Blog Core Values

a spear in the fog

2007-06-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

But look!

there is a spear

catch

foggy up-stares

mammonistic monetization mania

2007-06-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

The Digg mutiny and now the FM Publishing - ValleyWag PR disaster are indicating a serious Web 2.0 Meltdown. I love it. I love the fact that the attention is focused on ethics, advertorial vs. editorial, journalistic integrity, and mammonistic monetization mania.

Mammonistic Monetization Mania, what is it?

When your emphasis is on "how can we make a fast, easy buck?" instead of "how can we provide value and convenience for our customers?"

When you see web users as dim-witted sitting ducks, eager to recklessly fling away their not so hard-earned cash. The dummies might as well send their money to you, right? Clutter your web site or blog with all kinds of intrusive ads! Go for it!

What a lousy attitude.

And when the ads begin to seem like editorial, it looks like you're trying to take advantage of the #1 Web User Reality: web users are impatient, skimming for relevant content, distracted, multi-tasking, and in a big hurry.

Blurring the boundaries between advertising and editorial, or between genuine product user remarks and PayPerPost spam commenting, is Marketing Suicide.

Our glorious, triumphalistic, Self-policing Blogosphere is not to be mocked or messed with.

We all are learning, making mistakes, looking like idiots and losers, now and then. We must not rush to condemn, but must try to learn from each other, and help each other with honest, bold critique and advice.

murder trick

2007-06-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I heard the most gruesome thing I'd ever heard. It was a show on a serial killer with no conscience. He actually wakes up every morning, hungry to kill another little boy. Someone who enjoys slaughtering children is not a human. That thing is less than an animal. He's a monster.

Here's what made my skin crawl, psychologically.

A victim who miraculously survived the attack said:

"I was new in town, my family just moved in. I was 8 years old. As I was walking through a field, exploring the neighborhood, an older kid rushed up to me out of nowhere.

He said, "Hey don't you know there are people around here who like to kill little boys like you?"

I was stunned. Before I could process what he just said, another abrupt event hit me.

"Look out! Here comes one now! Get down. Get down, so they won't see us!" the other exclaimed as he pushed me down to join him crouching in the grass, on our stomachs.

After a few seconds, I said, "I don't see anybody", and started to roll over to face my companion, but it was too late. I could feel the long sharp blade dig into my liver.

"Why did you kill me?" I asked.

"I just wondered what it would be like to kill somebody. You'll be dead soon," he replied, then started laughing, as though highly pleased with himself.

Lesson For Parents:

Tell your kids that if someone runs up to them, run like hell screaming, just to be on the safe, not sorry side. And if someone starts talking "crazy" or homicidally, one single word or sentence, run like hell and scream.

internet trolls and cyber bullies

2007-05-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

A growing problem in blogs, Twitter, and online forums is the internet troll.

Trolls are cyber bullies who, while they appear to flame specific individuals, are actually jealous of online communities.

Their purpose is to anger and upset individual members, but their primary goal is to gain attention and to disrupt communities, especially when the members are peacefully helping and advising each other.

They tend to be anonymous, or use a fake name, a pseudonym. This is pure cowardice and fear of accountability, lawsuits, banning, etc. Trolls tend to have no clients, no content, and no allies, except other sadistic trolls.

Trolling is unvarnished misanthropy (hatred of humanity), usually coupled with a Luddite opposition to computers, blogs, user generated content, democracy, people power, and innovation. They often use the F word and juvenile insults.

Best method is to ignore and never mention the trolls.

Sometimes you have to bash them directly, which is fun.

EDIT UPDATE: This is a "post-in-progress". I will add links to The Matrix Online Guide to Trolls and other resources. Return to this post, if the topic interests you.

Check out my Vaspers Twitter messages for contextual blogocombat and advice.

http://twitter.com/vaspers

In Amerikkka the gun is god

2007-04-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

Each of us must respond to this Virginia Tech massacre.

Not with grief or sympathy. What good can that do?

Most of it is grandstanding, prissy-flitting around like angels with weepy harps. We feel sad, we pause, we express compassion, we waltz around in flowers, then: Life as Usual. Nothing changes in us, nor in society.

We must respond with harder looks at disturbed and bizarrely behaving individuals. We have to stop sticking our heads in the sand, ignoring the warning signals. I'm sure we all have sociopaths in our midst. They may never act out their secret seethings, but are you willing to wait and see?

Not me. If I observe bizarre behavior, words, or attitudes, I'm committed to confronting and combating them, either defensively or offensively.

We must respond with deep questioning of our callous media and our worship of violence.

We pursue careers violently. We work violently. We are rough, rude, and unreasonable. We flock to violent music, movies, and moodswings.

To say you're not going to blog about it, because that's what the shooter wanted -- that attitude is absurd. The shooter wanted media attention after he killed others and himself.

I have blogged and Twittered extensively about this tragedy, but I discuss the worthless university administration, the lousy security crew, the dimwitted local cops.

I have never mentioned the shooter's name, it's too hard to spell "on the fly".

Virginia Tech massacre is being exploited by the filthy MainStream Media, as usual. Like they exploited OJ Simpson, Monica Lewinsky, Anna Nicole Smith, Don Imus, and now Virginia Tech. "The media doesn't care, they want YOU to care, so you'll continue to watch," someone said on Glenn Beck tonight. True.

Interviewing survivors, young shocked students, minutes after the killings...how crass, uncouth, and uncaring is that? That's your MSM, the bearers and defenders of professionalism and objectivity, sans conscience, without any morality or common sense.

Can we all try to become more peaceful as individuals. Can we learn to spot potential "go postal" killers in our midst? Can we fight back, and teach our children how to fight back, against kidnappers, molesters, con artists, bullies, terrorists, traitors?

Or are we too concerned with Web 2.0 conferences and streaming live video of us riding in a car? Too happy drinking beer at a blogger gathering to feel sorrow for mourning families, or to feel anger at university administrators who allowed 33 people to die?

Why didn't a bunch of males jump the shooter, like when he casually reloaded a new clip?

Why is no one explaining how to defeat a gunman, how to distract, confuse, and tackle him?

It is not impossible to stop an crazed killer. They are not superhuman, but that's what our motion pictures try to make us believe. A gun makes you a big man, a man who can solve problems, can get revenge.

Got a problem? Get a gun. This is Amerikkka.

Guns everywhere.

One guy wins every single war that is fought. The arms dealer.

Gunning up Amerikkka, gunning for Amerikkka, all gunned up: Amerikka.

Want fun? Play Grand Theft Auto, commit virtual crimes, kill virtual human people.

Violence is what Amerikkka great. We killed the native inhabitants, we killed our southern neighbors, we killed our enemies to the east and west, we kill and kill and watch killing on the boob tube, the "influencing machine" that is fading fast, giving way to social media tools.

Bomb the bad guys. Torture the terrorist. Fight fire with bigger fire. Avenge our slain, by slaying more, then more, and some more.

Hate, war, shoot, hurt, destroy: the Amerikkan way.

We pretend to feel sorrow for a few seconds, upon hearing of the slaughter, then go right back to watching movies and TV shows obsessed with homicide, crime scenes, vengeance, brutality.

In Amerikkka, the gun is god.

contact Vaspers at Twitter

2007-04-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

The fastest way to contact me nowadays is by joining Twitter and transmitting a Tweet.

Ultimate Spinach 1968 revolution in music

2007-04-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ultimate Spinach was one of the best psychedelic hippie protest bands of the late 60s.

In 1968, they released their first album, followed by the ethereal "Behold and See", a political mystical statement about observing the 70s usher in with anti-hippie values of commercialism, etc.

Radical lyrics mixed with Dada surrealism is still an effective artistic response to turbulent times.

"Collapsed laughter running falling tripping across the minefields of your thoughts dissolved wondering who am I why should I be alone alone?"

"Flower children dressed in a shroud
get enveloped by a grey flannel cloud
because they're going around acting too proud
because they're going around acting too proud.
Your head is reeling...

Plastic masses don't know what to say
they want to make all the flowers go away
or take the sun away from your day
or take the sun away from your day.
Your head is reeling..."

"Mindless cretins grope through idiosyncracy fields rising up, up, then down..."

Many very trippy and charming anti-war, anti-establishment lyrics -- that still sound relevant today. Bad guy singing, beautiful female singing, excellant rock instrumentation, trippy electronic analog effects.

Perfect for heavy blogocombat and gentle Twittering.

http://twitter.com/vaspers

Check out their "The Very Best of ULTIMATE SPINACH" compilation CD at Barnes & Noble (special order it), or through COOP Records or your favorite local record store.

Songs include "Ego Trip", "Ballad of the Hip Death Goddess", "Your Head is Reeling", "Mind Flowers", "The World Has Just Begun", "Sacrifice of the Moon", "Pamela", "Suite: Genesis of Beauty", "Fragmentary March of Green", and "Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse".

Outstanding hippie protest music, with a Futurist twist.

This is where neo-psychedelic bands like Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, and Stereolab came from...ultimately.

crybaby blogging

2007-03-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

According to some, crybaby blogging is on the rise and for good reason. Why would more and more bloggers succumb to weepy loafing around and wimpy wheezing? We take a closer look, just for fun.

It's easy to be sad, dismayed that nobody pays any attention to you. Or they all pay too much attention to you, following you everywhere with their cameras and microphones and questions. So who can you lash out at?

You look around. Everybody else seems so large, so mighty, so self-assured. You feel the first tear roll down to your pouting lip. You think it doesn't seem fair that you're ignored or disliked. You want to be avenged by an adoring public.

People hear of your plight, your suffering, and they run to your side, weeping with you. They offer support, or cookies and coffee, or sympathy. You take what you can. It worked. The world seems brighter now.

The subversion of blog core values, in the name of emotional relief, looks absurd upon a careless and superficial examination, but when we scratch into it, beyond the surface, it scratches back.

how to detect authenticity

2007-01-19T11:01:00.000-08:00

What is "authenticity"? Why is it a core value of blogging?

You can easily tell a spam comment from an authentic comment.

A spam comment is insincere, vague, irrelevant, or has an ulterior motive, an agenda that is either hostile or exploitive. They are using your blog comment field as an ad venue for dubious, malicious, or non-existing products. Spyware-attaching sites is where many spam comments link to.

Boiler plate comments posted hurriedly as part of an artificial, compensated, or company-mandated, these comments defending a product are always slightly off topic, or otherwise contrived. Using your blog as a message board, for free.

If you've been blogging a while, and using email, you should have great skill in detecting authenticity.

You also see authenticity and the lack thereof at work and in personal relations.

Authenticity means you do what you say. You stand by your word, even if guilty parties think you're "harsh", "abrupt", or "too direct". A chump is not authentic. He is a masochist with a "born to be victimized" mentality. They may issue a demand or command, but will not really check to see if it is complied with.

Chumps, wimps, pussies: all inauthentic.

Liars, con artists, exploiters and manipulators: inauthentic.

People who know how to "play" the system, the boss, charities, churches, and chumps: inauthentic.

blog values as life values

2007-01-17T18:08:00.000-08:00

how do you evolve your mind?

and do your blogging ethics carry through to your offline life?

but how can you evolve if you never do anything new, risky, dangerous, wild, exploratory, experimental, challenging, different, bizarre, contrarian, innovative, visionary, eccentric, advanced, difficult, provocative, problematic, unexpected, boat-rocking, world-shaking, thought-provoking, pattern-disrupting?

and are you authentic, passionate, transparent, credible, individualistic, creative, original, relevant, and full of integrity in all that you do when you're not blogging and commenting on other blogs?

HOW do you evolve yourself mentally, socially, artistically?

How do YOU do it?

We either evolve or we decay. There is no cozy mediocre island in between,.no medicinal shrub that scrapes us clean. We remove the filth of conformity and step out proudly, boldly, into the unknown, the unproven, the uncertain.

are your geeky blog values also your personal life values?

Blog Burst editor explains blog journalism

2007-01-14T09:56:00.000-08:00

Blog Burst interview with Senior Editor Tina Nelson.

I thought this was a good explanation of blogs in journalism, blogs and journalism, and blog journalism.

Blogs have caused the online world to expect and demand more interactivity, more user-generated content, more reader reviews, more forums and debates...

...and less advertising, marketing, and sales hype.

Consumers of products, and news is the quintessential product par excellance, since anyone can have it, anyone can be it, anyone can create it and add to it or subtract from it, it's easily customized and remixed for new uses.

The news, as consumable product, as reflection of and upon event, news, to remain news and not olds, the news has to renewed, replenished, resupplied both endlessly, and at the very moment of consumption, in perpetuity, forever and ever, amen.

[QUOTE]

As a consumer and a citizen of the world, the blogosphere provides a depth and breadth of content I could never have imagined when I was in Journalism school. It’s very exciting.

The BlogBurst service provides publishers the opportunity to present varying opinions and analysis of events and topics that is just not normally possible within the confines of most news budgets.

The end product is richer, more well-rounded content.

What experience from your previous jobs/positions and talents are you hoping to share and/or use for BlogBurst?

I was a reporter for many years and understand how seriously people take their publications and their content.

You are the guardian of words, ideas and opinions.

In my early days, I thought an Editor’s role was to make a reporter’s life miserable by hacking up their copy — no grace and no guts! Later I became a News Director, and my perception of what was “worthy” changed and broadened — even moreso as the Internet came into play.

Once I became responsible for the content offering as a whole, I began to fully understand the challenges faced by publishers. Being tasked with protecting the business brand and the organization’s credibility is a heavy burden. The calls you make aren’t often easy and are out there for the public to judge daily.

I later moved into working with content for technology companies, which eventually led me to BlogBurst.

I think my background affords me the unique ability to understand the mentality and values of both bloggers and publishers.

The needs of one and the desires of another are sometimes at odds and yet in this day and age, they must work together to support each other. I am hopeful that I can use my knowledge base to further enhance the working relationship between the two groups.

As an editor for a New Media product that is integrated into traditional media, what do you see as your biggest challenges? Or how do you think traditional publishers can best benefit from a content source like BlogBurst?

Allowing people other than recognized experts to comment and offer opinion on topics is so opposite of what we were all taught in Journalism school.

It’s a long standing tradition that publishers define what is news and who are the experts on a topic. Understandably, being open to this kind of user-generated content participation goes against the grain for traditional publishers.

But there are some incredibly lively and relevant blogs out there that can be hugely complementary to traditional media. There’s a comfort level that bloggers and publishers must come to in order for it to be beneficial.

Then everyone wins — especially the audience.

[END QUOTE]

human dignity vs medical oppressors

2007-01-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

[image: "eye in worded wonder" by se streight 2007]

Here's a values and human dignity question for you.

We, being interested in core values, can now go straight to the inner core of life itself, and how predators, hungry ghosts seeking money and temporal luxuries beyond belief, prey on the weak and helpless in society. While the holy and scientific people sit back, doing nothing to stop it.

Is it okay to surgically desex and devolve a young mentally retarded girl? To make it easier for the parents to take care of her?

Is the comfort and ease of the caregivers a valid reason to mutilate and sterilize and force to never age, a young mentally challenged girl?

Deconstructively speaking, she is YOUNG, she is MENTALLY SLOW, she is FEMALE.

Her oppressors and mutilators are OLD, they are HIGHLY EDUCATED, they are MALE.

How many more strikes could be against her? The ancient domination systems which we have vowed ceremoniously to destroy and remove, are in full fluid force here, with the most vulnerable and unprotected of all human entities: see how the high and mighty pounce upon her and punish her for being FEMALE.

The misogynist dream: to annihilate the FEMALE sex organs and mammory glands.

The MENTALLY SLOW are prohibited from AGEING and from being a MOTHER and from being FULLY HUMAN.

Why aren't there riots and fires in every city, by rampaging FEMINISTS, human rights ACTIVISTS, zealous PSYCHO-ANALYSTS, gung ho CASE WORKERS, high falutin' PHILOSOPHERS?

Where are the Buddhists? The Muslims? Followers of Jah or Jehovah? Good church or unchurched or antichurch people? Department of Human Services? Where, for that matter is Reginald Mental Hygiene in all of this? Unscientology? Salvation Navy? Hello? Is anybody home?

Where is the outcry?

She was physically, barbarically violated...and no one rose to stop the madness! Nazi Germany here we already are, in Amerika! Ghastly visions should haunt your every sleep.

blogger ethics and honor

2007-01-02T23:26:00.000-08:00

From all sides it seems to undergo attack, blog ethics and honor.
From the slide of a strange misfit arche-resurrect, freedom's daughter.
And now the sway of all things comes to decide
If blogs can really be a place for truth to abide.

Abridged and forming spans, the recalcitrant glow of hands,
unlibraried from the very last to the drifting of the sands.
The pre-lapse envied by the dredge and the demands,
a mishap, mental prisms, that no one overstands.

what to blog about

2006-11-18T22:20:00.000-08:00

Ever sit down at the computer and feel like doing a new blog post? But not know what to blog about?

Well, Dave Taylor sent me an email newsletter, Blogsmart News.

I strongly advise you to sign up for this service from a veteran blogger, computer book author, and online marketer.

In the latest issue, Dave has the solution to what to blog about, for you business bloggers in particular. This can also work for personal bloggers, if there are any more of those out there anywhere.

[QUOTE--my email to Dave]

I think you could refine your statement a little tiny bit by saying it's also about Your Customer's Problems.

To blabber on and on about my this and our that, is indeed boring, in personal and business blogs.

People need to know about the marketplace, but they only care about the marketplace because it contains Solutions to their problems, plus general news and excitement about a field of interest.

You said:

"It's not about your products
It's not about your customers
It's about your marketplace."

[snip]

"The solution is actually straightforward: write about what's going on in
your marketplace, what new innovations are coming, what companies are doing
well, what customers tell you about their experiences, and, yes,
occasionally what products you have and are offering to the public.

Given that idea, how well are YOU doing with your business blog efforts?"

[END QUOTE]

That was my reply via email to Dave.

When you blog you could blog about what your customers, or blog readers, care about. You learn what blog readers care about by reading their comments on your blog, their posts on their blog, and their emails to you.

Customers care about the marketplace only because it contains Solutions for their problems, Answers for their dilemmas, Help for their lives, and Enhancement of a lifestyle or pursuit. Plus they may also care about news and various issues connected with a field of interest.

To blog about what's happening in your industry, marketplace, or field of interest is not enough. You must also share your own opinions and expertise, your anecdotes and experiences, your insights and information. Your readers need to not only be updated on marketplace trends and events, but also need how to tips and practical advice.

Share your knowledge and tricks, your observations and complaints, whatever might benefit your readers in some down to earth manner, or in a theoretical way.

We need hands on training, yes, but we also need higher level mental input, like philosophy and poetry.

attack the word of mouth buzz agents

2006-11-10T23:18:00.000-08:00

I call on all ethical bloggers to aggressively attack, flame, and guilt-trip the heinous Paid Enthusiast bloggers, companies that employ them, and the blogs that advocate it.

If you know a company is using blog-whores to spread Artificial Word of Mouth, attack those companies in every legal and moral way you can think of. If you know any bloggers who praise and advocate Paid Posting About Products, post harsh, critical comments on their blogs.

Not to anger and annoy, but to show a firm opposition.

Paid blog whores also are compensated for gang-blogging and gang-posting against a product, company, or person. You could easily be the next victim. I dare them to try ganging up on me, I'd love to show that what I can do to retaliate.

Check it out, "The Death of Adsense Meme":

Why so many Death of AdSense or AdSense is Dead type posts? Here's one reason why.

Bloggers are getting paid for discussing some Death of AdSense book or newsletter by PayPerPost.com. This campaign ran from September 14th to October 14th and apparently paid $10 per post. We have no way of knowing if it is being renewed for another month because and PayPerPost.com now blocks the opportunities page from non-members (we are not a member).

Aside from the ad campaign there is also some genuine discussion taking place. Some bloggers do think AdSense revenues could drop if there is too much click fraud going on or if Google is hampered by expensive click fraud lawsuits. Other bloggers think AdSense will continue to perform well. For some recent discussion of AdSense and click fraud see posts here, here, here and here.

Speaking of PayPerPost.com, someone has a blog (via Blog Herald) that is all paid posts from PayPerPost.com. This blogger loves beach wedding invitations and whatever else is offered on PayPerPost.com.

Our beloved blogosphere, our web of trust and credibility is in grave danger. Eventually, if this trend continues, we will no longer be able to believe any recommendation we read in a blog or online forum. You will never again be able to praise or critique any product, author, artist, or company--without everyone thinking you're compensated for it in some way.

I let companies advertise on this blog. But once the ads goes up, I am totally oblivious to them. Not wishing to embarrass any company, I won't give a specific example, but I have combatively criticized some of the companies whose ads you see displayed on this blog. I don't care what they think, and I never will. I seek and speak truth, the best I can.

PayPerPost, Word of Mouth Advertising, Paid Enthusiasm, it's all one thing: SPAM.

When a blogger promotes any item or person, and get paid to do so, it's SPAM.

When PayPerPost or any of the many other scumbags out there tell a company they can "leverage" the trust network of the blogosphere, and promote their products by targeting certain relevant, high traffic blogs and forums, with promotional comments, that's just dead wrong, and evil.

Especially when they lie, or refuse to disclose (reveal) that they are paid, and who is paying them to say these things. Paid enthusiast buzz agenting, aka blog-whoring, is unethical, even with full disclosure and transparency.

The issues here are so simple.

