Just spell it out
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
NASCAR has started and I’m watching the Daytona 500 with the nearly 3-year-old –
“Daddy, Cheerios!
Look it’s, Target!
Hey, M & M’s!
Home Depot! Can we go Home Depot?”
I had a conversation today with a local CEO that runs a media buying agency that only deals with user acquisition campaigns for their clients. First it was great for me to have a conversation that included the phrases CPM and click-thru, but it was even better to hear a person talk about setting his own schedule and having the opportunity to choose his clients.
Think about this idea of choosing your clients. So many of us are in the constant state of trying to acquire new clients that it never seems possible that you can have all you can handle or, more importantly, all you want. The best part is that he can use Binghamton as his base and its easy access to NYC and Boston for working with clients. Ahh, just sayin’.
This week saw two new major brand entries to the world of subscription-based content. First the Boston Globe announced that next year they were splitting and enhancing their online content offerings by creating a paid subscription site at BostonGlobe.com for $14.95 per month. Their flagship Boston.com will remain free. Magazine publisher (can I still use the “M” word?) Condé Nast announced Golf Digest on Demand as a premium subscription service for $9.99 per month, offering on-demand golf content like instruction videos. This is great. I have no problem with paid-for content. My question: how do you set these prices? I once used the HBO test when deciding if a monthly fee had value. That worked until the day I signed up for a DVR and realized that a $10/month DVR was so much more valuable by allowing me to control by viewing compared to the $12/month for HBO. Earlier this year. I tested the value of the DVR when we moved into our new place and tried to go with the HD over-the-air antenna = $free TV, but no DVR (unless I wanted to buy and pay monthly for TiVO). We quickly learned the value of on-demand Curious George as the only way to get a two-year to sit long enough to fix dinner. Back to the fees question … where do you set that value? The $9.99 for the Golf Digest on Demand makes initial sense, but every month? And that’s where the line needs to be set, you want to find that sweet spot where the subscriber is willing to pay, but not inclined to cancel. The other issue these publishers should build into their pricing is that paid subscribers are FAR MORE valuable for partnership programs. Any subscriber that is willing to pull out a credit card is going to be a FAR MORE desired target. These publishers should look to setting a price that is low enough to make the decision to join easy, and not one that makes the subscriber evaluate it’s value against another service. My take is to price low enough to cover operational expenses in order to encourage subscriptions. Then look to scale revenue on the ad/partnership side of the equation. This is especially true if you are counting on user interaction and content to drive engagement since you’ll need the people to ensure the traffic
St. John's Combo Platter: Pierogi and Holupki
I feel like I’m a one-man directory for Foursquare in the Binghamton area — sort of a modern day Lewis without Clark. It seems like everywhere I go requires that I enter the name and address. This doesn’t mean that I’m the only local user, far from it. It means I’m the only local user with a kid. While the others are fighting over mayorships at the bars on State Street, I’m commenting on the blueberry cheesecake at Apple Hills and holupki’s at the St. John’s Festival. That was just yesterday.
Tim McGraw via last.fm
One of the tricks of country music song writers that are out of fresh ideas is to write a song that does nothing, but drop proper names, such as people (Conway Twitty rhymes with so much), places (Cabo is a fav) and things (happy hour). You don’t even need to be a country music fan, and I’m sure you have a jukebox of bad music in your head right now.
Well, I’m going to test one of the worst offenders of this: a song called Southern Voices that is sung by Tim McGraw and was written by Bob DiPiero and Tom Douglas — to make sure the blame is spread fairly. The opponent Zemanta and their semantic web publishing tool. I’m afraid to paste in the lyrics, because this thing will explode. The song is nothing but a name dropping brain dump in the hope that somewhere ol’ Tim will be able to hit the right note with the music public to make you, yeah you, want to buy this drivel.
(Now, before some heads explode, please note that I am not condemning the names in the song, which range from Charlie Daniels to Jesus. I’m a big fan of these people. It’s the shameless use of their names that is bad.)
Ready… time to hit ctrl-v, and I’ll tag the names that Zemanta finds:
Hank Williams sang itNumber 3 drove itChuck Berry twanged itWill Farmer wrote itAretha Franklin sold itDolly Parton graced itRosa Parks rode itScarlett O chased itSmooth as the hickory windThat blows from MemphisDown to AppalachicolaIt’s hi ya’ll did ya eat wellCome on in I’mSure glad to know yaDon’t let this old goat crossIn this Almond Brothers t-shirt and throw yaIt’s cicadas making noiseWith the southern voiceHank Aaron smacked itMichael Jordan dunked itPocahantas tracked itJack Daniels drunk itTom Petty rocked itDr. King paved itBear Bryant won itBilly Graham saved itSmooth as the hickory windThat blows from MemphisDown to AppalachicolaIt’s hi ya’ll did ya eat wellCome on in I’mSure glad to know yaDon’t let this old goat crossIn this Crimson Tide t-shirt and throw yaIt’s cicadas making noiseWith the southern voiceJesus is my friendAmerica is my homeSweet iced tea and Jerry LeeDaytona BeachThat’s what gets to meI can feel it in my bonesSmooth as the hickory windThat blows from MemphisDown to AppalachicolaIt’s hi ya’ll did ya eat wellCome on in childI’m sure glad to know yaDon’t let this old goat crossIn this Charlie Daniels t-shirt and throw yaWe’re just boys making noiseWith the southern voiceYeah, yeah, yeah, yeahI got a southern voiceA southern voice
Now, let it be said that I’m a big fan of Zemanta and their publishing tool is great for making the blogging process easier. However, Zemanta tried, but it was just overwhelmed by the country music hit formula. 10 of the 24 proper name references that I found as ‘in-text links’, but it did much better finding 20 of 24 pictures, and it offered a wide range of related articles to choose from.
