The Official Blog of the Grateful Web

Best of Times or Worst of Times for Radio? Both?

Stormy days for radio stations, swirling winds, thunderbolts of new technologies deliver audio bypassing the king of sound delivery: Radio. Within 'Radio', technologies like HD and Satellite fight to deliver a fractured audience what was traditional 'radio' just a few years ago.

Like Lear, some stations ignore this storm of technology: "Blow, wireless winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow. You cataracts and iPods, and hurricanoes and streaming websites, spout Till you have drench'd our broadcast towers, drown'd the cocks with the  DJ." Some radio owner's efforts to talk back at the storm may mean they have lost touch with reality. Perhaps, like Lear, some owner’s behavior worsens as the technological storm waxes. Like Lear they go mad or bankrupt – a tragic fall as an industry forgets its simple yet priceless commodity: Delivering live sound over airwaves.

There are a rare few who stand pat in the storm. See new opportunity in radio's ability to deliver live sound in a new age.

Mark Ramsey is one. On Hear 2.0, Mark Ramsey starts with a basic premise: love of sound. From this understanding Mark tackles issues confronting radio today. Hear2.0 is one of a two prong approach to enlightening radio station direction in exploiting strategies for new media and radio. The other prong, sister company, Mercury Radio Research,  provides strategic research of what people want and listen to in the sound delivery industry.

When my wife and I moved from the east coast in 1995, we left a vibrant 102.7 WNEW FM, a NYC icon of classic rock with classic rock DJ's. What we did not know is WNEW built its format from smaller stations like Boulder's 97.3 KBCO, which Mark played a role in last century.

In his book, Fresh Air: Marketing Guru's on Radio, Mark culls the best minds in today's marketing from OUTSIDE the radio space. Some from inside the Web 2.0 space (i.e. Seth Godin) as 'Thought Starters' to reflect on what radio is capable of in this new tech paradigm. As a Blog supporter & reader at Lijit (and a guy who works in the garage while the baseball game plays live over the radio), I connect to Mark Ramsey’s message of inclusion for radio in a Web 2.0 world.

Mark and the Gurus’s Mark assembles offer enlightened ideas to do just this. The question is will radio owners consider them as this new century goes top speed with media delivery? Or will they just bellow about on the heath?

Barney Moran

Grateful Word

 

Instructables: Make acoustic panels for your recording studio or home theater

Instructables is one of the best blogs for learning ways to make things yourself for 'grate' fun, AND never hurts to save $$$ in the process. Another site I wish I had when I was in 8th grade. We all dreamed of making our bedroom or basement a recording studio, remember? Now you can.

From Instructables:
 

"Acoustic treatments are often used to help improve the acoustics of a room by taming "flutter echoes," "room modes," and other problems which arise from a room's dimensions and construction.

Although a variety of treatments are available for commercial use, they tend to be quite expensive. After some research both online and in print, we came across several sources for DIY acoustic treatments using rigid fiberglass panels and simple frames. These are often referred to as "bass traps," although the ones that we're focusing on have a fairly wide range of absorption. While commercial versions are available for almost $100, we were able to make these panels for about $24 each."

Read the simple way to do it in step by step pictures and instructions at Instructables:

One of the best, and oldest, War Blogs

 

Knitware Blog turned me onto a blog where William Henry Bonser Lamin's descendants recreate his letters from the WWI front in a daily blog, exactly 90 years to the date Lamin wrote them.

I posted just yesterday about the Good Egg Gazette being an example of the future of blogging, so of course today I find http://www.wwar1.blogspot.com and what do I say. This use of an historical diary, posted daily in the same delivery sequence of William's 90 year old diary is a fantastic use of the blog medium. Daily, whether you or I stumble on it, someone is not just getting a breakthrough idea, they have the 'channel' Warhol described last century. Immediacy of instant publication allows the idea life. No production costs, no capital needed, no pitch to a middleman or agency. To borrow from Nike, "Just Do It."

Tomorrow we will find another blog that is the future, literally.

Barney Moran

Grateful Word

 

The Good Egg Gazette

Pinch me I love this blog!

I read blogs all day for Lijit. Get paid too. Think its fun? When I land on rare and special ones like The Good Egg Gazette, it sure is.

Look, I don't have any idea who's right about the fight last night at Ruby's. I don't know Steve, or the service at Lincoln's, or how hard Missy has to work there.

What I do know is The Good Egg is as much the future of blogging as any blog you can show me. Local talk with locals commenting is the new paradigm. Good Egg is the example of the future. Incidents and talk of the community previously scuttled around only in living rooms, or with the local cop stopped at the light, or at the grocery cash register, is now online. What tells us how very special Good Egg truly is, are the comments from others in the community of Stuart, Iowa.

Author Nate Westre is leveraging something newspapers, even online ones, can't. Personal perspective on people and behavior. And because Nate can and does, it strikes a nerve and community responds.

Meanwhile both the community itself, and the entire world, are in Stuart, Iowa. Viva Stuart, Iowa!

http://goodegggazette.com/

Barney Moran
Grateful Word

Cant Touch This: Bay Area Kicks Sneaker Blog

BAK, Bay Area Kicks, is another great example of the evolution of the Blog. Started as a .com in 2003 to leverage the web as an online sneaker business, BAK staff realized TALKING and SHARING information about sneakers was a critical component of the online sneaker experience. Ba-Da-Bing, the Bay Area Kicks Blog.

This is no IBM commercial about 'just talk', this is another hard example of how Blogs are redefining information as a component of intelligent, thoughtful, customer oriented marketing. Going are the days an investor rented the store, stocked the goods, and paid people minimum wage to sell. We are moving to  the 'fully/multi/expecting to be' informed consumer; only the informing retailer will survive the wave.

Oh yeah. You cant touch this sneaker. Unless you fly to Asia. Do'h!

http://www.bayareakicks.com/

Leno & Conan contemplate doing what blog Publishers do.

Don't get me wrong, I respect any show host who has to get in front of a camera 5 days a week and not suck.

Ton's of blogs suck. Yes, correct, this blog has sucked. But it's funny to hear the back end of how things work for shows during this writer's strike, and the quandary host's are in to 'just do it'; talk their own words, not something written for them to speak.

This strike IS different from previous writer's strikes. At stake are the tentacles of new media feeds, and how the people who actually create content are paid for its delivery. There are parallels all over concerning how middlemen can make their blood sucking living now the creator is connecting DIRECTLY to the consumer. This is the bridge society to the next paradigm, a moneyless society beyond any nightmare BUSHIES can comprehend beyond communism or 'socialized medicine.'

Imagine a life where you  create for the sake of creation and not the accolade and materialism of creating it? It isn't hard to doo....

Like the parasite TicketMaster, or the real life handicapping disease real estate's "MLS",   last century 'middle men'  services lose value daily. The dance we watch now is their determination to keep status quo for as long as possible.

Barney Moran
Grateful Web

The great bloggers CANT quit. Take Ronni Bennett.

On the morning of December 3, 2007, Ronnie Bennett posted she was shutting down her premiere blog about what its like to grow older, Time Goes By. Really growing older. With Sex Toys and everything. The Good, The Bad & the Ugly. The real poop, not aunt Bea's coffee table version of becoming older in America and the world.

By Friday of that week, December 7, Ronnie reneged. Her blog would not come down, she would not go gently into that good night. However it was not soley her inner soul making the decision to continue blogging. Readers, many who started their own blogs because of Ronnie's words, implored her to continue her voice. Read the comments after her shut down post for yourself.

It's a new era, a new paradigm. Anyone who calls individual blogging a bubble need look no further then Ronni Bennett and her impact to understand the power of the individual voice has arrived for good.

Thank you, Ms. Bennett.

--Grateful Word Editors

Web Company Evangelists get together in Boulder Evangicamp

  Just because there is a RED A on this blog does not mean I cannot be an Evangelist. Last night in Boulder, I had the unique opportunity to meet with people who do the same thing I do, at different web companies: Evangelize their product to blog publishers. It was, in last century’s terminology, a sales meeting of salespeople.

However the rules, the tools, the clients we pursue have changed since Willy Loman, and our December 6th Boulder Evangicamp covered the new ground of working the Web 2.0 world.

We decided to meet as we share a common and new opportunity/challenge reaching out to potential Web publishers. Though our titles and goals are similar, the products we each represented last night do not compete in function. Our common stories and lessons learned benefited each of us. Maybe, we can also work together in special cases and bundle our services for a unique publisher when it works for them.

The competition, we agreed, is for real estate on publishers websites. A blog has only so much space, and in the end, only its publisher(s) can decide what products or functions make sense for their site and content. Among our group was myself, Tara, Kevin and Micah for Lijit, Emily of Fuser, Josh from Intense Debate, Dean from Me.Dium , Josh from Madkast, Rob of Eventvue ( in closed Beta at the time of this writing), Andrew with StartUp Weekend, Ari of Filtrbox, Brett Copy Brighter SEO and Jenn of Yallery.

