*michael parekh on IT*

On Blogging Again

As former followers of this blog know, I stopped blogging on a regular basis in 2009, after having maintained a daily blog here for several years, with almost 1800 posts.

Since then, I've been consistently Twittering @MParekh, and enjoying the micr0-blogging experience.  Occasionally, I've been asked my friends and former readers if I'd start blogging again, to which I generally replied, maybe some day soon.

Lately though, I have been missing writing the longer pieces, and have been thinking of re-starting the blog sooner than later.

For the last week, I've been trying out the new Google+ Project, and think it may be a good way for me to re-start writing longer pieces. 

As my friend Loic Le Meur posted on his Google+ page earlier, "Do you really need a blog anymore?"  His point is that Google+ may be a light way to scratch the blogging itch, with a greater number of pros than cons for both writers and readers.

So instead of starting to blog here again, I think I'll try blogging again at my new Google+ public page.  As another Google+ adopter said earlier today, Google Plus feels like a "Tumblr for Adults".  

Sounds pretty apt.  

Initially my thought is to amplify some of my daily tweets, adding additional thoughts/color, and hoping to start conversations that are tougher to do on Twitter.  It may not be daily, but I hope to keep up a regular pace.

That may be followed by longer pieces, and who knows, may return to full-time blogging as well.  Of course, will continue to Twitter daily as usual.

In the meantime, please join me at Google+  if you'd like.  As always, appreciate any and all feedback.  Thanks.

Image source

 

ON GRASS-ROOTS ADVERTISING

FROM THE HEART

With the exploding popularity of social networks and social tools to leverage them, the question arises...what if consumers produced their own ads for products or services they really cared about? What would these "user-generated" ads look like?

Certainly, this movement has already started a few years ago, with marketers in recent SuperBowls fielding ads conceived by users.

But what if it was even more grass-roots than that? Might it look something like this ad done by a fan of Trader Joe Supermarkets? With his Blackberry? Take a look:

Who knows, the song may even become a standalone hit, like some of the tunes from those Apple commercials.  And they'd give a whole different twist to Fan Pages on social networks like Facebook.

ON A NEEDED VERSION OF iTUNES

WISH UPON A STAR

One of the top discussions on Techmeme today is around a TUAW story  titled "Rumors:  Apple working on iTunes controller for iPhone", focusing on the following:

"An anonymous tipster tells TUAW that according to code found in the latest firmware release, Apple is working on a new iPhone application called iControl. Like Apple TV and other remote controllers, it would allow the iPhone to connect wirelessly to local iTunes libraries and browse through and play media from those sources."

This is all very good, and I'll be among the first adopters if and when Apple does release a new iTunes manager for iPhone.

But I'd be even happier if Apple were "just" to release a new iTunes Manager for, well, iTunes.

Let me explain.

Over the last few years Apple has done a terrific job of making iTunes central for millions of both Windows and Mac users, in the way they use and manage over a 100 million iPods, and soon over 10 million iPhones world-wide.

By now, most iPod users have at least one iPod, and likely several iPods used by several members of their household.  And many users have more than one computer and/or laptop, that they use iTunes on, be it Windows or Mac.  Many of those households in turn have their various computers and laptops connected via a home network running ethernet and/or wireless Wifi.

Yet iTunes by itself remains quaintly designed for a world of almost a decade ago, when most people had one iPod, one computer, and no home network.

If you have more than one member of a household using the same version of iTunes for various iPods, they have to jump through several hoops to share an iTunes library with their individual play-lists, ratings, and sub-libraries of music and videos.

Forget making the iTunes library available over a home network via one computer and/or a home server, especially across Windows and Macs in a household.

And you'd better make sure you buy you music and videos via the one master computer that has the copy of iTunes everyone uses in the household.

If you buy a tune or video on a laptop attached to the same iTunes account (which is still archaically limited to five computers), then you have to sneaker-net that item back to the original iTunes library if you want to make sure it's backed up with the master library.

And forget syncing various iTunes libraries across various computers in a household with all the music and play-lists.  Cannot be done for now using Apple software.