To the Zemanta people and power users: If there is a way to request more in-text links, let me know and I’ll send it through again. This song should become the benchmark for all future improvements.
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Citi Field - First Game
My tickets for the Red Sox / Yankees on Oct 2 at Fenway came in the mail today — only 161 games away. The key to getting these was that they were single seats, but directly behind each other in rows 12&13 behind home plate. Which is cool. The thing is that the game time is TBD, so I have to hope it is a day game, so we can take the Little Monster to see the Green Monster, though that probably means that it isn’t a big game. Again just 6 1/2 months away.
The real downside to this is that there is no way I can keep Colleen a Mets fan considering that the first game she went to was a Mets/Nationals battle for last place last September. Now it the Yankees/Red Sox, and I can only dream that it is a battle for last.
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Image via Wikipedia
It has been far too long since my last entry, but the reason is good — we were on the move again. At the end of September, I started a new job in Binghamton, NY. Probably the last place on earth I ever thought that we would be moving.
For the first few months, I drove back-and-forth between Weschester and Binghamton, but we made the move to temporary residence at my parents, and then finally into our own apartment this week. No hurry right now to buy a house, but that will happen soon enough.
I’ve been doing all the moving myself while the rest of the family spent Christmas plus a couple more weeks in Florida. So I’m off to unpack up some more boxes and settle in. Good to be back.
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Freebase from Metaweb I had a unique opportunity to attend a presentation put on by The New York Semantic Web Meetup called Content, Identifiers and Freebase from Metaweb about ways to use Freebase. I’ll use organizer Marco Newmann’s words to describe Freebase: 
“Freebase is a community managed database for knowledge about the world. Information in Freebase is organized as a web of facts, which can be systematically retrieved.”
So get this: Someone else stores and maintains the data, and you get to use it. This is a great resource for building applications or as a repository to supplement content projects.
As I had covered back in June, I am itching to build something using these resources, and last night may have given me a little more inspiration. For help I’ll look to pick up Jaime Taylor’s new book “Programming the Semantic Web“. Jaime Taylor presented a mix of high-level application ideas along with some code samples to show how it works, both the ease and flexibility of accessing data. Robert Cook, the co-founder of Metaweb Technologies, covered aspects about how we can use the Freebase database, including usage allowances (100k queries/day), the Creative Commons licensing requirements, and how we can upload and maintain Freebase data
I can already think of a great semantic search application that can be built with already available data — so if you are that client I spoke to last week — call me fast this is a home run, or I’m building it myself!
Like I said: It makes you want to start building. Great presentation.
Hyperlocal GuidesLast night I attended a panel discussion on The Future of Hyperlocal City Guides that was part of the Future of Local Media Salon Series.
The panel participants had a opportunity to discuss their company and products, and also voice some opinions. The panelists were: James Tunik the CEO of Mapcidy; Dennis Crowley the Co-Founder of hot start-up Foursquare; Polly Lieberman, VP at Buzzd; and Brad Rosen the Founder of Prximity.
However this is where I thought there might have been a disconnect between the topic and the panel — I do not really see these companies as being hyperlocal. Sure they are local-based guides, and each offer their own ways to gather and display information about where you are right now, but they do not present the hyper-local qualities of our two NY entries, outside.in or Patch.
With that behind me, I have to say that Mapcidy may be the closest to a hyperlocal implementation based on Tunik’s description of the planned launch on September 10. The plan is to gather data as it is published and build a layer on top of a Google Maps API. Foursquare seems to be the most fun, and likely the best chance to deliver the ad dollars that are missing from this business. The issue there appears to be scalability, though to be fair this has always been an issue with rolling out local sites. Buzzd seems to be approaching this more from the mobile web side, which is in-line with Lieberman’s comment that the mobile apps business is nothing but a phase the mobile industry is going through. She thought that apps go back to the days that applications where distributed on CD-ROM and ran as a standalone executable. Soon enough the apps will be standardized to run using a mobile browser. In the words of Rosen, Prximity is looking to be our virtual concierge with the ability match events to our interests, location and free time. It’s certainly very early in their development, so let’s give them a chance to evolve, but you can test their beta.
The next step is to sign up for these applications and see how each delivers. I’ll follow-up down the road after I get some testing under my belt.
Real-time Search with CollectaI had an geek’s evening planned where I would watch the Mets and follow along on real-time search engine Collecta. Sadly, this is not the first time (this week) I have done something similar, but usually I do it via my @METSorYANKEES twitter feed. 
Doing this is the definition of social media, since I can’t be a real social gathering with other fans, this way I get to exchange information, barbs, or frequently in the Mets case — bitching. One thing to note is that through Collecta I can’t directly contribute, but it made it very easy to find other Mets fans and add them to my twitter follows list and ping away.
Overall it was interesting, but it also changed my perception of this as “search” as we have come to know it. The search engine paradigm is that I want information, that information is stored in historical archives, and I use some words that surround the topic and this hopefully gets me an answer. On Collecta, it was more of watching history unfold. The results are partial pieces of the big picture, but as time — in this case the game — played on, it was up to me to follow along and piece everything together.
The flow of information was constant, but the content mixed during the evening. Here are some samples:
So the outcome of all this: First, the experience needs to be renamed from real-time search because anything called search eventually gets compared to Google by the mass audience. The only thing that it shares with the Google activity is that I type a query in a box and click. I this case the “Now!” button.
Second, it is the perfect complement to enjoying a live event on TV or radio. The endless stream of commentary is perfect for baseball which we all know has a lot of down time. However, I’m sure it will provide the same benefits for the American Idol and Lost crowds as their geek quotient increases.
Though the Mets lost this one, I think I found a new way to add some enjoyment to the game.
Take care, and Let’s Go Mets!