Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

it’s all about the people, stoopid.

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Posted by Ben Barren on January 19, 2010 – 1:03 pm
Filed under Enterprise_Internet, Entrepreneurship, Social Shopping

I’m thinking pretty seriously, as one does at this time of the year (sometimes), about what to do, workwise, 2010 - now it’s almost 100% here as it will be when schools go back after Australia Day Weekend.

I have a feeling, no major impacting external events happening, that the answer may be right in front of me.

Would like this parra tshirt via The Reed Space.

The answer is indeed what I am doing. What I have been doing. An extension of it. Systemised. If the World’s Best Opportunity isn’t suddenly presented to me, that is.

It’s the time of the year where resolutions by now have either had a successful beginning, or not.

Supra TK Society burgundy patent suede 2010 in the house

Luckily I’ve given up smoking at midnite New Years Eve, and haven’t looked back. And i’m eating cereal not toast for breakfast. They were my 2 resolutions and I’m happy to have enacted them. The aim was to start a positive roll.. get some of that momentum thang!

I'm enjoying Kenneth Branagh's Wallander

But they were in effect prevention of the problem is better than treating the solution, or some such golfing analogy which is on a Par 3 on the back nine of the Flinders course in relation to golf divots i think.

Supra Skytop Acid Wash 2010s : Ditto! "I am really feeling these Acid Wash Denim joints. Which colorway do you like?""

So in proactive terms. I now want to raise the bar, and enact the University goal of running the Melbourne Marathon, which I did twice back in the day.

Kinda interesting summer kick, prob id go white perforated in The Supra Cuban 1.5's.

I have 263 days to train for it. And every1 will be needed. Even if u can get ultrafit, the last 8 kilometres totally suck, when body problems - for me shin splints.. become unbearable pain n cramp wise. But that’s why the Marathon is such a good event.

But back to the main topic here; Not smoking : tick. Cereal; tick. Marathon; hopeful tick. Work plan: TBA. Unless it’s in front of me.

Nike Dynasty ‘81 Hi Quickstrike in Team Red

I(ve) spent years indexing the Australian blogosphere as my startup business. You could only really do it manually, because Australian blogs are generally under a dot com domain - whether it be wordpress, blogspot, or your own $8 .com address. Basically there was no simple way to create a database of Australian blogs.

Also, like Technorati has/had found - There is no obvious business model for a blog search engine, beyond resold search engine advertising via google and ad networks.

HELLZ x VANS

Further, the Australian market wasn’t exactly ahead of the curve when it came to Social Media circa 2005-9.

But what I’m finding now, via the growth of Twitter and Facebook to Australians (which have anywhere from 800k-2m and 8m end unique “users” respectively) - Well the major brands and businesses are starting to be interested in these channels. Whether it be from a monitoring,  customer service, PR 2.0, guerilla marketing, or online marketing multiplier effect. Sometimes it’s as simple as tick the Facebook + Twitter box now on a client’s marketing brief.

Kewl Nudie Cardholder and affordable to boot (well there is a 25quid version from Oipolloi) - would age wicked too


So where this intersects for me, is that when previously I indexed 100k largely blog feeds : Now what I’m interested in isn’t the feed (altho i will grab it to index in google reader, represent in feedly and score in postrank) Nor is just twitter, or facebook, the blog, youtube, flickr etc

damn i dig these supra skytop acid wash why cant they be the Skytop II or TK Society models in this wash

What I’m interested in is the person. Which again, is a bit ironic, given my aversion to people in parts ;)

So while a brief may look at the aggregate unique “users” of twitter or facebook : Underneath all that are the influential people;

Topher + Summer Glau - "More of that ? Even if we prevent the end of the world? U know i had a crush on u? Even when i thought u were a dood." #Dollhouse Penultimate

- Starting with the Creators who make new stuff then upload it; Pictures from HotBBQ in Portsea; Flickr capture of the 1kg T-Bone rack.

#Dollhouse penultimate of Topher "Would it sound OTT if I said it could help prevent end of civilisation as we know it?"

- Then the Hunters : Subscribing to lots of sources then scanning thru thousands of items each week to find the nuggets to share. They’ll follow links and forums to reduce to a 140 character message they share with friends on facebook, twitter etc

"U broke out the tasty couture, good choice!" poor summer glau - where is sarah connor when u need her? #dollhouse penultimate

- Followers is an apt segment as defined by Twitter, but even then there is the difference between those that merely glance at their timeline if that - Versus those that click on links, engage with the shares, follow directions and then retweet. In this sense Active rather than Passive Followers are more interesting as a business asset.

The orange skywalker mids r my fave of the adidas Originals STAR WARS - These Feb (Episode III)

That’s the top level, but then what is really interesting is while in 2004/5/6 - You really had a bunch of industry people talking to themselves about Web 2.0, and often having their own related venture : What is different now is traditional marketing practise is starting to take over the social networks, user generated content and blogs. At least as it relates to the business model side.

So you have clients wanting to reach particular demographic groups - No different to if they were creating a Television Commercial; Could be Baby Boomers, X’er, Y’s, Women, Retirees. Young Families. Mums, etc.

"Is that Mascara? U've got on guys'liner + leatherpants" : "It's fashion week": "if u r steven seagal" #Leverage S2E10 "not every1 can rock the scarf!"

Then the other major variable is the client’s industry; Financial products want to interact and connect with online influentials that are in the right lifecycle for their products. Or in some cases, the influentials audience. Ditto for FMCG, Alcohol, Consumer Electronics, Automotive and so on.

Adidas Star Wars Tshirt if u didnt guess via Huf

Different industries; Different consumer segments; Different buying groups.

2nd Last Ep: ill miss good #dollhouse "I'm not a thief. I'm a Terrorist." but bad @elizadushku "then lets bring down the building" nup

I’ll stop there - but the overall space : Let’s call it Social CRM + how it can act as the catalyst for  Social Media Optimisation (by increasing a client’s social media share of voice) is definitely what I’m interested in doing 2010… But right now I need to go back to doing such a project so I can put food on the table : Before I figure out how u can systemise people - Don’t want to end up like the#Dollhouse or like a bad dream in latest Criminal Minds ep.

OUTLINE: Computers vs People; Man against Machine. Filtered or Curation.

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Posted by Ben Barren on January 14, 2010 – 4:36 pm
Filed under Entrepreneurship, blogging

Computers vs People; Man against Machine. Filtered or Curation. Am I surprised that finite issues being faced beyond survival include these perennial debates translated into everyday practicalities.

First u have the scenario of out of mind, out of sight, the machines will just sort all content into the perfect google result and make it perfectly presentable to a client.

Funny thing is it’s amazing how good u can get an algorithm. And these days even without a programmer, with Google pumping more and more of their labs into their advanced search filters which can then be exported as a feed (even the new google.com alerts while still not a trillion webpage index, still provides a feed now which is good for the non feed web page universe)

Startups too have APIs and widgets which means even compared to 2004-7 what used to cost $20K, can now be done closer to $2K. Sometimes, for a standard use case.

But the machines cant do everything.

For example a classic scenario is a client has a brand, whose name also has other meanings; It could be a phrase, place, person, or even another business in a different location.

In this case - suddenly the $2K perfect algorithm just went out the door. And u may have to place yer handy “curator” in 2.0 speak to sort through the false positives.

Before going direct to shit kicking goal however - You can go back to algorithm: Make the searches more specific : Longer phrases, more keywords, more geo-parameters, limit the content types.. Try and test different combinations - and maybe u can get rid of alot of the duplications.

