party pooper. And by the way, if you disagree, we'll make sure nothing you post gets a single view from "our crowdsource".

That is the brave new and different, the sagacity of the 30 something leading the 15 something, to a world of, aging twitlebrities trying desperately to keep the crowd alive and at a virtual distance because, hey, we're important and we need our vacations and rest.

And that is the ground against which Jon proposes to empower yet more grassroots. I don’t disbelieve; I think the timing given the zeitgeist and general immaturity of the players may be hopelessly optimistic.

There is a rough or at least ironic justice in the Vanity Fair 6 affair. The very technologies they extol created the era of snark as journalistic policy to which they fell prey. It is the old saying about laying down with dogs and getting up with fleas. Trying to dismiss claims that they should have known better is like claiming a fake tan is noteworthy: self-seeking. That Dave claims agism is a problem a short decade and a half after a generation of young hypermedia enthusiasts ran shivs through their aging bosses is simply karma.

It's a bitch but own it.

We built the most powerful communication system in history so we could rant about age, government and who is the current most hot hottie who we are assured we must take very seriously while they tweet about their lunch. Life among the mammals, for sure.

Meanwhile, the web brought me this wonderful toy box for making videos, publishing songs and generally having fun making stuff. I got mine. May you also. ;)

Shraddha (X3D Movie)

Here is my new video. Like the other 3D derived videos, this uses X3D/VRML samples. The theme is "Shraddha", Sanskrit for "Marvelous Faith". I hope you enjoy it.

Social Media and Being Almost Famous

A career can cross a lot of paths. The two gentlemen in the photo are standing about twenty feet from my office door. One is an exec at our company and the other is one of our business partners. I'll let you figure out who they are. Hint: the short one worked for a much more famous executive and the tall one is, tall, even in sneakers.

In all the fun of the Tweety Bird posts, I've been thinking about the social media aspects of our careers. I am pointedly not a social media expert. I've been around about twice as long as the folks sporting that badge have. As a musician, one time actor, still writing and recording because it's like the breathing habit, hard to shake, I do know a little bit about media.

Take a look at this graph. It's from my YouTube insight page.



The left and right sides are different to say the least, and the number of countries where I can't imagine having fans, I do. I learn a lot from the Insight stats. A picture is worth whatever it's worth but the dramatic increase in views of my videos can't be argued with and there are only two causes: 1) posting more frequently and 2) Facebook. Of the two, the second is the engine: Facebook.

So even for the hobbyist, if you want to put work in front of people, you have to find them and Facebook is rather good for that. I've a MySpace music page as well and there is nothing like these results to be had there. Twitter? If I want a bigger first day release bounce, Twitter would be a way to get that but frankly, Twitter wastes too much time on trivia and not being a fully-developed attentivore, I don't have it to waste. Yet I know some fairly famous people (actually, some very famous people) and those relationships don't get me those kinds of results in page views. That takes real fans, friends and the mildly curious.

Social media is here to stay and for those careers that do rely on being famous or almost famous (mine doesn't), careful use of social media such as Facebook is a skill you need these days as other aspects of the media industry are collapsing. Would I go hire a social media expert for that? Possibly but probably not. It isn't that hard to figure out unless of course, Vanity Fair calls, but until then, use it while it's still free.

And have fun!

Tweety Birds: Free the VF6!!

They walked into the punch, but then as I dig around more, I realize the question is why the punch at all? It is time to call BS on the snark industry of blog journalism. They is geeks and us is geeks and they may be divas but they's our divas.

Read Everybody Sucks by the same author, Vanessa Grigoriadis. The snark chic is the culprit.

Geeks Unite! Free the VF6! ;)

Tweety Birds: It's The Web, Stupid!

