January 2003
Guardian on nanopublishing
Jim McClellan with a pretty sensible piece about new trends in online media: particularly the growth of nanopublishing. McClellan, writing in Guardian Online, highlights Gawker and Gizmodo. I’m glad he relays the crucial point: there’s nothing new about the revenue model; all that’s changed is that costs have been brought into line. New biz on the blog [Guardian]
Axis of evil
Don’t let anyone tell you that Iraq is diplomatically isolated. Iraq Daily reports a visit by a North Korean taekwondo group. An opening ceremony was held at Saddam Hussein Sports Indoor Hall. Addressing the ceremony, head of the Korean delegation said the delegation’s visit comes to stress the deep-rooted relations between the two countries in a time in which Iraqis are facing American...
London
Occasionally, London plays to stereotype, and there is no use pretending it’s a hip happening place. The Central line is out of service, because a train derailed at the weekend. Because of the fire service strike, random tube stations are closed: I had to change three times to get home last night. The taxis have become outrageously expensive, and it will soon cost a fiver even to drive...
America's bloated newspapers
We assume that the US media is as vibrant as the society on which it reports. That’s a myth: America’s newspapers in particular are lazy monopolies. Fortunately, that’s about to change. Here’s a contrarian take on the US media industry for the State of the Union column in Management Today, the UK business magazine.
Think of the American press, and what comes to mind? JJ...
Free Iraq
Thomas Friedman makes the case for an invasion of Iraq, and regime change, far more convincingly than Bush has ever done. It is not unreasonable to believe that if the U.S. removed Saddam and helped Iraqis build not an overnight democracy but a more accountable, progressive and democratizing regime, it would have a positive, transforming effect on the entire Arab world — a region desperately...
Julie Meyer
The saga continues. Julie Meyer, former queen of Europe’s internet scene, now claims that someone fabricated the memos that have appeared under her name on Fucked Company. A tall story, which the Guardian reports. Whether it is Julie or someone with an uncanny familiarity with her tone, the author is a mad genius, and ought to eassay a new career as scriptwriter on The Office. Net’s...
Julie Meyer and the missing stationery
File under you couldn’t make it up. Julie Meyer, queen of the European internet scene, accuses ex-employees of stealing stationery, changes the locks, and then realises that she was the one that misplaced the items. Julie, a former colleague at First Tuesday who now runs Ariadne Capital, complains: Both Bundeep and I have invested more of own cash into the firm to pay salaries and benefits...
Food Network
That’s the fourth person who spotted me on the Food Network. [That’s me, in the background, on the left, immortalized on Mena Trott’s TiVo.] Can’t a guy have lunch without someone snooping? I’m less worried about Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness database than I am of omnipresent photobloggers and low-budget cable television networks. One thing I...
Investment ideas - 6/6
· Outdoor advertising · Pretty places · Old skyscrapers · Online media · Short telecoms
If all these ideas seem speculative, as they should, one final suggestion: cash. In a deflationary environment, higher returns are often illusory. Even if interest rates are vanishingly low, real estate prices can still fall, as they have in Japan. Preservation of capital, rather than reliably high returns,...
Aardvark
So there’s a reason aardvarks come first in the alphabet. We’re all descended from the weird creatures. BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Great uncle aardvark? [BBC]
Nanopublishing traffic
Internet media sceptics would do well to look at the stats. We launched Gizmodo, the gadget weblog, last August. Marketing consisted of an email to a few webloggers and reporters — that’s it. And pageviews have doubled every two months or less since then. [See the table below, with pageviews in the right-hand column.] I’m not trying to blow Gizmodo’s trumpet. Well, okay,...
Hitchens for war
Christopher Hitchens makes the case against a arranged removal of Saddam Hussein.Thus a victory over Saddamism that skips this critical demonstration is a somewhat hollow one, especially if the “skip” is undertaken at the request of the very regimes—most notably the Saudi—that were the undeclared but definite targets of the demonstration in the first place.
Exile and the Kingdoms -...
The view from Ken Layne
Put all the weblog rants in the bin: Ken Layne sums up the state of the world in six neat paragraphs. North Korea: We’re negotiating with this nutjob? Take him out. I don’t care who does the job. Beijing, Seoul, Mexico City. Kill him. Send Chuck Barris. People ought not have to eat their own people. Just a thought.
Ken Layne
Investment ideas - 5/6
Telecoms. One short recommendation: incumbent telecom companies. Yes, their stock prices are already corrected, and they appear reasonably priced on a price-earnings basis. But the market does not sufficiently appreciate that competition is about to intrude on the last bastion of the telecom giants: the local phone business.
I have just installed a box by a company called Vonage, which plugs...
Spiers v Nolan
The prize fight: Elizabeth Spiers v. Chris Nolan. The subject: NYC v. SFO. Chris, former internet gossip columnist for the New York Post, is a New Yorker at heart. And it takes a New Yorker to make a decent case for San Francisco. But Gawker’s Elizabeth Spiers always has to get in the last word. We’ll take competitive fucking and shopping over competitive self-righteousness anyday....
