Waiting for Open Social at MySpace
Category: MySpace

Google announced a few weeks ago that they would be releasing some new programming tools that would enable social networking sites to allow programmers to make gadgets for those sites.

On November 1st, an announcement went out that MySpace would be joining with Google, and a good number of other social networking sites in offering OpenSocial applications to their users. 

Mashable covered it in a post titled It's Official: Google + MySpace = OpenSocial

So far, there's been no sign of any OpenSocial gadgets of any type.  I'm wondering if the addition of those might require some rewriting of the MySpace interface. 

Hopefully we'll see something out of them soon.  I suspect that it will make MySpace a whole lot more fun.

2:22 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Living on the East Coast & Tech Conferences

A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to spend a few days in Silicon Valley.  It was my second visit out there in the last two years, and was a lot of fun.

I went to the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, where I gave a presentation on Universal Search and Blended search from Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com.  The conference lasted a week, and was a lot of fun.  The weekend before the conference, I attended barcampblock, a barcamp "unconference" happening in Palo Alto, and was joined by around 500 other participants who discussed a great number of topics, including many involving social networking and blogging. 

There are a lot of free or inexpensive gatherings involving technology, and some great presentations from places like Stanford University (in Palo Alto).  I wish more happened on the East Coast like that.

I did get to go to podcamp philly this past weekend, and the experience leads me to believe that there may be more going on in the tech field in Philadephia than I thought.  I was beginning to think that I might have to move to the West coast to gain exposure to the kind of interactivity that I experienced this weekend in the tech field.  Maybe I don't.

11:05 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

No "Get Rich Quick" Friends, Thank You
Category: MySpace

Added - When I wrote this, almost every friend requestion that I was getting was someone selling something, or marketing something, except for people I had already met offline.  Those have dropped a lot.  Good thing.

Bubba, I don't want to buy your "faster ways to wealth" eBook.  I don't want to be your friend, if being your friend means that you want to suck my wallet clean.

Please go sell your wares elsewhere. 

Friends don't sell friends their "get rich quick" schemes. 

Seems like I'm getting a lot of friend requests here at MySpace from hucksters and teen girls with naked pictures of themselves on "their" websites. 

Can't you all find better things to do with myspace, and your time?  Is this really how you want to earn a living?    

11:15 AM - 3 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Google by Phone
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

I received a call yesterday from a business student from New York who was interested in hearing my thoughts about a potential acquisition target for Google.

The company he named has been involved in the field of programmatically transcribing spoken word to text for decades.  They've also done a nice job of keeping up with the times, and show some modern web 2.0 sensibilities - no mean feat for a company that's been around more than 30 years. 

To top that off, their web site shows that they own some patents in the area of speech to text.  So, they possess a nice combination of Intellectual Property, leadership in that field.

But does that make them a good acquisition target for a company like Google?  Is there a need for search by phone?  Google did come out with a patent application earlier this year on searching through speech.  A white paper from Google also covers the topic - Searching by Voice (pdf).

Regardless of whether the company in question is one that Google would buy,  it does seem like a natural step for a major search engine to take at some point. 

9:46 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Aged Rockers Crawling From their Graves

Sitting around my folks house the other day, my father and I were watching some cable show featuring rock stars from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. It featured clips from many decades ago, followed by more recent look at the bands.

Many of those bands had more than one "surviving" member, and it was fun watching them relive their days of glory.  The show was an advertorial - and the clips were part of a larger package, selling for about $250.00.  I suspect that people were purchasing it too.

The Rolling Stones at the Superbowl this past year had the same sort of feel to them.  I think I would have preferred a more modern band.  Green Day could have pulled off the Superbowl really well, as could a number of other bands. 

Is it time for some of the older bands to make room for a younger generation?  Should folks like UB40 be returning to tour?  Or the buzzcocks?  Do people really want to relive the days of Motley Crue?

One of the best concerts that I've ever seen was Muddy Waters entertaining a crowd while in his sixties.  I think that there's room for bands to keep on going at it as long as they have the stamina and the skills to thrill an audience.  I'd probably even pay to see UB40 or the Buzzcocks.  Don't know if I could stomach Motley Crue ripping into a rendition of "Girls, Girls, Girls" though.  Maybe some songs, and some acts don't age well. 

