Author: Zach

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Starring At The Bar

Now that I have some stability in my life, I’ve been thinking and wanting to spend more of my time and attention on the things in life that I am truly passionate about. It’s mostly nerdy things, wanting to blog more and start yet another podcast or three, get back into computer programming, maybe learn an instrument like piano or how to play the guitar that i got for Christmas years ago, gathering dust in the corner.
I get inspired by great content and the people that are behind it, but at the same time, while listening to great audio podcasts like Radiolab, I imagine the eight year old version of myself starring up at the monkey bars on the school playground; the bars seemed just out of reach, but at the same time, a lifetime away.

There are great podcast like You Look Nice Today and Radiolab that while listening I am just amazed at the level of production and the amount of time that has to be put into each episode.  There is an almost dibailitating thing by spending too much time watching and listening to everyone else’s work, especially when I’m are just starting out and don’t have a body of work to show, that scares me from taking the first step in creating something of my own. I think of shows like Radiolab and This American Life as the shows that all others are judged by and the little lizard brain that I spend way too much time listening to and following it’s advice has scarred me into inaction much of my life.

I get these fits of energy and focus, where I am able to shut out the voice in my head and actually create something, anything with my mind and hands. There is usually a process that envolves me buying yet another domain name in hopes that this time (about the 70th time) that I will actually make something and keep up with it. A podcast that maybe goes 6 episodes or a new blog with 4 posts is my normal tolerance to stick with something. I feel at times as a litterbug on the internet, littering the web with these scraps of content that exist forever, never to decompose.

This single blog post is something that I have kept coming back to and rewriting for almost a month. Each and every time, starting by reading and deleting most of the words that I somehow thought were good and descent writing on one of my sleepless nights, but I have to come to a point where I can let my work out and let it stand for me, and in a way that is a very vulnerable thing.  Maybe I should just click publish.

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Foursquare & Gowalla Need City Managers

It has been almost a year since geolocation services like Fourspare and Gowalla came into the iPhones of nerds (myself included) that made the annual pilgrimage to Austin Texas for South by Southwest Interactive. The Austin based Gowalla had a significant marketing presence at last year’s conference while Foursquare was stronger out of the gate, being the must have app for SXSWers looking for the hot parties and the who’s who’s of the tech world each night and filling out their badge sashes with the all-night benders that are a SXSW staple. Gowalla picked up steam throughout last year, and now many people (myself and most of my friends) use both apps whenever they remember to check-in somewhere.

Continue reading “Foursquare & Gowalla Need City Managers”

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Buddypress 1.2 Comes Out

Buddypress is a great plugin (and to say it’s just a plugin is to demean it somewhat) that was originally built for WordPress Mu installations, but the new version 1.2 now works with standard WordPress installations as well. I’ve used Buddypress to build a site I started called PodcasterTech.com and really like the community functionality and built-in forum feature.

With the update to 1.2 also a new default Buddypress theme is released, and I immediately switched over. The new default theme was exactly the look I was going for when I installed Buddypress and tried to squeeze out of the old default theme. The new version is also easier to install and increases the social interaction features with greater support in the activity pane. It incorporates some twitter like features like @username support.

Download it and try for yourself at  Buddypress.org

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Thoughts about the new WordPress 2.9 Update

Yesterday WordPress released an early Christmas present for all us bloggers with the update to 2.9. The update is mostly chocked full of bug fixes and improvements to the wordpress code. Below is a breakdown.

1. It’s faster: Although not a listed improvement, many users, including myself, are seeing that sites are running faster with the 2.9 upgrade.

2. Built in Image Editor: WordPress now includes a basic image editor including crop, edit, flip, rotate and scale images all available through the media library and when uploading/inserting images into posts.

3. Batch plugin updating: Now more updating each individual plugin site wide, under tools, in the update tab, a new option to update all plugins at once makes managing multiple sites more easy and the updater checks to make sure the plugin updates are compatible with your version of WordPress.

4. Oembed support: no more embed codes for inserting videos. Just paste the url for the video on its own line inside your post and the video will automatically be embedded. Currently all the major players like Youtube are supported with more providers coming.

5. Sitewide Trashcan: No more accidentaly deleted posts or comments; the new trashcan saves the posts for thirty days.

Below is a WordPress video highlighting some of the new features.

https://videopress.com/v/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.11

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The Internet and Stupid people.

Below is a post I wrote for discussion in my Mass Media and Behavior class about Stupidity and the Internet.

The topic of stupidity and its suspected growth has become a topic for conversation in the culture. Movies like Idiocracy and the documentary titled “Stupidity” have investigated the roots and imagined the possible future world of idiots. I think what lies at the root of the issue is a lack of critical thinking about our lives and the world around us.

In Idiocracy, Mike Judge shows us his vision of the future we’re headed for as people become mindless zombies and are beholden to the large corporations that infiltrated the government. I personally would enjoy having a Brawndo-esk energy beverage piped into my home, but not replacing water as in the movie.

I hate to go on a education bashing rant as I aspire to become a teacher, but I feel that there is a lack of using critical thinking skills as a way to examine the world. In school we are taught the scientific method as a way to test our hypothesis about a science experiment but that valuable analytical process isn’t applied to other arenas.

Everything we’ve learned and discuss in class involves looking beyond the first glance and analyzing the issues and motives of the people who bring us the news and entertainment.

