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Saturday, June 18, 2005

What I want as a blogger

I have been thinking about what I want as a blogger. This was sparked by the KRON Blogger Meetup. I have been thinking about what an organization like KRON can do to for me. I know that some of these things might already be happening, but I do not know about it. If they are happening I want someone to let me know.

Regular blogger conferences: I meet with other bloggers all the time, but we rarely talk about blogging. I did not talk about blogging that much at the KRON Meetup. I did not talk about what makes a good blog. I did not talk about what people want to see in blogs. I did not talk about what I can do to be a better blogger. I would go to a conference about any of these topics.

Recognize the different types of bloggers: I am a Personal blogger. I am not the same kind of blogger as Tantek, Clyde Smith, or Niall Kennedy. I am more like Dave Goodman or Elke. I do not want to made to feel like my blog is somehow less important because of what kind of blogger I am. I think it is important for different types of blogs out there. I do not programs and services that notice that my needs are different then bloggers with different types of blogs. I think that there are programs that would be interesting only to food blogs. I think it is still good to offer those programs.

Sponsor programs that put bloggers in touch with other bloggers: The best part of the meetup was meeting other bloggers. One of the problems with the KRON event was no Q&A. The problem is that not only do I want answers to my questions. I also want to know the questions that other bloggers have. Interacting with each other in the real world can change how we interact. I think this is the way to get a real community of bloggers.

Find ways to connect bloggers to news resources: There are lots of ways this can happen. There is not enough news programming to cover all the city events. If something is happening that you cannot cover, throw it out to the blogging community. If there is an event lots of bloggers are covering, help them cover it. If it is already covered, pick out the best coverage and highlight it.

Find bloggers that want to be journalist and help develop them: I do not want to be a pro, but many people would like to be a pro blogger. Reach out to those bloggers and see what can be done. Is there a partnership that can help both the station and the blogger?

Is there other things that my readers think they would like to see?

- Rich, 12:39 PM |

Friday, June 17, 2005

More about CDs and music

Eric posted some links in the comments of my last iTunes post. Here are the links about Album length, More on album length, and Death of albums. I wanted to make them a post so I did not lose them when the comments turned over.

I had a conversation with Eric about the future of the music world. He can easily see a future with out record labels. Once there is all digital distribution, the current record labels do not make sense. There will be no reason for them to exist. Artists will be able to cut the deals themselves.

I think the future looks a little different. A lot of people like Pop Stars and Rock Stars. There is a reason that American Idol does so well in the ratings. I think that you need a machinery to make and promote these kinds of stars. I think the rest of the media would not know who to look at if the record labels were not promoting anyone.

I can see a future where large record labels have very small number of artists under contract. They go from having thousands of artists under contract to less then 100 per company. Just enough to fill Wal-Mart shelves. Record companies will only deal with the most profitable properties.

In a world like this there is a lot of room for smaller companies. Those smaller companies have the ability to take more risks. The problem is they still will not have the same promotional power. It will still be harder for people to find those acts.

The hard part of all of these things is that the major record companies are part of big media conglomerates. An artists on Sony Records can find his music in a movie or in a video game. The smaller labels will not be able do this.

I do not think anyone can say what the record industry will look like in 5 years. I have the feeling there will be one or two more changes yet that we do not know of.

- Rich, 9:58 PM |

Casual piracy Friday

I caught site of a story about casual piracy in the Mercury News this week. The story talks about how Sony BMG Music Entertainment want to copy protect all of its CDs by the end of the year. I cannot tell you how angry this makes me. It shows me that the record industry wants to kill the CD format.

This is another case of the music industry not understanding its customers. I cannot think of an industry that trusts it customers less. They want us to pay them money and to give us as little as they can. They make the airline industry look generous. This is a good way to chase away customers.

I will be looking for CDs that are not protected. I know that I love Bruce Springsteen and Ben Folds, but it looks like I will be buying music from the bands on Kill Rock Stars or K Records if everyone else's CDs are protected.

One thing I hate about the article is that it totally does not understand why Apple will not license FairPlay. They are doing this so they can move people toward the iTunes Music Store. If a CD I really want will not play on my computer, I will have to think about iTunes Music Store.

I wonder if copy protected CDs will be a good music services like Yahoo Unlimited and Rhapsody. If you are going to restrict what I can do with music, I might as well just use one of those services. I wonder what will happen to record labels if that is how people are getting their music. Can they generate enough if revinue if that is where all their money comes from. My guess is that they cannot. This move might be what kills CDs as a format.

- Rich, 8:49 AM |

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Blogger Meetup Report naked bea arthur

Or Naked Bea Arthur rocks

I snuck out of a work event early last night to I could make it to the blogger meet up. I am so happy I did. Some one had to be there with the laptop. Someone had to be there to record the now classic Naked Bea. I would like to give a round of applause to Antwon and the Antwonettes (Hank, Jon, Elke, and Ealasaid)

This morning I could not remember how it all started. All I could remember is that I laughed myself to tears. I am happy that Elke remembered how Naked Be Arthur started. I know that we talked about a lot of other funny stuff also, but listening to this MP3 just blocked everything else out. I remember two other things.

1) I found the idea of nakedbeaarthur.blogspot.com much more disturbing then just nakedbeaarthur.com. I guess there is a whole idea of intent there
2) If you do a Google Image search for Naked Bea Arthur with Moderate SafeSearch on, you still find three images.

