Once in a while, you need to see perfection…

a little happiness to send off Summer…

How the World Wide Web was Invented.

When you are deciding about whether to buy the 1080p or the 720p flat screen TV for your home theater, pause a moment to remember Philo T. Farnsworth.

As a young electrician, he imagined lines, or rows, of electrons forming an image while plowing potato fields in Idaho in the 1920′s. Driving back and forth amongst the potatoes, the young inventor imagined  the rows being tightly presented, so Seurat-like images could be transmitted to screens.

This led to the invention of the first purely electronic television and the issues of screen resolution. We are just now fullfilling Philo prophecy that one day, scanlines can be so tightly assembled they’d look like, “pictures hanging on the wall”.

Them is some “High Def” taters.

This talk by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of HTML, URL’s and by default, the internet as we know it, is a must see. Here is the Philo T. of our day. He didn’t invent the internet, but he increased it’s resolution beyond anything the ARPANET offered.

It will take sometime, precisely 16:51, but will bring you up to speed on what may be in store for our Billion Channeled world.

(Notice how little Berners-Lee looks like Al Gore…)

From Gin to Linkedin: The Zoned out are Tuning in

I’ve just been pointed to this fascinating post on social/cognitive surplus. (thanks Seth)

Turns out the industrial revolution produced the “gin cart” as a coping technology for the slaving factory masses. Gin carts filled the street of London, numbing the dehumanizing pain of mindless factory work into submission. The 1800′s lacquered workforce lubricated the march of industry. But it also created what we call the institutions of industrialized society; public education, museums, libraries, etc. When you have all those people urbanized, the social surplus had to eventually extend beyond inebriation into other outlets.

As the efficiency of industrialized society produced more free time, the gin cart became television. This new lubricant oiled things into the late 20th century. Television, and I would argue, commutes are now less and less cognitive heat-sinks as we make our way into the 21 Century. Cognitive surplus is finding a new outlet. Wikipedia, for instance, has taken 100 million hours to produce. Where did that time and attention come from? Former TV viewer’s cognitive kinesthetics.

We are at the beginning of a new age of sorting through the complex issues surrounding this new cognitive surplus. Yes, surfing the net can be a time sucker like TV, yet it is not passive. It is interactive. It is social. All these blogs! All these viral videos! All these podcasts! All these conversations. The microeconomics and the peer to peer bartering. It all adds up to a confluence of incredible cognition. The exodus from TV generates the time to create a wikipedia, the social media explosion, and hopefully a more involved citizenry.

The link above points out that 1 Trillion hours of TV is still paralyzing the world population yearly. So we are at the beginning of something big. Think about shutting off your TV and using your own mental superfluity to do something remarkable. Something engaging! Your media channel may be one of the first gathering places as the masses start passing up the gin cart.

My Ode to Apple’s MobileMe Launch Failure

This week Apple moved all .Mac customers over to MobielMe, their new cloud computing email service. This coincided with the launch of the new iPhone. I have not been able to retrieve email for four days from the Apple servers. Apple claims only 1% of all users have had service interruption. I’ve been on boards, forums, and chats about this all weekend. I seriously doubt Apple’s loyal fans will forgive them anytime soon. Many many iPhone and .Mac users have been affected.

Since no one at Apple has been able to address my concerns, I’ve decided that sometimes service can be so insanely frustrating, so ineptly and dishonestly deployed, and so vehmently denied by a provider that a user has to make a video for youtube in protest. Here is mine:

Rwanda Gorilla Trek with a Conservation Podcaster

Recently returned from Rwanda, where amongst other things, we went up a volcano to see the mountain gorillas. Along for the trek was Paula Kahumbu from WildlifeDirect in Kenya, and co-author of the upcoming book, “Looking for Miza” – about a lost baby mountain Gorilla, coming soon from Scholastic and Turtle Pond Productions.

