Nearly a week in and slowly getting the hang of things, might try some higher-rez stuff next week. In case you haven’t dropped by yet, I’ve devised a cure for cancer and bought peace to the world….or not.
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Re: this, Rage against the machine 🙂
On a more serious note, simple rules: Twitter for Breaking, Goog Reader for reading, use aggregators like Techmeme and others to pick up the stuff you miss.?Ǭ† Now if only I could sort email….but shhhhh, we wont mention that dirty word today.
CNet reports that Andrew Baron has pulled the auction for his Twitter account. It was a clever little publicity stunt from day one, and credit to Andrew on it, but the following sounds severely retarded:
Essentially, he said, a fellow Twitterer wrote him suggesting that the people who were bidding the eBay auction well into four figures were “all spam marketers, people who will do anything just to get their name out there, people who don’t understand Web 2.0 and blogging.”
“I already knew,” Baron said, “there would be a great range of different types of (possible) outcomes. But I believed that I would be able to manage the outcome by trying to make a positive outcome for the buyer, for my friends and followers. Even if it wasn’t a good fit, I (believed) I could work with them. But after I heard that they were all just spam marketers, that just kind of killed it for me and I didn’t want to risk that.”….
Instead, he insisted to me, he just felt very uneasy about having the account–and his many followers–fall into the hands of people who didn’t necessarily have any idea how to use the account in a way that benefits all concerned.
WTF did he think would happen? that some utopian hippy would buy the account and spread peace and goodwill to his followers? lolz
Time for some appropriate Ben Folds Five 🙂
Good news: YouTube’s partner program is now available in Australia, Japan and Ireland. I’ve applied, no idea if I’ll qualify.
Now for the WTF: I had Nova on in the car (wife had been in the car, otherwise it would have been on ABC Local Radio) and their sad excuse for a news came on a 8am (sad as they seemingly read the headline only), and it went something like this
“If you upload videos to YouTube ads will now have to run on your videos.”
Apparently the partners program = forced advertising on YouTube. I should be so lucky…well I might be if I get approved, but we’ll wait and see.
I still haven’t settled on the exact format, and I’m going to mix it up, but thought I should at least come out swinging a little.
Visuals on Ustream aren’t great once you download the thing then syndicate them out, might switch to quicktime or even my video camera instead of sticking with a recorded live stream,?Ǭ† we’ll see how things go. This is still an experiment at this stage, some where along the line something might work well 🙂
It’s been a year since I’ve last updated this site, so it’s time for a new look. At the time of writing I’m still working on it, the blogroll is still very dead (as it was on the last template), and I’m still tweaking colors etc from the original template, but getting there. Apologies if this looks odd for you at the moment.
I’ve purchased a ticket for this years Gnomedex in Seattle, my first. Buggered if I know how I’ll get there, the airfare will work itself out in the coming months, they always do. Just a shame Virgin doesn’t start the pacific route till October, finally some competition on Qantas’ cash cow route.
The occasion coincided with this response to my earlier what to broadcast about video from Chris Pirillo. Perhaps my calling may be in surprise humour? 🙂 (language warning)
(language warning for video)
So I’ve been playing with Live streaming services and I want to do something more regular, but not 100% on what. I love what Chris Pirillo does, but the subject matter is a little tame for me. Open to suggestions, on topic, format and even streaming service of choice.
Note I recorded the video above directly to YouTube, hence the quality is shite. I picked up a $100 Mac compatible webcam on skype the other week and the quality is easily twice as good as the overly expensive with backstory iSight I bought last year, and it looks nothing like this.
Mark Glaser has a post up today on the virtues of the so-called “social media press release” (pic above): The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public. He runs through the arguments in favor of it and how apparently PR folk are starting to use it.
Perhaps I’m old school…ok, I am old school, but I’ve been dealing with media releases since 1997, when I was taught in a job how to write a good press release, so I have no issues with the current format of press releases and I don’t see an immediate need to dump them for this format, although I do take on board that others may prefer the style.
Press releases can be both bad and good, the bad usually comes from people who have no real idea how to write one. I get a mixture every day, some I read, some I just delete.?Ǭ† How a media release should work: short intro that includes exactly what’s in the release (the hook), second paragraph that expands on the details in the first one, maybe another paragraph if needed, two paragraphs of quotes (always important when pitching at the MSM as they may run them) then a concluding paragraph. Ideally the press release should never be longer than a page. That’s the formula I was taught and have always followed.
Here’s my issue with the social media release, and I think it’s a fatal flaw: there’s no hook. Leading with contact information is bizarre because contact info is only relevant for a follow up and is always best left in the footer. But to then have the headline below that, and “core news facts” with bullet points on the release….where’s the hook? General rule of thumb is you’ve got seconds to hook someone reading your press release before they delete it/ trash it: headline should lead with an immediate description (hook) of what the offering is. Good headlines help, but it’s that opening introduction that most people will read, you need to hook them there (headlines can’t always convey the vital info). Rejig a social media release to open with a hook then I’d think it would work a lot better.
Five reasons why Vista beats Mac OS X from Preston Gralla. ZOMG.
Reason one: Vista runs more software
True, but “here’s where Mac OS X falls short. It can’t run much common software, including enterprise applications and games” calls for a major WTF. Since switching to Apple 12 months ago I’ve never longed for one piece of Windows software. Vista may have more software but Mac software works better, end of story.
Reason Two: Vista is safer
So apparently hackers can crack OSX quicker than Vista. Big fucking deal. I don’t have a virus scanner running in Leopard, find me a Windows user who doesn’t and hasn’t had their system taken over. “Safer” is subjective: running a Mac is always a safer choice for the end user, end of story.
Reason Three: It’s the money, stupid
The old Mac’s cost more argument is apparently a reason to go with Vista. Here’s the thing: Mac’s may cost more up front (and not that much, 7-16% depending on the machine compared to a PC with similar specs) but it’s the marginal cost of using Apple products over the life of the computer, not at the point of purchase that counts. Simply you pay a little more up front but save that money in spades by not having to maintain the system. Every hour spent maintaining a PC has an opportunity cost so therefore it has a measurable cost as well.
Reason Four: The Mac is closed; Vista is open
True, but the quality control because of this is priceless. Besides, when was the last time Apple sued anyone for a Hackintosh system?
Reason Five: Two words — Steve Jobs
I don’t get this point at all. Why is Steve Job’s evidence that Vista is better than Windows? Is it because he doesn’t monkey dance like Microsoft’s Steve Balmer?
So far the comments on the post at ComputerWorld are going 100% against the post, and rightly so. As I said on Twitter, this is the most retarded thing I’ve read this year.
Duncan Riley on SiliconANGLE Chiang Mai One
