Innovation '04: Ipod. Therefore I Blog.
Google, having it's IPO this year, is certainly a contender, and I did write on that. Other contenders, according to the Washington Post are VoIP, Spyware and Oracle. But, it's clearly these two flowering this year. They both add so much to the lives of many people in terms of enjoyment and creativity; eclipsing business developments in an economically flat year.
I got my Ipod earlier this year and it has definitely enhanced my life to be able to easily carry 8k songs with me. I simply plug it into whatever stereo I'm listening to, and airports, dentists, previously unpleasant places, are so much better when you've got great tunes, the ones you want, coming into your ears, without the insipid commercials I had to listen to, to pay for them. When I lugged those boxes of unplayable albums in my car for months at a time, there were probably only a few hundred great songs in there, sure hundreds more mediocre songs, but, they only made it more dilute. They were big, heavy and unwieldy, so unlike my cute little Ipod.
From what I understand, there is nothing that really compares to it for ease of use. The wheel and button are pretty easy, though, I carry so many artists, it is hard to find a given song unless it's on a playlist. I only tried one other mp3 player, years ago, and couldn't even get my library on it. I just plug P Poddy up to my iBook, and it completely updates the songs and playlists in minutes, the whole library in a few hours, which is what I'll have to do again soon. My iPod hungry son is still some $100. short of his dream, so I generously, posssibly stupidly, lent him my iPod for a week. He already deleted my amazing library for his little 90 song library. But, that's what you can do with a hard drive. I see more and more folks with the givaway white wires coming out of their ears. On the U Mich campus, and many others, ear emanators outnumber the podless. And, of course, these little beauties will spur on Mp3 downloading, free & non, forever extincting CDs.
I, obviously, started to blog this year. Shout out to Hank Barry, who once again turned me on to a Brave New World of fun and creativity. I had wanted a website for quite some time but was daunted by my lack of HTML, which I'm now learning by trial & error. Kudos to Blogger and Google for coming up with something easy to learn. I'm sure it's just the beginning. Already you can upload photos and audio. It's pretty basic stuff, but it's still audio.... coming soon, not, I just tried it and it's completely useless for music. Speech, which I guess is all it's designed for, may be ok, who cares....I guess I could phone in my posts, but I don't think the world is ready for quite that reality. I did leave you a little blurb up top, after deciding to spare you a longer rant.
The link up, editing, organizational and archiving systems are not bad considering I don't know much HTML and it's free webhosting. In fact, the money flows to me, and should. I am, in effect, an extremely low-paid, yet uncontrolled, staff writer for Google. Their algorithms reward text-rich pages. They're hoping my words attract eyes and give me a certain support to achieve that. Unlike most tomes, they don't care what I write, cause they only pay me when someone who looks at my words clicks on their ad. Print can't offer writers commission based pay.
Blogging may explode in a way the more passive Pod won't. Most people I know are well aware of iPods, even if they don't care enough about music to own one. But few, even here in Palo Alto, know much about blogging yet. They don't realize how approachable and empowering it is. They think of blogging as something done by semi-pro political pundits, not as a way to express yourself, allow others to get to know you, record your thoughts and your life, and, most importantly, to have a voice, and possibly a positive influence in this world. We are so inculcated into this role to our role as passive viewers (fat & happy Americans), but, people have a natural desire to express themselves. It just gets cut off. I went into that in great depth earlier in this blog. But, it can get turned on again. I see it in the Dad's bands, and the many other bands and film projects that are becoming more prevalent.
For me, being single, and an artist, it's a way to let others get a very, very good sense of who I am, without having to personally spend a lot of time revealing myself to each. My life is literally an open book here....available to any who care to look, and I'm finding many do. My conversations are more interesting because people often do know quite a bit about me, sometimes before we have even met. It is kind of like Warholian fame; and has actually hepled me understand a bit what fame must feel like. You're "out there". There is a certain loss of control. People know stuff about you that you have not personally told them. For others, it's more professional, commercial, and I think it will develop in that direction for me. The medium can demonstrate not only our voice and personality but our productive output as well. BTW, anyone who likes my art is welcome to buy it... email me. These blogs are quite interactive, so, interact... visibly.
