Disqus - Friends of danielrmccarthy

Re: Get a ZoomCloud for your site

Craig Bromberg — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 21:28:56 -0000

Remember what headlines and deks and pullquotes and captions were/are for? Context, urgency, telegraphing ideas. See a headline, you know just how important the story is. When someone finally gets around to inventing a presentation layer XML that faithfully recreates what headlines do in different fonts, tag clouds will be seen as the screen wasters they really are.

Re: Head, meet sand

Craig Bromberg — Thu, 11 May 2006 15:22:03 -0000

Perhaps, Jeff, you came to reading British papers later in life. British broadsheets have always been analytical tools, less for reporting--that role is taken by the BBC (notably a public corporation)--and more for opinion. This is one reason they have always been thinner: none of that blathering reportage. If you live in London, you get the broadsheets in the am, tabs on the way home, and fill in with radio and tv. One reason this makes sense is becz of the concentration of brit media. Everyone knows everything in seconds (sans email, fancy that). So the newspapers really are to shape opinion.

The problem w/ US papers is that they are all so caught up in reporting the so-called objective news. This makes them bloated with longer stories, (increasingly) fact-checking staff (certainly the case at US magazines), and huge staffs. I have no doubt that the engagement of social media by UK papers will only be faster than that of US peers because of these underlying structural differences.

Re: Dancing with the FSBO devil

Craig Bromberg — Tue, 23 May 2006 14:58:33 -0000

Aw. Isn't that cute: Daddy's little captious nut is still thowing tantrums about the big bad Internet. Awwwwwwwwww.

Well, little boy, if you ever actually do sell a property by yourself, you'll find out that CL, MLX, MLS listings services, are all woeful when it comes to selling a property on your own. As someone who recently (and sucessfully, I might add) sold his property sans brokers, I can tell you quite without doubt that there is actually only one place to advertise a FSBO property in the NY-Metro area: The New York Times. The only people who respond to CL ads are vulture brokers looking to find properties they can relist on their own sites for their measly 3%.

Interestingly enough, Little Nut (so captious you are too!), fully 30% of our respondents were sourced from the NYTimes in print! That's right: dead trees sell FSBO properties more effectively than pure play web properties.

While Tribune will indeed probably screw this up (simply because FSBO is bad branding and because there's so much more to making this work than just listings), a FSBO site combined with the likes of Trulia or Property Shark will eventually hurt the brokerage industry. Should a media company be bold enough to enjoin the battle against Trulia, Zillow, PS, and others, the battle for the FSBO sale will likely have longreaching consequences. (Should Corcoran or Elliman ever figure out how to coopt the FSBO crowd, the Times will have a real problem on its hands.) Fortunately for the NYT, most brokers have their eyes tightly shut against the reality of this disintermediated future, so FSBOs are caught by the only real monopoly held by newspapers until CL can figure out how to clean up its act...

Now go to sleep little captious nutcase: you can throw that phone book at daddy tomorrow....

Re: The Web's End

Craig Bromberg — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:21:50 -0000

If you're on the Mac platform http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/. Don't know what the pc version is.

Re: The Web&aposs End

Craig Bromberg — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:21:50 -0000

If you're on the Mac platform http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/. Don't know what the pc version is.

Re: Apple TV vs Roku Netflix

Craig Bromberg — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:22:42 -0000

What Steven Johnson says, and more: AppleTV already streams music, both from any paired computer or from any internet radio stations featured in iTunes. This makes Take2 a true music jukebox, giving you control (not just streaming) at your stereo system. For anyone who's got a real stereo (or home theater) ATV delivers terrific 5.1 sound. With Airport Express, you can't control what you're listening to; with ATV you have total control, and can even import internet radio stations into ATV through an iTunes playlist (simply drag the radio station into a playlist and then instruct ATV to stream from that playlist). I suspect that a lot more people than are being counted are using ATV for playing their music, perhaps even more than their video (or photos). How many ATV competitors do that? (Btw, same argument can be made for Flickr which ATV also natively integrates.) It's a terrific product, notwithstanding a few flaws (e.g., occasionally losing its pw.)

