Earthling

A popular misconception is that blogs are for ranting and raving and communicating extreme opinions to the masses. This is part 2 in a series pointing out some simple ways blogs might be useful to you. Part 1 was about using blogs to stay in touch with friends and colleagues who don't necessarily merit a phone call all the time. Part 2 is about finding individual writers you like as a replacement for bigger, more impersonal news sources.

Part of accepting information overload as a reality is accepting that you don't need to follow every interest you have as if it was your job. This is very freeing; it means you can give up finding the most comprehensive news source around and look for sources that you simply enjoy reading. Nothing bad happens when you stop frequenting the one-stop shop and instead connect with individuals writing on topics that interest you. In most cases, even if this means you read the news a day or two late, who really cares? A reader named JB made the following astute suggestion on my Information Overload entry:

If you have an interest, find the best specialty site and use it exclusively, like your favorite bar.

Here are two such speciality sites that have become part of my routine.

Continue reading "Why Read Blogs: Choose Knowable Sources"

Posted by dave coustan at 4:19 PM |

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While I'm working on a brief Part 2 today for "Why Read Blogs." I wanted to point out a discussion I'm reading this morning that's emblematic of discussions you'll run in to all over the place.

Blogs love to talk about blogging. For a couple of years now there's been an ongoing debate online and in the traditional press about the value of blogs. Today, I'm reading Rich Ord who argues that blogs are just the same as websites. I've said something similar in the past, but my point was that you shouldn't be afraid of them. You should consider them another option for something to look at, interact with, or create online.

Shel Israel, who recently co-authored a book about blogging called Naked Conversations, refutes Rich's points. The discussion ends up focusing on some specifics about underlying technologies. If you like reading debates, Shel creates some good point-by-point clash and re-focuses the discussion on some important differences between regular web site publishing and blog publishing. He points out that blogs are easier to use than regular web sites, provide more direct interaction between author and reader, and rise to the top of search engines that value freshness. He also defends the unique value of RSS.

I try not to focus on blogs-about-blogs too often because it's just a bunch of posturing on both sides. Why worry about whether or not blogs are past their prime, overhyped, undervalued, or the key to capturing the hearts and minds of a generation? Like I wrote in part one, blogs are a specific form of web site, and they can be very useful in a number of ways. I wish we weren't so obsessed with declaring them dead on the one hand or the savior of all mankind on the other. It all starts to feel a little robotic, and the hyperbole gets in the way of regular people using them for regular things. Let's put the thrones and pillories away.

Posted by dave coustan at 11:34 AM |

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As a Mac user, you never want to see the message "Keys out of order” when you run Disk Utility. I got one of those on Saturday.

It's not a good feeling. When the doctors looked at running back Bo Jackson's career-ending hip injury for the first time, they probably said "keys out of order" before they diagnosed him with avascular necrosis. My iBook may never play football again.

I guess I was tempting fate in writing on Friday about which new Apple laptop to get. My iBook exacted revenge on me over the weekend with a series of cascading problems. I'm tending to the sick as I write this on an older but more reliable Mac G4 Desktop (Sawtooth).

I'll write more once I have things under control from here. In the meantime, I leave the Mac users among us with this thought: SuperDuper is an excellent program for backing up your stuff.

Update: Anyone ever get one of these when trying to erase a disk with Disk Utility and start from scratch?

Yikes. I think I may be ready to call a time of death. Not sure what else to try other than replacing the hard drive.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:02 PM |

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I've been wondering which computer to buy if I replace my aging Apple iBook any time soon. Should I go with the brand new MacBook Pro, wait for more Apple news, or look for a good price on last year's Powerbooks? Macworld published a first look at the MacBook this week, but what I'm really interested in is something that only Miss Cleo or insider information can tell you.

Is it a smart purchase right now? What's the likelihood that it'll have reliability problems, that Apple will quickly change it up and re-release it, or that there will be a better product coming along shortly?

No matter what you decide, you can depend on your your friends to mock you behind your back and in hindsight. If you can hold off their derision for at least a year, you've made out quite well.

