blackrimglasses.com

A small note: today was full of meetings with the parent company, but it also included hanging out with the lead singer of my favorite band ever, and seeing Kings of Leon at MSG.

Both experiences compounded with the meetings really cemented for me something.

When staring back at a full 10000 people, or talking to someone who actually wrote and pulled off a song called with the line “the carpenter’s out, running about and barking in the street” in it, it cements the reason myself, and those I work with stick with the job we do. It’s about passion, and nurturing the passions of both artist and fan to a situation that realizes itself in the moments where someone gets lost within it.

Looking back in the show, I saw dad’s with their sons, girlfriends and boyfriends, college kids, older people, high schoolers and everything in between. All collectively focused on four guys from Tennessee on stage as equally awed by the spectacle as the audience.

And likewise, talking to a guy who has been in this business for 30 years, but still has his eyes light up talking about the Santogold record, or MGMT or his latest record — its fucking inspiring as hell.

Music has power to it, and you can never, ever forget the power of it, especially when you are in the business of nurturing talent, promoting music and distributing it. If you loose sight of that power, it’s to your own detriment and failure.

I actually think this applies to other industries as well. The power of mass communication, motion picture, television, journalism, etc.

The businesses that are “dying” are somewhat doing so because they are so entrenched in the business of surviving, that they loose sight of the power of living.

We have to step into our own worlds periodically to figure out how to live within them.

Has anyone ever tried to use a BBerry Storm? It’s like “My First Touchscreen PDA” Horrific.

[From Bumpy Start for BlackBerry Storm - WSJ.com]

I kind of love that the press is complaining that they’re not getting access, when I’m sure the public can give two shits since the administration is putting everything up on the web anyway, pretty much as it exists and unfiltered. When you are your own media, what value is the traditional media anyhow? What value proposition is the Old Grey Lady providing with an interview? Color commentary? Biting wit? Flawed sourcing and plagiarism? Transparency isn’t about letting the media have first dibs, its removing the middleman and going directly to the masses through whatever means necessary.

[From Media frustration spills into briefing - Michael Calderone - Politico.com]

There has been a lot written about newspapers lately. I wrote this about newspapers when I worked at a paper, and presented it to people there:

The Internet is not a medium for the presentation of static pages of content, where you expect a user to just read it and not react. By its very construction, the Internet lends itself to people communicating with other people, and as far back as the beginning of the technology, e-mail and discussion groups formed the core of the online experience. When you provide your visitor with a “voice” in the context of your website, you are not only engaging them in a way that is much more tangible and active, but you are also promoting the notion that your site is a unique place where the user has a say in its construction. Too often websites are constructed under the “if we build it, they will come, buy and leave” philosophy. What this fails to do is engage the user in active participation, which is the fundamental model for Internet “surfing” in general.

The same things that make real world communities so vibrant, engaging and essential apply on the Internet. What we gain on the Internet is the advantages of this mode of communication: lack of time, space and demography. Online community is as close to social utopia as we can get, and that adds tremendous value to a website; both in the users trust for the company providing the information and by increasing the users involvement in the site.

We want to change “if we build it, they will come, buy and leave” to “come in, login and live.” The goal here is to make the site the users home on the Internet, and base the rest of their surfing experience off of the online community we provide.

I wrote this when I was 18, in 1997. In 1998 we put up the first OC Register community forum (called Dialog). I ended up leaving OCR in 1998 and then the whole newspaper chain in September, 2001. Planes flew into two towers, newsprint prices went up and the first thing to go was the Manager of Online Community Development.

Oh well.

if this is the future of news media, I’ll shoot myself. Talk about paper-thin content. There is nothing here! And it has 46 diggs. Literally, my cat could have written a more thorough piece.

[From Barack Obama: Digital-Nomad-In-Chief - Computerworld Blogs]

“So please, take my advice, as I go into other concentrated endeavors. Fuck the Cloud. Fuck it right in the ear. Trust it like you would trust a guy pulling up in a van offering a sweet deal on electronics. Maybe you’ll make out, maybe you won’t. But he ain’t necessarily going to be there tomorrow.”

Yeah, pretty much. The term “in the cloud” has been overused to such a huge degree that it is getting to the point of self-parody. “In the cloud” is now blanket for “data that other people store the same way I might.” No different than any client server architecture really.

[From ASCII by Jason Scott / FUCK THE CLOUD]

Today Amy and I had our third ultrasound, confirming what I suspected: we are having a boy! His name will be Eli Michael Kaplan. In Jewish tradition, you name your child after a deceased relative. My dad’s father’s nickname was Eli, and Amy’s paternal grand-father was named Michael.

Not to bring geekiness into something that isn’t, but in terms of concrete representation and technology: nothing I have ever seen on a screen forces the abutment of the real and virtual more than an ultrasound machine. Seeing this little person-in-making moving around takes your breath away.