Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

There’s been a lot of buzz on the web about piracy, this time not affiliated with the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Johnny Depp, but… e-books.

Every news article about the potential e-book market is another can of gas on the fire:

• The petition against Google’s e-book scanning
• Apple’s impending i-book store
• The Kindle-killing (and horrifically named) i-Pad

Seems that e-books are the talk of internetville. But doesn’t all this talk sound familiar? Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

Sales are down! Piracy is destroying the industry! Lawsuits! Copyright!! DRM!!!

Oh yes, that’s right. We DID hear all this before. From the music industry. We heard it when the cassette tape format was invented. We heard it again when CD burners became a household item. And we got to hear it again when Napster + broadband internet connections made it possible to download an entire library of audio in minutes. And now that books are on the block, we get to hear it again from the publishing industry.

Yawn.

I’ll direct the publishing industry to read my Open Letter to Gene Simmons (of the band KISS) and the RIAA. Simply replace the word “music” with “e-book” and replace “Recording Industry” with “Publishing Industry”.

Oh, and replace “Pirates” with “Pirates”.

The Problem is Virtual

Until recently, artistic works such as music, video, pictures and stories required a medium to contain the art and transfer it from one person to another. That medium (Tape, DVD, CD, Book, etc…) had a production cost, a fixed physical expense that someone had to pay because that THING had to be manufactured, packaged, shipped, received, warehoused, and stocked.

For decades, we’ve been told how much it costs to make THINGS and to ship THINGS and to stock THINGS. And the cost of the THINGS keeps going up because of [fill in the blank].

But consumers were never buying the THING. People don’t really want a cassette tape. Or a book. Or a computer file for that matter. Consumers want the art that the medium carries. They want the story about Frodo and Sam. They want the song by Jagged Spiral. They want the picture of the pirate flag.

With the internet, the medium is all but removed from the product, leaving an intangible stream of ones and zeros. At long last, the products of art have been un-THING-ified. Virtualized.

One of the reasons consumers never wanted the medium in the first place was that it adds unnecessary cost to the art. Well, now the medium is almost completely gone, but where are the savings? We should be seeing prices dive for the virtual products, but the industries still try to justify the old prices.

This is a problem.

Price Check

Why is an e-book selling for $9 when the hardcover book is $13? Why in the Hells do they both list at $29?

Seriously. Twenty Nine American Dollars is the Publisher’s Suggested Retail Price for an E-Book? Is that supposed to make you think that $9 is a good deal?

I’m not the only one calling the publishing industry out on it’s bullshit. New York Times Bestselling Author Michael Stackpole lists plenty of other reasons publishers can’t justify their e-book pricing.

The industry holds the price up, because they won’t let go of the THING-ness of their product. They see every sale of a virtual product as a direct equivalent of the sale of a physical product. They think that every e-book sold is a physical book not sold.

Reality Check: Virtual products are not Physical products.

Truth is, the publishing industry should be thrilled to death about internet distribution. E-books may have a lower cost, but they have a far higher margin than their physical counterparts. If you don’t know what that means, ask an accountant. If you can’t make your business work with this new math, then hire a fucking accountant, and change your business to become profitable. The last thing you’d want to do is waste money on lawyers to fight the system. Ask the recording industry.

Why is the industry is down? Why aren’t people buying? Its simple. The product is virtualized, but the price is not.

Hey, it’s a free market, and it’s not against the law for businesses or even the entire industry to use business practices leading to their own obsolescence. It also isn’t against the law for them to starve to death because they refuse to adapt to the new technology.

But it looks like instead of taking advantage of the new technology they have available, the publishing industry has decided to try to force a square peg into a round hole. When that doesn’t work, they sulk and stare at the dwindling sales and blame…

Pirates!

Before you break out the flamethrowers, understand that I’m not endorsing piracy.  Piracy is unlawful and unethical. Google is evil for doing it, and so is everyone else who does it.