Re: Apple TV vs Roku Netflix

Craig Bromberg — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:12:15 -0000

hey what's with the f bomb, buddy? i was under the impression you want civil, constructive dialogue in your comments.

as to "any stream,"--yeah dig you fred. i too want it all. but you're getting way caught up in early adopterville. apple is about architecture not technology. if you wanna live in an open source geodesic dome, cool by me (and you'll find a lot of other people who'll join you). but the ipod's success shows that many more people in the consumer marketplace prefer clean white, aluminum post-war buildings with a protective moat--ipods and itunes and iphones and maca. they want a simple interface and simple technology for what they rightly understand are lifetime digital problems.

i find it odd that you're cool chasing musical ubiquity at the expense of long-term strategic innovation. apple is not "donkey-ass" (again, what's w/ the language, dude?) it is simply doing what's right for the company and its users by leading them to a risk-adjusted solution that users seem to like, iterating towards imperfect but market-sweeping solutions. you are a latecomer to macs so i suspect that you have that pc gene in you that says, "windoze sucks so bad, we have to tear it down w/ homebrew strategies." again: that's the geodesic domes way. long term mac users recognize that they have a good product that keeps getting better.

so give it up fred: where do you want to live--a geodesic dome with hand pumped showers or a cool calatrava (or maybe that's zaha hadid) building with the latest technology built into a systemic user-based solution? the choice is between the hard intellectual work of techne or the joys of starchitecture and convenience. they're not entirely exclusive but you should see how different they are. apple tv is imperfect but it really is a sweeping solutiion for most folks who want great music (w/o spending a grand on a sonos/rhapsody solution) or a crappy netflix solution.

Re: Apple TV vs Roku Netflix

Craig Bromberg — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:40:54 -0000

i know you have investments in bug, but if you had ever worked for a hw manufacturer (although apple is hybrid hw/sw) you would know that the focus is moving boxes; software follows. take comfort, though fred. that's the way the entire history of computing has evolved.if you have patience, apple will get there eventually.

Re: Why The iTouch Is Inevitable

Craig Bromberg — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:03:30 -0000

Fred, it's interesting to me that you're gradually creeping up to precisely the system that many Apple TV users have had--at a fraction of the cost of Sonos. In fact, we've been around this bend in previous discussion on your blog, but ATV is tremendously underrated in this regard because it gives you the power of Sonos for $150 per TV, and both the Touch and iPhone work directly with it thanks to the Remote app. Plus, thanks to all the ATV patch fiends out there, Boxee now works on ATV--an almost painless hack at this point. Interestingly, for a while, I coveted your Sonos/Rhapsody system, but a hacked ATV far exceeds that firepower (and provides 5.1 sound, HD quality video, and even a web connection to my TV.) As I said, at $150/room that cannot be beat.

Re: Why The iTouch Is Inevitable

Craig Bromberg — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:31:42 -0000

Ah the investment! Well, since you're justifying the Sonos experience on
the basis of your sunk costs, allow me to remind you (my journalism-based
morals are showing here) that your readers will often take your advice--I
almost did, so passionate were you about Sonos/Rhapsody at that time--to the
tune of hundreds of dollars.
This is interesting for two reasons. First is that in the past you raked ATV
over the coals because it was a closed Apple product, but over time it's
become clear that for a Mac, this is is an uncharacteristically "open"
product to modding. ATV keeps growing in value relative to other audio
controllers whereas the rest keep getting more expensive. Also wonder if
perhaps this illustrates how little sense bloggers (I'm afraid I'm
generalizing here) don't quite see that product cheerleading w/o careful
competitive research can lead to some bad buys. Upshot: caveat lecteur! And:
get thee an Apple TV for video AND audio: The ATV interface is pretty much
all the control you need to play just the tunes you want when you want
em--and you can play any file, using almost any codec now on ATV.