I think the internet and the growth of new media can lessen the brain drain of TV with the larger variety of content the reaches targeted audiences and engages audiences better. Certainly spending countless hours watching cat videos on YouTube isn’t going to expands one’s horizons, but it is the interaction through the internet that engages people. A recent study from the University of Stiriling showed that avid facebook users had an increase in working memory capacity versus control and social networking and youtube study participants.

It was in colleges where the internet was born and raised and academia as a whole has a vested interest in seeing knowledge spread and the internet not become a vast wasteland. Most teachers dislike Wikipedia, but I see that as a missed opportunity for academia to open the gates spread the knowledge for the betterment of society. Projects like MIT’s open course ware are all about sharing the mountain of accumulated knowledge. Sir Isaac Newton was famously quoted as saying “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” He was referencing the great minds that had come before him and their learning making his discoveries possible, and I think that the internet can be a tool to help others jump up on our backs and see farther.

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Newspapers and the Internet Today

Below is a post I wrote for discussion in my Mass Media and Behavior class about newspapers and their role in the digital age.


Newspapers like other old media formats has had to find ways to coexist and continue to be profitable in the digital age. The subscription and classified revenue models that newspapers subsisted on for decades is in rapid decline as subscriptions continue to drop because more and more people are getting their news from internet and TV.

With the growth of ebay and craigslist the money that newspapers would get from classifieds ads has been drastically decreasing as well as more and more advertisers are finding better success and higher engagement with internet advertising putting more strain on newspapers.

Today it was announced that the New York Post is going to close its bureaus in New York, Chicago and Las Angeles; another strike for newspapers. With the growth of the internet the number of news outlets has grown and the pace that information travels is something that Gutenberg could have never guessed. Even now the 24 hour news networks are having trouble keeping up with breaking news and more and more people are using twitter where breaking news can travel the globe in seconds. MSNBC has recognized this shift and partnered with a leading twitter account, “BreakingNews”, to share content and assets with each other.

The way that people access the news has also changed, RSS readers and search engines are huge sources for new content and News Corp has recognized an opportunity to profit. News Corp signed a deal with Microsoft and their new search product Bing.com that will give Bing exclusive access to indexing News Corp content. News Corp has been vocal in their opinion that search engines should be paying newspapers for access to their content and the deal with Microsoft told to be worth one hundred million dollars could be the first in a wave of print publications that begin to limit access to their content. Several newspapers have tried subscription models with minimal degrees of success.

There has been a rash of newspapers going out of business or consolidating, reducing competition and consumer choice in print, but blogging more a viable reality than ever. It’s odd, colleges are reporting an increase in the number of journalism majors yet regular jobs in the media are on the decline. There is a twitter account called “themediaisdying” all about reporting the painful death of old media. The opportunity is for journalists to dive deep into topics that interest them and they can become their own boss. A battle that has yet to be tried out in the courts is in matters of freedom of the press, where reporters need to keep secret their sources and the court system will someday have to create the water test of what nowadays can be counted as the press.

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The Music Industry

The below is a rant I wrote for a school discussion topic for my mass media behavior class and I thought I would post it here too.
The digital revolution and the growth of the internet has vastly changed the music business with the availability of cheap multiple track recording software, and the sharing and social networks the internet has made possible. I think that the idea of “making it” has drastically changed in the past fifteen years. I am reminded of the movie, Airheads, where the protagonists take hostage of a radio station in attempts to get their demo tape aired and get a recording contract. The idea that today any artist would be signed by only listening to their demo tape is laughable as well as the idea that signing the record contract would make the artist rich.

The digital age and file sharing has greatly hurt record companies and radio stations, but has been used by artists new and old to grow and strengthen their fan bases. For artists, selling records is no longer where the majority of their money comes in from, it’s from touring and merchandise, and ancillary revenue streams that come from being a star. The business of selling 20 dollar CDs as been replaced with 99 cent download singles and 3.99 dollar ring-tones; for too long record companies and the RIAA fought to protect their old business model instead of innovating and embarrassing new technology. They thought for too long that using DRM would force people to purchase their licensed digital goods, but often forced consumers to other places to find music.

Radio stations too are fighting to protect their long held business models in the new landscape of audio options that consumers have as the number of devices that listeners increases. With satellite radio, iPods, CDs, and internet radio, and others there is no lack of choices in audio entertainment where terrestrial radio once dominated. Video killed the radio star and the internet killed the radio station; radio stations can no longer charge their outlandish CPM rates with declining listener-ship and cheaper, more effective targeted advertising that is available on the internet. Radio ownership deregulation reduced the variety in programing and the days where DJs had actual influence on which songs get played are long gone. Clear Channel has national syndicated programming that airs across the country reducing costs and jobs; this also gives them huge sway with record companies that are trying to get their music played.

A topic that wasn’t covered in either side is the consolidation of music venues and ticketing agencies and the impact that has on newer artists. Earlier this year, Live Nation and Ticketmaster announced a proposed merger worth 2.5 billion dollars that would merge the largest ticket seller and largest venue/concert promoter. Luckily the merger has been meet with some vocal opposition, mainly in the UK as the merger would almost certainly create a monopoly on first rate concerts and shows. Already large music acts like Michael Jackson and Madonna sign deals with Live Nation because they no longer need the support of a record company to get their music out there, but the problem is for newer and indie acts that can be locked out of Live Nation venues. The merger could mean higher ticket prices and could almost eliminate the secondary ticket market.