While working on a creative response to this flap (dieing down but still fun), I ran across this article from the author of the Vanity Fair article that started the mole rolling, Vanessa Grigoriadis. A couple of points:

1. She isn't a hack. Vanessa can write and she is a decent journalist.

2. In the article, the environment she describes is deeply flawed, seamy, and rage addicted.

3. She admits to tweaking noses as part of the job.

Past the screeching from the Twitter crowd and their fans, it's worth reading the article to understand how the web may indeed be transforming the publishing industry and journalism, but it may be devolution at light speed.

A War On GeekSheik

Ursula leGuin resigned from the Author's Guild over their acceptance of the Google settlement regarding copyrights of published works.

A war with the self-proclaimed digital royalty of GeekSheik is coming. They are destroying the creative ecosystem and real artists are shooting back.

This is bad.

Tweety Birds: The Second Wave Off

It seems that digging the hole and standing in it is how tweety birds rest for the winter.

Digital Royalty?

I have to admit, when I heard the news I immediately called a family member and dropped a Ron Burgundy, “I don’t know how to put this, but I’m kind of a big deal.”

It's hard to expand on that. In her opinion and that of her mates, the missed opportunity was to tell the story of their success, or as Felicia Day put it, "new, different and powerful". I sense Day is moving on from the story possibly because as an entertainer, once the story quits being funny and she attempts seriousness it begins to turn into a story about young women who need to get over themselves as correspondents have been suggesting, and that's not a good image for an entertainer.

The trap is that now of those who are climbing aboard the Geek Train are using this tempest in a teapot to push their own wares as social media mavens (Digital Royalty? Really?) it spins ever more toward the silly pole and as the avatar of the story (the irony is thick here), Day gets pulled into the spotlight of this farce. Que lastima!

If they claim it is all about them, they are the attentivores as named, insipid, vapid and with none of the media savvy required by their portfolio customers. If they claim it is about Vanity Fair, they are fighting human nature's need for a good gigglefest and once again accentuating that in the media where they portray themselves as experts, they are wanting and customers beware. If they recognize they are simply the latest women to get kicked in the ass by the Lolita Effect which they are themselves exploiting, there might be a story with legs and not just the ones in the photo. It might be a broader issue about the sexualization of women getting younger every year and creating problems for all women as Amber Fenner Gray points out.

So far, they aren't that smart and perhaps their clients will take note. Day will move on because she does have serious work to do on the next season of The Guild and other projects. If she is the artist she desires to be, she'll find a way to salvage this in comedy with a point.

UPDATE: The new meme to keep it going is the article is somehow 'sexist'. They need to let this drop. a) The digital royalty appear to be begging their own status b) It's too obvious the attentivores want more of the same for their own brands c) The one of them who gets hurt is Felicia Day who will look sillier the longer this goes on for participating.

The problem of trusting the herd to keep one up on their shoulders is they are distractable and not that adverse to sacrificing one of their clients to better their own nests. It's hard to feel sympathetic. If they intend a movement to change things for women because as one commenter at Day's blog said, "The major figures aren't going to put up with this", then why bother with Vanity Fair to begin with. These ladies were already changing things before they gave into the attentivore reason for existing: to get just a bit more attention as glamour babes.

They may find out they aren't that major after this. I think they fear that and keep trying to spin this into a story where they are victims. There is some more attention to be had in that frame but frankly, I look at their photo and I look at the photos of Neda Soltan and have a hard time giving a damm.

Tweety Birds: Mama Smurf

Why put on the trench coats and have the glamour shot? I think John Cowan nailed it: attentivores.

Culture satirizes any source that takes itself more seriously than it is essential or more novel than a new version of an old model. 1.6 million people willing to give you access to their raster attention budget is as trivial or non-trivial as what that 1.6 million will do given a message from the twitter account. Marketing speak particular; it's non-trivial. It is power.

Societal importance?

What will smurfs do for a smile from the smurfette? Sometimes, quite a lot.