12:26 PM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Anarchy in the Piss Rock Hall of Fame

I was quiet in my civil disobedience in my younger days, and didn't dye my hair, or put a safety pin through my face.  I didn't wear odd clothes, or really do too much to stand out in a crowd.  But, back in the day when the Sex Pistols were finding their way to the top of the charts in the UK by getting kicked off the radio with songs like "God Save the Queen," I was trying  to find a way to get more people to hear the band.

It put a smile on my face to hear that the Sex Pistols were announced as inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the smile grew as the band responded that they weren't the museum's monkeys, and they wouldn't be attending.

Liked this quote from Art for a Change:

True to form, the Pistols have once again stormed the world stage, reminding us all that it's possible to bite the hand that feeds us crap.

You want to give the band a tribute?  You want to tell these old fogies, who once upon a time sneered at the world that they made a difference?  And in a fashion where the world had to take notice.

There are a couple of things that you can do.  Go out, and buy a copy of  "Never mind the Bullocks" and play it.  Play it loud.

Even better, find a band that you like, regardless of how others feel about them, and show them some support. The Sex Pistols challenged society on a number of levels.  They made us question the way we dressed, the way we kowtowed to authority, and the way we played and listened to music.  That spirit of defiance, that call for change, it still exists today.

The band's response to the invitation:

"Next to the SEX PISTOLS rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. Were not coming. Were not your monkey and so what? Fame at $25,000 if we paid for a table, or $15,000 to squeak up in the gallery, goes to a non-profit organization selling us a load of old famous. Congradulations. If you voted for us, hope you noted your reasons.Your anonymous as judges, but your still music industry people. We're not coming.Your not paying attention. Outside the shit-stem is a real SEX PISTOL."

John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) will be on the Jimmy Kimmel show this Friday.  Should be as fun as an induction ceremony.  D. Allan Kerr has a good point when he notes:

 John Lydon, by any name, is an obnoxious little poseur, even narcissistic in a curious kind of way. But God save the freakish fellow for once again giving the rock 'n' roll industry a boot in the ass when it was desperately in need.

The band is playing at fame in its own manner.  They won't be there to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but you're going to be hearing a lot of Sex Pistols in the very near future.  They're selling out. Sex Pistols action figures, and Sex Pistols displays in store windows on High Street, and ring tones, and radio and tv ads.  Will a Range Rover sell better accompanied to the sounds of "God Save the Queen?"

Is it angst and anger, and defiance fueling the decision by the band not to attend?  How would you feel if you were inducted into something like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and you had to pay for tickets for your kids to attend?  The comment in the note from the Sex Pistols' website alludes to that.  The section about paying money.  The Independent explains, in B****cks to fame, we're the Sex Pistols

The Sex Pistols' former bass player, Glen Matlock, told The Independent on Sunday yesterday it had been a unanimous decision by the band to steer clear. "It's nothing to do with the bands - it's all to do with business. When I first heard about it I was quite excited... but then I found I was going to have to pay thousands of pounds to take my kids. It's just a big corporate event, a bunch of Herberts in suits... just a money-making opportunity for multi-million shysters." 

You don't need to be an angry old punk rocker to get pissed off at that treatment.  What kind of honor is that?

Punk rock was partially about an older generation taking advantage of a younger generation, denying them jobs and opportunites, telling them how to think, how to act, how to look, and how to perform.  The American Music Industry is still trying to make a fast buck off of the Sex Pistols. 

The band may be selling rights to use its back catalog and likenesses in advertising and commercial products.  But they have control over which endeavors they will accept.  The negotiations are at arms length, with both sides treating each other as respectable human beings.

The Rock and Roll Museum is treating the band's legacy as a commodity that they have a right to exploit.  That type of exploitation, without negotiation, without treating the band members as human beings is the type of behavoir that sparked the defiance of punk rock in the first place.

Based upon Glenn Matlock's comment, I understand completely why the band told the Hall of Fame to stay away.

9:02 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment