A.Connector

Another nice side of Paul and Martha’s recent visit were the half-a-dozen or so books they brought for me. My dead tree artifact reading has been way too sporadic as of late. Most were detective fiction which is always a good starting point. I have been using the camera they brought me from mutual friend Hugh Brackett but so far Windows is acting sulky when I go to sync the camera with the machine. Oh well…

Good food for thought on some less than LOL truth from Bryce over here.

Your A.Connector guy has been busy these last few days with friends/guests visiting form the States. I had the opportunity to play tour guide introducing them to some of my favorite places and people here in Central Taiwan. We originally knew each other virtually via podcasting circles. Now we are legitimate have met, eaten together, hugged and shook hands, shared elements of our lives in real time, friends. Nice transition.

*RSS feeds wants to be free-don’t lock them up or water them down-my experience with Freakonomics, good conversation on Neville’s blog here. Learn the culture and embrace it if you want to be embraced back. True Hoop an example of good transition to big media site that maintained good faith with original readers.
Update: Here is an excellent post by Scott Karp that addresses rss feed issue perfectly. Can you win betting against the internet?

*New Media marketing success stories: Hugh Mcleod mentioned in Business Week here for Stormhoek, Twitter as human powered search, JC Hutchins successful campaign to reach listeners resulting in a writing deal. Mention new Asian Variations free web album-participate in viral marketing campaign.

*Twitter is like a news teletype or the local bar; ephemeral and virtually live(the way I view it) Facebook like the newspaper.

Hope you enjoyed the episode-feel free to leave comments on blog, by email or Voice mail and help continue the conversation.

I’ll never forget when one of my Taiwanese business associates asked me if I was on Skype(pronounced Sky-pee by most here)? I had no clue what that was and he explained. I tried it and loved it immediately. Then I was pleasantly surprised to find out that many podcasters and bloggers(all new to me then back in mid ‘05) were also on Skype.

Well when and application becomes that ubiquitous and even supersedes application utility becoming a virtual phone replacement that is a great level of achievement. Unfortunately, Skype undid what it had gone to great pains to do, it broke down and we all noticed.

Not a good thing for a utility like electricity, water and phone(in this case Net phone.) Sure things happen, software breaks or gets attacked,etc. P2P and Web apps while making great strides and offering much convenience still have a ways to go before they offer comparable stability. Just sayin’.

What do they see? The latest trendy stuff? Anything deeper more substantial than that? It seems to me that in many cases old media recognize there is something going on, there bottom line has been affected but still relies on cooptive old media methods. Pwning is enough, no need to go any deeper. In fact, much of new media and the early adopters it attracts is very much attuned to the culture that goes along with the widgets, api’s, etc.

I have much experience dealing with different cultures, so I am kind of an expert on cultural sensitivity and insensitivity too. Culture is like air in that you don’t see it or give it a second thought but without it you’ll die. In essence, the savvy old media shoppers will also buy and listen to the new media cultural evangelists, particularly the ones that have worked in a money making model to make sure there is adequate awareness and sensitivity enabling continued acceptance of the property that’s been assimilated.

I’ll never fault anyone on making any decision to improve there economic picture. I’m assuming that the Freakonomics blog’s move to within the NY Times(behind their wall) was for that reason. I happen to have mucho respect for the Times being a native New Yorker. However, while the blog used to be very RSS browser friendly it is now very much not. They still have rss feed going out to GReader except now it is a one sentence blurb. You must go to the Times site to read every blog post and it isn’t even pretty-just the NY Times online drab look. Oy Vey-I mean freaky “nomics.”

I’m hardly the superior tech geek, couldn’t code my way out of an anti-static baggie if my life depended on it. Yet, I’ve mentioned several times here and in podcast that I believe Dave Winer is going to ensure that Twitter not only stays around but morphs into some other useful forms enabling wider and more frequent use besides what we had for lunch. Look here. Scoble has been assisting in testing this new stream application of Twitter as well see here. This is a welcome diversion from Facebook/IPhone blog posts. BTW-How many Robert Scoble’s are there? All this activity can’t be from one guy right?

Moonlighting as new media guy? Well actually my day job is as small business owner. Calling it a day job isn’t exactly accurate either because any business owner will tell you many times it’s 24-7 particularly if there are problems. One problem I have been dealing with lately was a creative mental block. While my new media endeavors have been going smoothly and provided me with a creative outlet and some needed self-actualization, my direction for new business development had been kind of underwhelming for the last few months.

Fortunately last night I started getting some ideas in my head as I laid in bed. I didn’t let my mind dwell on them too much knowing that I’d never get to sleep if I did. In fact I had one of those did I sleep, was that a dream or thinking type sleeps. The lifeblood of my business is me coming up with new products using my proprietary materials. This is quite a task since there are so many possibilities and coming up with a direction that will be well received, in the shortest amount of time, with the fewest resources expended is the goal.

It looks like I might be on to something and will get moving in that direction. Working on designing some medical accessory items that utilize nano technology in the form of FIR(far infra red radiation) in my soft InGel material. Even if I’m wrong I know this brainstorming has helped snap me out of my temporary dry-spell and will definitely serve to blow out the cobwebs from my old noggin.

Nothing like working on some design/marketing challenges to get the creative juices flowing. Ahh, I feel my muse again and I like it!

Well lately I’ve been establishing more of an Eastern social media/digital marketing quotient via Facebook new friends. On that note, “friends” broadest definition by a Chinese friend-someone that hasn’t hurt you and hence isn’t your enemy=friend. OK, I can live with that broad definition. Let’s face it there are many different kinds of friends and very few of them the “close” kind. Internet conversations via blog, Twitter, etc. are like parties that you don’t need to get dressed up for, drive to, or bring a gift to. You can also conveniently duck out without fearing the host will spot you and think too much about your early departure and come back in later if time and interest permit.

The best result of these digital conversations are when they provoke though or enable enlightenment of some for that will integrate into your real face to face encounters. That is the real payoff of filtering through so much “noise” to reach the “signal”.

Ahh the East>West meme. Since I am in Taiwan, it is good for me to have more dialog with folks that are here in Asia and share similar interests:marketing, connectivity, social, thinking, music, etc. Expect more of this type of thread in future blog posts and A.C Casts. Here is a project I am doing with Jim Stanger that ties in directly with this. Jim’s thinking was that many Western people would be interested in learning more about what their Oriental(or expatriated Western) cousins are doing digitally speaking.

I couldn’t resist linking to this one here and on social networking no less. I have been a similar info-connector on so many occasions telling friends in the US about an event happening near by, or hooking up some friends that were close to each other. Nice to see that the Net is making the earth flat in many ways. Thanks to Paul for the point.