Migrating my Blog to Typepad
Now Playing: NewsHour with Jim Lehrer podcast
Topic: Personal or Reflective
I've finally taken the leap to a real blogging platform and am slowly migrating my blog from this Tripod location to my new Typepad location, http://herbert.typepad.com.

Please be patient while I transition but I want to take this to the next level and I need a professional platform to do that, which was becoming increasing difficult with Tripod.

Please update your links to reflect my new blog address, http://herbert.typepad.com, and in case you were using my old Feedburner RSS link, please redirect to me new Feedburner RSS link, http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/cphsherb/dimen_designs.

Thanks to all of my faithful readers (0-5 people if I'm lucky) and please join me on the new blog.

Cape Cod Musings from Benkler
Now Playing: The Media Project #785 podcast
Topic: Personal or Reflective
I went to Cape Cod a couple of weekends ago and while it was fun to hang out with Tyler, Stacie, and Alex, I got shot down a lot over that weekend. There were a myriad of topics, including the Sat. night conversation at the restaurant that was a good wake-up call for me. But, I wasn't wrong in the other discussions we had.

I don't usually voice my opinion unless I think I'm well grounded (personality flaw perhaps, humility is the better way to look at it), meaning I've read or studied the topic.

Below are a couple of takeaways from Benkler's The Wealth of Networks, which I'm currently trying to finish, that prove my points more eloquently than I did over the weekend in Cape Cod. Just because I couldn't fully explain my point or argument all the way to this level of detail doesn't mean that scholarly experts like Professor Benkler haven't done their homework on the subjects of the mass media and the internet:

-----
1) Whether you agree with its effects, the premise here is true and critically important to understanding the future and as importantly, why the internet does fundamentally change certain economic patterns that we’ve become accustomed to over the last 50 years.

Book pg. 4 / PDF pg. 16

“First, non-proprietary strategies have always been more important in information production than they were in the production of steel or automobiles…Education, arts and sciences, political debate, and theological disputation have always been much more importantly infused with nonmarket motivations and actors than, say, the automobile industry. As the material barrier that ultimately nonetheless drove much of our information environment to be funneled through the proprietary, market-based strategies is removed, these basic nonmarket, nonproprietary, motivations and organizational forms
should in principle become even more important to the information production system.”

2) Internet trumps TV because it’s a conversation, not one-way mode of communication and it strengthens the weak bonds that are never sustained in the real world

Book pg. 15/ PDF pg. 27 (emphasis added)

“A substantial body of empirical literature suggests, however, that we are in fact using the Internet largely at the expense of television, and that this exchange is a good one from the perspective of social ties. We use the Internet to keep in touch with family and intimate friends, both geographically proximate and distant. To the extent we do see a shift in social ties, it is because, in addition to strengthening our strong bonds, we are also increasing the range and diversity of weaker connections…we have become more adept at filling some of the same emotional and context-generating functions that have traditionally been associated with the importance of community with a network of overlapping social ties that are limited in duration or intensity.”


3) Mass Media doesn’t reflect or serve what the masses really want; it gives you just enough generic content to maintain the minimal interest level so that you keep on the television

Book pg. 165-166 / PDF pg. 178-179 (emphasis added)

Mass-mediated outlets serve the tastes of the majority, expressed in some combination of cash payment and attention to advertising. Baker in Media, Markets, and Democracy shows why, however, that mass-media markets do not reflect the preferences of their audiences very well.

"Advertiser-supported media tend to program lowest-common-denominator programs, intended to "capture the eyeballs" of the largest possible number of viewers. These media do not seek to identify what viewers intensely want to watch, but tend to clear
programs that are tolerable enough to viewers so that they do not switch off
their television."

