Paul Carr Turns Out Brilliant – A Review of “Bringing Nothing To The Party”
December 21st, 2009
Paul Carr just released his book for free on the internet, and my somewhat bemused self decided to download a copy and burn through it this fine Sunday. You indeed are reading this on a Monday, given that I decided to drop sledging this review to go gamble my small brains out at a poker table. But I digress.
This review is a bit self-reflective, but I shall try and keep my ego from intruding overmuch. It is, after all, about Paul’s book.
Paul Carr is a bit like a better, older, and somehow wiser version of your humble reviewer. Especially if you think about him before he recently stopped drinking. That cease-fire on his liver made little sense to me before I read his book. Allow me space to explain.
Drinking and technology have long been bunkmates for a wide number of reasons. Some personal favorites of mine include the philosophy that we internet people seem keen on being full of shit (it cannot just be me), and that drinking helps us do that, but with more confidence and hiccoughs. Also, many people have pointed out to me that we internet folk tend to move a touch faster than other people (perhaps), and that alcohol slows us down a notch (a still larger perhaps). Read the rest of this entry »
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The Life Of A Tech Blogger – A Cartoon
December 16th, 2009I drew it! Pass it along, if you could.
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Hate Mail Take One
December 15th, 2009Because everyone wanted to see it:
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Guest Post
December 9th, 2009I wrote something that I am quite proud of for Holden Page’s PagesAreSocial, you might want to give it a read.
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RIP CrunchPad – I Still Love You
November 30th, 2009
Tags: crunchpad
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The Most Important Speech You Will Ever Hear
November 26th, 2009Listen to the below speech twice, it will change your life. Trust a friend.
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Philosopher’s Drinking Song – I Love This
November 2nd, 2009Best song ever?
Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
Heideggar, Heideggar was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.
And Whittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nieizsche couldn’t teach ‘ya ’bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shanty was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
“I drink, therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.
There is nothing in that but greatness.
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Writing For A Major Blog
October 16th, 2009This just got tweeted about, so I feel the need to add a little. I wrote the below text when I was but a spry new member of TNW. Now probably 200 posts or so into my time with TNW, what do I think that is different?
Speed is more important than I thought - and write dickish headlines.
The faster you get to the important nugget of news, say that Apple has blown its nose, you have probably four to eight minutes to get a post up on it. That’s doable. Plenty of time to hammer at the keys, and sling invective.
But once your wonderful post, which thousands will read via the website and RSS, how do you title it? Take the title, remove 10% of the truth, and crank the hype to 11. I declare it the Alex Ratio. Trademark.
But more than anything the tech blogging world is very competitively friendly. The team to break the story very nearly gets the lion share of the traffic. But everyone must cover it, assuming that it is of suffiecient importance. Or it is Apple related. Same thing to most people, comically.
Oh yes, comment baiting works. Like this: -> write your opinion. Wait.
That’s all, see everyone on Twitter.
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If you are reading this, you probably know that I used to write actively for TechGeist. I have since moved over most of my writing to TheNextWeb, with Zee, Boris, and the whole crew. It has taken some of my time away from midVentures, but that is just the way life works. After writing for TNW for a while, and a few dozen posts, I wanted to share a few insights about tech blogging, and blogging in general for a large blog.
TheNextWeb is a major European technology blog, and I represent one of the two US authors, bringing in the perspective from the States. I write between three and ten posts a day for them, depending on what exactly is going on, and how quickly I get to the story. Mike Bracco is the other US blogger. Nice guy.
Technology blogging is all about speed. When a story breaks, every major tech blog pounces pretty much at the same time. How fast you get to the story can determine what share of the traffic that will surround that particular story. This means you need t o write quickly, or fall behind even more quickly.
I’m not sure how this post is going to go, in all honesty, I fell like it is devolving into some sort of paragraphed bullet points.
Another distinction, who are you writing for? It truly depends. Digg? Your RSS subscribers? Every audience needs its own special niche. Its own content flavor, etc.
Do you like sleeping? Then blogging is not for you. Up late, up early, laptop in your teeth.
Also, do you have a thin skin? If so, you are not cut out to blog, just take a look at this.
Does any of that help? I’m not sure what to share. If you had asked me 10 months ago, before TechGeist or TheNextWeb, I think that I would have known what to ask. As it stands, I am far to close to know what to say. I love blogging, how is that?
Tags: blogging
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Headed To TheNextWeb
October 11th, 2009I am headed over to The Next Web for a while to do some writing. I do apologize to the few hundred people that are subscribed to this feed, for all the silence. For the near future, you can track my writing here for TNW. I am so far truly enjoying my time there, @Zee and @Boris have made me quite welcome. Oh, and in other news I unfollowed everyone on Twitter. If you think that I should be following you, send me an @.
Finally, a big thank you to everyone who has signed onto my Facebook page, it’s been fun talking to you all over there. Until soon, peace!
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FlightCaster Is My New Best Friend
August 19th, 2009I like to travel, and unfortunately that means extensive amounts of time in airports, on tarmacs, and strapped in next to the smelly guy in airplanes. FlightCaster is out to make some of that a little more livable. The service, which predicts if and when a flight will be delayed, and gives percentage guesstimates, can be quite a boon. Why worry when you are running late to the airport when the flight is 99% delayed at least 30 minutes? You’ve got the time to get through security, and get a mocha. Airport nirvana.
The service pulls in extensive data to reach its conclusions. According to the website, the information comes from the following:
- In-bound aircraft tracking
- Weather forecasts
- FAA monitoring
- 10 years of flight history
I am not sure where they managed to get 10 years of flight history, it seems like the government would be mum on such information due to trumped up terrorism fears, but they have it. And from the demo screenshot (I am sadly not travelling for another three weeks, so have yet to run it live), it takes all four inputs and spits them out in a simple to understand page. Look at this and claim to be confused, I dare you:
Happily, they even have an iPhone application to go with the website. No words on monetization yet, but I could see them licensing the product to every single Fortune 500 company in existence. Any company with travelling team members, that is, every company, is going to love this product. I’ll post more information after I get to use it live, but until then, I will drool contentedly over the above screenshot.
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