The Gong Show

Here’s my contribution to OneWebDay. I’m currently standing in Battery Park, NYC watching Craig Newmark speak on the “heavy lifting” on the web. His talk is over now. He was brief, but engaging.

Why are you all thankful for the web? Or are you?

This post by Om depressed me a bit. Key quote:

They (which includes everyone from Microsoft to Real to SanDisk) used to mock Apple for having a walled garden approach to digital music. iPod + iTunes + Apple DRM = Money. Well now they are building their own walls – Microsoft has Zune.

This smells like the Prodigy, Compuserv, AOL trend of the early 90’s. Competing walled gardens in an arms race over content and price. None of which offered the value of internet-only ISPs.

So, where does a company like eMusic fit into this analogy? eMusic is still a walled garden because they do not offer the full spectrum of artists. But, it’s significantly more open and less offensive than the rest of the walled gardens because there are no nasty DRMs involved, so you can take the music you purchase at eMusic and play it in iTunes or Zune or whatever. So, in my analogy, eMusic is not an open ISP, but they’re not as bad as the traditional walled gardens like AOL and Co.

Based on this analysis I’m saying that no music service will ever be truely open until you are able to purchase all music from all sources on it. I think that’s fair criteria for a truely open system, but I don’t think it will happen anytime soon.
And does that make ad-based P2P piracy software = old-school, free NetZero? That’s a fun comparison. They’re both ad-based and both delivered a service for free that others tried to make you pay for… but, again not a perfect fit because there was nothing illegal about NetZero… it was just an unsustainable business model; whereas, KaZaa, Limewire died because they were illegal.

Well, I’m having too much fun beating this metaphor to death, but I am writing about it to illustrate a point. The old value-added ISP walled gardens were eventually overrun because of price and the closed nature of the network. I hope the same will hold true in the music download space.

My dream: someday, the pendulum will swing back, and all the companies Om described running to setup walled garden music download services will realize the error in their ways. We will see music download services with endless choices. It will be easy (and practically free) to become a content distributor on the service, just as free as setting up a website today. Open, DRM-free standards will be embraced: mp3. Music will be licensed and priced by the artist, but licenses will be simple in order to respect the consumers’ fair use rights.

Openness will prevail.

I decided to implement my blogroll using Grazr. If you don’t know what Grazr is, it’s essentially a feed reader widget that can be embedded in HTML. Just play with my blogroll for 5 minutes, and you’ll understand what Grazr can do.
Most of my readers are reading via RSS, so this change means nothing to them because they never see my blogroll, but it’s a significant decision for me because of the importance I place on blogrolls in general.

I had a professor in college, Terry Winograd, who said that when he picked up a book or a paper with which he was unfamiliar, the first thing he did was flip to the Bibliography or Sources Cited section. That’s because he wanted to figure out of the author was in his social network or not. It’s a great metric for Terry to determine if a given author is worth spending time reading.

I feel similarly about blogrolls. If I don’t recognize a single blog in the blogroll then it’s unlikely that this blog falls within my social network and my realm of expertise. That’s not to say I won’t read the blog (though occasionally I won’t), but it lets me know where my common ground is with the blogger and whether or not the blogger and I agree that certain people are important and worth reading regularly.

So, given the importance I place on blogrolls, I am now using Grazr for the following reasons:

1. It takes up less screen real-estate than my old blogroll.
2. It’s a clean, tight, snappy UI.
3. It’s organized better. My old blogroll was ordered alphabetically; whereas, Grazr is categorized by my bloglines categories.
4. If I update my OPML on Bloglines, my Grazr automatically updates.
5. Users can customize their Grazr view on my widget to their liking, even pop the widget in a new windows.
6. Users can view other people’s posts directly in my Grazr widget.

Basically, it’s a blogroll on steroids.

What are my gripes so far?

1. My users now cannot click-through to a blog they like from my blogroll.
2. Viewing posts is a bit of a strain in the 180 pixels I gave the widget to work with.
3. The widget does not expand and contract when there is significant blank space in the bottom of the widget.

Let me know what you think of the new Grazr blogroll.