I asked a few friends and colleagues what their gut feeling is telling them about the MacBook Pro, and what advice they might give to:

• A Mac nerd who doesn't need your stupid advice
  
• Someone who has used Mac products for a while but doesn't know much about their insides, and
  
• Someone who only has experience with iPods

Here's a round-up of what they had to say. Feel free to chime in in the comments.

Continue reading "MacBook Pro: Trusted Old Friend Or Inappropriately Friendly Stranger?"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:26 PM |

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Whoah, mule. This week the news cart jumped out in front of the explanation horse. I have a bunch of stories I'm researching about the details of EarthLink's municipal wireless network projects in Philadelphia and Anaheim, but none of the stories were finished enough to publish yesterday when the news broke about us teaming up with Google in San Francisco to submit a joint bid.

The most interesting things to me about the Muni Wi-Fi projects are all of the challenges and solutions that come from putting pieces of the internet that are usually in cushy indoor environments outdoors in cities. As I've talked to some of the people on the Muni teams here this week, I've been repeatedly impressed by their stories about the technical and human snags they've run in to and the ways they've overcome them. For example, did you know that of all of the leaves on trees, pine needles are the worst for blocking wireless signals? It all sounds simple until you start to consider the scale and complexity of all of the various parts and systems and people working together to bring wireless internet capability to a whole community of people. More on that in upcoming days.

I was happy to oblige Corporate Communications and publish Don's statement yesterday, but now I feel like today I should go back and explain a little bit about the history of the San Francisco proposal for those of you who are just now learning about all of this Muni business.

Continue reading "More On EarthLink And Google And A Lack Of Wires"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:55 PM |

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Corporate Communications asked me to do them a solid tonight and publish the following announcement for them without comment or discussion. This only happens once in a great while. Things will be back to normal tomorrow and I'll provide more context and explanation then.

The following statement is attributed to Donald Berryman, executive vice president of EarthLink and president of the ISP’s municipal networks unit:

“Yesterday, EarthLink and Google jointly submitted a ‘Request For Proposal’ (RFP) to the City of San Francisco to build a citywide wireless municipal network. This proposal presents a unique opportunity for both companies. By coming together to leverage the strengths of both companies, we will be able to offer services to different customers on the network that fit with their own individual needs and wants.

Fundamentally, this RFP is in line with EarthLink’s belief in ‘open access’ – that these municipal networks should offer the tools, services and applications that businesses, governments and consumers want to use to enable, enrich and empower their Internet experiences.

Customers shouldn’t be tied to their desks, or to a single provider, to get the Internet experience they want. Both EarthLink and Google recognize this and are attempting to provide great service and choice in San Francisco.”

If interested in scheduling an interview to discuss the joint EarthLink/Google RFP and EarthLink’s Municipal Network initiatives, please contact these representatives from the ISP’s public relations firm, Text 100. Fiona Doherty, 212.871.3927 FionaD@Text100.com or Lisette Kwong, 212.871.3953 LisetteK@Text100.com.

Posted by dave coustan at 11:43 PM |

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One of the big three topics at CES this year was the beefing up of America's home theatre systems. I saw lots of evidence that Consumer Electronics companies are spending scads of money to make you think that your neighbors all have high-definition flat screen televisions, a six speaker surround-sound setup, next-generation gaming systems, multiple iPods, a TiVo, a Slingbox, and a computer in your living room to control it all. And, they'll have you believe, the way DVD's look on your flat screen high-definition television is so awful that you'll beat people down for the chance to purchase either an HD-DVD player or a Blu-Ray player (or both) as soon as they hit the market.

I call BS. First of all, I know lots of folks who have several of those items, but many who have none. And everyone I know who has high-definition TV thinks regular DVD's look just fine on it. If there's a concern about image quality, it's not one that would motivate them to go out and buy another fancy DVD player and replace all of their DVD's. I was hanging out with the HowStuffWorks.com nerds at CES for breakfast, and we turned to the guy in the booth next to us and asked him the same question, and he agreed whole-heartedly. Standard DVD's look just fine, and he has no motivation to buy a new player unless they force the old one into obsolescence.