"Small increases in the number of outlets continue to serve large clusters of low-intensity preferences?that is, what people find acceptable. A new channel that is added will more often try to take a bite out of a large pie represented by some lowest-common-denominator audience segment than to try to serve a new niche market. Only after a relatively high threshold number of outlets are reached do advertiser-supported media have sufficient reason to try to capture much smaller and higher-intensity preference clusters?what people are really interested in."
-----

Taken together, my main point is that Alex was wrong in his assertions about the mainstream media and about the social value of the internet. I value your opinion, I really do (as evidenced by the homework that you assigned me), but you're wrong when it comes to these two topics.

Why I Left Rochester and Upstate/Western NY
Now Playing: newest Ben Harper album
Topic: Creative Class
I left upstate NY (or western NY as I say to non-natives who think of Albany when I say upstate) for many reasons, primarily economic and social reasons. First read Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class or Flight of the Creative Class (still in my reading queue) for some background on what western NY is facing and check out Greater Rochester Enterprise and The Rump Group, both Rochester-based organizations trying to improve the economic development of my hometown and promote the Flower City to the rest of the state and to the rest of the country. Kodak and Xerox aren't what they used to be as employers for the city and region.

Lastly, read this NYT article "Flight of Young Adults Is Causing Alarm Upstate" to round out the picture. All of this explains why I left my hometown of Rochester in western New York for greener pastures:

" In almost every place upstate, emigration rates were highest among college graduates, producing a brain drain, according to separate analyses of census results for The New York Times by two demographers, William Frey of the Brookings Institution and Andrew A. Beveridge of Queens College of the City University of New York. Among the nation's large metropolitan areas, Professor Frey said, Buffalo and Rochester had the highest rates of what he called "bright flight." "

Free Skype Out Calls, That's Huge
Now Playing: BBC overnights news on the radio
Topic: Web 2.0
I heard that Skype was now offering SkypeOut calls (from your Skype account to a normal phone number on the PSTN) for free. Running up to the Washington Monument and listening to a local NPR station on my Walkman, I exclaimed "Holy Sh*t" out loud.

Am I only one that thinks this is a huge story, another strike against the telecoms and their eventual decrease in prominence and monopoly? I've searched via Google, Tecnorati, Digg, Slashdot--wait, Slashdot has the story, and it is old, from May 15th, TechMeme, and didn't see any posts about this news. If it happened awhile ago, then I must have missed it and nobody thought it was news relevant. If not, I hope to seem some analysis of this story.

Forget Google and their new spreadsheet app (Battelle describes it as a FU to MSFT vs. Nick Carr describing Google as an Excel Add-on), Skype offering free SkypeOut calls for the rest of the year is much more important story and has a larger impact for everyday people.

And PirateBay is still giving them hell, as evidenced by their new logo:

Cape Cod Cold as Hell
Now Playing: Daily Source Code #389
Topic: Personal or Reflective

Welcome to Blogsphere Justin!
Now Playing: The Gillmor Gang - Gartner Gang-Up Part 1
Topic: Personal or Reflective
Justin, it's about time, the blogsphere truly needs your unbiased, brash opinion and humor:

http://thoughtsfromthoughtless.blogspot.com/

Failure is Good
Now Playing: Editors - Munich
Topic: Web 2.0

(turned 26 on the 26th, no birthday cake, just beer and baseball with my borther, a perfect birthday)

In response to Google's introduction of ad-click videos (not pay-per-click video ads), Umair again points out a seemingly obvious yet profound insight about new media and innovation in the future (emphasis added):

"Now, most of the chatter hinges on a simple and totally erroneous conclusion - people won't go for it, because they hate branded ads, and it will fail...

But that's either irrelevant, or it's actually a very good thing. Because Google's strategy is predicated on making millions of failures - amplifying the value of each. Failure is a deep source of advantage for players at the edge, because the marginal costs of experimentation are essentially zero.