Investment ideas - 4/6
Online media. I know what you are thinking: we’ve heard this one before, in 1999, and we all know how that turned out. All the sensible investors have written off the sector: built on hype, margins unprotected by any barriers to entry, of dubious value to advertisers, offering services for which consumers refuse to pay.
Which is precisely why online media is such a good investment now....
Advice for the Democrats
Just as liberals make the best conservatives — look at the backgrounds of most of the leading neocon thinkers — so conservatives make the best liberals. Tucker Carlson, the American right’s representative on Crossfire, gives some excellent recommendations to the Democrats. His central idea: outhawk Bush. But there’s also this important line.And while they’re at it,...
Investment ideas - 3/6
Another real estate thought: old skyscrapers. Their value as office space fell in the late 20th century, because the ceiling height did not allow sufficient headroom for telecommunications and electrical wiring, among other things. Wi-Fi high-speed wireless connections will give new life to older buildings. Local wireless networks can carry both data and phone traffic. Time to rip out the false...
Investment ideas - 2/6
Pretty places. The growth of discount airlines such as JetBlue and easyJet, in the US and Europe, has put smaller destinations within cheap and easy reach of major cities. And the spread of high-speed internet access makes it ever easier to access corporate information systems, and communicate with colleagues, while away from the office. If location no longer matters, why not spend the winter in...
North Korea's terror
Propaganda this may be, convienently timed too. But these stories of North Korean concentration camps have the ring of truth. Kim Jong Il will go down in history alongside Hitler and Pol Pot. Any accomodation of the North Korean dictator would be appeasement of the worse kind. His Asian neighbors argue for compromise? They’re far too close, and craven, to have any moral perspective. This is...
Gawker under construction
No, it’s not, well, at least, not in that way. But you, like James Lileks, may have gotten the message that Gawker was under construction. That’s to do with changing domain name registrars. You don’t want to know.
The product
Unfortunate choice of words by Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon spokeswoman, bound to become part of any anti-war conspiracy theories. Speaking to DC bureau chiefs, she said: “It might be that your equipment can’t get the product out and we may be in a position where we can move your product and commanders are going to be encouraged to assist you in that.” Italics are mine.
Clarke...
Investment ideas -- 1/6
Outdoor advertising. LCD manufacturing has become so efficient that 15-inch screens are standard in larger laptops, and companies such as E-Ink promise further improvements. Within another decade, it will be cost-effective to replace traditional billboards with moving displays, which will be much more attractive to advertisers.
In Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, Tom Cruise runs a...
Ken Layne on San Francisco
Someone just asked me what’s wrong. It’s called a Layne attack, an unstoppable bout of laughter, triggered by an item on kenlayne.com. In this case, some viciously funny comments on San Francisco. My disappointment with the city is well documented, but Ken makes me look like a shill for the local tourist agency.Apparently, there are two San Franciscos: the one where I lived for several...
Tunnel vision
On the subject of outdoor media [see previous], Aaron writes in with a pointer to this fascinating item on subway advertising. A company called Submedia is experimenting with illuminated enlarged film strips which, when viewed from a moving train, give the appearance of video.
One other point I didn’t have space to make in the article: outdoor advertising will benefit from the spread of...
Marivi Lerdo on NY v SF
As most of my friends will tell you, I am really a New Yorker at heart. (After 10 years in SF I still haven’t learned to drive, ski, surf or mountain bike.) There is no doubt that New York is one of the world’s great cities, and the capital of many worlds (finance, media, dance, art, publishing, music, etc).
Frankly, it is *ridiculous* to even compare NY to SF. Why bother?
In...
Friscophobia
For you convenience, here’s a comprehensive digest of the great San Francisco debate: from the seminal Ken Layne columns in the late 1990s, through to Gawker’s recent pisstake. Gaby Darbyshire makes the fair point that, during the boom, I was pitching San Francisco as single-mindedly as I now love New York. True, but largely because it was impossible to hire locals, and I’ve...
San Francisco gossip
Elizabeth Spiers, taking a break from her usual New York gossip roundup, has tried her hand at a San Francisco version. Gossip roundup: The [hypothetical] San Francisco version [Gawker] Gossip roundup [Gawker]
Vegas gadget bonanza
A special report on Gizmodo, from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Flat panel teevees, PDAs that make my Danger Hiptop look outmoded, internet payphones, and a Persian rug mousepad. Vegas is ever a city of temptation. CES Field Report [Gizmodo]
The week in Gawker
The big stories: · Mottola ousted from Sony. · Sex in the City cancelled. · The Republicans are coming to NYC. · Henry Blodget in hot water again.
Things you may have missed: · Times Square when it was still smutty. · De-coding Musto and Sam Champion. · Being mean is fashionable. · Responses to the first “honest gay personal ad.” · New Yorker article on standing in line at the...