The future-as-today picture of your living room the big manufacturers are pushing is not accurate, but I do believe that our living rooms are getting better and better at their own pace. My question is, what are movie theaters offering any more as an alternative to your comfortable and customized home setup? Just about every time I go to the movies with my friends Linda and Chris, on the way back we end up discussing how mediocre the whole experience was. Even when the movie itself was pretty good. Have you had similar feelings?

It's good and healthy to get out and be among people you don't know. There's no substitute for the excitement and fun you can derive from seeing a movie with a crowd of strangers. I've always been a big fan of that experience in general. I even like people talking back to the screen from time to time.

So that's one thing movie theaters have going for them.

Continue reading "The Movies Versus Your Comfortable Living Room Chair"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:47 PM |

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Today the New York Times picked up a story dating back to last Friday about YouTube.com taking down all of its copies (about 500 of them) of the original Lazy Sunday Saturday Night Live short at the request of lawyers representing NBC Universal.

There's a brief entry on YouTube's blog from February 16th about it:

Hi Tubers! NBC recently contacted YouTube and asked us to remove Saturday Night Live's "Lazy Sunday: Chronicles of Narnia" video. We know how popular that video is but YouTube respects the rights of copyright holders. You can still watch SNL's "Lazy Sunday" video for free on NBC's website. (link to the blog)

As far as I can tell, NBC Universal didn't ask for the removal of any of the user-created remixes of Lazy Sunday. That's something of a silver lining to me. Those authors borrowed the audio, video, and in some cases both in creating their own versions. Hopefully NBC decided to leave them alone because they see it as fair use of the creative material, and not because it's impractical to go after them.

Continue reading "One Fewer Lazy Sunday"

Posted by dave coustan at 4:14 PM |

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Last week EarthLink agreed to sponsor the Rocketboom vlog for the week of March 13, 2006. A vlog is essentially a video version of a weblog. If you haven't seen one before, Rocketboom would be a good place to start. It's the biggest name to have come out of video blogging, and gets over 130,000 downloads of the show each day. The host, Amanda Congdon, has even appeared on the TV show CSI. Amanda was one of the attendees of CESCamp back in January, but I did not get a chance to speak to her much. She tends to draw a crowd among nerds. Even Robert Scoble's Channel 9 Guy was crowding me out.

Where the magic happens (photo courtesy Rocketboom.com)

This is new ground. Rocketboom has never taken advertising before. They sold their first spot via an eBay auction won by a company called TRM. We're their second. The medium of video blogging is evolving so quickly, they haven't had time for traditional press releases. While Earthling is far from traditional, this is really the first official announcement of its kind for Rocketboom.

Continue reading "From Radio To Rocketboom"

Posted by dave coustan at 12:26 PM |

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I've been begging Helio since I first got their number in November to give me a hint about which phones and services they'd be supporting. Today, they are announcing some of what will be available when they launch their service later this Spring. They're unveiling two of their phones, a new partner, and some of the innovative services I wrote so vaguely about earlier. So now I can fill in some of the more interesting details of my visit.

The Helio Kickflip Phone (and a mechanical pencil)

The first new feature they told me about(new to the U.S., anyway) was what's called "gifting and begging". Gifting is when you buy something digital -- like a song or a game or a ringtone -- pay for it on your phone, and have it sent to the recipient's phone. Begging allows you to ask your friends to buy something specific for you. I was kind of surprised that these features aren't available elsewhere. They made perfect sense when they were explained to me.

There are no plans that I know of to offer either a "scrounging" or a "grifting" feature.

Continue reading "Helio Detailfest 2006: MySpace Partnership and Two New Phones"

Posted by dave coustan at 12:01 AM |

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Helio is a new U.S. mobile phone service provider formed through a joint venture between EarthLink and SK Telecom, South Korea's biggest mobile network. They are an MVNO(Mobile Virtual Network Operator), which means that instead of owning the network they use, they lease it from a company like Cingular or Verizon Wireless. But when you buy a Helio phone and Helio service, you're a Helio customer. Virgin Mobile is a company that works this way today.

Mural by Buff Monster, inside Helio HQ

I've taken to referring to them as "cousin Helio" because they are part of the EarthLink family but a wholly separate company from us. My visit on Monday confirmed that they're pretty cool cousins to have. They're bringing new phones, new types of services, and a completely different approach to mobile service from what's out there now.

