Disqus - Latest Comments for whitneymcn

Re: Funding Friday: A Modern Composition Notebook

whitneymcn — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 10:52:15 -0000

Nope, nope, nope. Ampad graph ruled computation book or GTFO.

https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

Re: Funding Friday: The Voyager Golden Record

whitneymcn — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 10:55:37 -0000

I saw this a couple of weeks ago and couldn't quite get myself to do it, but I think you've put me over the edge...

Re: USV 2016

whitneymcn — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 09:13:28 -0000

I don't spend a lot of time hanging around VC's offices, but USV is hands down my favorite, and it's good to know that it's going to remain a good place to hang around going forward.

Re: SoundCloud Go

whitneymcn — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 10:59:27 -0000

It's not that hard to believe when you think about how music gets onto Spotify: a label cuts a deal, then everything that they've ever released (assuming they have digital copies available) goes up on Spotify. It's to the label's benefit to upload everything, because the cost of doing so is vanishingly small, and every track represents potential -- if largely theoretical -- revenue.

But the flip side of that is that most records haven't sold a copy or had a listener in a long, long time, even in the pre-streaming era. Just running quickly through http://forgotify.com/ I got:

- Guitar music from Ecuador, recorded in the mid-'70s.
- "Yeah I Want My Cake" by Tennis and the Mennonites. (Awesome name.)
- The demo version of "Bone Breaker" by a band named "Kreator."
- A mid-'60s folk song by Mickey Miller (released on Folkways!)

Sadly, none of these songs are anything that anyone is actively looking for these days, and it doesn't seem surprising to me that they've never (yet) been played on Spotify.

Re: SoundCloud Go

whitneymcn — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 09:20:51 -0000

So I saw a post about the iOS update leaking the existence of the service early this morning, which got me wondering:

A question: would it be possible for Soundcloud to structure their license deals such that they cover users hosting content on the service?
— Whitney McNamara (@whitneymcn ) March 29, 2016

Glad to see that the answer to my question seems to be "yes." :)

Re: Foursquare Trip Tips

whitneymcn — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 13:02:10 -0000

Indeed they do -- the store itself isn't huge, a big chunk of their business is online/mail.

Also, and even more important: they send out a weekly email (Saturday mornings) that is absolutely fantastic, and you should sign up immediately. It's not so much the records they pick that makes the email great as it is the actual writing about those records...it's just fantastic.

Re: Supporting workers in the gig economy

whitneymcn — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 14:38:39 -0000

Just this: I'm happy that you seem to be using "on-demand economy" as the primary term. I feel that "sharing economy" is a borderline deceptive construction for many of the current companies flying under that flag, so any help getting "on-demand economy" set as the default is appreciated. :)

Re: If RSS is dead, why are podcasts so popular?

whitneymcn — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 17:13:12 -0000

When people say "RSS is dead" I don't think they're talking about RSS the syndication format, but rather about RSS readers -- or more generally about the approach to consuming aggregated content that is embodied in RSS readers.

Google shutting down Reader was a bummer, but other than a short-term bump in registrations for a handful of other RSS readers I haven't seen any indication of significant activity on the reader front since Google left the field to whoever wanted it.

The bigger issue to me is the rise of the Twitter and Facebook end of things. It feels to me (note the subjective nature of the statement) like a broad swath of people accepted that the people in their social circle would provide them with links to the most interesting stuff online, so fewer people felt the need to have a tool that could provide them with everything produced by every site that interested them. (Especially when such tools couldn't provide content from any site they didn't already know about).

RSS itself is doing just fine, I think, but it's successful behind the scenes, not in the user-facing way we initially envisioned; we just ended up with a slightly different relationship to online content than the one we expected at the dawn of RSS.

About five years ago (good lord) I wrote up a few thoughts more-or-less related to this:
http://smr.absono.us/2009/0...

Re: Unintended Consequences

whitneymcn — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 09:11:43 -0000

I hope you're right, and it's very possible that I'm just feeling the trepidation of old people. :)

My concern -- or perhaps more accurately my question -- is about whether the networked world results in a qualitative, rather than quantitative change in how human beings communicate with one another.

Such a change wouldn't necessarily be a negative thing, but I don't think we have the experience or tools to predict what the implications of such a change would be.

And definitely with you on the excitement; maybe the little edge of fear I have is part of what makes me so excited about all of this. :)

Re: The Personal Blog

whitneymcn — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 11:15:48 -0000

Aw, shucks!

Re: The Personal Blog

whitneymcn — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 08:31:53 -0000

I was thinking about this the other day when you mentioned being an army brat -- I realized that I already knew that from your posts here back in the olden days.

My own blog has shifted away from personal (Tumblr more of that role for me now), but in many ways I prefer blurring the lines between "professional" and "personal" content. I know that it bothers many people who want just one or the other, but I really enjoy getting a little bit of all sides of the people I meet through the internet.

Re: the social teen and the unpaid intern

whitneymcn — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 09:40:43 -0000

I've ended up with a lot of recent writing dumped into pocket with some combination of "context," "identity," and "network" as tags:

http://tumblr.absono.us/pos...

