The Age of Digital Rumors

I have to admit I feel kind of bad for Christie Chorley. She’s a sports anchor for CityTV here in Edmonton, and was subject to rumors recently that she was carrying Chris Pronger’s baby (he’s married with kids in case you didn’t know), and hence, was the reason he requested a trade. Turns out that was completely false:

OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM CHRISTIE CHORLEY
JUNE 29, 2006

ANY RUMORS AND/OR SPECULATION ABOUT MY INVOLVEMENT WITH THE CURRENT CHRIS PRONGER SITUATION IS COMPLETELY, ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT FALSE.

I would appreciate your help in putting an end to my name being linked to this situation, as it is completely WITHOUT ANY MERIT OR FACTUAL BASIS.

Any further slander or defamation can and will result in swift legal action.

Thank you.

What’s interesting about this to me, is how fast and far the rumor spread, thanks in large part to the Internet. I received an email about it, as did Megan (she posted about it here). In addition to the email, a quick search on Technorati reveals a number of posts about the rumor. Christie’s site was down most of the week, no doubt because of huge amounts of traffic.

The Oilers have also felt the power of the Internet with regards to this rumor, posting a message that threatens to ban anyone who continues the discussion on the Oiler forums:

There will be no more speculation or rumours on this board regarding Chris Pronger’s situation.

Any attempt to do so will result in an immediate ban.

If it continues, we will be forced to remove the message board due to the threat of legal action against the Oilers. The legal action is NOT by Pronger himself but by outside parties implicated by rumours on the message board.

You can discuss trade rumours, etc. but leave his (or any other player’s for that matter) personal life out of it.

I agree with Megan, Chris Pronger himself needs to make a statement to put an end to all of this madness.

Things just aren’t like they used to be. Remember in high school, if someone started a rumor, a few dozen people might here about it, and then they’d get bored and move on to something else. There was rarely a record of the rumor. That’s different now. Even for high school students, I imagine MySpace has become a haven for rumors and slander. Welcome to the age of digital rumors I guess!

And Christie, if you’re reading this, you can take one positive from the whole situation. Most of the comments I heard related to the rumor said something to the effect that “I can’t blame him if he did.” Not the way in which you want to receive a compliment, but if you’re going to look for the positives here (aside from your name becoming much more widely known), that’s one.

[As an aside, I was kind of surprised that I still got an email about this. One of those “forward it on to everyone you know” kind of emails. I guess blogging hasn’t quite taken hold as firmly as I had thought, despite the number of worldwide bloggers inching towards 100 million (or maybe even beyond that already).]

Read: Christie Chorley

Old School 2

Oh man, I just can’t believe this. Well that’s not true, I can, I just can’t wait! Via Sharon, I got this link to the IMDB site with an entry for Old School 2! Yes, a sequel to one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. There information there is sparse, but Wikipedia has the goods:

Old School 2 is the announced sequel to Old School. This film will be made by DreamWorks SKG and will be distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is scheduled to be released some time in 2007.

That’s just the description though. The real goods are in the cast list they provide: Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Steve Carrell, Elisha Cuthbert, Kathy Bates, and Christopher Walken.

Is that even possible? The Wikipedia entry has a warning that sources have not been cited, so take that list with a grain of salt, but still! That would be absolutely amazing! IMDB has the movie listed for a 2007 release. I hope it is correct.

Black van of death, Frank the tank, and all the other greatness that was Old School. Just imagine!

I wish IMDB had RSS feeds for movies, then I could easily see when the cast is updated.

Anaheim goes wireless

And I thought the biggest news in Anaheim was that the Mighty Ducks are now known as the Ducks! But nope, it’s not. The latest city to embrace my mantra is indeed Anaheim, which announced the new wireless network today with a ceremonial cable cutting:

Curt Pringle, the mayor of Anaheim, cut a thick blue cable with giant scissors in front of a quiet lunchtime crowd Thursday as this Los Angeles suburb joined the growing list of American cities that have launched a citywide wireless Internet network.

