LB's Rambles

Podcast Predictions

As a podcaster myself, I am always trying to do whatever I can to spread the word about podcasting in general. You know, "a rising tide floats all ships," and so forth. And - possibly because of the circles in which I travel - I do seem to be encountering more people who don't just stare at me and ask, "a pod-WHAT?"

It's encouraging to find that I'm not alone. Steve Smith, writing in MediaPost's Mobile Insider blog, says podcasting remains a niche - but a big one, with perhaps 10 million people - but it is beginning to attract serious amounts of audio and video advertising. A lot of it, he says, appears to be created especially for web use, rather than just repurposed TV ads.

That's good news - and the dollars will be welcome. Smith quotes industry people who say they think podcasting is set to break out of its niche and become mainstream. As a podcaster, I'd say it can't happen soon enough.

Social Overload

So on Tuesday morning, I posted a status update on Facebook complaining that I was "starting to have trouble keeping up with all the updates on too many services."

Apparently I'm not alone. One of MediaPost's myriad newsletters has pointed me to a Monday article from MSNBC called "Beware of social networking overload." Got THAT right! Bottom line: you - we - need to be a part of at least one network, probably a couple. But don't start loading it up to the point where you can't keep track. Which is about the point I think I've reached...

HAROs of Journalism

I've written here before about Peter Shankman's wildly successful service called HARO - Help a Reporter Out. What started out last fall as a small Facebook group has grown into a website and mail list with more than 15,000 people, and the number increases faster than I can possibly keep up with it.

It's a remarkably simple concept: there are two lists. One group, the journalists, submit queries when they're looking for experts on virtually any topic. The other, larger, group consists mostly (but not exclusively) of PR people - the experts who can answer the journalists' questions. Neither group pays a penny for the service.

I rehash all this because Shankman, who is a friend, has now scored a really great article from The Industry Standard. It details HARO's brief history - and the way that PR Newswire, which has made a great deal of money from its own expert source system called ProfNet, suddenly finds itself threatened by a free upstart. If you're interested in the birth, gestation and incredibly quick growth of a good idea, take a look at this story.

About Writing

There's a fascinating column in today's edition of the Bulldog Reporter's "Daily Dog" newsletter by Kim Perez, a freelance writer and PR consultant. She explains why she writes: because she loves writing. Yes, it's how she makes a living, and it's unbelievably hard work. But she loves it, and that's her main motivation.

As another professional writer, I understand what she's saying, and I agree with her completely. I too am fascinated and occasionally frustrated by people who seem to think that writing isn't really "work." Surely we must do something else as well.

Wrong on all counts. See what Kim Perez says, because she is saying it extremely well. And I would echo her advice to those who think they can just sit down and start writing: if you don't love it, and aren't willing to work at it - please don't bother.

"Classic Mystery Stories"

Our review this week on the podcast is of the 1999 anthology called "Classic Mystery Stories," edited by Douglas G. Greene. It's a Baker's Dozen of stories, starting with Edgar Allan Poe and coming up (down?) through H. C. Bailey in 1920.

Some of the authors will be very familiar to the mystery reader - Poe, obviously, and Wilkie Collins and Baroness Orczy. But there are others as well, such as Charles Dickens and Jack London, whom we may forget when we list mystery authors. It's a a good collection of highly enjoyable stories. You can listen to the podcast here.

(Cross-posted at www.classicmysteries.net )

On the Bias

Memo to my former journalistic colleagues: the public thinks your bias is showing. Badly.

In fact, the latest Rasmussen poll finds that 49% of voters believe reporters are out to help Obama win - up 5% from one month ago. Only 14% believe reporters are trying to help McCain win.

Perhaps even more disturbing, in terms of long-term trends, is the discovery that 45% believe that reporters would hide information if they believed it would hurt their preferred candidate. And, in a separate poll, 50% of voters believe that reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it really is.

I'm not sure what responsible journalists can do to turn their image around. But they - we - had better come up with something...

Hat tip: Instapundit

Pandora Opens the Box

Pandora, in this case, is ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which has voted to open up top level domains to just about anything that just about anyone might want.

That means that in addition to the established top-level domains, such as .com, .net and .org, and the additional domains opened up fairly recently, such as .tv, you will soon be able to open it up to just about any three-letter-or-more word or abbreviation you like.

Sell a lot of tchotchkes? Maybe you want to open up /MyBrand.tchotchkes/ for yourself. Of course, anyone else who wants to use that top-level tchotchkes domain may have to negotiate rights with you. But that's just the beginning of the potential headaches.

So before you get in line, take a look at comments by Rob Garner, strategy director for iCrossing, on MediaPost's Search Insider blog. If you're an established brand, you may want to think a bit before rushing out to make your brand a new top-level domain - because it will have a tremendous impact on your search visibility, especially if you already have your brand out there, building up its great position on Google.

Garner's post - and the comments on it - might give you some fairly sober second thoughts about the whole process. We live in interesting times. And there's a reason why that is generally considered a curse...

Classic Mysteries - Now a Blog Too!

The Classic Mystery podcasts (which are linked individually from the right-hand column of this blog) now have a matching blog to go with them, where - I hope - we can continue the conversations started by our weekly Monday podcasts.

The blog is at www.classicmysteries.net - note that this is a .net, not a .com . Think of detectives casting out their nets and you'll remember it. Anyway, I encourage you to visit there and join in the conversation. I'd love to see suggestions for other authors in the classic mold.

I'll still keep posting a brief announcement here each Monday - but will take most of the mystery discussion over to the new blog. Please visit early and often!