A couple of sources of celebrated YouTube’s recent announcement that they have technology which can recognize copyrighted music in videos when a video is uploaded. YouTube’s using this technology to work with Warner music in order to license the content as it’s uploaded (instead of being forced to remove the content under DMCA compliance). Most of the praise is for the deal with Warner, but I fear that there is a great hidden cost in this deal in the new technology involved.

There are little-to-no details as to how exactly YouTube is identifying copyrighted material, but I assume it’s not something as trivial as a flag or ID in the video content because that could be too easily sidestepped. So YouTube likely now has technology to look at the content of a video and determine if the music is a match to any video in the Warner (or other major recording studio) library.

I appreciate the fact that YouTube is making it easier for me to upload and download copyrighted content without being overbearing or invasive, but my fear about this technology is applications outside of YouTube. One could easily see how this could be extended to work with packetshaping at ISP gateways or other major network hubs. Packetshaping is already occuring on most ISPs (traffic that has packet headers which indicate that they are involved in P2P networks or online gaming and being throttled). However, packetshaping that can detect whether traffic is violating a copyright or not would have negative implications. It might put more responsiblity on the ISPs to monitor and shape their traffic. That’s scary to me.

How about another application of this music-matching technology, censorship. Right now, the Vchip in televisions is implemented by looking at the metadata of the ratings system, but if offensive material can be identified simply based on content, then censorship technology doesn’t have to rely on metadata. I’m not at all in favor of reducing barriers for censorship, but I’m pretty progressive in my anti-censorship beliefs. The main reason I quit using Blockbuster a year ago is that they won’t stock NC-17 movies, so I get shit, chopped-up versions of great films like L.I.E. and Requiem for a Dream. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are parents out there reading my blog who sing the praises of the Vchip (and certain applications of censorship in general) and on those grounds I think we have to respectfully disagree.

In summary, I’m not trying to say that I wish this technology had not been invented. Furthermore, I like YouTube’s intentions and applications of this technology (so far). But, I don’t like the directions that this technology could take…

Though Daily Candy is probably best described as an “email newsletter:” by Wikipedia’s definition of a blog: Daily Candy is a blog. The WSJ is calling Daily Candy something else: a $130 million dollar company (linking to Gawker for this fact because WSJ requires subscriptions).

I was intrigued at the noise this valuation made in the blogosphere, so I decided to go to the site and subscribe to their feed to see what all the fuss was about…. Wait, what?… No RSS Feed?

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I couldn’t find a Daily Candy RSS feed anywhere on the site. This is the kind of thing RSS was invented to do… it’s Email Newsletter 2.0. Yet, the only way I could subscribe to Daily Candy was by email.

I understand that Daily Candy doesn’t need to offer RSS because only 2% of the population subscribes to an RSS feed. (That stat was floating around in a recent meme. I believe I quoted it in an earlier post too). I’m sure there’s little-to-no overlap between Daily Candy’s target audience and the 2% that uses RSS regularly, but when a company’s only distribution channel is daily updates delivered electronically… how can RSS not even be offered? Amazing.

Since Daily Candy only offers subscription via email, and they certainly know what blog readers want based on their popularity, I’m now offering my feed via email. My guess is that anyone in my audience that is interested in staying up-to-date with my blog will use RSS because you all, like me, are a bunch of tech geeks. Nonetheless, email feeds are now available.

My email feed is hosted by Feedburner. I love that everytime I want to do something new with my feed Feedburner has already anticipated my desire and makes doing so as easy as pushing an “activate” button.  (Disclosure: Feedburner is a USV portfolio company, but that doesn’t mean they rock any less). Sign up for my email feed in the little sign up field on the left side of my blog.

I set up live blogging via email on my worpress install last night, so this post is a test. I hope it doesn’t look like a complete mess.

I’m at the Yankees/Sox game. Sox are leading the Yankees 3-2 in the 7th, which puts a smile on my face. Ortiz has been booed endlessly. In 4 at bats he has had a double, a ground-rule double, and 2 walks. Looks very likely he’ll end the game on base at every at bat, but I’m probably jinxing his 9th inning at bat right now.