Continue reading "What's A Helio?"

Posted by dave coustan at 4:15 PM |

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Today is a catch-up day. I just got back into town last night after spending a few days in LA, in media training and meeting cousin Helio.

Media training was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. There's not much more humbling than having a hard time with something and then having to watch yourself on video having a hard time with something. But it was fun to make up my own DVD director's commentary about my performance in my head. "We shot this whole interview sequence atop giant worms, a few feet from the Earth's core. The worms are just out of frame. Dave was a true professional, and if he appears a bit dazed and incoherent, it's because he had just completed two very difficult math problems."

New Earthling mascot?

I'll have more on my visit with cousin Helio later in the week. Watch my Flickr account for more photos from the trip.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:41 PM |

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Over the weekend I found two interesting thoughtlets relating to my earlier entry on information overload and wanted to tie them together here.

The first I came across was in an industry blog -- B.L. Ochman's Whatsnextblog. B.L. suggests that in order to keep the medium of blogging healthy and free of bloat, more bloggers should focus on contributing original content to the mix, instead of just pointing to the work of others. She writes:

Adrants' Steve Hall told me yesterday that he believes Technorati and others are "measuring the wrong thing." What they should measure, he says, is how much original content is on a blog.

A large percentage of blogs just aggregate other bloggers' content, or provide links to articles of interest. But the meat in the blogosphere is the original thought -- and there's very little of that going around.

If the blogosphere is to continue to grow, and to have impact as a communications medium, more bloggers have to do the work to create more original content.

Continue reading "A Great CD Is Not A Failed Radio Station"

Posted by dave coustan at 11:07 AM |

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I'm out West again, hence the lack of words here on Thursday. During an involuntary nap on the plane, I had at least three daydreams:

1. Ohmygosh, I forgot to put my dog in boarding before I left. (No I didn't; it was just a dream.)
   
2. By their snack-giving rules, Delta Airlines seems to be telling us that:
   1 small granola bar = 6 crackers with orange cheese = one bag of pretzels = three cookies. Are these amounts really equivalent? I'm not sure about that math. And what should the shrewd snacker go for?
   
3. A while ago I wrote about an outage at del.icio.us, and I wrote about backup options for del.icio.us, but I only touched upon why you should use services like del.icio.us in the first place.

   So here goes.

Continue reading "More Thoughts On Social Bookmarking From The Road"

Posted by dave coustan at 9:40 AM |

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I got an e-mail from a reader a couple of days ago asking the following question about the myEarthLink pages:

Why are there only choices for men's sports for getting scores posted on my Home Page? There is a WNBA as well as an NBA, and there are women's sports at the college level. Men are not the only ones who watch sports and are interested in the latest scores.

-Niomi H

Thanks for writing, Niomi. In tracking down an answer I spoke to Don Roberts, Product Manager of Sports on myEarthLink, via e-mail. Here are some snippets from our conversation.

Continue reading "From The Mail Bag: Womens Sports Scores"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:25 PM |

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Well, not really. Just a round-up of many of them. A quick timeline:

The Chris Parnell/Andy Samberg short Lazy Sunday ran on Saturday Night Live on December 17th.

The first recording of it on YouTube seems to have appeared on December 18th.

I saw the first reference to an online version in my e-mail inbox on December 21st.

By December 23rd, the short was made available for free download via iTunes(note: you need the iTunes software to download it).

The New York Times covered it extensively on December 27th.

It's now February 7th, less than two months from when the short first aired on television. Today I count at least a baker's dozen of videos online inspired by Lazy Sunday in one form or another. Some dub new audio over the video, some add flash or their own video over the audio, and some are full remakes.

Read on for a representative sampling of what's out there.

Continue reading "All Of The Lazy Sundays In The World"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:52 PM |

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Do you remember the first time you fired up a web browser?

I'm not sure if this was my first time, but one of my strongest memories of early browser experience took place at Butler Library at Columbia while I was in college. A friend in the engineering school (was it Michael Feldman or Mike Malm maybe?) pointed out NCSA Mosaic on one of the X Window terminals. For old time's sake, here's the e-mail announcement that NCSA sent out when a Beta version of Mosaic was first available.