While the rest of us were armed with still and video camera’s, Paula had her audio equipment strapped to her side for podcasting the experience to her faithful blog followers. (I include myself now) She documented our journey via audio as we tromped through the stinging nettle and mud up to the Gorillas. Then as we encountered the Gorillas up-close and personal, there was Paula, microphone outstretched in hand, capturing the cacophonous sounds of the Gorilla habitat for her blog. This is what happens when you have an audience. This is what happens, and we’ve been addressing this for two years now, when you know you can make a difference with your story. I am inspired by her forward thinking, which includes organizing and encouraging many conservation-minded trackers and rangers to start their own blogs and communicate about the issues surrounding this endangered species. Check out her channel here.

She has also done a wonderful post about our animation workshop in Rwanda. Rather than toot our own horn, look at the post Paula has offered. Wonderful!

More on this exciting experience on the next post

123 Cancelled TV Shows, a TV Memorial Day Excercise…

Back in the days of limited channels, we all watched pretty much the same things.

Here’s a list of cancelled shows sent to me by Dr. Laurie. I’ve added 10 titles. It is growing. How many have you actually watched? How many have you never heard of? With TV Land and the like on cable, your numbers are not based on your age necessarily. Much of this is also watchable on youtube.

It would be unthinkable to do the same with classic websites we all remember. To quote Carl Sagan, “billions and billions and billions…

Can you think of a few more? Ask your grandpa to look at the list too!

1. Andy’s Gang (Andy Devine)
2. Mission Impossible
3. LOVE AMERICAN STYLE
4. Six Million Dollar Man
5. The Danny Kaye Show
6. Then Came Bronson
7. The Smothers Brothers
8. Little House on the Prairie
9. Dragnet
10. Friday night fights!!
11. Dynasty
12. Streets of San Francisco
13. St. Elsewhere
14. Here Comes the Brides
15. Peyton Place
16. Topper
17. Friday Nite Videos
18. China Beach
19. I Remember Mama
20. The Red Skelton show
21. Lassie
22. Gunsmoke
23. 60′s LAUGH IN
24. The Dean Martin Show
25. Sky King
26. Dr. Kildare
27. The Carol Burnette Show
28. Bosom Buddies
29. Mork and Mindy
30. Truth or Consequences
31. That Girl
32. The Waltons
33. Burns and Allen
34. Star Trek
35. You Can’t Do That On Television
36. Mr. Ed
37. I Love Lucy
38. My Three Sons
39. What’s My Line
40. The Lone Ranger
41. The Ed Sullivan Show
42. You Are There (1953)
43. Bewitched
44. I Led Three Lives
45. brady bunch
46. GIMMIE A BREAK
47. Jeffersons
48. THE EDGE OF NIGHT
49. Dark Shadows with Barnabas Collins
50. Hee-Haw
51. F-TROOP
52. Rin Tin Tin
53. Charlie’s Angels
54. Casper the Friendly Ghost
55. The Wonderful World of Disney
56. Wyatt Earp
57. Flicka
58. Paladin
59. The Fall Guy
60. The Dukes of Hazzard
61. Rawhide
62. Bonanza
63. My Mother the Car
64. Ozzie & Harriet
65. American Bandstand
66. Route 66
67. The Patty Duke Show
68. Father knows best
69. Cheers
70. ALF
71. The Jetsons
72. Car 54 Where are you?
73. Green Hornet
74. Andy Griffin
75. The Twilight Zone
76. Combat!
77. Show of Shows (Syd Ceasar)
78. Dr. Kildare
79. 77 Sunset Strip (Kookie, lend me your comb)
80. I Spy
81. The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
82. Dallas
83. Man From U.N.C.L.E.
84. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
85. The Donna Reed Show
86. Inner Sanctum
87. Crusader Rabit
88. I Love Joan (Joan DAvis Show)
89. The Cisco Kid
90. Arthur Godfrey Show
91. Have Gun will Travel
92. The Beverly Hillbillies
93. Code Red
94. The Flintstones
95. Soap
96. The Flying Nun
97. The Honeymooners
98. Winky Dink and You
99. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
100. Alias Smith and Jones
101. The Bearcats
102. HR Puffn Stuff
103. A Family Affair
104. Northern Exposure
105. Time Tunnel
106. Candid Camera
107. Three’s Company
108. Rocky and Bullwinkle
109. Lidsville
110. Hawaii 5-0
111. Columbo
112. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kindgom
113. American Sportsman
114. Battle of the Network Stars
115. Munsters
116. Get Smart
117. Six Million Dollar Woman
118. Murphy Brown
119. Wonder Woman
120. Mighty Mouse
121. Lost in Space
122. Fantasy Island
123. Sigmond and the Seamonster