Anaheim is EarthLink’s first citywide network, but certainly not the last. EarthLink has signed on to provide San Francisco, Philadelphia, New Orleans and five other cities with municipal Internet access.

This one is different than most you may have heard about, as no free service will be made available. Instead, residents can pay $21.95 per month for access, and visitors to the area (such as the millions who visit Disneyland) can buy smaller amounts of access.

Still, this is great news for those of us who want wireless to be ubiquitous.

Read: CNET News.com

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 Released

Microsoft today released Beta 3 of Internet Explorer 7. The main changes are around the user interface, though there are also improvements to tabs, RSS feeds, and security. You’ll have to uninstall any previous versions of IE7 before installing the new beta. According to IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch, this is the last beta version, meaning we’ll see only release candidates until IE7 goes gold.

There’s a great overview of the interface changes up at the IE Blog. The stop, refresh, and search buttons have all been lightened, which is good as they don’t clash as much now. There’s horizontal lines separating the links toolbar from the rest now too! I don’t remember if Beta 2 had it, but when you type a URL in the address bar, the refresh button changes to become a “Go” button with an arrow. They have finally made the awkward image zooming from IE6 much easier to use as well.

And my favorite change? You can now drag and drop tabs to reorder them! I wish Firefox had this feature too, it’s so useful when you’ve got a lot of tabs open at once. IE7 isn’t the first to have this feature though, Opera 9 has tab reordering as well.

Read: Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3

Google Checkout – @!%$ you too Google!

When I got to the office this morning I checked to see if Google Checkout was working, and was happy to see that it was. And it’s not in beta either! I started looking through all the information (there’s a lot), glanced at the API information, and was generally feeling really great about the service. It’s really cheap too, at only 2% plus $0.20 USD per transaction. Actually, you get up to ten times your AdWords spend processed for free, which is pretty damn sweet.

And then, I came across this:

At this time, only merchants with a U.S. address and bank account can process transactions through Google Checkout. We look forward to offering more options in the future.

What?! Are you kidding me? I have an AdWords account, why can’t I create a Google Checkout account? Indulge me while I get on my soapbox for a moment…

I am sick of being treated like a third world country! We’re right next door! I’m as proud a Canadian as the next guy, but I’m not afraid to admit that we’re practically another state. Is it really so hard for Google (or any company for that matter, they aren’t the only ones) to make their services work for Canadians right from the get-go? I mean seriously, there cannot be that much work involved to make it happen.

So while I think Google Checkout looks great, and I’m happy that PayPal has some competition, I’m pissed that it doesn’t support Canada.

Read: Google Checkout

No GBuy Yet

Like a lot of other bloggers (at least I’m assuming I’m not alone here) I have been waiting patiently today, for any sign of Google’s long-rumored “GBuy” service. A report was published a couple weeks ago by Forbes, that said today would likely be the day Google would launch the service.

According to bloggingstocks, eBay, who would feel the largest effects of a GBuy service, was doing better today:

So after eBay hit a 52-week low yesterday, mainly on fears of up and coming competition from Google, investors had time to cool off and rethink the ramifications of this play. EBay stock gained back 50 cents (1.77%) to close at $28.75.

And according to the Search Engine Roundtable blog, quite a few people would switch to GBuy if it was ever launched:

Currently we have over 38% saying they will switch, only 19% saying they will not and 42% saying they just don’t know. Why would someone switch without seeing it first? Well, it is Google.

I just want to see if it’s anything like PayPal, which I quite like.

Maybe it will come late tonight. Or maybe it won’t come at all?

UPDATE: I knew I wasn’t the only one waiting!

UPDATE 2: Looks like we’ll see Google Checkout on Thursday. The service doesn’t seem to be available yet, so I’ll reserve further comment until later.

Communication with Podcasting

Lots of the podcasting-related discussion taking place in the blogosphere over the last week or so has been about whether or not you can build a sustainable business around it (or even just whether podcasting is here to stay or not). No doubt Scoble’s move to PodTech has fueled some of the discussion, as have comments like Larry Borsato’s:

People talk about podcasting as if it is some amazing new technology, forgetting that we’ve had radio and books on tape for decades. The only difference is that we store the thing in a digital file now.

