Reading List September 18, 2005

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  • Sometimes You Are The Dog (Patrick Eakes) – Patrick had a bad round of golf during a tournament, thought about throwing in the towel, but to his credit he didn’t.
  • Hackoff.com – A Must Read (A VC) – This post points to a new blog-based book publishing adventure that the book author calls a "blook."  That’s the 2005 winner of the dumbest "coinage" to date.
  • Man on the Street Tests (The Post Money Value) – The author provides a series of questions you can ask to get a handle on how prevalent certain phenomena are in your community.  Tops on the list is to say to someone you’ve just met, "Hey I love the blog" to see how many are actually blogging.
  • The Triangle: Limits of Blog Power (Daou Report – Salon.com) – A very interesting look at the relationship between the "netroots", media and political power structure.  They are the three sides of a triangle that the author believes is the new political reality.

Lego’s Open World

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Did you know that Lego has a fanatic adult fan-base?  Me either.  Some of those fanatics hacked Lego’s recently released Lego Factory system to customize it for their own uses, and instead of pulling an Apple the company decided to embrace them.  The company figures it can get new product ideas from the fanatics and it won’t cost them a dime.  Read all about it here.

Reading List September 15, 2005

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  • Dave Sifry – Don’t Order a Body Bag Just Yet (The Post Money Value) – Why the reporting of Technorati’s demise is premature.
  • Yahoo Launches "Instant Search" (John Battelle’s Searchblog) – Yahoo announces launch of search tool that shows results below the search box as you’re typing.  There’s some real value there as the tool will help you refine your search terms without continually having to type-search-repeat.  John’s favorite line from the release: "Why feel lucky when you can be right?"
  • eBay Motors + Google Maps = Mashup Heaven (Business2) – A blogger combines eBay’s car sales data and Google Maps to show location of all cars for sale on eBay Motors.  The guys at Business 2.0 conjecture on the next step: eBay incorporating Google Maps themselves and then having Google’s text ads appearing on the page.  It’s a business mashup!
  • Because That’s the Way We Have Always Done It (Blog Maverick) – Mark Cuban hates the "because we’ve always done it that way" reasoning. Reminds me that all the good entrepreneurs I’ve met have always been "why" folks.
  • Michelin’s Bibendum (Reveries.com) – A fascinating article about the history of the Michelin Man.  Warning: it includes the words "Latin gerundive."
  • Fat & Fit (Reveries.com) – Gyms are starting to hire trainers who aren’t hard-bodies. Could it be that people are beginning to realize that six-pack doesn’t necessarily equal fit?  I know a lot of skinny smokers with incredible abs who can’t walk down the street without gasping.

Newspaper is the Glue for the Community

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There’s been a lot of navel gazing by local newspapers over the last year as they’ve rightly wondered what their place in the media universe will be.  Well I think the Times-Picayune and it’s website NOLA.com have shown what that role is: community glue.

Rex Hammock, the owner of a custom-publishing company in Nashville and an influential blogger to boot, has called for the NOLA.com blog to be awarded a Pulitzer because of its role during the Katrina disaster and continuing in the aftermath.  (I agree.)  Today Rex linked to an article in Online Journalism Review (OJR) that includes an interview with Jon Donley, the editor for NOLA.com. Here’s an excerpt:

NOLA.com is known more for its MardiGras.com
site and its live webcam, but now has become Exhibit A in the
importance of the Internet for newspaper companies during a disaster.
When the newspaper couldn’t possibly be printed or distributed, the
NOLA.com news blog became the
source for news on hurricane damage and recovery efforts — including
updates from various reporters on the ground and even full columns and
news stories.

The blog actually became the paper, and it had
to, because the newspaper’s readership was in diaspora, spread around
the country in shelters and homes of families and friends. The
newspaper staff was transformed into citizen journalists, with arts
reviewers doing disaster coverage and personal stories running
alongside hard-hitting journalism. In a time of tragedy and loss, the
raw guts of a news organization were exposed for us to see.

And it wasn’t just about newsgathering. NOLA.com editor Jon Donley turned over his NOLA View blog
to his readers, who sent in dozens of calls for help. Those calls were
relayed onto the blog, which was monitored constantly by rescuers, who
then sent in teams to save them.

