Djchall's Micro Blog

Dire Wolff

On the one hand, Facebook is mired in the same relentless downward pressure of falling per-user revenues as the rest of Web-based media. The company makes a pitiful and shrinking $5 per customer per year, which puts it somewhat ahead of the Huffington Post and somewhat behind the New York Times' digital business. (Here's the heartbreaking truth about the difference between new media and old: even in the New York Times' declining traditional business, a subscriber is still worth more than $1,000 a year.)

via www.technologyreview.com

That's a pretty amazing number. A big difference, of course, is that home delivery of the printed NY Times is much more expensive than any online option. (Full price is $800/year in Berkeley, though I'm sure you can get that discounted in many ways.)

Is the rest of the difference advertising? Why is advertising so much more valuable in the print edition? There are a lot of reasons. One I can think of is that the NY Times seems to get a lot of prestige advertising. It is, after all, the "newspaper of record." During the fall, the Sunday Arts section has a full-page ad for seemingly every movie that comes out. Every time a big corporation kills innocent people or wrecks the environment, there goto PR plan is to post an apology in the form of a full-page ad in the editorial section. It's hard to think of an online ad with similar gravitas.

The real problem with online advertising is that it's completely metrics/ROI driven, not a cultural institution.

"An eventful day in the life of Slick Rick"

This song tells an eventful day in the life of Slick Rick. It begins by him waking up in the morning, around 10 o'clock, washing up and preparing to go out on a date at night by putting on cologne and dressing fancily. Once ready he leaves but shortly after leaving he realizes he that he forgot his Kangol hat. Due to this he returns to look for it and then rushes out again. While he ran through an alley he met with a friends of his, a girl he knew since a long time ago named Sally. He noticed she seemed upset and asked her what was wrong. She then proceeded to tell Rick that she still loves him after the separation. while consoling her, Rick sees Sally's mother approaching with two children. She greets Slick and begins to assault Sally causing the children to leave. Rick jumps in attempting to break the fight up and asks Sally's mom why she was beating her daughter. She replies that if she can't have him then Sally can't either, now knowing Sally and Rick had already broken up. Having learned of the reason Rick attempted to run away but was caught up by Sally's mom. She stops him and points her finger to him. She confesses her undying love for him and suggests going for a ride on the jaguar before returning to the apartment to fornicate. She also tells him that she is sometimes hypnotized by his words and ability to rap. Rick calms her down by giving her a kiss and tells her he is too young for her, having said before he considered her to be older than his mother. Sally's mom then says she is not and Rick reveals to be 19. She does not believe him and Rick offers the possibility of checking this with her mother claiming that she is too old for him and, for that reason can not be her lover. The song end with the words “To the heart tick tock you don’t stop To the heart tick tock you don’t quit, hit it!”

via en.wikipedia.org

Axl Rose pens letter to Rock Hall

The only reason, at this point, under the circumstances, in my opinion whether under the guise of "for the fans" or whatever justification of the moment, for anyone to continue to ask, suggest or demand a reunion are misguided attempts to distract from our efforts with our current lineup of myself, Dizzy Reed, Tommy Stinson, Frank Ferrer, Richard Fortus, Chris Pitman, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal and DJ Ashba. 

via latimesblogs.latimes.com

If you like long, completely insane letters from rock stars, this should be right up your alley.

Answers to Dr. Brain-Wizard’s Logic Puzzles

Although there is no “solution,” as such, the answers to Dr. Brain-Wizard’s three rhetorical questions are: to limit costs; someone made a mistake; and to limit costs.

via www.mcsweeneys.net

"To limit costs" and "someone made a mistake" are the answers to almost every question.

"putting our users and advertisers first"

Our goal is to get back to our core purpose – putting our users and advertisers first

via techcrunch.com

Since users and advertisers are distinct groups whose needs and desires are not completely aligned, this statement is invalid.

Websites Need to Have Better Clutter

Websites should think of Instapaper as competition. People are spending their reader-experience (RX?) dollars elsewhere, period. They don't want to pay publisher sites with impressions on ads they don't value, so they pay Marco Arment for a better reading experience. If publishers want to get those RX dollars, they have to deliver a great experience Instapaper can't provide. It's pure and simple competition.

via www.readwriteweb.com

His argument boils down to this: readers like Instapaper and Readability, because they provide a clutter-free reader experience, so the solution is that website should have more clutter, like videos, community, etc.

My first interpretation is that what he really meant was content sites should divide the market and let the serious readers use InstaPaper and everyone else stay on the site. That seems short-sighted, though, given that the serious readers seem like the ones who are more likely to be return customers.

So maybe he means the solution is that websites have to improve their clutter--ie, make the clutter actually seem worthwhile. As someone with a vested interest in the written word, I believe this is also short-sighted, because then you're not focused on great content, you're focused on attendant gewgaws and community management, which is all well and good but there's already so much of that on the internet it doesn't seem like there really needs to be more.

The underlying problem as I see it is that advertising is a shitty business model for websites. Advertising is only cool when it's decoupled from ROI and is done for prestige purposes (the corporate equivalent of peacock feathers.) Mad Men gets this, one of the reasons why it's such a great show. The disastrous thing about advertising on the internet is that you know which ads work and how well, and you know what content gets the most hits. This creates a race to the bottom which is inimical to creativity and cool.

"Mark Fucking Zuckerberg won the blogging wars"

Because when I would spend my time flinging zingers at Matt Mullenweg about the merits of Movable Type vs. WordPress, you know who was winning? Mark Fucking Zuckerberg. Facebook won the blogging wars. The web became a more closed place than if either Movable Type or WordPress had evolved into the tool that powered social networking.

via dashes.com

I was there and... yeah.

Summer in March, 2012, draws to a close

I've never seen a case where the low temperature for the date beat the previous record high. This happened on at least four occasions during "Summer in March, 2012":

The low temperature at Marquette, Michigan hit 52° on March 21, which was 3° warmer than the previous record high for the date.

The low at Mt. Washington, NH on March 21 (44°) beat the previous record high for the date (43°.)

The low temperature for International Falls, Minnesota on March 20 bottomed out at 60°F, tying the previous record high for the date.

The low temperature in Rochester, Minnesota on March 18 was 62°F, which beat the previous record high for the date of 60°.

via www.wunderground.com

The cataloguing of unprecedented events is mind-numbing. Reading it feels like being in the first ten minutes of a Roland Emmerich film, the kind where at the end human civilization has been completely wiped off the earth.

The Napoleon Dynamite Problem

When Bertoni showed me a list of his 25 most-difficult-to-predict movies, I noticed they were all similar in some way to “Napoleon Dynamite” — culturally or politically polarizing and hard to classify, including “I Heart Huckabees,” “Lost in Translation,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Sideways.”

via www.nytimes.com

I missed this when the Netflix prize was a big deal (maybe I was working too much) but the interesting thing abou this list is that, other than Fahrenheit 9/11, those are all movies I really, really loved. So apparently I like polarizing movies.

Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog : Unprecedented early-year heat smashes all-time records in Midwest : Weather Underground

Perhaps the most extraordinary record was set in Traverse City, Michigan, which hit 81°F--a temperature 42°F above the average high for the date, and four degrees warmer than any previous day so early in the year. Records go back to 1897 in the city.

via www.wunderground.com

If my back-story notes for 2049, I have Thermogeddon scheduled for 2031. Based on what we've been seeing so far this year I think that might be too late. Forty degrees above the expected temperature is a pleasant surprise in peninsular Michigan in March, but what happens when July temperatures in Dallas are that much above average?