Re: Why The iTouch Is Inevitable

Craig Bromberg — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:03:37 -0000

No need to get defensive: just pointing out that while we may share similar
passions, we don't all have similar resources--and noting that this is one
of the many differences between journalism and blogging: the former is
committed to resolving readership needs, the latter to proclaiming
individual passions. I carry no brief for Apple but ATV is a good product
gradually getting to great and can't be beat at the offered price point. To
wit (speaking of research): Mac Mini: From $599. (Apple); Apple TV
(40gb): $179.00 (Amazon).

No need for a "double" hack either: http://code.google.com/p/at....
Note that this hack not only gives you Boxee, but XBMC--both of which work
straight outta the box with FrontRow.

Re: boxee blog » boxee on Apple TV 2.3

Craig Bromberg — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:36:12 -0000

does anyone know if this erases other hacks (perian, sapphire, couch surfer) already on my atv?

Re: 8 REASONS PORTFOLIO FOLDED

Craig Bromberg — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:13:10 -0000

Conde (and just about every magazine publisher out there) just expects that
it's only a moment of time before brand advertising hits the web with the
same ferocity it has on TV. Hate to add to the Fail meme, but: FAIL.
Branding on the web happens through businesses adding value, media
businesses included. More or even different content doesn't cut it anymore.
Before they spent that $100M they shoulda thought about data, and especially
the role of data in business media...

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Craig Bromberg — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:29:54 -0000

As my grandfather might have said, oi gevalt, gestalt!

I really appreciate your comments, Seems that we are at a point where the holistic character of CS has to be acknowledged.

At the same time, so essential for content strategists not to get big heads. Marketers, audience development folks, researchers, corporate strategeists and others who create strategy process and articulate brands already do much of what some CS folks think they should be doing. This may be a manifesto for holism but it is also a recognition that it must be bottom-up, as it were. (Although there's complexity in that too.)

Re: A Little R&R

Craig Bromberg — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:08:10 -0000

Hey Fred:

Make sure you eat at these restaurants:
--Au Pied du Cochon. It's the best "real Quebecois" food in the city
--Schwartz's, for the smoked meat (corned beef, Montreal style) no one does it better. Great action
--L'express: my favorite bistro in N. America

On St Denis also make sure to visit Arthur Quentin and the stores around that section (called The Plateau). It's a great housewares store, very beautiful and GG will love it. There's also a terrific French bookstore up St. Denis (Flammarion) you shoudl visist jst to see how much better book retail can be done.

Unfortunately,Daniel Langlois's Ex-Centris cinema has closed (just googled it) but his Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology is still open. You should check out eveyrthing Daniel Langlois is doing. He's a terrific entrepreneur, started Softimage, digiscreen, and lots of other digital cineman initiatves, owns a hotel and this very beautiful le357, which is a great spa/biz club— http://www.le357c.com/. Btw it's attached to the Hotel Gault where we stayed last time we were there (4 years ago just before my kids were born--a last hurrah) and had the most amazing pancakes there. (A great hotel too.)

Have fun!

Also be sure to check out the burgeoning digital cinema empire of Daniel Langlois.

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Craig Bromberg — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:30:53 -0000

Hi Kristina: First of all, you rock.

Second: I appreciate the self-consciousness of this awakening. It reminds me of the stirrings of the nouvelle vague—people who were critics and artists at the same time, struggling with self-definition. That's the kind of permanent revolution I can sign up for.

Third: I wanted to send you a virtual martini to encourage your bookwriting but you're not following me:(

Finally, I think it's true that CS is where the buck often stops on anything related to content. However, the economics of content production relative to that of marketing are such—attention being cheaper to obtain than high production values—that content is still often relegated to second place status, even among creative professionals. (Btw, the economics of this are actual, and in my next post, the link to Umair Haque's dek on economics of new media shows this in great detail.) Umair, for one believes that the plasticity of microchunking and remixing in what we call web 2.0 will create a moment when the economics of media favor content productoion over attention—i.e., marketing.

When that day comes, you may be sure, that the buck really will be stopping with content production (including what are now called content strategists.)