But u still end up having to curate the index of potential matches for whatever u r trying to track.

Quite often too I’m finding a typical scenario is a client is part of by definition a functional division, business unit etc : Maybe they r in marketing, or only responsible for below the line, or above the line, pr, digital, search : And u need to train your machine and curator to drill down to the product group, function or quite often “The Campaign” that is being looked at.

Which often means u start up filtering the internet universe for a client’s whole business but need to drill down to the functional and then campaign level.

All of which u can do.. but the icing on the cake is always curation. The trade off is always time it takes to do it and lack of budget available for it.

Once clients are spending a fair bit higher of their marketing and “other” budgets on social related digital media and marketing - then there will probably be more dollars for the social curation of brand mentions.

When I compare the cost of social media to traditional and by definition the media cost is largely excluded; Programming is in the single number of hours or days + Design is often not more than a header, avatar, wallpaper and some other style guide work. Maybe a couple page minisite for design and development.

This isnt 3-6 month design and development.

Clients want results from The Social..

And I’m sure once there are successful social campaigns and budgets that dont end up being on the news for their racism failure. Then the next client will spend.

Suffice to say u r seeing more brands spending very little creating a positive feedback loop : Tweet about latest marketing. Drive target consumer to facebook and do something. Retweeted on Twitter.

That’s the outline of the post. Will 2010 be the year that machines and curators co-exist hehe Can u tell I watched The Lost Boys and Day Breakers last nite ? Um, but Now I have to write it… put the links in for the pictures… but im goin4 a run… so later…

google remains undftd with yelp but do aussie mediaco’s give a foursquare

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Posted by Ben Barren on December 19, 2009 – 3:29 pm
Filed under Entrepreneurship, Hyperlocal, Social_Networking

#MISFITS - best new TV of 2009 : What a gr8 6 ep arc with S2 approved; #Skins 2.0. Totally Chav.

Typically I was into pure play internet businesses as my inspiration for “get rich quick.. fly 2 the sky etc” fantasies of frictionless economics. Didn’t really work out.

Forget preconceptions of Ray Romano #MenOfACertainAge is a very good show 2 eps in.

Now in California, that’s not strange at all. But Australia has always been a country where we love our physical assets; UR meant to acquire one property, do it up, rent it, flip it, acquire another, rinse, repeat. The Jason Calacanis built to flip story, but applied to property. That’s Aussies.

Had to cop before they all went.... Triumvir Constantine Jacket "The Civil War involving Constantine and his vision of Christ’s symbol happened circa 312 AD. The screen printed Roman numerals (army stencil type) on the back CCCXII translates to 312 AD. I thought the Blind Faith theme can be best translated onto a bomber styled jacket when I was researching WWII air force squadrons and saw a particular graphic on the side of a plane with Felix the Cat holding a bomb on it, Felix meaning “Lucky” in Latin…"

Iron Heart X Diesel X Self Edge sexiH07

Typically my angle was to follow the US curve, accept Australia is behind the tech curve… No different to someone importing a new retail concept working in other larger markets.

"Making the rumors official, Louis Vuitton launch a special mini site dedicated to its latest collaboration, this time creating alongside Parisian artist/entrepreneur Andre."

So when I saw the first posts coming in that Google would be buying the King of local reviews in big US cities for lifestyle orientated segments - Yelp.com - My immediate thought was 2fold : Annoyance I hadnt successfully translated 2005-6 work in local reviews space downunder into an asset (that we were doing as a service provider to a mediaco)

But also the thought I assume alot of people are having : That being the foursquare opportunity in local markets - And how it will play out. And how to position within that.

Stained leather welt, with a honey rubber outsole. Black waxed laces, with a yellow gold "Starks" branded aglet.

I’m pretty sure Foursquare - and various fragmented commerce, mobile and hyperlocal players (eg  that extract and repurposes consumers data to make “checking-in” and automated sharing easier) will end up being part of the post twitter new thing. Not that twitter or facebook or google are going away. But they are each standards or platforms in their own way.

Looks nice eh ? :P

So for your Sensis + Fairfax type players with a dependence on local advertising - the post google/yelp, twitter/foursquare, facebook/foursquare world is one - that u think they’d be replicating - maybe with foursquare themselves or the well funded gowalla type player, or from a bespoke arrogance.dilusion to build themselves.

UNDFTD X TIMBERLAND 6 INCH BOOT SAND

Luvd okanuis when i had as a kid.. the brand has been around since 50's based out of Byron Bay.. u want some of these navy beachcombers...

Herringbone twill tape bounded tongue. Orange leather lining and insole, with game bird art, Starks branding, and woven labels. Nice buy for $129

Now I’m sure the more likely response to these huge developments in local search, user reviews, hyperlocal mapping and the intersection with search and social networking will be to take an extended holiday over the late December/January/early February period. Let the landscape settle.

Taka Hayashi for Vans Vault - "Featuring inspiration from Taka’s artwork and designs, the lineup finds influence from traditionally crafted Native American goods, vintage military surplus and craftsmanship from 1960’s Italian-made footwear. Aside from just sneakers, the collection does an excellent job of incorporating flip-flop sandals into the mix, further emphasizing the new climate change."

The pity if major Australian media players do take this yearly break is having worked a bit in all the segments which foursquare/yelp/googlemaps etc all cover- The Foursquare post Twitter opportunity is not yet defined or standardised, esp when u look at the cities and countries outside the dominance of Yelp.

10 Deep Iron Clad & Ear Cap - Want 4 Summer.

Foursquare, in cities outside the US like Melbourne and Sydney which it just became available in, has only a limited database of businesses in it. Where I am - 75 minutes drive from Melbourne - the closest location it can guess as to where I am is St Kilda - 75ms away. And as for the maps integration it is pretty basic on foursquare.

http://magazine.windingroad.com/issue/53/

Dutch artist Parra is my hero - he is doing collabs across a range of product categories for many brands

What they do have however is an iphone app which is alot more interesting than Sensis’ Whitepages equivalent one.

modelled on the car james dead died in - super light... porsche boxster spyder

That said, my post wasn’t even meant to be about the whole local search, social networking and mobile opportunity. While I hope one of MediaCo’s doesnt just a let a 2 or 3 horse race of Google/Yelp (reviews bolted in Google Maps), Facebook (with increased foursquare integration + maybe some new hyperlocal friendfeed dev in background) and Twitter - fight for the spoils of the convergent space that combines hyperlocal social networking with social gaming.. I wouldn’t be surprised if the space is just ignored in the way Yelp was for so long (convenient that Yelp never had the resources/motivation to launch in Australia too)

Supra TK Society features an azure blue upper made of cracked leather accompanied by a lime green sole. Going kinda crazee...

I was hoping to write about the physical product producing businesses - that become hot brands online, have multiple selling points via the web.. but more so create insatiable demand for new products… that then make really money.

Luvn the nike+ experience : little gadget in my nike maxim parras + nike+ iphone app uploaded to nike.com schweet!

In many cases the businesses I’m thinking about have warehousing and logistic assets, retail outlets and partnerships, and collaborative partnerships with manufacturing and also major brands. But what these companies have oodles of as well as etail and product vision - is very very strong communities of advocated consumers; That provide feedback, early sales, evangelise, retweet and so on. Without the internet they could still use equivalent word of mouth… but these evangelist groups of passionate brand consumers seem to be assets which high performing businesses in these spaces have. These consumers are more important than the manufacturing. Initially many don’t even have to make all the products they sell under their name, or even know how to make them, as long as they can design how they look.