Keep that in mind - because it's increasingly going to be what separates players like Google and MySpace from the rest of the pack (Yahoo/MSN/media players/etc), who don't understand the new rules of innovation." (Umair's post "Next Big Things: Post-Branding")

Currently Playing: Editors - Munich (heard on Shralp episode #31 from May 21, 2006)

I Couldn't Agree More
Now Playing: The Daily Source Code for 6/24/06
Topic: Personal or Reflective

A Concise Description of Ah-Hah Moments
Now Playing: Juliet Lloyd - Ordinary World
Topic: Web 2.0
I finished Battelle's book The Search, way back in January when I first came to D.C. but still never posted my comments. With little paper flags stuck in the sections that I wanted to comment on, those flags have been like middle fingers flicking me off every time I sit at my desk. The book lays there, naked without its jacket, and I keep telling myself that I need to post the three flagged sections (like the hundreds of things that I've wanted to but never posted)

Rather than hash out either my comment on the paid content-firewall issue (which I briefly covered here reviewing that Economist podcast with Dave Sifry of Technorati) or my comments on the always-on Google power of the future, here's the critical quote from this great book:

"But what may well become possible in the world of perfect search is the ability to take the clickstream of that journey and turn it into an object- a narrative thread of sorts, something I can hold and keep and refer to, a prop to aid in the telling and retelling of how I came to my answer. Tracks in the dust, so to speak, that others can follow, or question to discover how I came to my conclusions. And these tracks are not just potential narratives for others to read; they can also be objects that can be spidered y a search engine, providing them with an entirely new order of intelligence about how people learn. In the aggregate, these clickstreams can provide a level... As Bush outlined, the memex gains its potency by capturing the traces of a researcher's discovery through a corpus of knowledge, then storing those traces of intelligence so the next can learn from and build upon them. Clickstreams are the seeds that will grow into our culture's own memex- a new ecology of potential knowledge- and search will be the spade that turns the Internet's soil." (pg. 257-258)

I've mentioned these ah-hah moments a couple of times before, but it the section quoted above that that cemented this idea concisely and eloquently. It captured an idea, sensation, experience that I've had many times since first surfing the next back in '96 or '97.

I remember and believe in these ah-hah moments they're the foundation of learning and acquiring new knowledge. And that's not me talking but it's from a academic video on the study of learning that my Dad bought my brother and I when we were in high school. Maybe he thought we weren't serious enough with our studies or maybe he just thought we'd enjoy it ( we didn't) but I do remember this one thing from the video.

We really learn and remember new information (transforming it into knowledge during this process) when we can combine old knowledge with new knowledge (which I call ah-hah moments). Building upon the past and creating new insights, that is the essence of learning. Sounds a little like Lessig or Newton's " standing on the shoulders of giants" quote doesn't it?

Currently Playing: two new albums-
1) Red Hot Chili Peppers- favorites are "Charlie," "2st Century," and "Snow (Hey Oh)"

2) Snow Patrol- favorites are "Open Your Eyes," "You Be Happy," "Set The Fire to the Third Bar," "Shut Your Eyes"


A fellow Last.fm user echoing similar sentiments about the new RHCP and Snow Patrol albums (can't speak to the new Goo Goo Dolls).

Herbie You Are Mighty!
Now Playing: Morcheeba ft. Talib Kweli - Let Me See (remix)
Topic: Personal or Reflective

Social Tendencies and Blogging: Point / Counter-Point
Now Playing: 5/11/06 WSJ Podcast::
I'm mashing up two quotes for a new point/counter-point post (see the original here and the 2nd one here). The first quote is from Chapter 8 of the free PDF book, The Virtual Handshake by David Teten and Scott Allen, which the master networker Keith Ferrazzi recommended:

Point:
"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Commencement Address at Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges, 1974

---

The second quote is from a 4/20/06 WSJ op-ed article on blogging, Disinhibition Nation by Daniel Henninger:

Counter-Point:
"The power of the Web is obvious and undeniable. We diminish it at our peril. But what if the most potent social effect to spread outward from the Internet turns out to be disinhibition, the breaking down of personal restraints and the endless elevation of oneself? It may be already...
The web is nothing if not 'social.' But the blogosphere is also the product not of people meeting, but venting alone at the keyboard with all the uninhibited, bat-out-of-hell hyperbole of thinking, suggestion and expression that this new technology seems to release...
But researchers note that the isolation of Web life results in many missed social cues."

