So tonight I had a friend from the real world ask me to go out drinking with him. I hadn’t done that in years, so I figured what the hell. I spent $15 throughout the night. Not bad for a night out I know, but my cheap ass was thinking how I could have bought everyone I talked to drinks for the night as well as served them my wife’s infamous nachos from hell. Maybe even played a really awesome bad move we could all make fun of. There were some awesome parts though and one of them happened within an hour or so of bar hopping.
We were all sitting there in a circle talking to eachother and things turned to tech related subject matters. Before you know it I had everyone’s attention trying to tell them about Twitter, Plurk, Ping, Friend Feed, and a few others and how they could all be used to enhance your real world social life. I made a joke about how I should start teching rock and roll tech classes once a month and several people in the group instantly thought that would be the greatest idea ever. Of course great ideas when everyone has had a few drinks in them and how many show up sober on a Saturday afternoon to learn why real geeks laugh at people who still get excited about MySpace is another story.
So here is my question. Should I try to start a Rock And Roll tech class in my area? How would I get people to show up? How much should I charge? Where should I host it? Do little people get offended when I call them midgets? What equiptment should I bring to these classses? In short, whould anyone care and could I pull this off?
If you are from the Olympia WA area and are interested, please let me know as soon as possible. Thanks.
So my live stream internet show has suffred greatly because my current system gives off this annoying crackle. No mater how great the show I put together, no one wanted to listen because of that annoying crackle. This along with Ubuntu releasing the latest version of their great operating system, made my current system too slow for even the simplest tasks.
Now I could have just bought all the parts at New Egg and saved a few dollars, but I decided to go with the local guy instead. There is a locally owned store that just moved way closer to me. In fact they are now about a ten minute walk from my house, so I wanted to support that. Plus, they just got robed for about ten grand of stuff. I also like having someone help guide me through things that is a few steps more geeky than I am. I may not be able to pick the most compatible components. Having someone more geeky than I am to toss ideas around with is worth any extra dough I may end up spending. I have found that cutting costs on computer purchases can really end up kicking you in the backside.
So here is what I got:
CPU AMD 9950 Quad Core
Mother Board Am2 Asus M3N78-p
Soundcard Creative X-FI Extrm Audio
2 4GB DDR2 sticks of ram
Vid PCie 9400GT 1GB
CD DVD RW 18X SATA ASUS
Hard Drive 1.5 TB Sata Seagate
Operating System Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)
Please stop drooling. You are going to ruin your keyboard. Ok, some of you might have bigger, faster gaming machines, but this will do me just fine for the next year or three. The bad news is that it won’t be ready until January 5th. So I probably won’t be able to really get it ready until the weekend of January 10th. Getting all my settings, passwords, and files transfered over is going to take some time. But look forward to the full relaunch of my live show January 12th at Rock My Monkey Live…now with way better sound quality!
So I love both Ustream & StickAm. Let me start out this rant by saying that anyone who complains about what they are giving us all for absolutely free is nothing more than a total douchebag. It’s free, so stop your bitching. However, there is a solution to all of our problems. Give us some pay level of service. Now I mostly use Ustream, so this rant will focus mostly on that service.
Now just like the friendly neighborhood crack dealer, what we get for free is a really great introduction to what they have to offer. Jump into their service with both feet and you will be totally hooked. You will however end up wanting more than what they started out giving you for free. So with this little rant I hope that one of my favorite crack dealers (I will call him Ustream) will offer a few pay services. I am hooked and now I want more crack!
First off, am I the only one who has never been able to play back a video I recorded from Ustream? Never once has it worked for me. As it is a free service I should not bitch. I can however wish they would offer me a pay version that might be put on a higher end (or a less strained) server that would play back more dependably.