Paul Ford's recent post, in particular, is a huge one to chew on (though I was disappointed that he didn't mention bedroomcovers).

Re: The Mobile Downturn

whitneymcn — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 09:52:08 -0000

Exactly so.

Re: The Mobile Downturn

whitneymcn — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 09:17:41 -0000

Sorry, but my father and his editing pen are (figuratively) standing over my shoulder, so I have to say this: it's "fewer" for things that you can count, "less" for things that you can't.

Re: Fads and Phases

whitneymcn — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 10:31:29 -0000

Totally agree -- I'm working on a post (which, after listening to sage counsel is turning into three different posts) about exactly this.

I think that the current crop of ephemeral/anonymous apps *are* in large part a reaction to Facebook and the evolution of monolithic identity online, but also that they're the very early stages of a reworking of identity online...a new phase.

Re: Fun Friday: Which web or mobile services most inspire you?

whitneymcn — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:55:32 -0000

At this particular moment, it's Whisper. I don't find the app/service personally appealing as it exists right now, but I feel like it's an early iteration of a significant evolution of our relationship to "the Internet." It's playing with the way we define identity and community online, and that absolutely fascinates me.

Re: Predictive Capacity: Thoughts on Anonymity Four Years Later

whitneymcn — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 09:33:03 -0000

Let me know if you're going to be in NYC any time soon -- this is an utterly fascinating area (that I think extends well beyond just "anonymity") and would love to spend some time talking about it.

Re: The New AVC

whitneymcn — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 09:07:11 -0000

An avc.com that is completely, totally, utterly without blog bling? Not a single widget to be found?

This is freaking me the fuck out, man.

Re: 5 Reasons SoundCloud With Major Label Music Could Be Amazing | Evolver.fm

whitneymcn — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 18:05:22 -0000

Perhaps a slight tangent, but interesting: in the past month or so I've seen two occasions where labels or artists pulled a song that they'd posted to Soundcloud. In both cases the song had made the rounds of music blogs, so there were lots of references to the songs online, but get this -- it was virtually impossible to find the actual music on the web.

Because it was really simple for everyone to just embed the Soundcloud player in their post, basically no one had their own copy of the song. No one particularly wanted one, apparently, they just wanted an easy way to get the music to play when you visited their site.

The labels were, in effect, able to pull music off from all over the internet...because they'd made it easy to put that music all over the internet.

Re: The Favorite Button On Twitter

whitneymcn — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 17:22:10 -0000

That's exactly why I like the non-deterministic "star" that already exists in both Twitter and Gmail, rather than something that sends an explicit "will reply" kind of message.

Just as with Twitter stars, it could serve different functions for different people -- it's simply a "lightweight gesture" that can be used however you and I feel is appropriate, even if we have different use cases for it.

Re: The Favorite Button On Twitter

whitneymcn — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 12:45:28 -0000

Fair concern, but seems like the lack of the star functionality didn't prevent the problem, so we're stuck either way. :)

In my head, this isn't an auto-replay message saying "I have read your email, understand its contents, and agree to all terms and conditions stated therein," but rather just a view in the email client where my friend Kirk can see that I have a star on the email he sent me that I haven't yet replied to.

And as with Twitter, the specific meaning of that star isn't strictly defined: different people would give stars different significance. In any event, though, it'd be interesting to see what effect that kind of lightweight acknowledgement would have in the context of email.

Re: The Favorite Button On Twitter

whitneymcn — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 12:38:07 -0000

Nice! I'd really prefer for it to be a native client implementation, though -- rather than a "got it" email cluttering up the original sender's inbox, just a mechanism that allows them to see that I've got their email starred. A supplement to the inbox, rather than an addition to the inbox's contents.

Re: The Favorite Button On Twitter

whitneymcn — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 08:59:53 -0000

The place I really want this is email. I use gmail stars to deal with the "will respond, but can't right now" emails, and a while back it struck me how useful it would be if I could make gmail stars work like Twitter stars: when I star an email, the sender gets the feedback that I did so -- a communication that I saw the email and think it's important, even though I haven't written a response.

It's interesting (to me, anyway) that Twitter and email map almost one-to-one on general use cases, with the exception of the star -- documented here:
http://tumblr.absono.us/pos...

Re: No more secrecy: 10 transparent company blogs worth following

whitneymcn — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 08:49:10 -0000

Also worth noting that company blogs (specifically startups/small companies) sometimes end up playing a "canary in a coal mine" role: they start out as records of optimism and success, followed by a sudden, extended silence when the company hits real difficulties.

In the most extreme cases you get a few months filled with upbeat posts, a gap of many months, a "we love you all, but we're shutting down" post, and then a link to the increasingly common "lessons learned" post on one of the founders' personal blogs.

Silence does sometimes speak volumes.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

whitneymcn — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 05:49:48 -0000

Yeah, Newton is probably an apt comparison -- directionally correct, but flawed and at least three or four (device) generations away from anyone really figuring it all out.

Also: prominent Hypem sticker placement!