Youtube beats Hollywood

This month’s Vanity Fair caught my eye at the local salon. Michael Wolff’s piece called “The Plot Sickens” is a classic riff on the demise of two channels; movies and television.

Here is how he puts it in his conclusion:

“The epochal point is that Hollywood, which has been the center of the culture, the coolest place, the ruler of the Zeitgeist, is out of it. It’s on the industrial sidelines. It’s just a bunch of crabby managers and a sullen workforce in a dysfunctional relationship in a declining industry, quarreling over an ever smaller piece of the pie.”

You really have to read the whole thing. Do you think it makes a point?

Burning Business Barracks for Deliverance.

Last night I had the opportunity to address two different business classes at Western Connecticut State University. My agenda for the evening was to get them to think in different ways about business possibilities in their future. More than half expressed interest in doing business as an entrepreneur. Nobody had a blog. Nobody had a podcast. A few had a Youtube channel. Everybody had a Facebook account. Many were afraid of the lack of privacy online, many accepted it. I tried to convince the students, and you know who you are, to think of themselves as a “media channel”, as the banner of this blog declares. People are going to dial you up, select your channel…Google you…and what are they going to find? An expert business person’s channel I hope.

How are you going to program your channel to distinguish yourself from others in the business world. Broadcasting yoru business expertise is the future. Controlling how you do that is the challenge. Changing basic assumptions about doing business is required. Moving out of comfort zones is necessary. Living with a high degree of uncertainty is required but the rewards are unprecedented in the history of business.

To get a metaphor meaty enough to drive the point home, I related the story of the rescue of the POWs from Los Banos, Phillipines during World War II, focusing on the reluctance many POW’s in Los Banos to leave their wreched hell-hole of a camp even when all the guards were killed and our troops had landing craft ready and waiting to take them to freedom. Most of the 2,000 American civilian POW’s weighed 100 pounds or less when the marines, airmen, and soldiers arrived to rescue them. Many POW’s had to be forcibly removed from the camp. Their comfort zone and disorientation was such that the army had to burn the camp down from back to front to get them to leave through the front gate towards awaiting landing craft. (BTW, if you get a chance to see the History Channel’s documentary about the Raid at Los Banos, don’t miss it. Details are here.)

What baffled me was how reluctant the POW’s were to be rescued in a timely manner after years of hoping and praying for deliverance. Hoping for deliverance is one thing, it turns out. Actually being delivered is entirely another. The history at Los Banos teaches once again that we prefer the misery we know to the unknown, however promising.

My hope for the students last night was to show them a way out of the barracks of old business before market forces burn them out the exit, to give them a sense of rescue, direction, and deliverance from the assumptions underlying many of their career paths.

I offer here a recap for those who wish to review, and for those who wish to pass along the word that the barracks are burning. I’ll just point to the links: (these are videos, summaries, and blurb links so you can scan and get to the point quickly)

- For a deconstruction of the television industrial complex which underlies many business assumptions – Seth Godin

- For a controversial take on 21st century economics – read version 3.0 of The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.

- For Peer to Peer micro-economics see “here comes the p2p economy” by Stan Stalnaker

- For the “why” P2P microeconomics is possible and why niche markets are going to change everything, see The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson (also see this video for Anderson’s latest barn burner idea)

- For somenone who implemented extremely unique business modeling using P2P, Long Tail, World is Flat thinking, The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.

- For a head’s up on how to navigate the globalized commodification of business, A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink (watch all the little clips on “related video” side bar.)

