The Brad Hill Weblog

Chrome meta-liveblog, meta-comment

Brad Hill — 2008-09-02T14:55:00+00:00

Love this. In Download Squad's meta-liveblog of Google's Chrome announcement, someone inserted a comment from Chrome, within seconds of the download link being released.

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The epic TC50 contest

Brad Hill — 2008-08-15T23:24:00+00:00

Jason has started a top-10 contest for a ticket to TechCrunch50. That young man has too much time on his hands. And apparently so do I.

1) If I win the ticket, I will hold a top-10 contest to regift it.

2) If I win the ticket, I will use it myself.

3) If I win the ticket, and do #1, I will write and post a poem about the regifting experience.

4) If I win the ticket, and do #2, I will write a top-50 list about the conference.

5) If I win the ticket, I will keep it, but fail to attend the conference, wasting the ticket.

6) If I win the ticket, and do #5, I will post a picture of me sitting on my front porch in my underwear (boxer briefs).

7) If I win the ticket, and later am invited on David Letterman, Jason can come with me, hang out in the green room, and eat all the cookies.

8) If I win the ticket, and decide to go with #2, I will promote TechCrunch50 every weekday on Download Squad. (Sorry Victor. A guy's got to do what a guy's got to do.)

9) If I win the ticket, decide to go with #2, start promoting every day on Download Squad, then change my mind and do the regifting, I will update each of the promotional posts with the sentence: "I am missing the chance of a lifetime. Will I ever stop weeping?"

10) If I win the ticket, I will remain the same caring and compassionate individual that I am today. I will not give up my blog, denounce blogging, or post Bigfoot entries. That is my promise to you, the American people. (Oh, and anyone reading overseas.)

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Costner's band and an unusual 4th

Brad Hill — 2008-07-05T12:31:00+00:00

Kevin Costner is a huge deal in Durham, NC. Unlike larger metropolitan areas whose residents remain cooly unaffected by movies made in their neighborhoods, Durham and its citizenry are fiercely proud of Bull Durham, and Costner enjoys the status of folk hero. This year marks the 20th anniversary of that film's release, as posters all around town remind. Capping the regional pride was a 4th-of-July concert by Kevin Costner and his band, Modern West (yes, he has a band and does a bit of touring), in the Durham Bulls Athletic Park (DBAP), the beautiful downtown home field of the triple-A Bulls.

Though not a sell-out, I would say four-fifths of the 10,000-seat park was filled, and 8,000 raving fans is not a bad audience. This was not a game night; the Bulls were playing elsewhere. That fact dawned late on the folks sitting behind us, who, at about 7:30pm, with not a uniformed player in sight, erupted in confused laughter at their folly. Costner was there to give a concert, not a pre-game wave of the cap.

A bigger folly: I decided to leave my camera at home. So this remarkable evening can be described only, not illustrated.

The bandstand was set up at second base, and few hundred people owned field passes. The infield was roped off from the grass and that crowd gathered before the elevated stage. My wife and I had seats at field level, next to the Bulls dugout. There is not a bad seat in DBAP, as in many minor league venues, but down there on the field the view is spectacularly intimate. When Costner emerged and walked toward the infield, he passed within feet of us, smiling and waving. I am not starstruck, but I mean, c'mon -- the man swings a bat better than any movie star in history. Credit is due.

Before that, though, the scoreboard screen (the Bulls have a traditional hand-operated scoreboard below it) showed clip after clip from Bull Durham and many other Costner films. A couple of brave fans played "Name the movie" and "What's the next line" games over the public address system. Perfect scores in both cases diminished credibility but enhanced the good feelings.

When Costner stepped onto the field, the entire crowd stood and cheered, an outpouring of love and gratitude that lasted for minutes as he walked slowly along the grass in foul territory. Even from a distance, the guy has good eye contact, and a gift for acknowledging an ovation with apparent sincerity. Woman screamed, "We love you Kevin!" and men, though not as amorous, called out manly salutations. Costner entered the infield territory and milled slowly toward his perch, slapping hands and signing shirts.

