I woke up this morning and said, "hey how can I make my multimedia life conceptually more challenging? I KNOW, I'll combine our show, on-the-go podcasting, personal videoblogging, and the music show into ONE THING!"

Okay, I didn't really say that, but yeah.

In the short term, we'll be doubling up on both feeds /ericriceshow and /ericricevideo... the podcast feed will remain the main feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ericriceshow, which you can use any podcast listening software to have the show automatically delivered to you. (Visit us in iTunes and also on MySpace. Also, you'll still be able to send us SMS and call us toll-free, and we'll do our best to record the show and simulcast it live, where applicable.

Perhaps if asked, I'll share the infrastructural reasons why this makes sense for us, as well as how this will positively help the show's revenue streams *and* growth.

Thanks to about a bazillion folks for the love and support!

Okay folks, we GET that, but the point is, the technology matters when the PEOPLE, MARKET, and CONVERSATIONS warrant it. Nothing more.

I'd like to note that we should move out of the WEB way of thinking. Especially since it's about stuff-that-is-networked, outside of the web, on devices, and permeating other areas (we hear poo poo'ing of small video screens on ipods, yet we sorta look the other way at the growing number LCD screens in cars--- you don't have to like it, you just have to realize it's *there*)

Finally, take a deep breath and see that it's not about the technical details at all, it's about what people DO. Open systems, closed systems, who cares. What are people DOING.

Matter of perspective is all, I'm just sayin'.

I posted a link to the Keith and the Girl podcast where they presented us with the Podshow contract. I linked to it, said something cute and sarcastic and boom, done. Then, I discovered I kept wanting to add to the post. And then, I finally decided to say, screw this, I'm gonna start over. So I deleted it temporarily. (Bad blog form, I know but whatevah)

I have too much to say about this nonsense, both on the blog and on the show we're recording tonight.

And to be perfectly clear, absolutely no one has given me static about anything. I've only removed the post to formulate more coherent thoughts on the whole clusterfuck. (Read: I'm metaphorically reloading)

Apologies for the brief confusion on the post vanishing. I guarantee that I'm not done with this, not in the least.

On Tuesday, March 28, at 4PM SLT, Radio Open Source, a public radio show hosted by Christopher Lydon, will broadcast live from SL.

The episode will feature dialogue between Lydon and his guests on issues related to virtual worlds, focusing on our own personal favorite, Second Life. Guests will include Sherry Turkle of MIT, and several more to be announced, with rumors strongly leaning towards the inclusion of a Linden in this all-star roster.

Radio Open Source Live in SL

I got my Cingular 8125 Uber Phone. I have nothing more to say other than what I said in the title. Yeah. It rocks.

Okay, I'm not a coder, but I'm getting close to writing a simple database app to plug into an API, because it's taking me like 20 minutes to fill out a Word document for a process because I am copy and pasting from a web page that is dynamically generated.

Cover sheets on TPS reports, that's all I'm sayin.

I went to a big post-GDC party at the SJ Museum of Art (it was an SL party, natch), and was happy to see that I knew only two blogospheric types there. Beth Goza and Niall Kenedy (both pals). I knew some other folks, but from other SL gatherings.

Here's the thing. In the span of a couple days I have met some fascinating folks who exemplify how the other half lives.

Case Study #1. Met a fellow SL resident, who, like me, has an island, except she has a massive shopping mall, gardens, estates, nightclubs and such. When the conversation went to blogging and podcasting, it was made clear that she didn't know what a podcast was, and sorta heard about blogs. This was punctuated with, "Sorry, I'm computer illiterate"

Read that last bit again.

Because one of the few barriers to SL is how *hard* it's perceived to be. And yet, this enterprising young woman, who calls her blog-and-podcast-unaware self "illiterate", has beaten that. And makes some killer content and product.

Case Study #2. Not SL-related but at the same event. Talked with some brilliant audio engineers from Rainbow Studios (yes that Rainbow Studios). A similar conversation emerged. Talking about blogging, what it is, why it's important--- same with podcasting and videoblogging. (We need to do more of this--- finding people as far away from the blogosphere as possible.)

I keep thinking of that shirt, "I was Internet famous once". And while it's amusing, it might be a bit off. We're not Internet Famous, we're Blogosphere Famous, and that's a big difference. We think we are very important to ourselves.

Now the question is, can we the people, scale?

Here's how my brain works: I'm out today doing a coffee run and I'm cruising through downtown Morgan Hill, CA. I thought, hey, wouldn't it be fun to have a meetup here for some Silicon Valley-area Second Lifers to come down to 95037, and chill out at a coffee shop up the street from the old Granada Theatre, and take pics and scrutinize it and try and recreate it in 3D? But hang on, the thought process doesn't stop here.

I must make note that one thing that Second Life has caused me to do is spend MORE TIME OUTSIDE. I am in love with architecture and environmental design now. Gimme a mountain to look at, and I'll stare at it all day. Then I wanna go build it. Weird? Naw, it's not weird when someone sits outside with a canvas and brush painting a sunset, is it?

Anyway, I thought, "Hey I want to have a meetup that's a podcast-blogger-videoblogger-flickrshooting-Second-Life-Centennial thing in Morgan Hill (a town that some San Jose residents don't even know where it is). I mean why not? We'd be outside, socializing, taking pictures for reference, then perhaps recording the process to video, talk about it on a podcast, and post the progress on our blogs while we recreate not just the Granada Theater, but the five or six block strip of Monterey from First St. to Dunne Ave.

BTW, Morgan Hill (population 33,000) still remains a reasonably quiet, former ranch town that is that last stop in Silicon Valley (maybe Gilroy is, whatevah). It's 100 year celebration is this year and I want to do something because my family (I'm local to the South San Jose Area), has about 100 years of history with the actual town of Morgan Hill. (I live about 2 blocks from where my dad grew up in WWII. Trippy what he remembers).

Okay, back to my maniacal thoughts.

Many of us familiar with the Bay Area, and specifically Morgan Hill's downtown--coughahem 'redevelopment' initiatives, really agonize how lame the city of Morgan Hill is in contrast to elsewhere, like Walnut Creek (WHOA creek, George), who has just absolutely NAILED a beautiful, boutique-y, indie, foodie, hip downtown strip.

You see where I'm going with this.

Build a model of downtown Morgan Hill in Second Life. Just like the main drag of Dartmouth, NH that was built as a class project to study disaster response; or like the French Quarter in New Orleans (as a tribute to raise funds for Katrina victims). Build it as close to scale and accuracy as possible.

Throw in the already existing super-uber-talented designers, modelers, and other fine, fine residents of Second Life, and endlessly conceptualize the ideal downtown district. The City of Morgan Hill can't do it, so fine, we'll do it ourselves.

And if it's cool enough, and hip enough, I bet we could sell our virtual wares and host our virtual parties and continue to make money in a virtual place, with little to no overhead.

Can your city do that? Sure they can. Just eliminate half the meetings and the politics, and guess what.

Things can get done.

Action item: Who wants to meetup in Morgan Hill at the local coffee shop (free wifi and convenient free parking), to build the Granada and who knows what else? We can podcast it, vlog it, blog it, and above all, hook up and socialize in meat space. We can do it!

Hit me up in e-mail or ping the office: 408-612-3427.

And that's how my brain works.

PodcasterWorld is one year old now (I'm a little bit late) and you can have some fun partying with Blymm. Check out Blymm and get his music/talk podcast delivered automatically. It's hip-hop. It's real. And hilarious, bud-dee.

I hereby induct them into the Lords of Podtown.

Come on by and then stop by the machinima backlot on Slackstreet.


Download File

I'm glad Audioblog.com (hipcast!) scored 19% on Certifyr. Similar companies scored much higher. It's like golf scores. Lower is good. Higher, well that's just ridiculous.