If you’re at a party, let’s say, and since they’re all friends, you ask the entire group if anyone knows a good dentist.

If a person raves about a dentist, you feel like you can trust his statements. But if you find out later that, though sincere and truthful, he had a two fold agenda–helping you and getting paid to hype the dentist–how would that make you feel?

Can’t we all see what is going on?

It’s the old outmoded dying model of Business As Usual, use the blogosphere as an advertising medium, exploit the blogosphere, leverage the trust that exists in the blogosphere, for greedy commercial gain.

PayPerPost is fraudulent, unethical, and marketing suicide. WOMMA (Word Of Mouth Marketing Association) is in the same boat.

It’s not transparency or sincerity that is the main principle here. It’s hidden or blatant commercial agendas.

By the time the stupid business chumps destroy the blogosphere with such pollution, we will have moved on to better venues for candid, trustworthy, altruistic conversations.

Does a company want to promote product in the blogosphere?

Then hype your expertise, give away free samples of something, help people solve problems.

Soon, we will have to keep saying “I’m not paid in any manner to say this” whenever we compliment or criticize any product, author, music band, book, etc.

What a drag.

core values vs. lonelygirl15

2006-09-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

Is it okay to lie, deceive, exploit, manipulate, toy with the emotional investments of your audience? As I see it, this is the main issue of the Lonelygirl15 YouTube controversy. Where do you stand? Do you care about the core values of blogging and videoblogging?

Do the values Authenticity, Honesty, Transparency, Integrity, and Credibility mean anything at all to you? Or do you side with such lies as Enron, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Watergate?

Jessica Rose was hired by a Hellywood talent agency to pretend to be "Bree" a 16 year old, home-schooled, lonely, apparently Satanic teenager (picture of Aleister Crowley in her staged "bedroom"), who was being prepared for a mysterious occult "ceremony".

Many viewers of her YouTube videos became concerned for her and emailed her advice on her problems. These emotionally involved viewers took her to heart and worried about her "life". When the truth came out that she was a fake, this broke the implied agreement on YouTube, and in the blogosphere, that You Are Who You Say You Are.

Why is this such a big deal? Because lots of fakers exploit teens, to prey on them sexually. Plenty of online con artists exploit people financially. We are sick of being lied to all the time by politicians, presidents, CEOs, bloggers, and videocasters.

Here is an transcript of comments under the video promotion "Lonelygirl15 200 websites in 2 minutes". Notice that the uploader's name is "phiktion".

I believe the LG15 project is to determine if YouTube viewers are easy to manipulate and if deceptive practices can work for profit and capitalistic exploitation "success". But ill gained wealth always backfires.

[QUOTE]

lonelygirlI5 (2 days ago):

righteous

nirvanaistheshiz (2 days ago):

that made my eyes hurt.

samet63 (2 days ago):

what's she is doing and sex site and wikipedia

harvesteroftruth (2 days ago):

This is an example of viral marketing....

vaspers (1 day ago):

No, it's an example of deceptive consumer fraud and false depiction of self. It's called inauthentic, pandering, and exploitation for occult and commercial agendas. Sorry to rain on your misguided and gullible parade.

codem0nkey (1 day ago):

It's called acting. Simple as that....but I'm sure you're not comfortable using such a short word to describe it, as it doesn't give you your false feeling of superiority.

vaspers (1 day ago):

Monkey with code all U want. It's called fraudulent representation and toying with YouTubers, pretending to be something you're not. Fictional Characters have been dealt with harshly in the blogosphere. Now the same repulsion is occuring in the videosphere. Go kiss Harry Potter.

IrishHitman (1 day ago):

Wow, somebody LIED on the internet, who gives a crap.

Obviously alot of americans do...

PS: did i see a GTA website there.

Edbrad (5 minutes ago):

What's wrong with you guys? It ALWAYS looked like a couple of film students. It was more than that as it turns out, but it always looked too thought out and comedic on purpose.

Its like if The Office had been released on the internet, of course the office isnt real and you can tell it isnt. But its guys like you that would get up in arms about it when they finially came out and said "this was just a film project".

vaspers (14 seconds ago):

You dummies, the difference between The Office and LG15 is that one is upfront about being Fiction and the other is deceptive, pretending to be a Real representation of a person and her life. Some of us still value the blog core values Authenticity, Transparency, Genuine Passion. We despise buzz agents who pretend to use a product and rave about it. Think: Enron. And Weapons of Mass Destruction. Lies suck!

[END QUOTE]

YouTube and business models

2006-09-12T18:44:00.000-07:00

Many young people watch YouTube now *instead of* television.

Why? Because they like repetition and easy access to the juicy scenes, the funniest moments, the heart of the buzz. So instead of boring parts of shows, and commercial interuptions, they get the best stuff, and they can watch it over and over again.

Interaction at YouTube includes posting text comments, uploading a video response (subject to approval), distributing bulletins, saving to favorites, ranking the video, subscribing to a channel, and displaying the video on your blog via a player embed code you paste into your post template in HTML mode.

LonelyGirl15, Lisa Nova, It's Jerry Time, Hope is Emo, Loren Feldman (1938 Media), and Cutiemish exemplify a business model working so blatantly we tend to skip over it: the YouTube Soap Opera series of video postings by a real teen, a computer animated character, a fictional human character, a rebel, a social critic, an outcast, an average person who revels in their average outlook and amateur style.

Once an audience is obtained, the merchandising can follow, and the loyal fanatics will eat it up, all of it, for a long time.

Betray, deceive, exploit, toy with, manipulate that audience, especially their emotions and desire to care for strangers, and you're dead.

LonelyGirl15 may be enjoyed by a devoted group of people who like her, even though she, "Bree", is just a scripted fantasy produced by mysterious figures who are evasive about motive, religion, and commercial agendas. But probably most of her fans will mutiny and turn their allegiance to more authentic performances.

The same core values that drive the best of the blogosphere are operating in the vlogo/videosphere.

The uproar over Lonelygirl15 is focused on Fictional Character Blogs being deceptive mind games that exploit and injure the feelings of actual humans who may become quite fondly attached to the character, and then feel used and duped. They emailed advice and consolation to "Bree". Now they think their earnest, heartfelt communiques were being laughed at. Bree is just a committee of oppressors, capitalist exploiters with a hidden and unseemly commercial agenda.

The frenzy and hostility is over the issues of Authenticity, Passion, Transparency. How refreshing to see the younger crowd rally to the same war cry as the early bloggers.

Is your company online? Blogging? Videocasting? Web conferencing?

Then you better be exactly who you say you are. With online predators, con artists, and malware, authenticity and honesty are fighting words in the videosphere and blogosphere. Cluetrain Manifesto and Gonzo Marketing made that clear long ago.

Truth and Transparency as you solve a problem or enhance a life style for your customer.

Let that be the foundation of your business plan. Don't deceive or exploit. Be yourself. Be upfront about everything. Anticipate flames and complaints, don't be caught off guard and then panic with denials and lies.

MySpace is so 2005.

YouTube is 2006.

Blogging is where you should already be.

Video is where you need to be going now.

web users get smart, reduce activity

2006-09-05T00:28:00.000-07:00

Web users are smarter, and more cynical, according to Consumer Reports Webwatch, in a report from October 2005.

Due to ethical problems, health concerns, and self-protective measures, web users have retreated back to the real, offline world, and have drastically reduced web activity.

"Leap of Faith"

[QUOTE]

Web users are demanding more of Web sites while becoming less trustful of them, and are adjusting their behavior in response to what they see as real threats online. In fact, almost a third say they are cutting back their Web use, according to a national survey and report prepared for WebWatch by Princeton Survey Research Associates International (PSRAI).

[snip]

For all online users, the report found that concern about identity theft is substantial, and is changing consumer behavior in major ways.

Four in five Internet users (80 percent) are at least somewhat concerned someone could steal their identity from personal information on the Internet. Nearly nine out of ten users (86 percent) have made at least one change in their behavior because of this fear:

• 30 percent say they have reduced their overall use of the Internet.

• A majority of Internet users (53 percent) say they have stopped giving out personal information on the Internet.

• 25 percent say they have stopped buying things online.

• 54 percent of those who shop online report they have become more likely to read a site’s privacy policy or user agreement before buying.

• 29 percent of those who shop online say they have cut back on how often they buy on the Internet.

[snip]

[END QUOTE]

Also see "Who Are You Online?" by web ethics columnist Angela Gunn (Oct. 2002).

lucid-translucent excuses

2006-09-03T03:18:00.000-07:00

Something that has been put here, and man has persecuted.//Freedom.\\We make so many excuses: brilliant, unarguable, endlessly proliferating, [words censored by superscripted under-text] lucid-translucent excuses. Result? The diminishing of //a good\\.

We sigh and change channels on the television, or hop to another blog in the blogosphere, but we don't change inside. The same old marketing ploys, the same hyped up pleading, the Business As Usual blase blues. We hear the troubled chords.

("Try my product."--no not that, but rather instead: "Solve your problem, enhance your lifestyle, increase your enjoyment of being alive -- by my product." whimpered in a Miserably Servile Customer Pampering system [txt missing from original source data] tone of voice.)

I w...[text illegible in the original document]...and wrote this brief, elusive, annoying post.

"You don't like how I'm dealing with certain problems, " I said surreptitiously.

"Are you trying to make excuses and exceptions to explain your behavior?" she asked in ironic voice.

I replied. "But something was put here, and I utilized it, and now there's a problem. The fault is not in the item, but in me, because of the perceptual framework of others. This is a sad and unfortunate state of affairs, a situation that contains only my doom, and not my release."

"[garbled communication in reference work]", she answered.

What was "put here"? you wonder.

Just this: //Freedom\\.

online loyalty via core values

2006-08-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Online branding, social media, ecommerce, and blog popularity are all based on one thing. Your manifestation of the core values of human communication. We hate to be lied to, ripped off, or have our time wasted with boring or unhelpful content.

It really is that easy.

Online loyalty is caused by the same qualities that govern any conversation: civility, attention to others, dignified discussions, personal boundaries, professional ethics, normative best practices, and consensus principles of polite conduct.

All your web site or blog has to do is identify and gratify needs.

All you need to do is respond cordially, authentically, and completely to reader comments, furnish fresh frequent content, and circulate in the blogosphere by posting comments at other blogs and forums.

If you must fight, be fair, firm, and friendly, even so far as complimenting your debate opponent. I was arguing with some stranger online about a recent Stephen Colbert roasting of President Bush video on YouTube.

The blogocombat got a bit stern and heated, but when my foe said, in passing, that I was a pretty good writer, he won. I felt defeated. He beat me to the blogocombat compliment, a sly and innocent way to win. Say, "I still disagree completely with your unfortunate point of view, but you sure type swell paragraphs."

Your online brand can be defined via blogs, podcasts, and web video.

Just stick to your core values and audience satisfaction, and you'll do just fine. I promise.

video authenticity

2006-08-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

I have been putting lots of my original lecture and music videos up on Vaspers the Grate. See sidebar link, soon to be added here, of All Vaspers Videos at YouTube.

A few fans have asked: "Are you trying to be avant garde?"

I have no idea why anyone would ask such an absurd question. I have to confess right now: I don't know how to "act" or "try to be". I have tried to be someone or something, sure. Back in grade school, a few times. Maybe once or twice in high school. But I'm not cut out for theatre or imaginative writing.

I'm very ordinary and prosaic. I eat regular lunches and grow normal flowers. I have not the slightest foggiest notion how to "be" anything. I just do what I do. I have been expressing myself in blogs for going on 3 solid years now. Why the sudden arousal of video apprehensions and visual hermeneutics?

I have repeatedly expressed the thought that I just am me, and cannot otherwise be. I'm not trying to be anything. What ppl see in my videos, hear in my podcasts, and read in my blogs and email is just me. That's all it can be.

I admire those who can seem to waltz right out of their ingrained character. That means their true self is temporarily artificialized and marginalized, while the false front goes to work.

Actors can train themselves to act like something they want to be, or need to pretend to be. I hear that some people decide to be edgy or controversial or radical. I don't know how they do it. I cannot decide to be some way, then be it. I'm trapped in my authenticity.

If someone thinks I'm trying to be something, I sure wish they'd teach me how to pull that stunt.

In actual fact, my videos are spontaneous and unthought-out. I just turn the camera on and go. It's the core values of blogging, but applied to video blogging (vlogging).

I must explore every dumb idea and profound thought. Every twinkle in the eye and wrinkle in the forhead: every inspiration and doubt. Make my esoteric blogopedic treasures available in human lingo, down to the slowest mind imaginable, all inclusive, with never ends.

The upside down head (in "blogocombat manifesto VIDEO") was a mistake at first, very sleepy, then I just rolled with it. I don't know how to be what you say avant garde as you call it. I just know how to get angry and defend the things and people I care about.

I don't want to be a JABHIV (Just Another Boring Head In Video). So I use creepy home-made low tech video effects and call it space shuttle phase shifting, because it is. I do anything but sit there and jabber like a million other vloggers.

Maybe some day I'll figure out how to be really, delightfully infotaining.

MySpace Unraveled book for parents

2006-08-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

Peachpit has a new book on MySpace available:

MySpace Unraveled: what it is & how to use it safely.
A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking.

192 pages, list price $14.99, copyright 2007.

Check out the very informative MySpace Unraveled review at CNET.

Dangers and opportunities are explained, including how the blogging disciplines (writing, editing, publishing, promoting, networking, etc.) can boost a teen's self esteem, provide practice in marketable business skills, and help to develop online socializing proficiency.

Blogs really can improve a person, and not necessarily lead to perversity and predators. Parents, teens, and business people need to understand all the many facets of blogging and the divergent blog platforms.

Social networking blogs are rising in the same blogosphere as the more isolationist, less social blogs of professionals, CEOs, and consultants. Thus, both blogosectors can benefit and learn from each other.

Personal bloggers can gain sophistication, ecommerce ideas, and promotional savvy from business blogs. Business bloggers can gain personalization, candor, and transparency inspiration from personal bloggers. As we support, challenge, monitor, and encourage each other, the blogosphere increases in value, power, and prestige.

Altruism, helping others, is the pure and primal heart of the blogosphere.

:^)

blogocombat is not trolling

2006-08-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

An online friend asked me today, via email, if I took "the minority position to instigate discussion." He seems neutral, so this is not an attack, it's just a question he presented to me for clarification of my style.

I do NOT intentionally express a minority, marginal, oppositional, contrarian, argumentative, critical, hostile, challenging, combative, or confrontational point of view.

To do so is a criminal act, called "trolling" or "baiting".

Here are my definitions:

blogocombat: online discussions, debates, and defense, thus can be friendly/professional, neutral/fact-finding, or hostile/emotional.

blogodiplomacy: exercising self-restraint, understatement, pacifying remarks, polite wording, and a tendency to favor ending arguments after an appropriate number of comments, from a few to many, depending on topic, host site preferences, netiquette, and honor -- rather than debating endlessly, thread-jacking, or spam commenting.

harshing: making very critical statements to scold, correct, or vilify an online foe or guilty entity, opposite of cringing, passivity, and civility.

trolling: cruising web forums, bulletin boards, chat rooms, blogs, wikis, discussion lists to incite trouble, to stir animosity, to make insincere but inflammatory proclamations to trick or provoke people into fighting.

baiting: making a statement, from hostile to supportive, with a hidden intent to lure people into a trap of saying an absurdity, revealing their true colors and agendas, or to deceive them with a commercial exploitation.

Blogocombat is a volatile, trouble-maker word, that many could misapply or misinterpret. Perhaps a better word is needed. The reason I use "blogocombat" when I mean a wide variety of online, and even offline, discussion is because I'm usually being attacked and have to defend myself sometimes, and it can get a bit intense.

:^)

why I am boycotting The Blogging Times

2006-08-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

Porn is not a core value of blogging, or of being a decent human being. Porn stimulates rape and viewing women as sex objects for male domination and abuse.

I had The Blogging Times in my sidebar at Vaspers the Grate. Not anymore. TBT has a banner ad headline over the title of the blog.

"Porn loving blogger needed" is the ad text.

I clicked on the ad to see what was up.

[QUOTE]

Porn-loving blogger needed

Friday August 18th 2006, 8:18 am . Filed under: Blogger

Notorious, rapidly exanding adult(all-male) studio needs disillusioned, loyal, intelligent, creative and peculiar personality for politically minded porn blog.

Send writing samples (please be original); a picture (doesn’t have to be nude); a resume; a witty but brief self-description, include your reasons for wanting to break into the filthy world of smut, what blogs you currently read and why you should represent.

[END QUOTE]

As politely as possible, I told them to shove off, in a comment I posted. Polite? Me? Heh. Not really. Just joking. I was as abrasive as possible. Forgive my French, but I was very irate.

Excuse me, I have to go delete my links to this crap blog The Blogging Times. See ya later, friends.

:^)

how to triumph meaninglessly

2006-08-16T22:24:00.000-07:00

A self defensive person is deluded by Normal Mind into thinking he has a self that can be attacked and therefore must be defended. This grandiose overvaluation of a figment of the body's imagination leads the person down the path of conflict, battle, and strife.

A hardcore blogger doesn't care what anybody thinks.

You post whatever content you think might benefit your readers, or whatever you feel like exhibiting: expertise, talent, anecdote, solutions, links, insights, art, photos, podcasts, videos.

Fearful enemies and jealous will abuse you, insult you, demand that you see a psychiatrist. Just because they disagree with your opinions, choices, style.

You must know how to bypass all that.

Triumph Meaninglessly.

You keep posting text and audio and video to your blog, for one simple reason. To irritate the player haters who demand that you stop, get a life, see a shrink, or turn yourself into law enforcement. You disturb the mediocrity. They feel a guilt trip every time they think of you. Every time they force themselves to involuntarily inspect your blog and videos, they loathe them. They must bully you into agreeing with their superior judgment.

If you don't agree with their bullying critique, it means you're "an asshole".

According to them.

They hysterically rant, rave, and rage like screaming lunatics, but you, who aren't bothering or bullying anybody, are the one at fault. You, the happy, calm, contented person, you must be punished. Your smug lack of self-loathing must be desecrated and dumped. You are too prolific to be tolerated.

You make them look bad, as they obsessively, insecurely compare themselves to successful and contented people. Like you, you asshole. How dare you show passion for blogs and video and RSS? How dare you feel so free to self-assert like you do?

Your joyous freedom, creative insatiability, and stunningly innovative productions are just too much for lazy Normal Mediocre Mind and the Kingdom of Melancholic Failure to handle. You're impossible to understand. They want to erase you.

But you remain you, and they fade away.

future of blogging is what?

2006-08-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

My jejune colleagues, ever seeking new topics to bomb us with, are getting excited about The Future of Blogging and Social Networking Sites.

I think blogging is still in its early stages, as most other pundits proclaim.

Are blogs better now than they were back when Doc Searls, Jorn Barger, and Dave Winer first began? In what ways?

More popular, easier to use, more functionalities, more options for audio and video. These are some of the improvements we've seen.

Here is my comment on a recent post at The Blogging Times.

The article entitled "The Coming Long Tail Tsunami in Blogging".

[QUOTE]

The social networking aspects of web services are to be favored mainly by young people looking to hook up sexually or sell a music band and its CDs.

Business blogging will be a way to display expertise and to generate conversations with customers.

I do not buy into the snake head/long tail debate.

It’s odd that few discussions of blogging and its future ever consider past technologies.

Either blogging will fizzle out and become the exclusive domain of hobbyists and avid communicators (HAM RADIO) or it will enter the mainstream of normalized communications channels (TELEPHONE)…or a type of blogging will evolve into a bizarre new form of personalized contact (TELEPRESENCING).

That’s how I see it, with my nose to the blogging grindstone.

...................

P.S. I like WordPress and Blogger. In defense of Blogger, it seems perfect for serious, non-tech communicators.

It is a lot easier to do several simple things on Blogger than it is on WordPress, at least the free version that Chartreuse and I (Corporate Blog Revolution - beta) and Scoble use.

I can easily tweak my template, upload images, add podcast audio and video player embeds in Blogger.

I don’t believe it’s very easy to do these things on WordPress. So in that sense, Blogger has kept pace with the blogosphere.

I also have foolproof comment spam elimination via easy comment moderation with captchas and delayed posting of comments.

In WordPress, you have to use all these different plug ins, and sometimes the plug ins are buggy, no offense Matt.

I recall hearing that WordPress was “not set up” to allow bloggers to access their template and make massive modifications, which I can do on Blogger.

I even made an Unblog called Jejune Jumpers, that stripped all blog functions and features from it, resulting in a web based billboard, a totally static page, like a magazine add. No posts, no comments, no trackbacks, no author, no blogroll, no archives, no recent post list, no About, no profile, etc. Just to show that a Blogger blog can be deconstructed and still have some web object floating in the digital effluvium.

[END QUOTE]

this is why we fight online

2006-08-08T10:32:00.000-07:00

As your kids enter school this fall, you're bound to hear various versions of the new internet nursery rhyme that's all the rage.

Called "This is Why We Fight Online", this strange little childish ditty contains an obscure reference to "clients", and the social media pundits are deeply divided as to the proper interpretation of this peculiar term, some saying "parents" and some shouting "peers", but no one offering any proof.

"This is Why We Fight Online"

we see grinding mediocrity
it sickens us
we see the con artist trickery
it withers us
we see sleepy stupidity
it awakens us
we see lack of creativity
it enshakens us

so we attack
we don't want our clients pleading
"give us some of that"
when we can see it's schlock and slop
and time to close up shop

Be Outside the Box (video)

2006-08-05T17:43:00.000-07:00

What is your business creativity skill set? To think outside the box, you must be outside the box. Not in it looking out. A sleepy delivery of a slippery subject.

To many, business is dull, dry, depressive. A vibrant hope can elongate a miracle mind, the dedicated employee.

Blog core value: creativity.

Vaspers the Grate
"Be Outside the Box" (3:12)

new avant super corporation: part one

2006-08-04T15:42:00.000-07:00

The new avant super corporation has moved far beyond Total Quality into Continual Improvement Forever. It has also stooped to conquer. Bent into a humble subservient posture, it stands poised for the ultimate marketing genius idea:

Miserably Servile Customer Pampering.

Here's how to begin: chew the Clue. The Cluetrain Manifesto.

According to The Cluetrain Manifested by you by your company.

[QUOTE]

They're constantly searching for solid information they can share with customers and prospects via Web and FTP sites, e-mail lists, phone calls, whatever it takes.

They're not half as concerned with protecting their data as with how much information they can give away.

That's how they stay in touch, stay competitive, keep market attention from drifting to competitors. Such companies are creating a new kind of corporate identity, based not on the repetitive advertising needed to create "brand awareness," but on substantive, personalized communications.

The question is whether, as a company, you can afford to have more than an advertising-jingle persona.

Can you put yourself out there: say what you think in your own voice, present who you really are, show what you really care about? Do you have any genuine passion to share? Can you deal with such honesty? Such exposure?

Human beings are often magnificent in this regard, while companies, frankly, tend to suck. For most large corporations, even considering these questions and they're being forced to do so by both Internet and intranet is about as exciting as the offer of an experimental brain transplant.

[END QUOTE]

CEOs blogging, videocasting, telepresencing

2006-08-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

Here's some real live blog discussion for you to chew on, if you want.

From comments on "Should the CEO Blog?" in which there seems to be some discomfort on the parts of certain CEOs, regarding blogging, a supposed "risk".

[QUOTE]

Comments

31 Jul 06 | vaspers the grate wrote …

According to the book Credibility by James M. Kouzes (chairman emeritus of the Tom Peters Company) and Barry Z. Posner (2003), people expect a CEO to be Visionary and Inspiring.

Visionary means you take do take risks. Who ever heard of a conservative, timid Visionary?

Inspiring means you try things, experiment, and risk falling flat on your face. If a CEO fails, looks stupid in a blog or video, so what?

I don’t get it.

I think they are lying to us.

The real reason a CEO would act clueless or shun blogging is: not fear of flames, but reluctance to really hear the unvarnished complaints, questions, suggestions, and critiques of consumers.

The best thing any CEO can do right now is start Video Blogging. To present a human, fallible, credible, regular guy type image.

CEOs are in dire need of reform and good publicity.

31 Jul 06 | vaspers the grate wrote …

P.S. It’s on page 14 of Credibility. The 6 most valued characteristics of admired leaders:

1. Honesty
2. Forward-thinking (“visionary”)
3. Inspiring
4. Competent
5. Fair-minded
6. Supportive

A CEO may not be the best blogger, though, you’re very right about that. He should be, ala Mark Cuban.

But anyone who has the requisite leadership qualities, and has a Real Passion for the solving the customer’s problems via the product, that’s who your blogger should be.

Not the most articulate, but the most sincere. We in the blogosphere have our digital senses trained to detect insincerity, con artists, and hype BS.

Let the one with the most team spirit, the most altruism, the most product knowledge be the blogger.

It’s sad to think that person might not be the CEO.

Hmmmph.

01 Aug 06 | Teresa Valdez Klein wrote …

Vaspers: I recognize that C.E.O.’s are supposed to be visionary leaders. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be cautious and planful when it comes to making important decisions about their companies.

I don’t think that blogging should be viewed as an “extreme sport,” to quote Stross. But I also don’t think that it should be a requirement that a CEO blog. When it comes to companies and the blogosphere, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

01 Aug 06 | vaspers the grate wrote …

The blogosphere began as a rough and tumble realm and it shall remain so.

CEOs who shy away from blogs are generally unwilling to be honest, candid, transparent, and hear directly from all types of customers and stray blog visitors.

There is great ROI on blogging: zero or near zero expense. But there is a time drain, but so what? Email drains time, too.

CEOs making important decisions about their companies? Blogging should be a trivial decision, like business cards and cell phones. No sweat.

Boy, these business people really are a trip, aren’t they?

01 Aug 06 | vaspers the grate wrote …

CEOs, all of the ethical ones anyway, need to be blogging, and video blogging, and preparing to initiate telepresencing (see Aug. 8, 06 issue of PC Magazine).

CEOs should be the leaders, the pioneers, in new media. But instead it’s their teenage children who are paving the way.

Risk aversion? Gimme a break, the poor darlings.

[END QUOTE]

virtual worlds and future mental diseases

2006-07-29T17:46:00.000-07:00

Virtual social worlds will spawn new online mental diseases, digital co-dependency, and computerized paranoia.

Right now, these Matrix-like environments are being explored by corporations, for virtual convention centers like Gnomedex, and by individuals for...for what?

Well, a creative business person might use a system like Second Life to simulate an entrepreneurial situation, set up a shop, and display their expertise and judgment.

But others might dive into a Sims type fantasy world...and never return. Like a chemical addiction, its seductive and illusory self-fulfillment beckons, beckons, beckons...conjuring up a helpless chump who leaves real relationships with actual neighbors and family, to drown in the comfort of a world they can control more completely.

Did you see that episode of Wife Swap, where the lady ignored her own family, shipped her kids off to a daycare center even, just so she could stay home and interact with her virtual online simulated faux family? Beyond sick, man.

"Become the first virtual millionaire" says a headline on this subject, over at ZD Net blogs.

Second Life comes to you from Linden Labs, Phillip Rosedale, CEO.

"[Big corporations] can't advertise at us, they have to play and interact with us." -- Eric Rice, Cofounder, Hipcast, designer of virtual convention centers.

Second Life Virtual World (5:07)
July 7, 2006 // Ch. 7 Australia "Beyond Tomorrow"

long tails and snake heads don't matter

2006-07-28T07:14:00.000-07:00

My contribution to the Long Tail vs. Head of Snake conversation, which consists of bewailing the development of difficult entry into the A List and the nice cash rewards companies can reap from the low traffic niche losers like me and 98% of other bloggers...

Here's the comment I posted on buddy Dave Taylor's magnificent blog Intuitive Life Business Blog, his post "Why Companies Can't Profit from the Long Tail".

It's the End of Stardom.

From "They Media" to "Me Media" to, coming faster and sooner than prophesied, "We Media", where the distinctions between consumer and producer and distributor vanish, forever.

We make our own books, movies, music, art, photography...and share it, generally free of charge, with other consumer-producers.

Some products, like food, will continue to mass market and mass produce. Most other items will disappear into niches and selective, consumer chosen and orchestrated channels.

We will get exactly what we want, when we want it, as much as we want, as frequently as we want it. Without advertising agencies telling us what we must want and buy.

Buy? Most of the stuff we share, give and receive, is free.

There is a Universal Democracy and Everything Free All The Time revolution going on. Long tail, head of snake, all this is nice theorizing, but the bigger picture is the real reality.

It's the end of psycho-capitalism and domination systems.

future of software

2006-07-26T17:06:00.000-07:00

Marc Benioff (Always On) Top 10 List

He then listed his top 10 tenets for the future of software:

* Multi-tenancy
* 99.9 + at < 300 milliseconds per transaction
* Scalability–1 to 10,000 users on the same instance
* Easy meta-customization transcends versions
* Standard Web services APIs for easy migration
* Mashups–composite Web services apps
* Replicated development environment as a service
* Application exchanges and directories
* Multi-application execution
* Write once, run anywhere

pleading Dieter to join

2006-07-22T21:58:00.000-07:00

Vaspers the Grate
"pleading Dieter to join New Reformed Insane Blog Media Network" (5:01)

"You don't want to blog, that's too trendy, and you're too hip for that. You don't care about blogging or social media. You belong in the future, you don't belong here. And your inappropriateness for this world makes us now begin to honor you and want to subsidize you..."

blog culture, blog values

2006-07-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

Vaspers the Grate
"blog culture, blog values" (2:08)
Introductory remarks on these twin angels of the blogosphere.

ethics of automation and self service

2006-07-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

I see a good side to self check-out stalls and automated everything. The bright side to it is the opportunity to have more control over certain routine events and activities.

Some, over at the Chartreuse blog, are sour about it. They feel like the consumers are being enslaved by the companies when they clear their McDonald's table when done eating, or use a self check-out apparatus at a grocery store.

"The Outsourcing No One Talks About..."

I don't think I'm keeping somebody employed by making a mess, so an employee will have to clean it up. Might as well say you commit crimes to keep the police collecting their paychecks.

I like all this Absolute Switched-On User Empowerment. I like to have some, or really a jumbo amount, of control over my experiences and mis-adventures. Doing it all myself, why not allow us to not only check out and bag the stuff, but also make it in the first place?

This is what could use some polishing, make it gleam: auto-consumption economy, which is barely any economy at all. Consumers produce and communicate to each other and the intermediaries are wiped away like chocolate syrup off your chin.

At WalMart, the self check stalls are usually vacant enough for me to slip in pretty quickly, while the lines of customers who prefer to be pampered by a human check out thingamajig cashier are intolerable, too long, too slow, too populated.

I prefer to step right up to a computer, scanner, optical recognizer, or what have you. Pass my goods before it, await its approval to allow me to buy it, answer all its questions about past purchases and future shopping plans, provide two proofs of ID, and dance a jig on the head of a PIN number.

The more we interact with the machines, the kinder they will be as they eliminate us.

Vaspers working on computer July 2006

2006-07-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

atypical comment at another blog

2006-07-13T21:58:00.000-07:00

From a Squarespace blog called Tech Whisperer, at the post "Building Credibility in Blogging"...

Reader Comments

(1) thnak you for lynking to my poast on ghost frost-tinglings cobalt-vaulted to relinquish that fathomable ball of polite indentures to Blog Core Credibility Values...

vTg on VpN

Vapor Network Frewquency Bouncer

July 14, 2006 | vaspers the grate aka steven e. streight

//

Post a New Comment Enter your information below to add a new comment. All HTML will be escaped. Hyperlinks will be created for URLs automatically.

My response is on my own website.

toilets and hickster businessmen

2006-07-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

Replies to telling local businessman that I can help with customer acquisition, sales, web presence, and direct mail promotions...

(1)

Me: "I can help you with your wifi and a promotional business blog."

Local Restaurant Owner: "Great, but could you also bus that table over there?"

(2)

Me: "I can help you gain new clients and improve your online services."

Local Hotel Operator: "Okay, but will you also scrub some toilets?"

(3)

Me: "Where's the second part of my payment for direct marketing services rendered?"

Local Printing Shop: "...[silence]..."

Bad Pundit exposes idiot politicians

2006-07-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

I just discovered Media Orchard's sister blog: Bad Pundit.

As much as I hate all politicians and political parties, and the myth of government, at least this political site is doing a service to humanity and the blogosphere.

Check out this great post "For Presidents Day: Top 10 Moments in Public Honesty".

I liked it, but I disagreed with John McCain being exalted in any way, shape, or form. Why? See my comment posted over there.

parenting and blogging

2006-07-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

Most parents are shit. I was raised by parents and I am a parent. And parents are mostly worthless. They, I mean we, are lazy, stupid, and confrontation-avoiding. Wimps and fools, all.

Why do I say this, in Blog Core Values?

Because I see parenting and blogging connections. We already know from Dateline: To Catch a Predator, and other sources of information, that unbridled blogging by young people is not wise.

So we already are in agreement: parents don't give a shit about what dangers their kids are exposed to online. They really bury their heads in the sand, act dumb, and say, "What is MySpace? What is a computer? What is technology?" like freaking numbskulls.

I demand that Parenting Licenses be mandatory. You can't have a child, unless you pass a socio-psychological examination, to see if you're fit to be a good parent.

Neighborhood as Day Care Center:

Example of why parents piss me off: a little 4 year old girl is dumped into the neighborhood by her single mom, and the mom expects the block to be the babysitter. What I mean is, the little girl spends all damn day saying "Hi" and "Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me" to total strangers.

I hear the little girl outside my window as I blog. I see her when I go out to work on our property. I usually have machetes, lawn mowers, garden shears, etc. Dangerous. Yet she persists in running over here, trampling on flowers, to bug me. I scowl, and yell at her to get off my property.

Why does this little girl approach strangers? I see it as a sign she has been abused. Her mother rarely shows her face. Mom is probably a drug addict or a drunk. Her child screams constantly, in a whining, selfish, temper tantrum style of wailing.

This little girl, at age 4, already reminds me of a psycho bitch, the kind men encounter in bars late at night. Always complaining, crying, screaming, squealing, demanding, grasping, fussing, griping. Psycho bitch, embryonic stage. Sad.

As a parent, you need to teach, entertain, and play with your children. If they bug you, don't unleash them out into the neighborhood. Child molestors are often an uncle, daddy, priest, pastor, teacher, or next door neighbor...or an unknown online predator.

Neighborhood. Blogosphere. Both can be very dangerous for young, naive people. You never really know a neighbor or a blogger. MySpace is a toilet of sleazy porn, but how about that friendly charming pervert next door? Most evil people are very charismatic and, well, charming. That's how they con and lure people.

Wake up, parents. Protect your children.

Net Neutrality: safeguarding our democratic internet

2006-06-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

As a blogger, web user, and internet-enabled business person, I champion the cause of Net Neutrality.

Listen to what is being said by smart internet defenders.

Net Neutrality on Center Stage

By Marjorie Heins

[QUOTE]

(May 30, 2006) - Washington DC-watchers last week saw a remarkable change of the weather on a profoundly important issue - "network neutrality." Energized by one of the most diverse coalitions in our recent political history, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would bar the telephone and cable companies that control broadband Internet access from discriminating in the provision of services.

Allowing the few companies that now dominate broadband to discriminate would end the Internet as we know it. If the companies that own the pipes - the high-speed cable and DSL lines that are increasingly essential to online communication - can block sites that they dislike, or that don't pay them for fast connections to our computer screens - then the Internet will be transformed from a dynamic, interactive forum into just another medium delivering shopping and entertainment to consumers.

Nonprofit educational, religious, and advocacy groups of every political and cultural variety, unable to pay for the fast lane, would be relegated to the bumpy dirt road under this system - if they showed up on our screens at all. Information about health, the environment, politics - you name it - would be delivered at slower speeds while commercial sites would zoom into view.

Yet despite these high stakes for culture and democracy, new telecom legislation was headed for passage without serious net neutrality protection until just a few weeks ago.

On April 26, the House Energy & Commerce Committee had rejected a strong neutrality mandate proposed by Congressmen Rick Boucher and Ed Markey.

Thus, the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement," or "COPE," Act (watch out for those seductively misleading titles), was sent to the House floor with only the weakest of net neutrality language, and essentially no enforcement mechanism.

A columnist from the Blue Meme blogsite opined:

Six weeks ago, the takeover of the Internet was so close to fait accompli that Big Telco was comfortable pulling off its heist in broad daylight. There was no real opposition, and AT&T and Verizon appeared to be on the verge of success.

And then the blogosphere lived up to its potential. Tim Karr [of Free Press] put up savetheinternet.com, and gathered ¾ of a million signatures supporting neutrality. People wrote emails and faxes to their representatives and Senators. In short, we raised the profile of the issue so high that the crime became (for the moment) too risky.

In addition to those 750,000-plus signatures, savetheinternet.com rapidly became a coalition of nearly 800 wildly diverse organizations, ranging from Consumers Union and Common Cause to the Christian Coalition and the Parents' Television Council.

Rock stars like R.E.M. and Moby began to lobby Congress; and last week, "National Day of Outrage" rallies were held in major cities.

Yet it wasn't only the public outcry that accounted for the Judiciary Committee vote: as several observers pointed out, there was also the matter of turf competition between the Energy & Commerce Committee and the Judiciary Committee.

The Judiciary Committee bill, authored by Reps. James Sensenbrenner and John Conyers, makes net discrimination an antitrust violation, which gives enforcement authority to the Department of Justice as well as private litigants.

Other pending bills, if they mention net neutrality at all, give the FCC (the Federal Communications Commission) the power to enforce, or in the case of COPE, to respond to complaints. The FCC administrative process is notoriously slow, and vulnerable to political pressures. Cases can take many years to get to court - if they ever do.

There are currently six bills pending - three in the Senate and three in the House - that address net neutrality. The Sensenbrenner-Conyers bill has a long way to go, and the danger of a total loss, or of a compromise that allows some form of two-tiered Internet service, is still very real.

Why is Net Discrimination Suddenly a Threat?

How did we even get to the point where a few corporate access providers have the power to change the Internet so drastically? This medium, which exploded on the communications scene not much more than a decade ago, used to offer a multitude of online access choices. But advancing technology combined with appallingly bad decisions by the FCC and the Supreme Court have brought us to the current crossroads.

Telephone companies have long been "common carriers" under U.S. law. That is, they supply the wires that allow us to communicate, but they can't control what is said, censor what they don't like, speed things up for customers who are able to pay more, or refuse to allow other providers to use their lines for a reasonable fee. This last requirement proved crucial to the early Internet, when there were lots of competitors vying for our dial-up business.

Thus, you could sign on with mindspring, compuserve, or other names that are now distant memories, and your local phone company had to allow them to rent space on its dial-up wires.

Then along came cable broadband, which was great for speeding things up on what had quickly become a very crowded Internet, and for handling large files, including video and audio streams.

The cable companies, although supplying essentially the same service as dial-up - just faster - argued that they should not be treated as "telecommunications services" (that is, common carriers) for purposes of their new business of selling high-speed Internet access. Instead, they said - and the FCC agreed - that they should be viewed as "information services" for purposes of connectivity, just as they are for purposes of the actual content they deliver to your cable TV screen.

The implications of this decision - the censorship power it would potentially give to cable companies supplying broadband service - was apparent. Seeking to avoid this unappetizing result, a federal court of appeals in 2003 disagreed with the FCC and said that for purposes of providing the pipes, cable companies are no different from other telecommunications providers. They must be treated as common carriers.

Alas, the Supreme Court reversed this decision in 2005 (the case is called National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services), and ruled that the appeals court should have deferred to the FCC's judgment that cable companies providing broadband access are "information," and not "telecommunications," services. Barely two months later, the agency gave phone companies, now also in the business of providing high-speed, or DSL Internet access, a similar exemption from common carrier rules.

Today, if you want high-speed Internet service - which is increasingly essential for business, for education, and for old-fashioned web surfing - your choices are generally two: either cable broadband or DSL through the phone company. If you live in a rural area, you are lucky to have even one, usually high-priced, broadband provider.

This "duopoly" - or in some areas, monopoly - situation set the stage for the net neutrality fight. In a competitive market, Internet service providers would probably not even consider proposing a two-tiered (or three-, or four-tiered) Internet - few consumers would sign up. But with the combination of high-speed technology plus capital that only cable and phone companies have, and the power to deprive competitors of access to that technology, these communications giants are now in a position to control the Internet.

It didn't take long for the phone companies to make their intentions known. Just a few weeks after the FCC relieved them of common carrier requirements for DSL, the chairman of then-SBC Communications told Business Week magazine that "there's going to have to be some mechanism" to get companies like Google and Yahoo to pay for Internet traffic to their sites. BellSouth and Verizon executives soon made similar statements.

Focusing on big sites like Google that are heftily supported by advertising is smart public relations for the telecoms, but it didn't take long for web democracy advocates to point out that subscribers are already footing the bill for Internet access, and that millions if not billions of nonprofit sites will not be able to pay the broadband providers for favored treatment.

The telecom industry's other favorite rhetorical phrase - "don't regulate the Internet" - is only slightly less misleading. Since all aspects of our economy are governed by laws, regulations, and government policies, it is not a question of whether to "regulate the Internet," but how. The FCC's decision to allow phone companies to monopolize DSL wires is one type of regulation. A decision by Congress that would require net neutrality, thereby restoring the common carrier principle, is another type of regulation - and one far more likely to secure the democratic potential of the Internet for generations to come.

• • • • •

Update: On June 8, the House of Representatives voted down net neutrality legislation; see http://savetheinternet.com/blog/ for a full report, and continuing updates.

For more background on net neutrality, go to FreePress. For information on advocacy, see savetheinternet and saveaccess.org

For background on the Brand X case and the breakdown of the common carrier principle, see "Two Defeats and a Silver Lining," "Supreme Court Will Consider Cable Broadband Access," and "Brennan Center and ACLU Amicus Brief in Brand X Case Urges the Court Not to Let Cable Companies Monopolize the Internet."

For background on media democracy generally, including net neutrality, see the Media Democracy Fact Sheeets.

[END QUOTE]

It's easy to take a Free Expression, Non-hierarchical Internet for granted. Yet, wouldn't you know it, there are diabolical forces trying to radically change the democratic, even playing field of the internet.

Some people just insist on elites, domination systems, hierarchy, privileged classes, and favored groups. They, to put it bluntly, suck.

Let's make them fail.

Seth Godin on blog comments

2006-06-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

Why I don't have comments

by Seth Godin

[QUOTE]

Judging from the response to my last post, some of my readers are itching to find a comment field on my posts from now on. I can't do that for you, alas, and I thought I'd tell you why.