As the sun declined and the air cooled, the Modern West drummer counted off the first tune and a strong backbeat (which would hardly change in tempo through the entire set) kicked in. As a singer, Costner would not make the final 20 on American Idol, but refinement was hardly the point on this occasion. He belts and growls it out. The six-piece band (with fiddle) pumps out acoustic-flavored, country-tinged rock and roll -- all originals with simple evocative names like "Long Hot Night." Children danced in the infield. Grown-ups tapped their feet in the stands. Whole sections of people coordinated arms-up to elicit a wave from Costner as he played. He kept an acoustic guitar slung around his shoulders, strummed it without a pick fairly often, but Costner does not contribute a rhythmic force to the music. He is sole singer and celebrity presence.

Clouds increasingly glowered in the twilight sky as the set proceeded. Costner optimistically predicted that the incoming storm would wend around the stadium without touching it, and the crowd cheered while glancing upward. Fireworks were the scheduled icing on the evening's cake. Within seconds of the band's final flourish, the first heavy drops splattered down. We left our seats and headed for the terrace section beneath the overhang. As we reached the protected area, there was no lingering hope of a gracious weather system sparing the center of downtown Durham. The wind whipped in as thick curtains of water lashed the net behind home plate. Under a suddenly dark sky, the tower lights illuminated a cosmos of rain drops pouring into the brilliantly lit bowl. On the field, roadies scrambled to cover the band equipment as everyone from field level seats jostled for the ramps. Thick shards of blue-white lightning lanced crackling from the clouds, followed instantly by bone-shaking smashes of thunder. It was upon us, exactly and ferociously.

We got down the ramp and inside the stadium, embedded in a mass of slow-moving humanity. Baseball parks don't have true insides, of course, with their open walls. We were under a roof, but the sideways-powered rain drove through in splattering sheets of water. Leaving the building was inconceivable and inadvisable. The cacophony of the maelstrom was amplified by the tightly packed concrete shell. The emotional atmosphere mixed hilarity and nervousness.

Then the lights went out. One of the five towers held onto its power; the other towers -- and all the inside lights -- blacked out. Everyone flipped open their cell phones and now it really felt like a rock concert. We waited a while, but abatement was not forthcoming and my wife and I began feeling oppressed. Pushing our way back up the ramp into the open stadium, we found two seats among the faithful crowd sitting it out in the shelter of the overhang. There, with the half light of the remaining tower shining reflections off the soaked field, we waited.

No fireworks, needless to say, and they probably couldn't have matched the glories of the storm anyway.

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A kindler, gentler world

Brad Hill — 2008-06-14T18:22:00+00:00

Got a Kindle this week, and am experiencing the now well-known pros and cons.

Yes, the paging buttons along the side represent a mystifying design choice that should never have passed the most rudimentary usability testing. But it's not hard to develop handling habits that don't scoot you unwillingly backwards and forwards through a book. Using the Kindle case helps.

Yes, the gray background makes it tough to read in low light -- wondrous though it is in bright sunlight. My wife discarded this thing instantly as "too dark." There should be background shade control. I would also like an optional back light for in-bed reading.

Yes, page-flipping is sluggish, but that's easy to get used to during normal reading. It does make it impossible to riffle through a book.

Yes, the on-screen UI is rudimentary, sometimes confusing, and apparently developed by interplanetary illiterates.

So. The Kindle doesn't close the deal for mainstream use. But it is perfect for frequent fliers like me, which seems to be the most enthusiastic user profile in the online reviews. I usually cannot carry even one book in my small, tightly packed carry-on, and I don't want to manage a larger bag in my two- and three-day weekly trips.

The most useful feature? The Kindle store lets you download a gratifyingly large chunk of its books, free of charge. Good money-saver there -- it has already dissuaded me from buying one book I was sure I wanted, the writing of which turned out to be dull as a plank.