Still liking opening ceremony timberlands

That’s why fashion companies like UNDFTD, HufSF, Super Sunglasses, The Hundreds, Crooks and Castles, Ksubi, Mishka and Triumvir - I find so interesting. (ditto for other categories eg micro-breweries who are building buzz via twitter/facebook etc….)  I was going to write about that… but that will need to be tomorrow - seems I got distracted by Yelp + foursquare.Funnily enough the “Collaboration” model.. so favoured early on by these groups.. as well as stage 2 which is outsourcing.. often by Stage 3 is followed by insourcing of manufacturing and less collaboration - at least in the core product categories. But again, I’ve been distracted by foursquare.. i’m gonna have to riff on this later.

VA of Tokyo have taken a stripped down colorway to the Tokio by whiting out the technical sole unit and leaving the uppers exclusively black except for the bright yellow ghilie lace loops.

Maybe pure play internet still has a bit of interest in it for me... Altho I gotta say the fact that Kanye West cant get a sneaker deal with Luis Vuitton or Nike that works for him and them.. is kinda interesting, given how many sneakers he can sell and dont want to be overly dependent on him.. or in the deal maybe he just isn’t realistic… I wonder how much Michael Jordan has made and continues to from Nike… (to be continued…)

SNEAKER FREAKER SKIPPY which is a 850 model complete with genuine Kangaroo leather, suede pops and tangy lemon/lime inners.

“You fighting the good fight ?”

1
Posted by Ben Barren on November 20, 2009 – 2:50 pm
Filed under BB_or_not_BB, Entrepreneurship, blogging

"i cant believe i gave up stripping for u" #californication S3E8

It was one of those unproductive days in front of the computer + the internet populace, where u conduct a whole range of commercial and non activities, but at the end of it, the net sum is likely negative.

the happy hilary duff #gossipgirl threesome the night before the morning after

That doesn’t particularly phase me; Swings + Roundabouts. Bad Day 2day. Good1 2morro. And anyway can go to the gym at 5pm, pound out 9kms on the treadmill and have it beam-up to the Nike+fitness cloud.

3+ minutes quicker 2day : BB ran 9 km on 11/13/2009 at 6:07 PM with a pace of 6'47"/km

Some people like to fill their tanks up with petrol - possibly start of week, or if true value-optimisers : At a time of the week where public road bodies, accc attackers and iraqi petrol conspiracy theorists - advise us getting from A to B petrol burners - when to buy our climate destroying gas.

im sick of the serial killer foreplay just kill him already #dexter or him u but the show is called #dexter so fkn kill him S4E8

If there is 1 thing I miss from the Big Brother work, its the petrol card. Well cards, actually. “Fill it up”. He muttered to himself.

Constantine Jacket spacer Front snap closure. Rib collar, waistband. Dbl welt rib pockets, contrast left rib sleeve, diamond quilt lining. Embroidered patches; chest, Right sleeve. All cotton fine twill jacket Options: BLACK

From Triumvir product designer/cofoundr : "Thought the Blind Faith theme can be best translated onto a bomber styled jacket when I was researching WWII air force squadrons and saw a particular graphic on the side of a plane with Felix the Cat holding a bomb on it, Felix meaning “Lucky” in Latin"

Need the Trivmvir constantine bomber before the 150 pieces r sold 4 good - its next purchase

With some of the new Gourmet's jumping on the big Pony Hair trend....

I digg the Adidas Ransom line it's well priced too. Like the black on black canvas or leather models.. or blue suede chukkas r nice too:P

The Adidas I really like tho r by the Undefeated Cofounder James Bond who did an awesome line for David Beckham of all folk. These look like 2009 Doc Martins should...

Alternately and these were selling for $75USD at Huf Luv Converse Skidgrip 100 HFZ Mid HUF - where half the $ go to fight Aids in Africa.

So I’m not a fill’er’up’er’er ATM. If I filled my tank up on a Monday for example, it would make me feel poorer; Less cash in pocket. Less in my Bendigo Community Bank.

I'm actually glad S3 of #MadMen is over altho annoying that the final ep was so good (relatively) along with the lawnmower episode early on in series.

Not that it makes any difference to my driving habits, and thus the amount of petrol I use and money I spend.

Drapers a tool, the flighty teacher i dont mind #madmen S3E11 in the ep named "The Gypsy and The Hobo" - Which 1RU Dick Whitman and Don Draper ?

While I had more money, I didn’t really. 1 to 2 return trips to Melbourne a week. 5 trips to the gym 20 mins each way at 80km-100kmhr. 2 trips to rye return. Errands. Maybe 300-500kms a week / 1.5 to  2 tanks of petrol?

Ended up loving the HBO #BoredtoDeath. Recommend the 8 episode of 25 minutes a go... the 3some is highlarious:P!

So back to pounding out a bad day at the gym. But on this particular day I dont have enough petrol to get there and back. So I need gas.

“$15 unleaded thanks.” I say to attendant - They still pump yer gas around’ere which is good.

Trouble Maker Current Line : Crooks and Castles not what it used to be but there are always standout pieces

Luv this just lookbookd not in shops yet 10 deep Baseball/Coaches Jacket with killa badging. Called the 10 Deep Terrible Tenth I just learnt : $154USD at CompoundGallery.com - These will go vvquick:P

Or if u want the 10deep in textbook (and same as Triumvir Constantine...) Black with white piping... Click 4 the 10deep.com Lookbook

Working the gas ain’t a bad thing, careerwise. Honest quid’n'all’that. People migrate from working the video store/cafe to the servo station/mechanics.

Compound Gallery get dope stock in and quicker than nearly every1 and sell it for no more than retail or even less... which for ultra new stock is rare..

Compound Gallery get dope stock in and quicker than nearly every1 and sell it for no more than retail or even less... which for ultra new stock is rare..

Having worked in video store they know their directors, Japanese manga, noir.

Navajo. Chimayo. Americana. It is through these three themes that best describes April77’s 2009-2010 Fall Winter Collection. These keywords not only bring forth the essence of this season’s clothing line, but forge a new path in modern apparel.

April77 Mens Joey Chimayo Black Drill Embroidered Pants

“How u going ?” he asks…..

Cant u tell i dont have photoshop - Click for Super Sideviews Black Sunnies Collection currently in my possession, not that we ever own anything.

(alot of thoughts go through my head… then alot of potential answers..) “Not bad. All good.”*

Canon G11 angular muscular. Read Digital Camera Review dot com. I still want S90 but make mine a Canon this time.

Probably one or two too many false positives there. They arent stoopid round’ere either. Bullshit detectors on high. Followup question.

LEICA HERMES M7 comes paired with a “Leica SUMMILUX-M 35 mm f/1.4 ASPH. wide-angle lens, a matching classic round lens hood, a LEICAVIT M rapid winder and a real leather carrying strap matched to the colour of the camera !

“You fighting the good fight ?”

MB&F And Alain Silberstein HM2.2 “Black Box” Watch

“I think so.”

Brushed 316L surgical stainless steel with Black PVD Coating. Ø 45 mm - height 18 mm - lug distance 24 mm. Screwed crown w. side protection

Although TBH, I’m not so sure.

blogging is sooooo 2005 :)

But it’s a good raison d’etre question to ponder in between sitting on the imac, getting funding/petrol, and emitting workout data to nike+ fitness.

my immaletufinish SUPER SIDEVIEWS BLACK summer sunnies arrived from SESTO ULTERIANO ITALY *Then I started mumbling about utilisation of labour percentages and how I need to increase my base utilisation from a low percentage to a high percentage, while reiterating I am vhappy with the work I am doing at a low utilisation. Heck I've been high utilisation at a high rate but productivity / value creation / actually achieved thingz is waaaay low. U end up driving hours each day to attend meetings which just generate more work u have less time for. Now I want to work high value / high yield. Virtual; Years later - u (cant help but) look at what has been acheived and wonder if there isn't a better way to get the X, Y and Z right - so that is what I'm trying to do.... grow from a small base of the right things... get good word of mouth.. work with good people.. get great results.. do things the right way... with good outcomes... and Deniro/Heat style... 'be ready to leave in 60 seconds....' - The work that is... or the work/life balance thing.. ok im off 2 gym on a friday.. want this change to kick in hard...

