Commanding Chaos for Coworking, Open Source and Creative Communities

How does iTunes popularity work?

Sun, 03/04/2007 - 10:26 -- rprice

Dear iTunes:
Will you please tell me how many people clicked Subscribe inside of iTunes? I know you know, and since you know I know you know, you appear to tease me with the information. Why?

Is my podcast popular in relation to other Alternative Health shows, or simply compared to the other shows I searched for? Is it popular today, this week, this month, since the beginning of the year, or since Hallowe'en? Is there any way to find out? Please, please, please help me.

Footprint Podcast is Popular on iTunesFootprint Podcast is Popular on iTunes Hosted on Zooomr
iTunes OCDiTunes OCD Hosted on Zooomr

Your podcast catching platform is regrettably the only software that works well for audio and video across 2 major platforms and also manages to keep people inside the program for hours a day, with a little number next to the "Podcasts" source that lets the OCD people know they have unfinished business with their podcast hosts. If someone else captured attention as well as iTunes, I would scream it from the rooftops. If all I do is video, Democracy Player is great! I wish Democracy did audio, or someone would write a hip, open-source podcatching/ music listening platform.

Wait a second... what about Songbird? Is their user experience too general? I can subscribe to a webpage with mp3 links, but not to a feed. Or if I can, they don't make it obvious. Since they are still on version 0.2.5, does this mean I'm going to have to wait a few years for them to get it right, like I'm doing with Flock? Only you, iTunes, have the power to help me in my quest. How do I compare?

People don't want to visit Podcast Alley, and they especially don't want to be NPR'd to death with "Please vote for our podcast, so we can beat the Harry Potter kids!" all the live-long day. They just don't. Most of them only tune in to about half an hour's worth of material anyway, so unless we plug it at the beginning, which no self-respecting podcaster would do, there's almost no way to get a decent comparison.

iTunes Related SubscriptionsiTunes Related Subscriptions Hosted on Zooomr

When I first saw these little gray bars, I was very excited - my podcast is popular! Hell, people even have related subscriptions... I think. Is this like the Amazon store, where they say "People who bought this product also bought..." because if it is, where are the comments from those kids? This large number of related podcasts leads me to believe that you are just pulling the stats from Alternative Health in general, or one very eco-friendly person's list.

Gosh, iTunes. Even your screenshots look good in a blog post. I wish you weren't the only major player. I guess all I can do now is start writing XUL plugins for Songbird, create BitTorrent friendly feeds for Democracy TV, and keep doing my shameless self promotions for Liberatr, Liberatr, Liberatr.net!

Thanks for... something, Uncle Steve.

Peace,
Ryan Price
iTunes User
Orlando, FL

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Holly Riggs' Farewell Show

Sat, 03/03/2007 - 09:57 -- rprice
Holly Riggs' Final FarewellHolly Riggs' Final Farewell Hosted on Zooomr

Holly Riggs began writing poetry after a rough break up. A producer from Nonsense Records discovered her talents at a performance and offered to produce a spoken word album. It came out great, and Holly kept performing around town. She was a regular at the Tuesday night SPEAKEASY at Will's while it was still around, and she even appeared in the documentary about the event.

Apart from her music career, Holly makes jewelry and produces interactive, hip-hop inspired theatre as Starbananas Productions. I never got a chance to see the play they put on last year, but if I know anything about this girl, it was a sight to be seen.

Come out to Dandelion on Friday and help Orlando wish Holly a fond farewell and many happy returns.

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MacBook Pro Optical SuperDrive Rejects 1 in 4 Discs

Fri, 02/23/2007 - 04:55 -- rprice

I am ready to visit a Mac Genius and make them replace this piece of shit drive. Every 4th disc, CD/DVD, gets rejected from the drive - sometimes trying again works, other times, I can try 10 times with no positive result. The first time I noticed this was Harry Potter on DVD.

At first I thought it was Warner Brothers trying to protect themselves from piracy, but then I tried a bunch of (good) burned discs, all with the same effect. Also, my volume 2 of Firefly is rejected, but the others work fine. Sure, these discs might have a tiny abnormality, but the thing just spins and spins and then spits the disc out! There is no way to mount the disc or override this function as far as I know. This is what I consider broken and I want a new one.