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The politics 2.0 victory

Brad Hill — 2008-06-07T15:22:00+00:00

The "What Went Wrong" articles have been pouring out for weeks. In analyzing the Clinton primary defeat, a few consensus themes are calcifying a definition of political failure:

Too much entitlement
Bill gone berserk
Underestimating the opponent
Feuding campaign leaders
Short-sighted electoral strategy and financial planning

It might be more interesting, and more instructive, to consider the simple equation of victory that enabled Obama to run through the heavy Clintonian scrimmage line of political heavyweights and score the nomination. Here, consensus wisdom talks of superior oratory, focus on change, natural appeal to youth, separation from dynastic branding, and powerful inspirational rhetoric.

But all these factors are tied together in the Obama campaign's understanding and application of Web 2.0 principles, especially the long tail and social networking. In this primary campaign, as in the competition between old media and new media for cultural mindshare, the battle was between blockbuster tactics and long tail tactics. The currency in this battle was threefold: voter involvement, delegate commitment, and dollars.

When Obama talked about "old politics," he might have said "short tail politics" or "blockbuster mentality." From the start, the Clinton campaign was founded on blockbuster resources: a few huge donors and a few huge states. Like a book publisher, Clinton & Co. planned on a few high-volume products underwriting the low-profit assets like caucus states and small-time donors.

In contrast, the Obama strategy adopted long tail realities, recognizing that low-profit assets can match high-profit assets in the aggregate ... if you have enough of them. And to aggregate masses of low-profit asset points, the campaign turned to the primary Web 2.0 business model: social networking. The Obama campaign site is basically the Facebook of a political movement, whose apps and widgets encourage extended networking, deeper involvement, and harvesting small donations.

In Peter Baker's and Jim Runtenberg's NY Times analysis, the authors state, "The [Clinton] campaign was built on the assumption of overwhelming force." That's true, and in the blockbuster model the campaign was, in fact, unmatchable. But in this primary season, as in the extended sunset season for many blockbuster media institutions, the long tail principles of social networking and granular values won the day. And probably changed politics forever.

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Sarah Jessica Darker

Brad Hill — 2008-06-01T18:08:00+00:00

Saw Sex and the City with my wife. I thought it was reasonably diverting, certainly colorful, and at many points airily preposterous. I went into the theater owning a glancing familiarity with the TV series, but not enough to know the names of the four major characters. I knew they struggled for fulfillment in love and fashion.

I have roughly the same level of familiarity with Sarah Jessica Parker. I can't remember much of her work that I have seen, but I know her to be an attractive woman. She is far from my notion of a sexpot, but when I've seen her on Letterman she has struck me as smart, bouyant, and engaging.

So the one aspect of the film that astounded me was the extraordinary level of effort, degree of skill, and absolute dedication to image destruction that must have been brought to the assignment of making her look absolutely awful. Lighting, photography, clothes, hair -- masters of all these arts and more were evidently hired on to wreck her glamor cred. From the absurd bird on her head in the wedding scene to the tightly drawn-back hair, from the starkly photographed haggard face to the slathered eyeliner, this was a supposedly over-privileged character made to look like a woman stressed by a calamitous life for decades.

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Borders browsing

Brad Hill — 2008-05-27T19:45:00+00:00

Borders is back in the e-commerce business. That's fine; I'm sure I'm not the only person who would welcome an alternative to the always-dreadful Amazon interface. Not that I'd give up Amazon -- I'm not suggesting that for a second. The combination of deep familiarity, rich community knowledge, and tremendous execution is simply unbeatable.

But the Borders look-and-feel, which is designed to simulate store browsing, is attractive. And somehow, the books "selected" for me (though Borders has not mined any information about me that I'm aware of) were uncannily apt on my first visit. But what's this? Jill Taylor's "Stroke of Insight" won't ship for 2-4 weeks?! Amazon measures the delivery time in hours, urging me to bang in my order pronto.

And that isn't even the long-term problem for Borders. The real competition is Kindle. I can start reading that book in minutes, at less than half price.

Beautiful site, Borders. Funny how irrelevance can be so pretty.

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Surface damage

Brad Hill — 2008-05-27T11:23:00+00:00

Was he trying to put a good light on it? Or does Jan van der Cruysse have a talent for understatement? After a Boeing 747 split in half following an aborted takeoff, the Brussells airport spokesman said "The plane is very seriously damaged."