Let there be ExtraBigKahuna Parasites + May #MadMen #TrueBlood #Hung Mondays Begin

17
Posted by Ben Barren on August 17, 2009 – 5:15 pm
Filed under Entrepreneurship, Newspapers, TV

Mick Malthouse’s Premiership Clock is ticking + his now ex-assistant Brad Scott, formerly of Brisbane - altho he was a Melbourne boy, has been made Senior Coach of North Melbourne. Unfortunately I missed the Dees Win yday - atho I did listen to the SEN radio audiostream - I’ve had one of those cold thangs which us unavoidable if u enter out into the human world. The only viruses u catch arent just on windows machines!

I did catch the Red Hill V Hastings game tho (as Rye had a bye) I’ve gotta say I’m lookin fwd to the Mornington Peninsula Football League Nepean Division (finals’ere) where my team Rye (assisted by Richmond Trifecta of Jake King - who went for Didak on weekend, Greg Stafford + Chaffey) is playing in a good year for the Top 5 teams.. AFL Finals at the MCC (Long Room + Dining Room Bar where I can take up to 4 visitors for the first few finals anyway!)

And now that Geelong have come back to the field, and even Riewoldt et St Kilda choked against Bombers yday. It’s gonna be all on come September. Did I mention the kickass organic chook chips n gravy I had from Ormond road last nite ? Yumo… Could have used the D+G Hooded Scarf - even if D+G Copied the original…

So while I have no topic in particular to this blog post.. maybe u can get behind my request of Google Reader that I twittered @googlereader Was wondering if feeds by tag/folder4 shared items is on your product roadmap radar? awesome 2have spliced shared items feed - Let me explain my request further and you can see the Google Reader Get Satisfaction feedback forum - which is an interesting case study itself on modern product development, even in a farely secretive BigCo like the big GOOG cheese.

In my current Red Barren work - I’m trying to build on a single value chain (Social Media Optimization let’s call it), singularly (meaning I can deliver and support it myself / i am dependent only on me, myself, and I / no1 2 blame or reward but me), even if working on various client objectives (some want to monitor when they are mentioned on blogs/twitter - others want to syndicate a selection of youtube/flickr/blog posts to their website)

Rather than working on a range of projects with no continuity - I’m also trying to be able to work virtually (so I dont need to actually be there or somewhere to do the work - so dont need to waste hours/days on driving to multi-hour meetings which is ineffective for me and to the chargee) Finally, I’m trying to utilise and then build upon the most open / freemium tools available using some base level Atom, RSS, OPML and other feed based formats. The main tool I’m using to coordinate the different projects is Google Reader.

G_Reader as those in the industry around it (8 and counting) is great at sucking in, validating and updating RSS feeds - which can be categorised into their various content types (eg images from Flickr, videos from YouTube, microblogs from Twitter and Friendfeed, media news from Google News, blogs from Google Blog Search) as well as other dimensions such as location (region, state, suburb etc) and category (eg sports, entertainment, travel, auto etc)

The bonus with Google Reader is you can import and export OPML. I personally track 4000 feeds - which I have to finally delete some as I maxed it about 6 months ago… And there are brilliant extensions to represent the content via Feedly.com. And awesome real time analytics down to entry level out of 10 from Postrank.com with their Google Reader extension. I totally agree with what Rex Hammock said re whether Friendfeed type solutions replaced Google Reader (NOT:P!) : “I’m now a fan of FriendFeed, but Google Reader is the place I live. It’s not only my browser start page — it’s pretty much my browser middle page and end page, also. Oddly, whenever I speak to groups of real people (individuals not obsessed with geekitude) I always ask how many of them use Google Reader (I’ve quit saying RSS Reader). None do. Only a small percentage of them even use iGoogle. Frankly, I don’t understand how someone can cope with all this stuff that bombards us everyday if they didn’t have the internet organized with a news reader. If you’re reading this and don’t use Google Reader, spend a little time setting it up and using it a little each day to make the web come to you — rather than you going to it. Within a week, you’ll be thanking me for saving you lots of time. Or “cussing” me because you’ve discovered some incredible new feeds to follow.”

So you can do some pretty fancy yet still basic boolean/advanced search parameters to get a good match for clients wanting to monitor their company, brands, competitors, topics of interest + whatever other alerts they r interested in. After spending years drilling the blogosphere down to a country rather than Global AKA North American level, you can limit the content to mentioning or originating from Australia or England or Germany or Asia etc.

But what u cant do is combat bad quality. Bad writing. Blog posts or even worse tweets that just arent relevant to your client. And that’s why preventative algorithmic matching to create a subset of content ready for human moderation works so well. But u need the editorial manicuring if that is a word or who cares if it isn’t. But what Google Reader doesn’t do and what I tweeted for them to do - to save me the hours and days I’ve already spent (probably wasted too) is when U select the various items of relevance to your client(s) - What Google Reader calls “Shared Items” - which outputs as a feed (and so can thus be manipulated/syndicated/turned into a daily pdf report via Tabbloid.com)

The Shared Items feed from Google Reader loses all the category and tags that u set up in Google Reader and comes out as just one dumb aggregate feed by recency. If these shared items could just retain their tags/topics/folders it would be so much more powerful. I could deliver to my clients out of the box:

  • A Daily Report of the 10 most Important Twitter Messages for mentions of a Public Company
  • Selection of YouTube Videos broken down by their Roy Morgan Psychographic Consumer Segmentation
  • Best Suburb Level Geocoded Flickr Pics for Real Estate Website
  • Five Customer Testimonials for a new Online Banking Feature
  • Bad Consumer Experiences blogged about of a competitors customer support
  • etc

But bloody Google Reader only gives me one feed to aggregate all of the above... and supposedly it loses the tag.topic.category schema/structure built into the feed. Aggh so pretty please Google Reader team u rock, but can u pls fix, ta.

So in other news, it appears newspapers and related content entiries such as AP were validated in their wish to ban the parasites like Google and bloggers. Paid Content : “The vast majority of the value gets captured by aggregators linking and scraping rather than by the news organizations that get linked and scraped. We did a study of traffic on several sites that aggregate purely a menu of news stories. In all cases, there was at least twice as much traffic on the home page as there were clicks going to the stories that were on it. In other words, a very large share of the people who were visiting the site were merely browsing to read headlines rather than using the aggregation page to decide what they wanted to read in detail. Obviously, this has major ramifications for content creators’ ability to grow ad revenue, as the main benefit of added traffic is the potential for higher CPMs. (Disclosure: I have consulted for the AP and other content creators, though not on this particular issue.)”

But then the pro-validation of the anti-parasites argument was deconstructed to the positive. Jeff Jarvis : “If links are not valuable, then fine, get rid of them: refuse all aggregators’ and search engines’ robots, complain so much about links that no one bothers to link to you (a la the AP). Or put all your stuff behind a pay wall where the links won’t pay off. Where are you then? Without discovery. Without audience. Without a means to monetize audience. Links may not be worth as much as you wish they were worth, but that’s an unstated and unmeasurable standard and quite meaningless. You’ll discover just how much they are worth if you don’t have them. That’s the only meaningful analysis.”