Now if you use Ustream to record shows you will also find in the control panel an option to convert your video to a format your followers might be able to download more eaily. Can’t stream the archived video as I mentioned above? No problem! Just convert it to a WMV or an MPEG and let viewers download the thing and watch it offline. Ok, this is another problem. I have never been able to get this so called converter to work! I would also love to have the option to let my followers just download any file type of anything I do at anytime in any way they want. Otherwise what’s the point? Again, I am not complaining about their great free service. I am just saying I would love to have a paid version that offers these few extra things. A higher level of service for a little bit of monthly cash.
Now how much to charge for something like this? Now of course they could charge a few hundred a month to offer the level of service I am talking about in this post. Then they might get 2 or 3 people that would pay. Or they could charge $5 to $10 a month and I am pretty sure they would have a flood of people sign up. When word spreads that it is everything they promise even more people would sign up. This would at least quadruple their revenue in just a few days. If they prove me wrong I will go on my Ustream account wearing a pink tutu lip syncing to Disney Showtunes. What do I have to worry about? It’s not like anyone would be able to view the footage in archives anyways, right?
Wanna know how to get the most out of what they do offer for free? Watch the video below…
So Digg continues to go down the tubes. They keep banning top users for no apparent reason. They say it is because they were using bot programs to automate blind voting of friends’ submissions. However, many have made it very clear that this was not the case. These are people that I trust way more than the Digg staff. It seems that this is now starting to really affect their traffic as well. Mixx seems to be gaining most of these rejected Digg users and a few web traffic ranking sites are starting to show Mixx catching up very quickly. How much will they have to lose before they see that this is not the way to go?
Now this doesn’t affect me in any way because I gave up on Digg a long time ago. I think it has been around a year at this point. In fact, when they put RockMyMonkey.com on the auto-bury it inspired me to start my own site, HeavyAsHell.com. The Digg community wouldn’t know what rock was if Lemmy (from Motorhead) shoved it up their backside with the end of his boot! If it isn’t some weak 3 piece suit crap like Radiohead, Coldplay, or Weezer they get afraid and run away like the pink dress wearing little girls they are. So I created a site made for people that like to rock a little harder. Sure we have those wussy 3 piece suit rock bands, but it’s more about meat and potatoes rock, metal and punk. To me this was the start of the fall of Digg. So none of the garbage they are trying now is much of a shock to me.
Why are they doing these things that are so obviously suicide for their previously successful business? I mean they pretty much invented the style of site that so many others are now taking to the next level. So when they started to auto-bury sites like RockMyMonkey and other great bloggers it was driven by pure ego. They were the undisputed kings and no one could touch them. However, they played bully too long and the masses started to resent them. Instead of the proverbial ‘David’ kicking the butt of ‘Goliath’, they became the ‘Goliath’ that everyone wanted to bring down. Now that everyone wants to bring them down, they are making desperate last gasp efforts to reinvent themselves.
So why save themselves? Well, there is the several times they came close to being bought for millions by much bigger companies. After Google recently rejected them they started acting like they were drowning more than anything. Their moves became more desperate and the suicide began. Can they save themselves? Maybe.
How can they save themselves? Well, take a note from Mixx. Mixx kisses their users’ collective asses. Instead of looking down their noses at their users like Digg has done for so long, they seem to come off like humble servants. This has created a rather passionate fanbase. The other thing Mixx has done to win people over is an insanely open attitude towards the users. Try and email Kevin Rose and email Chris from Mixx at the same time. Don’t bother starting a time clock because it won’t be even close. Be more open. Be more honest. Don’t just accuse all the banned users of using a bot. Be clear about what each one did. If Digg was more honest, more open, more clear, and more humble they would be able to keep the king’s crown. If not, Mixx will destroy them and micro-Social sites like HeavyAsHell will grow from eating off of their corpse as well. Let’s not dance on their grave yet, though. Let’s wait until they get a little closer to their death!
So after two requests in one day I threw together this little video tutorial. This info works best with Ustream & Stickam but might work on others as well. I forgot to mention I use an Ubuntu o0erating system on the desktop and Vista on the laptop. This is to prove that the OS has nothing to do with how well your podcast can be.