Much of what can't be done above, CAN be done using third-party applications.  But using many of them is a bit of a learning curve into the intricacies of managing an iTunes library, that most mainstream folks won't have the patience to endure.

And there's no guarantee that those third-party apps will work immediately with the next upgrade of iTunes, which as most users know, tend to come fast and furious most of the time.  If something breaks, then one typically needs the patience and diligence of a CSI to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

So it's for all these reasons and more, that I fervently wish Apple would soon introduce an iTunes manager for iTunes. 

Followed of course by an iPhoto manager for iPhoto, which has some of the same issues as iTunes, albeit without a Windows version, for now.

ON CREATIVE ENDEAVORS

SPARKS OF SUCCESS

My sister mentioned in a casual phone call yesterday, that her six-year old son came home from school the other day and announced that he wanted to be an artist. 

Of course, that is about the most traumatic thing an Indian mother could hear, especially from a son, regardless of age.

She of course immediately tried to convince him on the merits of a career in engineering, business, medicine, or even architecture, like his Dad.

But young Neal wasn't having any of it.  He emphatically kept repeating, "I like to draw".

I tried to console my sister that times had changed, that yes, it was possible for artists to be millionaires.  Sometimes.

It's a sentiment eloquently captured in this cartoon by Hugh McLeod, who in a recent post announced he was writing a book.  It builds on an online work he published some time ago on "How to be Creative".

Like so many of his fans, I was introduced to Hugh's work via blogging, and am a keen follower of his writings and trademark back-of-a business card cartoons. 

My business card sports one of his cartoons.

I wish Hugh all the best in his current endeavor.  And look forward to his success as both an artist and a businessman.  How could he not, given this eloquent summary of his upcoming work:

"If I had to condense the entire work into a single line, it would read something like, "Work Hard. Keep at it. Live simply and quietly. Remain humble. Stay positive. Be nice. Be polite."

A role model indeed for young Neal to follow.

ON THE MOST UNEXPECTED BLOGGERS

LEFT FIELD

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a cool move by Walmart, allowing it's Buyers to blog about their experiences with vendors in the many categories that sell to Walmart. 

It represented a huge mind-shift in a corporate mind-set in how to think about sharing information with the public, that it otherwise would be inclined to never share.  The Walmart experiment may not last long, but the company deserves kudos for giving it a shot.

Well, Tracy Sheridan points out in a Twitter post, another unlikely organization that you'd NEVER think would allow it's employees to blog:

"Israeli secret agents are writing blogs about their lives in a bid to boost recruitment.

Shin Beth, Israel's equivalent of MI5, is allowing four agents to write blogs about their daily routines.

The bloggers will also respond to messages from members of the public, reports the Daily Telegraph.

The four agents, whose names are replaced by a single initial, appear in black silhouette on the site's home page..."

Here are some representative posts by some of these agents:

"Another blogger, Agent Y, agreed that the working hours in the Shin Beth were not too demanding: "You never work overtime, unless you really have to," he writes. "I rarely get home after 6:30pm."

Agent A, a software engineer, wrote: "I don't wear uniform, the office is not located underground. I don't walk around with an earplug all day long, and although this is extremely unfair, I do not get to place lightbars on the roof of my car."

Wow, if secret agents were blogging when I was growing up, life could have been very different indeed.

This is almost as clever a move as the US Army recruiting kids via free, down-loadable, and hugely successful video games.

ON A MILESTONE OF SORTS

THANKS FOR ALL THE FUN

I missed this in the hustle and bustle of the past few days, but last Friday the 15th marked the fourth anniversary of this blog.  It's been a long road, and I didn't think this exercise in public communication would last this long.

It started humbly enough, with the following objective outlined in the very first post:

"This blog reflects my personal views and thoughts on topics, mostly about the Internet and Technology and its effects globally, but sometimes about media, the arts, politics, and the goofy, marvelous and always surprising world around us. 

It's an experiment, and the blog is likely to have its fits and starts, but I'll try and keep it going and hopefully interesting.

So, welcome to mp.blogs.com.  It started as a lark, inspired by Fred Wilson's VC blog with the ultra-cool, and ultra-early avc.blogs.com...Checked out and saw mp.blogs.com was available. Thus, I homesteaded the  URL, knowing that the site may lie fallow for a while."