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Craig Bromberg — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:31:35 -0000

See my post today, Colleen. I was thinking of your comments when I wrote it.

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Craig Bromberg — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:37:42 -0000

Well you most certainly are brilliant Moritz. Doing great work there in the belly of the beast. I've written a bit more today about taxomical narratives—still not entirely fleshed out, but getting there.

>I worry about approaching a project wielding a conducting baton and hearing everyone in >the room remark on what a lovely little flute I have.

Great analogy although I'll skip the Freudianism in it:) See what I wrote above to Kristina. Your concern I thnk is legit. CS has been the last to enter the rom and then is often the little flute playing sotto voce in the background. You're not alone in experiencing this.

However as I wrote to K, this is changing, will continue to change, the more companies give up their control over rigid monological content. The more content and corporate websites—as well as so-called digital custom publishing—becomes a conversation, the more that media products are based on user needs, the faster the changes to content strategy will take place. Like you I look forward to the day when the baton resembles a baton.

For now, I'd just like to get back in the room, but let's hold off on that for now.:(

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Craig Bromberg — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:41:09 -0000

Great comments, Rachel. Love what you wrote in the last graf here. There's no doubt in my mind that that XML production, tagging, Googlejuice, SEO, SEM, etc. are mere babysteps along the long road to semantic publishing. It's good to think about all those juicy semantic technologies, however for the moment my attention is less on technological capability and more on immediate innovation steps.

In my experience, the firms that are just starting to hire content strategists are donkey years from thinking about the capabilities or technologies of the semantic web much less considering how they need to change production at the level of bit production based on semantic concerns. 90% of the media companies I know don't yet even have end to end distributive XML capabilities. They're still struggling with Interwoven! Just thinking about networked capabilities (much less semantic web capabilities) in the news business is still a debatable and potentially fireable presumption. When there's so much focus on trying to assert the continuance of metanarratives of story and brand, when you're worried about making it to the next day, when your client stream has just dried up—when you don't even have a job:-(—the future of semantic publishing can seem very, very distant.

Lastly, and somewhat tragically, although the idea of semantic publishing has been around for a long, long time—some say it predates the web if you consider Ted Nelson's Xanadu or Gelertner's lifestreams—it hasn't gotten very far. There is still a whiff of utopianism about it, and at the moment (i.e., the moment when I'm unemployed), the one thing I really can't afford is to be too early:).

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Craig Bromberg — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:09:19 -0000

Thanks, Jeff. It is terrific to have this converation, and to tease out all the threads of it with you.

Couldn't agree more with the idea that CS deserves a seat at the product strategy table, and that publishing, whether of magazines, books or newspapers, is likely to benefit most from it. Will there be a chair labeled "CS" at the table? I don't know. As you say, seems to me, agencies flooded with spec content are the ones hiring content strategists these days, and (per Moritz's tweets), I'm not sure whether content strategists in agencies really do transcend "the project spectrum where agency talent builds and bills."

But —and here's where my next post—just hit the home button on the left to read it— digs deeper. You're right to connect content strategy with competitive strategy. I do. But innovation—and mark my words, this ultimately is major plumbing—requires much more than traditional CS deliverables or even competitive analysis. It requires innovation at behavioral and organizational levels and a reinvention of what it means to be a brand—either an editorial/media brand or a consumer brand. I don't know if that's what content strategists should be doing, but it's definitely what I'm driving at here: hwo media, technology and innovaton fit together. CS is definitely at that table, but whether it is leading it or not, is probably very firm specific, and most likely to be found in economic models that are content-production heavy and attention light than the other way around.

Again, see the next post.

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Craig Bromberg — Sat, 09 May 2009 22:03:50 -0000

Ah but per Jeff's point below, it's a question of business strategy. In most media companies—heck most companies—the essentials of a p&l are calc'd on the production costs weighted against the potential ROI of the data in sales, advertising, or other rev lines.