Counter Intuitive

That's "counter" as in "sales counter." According to eMarketer, a lot of shoppers are largely in the habit of checking out possible purchases off-line, in brick-and-mortar establishments, before coming home and ordering them on-line. According to the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, better than 2/3 of consumers - young and old - do their shopping that way, looking at the product first in retail stores and then buying on line. I would have thought it was the other way around - especially given the number of studies we've seen recently about the growing trend to rely on friends and others we trust to give us online reviews of products. Ah, the joys of statistics...

12 Billion

That's the number of online videos watched in May, according to comScore, as quoted by MediaPost.

12 billion. Up 45% from a year ago. Up 10% from April.

12 billion.

So what's your company's strategy when it comes to online video?

Hint: it takes more than hiring some company and saying "I want my video to go viral."

"Because of the Cats"

A prosperous and self-satisfied suburb of Amsterdam turns out to be the home base for a vicious gang of teenagers. Why are these children carrying out their increasingly violent crimes? Because of the cats - the title of Nicolas Freeling's police procedural mystery, set in the Netherlands and featuring Freeling's Inspector Piet Van Der Valk. It's the featured book this week on my Classic Mysteries podcast.

As a general rule, I'm not a huge fan of police procedurals, but "Because of the Cats" goes well beyond the usual restrictions of that genre. It is entertaining and chilling and a fine study of the personalities involved - and there's a degree of fair play in the mystery as well, so that the reader accompanies the inspector as he tries to solve the mystery. For a full review, please check out the podcast.

New Media Expo

We're just one month away from the start of this year's New Media Expo in Las Vegas, which runs from August 14 to August 16 this year. For anyone interested in the business of podcasting - audio or video, beginner or experienced pro  - this is the place to be.

I went last year and learned an enormous amount about podcasting - and I'm looking forward to learning more this year in Las Vegas. Follow the link (or check the link at the bottom of the right hand column) to check out the many sessions and keynotes.

If you're going to be there, give me a shout. Great parties, lots of networking opportunities...

Pirates in the Clouds

If I were a major content provider trying to assert my rights over my material - as, for instance the recording and movie industries do - I'd find this warning from Shelly Palmer very disturbing. Writing at JackMyers.com, the Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC, notes some possibly unintended consequences from cloud storage computing.

He's talking about the companies that now specialize in providing large-file off-site storage space for companies and individuals. Most of us use these for backups, to free up local disk space. But Palmer notes that a casual friend of his, in the course of an email exchange, was able to offer him a link to a very large HD movie video on the friend's storage cloud. As Palmer says..."Yikes!"

Now think about it for a moment. Most of us, generally wouldn't dream of downloading a pirated movie for a variety of reasons - from a concern about piracy (and, as a writer, I am opposed to freeloaders) to a practical concern that we may be downloading a virus or other malware along with that pirated music or movie.

But if a friend sends a link to a private storage site where he's put a movie he uploaded from his own computer - well, where's the downside? Except, of course, that it's piracy. But that's a hotly debated point, isn't it - is it that much different from handing my HD movie disk to friends for them to take home and view?

And unfortunately, as Palmer points out, it probably won't take the pirates long to move in on this "legitimate" form of storage:

At the end of the day, P2P networks and strange or alien files are not going to cause any more economic hardship for the content industry than they are causing right now. However, good natured, good citizens using private storage clouds are going to be hugely hurtful. And, if good citizens can cause irreparable harm by paving the road to hell, imagine what bad natured, bad citizens will be able to accomplish with the same technology. Trust me, the computer network does not know the nature of its users.

It has to be a frightening prospect for anyone owning the rights to movies and music.

The Mighty Dinosaur in the C-Suite

Steven Cody, Managing Partner at Peppercom, has a fairly depressing commentary over at the Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog site - depressing because it is accurate. Cody laments the lack of understanding of digital PR in the C-suites. He quotes various communications execs, speaking about their bosses:

• "The CEO is disinterested in communications altogether."
• "The C-suite is for it as long as it saves money."
• "They see it as an expensive tool to use during hard economic times."
• "My C-suite simply doesn't believe in digital."
• "My communications department is ready to implement a digital strategy, but management and other departments are uncomfortable with technology."
• "They have no idea what it is."

Thus spake Tyrannosaurus Rex, king of the dinosaurs, at the top of the food chain, looking forward to an undoubtedly bright future.

Also, alas, extinction.

I don't expect the CEOs and other Cs of major corporations necessarily to lead the way on technology. They have other matters on their plate, necessary functions if they are to become or remain industry leaders. But technology isn't waiting for them. Cody has some very good suggestions about how to speed up the education of these people. He's right. It's just that we're all well along the way through this communications revolution we're all undergoing - and it would be so much easier for all of us if the top people had a clue...

Slowpokes

I'm not quite sure what to make of new statistics on home broadband penetration from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Pew reports that 55% of adult Americans now have broadband Internet service at home. The number is growing, but more slowly than in the past. The statistic that is throwing me, however, is that - among Americans still using dial-up service - 62% say they're not interested in giving up dial-up and switching to broadband.

Yes, some of them say it's because broadband isn't available in their areas yet. Some say it's a difference in cost - and, true, broadband is generally more expensive (though, in real dollar terms, not that much so). But what to make of the 19% who say that nothing could persuade them to switch over?

eMarketer takes a look at Pew's numbers and finds itself as perplexed as I am:

[B]roadband penetration is no longer simply considered a technological upgrade from dial-up. It has become a conduit for a host of communication and entertainment services—the so-called triple-play of voice, video and Internet access—as well as for ads placed in conjunction with those services.

Does it make sense to you?