Year: 2007

HillaryClinton.ca Podcast

Post ImageToday I am launching a new little project of mine – a podcast about Hillary Clinton and her run at the White House. Each Sunday I’ll post a new episode with a recap of the previous week’s Hillary-related headlines. You can listen to the first episode here.

I’ll also use the podcast to test and demonstrate some of the features available at Podcast Spot. For now it’s just audio, and the weekly recap will likely remain that way, but I might do some additional episodes in the future. As I mention in the first episode, there’s about 92 weeks to go until the election. Wouldn’t it be cool if I got to interview Hillary Clinton herself during that time? Highly unlikely, but you never know.

The first episode was recorded pretty quickly this morning, so production quality might not be spectacular. I’ll work on it though. If you have feedback, I’d love to hear it!

Read: Episode 1

Thoughts on Digg Podcasting

Post ImageOver at Geek News Central today Todd Cochrane had some harsh words for Digg’s newest feature, their podcast portal. Most of his argument is based on the traffic he apparently isn’t receiving from Digg:

Lately though I have come to the conclusion that for all the traffic Digg gets very little if any of that traffic in the way of downloads or pure referals [sic] comes from that site.

He goes on to offer some advice to podcasters:

My advice to podcasters is this, look at the directories you are listed in and figure out if they are doing anything to build your audience or giving you equal exposure on the front of their respective websites. If they are not find sites that are and support them in your shows.

That plan of attack might have worked when podcasting was just getting started, but we’re beyond that now. I would suggest that podcasters do in fact add themselves into Digg’s directory, flawed as it might be. Why pick one directory over another? The idea isn’t to play favorites, it’s to help the audience find what they want, wherever they might be looking. There’s more to being in a directory than just getting listed on the front page.

As for Digg’s podcast portal, here are my thoughts:

  • The way you add a podcast into the directory sucks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and the feedback you get is really unhelpful.
  • Only iTunes-compatible feeds may be added into the directory. Why Digg felt the need to perpetuate Apple’s hegemony is beyond me.
  • It would be better if episodes had a “front page” as well, instead of just podcasts. Right now you can only look at episodes for a particular podcast.

The podcast section of Digg hasn’t been around very long, so I’m pretty sure they’ll be making changes over time. There’s definitely room for improvement, but the directory is not useless.

Read: Geek News Central

Midomi worked for me!

Post ImageMichael Arrington wrote about a new startup called Midomi today over at TechCrunch, and he reported that he couldn’t get it to work. Midomi is a voice-based music search engine, which means you can sing or hum part of a tune and it will tell you the artist and name of the song.

I first saw a service like this back in 2003 at the Imagine Cup finals in Spain. I forget where they were from, but there was a team with precisely this kind of search engine. It worked pretty good too, if I remember correctly.

I just tried Midomi out for myself, and it worked great! I hummed the chorus of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”, and it came back as the first result (the reason I chose this song is that I had to hum it on New Years Eve during a game of Cranium…and I did very well that time). Pretty impressive. Give it a shot, see if it works for you!

The only thing I don’t like about Midomi so far is the social networking features they evidently felt compelled to add. I think it is largely unnecessary for the site, even if it is the feature du jour.

Read: Midomi

Amapedia by Amazon.com

Post ImageWikipedia is a superb resource for general information, but I think there’s room (and demand) for topical “wikipedias” too. Such as a wikipedia for product information. Which is exactly what Amazon.com recently launched:

Amazon has just released a new Wikipedia clone, called Amapedia. It’s described as “a community for sharing information about the products you like the most.”

I took a quick look at the site, and so far it’s not very impressive. It has potential though. I have to agree with Richard:

The site looks pretty raw currently and has little info in it – it is after all brand new. But a wikipedia for products makes perfect sense for Amazon. Who better to spotlight products and gather product information from the community, than Amazon?

With enough contributions, Amapedia could become the site to check before you purchase something. Good idea Amazon!

Read: Read/Write Web

Google Video searches YouTube

Post ImageGoogle announced today that it has integrated YouTube results into Google Video. This is the beginning of a transition for Google Video from hosting provider to search. Liz over at NewTeeVee wonders if this is necessary:

In thinking about video search, we’ve been concerned that with the huge number of videos coming into and and video streams coming out of YouTube, there would be little need for — well — video search.

I think there’s a huge need for video search. Just because most of the videos are in one place doesn’t make the search good or effective. There’s lots of things Google can do with it’s video search product to make it the destination. I’m thinking about speech and visual recognition to improve accuracy, and other really complex things.

When it acquired YouTube, Google got more than just a video hosting site. It got unfettered access to one of the largest test beds for video search around. That’s a big asset to have when you’re trying to build an excellent search engine.

Read: NewTeeVee

Most New TV Shows Require Too Much Effort!

Post ImageI don’t watch a lot of television, save for hockey, news, and Smallville. I guess I am “an Internet child” and that’s definitely where most of my time is spent. I think there’s more to it than that, however. Almost all of the new TV shows being produced require a lot of effort from the viewer. More effort than I am willing to put in.

Take 24, for example. People are crazy about this show. I mean seriously off the reservation, like this guy:

If Jack Bauer has to catch a shark with his bare hands and speed-dry the fin so he can make a soup to restore the President’s sexual potency, I’ll be watching. If Jack Bauer is caught in the path of a fiercely-lit green energy beam made of fuckton particles in a suspended gobbledygook matrix and inadvertently is wearing a shark’s tooth necklace and become half-human, half tiger shark – I’ll be watching.