Well, the blog did lay fallow for a year, despite the best of intentions, and I didn't start posting again until a year later, on February 22nd, 2005.

And I haven't stopped posting almost every day since, with over 1,300 posts made in the last three years.  Of course  you're the best judge of whether that's a good thing or not, but it's been a blast from my perspective.

I've made lots of new friends along the way and become re-acquainted with quite a few more.  And it's been helpful both personally and professionally to be able to connect with folks on issues large and small that interest me.

So thank you all for indulging me, and as usual, suggestions on how this whole exercise can be improved upon, are always welcome.

ON MY USE OF TWITTER & TUMBLR

A HOUSEKEEPING NOTE

Fred Wilson had a recent post highlighting the advantages to bloggers to try Tumblr that I found interesting.  Specifically, he says:

"There's an emerging category in the middle that takes from both blogging and social networking and we at Union Square Ventures are heavily invested in it with our investments in Twitter and Tumblr. I'll call it social blogging but I'd sure love a better name for it."

I've been a user of both for some time now, and as a housekeeping note, wanted to readers know that I've updated my Tumblr page to include feeds from both my primary blog (this one), and my twitter feeds. 

In principle, this should simplify getting "my content" in a simpler, more unified way by just bookmarking, and/or "subscribing" to my Tumblr feed.

Here are the URLs for these feeds for your reference.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mparekh 
Tumblr:  http://mponit.tumblr.com/

I'm using my Twitter site as primarily by "linkblog", where I list in two sentences or less interesting items I've read or noted in my web meanderings.  There's also an option just to "follow" my twitter postings directly, which is explained here.

There's also a link to my Twitter feed, along with my latest Twitter post, in the sidebar to the right on this blog.  It's the box in pink.

As a side note, there's a bit of a lag between one's  postings on Twitter and when they show up on Tumblr.

Hope you find all this useful and fun.

ON THE FORCE OF FARCE

BLURRY LINES

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has a tongue-in-cheek letter to Iranian President Ahmadinejad, purportedly written by the Head of Iranian Intelligence. 

It's a hypothetical and farcical take on what such a correspondence would report about U.S. policies and directions. 

Most of it was just ho-hum until it came to this little bit:

"We have to note that obtaining open-source intelligence in America has become more difficult, because traditional news shows have become more comedic and more comedic news shows more authoritative.

For instance, CNN’s nightly business report is hosted by a man named “Dobbs.”

Real journalists come on his show and present transparently propagandistic stories about immigration and trade and then he fulminates about them, much the way our ayatollahs used to do about “Satanic Americans” on late-night Iranian TV.

So viewers have no real idea what’s happening in the U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, at 11 p.m., something called “The Daily Show,” which appears on Comedy Central, has fake journalists presenting what turns out to be the real news."

Ironic that an op-ed piece written in jest also hits the nail on the head when it comes to the state of our news media.

ON LIVING THROUGH A MUSIC REVOLUTION

PAINFULLY FUN

Anecdotally, it has all the makings of a major trend.  First Radiohead decided to forgo a major recording contract for their new album In Rainbows, and distribute it directly via their website (see Fred Wilson's take on the album).  Then, some other established Acts announced that they'll try something similar.

And today of course, the major papers and sites are covering Madonna's nine-figure deal with a concert promoter for her next major albums, in lieu of re-upping her recording contract. 

Echoes of Howard Stern and Sirius not so long ago.

Anecdotally, music discovery and consumption has been changing for me too. 

So many of the artists and songs I've discovered, sampled, and then bought for my iPods and Sonos networks have been through watching TV shows and commercials.  They've somehow become the new radio in recent times.

The rest have been through music blogs like the Hype Machine.

There are so many of them, and it's hard to keep on top of it all.

Revolutions can be good things when they're over, but they're hell when you're living through them.

Ironically, buying music has become so much more hard work, even though albums can be downloaded in the blink of an eye.

If more acts go the way of Radiohead, you'll have to remember which sites to go for which music.  As it is, I'm still having difficulty buying the Radiohead album due to what seems to be high traffic loads on the site.