UPDATE: Amber comments on the Lolita Effect. In the sense that this incident is about 30 somethings, it doesn't quite apply. In the sense that the objectification of women has been brought up, it does. Do read this:

http://www.alternet.org/story/85977/

The Flight of the Tweety Birds

It appears that the Flight of the Tweety Birds is this week's cause du jour among the geek women bloggers. The claims are getting evermore snarky and meant to justify a round of 'serious' web generation mystique but don't seem to offer a basis for complaint. Instead they are the victims of old people, old business, just old. Old frightens them. It could be they were had except the article was written by someone who isn't old and isn't that tied to old media. Vanity Fair is a glamour mag and glamour mags don't take up serious topics. If they did, they'd be Playboy. Sad but so.

The claim that gets to the heart of their complaint is one made by Felicia Day, that the author of the Vanity Fair piece failed:

to celebrate a new kind of independent and liberated woman

I guess she doesn't have the awareness to notice she is practicing the same sexist agism and generationism that got her into the mess. Ok, Felicia, somehow you think you are new? Challlenge: exactly how are you the example of a new independent liberated woman? What is it you've achieved that say, Carly Fiorina hasn't? Meg Whitman? Susan Sarandon? Dolly Parton? Over a million followers on Twitter? So now you have the power to change exactly what? Your fellow bloggers say you and they want to have THAT conversation, so get on with it.

You want to sling arrows because you believe you've been trivialized. Great. Just be sure you have a full quiver and a solid stance in the saddle because you're accelerating into the curve on a running horse, not out of it. The complaints you have and that of your fellow bloggers read like Danah Boyd crying over her Twitter-wall experience at her presentation. In other words, it's infantilism vs agism and somehow none of you seem to understand if you put your sex up front, it is the topic. Smart women or men get that and run with it. Hypocrites or just plain too full-of-themselves repeat the remarks that have stereotyped you as the whiniest generation since the Jazz Age. New and different? How? Say it or STFU because there are real victims out there who need attention a lot more than a 30 something living in LA with the TwitterNation hanging on her every burp.

Compared to Neda Soltan what have you suffered lately?

Nothing is more boring than a successful anything that complains when the spotlight turns green. Like the sign at Wentzel's says, if you want a place in the sun, expect blisters. Otherwise, get over yourself, or at least take a moment to study the career of Lenny Bruce. When commedians or commediennes turn serious, the laughter stops and so does the applause.

Tweety Birds

In the new edition of Vanity Fair, some ladies of the web are photographed wearing trench coats and posing just slightly provocatively. The article has the breezy tone of snark VF is famous for and in the text follows the tone of the photo. It isn't a serious portrait or all that demeaning but the subjects have taken upon themselves to become outraged, pissed, ready to 'thump skulls' and their fans are following suit. It is the usual herd response from a generation that seeks opportunities and creates technology to increase their herdiness through their nerdiness. The article is poking fun at that and I don't think too many geeks were harmed in the production of the article.

Still:

1. They signed up for the photo. If the trenchcoat poses didn't clue them in as to what was coming, these ladies aren't quite as media savvy as claimed.

2. They need the photos. The cult of celebrity requires a persistent thumping on the skulls of the public to keep them front and center. Celebrity is a brief fling with a bull-riding machine anyway. Day, for example, is someone who rather desperately wants to be a Hollywood insider despite her reputation for being a successful outsider. That is where the career and the money are and she is not a silly woman from the cheap seats.

3. Every ten years or so, the last media darling generation gets tossed on the fire of satire and ridicule to make room for a new generation. Thus has it ever been and the geeks don't seem to be prepared for the inevitable.

So ladies and irate fans, putting up blogs about how unfair VF is, how they are ignoring your serious accomplishments (lifecaster? really?), or how the old media is just jealous of the new media (we be fast; you be slow), is what is expected of you and it will fuel the flames of support, and it will drive up the sales of that issue. Mission accomplished. It will also make put you on the path to the C-list and start the crack down the middle of the ice that holds your feeds above the waters of oblivion because the more you emphasize your serious accomplishments, the more boring you will become.