"The site has been fantastic — and quite a life saver — and I
truly mean a life saver," said Eliza Schneller via e-mail. "I listed a
friend’s mother, who needed rescuing, on the site and between me and
the numerous caring people who responded — she and her daughter where
picked up by the National Guard. Bless everyone that had a hand in
keeping that site up and running!"

According to Donley, the calls for help came via text messaging, since cellular voice services and landlines were down.

"It
was weird because we couldn’t figure out where these pleas were coming
from," Donley told me. "We’d get e-mails from Idaho, there’s a guy at
this address and he’s in the upstairs bedroom of his place in New
Orleans. And then we figured out that even in the poorest part of town,
people have a cell phone. And it’s a text-enabled cell phone. And they
were sending out text messages to friends or family, and they were
putting it in our forums or sending it in e-mails to us."

And later in the article:

"We’ve been checking the NOLA.com blog religiously," Lien told me via
e-mail. "We were checking it literally almost every hour. They had so
many small details and covered nooks and crannies of New Orleans that
an Associated Press or major network person would NEVER have known or
gotten right. (Emphasis mine)

Please read the whole story as it is a testament not only to the power and influence of a local newspaper within a community, but also to its absolute necessity for the well-being of the community.

Local newspapers are the only organizations that traditionally have the depth to do the kind of work that is vital to a community.  TV and radio outlets simply don’t have the staff or the medium required to cover the community in-depth.  Broadcasters are ephemeral compared to local newspapers that are the mortar for the community’s bricks.

What the NOLA story shows is that whether or not the information is printed on paper or screen, the "newspaper" and the people who produce it are vital to the community’s health.

Last point: how about the ingenuity these folks showed in utilizing all available technology to do their jobs?  Amazing.

Blogging for Business

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I’ve been a long-time reader of Micro Persuasion which is the blog of Steve Rubel, a honcho at PR firm CooperKatz.

One of his clients is Vespa and they have a nice little blog called Vespaway.  I have to say they’ve done a nice job, at least from the posts I’ve read.  The blogger has a good voice, seems to be a genuine fan of the product and seems to have a tongue-in-cheek tone appropriate for the company.

Compare this to the piece of crap that Juicy Fruit has put out there and labeled a blog and you have a good case study for the right and wrong ways to use blogs for business.

Reading List September 14, 2005

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For Those of You Who May Still Doubt that the US Congress is a Festering Boil Oozing Slimy Power Brokers

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Okay, the headline is a sweeping generalization about the legislative branch of the US government, but these folks are intent on reinforcing this image of themselves.

Today’s story involves Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. who’s district includes New Orleans.  ABC News reported that the Congressman decided to tour his district on September 2 during the height of the post-Katrina chaos.  While on this excursion the Congressman and his National Guard escorts stopped at his house and the guard members waited around for an hour until the Congressman "Jefferson emerged with a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box
about the size of a small refrigerator, which the enlisted men loaded
up into the truck."

Here are some excerpts from the story followed by my own comments:

On Sept. 2 — five days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast — Rep. William
Jefferson, D-La., who represents New Orleans and is a senior member of
the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was allowed through the military
blockades set up around the city to reach the Superdome, where
thousands of evacuees had been taken.

How admirable that he was making an effort to be on the ground with the people he represents.  Or could there be another motivation?  Keep reading.

The Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News the truck became stuck as it waited for Jefferson to retrieve his belongings.

Two weeks later, the vehicle’s tire tracks were still visible on the lawn.

The soldiers signaled to helicopters in the air for aid.
Military sources say a Coast Guard helicopter pilot saw the signal and
flew to Jefferson’s home. The chopper was already carrying four rescued
New Orleans residents at the time.

A rescue diver descended from the helicopter, but the
congressman decided against going up in the helicopter, sources say.
The pilot sent the diver down again, but Jefferson again declined to go
up the helicopter.

After spending approximately 45 minutes with Jefferson, the
helicopter went on to rescue three additional New Orleans residents
before it ran low on fuel and was forced to end its mission.