Rubber meets the road, yo.

Well so on today's installment of 10, the cat's out of the bag. I've been helping them build an island for watching 10, chilling out, community-ing in Second Life. It's been quite a bit of fun and like everything in SL, nothing is ever finished. The sim is only half-filled with some fun stuff thrown in for good measure. Go find the easter eggs I've left.

In other Second Life news, we're bringing another island online, connected to the Slackstreet island. On the new island (called Shalida), we're building the Hipcast.com Convention Center (hipcast = formerly audioblog.com), where we are planning virtual trade shows and conferences and concerts and such. We've also got some rockin' partners like our homies from The Electric Sheep Company to do some wild stuff in world. (Here's a little insight into what SL is without the 3D)

And also, the record label I bought, sorta? Once upon a time, someone created a record label in SL to manage the promotions, performances, and sales of music of artists who do SL-oriented music stuff. Yep, you read that correctly. Since I'm the new owner, I'm picking up the reigns to not only continue to help some very talented musicians do their thing in SL, but also, to make money from their art. There's been increasing interest from real world musicians who want to come in, do a show, do a thing, a la Gorillaz-style. Also, I'll be working to introduce podcasting and Creative Commons (I am an officer of the Podcasting organization in SL and also the Free Culture group (Free Culture is driving the introduction of Creative Commons in world, for virtual objects and the like).

I'll talk more about this on an upcoming podcast which you can get at show.ericrice.com or on Tower Records' new podcasting site Tower Pod (now with more rights-cleared Public Enemy! w00t)

In the mean time, head on over to the on10.net island, located here and stop by Slackstreet and chill with Scoble Seattle and a cast of millions (okay, like 12 people) on the Slackstreet sim.

Tell 'em Spin Martin sent ya. ;-)

It's not their fault, however, it's mine. Sorta. See, Basecamp is a pretty swank application for project management: fast, easy, light. I was up and running in no time. I invited people and made groups. Piece of cake. I even belong to other Basecamp groups, however, I'm so reliant on e-mail and RSS that stuff has to come to me. I never realized that activity can happen in Basecamp that requires me to log in. That's another story altogether.

What I noticed (and perhaps this is a problem with social aps), is my motivation level is affected by the motivation level of the community, whether it's the community at large, or my own private one. As usage by the group has slipped off, so has mine. And I'm too lazy to cancel because you just never know. This might come in handy.

There's something to study here in this behavior. Is this a flaw with social networks? For example, do some social networks work in certain cases (LinkedIn for example, is something I use *after* I meet someone, never to meet someone for business. Maybe that's the point, I don't know).

Perhaps I can solve this by getting a rapid project manager to run the Basecamp activities for our group? Of course, this gets into issues of control or no control (think the wiki model)... should it be open to the world at large or does someone need to be in charge and control?

What if I told you that there's software out there that has lots of components that are similar to many cool products out there? And it's all wrapped up in one package. Not unreasonable to make such an assertion, so hear me out on this one. ;-)

For brevity, I'm going to call this thing 'software', however understand that it's hosted. Its price slides from Free to Cost Lots of Money (if you want it to). Let's look at the functionality.

1. Chat/IM: Nothing weird here, most of us use some sort of IM client and that's basically chat. Chat represents more of a public conversation.
2. Social Networking: The ability to make groups, public or private, complete with a power structure AND the ability to assign a membership fee (more on fees later)
3. Content Creation tools: Drag and Drop functionality. The content creation tools can be as simple as drag and drop, which is half the battle, to complex and robust.
4. Programming Environment: There's a programming environment for those that want to be one with the code. Not being a coder, I can't really say much to this other than it's there.
5. Access Control: Being able to say what others can or can not do with your work is important. Anything you create can be assigned a variety of levels of permissions. You can make something, and say, 'sure, modify the heck out of this but don't give it away'... Very much like Creative Commons (which is coming soon). You can also assign a price to what you create, so people can pay you for your work. (And you'll think I'm nuts, but lots of people are happy to buy the things that others make). I can also make my workspace private and not available to the public.
6. Collaborative Working: Since I've got a whole list of buddies because of the social networking components, I can assign rights to people to work on the same things I'm working on (very much like a Wiki). Combine Access Control with Collaborative Working and I can make a private place where myself and a couple other friends can work on things together, remix, mashup, do whatever with what we make, and then turn around and sell it if we want.
7. Personalization: A ton of functionality for customizing the personal profile and the information I choose to share (think MySpace)
8. Rich Media: The software is also an audio/video client; and also supports the uploading of my own media: audio, images, etc
9. Revenue Generation: People pay to use the service, people pay to make things, people pay to buy the things other people make. (Read that a few times).
10. Used for serious work and fun and everything in between. People also make a living using this software.

Sounds cool, eh? I think so. I also think this software represents a lot of what we do and where we're going with our culture. Distribution big and smalll; working together and collaborating; doing things for love and/or money.

Now, make all that the foundations of a 3D virtual world, and you have Second Life.

Next up: What people do in there: from the serious to the silly

SXSW is the recharging event of the year. We get through summer all authority-rockin, trudge through winter, and when we get ready to kick off spring here in the hemisphere, we do SXSW and get an unbelievable rush of energy (and it has nothing to do with that Red Bull party or the oodles of open bars, seriously).

As people are collecting themselves post-marathon, all the e-mails are coming in. As my pal Kevin said at a dinner one night, "We have 85 3 second conversations with everyone." And it's true. SXSW is overwhelming and go! go! go! the whole week. Worth it, though. It's also always over my birthday so, SXSW is my part-ay. (Thanks Byron for the group-led happy birthday song during our panel).

So, instead of e-mailing I wanted to say how awesome it was to meet folks, old and new. I also had a chance to spend time with some folks that I wanted to spend every second with, absorbing everything they know. (You think I know a lot about Second Life? I don't know jack, next to the Electric Sheep crew. They got it goin' on. And I'm honored to have met them.

I also want to say thanks to everyone who came out to Fray Cafe 6 to partake in great true, personal, storytelling (and the open bar by Audioblog. I wish I could have gotten through the whole list like last year, but alas, it was packed and 13 folks didn't get a chance to get on stage. Next year, come early and signup ;-).

SXSW is that one event that brings people together, technology together, hype together, partying together, and so much more. It's a together thing. If you missed it, that's cool. It's the 20th year of the festival. And next year (where I'll be attending the entire conference (interactive/film/screenburn/music), I hope to see you there!

For my non-geeky readers, two old guys are bitching about a few bucks and code and something must be noted: One of them posted a letter from an attorney, gobs of people weigh in, and both parties have commented. Go here and here.

Is posting on legal matters something that can affect the litigation?

Yup, Podtech gets funding to continue doing great things. And I'm probably willing to bet that there are some VC firms here in the valley who made some ridiculous investments on other podcast stuff and are kicking themselves.

There's a lesson in here somewhere, methinks. Rock on, John and the PodTech.net crew!

No one would ever EAT Patagonian Toothfish. Would you? Would you eat Chilean Sea Bass? Ohhhhh, well see that's different.

Chilean Sea Bass = Web 2.0 nomenclature for the Patagonian Toothfish. I get it now.

It alienates people and gets in the way of being productive.

"...I originally wanted to come to meet up with people who shared my interests, but what I'm finding is I don't want to talk in acronyms all the time. I actually want to bridge the gap between the people who talk in acronyms and the people who call the web the internets or the interweb and would prefer not to go near it. In the Book Digitization and a tagging session I went to, there was some discussion of that. Thanks, Liz! But generally, the acronym people just want to reach other acronym people. Unless we all become acronym people, I don't think that's a good long-term strategy."

Geeky Mom: SXSW: some observations