mathewingram.com/work

My oldest daughter Caitlin has been applying to universities (yes, that means I’m old — please don’t remind me) and most of them ask for some kind of personal statement about your abilities, etc. And I was really, really tempted to submit this, which was written by this guy:

“I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding.”

Continue reading “I have been caller number nine…”

Is all the fuss about Twitter much ado about nothing, as Shakespeare put it? Is Twitter the crack of the Internet, as my friend Mark puts it? Is it a useful way of staying connected to friends, and keeping track of your thoughts — as Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt has said? Or is it a waste of time designed for the self-obsessed and those with short attention spans or attention-deficit disorders? Is it all Robert Scoble’s fault?

The answer to all of those questions, of course, is yes. Except for the Scoble one; I don’t really have an opinion on that, although I will point out that the Third Law of the Blogosphere reads: “When in doubt, blame Robert Scoble.” I wrote a bit about the Twitter phenomenon a few days ago, in this post, and described it as “noise, but also signal,” and I’m sticking with that.

Twitter.com may seem like a throwaway fad — the Hula Hoop or Pet Rock of Web 2.0 — and perhaps it is. But I also think it is another piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding how we relate to each other in an online world, and how those relationship mechanisms are changing. Instant messaging and Second Life and blogs and Digg and Facebook are all pieces of that puzzle too.

Can Twitter be irritating? Of course it can. So can email, and so can the telephone or a conversation in a bar. But we still use or engage in those things. It’s worthwhile remembering that even Alexander Graham Bell never expected the phone to be used for business — he saw it as an entertainment device. I wonder what he would have thought of Twitter.

Further reading:

The always insightful Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users has a great post looking at the benefits but also the downside of a “continuous partial attention” app such as Twitter and its potential effect on our lives.

Coming so soon after the company bought a social networking platform (Tribe.net), Cisco’s $3.2-billion acquisition of WebEx makes it clear that the network equipment company’s interest in matters of the Web is more than just a passing fancy (although I suppose that it’s possible deals of that size qualify as a fancy at a giant like Cisco, which has a market cap of about $155-billion).

In any case, WebEx is an interesting purchase to make. I think Om is right that the service makes a natural pawn (or maybe a rook) in the chess game with Microsoft for supremacy in the in-between world of Web and desktop for corporate users. And from that point of view the deal makes a certain amount of sense as a positioning effort.

However, I also think Rafe Needleman makes an excellent point in his post at Webware, which has the wonderful title: “Cisco buys WebEx for the land — the product is a teardown.” Having used the service more than once, I can attest to the fact that in most cases it is difficult to configure and a pain in the ass to use, in contrast to more flexible (and cheaper) Web services such as Vyew.com and Adobe’s Connect.

In that sense, the deal doesn’t look quite so great — and the valuation looks rich at best. Paul Kedrosky asks whether Cisco even knows what it wants to be when it grows up.

There’s no question that online video has become a phenomenon over the past year or so, whether it’s the rise of YouTube and “user generated” stars like Lonelygirl15 or IsabellaBrave or the increasing use of video blogs by politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And the $1-billion Viacom suit against YouTube only reinforces the power struggles that are taking place in this new universe.

Online video and the revolution it is helping to power is a big part of what we’re going to be discussing at the mesh conference in Toronto on May 30 and 31, and so we wanted to reach out to the community and hopefully find our own version of that fantastic “The machine is us/ing us” video that has been making the rounds of late.

My fellow mesh organizer Rob Hyndman has written a great post on the mesh blog with more details about the contest we’ve set up. Check it out and then get out that video camera!

So Viacom has slapped Google (or YouTube) with a $1-billion lawsuit for blatant copyright infringement on a massive scale, according to the entertainment conglomerate’s claim. On a side note, have you ever noticed how people invariably get slapped with lawsuits? Not just hit — slapped. And a big thick lawsuit would hurt, I bet. Especially legal paper.

But seriously, is anyone surprised by this? I’m willing to admit that Viacom might have a point about a few things, such as the copies of copyrighted material that pop up right after a clip is taken down, or the inability to search for more than 1,000 clips, etc. But those are really technicalities and Viacom knows it. It doesn’t even seem to be trying to make a real case under the DMCA.