Meaning the newspapers and AP are wrong again.

All I know is I don’t have AMC or HBO Premium Cable TV Channels - and tonite I watch the Series 3 return of Mad Men, followed by current season (actually last nite in America… well a few hours ago only really) HBO’s biggest show they say since Sopranos - True Blood, the awesome new str8 basketball coaching hooker Hung and not so good anymore actually bloody awful Entourage.

And not only do no Aussie or Global players let me legally and fairly pay to watch what hundreds of millions of people have the right to at the same time... heck Australia has only just started playing Seasons 1 of The Wire, United States of Tara and Mad Men on TV.

The only Parasite getting paid is iPrimus $139 for 200 gigage of programming a month (The ADSL 2+ Extra Big Kahuna Plan the only good large usage internet plan on the Mornington Peninsula)- who then use the Telstra network (but i much prefer paying 70c a gig versus the $2.50 they charge + $150 per gig when u go over 60 gig!) - to deliver me the latest HBO + AMC. Well plus $17 a month for a superfast / supersafe / supersecure up to the second TV deliverer….and with a sub $200 WDTV 2.0 settop box connected to yer LCD big screenTV - u can throw away that Foxtel IQ box and get the world’s leading TV and movies from the last 24 hours not Foxtel which apart from LIVE sports shows 2 years ago Movies and TV.

Supra NS Wildlife Strapped Zebras ROOOLZ

Anyway, I’m going to try and exercise so I can give my body a bit of a cleanse and see if I can get rid off this wacko cold thing… and I actually new new hightech / retrointerpretation runners with a twist like these Air Maxim Cross Trainer in OG colours… maybe with the new U-Boat Classico Chrono for a stopwatch…

End of Post Polyvore Charcoal + Zebra Fun

Some Polyvore Zebra fun

Lanvin Patchwork Suede Trainer | Browns Fashion
Puma Blaze of Glory - Sneaker Freaker x Puma NBK Shoes 348193-01
Karmaloop.com - Global Concrete Culture
Karmaloop.com - Global Concrete Culture
Karmaloop.com - Global Concrete Culture
Artful Dodger The Ammo Button Up Shirt, Buttondown Shirts for Men
Karmaloop.com - Global Concrete Culture
Karmaloop.com - Global Concrete Culture
Blackbird - Robert Geller - Fencing Shirt
Common Projects Tournament Mid Nappa (1321 42 3497) - Caliroots.com
Alife Chuck Toxic Sneakers at Tobi
adidas Originals Nizza Hi x PORTER () - Caliroots.com
Russell (Charcoal Wool) from CLAE : Boundless NY
Tw Steel Watch TW821 Cool Black Mens at WatchWear.com
Reebok BB4600 Re-Issue | KicksOnFire.com
Huf ‘09 Fall Preview - mashKULTURE
supra-steve-aoki-wildlife-strapped-3 | Highsnobiety.com
supra-steve-aoki-wildlife-strapped-2 | Highsnobiety.com
adidas Originals Fall 2009 ZX700 Boat Zebra | KicksOnFire.com
adidas Originals Fall 2009 ZX700 Boat Zebra | KicksOnFire.com
Classico CAS 1 Chronograh - U-Boat Watches - Matt Baily | Authorized Retailer
Rogue Status Stadium Jacket | CtotheJL

Social Media Monitoring Needs To Be Hyperlocal, As Well.

0
Posted by Ben Barren on July 29, 2009 – 2:15 pm
Filed under Australia, Enterprise_Internet, Entrepreneurship

Google Australia Blog : “The fastest rising searches conducted on google.com.au during 2009 to date are for ‘swine flu’ (1) and ‘susan boyle’ (2), and home-grown TV show ‘masterchef’ made number three, after awakening the foodie within all of us. Aussies also headed online to understand their eligibility for the Government’s ‘stimulus package’ (4); follow Roger Federer’s effort to match Pete Sampras’s grand slam record at ‘wimbledon’ (5); and better understand technology phenomenon ‘twitter’ (6).”

Quick Break from Work Programming as I wait for Technical Fixes from a Trusted Party in Another Beautiful Country : So Shapelle Corby, serving 20 years in Bali for a boogie board of some1’s ganja, is in a very fragile mental state according to her mother. She hasn’t yet heard back from the Denpasar Prison Boss whether she will be able to setup her beauty therapy business within those mentally challenging walls. Gartner’s graph concurs with the Shapelle rollercoaster yet I imagine they would encourage her to hold’em dont’fold em as the graph goes’a'moving_on_up after a dip. I particularly like their transition from “Peak of Inflated Expectations” to “Trough of Disillusionment” to “Slope of Enlightenment” + the ultimate arrival @ “Plateau of Productivity.”

So working from Australia isn’t exactly as extreme as Shapelle’s case but the rollercoaster of trying to fight the fair fight in a location whose market is tens of times smaller than bigger ones; Where market power is concentrated in the same way Google controls search; And rather than in Digitally Native Centres or Hot Passion Hubs, where it seems nearly everyone is an eWorker on the next kewl thang. Check Brad Feld whose Colorado community is a shining example. Some example 2009 posts from Brad in last quarter - Transforming Colorado IT Services, Vancouver Entrepreneurial Energy, Maturing of Implicit Web + Entrepreneurial Communities;

Brad Feld : “I’ve been adamant that Colorado’s goal should never be “to be like Silicon Valley”, but instead we should listen and learn what works here and figure out how to apply some of the chocolaty goodness while avoiding all the traffic jams. I believe that the future of most economic development and growth comes from entrepreneurship.  Plus, it’s a ton of fun.”

Here, when u do encounter a forward looking, willing to innovate party - u then face operational battles to execute successfully : Big picture ones such as lack of engineering talent skilled in the right areas; And when u find the brains, attracting capital to fund the engineering is relatively a joke worse than the real bubbling innovation cauldrons.

Then if u get capital or clients willing to spend money on “It” - In fact this whole post was triggered by the excellent post by Jeremy Owyang on Social Media Monitoring approaches and budgets in the US :

“Appropriately Staff and Fund. Don’t expect this partner to understand the nuances of your markets’ discussion, assign a few part time resources internally to champion this audit internally –and don’t forget to budget. I’ve seen many annual pricing proposals at the 100k range –varying on services and number of keywords used.”

The reality is in Australia $100K Social Media Monitoring or even marketing related budgets arent there - So Hackerstyle U need to often forcefit technology parts that were built with a one size fits all characteristic. Cue my favourite topic of Localisation of Web Services.

Localisation is an argument I wouldn’t try and convince an Australian investor to buy into again. It only ends one way, and that is with Chapelle rocking on the ground, staring into space, counting down the next 15 years, even though the average life expectancy in her current home is 75% of her committed sentence there; 15 years.


While half or the majority of Google’s revenue now comes from outside North America (and there is actually global google product development done in Sydney for Google Maps and some holistic search features) - market leaders from multibillion market capped multihundred million users Facebook - doesnt have a local team or executive (is that still true ?) downunder (MySpace/Fox Interactive even with downscaling do) Nor does the new early adopting black every1’s fave 140 character txt - Twitter - The #6 most searched for safe term on google.com.au - Australia’s localised largest search engine.

And when it comes to the space I’m spending the greater part of my time : Social Media Monitoring, Intelligence, Syndication and Conversational Marketing - some of the larger players have sales affiliates and representatives. Some even probably have a fulltime body or two.

