The year is just about over and it seems like the best time to run down how I am starting out the New Year. I’ve been working hard at getting the mixture right for my Beercasting project. There’s lots of moving parts involved in putting something like this together, but I am getting a handle on it.

One of the greatest challenges, technical things aside, is getting people motivated and behind the cause. Since I’ve started promoting things in New York just to my immediate group of friends, there’s been a steady and smooth uptake in attendance. But I’m never satisfied.

January marks the beginning of my Beercasting America Tour. I’m trying to focus the tour around places I’m already heading, but plan to expand on it in February to include another batch.

So here’s the schedule. If you see your city listed and can recommend a location, want to attend, or both drop me a comment here.

• Tuesday, January 4
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
• Tuesday, January 11
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
  • Worcester, Massachusetts
    9:00 PM
• Tuesday, January 18
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
  • Washington D.C.
    7:30 PM
• Sunday, January 23
  • Seattle, Washington
    6:00 PM
• Tuesday, January 25
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
• Wednesday, January 26
  • Portland, Oregon
    7:30 PM

Just a quick hello to my new niece, Kaitlin Narain. She was born yesterday at 1:19 PM at a hefty 7 pounds 6 ounces. Funny part is she was due on Christmas Day and all her aunts and uncles came from everywhere to see her. The day they left, she was ready :)

I’ll post a pic as soon as my computer starts behaving.

BTW, is this a strange spelling for Kaitlin? I thought it was. How would you spell it?

The first stop on the Beercasting Tour next month is going to be in Worcester, Massachussets on January 11th. Most from the Massachussets area are probably asking “What the hell you doing in Worcester?” Well, the answer to that is pretty simple. My good Internet buddy (soon to be real-life acquaintance) Peter Caputa is located out there and he’s shown me that there’s an active and interested audience there.

To make things more interesting, Pete’s company WhizSpark and I are collaborating on using their event management system for tracking the tour.

Pete’s done the dirty work and setup the event site here:
http://www.whizspark.com/es/viewevent.aspx?eid=569

If you are in the area or can easily get there, I’d love to have you sit in on a session.

A couple of weeks ago, I drafted my now scorned “Of Power Laws and the Pod Squad” piece. The basic idea of the article is that a new trend is emerging, Podcasting, and the A List has formed incredibly quickly, the Pod Squad.,/p>

The purpose of that post was two-fold. First, it acknowledged that we have a unique opportunity before us to learn about Power Laws and how they work in the wild by watching Podcasting grow. Secondly, I proposed that, as is always true with any A List, that it will be a force to be reckoned with for newcomers.

This initial post got circulated quite a bit, well above the average for this site, and the comments were on both sides of the fence. I initially wrote it not to attack or condemn anyone but simply to collect the voices that were whispering in my ear. Unfortunately, it also served to ruffle some feathers.

Now we’re moving on. And others are paying attention which was really the real goal. A recent MSNBC article (via Newsweek correspondent) seems like it could have been written reading the comments on this site. Here’s a blurb:

The alphas, or “A-listers,” as they call themselves, commonly cross-link to one another, with the effect of having one of their comments amplified and commented on. In the case of podcasting, they conducted a deep asynchronous conversation about the practice. Was this a new form of personal, do-it-yourself radio? Could it replace radio? Even though its workings were fairly esoteric—no one is close to making podcasting as simple a process as Apple has made music downloading—the accumulated buzz from the blogs became deafening.

The inevitable result was that podcasting suddenly became the hot topic in geekdom. In early October bloggers began keeping track of how many Google results you would get if you queried the word “podcasting.” Day by day it rose… 5,950… 7,510… 13,000. By the end of the month it was more than 50,000, and by mid-November the number was 387,000. By that time the din of the blogosphere was too loud for traditional writers to ignore, and articles about podcasting appeared in the L.A. Times, The New York Times and BusinessWeek.

Source: MSNBC.com, “The Alpha Bloggers”

In other parts of the web, Dave Slusher, of The Evil Genius Chronicles, has commented on the previous post as well as given some attention to it in one of his podcasts. I sincerely thank him for doing that. He’s made many good points on the matter and seems sincerely concerned with helping grow this thing.

He has made a couple of points that I think should be addressed. In his comments and podcast he asks “What do you want me to do?”. The simple answer is nothing. There’s nothing to be done since you’re not doing anything wrong. The not so simple answer is to fight the clumps whenever you can. It’s hard to do that because it requires familiarity with tons and tons of other stuff out there and he’s only got so much bandwidth. I don’t blame for thinking that’s hard to get done. He relates this problem quite adeptly when he describes “the old days” when he could listen to pretty much all the podcasts out there compared to now where there’s thousands upon thousands available. His point on this matter is that we should go out there and “bust the Pod Squad”.

On the same point, I’ll tie in some comments that came from many on the mailing list. The crux of their opinions is “screw the Pod Squad, I Podcast because I want to”. I think that’s admirable and probably the best force to rely on in terms of keeping your Podcast up to date. Of course, that’s not exactly why all of us are in this and that form of recognition is desirable, if not required, for success. To those people, it boils down to marketing. The Pod Squad is still very approachable and if you want to get in touch with them you still can with ease. Get your message to them creatively and memorably (they’ve only got so much time). That will come back to help you two-fold.

A second comment Dave made in his podcast was that “A-Listers are made all the time”. I don’t actually think that’s true. I do think that new people become popular all the time. It’s easy to become popular, but quite the opposite when it comes to hacking your way to the top of a Power Law curve. Gaining popularity or notoriety does not earn respect or authority. It does not earn residual nodes - nodes that persist over a period of time. Being on the A-List, as far as Power Laws is concerned, is all about the number of nodes behind you. Anyone can be Flavor of the Day, but still everyone mostly remembers Chocolate and Vanilla.

The last observation about Podcasting worthy of mention is the shear speed at which it is growing. Many people have drawn parallels to blogging as they digested my first piece. I think they are completely right, except for one part - the timeline. Blogging has been around for YEARS. The people in the A-List of bloggers have been doing it for many many years. The people in the A-List for Podcasting, however, have been doing it for many months. When those timelines are juxtaposed, it’s quite clear that there’s a multiplier applied to this calculus.

Quick announcement for NYC Beercasters. Tomorrow night is the last session for the year and we’re hoping to go out with a bang. If you’re interested in attending please do. If you’ve got any kind of digital recording device, please bring it. Here are the details:

Tuesday, December 28, 2004
7:30 PM onwards

One And One
Corner of 1st Avenue and First Street
212-598-9126
http://oneandonenyc.com

If you are lost or have questions call 973-204-5499.

Topics for the session include:

• New Year’s Resolution: What are the Best and Worst Resolutions?
• Could racism be a mental disorder?
• 2004 Is Over: What Do You Remember Best? What Troubles You Most?
• What natural disaster terrifies you most?

See you all there!

It’s now going on 6 days since my laptop decided it was too tired to work anymore. Dell’s performance in resolving this issue has been anything but stellar. Here’s the background, you decide.

Problem 1: It’s the Motherboard, Stupid

When I first called and talked to the Tech Support technician, I explained to him that I thought the problem was with the main board. Why? Well for a year now I have been having an issue whenever I shutdown or restart my machine (you know that Blue Screen of Death thing). The most recent plague, and the one that led me to the call, was the consistent crashing and the Bios (yes, the message from the Main Board) complaining that the amount of system memory had changed and it was lowering the amount.

So this guy has me remove the RAM, put one in, put the other in, seat it, re-seat it. Whatever. A bunch of hokey-pokey dancing and the problems don’t go away, they just look more and more different. We don’t get the RAM mention for a 20 mins (so I guess that solved it, I should use half as much RAM). SO he blames it on my Windows install and leaves me to run one last Diagnostic (takes like 2 hours to complete). Finally, it complains of no errors, I start up the machine and I get the bloody memory warning again.

I call back now and tell the guy, “Hey, I think it’s the main board”. Again, he says that it’s the memory. At least he said he thought it could be the main board as well (he went on mute and checked with someone that told him no). SO they schedules some new memory to be sent to me. When Dell says new though, they actually mean some refurbished memory.

I get the new memory. No dice. Same error. Still no computer.

Problem 2: Thanks for the warning

So I call to alert them once again, “Hey, I think it’s the main board” Now that they’ve wasted 3 days with this stupid memory fix shit. So finally the guy agrees and says they’re sending out a new main board to the technician and he’ll call me on Thursday to come by and fix it.

Wow! That’s cool I am thinking. So I wait around all day like an asshole hoping that this guy is going to call me so I can get back to work. Guess what. No call.

I just got off the phone with another one of them now. According to her, that guy’s on holiday now and won’t be back until Monday. So he’ll call me then to make arrangements. Hello? When they scheduled this to go out, they knew he was not going to be available so why the hell didn’t they tell me this to begin with. Now I am stuck another 4 days without my machine.

To top it off, she’s warning me that I need to return my original memory so that they don’t charge me. The last tech told me that I should hold it until the main board is shipped so that we know for sure. Make up your damned mind. It would have been returned if your friggin’ tech got his ass over here today with my shit. Who’s fault is it exactly?

All I know is they’re so lucky it’s Christmas time and I’m in such a fucking cheerful mood ;)

Happy Holidays Friends!

I came across an article on News.com that takes a quick look at how the Air Force is now getting into the IM business as well. Here’s a snapshot:

The Air Force has launched an instant messaging service for enlisted people stationed abroad to communicate with their families and loved ones.

The new program, called “Friends and Family Instant Messenger,” will let airmen chat with anybody with an Internet connection. It was launched earlier this week. Airmen must first send an invitation to family members and friends–limited to five–to register on the Air Force’s Web portal to begin chatting. The service is a departure from the military body’s former policy of keeping instant messaging for internal use only.

Source: News.com, “To airmen, from the Air Force: New IM tool”

For anyone that one’s to tune in to some interesting conversation, here’s the Beercast’s from this week. I’ll post the Flash-enabled versions in a bit.

• You Dumped Her? What WERE You Thinking? (12MB) - Download!
• You Bought What? Too Bad. You’re Returning It. (12MB) - Download!
• Retuhned It, To The Fucking Video Shop Tommy.. The Fucking Video Shop! (12MB) - Download!
• All I Got For Christmas Was a Stocking Full of Coal (12MB) - Download!

Happy Listening and Happy Holidays!

Sorry for the morbid headline, but it’s an important thing to do. I’ve thought about this quite a bit in the past (and taken my own advice). Today, we’re using computers and other systems so much that we’ve got passwords, secret words, and PINs almost everywhere.

Good security practices advise us that we shouldn’t use the same password in any two places to prevent a breach. Of course, that’s easier said than done for your average, non-unix sys admin. Reality is that most of us might have a few passwords that we rotate through (along with a few screen names, member names, whatever).

But here’s a very compelling example of why we need to document this information for someone close to us to find in case we pass away.

The family of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq was denied access to the soldier’s Yahoo e-mail account due to the company’s policies, raising questions of whether businesses should balance privacy with special requests.

The Marine, Justin Ellsworth, 20, was killed in November by a roadside bomb in Falluja while assisting civilian evacuations before the large-scale military offensive against insurgents in the city, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press. But when Ellsworth’s father John tried to recover his e-mail account, he was barred due to Yahoo’s policy of not giving e-mail passwords to anyone besides the account holder.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said the company’s terms of service require the company not to disclose private e-mail communications for its users. Yahoo will turn over the account to family members only after they go through the courts to verify their identity and relationship with the deceased. After 90 days of inactivity, Yahoo deletes the account.

Source: News.com, “Yahoo denies family access to dead marine’s e-mail”

So the advice here is to make your list and check it twice. In this case it really doesn’t matter if you’ve been naughty or nice. Oh yeah, and one last tidbit - if you’re using your ex’s name or some other form and your in a committed relationship - change it (how’s that gonna make your significant other feel) ;).

Sorry for the morbid headline, but it’s an important thing to do. I’ve thought about this quite a bit in the past (and taken my own advice). Today, we’re using computers and other systems so much that we’ve got passwords, secret words, and PINs almost everywhere.

Good security practices advise us that we shouldn’t use the same password in any two places to prevent a breach. Of course, that’s easier said than done for your average, non-unix sys admin. Reality is that most of us might have a few passwords that we rotate through (along with a few screen names, member names, whatever).

But here’s a very compelling example of why we need to document this information for someone close to us to find in case we pass away.

The family of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq was denied access to the soldier’s Yahoo e-mail account due to the company’s policies, raising questions of whether businesses should balance privacy with special requests.

The Marine, Justin Ellsworth, 20, was killed in November by a roadside bomb in Falluja while assisting civilian evacuations before the large-scale military offensive against insurgents in the city, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press. But when Ellsworth’s father John tried to recover his e-mail account, he was barred due to Yahoo’s policy of not giving e-mail passwords to anyone besides the account holder.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said the company’s terms of service require the company not to disclose private e-mail communications for its users. Yahoo will turn over the account to family members only after they go through the courts to verify their identity and relationship with the deceased. After 90 days of inactivity, Yahoo deletes the account.

Source: News.com, “Yahoo denies family access to dead marine’s e-mail”

So the advice here is to make your list and check it twice. In this case it really doesn’t matter if you’ve been naughty or nice. Oh yeah, and one last tidbit - if you’re using your ex’s name or some other form and your in a committed relationship - change it (how’s that gonna make your significant other feel) ;).