| Friday, 28 July 2006, 11:18 am Tags: Blogging |
Like Sam and Frodo, Alex Lindsay and I are headed there and back again.
I smiled even more broadly a minute later when they called me to the desk and upgraded me to first class. I felt guilty leaving Alex behind in economy. For about two seconds.
Alex was busy setting up his new Vox blog anyway.
Any extra bit of luxury is more than welcome. I’ve just finished 15 TV shows in four days. I’m tired, but it’s that happy and satisfied kind of tired. I really enjoy the gang in Toronto – we have such a blast shooting the show. It’s almost like a vacation every month. The kind of vacation where you work really hard all day then fall into bed exhausted every night. Come to think of it, it really doesn’t sound at all like a vacation.
Starting next month I’ll be staying at the same hotel every time I come to Toronto, in the same room, and that will make it a little more homey. This will be my 28th trip in two years. I’ve been staying in an assortment of large hotels in the financial district and they’re just so impersonal. Nice, but big.
The new place is a teriffic, fun, little hotel (only 19 rooms) with three great restaurants, including two patios and rooftop dining, and a nightclub in the basement, and it’s in one of Toronto’s hippest neighborhoods. They already treat me like family.
Despite the grueling schedule, every week I’m here I try to soak up a little Toronto culture.
Last night I saw the musical version of The Lord of the Rings at the Princess of Wales Theater. It’s an amazing show – well worth seeing if you come to T.O. Unfortunately it’s closing and moving to London in September, so you’d better hurry.
It’s not perfect by any means, but much better than the reviews would indicate. And the production is stunning. The Balrog at the end of the first act is chilling. Literally.
It was clearly a challenge to get all three books into three and a half hours, but there’s as little exposition as possible and ultimately it works. I cried at the end and left the theater singing. Two furry toes up.Â
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| Wednesday, 26 July 2006, 12:03 pm Tags: Screen Savers, TechTV, Video |
I recently came upon a cache of old Tech TV promos. Ah memories.
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| Wednesday, 26 July 2006, 8:22 am Tags: Amber, Call For Help, TechTV, Video |
Many people don’t realize it, but my true calling is as a hair and makeup consultant. Here I give Amber a few tips and demonstrate the latest airbrush application techniques. Just remember kids, it’s not how you feel, it’s how you look… and you look marvelous!
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| Wednesday, 26 July 2006, 5:13 am Tags: Blogging |
We tape four Call for Help episodes a day during my week in Toronto. As
you might imagine, lunch assumes a major importance in such a long
march. Here we dine al fresco between show 365 and 366.
As you’ll see in the video, we often discuss topics of great significance.
From left to right, our intern Snowball, Command-N’s Mike Lazazzera, Flashmaster Mike Hogue, Lab Rat Sean Carruthers, and my co-host Amber MacArthur.
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| Tuesday, 25 July 2006, 2:31 pm Tags: Blogging |
Normally I wouldn’t comment on a pissing match between web sites, but in this case I think what’s happening is not so nice.
To recap, Netscape boss Jason Calacanis offered to pay Digg’s top posters (as well as the top posters on Newsvine, Flickr, Reddit, and del.icio.us) to post on netscape.com’s ripoff Digg page instead. Kevin Rose called the proposal BS on his podcast “Diggnation.” Calacanis reared up and complained that Kevin didn’t address the issue. Kevin shot back. Go ahead read. And watch. I’ll wait.
Jason is getting more mileage out of this than he deserves, but you can’t blame the guy for trying to pump up his web site. I do blame him, however, for saying that Digg is ripping off its top contributors by not paying them. The implication is that Kevin is greedy and holding out on the guys that made him a success. And he says that Kevin is stooping to an ad hominem attack??
The question is, do the top 10 contributors on a social networking site determine its success?
Of course not.
Kevin and his team created the value by building a site that attracted hundreds of thousands of users. Yes, the users also create value in aggregate but no group of 10 is more important than the rest. Can anyone, even Jason, seriously believe that netscape.com would suddenly become a better site if those 10 moved there? Would Digg be any less popular?
Digg is what it is because of the entire community that participates there. Ditto del.icio.us, and Flicker, and Newsvine. Losing any 10 contributors would make no difference at all.
Kevin doesn’t owe dirtyfratboy for his work, work he undertook on his own without any notion of payment. If Mr. Frat Boy decides to go for the gold and move to Netscape, god bless him. His move will matter not a whit to anyone, anywhere.
