Exclamation blog: Stories, Ideas and loud noises
Comics: A Lost Art in the Digital Age?
Last week I braved both weather and Wookiee to attend WonderCon, an annual comic, science fiction and film convention held annually in San Francisco. After a nice chat with Spiderman about the overpriced convention food, and a fear-inducing run-in with Manga warriors on the showroom floor, I retreated to one of the countless discussion panels offered throughout the day. Lucky for me, I happened upon a panel hosted by Ben Templesmith, best known for his illustrations in comic-turned-blockbuster creation, 30 Days of Night, by Steve Niles.
Templesmith’s panel was largely focused on the conversion of comics to films and video games, and the increasing presence of Hollywood in the comic industry. Yet as the discussion continued, it evolved into the issue of digital comics displacing the tradition print editions. Curious about this digital takeover, I did some poking around on the convention floor to find out just how digitized comic books have become.
Sure enough, Marvel started putting some of its older comics online last November, hoping to reintroduce and gain fans for a mere $4.99 a month. Dark Horse and DC Comics have jumped on the bandwagon and started putting their issues up on MySpace and Vertigo has gone so far as to offer free downloadable pdfs of back issues. As book stores are shutting down, publishing houses are facing closures, and 5-cent comics have virtually disappeared along with the five-and-dime shops that sold them. It seems comic book publishers need a new way to intersect with the lives of the modern reader. The fastest, cheapest and most effective way to do this? The Internet.
The initial concern with comics moving to the Internet is that the hard copies will no longer be purchased, further hurting the independent retailers and slowly smothering the nostalgic pastime of comic book collecting. Templesmith and his fellow panelists cast an interesting light on this concern in suggesting that it need not be one or the other. Ultimately, the coexistence of digital and print comics is the very thing that will ensure the survival of both. Perhaps digital distribution will simply serve to whet one’s appetite for a new series, or help an avid reader catch up on back issues without going broke to do so.
After spending a mere 8 hours alongside some of San Francisco’s most avid comic book fans, it is hard to imagine the industry doing anything but growing. I like knowing that I can catch up on Spiderman online and still purchase the latest issue at my favorite comic shop. It seems digital distribution is simply feeding the frenzy, as I spent an hour trying to wade through the used comic vendors simply to get to a cup of coffee. As Templesmith said of the comic book, “It’s an artifact,” and if anything the newer mediums of distribution aren’t harming this artifact, but helping it to survive.
Buy A Computer This Holiday Season and Help Change the World
This holiday season, Nicholas Negroponte wants to change the world by giving children in poor countries little green learning machines. In order to accomplish this he is asking you, the American consumer for a little help.
Negroponte, who started the One Laptop Per Child Project, is asking American individuals and charitable groups to buy two of his XO laptops and donate one of the them to children in poor countries.
Participants in the Give One Get One program pay $400 for two laptops - one for their own use and the other to be donated.
Participants who take part in the Give One Get One program receive a year of free wireless Internet access at hundreds of public hotspots operated by T-Mobile.
Since the Give One Get One program began in November, the foundation has received about $2 million in orders every day. That works out to about 190,000 laptops, with at least half donated to children in developing countries.
The One Laptop Per Child program was originally designed to offer computers to third world countries for about $100 each. However foreign governments haven’t placed as many orders as expected. So OLPC has asked American individuals and charitable groups to buy the machines to help out.
The mission of One Laptop per Child is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. This is a lofty goal, but one worth shooting for.
This holiday season is all about giving to others. So if you have children, or are thinking of buying a computer for a child, this program is a great idea. At the end of the day you’ll be giving back twofold; helping both an American child, and a child in a poor country.
This if nothing else will be a great case study of how technology and the American consumer can help to change the world. The program is running until Dec.31st. For more information, or to take part in the Give One Get One program go to: Give One Get One.
To Be or Not to Be: 23andMe
Yesterday I opened my mailbox to find a package from 23andMe, a new Silicon Valley start-up that offers a personal genotyping service, which contained the “spit kit” that will eventually unlock all sorts of secrets that lurk in my chromosomes. “This is your early birthday gift,” my brother-in-law told me when he signed me up for the service. Since he works for the company that makes the chip which reads the DNA, he was offered a discount for friends and family–$250 for a $1000 value—not bad to be a part of the ground-breaking, ubercool generation of folks who are the first to participate in this process. Or is it?
