When do we worry?

I hate to get all political because its so cliche in the blogosphere, but there are some serious issues in our country.  Here are the facts – please excuse any broad strokes.

1. The leader of the world admittedly believes in the rapture and the end of days and no one can tell for sure how much he believes in science.
2. America is stuck in an unpopular war that it can’t win and we are throwing jabs at another more dangerous country (Iran).
3. Global warming may be the single greatest threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.  A recent study finds that we must initiate action immediately or we are in serious trouble.

I remember during the 2004 presidential campaigns the left correctly accused  Bush and Cheney of creating fear to drive their campaign.  In 2008 the Dems won’t have to create fear, it has already arrived.

As a country I guess we reap what we sew.  Get involved.

Government on the Internet

Is it surprising that we haven’t seen a greater effort to promote the dissemination of  congressional voting records over the Internet?  I’m sure that many people will disagree, but I would suggest that the Senate Vote Record website is a decent attempt at transparency.

With presidential elections less than two years ahead it seems that there is a real opportunity for hopefuls to catalog and explain their voting record on their website.  Now is the time that candidates could gain a real foothold with the American people by speaking directly to them.  It has never been as easy or as free.

What are they afraid of?  There is no reason to go on TV and bring in editors that may distort their message.

On a related note, Katrina vanden Heuvel has a great article about the top ten bills that would help the country if they are passed.

The Damon Jones Fan Club

I just did a search and surprising enough, Damon Jones does not have a fan club.  He isn’t a great player, but he is the absolute best in the NBA at being unintentionally hilarious.  The face that he is making in this picture is priceless.  I can’t even imagine what he says right after the picture is snapped, but I’m sure that Dave Chappelle could do a whole sketch about it.

Cheers to you Damon Jones, the jester of the NBA.

Its kind of Amazing

Over the last two or three weeks I have met a diverse collection of smart, interesting, successful, funny and well respected people, yet for some reason not many had heard of  wikipedia.  What baffles me about this fact is that wikipedia plays a huge part in making me smart, interesting, successful, funny, well respected, good looking, seemingly invincible and humble.

If these people that I have met have such redeeming qualities already without the knowledge available on wikipedia, will telling them automatically lower my status in in said categories?  I am going to take the risk and urge anyone that hasn’t spent a few hours learning on wikipedia to do so now.

By the way, wikipedia is an encyclopedia built by a community on the web, and it is free for everyone.  Go to a topic you are interested in and then peruse related entries through the internal links.  Just be sure to keep track of the time.

It all makes perfect sense

It is tough to copy the top link on reddit and still hold your head high, but this is the best cartoon I have ever seen. Enjoy.

Ideas Are Free Today

Sorry – took down this post.

Most important thing in the world today… Google Unbound

For those of you who may not have heard, Google sponsored a line up of speakers focused on the book publishing industry today in New York.  By my estimations there were about 500 people in attendance comprised mostly of publishers, authors, consultants, inventors and at least one unemployed part-time, amateur blogger.

The speakers were absolutely phenomenal.  I was impressed by most of them, but I showed up to see Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine), Seth Godin (Seth Godin) and Cory Doctorow (BoingBoing.net).

Here are a some of the memes flowing through the PA.

Leverage in the industry is shifting (or more likely has already shifted greatly) from the publishing customers to the authors, at least the others with a respectable product and the ideas and desires to self-promote.

The long tail.  Its hard to see Chris present his numbers and then try to think of a bigger way that the Internet will affect business.

Give to Get.  Every successful author that spoke mentioned giving something away, be it product, novelties or attention.  The point is that smart authors realize that they are a brand.  Their time, attention and ability to lead conversations are the product.  The physical book is how they monetize this.

The overall feeling that I got is that big monolithic publishing is a sitting duck.  The conversations that I overheard ranged from “well we might be able to do that if we had those numbers” to “we should try to talk about something like that when I get back in March.”  I also spoke with some smaller companies doing cool stuff.
Misquotes:

“How many of you just use myspace to prowl for underage girls?…. Alright, about half of you.”

“Publishers are really just VCs that find and fund ideas.  For some reason you think you’re in the paper selling business.”

“I want to charge very little or nothing for a lot of information and then charge a whole bunch for very little information.”

“Edgar Bronfman, Sr, managed to get the Swiss banks to give back all that Nazi gold, while Edgar Bronfman, Jr can’t even get Steve Jobs to charge $1.50 for a Warners MP3.”

Thanks Google.

Joost is the most important thing in the world…today

So the Beta of Joost just launched today. Joost is a peer to peer television over the Internet. After reading some reviews by beta testers I found 2 advantages that Joost may have right now.

First, Joost simply has better picture quality than Youtube or Google Video. This is huge. Youtube and the like are great as potential but the quality has always reminded me of playing Pacman.

The more important aspect of Joost though is its usability. The founders are actually trying to make Joost feel like your TV. Everyone knows what Youtube is because of their spectacular buyout, but it is a stretch to think that the average Joe is going to change his tv viewing habits to accommodate a new technology. Whoever solves this Internet+Video puzzle needs to match approach the simple user interface of the television. Whether or not Joost has accomplished this, they seem to understand it.

The one obvious problem for now (I believe) is that Joost does not play over your regular TV, only through the Internet. I just worry that this product will only be used by adults that read reddit and digg, and 14 year olds. So I guess in the end, this company is building killer products (Skype also) that can change the world, but only making them feasibly usable by the top 1%.

I think 99 out of 100 people would rather hit the channel button than the mouse button to watch something different.

Here is Spencer Reiss with a great article about Joost in Wired Magazine.

Great News for Music

I found some great music websites and new bands over the last few days.  First of all, the site www.audiri.com (now stage.fm) is a great place to find new unsigned bands and download music for free.  The site is very easy to use and it requires no software or logins.  You simply type in a band that you like and it recommends unsigned artists that sound similar.

Two great acts that I found are

The Ready Aim Fire!

The Pop Demons

Get them on your ipod and spread the word.

Even more good music news, according to hitchaser.com an unsigned band reached the top 40 singles in the UK.  What this may mean is that instead of hearing all the same songs on every radio station we may actually hear some new stuff.

The charts started counting downloads instead of just record sales.  The tracking of this channel can seriously flip the power in the industry and allow bands to approach record companies with much more clout.  Rock and Scroll.

I knew it

When I was a freshman in high school the Seniors supposedly played jokes on the new class by selling them pool passes and elevator keys.  Now I did not go to a top-notch prep school, but I still don’t think that any students were gullible enough to give the Seniors money for these obviously fabricated privileges.

About the same time that I was not buying elevator keys, the movie Tommy Boy was released in theatres.  The movie popularized the idea of ‘cow tipping’ which by now you know means pushing over cows as they sleep.

Something about cow tipping just sat wrong with me.  I didn’t believe that it was popular among country kids or even possible for that matter.   Going to college in a rural town just reinforced my suspicions.  Everyone believed in cow tipping or had friends that had cow tipped, but no one ever had done it themselves.  I was sure that cow tipping was just a joke that country kids played on people from the city.  The opposite of an urban legend.

One day my belief was shattered by a friend of a friend that had definitely cow tipped on several occassions.  I couldn’t believe it.  Nothing had changed my world view so quickly or so drastically.

That is until I read the December issue of Wired magazine.  As it turns out I was right all along.  Cow tipping is virtually impossible and most probably made up.  Cows don’t even sleep lying down, who knew?

Oh yeah, gum doesn’t stay in your stomach for 7 years either.  Gum is not digested at all and it usually passes through within 24 hours.