I think comments are terrific, and they are the key attraction for some blogs and some bloggers. Not for me, though.

First, I feel compelled to clarify or to answer every objection or to point out every flaw in reasoning.

Second, it takes way too much of my time to even think about them, never mind curate them.

And finally, and most important for you, it permanently changes the way I write. Instead of writing for everyone, I find myself writing in anticipation of the commenters. I'm already itching to rewrite my traffic post below.

So, given a choice between a blog with comments or no blog at all, I think I'd have to choose the latter.

So, bloggers who like comments, blog on. Commenters, feel free. But not here. Sorry.

[END QUOTE]

I still don't get it.

Why would any blogger think they have to "answer every objection" or "point out every flaw in reasoning" that they get in comments?

I never write "in anticipation of the commenters".

While I like Seth, and consider him to be a smart marketing writer, I just don't get his avoidance of candid conversations with his readers.

But many good bloggers do not allow comments: Doc Searls, Evan Williams, Chris Locke, etc.

What do you think? Do blogs absolutely need to allow comments? Are the objections to comments valid?

I think it's mandatory to have comments enabled, but then again, I can see how a blogger might want to just post his thoughts, like footnotes to a book, which is how I think of Seth's Blog.

why does your blog exist?

2006-06-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

Why did you create your blog?

What purpose did you assign it? Have you ever thought seriously about how to measure the success of your blog? What goals do you have for it? How do you monitor the results?

If you say, "I don't care about results," are we to believe that you're an independent thinker who enjoys self-expression for exhibitionistic satisfaction, aloof from others, self-contained, not needing approval or affirmation, operating a blog for the pure art form of it, adrift like a dead angel on a toxic cloud.

If you say, "I want to achieve success, popularity, fame, riches, and admiration", you'll be cruelly disappointed, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do. You must blog for the benefit of others, to entertain, inspire, or inform them, if you wish to succeed.

Altruism triumphs over Narcissism.

If your objective in blogging is to improve your writing and debating skills (marketable skills), help others understand something, teach others how to do something, you'll succeed if you persist and never quit.

I'm quite interested in the Farewell To Blogging posts that I stumble upon. Like this one from Michael Martine, "I'm Back".

[QUOTE]

GoogleTube Video of the Day wasn’t fun, anymore, so today I killed it. I killed my blog! I had always said that when it wasn’t fun anymore I’d quit while I was ahead, and that’s what it has come to.

I feel sad about it, but I’ll also feel relieved to not have to post there, anymore, or spend hours searching for videos for it.

So what am I doing here?

Other than pimping WordPress themes, I think I’ll just use this as a regular ol’ bloggy-blog. The occasional video will still be posted.

Basically, whatever the hell I feel like.

I have no desire to post every day, but when I do, it will be because I’ve got something good for you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 8th, 2006 at 9:56 pm.

[END QUOTE]

Companies that should NOT blog

2006-06-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

Blogs are for ethical, enthusiastic, altruistic companies only. Businesses who provide a truly valuable, beneficial, non-harmful product or service. People with expertise in vital areas.

Arrogant, misanthropic, miserly, deceptive businesses have no interest in beginning a dialogue with consumers. why should they have to commit their callous lies and greed in writing on the web? they are not that stupid. no blog, thanks anyway.

Tech evangelism, and transparent pro-corporate PR, have been proven to be killer apps for blogs, as Robert Scoble and Shel Israel have proved, as documented to great effect in their book Naked Conversations.

There is "blog abuse".

As just another advertising, marketing, politicizing, or propaganda outlet, the blog falls flat. When you try to force the blog to be a super hyped vending machine, the intimacy of one-to-one personal communications suffers massively.

But the blog has an intrinsic character structure. And a blog has its own concerns to pursue, unknown to those who strive to overpower it.

A blog is made of glass, born transparent. Opaque objects stand out like a sore thumb in the blogosphere. Deceivers wither, shooting straight from the hip at a worthy target is prized in blogoland.

Ken Lay should delete his pathetic personal page.

Blogs and blogoid web objects are for those who wish to have a candid, spontaneous textual interaction with unknown others. Those who can handle flames, trolls, abuse, questions, suggestion, opposing opinions, and critique.

Only corporations and businesses, plus whoever else, who want a volatile communication exchange with the external web world need worry about blogs, RSS/Atom, podcasts, etc.

When any corporation acts stand-offish, reluctant, uncertain about blogs, and why they ought to have a voice in the blogosphere...

...it's a pretty sure bet what the Real Reason is.

You catch my drift, amigo?

is your mind been blogified?

2006-06-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

Is it? Your mind? Been blogified?

Then, if in doubt, check out this, from the Pearsonified blog:

[QUOTE]

Do You Think in Blog?

April 28, 2006

I have a confession to make. It seems like no matter where I go or what I do these days, I always find myself thinking in blog.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Does this plague you as well?

Let me give you an example.

Perhaps you're outside cutting the grass, or maybe you're in line at a restaurant. Instead of thinking about the task at hand, you're off in your own parallel universe, constructing paragraphs in the running blog entry in your head.

My MovableType stats tell me that I have 77 entries thus far, but I swear I wrote that many yesterday afternoon. Problem was, none of those ever hit the server.

Essentially, I have found myself going through my days, mentally "blogging" my thoughts at every turn.

So I wanna know...Do you think in blog?

We're gonna have to come up with a term for this and bust up Wikipedia.

11 COMMENTS:

[snip]

Comment #11

v[[-a,S;p/+E>r)S t;H'e %G,,r+aT^e at 3:18 PM on 06.11.2006

I have also invented or coined over 30 specific blogology neologisms, that you can include in your mind-blog reveries.

To merge with one's blog, become one with it, so you can no longer tell what is post and what is thought, what is real and what is text...this is mental deconstruction in the digital effluvium of the super-bloatospherical zoomorphism.

It's not real until I blog about it.

[END QUOTE]

I've already coined a word for it:

blog psychosis

(=)

I am bad business's worst wet dream

2006-05-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

You should see what I do offline.

Some say I'm harsh, critical, cynical even. But they refer to my online presence in this and other blogs. They are seeing only the softer, articulate Vaspers the Grate. They have never seen the real thing in real kick-butt action in a real situation in the real world.

Reason I say this is: I do try to practice what I preach. I attack. I fight. I proclaim truth and reason, against deception and hysteria/paranoia. I go up against actual corporate and religious leaders and fight against them to the bitter end, using every means at my disposal.

You can pretty much bet that at any given moment what I post to my blogs is a pale shadow of what I'm combatting in my offline life.

I'm in a new battle and just finished an assault yesterday. That was Phase One, going to the district manager to her face, and bitching for an hour on assorted sins against my business. I was hired to do a job, I did it, I stumbled upon some devastating behaviours by employees, and I am now considered an unwanted intruder upon protected turf.

Pay attention to what I'm saying.

I'm no martyr and I'm certainly no masochist or chump. I'm just the voice of a hate machine of pure and total war against liars, scams, hypocrites, molesters, traitors, terrorists, criminals, mediocrity, domination systems, and religious tyranny.

Sort of like Shelley, Milton, Dickens, Derrida, Lacan. Right, like I've got their brains.

If you get some courage and decide to make your life count, and you attack things that need to be exposed, shamed, and destroyed, you will be fighting hard and fast every hour of every day for the rest of your rotten life on this stinking planet.

I discovered employee theft, employee violations of corporate policy, and unauthorized computer cash register activity. I reported it. I am now hated by low levels who did me in. I will now fight back, as ethically, harmfully, and hatefully as humanly possible. All within the law, morality, and metaphysicality.

Shelley on government arrogance

2006-05-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

Shelley was a Romantic poet who was often in conflict with government and religion. In these times we witness massive insanity in the behaviour of nations and religious fanatics of Christianity, Islam, and other faiths.

I like Shelley because he fearlessly spoke out and proclaimed his radical beliefs.

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Semantically Correct speech

2006-05-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

There is no such thing as "politically correct" anything, certainly not "politically correct speech", so I propose Semantically Correct (SC) speech.

Political means unjust domination. To be political means to manipulate the masses to gain power over the masses and become financially secure, famous, important. Thus, anything that's political is always already corrupt.

Semantics is "meaning in language usage", or "the relations betweeen signs and the influence of these relations on human behavior".

In other words, good semantics is saying what you really mean, in a manner that will make sense to your intended audience, so they can autonomously adjust their actions if necessarry, for their own and others benefit.

If I want a woman to help me or listen to me, I cannot call her "bitch", for example, or "chick", or "girl" or "you sexy witch".

If I want a native American to help me or listen to me, I cannot refer to him as "chief", "how", "Tonto", "injun", or "redskin".

To speak respectfully and optimistically seems to be the underlying basis of the Politically Correct speech movement. I think most of us can champion and applaud that. But to gloss over real phenomena, to downplay a heinous crime, to sugarcoat a grievous situation is a troubling, linguistically incorrect, mishandling of the original object of PC.

Here is my comment posted to "Politically Correct" post at Mr. Angry:

[QUOTE]

I champion the underlying issue of Political Correctness, the desire to include everyone and to not make fun of anyone.

When right wing evangelical whackos attack PC, they talk about how "innocent" it is to say "he spazzed out", "fat guy", "trailer trash", "colored guy", "those people", "tree-hugger", or "weaker sex".

All these things are said by Non PC twerps with prejudice and White Male Patriarchal Religious zeal, as if God was a White Male Republican, probably American too.

So even though I hate all politicians and politics, as an Ethical Anarchist, I still applaud the sane aspects of PC.

I hate the term "politically correct" which implies you belong to the Communist, Fascist, Demopublican, Labour, or whatever, party.

It' more *correctly* "Linguistically Correct" or "Nominationally Correct" or "Semiotically Precise"...??? Somebody help out here, not you, you white bread cracker.

[END QUOTE]

Semantically Correct speech is respectful and optimistic, but not deceptive in phobic glossings, criminal coddling, or political bias.

To call an illegal alien an "immigrant", gangsta rap "urban reality", a static corporate web site "online presence", or an occupying force "liberators" is Politically Correct and Semantically Deceptive.

in the service of truth

2006-05-15T18:24:00.000-07:00

As bloggers, we get a taste of the new interactive social media approach to customer relations.

Each blogger has a product: his or her blog. Visits by your readers can be thought of as votes or purchases. They're spending time at your blog, and indicating their trust in your credibility and other values.

Sometimes you may feel compelled to state things you know many people will not like. You may need to say something that most people will not agree with. You may even know that your specific blog audience will not support you on this issue. But--you post it anyway.

This test of integrity can happen to just about any blogger, even if your blog is purely personal, whimsical, and mundane. At some point you may be tempted to minimize, or avoid altogether, a controversial issue.

Before you publish your opinion or statement of belief, consider what your intent is. If you wish to just blurt our your beliefs, because so many others are shouting this and that, you probably should refrain from expressing yourself.

Why?

Because to just arbitrarily pop off about religion, sex, politics, immigration, the war on terror, or some other hot topic, may not be worth it. You may only turn off otherwise loyal readers, and it's doubtful that you'll convert anyone to your point of view.

On most hot issues, most people think like their parents, priests, pastors, professor, or peers. Few people read deep books that challenge their prejudice and bias.

Then again...we must be bold, and tell it like it is.

Never flinch after publishing a controversial post. You, blogger, are expected to be In The Service of Truth, your personal truth.

Transparent, candid, spontaneous...you aren't hiding or deceiving, you're expressing your freedom to think outside the box, outside the political party, outside the normal mediocre human narcissistic mentality.

blog values vs. corporations

2006-05-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

In a recent post at my primary blog, Vaspers the Grate, I provided a running commentary on a Harris Poll on corporate blogging.

"Corporate Blogging: Snowball in Hell"

It seems that the ideas of transparency, candor, honesty, generosity, vulnerability, spontaneity, and reciprocity are alien to most corporate cultures and business environments. This is deeply troubling news for consumers.

Why don't corporations care about forming an intimate, two way conversation with customers?

I think you know why.

All they want to say is: "buy my product".

All they want to hear is: "love your product, help me buy more".

Good companies want to hear from customers.

Smart companies consider carefully what customers complain about and suggest.

Ethical companies reach out to customers with integrity and user-friendly products.

For the time being, the blogosphere is a realm with higher standards than the business world, but corporations can improve their culture by letting blogs set the pace.

Get FREE CompuMusik CD "the void blue human"

2006-05-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

"the void blue human" CD by Steven Streight CompuMusik is now available for shipping, and in keeping with the Anti-corporate Music Distribution Revolution, this professional music CD is FREE.

Just email me a P.O. Box or land address to mail it to, and I'll get it to you.

I consider this my magnum opus, the culmination of disparate tastes and lopsided perfectionism. If you like science fiction film soundtracks (Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc.), you may enjoy this sequence of electronic computer noise concertos...based on refined sampling techniques, precision cut & paste, and disturbing sonic filters.

You will hear sounds you never dreamed possible. Makes great background music for computer work, blogocombat, and poetry writing.

From the CD liner notes:

Steven Streight (composer) uses Audacity freeware for CompuMusik.

Streight was co-founder of art band Camouflage Danse of NYC (1980-89). CompuMusik was performed and recorded in Peoria, Illinois. Made in the USA.

This is publicly available CD #3, released May 10, 2006, containing 9 noise concertos, and entitled "the void blue human".

The only musical instrument used was a plastic musical snowman bubblegum dispenser toy (Hilco Corporation, 2004).

Other CompuMusik CDs: "Christian Noise Metaphysics" and "Assorted Sound Confusions".

CompuMusik: "Ambient sludge for interplanetary infotainment."

Contents:

1. burnt diode (0:15)
2. message from outer space (12:41)
3. rays of clean living (14:48)
4. nice day in the moon tomorrow (7:39)
5. discontinuum (8:53)
6. infinitude (8:54)
7. unnatural noise (9:07)
8. floximizer [power mix] (7:45)
9. de-filibration (8:48)

NOTE: This time, it's not "ragga junglist" music, like I featured prominently on "assorted sound confusions". My CD "the void blue human" is far less melodic, virtually beat-free, and will annoy and disorient traditional rock/rap/techno musicians.

This is sonic environment experimentation, ala trippy hippy electronics, and *not* sleepy new age, boringly slow progression, minimalistically trite, three-chord synthesizer sloth-crap.

Request your FREE copy on archive quality Maxell MusicPro CD-R...

...email me today.

content theft blogs

2006-04-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

Content theft blogs are blogs that merely aggregate the posts of other blogs, and actually take credit for these posts. Sound insane? It happens a lot.

I have a post called "secret depths of blogging" over at Vaspers the Grate. Imagine my surprise when I did a Technorati "blogs that link to me" search...and discovered some asshat using my post as their content.

"secret depths of blogging by Digital music download music shopping"

link to content theft felony blog

WTF? "by Digital music..." ? Hell no. That post "secret depths of blogging" is by Vaspers the Grate. See that link to my post, at the bottom, that says "Original Post:...."? That's a link to my post. But, although they link to me, they are taking credit for the post, which is only partially quoted.

See the term "digital effluvium" in the text? That's my original neologism, an expression I invented. No one else in the entire world uses that expression. I'm not sure what the purpose of this blog is, though I suspect it's a link farm "splog", or spam blog, a blogoid object that exists merely to drive traffic to other sites.

Do not click on any links in this blog, for they're probably malicious, links to spyware or virus attaching sites.

I plan to press charges and sue the blogger. I want to destroy this con artist and his shitty aggregator blog that rips off music-oriented content of other blogs.

Content theft blogs are usually, maybe always, anonymous. They don't have the balls to identify themselves. I have seen this plagiaristic practice many times, and this is not the first Pseudo Blog to steal my content.

take a stand against sleazy employers

2006-04-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Business leadership must be based on ethical standards and moral principles, not profits and success at any cost.

Many times I have abandoned a client, due to lack of moral leadership. I have had clients who have tried to "pull something" on me, or on their customers.

When you see something shady, dubious, or outright wrong, you have to take a stand. If you see exploitation, unjust or unfair treatment, sadistic domination, it's time to leave.

You may not necessarily confront the executive, and you may not be able to do anything about the situation. But you can sever your alliance or employment with the questionable company or client.

"Every one of us should therefore be ever vigilant, watching for those who choose to lead others in immoral ways toward evil ends--or moral ways to evil ends, or immoral ways to good ends. This vigilance means that it is essential that you, as a constituent, demand to know what your leaders value....

One way to recognize moral leaders and to guard against immoral ones is to observe if they engage in learning the true needs and values of their constituents. If they are more intent on telling than on listening, it is likely that they are up to no good....

Respondents in our studies consistently favor honesty, competence, dependability, support, fairness, and caring. Leaders should bear this in mind--and constituents should be more willing to take a stand against those who would undermine these principles."

-- James M. Kouzes, chairman emeritus of the Tom Peters Company, executive fellow at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.

Barry Z. Posner, dean of the Leavey School of Business and professor of leadership at Santa Clara University.

Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It
(Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, 2003)
p. 66-67

It's important for corporations to not only comply with the new post-Enron government regulations, like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but also to realize that greed, paranoia, and deception are not success principles.

When workers are afraid to voice legitimate complaints, or to suggest improvements, a business is doomed.

The old tyrannical "Command and Control" style of leadership is dead. Business must engage in candid conversations with customers and with employees. Blogs, used correctly, represent one way to achieve transparency, honesty, and sincere relationship.

teenage riot by Sonic Youth

2006-04-16T19:25:00.000-07:00

I'm testing the YouTube embedded video player here. Several other cool music videos can be found on Vaspers the Grate.

Are You a Blog Addict?

2006-04-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

I got this list from the MSN Spaces blog of a person named Hafsa.

http://spaces.msn.com/hafsa-hafsa/blog

It's his February 17, 2006 blog post entry.

[QUOTE]

"Blog Addict?! Me? No!! "

You know you’re addicted to blogging if:

(1) If you can’t access the site, you have a minor freak out -- and a major case of hitting reload.

(2) You found yourself composing journal entries during dates, movies, etc.

(3) When you’re out, you suddenly think of a witty reply to a comment somebody made to you… several days ago.

(4) You’ve downloaded some sort of program, which has only the purpose of making entries easier to write, without going on the site manually.

(5) You consider it a great offense if someone deletes you off their friend’s list.

(6) The first thing you do every day when you go online is check your friends journals -- even before checking your email.

(7) When your friends ask what’s new, you get mad at them, because you already wrote it in your blog, and they didn’t check it yet.

(8) You can’t seem to call your friends by their real names.

(9) You have written posts to notify people you’re going to sleep.

(10) You talk about your blog friends to your real life friends all the time… like they’re a part of your group.

(11) You’ve created a blog community, and people actually post in it.

(12) You’ve been recognized in real live by a fellow blogger.

(13) Instead of doing research, you post difficult questions on your blog.

(14) You’ve stopped being friends with someone in real life because of something they’ve said on their blog.

(15) You have consoled yourself after a horrible day thinking “At least this will make a great post.”

(16) You’re jealous of people who have more friends and / or comments than you.

(17) You have written a really great, solid post - only to be disappointed by the lack of good comments.

(18) You’re guilty of commenting excessively to get more traffic to your journal.

(19) You give shout outs to all your blog friends on their birthdays.

(20) You have an additional, secret journal that hardly anyone knows about.

(21) You have gotten mean anonymous comments (bonus points for figuring out who it was via their IP)

(22) You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends who are blog addicts.

Rampurple [at] Savior Machine

I can only add these:

(23) You don't watch TV, go to bars, or visit shopping malls anymore, and hardly ever eat or sleep, due to blogging.

(24) You feel depression and self-loathing when your syndication feed subscribers drop from a whopping 16 to a paltry 4...in one night.

(25) You feel bitter toward those who are considered A Listers, and you dream of attending blog conferences and cruises, instead of winning the lottery, or meeting Mr. Right.

(26) You tell people you're married...but you mean to your blog.

(27) You no longer know where your blog ends and yourself begins. There is no boundary. You are one unit, indivisible.

(28) You jabber incessantly about how you clobbered someone in blogocombat, as if you just won the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship.

(29) The only sport you care about is blogrolling.

(30) On the rare times you do watch TV, you fumble around with the remote, looking for the Add Comment button.

(31) You cannot read any book or magazine without "interacting" with it by scribbling voluminous notes in the margins.

(32) You won't accept any job unless the company allows you to wear your "blogger uniform" of soft cotton pajamas.

(33) Your site traffic stats mean more to you than a medical check-up.

(34) Your non-blogging friends and family members seem alien, distant, unreal, and they don't understand anything you say anymore because you pepper your talk with words like "feed syndication", "tags", "comment moderation", "captchas", "link pop", "Technorati", "Scoble", and "Mullenweg".

(34) You think the life of Jason Calacanis would make the most interesting movie you could ever see.

(35) Your tee shirts say things like "Skype Me", "let's exchange links", "blog you, pal!", and "feedroll it"... making people think you're a degenerate.

social media insight hot dog

2006-04-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

Social media, people connecting, individuals sharing their secret selves and public demeanors, vast field of flickering consciousness, brains lit up with waves of self-disclosure.

