We ARE the media!

Wow. Webzine was a blast - I already wrote about that. But how about this: I interviewed Bre Pettis for the 49Media podcast and he interviewed me!

This stuff is really wild.

And talk about We Are The Media: check out this video from Micheal Verdi!

Back home & Webzine

Wow, what a trip. Since I missed my plane on Wednesday I got a flight on Saturday - in London they told me I was flying through NY JFK, that was not good. I don't think it has ever taken me that long to get from Hamburg to San Francisco. Blah. Ugh. Yuck. Pft. Ththth.

I did make it Webzine though, that was a blast - so many cool people, such many great thoughts - so much going on. It's really too bad I missed Saturday.

Rats - I've been trying to upload a couple of photos to Flickr but it keep coming back with error messages. Hm.

1/2 million unique visitors per month @ 49media

Wow. 49Media is taking off. We're averaging 500,000 unique visitors per month.

This is not only good news for us, but also for personal media - people are interested. People are VERY interested. Blogs, podcasts and videoblogs are coming on strong, and they're here to stay.

Elaine

Just got these from Elaine, who found a post from her blog culturelifenewsii.blogspot.com on 49media - aren't they just wonderful:



This is the kind stuff that makes working on 49media so much fun!

Thanks so much Elaine!

Oh, this is the photo I sent her:

Podcastcon UK

Wow, I've had a little time to go through some of the posts people have been making on the conference in London... wow. It seems like everybody agrees that this was an absolutely awesome event. And the people there... I spoke with so many wonderful people... and learned so much...

Check out the Podcastcon Photos!

6h at London Heathrow

It has been a few days but I just had to post this - I spent 6 hours at Heathrow waiting for my flight to Hamburg... not all that much to do but drink beer and watch Cricket on TV, can't say I know how that game works, although I sure did try to understand what was going on. Anyway, this animation pretty much sums up my 6 hours there.

Podcastcon UK - the day after

It's Sunday morning here in London, I'm in my hotel stealing somebody's Wifi to get online... but I am!

Podcastcon UK was absolutely fabulous. Paul, Adrian, Alex and Neil really pulled this thing off - it was a success from start to finish.... and it wasn't over until they closed the pub at 11, when everybody headed home to rest their sore bodies and minds.

Sadly enough I didn't get any audio, but I'm going to try to get some of the people I met there on the phone for interviews...

All of the speakers really had fascinating things to say (I'm not speaking for myself here of course... duh) - but one thing that really stands out in my mind is what James Cridland from Virgin Radio had to say about Podcasting and mainstream/commercial radio: is podcasting a threat to traditional radio or is it the other way around??? Many, many people like to listen to stuff that they're used to - and not necessarily new or crazy or original stuff... I really think it's important for the podcasting community to keep in mind that talking and listening to the people of traditional media is extremely important. Because there's not going to be only podcasting in 5 years, just like there's not only blogging today - it'll all be out there. All of this new media is not replacing anything, it's in addition to what's already out there now.

(This is the same text I posted to podcrawl)

Yeah man, it's relevant!

Jeez. I've been thinking about relevance for ever, so it seems at least. What in the heck is relevant in Weblogs, Podcasts and Videoblogs? Tags? Hits? Links? Blah? Blip?

So I was just sitting here staring at 49media, drinking a glass of red wine and thinking. Yahoo's got the Buzz index. The buzz index. The buzz index. I look at what people are searching for in 49media. That's a buzz index too! But it's the buzz index for the people that are actually using 49media to find cool stuff in weblogs: images, podcasts, videoblogs) - that's what people are looking for. That's what's relevant... at least for a home page, the page that people go to and see first when they get to 49media. They still browse and click here and there, but if they type in a search, then that's what they're looking for.

So what does that mean? Well, check it out - click over to 49media and see what comes up for the words people are interested in... you may not like it, I may not like it, but that's what people are really interested in. And there's nothing I can do about it.