23andMe was founded by Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki, the wife of none other than Sergey Brin of Google fame. Coincidently, Google gave 23andMe $3.9 M in their Series A round of financing. Now that I am satisfied the company will never go out of business, I am left with an excited yet uneasy feeling about all of this. 23andMe promises that I will be able to find out things like my propensity toward certain types of cancer and illness such as diabetes, Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and heart disease, whether or not I have the “sprinter’s gene,” and where my ancestors came from. I will then get raw access to all my genetic information via the website and will be able to compare it with the rest of my family and other people across the globe.
I have always thought of myself as young and healthy, and the young part grows more grim with each passing day. Do I really need something telling me that I can eliminate the healthy part, too? I am still reading through the documents that accompanied the spit kit which detail considerations I should take before participating. It would be difficult enough to find out that I have a genetic variation for imminent death, never mind being denied health insurance because of it. On the other hand, I feel that this is the next-generation of self-discovery, and ignoring the facts doesn’t make them go away. 23andMe is social networking on steroids, and let’s be honest–how many people out there don’t have a Facebook or LinkedIn profile?
I think I am going to courageously mail my spit-kit back to 23andMe tomorrow and await my results. Hopefully I will live long enough to post again on my findings.
G’Day Mate! Social Media and Politics in the Land Down Under
Approximately one month ago in the land down under, YouTube launched its Australian site. In his inaugural Aussie video, YouTube’s News and Politics editor Steve Grove noted that the site’s launch corresponded with the heart of Australia’s elections for Prime Minister. In sharp contrast to the seemingly endless American campaigns - which practically begin for the next election before the last ballot for the previous election has been cast - Australia’s federal election season is just six short weeks.
This truncated season - combined with the fact that Australia’s remarkable lack of population density makes it difficult and time-consuming to physically meet large groups – may explain why the Australian candidates have so enthusiastically incorporated YouTube into their campaigns.
In a Reese’s-style conundrum (you got peanut butter on my chocolate…) the internet is becoming politicized and politics are moving online.
In addition to professionally written and produced content à la BarelyPolitical, the growing prevalence of sites that allow people to submit their own content and have that content made globally accessible and easily searchable has forever changed the face of politics.
You don’t even have to have the body of Obamagirl to get noticed. Even the most seemingly banal videos can change the course of a campaign and thus a nation. Nominally, a video of an obscure Australian politician making a commonplace speech would not be particularly interesting. But when the person behind the speaker – the guy eating his own earwax – decides to run for Prime Minister, the hits start pouring in.
In American politics, examples abound. John Edwards’ haircut, George W. Bush struggling with a locked door, and Virginia Senator George Allen’s famous “macaca” comment.
These videos can be provided by anyone with a camera and a connection to the internet. Often times you don’t even need a camera – but just a VCR and a willingness to slog through hours of boring tapes, trolling for embarrassing gaffes.
Indeed, technology has advanced to the point that we don’t even have to wait for politicians to embarrass themselves. We can do it for them using iMovie or even free video editing software.
It is hard to measure the influence that these videos have exerted on the political fates of those featured. Indeed, who has heard of an exit poll inquiring whether a particular YouTube video effected the voter’s decision? (On a side note, while these sorts of questions may eventually be asked I do not think that people would admit the extent to which they were swayed by a single video clip) Yet with millions of views it is clear that these online videos can’t help but influence some voters’ perceptions.
(On a side note, Australia’s Federal Elections were held over the weekend and the earwax eating candidate - Kevin Rudd - emerged victorious with nearly 54 percent of the vote. This is merely a factual observation and is not intended to make a statement on the impact social media can have on political elections.)
In spite of the large impact that online videos can have on the political process, I believe that they play a more important role as a means of participation than they do of persuasion. In sharp contrast to the silent onlookers of yesteryear who were only allowed to express their opinion once at the very end of the process (with their ballot), today’s voters can become as involved with the political process as they wish by creating their own content and editing and commenting on that of others. The proliferation of YouTube, blogs and other social media outlets has exponentially increased the avenues of participation.
And we all know that Web 2.0 is all about participation…
Welcome to the Dog-o-sphere
Infamous for his shoe-thieving, pants-biting, garbage-eating habits, it wasn’t long after introducing my pug, Gutterball to LaunchSquad that several coworkers suggested I blog about his notoriously naughty behavior. Who wouldn’t want to read about a dog unscrewing an airtight canister and eating the enclosed pound of puppy kibble at 5 a.m., or taking the lids off two dozen Poland Springs bottles without spilling a drop, only to watch me dump the entire pallet onto my pants the next morning?