I got my Ipod earlier this year and it has definitely enhanced my life to be able to easily carry 8k songs with me. I simply plug it into whatever stereo I'm listening to, and airports, dentists, previously unpleasant places, are so much better when you've got great tunes, the ones you want, coming into your ears, without the insipid commercials I had to listen to, to pay for them. When I lugged those boxes of unplayable albums in my car for months at a time, there were probably only a few hundred great songs in there, sure hundreds more mediocre songs, but, they only made it more dilute. They were big, heavy and unwieldy, so unlike my cute little Ipod.
From what I understand, there is nothing that really compares to it for ease of use. The wheel and button are pretty easy, though, I carry so many artists, it is hard to find a given song unless it's on a playlist. I only tried one other mp3 player, years ago, and couldn't even get my library on it. I just plug P Poddy up to my iBook, and it completely updates the songs and playlists in minutes, the whole library in a few hours, which is what I'll have to do again soon. My iPod hungry son is still some $100. short of his dream, so I generously, posssibly stupidly, lent him my iPod for a week. He already deleted my amazing library for his little 90 song library. But, that's what you can do with a hard drive. I see more and more folks with the givaway white wires coming out of their ears. On the U Mich campus, and many others, ear emanators outnumber the podless. And, of course, these little beauties will spur on Mp3 downloading, free & non, forever extincting CDs.
I, obviously, started to blog this year. Shout out to Hank Barry, who once again turned me on to a Brave New World of fun and creativity. I had wanted a website for quite some time but was daunted by my lack of HTML, which I'm now learning by trial & error. Kudos to Blogger and Google for coming up with something easy to learn. I'm sure it's just the beginning. Already you can upload photos and audio. It's pretty basic stuff, but it's still audio.... coming soon, not, I just tried it and it's completely useless for music. Speech, which I guess is all it's designed for, may be ok, who cares....I guess I could phone in my posts, but I don't think the world is ready for quite that reality. I did leave you a little blurb up top, after deciding to spare you a longer rant.
The link up, editing, organizational and archiving systems are not bad considering I don't know much HTML and it's free webhosting. In fact, the money flows to me, and should. I am, in effect, an extremely low-paid, yet uncontrolled, staff writer for Google. Their algorithms reward text-rich pages. They're hoping my words attract eyes and give me a certain support to achieve that. Unlike most tomes, they don't care what I write, cause they only pay me when someone who looks at my words clicks on their ad. Print can't offer writers commission based pay.
Blogging may explode in a way the more passive Pod won't. Most people I know are well aware of iPods, even if they don't care enough about music to own one. But few, even here in Palo Alto, know much about blogging yet. They don't realize how approachable and empowering it is. They think of blogging as something done by semi-pro political pundits, not as a way to express yourself, allow others to get to know you, record your thoughts and your life, and, most importantly, to have a voice, and possibly a positive influence in this world. We are so inculcated into this role to our role as passive viewers (fat & happy Americans), but, people have a natural desire to express themselves. It just gets cut off. I went into that in great depth earlier in this blog. But, it can get turned on again. I see it in the Dad's bands, and the many other bands and film projects that are becoming more prevalent.
For me, being single, and an artist, it's a way to let others get a very, very good sense of who I am, without having to personally spend a lot of time revealing myself to each. My life is literally an open book here....available to any who care to look, and I'm finding many do. My conversations are more interesting because people often do know quite a bit about me, sometimes before we have even met. It is kind of like Warholian fame; and has actually hepled me understand a bit what fame must feel like. You're "out there". There is a certain loss of control. People know stuff about you that you have not personally told them. For others, it's more professional, commercial, and I think it will develop in that direction for me. The medium can demonstrate not only our voice and personality but our productive output as well. BTW, anyone who likes my art is welcome to buy it... email me. These blogs are quite interactive, so, interact... visibly.
posted by Intervision at 5:12 AM
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