Coke
Some original content from Gawker: Elizabeth Spiers interviews an expert on the retail cocaine market. The quest for the perfect coke dealer [Gawker]
About me data
Here’s a way to submit bio data to a central repository, and win yourself a place on Dave’s highly selective sidebar as a prize. David Galbraith
2003 investment ideas
[For February’s State of the Union column in Management Today.] It is the great dilemma of the deflation-era investor: what on earth to do with the money.Prices for prime real estate in London and New York are down more than 10%, whatever the agents may claim; and that is usually a forward indicator for the rest of the market. Rental income is falling even more swiftly: the latest survey by...
Qadaffi
The US administration is irritatingly judicious in its stance towards Saudi Arabia. So it’s refreshing to listen to a wacko like the Libyan dictator, in this Newsweek interview.Q. Do you believe that Saudi Arabia is doing all it can to fight terrorism? A. Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist state itself.
The Former Face of Evil [Newsweek]
America's economic miracle
The usual back-and-forth last night at one of those weblog rantfests, about the relative economic prowess of Europe and the US. The US has higher GDP per head. But Europe has been catching up. Not recently: the gap’s been widening. That’s only because of the bubble: you can’t really claim Kozmo contributed to US productivity. We’re still more productive, nyah, nyah. But...
Economics
There is nothing like the self-importance of someone who has recently studied economics.
Bay Area's brain drain
So Dave Winer, a Silicon Valley institution, is moving to the East Coast. Winer, an influential independent developer, as influential as he is crotchety, is taking up a fellowship at Harvard Law School.
Dave Winer’s originally from New York, and has been spending more time on the East Coast while his father has been ill. But he’s part of a general movement of web people. The Bay...
Micromanagers on speed
Libertarian hawk is a particularly fashionable political combination, but have you ever noticed the inconsistency? American libertarians put their faith in individuals over governments; they believe that people are best placed to make decisions on their own behalf. But, by people, they mean Americans. If the Venezuelan people elect a dumb populist, or Egyptians yearn for the end of Mubarak,...
CoolStats are spammers
If you’re looking to put up stats on your site, stay away from CoolStats. They market by harvesting email addresses from the web, and spam offers without permission. Sitemeter works well for me. And anyone have any good suggestions for retaliation against spammers? I have the support email address.
Semantic search engine
An idea whose time is nearing: a semantic search engine, which takes information from Movable Type weblog templates. David Galbraith, get a move on. MT Help Request [idlewords.com]
Phone blogging
An Irish startup is trying to marry two of the hottest trends in technology: weblogs and cellphones with built-in cameras. The company’s FoneBlog software would enable mobile operators to offer automatic web publishing to mobile users. Start-up marries blogs and camera phones [The Register via Richard Marton]
Getting off the grid
I enjoyed the most productive couple of hours of work in a coffee shop yesterday. No, this is not another of those tedious paeans to Wi-Fi. The converse, actually: I got work done precisely because I wasn’t connected to the internet. Coffee shops ought to sell themselves, not on boundless connectivity, but as places to disconnect from the grid. Starbucks
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
He’s one of my absolute favorite weblog authors, and finally posting with the frequency that demands a daily visit. Go, now. Electrolite
Rethinking New Year's Eve
Everybody says: don’t have a party on New Year’s Eve. It’s always terrible. People flit from event to event, their very desperation makes enjoyment impossible, and expectations for the evening are so high that they are bound to be disappointed. It’s a losing proposition.
But is it? Knowing that ones hopes will be dashed: don’t those two expectations cancel...
The horror, the horror
So all the journals are becoming blogs. First someone had the clever idea of putting Samuel Pepys online. Now someone has posted what purports to be the notebook of a business traveller in Michigan. If you don’t have a job, remember quite how miserable it can be to have one.I’ve barely been awake most of the morning but I managed to catch these actual tidbits of dialogue:
“Let’s table...
Another Hungarian blogger
Someday, I’ll do a complete list. But, till then, try these: Eszter’s Blog Adi Haspel
David Galbraith's crystal ball
Some rather good predictions from David Galbraith. Among other things, he repeats Jeff Jarvis’s point about the coming weblog backlash, and says XML development has only paid lip service to standards.
Comments and communities
Glenn Reynolds says weblogs may degenerate into a flamer haven; Jeff Jarvis says that volunteer monitors can deal with the problem. Nope, this is the way to deal with flamers: let them post on their own damn sites. And then let everyone else ignore them. Weblogs are a gigantic interlinked discussion forum, in which it’s trivially easy to route around idiots.
One day, everybody will have...
The Financial Times
The FT was long rather sceptical of dotcoms — not realizing that it was as much a beneficiary of lax boomtime investment as they. John Cassy of the Guardian reports on a newspaper which, from operating income of £81m in 2000, is now barely profitable. Still a great paper, though. Let’s not do lunch… [Guardian]
Gearbox
I’m not much into cars, and haven’t owned one for years. But Mickey Kaus’s Gearbox blog for Slate is surprisingly interesting. Gearbox [Slate]