Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 10:56AM Jeneane Sessum sends word of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Women make themselves heard through blogs, on women, blogging, and BlogHer (later this week). It's a nice piece that aptly highlights Jeneane's seminal role and contributions to the blogging community.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 10:30AM This is the first event I've been to in years (maybe ever) where I'm not toting business cards. The oral alternative seems to work just fine: "Google my first name, I'm the one who was never married to Charlie Sheen."
Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 9:54AM Here again is the address for the live webcast and chat. Go get in the chat room, it's onscreen in real time for the audience and speakers here. I'm just catching the last few minutes of this panel, but it's a good one: Kara Swisher moderating Michael Arrieta (SVP Sony Pictures Digital Sales and Marketing), Dave Goldberg (head of Yahoo! music), Chad Hurley (CEO YouTube), and Michael Robertson (once of MP3.com; now CEO MP3Tunes).
Shock and awe: YouTube is presently serving up 100,000,000 videos per day.
Intention economy: Kara Swisher mentioned in passing that at Google they can tell weeks in advance which Hollywood films will be hits once released, and which won't.
Sony's Arrieta discusses mashups, leveraging and harnessing the marketing power of fan/user creativity, and getting ahead of the copyright issues. Says Sony will go through the hurdles to ensure that user remixing isn't infringing. It'd be nice to see the licensing and parameters of that. [Update:] In a brief conversation after the panel, Michael told me Sony has been experimenting with this since 2001 and suggested I call him to talk more with Sony legal about it. I'll see if I can get someone to elaborate.
Michael Robertson mentioned Eyespot: Ajax-based online video editing and sharing. Looks cool.
JD Lasica asks Chad Hurley about the role of other video sites than YouTube. Chad says people upload to YouTube for the viewership and network effect, but there are plenty of roles for other sites filling other niches.
[Update:] Here's Dan Farber's excellent coverage.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006 at 6:25PM Greetings from beautiful, sweltering Stanford, CA.
If you're reading this at 6:20 p.m. PDT or so, you should follow along with the AO Live Webcast. Here's what will be going on at AlwaysOn. I'll be updating this post intermittently throughout the evening.
Tom Byers asks Stanford's president about the role of universities in solving society's most difficult problems. Universities are home to "the most creative people in the world:" graduate students. "They're the doers. They're the people who don't see the inhibitions to innovation."
Key themes for this year's list: consumers (entertainment, information, socializing), mobile. Many familar names, old friends even, including Technorati and CafePress. Alex Welch of Photobucket accepted the Top Newcomer award, and Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO of Blue Lithium, accepted the Top Innovator award.
Todd Bradley of HP. HP has an ad campaign focused on achievers who use technology to drive the way they work and play:
"The millenial generation is generating its own content." Stat: among 21-year olds, 61% of Web use is to access material created by someone they know. Kids know: "Which is more fun, Internet or TV?" "Internet!!!" HP is orienting its focus around enabling storytellers to tell better stories.
Ed Leonard of DreamWorks, Todd Bradley of HP, moderated by Al Delattre, Global Managing Director at Accenture. Barriers to entry for creation continue to plunge, according to Ed Leonard: "The stuff that our animators are running to do Over The Hedge is the same stuff you can buy from HP.com."
Monday, July 24, 2006 at 2:50PM Steve Martin used to toss a line into his routine when he spaced out, something like: "Oops, went to the Bahamas there, just for a moment." I've always wanted to know what he meant, and now I do, six days there having gone by in precisely the blink of one eye. This was a family trip over a year in the planning in honor of my mother-in-law's 60th. I'd torture you with photos but my camera refused to leave and is still bumming around Nassau somewhere (I do have some hope it will make its way home, we'll see). In the meantime, the Exumas tag at Flickr will do nicely; I think we met this very pig. [Update: yay, the wayward camera turned up.]
Huge, huge thanks to all who offered kind or thought provoking sentiments in response to my last post; I'm still pondering these in particular.
The only "media" (if that's the appropriate term; maybe I should just say "non-blog") attention I've seen are these blurbs from thelawyer.com. I'm not very familiar with the publication but I'd encourage you to take its coverage and speculations with a boulder or two of salt. Gently put, the two pieces (the more recent of which is un-bylined) fail to bowl me over as superlative examples the journalist's art. They've botched my name ("Howells"), my position with the firm ("partner"), my notoriety as a blogger ("legendary" — quite an adjective for someone with modest traffic who has come about as close to hitting the Technorati Top 100 as my new Bahamian friend), and the nature of my blogging ("Her blogs have championed the interests of women and mothers in law firms...;" "Howells...has been a leading commentator on work-life balance in law firms" — ??? I've discussed "work-life balance" in exactly one post, mentioned being part time just twice before that, and am far more likely to be blogging about some arcane copyright issue only a technofetishist could love than donning gold llame cuffs and circlet as WonderLawerWoman). So, as always, read critically and skeptically. And, read blogs. I've seen some interesting discussion around my 7/15 post and thus far it has all been in that context.
There's just time for a time zone adjustment and a couple of loads of laundry before heading up to AlwaysOn. Hope to see you there.