Where it gets interesting, as I’m spending alot of time with overseas leaders in the front end tools of Social Media Monitoring space - is that the Social Media Index of content needed - is still largely drawn from Australian consumers blogs, flickr account, youtube videos and twitter messages. As well as the large well known media institutions ala Fairfax + News Ltd Major Mastheads, Telstra/Bigpond and Sensis/Yellow, Kerry Stokes Yahoo7, ABC with TripleJ, Austereo + DMG Radio with their celebrities like Hamish and Andy and the podcasts and so on.

And this is just Australia. The same issue applies for the UK, Asia, Germany, Spain.. name a continent / region / country / state / suburb. Just as consumers live, buy, communicate within a 45 minute drive from their home - So too is advertising and marketing still a largely regional thing. Cars may be made in Germany and Geelong, and while with BMW you may be able to track online your car from manufacture to the docks to delivery - The Relationship marketing and viral tactics to get u to upgrade to the new Z4 or X6 was done at a local level.

So that’s where I’m at today, trying to separate Signal from Noise so that no important client related tweets are algorithmically missed - While also trying to provide a dashboard of local near realtime insights about target consumers in this local geography.

So luckily over 2005-9 there has been alot of funding of the 2nd phase of RSS - around tools that deduplicate the same match of a client’s name on blogs or retweeted - You can generate really kewl graphs and charts within a few clicks into a PDF report, Excel chart or HTML. It is now easy to filter content by whether it is Good, Bad, Average or Great,

But ask it to show you Australian or English consumer or sensibility... that does not yet compute. Which is why it’s so interesting; Unless u have 15 years left to serve.. but a life expectancy of 10. OK back to work… enough 2.0 gallows humour.

Wouldn’t it Be Gr8 If there was a Real_Time_Web Industry Downunder?

0
Posted by Ben Barren on July 10, 2009 – 10:40 am
Filed under Australia, Entrepreneurship

Working in the online industry while being in Australia is always better (as i get older) done as an extension of dealing with True Technology Hub Cities rather than trying to get things done within (sorry to insult the mentally challenged) retarded Aussie market; I’d much rather - well actually I wouldn’t - but it’s better for my sanity to deal with a City of People that are Chasing rather than Protecting It.

The Archetypal_Proto:Typical example is San Francisco, but (sometimes smaller is better + creates more connection / better buzz) also the passion hubs where innovation, education, entrepreneurs and no strings high-IQ capital proliferate are especially interesting and productive. This week I’ve been collaborating with Colorado and it’s all Can Do and (Just Unprompted with a real smile) Do. Where Companies with 11 people who focus on making and growing The New New Thing.

Downunder, it’s an Old Old Garage Sale - Will Kerry + jilted Stokes son buy up James Packer Foxtel stake ? (or Telstra be forced to sell it via the government) - is an example of a current story. Not to mention the hubris of a $43Billion SuperHighway build out by the government - potentially in competition with the industry. Or collaboration. Or as part of a breakup and reallocation of assets. Who knows ? There will be committees, tenders and activity in Micro-Washington Canberra : All while the internet gets slower relative to the world : And alot more expensive than our peers. Not to mention the prohibitive contracts.

The government doesnt’ want to help the battler get a fairer price/speed/contract from the nation’s leading ISP with dominant market power - nor mandate the ACCC competitive body to do so (who seemed more keen to settle turf wars with a now dead football scion paper industry billionaire) Nup, the government wants to jump straight to being the fastest internet in the world ! Who cares if it takes a change of government and a decade plus change.

So instead of sending out $900 cheques and putting the price of smokes to $20 and a 6pack of smirnoff up 35% - why doesnt the government make internet cheaper ? And provide consumers with ability for Fast Transfer between carriers without prohibitive 6-12-24 month contracts ? And dont let the partially publicly owned monopolist ISP charge AKA Bigpond charging $150 PER GIG without direct consent from the consumer when they go over the woefully too small accounts - It is ridiculous that the biggest ISP plan by Bigpond and many other telcos is 60 gig - or well under 1/3rd of a typical US plan + and then charge $150 per gig - even though the internet I type this post on uses the same Telstra back end but 200 gig costs $139 per month or 70 cents per gig. Yup - Telstra charge $150 per gig for excess use (often without consumer knowing let alone actually click consenting nor can u just buy topups/datablocks to avoid this charge) versus 70 cents (which goes all the way up to $4 per gig - or Internode’s more reasonable $1.50 per gig Datablocks) Bigpond - let google index this and warn off another customer.

But the irony is alot of Australian business wouldn’t care if they lost a customer. It’s the ugly side of the laidback dont give a toss Aussie, who really couldnt give a fk if they lose a customer. Which means u never really fight enough in the first place.

And it certainly means it’s not like Colorado. Where alot of the fire power and infrastucture of Web 2.0 came from ala Brad Feld backing Newsgator, Technorati, Feedburner, and later Gnip, Techstars, Lijit, Filtrbox and many many others (with many other investors too…. it’s just one higher profile example in a sector that’s mypassion) - Web 2.0 must have been dead by 2006/7 in Colorado - with the rise of the Implicit Web / 3.0 / Semantic technologies or Glue Companies as the MIT Marathoner dubs’em.

So I’ve only got 35 minutes to meet a twitter sea change user at my local cafe, so I better actually get to the 2 links that got me to write this post about Australia being behind the Internet Industry’s real current issues (and also consume Matt Cutts Google indexing posts, presentations and video that says to effect google used to update its index yearly, then bi-annual, monthly weekly to… well I twittered a product yesterday then I did a Google search trying to find where to buy it and my Tweet about product I’d just made was a top 10 search result, wow) :

1. Real Time Search : What is Real Time Search ? Definition and Players by Danny_S

Extract : “There seems to be no end to companies saying they offer real time search these days. And no end to people quoting how Google itself says it wants to improve in the area. But what does real time search really mean? For me, “real time search” means looking through material that literally is published in real time. In other words, material where there’s practically no delay between composition and publishing. You take a picture and seconds later, it’s posted to the world to see. You think of something, immediately tap it out on Twitter, and your tweet is shared almost as soon as you thought of it.. How about the fact that Google can return “fresh” content sometimes within minutes of that material first being published. Yes, Google does this. But the material itself wasn’t published in real time, nor does it make Google into a real time search engine. That blog post or web page or news article took time to compose between the original thought and the actual publishing event. It didn’t go out in real time.. Twitter said last year that only four companies were getting the firehose data. One partner they purchased, Summize — which is now Twitter Search. FriendFeed was only getting it for a subset of Twitterers who also use FriendFeed. It’s unclear if Zappos really got the entire thing or still gets it. Twittervision might still get it, but I suspect they’re now using the Twitter API. It’s unclear who, if anyone, is still getting it.. The Twitter API allows partners to conduct searches at Twitter automatically, to bring back data to someone based on those they’re following or tap into Twitter data in other ways. However, the API limits how much data can be requested and does not give access to everything Twitter has stored.. The major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo want the firehose data. Twitter’s been talking to them, but no agreements have been reached. This seems less to do with any technical issues and far more to do with financial ones. If Twitter gives Google its firehose, it loses a unique feature, that of Twitter Search as the only service with the ability to search all tweets (when Twitter Search actually works right, more on that in a bit). Access to the Twitter firehose won’t come at a cheap price..”

2. The Micro-Blog Real Time Firehose : Speeding Up RSS by Eric_S @ Techcrunch

Extract : “RSS Feeds are too slow.. Tomorrow, at our Real Time Stream CrunchUp, we will see three demos of projects that do just that in slightly different ways.

