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Robert Scoble Michael Arrington, Other Bay Area Web Techs Give Political Advice

Sun, 28 Jul 2008 21:21:00 GMT

posted by zennie62

I present my long form video documentary of the TechCrunch | August Capital Party held Friday, July 25th 2008 at
August Capital and hosed by TechCrunch Co-Founder / Editor Michael Arrington. First, let me thank Michael for the opportunity to do this at his event, as well as the time he gave me. Second, let me thank all of you who gave me your time at the party, which was the vast majority of you.

I set out to form a pattern of opinions on what the Democratic Party and Senator Obama should address on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. I also tried to give a view of what people were working on in the tech / web community. There's a lot here. But I also tried to make something fun to watch, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The video is 41 minutes long and some of the highlights: TechCrunch's Michael Arrington explaining that he hope Barack Obama sicks to his concern for "net neutrality" as well as his hope that issues regarding H1 Visas, the FCC, and the avoidance of Internet Taxes are addressed. Technorat Founder and Chairman David Sifty introducing his new venture OffBeatGuides.com. The great EtchStar.com service for devices like iPhones. An iPhone App from VSmax.com. Sara Lacy telling the Democratic Party to "get some balls." Andrew Mager talking about the party and introducing Cathy Brooks of Seesmic, who in turn introduced the Legendary Robert Scoble, and Brooks echoing (unknowingly) Lacy when she says the party should "grow a pair." And Robert talking -- at considerable length -- about what happened to PodTech and what it says, if anything, about the economics of Podcasting.

In all the message to the Democratic Party and Senator Obama was to work to achieve unity, don't fashion policies that tax the Internet or harm Net Neutrality, be courageous, and for Senator Obama to stay the course.

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Robert Scoble Talks About PodTech Demise At TechCrunch Party

Sun, 28 Jul 2008 21:08:00 GMT

Sam Whitmore Marc Canter Dana Gardner Mike Arrington Mike Vizard, and Robert Scoble Potty Mouth extravaganza

Fri, 17 May 2008 12:48:56 GMT

posted by rmorrill

You can get to the podcast right here, and there is a lot of humor here. Really if you want a laugh, you gotta listen to this.

Go screaming to minute 45 to get to the fun bit, it is great hearing pundits swear on a pod cast about “hiding behind a shroud of privacy while pushing their business forward” when it comes to Facebook agreeing to play in Google’s playground on the whole open ID single sign on hoopla that is infecting the tech elite this morning. There is some humor here listening to Robert Scoble and others go at it.

So what this centers around is the idea that Facebook and Google are working on the whole Friend Connect program allowing anyone to take their friends along to any social network. The main argument centers around plaxo which is now part of comcast, and the reputation really of the social network that your friends are trying to get you involved with.

While Robert really likes plaxo, given their checkered history, many people use LinkedIn rather than Plaxo. So as people in the podcast really start getting into the whole idea of friendship portability, what they don’t get and what is not mentioned in the process is that when someone takes your contact information and dumps it into some other social network, it does not mean you have to accept that.

Picture from Google.

Many friends have tried to get me involved in plaxo, and some other weird reputation system, and it is really easy to just ignore them, dump them into the spam directory and not sweat it.

A good question is the Facebook privacy standards too protective? Do you really have to follow your friends around especially amongst the tech elite that tend to way early adopt any shiny new system just because they can. If you look at what happens fairly frequently, a large herd of people will follow along when the technical literati talk about something, but then actually using the system months later is fairly rare.

The initial boost in traffic is good, the follow through is fairly bad. Friend Connect and other systems are really designed to ensure that systems can work on one ID. The idea of having users allow their data to be ported to other systems, other networks, we don’t have that yet, but it is a good idea in the longer run to have something like this. The reason that I won’t use a lot of Facebook games or apps is because the data access that they have. I seriously doubt that based on my past behavioral patterns, that if my friends try to rope me into some other system, that I’ll just blindly go along with it.

In the mean time, go to minute 45, have a laugh, and then wonder what happens when your friends try to bring you into every other social network on the planet. Do you really have the time to beboMyspaceFacebookLinkedIn and the rest of them?

Tags: humor, Sam Whitmore, Marc Canter, Dana Gardner, Mike Arrington, Mike Vizard, and Robert Scoble Potty Mouth extravaganza, podcast

Working in a Blogging Sweat Shop

Sat, 6 Apr 2008 15:02:27 GMT

posted by rmorrill

The NYTimes is running a post on how three of the bigger names in blogging have suffered heart attacks and medical issues since they started building out their blogging empires. They compare the work that bloggers do as a “sweat shop mentality”, in that the pressures to be 24X7 eventually lead to the demise of ones health.

I have been blogging now for 3 years, and I have lost 50 pounds, cut back on cigarettes, and am generally in better health now than I was when I started blogging. If you are working in a sweat shop, then you are doing it wrong.

“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.” “This is not sustainable,” he said. Source: NY Times

There are some real down sides when trying to build out a major media empire, and depending on why you blog, what your goals are, knowing these downsides are pretty important to you personally. There are many a-type personalities out there, this does not mean you need to work for one.

When I looked at pro-bloggers job board, and did one as an experiment, that was one of the worst experiences I have ever had in blogging. I am very careful about facts, but was told that what I wrote was materially incorrect. What the blog manager didn’t note was that (and this was clearly spelled out) I had used Firefox for the example. It was materially correct for that particular browser, and it even had screen caps.

Time to walk away from people who want bloggers, but can not deal with the work that is being put out, nor understand the material being pushed by the blogger. If the job poster does not get it, time to walk away and work with people who do get it. As a blogger, if the other end of the conversation does not get it, it is not worth writing and rewriting just to make them happy. There are other things to do, other people to see, and better places to make a couple of dollars.

Depending on where you want to go with your blogging career, it is important that you take care of yourself first. Blogging is supposed to be fun even if you are building out a multi-million dollar empire. The minute it stops being fun, or has adverse effects on your health, it is probably time to move on and do something else.

Keywords: death by blogging, blogging accident, health, heart attack, techcrunch, Michael Arrington, technology, blog, blogger, blogging, a-type, personality

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Techcrunch drops a bomb who are the most popular tech bloggers

Sun, 21 Apr 2008 13:31:32 GMT

posted by rmorrill

This ought to start off some conversations this morning, if not a bitch meme or two. Techcrunch has gone through Techmeme’s head lines to figure out who the top bloggers are since the beginning of the year. The good part, we read most of these folks, the bad part, if they have an ego, it just got seriously inflated.

For now we thought we’d show a teaser - below are the top 100 tech bloggers/authors, based on the total number of headlines they have had on TechMeme from January 1, 2008 until today. The data isn’t 100% perfect as we’ve been grabbing it only once per hour, so a headline that was up for less than one hour may not be counted. But in terms of tracking the most popular bloggers, the data is meaningful. Since a lot of the top leaderboard blogs are multi-author, this helps to shake out who’s actually writing the popular stories. Source: Techcrunch

In all the list is very good, as many of the top headliners are those folks we read, like, and enjoy what they write. If they needed to get a kudo, then this is a nice way to start off a Monday morning.

What is interesting in the list as well is the difference between the leader board shown below and the actual authors and where they come from. While the leader board shows the popularity of sources, the techcrunch data leads to some interesting vector mapping between the sources and the writers. The top five head line grabbers and where data comes from are not in conjunction with each other.

This is what makes it interesting to the overall way that techmeme does its job, while the sources of data are popular from leading media like nytimes and news.com, the top five writers are bloggers. Not surprised to see techcrunch on the top of both lists either.

Keywords: techcrunch, techmeme, leader board, popular, writers, bloggers, information, vector diagram, information

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