Yes, very. Brings to mind a few other classically cool responses to, um, temporary setbacks.

"The ocean liner took on a bit of water."
--Spokesperson for the R.M.S. Titanic, April 16, 1912.

"Got a bit warm up there."
--German Air Ministry, operator of the Hindenburg, May 4, 1937.

"We apologize for making the air smell bad this morning."
--Spokesperson, Bhopal pesticide plant, December 3, 1984.

"I don't know anything about 'Black Death.' But there's a bug going around for sure."
--Anonymous London doctor, 1351

"Reduced view seats now at half price."
--Facility administrator, Circus Maximus, 140 A.D.

"Low blood sugar can make anyone light-headed."
--Publicist for Britney Spears.

"Some tiny particles escaped through a small leak. You can't even see them."
--Site manager, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, April 26, 1986

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
--President Bush, September 2005

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The Amazon Dwindle

Brad Hill — 2008-03-23T19:18:00+00:00

Memo to Amazon
RE: The Kindle

Either bring that damn thing into the marketplace or stop plastering ads for it all over my Amazon experience. Your little apology does nothing for me.

That is all.

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Mysterious hotel excellence

Brad Hill — 2008-03-14T23:18:00+00:00

I don't need extraordinary service from a hotel. In fact, an excess of personality can get annoying. But I'm impressed by casual virtuosity in the hospitality business. I stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Austin for SXSW, and noticed from the start that every encounter with a staffer was smooth and helpful. But it was when I was leaving that something inexplicable and deeply impressive happened.

I went down to the lobby early. Hung out on a couch twittering and emailing. Finally walked outside to catch a cab to the airport. The uniformed guy called over the taxi, grabbed my bag, threw it into the trunk, and said "Have a good trip, Mr. Hill." Um, wha? I hadn't checked out at the desk, hadn't had any contact with anyone in the lobby. No tag on the luggage.

That's some hospitality mojo.

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Hulu gearing up to leave the beta nest

Brad Hill — 2008-03-08T13:09:00+00:00

Hulu's reported imminent emergence from beta seems like a good/bad news thing. Like many, I have enjoyed Hulu much more than I anticipated when it was first announced. I have used it to get up to speed with Firefly and Friday Night Lights -- as such, Hulu has partially displaced my addiction to Netflix streaming. The impressive interface, especially easy pop-outs of the player window, really helps. Performance is another matter. At home, all is good. But bring the connection quality down a notch or two -- like in hotels, when I really want my Hulu fix -- and the jitters set in harshly. I'm not technical enough to peer under the hood, but it looks to me like Hulu doesn't buffer in pause mode, so you can't buffer into a video like on YouTube.

What will happen when the masses come flooding in? Oh wait -- maybe there isn't any massive demand for Hulu's rail-thin catalog.

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Military phraseology rut

Brad Hill — 2008-02-08T12:21:00+00:00

After one week in which coverage of MicroHoo was more saturating than anything in recent memory, I would like to propose legislation banning this phrase:

pass regulatory muster

People. There must be other ways of saying it.

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Flight attendants: Update your act

Brad Hill — 2008-01-26T22:18:00+00:00

Interesting piece in the NYTimes about impressive survival rates in airplane accidents -- the ones that are serious, but not the hopelessly catastrophic plummets. The point is that passengers should pay more attention to the pre-takeoff safety speech that flight attendants rip through.

First of all, if the flight attendants themselves didn't seem fall-down bored as they race through their mumbled instructions, maybe they'd attract some attention. More important, tell us important stuff! The universal spiel begins with a tutorial on how to operate a seat belt. Come on, now. If you start your act with brain dead material that would make a six-year-old snicker, you can expect your captive audience to tune out.

How about this for an opening line? "Good morning folks. Please give me your attention as I describe how to stay alive in a crash." That would make my Raleigh-to-Dulles companions lower their newspapers.

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FTC casts bored glance at behavioral targeting

Brad Hill — 2007-12-28T10:48:00+00:00

The much-anticipated guidelines from the FTC (Freakishly Timid Commission) regarding behavioral targeting vs. privacy delivered an anticlimactic denouement. In a typo-infested statement, the blunt-toothed government agency borrowed principles in play since the mid-1990s to shape a wet-noodle platform of privacy and security principles. The basic points:

* When gathering behavioral data, put up a clear privacy policy.