So let me start out by saying that I love Mixx! Great site done by some really great people. My problem is that since I don’t have a job that puts me in front of a computer, my computer time is very limited. One way I find time for sites like Plurk and Twitter is that I can interact with them through my mobile phone. There is no way to even look at Mixx on my mobile phone at all. I have heard that they have an iPhone version of the site, but iPhone is far from being the most popular mobile OS (just the most hyped).
Mixx recently also made changes that slow users down when voting for stories. Before you could pull up the list of stories submitted by all the people you follow and vote for the ones you thought worthy of your time. Now a user has to go to each specific story to vote for it. Yeah, I know this was done in an effort to make it more difficult for spammers. However, it made people like me not able to find time for the site.
Now does this mean I am pissed off? Not in the least. Does this mean I will never use the site again? Not even close! All I am saying is that it makes it more difficult to find time for the site. All I am saying is that I can find time for sites like Twitter and Plurk easier. Less time means I go to the sites that are less time intensive. I still love Mixx! Take a look at my video interviews I did at Gnomedex. Notice the Mixx logo on my shirt? I made sure to wear that shirt when I did my video interviews as a friendly nod to my fellow mixxers, because I feel bad I have neglected the site so much recently.
So what is my point? Would you believe it isn’t actually about Mixx? I just used Mixx as an example because it works so well for the point I am about to make. When creating your site, keep mind that not everyone has a ton of time to invest into a site. If the user feels they are drowning, they can get pulled away by sites that make them feel less like they are drowning. So many sites are working so hard to make you click more so they can get more ad impressions(not Mixx). Instead the result so often is that users leave and their traffic goes down. If you are a site that has enough funding to have a mobile version, make sure it’s not just for users of one type of mobile phone. Make things easy for your users and they will thank you. As for Mixx, I hear my work schedule might change in Mid-September. Until then I will try to fit it in on the weekends maybe.
So I had a few agendas for my time at Gnomedex. First off was to network with as many people as I could and establish as many relationships with as many people in the tech world as I could. Second, I wanted to learn some things I would not be able to learn otherwise. Those two goals were reached in spades! Gnomedex is something everyone that deals with the internet should attend. This means every programmer, every blogger, every online journalist (that doesn’t want to take on the term blogger for some reason), and many others whose entire industries are drowning fast because they are so afraid of technology. Yes, I am talking about everyone that is involved with the music industry from labels, press agents, musicians, and everyone else.
Now some may look at the price and freak out. Why so damn much!? $600 may seem like a good chunk of money, but here is why it is worth it. My wife (The Queen Of Cheese herself) packed all kinds of food for me to take just in case. Well, we had to bring every bit of it back home at the end. I even joked to Chris that he must be on some evil plan to make me fatter than I already am. He said yes and smiled as he walked away. The Pirillo team (many of which are his family) worked very hard to make sure no one was ever hungry. I never paid for a single meal once I was there. The food was great too!
The second reason was the set up. While we sat around to listen to the lectures, we had nice comfortable seats, had an outlet for every single persons laptop, wi-fi internet connection that somehow handled all the bandwidth us geeks were sucking up, a kick off party with free drinks, a second party the next night where they rented out one of the hottest clubs in town for just us, and tons free stuff I’m not going to bother to list here. If Chris found a way to fit in hotels we wouldn’t have a reason to spend a single dime on anything!
Now for the vibe at this conference. hat an amazing bunch of people. Now I said that there were some lectures. It was a conference after all. However, the real big deal with Gnomedex was the people. It was all about the networking. Everyone there seems very serious about making sure that no one feels like the superstar and no one feel like a no one. There is no “little guy” at Gnomedex! Within minutes of my arrival I shook the hand of Chris Pirillo himself. Then I saw him working ever so hard to make sure he was always totally available to everyone the entire weekend. Robert Scoble is about as internet famous as it gets, but the second he got there (he was a little late) he was as approachable as anyone else. I did run into one person I call “The Gnomedex asshole”, but he was the only one out of hundreds (300 – 500 I hear).
