Archives: July 2006

Well-wishers beware

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 31, Categories: society

A neighbor just urged me to "Have a safe trip." I might be inclined to say that to someone flying into a war zone, but do we really need it...

The State of PostSecret

Posted by: Heather Green on July 31, Categories: comments

So, an editor of mine, who used to love PostSecret, wonders whether the site's quality is slipping. I never really read it that closely to know. But in his opinion,...

Rocketboom (Post Amanda) Signs Ad Deal

Posted by: Heather Green on July 31, Categories: podcasting

Andrew Baron just emailed to say that Rocketboom just sold ads for its first post-Amanda Congdon version of the popular video blog. Rocketboom is partnering with the Rechargeable Recycling Battery...

Immigration detour: A Mexican tale

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 30, Categories: Weekend Rant, society

Long before I'd heard the word Internet, much less blog, I worked as bureau chief in Mexico City for BusinessWeek. Before that I covered the border in El Paso....

Ze Frank, YouTube, and Making Money

Posted by: Heather Green on July 28, Categories: digital media

Ze Frank's discussion on YouTube, copyright, control and/or money, and how that represents the coming of age of indie online video.

Questions as Wonkette rises at Time

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 28, Categories: mainstream media

As Wonkette prepares to take over as Washington editor of Time.com, here are some questions sure to be circulating among Time's minions: 1) How much is she getting paid? 2)...

Now I know how Clive Barnes feels

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 27, Categories: search

The phone buzzed in my pocket. It was my sister from Portland telling me about a full-page Ask.com ad in Tuesday's New York Times. It quoted one of my...

This Week's Podcast with Mary Hodder

Posted by: Heather Green on July 26, Categories: podcasting

This week's guest on the Cutting Edge podcast is with Mary Hodder, after she launched the Dabble video search and social network service.

PBS Partners with OMN and Google to Sell Videos Online

Posted by: Heather Green on July 26, Categories: digital media

PBS partners with Google and Open Media Network to sell downloadable videos online.

You sell my data? That's what friends are for.

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 26, Categories: spam and other abuses

Read Stowe Boyd's take on Jigsaw, the Web 2.0 company that pays the public for their friends' and colleagues' contact data. Stowe takes a gentler approach toward Jigsaw than Michael...

Trackback Spam Tangent

Posted by: Heather Green on July 26, Categories:

I particularly like the trackback spam that's pushing adware filters. Nicely ironic.......

Google for the blind. How about iPods?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 24, Categories: search, society

Good news that Google is developing search engine technology for the blind. What I'd like next is technology to help the blind navigate an iPod. When the screen on...

Skype Founders New Video Service

Posted by: Heather Green on July 24, Categories: digital media

BW's Steve Rosenbush writes about a new video distribution venture that the founders of Skype are working on. Steve writes: "Working under the code name "The Venice Project," Zennstrom and...

Hodder's Dabble Video Directory Service Launches

Posted by: Heather Green on July 24, Categories: digital media

Dabble, the video search and social networking site started by blogger Mary Hodder, is launching today. As with many services that offer leaps forward, Dabble is trying to solve a...

The Internet, Video, and Feedback

Posted by: Heather Green on July 24, Categories: digital media

How the showing of the Grizzly Man documentary showed some of the potential that the Internet to remake what we think of as video and storytelling.

Vulnerability: Why journalists should blog

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 22, Categories: mainstream media, society

Vulnerability. It's a good thing. It's what people need to establish healthy relationships, and it's why journalists (among others) should blog. This thought occurred to me when I was...

MySpace spawns its own ecosystem

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 21, Categories: society

Steve Rosenbush writes about the evolving ecosystem around MySpace and compares it to those around Windows and Apple's iTunes. Perhaps the clearer parallel would be eBay, which has developed into...