To say that podcasting is an “amazing new technology” is far too broad a statement to make, I agree. I would argue, however, that podcasting is a great new communications technology (or more accurately, the repackaging of existing technologies (MP3, RSS, the web) to create a great new communications technology). I touched on this idea in my National Post article in May, but I actually developed the theory much more completely back in March of this year. During that month, Paramagnus was heavily into our two business plan competitions, and one of the things I wrote was a introduction to podcasting, which explained how the technology fits into the overall communications picture:

Podcasting is, at its heart, a communications technology. The essence of podcasting is creating audio-visual content for an audience to listen to or watch when they want, where they want, and how they want.

Around the same time, I wrote an essay for a class at the University of Alberta, which explored the impact of the diagram above:

Communication can be broken down into four main methods: real-time text, real-time audio/video, time-shifted text, and time-shifted audio/video. Until very recently, only the first three of these methods had been made available to the masses in digital form by modern technology.

Podcasting fills a great void in communications technologies by enabling everyone to communicate digitally using time-shifted audio and video.

In the diagram above I chose videoconferencing (because of the ability to include both audio and video, and the ability to communicate with more than one person at a time), but you could just as easily stick the telephone in there as well. You might find the diagram simplifies communication, but that was kind of the point. When the average person is going to communicate with someone else, they’re either going to see them in person, call them, email them, maybe instant message them, perhaps post something to their blog, or something similar. Until podcasting came along, it was really hard to use audio and video to do any of this.

As for sustainable business models around podcasting, I think they exist, even if they are hard to see at the moment. Unfortunately, everyone seems to be focused on podcast directories and podcast advertising, the two models I don’t see as being very sustainable (at least not for the incredible number of companies each segment currently has). Advertising is for content companies, which might choose to use podcasting as a delivery medium. I don’t think to be a podcasting company you need to have a strategy to sell advertising. Like most communications technologies, I feel the bulk of the money in podcasting will be on the creation side.

Basically what I am saying here is that podcasting is all about communication, and that’s why it is relevant/important/going-to-stick-around. I don’t think we’ll ever have too many solutions to the problem of communication. And what I said in my last podcasting post still applies – you’ve got to choose the right tool for the job. Sometimes, you’re going to use email or blogging or instant messaging. Other times, you’re going to use podcasting.

Google passed on MySpace

The July issue of Wired includes a feature on News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, and what might be his current crown jewel, MySpace. The main value that MySpace provides the company is “the power to make hits.” Ever hear of Dane Cook? He’s a really popular comedian probably because of his MySpace page. The Arctic Monkey’s are becoming popular in North America with help from their MySpace page. Lots of celebs have them now. MySpace is huge, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Of particular interest to me, Murdoch claims that Google passed on the opportunity to purchase MySpace, for about half the price News Corp. paid (which was still a steal). Murdoch says:

I like those guys, but theres a bit of arrogance. They could have bought MySpace three months before we did for half the price. They thought, “Its nothing special. We can do that.”

This, dear readers, is what happens when you’re a media company that thinks you’re a technology company. I’m not sure it’s arrogance, so much as it is this incredible desire to be a technology company that blinds them from making any rational decisions. Google’s big three (Larry, Sergei, and Eric) all have technology backgrounds, yet Google is very clearly a media company. Almost all of their revenue is derived from advertising, and they increase that revenue with more eyeballs, not necessarily great technology.

As Om Malik points out, Google really, really, should have bought MySpace when they had the chance:

As widely reported, MySpace is now the largest source of search traffic for Google, accounting for over 8% of their inbound traffic as of early May. That essentially means that MySpace is responsible for about $400 million of Google’s annual revenues. Knowing this, MySpace is trying to capitalize by holding an auction for its search business. If Google wins, it will end up sharing a significant percentage of that $400 million with MySpace… John Battelle thinks the split to MySpace will be close to 90%. And Google would need to pay it every year. Needless to say, had Google acquired MySpace, no such payments would have to be made.

