Blog

I’ve used Google AdWords a couple of times at work, out of personal curiousity more than anything. Here a quick report from a Jupiter researcher about his effort to market his blog, and the (mild) success of AdWords for him.Of course, he doesn’t link to his own blog in the article… which may explain the title: “What If You Built a Blog and No One Came?” Since I think I have maybe three readers (including me), I’m not really one to throw stones, but then again this isn’t a professional duty. It’s just mine.

Mike proposed in a sunrise hike this morning. Samantha said yes. Yay!

Will graduated just fine, and it didn’t rain. Phi Beta Kappa for the youngest… nice work! I certainly didn’t come close to working that hard in college, and having brains ain’t enough if you’re not prepared to back them up with effort.

Memorial Day was a quick trip up to Healdsburg to relax with family and swim, before returning with Ben for a nap while Brooke stayed for a funeral. I remain torn between the urge to take a nap myself when Ben sleeps versus the impulse to rush about and get things done that will not get done with him awake. Whose time is that?

Regarding the weekend, the travel was a bit much, but it all worked out smoothly, and I was even able to get back earlier, thanks to filling the last seat on the plane from Burlington to Chicago, and then sprinting through O’Hare from one terminal to the next to get on an earlier-still flight than the one I was supposed to get. Worth the run, definitely. Earlier in the weekend, I just made a ferry from Burlington to Port Kent… saved me nearly two hours overall! On a sidenote, driving in the Lake Champlain region is beautiful this time of year.

Also, all the Lone Tree business went well, and I even lent a hand, however briefly, to some porch reconstruction. It’s gonna be a great step.

My brother graduates from college on Sunday morning in Vermont, so I’m getting on a plane tonight to get there. As the youngest of six, he was dragged/brought to so many family events it’s only right that we convene to celebrate this milestone. I’m not sure how much Will found his particular college right for him, but I know he’s ready to move on. We’ll pull/push him onwards. Congrats.

When was the last time your computer couldn’t keep up with your typing? Yeah, thought so… about never. (If you have an example, then you need to try different software!) So I appreciate Clay Shirky’s recent essay comparing “grid computing” to “push”. There are so few people who really need more cycles. Businesses do, but not people. Shirky writes, in part:

As long ago as 1968, J.R. Licklider predicted that computers would one day be more important as devices of communication than of computation, a prediction that came true when email overtook the spreadsheet as the core application driving PC purchases.

The Licklider essay is online (PDF). A 1964 viewpoint of “autonomic computation” was published in The Atlantic Monthly as “The Computers of Tomorrow. Remember your history.

Finished Bay to Breakers on Sunday in 49:59, according to the official timer. My watch had it as 49:55, but as long as I squeaked in under 50:00. I’ve been faster. Sporadic training doesn’t do it anymore. Time to pick a race and be serious. Of course, given child #2 coming and lots of work to do, additional training doesn’t seem very likely. Guess I have to remember that my really selfish days are over, or at least limited. Can I whine yet? 😉

I’ve been cluttering my Safari bookmarks bar with the following for a while. Some of them were even worth the wait.

• Digital Media Mistakes – Notes from the newspaper world on mistakes to avoid. Not incredibly useful for me, but right in touch with online-news.
• Slashdot review of a book I’d like to read someday: How would you move Mount Fuji? about Microsoft interview questions (it’s more than that, but that’s the Cliff notes).
• Some people don’t need the internet. Freaks. 😉 There is a research study from Pew behind this post.
• Barry Parr on why the definition of content is too broad when you’re looking at content sales. Classifieds don’t count (well, they do, but not in the same category as news).
• Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters is already, seemingly, a blog classic. I did read it, and I enjoyed a few things. First of all, his definition of “makers” as the right kind of hacker. Also, on a longer note, his reminder that time must pass for reputations to really center.
  

  The only external test is time. Over time, beautiful things tend to thrive, and ugly things tend to get discarded. Unfortunately, the amounts of time involved can be longer than human lifetimes. Samuel Johnson said it took a hundred years for a writer’s reputation to converge. You have to wait for the writer’s influential friends to die, and then for all their followers to die.

• Another note from Barry Parr on the slow, steady progress of The Economist online.
• More about building the Memex, from Emergic. I did read Vannevar Bush’s “As we may think” several years ago. I was one of the people who helped get it online at The Atlantic in 1994 (AOL) and 1995 (web), where it was originally published in the magazine in… wait for it… July 1945. It’s been almost 60 years and we’re still striving to meet the visions here. I want to read the biography.
• Social capital of weblogs – nifty diagram, but tries to make too much of the topic.
• Newspaper as UI from Don Park. We are still re-learning some of the UI lessons of the print world here online. Yes, it’s different, but we (the audience) are still much the same. Maybe the next generation or two will change that, but not yet!
• Where is the knowledge in a CMS? It’s a damn good question.

OK, well, an afternoon. A beautiful day all around, which I spent racing, napping (no link necessary!), and lounging on the beach in the sun. This being San Francisco, a sunny day at the beach still means long sleeves thanks to the wind, but with a full-on view of the Bay, parking within 50 yards, the Golden Gate Bridge, kite-surfers flying, and a kid happy to be playing in the sand… nothing to complain about.

Emergic pointed me to this outline of the ultimate weblogging system. I’ll have to read the entire thing at some point, since I’m curious about other systems. However, the reality is that I just need more time. My wife asked me when I started this whether it was just one more thing I was going to feel guilty about. Sort of…

Straight from Seth Godin’s site… he doesn’t have permalinks, so I’m going to cite the post in its entirety. The question I ask after reading it is… what is a hit for news? Is there one?

The power of a hit

One thing I didn’t write about that much in my latest book is the phenomenon that allows a new product to cross the chasm and reach the vast majority that are so busy ignoring you.

It’s the hit effect.

When all the early adopters at radio stations start playing a Norah Jones song, it becomes a hit. Billboard magazine charts it. It spreads. First to radio stations that only play what’s on the list, then to consumers who only buy what’s on the list.

When all the early adopters in silicon valley start carrying a Blackberry pager, it becomes a hit. They feature it at Fry’s. It spreads. First to the friends of the geeks, then to people who buy what nerds buy.

The middle of the market wants to be safe. They want to buy what others are buying, read what others are reading. And scorekeepers–like bestseller lists and cash register displays–are the barometer they use to determine whether a new idea is safe yet.

Tivo’s challenge, for example, is that Tivo is essentially a private device. There’s no obvious list it could be on. No retailer it can dominate. As a result, it takes far longer for it to jump over to the middle of the market.

One lesson here is to try to create products that have obvious lists. The second is to figure out how to work with early adopters in a focused, coordinated way to get on that list.