(1) Google engineers Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin will show a demo of a new push protocol called pubsubhubub, Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini will demo his similar RSS Instant Update Hub, and WordPress engineer Andy Skelton will show off a Jabber client which uses the XMPP protocol to push blog headlines into an IM-like environment faster than RSS.. The pubsubhubub and Netvibes technologies create RSS hubs, which push out feeds as soon as they are available. This approach is in contrast to the polling method which is the foundation of RSS. The polling method sucks because it requires the server acting on behalf of the RSS subscriber to constantly ping the server where the RSS feed is published to ask if there is anything new yet..

(2) Netvibes is creating its own proprietary version of this for its own service, which it is developing independently. It is called the RSS Instant Update Hub.. The Instant Update Hub will cache and push feeds automatically so that the widgets load faster and they update continuously without requiring a refresh. Any data stream that is supported by a Netvibes widget today, which goes well beyond RSS, will be pushed through the Instant Update Hub.

(3) The WordPress Jabber client uses a different push technology, XMPP, to speed up RSS. The effect is that headlines pop up like instant messages. Jabber is mostly used for IM clients such as Gtalk, but Wordpress is using it as a feed reader and micro-blog publisher..” Oh the RVCA puffer hoodie thing below would go with my TK + Adi-Diesels yeh ?;)

If any1 can point me to any Australian company, people or developers doing “REAL TIME” as per Danny Sullivan’s definition above.. that’d be awesome…

Current Faves

Karmaloop.com - Global Concrete Culture
In4mation The Howlett Sweatshirt in Heather Ash, Sweatshirts for Men
Oak | harmon - black fisherman pants
K.Z.0 ISO Jacket in Black at Revolve Clothing - Free Shipping!
B STORE Biker Jacket in Grey at Revolve Clothing - Free Shipping!
CONCRETE NL - Nike Sportswear x Kanye West – Air Yeezy Sale Event | July 4th | FRESHNESS - Established in 2003 | Sneakers, Toys, Shops & Fashion
CONCRETE NL - Nike Sportswear x Kanye West – Air Yeezy Sale Event | July 4th | FRESHNESS - Established in 2003 | Sneakers, Toys, Shops & Fashion
Common Projects Tournament Low (1320 43 0506) - Caliroots.com
Common Projects Tournament Low (1320 43 0506) - Caliroots.com
Nixon Rubber Player (Yellow) at PremierSkateboarding
B.Son Ribbed Mock Pullover Hoodie - CONTEXT CLOTHING - Free Shipping!
Nixon Rubber Player BLACK at Snowboard Connection
B. SON Sandy Fleece Zip Collar Hoodie in Heather at Revolve Clothing - Free Shipping!
B.Son Zip Mock Hoodie Charcoal - CONTEXT CLOTHING - Free Shipping!
Beta Unit - Welsh Fleece from Robust Flavor
B.Son Thermal S/S Pulloover Hoodie Heather - CONTEXT CLOTHING - Free Shipping!
Supra Thunder Grey Leather | Hypebeast
visvim-2009-fall-winter-outerwear-collection-34 | Hypebeast
visvim-2009-fall-winter-outerwear-collection-30 | Hypebeast
visvim-2009-fall-winter-outerwear-collection-40 | Hypebeast
【楽天市場】【送料無料】 《SUPRA・スープラ》SUPRA CUBAN GREY WOOL：LIMITED EDT
Crooked Tongues | News
visvim-2009-fall-winter-outerwear-collection-60 | Hypebeast
visvim-2009-fall-winter-outerwear-collection-41 | Hypebeast
visvim-2009-fall-winter-outerwear-collection-64 | Hypebeast
visvim-2009-fall-winter-outerwear-collection-49 | Hypebeast
The Hundreds : The Feed» Blog Archive » BETA UNIT - SUMMER 2009 COLLECTION
Oak | complex geometries - black square hood tee

The Technology Sometimes, it doesn’t a work.

1
Posted by Ben Barren on July 2, 2009 – 8:41 pm
Filed under BB_or_not_BB, Entrepreneurship, TV

If there is one benefit of employment other than rent a crowd friends, centrally located offices, a suggested social life, long list of can-do acquaintances, and importantly a transfer of substantial funds at the same time every 14/28/31 days : It’s that they provide or should The Technology. Or Just Say No in Less than 60 Seconds like RSS/Glue VC Mogul Brad Feld.

Michael Wolff, the 1.0 legendary deconstructer + protagonist in Vanity Fair on Politico : “For two generations—since Watergate, let us say—politics has been about opposing Washington. The true modern American ideology was to believe that the federal government, if not evil, was grossly ineffective and pathetically out of touch. Practicing politics, or writing about it, was a job not for the best and brightest but for the narrow-minded and obtuse. Even Washington reporters, once the zenith of the trade, became stodgy relics. Washington was not even the center of power—finance, media, and technology had much more immediate effects on people’s lives than government did. A whole language grew up to characterize the oddness, and the emotional limitations, of the Beltway-centric: “wonks” or, their own, self-loathing favorite, “political junkies” or, that most merciless characterization of Washington, “Hollywood for the ugly.” Even cable television, with its left and right divide, was not interested in politics per se, or in Washington, but in the clash of opposing sides.”

True Blood this week really kicked into gear - The Vampires have Sookie, and a competitor via Scene Source : “Bill, Eric and the rest of the vampires are caught off-guard when a creature savagely attacks Sookie. A shy Hoyt finds himself attracted to Jessica as she makes her first visit to Merlotte’s. Sarah and Steve try to boost the confidence in Jason in his calling. Meanwhile, Sam considers moving to new scenery, and Tara is shocked by the revelry at Maryann’s latest bacchanal.”

@m0nty is on2 the inquisition.

So whether it’s a Laptop that works; Mobile with unlimited usage; A company car with petrol, insurance, crash repairs and late vintage low kilometres lack of style - the thing that does suck about not doing The Devil Deal (or doing a similar transactional version consulting) is The Technology isn’t just provided. Nor can u just hand back that Blackberry when u drop it in The Toilet : Ocean or just leave your laptop at some sponsor benefacted Internet Advertising Drinx.

If not Bing it’s Bling via VentureBeat : “Bling Nation has come up with a way to introduce pay-by-cellphone transactions in the U.S. for the purchase of physical goods at stores. That, in turn, has enabled the company to raise $8 million in funding, which is being announced today. Investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Meck and Camp Ventures. The hope is to disrupt the inefficient $60 billion credit card purchasing industry.”

Some prequel Vintage Kenlu.net Nike’s for ya or some totally Factory413_Blog modern Supras (grey wool Cubans or white leather Thunders please!)

“Hello Mr IT : I Need some True Blood Type:O / a replacement Laptop / Blackberry” are not exactly words u utter. Rather how the fk could I have destroyed my 3rd Apple Keyboard within the last year and why did my Blackberry Curve go AWOL a day before the Iphone 3GS came out and the last keyboard died. Not to mention the primary iMac 24″ iMac sitting in the boot of the car needing to be repaired but not getting round to dropping it off at The CompNow Service Centre for fear of sticker shock servicing.

Weeds new season is getting fun and I think Scott Rafer is totally right : “I spent from 1992 to 2006 presuming VC-backed startups were the business I was in, and I worked towards understanding that system. After all that time, two things happened to radically change my outlook.

