Sep 25
Posted: under This week in paid content.
This week: I attend the Digital Family Summit (pictures of which have already appeared on this blog) La Patria expands reader benefits packages, Clay Shirky hopes for a “thousand flowers” to bloom, Seth Godin indulges in some “brandjacking” and the Economist’s story on the global effects of the mobile revolution is absolutely not to be missed.
Sep 25
Posted: under Uncategorized.
This shows the impressive turnout at the Digital Family Summit event; actually, it falls a little short, because there was also quite a crowd hidden back and to the left, by the bar (heh).
The brick walls made for some … interesting … acoustics, but by and large, it was a tremendous place for a meeting like this.
Sep 24
Posted: under Community, Digital Migration, New Marketing, new media, Online Video, Social Media monetization, Webconomics.
Tags: Brad Nye, Digital Family, economic optimism, event, Jason Calacanis, meetup, New Media Migration, photos, Santa Monica, This week in startups, VIC, Wokcano
It’s late and I’ve got a lot more post-processing to do on the photos, so here’s just a couple of the images that I shot. The video of the discussions can be found at This Week in Startups.
Before the lights were adjusted, standing on the platform over the audience made the speakers look like they were either making a dramatic entrance - or having their identities concealed in some "60 Minutes" tell-all segment.
The energy of the old VIC was certainly present – a little too much, as techies on the make back at the bar made it a little hard to hear the speakers at the time. This, despite the overt threat by organizers to find the yapping networkers and toss them out.
Anyway, here’s Calacanis discussing what the future of social media sites is going to look like, and what smart companies should do in the next couple of years to try to adapt to the increasing pace of innovation.
As I said in an email to Nye, Jason would probably be secretly pleased at the whole Citizen Kane-esque imagery here. And then, of course, he'd feel conflicted about it and make a self-deprecating joke.
One of the more interesting areas of discussion – particularly since I just got back from Costa Rica – centered around virtual currency as being “the next big thing.” Certainly seems that way in places like Costa Rica, where you’re getting an increasingly large, tech-savvy and connected labor force. A lot of people either work in the internet gambling industry there – or have relatives/friends that do. The speed of internet connections in San Jose – and even out in the jungles on the Pacific side – stunned me. I’ve had much worse connections in the small town U.S.A.
One of the things that has stuck in my head the last week or so has been the stories coming out about how spammers are getting around the Captchas by simply hiring dirt-cheap human labor to fill in the blanks on the pages to stuff spam onto our hard-constructed sites. I’m not sure what the next step in trying to get rid of the spam is going to be – Calacanis lamented how from the very first days of blogs, spam started becoming a problem, and it has kept pace with our attempts to try to get rid of it. Now it’s starting to get into the social networking world (viz today’s Phishing attacks on Twitter), where the level of trust that we have for our social circle is going to make the impact of a malicious click that much heavier.
Sep 15
Posted: under Uncategorized.
This guy would just not leave my shoes alone. We hiked up and down the jungle ridges, and he wove in and out between my legs, and kept trying to chomp on my shoes every time I paused. He did demonstrate the fabled goat agility when crossing a river, bouncing from rock to rock and sprinting up the hillside, and then standing on top of the hill and baaing at us in triumph.
Like I say on my Flickr page – yeah, my socks are over my jeans. The ticks in Costa Rica could suck an oil tanker dry.
Sep 15
Posted: under Uncategorized.
This guy’s name is Rafa. He’s smiling in his sleep at the Rescue Shelter Las Pumas, where he’s safe from the hunters and the men who captured him from his mother because he had a thorn in his paw and couldn’t run fast enough to escape. Like so many of the other big cats, his life is a tale of tragedy.
I wish he could be set free to roam and hunt for himself, but since he’s been around humans since he was a kit, he can’t survive out on his own. Still, I’d like to see him in a bigger enclosure, where he can run around and play and bite stuff without having busloads of little obnoxious kids taunting him through the bars of his cage.
Sep 09
Posted: under Uncategorized.
The “Apps for America” contest was won by this addictive little toy, called DataMasher.
It allows you to access U.S. government statistics, establish a correlation between the two, and then map out the incidence of that statistic across a map of the United States.
What? You want that in English?
OK. You take the number of households with a loaded gun in them. Compare that to the number of firearms-related deaths per 100,000 residents. And then break that down on a state-by-state basis. Viz:
Yeah, I know this can create some false equivalencies; but think of how much fun it would be to compare “Percentage of supporters of Sarah Palin” to “Number of angry, overweight, underemployed, poorly educated males living in their mom’s basement.”
Sep 05
Posted: under Uncategorized.
This week the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette takes the paid content plunge (or do they…?), the Top 10 Lies being told in newspaper executives suites are revealed, Information Architects graphs out exactly what content can be sold online and to whom, and an entrepreneur lays out the motivations behind the various warring tribes making this entire decision process so crazy. Oh yeah – and if you don’t know what the “Three Wolf Moon” t-shirt means, Julie Sims thinks you’re a loser.
Sep 01
Posted: under Time Exposures.
Tags: bloody moon, Los Angeles, photo, sky, smoke, Station Fire, time exposure
Is that Jay Gatsby's "green light" back there...?
This looks like something out of “True Blood” – the part where there’s been some devil-worshipping sacrifice and the whole lawn is tinged with red after some poor sweaty schlub got chucked into the wood chipper.
Just breathing the air here in Los Angeles today made me feel lightheaded and dizzy, as though I were back up about 10,000 feet in altitude. This city has turned my lungs into Swiss cheese.
And yeah, I know this is a bit blurry. You try standing stock-still for 15 seconds.
Sep 01
Posted: under Time Exposures.
Tags: bloody moon, cloud, Los Angeles, night sky, smoke, Station Fire, wildfire
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
–Hamlet Act 1 Sc.4.39