Before devoting my time to any extensive dog-blogging efforts, I decided to do a small audience study. What kind of audience is there for crazed pet owners and their crazy pets? Would I be on the same level as the guy whose dog has matching pajamas, or the woman who refers to her canine as her first-born child? Is there a home on the Internet for those of us who simply like to boast of their pets’ abilities to sit, fetch, and wreak havoc on the general population of San Francisco?
I discovered rather quickly that there’s a stronger niche on the web for the average pet owner than one might expect. In fact, social “petworking” has been taking the Internet by storm. It began with the advent of Dogster in January 2004, in the then-fresh wake of Friendster, Myspace and Facebook. The pet-centric networking site is an online forum where dogs like Max Benkelman, a Schnauzer from Nebraska, can gripe about his brother Gus chewing on his ears, while Max’s owners and others can trade tips on doggie daycare and flea control.
Social networks prosper because they are a platform for folks to engage and interact. Creating one around a popular “vertical market” such as canines has proved a surefire way to bring people together. In its first three months, Dogster’s subscriber profiles grew from 100 to 8,000, and nearly four years later, it has over 300,000 subscribers worldwide.
In light of Dogster’s success, multiple social petworking sites and an infinite number of pet-specific blogs have cropped up across the Net. This week alone, two dog networking sites launched. MyPetVideos.TV, a user-generated community for people to share home videos of their pets, announced on Monday, boasting such treasures as a cat playing Whack-a-Mole. Meanwhile, actress Glenn Close and husband David Shaw founded FetchDog on Tuesday, which offers advice, a shopping catalog and a social network for dog owners to share information, photos and stories about their pets.
Though petcentric blogs don’t have an overwhelming readership in the blogosphere, there are a lot of them, and it’s clear that dogs maintain a solid position in the world of Web 2.0. According to the 2007-2008 National Pet Owners Survey, Americans alone owned 74.8 million dogs in 2006, and over 23% get information about their dogs online. Truly, dogs and our love of them is an unstoppable force, even on the Web.
It’s good to know that while not everyone will be flocking to read daily updates on the life of just another pug, there is still a place out there for Gutterball and his much-deserved shot at international infamy. He hasn’t spent the last four hours single handedly dismantling my couch in vain. Now it’s just time for me to start writing about it, and finally throw him a bone. Maybe then he’ll stop gnawing on the microfiber.
Mobile RSS Solutions - What’s Out There?
Exclamation is usually our blog that’s reserved for storytelling. Well, half of storytelling is listening, right? And it’s pretty hard to “listen” to a story on the bus or the train unless you’re into books on tape, and, as much as Audible would like, I doubt a majority of the people I know are as into books-on-mp3 as I am. I think they’re much more likely to read, rather than listen, on the fly.
One of our clients told me the other day that he wanted to start reading and commenting on more blogs on his Blackberry. I realized, in talking to him, that I don’t know what are the best mobile RSS readers, as of this summer. I remember setting up HubDog about 18 months ago on the lousy T-Mobile MDA smartphone, nearly vowing never to use mobile RSS again. Mobile RSS has been tossed around for the last couple of years, but only recently have a few real contenders come along. I know that EnGadget did a posting on this a while back, and I don’t think of this as so much of an update as a condensation!
So, here’s a quick roundup, based on the popular platforms. One disclosure: NewsGator is a current LaunchSquad client.
Blackberry: NewsGator Go! is the best thing I’ve seen, but you can use a web-based app like Google Reader, if you’ve got the time to do a bit more clicking.
iPhone: The native Safari RSS reader on the iPhone is pretty strong, but lately, in the the Apple forums, NewsGator has been gaining some traction. Most of the iPhone RSS conversation takes place in Apple’s Internet & Networking forum. To register for a Newsgator account, you can go here, and you’re you’re set up you can log into the mobile RSS portal here. It’s definitely what I’d use to sync mobile and desktop RSS together. If you want to view multiple feeds at once using feeds that you’ve read before using Google, you can use Google Reader, as it’s been recently optimized for the platform. What it lacks in comparison NewsGator’s horsepower, it somewhat compensates for in look and feel.
Palm: Bloglines Mobile has a light-looking PDA interface, but for more robust RSS reading on the Palm platform, but if you’re looking for a standalone application it looks like QuickNews may be the answer. Google Reader is also a suitable alternatative, but I haven’t personally used it on a Palm.