Stopping by one, a social media site, not a blog platform, but, like I said, a socmeplat, I fished around and traipsed accidentally across this:

[QUOTE]

Well let's see. I am a straight guy, who just retired after 25 yrs of Law Enforcement. I am very happy & hitched. I love to be nude and I love nude beaches & resorts. I like to be naked with others who feel the same. I really enjoy being naked with couples the most though. I served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

[END QUOTE]

free Flash blogs from flogger tv

2006-04-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

Free Flash blog ("flogs") are now available, in Beta, from Flogger TV, in Mexico.

Mine is called Music Cloud. It's under construction, but check out My Slideshow, if you're on broadband connection.

Common Cause tries to save the Internet

2006-04-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a email I received today from Common Cause. (MaryBeth, of The Desert Day By Day blog, alerted me to the corporate attempt to hijack the internet.)

[QUOTE]

Dear Steven,

Thank you so much for signing our petition on net neutrality on petitionsite.com.

The thousands of signers on the petition will send a strong signal to telecom execs and Congress to keep their hands off our internet.

Right now, we are engaged in a fight in Congress to ensure a fair and open internet. You can help by asking your Senator to cosponsor S. 2360, the Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006, introduced by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The bill would prohibit network operators like AT&T and Verizon from favoring certain content over others and double-charging companies and consumers for faster delivery of content.

http://www.commoncause.org/CoSponsor2360

Media reform issues are a key part of the Common Cause agenda, but we are also working hard in other areas: lobbying and ethics reform, money in politics reform in both Congress and the states, and fixing the problems with our voting systems.

[VASPERS: I am 100% against ALL lobbying, which is the most fucked up aspect of Amerikan "government", IMHO]

Visit our website and get to know us. You can also comment and debate these issues on Commonblog.

Again, welcome to the Common Cause community. I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Chellie Pingree
President
Common Cause

P.S. We know you'll be interested in a new report we issued last week - Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: Telecom Industry Front Groups and Astroturf.

The report uncovers the stealth groups set up by the telecom industry to fool Congress into thinking there is public support for the industry's agenda. The report has received wide coverage in the press, which you can read about on our blog.

[END QUOTE]

What is Common Cause?

Here's what they say in their About page.

[QUOTE]

Common Cause is a nonpartisan nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest.

Now with nearly 300,000 members and supporters and 38 state organizations, Common Cause remains committed to honest, open and accountable government, as well as encouraging citizen participation in democracy.

Common Cause
1133 19th Street, NW
9th floor,
Washington, DC 20036202-833-1200

History
Our Issues
Staff and Volunteers
National Governing Board
Common Cause Education Fund
How We Are Funded
Mission
How We Do It
Accomplishments

We must bring about a renaissance in politics...Does that seem inordinately ambitous? It is. This is no time for small plans.

- John Gardner

John Gardner, a Republican, came to Washington, DC to serve as the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat. Gardner later became chair of the National Urban Coalition, a group advocating for poor, minority, and working-class residents in urban areas.

During his time in the nation's capital, a city teeming with special interest groups, he observed "everybody's organized but the people." That thought formed the seed of Common Cause, which Gardner established in August 1970 to represent citizens' interests in Washington. Within six months, the organization had more than 100,000 members, many of them joining to oppose the Vietnam War.

Since that time, Common Cause has been involved in many of the most pressing issues of the day. The organization led fights for campaign finance reforms, ethics and accountability in government, and open government at the national, state and local levels. We joined with coalitions fighting for civil rights legislation, ending wasteful weapons programs and working for reforms to our nation's system of voting.

Click here for a history of Common Cause issues. This is an informal listing of nearly every issue Common Cause has worked for since its founding in 1970.

Please visit PBS for video clips about John Gardner and the founding of Common Cause.

Our Issues

Right now, we are working on several fronts to:

Increase the diversity of voices and ownership in media, to make media more responsive to the needs of citizens in a democracy and to protect the editorial independence of public broadcasting,

Advance campaign reforms that make people and ideas more important than money,

Make certain that government is open, ethical and accountable,

Remove barriers to voting and ensure that our voting systems are accurate and accessible,

Increase participation in the political process,

Make certain that our government is held accountable for the costs, in lives and money, for the invasion of Iraq.

[VASPERS: Hey, what the fuck is happening with the Iraqi oil? You never hear the MSM mention a single hint of this scandal. We invaded Iraq for the oil, and thus all the military and civilians who die, are dying in vain. That's the truth.]

Today, Common Cause is one of the most active, effective, and respected nonprofit organizations working for political change in America. Common Cause strives to strengthen our democracy by empowering our members, supporters and the general public to take action on critical policy issues.

[snip--text deleted]

[END QUOTE]

grim, glum, gloom

2006-03-31T19:41:00.000-08:00

If you pay attention to what's going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, U.S. Congress lobbying scandal, etc., there seems to be a universal hopelessness, defeat, disaster.

No browser is worth a shit. I have to use 4 browsers (IE, Firefox, Avant, Opera) to get any work done. They keep crashing or freezing up, or can't handle blog post format tools, etc.

Experts are predicting major vulnerabilities in Windows, April Fools Day cyber attacks, including email messages that link to malicious sites. An online Tsunami/Katrina is predicted, that could wipe out servers and even delete your web sites and blogs.

How does that sound?

Grim? Glum? Gloom? You betcha.

The world and the internet really are getting worse all the time, and the pace is escalating.

I predict that there is going to be a major shake up soon, and many web sites and blogs will be wiped off the face off the web. I hope I'm wrong, but the negligence of operating system and browser providers is incredible, almost unbelievable in scope.

MySpace predators, identity theft, constant futile wars, the list goes on and on.

So...now's the time to figure out what your values and ethics are. Now's the time to take a stand on morality, fairness, and altruism.

I suggest we band together, strike back, and foment peaceful revolutions that overthrow all corrupt systems, leaders, and institutions.

My favored way to force revolution to occur is by being prophetic via web and business analysis, by setting a good example for others, by encouraging the young, and by treating every creature, including spiders, squirrels, and birds, with respect and tenderness.

are get rich quick blogs a hoax?

2006-03-21T11:11:00.000-08:00

The difficult job of media-transformation and self-definition, ideal-propagation, is not a piecemeal turnkey operation, no matter how one slices it.

A direct mail template, a dirty day, it all amounts to a small pillow of change. Changing as we mend, winding as we weave a tangled web of interesting blase gizmos, clinging as we lend.

No one ever makes money with a blog. You make money with good, frequent, relevant, inspiring, instructional, helpful content, and/or desired functionalities, that reside in your web site or blog...or...portal.

In another ghost dimension, there thrive.

Blogging is nothing if not typing words into space. It disappears like a non-event into the digital effluvium.

Small Business Blogs for $999

[QUOTE]

I'll show you how, and most importantly, I'll do ALL the work for you!

Creating a successful business-blog WILL help you meet those goals.

There are two ways to get started.

One of them is to sign up for my free business blogging strategy guide and learn about why you need a business-blog. It's free (sign up on the right under photo).

Of course, if your business needs results fast, and you don't have the time to eliminate all the headaches and learning of starting your own business-blog on your own, then you can let me do it for you for only $999! (Valued at $2999 originally)

I take all the tips, tricks and knowledge I know as a long-time blogging expert to create you an amazing business-blog that will increase your search engine rankings, build awareness for your brand & skyrocket your $$$ bottom line.

Why $999? Because I know that's what you can afford as a small business person or career-minded individual who needs results fast. Read more frequently asked questions.

"Jim's work strategizing and setting up my blog has already paid off 10 times over. I continually get calls from people who find my blog through a search engine before they found my website. My current customers love seeing their photos that I blog about too. "

- Hal Stata, Cleveland Photographer Blog.

Order today, safe & secure!
Free domain name and 1-year hosting included!

It doesn't matter what kind of business you are! If you have customers, then you can benefit by having a business-blog that attracts and retains those customers.

Sign up for my free strategy guide and learn things like:

* Free copy of my ebook 'Blogs To Riches'

* How & why a business-blog can help my business today!

* What types of businesses can use business-blogs effectively

* Case studies on business-blogs that have proven success

* How & why search engines love blog content

* Learn the free methods of setting up your own blog

* Learn the right ways for promoting your blog and attracting readers (customers)

Sincerely,

Jim Kukral
1-888-BLOG-BIZ

Blog Training – Now you’re blog is ready for content.

I’ll provide you with a blogging schedule that will help you keep your blog fresh and full of content, and help you keep up-to-date with your blogging habits. I’ll also provide you with a technical walk-through on how to use your blog software, and answer any questions you may have at that time.

You’re Ready to Blog! - At this point you have everything you need to start your business blog.

Your strategy guide will already have explained to you what kinds of content you should be writing, and your training means you should have no trouble using your software.

You will not find a similar system and low-cost for producing as high-quality service as I am providing. I guarantee it. Order today, or call 1-888-BLOG-BIZ for more information.

Who Is Jim Kukral & Why Is He An Expert On Business Blogging?

I’ve been blogging since 2001, and have written, created and/or participated in over 30 blogs since that time. Some personal, most professional, and more importantly, all blogs focused on promoting either my own career or the various businesses I have been part of. All successfully.

I am currently the publisher of ReveNews.com, the industry’s most widely respected group-blog focusing on the billion dollar online marketing industry.

I manage and interact with over 30 of today’s top CEO’s, web gurus, and general web-trepreneurs who are icons of the industry, covering topics such as affiliate marketing, blogging, search engine marketing and more.

But I don’t just know about blogging. I know about business online. Specifically, how to make money online.

That’s why I know that you can use a blog to be successful if you listen to my expertise and follow my strategy I give to you. You will not find a similar system and low-cost for producing as high-quality service as I am providing. I guarantee it. Order today, or call 1-888-BLOG-BIZ for more information.

[END QUOTE]

"Every time I turn around, I find I'm shot. Every time I sit around, I find I'm shocked." -- PAVEMENT, "Summer Babe"

"The modern age is portrayed as a time in which individuals, groups, nations, and whole cultures are caught up in a process of technological transformation which affects every sphere of life and which pulverizes pre-existing social alternatives." -- Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology (MIT, 1977, p. 52)

web hoax buster: Webmasters with no mastery

2006-03-17T21:45:00.000-08:00

Friends, there is a web builders group in town, selling attendance tickets for its dog and pony show on how to supposedly make money on the internet.

The outfit is called Webmasters [dot] org.

When I inspected their own site, it failed in nearly every usability and credibility characteristic.

For example, to determine who is money trailing them, I clicked on Partners tab. I was greeted evasively, non-professionally with this stupid error message:

"Welcome to Webmasters [dot] org
Coming soon."

That's what this "money making technology" web site provided in its Partners page? Folks, this is so amateur, suspect, and deceptive, it's ridiculous. It deceives by way of the tab seeming to indicate the existence of real Partners, but if you bother yourself to click on the Partners tab, you are given NO INFORMATION about any "partners".

It's a hoax.

I clicked on the Become a Partner tab. Ditto. Nothing. "Coming soon." Yeah, right. More like "permanently under feigned construction".

I clicked on the Corporate Team tab. Same-o same-o. Not a drop of information, a big blank.

So Webmasters [dot] org has NO Partners, NO way to Become a Partner, and NO Corporate Team. It is just one guy, apparently, whose name is given.

But they, or he, or it, Webmasters [dot] org, does have a seminar or jamboree or snake oil sales show. If you want to pay money and waste time attending. Buy your tick-cuts now.

This web hoax busting was brought to you by Vaspers the Grate, home of fine web hoax busting technology and techniques.

Walmart Edelman & New Reformed Insane Blog Media Network

2006-03-09T00:50:00.000-08:00

My dear friend and ally, Richard Edelman is under attack for what was possibly a mistake. He did something with cut and paste bloggers to promote or defend WalMart, or something like that. I'm too busy to fuss with it. It barely got on my radar screen.

I know NOTHING about the case, yet here I am, being a "typical blogger", and doing what CyberGal said she can do: blabber on and on about something I know absolutely NOTHING about.

My comment on Kami Huyse blog Communication Overtones, on the post dealing with Edelman and WalMart.

[QUOTE]

Here I come patting Richard Edelman on the back, as my arms sally forth. Edelman is a genius gentleman of the highest moral caliber, and a marketing mind of great impact.

I consider Edelman an ally, a friend, and a collaborator. He has contributed material to my blogs and to at least two of my upcoming books on social media topics.

Now I have not looked into all this Walmart fussiness. I am against all "buzz agenting". I am against Paid Opinion Blogging, in posts or comments.
But I go to another extreme.

I have begun to launch the lurching New Reformed Insane Blog Media Network.

Brains, blogs, and castration blades at your service, sir (or ma'am)!
Highly trained psycho "buzz agent destroyers" will flame mercilessly those sissypants flamers and trollers who try to damage your corporate reputation and mission.

GUARANTEED Nervous Breakdowns: one flamer at a time.

[END QUOTE]

Asshat "Hoax Marketing" for idiots

2006-03-07T21:26:00.000-08:00

Wanker "author" and loser "marketing guru" Joe Vitale is up to his dirty, unethical tricks again.

I hesitate to even post this, because I don't want to give the turd any more publicity than he has already obtained in a shady, degraded, debased manner.

Anyone who calls their system "Hypnotic Marketing" is bound to be bad news.

What's next, "Spell Casting Marketing"? "Human Sacrifice Marketing"? "Black Magic Marketing"? "Bewitched Marketing"? "Put Unsuspecting Customers in a Trance to Make Them Buy More Crap"?

I sure hope not. Marketing and advertising are already insane and stupid enough, we don't need to add superstitious bullshit into the mix.

Anyway, here is an schmuck using lies and hoaxes to "market" his new crap book.

Do you think it's perfectly okay to use deception, false advertising, and guile to sell a product? I think marketers are obligated to follow strict moral principles and tell the truth, creatively, but honestly.

Notice that the "link" to "prnewswire" is a false entity. You go to a page that contains this "news story", but see that button in the upper left? It says "web site". Weird, huh? Guess what it is...it's the Joe Vitale blog Mr. Fire. This is so pathetic, it's funny.

[QUOTE]

Hoax Concerning the Powerball Lottery...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., March 7 /PRNewswire/ --

<http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/
stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=
/www/story/03-07-2006/
0004314712&EDATE=>

Joe Vitale, Internet marketingguru and author, confessed today on his blog, that he financed the recent hoax of the Powerball lottery as an Internet marketing strategy for his already bestselling book, "The Attractor Factor: 5 Easy Stepsfor Creating Wealth (or Anything Else) from the Inside Out."

"I hired Alan Abel to pull this grand hoax," admitted Vitale, 52. "Abel has been hoaxing the media since the 1950s."

When the Powerball lottery showed a winner for the grand prize of$365,000,000, the largest jackpot in American history, Abel got his friend, radio DJ Bob Pagani, to pose as an unemployed truck driver who held thewinning ticket.

Pagani walked into a deli, announced that he was the lotto winner and bought meals for everyone. The news media were called by a restaurant employee. Good Morning America and World News Tonight, among many others, did on-camera interviews with Pagani.

Pagani said he picked the winning lotto numbers by reading Vitale's book, which he carried throughout the publicity stunt.

According to Vitale's blog, it's all part of a three-step master Internetmarketing strategy to sell more copies of his book, "The Attractor Factor" as well as his new book, "Life's Missing Instruction Manual".

Step One is the stunt itself, which was covered by the Associated Pressand seen on national television.

Step Two will be to leverage the media coverage into book sales, which hasn't begun since the first step hasn't died down yet.

Step Three will be to turn the event into a documentary, as well as a book.

"It takes guts to carry off a stunt like this," confesses Vitale. "I hired Alan Abel because even at 81 he's the smartest and most courageous hoaxer alive today."

Vitale is no stranger to publicity stunts. He wrote a business book on P.T. Barnum's secrets in "There's A Customer Born Every Minute." He says he is a disciple of the circus showman.

"You know Barnum's name today because of some of his humbugs. You may know my name a hundred years from now because of this hoax involving the Powerball lottery. But for now, I just want to sell some books," said Vitale.

[END QUOTE]

We have to make up our minds.

Blog Core Values is a site that has strong moral values:

(1) Authenticity: this book promotion stunt is Not Authentic. The value of the book is not the star, nor the intelligence of the author. What is in the spotlight is a prank, a con artist's trick.

(2) Passion: Joe Vitale has no real passion for his book and ideas. If he had a true, burning passion about genuine, smart marketing, he wouldn't need to use a lie, a hoax, or a false story to sell anything.

(3) Transparency: Joe Vitale abhors this value, since if you could see through him, you'd see his insincerity and desperation to make more money. This is secret plotting, scheming behind the scenes, in the dark.

(4) Credibility: Vitale has zero credibility now.

(5) Individualism: again, if Vitale had this quality, to a strong degree, he could use his uniqueness to sell books. Deprived of any true individualism, he resorts to a stunt to attract media attention, to gain notoriety.

(6) Creativity: this hoax is a practical joke, not imaginative, just stupid.

(7) Originality: this hoax is imitative of other manipulative acts by similarly untalented schmucks.

(8) Relevance: the hoax is not relevant to anything except the clueless desperation of its perpetrator.

(9) Integrity: we cannot trust any person who thinks he has to stoop this low to trick people into buying his fucked up shit.

Isn't that exactly what "Hypnotic Marketing" and "Hoax Salesmanship" is?

Just tricking, scamming, manipulating maliciously?

I think you know the answer already.

turn everything into revolution

2006-03-04T01:22:00.000-08:00

Can you?

Try to!

You can do it.

Just simply look at all your habits, behaviors, thoughts, opinions, attitudes, goals, dreams, secrets...and question them.

Where did they come from? How long they been hanging around? How useful are they now? Can you really justify or explain them?

Look at your office. Your blog. What needs to be improved? What marketable skills do you need to obtain? Is your blog design old and boring? Can you enhance your sidebar?

Yesterday, I started adding Amazon Associates and other ads to my blogs. I wanted only very prestigious, relevant, and quality type products to be represented in my advertisements. I did not want annoying, ugly, or dubious ads cluttering my blogs.

I changed the design template for Blog Core Values today. Hope you and I like it. I still need to fix a few things in it. Like the comment field. And post title text size. Etc.

I love revolution, change, upset, mental catastrophe, existential disturbance, metaphysical cataclysm, personal transformation, and professional upheaval.

I enjoy challenge, debate, teamwork, progress, and mental evolution.

So I try to reflect all that in my blogs and in my music compositions.

Since I read somewhere, in Hafsa's "Blog Addict" list of symptoms, that a lame thing to do is to post about going to bed. So mark me down as goofy....

Goodnight amigos!

great internet myths

2006-03-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

Are you lonely and bored?

I could use a few seconds of your time, then.

I need someone to research, briefly, the following items that I strongly suspect to be FTP falsehoods, IT errors, digital doggerel, browser bull, and plain lying myths:

(1) porn supports the internet

(2) pornography is protected "free speech"

(3) DRM is the answer to RIAA and Hollywood problems

(4) blogs began in 2002

(5) most blogs are in English

(6) the MSM has a chance in hell of making a "come back"

(7) RSS is the opposite of Search Engining

(8) blog ads have to be ugly, irrelevant, and annoying

(9) Tom Peters, Pete Drucker, and W. Edward Deming are okay for upstart new start-up companies but too cumbersome to implement in large established organizations

(10) making ecommerce pay off is difficult

(11) e-cash works only for PayPal, and will not spread...ever...to other realms

(12) corporations need change only slightly and painlessly to survive in the New Share / User Driven Economy.

You want to occupy your bad self with trivia that could change the blogosphere, web, net, and whatever exists outside them?

Ping me!

Later, aggregator....

vaspy

P.S. You WILL visit CyberGal and post comments to cheer her up! Please....? Do it now, while you still can! She is about to be a famous podcaster!

reports of my "suicide" are a bit over the top

2006-02-28T09:53:00.000-08:00

Rumors of my self-immolation or despondency leading to auto-cannibalism? Not entirely true. I am, thanks to your prayers and substantial financial contributions funneled through one Paul "Tin/Blog-Basher" Woodhouse...who receives a small token fee for fussing with PayPal and PayPal Phishing pukes.

I have a plan for taking back my poor old Vaspers the Grate web site/blog.

But I'm too busy reading Catch-22, Gonzo Marketing, and Patanjali's Yoga Sutras right now to deal with it.

Plus, I'm frankly just not getting the Google Juice or Blogosphere Buzz that I desperately longed for, by going into hiding, fearing for my wife and family and new home, afraid to look for that dishwashing job I need to cure my frozen shoulder/geek neck/etc.

You want news and theoretical underpinnings related to the 9+ Core Values of Blogging. Me too. So why won't one of my loyal friends of this lowly blog SEND ME something to publish here...while I fight off irate IT guys in hostile environments, who know how to hack into and pillage anybody's blog, including yours?

Thanks. I shall return...with MORE...and MUCH MORE....soon. (i hope)

Quit spanking me (pretty please with sugar on top)

2006-02-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Will someone please tell me why Blog Core Values syndication feed subcribers just now took a huge downward spiral plunge?

My feed subscribers, holding steady at 12 to 16 persons, has suddenly dropped to just 4.

Is there a problem with Feedburner?

I can't think of any super controversial posts that have been put up here lately. Or is everyone just getting wasted watching the negative Morbid Stream Media coverage of the Olympics, and are taking their anger out on poor little BCV?

Surely, I don't have nothing but Mao Pinkos reading this rag, do I? Or frumpy butt business schmucks who are racing to eat China's butt hole to sell products in that crap ass totalitarian regime?

I'm so civil, polite, and freaking gentle to all my enemies, it can't be that I've alienated everyone with my posting policies? Right?