I still think that the lawsuit — which Cynthia Brumfield at IPDemocracy correctly describes as “puffy and fluffy” — is really just another case of negotiation by other means, just like the notice and takedown letter about the 100,000 clips. I would also agree with Henry “I used to be a famous Wall Street analyst” Blodget that it is unlikely to be successful.

I also think that, regardless of the merits of the case (which are not nearly as strong as Viacom’s blustering press release implies) my friend Paul Kedrosky is right, and this lawsuit is fundamentally just dumb. Not necessarily wrong in a legal sense — but still dumb.

If you can’t wait until the mesh conference (May 30 and 31 in Toronto) to talk about all the interesting things that are happening on the Web and how they are changing media, marketing, business and society, then come on out to the next mesh social event. The first one at the Irish Embassy was so much fun that we decided to have another one.

It’s taking place on March 28 at the Charlotte Room, which is just east of King and Spadina in Toronto, and we’ve got most of the bar booked — and all of the pool tables (check the Upcoming page here for more details or to see who else is coming). Come on down to have a few drinks and connect, share and inspire.

Let’s mesh!

Just a quick administrative note to all of my devoted readers (hi Mom) that I am on vacation for the next week or so, and so blogging is likely to be erratic at best. In the meantime, please enjoy some photos I took last year when I was doing pretty much the same thing I am doing now.

It seems as though everyone has an opinion on Twitter, the instant-messaging style app that Blogger founder Ev Williams shut down Odeo to focus on (wise decision, that). Pete Cashmore says that it’s another way to blog about your cat, while Karoli at Drumsnwhistles just doesn’t see the point — and in the comments on her blog, Robert Scoble says Twitter hate is “the new black.”

It’s an interesting idea, Twitter — and in many ways a natural evolution of (or accessory to) Evan’s original creation, Blogger. And the name is perfect, since it conveys precisely the kind of instantaneous, frivolous, and maybe even scatter-brained nature of the app itself, like a bird twittering. Not singing, but twittering.

I blame Austin Hill of Billions with Zero Knowledge for getting me on to Twitter, even though he has never mentioned it to me. I signed up because a couple of friends had mentioned it, and then I started seeing Austin’s updates from the TED conference pop up regularly in my Google Talk window as feeds from his Twitter — and on his blog in a little Twitter widget. I thought it was a pretty cool way of sending out short thoughts.

In fact, it reminds me a lot of what my 17-year-old daughter and her friends do with their instant messaging accounts, where they change their login names every hour or two to let everyone know how they’re feeling — complete with many emoticons and other strange characters — or include some lyrics from a favourite song, etc. And they do the same with their Facebook profiles, where they post updates every hour or so.

Is this obsessive behaviour in some sense? Possibly. And I can see the point made by many, that these kinds of continuous interruptions don’t really add anything important. And yet, I still find it interesting. We want to be connected, I think, and anything that helps us do that is useful in some way — even if it results in noise that we have to tune out sometimes.

I know that this has nothing whatsoever to do with Web 2.0 or anything like that — apart from possibly illustrating how a guy who used to help people download copyright-infringing music files can become a Hollywood-sized celebrity, complete with airborne scandal — but I couldn’t help noticing that Janus Friis of Skype and Joost fame was discovered recently trying to join the Mile-High Club with his paramour, Christina Knudsen, step-daughter of Bond actor Roger Moore. The ever-tactful and tasteful Nick Carr refers to this as Mr. Friis trying to start a new “peer-to-peer network” with Ms. Knudsen, a line I wish I had come up with. Blogger Pat Phelan, meanwhile, notes that the pair might have consummated their relationship but flight attendants stopped them Joost in time. (hat tip to Luca Filigheddu). Incidentally, the Great Dane’s real name appears to be Janus Friis Degnbol, at least according to the recent statement of settlement in the Kazaa lawsuit (pdf link).