As I’m writing my first live blackberry post, I’m realizing I may never do it again because I can’t link from my Blackberry email. Links in posts are often more important than the posts themselves, so this is way too limiited for habitual use.

Yankees just walked in a run, and the Jeter superfans are devestated. Life is good.

My obsession with Elliott Smith is borderline unhealthy. Perfect rainy day music (which makes it particularly appropriate for today in NYC).  Elliott songs carry an improbable dichotomy of being soft, warm, and sweet sounding, with lyrics that feel barren, cold, and dejected.  The two opposites play well together.  On top of it all, Elliott’s acoustic guitar work is mesmerizing and, his voice has an addictive gentle gruffness.
Anyway, I nearly jumped out of my chair when I just read that unreleased Elliott Smith track have just surfaced on the web.  I’m slowly downloading them as we speak (my connection’s slow because I’m “borrowing” it from my neighbors’ wifi), but I thought I would sacrifice a few kilobytes of bandwidth to blog about this terrific find.  I found it view Pitchfork News, so check out this brief review.  But first, grab the new unreleased songs.

Does anyone actively participate in a bliki? Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of a bliki, so I can skip the basics and get straight to the point. I don’t participate in a bliki, and I don’t know anyone who does. Maybe digg is close to a bliki… but it doesn’t allow you to write posts of any significant size. So, as a small experiment to satiate my curiosity, I aim to change that.

I’m opening registration for contributors to my blog:

The registration URL is: http://blog.andrewparker.net/wp-register.php

Registration is pretty straight forward. Writing posts is pretty easy… just go to the “Write” tab once you login… Write your post… and then hit “Save.” Once the post is saved it will be stored for me to moderate and publish if I see fit.

My thoughts that lead to this decision:

Blogs are huge, and few would contest that point. Wikis are huge (less huge, and mainly driven by Wikipedia’s success, but still, they’re huge). Yet, there has been little-to-no traction in the middle ground between the two. There doesn’t seem to me to be a good reason for blogs and wikis to stay separate. I know that this experiment is not a TRUE bliki because there’s no collaboration in the authorship. My experiment is really a community authored blog. But, I don’t want to take the time to install a real bliki for an experiment I expect to get little traffic. Plus, even if I did install a real bliki, it wouldn’t have any traffic going to it because it would be at a new URL, so there wouldn’t be an incentive for anyone to post.

Speaking of traffic: Yesterday I had 60 pageviews (according to Google Analytics) and 101 Feed Subscribers (according to Feedburner). So, it’s not like I’m giving access to some major broadcasting channel. Heck, you could probably reach more people with a megaphone on a New York street corner.

If a blog I liked made the same opportunity available to me, I don’t think I would take it. Just because I read and enjoy a blog, doesn’t mean I want to start writing the posts on it. In fact, I probably read and enjoy blogs because I learn new things. If I wrote the posts then I wouldn’t be learning anything. The value that the blog offered me would be lost. Therefore, I’m curious to see if anyone picks up this opportunity and runs with it.

However, I think comments are pretty lame. They give the author of the blog all the feature space and the commenters get hidden behind a “comments” link in small real-estate at the bottom of the page. I like to think of blogging as a dialogue, not a monologue, but my current comment system is the dialogue equivalent of me shouting through a megaphone and my commenters whispering back in my ear. Hopefully, the “contributor” solution I am setting up will remedy this problem.

As a blog owner, I take some pride in the posts I write. I try to keep the ratio of tech-geek-opinions to personal-music-ponderings fairly even. So, I’m not sure this is a good idea. I might get too possessive, and just close it down. The type of registration I opened is called “Contributor” registration, so I get to monitor all posts before they go live. That helps me ensure that no one is being lame, spammy, racist, or otherwise unfit for my blog.

I think the most likely outcome is no one will take it up, and I’ll close the registration after awhile due to lack of interest. But, it’s an experiment, and I’m happy to see it fail because it’s better than not doing it at all.
Finally, if you write good stuff and I develop some trust, then I’ll upgrade you to “author” status so your posts will appear in real-time (in other words, I will not have the opportunity to moderate your posts before they go live).

Happy blogging.

… to root for the Red Sox.  If I acquire any notable war wounds I’ll post them in a flickr gallery.