10 posts from 2007

To my Voxvillians...all two of you...I bring you my first in hopefully a series (meaning maybe three a year) of posts I do on Japanese culture over at TokyoMango, one of the best blogs in the universe.

The post is on a book I read and am currently utilizing as a shopping list for Japanese psych rock. I have been a long standing fan of Ghost and after meeting Ben Chasney of Comets on Fire and Six Organs of Admittance through a friend I got an early track on a little of what's in this book by serial music commentator Julian Cope, so na nah na nah.

I don't go into my personal record collection in it since that would take WAY TO LONG because my personal record collection spans the length of the universe and is as deep as a Buddhist on his way back from a personal sojourn.

Instead it directs Lisa's readers to some of the most well-known Japanese psych rock albums from the early 70s and gives away the ending...

sort of.

Ok, so what's happening here folks?? Arrghhh...information overload? Yeah, me too. I think for perspective I'm going to mention that I just took in a blog post from newly hired Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang where he mentioned "sleeping in shifts," in order to keep posting.

Now...Jeremiah is an incredibly smart guy, tasked with figuring out the advantages and disadvatages of social media for workers themselves, and their bosses -- no small feat -- and his passion for this new era of communication is obviously above that of us average citizens living in the digital age. But. It still highlights the obvious flaw in social technologies...this shit takes up too much time.

I don't IM at work. I have clients that use it as a communication tool, and I don't. It's distracting. Of course email can suck up a huge amount of time too, if you are an Outlook power folder-er especially...my solution to that, rather than try to pretend like I could justify the time spent categorizing, is Windows Desktop Search. Which I LOVE.

There are some interesting conversations going on around whether Facebook will have use in business. You can check out Jeremiah's colleague Charlene Li, arguing for Facebook adoption within business, and a great counter point by Tom Davenport at the Harvard Business blog for both sides.

Personally, Facebook has a huge value for me from a business perspective. But people pay me to communicate. I have friends that "friend" me on their, sure. But I want to keep it a relational tool for work, so I tweak the settings in my news stream so that I don't receive updates from those people. Just journalists. It's pretty easy to figure out. I sign up for groups that relate to the industries I'm tracking. Those updates are valuable, and so is seeing who is attending. Again pretty straight forward stuff here folks.

Twitter. Don't use it. Can't figure it out. Not afraid to come clean here. Micro blogging from me doesn't have much appeal to anyone, "Hi Ryan here...I'm still at my desk reading the news, because that's my job and it TAKES ALL DAY NOW thanks to everyone's blogs."

Pownce I see a lot of promise in. Its Adobe AIR client is easy to use, and appealing to companies wanting to communicate easily and track it all, and with a large contingency of early-adopters...e.g. DEVELOPERS.

Watching Leah and Daniel send and recieve immediate feedback on ideas for the product instantaneously is quite an amazing thing to see, and with the ability to share files, links, and calendar dates...there is great communication potential that can be put to use.

This is a great article on cable ISPs and broadcasters moves on the web for monetizing content. Did you know that the new Daily Show site (which has all the shows archived for streaming) is off-limits for Canadians since the Canadian-owned Comedy Network has their own online ads they need to sell?

I've been thinking about the need for user-generated content to step it up on the web lately. Especially since my stories on the moving picture box have stopped.

If Seth MacFarlane has a single smart bone in his body, he'll capitalize on the strike in this era of user participation. Create a site where you can plug in your own script. Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

The music industry gets it from all angles from everyone on the planet all day, everyday, a day. I'm sick of reading about how "brave" Radiohead is for releasing their album without a label. What I'd like to read about is reform for copyright of artistic liscense and the length of time works spend in the public domain. It was the labels AND the artists that screwed everyone here with their greed, and you never hear about how asinine it is to call a musical work in this day in age "property."

So the music industry lacks "innovation" for delivery. So what? Everyone I know wants to steal music anyway, and, while I feel quite differently, and actually love the concept of owning a tangible album, the most common excuse I hear for not paying is "It's all been done before anyway."

This I totally agree with.

There is nothing new under the sun. So let it all go towards remix and reuse. Listening to these new indie bands talk about how their music defines them as artists or whatever makes about as much sense as paying to see a DJ spin "live," so suck it up if you went into music full time, and start preparing to live with your parents or in Canada -- which seems to be where you are all coming from anyway.

Radiohead will make an assload from charging WAY too much for concert tickets, so it's not "cool" that you can decide what you are going to pay, ok?

and no, they are not an AMAZING live band. Go look up some YouTude clips of old Emerson, Lake & Palmer for what a live concert experiece should be. If there aren't knives, fire, and the world's sickest drummer I've ever seen...I'm not paying more than $25.

So took the weekend to visit Los Angeles for a friend's birthday and caught the Detour Music Festival, where I was blown away by Justice, but also the Ed Banger crew and their continued set on a little side stage there.

Also, if you are in L.A., set your Google Maps for 123 S Onizuka Street. There is an awesome memorial sculpture of the space shuttle Challenger, and a challenge awaiting you if you think you can down some spicy ramen.

To the left, you will find Tony, who was the birthday boy of which I speak...and could indeed, down the spicy ramen. If you order the super spicy #1 at Orochon and eat the whole thing in under a half an hour, your picture goes on the wall.

I don't eat spicy, but respect to Tony, and my man John Dang, who from the looks of his picture, was not feeling it was the "easiest thing he's ever done in his life."

More pics of the festival, a crazy night of karaoke, and the lovely Marina (who ran into the Ed Banger guys day after the festival and snapped a pic with them) in my photos if you're interested.