Employee Bloggers: Move to France

Posted by: Heather Green on July 20, Categories: society

Ah ha! Another reason to move to France. Amid all the hubbub about blogging and employees being fired, an English French woman who was fired by her employer in France...

youth and email: the fear factor

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 20, Categories: society

Steve Rubel notes a study that teens view e-mail as old school. It's been trending that way for a while. When I interviewed college students two years ago for an...

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

Posted by: Heather Green on July 19, Categories: digital media

Celebrity blogs, fake blogs, anomymous blogs. Now a combo of the three with the Secret diary of Steve Jobs

Pew Blog Study Shows the Lure of Storytelling is High

Posted by: Heather Green on July 19, Categories: society

A new Pew study finds that most people who blog do it to tell stories about their lives--not to write about politics, tech, or media. One interesting tidbit: About 55% of bloggers write using a pseudonym.

Jason Calacanis, Digg Users, and the 1% Rule

Posted by: Heather Green on July 19, Categories: business blogging

Is Jason Calacanis' offer to pay the top 1% of participants at the Flickr, Digg, Reddit and Newsvine for his new Digg-like Netscape service an indication of just how much these services are propelled by early adopters?

This Week's Podcast with Rocketboom's Andrew Baron

Posted by: Heather Green on July 19, Categories: podcasting

Andrew Baron of Rocketboom is this week's guest on the BW Cutting Edge podcast.

Analysis of YouTube Top Videos

Posted by: Heather Green on July 18, Categories:

No Man's Blog has a fascinating analysis of the All Time Most Viewed Videos on YouTube. It's a breakdown of how many music videos, movie clips, commercials ads, etc. are...

On Updike and the Future of Books

Posted by: Heather Green on July 18, Categories: society

I am so glad that Jeff Jarvis has brought up again the whole issue of John Updike's concerns about the future of books and being a book author. Because I...

Heads Up, Janet Jackson Fans

Posted by: Heather Green on July 18, Categories: digital media

Hard on the heels of the BBC inviting the public to help it redesign its Web site, Janet Jackson is inviting fans to design the cover of her new album....

Bix: American Idol for the Online Video Set?

Posted by: Heather Green on July 17, Categories: digital media

The launch of Bix, the online contest service from Mike Speiser, one of the founders of Epinions.

Robin Good's Primer on Online Video making and mixing

Posted by: Heather Green on July 17, Categories: video blogging

I missed this over the weekend (cable modem woes), but Robin Good's blog has a nice little primer of how to do online videos and what tools you can use...

Working For Clams at Online World Whyville

Posted by: Heather Green on July 17, Categories: society

Pointer to a story on BWOnline about Whyville, a Second Life for kids that focuses on education.

This Blog and Barbaro Discussion

Posted by: Heather Green on July 14, Categories:

Why a blog in a developing story that people care about makes sense. With Barbaro developing complications, people are coming back to Blogspotting as they search for a blogs to discuss the racehorse.

Attention Deficit and Strategies for Engagement

Posted by: Heather Green on July 14, Categories: digital media

BW story about shattering attention spans and strategies three companies (Nike, Efficient Frontier, and the BBC) are using to try to reengage folks in this new world.

And Rocketboom's Back....

Posted by: Heather Green on July 12, Categories: podcasting

It looks pretty darn good. Right off the bat and in a hilarious way, it acknowledges the recent split between the popular video blog's two founders. That's very smart and...

This Week's Podcast with Meebo's Co-Founders

Posted by: Heather Green on July 12, Categories: podcasting

This week's BW Cutting Edge podcast is with Seth Sternberg and Elaine Wherry, the co-founders of Meebo. They discuss the growth of their instant messaging service and why it’s more...

Jeff Jarvis, Dell, and an intern who thinks he's a worm

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 12, Categories: business blogging, marketing

An intern at an ad agency is trouble-shooting for Dell in the blogosphere and apparently finds the time to leave a comment on Dell-tormenter Jeff Jarvis's blog and call him...