Jason knows this. Once again the Brooklyn boy has whipped up a nice publicity stunt. But attempting to create bogus resentments in the community is a lousy way to get publicity. I have no problem with his offer to pay Digg’s top posters. I don’t think it’s going to make any difference, but I have no problem with it.
I do have a problem when he insinuates that anyone who doesn’t pay is a capitalist pig exploiting his workers. That’s just nonsense and destructive to the very social network he pretends to want to foster.
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| Friday, 21 July 2006, 2:55 pm Tags: Blogging |
I don’t want to be a tease, but there’s some interest in putting together a TechTV reunion show for the net. Many of the TechTV hosts have said they’d participate, including Kate Botello. Kris Kosach, Chris Pirillo, and Jim Louderback. Martin Sargent has offered to host it. I know we could get all the TWiTs involved.
There are quite a few more people I’d love to see again. And I think there are a few people who would watch. I’m thinking that May 7, 2007, the ninth anniversary of the channel, would be a nice date.
We need to find a sponsor and a host. Is there someone with deep pockets out there who would like to help us put this together?
I almost hate to say it but the best people to do this would be G4 – they own the rights to all the clips, and frankly I think it would get better ratings than anything they’ve run in the last two years. Hmm. There goes that idea.
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| Wednesday, 19 July 2006, 10:38 am Tags: Blogging |
I’m testing video uploads on Vox – they work! This is a (meaningless) test Quicktime movie, shot with my new MacBook’s built-in iSight using the free Quicktime Broadcaster and saving to the Apple intermediate codec at 320×240. That codec seems to be the only one that can capture isight video in high quality at 30fps, even at 640×480.
I then opened the resulting MOV file in Quicktime Pro ($30 from Apple) and exported it as an MP4. Seems to have worked. Now that I can do it easily I can use the iSight to videoblog.
Sorry it’s such a stupid video. I was experimenting on the plane home and was too embarassed to actually say anything with people around. Next time I’ll take it into the plane’s bathroom. Or maybe not.
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| Tuesday, 18 July 2006, 11:30 am Tags: Blogging |
I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, only about an hour from Fenway. I was a Red Sox fan, of course, but I don’t think we went to Fenway Park more than once or twice. It was really fun to go back, even though it was 95 degrees at game time – and muggy as hell.
Even the field needed cooling off. I think a lot of people were tempted to run on the field for a hose down.
Some things never change at the park. I remember these Jimmy Fund boxes from forty years ago. Money raised goes to the Dana Farber Cancer institute. Coincidentally we’ve got an interview with a researcher from Dana Farber coming up on Futures in Biotech.
Fenway is 94 years old – the oldest major league ball park – and it shows. There’s a lot of “character” there. These steps have the veneer of 94 years of hot dog wrappers, spilled beer, and peanut shells. They smell kind of funky , too. But it’s a great place to see a ball game.
By the way, Sox won, throwing a combined one hitter to beat the Royals 1-0.
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| Monday, 17 July 2006, 1:10 pm Tags: Blogging |
Look what I found on Boylston St!
I’m in Boston for the Cable Television Marketing Association’s annual meeting. I’m doing a panel Tuesday (with Molly Wood, coincidentally) on portable media devices.
It’s really muggy here, but the good news is… the Red Sox are home tomorrow night and my hotel is just a few blocks from Fenway. Go Sox!
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| Friday, 14 July 2006, 8:30 am Tags: Blogging |
Interesting article in The TVNewser at MediaBistro.com
on the 10th Anniversary of the launch of The Site. That’s the TV show I helped create for Ziff-Davis many moons ago.
I’ll never forget pitching it to NBC at 30 Rock just before Christmas 1995. Then NBC News Director Andrew Lack came in in a three-piece suit and cowboy boots. He propped his booted feet up on the table and said, “ok, let’s hear it.” It was like something out of Seinfeld.
I wish I were a better packrat. I have the 90-page treatment on a disc somewhere. If I can find it I’ll post a couple of pages.
I had hoped to be the lead reporter on the show, but the NBC executives told me I had no chance of getting on camera so they stuck me in a VR suit and the character Dev Null was born. I won an Emmy for it but the only other competition was a sock puppet character on the local Spanish language station, so it wasn’t exactly a competitve category.
The show was cancelled after 18 months. Our anchor, Soledad O’Brien went back to NBC. She’s now the anchor of CNN’s American Morning. Most of the rest of us stuck around to found ZDTV six months later.
And it all started ten years ago tomorrow. The Site was a major network’s idea of what a technology TV show should look like: big on production values, light on content, but it was an important moment in the mainstreaming of the Internet. I still run into people now and then who remember me as “the guy in the suit.”
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