Registering Before Posting Blog Comments
Now Playing: Thievery Corporation - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
This is delayed as well because I’m catching up on my podcasts but I have to call out Jon Furrier at Podtech.net and his 3/30/06 InfoTalk podcast w/ David Hornik. The reason I’m irked is that Jon recounts, rightly so, a frustrating incident of having to log in to a blog’s Blogger system in order to post a comment. Scan to minute 5:30 of 15:52 of the mp3.

Jon said that it was a great blog with an interesting post so he decided to write up a good comment, so he typed up the 25 words or so because it would be posted to a public blog, and then learned that he needed to login to post the comment. I agree Jon, having to login to a public blog to comment is a pain. As you said, “it just killed the whole thing, I just didn’t comment.”

Well guess what Jon, I had this same terrible expereience on your Podtech website, forced to login in to your Wordpress blog system to post a comment on the great first episode of the Marketing Voice podcast.

I had the exact same experience as you describe; a great podcast that I wanted to give a quick comment/thank you on and I had to battle with your Wordpress system. (It didn’t say that cookies needed to be enabled-- should I have assumed that? Yes, maybe, but I had already denied your cookies when Firefox first loaded the site)

I, however, decided to slog through the registration process because I really wanted to say how much I enjoyed the podcast. So I received the login info via my email, went back to your site in IE so that the cookies would work (I’m not going back through my Firefox cookie list to remove your site because who knows which domain Wordpress is using), and finally posted the comment.

I don't understand your inconsistency on the issue of registering before posting comments on blogs. If you assert on the 3/30 podcast that logging in to post comments is an annoying and counter-productive part of of the blogging/New Media world, then please address this with you’re the Podtech.net. websites

Currenly Playing: Thievery Corporation - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Events of the Last Few Weeks
Now Playing: NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and WSJ podcasts
A quick review of events, some previously mentioned but probably not posted (and in no particular order):

1) The most sarcastic and caustic NPR episode that I've ever heard, The Most Annoying Mother's Day Music from yesterday's Weekend Edition Saturday. My favorite, the six-year old singing "You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings," truly terrible.

2) Quick discussion on The Media Project, stemming from my email to the show, on Dan Gilmore's speech on citizen journalism at Columbia Journalism School. Alan, Rex, and Elisa briefly discuss if at the very beginning of episode #779.

Elisa- a more participatory environment, because journalism is becoming less of a lecture and more of a conversation, is a positive democratic force
Rex- some newspapers are going to the extreme (not necessarily bad but extreme as in the range of options) of letting readers vote on
Alan- "I say bous swa...I think that there is anything as objective journalism, I think the only thing that we can say is it's comparative."

Speaking of, McKinsey's Quarterly just published a story on the future of newspapers in the digital age, a good tie-in to Gilmor's speech and this topic.

3) My Mom was in town a few weeks ago and I never got around to posting on our trip to D.C.'s National Zoo. Below is a sea otter video doing a backflip (wait until the end of the 12 second video) and then these two funny photos from the repitle exhibit:

Sea Otter Backflip

4) Went to 18th Street Lounge (ESL) last night to hear Eric Hilton of Thievery Corporation spin the night away. Cover was a little steep but the music was great, reaffirming the experience of my last visit back in 2004, that ESL is truly a great and mellow hang-out.