Oh well. I'll Google "Feedburner subscriber problems" or something. And I'll look at my Sitemeter stats.

Stay tuned.

CyberGal teaches me a thing or two

2006-02-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

I don't get it. How can there be two of me, when I'm no one at all?

I mean, what gives? And she's all the way out, er, in Indonesia, or Neptune, or Alpha Centauri (my hometown). I forget where she said she struggles to live. But wherever it is, there's something in the water. Or Kool Aid.

See, she last night Skyped me. I know. That sounds dirty, doesn't it? Well, that's just your filthy thought life rearing its ugly decapitated head again.

Anyway, as she Skyped me, I learned that there are two ways to deal with online detractors, abusive commenters, and general rabble rousers at your site...

CyberGal Anti-Flame Tips:

(1) Rant endlessly on the topic, even if you know absolutely *nothing* about it.

Quote: "I can jabber forever on any topic. I have strong opinions about every single thing in the universe, and it doesn't matter if I don't have a clue as to what I'm talking about, or if I'm using correct protocols and terminology."

(2) Use foreign language sentences in reply to flames.

She gave me two French sentences, taken from her Mac translator program thingamajig. You can see how I used them over at A Jack of All Blogs.

One is the French version of "I'm sorry, I was cleaning out my sock drawer, what did you say?"

The other is the French version of "You may not be full of crap, but you still smell bad anyway."

[EDITOR: Deep link post comment URLs will be provided shortly, in this post.]

CONCLUSION: Don't mess with this lady. She'll devour your empty head while she forces you to polish her storm trooper boots. Spit polish. Very shiney.

Pure and utter freaking genius.

I...am...deeply...humbled...and grateful. She's not too shabby of a Skyper, too.

:^)

Miserably Servile Customer Pampering: intro

2006-02-19T12:43:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard of MSCP?

Of course you haven't. I just now decided to reveal it.

Miserably Servile Customer Pampering, or MSCP, is a fool-proof form of groveling that is guaranteed to increase sales, consumer satisfaction, and headaches for any company.

All you have to do is bend over backwards, and turn heaven and earth upside down for every customer request.

I learned this at Boring Pseudo-Christian Bookstores International, a mediocrely successful enterprise.

They give you an antiquated computer to look up products for special orders. The database is not updated in a timely manner. The search program is sluggish, and extremely problematic.

You type in the "Artist Name" and, for say Michael W. Smith, you get 3,012 hits. His album CDs, songbooks, accompaniment tracks, singles CDs, etc., everything he's ever done.

The program always dumps you somewhere within this file, then you have to press P for previous or N for next, then Enter, over and over and over again, to find the randomized, non-alphabeticized entry you are seeking, like "Friends" AC (accompaniment track CD, churchy people sing along with it in a church gathering).

Well, now. When a customer asks for the item, and you don't have it, you say: "Like me to special order it for you?" You hope they say no. Your Music Manager instructed you to just send them to Barnes & Noble. But you know that is unprofitable for the store, and the customer gives you that critical look, and says, "Yes."

MSCP dictates that you oblige.

You search and search for it. Can't find it. You do another search, on other branches, then on distributors, and finally, on the manufacturer. Still no luck.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," you say sweetly. "It says, see?, that the UPC number is invalid. This means that not only does no store have it, nor any distributor, but also it is out of print."

You, in obedience to MSCP, and the Music Manager, suggest they try Barnes & Noble, All That Matters, A Christ-Centered Store, Zondervan Bookstore, Thomas Nelson Outlet Shop, eBay, Goodwill, Southside Mission Mart, Lagron Miller, The Family Resource Center, or the artist/record company web site.

You do everything you can to keep the customers happy and satisfied. Even if it means driving business to your heartlessly ruthless, but more organized and efficient, competitors.

Even if they don't believe you, about the item being "out of print", and think you have a personal vendetta against them, at least you conformed to the terrific MSCP system of customer relations.

The one drawback to Miserably Servile Customer Pampering is this: your customers become hardened complainers anyway. And they start to enjoy watching you fawn all over them as you use broken computer configurations to solve their miniscule, insignificant problems.

It tends to make customers more sadistic and demanding than they already are. But that's life...and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Meet Vernon: death row proxy blogger

2006-02-17T00:25:00.000-08:00

Meet Vernon

http://meetvernon.blogspot.com

is a "proxy" blog of a death row inmate.

Proxy Blog means you email questions to his representative, they forward messages to Vernon, and his replies are posted to his blog by his representative.

China Sucks: torture, etc. of Falun Gong

2006-02-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

Here's another reason why the Communist government of China, and the people who will not rise up against it and overthrow it, SUCK.

"China's fight with Falun Gong"

http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/09/falun-gong-china_cz_rm_0209falungong.html

Chinese government is torturing and imprisoning peaceful citizens.

I've watched a Falun Gong video from the local library. It used overt hypnotic techniques. The cult leader said: "I'm going to now deposit within you a [something mystical, like an inner mantra mechanism] so that you will always automatically be practicing Falun Gong Buddhism, even while you work and sleep." (my paraphrase, but very close to actual quote)

Falun Gong leader will implant a mystical "device" within me? No thanks. Stupid.

Yet, I defend their right to free expression, functioning web sites, and freedom of association. Paranoid Commie China government wishes only to repress.

Tech Republic on Firefox problems

2006-02-15T00:54:00.000-08:00

"Firefox has problems"

http://techrepublic.com.com/
5253-6257-0-1.html?id=4178302

I copy and pasted that post URL, but it will not work. Anybody explain that to me?

Just go to TechRepublic Blog

http://techrepublic.com.com

and click-select "Firefox has problems" from Latest Articles list.

Seems I'm not the only one to temporarily ditch the plagued new Firefox browser. It keeps crashing when I attempt to visit my Gmail account.

The comment posters to this TechRepublic Blog post have some other observations pertaining to "Default" error messages, Control Alt Delete to get download manager, problems with dl overload, etc.

Increase comments with comment post blitz

2006-02-15T00:30:00.000-08:00

Not getting many comments on your blog?

Here's just about the best cure there is: a comment post blitz.

A blitz is a sudden-onset, overwhelming onrush of aggression or benevolent activity, a shock and awe wave of tsunami proportions and laser perforations. It means a massive attack, a huge campaign, sprawling almost out of control, with incredible precision and impact.

So, go post comments on about 40 to 100 blogs, starting with blogs of those who have posted comments on your blog ("reciprocal commenting"), then blogs you've already posted comments on in the past, then to whatever blogs you have on your blogroll, and so on and on and on.

If you post comments on that many blogs, 40 to 100, and the comments are good, I guarantee you'll get some comments on your blog.

Just make sure your comments are (1) relevant, (2) smart, (3) interesting, (4) well written, (5) funny or profound or anecdotally clever, (6) brief as possible, (7) not spammy, not embedding a link to one of your posts, (8) not self-serving, (9) tailored to that blog's audience and atmosphere, (10) assertive, (11) friendly, (12) helpful, (13) insightful, (14) complimentary.

Your hate posts may pin a crime on you

2006-02-13T06:34:00.000-08:00

Blogs and murder are intimately connected, and we can be glad.

Stupid bloggers, who happen to be pychopathic killers, are blabbering all their thoughts and feelings on their blogs.

Law enforcement officials are happy that personal trivia bloggers post so much on their blogs.

They say that blogs are a series of snapshots of a person's inner self. Regardless of how much is strictly factual, a personal trivia blog can provide "motive", "key witnesseses", "intent", and many other clues that can help solve serious crimes.

Also, victims are leaving blog posts behind, posts that contain clues or direct references to those who seemed to wish harm to the blogger, like an alcoholic ex-boyfriend or a vengeful neighbor. Bloggers use such little discrimination when posting, they are a goldmine of criminal investigation information.

So, the next time you feel like venting, expressing your loathing for a person, for example, just hope nobody kills that person any time soon. Because, if your blog contains probable motive, you may be a suspect. And many who are in prison are innocent, as DNA tests and other evidence have proven.

So, even if you're Not Guilty, you might still accidentally be convicted, based on what you write in your blog.

"Killers, victims post their thoughts on personal Web pages"

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/
259237_webpages13.html

Your blog is selling you

2006-02-12T18:17:00.000-08:00

Your blog is a sales tool.

NO--I don't mean you are selling, or could sell, products on it.

I mean, your blog sells YOU...with every post, every sidebar enhancement, and every new design.

You're selling your humor, expertise, style, content, presentation, information, personality, human warmth, altruism, compassion, and other reader benefits--like links to cool sites and safe downloads.

You're in sales if you deal with people in any way at all. We are all sales professionals, by default, by being social creature. You could do worse than to study a sales professional's book on how to sell. It could improve your situation at work, at home, and among friends.

Sales is simply being mindful of words, feelings, and needs. Being scientifically, almost Buddhistically, attentive to the powers and effects of direct communication. Knowing more about good sales techniques can help your blog. Your blog is a store selling opinions, news, links, or expertise.

Sales is just street smarts, hardened psychology. Selling is guiding another's actions in regard to their money purse. It's getting them to open the gates and allow some treasures to flow your way.

Dating is a sales relationship. So is parenting. Children must be "sold" on your authority, integrity, and reliability.

Blogging also is sales. Your blog is working hard to sell you and your opinions or know-how to an audience of readers.

RECOMMENDED READING:

How to Master the Art of Selling
by Tom Hopkins
(Warner Books, 1982)

Exo-blog promo: be an expert

2006-02-09T16:18:00.000-08:00

Are you an expert? Is your blog your way of displaying your skills, ideas, scholarship, proficiency?

Here is an "exo-blog" strategy, something you can do outside the blogosphere, to promote your expertise.

Listen to direct marketing specialist, and blogger, Robert Bly in his book Selling Your Services (Henry Holt, 1991, p.76)...

Other service providers position themselves as experts by sending letters to editors that say, in essence, "I am an expert in so-and-so subject, and I am very open to being interviewed by the media. So if you ever do a story on so-and-so subject, and need information, feel free to call me."
+
The strategy here is to offer yourself as a source.
Many editors and reporters are not experts in the topics they write about, and are in constant need of experts they can interview--frequently on a moment's notice.
+
If you have expertise in a subject they cover, and are cooperative and available when they need you, they'll interview you.
+
The benefit? You get quoted as an expert source in the article, your name is given visibility, and you become known as an authority in your field.
+
When mailing such a letter...include a printed Rolodex card the reporter or editor can keep on file....
+
When being interviewed, always have some free booklet or brochure [or URL to announce] to offer listeners, and make sure you give your name and address [email and blog/site URL, Skype name], so listeners can contact you to receive your material. ...clear this with the host or interviewer before you go on.

[END QUOTE]

Thanks for sharing this great tip in your book, Robert. Hope people buy it now that I've mentioned it.

bloggers are revolutionists

2006-02-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

You are not random pieces of amphibian crud.

You, blogger, are a living act of aggression against Global Mind Control.

You, blogger, are a continuous behavioral pattern of deconstruction of your personality, your faith, your feelings, your own opinions. You hate and persecute anything that threatens Free Speech, Free Food, and Free Music.

Speaking of music, it can soothe and it can also give you that kick in the rump we all need from time to time. I listen to protest music of every stripe I can find, except white supremacy, misanthropy, or religious intolerance cultism, and crank it up.

The harder the better. You know: Noize Punishment, Ambassador 21, Atari Teenage Riot, Skin Chamber, Tourniquet, Attrition, Techno Animal, Bob Dylan.

You can feel the Passion, Angst, Pain, Anguish coming through the music.

If you don't listen to some purely violent music now and then, and I mean really violent in every possible musical way, I ask you: where's yr Passion?

Skip the soft stuff and go for the gusto once in a while. It might light a fire where only a soggy mess sits now.

You, Guy-blogger or She-blogger, are a Revolutionist. You already know till your ready to puke that this is a Blog Revolution, Information Catastrophe, Communications Mutiny.

Look upward.

Domination Systems have left the building. The universal electro-telepathic realm we call The Blogosphere: it's ours now and maybe for a while longer.

You quit your whining and weeping about no comments, no link popularity, no reason to go on blogging. I fired the violin players long ago. No droopy drippings allowed.

Either blog until your head falls off, or get out.

Stick with your creative insights

2006-02-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

Listen to, or see and read, what Harvey MacKay says about creativity and book titles. This is quoted from a print book, but it reads like a sharp-tongued, pajama clad blogger, does it not?

My point here is that the anecdote is written concisely, it reads quickly.

Blog readers are always in a hurry. So keep your posts, post titles, paragraphs, descriptions brief, not verbose or prolix.

Don't be afraid to be creative, break some rules for shock effect, doing the opposite of what you and millions of others are "supposed" to do, don't refrain from sometimes using wild titles and zealous language.

You defend your country, your family, your faith.

Why not also defend your creative impulses? Don't give up. Keep blogging and whatever else you do. Stick with your creative insights. They may make you rich some day...if you persist and ignore setbacks.

Harvey MacKay

Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt
(William Morrow, 1990) p. 78, 79

[QUOTE]

"When I wrote my first book, my contract with my publisher, William Morrow, read that the title had to be "mutually agreeable." It wasn't. The publisher did not like the title I'd submitted, How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.

One, it was too long.

Two, it didn't tell the reader what the book was about.

Three,it was confusing. The casual reader would think it was about skin-diving.

Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. They didn't like it. They didn't like it. They didn't like it.

It sounded weird for a business book. Business book titles should tell you ten ways to do something....

I hired the firm of Janz/Abrahamson to conduct market research on the title. They had a dozen creative people read a fifty-page excerpt from the book; then they conducted focus groups.

The participants came up with a list of eight hundred (800) additional titles to choose from and were not told which one I had chosen. They picked How to Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive as their number one (#1) choice.

I went back to Morrow armed with the most powerful weapon you can possess in any negotiation: superior information.

And finally reached a mutual agreement, just as the contract read. I got Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. They got to delete How to.

[END QUOTE]

Do your customers WANT a conversation?

2006-02-08T01:13:00.000-08:00

In the frenzy of relationship marketing, customer development, dialogic communications, and corporate-consumer conversation zones, are we sure our customers really want this?

How do you *know* that your customers want to engage in mutual interaction? Some industries are not set up that way. If you've ever worked in retail, you know some customers don't want to be disturbed. They don't want any help, they're not looking for assistance, they don't feel like talking. But still, they may be shopping and buying.

"What if the customer never wished to be in a 'relationship' with the organization in the first place? Just because an organization has decided to change to a relationship marketing strategy, this does not mean that customers will also make the shift to the same extent, if at all.

Customers may actually desire a one-way marketing relationship in which they do not have to expend any effort in building and maintaining the relationship, believing that it is up to the supplying organization if it wants to retain their custom....A company may then find itself in the uneconomic position of having to run with both transactional and relationship-building policies for different customer groups."

--Lisa Harris and Charles Dennis,
Marketing the e-Business
(Routledge, 2002), p. 165.

Electro Telepathic Planet

2006-02-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

My email message today to Christa N. Hines, University of Nebraska, Omaha, School of Communication. She mentions her interest in corporate blogging and Dialogic Communications. I thought it might be nice to share my reply to her.

[QUOTE--my email to Christa]

Do you have a blog? You ought to. You need to get flamed, trolled, abused, out-debated, sleaze-linked, comment spammed, trackback spammed, and all the other nuances of the nightmare of anarchy bloggging. I love it. I especially, as a CEO and marketing consultant blogger, I love negative hateful comments directed against me.

Negative comments confront, prod, provoke, evolve you. You grow in blogocombat finesse, thinking and debating skills. I got flamed like crazy for my "Against RSS" blog post of about a year ago. Now I'm a radical RSS advocate and learner of its esoteric and exoteric indugences.

You a writer? Then write weirdly. Be totally unique, be more like yourself than anybody else.

The corporate conversation is the new revolution, social media, web hybrids, power to the people and the invasion of Post-Enron audit reformations and quantum leap innovations.

Businesses that listen to and respond favorably to customers will be the only ones left standing in a few years.

And the lucky remnant will be fighting each other mercilessly with electro-telepathic advances.

When our biological dreamworlds start connecting with each other, via electro-tranmissable neuro-exchangers, even the machines will be in trouble.

The world in a word: a giant robot, inevitable unreal servo-mechanism insurgencies. Automaton Mutiny. Viva Virtual. Dead On Digital. The Humachine. The Robocorporation. Machines talking to each other. Eavesdropping on us.

Blogs, IM, wikis, glogs, etc. assist humans in navigating nature and virtuality, which is replacing nature, and eventually us.

See my "Not against flesh and blood, but robots" for why we must continue to form connnections and conversations with customers, family, clients, colleagues, mentors, proteges, the global turned-on, frenzy-interactive, hooked-up village of Electro-Earth [electro-telepathic planet].

You can use my Search Site function or my sidebar categories to find some relevant articles.

[END QUOTE]

vaspers the grate

Sign up now Krugle web dev SE

2006-02-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

Via Christopher Locke's EGR newsletter: Krugle the Developer's Search Engine, beta launching in early March 2006.

http://www.krugle.com

If you work with code, even if you just fiddle with your blog template on occasion, you could do worse than add Krugle to your arsenal of internet tools.

Sign up now for the sneak preview of one of the most significant milestones in Open Source history: the launch of a FREE search engine designed exclusively for code and tech info foraging.

Dialogical communication AND books I'm reading

2006-02-03T18:26:00.000-08:00

nBlogs are web tools for dialogical communications with an audience that is capable of existing as an online community of shared interests, marketable skills, and needs for reliable comparative product information.

In an age of growing alienation and isolation, with people cynical and hostile toward corporate pension raiding, medical benefit cuts, offshore outsourcing, downsizing, oblivion to the suffering poor and aged, blogs can save the day.

Blogs can humanize corporations, by connecting them more closely with real humans and their real world problems.

Blogs are Dialogical
Communication Generators

"By dialogical person we mean one who, by word or relationship, is in communication with his environment and open to the communication that environment offers, environment in this sense including both persons and things....

The dialogical person is a total, authentic person. He is one who responds to others with his whole being, and not with just a part of himself, and he is able to listen with his heart as well as his mind. He is really present...

The dialogical person is an open person, one who is known first by his willingness and ability to reveal himself to others, and, secondly, by his willingness and ability to hear and receive their revelation."

The Miracle of Dialogue
Reuel L. Howe
(p. 69-71)

Here's what I'm reading as we enter February 2006:

(1)

Naked Conversations
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel

(2)

Hacking RSS and Atom
Leslie M. Orchard

(3)

Information Technology Control and Audit
Second Edition
(Auerbach, 2004)

[NOTE: The most expensive book--retail: $100.00]

Frederick Gallegos,CGFM, CISA, CDE
Sandra Senft, CISA, CIA
Daniel P. Manson, Ph. D.
Carol Gonzales, CISA

(4)

Marketing the e-Business
Lisa Harris and Charles Dennis

(5)

Creating Web Sites Bible (2nd edition)
David Crowder and Andrew Bailey

(6)

The Pursuit of Wow!
Tom Peters

(7)

Credibility: how leaders gain and lose it, why people demand it
James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

(8)

The Innovator's Dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail
Clayton M. Christensen

(9)

Net Gain: expanding markets through virtual communities
John Hagell III and Arthur G. Armstrong

(10)

Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt
Harvey MacKay

(11)

Managing in the Next Society
Peter F. Drucker

(12)

Webmaster in a Nutshell
Stphen Spainhour and Robert Eckstein

(13)

Blog: understanding the information reformation that's changing your world
Hugh Hewitt

(14)

The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture
Shane Hipps (foreword by Brian McLaren)

(15)

Gonzo Marketing
Christopher Locke

(16)

Collected Poems
Edna St. Vincent Millay

(17)

F'd Companies: spectacular dot-com flameouts
Philip J. Kaplan
f**kedcompany.com

(18)

A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds
Edited by Peggy Kamuf

[signed] steven edward streight aka vaspers the grate

Unmasking a spam blog

2006-02-01T13:43:00.000-08:00

Now I reveal, unmask, demystify the Spam Blog.

I was going to embed a link to a link farm or "spam blog", but thought better of it, and am refraining. I have no wish to drive traffic to a traffic-driving site.

Instead, I'll describe what I saw, in my ongoing efforts to pre-surf the web and filter out detrimental sites...for my readers' benefit.

It was a Blogger/Blogspot blog that I visited and suddenly realized what I had done. I had followed a link to an Enemy Blog. Now, I share what I learned and observed.

I knew it was a Spam Blog, when I clicked on the link to it that was embedded in a Vaspers the Grate comment submission awaiting my moderation. I deleted it, instead of publishing. I clicked on "Reject this comment".

I know it was a Spam blog, because the Blogger Profile contained NO INFORMATION. No real name, no email address, no profile categories (favorite books, movies, etc.).

Spam blogs are usually anonymous, no profile information, no contact info, no grounding in any reality, floaters, sewage, blogo-pondscum.

Heavily linked generic copy and paste or minimalistic, impersonal text.

Links go to target sites to build traffic, to "send web surfers to" other sites. Hope to boost search engine rank. May attempt to attach, upload, install worms, viruses, Trojans, keystroke/printer command/page view logger spyware, or other malware/annoyware to your system or network.

It happened like this: it was a pseudo blog dealing with MySpace dangers and teen web surfing safety. But it was not a real human person behind it. It is a program posing as a human, or it has a human or group of people behind it, but with

... covert intentions.