Soccer and American hegemony

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 11, Categories: society

I'm really enjoying the comments on yesterday's soccer post. The conclusion I'm reaching--and tell me if I'm stretching--is that most of the world would like Americans to love soccer, to...

Meebo and Its Language Wiki

Posted by: Heather Green on July 11, Categories: Wikis

How IM company Meebo created a wiki to tap the knowledge of its users to create translations for popular phrases in different languages.

Hollywood and Online Video: Guba Keeps Rolling

Posted by: Heather Green on July 11, Categories:

After first signing up Warner Bros., Guba announced today that it is also working with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to sell and rent movies online.

Crying, diving, head-butting: My only World Cup post

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 10, Categories: society

Three points about the World Cup, and then I'll shut up about soccer. * I hope Zinedine Zidane's vicious head-butt was satisfying to him. I'm betting that it cost him...

Who doesn't want to know English?

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 08, Categories: Weekend Rant

The mayor of a nearby New Jersey town called Bogota is pushing for a boycott of McDonald's because the hamburger giant has --gasp!--put up a few billboards in Spanish. The...

Glad to See Hitwise Weigh in on Digg v. NYTimes Traffic

Posted by: Heather Green on July 07, Categories: digital media

In a great example of how blogs can be used to bring clarity to muddy facts, traffic tracking service Hitwise sifted through its data to weigh in on the debate on whether the Digg is closing in on the NYTimes. Their finding: "The share of page impressions for the NY Times was 19 times greater than for Digg for that week."

Nokia's snazzy phone fails to wow

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 07, Categories: mobile

Nokia's new 8801 looks like a dream machine shrink-wrapped in metal, but I found it hard to use. When I was covering Nokia in Europe, it had what I considered...

Airline vouchers: How to rip off your company

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 06, Categories:

I spent way too much time on Continental.com and later, the phone, trying to put to use a voucher for a first-class upgrade. It would have made things a lot...

Rocketboom Splitsville Saga

Posted by: Heather Green on July 06, Categories: podcasting

BW's overview story about the founders of the pioneering video blog Rocketboom splitting up.

Green Words

Posted by: Heather Green on July 05, Categories:

Massive tangent here, but sort of in my baliwick, since I am a writer!Seth Godin has an interesting post about how the terminology global warming is a problem.

The blogosphere isn't poisonous--but the name may be

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 05, Categories: society

I've been thinking about yesterday's post (which I inadvertently posted twice). It's easy to say that the presence of millions of bad bloggers doesn't weigh down the good ones....

The blogosphere is not "credible"

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 04, Categories:

Steven Straight leaves a comment on Heather's post warning that the blogosphere is losing credibility. (I left a comment on the post, but don't feel like waiting for it to...

The blogosphere is not "credible"

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 04, Categories: society

Steven Straight leaves a comment on Heather's post warning that the blogosphere is losing credibility. (I left a comment on the post, but don't feel like waiting for it to...

Inmates running asylum at Philly blog

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 04, Categories: comments

Will Bunch, a blogger at Philadelphia's Daily News, left for vacation saying he was leaving his blog, Attytude, in the hands of commenters. I clicked to the site, wondering...

A Hard Look at Google's Nonsearch Innovations

Posted by: Heather Green on July 03, Categories: digital media

BW's Ben Elgin took a hard look at Google's innovations outside of search, finding that none of these services have become market leaders.

The Meaning of Being Bearish on Blogs is....

Posted by: Heather Green on July 03, Categories: blog business

After skimming through David Carr's column in the NYTimes about Nick Denton entitled "A Blog Mogul Turns Bearish on Blogs," still unsure about what part of blogging is Nick Denton bearish about.

Engineering our coffee, our dogs: The coming backlash

Posted by: Stephen Baker on July 02, Categories: marketing, society

I'm in a Starbucks in Portland drinking a small latte with an extra shot. I have orders to take home an eight-ounce latte, half skim... you get the idea. Made...