What if you were doing that today, for the very first time -- what's the one site you'd recommend a brand new internet user start with? Would you tell them to start with your favorite tutorial, or a Wikipedia entry, or something else?

Over the weekend, a brave reader named Brenda posted the following comment on Earthling:

As, I'm new to this web surfing business/play seeing a lot of abbreviations. Is there a place that has a dictionary just for this web world? For instance What is URL stand for.

In my reply I pointed her to the tutorials on the EarthLink Personal Support Center. I might also recommend checking out Answers.com and the BBC's Webwise site.

What else do you recommend, as the one site to hit if you were arriving at the information superhighway through a browser for the very first time? And if you're new to the web, which of these suggestions do you find most helpful?

Posted by dave coustan at 2:56 PM |

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Part of my job is to watch the culture of the web for things to share. I look for big trends, slow evolutionary changes, individual stories, tiny points of interest, and the occasional news bulletin. More specifically, I'm really looking for things that might matter to you if you use the web every day for work and play, or aspire to do so. I don't focus as much on business news, computernerd news, or even technology news, unless it's something that affects the culture of the internet to some significant degree. Small, funny, worthwhile pieces of homegrown content are as interesting to me as big huge new software products.

There's too much going on all the time to try to talk about all, most, or even some of it. I take in as much as I can, and each day pick one thing or group of things that I think is worth talking about.

In my writing I may mimic the relaxed, steady, and unflappable tone of some throwback tv news correspondent, but in truth it's all disheveled hair, half-drank coffees, and cluttered desktop over here.

Continue reading "Information Overload - My Dirty Little Secret"

Posted by dave coustan at 11:24 AM |

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I am proud to welcome a new arrival to our family by the name of EarthLink DSL and Home Phone Service Frances Reynolds Esquire. It goes by EarthLink DSL and Home Phone Service for short.

Its birth certificate reflects three home cities -- Seattle, San Francisco/San Jose, and Dallas -- and its initial weight is a scant 0 lbs, 0 ounces. The new bundle of joy has its mother's ample bandwidth and its pop's inexpensive voice capabilities.

On the maternal side, it joins its cousins EarthLink High Speed and Dial-up. Its father's side includes EarthLink TrueVoice and Vling, which has not yet made the full journey out into the cruel world.

We have high hopes for our new bundle of joy. Here are some of the quirks that make it so special to us:

• It's so cute and tiny you won't even know it's there. It requires no special adapters, fleece blankets, or plastic boxes, other than its modem. And it plays nicely with your regular old telephones.
  
• It won't mess on your floor.
  
• It never needs a nap. The phone service it provides will work even when your power goes out. That is, unless all of your phones have power cables.
  
• It keeps it all in the family. Since you're not dealing with a phone company, you get to avoid mysterious phone company charges and taxes.
  
• It will never ask you to send it to college. It costs around $69.95/month for unlimited local, long distance, and high speed internet access up to 4x faster than regular DSL.
  
• It drools a bit. Sorry about that.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:03 PM |

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Atlanta EarthLinker Travis Metcalf reminds us that there's a sleeping computer virus, Nyxem, that will become active on February 3rd. It's not known how many Windows-based computers are infected with Nyxem, but estimates suggest it may lay dormant on anywhere from 300,000 to over 510,000 machines. It appears that Nyxem only affects Windows systems.

Travis writes:

The Nyxem virus will, on infected systems, delete all MS Office documents. The virus is programmed to delete these files on February 3rd so it is recommended that you scan your computer before February 3rd to make sure your documents are safe.

I talked to Ben Kaplan, Product Manager of EarthLink’s Protection Control Center about the upcoming threat. He told me that the PCC is able to detect and remove the Nyxem virus.

Thanks for the heads-up, Travis.

*Update: Ben adds the following instruction for Protection Control Center users: "In order to be protected from the Nyxem virus, please be sure you have the latest virus definitions. To do this, click the "check for updates" button in the lower left side of the Protection Control Center. "

Posted by dave coustan at 9:00 AM |

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