Scams. Computer hijacking. Zombification of your network. Security exploits.

[signed] steven edward streight aka vaspers the grate

Why a blog is not a journal or diary

2006-01-31T20:05:00.000-08:00

If a blog has frequent new postings, and enables reader comments, then, the blog is not a journal or diary. A blog is not a memoir or textbook. A blog is not a bull horn, intercom, or preaching pulpit.

A blog is:

NOT a "journal/diary": what diarist lets other people write in it, and what journal is entered in chronological order, but is displayed paradoxically and unexplainably, in Reverse chron order?

What print journal links directly to other journals?

What paper diary writing appartus requires fingers to simply touch the letter producing keys, and not have to guide them, as in penmanship?

What book or biography can be opened to any random page, and certainly be interesting, understandable, and context-free?

Sex Predators Love MySpace

2006-01-30T21:56:00.000-08:00

MySpace is a Sex Predator's Paradise, Mr. Murdock.

Do you care, Mr. Murdock?

From "Teen Menu" at the Blog Safety site:

[QUOTE]

The sad fact is that it is now very easy to find teenage victims in your community, thanks to an online social networking service called MySpace.com.

This advertising-supported site, which was acquired last year by Rupert Murdock's News Corporation, presents a veritable smorgasbord of teenagers, organized by community and high school.

If you know the name of your local school and the sex and age of teens you're seeking, you can find them on MySpace.

What's more, in most cases, you can find pictures, names and photos of their friends; details about where they were born; what they like; and where they hang out. In many cases, you can also find their full names and cell phone numbers.

As an experiment, I used the site's search function to look for 16- and 17-year-old "women"who attend the high school near where I live -- where my kids went to school.

Within seconds, I was presented with a list of 198 girls who were registered on the service. Including boys, there were a total of 577 listings for current students, which represents about a third of the school's student body.

The search function allows you to specify age, starting at 16.

MySpace's terms of service say that it's open to people 14 or older, but there is no age verification process to prevent younger kids from setting up an account by lying about their date of birth.

One of the girls, who is 16, has a sexually suggestive word as part of her user name.

Thanks to MySpace, I have a pretty complete picture of her life. I know the day she was born, the hospital she was born in, her full name, where she goes to school, what she likes to eat, what time she goes to bed at night and her favorite fast-food restaurant.

She gets along with her parents "sometimes". In the past month she says she has consumed alcohol, eaten sushi, been to a mall, and gone askinny dipping. She says she has shoplifted at least once, wants to be a lawyer and would like to visit Egypt.

Information like this, which used to take predators months to extract from a child can -- in the wrong hands -- be skillfully used to help win a child's confidence.

Thanks to several pictures on her site, I also know exactly what she looks like and have seen pictures of many of her friends and am able to access her friends' profiles as well. This girl lives within a few miles of my house. Some of the pictures were clearly taken at the local high school.

With information like this, it would be pretty easy for someone with bad intentions to locate this girl.

Then the question is what might happen. Hopefully, the young lady would have the sense to avoid the person, but armed with enough information, predators can be very good at persuading would-be victims to comply with their wishes.

[END QUOTE]

Have a nice, Mr. Murdock.

Enjoy Hell when you get there.

Your negligence gleams like filth in the sky.

[signed] steven edward streight aka vaspers the grate

Example of Friendly Blogocombat

2006-01-30T11:35:00.000-08:00

Here's an example of friendly blogocombat, or blog debate. A search for truth.

D.L. Byron, a smart blogger, sort of scolded me about my last comment there. He said I was perhaps a bit "bombastic" in my scolding of publishers who don't fact check books of "memoirs", regarding Oprah and the "Million Pieces" book con job.

Here's the topic thread, three comments appended to the original post, "Why Oprah Won't Have to Holler at Scoble".

http://blogbusinesssummit.com/2006/
01/why_oprah_wont_1.htm#comments

[QUOTE]

29 Jan 06 | steven streight who is vaspers the grate Enemy of MSM and Pseudo Bloggery wrote …

I also blame the freaking lazy, cheap-ass publishers for not fact checking. That is their job, like it or not. They used to hire college interns and such to do it. This is Psycho Capitalism, Super Mediocrity striking again.

I read some excerpts from that Million Pieces book. I’ve lived in the East Village, NYC, played in punk bands, been a hippie, been a bohemian, etc….and nobody in their right mind would believe this stupid, exaggerated, hyperbolic book.

“I wanted to smoke a mountain of crack, drink an ocean of whiskey, smoke 50 million cigarettes in one hour…” stuff like that.

“I awoke on the airplane in a pool of blood and vomit” etc.

Silly junk from a little twerpy fool. Look at him. He did all that stuff? No freaking way, man.

Rumor going thru the blogs is that the author tried to shop it to publishers as a novel first. I have to check this “fact” first, so please don’t quote me. ha ha ha.

Morons, all.

30 Jan 06 | -b- wrote …

That’s a bit bombastic Steve. I mean, what facts are to be checked in a blog book? A company says yes or no that we blog and it was on this date we started and we sold 10M widgets because of it? Does anyone fact check when Scoble and Shel say that MS is the most naked corporation in the world? That’s an opinion not a fact.

30 Jan 06 | steven streight the mind design guy vaspers the grate wrote …

Many large corporations have a cynical attitude toward the lowly “consumer”. Many think we are easy to influence, and we will buy anything if it is hyped hard enough.

Until recently, they may have been correct. But now, with the Information Explosion and Blog Revolution, the tables are turned.

Why can’t I dance a Irish jig on the grave of corporate idiocy?

I’m a blogger. Bloggers are known to be sharp tongued. Corporations are known to be arrogant. Thus, it takes strong speech and forceful attitude to get through.

When people say bloggers are harsh, I laugh.

How harsh are corporations? Some top executives raid the pension fund, exploit Third World countries, hire illegal immigrants, operate sweat shops, offshore outsource sensitive data work, etc.

And we are to pussyfoot around them? Not me, baby.

[END QUOTE]

You may think I really am rather bombastic, bellicose, or belligerent.

But check this out, a quote I posted yesterday at Naked Conversations:

"...the internet was built on and thrives on the strong voices of its participants. Online you need to have a strong character in order to stand out from the crowd...articulate, witty, ridiculous, and loud.

...Being blah guarantees that you'll never be heard.

...Better to be known for your strong beliefs, your strong personality.

Better to be hated by some than ignored by everyone."

--Nick Usborne, Net Words (McGraw-Hill, 2002), p. 40, 41

Just remember, if you yourself are on the side of Truth, Goodness, and the Universal Ethical Way...you have nothing to fear from me.

:^)

More on this debate at Blogcritics, over Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" and Oprah:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/
01/28/155303.php

EDIT UPDATE:

My comment posted at that BlogCritics article referenced above:

[QUOTE]

Sharp Tongued Bloggers Unite!

I am so pleased to see people actually praise Truth and ask, "Since when does America approve of lying your way through life?"

Since Ad Agencies, Politicians, and Corrupt Corporations made a science out of it, and were oh so charming as they screwed us.

How could even Oprah believe all that silly exaggeration and stereotyping?

Publishers may state "we took the memoirs on trust". Means: "We are too inept and cheap to hire good fact-checkers."

Be harsh and abrasive about it dear bros and sistahs. They are arrogant, these publishers and rich folk. Hit them and kick them into submission via blog comments and posts.

Yeah, buddy!

[END QUOTE]

[signed] steven edward streight aka vaspers the grate

eyes wide shut

2006-01-28T17:01:00.000-08:00

There was a man who refused to open his eyes.

"I'm trusting in the goodness of the Universe," he would explain.

Others warned him about the dangers of automobile traffic, fire hydrants in the middle of the sidewalk, ice, debris in the path, yet he continued to keep his eyes closed.

For a long time, he was safe.

His friends and relatives tried to guide him and help him cross busy intersections. He grew more and more confident in his optical darkness. He began to proclaim that he was Specially Favored by universal laws, karma, good intentions, guardian angels, or whatever self-justifying delusion his imagination could supply at any given moment.

He mocked Open Eyers, as he called them.

In a recent New Age seminar he promoted heavily, called "Walking by Faith and Not Sight," he said:

"Open Eyers use vision as a crutch. They aren't spiritually advanced like me.

I am proving the Benevolence of Protective Spirit Guides. My good karma is my safety.

I move by Divine Revelation and Good Intentions.

Open eyes are easily deceived by optical illusions and mirages. We see only what we want to see.

Since I physically see nothing, I remain undeceived."

A week after that seminar, he was struck by a car and killed. His darkness and resistance to sight was what deceived him and lulled him into a warm and fuzzy feeling of invincibility.

MORAL: Why tempt fate and do what you have been warned is dangerous? Internet predators are invading in ever increasing numbers. MySpace is full of sexual deviants and adults pretending to be teenagers with similar musical tastes.

"You like Stereolab and chocolate Ovaltine. I do too. Let's hook up!"

Then your teenage daughter is raped and murdered and tossed into a ditch. By a 48 year old geezer who posed online as a teen hipster. Guess who's at fault? Mom, Dad, you are to blame.

Wise up.

Protect your children from baby snatchers, stalkers, and child molesters.

Don't post photos of babies, under 18 year old children, home addresses, or other private information online.

To thwart Identity Theft, don't shop online or conduct any financial or medical transactions via the internet.

[signed] steven edward streight aka vaspers the grate

Brazil blog quotes Blog Core Values

2006-01-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

What does this quoted Spanish text say?

I just got done reading in Naked Conversations that there are almost NO Spanish language blogs, compared to USA, France, South Korea, etc.

Well, here's a blog in Brazil, that quotes part of one of my posts.

http://volneyf.blogspot.com/2006/
01/apocalipse-e-revelaes.html

Technorati "Other Blogs That Link Here" search produced this post, which I quote here. There is a Google and a Firefox function that will translate this, but while I dig around for the Translator Tools, I thought I'd put this up and see if a reader can translate it for me.

[QUOTE]

A nossa esquizofrenia, além de ficar exposta publicamente, é alimentada pela contínua curiosidade e teimosia em querer domar esse mundo virtual que lhe explode nos olhos, lhe hipnotiza e lhe escraviza. Se você não sente isso é que não experimentou - não foi fundo o suficiente.

Olha só o que esse cara diz:

Your blog *will* produce results, if you keep at it.

How long?

Who cares? Just keep at it. Keep...

improving / learning / listening to readers / visiting high quality blogs / posting comments at other blogs

e ...: publishing frequent posts.

Mas se você quiser a tradução correta de tudo isso em uma só palavra: TEIMOSIA!

Leia mais aqui!

----
E por falar em revelação - sempre fui fiçurado em Corvette. Ok ok, os blogs também revelam você pro mundo. Mas como é que deu certo? Nem a bruxa do Lewis explica!

[END QUOTE]

Anybody out there who can read Spanish? I know I have readers in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, according to SiteMeter.

Google, China, business ethics

2006-01-28T08:34:00.000-08:00

Dave Taylor, a consistently interesting blogger, who has written many computer books, has a controversial post recently published:

"Google gets pragmatic and enters China"

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/
google_gets_pragmatic_and_
enters_china.html

One line of thought is that business can do business wherever the F business wants to.

This is called Arrogant Narcissistic Delusion.

It always culminates in irreversible psychosis from the total dis-integration of the sense of corporate self and self-objects (others who are manipulated as mere extentions of the self, the company, rather than as independent digified subjects of equal value and human worth)...or bloody revolution and death to the tyrants.

I don't understand why anyone thinks "pragmatic" means "cold hearted killer". I mean, why equate "practical, financial considerations" with "no morality, no ethical standards"?

Is this Separation of Church (weird metaphor for Ethics) and State (ugly metaphor for Corporation)?

Who says: "Separate human values from business policy"?

Con artists do. Spammers. Sex slavers. Drug pushers. Monopoly-mongers. Wall Street sharks. Fly-by-night home improvement drifters. Cults. Black slave traders of the past. RIAA. Multi-Level Marketing scammers. Television infomercial sponsors. Telemarketing schemers. Email spammers. Blog comment spammers.

That's who.

Evil people are far smarter than good people, and it's time for good people to wake up and smell the coffin.

Ethics are pragmatic. Immorality often ends up with untimely death, prison terms, and public humiliation. Yet human greed is blind to the True Moral Progmatism, the Absolute Supremacy of Light over Darkness, the Law of All Universes.

Yet, how do we evaluate Microsoft and Google in their relations to the repressive, scumbag Chinese government?

[QUOTE--my comment on Dave Taylor's blog]

Psycho Capitalism is the Mammonist worship of money at any cost (excuse the pun).

Step on any morality just so long as you make filthy lucre, is their policy.

Business is historically the black sheep of the human family. Only at about the time of Buddha, Jesus, and the Roman road system did the Merchant begin to gain some status.

But historically, merchants are low life scum you cannot trust to have any honesty or morals.

I see little evidence of any moral evolution of business, which is why we must struggle to regain some ethical qualities and dignity, in contrast to the many Enrons and Martha Stewarts out there.

Google I like and support. This China situation is tricky and complex.

But I will say this: we should punish China economically for their sick, depraved, monstrosity of Mind Control BS government.

You *never* hurt business by being ethical. You *never* jeopardize your business growth by refusing to compromise with evil and tyranny.

Profits from porn, sex slavery, drugs, spam, con jobs, and business with repressive scum bag nations, like Retard China and North Korea Cult State, is "dirty blood money".

Still, I respect both Microsoft and Google, while having serious concerns about their dealings with that crap country China.

Posted by: steven streight aka vaspers the grate on January 28, 2006 09:32 AM

[END QUOTE]

Go visit Dave's blog for his post that I commented on.

[signed] steven streight aka vaspers the grate

Law of Stubborn Blogging

2006-01-25T23:01:00.000-08:00

Law of
Stubborn
Blogging:

Your blog *will* produce results, if you keep at it.

How long? Who cares? Just keep at it.

Keep...

improving

learning

listening to readers

visiting high quality blogs

posting comments at other blogs

publishing frequent posts.

Be stubborn. Ferocious. Relentlessly plodding along, not caring one fig about who likes you or how many comments you get. Screw comments. Keep on writing excellant blog posts, polished and gleaming. You're burning new paths to other worlds, blogger.

I feel like a blogger who stops, gives up, abandons the blogosphere, deletes his blog, departs forever, for me, a blogger who goes AWOL, is a disappointment to me personally.

I wish them well, I know they felt compelled to throw in the towel, but it's Blogicide.

Yes, it's blog death, the blog died, and a little point of light in my own blogospheric heart was extinguished.

I can't go there anymore. The blogger quit. That blog is gone. They do disappear, you know. Some say they fade away in pixelated decay. Others claim a Blog UFO uploads them and removes them to a distant galactic network museum for aliens to laugh at and feel superior to human beings, at least the ones who blog, and give up.

Don't give up.

Also don't think you can just post brilliant essays, and people will respond and compliment you. Forget it. There are millions upon millions of blogs, like stars in the visible sky. One blog is statistically insignificant, but still meaningful to someone, some others, those who read it.

Keep at it, and I don't want to hear any crybaby whining about ROI or comment loads.

You learn how to solve blogging problems, like how frequent to post, how to combat flamers, how to prevent abusive remarks and comment spam, community-building, RSS, and how to interact with readers.

Hey, blogger. If nobody posts comments, check your blog stats. If you have 100 people visiting your blog daily, you've got 100 silent readers.

So blog for your 100 silent, non-interactive readers.

Blog for Your Lurkers.

At least they are reading you. Specifically ask questions of your audience, and maybe then someone will post a reply. Invite comment, criticism, differing opinions.

Never worry about comments, other bloggers blogrolling you, or any other extraneous, peripheral details.

Even if your blog is made for a client, and that client expects some sort of measurable, tangible results, I still say, forget results. Keep that blog going.

Think of the telephone. Businesses were slow to catch on that they should have a telephone.

"Why would I want to talk to a customer?" they asked at first. "If they're on the phone, they're not in the store, so they can't buy anything. A telephone might even drive customers away. I'd get tied up yakking to some lady, instead of attending to customers in the store. No thanks. A telephone in my store? No way. No ROI that I can see."

Be a stubborn blogger. So what if you're an early adaptor and no one understands you. Keep at it. Okay? Thanks.

[signed] steven edward streight aka vaspers the grate

hugo ball the pre-blogger

2006-01-24T21:30:00.000-08:00

hugo ball
the pre-blogger

Pre-blog diaries, like what Hugo Ball , founder of the Cabaret Voltaire, wrote, are instructive for bloggers who wish to learn how to write creatively, with a distinct personal flair.

When you read a famous writer's agile turn of phrase, a cleverly composed statement, or an allusion with strange descriptors, it can inspire you to dream up your own unique style. I actually notice a strong burst of poetic language flow from me right after I've spent some time reading a good book of philosophy, poetry, anthropology, psychology, or art criticism.

When you read diaries, journals, memoirs, autobiographies of famous people, don't you start to feel like you're reading a blog? I do. For example, I'm reading Hugo Ball's Dada Diaries. Certain phrases, paragraphs, entries sound much like what you read in blogs. His scorn for mediocrity, his love of progress, his belief in self-expression, so many traits and assertions seem so bloggy.

Let's imagine what it would be like if Hugo Ball were alive and had internet access. Here are some excerpts from his diary that sound like really good blog writing. See if you agree.

And next time you read a book, particularly an episodic first person text, ask: "Would this writing style work in a blog?"

Hugo Ball Blog:

From Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary by Hugo Ball, edited by John Elderfield (University of California Press, 1996).

(1)

"The world and society in 1913 looked like this: life is completely confined and shackled. A kind of economic fatalism prevails; each individual, whether he resists or not, is assigned a specific role and with it his interests and his character.

The church is regarded as a 'redemption factory' of little importance, literature as a safety valve.

It makes no difference how this came about; it exists and no one can escape from it." (p.3)

(2)

"The machine gives a kind of sham life to dead matter. It moves matter. It is a spectre. It joins matter together, and in so doing reveals some kind of rationalism. Thus it is death working systematically, counterfeiting life.

It tells more flagrant lies than any newspaper that it prints. And what is more, in its continuous subconscious influence it destroys a human rhythm.

Anyone who lasts a lifetime near such a machine must be a hero, or must be crushed. We cannot expect any spontaneous feelings from such a creature. A walk through a prison cannot be so horrifying as a walk through the noisy workroom of a modern printing shop. The animal sounds, the stinking liquids. All the senses focused on what is bestial, monstrous, and yet unreal." (p.4)

(3)

"Only the thoroughly tested idea, exposed to temptation and opposition, only the idea that is lived and embodied, only such an idea really exists." (p.15)

(4)

"Do not attack abstractions and doctrines. Everyone thinks what he wants to about them, and many abstruse words are used. Attack prominent people and events. One single sentence is enough; it does not have to be the whole system." (p. 22)

(5)

"Something is rotten and senile in the world. The economic utopias are the same way. There is a need for a widespread conspiracy of eternal youth to defend everything noble." (p.22)

(6)

"Self-assertion suggests the art of self-metamorphosis. The isolated man tries to hold his own in the most unfavorable circumstances; he has to make himself unassailable." (p.96)

(7)

"Resolute self-portrayal in the sense of Augustine and Rousseau would be the solution. But a great deal of courage is necessary for that and also a relevance...if the importance of the author were to be dispensed with, then a confessional, self-exhausting attitude would be essential." (p. 87)

Hugo Ball, along with Tristan Tzara, Kandinsky, Picasso, and others, spearheaded an art revolution, or actually a series of revolutions: dada, cubism, constructivism, futurism, etc.

We bloggers can learn from, and be encouraged by, classic art and technology revolutionists of the past.

What smart books are you reading?

[signed] steven streight aka vaspers the grate
:^)

WordPress, Blogger comment moderation

2006-01-22T21:04:00.000-08:00

WordPress, Blogger
comment moderation

Two of the most important issues for me as a blogging, right now, are (1) Spam/Abuse Comment Prevention...and (2) Post Archive Categories as Sidebar Text Links.

Bless both WordPress and Blogger (though they were a bit sluggish) for providing blog operators with a sure defense against comment spam.

Almost all blog software offers captchas (captcha = completely automated program telling computers and humans apart), also called Word Verification or Optical Character Recognition, which wards off most or all spambots (automatic programs that surf the web, looking for vulnerable sites to post spam on), but the visually impaired (blind) are also unable to pass this Turing test.

Would-be comment posters must type in a series of numbers or letters as displayed in a box with an obfuscating, camouflaging background. If you make a mistake, a new box with appear, and usually your comment is intact also.

COMMENTING TIP:

Always copy your comment text BEFORE submitting for publication, PRIOR TO clicking "Say It" or "Post Comment" function. Why? If you wrote a lengthy, impassioned, and well composed response, it would be a shame to lose it all. And you will lose it forever, if something goes wrong in your posting of it. Or if it's moderated, and the blogger decides not to publish it.

I no have zero (0) comment spam appearing in my blogs.

Comment Moderation with Delayed Posting: readers activate form for typing in their remarks, but their comments are not automatically posted on your blog, under whatever post they wish to add their input to.

The comments are emailed to you, then you can Reject or Publish. With some blogging software, you can also ban their IP and do other system or network hardening to deflect their very entry in the first place.