Om also points out that Google+MySpace=Largest-Site-on-the-Web. Or at least, that’s what could have been. More eyeballs than anywhere else. A media company thinking like a media company would have purchased MySpace, no question.

News Corp. doesn’t have any such delusions. They’re a media company. They purchased MySpace.

[In case you’re wondering, my very plain, very boring MySpace page is here.]

Read: Wired

Podcasting or Text?

“Why listen to a podcast when you can get ten times the content when you read?” That’s the question Peter Davis recently asked, and I’d like to attempt to answer it. Scoble chimed in with his response, essentially saying with communication, you should use the right tool for the job. Maybe that’s text, but in other cases, it might be audio or video.

Here’s why I think you should listen to or watch a podcast, even if you can get ten times the content when you read:

The Right Tool For The Job
Like Scoble, I think that sometimes audio or video is better suited to the job than text. I’ll just cite his example too – I’d much rather watch a short video about Halo 3 than read an essay on it. It really depends on what you’re trying to communicate.
Mobility
Can you read an email or the newspaper while you’re driving your car? I certainly can’t. But I can listen to a podcast. Do you carry all your books and magazines with you everywhere? Probably not, but I’ll bet you carry an MP3 player! There are a lot of scenarios where podcasting on the go works and text simply doesn’t.
Show Some Emotion!
Try to write a really emotional blog post. Or a post that is sarcastic. It’s not as easy as you’d like to believe! Most times, your emotion or sarcasm will be misinterpreted. Audio and video allow you to convey emotion, sarcasm, and other things using tone of voice and body language. Sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it.
Ease of Creation
You’re probably thinking I’m nuts, saying that it’s easier to create a podcast than write a blog post, but in some cases it’s true. The tools to create a podcast will soon be as easy to use as blogging tools, and when that happens, the creation time really depends simply on the content. Most people can talk a heck of a lot faster than they can type, and with regards to video, a picture really is worth a thousand words! Sometimes it might be easier to get your message across in a podcast. Heck, I should be podcasting this post!
Multitasking!
I’ve always got some sort of background noise going on, as it helps me concentrate. Sometimes I just block it out, while other times I’ll sort of half listen and if I hear something interesting, I’ll pay attention. The idea here is that I can play a podcast in the background and continue working, and if something being said catches my interest, I might pay a little more attention. Can’t do that with text. I’ve called this multitasking, but you can think of it as passive podcasting consumption!

Don’t be fooled by the comments on Peter’s post and elsewhere – this discussion is about more than just those who listen in the car and those who don’t. Podcasting is an extremely viable communications technology, for a wide variety of scenarios.

To be clear, I’m not saying one should always use podcasting. The most important of the reasons above is to use the right tool for the job. Developers are told this all the time – use the right programming language for the task at hand! Same holds true with communication. If you can communicate something better using text, go for it. If some sound or a short video is better, maybe podcasting will work for you.

Peter is correct in stating that podcasting is not as efficient at delivering information as text is. However, if you consider the amount of overlap that exists in text (look at Google News for a news story, or the hundreds of blog posts on a given topic) it might start to even out. At least for the time being, podcasting does not suffer from the same “echo chamber” as text does.

Now hopefully I’ve offered some good reasons for why you might use podcasting over text. There are many more reasons that podcasting is great, but they go beyond a comparison with text, so I’ll save them for another post. There’s still a long way to go to make podcasting incredibly useful, but it definitely has some inherent properties that make it pretty attractive.

Read: Peter Davis

Notes for 6/25/2006

Here are my weekly notes:

My parents are back in Inuvik now, as is Tom who went up for the summer at the same time. It was nice to see them for a short while!
I simply cannot wait for Superman Returns! I’m really looking forward to the movie. It opens June 28th.
Warren Buffet is giving over $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Are we at the beginning of a major shift in world philanthropy? Sure would be nice if more extremely wealthy people joined the cause.
This picture is just creepy.
A simpler controller for the Xbox 360 a la Atari? That would be kinda neat I think!
Beckham scored a lovely goal today to put England into the quarter-finals against Portugal.

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