But I am telling you that it is entirely true that (music/movie/ebook) piracy is NOT “killing” the (recording/motion-picture/publishing)  industry. It wasn’t back when cassette tapes came out. It wasn’t back when the VCR was released to consumers. Author’s careers are not being destroyed because their books are available for free at the library, or borrowed from friends, or sold in used bookstores. Musicians aren’t going broke because their songs are played on terrestrial radio, myspace, and pandora at no cost to consumers.

The publishing industry is down because of many factors, but piracy is the last one to worry about. Wasting time on it is like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.  Keelhauling every pirate in the universe won’t fix what’s wrong with the publishing industry, the music industry, or any other industry, because Pirates are not a problem; they are a symptom.

Let’s look at the problem that causes piracy to become popular:

Free as in “E-Books”

Price a product high enough and two things will happen.

• Sales of that product will decrease.
• Customers will find other ways to get the product for less.

The music industry already learned this, but let’s look at how it pertains to the publishing industry, by examining these ‘other ways’ to get the product for less than the listed price:

• You can get every Dean Koontz book ever written for free… at the public library.
• You can get every Stephanie Meyer book for free… by borrowing them from your niece.
• You can buy the latest Stephen King novel for One Dollar…  on Craigslist. (In hardcover.)
• You can buy Scott Sigler’s latest for just a couple bucks… at the used bookstore.
• Ebay.com
• Swaptree.com
• Bookcrossing.com
• And you can get the latest of pretty much any e-book for free… by pirating it via bittorrent.

Care to wager that library usage is way up? Borrowing/lending? But you won’t hear about the publishing industry claiming that libraries are “Destroying the industry” or trying pass laws banning the sharing of books. That would be just as laughable as saying that pirates are destroying the industry.  It’s just one more way customers can get the product if they don’t think it’s worth the list price.

Am I suggesting that publishers are causing an increase in piracy by setting their prices too high? Yes. Just like they are “causing” people to check books out at the library, or borrowing them instead of purchasing them at the bookstore. Just like they are causing consumers to obtain the product through other methods, or pass on the product altogether.

Of course publishers have to fight piracy, or people will think they’re OK with it. But to declare that piracy is destroying the publishing industry is simply not true. Illegal? Yes. On the rise? No doubt. But look at the cause:

Your business plan sucks.

Here’s where you should be focusing. Not on pirates. Solve this problem, and piracy will diminish, along with borrowing/lending and library usage.

But, we doesn’t understand business or teh Interwebs!

I can already hear the publishing industry screaming at me that it can’t make a profit off what people are willing to pay for e-books. Sorry, but that argument does not fly.

You can price your product whereever you like, but products are never worth more than people are willing to pay for them. It doesn’t matter how much they cost to make.  Like I said, price it too high and people won’t buy it or they will find cheaper alternatives. Yes, including piracy.

This is the spot where I’d make a “buggy whip manufacturer” reference, but q.e.d. right?

The Solution

The solution starts by acknowledging the real problem.

The solution starts with letting go of the paradigm of treating ones and zeros on the web as a physical product. Virtual products are not Physical products.

The solution starts when people stop crying that change is bad, fighting against the new tech, and trying to cover up bad business models by blaming pirates.

I suspect the solution requires a generation of post-internet people growing up with virtualized products; people who weren’t born into a system of 100% THINGS and then had to suffer the paradigm shift to the virtual. These people will have a more intimate understanding of this “problem”, and perhaps when they grow up to take over for the current regime, they will arrive at a more elegant solution – one that works to Everyone’s advantage.

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

The Devolution of Twitter

The creators of Twitter will tell you that they didn’t know what the hell it was for when they released it. They created a way to send a txt message to the world and watched to see how people would use it.

Like several people I’ve dated, Twitter is fast and easy. The microblogging and public text-chat format is perfect for sharing links, updating status, asking questions or blurting out random props that don’t require the treatment of a fully-formed blog post. Way back in Feb 2009, I guessed what twitter might evolve into.