This Modern Love
Now Playing: Bloc Party - This Modern Love

Currently Playing: Bloc Party - This Modern Love

Gaper Hunting (Neon and Fanny Pacs Rock!)
Now Playing: Sujan Stevens - Dear Mr. Computer
In honor of recently discovering Gaper Hunter.com, here's my salute to the people out there who make gaper hunting a real sport. Thanks to Flickr user Riomx/Joktan for the photo below, the only person on Flickr who tagged photos with "gaper" and used it correctly (applied to dumb skiers/snowboarders):

And no more blogging (yeah right) until I finish Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks. Need a reason why? because Lessig says so...

"This is — by far — the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years. If there is one book you read this year, it should be this."

Currently Playing: Sufjan Stevens - Dear Mr. Computer

Analysis of Always-On Hollwood
Now Playing: Josh Rouse - James
Here’s the complete AlwaysOn Hollywood video archive list and below are my notes or comments from two of the panels. Check out Stowe Boyd’s post for more concise and insightful analysis.

1) Where’s the Ad Money Going?-

Audience Question-Where’s the [advertising] money going?
Sarah Fay, President, Isobar U.S, said that the money on digital is coming from all of the other mediums. A big flux from TV to digital- "a gusher." Since online market has been a small part of the media mix, it doesn’t take much for online/digital media budgets to double.

Also from Sarah, she mentioned a client that spends $100 million a year that undertook an internal analysis to understand how much time they bought in TV media with their target audience over the course of year: 6 minute average

Audience Question- Working with advertisers, it’s difficult to manage their online campaigns because of fragmentation and complexity, as compared to reaching millions via TV?
Panel Answers:
a) Rocketboom guy- if anything, if you find right show then you can the exact target of 10,000 people that are a perfect fit
b) New era of brand accountability. You must deliver the brand promise now and if you don’t, the consumers will fill it in for you.
c) Even if you mess up the online plan, you’re still better than if you committed the ad money to TV. As an advertiser, it’s much more precise than having to wait 6-8months for TV response data.

Audience Question- Who has substantially increased budget to online? How has a large budget percentage transferred to from traditional to online without affecting performance of traditional media.
Sarah- Dollar for dollar is the same but the performance percentage from online is better. One example is Adidas, who used to see online as too experimental and it took arm twisting to get them to sign up.

Audience Question- Where are TV up-fronts going this year?
Sarah- It will be down. Also, where online used to ride on the coattails of TV, online and TV will now come to the negotiating table with equal voice.

---

2) Is the Web the New Hollywood



I posted Thursday the opening quote from this panel and it’s a point worth repeating:
The audience is taking over the programming. A few years ago we looked at litigating it, now we are looking at how to monetize it."
Ted elaborated later on saying this loss of control is a huge pill to swallow for the traditional media companies.

From Ted Cohen, he mentioned the online launch of Alias and Desperate Housewives. He described how the ads are embedded in the videos and you’re forced to watch for maybe 20 seconds but then there’s an option to skip the ad. As Curry and Dave Winer have said, if you make good advertising, it longer is really an advertisement and people will want to watch that content.

Also, it may not be entirely user-generated content, but the ability to mash-up or how you can users put frames around their videos. Hmm, if there’s a huge market there for being able to frame or re-mix (or mash-up), then all of those online video editing tools will take off. Check out TechCrunch for some reviews of those companies.

Advertisers are confused about user-generated content, some like it and some litigate it.
Ted Cohen- “You’re seeing a lot more letting go." There can’t be too many rules right now. “If you don’t let them play, then they’re going to play anyway. So we have to figure out how to monetize it."

MySpace Killer: Not with a bang but a whimper
Now Playing: Knowledge@Wharton podcast
To keep the conversation going from my last MySpace post, wanted to examine the flip side of the site's possible demise, which is to look at external factors. I'm not advocating MySpace's demise but there's seems to a lot of discussion on the topic, usually refining the death of Friendster as the fad-example demise that MySpace could suffer. Besides an internal threat, like my mp3 sharing program that would turn the site essentially into a giant P2P network, there's the external threat that people just tune out and move onto another platform. A recent Knowledge@Wharton article on the long-term viability of social networking sites got me started on this subject. Here's a choice quote that at first struck me as blunt and shallow but give it a second and then reassess:

"MySpace, with 70 million visitors, has become the digital equivalent of hanging out at the mall for today's teens, who load the site with photos, news about music groups and detailed profiles of their likes and dislikes."