VlogEurope in Amsterdam

Wow. That was a great event yesterday at the Mac House in Amsterdam. Gabe and the Xolo team did such an amazing job and they are absolutely wonderful people! The room was packed with people interested in videoblogging and the presentations were awesome. Got back to Germany at about 3am this morning, totally exhausted but happy.

Check out Joel's videoblog for some video!

And - on the way home we were stopped by some friendly German customs officers who wanted to make sure we weren't bringing some Pot into Germany from Amsterdam. I told them that I had thought about bringing some but didn't have time to get any... the guy seems quite surprized to hear me say that. I guess he didn't believe me though because he searched our bags - without finding anything of course. The good thing about the whole thing was that I was getting pretty tired and them stopping us woke me up - so I managed driving to Hamburg in the middle of the night quite well!

In Amsterdam

Arrived in Amsterdam yesterday - actually found a hotel right across from the Mac House which is totally cool because I can use their Wifi from my room. Totally cool!

Met Jan, Jay, Ryanne, Daniel and some of the other videobloggers that are here for VlogEurope - what a great bunch of people! I'm looking forward to the presentations today, meeting more great people and hopefully being able to interview some of them for the podcast!

I'm co-authoring at Podcrawl

Wow, I'm now a co-author at Podcrawl - Hilary's got such a great site where she's 'scouring the net for the best in podcasting' - I'll be at Podcastcon UK so I'll hopefully be able to interview some cool podcasters while I'm there - I know there'll be enough of them!

I just posted my interview with Paul Nicholls at Podcrawl, he's one of the organizers of Podcastcon UK. Wow.

Podcast Hotel

I had a great time at the Podcast Hotel event in Portland. It was a great networking opportunity and I think we all learned a whole lot and also had tons of fun. Portland is a great city - it was amazing how totally cool and friendly the people are there!

I got spam.

Wow, I'm thrilled - now I'm part of the spammed blogs league. Just got this:

A real enlightening blog. Don't stop now. This may be of interest to you; how to buy & sell collection agency [link removed, duh!] on interest free credit; pay whenever you want.

and

Your blog is nice . If you've ever had a bad hair day, I'm sure you'd be interested in hair Dryers Quality hair Dryers

And they write that this is an enlightening blog! And that my blog is 'nice'. Finally, somebody is enlightened by my blog! Oh thank you spammer! You made my day!

Now that I think about it - I actually had a bad hair day today - I used my girlfriend's shampoo - that screwed up everything. Or was it something else... maybe I should click that link after all!

Anyway - I'll follow Steven's preaching and start deleting this shit. I sure hope this won't become a full time job - I'm just too freakin' busy. Hm. but what I do about those bad hair days?

Oh wait - I know what I'll do - I'll put in the captcha thingys (uh - 'word verification' as they call it here). That'll do it. Or will it? I don't know - those f-ing spamming f-ers probably have that stuff figured out by now too!

Podcasting stuff

That's my podcast setup. I know - not very impressive, especially the double mic I soldered and taped together for phone interviews. But it works. And it was cheap. And some people have said that the sound quality isn't half bad. I love it.

Oh - that red thingy is my iRiver iFP-899 - with 1GB of memory. It'll record 16h of 44khz stereo - and the quality is really good with that stereo mic I'm using - just not in coffee shops when they're steaming milk right next to where you're sitting or you're interviewing outside and the wind's blowing like crazy. Otherwise it's perfect!

And those postits and pens are almost important as the hitech stuff - so when I'm in an interview I can scribble down questions that pop into my mind so I don't forget them 30 seconds later. The scrunched up postits are questions I decided not to ask after all!

Hurricane Citizen Media

I was listening to NPR where they were talking about not getting information from places outside of New Orleans and Mobile on what's going on... because big media seems to be concentrating their reporting on these areas.

I'm seeing that 49Media is proving itself to be a great source for information on this horrific event - because it's coming up with photos, audio and video from citizens, not corporate media.