Posts from March 2005

Jackson and I went to see Bettie Serveert last night at the Bowery Ballroom.

I can still hear Carol van Dijk singing "untie the knot" in their epic song Leg which they closed their set with last night.

The show was great, but I most enjoyed their "old songs" as Carol called them.

The wrapped with Kids Allright which rocked the house.

My ears were ringing as we walked out into the snow at 2am.

Great show by a great band.

The Gotham Gal posted today about a debate raging in our house this week.

Jessica wanted to turn in a paper with a bibliography that only contained Internet URLs.  That’s not allowed at her school.  She needs to read some books and consider some other offline sources.

The unanimous feeling in our home is that the school’s policy is antiquated.  With Google Scholar and the coming Google Library, we’ll have most of the same books that Jessica is supposed to be going to the libary to review available online.  And you’ve got Answers.com and Wikipedia.  The list of amazing online research resources just keeps growing and growing.

So The Gotham Gal told the school principal that she thought the "no Internet only bibliographies policy" was wrong.  He came back with a very thoughtful response.  He said the "instant gratification" (my words not his) of internet research was leading to "cut and paste" (again my words not his) reports and the reason he wants kids to use offline resources is that it forces them to take time and think and construct real reports.

Now that’s a great point.  He’s right about that.  I see it in Jessica’s work to be honest.  It’s good, but it does feel a little manufactured. 

But I wonder if technology isn’t a better solution to that problem.  What if instead of creating paper reports, the kids had to post their reseach and thoughts online, subject them to comment and editing online, and evolve them over time from raw research to thoughtful considered online papers?

Maybe that’s too much change in the system to expect in too short a time period.  But I think that embracing technology is ultimately the solution to the problem because like it or not, our kids are going to use digital technology to do their work.  We’d better show them how to do it well or risk creating a generation of cut and pasters.

Tonight is a special pick.

I’ve had this record on my short list for inclusion in the top 50 for months but have been waiting for the right moment to add it.

Tonite is the night because I am going to see them in concert for the first time.

The band is called Bettie Serveert and the record is their first album, Palomine.

The thing that makes Bettie Serveert special is singer Carol van Dijk.  As a commenter on Amazon said, "she has a great "lived-in" voice that sounds like she’s been drinking
whiskey and smoking cigarettes since she was age 3. it’s so rough
around the edges, yet so charming and adorably sweet."

There is a Velvet Underground influence for sure, but there is also a grunge influence in this record.  It was recorded in 1992/1993 afterall.

Here’s another quote from Amazon, "I listen to palomine all the time to this day, and no matter how long
it’s been since I last heard this record, I still get that same feeling
every time I hear it. It, quite simply, never gets old."

I feel the same way and that’s why Palomine is on my Top 50 list.

Last week I posted my frustration with Technorati.

I mentioned two big issues, link count wasn’t working, and my own posts were coming up in my results.

Sometime in the past week, they fixed both issues.

I don’t know if they fixed the service or just fixed my results, but now I have "546 links from 365 sources" and none of them are my own posts.

I still have my concerns about Technorati, but this is a great step in the right direction.  I’ll be watching closely to see if link count is fixed for good.

There’s this idea that’s "brewing" as John Battelle says about sell-side advertising or "open ad tags" as Jeff Jarvis calls them.  The idea is if you’ve got an ad, you just put it out on the net somewhere, tag it, and let the ad networks’ crawlers come get and run it wherever.

The critics claim this scheme is prone to massive fraud.  And I suppose that solving the fraud problem is a neccessary step in realizing this vision.

But I honestly believe we are headed in a direction where all the existing models get flipped and the power of the open internet gets harnessed in ways that we are just beginning to imagine.

So into this emerging/brewing ideaspace steps my friend Mark Pincus who is always at least one step ahead of me.  He takes it one further and says this flipped/open model is going to work for social networks too.  And he should know since he runs one of the largest social networks, called Tribe.net.

Mark calls it the PeopleWeb.  A great name like all of Mark’s ideas.

The PeopleWeb will open up the closed walls of the existing social networks and turn the web into one big one.  Mark’s got it right.  Go read his whole rant on the subject.

As we move from text (blogging) to audio (podcasts) and video (streaming video), we are missing what Jeff Jarvis calls "link love".

Links are the currency and the lubrication of the online world.  They are huge.

And they are missing from audio and video content today.

I love my podcasts, but generally really want to link to a very specific part of the podcast (5:33 into it when the joke is told or the song is played).  And I can’t do that.  And it’s incredibly frustrating.

You can imagine the mixed emotions I felt when I saw the news on Curbed that someone is doing Kozmo again.

This time it’s called Max Delivery.

My first reaction was "great, when can I sign up?"  The Gotham Gal and I were huge Kozmo customers and I suspect we’ll be huge Max Delivery customers too.

My second reaction is to offer them some advice.

1 – Don’t raise venture capital

2 – Stick to New York City

3 – Keep the number of SKUs manageable

4 – Don’t do any big real estate deals

5 – Don’t take money from big strategic partners

6 – Don’t become the cover boy for Web 2.0

This can be a great business if its done right.  Most people don’t realize this but Kozmo made money in NYC.  It was the 18 other cities that brought the company down.

Good luck Max Delivery.  I am rooting for you.