Regular Phone: Feedm8 seems to be the service of choice for most major publishers (CNN, Reuters, Engadget), and I’ve even seen Digg using it lately. It works fairly well if you’re just reading basic RSS feeds published by large publishers. On the other hand, I wouldn’t recommend it for encrypted RSS, and it’s a free service that’s only usable with some publishers. If your phone is even slightly Java-enabled, NewsGator Go! would be a good fit, and is worthwhile for any heavy-duty RSS usage.
Our Clients Make Stuff We Use Every Day (Awareness, AnchorFree,TimeBridge, SuccessFactors, NewsGator)
While I sometimes envy PR agencies that handle super-flashy clients like Slide and RockYou, because they’re super-slick applications with huge usage (in social networks), I realize that, at the end of the day, there are probably more people working behind a desk, doing business, than on Facebook or Myspace. Which makes me pretty glad to work with clients that make some super-useful stuff. And while one could say I’m being “paid to write this,” I suppose I could secretly not use these products. But why would you want to use software that sucks? Google Reader, anyone? (Stats feature excluded…)
Here’s the breakdown:
Awareness: They make enterprise-grade content management and social media management systems. If you’re looking to manage all of your blogs and wikis (modifiable internal blog pages) and need crazy-big scalability, this is what you need. I can’t think of too many social media solutions that are a good fit for a group of 30 and a group of 3000. The search feature has saved my butt more than a few times.
NewsGator: There’s nothing like doing your RSS feeds on a plane. And until the rest of the aviation world catches up with British Airways, NewsGator’s NetNewsWire is the best freakin’ RSS reader I’ve ever used. The new Mac version is lightning-fast, and eats roughly 60 feeds for breakfast for me, every morning. NewsGator’s Enterprise-On-Demand platform is basically the backbone of LaunchSquad’s coverage and tracking architecture. I had a meeting yesterday with a tech company who told me that their PR firm sends them Google searches on their brand. For 2002, that would be totally acceptable. If my PR firm did that, I’d fire them and bring on a bunch of high-school students to research my coverage. Or, I’d start using NGEOD If you’re doing any kind of coverage tracking, beware that 30-day free trial - you’ll be hooked.
AnchorFree - Okay, who doesn’t hate paying for wi-fi? Why can’t Apple just cut a deal with T-Mobile and charge the customers an extra $25 when they buy their computer and give them free wi-fi at any T-Mobile location? Oh well, while that all gets sorted, you can reliably depend on AnchorFree not only for free wi-fi (in most cities with a population greater than, say, 1000 people) but for a solid HotSpot Shield, so you can reliably do your banking, your Amazon or any confidential-type-stuff in a public place. Complaints about the small ad leaderboard can talk to the hand. When was the last time Yahoo or Google gave you a great service that wasn’t ad-supported? Puh-leese.
SuccessFactors: Although my experience using this software is not so much on an everyday basis, it forms the basis of goals, expectations and long-term people development strategy at LaunchSquad. From what I understand, this solution is the quickest way to get innovative 360-degree reviews into smaller and medium-sized companies, without forking out for a five or six-figure consultant-enabled SAP installation.
At my wife’s previous company, the implementation seemed to eerily coincide with the firing of a bunch of unproductive laggards and the promotion of a group of her team members that worked really hard. I definitively say that SuccessFactors “did it,” but the data that the program surfaced clicked with some substantial changes.
TimeBridge: I must say, I’m not lucky enough to use this every day, but I love using it, because it means you’re making things happen. This is a tool for scheduling 2-way, 3-way, 4-way and 5-way (and more!) meetings that saves all parties involved about 3-4 emails per person. It’s a huge time-saver.
Attendi, one of our newer clients also has developed a really high-utility people search product, but it really can’t be summed up in a quick blurb, so I’m going to dedicate some time to that later in the week, to explain it in-depth and show some great use cases..
Just what does it mean to be hot?
I like to think that we have some hot clients. Clients with stories, technologies and entrepreneurial leaders that make people stand up and take notice. Our client SuccessFactors, for example: industry analyst Jason Corsello just called SuccessFactors the hottest thing going in enterprise software today. The Financial Times too is taking notice. As is Forbes. And some folks don’t necessarily agree either; nothing like a healthy disagreement to validate the hotness factor.
Apple of course is hot. Hotter than hot. Since more than a day can’t go by without iPhone news, this week’s hubbub is that Apple has announced what time the iPhone will be available at Apple stores across the country. But will it be any good? Does it matter? Google of course is hot: so hot that people are trying to get out of the glare and trying to live life without Google.