(1)
WordPress
Comment Moderation
message:

ABIGALE

Comment:

hello everyone

You can see all comments on this post here: [URL]

To delete this comment, visit: [URL]

New comment on your post #5 "Welcome to WordPress dot com"

Author : ABIGALE (IP: 220.166.202.239)

E-mail : mailto: [email address]

URI : http://www.yahoo.com

Whois : 220.166.202.239

Comment:

hello everyone

wopd

You can see all comments on this post here:

[URL]

To delete this comment, visit: [URL]

What you see quoted above is an email message from WordPress about a comment attempting to be posted to my blog "electrica".

Next, the Blogger version of the same methodology.

(2)
Blogger
Comment Moderation
message

News Electronics Lover [HTML deleted]

Mon Jan 23 2006_11:03 AM">11:03 am (1½ hours ago)

News Electronics Lover has left a new comment on your post "Best book on blogs now in bookstores":

Hi Dude,

I don\'t go to electronics online stores to get reviews on consumer report electronics i think they are not that fair, i visit blogs like yours to get customers reviews. I like it better. I think it is less deformated

Also i go to consumer report electronics ..good mine of fresh electronics products info.

ciao,
alaine

Publish this comment.

Reject this comment.

Moderate comments for this blog.

Posted by News Electronics Lover to Vaspers the Grate at 1/23/2006 10:54:54 AM \n",0] ); //--> News Electronics Lover has left a new comment on your post "Best book on blogs now in bookstores":

Hi Dude,

I don't go to electronics online stores to get reviews on consumer report electronics i think they are not that fair, i visit blogs like yours to get customers reviews. I like it better. I think it is less deformated

Also i go to consumer electronics bargains [embedded URL deleted] ..good mine of fresh electronics products info.

ciao,
alaine

Publish this comment.

Reject this comment.

Moderate comments for this blog.

Posted by News Electronics Lover to Vaspers the Grate at 1/23/2006 10:54:54 AM

Notice how the spam comment from News Electronics Lover is irrelevant, has no connection to, my post topic.

Notice how spam comments almost always have an embedded URL, a hot link, to entice readers to visit a dubious or dangerous web site.

Marching Orders: If your blog software has it, activate Word Verification, Email Comment Notification, and Comment Moderation with Delayed Posting.

Some readers will balk, and not like these "annoyances", but have they ever spent 4 hours manually hunting for, and deleting, spam comments from a blog?

[signed] steven streight aka vaspers the grate
:^)

blog flow vs. blog info

2006-01-22T20:27:00.000-08:00

blog flow vs. blog info

How important is it to know if your blog readers (1) go with the flow or (2) search for info?

A "go with the flow" blog reader keeps pace with your postings. This reader views your blog as an ongoing series of episodes, never fully resolving, full of suspense and intrigue, the story of your pursuit of [insert: your specialty, hobby, profession, etc.].

A "search for info" blog reader delves into your archives. If you have poorly labeled categories, such as months, this type of reader will find your blog frustrating. Blog site search tools offer one form of date retrieval, but are limited and difficult for some users.

If you have lousy archive categories, like I do, you had better put some text in your sidebar that explains your site search tool, with suggested topic keywords a user might type into the text entry box.

[signed] steven edward streight aka vaspers the grate

Doc Searls adds to my Blogosphere 2006 list

2006-01-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

From the Doc Searls Weblog, Saturday, January 21, 2006:

http://doc.weblogs.com/
2006/01/21

[QUOTE]

A ('nuther) list

Over at Steven's Streight's (see below) Vaspers the Grate blog, he has this excellent headline: Feeding cat steak to mice* is what I'm doing here at Vaspers the Grate. Oh, my friends, I see victory, triumph, and a new blogosphere on the horizon.

He also points to the Srategic Board Aggregator, which lists the 100 Top IT Sources. #1 is Scoble. #2 is Dave Winer. #3 is Steve Rubel. Gapingvoid is #26. Niall Kennedy is #89. Kevin Burton is #100.

[snip]

Ad vice

Steven Streight has ten suggestions for improving the blogosphere in 2006. I have one more: ads the reader actually wants to see. Who's gonna be in that business? Any takers?

[VASPERS: Thanks Doc. Yo Roc.]

Over-bloggerization and Blog Psychosis

2006-01-22T10:57:00.000-08:00

Over-bloggerization
and Blog Psychosis

The phenomenon of Over-bloggerization, also known as Blog Psychosis, occurs when a blogger considers their blog to be more important than money, life, or music itself.

Experts had a solid grasp of the blogging-induced disease spectrum, but no reliable symptomology or progressive sequence of blogistic events that culminate in the dreaded dysfuntion in the core of the blogger's ego, self, and personality.

The blog has a mysterious power of seduction, in that it can replace your normal, unblog personality with grotesque and towering mutation that overshadows and causes to cower every adversary, bully, and thought cop.

The negative side of this blessing is that it may also outmanever and overcome your core sense of who and what you are. The insidious invasive aggression of blog-induced identity decay can be catastrophic in effect and hopelessly irreversible.

Over-bloggerization generally occurs in the sequence of events, and tends to be seen in bloggers with 6 months to 3 years continuous blogging/commenting experience.

Over-bloggerization
(Blog Psychosis)
Event Sequence:

(1) Blog Elation.

(2) Blog Confusion.

(3) Blog Comment Ecstasy.

(4) Blog Citation Euphoria.

(5) Blog Conference Inanity.

(6) Blog Clique & Cloister Syndrome.

(7) Blog Myopia & Narcissistic Cathexis.

(8) Blog Hyper-Mania/Melancholia.

(9) Blog Parenthetically Installed as Rehab Superego.

(10) Blog Over-valuation Morbidity.

(11) Blogopathic Reaction Formation.

(12) Blog Ambiguity Crisis.

(13) Blog Replication of Introjected Archaic Object.

[we have now passed the point of no return, no remedy]

(14) Blog Apotheosis Dissemblancing.

(15) Blog Psychosis--total permanent loss of original pre-blog personality and goals.

It is only when your blog becomes your surrogate, psychic shadow, extension, or facsimile, and this may take months, that you face any danger of the ruinous road to Over-bloggerization, Blog Psychosis, and the irrevocable vanishing of your former self.

[signed] steven streight aka vaspers the grate

I typed blogistics into the...

2006-01-21T23:33:00.000-08:00

I typed blogistics into the text entry box that said Search the Web, and expected Google to find me a list of articles that contain the word "blogistics", that deal with blogistics.

But instead: I am transported to

a strange Google Start page that link-lists all their services, including Google Answers, Blogger, and Gmail. I have not seen it, nor did I expect it. Is it time for this shanty town migrant to recede from the shores of computerville and go to bed and stare at the ceiling until time to get up again?

Did I experience a tech flash wrinkle in the space-time (spam-face) continuum?

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

The link does not work, you'll get an Error Message, URL not found. The anomoly has vanished, Elvis has left the building. But---

---I copy and pasted that URL from my browser address bar. It has to be correct.

What was that sound? Who's there? what are t

5 Blogospheres in One Blogiverse

2006-01-21T20:59:00.000-08:00

I'm formulating a list of topics and areas in which a good blogologist or blog consultant should be an expert.

We must be experienced in several blog software tools (Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Xanga, MySpace, Moveable Type, Radio, etc.) to know which might be best for a client.

We must have experience interacting with all types of blogs, personal, CEO, mommy, military, political, hobby, tech, etc.

We must post comments at all types of blogs, get into or start heated debates at not only blogs, but also at discussion lists, web forums, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and message parlors.

We must experiment with wikis, glogs (assistive psycho-geographic tech), podcasts, audioblogging, videoblogging, blog polling, mashups and social media networking communities. We must also be proficient email writers, email surveyers, and email marketers.

My contemplation on blogology led me to how blog-analytics and diagnostics are applied to various blog situations. I formulated different sets of expectations and directives for different types of blogs, then eventually realized: the types resolve themselves in distinct sub-cultures and web tribalisms, each with its own blog-thropology and blogistics.

There seemed to be two, three, no four, or more "blogospherias". I wanted to call them "blogospherias" to differentiate them from blogosphere, but that seemed to over-specify and needlessly complicate an emerging discovery.

They are more than sectors of one blogosphere, I decided. Each individual blogosphere is governed by a different set of rules, etiquette, and protocols. This seemed both obvious and yet also a ripe area for exploration.

A leap in conjecture: the Fragmented Disunified Multi-Blogosphere, a new model to work with in blogological theory, practice, and analysis.

I kept pondering the ambiguities and peculiarities of various styles of blogging.

The totality of blogs does not behave or exist as one unified, homogenous blogosphere at all, although in the early 1990s such an entity probably did exist. Then it was a tiny blogosphere of tech people, not teenage diarists, but link logs and computerese. No photos of babies and cats, but recommended sites for computer related items, events, info. These primitive early blogs were rather unified and homogenous.

It was the rise of Pop Blogging, especially Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, then eventually MySpace, that spawned a strange mix of hybrid bloggeries: from legit personal and professional blogs...to internal firewalled intranet-like corporate networking or project collab blogs...to pseudo, reblogger, link farm, and copy & paste faux blogs.

A MySpace blog of a high school student is set up to admit friends into their private online community, which is generally composed of only offline friends, people they know in real life, and family. Readers have to ask to be invited to join the blogger's community, or friends list, in order to post comments. Bloggers often read or write their blogs and IM simultaneously.

This is a very different blogosphere from the one that Naked Conversations, Blog, or Who Let the Blogs Out speak of, for the most part.

So, as I pondered the difference between a business PR blog and a teen network blog, I was startled at how profound a chasm existed between them, and how more chasms and more blog realms loomed ahead of my analytic vision.

Here is my first attempt at a systematic theoretical framework for understanding the complexities of the multi-blogosphere, the blogiverse (blog + universe) that we are residing within.

5 Blogospheres
in One Blogiverse

(1.) Social Connection Youth IM-Blogosphere: Xanga, LiveJournal, MySpace, etc.

(2.) Mature Personal-Hobby-Family Blogosphere

(3.) Business-Marketing-PR-CEO-Corporate Blogosphere

(4.) Meta Blogosphere (Blog Consultants, Blogologists, Blog Metric Analysts, Blog Trackers, Blog Content Syndicaters/Aggregators, Blog Services, Blogging Tool Providers, Blog Hosts, Blog Directories, etc.)

(5.) Professional/Military/Educational Blogosphere

If I my theorizing has some merit, and there are a multiplicity of blogospheres within a blogiverse of all possible blogs, then each blogosphere has to be differentiated by distinct rules, user expectations, netiquette, protocol, tech configurations, meaning a different philosophy and style govern each of them.

So it would not be fair to compare the behavior and goals of high school Xanga blogs to those of meta-blogs, CEO blogs, mommy blogs, or Army blogs.

[signed] steven streight aka vaspers the grate

Blogosphere 2006

2006-01-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

These are my slapdash suggestions for improving the Blogosphere 2006, which I hope will evolve into the multi-media, multi-phonic, multi-functional Blogosphere 4.0

I may publish sequels to this post ("Blogosphere 2006: Phase II", etc.) if my back quits hurting so I can type out all the millions of okay ideas exploding in my head.

Suggestions for
Blogosphere 2006

(1) Blogger Dedication

I am assuming that blog pioneers, innovators, consultants, and authors truly wish to see the blogosphere refined, dignified, and blossoming into new and beneficial forms. Not "anything goes" mutation blogoids that violate user expectations and frustrate the typical reader, but real progress in blog functionality, efficiency, connectivity, syndicated delivery, and interactivity.

The lines are drawn in the sand.

Bloggers must individually decide where they stand on such matters as reblogging vs. aggregating, ghost blogging, link farms, blog advertising, RSS, blog psychosis, blog addiction, blog ethics, blog core values, blog voice, personal details in blogs, identity theft, blog licensing and blogospheric regulation, porn blogging, CEO blogs, child and teen blogs, online predators, anti-blog bloggers, MSM information hegemony, blog crediblity, dark siding, comment spam, pseudo blogs, and sleazy sponsored link blogs.

Get good at blogo-combat, or blogo-diplomacy. Blogopathic hostility will increase, and blog haters will start blogs just to ridicule bloggers and debase blog values.

(2) Importance of Blogroll Quality

Every blogroll is a new hub in the blogosphere within the web of the internet. Your blogroll acts as a transitory portal for your blog readers, a gateway to recommended blogs and web sites you feel might benefit them in some way.

Blogrolls are an indication of your blog's credibility. One way to assess, evaluate, or judge a blog that is unfamiliar to you is to check the blogroll, who is in it, and who is excluded.

For example:

If a blogologist or blog consultant's blogroll includes Doc Searls, Scripting News, Evhead, Sifry Alerts, Tom Peters, Tim Berners-Lee, Seth Godin, Naked Conversations (aka: The Red Couch), Gaping Void, Ensight, Kottke, Joi Ito, Shel Israel, Scobleizer, The Blog Herald, WebProNews, CNET, Slashdot, Shel Holz, BlogWrite for CEOs, The Big Blog Company, Peter Merholz, Crossroads Dispatches, NevOn, Tinbasher, Decent Marketing, Blogspotting, Intuitive Life Business Blog, Contentious, Blog Business Summit, Lipsticking, and other high quality blogs that focus on, or regularly discuss meta-blogging, you know the blogger at least is smart enough to know, and possibly read, some of the best blogs in the field.

But still, this could be a copy and paste type job, and mean only that the blogger knows how to *look like* he has some credibility, as though these blogs somehow "endorse" him, or make him part of their circle.

It's good to clean up your blogroll every six months or so. Delete any blogs that you never visit, and no longer are enthusiastic about directing your readers toward.

Keep a handy list of titles, blogger names, and URLs of new blogs you want to add to your blogroll. Don't worry if these blogs reciprocate by blogrolling you, because nearly none of them will.

(3) Specificity and Confirmity

Specificity (precision in all details) and Confirmity (ability to confirm, substantiate, verify, certify all information) will be two keynotes in the symphony of social media hybrids and filtered information zones.

Blogs will need to tighten their focus, while allowing occasional tangents and sidepaths, and amplify their serviceability to readers, giving them more targeted help, advice, or links.

Blog Directories, and other blog category listings, must start including "Blogology", "Web Usability", "Blog Consulting", "Interface Design", "Corporate IT", "Personal Blogging", "Meta-blog", "Social Media", "Online Community", "Web/Blog Portal", "Blogging Tools", "Blog Networking", "Information Architecture", "Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)", "Web Writing Services", "Computer Music", "Digital Art", "Web Services", and other current internet-based specialties in their lists of Categories of blogs.

These directory categories are poorly written, and guess what? The professionals with the specialized skill sets mentioned above will not be "claiming" their blog for your directory listing, because a Blogologist doesn't want to categorize himself under the label "Web Design", "Internet", "Marketing", or "Communications".

A blogologist, a blog author, a blog reader (commenter or lurker), all blog-related agents and operatives are accustomed to typos and rash declarations now and then, but not fuzzy thinking, confused formulations, imprecise descriptions, incomplete instructions, or vague or antiquated categories.

(4) Blog Post Titles, Links, and Content

Blog posts should have better, more informative titles.

Blog posts should have more substantiating hypertext links embedded within post text, deep linking to source post.

Blog posts should be written with "How will this information, presented in this style, and at this length, help my readers?" as the top of mind goal.

(5) Sidebar Enhancements

What are you doing with your sidebar these days?

YOur sidebar is where you can identify yourself, display your photo, orient readers to your topic or theme, and display information that you want to be permanent, always visible to all visitors.

Badges: If you have graphic tools, create various sidebar badges, promoting your blog, your company, your sports team, your political party, whatever you are passionate about. Or visit other blogs and see what badges they have. Political blogs often have cool badges, for example, see my sidebar with Iran Democracy, Iraq Democracy, Friend of Israel, Firefox, Digg, etc. badges.

Blog sidebars should contain more functions and activities for readers. Consider polls, reader photo galleries, podcast links, music mp3 links, video, audio (speech, excerpts from lectures), digital art, links to external services and surveys, update text.

You should also include "Sidebar Updates", i.e., sidebar paragraphs, ideally with a graphic icon or photo, containing messages of timely significance, from you to your blog readers, with large headlines stating the benefit or category of information. Special communications you want all readers to see, thus you don't put in only in a post that will start sliding down the scroll sequence as new posts are added on top of it. Time-sensitive announcements, deadlines.

I continue to maintain, albeit cryptically, that the sidebar movie is a viable device, a film you scroll.

Is your sidebar full of dead space, padding, white noise?

Put that sidebar to work for you and your causes. Use it to promote and explain yourself, your organization, your beliefs, your blog allies, links to your most controversial posts, links to your most helpful posts, links to posts to educate newbies and computer nincompoops, and functions your readers need or might enjoy.

I link, for example, to free legal music mp3 download sites, in my sidebar. You will think of how you can apply this suggestion to your industry, audience, or personal goals.

What do your kind of people or customers want to know all the time, but it's not easy to find it? For farmers, it might be weather reports or commodity prices. Whatever it is, put it, or a link to it, in your sidebar.

(6) Archive Categories

Blogs, including my own, must solve the problem of archive navigation and information search. This is the biggest usability problem with blogs that I see in my practice and analysis of other sites. I very much admire blogs that have good archive categories, category titles that make sense to the user, titles that clearly identify user concerns, interests, needs.

Good, meaningful, clearly labeled archive categories enable you and your readers to quickly access posts on different topics of interest.

Blog site search is another functionality that offers data mining, post explorations, but few blog readers are skilled in site searching, what keywords to use, nor can they guess what titles or terms your post might have used for that topic.

(7) Comment Spam Preventives

I have now completely defeated comment spammers.

Thanks to Blogger offering: (1) email notification of comments submitted, (2) comment moderation with delayed posting, and (3) word verification captchas.

Find out what your blog software provides, then implement, activate, use it.

Letting comment spam sit in your blog is disgusting, irresponsible, and potentially dangerous and harmful to your audience. Spam comments often link to con artist, spyware-attaching, Trojan, adware-attaching, virus infecting, or otherwise malicious sites. Stop it and get rid of it.

(8) Comment Philosophy

Comments should be understood as opportunities to interact with readers, learn from readers, and help readers, NOT as proof of your blog's popularity, success, or effectiveness.

Comments should be enabled, else your blog is NOT a blog.

A blog that doesn't allow readers to post comments?

Aside from link logs that simply provide recommended sites, like Robot Wisdom, a blog without commentability is:

a blogoid object, a pseudo blog, a unilateral, one-way message delivery platform, a preaching pulpit, a propaganda machine readers must submit to, a soapbox that says "shut up and passively absorb, without questioning, this communication from me to you."

Encourage, invite, command, shame, antagonize, shock, astonish your readers into responding to your posts with a comment.

If you don't get any comments, it's your fault, not the audience or "blogging". You figure out how to be more interesting, more controversial, more helpful, more funny, more reader-conversation focused, more intelligent, more casual...whatever it seems you need to do. What do your readers request you do?

Have someone look at your blog, even someone who knows nothing about computers, blogs, or the internet. Ask them, "What's wrong?"

They may say, "It's ugly. I don't like the colors, and the design is too cluttered, too busy, too many distractions. It drives me crazy. I want to go do something, anything, else." So now you've got some good marketing intelligence, some free diagnostics, to guide your blog make-over.

Want more comments? Improve your blog and your posts. Visit other blogs and post comments, relevant, enriching comments that provide free content to the blogs. Do bloggers realize this? Comments, when good and intelligent, are free content that increase the value and popularity of your blog. Thus, be nice to your readers, both commenters and lurkers.

Lurkers are those who read but do not comment. Lurkers are good. They may be passing on your URL and your genius ideas to their friends, family, co-workers, and potential clients for you.

Lurkers may be doing battle for your ideas, but not in the blogosphere, or at least not in comments on your blog. Don't underestimate the power of lurkers. One may suddenly jump out of the shadows and post an astonishing comment, then you never hear from them again.

Comment should be enabled and enthusiastically accumulated, but do you really want 600 per post like Pete Townsend?

Respond swiftly, politely, and completely to every comment, as much as possible. Some comments need no reply. Most do. Don't leave your commenters hanging, wondering if you even care or pay any attention to other people's opinions and insights.

[signed] steven edward streight aka vaspers the grate

:-)

Business blogger bible now in bookstores

2006-01-15T20:48:00.000-08:00

The best book on blogs is now in bookstores:

Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers

by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble (forward by Tom Peters).

2006

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. publishers

$24.95 USD

I went to Barnes &amp; Noble yesterday and bought it.

The sales clerk said it just arrived, and she had to go into "the back" to get a fresh brand-spanking new copy of this treasure.

I feel like I should not post for a while, wait until I read the entire book at one or several sittings, and then post something with the white hot lamp of your revelation burning and brightening my vivid braincells and stem.

I just flipped to a random page, page 79, last bulleted item: "Blogging saves money, but costs time."

See? Pithy. Profound. Clever. Hip. Too much to believe. The highest praise I can give a business book: it reads like a title in the Harvard Business School Press catalog. Astonishing, as Seth Godin might say.

This IS the Bloggers Bible.

A first in the history of the beloved blogosphere.

EDIT UPDATE: Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention, I'm mentioned twice in the book, see page 137 and 234.

EDIT UPDATE 2: It seems that Vaspers the Grate is the first known person to purchase Naked Conversations in a retail bookstore. I have entered a footnote in the history of the blogosphere.

"Stephen Streight buys Naked Conversations in Peoria"

http://wroxblog.typepad.com/minatel/
2006/01/stephen_streigh.html

[signed] Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate