Blogher

Wow, I'm slowly recovering from Blogher yesterday - that was an awesome event. I met so many great people my head is still spinning. The panel discussions were absolutely fascinating.

One of the many things discussed there that struck me was the importance of incoming links as an indicator for the importance/value of a weblog. Some ideas were that it might make sense to look at the outgoing links, how many comments there are etc. The discussions about asking for links (linkwhoring?) was also very interesting, how people see that differently: from 'no way' to 'of course I do it!'. Wow.

Now I'm off to Meet The Vloggers in San Francisco. That should be lots of fun!

I am not a company. I am a human being.

Several notes to self:

I am not a company. I am a human being.

I am not a company. I am a human being.

I am not a company. I am a human being.

I am not a company. I am a human being.

I am not a company. I am a human being.

I am not a company. I am a human being.

I am not a company. I am a human being.

I am not a company. I am a human being.

I am not a company. I am a human being.

Amazing.

Imagine a world where everyone was constantly learning, a world where what you wondered was more interesting than what you knew, and curiosity counted for more than certain knowledge. Imagine a world where what you gave away was more valuable than what you held back, where joy was not a dirty word, where play was not forbidden after your eleventh birthday. Imagine a world in which the business of business was to imagine worlds people might actually want to live in someday. Imagine a world created by the people, for the people not perishing from the earth forever.

Exactly.

My Desk

My Desk
Originally uploaded by itzechris.

What a mess - but I like it.

Oh, the wine glass is allowed after 6pm weekdays, 4pm on weekends. You've gotta have some rules in life, right?

I'm going to Blogher!

Yup, just got my confirmation for Blogher.

I was stupid enough to wait until the day when they ran out of slots to try and register, so I got on the waiting list... and today I got my pass. Woooohhoooooo!

Who gives us permission to explore our world?

Steven just turn me on to this. I can't believe I hadn't seen it before. This is truly amazing - and from 1999. But with all of the stuff going on with blogs, podcasting and videoblogging now - it's as important now as it was then.

There's tons of great stuff in there - this section just amazing:

Who gives us permission to explore our world? The question implies that the world in fact belongs to someone else. Who gives us permission to communicate what we've experienced, what we believe, what we've discovered of that world for ourselves? The question betokens a history of voice suppressed, of whole cultures that have come to believe only power is sanctioned to speak. Because the ability to speak does involve power. It entails ownership and the control conferred by ownership. As the saying has it: "Money talks, bullshit walks."

Right then and there, in that chance encounter in some random Tokyo coffee shop, I gave myself blanket permission: to be curious, to learn, to speak, to write. But it's a long road from permission to practice, and there's plenty of negative reinforcement in between. Freedom of expression may be called out loftily in the U.S. Constitution, but even after two centuries of democracy, it's still a far cry from second nature.

And now we can podcast and videoblog... and damn it - I'm gonna do it!

Oh:

Don’t rely on lists, self-styled "gurus," or business books.

Damn it!

Content Producer Payment/Tip solution: rel="payment"

Peter, Josh, Kenyatta and Jay have suggested that there is a need to facilitate payments/tips for the producers of weblog media content when the content is found and listened to/viewed on aggregators such as 49Media.

We just implemented this in 49Media. There's a first example in 49Media here.
Click here for more information on how it all works!

Weblog, Podcast & Videoblog Ranking?

Working on 49Media and listening to all of the discussions going on between bloggers, podcasters and videobloggers about ranking systems. It seems that there's a consensus that pretty much all ranking sytems suck.

What does that mean for 49Media? Well I suppose it sucks.

But we are trying to do the best we can. So we basically have four systems:

Popularity
This is based on the number of clicks an item/weblog gets within 49Media and when somebody clicks on a 'Vote For Me On 49Media' button on a person's site.

Time
There's a page that just puts up what the spider finds, in the order that it finds it. The only thing we do here is hide 'adult' stuff which you'll only see if you've clicked an 'Over 18' link.

Channels
We place weblogs in 15 different channels based on where we think they belong. Within each channel, the newest item is placed at the top of a channel. But - items that get clicked on are skewed towards the top - but this is leveled off every two hours, items that are more than two days old get leveled off more than newer ones. So, for example, when Mariah Carey had her wardrobe malfunction, posts relating to this tended to be at the top of the entertainment channel - but as soon as this dies down it'll be gone, and new items will be populating the top ranks.
So this channel system gives pretty much any post from any weblog that's in a channel more or less the same chance of being at the top for a while.

WOW!
Anybody can put any item on the WOW! page (again, you only see adult if you've turned it on). So this gives more obscure things a chance of being noticed. Each weblog can only be WOWed once a day, and you have to enter a comment so people know why it's wow.

Hm. What do you think about that?

MEET THE VLOGGERS in San Francisco

Go to meetthevloggers.blogspot.com to find out what it's all about!

Another Wardrobe Malfunction

This time it's Mariah Carey. How do I know? Well, just by looking at what's getting clicked on the most in the 49Media entertainment channel today.

Now why is this something I'm writing about here? Well, it turns out that now not only Google, but also Yahoo are indexing 49media like crazy - and this wardrobe malfunction post is currently on the first page of Yahoo when you search for "mariah carey wardrobe malfunction".

So, this is a good day for 49media and a good day for grass roots media - because people are coming to 49media because of this tidbit of information (and probably looking for a photo or two) and then they're seeing all of the other cool stuff that's in there: like podcasts, vlogs etc etc etc... where else does this sort of mass media info get mixed in with grass roots media?

Now I'm taking Mikey for a walk up the hill.

Promising?

I don't know about all of these super-duper blogs. I subscribe to BoingBoing and enjoy or get a laugh or two out of about 40%-50% of the stuff. That's not bad. They're actually pretty good. But now there's a post in there pointing us to a new blog called TipsyDesign that Mark Frauenfelder calls 'promising'.

Now this new blog has three posts in it which are quite nice and interesting. But how in the heck does this super blogger know that it's promising? What is going on here?

I wish somebody would tell me how you know that a blog is promising when there are only three posts - and the last one is from July 2nd - today's the 13th.

Hhmmmpppffff.

Videoblog Interview

Markus Sandy interviewed me on video here. What an experience!

Vloggercue - Ojai

Wow, what a weekend! Drove down to Ojai with Dave and had a great time at Markus' house - meeting the most wonderful people.

I managed to watch some of the stuff going on online - didn't manage to get in on the discussion... it seemed I was always busy speaking with the people I was meeting in person. I should probably have gotten my act together - but it seemed so much nicer to be able to speak with people face to face- I seem to spend too much time in front of my computer communicating with people virtually....

A BIG THANKS to Alicia and Markus for their wonderful hospitality!

London & Blogs

What just happened in London is horrible.

I think that one of the main reasons people kill each other is because they don't understand people that are different from themselves which in turn makes them scared, which in turn seems to make them do horrific things.

My hope is that blogs will eventually lead to a better understanding between people of different nations, different skin color, different whatever. If people start communicating directly then they will hopefully gain a better understanding of each other's perspectives and they'll end up not being scared of each other.

And people will stop blowing things up, invading other countries - they'll stop hating each other. Maybe some day we won't even need borders anymore - we'll just be citizens of the country 'Earth'.

Blogs, Podcasts and video blogs might just be the best thing that has ever happened to us.

Webzine 2005 Drinkup

This just in from Renegade:

Webzine 2005 DRINKUP!
Wednesday, July 6th. 7-10pm
House of Shields, downtown San Francisco
39 New Montgomery St. @ Market (Montgomery BART/Muni)

Come join Webzine 2005 organizers for our first Webzine DRINKUP! This is an impromptu public gathering and we encourage anyone interested in speaking, attending, or criticizing the event to show up. The idea is to get interested zinesters & independent publishers in a room prior to the big event to meet, schmooze and ultimately be so blown away with how fucking awesome everyone is, that it will be cake to convince friends in Norway & Mozambique to come to Webzine 2005 in September.

Come have a drink with us and learn more about what's in store for Webzine 2005. Spread the word and prepare to liveblog, photoblog, podcast and vlog the event! Use tag: wz05drinkup0706

or cut and paste this into your blog entry:

wz05drinkup0706