Silvia is most likely happy that she left before the song was recorded.

Listening to the recording again, I think that it is as close as we could come to recording a drug trip in recorded sound. Sadly, it is not a good drug trip. Tell me if you want the garage band files so you can do better.

- Rich, 6:41 AM |

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Good News for people that like Bad News

As a renter I take a sick pleasure in stories about Which housing markets are ready to pop? It is not that I want bad things to happen to my friends. I just want to be able to afford a house someday.

- Rich, 9:18 AM |

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Pride in San Jose

I used to live at 6th and Santa Clara street in San Jose. That is right on the main strip of downtown San Jose. There are some weekends where Santa Clara is noises all weekend long from people cruising up and down the block. On those weekends it was not worth trying to get to sleep before 2 AM.

I was having lunch with two co-workers, explaining the noisy weekends. One of my co-workers was surprised that San Jose Gay Pride weekend was on this list. He thought that it would be a non-event because everyone would go to San Francisco instead. My other co-worker explained that the events in San Jose and San Francisco are very different from each other. I think this story from the Mercury News confirms my co-worker's theory about San Jose Gay Pride weekend.

- Rich, 9:05 AM |

Monday, June 13, 2005

KRON blogger meetup Pt. 2

I talked to a lot of bloggers at the KRON meetup. I talked to more then I could keep in my head. The KRON General Manager said the main point of the meetup was for the bloggers to network. I think I approached it more like a cocktail party then a place to network. I was looking to have a good time and not too worried about interesting people in Sad Salvation.

The South Bay had a strong condescend with Courtney, Fling93, and Kevin were there. I hung out with them some, but I wanted to spend my time talking to people I did not know.


I talked to Amy from Cooking with Amy was talked about taking pictures of food. She has to slow her family so she can take pictures of the food. She also told the story of a guy who took photos of everything he ate for a year. The pictures were not good, but they were compelling.

There seem to be a lot of people with cooking and food blogs there. I guess it is something we all do. It is better that we write about it. I also meet Biggles from MeatHenge. He gave me a business card with his slogan, "If it ain't pork, it ain's sausage."

The cameraman covering the event Stanley Roberts also has a food blog, We8there.

Biggles was there with his sister Kallisti. She runs a doll blog Blastmilk. The name comes from a babblefish translation of the description of the dolls. That is what happens when you try to go from one language to another.

The people from Runrab told me I had to see their site to understand it. After seeing it, I am not sure if I understand it.

I talked to Josh Wolf about his video blog The Revolution Will Be Televised. I asked him if he thought many people would take the time for this kind of production. He said he did not know because he was was producing the video anyway. The blog is just another way to get it out there.

I talked to Josh and Dave Goodman about production quality v. Interesting content. The production quality or writing quality of a blog is not as important to me as the ideas behind the content. They both told me they want both well written and interesting ideas in the blogs they read.

I talked to Clyde Smith from ProHipHop. He runs a HipHop business journal blog. We talked about a lot of ideas about hiphop and music. He like my ideas about the changes happening with iTunes and music.

I was around some bloggers that I did not talk to, but I overheard parts of their conversations. Bloggers like Niall Kennedy, Min Jung Kim, Craig Newmark, and Anil Dash.

The best quote I heard all the day was from Tantek. "There can never be too many blogs. Having too many blogs is like having too many voters."

He said this after he miss heard a comment I made about there being too many blogs. I meant that there are too many blogs in the bay area for it to be one community or "blogosphere." The bay area is like the Amazon rainforest of blogs. It is not one community, but lots of little communities that are very tightly packed together.

I wonder if the size and density of the community will keep KRON from achieving anything. I understand that they see blogs as the new media and they think it is important for us blogger to see television news as relevant. I just wonder if they will be able to make in roads with enough of us. I am not sure how many bloggers are in the bay area. Only 100 of them showed up. Maybe the group is to diverse.

- Rich, 11:41 PM |

Sunday, June 12, 2005

The TV/Blog gap

KRON 4 GM
Originally uploaded by Rich Thomas.

On Saturday KRON 4 TV threw a meetup for Bay Area bloggers. The idea comes from something that a TV station did in Nashville Tennessee. The station became a force in the Nashville Blog Community

Mark Antonitis, the station president and general manager, came out and spoke. He talked about building a relationship between his station and the San Francisco blogging community. He thinks it is an important relationship to build.

I was happy to hear him say that he did not know what the relationship would be like. There needs to be development before anyone knows what the relationship is. I would be worried if he already knew what he wanted to get out of bloggers.

I talked to him one-on-one for a little while. I talked to him about watching CNN and watching them read blogs on TV. I hate seeing this on TV. It is not journalism. He told me he agreed with me. He told me if you want blogs on TV you need bloggers on TV.

After this he proceeds to insult me. A women walks up who he had been speaking to earlier. The woman is attractive, in her late 30's, and stylishly dressed. He tells the woman he did not expect the bloggers to look like her. He points his thumb at me and said that he expected more techogeek types. Just want I want, to be pointed out as the Simpsons Comic-book guy.

Right now there are too many blog entries to read about this event. I meet a lot of blogger there. There is even a flickr group for the people involved. I am going to write another entry about the people I met there.

- Rich, 11:24 PM |

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