* Provide "reasonable security" for the gathered data.

* Don't hang onto the data longer than necessary.

* Get explicit permission to collect "sensitive data" (however that might eventually be defined).

* If you change the privacy policy, let people know and get permission all over again.

... aaand, that's just about it. In truth, self-regulation will always result in a mixed bag of compliance. The only way to raise the game is to raise the standards. The FTC just looks foolish breaking out principles that responsible publishers have agreed on for years.

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Ooh, pretty Gmail colors

Brad Hill — 2007-12-04T10:20:00+00:00

I woke up to Gmail colored labels today. Made me think my job was a game of Candy Land. I like them -- anything that helps convey the shape of my email heap in a glance is good. More colors would be good; Google is offering 24 presets. A side benefit to the popup interface for choosing a label color is the label renaming feature. No longer must you go into Edit Labels and hit rename. Google should bundle in the label delete feature, too.

As long as Gmail is adding value to the Inbox item line, I have two urgent wish-list features to propose:

1) Preview mouseover popup. We get a few words of the email in the Inbox, but not enough. Gmail is too clicky, and though it performs well, I spend way too much time waiting for emails to open. Then I often have to mark them as unread, when I'm postponing action on them. (My procrastination issues are a separate problem.)

2) Annotation. I want to put sticky notes all over my Inbox. Let me insert a note into the Inbox item, and let it expand into visibility when I mouse over a small annotation icon. Just like inserting a comment in Excel.

The goal is to make Gmail navigation as complete as possible without opening items. I don't want to click through to an actual email until I know I'm going to take action on it. Am I missing any preview or annotation plugins?

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Obama.xml

Brad Hill — 2007-11-21T11:02:00+00:00

Not that he can match Al Gore's politech savvy, but Barack Obama is bidding for the wired vote by making open file standards part of his platform. That's got to piss off Microsoft. More important, it puts computing and online living issues into the campaign. Why shouldn't they be? There are about 185-million internet users in the U.S. according to comScore. Let's have a tech-only debate covering the candidates' policies on spam, file-sharing, domain trademarking, online sales tax, ad-blocking, disruptive technology, and their personal content preferences.

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Editing Google Maps

Brad Hill — 2007-11-21T09:47:00+00:00

Yippee -- I can finally get the Google Maps pointer to my home address positioned on my house, instead of down the street where it has always pointed. This thanks to the new Edit feature. Google Maps becomes Wikipedia, with user-edited location pointers. But is this good? Wikipedia is (potentially) a description of all human knowledge, so is naturally a venture for the group mind. But geography? Google Maps is (potentially) a description of all human address knowledge. Will I be unable to find my midtown hotel because a disgruntled guest moved the address pointer into Queens?

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Blog World -- questions for keynote panel

Brad Hill — 2007-11-08T14:22:00+00:00

I'm doing the keynote panel at Blog World & New Media Expo in Vegas this afternoon (5:15 PST). Also on the panel: Richard Jalichandra (CEO, Technorati), Roger L. Simon (Pajamas Media), Jeremy Wright (b5 Media), and moderator Jason Shelling (ex-Google, now founder of The Secret Agency). Jason put up a comment page for question submission -- here it is. Have at it ... questions about my dogs are particularly welcome, if outrageously off-topic.

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And next ... WSJ online for free?

Brad Hill — 2007-09-19T13:01:00+00:00

Euphoria (well, mild gladness) over the NY Times announcement had barely faded when Murdoch started making noises about unlocking the WSJ online -- increasing gladness around the world. Well, around my household.

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Everyone can haz Maureen Dowd

Brad Hill — 2007-09-18T15:00:00+00:00

The long nightmare is over. The New York Times is dumping its content firewall, putting all articles back onto the free site, skittering back from near-irrelevancy, and making it much easire for me to get my daily Op-Ed fix. Archives will be free, too! Must be painful to realize that you're not the WSJ.

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