  1. I finally figured out that one should only raise VC if one is already rich,
  2. I also figured out that being boring and late has better risk|reward characteristics than being sexy and early, and
  3. Cloud computing arrived, making VC deal terms economic only as growth capital for Internet startups, leaving the early-stage field clear to angels (and bootstrapping)…”

Nurse Jackie is kicking along very nice - Like a female updated House with a bit of Dexter thrown in. John Hartigan of News Ltd is well um, not understanding the value of linkage in the new economy. Um lets put that Google Genie back in the bottle, not via Mumbrella : “How many journalists in this room have written a story recently that was original, exclusive, highly relevant and genuinely useful to your audience? I’m not saying there haven’t been stories like this. But, there have been too few.”

I enjoy a bit of Saving Grace minus the God/Avenging Angel conversations. But maybe Mr Hartigan might want to listen to Mr Fred Wilson who far more gets the aggregator linking to specialists with some curation + opinion underpinning the audience orientation AKA the future of the newspaper business : “If I was starting The Village Voice today, I would not print anything. I would not hire a ton of writers. I would build a website and a mobile app (or two or three). I would hire a Publisher and a few salespeople. I would hire an editor and a few journalists. And then I’d go out and find every blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, youtube, and other social media feed out there that is related to downtown NYC and I would pull it all into an aggregation system where my editor and journalists could cull through the posts coming in, curate them, and then publish them. I’d do a bit of original reporting on the big stories but most of what I’d do would be smart curation, with a voice, and an opinion.. At Huffington Post, I believe the formula is create 20% of the content and link to the rest. I think you could make this model work with a 50/50 creation/aggregation model but it would have to be the right locale, the right journalists, and the right advertising market.”

Mumbrella is trying to be nice to Hartigans outdated views on newspapers vs blogs : “I hope and believe that newspapers survive these strange days. But the comments from Campbell Reid and Harto suggest that News Ltd is currently looking the wrong way. Fortunately, there are many within News Ltd who are engaged with social media and excited about the opportunities it offers. I sincerely hope they get heard in the boardroom.”

A Post Hedi Slimane Kris Van Assche Talent Street Styling on Fashion Week Euro Trains : “Dear Shaded Viewers, I have to admit I was a bit overwhelmed when Kris Van Assche’s Argentinian Boys wanted to have a photo with me when we ran into them on the metro.  Sonny and I were leaving Kris’s show on our way to preview Kim Jones’ collection for Dunhill.”

Did I mention I did pay $69 today and got the new Apple Wired Mini Sized no Numeric Pad (or annoyingly no page up or page down) I’d camerapic the Apple ‘Keyboard’ box with my Lumix Leica lens but that fell thru my Diesels at Federation Square or I’d twitpic the compact keyboard via handset but the email on my blackberry is down and I’m typing this on Generation One PowerPC iMac. So occasionally I just ponder the daily and annual price of my soul and think back on the 15 work laptops I went thru in the 90’s. “Mr IT… I need some new technology*….”

If Newspapers had half a clue they would have launched Gdgt.com - Instead they prefer to cry and ask for grants / rip off their advertisers / make speeches / plan their retirements / milk the rivers of gold before they make their sea change. They certainly arent trying to do what two of the black amex tech bloggers circa 2004/5 Engadget/Gizmodo are doing : “Well, for starters it’s the gadget site we’ve always wanted. We both love devices and spend an insane amount of time playing with them, writing about them, talking about them, and thinking about them. We’ve waited for years for somebody to make a gadget site we could go hang out at all day – when no one did it, we just decided to do it ourselves and make sure that it went beyond everything else out there.. While the core concepts that drive the site — gadgets and community – will always stay the same, what we’re most excited about is the fact that we can use gdgt as the foundation for building tons of new features and tools for the gadget world.”

* MacBook Pro 13″, Canon G10 compact camera, iPhone 3GS or Blackberry Curve 2.0 or Palm Pre, Apple 24″ Monitor, Western Digital WD HD TV Media Player with 500G MyPassport Silver Ext.HDD - would be a start.

Hung is a kewl new HBO show that is paired with True Blood if u have a Green Card, about a gym teacher who starts to trick to pay for his burntout house + gothic emo children. Anyway the pilot was fun as would Scoble vs Arrington be in the Real Time Conference debate via Scobleizer where they will “have a discussion about what he sees as a frightening trend: that mobs are being formed faster and with more “real” participants now thanks to real time technologies, in particular FriendFeed. Me? I see that there’s a good part in crowd behavior. I’ve seen charities raise tons of money because of crowds very quickly. News distribution is changing pretty radically thanks to crowd behavior. I noticed that I started watching more TV because the crowd would talk about interesting shows (this weekend, for instance, I saw tons of people talking about the BET Awards). But there is a downside to mobs. People do get hurt and lives are getting threatened. So, we’ll try to come up with some suggestions for FriendFeed to see if we can find some way to help curtail mobs.”

Wings + Horns is on my list of one of those brands (above grey jacket please) which I’d buy if I A. Worked Hard B. Sold Out C. Made It (D. $106M Lotto Not ! I swear Melbourne and probably all of Australia went crazy with this tenth of a billion AUD$ win which was split 50/50 between 2 non-Vic parties. Via HRCollective : “Wings+Horns has one of my favorite collections this fall. Not that many ‘fashion journalist’ can get too excited about the flat front chinos, wool M2-K Military jackets for classic Wings+Horns zip/button flannels, but it would be hard to find so many high quality, easy to wear, great looking products from another brand. The collection is fairly small, but feels really well put together and quite cohesive. With additions like the mackinaw style wool vest, the chambray quilted field jacket and the leather arm varsity jacket, there is definitely enough to set it apart from the market. Being all designed and made in Vancouver, Canada of course brings a special feeling for us, as we are proud to have a brand that is pushing forward while representing our North Western aesthetic.”

Visvim Dissertation for ya from FreshnessMag.com. Still really want some Visvim Black Suede FBT’s. Damn Japanese design… and its small sizes and high prices! “Those who are fortunate enough to see Visvim’s lookbook in person knows that each is call a “dissertation” – a handsomely bound, hard cover book instead of the usual fare.  You will not find any insufficiency in it, instead gorgeous and extensive articles in both English and Japanese.  Because just as the title suggested, to Visvim’s Creative Director Hiroki Nakamura, each season’s collection is a tried and true process of experiences and education.  And much like a dissertation for a doctoral degree, each collection is base Nakamura-san’s thesis and inspiration, as well as the procedures of design and production. Now, that process is finally available for public viewing as the label’s official website, visvim.tv, came online today.”

My Future is so Bright I have to Wear Kris Van Assche by Oliver Peoples in Ivory Shadez. Or as Brad Feld says : “One of the keys to this is to “say no in less than 60 seconds.” Given that my email address is easily discernable, I get a lot of random inbound “we are looking for money” and “do you want to have coffee” emails.  These are easy to say no to, but I also get a lot of not-random “we are looking for money” (e.g. sent from someone I know) and “do you want to have coffee” (e.g. sent from someone I know or recommended by someone I know) emails.  And it escalates in relevance from there (and morphs into all forms, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, meeting, run, …) Somewhere between 1% and 10% of these fit my a/b/c criteria above. I can figure this out from the first interaction at least 50% of the time and my first email response is (hopefully a polite) version of “no” that usually consumes a total of less than 30 seconds from beginning to end.  Another 25% of the time I need a little more information and request it via mail. This has the side effect of eliminating another chunk of interactions since the person on the receiving end never bothers to respond. For those that do respond, I can usually figure out from the response whether or not I want to spend more time or not; if not, I’m still probably under 60 seconds for saying “no”.”