Unfortunately, twitter didn’t evolve. It devolved.

Automatic for the Tweeple

Automation is one of the cool things twitter had going for it. The open-source platform allows companies like youtube, myspace, facebook and others to tie in to your twitter account and auto-post tweets for you. In fact, this blog post here at conradzero.com will auto-post a link to twitter through the twitterfeed service. Saves me the time and effort of doing it myself. Coolness, right?

Kind of.

Automation is one of the suck things that is killing twitter. The open-source platform allows people to upload a spreadsheet of 10,000 senseless posts which automatically post to twitter on a schedule of about once per second. While the posts on twitter were already nearly mindless bits of fluff, now accounts drown twitter in completely mindless bits of fluff. The goal of these New Media Spambags is to post as many times as inhumanly possible. Post more = get seen more. Get seen more = get followed more. More followers = bigger market for your advertising messages.

Does this work? Of course it does.

Does it suck? Of course it does.

And of course, twitter only encourages that you follow people with lots of followers, because…that’s how you get more followers.

Invasion of The New Media Spambags

Of course the people who wreck almost all online things are those who REALLY REALLY want to sell you something. Whether their product is good or not is irrelevant – getting it out in front of people is all they care about. Using the automation I mentioned before, these Twitter Spambags stream continual posts – jokes, quotes, facts… and of course, repeated references to their product.

These are the same douchebags who use e-mail SPAM to sell their products. The idea is the same; a high volume of public contact will lead to a small percentage of click-thru, which leads to an even smaller percentage of sales. The higher the quantity of contact, the larger the number of click-thru, the larger the number of sales.

I’ve included a screenshot of just such a Twitter Spambag. No particular reason I’m picking on this person, there’s thousands of profiles just like this one. But here’s some tips on how to spot a Spambag in the wild.

First, note the frequency of posts. No human can write consistent posts like this every three minutes (Exactly three minutes apart, mind you.)

Second, note the content of the posts. Two tweets of generic quotes or factoids, then every third post is a link to a “Make Money Now” page. Because links take up part of the precious 140 character twitter-post limit, services are used to shorten the post down to a smaller size. Because of the shortening, the links are hidden and you can’t see where they go until you click on them.  But notice that the link in the first post is repeated in the last post. If you scrolled down the list of tweets, you would see this particular Spambag alternating between two links over and over.

Third, note where the posts originate. In this case, they all come from API, meaning they are being sent through a third-party service. Likely, an automated one.

This is another spam artist turning the new social media into a quagmire of auto-babble. Is this illegal? Of course not. But it’s also not illegal for people like this to starve to death because no one buys their shit.

#TwitterRebellion – Block the Twitter Spambags

If no one clicked on the SPAM e-mails and if no one clicked their links and if no one bought the crap they sell, e-mail SPAM would stop. E-mail SPAMmers only continue to send e-mail SPAM because it works.

If no one followed the Spambags on Twitter and no one clicked their links, twitter spam would stop. Twitter Spambags only continue to spam twitter because it works.

Why follow Spambags? It’s time to take Twitter back to the Tweeple. But how?

Simple.  Block the fucking spambags.

If you see someone you’re following post once per minute of all hours, check their profile page and look through their tweets. If they are interlacing mindless quotes and jokes between links to their snake oil, Use the “Block and Report SPAM” feature. If enough people call a spammer on their BS, their account will be pulled, and you will have done a great public service.

It’s not hard to tell a human from a Spambag.  Follow the humans. Block the spambags. Rebel and take back twitter!

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

The full article on billboard.biz requires subscription, but you can read enough excerpts here and from the Motley Crue fan club site to get the point:

Gene Simmons is an Idiot with a Capitalist I.

“Free Music Nonsense”

In a recent interview with Billboard magazine, Gene Simmons admits that all of this “Free Music Nonsense” could have been prevented if the Recording Industry had taken action from the beginning:

Simmons: The record industry doesn’t have a f*cking clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They’ve got freckles. That’s a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit’s mask.