One of my favorite compositions to appear in print last year was penned by Esquire's Chuck Klosterman...who wrote in his column (yes it appeared in print) a heated diatribe against Gatorade Rain.

The man went through the many different versions of Gatorade, and asked the company so many of us trust with the morning after's well being why they would unleash something so sub-par in taste.

Well, I haven't seen Rain pulled from the marketplace yet, but thanks again to Chuck for that beautiful piece of opinion. Now I'd like to back Gatorade for having invented one of my favorite of life's ingredients.

Gatorade Xtremo Mango. Quite possibly, perfection in a recyclable plastic container.

Mango?? You say. Yes, I know...it's a vile fruit, but it makes sense in the context of this salty sweet concoction of sabores naturales. Not too weak like the lemon-lime that was suppose to taste like lemonade(?) But not a knock out like the fruit punch.

The mango has brought my liquid hydration to new exciting levels. I want to thank the Mango, and encourage fellow Gatorade fans everywhere to buy a 32. Oz.

On the topic of evolving a business from a small community of passionate early-adopters, to a larger, successful brand -- can it even be accomplished without alienating the group that brought your brand to the forefront in the first place?

A great conversation on the future of PR is happening over on Tom Coates Flickr page of all places.

I had to get a word in (Mechr00n01) because that’s a pretty heated post that Tom made, and I’ll say here on my own blog that I feel a lot of it is melodramatic soap boxing.

What’s truly interesting, other than Tom’s need for public reassurance of his own self worth, is a comment in the thread that hopefully this particular discussion will evolve into a web-based application for communication between PR professionals and bloggers.

Hmmmmm…..I think I’ll step home and create a quick business plan.

Via CNET.

"Web 2.0 has forever changed the relationship between your company and your customer. Who best to understand and forge the new relationship? Marketing. Who best to create the technology to get it done? Your business technology/IT group. "

An interesting call out on two sectors that don't exactly spend a lot of time together. Maybe if they all meet in Second Life, the hot marketing interns won't inhibit the IT's thought stream!

Hello!

The first post on this Vox blog I have created for thoughts and ranting on new media involves the work/life balance for 20-somethings that are entering the workforce at a time when social media tools are everywhere you look. I've picked the title from one of my favorite indie albums (yes I'll be doing cute stuff like this frequently) from Built to Spill, and it's meant to represent the coming challenge that young professionals will face when work life and social life start to get convoluted over communication platforms like Facebook, Pownce, Twitter…etc. Will they have to clean it up? Will we all be perfect from now on, so to speak, because we aren’t sure who is reading/viewing? What of identity, and personal security?

Robert Scoble and countless other industry bloggers have been posting frequently on Facebook’s transformation since they opened up their gates to the unruly masses, and then the API for developers. A commentator on Scobelizer nailed it in my view, stating:

“Facebook is becoming a network of friends and a platform for social discovery of services and interactive communications within that environment. MySpace was (is?) a game for users to ‘chart’ by having the most friends - this was exploited by unsigned bands which drove MySpace’s exponential growth.”

I don’t want to talk about what MySpace was or is now, because I think that gets enough lip service, and personally…I never liked the site. What I did want to open up communication on is Facebook’s apparent duel use in social and work life, so I had some “interactive communication” of my own (albeit on the telephone, not Second Life) with Aaron Uhrmacher, at Text 100 to discuss. Here is a summary:

*Disclaimer -- This is not verbatim

RS: As a PR professional, I’ve utilized Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn network from very early on for industry updates on personnel changes, and I also find the “in network” questions function to be extremely useful when developing or researching story ideas. Beyond that, I haven’t even started a social media page anywhere, Facebook or otherwise, am I lame?

AU: LinkedIn is very easy to use. If you don’t know social networking sites, because you weren’t brought up with it, it’s a great place to start. Sure, most employees are just collecting names at first, but once you need to, you can really make it work for you. I read a lot of the in network questions, and I also see it continuing to be a great job message board. You are sort of lame, but that’s a whole different conversation.

RS: Ouch Aaron! If I were in Second Life with you right now, I would punch your avatar in the face. You are on Facebook though, right?

AU: Yes. Facebook is a weird kind of personal and professional feel. Nothing that you put online is sacred anymore, we all know that, and I do use it in my professional life, because I find it great for keeping tabs on which conferences people are attending, and where they are going for work.

RS: I’ve heard that Microsoft employees have a huge presence on Facebook, and since you need a Microsoft email to join up in their community, that’s legit. Meet dorks much?

AU: Ha ha! Well it takes an early adopter, and what are Microsoft employees if not ahead of their time a bit? No, it’s definitely different audiences right now across social networking platforms, which is really interesting. The older generation won’t go over to Facebook. LinkedIn has a lot of those people, so it will be interesting to see what they do with their API.

RS: So what’s next? Where is the IM generation, the 20 somethings just now entering the workforce…where will they end up?

AU: Well I believe that virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and Project Entropia are going to factor in. What is very interesting now though, is that younger employees with…say 250 friends on their Facebook profiles already, will have work life and social life collide. That, along with open protocols and more and more features definitely bring up security concerns.

Thanks Aaron!

Takeaways anyone?

--Facebook can be a valuable professional tool, but it will take time in developing and sorting your “online rolodex” for the working world. And don’t be a dumbass about it.

--LinkedIn is a bit more of a professional crowd, but limited for now in its functionality when it comes to events or other applications. Keep an eye on them though, because changes are a comin! 

Here is an interesting add-on to the conversation from a recent Valleywag post.