Having a crush on Obama is hot. LaunchSquad’s Melissa Klein is behind the scenes working the phones to help make this video one of the hottest viral videos going at this very moment. Is it the video? Is it the PR behind the video? Is it just plain luck being in the right place at the right time with entertaining stuff that made it so? My take is it’s a combination of things that’s making it hot right now: entertainment, smart marketing, good timing, a willingness to shake things up a bit.
One thing is clear, it’s 80 degrees in San Francisco today, and for San Franciscans, that’s hot.
Adam Comes Aboard, Podcast Hotel & Web 2.0
Howdy. I’m Adam Metz.
I’m the newest addition to the LaunchSquad staff, and what a perfect week to join the team. I’ll be handling a number of new initiatives at LaunchSquad and consulting with clients on social media, including projects that involve blogging, vodcasting, podcasting and viral campaigns. With apologies to famed rockumentarian Marty DiBergi: enough of my yappin’! This a crazy week in San Francisco.
The O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo began Sunday night at The Moscone Center, right down the street from LaunchSquad, and today is arguably the coolest day of the conference. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is being interviewed by John Battelle, Web 2.0 conference Program Chair, at 11:30 a.m.
I should be over there this afternoon and tomorrow, along with Jeremy Frank from Launchsquad. You can catch me on Twitter at the conference (LaunchSquadAdam) or on IM (ajmetz [at] mac.com).
This weekend (April 20 and 21), an amazing event comes to San Francisco’s Swedish American Hall – Podcast Hotel. I’m really looking forward to this conference/unconference, because it contains some of the coolest talks of the season, like the Friday afternoon roundtable, “How do Podcasting and DIY Media Mix With Music Marketing Today?”, which features Corey Denis from IODA and Kevin Seal from Pandora - two of the most innovative companies in new media today. (Full disclosure: IODA is the digital distributor for my tiny record label, Baum Records) The Saturday-morning keynotes from Jonathan Cobb (Kiptronic) and Robert Scoble (PodTech, ex-Microsoft) should also be awesome.
Dance dance revolution: the opening night party Thursday night (7 p.m.) at Madrone Lounge should be pretty insane, and it features Lucaso from The Sound Culture Podcast on the decks. I hear he goes to eleven.
See you on Twitter, at the conferences, or on the dance floor.
The Anonymous Bubble
Events like the recent insanity involving tech blogger Kathy Sierra are a stark reminder that we in the tech world are in a severe bubble, living in a world of blogs, wikis, IM, gadgets and gizmos. For everything technology gives us, it also removes a huge piece human existence – face-to-face interaction with real, live emotions like sadness, fear and happiness.
The bubble we live in – and that those who obsessively read blogs and immerse themselves in the online world reside in as well – give us a veil of anonymity which makes it very easy to push the outer limits of taste and acceptability. This anonymity gives us a greater ability to have open, honest discussion, but also allows those discussions to easily slide into terrible, offensive territory.
In Sierra’s case – she had to endure sexist, abusive, misogynistic and violent comments on her blog, and another site which devolved into basically a forum for hate speech against her – anonymity did just that. Last Saturday, a site called unclebobism.com, registered to tech blogger Chris Locke, posted a picture of Sierra with a Photoshopped look of terror on her face and a pair of panties over her head, seemingly choking her. The image was better suited for a third-rate horror flick than a blog from someone who is considered in some circles to be one of the industry’s top thinkers. The implication was also very clear – and posted anonymously, of course.
It’s important to note that Locke denied posting the picture or the accompanying comments and also important to note that he is working to identify who did. It’s also important to note, however, that he hasn’t apologized and most importantly, that all this all started over a third-grade-level conflict within the blogosphere. Which brings us back to the bubble.
Is this bubble such that we can let disagreements over innovation and corporate responsibility slide into anonymous death threats with roots in deeply-seeded sexism? Are we too far wrapped up in our little blanket that we can’t tell that this is wholly inappropriate? And are we so infatuated with the freedom and openness the Web brings that we aren’t able to recognize that we as citizen publishers can and should censor content (after all yelling fire in a crowded theater) is not within our free speech rights). Let’s hope not.
For all the discussion, innovation, creation and thought that flies around the tech world, there seems to be a deep vein of churlishness, immaturity and thoughtlessness that goes along with it. Incidents like Kathy Sierra’s help clean all that up by shocking people into action, but it’s up to everyone to realize the context and culture we’re working in – we’re not saving the world, but we are changing it. Insular thought, childish grade-school sexism and folks hiding behind their IP address do nothing to advance us as an industry, or we as a people. We can do so much better.
