Posts
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Blogging and the Law
I went to the presentation on Blogging and the Law that Charles Smith from Pheedo gave last night. Let me get some of the linking and background info out of the way up front:
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Technology and Medium of the Web
I’m on my way up to San Francisco, sitting on Caltrain, so I finally have some time to write up one of the posts I’ve been thinking about.
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Issues in Open Source Software
Thanks to a post at Future Salon I’m now aware of the Berkeley Cybersalon this weekend exploring issues in open source. Yay! New group. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it for the event. There’s other stuff going on that day, so I do have to admit it’s not a sure thing. Even if I don’t make it this time, at least I know about the Cybersalon now. Here’s the event details:
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Creative Commons Mobile Content
The WINKsite folks have created mobile versions of some Creative Commons licensed content. I find the whole pattern very interesting, especially now that I’m helping out with the Ourmedia project. As was spoken about at the Online News Association conference, many people see the future of online media as being much different than it was in the offline world. The President and CEO of the Associated Press said:
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Doug Engelbart at the Future Salon
Doug Engelbart is going to be at the next Future Salon on Nov 19th starting at 6:00pm. I haven’t been to see Doug speak yet, but I hear it’s a real experience. I’ll be there trying to write down everything he says and posting it, of course.
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Pheedo Needs PHP Help
It’s not part of my normal posting fare, but I just wanted to give Bill and Adam some linky love and point out that they’re looking for a PHP programmer. I got to meet Adam over at Gnomedex and I know Bill from the events he’s put on in the Bay Area. Great guys in general, and working towards good things. I would jump on the chance myself if I thought I would have the time to keep up with them.
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BloggerCon Vendors
Nick Bradbury also stopped by the vendors gathering we had. I love this comment that he made:
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I Heart Vendors
Elle and I had a bunch of people back to the apartment after BloggerCon ended. The no vendors rule was the focus of much of the discussion, a lot of the people who showed up were tools providers who felt really shunned by the atitude at the conference. A lot of them came to our little gathering, so we had an impromptu “VendorCon”. We had a nice discussion about what everyone was working on and what existing needs there were that were going unserved. I got a chance to thank Mark Fletcher personally for the mobile version of Bloglines. That’s a fantastic tool that I make use of all the time. Met Shimon Rura, who’s working on a soon-to-be open source tool called Frassle. Was able to thank Niall Kennedy for all the photos he contributed to the bloggercon tag on Flickr. JD Lasica stopped by to do a little campaigning for the Ourmedia project, something I’m helping out with and excited about myself. Tony Gentile stopped by to toss all sorts of interesting ideas into the mix. Bill Flitter told us how he envisions helping content producers directly make money from their content. Russ Beattie showed off his toys and tossed out some ideas related to mobilizing content. Scott Johnson was asking questions and taking notes about the feedback he got. That’s just really cool, the VP of Engineering at a very succesful company coming out to have a direct conversation.
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Making Money Comment II
Another point brought up during the BloggerCon Making Money session was that there are plenty of ways to make money using a blog that have nothing to do with trying to monetize the content directly. There are ways to connect with others and form a collective to do something new, trying to gather together the couple of people from all over the world who have the same kind of passion as yourself and the same ideas. Sure, a blog can be used in the same way that a newspaper or magazine is, as an alternative form of journalism. But that’s not the only model for use. There are some great oportunities to form new connections, managing new relationships, and facilitate discussion using blogs. It’s a way to use your blog while making money instead of using your blog to make money. Alternative models like this probably make a lot of sense instead of always looking at the content based model.
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Making Money Comment
During the Making Money session of BloggerCon, someone told a story about writing a book that ended up selling for $40. And the referral fee paid by Amazon for someone buying the book using a link from his blog ended up being twice the fee paid him by the publisher for each book sold. Interesting.
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