49Media Events: Blogging, Podcasting & Videoblogging Events

We've just added a new feature to 49media: 49Media Weblog Events where you can view and post upcoming events focused on Blogging, Podcasting and Videoblogging that are happening around the world. There are configurable feeds and different ways to include new events on your web site or blog.

There are already quite a lot of cool events posted there - check it out and add any events that you might know about!

Busy Busy Busy

Wow, it's really getting crazy, but I love it. This is what I have planned for the next couple of weeks:

Podcast Hotel Podcast Jams in Portland on Sept 7 & 8
Meet The Vloggers at the Portland Apple store on Sept 8
IBC conference in Amsterdam on Sept 12 & 13
VlogEurope in Amsterdam
Podcastcon UK in London on Sept 17
Webzine 2005 in San Francisco on Sept 24 & 25

And maybe some other cool stuff that I'm still figuring out.

And of course tons of interviews with amazing people on the 49media podcast!

What?

Gosh, I just realized that I completely forgot that I have a blog. What should I write about? Man, don't know. I've been so busy working on the 49Media networks and interviewing the coolest people for the 49Media podcast and thinking about the Podcast Hotel, Webzine, MeetTheVloggers and now even VlogEurope and God knows what else.

But let me say (well, actually write) this - Uta and I have been working on stuff the past days using Skype and SpinXpress (and a few other gizmos) - and even though we're 6000 miles apart it's absolutely amazing how easy it is to work together and actually get something done.

Whew. A blog post. Good night everyone!

Video Blogging & 49Media in SF Chronicle

There's a great article in the Chronicle from Vanessa Hua about the SF video bloggers and ways to find videoblogs, including 49media. Yeah!

Meeting Nichelle at Blogher

I met Nichelle at Blogher and I'll be interviewing her soon for the 49Media Podcast. She's just great!

And please - take a look at all the cupcakes!


Oh - I should mention that this photo is from Marian.

Vloggers on NPR

Great piece on NPR this morning! Schlomo, Ryanne, Rene, Jay and even I got to say a few things about what Videoblogging is about.

From the NPR page:

Andy Warhol believed everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame; vloggers say everyone will be famous to 15 people.

Hm. We'll see about that.

ChewingGumVolley Podcast = Explicit????

What in the heck is going on here? Now I see that the ChewingGumVolley podcast is marked as explicit in iTunes (in RED of course, gotta make sure people are warned!). What are they planning to do? Mark every podcast explicit where the host uses a four letter word? Or even worse: talks about sex?

I even heard somebody say that the 49Media podcast gets marked as explicit in iTunes, although it hasn't happened in my iTunes. How do they figure this out? Do they scan the post descriptions for 'bad' words? Or do they have something that can actually smell explicit stuff? What exactly is 'explicit'?

This is really getting weird.

Academy of Art blocking 49Media

Ok, so here's the deal: We were at the Academy of Art in San Francisco (yes, that's right: SAN FRANCISCO!!!!) today for Meet The Vloggers. It was my turn to show 49Media - I got on the computer, typed in 49media.com and it came back with something like 'Site blocked because of pornographic content'.

Now how about that. Yes, there is an adult section in 49media which you can access if you click on the 'Over 18' link. And yes, some of the stuff in there is pretty wild.

But what is blogging about? Huh? It's about freedom. It's about saying and showing what the heck you want. It's about Art. It's about politics. It's about hobbies, entertainment, tech, society etc etc etc. It's about what PEOPLE think is wrong and right in the world.

Now how can this be? Why is this school blocking content that is just showing what people in the world are thinking about our society? About their daily lives?

Should 49Media not show thumbnails and links to any weblog posts where you can see parts of the human body that aren't normally seen on the streets? Should we not show that there are podcasts about relationships and sexuality and what people can do to improve their sex life? Is this not a part of our lives?

So if they're blocking 49Media then shouldn't they be blocking Google and Yahoo? I know that you can go to Yahoo, click on advanced, click on 'Show me adult' and you get some pretty wild stuff, about as wild as you can get actually.

Maybe they should turn off the whole Internet? Or maybe just show Whitehouse.gov?

Sheesh. I'm going to bed. Good night.

Broken Windows

Just discovered this:

The researchers did a test. They took a nice car, like a Jaguar, and parked it in the South Bronx in New York. They retreated back to a duck blind, and watched to see what would happen. They left the car parked there for something like four days, and nothing happened. It wasn't touched. So they went up and broke a little window on the side, and went back to the blind. In something like four hours, the car was turned upside down, torched, and stripped—the whole works.

Read on here, it applies to BUSINESS!

Meet The Vloggers

Meet The Vloggers at the Apple Store in San Francisco yesterday was a blast. I think we really pulled off a great event, there were about 40 people there including Laura from NPR who recorded pretty much everything - it'll be on NPR sometime soon!

It's wonderful to be a (small) part of this group of wonderful people - I think they're really making a difference, and I'm convinced video blogging is on the verge of exploding into something really massive.

We're doing another Meet The Vloggers this afternoon at the Acadamy of Art in San Francisco... that should be great as well!