I’ve never seen an entire episode of 24, so I don’t know what the fuss is all about. I just don’t get it. And therein lies the problem. There’s no way I am going to start watching 24 now – it’s too far along. I’d be an outsider, a poser almost. I would have to go back to the very beginning and watch every episode just to catch up. And that’s just too much work.

And existing fans of the show? They can’t miss an episode, no sir. They have to record it for later if they absolutely cannot be sitting down when the new episode airs. Heaven forbid they miss one. They’d be behind, lost. Can’t have that – so they put in the effort.

There’s some old shows that are guilty, like 24, but it’s the new ones that are the worst. Just look at some of the newest shows – most pretty much require that you started watching from the beginning to really understand what’s going on. Heroes? Yup. Prison Break? Yup. Friday Night Lights? Yup. Studio 60? Yup. Ugly Betty? Yup. Jericho? Yup.

I am not sure if this trend is good or bad for television. On the one hand, networks might be limiting a show’s audience by setting the barrier of entry so high. On the other hand, these kinds of shows probably sell a lot better on DVD.

Either way, I kinda miss the old shows. The shows that didn’t require a lot of effort, nor an introduction. You could just start watching any episode and you just got it. There are notable exceptions in the current most popular shows, like CSI or Law & Order or American Idol, but for the most part, I think the new shows require too much effort.

In a way, I look forward to the day these shows are cancelled so I can just get all the DVDs.

Why nofollow at Wikipedia is a good thing

Post ImageYou may have heard that Wikipedia recently decided that all outbound links would be coded with the “nofollow” tag, meaning that search engines do not give the links any weight in their algorithms. The idea is that it will make it much less desirable for spammers to add their links to the thousands of pages at Wikipedia. Sounds good right? Well so far, the reaction has been pretty negative:

Although the no-follow move is certainly understandable from a spam-fighting perspective, it turns Wikipedia into something of a black hole on the Net. It sucks up vast quantities of link energy but never releases any.

Lots of bloggers are worried that the new scheme does not properly recognize the original sources of information. A blog or other site will still be cited on the Wikipedia page, but that citation no longer carries any weight with the search engines.

I think that argument is fairly weak. If you are really deserving of some major “link energy” then you’ll get it, because chances are, Wikipedia won’t be the only site linking to you. So worries about not getting “credit” in the form of Google-juice are pretty unfounded, I think.

I suppose it comes down to the “perfect world” scenario. In a perfect world, there would be no spam, and everyone would benefit maximally from linking to one another. Thing is, we don’t live in a perfect world – thus we have to attempt to reduce the imperfections. This policy is an attempt to do that with spam.

I see the nofollow policy as serving the greater good. Is an individual’s link juice more important than everyone’s access to a reliable, spam-free Wikipedia? The answer is no, and that’s why I think the nofollow policy is good.

NHL schedule change failed by one vote

Post ImageTurns out the proposed NHL schedule change failed today, receiving 19 of 30 votes (a two-thirds majority would have been required for it to pass). Edmonton Oilers chairman Cal Nicols wasn’t happy with the decision:

“The politics seem to always enter into it,” Nichols said after the meeting. “I think we should be more concerned about the future of the game than specific interests or it’s going to cost me a few more thousand dollars to travel a few extra miles. This shouldn’t be about that. It’s about the game.”

According to the TSN article, Montreal is believed to have been the only Canadian team to vote against the change.

I think the board of governors made a mistake today. Hopefully they change their minds for the 2008-09 season.

Read: TSN

Cowgirls Espresso

Post ImageCall me shallow, but yeah, I’d buy coffee from Cowgirls Espresso. I mean, who wouldn’t want to buy coffee from their hot baristas? There’s a ton of coffee shops out there, so you need to be different if you’re going to succeed. That’s what the Cowgirls Espresso chain is going for:

Hot is not the half of it. To stand apart from the hordes of drive-through espresso stands that clutter the Northwest’s roadsides, commuter coffee stops such as Tukwila’s Cowgirls Espresso are adding bodacious baristas, flirty service and ever more-revealing outfits to the menu.

They aren’t the only ones either – the trend is dubbed “sexpresso”.

I doubt we’ll see any of these coffee shops in the colder climates of Canada any time soon, but it’s an interesting bit of marketing nonetheless.

Read: Seattle Times

NHL likely to revert to pre-lockout sked

Post ImageThe NHL schedule is a hot topic here in the west, and according to TSN it is likely that the league will revert to the pre-lockout format in which all 30 teams play each other at least once per season. This means that teams like the Oilers would be guaranteed to have at least one game with the NHL’s hottest stars like Ovechkin and Crosby who can draw big numbers to games.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has not taken a stand on the issue so far and has basically allowed teams to make their cases, but one source said it might be time for the league to step in. The feeling is that if there is an appetite for change, Bettman will facilitate it.

Apparently New Jersey Devils GM Lou Lamoriello favors the current schedule and is leading the charge for eastern teams who would prefer not to change. The league’s board of governors meets tomorrow to discuss the schedule and the Penguins situation, among other things.

Read: TSN