The Barenaked Ladies may be known for their whimsical pop songs, but the group is dead serious about the evils of “digital rights management” — the copy-protection standard used by Microsoft, iTunes and other online music stores to control their content. Not only has singer Steven Page spoken out on the issue, but the band was also one of the founding members of the Canadian Music Creators’ Coalition (CMCC), a group that is trying to counter the lobbying by large foreign record companies when it comes to copyright legislation.

The Ladies are also one of the bands that has put their music online free of any DRM controls, and has even allowed fans to take different tracks and “mash” them up into their own creations. And now the new album from the Barenaked Ladies is available from an online service called Amie Street, according to TechCrunch, thanks to a deal with the Ladies’ record label, Nettwerk Music Group. Ars Technica has more on Amie Street here.

Amie Street has a somewhat unusual approach to the online music business: instead of charging a single price for its song downloads, the way that iTunes and others do, the service starts by offering new music (none of which has digital rights management controls) for free, and then gradually increases the price based on how popular the song is — to a maximum of 98 cents per track.

Amie Street keeps 30 per cent of the revenue, and the rest goes to the band or their label. Members can also earn revenue by recommending a song that goes on to become popular. According to a previous feature from TechCrunch, the service launched last summer and was founded by three students from Providence, Rhode Island. But will a pricing system that is based on demand work for music? George Scriban of Global Nerdy is skeptical.

Note:

Although the Barenaked Ladies’ songs started at free, they shot up to the maximum price of 98 cents relatively quickly, thanks to the publicity surrounding the service. The songs were available starting on Tuesday, March 6 and by the next day they had been listened to more than 14,000 times.

Not sure whether to call this an exclusive, but it might be as I type this: my email friend Adam Green just let me know that Grazr.com — the embeddable feed-browser app — just closed a $1.5-million round of financing from two angel investors, and has added the legendary Dan Bricklin, creator of VisiCalc, to its board. There are more details on Adam’s blog.

http://grazr.com/gzloader.js?font=Arial,Helvetica&fontsize=9pt&file=http://www.mathewingram.com/mathewi.xml

In a nutshell, Adam says the lead investors are Bruce Twickler and Louis Page, Boston-area angels. Both have worked with him in a previous lifetime, back when Adam was the chief technology officer at Andover.net. That company, which rose to prominence during the late 1990s as a portal for Linux-related news and content and eventually acquired Slashdot and went public, raising $72-million or so, was itself acquired by VA Linux in 2000 for a little over $1-billion, and Adam took a break and went to Harvard to get a Master’s degree in Science (he’s got a bio here.) Then he got interested in feeds and helped start up Grazr with Michael Kowalchik. TechCrunch had a pretty favourable piece about Grazr last fall, written by Marshall Kirkpatrick.

Grazr is a mini-feed browser, which displays an OPML file — essentially just a list of feeds — in a small, configurable window, like the one I’ve embedded in this post. You can browse through the list using the controls on either side of the window, and the newer version of the app allows you to plug any URL or OPML file into an address bar. I have one in my sidebar as a kind of interactive blogroll, and Ian Delaney does a similar thing at Twopointouch.

In a sense, Grazr is a little like Bitty Browser, but specifically for RSS feeds. And the company says that it has plenty of things in the pipeline to add to the app, including ways of monetizing it through corporate co-branding, etc. Best of luck to Adam and the rest of the team at Grazr.

This could be a pretty big deal: Beet.tv is reporting an exclusive — that Microsoft has signed a deal with Associated Press, the giant wire service, to “develop an online video platform for thousands of U.S. newspapers, television and radio stations to upload, publish and monetize locally-created video.”

The Beet report says that the system is in trial with about 30 newspaper publishers and broadcasters including The Miami Herald, the Houston Chronicle and the Rocky Mountain News, and the program is expected to go live in about a month. This is reportedly an extension of the Online Video Network, which the software company and the wire service set up about a year ago to distribute Associated Press video to about 1,600 member websites (including the Globe and Mail, where I work).

The new system is aimed at the 7,000 newspapers, TV and radio stations that belong to AP, who will be able to create their own content locally — either by staff or through user-generated content initiatives — and then upload it and generate revenue from it. Beet.tv says that for the 1,000 TV stations that belong to AP, “the opportunity to publish and monetize video is immediate.”