Once you get the tracks/albums you want, you then have to worry about which tracks will play on which devices, both in the home, on the road.  Which MP3 player will play which tracks?  Are the tracks compatiable with the player in your car?

Then it's the question of managing all the digital downloads.

Did you buy them through iTunes, Amazon, Yahoo!, eMusic, Rhapsody, or Microsoft?  Each one stores stuff in different folders by default.

Are they MP-3 tracks with no DRM or if they have DRM, which tracks have which DRM system?

Which PCs hold the various libraries?  Are they all constantly synced and backed up?

Oh, and did I remember to rip that new pile of CDs from Amazon into both Windows Media and iTunes formats (don't ask).

Of course, none of the music libraries can be managed easily from one network drive. 

Even Apple expects their rabid users to jump through all kinds of hoops to make sure the music in the iTunes library on the Mac or PC is synced with the iTunes library that's the back up on the network server.   "It can be done, but it's not an officially supported feature", intoned the Mac Genius at the local Apple store.

And don't forget about the iTunes library on the PC, since the wife uses a Windows laptop instead of a Mac.

And of course iTunes libraries on a network server won't talk easily to iTunes on BOTH Windows and Mac PCs, due to different hard drive storage formats (needed a two-hour trip to a Mac Genius at the local Apple store to figure that out).

And then even when you do discover new music on sites like the Hype Machine, you realize that many of them are "covers" by new bands (bands doing their versions of old, classic standbys), that you can't buy legally yet at any store online or off...of course, you spend 15 minutes just checking to see if you can find that track on half a dozen online stores.  Talking about chasing needles in a bunch of haystacks.

Of course, you can always enjoy live performances of the tracks on YouTube, like this cover of Cupid by Amy Winehouse, or this version of Careless Whispers by The Gossip (top-ranked on the Hype Machine today after the Radiohead In Rainbow tracks).

So you have to make sure to write them down the tracks on a To-do list with a tickler to remind yourself to check if they're for sale in a month or so, when you're next in the mood to buy some music.

Of course you can always download SOME of the tracks from some web-site found through a music blog.  But then you're worried about the music industry gun slingers slapping you with a law-suit and/or infecting your computer with a virus attached to that tempting little MP3 file.

If you do find a track you CAN buy and download legally, you then have to remember to make sure it's copied over to all the various online libraries that you have to maintain (see above).

And before you tell me that I'm making all of this way too complicated, as my wife has already suggested several times, do let me state that there is some well-thought out method to this madness. 

The civilians in the household don't appreciate the complexity entailed in the simplest request, as when my wife requested I play Billy Joel's Piano Man via the Sonos in the upstairs living room.   Of course it happened to be the ONE CD I must have missed ripping when I was methodically trying to rip several hundred CDs into the network server a few months ago.

So rather than say "No, honey, I can't find the track in our library", of course I buy it for a buck on iTunes, even though I know we have at least two copies of the CD somewhere in the house.  It plays instantly making the wife happy, but of course it rankles having to pay yet again for the same song again, and again.

If any of you can relate with EVERYTHING I'm touching on in this post, AND still have a suggestion or two to ease the pain, then I'm all eyes and ears.

Until then, or until this stuff gets easier over time, I'll continue to maintain that it's tough staying on top of it all as a music fan, in the middle of a revolution.

And forget it if you're just a mainstream, casual music fan.

Almost makes one miss the simpler days of Casey Kasem and the weekly Top Forty on the radio, and Tower Records.

And I haven't even mentioned keeping on top of favorite TV shows and movies yet in the midst of their respective revolutions.

ON A NEW GAME OF TELEPHONE

MAKING THE ROUNDS

One of the unintended side-effects of services like Techmeme is how stories get passed along, commented on, and morphed up and down the discussion chain.

Whether it's this morning's discussion on the valuation of TechCrunch, or the valuation of Facebook on any other day, it's now possible to see the chain of comments as never before.

It's the old game of Telephone, done Web 2.0 style (image source).

And unlike the traditional game of Telephone, where the players remain somewhat anonymous, this game is played in full view, and for posterity.

Ain't the internet grand?