Vanity Fair and articles to follow elsewhere aren't doing this for jealousy, spite or lack of 'getting it'. They are doing it because it's time. If "what the web thinks you are, you are, deal with it" as Tim Bray wrote is the meme du jour, you have just been bathed in how that comes about and how very little control you have over it except possibly in watching your warddrobe.

Deal with that.

What Will Happen When YouTube Isn't Free

Bono has written an op-ed in the New York Times touching on the topic of music piracy. The usual counter-arguments are presented in the comments to the article and the usual lunatics tend to prevail.

Fine for now. In the near future, maybe not.

At some point the free services that the indies who give away their work rely on will no longer be free. Today YouTube is the radio. Anyone wanting to keep up in the arms race of art competition (with each other; the audience is passive) has to be able to make videos on the cheap or otherwise. Fortunately, it isn't that hard and like other tools, costs are down considerably even as skills have to catch up.

Yet like it or not, the term is 'hypermedia' not hypermedium and there are costs to producing at that level of complexity that can't be dismissed as easily as "we give away our CDs" because while one doesn't have to manufacture, one is still having to climb the complexity curve. Frankly, most bands and songwriters aren't up to the challenge.

Other costs will creep up. This will dry up a lot of what far too many rely on for entertainment sources. Having choked the life out of several industries, it will be Nebraska morning noon and night for about a decade as those with access to capital realign among themselves to control the distribution of the works of those who used these services to develop themselves during the 'everything should be free because that benefits me' period of internet market development.

Bono is right. It simply doesn't matter at the moment but he is right nonetheless. Unfortunately, he is talking to the wrong audience. He's arguing with the pig and as the old joke goes, the pig only gets irritated and he comes up smelling of sow. The people who need to understand where this is going ARE the artists and particularly the young ones just getting into what is left of the music business.

A Christmas Carol: Marley's Ghost

Merry Christmas! I made my Christmas card. I hope it suits and brings good cheer. There is an extra treat at the end.

Buyer's Remorse

Don't get into the habit of the Republicans with Clinton: every time Bush made a misstep, the Republicans would cite something from Clinton and say 'this is better than that'. It may be but successful governance unlike some politics is about what is Next more than What Just Happened. I'm a Democrat and I say Obama is losing his support faster than the Titanic lost passengers. With all the first class advantages he has or had, he is too stupid to find a life vest or too proud to swim.

The problem of learning from history is that those who do are never in the majority when the time comes to use that knowledge. Among those that didn't learn, those that refused to learn, those that refuse to remember and those that are too young to know and have only the glossy reimaginings of those who pretend otherwise, perhaps the last are most to blame because they have the energy to act on a dream but not the real grit to see through it.

Of the rest, they were lost to cause at birth.

Politics is about individuals and unless the character is there by dint of experience, the substance is not no matter how compelling a dream they sell. A puffpiece bio and two years in the Senate do not a President make. Hillary was our best shot and Democrats aimed it at her head. Que lastima.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/CursesFoiledAgain.mp3

So You Wanta Start A Rock 'n Roll Band

Sometimes I get asked why I still record my songs and release them on YouTube for essentially free. The truth is I enjoy it and it's a lot of fun. I listened to Arlo Guthrie talk about the music business at The Church two months ago and as a veteran he described how marvelous it is that the young musicians no longer had to sell their souls to the entertainment industry. I listened to Sam Phillips (the female singer, not the dead Elvis producer) explain how despite the time she worked with T-Bone Burnett and thrived, she really likes the immediacy of the web that enables her to release straight to the public.

In other words, while most of us believe we really want a major label deal and the instant riches and fame that flow from that, veterans of the industry seem to think otherwise. Why?

Here are two articles that you should read to understand the economics of the deal. Once you understand this, then step back and ask why you really want to be in that business if this is the probable outcome. Meanwhile, I'll go back to making my homebrew videos. I never expect any measure of real success except insofar as I still enjoy the heck out of it.

