Month: August 2008

Embeds, content attribution, and success in the New Media

Jeremiah Owyang has a great think piece on the idea of embedded content. [here]
The piece sums up the foundational idea that has been driving the debate I dropped my self into with regards to the NBC (or any old-tyme media network’s) coverage of the Olympics. The concept of content-management by the leaders online has moved beyond the idea of control, and towards attributed sharing.
It should no longer be a world where national media entries control what you see, but rather the best media gets the highest rating. Would people in the US like to see how other nations treasure their athletes? Maybe another network will focus on Football, Swimming, Diving, etc. more than your network does, so you will chose that content, and share that with your friends/followers/groupies.
If NBC allowed people to embed the content on their own site, they still get the eyeballs (How 1999! But I heard someone use it on NPR yesterday), and the cred that goes with “Joe/Susie says this is the best content and has decided to put it up on their site”.
Embedded content goes to the idea that the best content/presentation will always be the most successful. Controlling the content, as the NBC monopoly on the Olympics has pointed out, just motivates people to find ways to get other perspectives.

Olympic Broadcasting: One Feed Does Not Serve Them All

In the community of voices I follow online, one of the continuing themes is the narrowness and antiquated coverage provided by NBC(I launched into a screed on the topic this weekend).
I have also heard that many people are using the tools at their disposal (open proxy servers being the most notable) to circumvent the geo-location tools of the providers to view coverage from other national providers. I thought I would share some of my experiences with two of the providers, BBC and CBC.
BBC
Finding proxy servers in the UK turned out to be relatively simple, and I was able to get to the BBC site and view, with substantial performance penalties, some of the video on the site. This was a tactic I have used before, as I am a fan of English Football, and need to use this method to gain access to highlights and match-day broadcasts.
CBC
I am, well, disappointed with the lack of success I have had with the CBC. I hear from people in the homeland that the coverage makes NBC looks like the US is the only country in the Olympics, where the CBC provides a true global perspective. However, finding a proxy server that can fool the CBC video servers has been impossible. Therefore, I continue to not watch any Olympics at all.
I am sure that there are other means (P2P, Torrents, etc.), but I am finding that, well, I don’t care that much. It is the events in South Ossetia / Georgia, Zimbabwe, and other hot-spots that I am finding far more relevant to my day-to-day life.
So while I appreciate some of the challenges posed by circumventing the monopoly of the mind that NBC wants to claim, once that was achieved with the BBC, I found that I was in a So what? position.
But before I give up, has anyone had any success with getting the CBC feeds to work outside Canada?

Olympics and the Concept of "Live" TV

Robert Scoble has launched a thread over on FriendFeed [here] discussing the NBC Olympics broadcast schedule and how the reality of the Internet and Social Media is changing how things are broadcast.
People are recommending the CBC feed. I would likely say the people in the UK would recommend the BBC feed. But I can tell you one thing: Samantha and I have boycotted this year’s Olympics.
If there is an interesting event, or final, I will search out the video. But the idea of watching the jingoistic, materialist, flag-waving, US-centric view of the Olympics makes me ill. I don’t like the Chinese regime for a variety of reasons; but the idea of having the US Olympic team shoved down my throat by NBC while McDonalds and Coke sell me a new world is enough to make anyone give up tv forever.
Rant Off.
UPDATE: Seems Henry Blodget has a similar opinion, with less rant. [here]

Thinking About the Effects and Reform of Higher (Cost) Education

In Massachusetts, the latest user-generated crisis has centered around the evaporation of low-cost student loans due to the credit crunch. Families are scrambling to find ways to pay for their children’s university and college education, surprised by this sudden disappearance of what had been seen as a very deep well.
I am not here to comment on the causes of the credit crunch. My thoughts turn, instead, to the revenue foundations that the US higher education system built on. The primary question is: Have institutions priced themselves out of relevance?
Other thoughts also come to mind. Is it time to move away from teaching certain skills/fields in universities and colleges, and consider moving to specialized apprenticeships. This idea is one that conjures up images of the guild system, and it is not a dissimilar idea. Certain areas would benefit from a system led by leaders and experts in the field, teaching real-world practices and implementations, rather than theoretical concepts.
In today’s society, the cost of higher education makes people indentured serfs, chained to a bank loan that they thought would afford them the opportunity to get ahead, to make a difference. If we are going to make people indentured serfs (harsh imagery, but how long have you been paying off your student loans?), then why not put them through an apprenticeship, where they can work their way through their education while learning the skill they have entered into.
Work-study and co-op programs have made a stab at that. But I am thinking of learning and working simultaneously. Developing skills, and paying your way in the same place.
Before you classify me as some Luddite or elitist, you have to understand my perspective. I have a liberal Arts degree (History) and found my place in the business world by learning my primary skills on the job. I have played both sides of the fence, and I would say that many others have as well.
And where a theoretical foundation is good in some fields, it needs to be heavily supplemented by real-world practice.
To circle back to the idea of cost, how much of what we require of people in a higher education is directed at the skills that they are most interested in learning? Does a university or college provide the skills needed to support our economy? How do we most effectively and economically ensure that we have an educated and knowledgeable workforce?
These are not for reasons of nationalism or core political beliefs. Every reader here should know I am a Canadian by now. The idea of rationalizing higher education to deliver what people want/need in a way that is effective, efficient, and economic without compromising the fundamental need for a free and open society to have centers of higher learning that foster debate and new idea is one that should be part of the debate in the current election cycle.
How do you deliver an education system that is open to all, and serves the needs of all, without bankrupting the people in the process is one that needs to be addressed.

Gutter Helmet and the Hangovers of Customer Experience

Nearly three years ago, I launched into a tirade on my experience with the installation of the Gutter Helmet system (no link; no link is deserved).
The initial post in this thread is still the single most visited post I have ever written. Years of Web performance, social commentary, political debate, and personal debacles in my blog, and Gutter Helmet is what calls to the broadest spectrum of people searching on the Web.
The fact that so many people continue to visit the post also tells me that people continue to be interested in this system and my experience with it. So here is the latest update.
In the next 10 days, a Gutter Helmet technician will come out and clean out the downspouts that are full of debris that has accumulated from the gutters over the past three years. Hopefully, they will not claim some technicality and try to charge the $150 maintenance fee that I was warned about.
I am also hopeful that the person who comes out and does the work is more friendly than the last one.
On a scale of 1-10, Gutter Helmet rates:
Installation 3
Installation Fixing 3
Ongoing Operation 6
Consider all your options before going with Gutter Helmet.

GrabPERF Outage – August 08-09 2008

Between August 08 2008 18:00GMT and August 09 2008 03:00GMT, GrabPERF had a network-related outage at the hosting facility.
Many thanks to the Technorati team for working hard to resolve this complex issue, which eventually turned out to be a loose fiber-cable.
Data from the time period has been cut, so no one’s stats should be affected.
I apologize for the incovenience.

Followers, hit-counts, and the Attention Economy

Since I migrated the blog back to my own servers a few days ago, I have realized something: I have fallen back to my old habit of watching the hit count.
This is weird, considering the lack of interest I had in my blog and its stats over the last year or so. But having my baby back home where I am in charge gives a sense that I should pay attention. That I need to know what’s happening.
In 2005, when I started doing this, I used to watch my hit count religiously, maniacally. Sort of goes with the bipolar, but I digress. In 2008, we are obsessed with followers, and the Slashdot like addiction to being the first to report some breaking (planted?) news item.
So, after three years of blogging, I see that the online communities haven’t progressed much beyond hit counters, page views, or followers. And online cred is a insular and self-perpetuating thing. You draw attention to yourself, you get comments, more people follow you, and more people feed you, you have more to say, more people follow you…and on, and on.
I am not saying that this is good, or ill. I am as much a traffic whore as the rest of the world. I just realize that we are all after the same goal – attention. That was the whole idea behind the Attention Economy, a term I don’t hear as much as I did 2 years ago.
With FriendFeed and Twitter, we live in the Attention Economy. With 200 channels in my basic cable package, TV is a passive Attention Economy, controlled by the PVR and the TorrentSphere. Satellite Radio forces us to make choices.
Be it hit-counts or PVRs, we all crave attention, knowing full well how limited the attention-span is. We don’t want be to waste our time, but we want to attract that of others.
Attention produces an unbalanced online economy. We can do many things to control the incoming flow. We can also work very hard to expand the outgoing flow. But for most of us, the outgoing flow remains a trickle, maybe even a fine mist.
So where does the power in the Attention Economy lie? With the off-switch.
And we all have one.
How do you use yours?

Welcome to Newest Industry…

Or should I say, welcome back.
Three years ago when I started blogging on a regular basis, the blog was name The Newest Industry after the Husker Du song of the same name. Then I migrated the content to WordPress.com, and relinquished hosting it myself.
Well, I have decided to resurrect Newest Industry, but with all the same shiny content you would find at the Crazy Canuck Chronicles.
So, if it’s been a while, welcome back. Otherwise, a simple hello.

WordPress Install – Installer FAIL!

So, the last post I put up simply stated that I had failed in installing Worpress 2.6 on my own server. The permalinks were messed up and it looked a lot like an issue that a lot of people were having.
But, the catch was: the problem persisted when I tried to use WordPress 2.5.1. Hmmm…wonder what’s up.
So today, I started thinking that it might be an Apache issue, rather than a WordPress issue. So, taking a break from a massive project I’m doing (only so much performance data you can process before brain freeze), I started to poke around.
AllowOverride All
That did it. I was not letting Apache read the damn .htaccess file that WordPress installed.
Excuse the thudding of my head on the desk.
Many apologies to the Automattic team. This user haz th dumb.

WordPress Install: Fail

I decided over the weekend to have a go at running my own install of WordPress 2.6, with an aim to perhaps hosting my own blog again, with the obvious gains in flexibility and monetization.
Let’s just say that it was frustrating.
The most frustrating part was the permalink issue. All known and posted fixes failed to resolve the issue of getting the permalinks to match those seen in this blog, which is the content I would be migrating. There is no clear and simple fix for those of us who just want the software to work, without having to spend two hours hacking.
I will try again when 2.6.1 is released, but it strikes me as odd that this made it out the door. However, I have seen worse unintended features appear in released software.

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