"Forty-five minutes can be an eternity to somebody that is
drowning, to somebody that is sitting in a roof, and it needs to be
used its primary purpose during an emergency," said Hauer.

Coast Guard Commander Brendan McPherson told ABC News, "We
did have an aircraft that responded to a signal of distress where the
congressman was located. The congressman did decline rescue at the time
so the helicopter picked up three other people.

Rep. Jefferson claims that he didn’t ask for the escort from the National Guard but they insisted because of his safety.  At this point did it not occur to him that maybe the tour could wait until it was safer and he wouldn’t be diverting valuable resources from their core mission of search and rescue?  Again, maybe there was another motivation for him to visit his district.  Read on.

Jefferson insisted the expedition did not distract from rescue efforts.

"They actually picked up a lot of people while we were
there," he said. "The young soldier said, ‘It’s a good thing we came up
here because a lot of people would not have been rescued had we not
been in the neighborhood.’"

With all due respect to the Congressman, he’s full of it.  Still, I ask, was there another motivation for getting to his house?

In an unrelated matter, authorities recently searched Jefferson’s
property as part of a federal investigation into the finances of a
high-tech firm. Last month FBI officials raided Jefferson’s house as
well as his home in Washington, D.C., his car and his accountant’s
house…

Jefferson has not commented on that matter, except to say he is cooperating with the investigation…

Last week, Jefferson set up a special trust fund for contributions to
his legal defense in light of the FBI investigation. A senior federal
law enforcement source tells ABC News that investigators are interested
in learning if Jefferson moved any materials relevant to the
investigation. Jefferson says he did not.

 

Why is it that the Ways and Means Committee seems to attract these guys
(Dan Rostenkowski, anyone?) in disproportionate numbers?  Oh, right.  Money.

After reading the last segment of the report I actually find it easier to believe that the Congressman didn’t want a National Guard escort after all.  I mean who needs witnesses?  Of course you have to wonder how he might have gotten around without them, but I suspect he would have found himself right at home in the sewage that was flowing around his house.

Reading List September 13, 2005

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  • Seven Deadly Sins (A VC) – Fred expands on a few of the seven deadly sins for entrepreneurs that venture capitalist David Beisel posted about, speaking of which…
  • Seven Founding Sins (Genuine VC) – David Beisel looks at seven deadly sins commited by many company founders.  They include inauthenticity, sloth, extravagance, taciturnity, greed, arrogance and indecisiveness.
  • Skype-eBay and Today’s Lesson (The Post Money Value) – To see the potential in the eBay purchase of Skype you have to think big.
  • Where’s the Dog Bowl? (The Post Money Value) – Rick Segal thinks that Microsoft isn’t "eating its own dog food" when it comes to the use of Outlook with the IMAP protocol.  The real interest to me is that it was the first thing I’ve read that helped me understand what IMAP means/does.
  • Positive Image and Context (The Post Money Value) – Rick has an interesting take on the memo written by the now-resigned head of FEMA, Michael Brown.  He points out that in the context of the entire memo the infamous sentence “Convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public” isn’t really bad.  His feeling is that if Brown had used plain language like “You’ll need to keep the red tape crap in check, show people their
    gov’t actually cares and paying taxes has somewhat of a point.”     then this wouldn’t have blown up into a PR disaster.  He makes an interesting point.
  • NYT’s Brooks Revealed that "from Day One," the Bush White House "decided our public relations is not going to be honest" — Why Hasn’t He Written About This? (Media Matters) – During an interview on the Chris Matthews show David Brooks said that from day one the Bush administration wasn’t going to admit mistakes, even if it meant being dishonest.  Duh?
  • Jackson Compares FEMA Contracts to ‘White-Collar Looting’ (San Jose Mercury News) – From the article, "The Rev. Jesse Jackson suggested Sunday that
    the federal government was encouraging ‘white-collar looting’ by
    awarding no-bid contracts to favored companies to rebuild
    hurricane-ravaged areas, rather than giving those displaced by the
    disaster priority for jobs." The Rev. is beating the same old drum, and it’s going hurt the people he should be trying to help.  The jobs need to go to those who can do it best, period.