Why do I bring this up, the possible ephemeral foundations of MySpace? Yes, there are entrenched fans and social behaviors tied into particular sites that would mean high transaction costs for some; I don't think strong allegiance keeps the majority of people on one social networking site or another. It's the network effects, Metcalfe's Law, that first help a site explode past the Tiiping Point and enter the mainstream consciousness. So I bring it up because the sites depend on openness to what the users (and most importantly the influencers and first-adopters) demand of the platform. YouTube, the darling of the online video, is starting to see ripples (waves, probably not there yet) of discontent and abandonment. Although the copyright issues surrounding any online video site aren't usually addressed, or are skimmed over, by MSM articles, it could be the death knell of online video sharing. A recent YouTube user was kicked out for supposed "repeat offenses" relating to copyrighted content; here's his response:

"Anyway, I’m done with YouTube, almost. It is clear they have no interest in preserving a digital archive of video content for the future, and that I cannot rely on them for posterity...I do have one thing left to do: Ruin YouTube. Since it is so easy to get someone kicked from YouTube, I am going to launch an assault on the service...Every day, I will destroy at least one account. I will only target those with copyright infringing content. When I am done, the only popular videos on YouTube will be those with zero commercial value. We will see how well the service does without the Daily Show and South Park entire episodes that are its real bread and butter." (InsideGoogle blog- "SCREW YOUTUBE")

No, online video sharing will never die completely (the genie is out of the bottle), there will always ways to distribute it through alternative channels if necessary, but let's hope that copyright holders get their heads out of their proverbial butts and realize the value of sharing video online. And Hollywood is starting to get it, slowly but surely. I wasn't able to listen to the webcast of AO's OnHollywood event, but here's a SVP at EMI Music talking about social, user-generated content:

The audience is taking over the programming. A few years ago we looked at litigating it, now we are looking at how to monetize it." (ZDNet link)

I don't want to open up the can of worms around social media and whether it will replace traditional/professional media producers (it won't) but I hope the connection is clear between MySpace's network-based foundation (and is susceptibility to the user's demands or whims-- remember, we're not talking about an entrenched player like Microsoft here-yet) and how it could be undermined both internal or external forces (a giant mp3 P2P network or by user backlash, ala the YouTube example above).

today's lunch, mmm...

Currently Playing: Knowledge@Wharton podcast (iTunes podcast link)- TV Models and the Internet, 4/24/06

Another Great Video- Fed Chief Parody
Now Playing: The Police - Parody Video on Fed Chair Ben Bernanke
Topic: Web 2.0
Go read everything that you know about user-generated video exploding online, including the section in the new issue of WIRED, and when when you strat thinking that it's all a bunch of garbage, watch the video below:

Media and Marketing
Now Playing: Rob Dickinson - My Name is Love
Topic: Web 2.0
Man I get really excited about this stuff, so much so that here I am posting at 12:55am (now 1:41am EST- damn PC) in the morning, screaming at my crappy quasi-broadband EDVO connection over my smartphone. Or maybe it's my almost 4-year old Dell Notebook ready to crap the bed as my Uncle Ed would say. Regardless, here's why the future is bright for media and technology and everything in-between; a quick hodge-podge of good finds from the last couple of days.

1) Forwarded this to Zeldman and BoingBoing, let's see if we can spread the web design/CSS geekiness joy of this love song about web standards.

2) Reddit linked to Advertising Age's article on How to Be a Master of the Digital Domain. I don't read the magazine but my colleagues do at the MarComm/Ad Roundtable so I gave it a glance. Lucky me, though the article itself wasn't too eye opening, it did mention my oft-referenced blogger guru Fred Wilson and even a small photo too. Here's Fred's take on the Magazine Publishers of America's second "Magazine 24/7" conference in New York.

3) Discovering the debut of the Marketing Voices Podcast from Podtech.net, with an interview with Steve King, Senior Advisor at the Institute for the Future.

[I had heard somewhere through the grapevine that in addition to Adam Curry's Podshow venture receiving a bunch of VC money, John Furrier of Podtech had also received a bunch of money as well.

I've enjoyed most of John's podcasts, found a few quite thought provoking and few quite dreadful (probably the interviewee more than anything), and have listened on and off since he first started. He has a distinct style of interviewing that often involves acronym-ridden summaries like "so what really you're saying is XXX is like XXX..." But generally, John knew what was going on and I highly enjoyed the caliber of his guests, including the VCs, and even the last question, making a five-year forecast into the future, slowly grew on me. Just glancing at the new site, it does look like they've received some money. The old website wasn't bad but this new one has the look and feel of professional media company. That's a compliment.]

Jennifer Jones' interview with Steve King was good, echoing a lot of the sentiments that I took away from Scoble's book. It's late so I'll post tomorrow comparing notes from Scoble and this interview, a few common themes arose as I listened to the podcast. And I hope Jennifer or someone at Podtech reads this or my comment on their site (nevermind, my cookie handling is giving the Wordpress login heart palipatios, I'll comment later) because, though I understand the need to reduce comment spam, having to register & log in to comment was a small but slightly annoying chore.

4) Upcoming D.C. shows:

This Sat. night Phoenix (music overview & samples here) is playing 9:30 Club, $15 tickets. They had a song playing during the karaoke scene in Lost in Translation.

Eric Hilton of Thievery Corporation is playing May 13th at 18th Street Lounge (ESL) and it's going to be a killer show. Music overview & samples here, quick blurb on the show below:
"For those of you in Washington, DC, Eric Hilton will again man the
decks at the Eighteenth Street Lounge on Saturday May 13th for what is
sure to be a memorable night. Expect to go on a musical journey with
forays into the finest dub, Brazilian, reggae, and other outernational
sounds"

"Third Annual Testicle Festival, brought to you by the good people of the state of Montana" is this Saturday night in Arlington. Thanks to DCist for the juicy details.

Oh yes, a great two weeks it's going to be.

Currently Playing: Rob Dickinson - My Name is Love

Posted by cph19 at 1:30 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 2 May 2006 1:56 AM EDT

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America's Backbone Shows its Spine
Now Playing: Marketing Voices Debut Podcast- Podtech.net
Topic: Personal or Reflective
I don't often watch the national news at night but I hit the gym for the first time since mid-Feb. and was amazed at the images from the May 1st economic strike. I don't want to delve into the what we call them, though I agree illegal immigrants is loaded term, but America's backbone, immigrants who work extremely hard everyday to keep this country running, showed the rest of America that they are a powerful force.

If the rallies of a couple weeks ago weren't enough, today was a powerful message to all those who think non-citizen immigrants are a silent majority. I think Brian Williams or a fellow reporter mentioned perhaps half a million in L.A. or NYC or Chicago (can't remember exactly which one), truly amazing. Just to mobilize that many people is a tremendous feat in and of itself. Although the 7pm national news didn't yet have a figure for the economic impact of today's marches, that number is coming and I'd guess it will be substantial.

(Thanks to Same Felder and Flickr for the photo)

To update yesterday's post about Colbert's ballsy move at the Corespondent's's Dinner here in D.C. last Saturday night, Boing Boing now has the story and yes, now's there's a torrent link. That's the tell-tale sign of any potential video going big on the internet: if it only has a WMV or QuickTime link, then it's not going tot takeoff but oncer's's there's a torrent file, that a sign of credibility that there's good content and good buzz surrounding the video. Torrents, not YouTube or OurMedia (at least for now), are the best indicators for viral success.