TOOLS:

squidoo.com, digg.com, facebook.com, technorati.com, stumbleupon.com, de.lic.ous.us, twitter, youtube, myspace, etc. Pick one and have some fun building a list of friend who might someday be your customers.

- http://www.elance.com the ebay of freelancers. Business plans for 300.00 done by top MBA’s, in India.

- http://www.nichebot.com for finding out what everybody is searching for on Google, Yahoo, MSN

- http://www.tubemogul.com for uploading videos to top ten sites simultaneously.

- http://www.InternetBusinessMastery.com for info and podcasts about two entrepreneurs going from nothing to automated business status in under 2 years in Web. 2.0 Marketing

- http://www.wordpress.com to start your blog

- http://www.copyblogger for Brian Clark’s unsurpassed take on copywriting and it’s ability to influence blog traffic.

- http://www.PodcastingUnderground.com, all things podcasting

- iTunes for getting business podcasts for free that teach you almost anything now, that would otherwise take two years to get into a text book.

- Steve Pavlina’s “how to make money from your blog” post for a comprehensive list of ways to do just that.

- Tom Peter’s Blog for break-the-mold thinking about your future in business. (click on Brand You in the categories list)

A review of these resources will jar you out of many assumptions about business as usual. This should be required reading for all business majors, IMHO. This is an amazing time to be alive. The dynamics of economics are changing in exciting ways. New business models are enabled by the interconnectivity, creativity, and innovation all around us. This is an abundant age, with extremly abundant opportunities.

To quote Tim Ferriss, who’s quoting somebody else, “the future is here, it’s just not widely distributed yet.”

The above will get you on the road to coming to terms with leaving the old habitations and getting on with the exhilaration and freedom from the industrial age and information age thinking.

Let me know if I’ve left anything out.

Free! The new way to make money?

For those who’ve read this blog for a time, you know I’ve required reading, The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson. It’s in my blogroll too. If you want to understand why all this niche/internet thing works, it is a must read. Now I have required “watching” of Chris Anderson. Watch this to see his latest thinking on, “Free”. From my perspective, he’s dead-on. (There is just a little problem with the phone carriers, so watch the Q&A at the end to understand.)

Basically, it’s, “give it all away for free and find unique ways to create scarcity to monetize later.”

Something many of you already know, but he gives it it’s full due in this lecture. Enjoy.

Marketing Entertainment in Shakespeare’s London

I’m reading Bill Brysons’ Shakespeare: The World as Stage. He lived in a world where not many could channel their voice, but lucky Will Shakespeare had his own channel at the Globe. Of course the apparatus required to cast his show to an audience was quite elaborate. Amusingly, not much has changed in marketing and product launch mechanics.

According to Bryson, plays started at about 2:00pm. Handbills were distributed that morning and early afternoon,. A large banner was hoisted upon the highest parts of the structure wherein the play was to be held, and then horns would blare in fanfare for the play when 2:00pm was near. The horns could be heard across much of the city.

For those aroused enough to take in an afternoon’s amusement, tickets came in three flavors. Groundlings (standing room) paid a penny, sitters paid another penny on top of that and those who like to sit upon a cushion paid another penny on top of that. (a day’s wage was less than 10 pennies) The money was dropped in a box, which was taken to a safe room for safekeeping and counting — the box office.

Then the upsell! Apples, pears, (the cores became projectiles for performers ) nuts, breads, bottles of ale, and tobacco were all for sale inside the theatre. The tobacco, delivered in a small pipe, cost three pennies, or three-times the cost of admission. (been to a multiplex to buy treats lately?)

Recently, an internet marketing conference sent handbills to my email account. Three tiers of entrance fees were offered, and of course when I show up, back of the room sales will look to extract many times the price of admission.

A walk through Times Square will illustrate the staying power of these methods. It still works for plays on Broadway. For that matter, it works for the airlines, credit card companies, health clubs, churches, etc.

As the good Bard said, “…the more a thyng justly changeth, the more it truely stayeth the same.”