"The rules?" We asked and offered around the table. 1) Be honest and to the point when reaching out to publishers. As mavericks blazing the trail on the forefront of blogging, publishers are savvy, smart, busy people who hate spam and pitches more than the Plague. 2) ANYTHING emailed can be converted into Public Fodder on a blog. It's as if the used car salesman's every word now is read around the world by everyone. You can call it forced honesty perhaps. Anything else will simply sink you. There is no room for embellishment or promises of functionality that are grey or wobbly. Imagine if at your job, all your written exchanges with clients was on the internet, or could be, at anytime.

(ed note: Ok, yeah. We had booze and played Rock Band)

"The business?" we asked each other. It’s totally new. We are still figuring it out. There is still trial and error. This is why web evangelists sharing experience was so good to hear. For example, what do you do with a user who exploits the product? Whose site posts illegal or pornographic material? Some blog widgets allow users to interact. What happens when a user is not simply socializing, but marketing without subtlety and incessantly to other users? What if the content of the site is minors displayed sexually? Calls to Jihad? These are not easy topics, but this is the public world we evangelists of web tools for publishers wade into. It's the public. It is not about having or coming to an easy answer to these issues last night. Like my Daddy Boot Camp Class for new, expectant fathers, the act of sharing concerns and stories of dealing with common issues amongst us was cathartic. Its helpful to know when you are not alone.

“The Tools?” All of us got to blogging ourselves and learning the perspective of being a publisher before we did our first outreach. Some of us, it’s true, the same day we got the job. This is simply how quickly this emerging paradigm is growing. To speak to a publisher, we need to be publishers. This is a critical component: having a unique voice of your own. We don't just sell you the car. We have a blog about cars. Read it first, and then look at our lot. We drive too. We fill up the tank. We get pitched from evangelists just like you. And we have needs we search for solutions to. Just like you. Here's a solution we found. We tried it, it worked. You try it.

We talked about the times we get our product installed the same day, and when we talk with a publisher for months responding to questions and comments before they opt in. Blogs are their babies, the look, the performance; the style is personal to each publisher. You’re just not going to walk into their living room and tell them where to place the sofa.

For a group of Evangelists, I was so happy I was probably the biggest ego in the room. No one was there to promote their product; no one was interested in putting down someone else’s product. We were truly hungry to hear each other’s experiences. I hope our Boulder group can meet again and build on this dynamic. I am proud to be in this industry with these minds.

 

Related Links:

Josh Larson’s Post 1 one thinking about doing an Evangicamp

Tara’s Post on Evangicamp (where I swiped her pic for this post)

 

Renaissance People: David Hall

Grateful Web Renaissance People: David Hall

As we stumble about Blogs on the internet, we occasionally bump against 'uber' folk, Renaissance people; folks who seem to do well at anything they set their mind to. More fascinating, are those whose interests vary widely. The artist/mathematician, the eco industrialist/tri-athlete, the ballet dancer/poet. Blogs showcase these often hidden personalities in a new light, and allow individual personalities to craft their collection of skills in unique personal frames, without last centuries “agent.”

One way to find Renaissance people is the Lijit "Explore" feature, with its visualization of who reads a personality, who this personality reads, and who they consider peers. Lijit's explore lets us move from person to person in a continuous organic flow via their chosen connections, and in this way Grateful Web found David Hall.

From David’s sketches and painting of the Red Deer Ptarmigan, to his writings about Scotland, to his ability as a programmer (click on one of his prints and see how his site delivers a display of it) and beyond including photography, conservation and more, David uses the blog format to provide an impressive and delightful journey into his imagination and logical prowess.

Remember last century and home life even 1,000 years ago? Mum and Dad wanted us to find a trade and become good at it, no side projects. How lucky many of us are today, to pursue wherever our minds take us, and how lucky we as spectators are in this age to follow along the paths of other's worlds.

To read about other Renaissance People posted on Grateful Web, try searching “Renaissance” in our Lijit search silly.

Images © David Hall, used by permission

http://david-hall.biz/

 

Weblogcartoons.com & Dave Walker

Dave Walker makes free cartoons for blogs.

This is the website to get them:

http://www.weblogcartoons.com/

Was Dave thinking he did not have another idea for a cartoon and drew this one?

I would ask him, but its like asking him, 'Why do you do this?' But some people do, anyway.