Gene Simmons must be the RIAA’s wet dream. He’s so entrenched in “the way we’ve always done it” that it is simply outside of his understanding that the world has changed.

And blaming the industry’s poor earnings on pirates instead of the RIAA’s own short-sightedness? Classic. Good luck with that, or haven’t you heard? Johnny Depp and Keith Richards have made pirates cool again.

Sorry Gene, that the internet has made things complicated for you. Here is something for you to think about (when you can break away from your book about all the prostitutes you’ve paid to have sex with)

• You can go online and view a picture of the Mona Lisa any time you want. For Free.
• You can also go to the Louvre and pay to see the real thing  for a short time.
• For slightly more money you can own a poster copy.
• With all of the money Gene Simmons has made, you could own the real thing.

Now, why would people pay to see the Mona Lisa, or pay for a poster-sized copy of the Mona Lisa, or pay to own the Mona Lisa, when they can see it online for Free? OH MY FUCKING GOD! HOW CAN THE ARTIST MAKE ANY MONEY WHEN YOU CAN ACCESS THE ART ONLINE FOR FREEEEEEeeee….. [insert sound of Gene Simmons screaming as he falls into the abyss of his own stupidity here]

As a musician, I would rather give my music away online for free (as a matter of fact, I do give it away for free) than to see a dime go into the pockets of the Recording Industry. Until they wise up and change their business practices to work with the technology available they are irrelevant – by their own choice, or lack thereof.

Hey, it’s a free country and it isn’t against the law for them to maintain business practices leading them into obscurity and uselessness. It also isn’t against the law for them to all die of starvation because they refused to change.

You think the system still has some value because it helped make you rich? Perhaps we should all go back to using cassette tapes, so the cassette tape manufacturers can stay in business?

Meet the RIAA’s new way of doing business… Oh wait, it hasn’t changed

Billboard: But some artist [SIC] like RADIOHEAD and Trent Reznor are trying to find a new business model.

Simmons: That doesn’t count. You can’t pick on one person as an exception. And that’s not a business model that works. I open a store and say “Come on in and pay whatever you want.” Are you on f*cking crack? Do you really believe that’s a business model that works?

Someone points the way out of Gene Simmons stupidity, and he asks them if they are on drugs.

You know Gene, as a matter of fact, opening a store with almost negligible overhead and upkeep, ZERO manufacturing and distribution costs, GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION and open 24×7x365, and then asking for donations is a fucking phenomenal business model.

How do you think wikipedia.org is still in business? How do you think the projects on sourceforge are funded? Are you aware that Radiohead are actually making an average of $6 per download by Giving Away their music and letting people donate what they want? And not a penny goes to the RIAA middleman. $6 average per customer, Gene. Do YOU make that much?

I’m not saying the industry should adopt Radiohead’s buisness practices, but at least Radiohead are willing to try something, because it seems like the recording industry would sooner destroy the internet than to learn how to profit from it.

I wonder if the RIAA got this upset about the invention of electricity. “OMG! Electricity is going to ruin our industry! People will stop going to concerts! They are going to stay at home and listen to music broadcast over radio waves for FREE! How will we ever survive? PI-RATES!”

A Lesson In Value

Billboard: So what if music just becomes free and artists make their living off of touring and merchandise?

Simmons: Well, therein lies the most stupid mistake anybody can make. The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you’re considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There’s no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that’s what going on.

Damn Gene, you almost figured this out. Things have always been worth what people are willing to pay for them. Now, change “Physical CDs” into “Bits on the internet”, and let’s see what happens…

When the value of the product decreases, the sticker price should also decrease. But that isn’t happening. The cost of a physical CD with 15 songs is around $15.00. The price of 15 songs on I-tunes is around… $15.00

And you want to know why people aren’t buying?

And you want to know why people are turning to piracy?

Change is Good… just not yet

Gene, calling this change “chaos and anarchy” may be your perception, but in reality it’s just Change. Change from one system to another system, one that you don’t like, because you don’t know how it will make you money. Your diatribe is just another dying gasp from an industry that is choking itself to death, because it isn’t smart enough to move to where the air is.

And blaming pirates. Honestly.

Gene, I know you worked hard using the system you had available at the time, and it worked out well for you. Congratulations. But the rules have changed. Clinging to the old way won’t help. And if people like you and the RIAA won’t figure out how to use the new way, others will. And it will seem like “chaos and anarchy” to you.

We don’t need people like you complaining that “change is bad.” We need people adapting to the change and figuring out how to make things better for both artists and consumers.

Yours Darkly,
-Conrad Zero

Since I previously announced my kingship, I’ve given careful thought to the general direction in which this country is heading. In my continuing struggle to make America a better place, here are some more commandments which go into effect immediately:

Regarding the War on Porn

Im sure you have all read the news about The War on Porn, but fear not. The War is over.

Porn is not a problem, American attitudes are a problem. Europeans have had topless advertisements forever, but Janet Jackson whips out a mammary at the Super Bowl, and Americans have a fucking Grand Mal. NO MORE!

I am hereby disbanding the FCC, the RIAA and whatever ridiculous task force the government might have put together to waste taxpayer money, and save us from bestiality videos. If someone wants to videotape themselves being tied up, stripped and whipped, and post it to their website, then they have the right to do so. If people would like to volunteer their free time to putting together a list of websites you shouldn’t look at, they have the right to do so. If you would like to take their advice, you have the right to do so.

The National Anthem

The National Anthem has now been changed to Nirvana’s Nevermind. The entire album.

Regarding the Flooding in New Orleans

Two items of note:

1. New Orleans is right next to An Amazingly Large Body Of Water.
2. New Orleans is Lower In Altitude Than the Amazingly Large Body Of Water.  (See note 1.)

Do the Math.

Therefore, what was formerly known as ‘New Orleans’ is now officially called ‘New Orleans Bay’, and instead of wasting resources on restoration so this catastrophe can repeat in a decade or two, the efforts will be spent on relocating the people and businesses to places Above Sea Level.

A Warning to California

Californians should take note of the predicament in New Orleans, and when the SanAndreas Fault breaks, and California slides off into the ocean, I promise we will not build a wall around you and pump the water out like New Orleans.

Regarding the Military

All overseas military are to be returned home, where they can serve and protect their country. All foreign ops will be performed by spies sent out to foreign countries. Any country which acts against the US will be converted into a giant, radioactive parking lot. No joke.

One-World Currency

United States currency will switch over to the Euro, along with a solemn apology for dumping all that tea in the ocean years ago. Lets let bygones be bygones, and work towards One World Currency.

Regarding the Buick Corporation

The owner of the Buick Corporation will immediately be burned at the stake for using the Aerosmith song ‘Dream On’ in a car commercial. Just because there is no more RIAA, doesnt mean we take timeless classics and debase them by using them to sell mediocre cars.

Plenty more commandments to come…

Conrad Zero, King of the United States

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

I’ve decided that the “Republicrat” system of government we currently have in place is not working. Republicans and Democrats have had their chance to fix things, and they’ve both proven themselves incapable of acting reasonably, rationally or amicably with each other.

Therefore, I have declared myself as King of the United States. My first acts as King are as follows:

• The Metric System. Right Fucking Now.
• Tom Green, Adam Sandler and Howard Stern are to be Stoned to Death for crimes against comedy.
• Bruce Springsteen can choose between Exile and being Stoned to Death. (Why? ‘The Rising’ is an unforgivable cash-in on the 9-11 tragedy. Nice try, Jerk. Get the hell out of my country.)
• George Lucas is hereby ordered to retract the Star Wars episodes I, II, and III, and refund all the money paid to moviegoers. He is then given one year per episode to remake them. If the remakes suck as bad as his first attempts, he will be Stoned to Death for crimes against humanity. If there is any mention of ‘midoclorians’ he will be Burned at the Stake.
• No More “Life in Prison”. The current justice system is not an effective deterrent to crime. Instead of being sentenced to life in prison, guilty parties will be Burned to Death in the town square. This will be televised and free for public viewing (Rating PG-13)
• No More Traditional Prisons. Those who cannot abide by the laws laid down by the King will work on self-sufficient farms, providing services for the community; farming, cleaning, recycling, and maintenance of roadways and public areas.
• No More Traditional Courtrooms. Since you Americans like your “reality TV” so much, all trials will be moved to live television, and the audience can vote for justice via phone or internet. It is every person’s moral obligation to vote on these issues. One vote per person. (For those of you who don’t understand how this works, look up the word ‘Democracy’.)
• There is no longer an expectation of privacy in public areas. All people will have a RFID/GPS chip attached to their brains at birth, so the government can know where you are at all times. Cameras will be mounted at every corner. Your every move will be recorded.
• No person can own more than one billion dollars worth of assets, cash, stocks, etc. The very idea is ridiculous. Anything above and beyond this margin will go to a fund, managed by the King.
• The King will have a secret group of Smokin-Hot Female Ninja Assassins to make sure these laws are enforced.

These are just off the top of my head. I’ll think up more as I go along.

Rule on,
-C

Back some 6 years ago or so, the University of Minnesota wanted to cash in on the untapped ‘Adult Learner’ market. Remember ‘University College’?

“Hey adults, come get a degree in your spare time! Take night/weekend/internet classes to fit your busy schedule!”

Now, some six years later, the University of MN is up in arms because it’s  ‘taking too long for students to graduate.’ Huh?

And now, they have implemented a ‘minimal credit payment.’ Students pay for a full credit load no matter how many classes they take!

That’s a great deal for kids right out of high school, still living with their parents who flip the bill for 13 credits while their kid takes 20. But it completely screws over working adults taking the odd evening courses, trying to sneak in a class or two when they aren’t working 60 hours per week. Now if they want to take three credits they have to pay for 13? As if the tuition hikes over the past two years weren’t bad enough!

This is surprising for a University where the word “diversity” is implanted into every speech and publication, until it is overused into meaninglessness. It doesn’t seem very diverse to me, to impede the ability of adults with jobs and families to take classes and get a degree in their free time.

I would expect more intelligent decisions from a group of people running a learning institution.

My suggestion to the University of MN is to either discontinue your use of the word “diversity”, or bring back the University College, without the mandatory minimum credit bullshit, and time limits for graduation. Return some fairness to the system for people who did not just step out of high school. What’s the harm if it takes them ten years to graduate?

Sincerely,
-CZ

In the initial excitement of podcasting, many podcasters have the misconceived notion of a podcast format as an hour long production, as though they were a syndicated radio talk show. There aren’t many reasons that a podcast post should be longer than a Blog post. Would you subscribe to a Blog that posted hours worth of reading material? Every day?

NEWS FLASH: PODCASTED AUDIO IS NOT FREE TO THE SUBSCRIBER! It takes bandwidth to download, MB to store, and most importantly – time to listen.

Think about it in terms of blog posts. Blog postings over a full page are LONG… Podcasts longer than a voicemail message are LONG. Podcasts over 10 minutes are REALLY LONG, and require people to schedule the listening into their free time somewhere. More than a half-hour per day is nearly insane. Would you read a single blog post that took a half hour to read? Every day?

The longer the post, the less likely it is that people will make time to hear it. Podcasting is not a Downloadable Radio Talk Show.  With this in mind, I offer podcasters this sage advice to reduce the length of your podcasts, and increase your number of subscribers:

BREAK IT DOWN:

Break your recording into sections and label them like Blog posts so people can pick and choose what they listen to, as well as skip to the next post without having to listen to the entire thing. Think of how music CDs work – instead of releasing an entire CD as a single post (like Jethro Tull’s ‘Thick as a Brick’), release each track separately (like Jagged Spiral’s ‘Days From Evil‘).

Instead of releasing an Hour-long talk show, release each topic within the show as a separate 5-10 min post (Are you listening Engadget? Dave Slusher?)

COMMERCIALS AND MUSIC BREAKS:

Honestly. Who do you think you are putting commercials and music breaks in your podcast? Unless the purpose of the blog post is to review the music or product, there’s no need to break up your technology post or book review podcast with your “kewl tunez”.  Yes, people can FF past them if they want, but that’s not the point. If people subscribe to your podcast for information, then inform them. If they subscribe to your podcast for entertainment, then entertain them. If they wanted to hear music, they’d get it from i-tunes.

EDIT:

HEY! I’m a geek with a microphone! Here me stumble over my lines like my first day in Theater class and say “Ummmm…” and “Ahhhhhh…”!!! How Unprofessional! And it’s reaching the Entire Blogosphere! Hehehe…

No one expects podcasts to be professional; it’s part of the geeky, quirky, kitchiness of the medium that makes it interesting. So editing mistakes out isn’t necessary, but it will make you sound more professional.

Editing for content is another matter. If you drift off topic for too long, or experience technical problems, you owe it to your audience to cut that crap right straight out. If you are tech savvy enough to do a podcast, you can also cut up or re-record your audio before posting it. Unless people are tuning in just to hear you talk, you shouldn’t ramble. If you drift off-topic, edit.

WASTING TIME:

Please don’t do this.

A prime example of wasting your listener’s time is Adam Curry’s 1-7-05 “Daily Source Code” post, [Jan 2010 Update: This particular podcast was pulled from Adam Curry's site.] weighing in at just over 43min long. After 4 min into the podcast, he still had not started yet! He rambles disjointedly about how the previous recording didn’t work, and how he bought a coconut, and how good the coconut tastes, and how a coconut makes an unwieldy drinking container, and that the ceiling fan in his hotel room is noisy, and he actually turns it on for you to prove it, and he did actually BLOW HIS NOSE, which just wastes the listeners time and makes him come off as an arrogant douchebag who just likes to hear his own voice, and thinks you are fascinated enough with his life to want to hear the sounds he makes in the bathroom.

I am picking on Adam Curry because he should know better, given his background, and self-proclaimed evangelist in the field of podcasting. He should be setting the standard. Drifting off-topic for a moment is OK and fun and sometimes funny, but pissing away the first 4 min of a 45 min post is rude to the listener. Expect them to do what I did: Unsubscribe. Worse, if the majority of podcasts behave this way, the entire technology will not see the adoption rate I’m sure we would all like.

Mike Lehman’s ‘Manic Minute‘ is a bit extreme in the other direction, giving the current news of the day in only 60 seconds, but it’s obvious that Mike realizes that his listener’s time is valuable, and he doesn’t dare piss it away like Adam Curry. Something between these two extremes better suits the medium.

THE FUTURE OF PODCASTING:

Podcasting is still a fledgling area, one with great potential. It also has the great potential to suck if everyone blathers for an hour a day. Look at it this way; let’s pretend the average podcast listener only has one hour per day to listen to podcasts. Are they going to listen to your shitty, hour-long ranting and time-wasting? Or are they going to subscribe to a handful of short, informative and entertaining podcasts?

Think about it. Cut your podcasts down, work less, and get a bigger audience. Once you have 10,000 subscribers who can’t get enough of your voice, then you can quit your day job, hire a staff of writers, and then you can post an hour a day podcast.

Conrad Zero
www.conradzero.com
zero@conradzero.com

PS: On a side note, I would just like to say that I hate the term “podcasting” more than anyone, but even I realize it’s too late to change it now. Just let it go. As bad as it is, I can’t image a term for anything worse than “Blog”, which is one of the sounds a toilet makes, and no one seems to mind that….