These aren't babysteps. for most firms, it requires a total reinvention and reimagination of the content product and the actual place the brand lives. Does the brand live in its destination or in its connectedness through FB, Gconnect, Digg? Which content types are appropriate to this, which not?

See for ex what I wrote about Portfolio a few days back—or what I wrote about Barnwell's comments on CS in ScatterGather yesterday following this post. .Portfolio was a totally missed opportunity to understand what a business media brand should be, could even exist in a hypersaturated market of business media—and hyperrich business data. What was needed was, as I say, a taxonomical narrative of the brand. I can tell you for certain that the concept of Googlejuice never entered Joanne Lipman's mind except as a line in a long thumbsucker by say Michael Lewis.

These questions aren't babyssteps but essential to the core of business model, brand model, content model. Whether CS is the right discipline for examining this though may be a different kind of question. Which brings us back to Moritz's tweets.

Re: Title help, please

Craig Bromberg — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:47:14 -0000

Jeff,

"2.0" (just 2.0) although if it already seems to have become a shoddy sales anthem like "dot.com." (And is now getting swept past by 3.0 and semantic web.)

Restart (Reboot is too olde and English and PC for me), because it implies an optimistic and eventual return to a smoothly functioning eco(n)system—and in doing so points to a wise philosophy of history—neither conservative or revolutionary.

Another way to think about this: historical antecedents. Paul Hawken's Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution; Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. Our friend Umair's book (something like Reconstructing Capitalism). Not saying these are right titles, but they suggest a certain way of thinking about the problem.

Re: Custom for dummies

Craig Bromberg — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:02:59 -0000

Hi Simon‚ thanks for your very interesting reply. I would love to talk with you.

A few years ago, I would certainly have agreed with you about custom's increasing relevance in the relatively random universe of networked XML. I'm less sure today. I'm particularly less sure given the state of custom publishing in the US--as opposed to contract publishing in the UK. I actually had a paragraph in this piece saying that the UK contract scene might have more ability to swim in these new currents than the US scene but pulled it because so few American custom publishers seem to know or care. As I noted, they don't want to compete and can't. And now they're falling behind the Gawkers/Daily Candy/Urban Daddy's of the world —not to mention pureplay digital agencies from Digitas (which does the Openforum for Amex) to Barbarian (which just designed Cookstr, for ex.)

UK contract publishers are guns for hire, and they are used to competing for every reader. As I'm sure you know, until just a recently, 10 of the top 20 bestselling magazines in the UK were contract published. In the US, one of the few custom mags to go consumer—Hallmark—was recently defenestrated. (You know that best of all since Hallmark started in your offices.)

I love your blog and am struck by how many of my postings and Story's seem parallel. But I also know you're a Brit, and I've seen that the history of folks importing the UK model here is spotty (remember John Brown Citrus's play a few years back?) The US model may be waning—I hope it is—but the point of my post in a way was to wonder outloud whether American custom's history—its long service of big boring brand monologues by the world's biggest companies—hasn't irrevocably damaged it, particularly relative to the competitive prospects of entrepreneurs with pureplay digital backgrounds.

I don't know the answer of course. But it does seem to me that something new has to evolve here. Pulizzi's model is one way, and a good one (at least for him). So too though are Crayon's and Shel Israel's and Chris Brogan's—all of them pure web based consultancies that have utterly divorced themselves from custom's legacy.

Let's talk!

Re: Custom for dummies

Craig Bromberg — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:12:36 -0000

Hi Joe, thanks so much for your generous response. Kudos to you for having created a model that is truly unique, self-perpetuating, and attuned to the realities of what's going on out there. Really great stuff.

I'd love to hear about the CPC thing just for prurient reasons! But to restate what I wrote above (below?) to Simon, this isn't about quality but rather about history and about how the paradigmatic shift from brand monologue and the technologies that gird it to brand narratives that are aleatory, random, and conversational. As I said in the piece, your tent is big enough (and should be) to hold both these things. I'm just less convinced that custom—at least US custom--can make the shift to the new paradigm. I suspect it's a lost cause, and that folks who are custom publishers are bailing water as fast as they can...but are finding few takers (and when they do are making a mess of it.)

So much of content marketing is promotional sludge, a step backwards even from custom. But I don't think the fancy pedigree of custom publishers will make the sludge run any clearer in the Google engine. Quite the contrary because the control issue is so deeply embedded in custom's DNA. It's all fine and well to say we are beyond control, but when you look at custom products in this country, it's clear that's not the case. I agree with you when you say that control was lost a long time ago however. But the consequence of that is that custom has long seemed fusty and irrelevant and as failed to create real customer gains. For that to change, custom would have to lose its history.

And then it wouldn't be custom anymore:-)

Let's talk!

Re: Custom for dummies

Craig Bromberg — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:22:52 -0000

Andrew, thanks for your comment. Sorry about using monetize as a noun—guilty!—but I really like the phrase Your Mileage May Vary, and Your Monetization May Vary didn't have quite the same rhythm to me. Oh well: YMMV:)

As for the rest, well, I'm afraid we just disagree. I’m not making the case against self-interest in custom media or any kind of media, for that matter. I’m making the case for participation and engagement and service to customers, not brands. Custom publishers say they have customers top of mind, but in my experience, most are busy promoting brands through the privilege of being able to own their own press. That’s not a customer focused, customer service business, that’s the business of customizing your own bespoke brand editorial. In some strictly B2B contexts, where there are few mainstream sources to be found on abstruse subjects such as chemical engineering, that business model kinda makes sense, and that may be the ace in the hole for B2B custom publishers such as Imagination. But it makes less and less sense as more and more people have that once-elite privilege of being able to publish what they want how they want.

In any event, I’m not debating custom’s credibility or lack thereof. My point is that custom's legacy as the arm of promotionally oriented brand editorial is inimical both to the spirit and technology of the distributive web, of feed-driven, networked and metagged XML. Mock the term "distributed brand intelligence" all you want—ok it does sound silly and pretentious—guilty AGAIN!—but it lies at the center of a revolution. You say it sounds like it means something but really doesn’t; I say Google proves you wrong a billion times every day.

And that brings me to the crux of it. Custom publishing is now playing in a very different strategic sandbox than it has throughout its history, but you’d never know it to look at most of the offerings. If you’re not propagating your data through XML and metatags to the network, you’re not competing. This isn’t about publishing new custom web destinations or finding new forms of multimedia storhytelling. Torch that money somewhere else; the smoke's getting in my eyes. it’s understanding the value of the data brands own and figuring out new ways of helping customers tell that story whatever way they want to across the search ecosystem.

My take is that custom just can’t do that. Its entire history is about publishing the hierarchically ordained story of brands. Sure there are good custom mags that do more. But the entire culture is just culturally, technologically, and emotionally out of touch with the needs of users operating the randomized search ecosystem today and tomorrow. By all means, call yourself a content marketer instead of a custom publisher if it makes you happy, but unless and until your brands let their data fly free of their own control, changing your name will not help. It's still the same address.

Disqus - Friends of danielrmccarthy

Re: Get a ZoomCloud for your site

Re: Head, meet sand

Re: Dancing with the FSBO devil

Re: The Web's End

Re: The Web&aposs End

Re: Apple TV vs Roku Netflix

Re: Apple TV vs Roku Netflix

Re: Apple TV vs Roku Netflix

Re: Why The iTouch Is Inevitable

Re: Why The iTouch Is Inevitable

Re: Why The iTouch Is Inevitable

Re: boxee blog » boxee on Apple TV 2.3

Re: 8 REASONS PORTFOLIO FOLDED

Re: Why content strategy matters (and size doesn’t)

Re: A Little R&R

Re: Why content strategy matters (and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters (and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters (and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters (and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters (and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters (and size doesn’t)

Re: Title help, please

Re: Custom for dummies

Re: Custom for dummies

Re: Custom for dummies

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)

Re: Why content strategy matters
(and size doesn’t)