Now I am going to try to go over the speakers as quickly as possible so this article doesn’t get too boring and long. Kris Krug did a great job with his photography talk. It was a great introduction for any beginners in the audience and it really made me feel good when I knew about everything he said. I must be learning pretty fast on my own if his talk didn’t teach me anything! Then there was some talk about some site called Ma.gnolia. Most in the audience seemed to not have a clue who or what they were even after the talk, but that was one of the few weak points of the weekend. This is to be expected and I didn’t care because I had internet to keep productivity going. Then we had Ben Huh, the owner of icanhascheezburger. He not only made us all laugh until our sides hurt, but also gave up some hints on what separates his companies sites from all the other low brow humor sites. He could have called his talk, “Why you fail and I don’t”, but he didn’t. Nice guy. The next highlight was from a woman named Beth Kanter. She challenges the Gnomedex crowd to help her raise enough money to send Leng Sopharath, an orphan from Cambodia, for her junior year at college. We made %1006 of the goal before she left the stage. This was the most powerful moment of the weekend and I am proud to say I was a part of it.
There was something about some art work called Serial Cyborg, but other than the name I never was sure what it had to do with tech. Interesting art sure, but not sure why it was at a tech conference. Friday lectures ended with something called Ignite Seattle. Not really sure what Ignite is about still, but they had these great 5 minutes lectures they hit us with at rapid fire. I loved how if it sucked it was over in 5 minutes, but if it was good it was really powerful. It ended with “Matt“. This is the guy who (in his own words) danced really badly all over the world. His whole speech was done in 5 minutes? Wow, pretty amazing stuff if you were there. After that we all took over a club in Seattle called The Showbox for 4 hours of networking, chatting, eating, drinking, and just being social off the web so we can have a more powerful social experience on the web in the future.
Saturday started off with more Ignite stuff, but then went into a talk with Sarah Lacy. For those that don’t know, at this years SXSW she had an interview with the head of Facebook that went very badly because she couldn’t seem to ask an actual question. Well this time she had a few questions, but her whole thing came off about as unfocused and scatterbrained as it could be. Very messy and I almost felt sorry for her. Kudos to Chris for giving her a second chance, but I think she has failed twice. She still needs to learn how to make a point! The next highlight was something called a Vocal Joystick. The guy showed a new advancement in technology that would allow someone to control their “mouse” or “joystick using only their voice. Then he showed how this could be used for speech therapy. Now if that made people go nuts it was nothing compared to the next highlight. Chris brought on Scott Maxwell, the Mars Rover Driver Team Lead for the Mars Exploration Rover project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory! I think a few of us shat ourselves. I am sure that for some, this talk alone was worth the price of the ticket.
Well, the entire last day I started doing interviews with everyone I could. I didn’t care how big or small they were. I wanted to interview everyone I could just to have some video interviews for this article. Sad thing was that I had no microphone and the sound on 95% of them was so bad they are not even worth posting to YouTube. Two of them did turn out pretty good though. So below are my interviews with Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo. If I did an interview with you at Gnomedex please contact me so we can do it over in audio format at least. I am going to try to hunt everyone down and do this as well, but feel free to contact me as well. My most humble apologies. Next time I am renting a better camera with a microphone jack on it. Next year I am bringing a posse too. Chris hinted that he was thinking about changing to one day conferences done in a tour format instead. I hope this isn’t what happens. Three days gives us a chance to bond more and the networking done has more lasting value than it would with a one day event. So please just keep doing the great Gnomedex you have done for the past few years Chris. We all loved it! I am saving up for Gnomedex 9.0 starting yesterday!
Robert Scoble:
Chris Pirillo:
I will try to salvage some of the others, but I would rather do the interview over if people would be willing to do it over the phone. Thanks for your understanding. I’m a noob with some of this stuff.