Historically, the day after Thanksgiving is known as “Black Friday.” It is also the biggest shopping day of the year. The people who put together the “Buy Nothing Day” campaign are upset with the Zombie Consumerism Mentality they see peak at this time of year, the endless marketing hype, and the endless lines of consumers (re)acting like mindless automata.

Sadly, no one told the folks at BuyNothingDay that this is what you get when you mix Free Market + Americans. I could sell freeze-dried shit on E-Bay and some fool would buy it. And if I mixed it with carbonated water, a pound of sugar, a little Emo/Rap/Hip/Pop sound, a catchy name (Poopsie? Croak? ShittyPop?) some cool marketing catch phrases (Stick it to the MAN! Drink who you ARE! Drink ShittyPop!), and showed a teenage midriff or two, PEOPLE WOULD LINE UP FOR IT!

You are here. Deal.

While I agree it makes one want to revoke your American citizenship , taking it out on the retailers is NOT the solution. It doesn’t work.

Their suggestion to walk around the stores clogging the isles dressed as Zombies is hysterical, but the practice of buying a bunch of stuff and then returning it immediately over and over is misdirected and wrong. They should know by now that those kinds of tactics only rebound to hurt everybody EXCEPT those whom they are intended for.

If you are upset that the Consumerist Zombies buy everything from WalMart because it’s cheaper, there are things you can do other than impeding their freedom to make an uninformed decision. If you can’t think of any, then you are a different kind of Zombie, and no better than the consumerist ones…

Blog on,
-Z

Patrick@93X,

The song by Cold you played earlier today (has lyrics “…I didn’t mean to be so cold…”) was just awful. Anybody can mix together bass+drums+powerchorddistortionguitars, but when the lyrics are pussy+whiny+”I feel”+”I want”+”I need” it really puts a damper on the song. It turns an otherwise decent band into a rocked-up version of Dashboard Confessional; possibly the worst lyric writing of all time.
I believe the style of music (in it’s unplugged, coffee-shop form) is called Emo for emotional, you probably know more about it than I do. There are bands that pull off Emo/Rock well (Outside by Staind, for example) and those who don’t, and they are easy to pick out by counting the number of times they say “I” in the first ten seconds.

Now that I have pointed it out to you, it will drive you nuts…

Sorry,
Conrad Zero

This blog post is intended for those prone to send e-mails containing confidential information; the rest of you can ignore this:

I recently received an e-mail with this thoughtful disclaimer/signature at the end…

“The information contained in this message is privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity named. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby on notice that you are in possession of confidential and privileged information. Any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. You will immediately notify the sender of your inadvertent receipt and return the original message to the sender.”

This may come as a surprise, but there is no such thing as “confidential” e-mail. That would be like “confidentially” yelling at someone across the parking lot at Burger King, or sending a “confidential” postcard through the post.

Furthermore, unless you have some kind of signed agreement with the recipient, any e-mail you send becomes the property of the recipient  as soon as you push the Send button, and they can do whatever they like with it. If they want to post it on a website, if they want to forward it to all of your friends to make you look like a fool, or if they want to pay Janet Jackson to tattoo it on her breast and then whip it out on national television, then expect it to happen, and no cowardly-half-hearted-attempt-at-ass-covering-pseudo-disclaimer is likely stop it.

With this knowledge, we can now reinterpret the disclaimer to read:

“I am an idiot who truly does not understand that e-mail is an incredibly insecure format that flows through the hands of many, many people, each of whom could quite easily read my communications and use them to get me fired, arrested, or (at the very least) publicly humiliated. I am hoping that you are as stupid as I am, and that this ‘disclaimer’ will trick you into believing that you have no right to ‘disseminate, distribute, or copy’ this e-mail.”

Please send “privileged and confidential” information by registered mail, or perhaps via encrypted/encoded e-mail, and take any ridiculous disclaimers like this off of your e-mail signatures. Honestly! Next, I suppose you will want me to sign a waiver before speaking with you at the water cooler…

-CZ