How Major Labels Cook The Books

The Problem With Music

Here is a new homebrew video.

Silent Night

An early Christmas card before it is too late...

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 1.35 million U.S. children are homeless on any given night. (2000)

Families with children are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population, accounting for almost 41% of the nation's homeless. (2005)

In 2003, children under the age of 18 accounted for 39% of the homeless population.

42% of homeless children are under the age of five.

http://www.misd.net/Homeless/statistics.htm

Moo Boo Bouree

I was playing with the video editor. It seems gif animations will work as drag and drop video objects. Obvious, but I'd never tried it before. Since the web is brimming with free gif animations, it's a nice add to the library of cheap tricks.

UPDATE: I win Stump The Googler. After a week it can't find a video to relate this to. All those billions and billions invested and beaten by a lowly children's folk song about tap dancing cows. There is a God and she loves barnyard humor.

Arlo and The People - Episode 1: The Pumpkin Singers

Episode I - The Pumpkin Singers. Where The People sing the ceremonial Pumpkin Song to disturb The Monster and the good citizens of Great Barrington Massachusetts.



Episode II: The TailGators. Where Loopy Len and Dutiful Dana explore the mysteries of the magic parking lot and The Church.



Episode III: Sailing on the Golden River

A beautiful voice sings a beautiful song. If you have it to give, send a few shekels to the Guthrie Center. They feed the poor, help the needy and put on the best concerts in the northeast. And they need HEAT!

This Little Light of Mine

This nation needs a rebirth. It has lost its soul. - Jim Flynn

Lost? Misplaced in my opinion. The soul of America is no longer to be found in the malls, in the megaconcerts, or even in a lot of town halls. It has retreated into the small places where neighbors are still helping neighbors, cleaning up after storms, taking children to school, singing in the church choirs, in short, to quote my wife, "choosing to be family".



Globally, economically and militarily we are mightily messed up at the moment. We did that to ourselves. Our fathers did it too. We almost recovered and then we let the city on the hill hawks lead us again and when we let the stupid rise to power, we pay because once in, they are tediously difficult to root out.

Choose your family. Choose to be with them. Watch the nefarious and don’t let your own need for significance blind you to the harm they do. Vote cautiously and often. Buy local. Read the lyrics to the songs your children listen to.



Give a damm but not a dime. Evolve your way. The nation is not due for rebirth. Our soul is intact. The universe sings to us. We quit listening.

Why? Someone trying to make a bigger buck told us we had to belong to a party, a cause or a hair club and we bought it.

Our soul is right where it’s always been in the small places where the chosen gather for the joy of being together, to be family.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

The Trickster

Photo Credit: Arlo Guthrie

Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being. - Paul Radin

Again, knowledge cannot be aggregated into a single ruling body." John Papola

That quote from Papola isn’t precisely true. It is actually a limit on tracking identified resources in real time, that is, kinds, types and precision converted to actionable intelligence. The entire focus of web/Internet design has been to increase the precision given real time feeds.

No, you can’t know what goes on inside a human mind but you can observe, record and analyze speech acts. So trying to use human purposefulness as a defense or offense is to hide behind the rat hole of intensionality. You can know enough to make locally rational decisions.

To provide investors and other control mavens such information, you’ve been steadily and eagerly giving up your privacy and submitting to a 365 x 24 x 7 surveillance society. You did it for your convenience, fun and need to increase your self-perceived significance. By the very same game rules for markets, you are now hostage to the business models of IBM, Oracle/Sun, Microsoft, Apple and so on where next year’s profits rely absolutely on increasing your use and submission to the very technologies that provide that transparency.

After almost two decades of crying in the wilderness about this, my best advice is find a little place full of good people where you are secure with whatever your ambitions are and adapt.

Feed the trolls whatever will cause them to evolve. You can use the greed of others to modify their behaviors. That is the role of The Trickster.

Eat more rabbits.