Support for my claim: MacBook Pro: Optical Drive

Update: The AppleCare disc was rejected the other day - that is my closing argument for when I go get someone to replace this thing.

Update: About a month later I took my MacBook in to the Apple store for repairs as I was going on vacation - the Millenia sroe was closed for renovations, so I went to the Florida Mall store, and the Mac Genius was very helpful. I proved the drive was busted, gave them my administrator password and went out of town, lugging my old PC laptop. When I came back, my MacBook Pro was as good as new and I haven't had any problems burning since. I wish I could have upgraded to a dual-layer drive, but I guess you get what you get.

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Comment Blitz! Sorry.

Tue, 02/20/2007 - 21:24 -- rprice

Wow, I actually got quite a few comments on my posts about MaxCast and Four Eyed Monsters, the Wine Haiku and others, but I have been neglecting my comments queue. I apologize to anyone who left comments. I get so much spam, I think I should get one of those 2 + 2 = ? systems like Mr. Josh Hallet.

If you're a blogger, what has worked for you? How do you fight the forces of evil?

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Thoughts and Inspiration

Mon, 02/19/2007 - 20:23 -- rprice

From Signal vs. Noise (37signals)

“If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
-Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., discussing the design of the lunar module that landed NASA astronauts on the moon.

Similarly, if you're sailing a ship named the SS Entrepreneur, do you want it to travel inside a track like the Pirates ride at Disneyland, or would you like the freedom to change course? I think you do. The pirate ship in that ride sits in the same place everyday, raiding the same castle, and the captain keeps calling out the same insults. That's not how I want to live my life. It's also not how I want to run my business.

Now, turning a big boat is harder than turning a small one, and turning a whole fleet of boats is harder than one or a few. Hence, come up with one thing to focus on, one set of sails to keep full, until you're secure in the knowledge that there is someone there to keep the ship on course. After you've made a few successful sea crossings, people will give you more credit as a navigator. Hell, they might even fund your expedition. Not everyone gets a Queen Isabella to their Chris Columbus.

There's a guy who knew when he had a good thing. Went looking for India, found something completely different. Take the team over at Riya for example: they think they're going to build this great identity search engine, and how they're a shopping site. They maintained the ability to change course and decide when they've found something more valuable than what they originally started looking for.

And myself? I thought I was going to bring local bands into the spotlight - it ended up being less of a passion of mine. I see now that I like all parts of Orlando equally - places to live, shop, eat, create, have fun and learn - I want to learn about everything local and share it with everyone. Still, I felt like the town had so much to offer, and there were so many ways to look at each person, place, thing or concept that I should get some other people involved with sharing. So witness the birth of Orlando Scene TV.

On March 4th, I'll show you the first of many installments of my latest vision. Around the same time, I'll give you a chance to meet the people involved and start a conversation with them. Afterwards, you'll have a chance to produce an episode yourself.

When I first created Liberatr I created a channel called Open Forum hoping that people would discover it and create their own podcasts - they could make a one-off opinion piece, respond to something we made or even create a recurring show without the burden of having to set up the hosting and promote the show. This is the same concept with a distinct spin - make it about Orlando, and show us what you're passionate about. That's all.

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Orlando Scene TV is in Motion

Mon, 02/19/2007 - 10:44 -- rprice

Last night, Becky, Mark, John, Stefan and Erin all arrived at Alex and Kathryn's apartment for the first production meeting of Orlando Scene TV. I chose that apartment because they have a breathtaking view of the Orlando skyline and a decent sized balcony with sliding doors that really open up the space. Despite the fact that it was probably 45 degrees out there, it was a wonderful clear night.

Backy, John and Mark (Michelle couldn't make it) are three people I have tapped to be hosts of the show, and we are looking to accept submissions from any interested parties out there with informational and entertaining content. The idea behind the show is to introduce people to Orlando from an insider's perspective. All of the people involved have 2 interests in common: 1) finding the less obvious things in Orlando (I can think of about a dozen "obvious" things, and most of them include the words "world", "park" or "center") and 2) creating good media, in this case, video.

True to form, Mark Baratelli got home and blogged about it: blog.myspace.com/markbaratelli

My next video project
You know I love putting myself on video, online. Pretty soon, someone else will be doing it for me. The tall Ryan Price has put me in his new Orlando-themed Rocketboom-ish but more-interview, less-scripted show "Orlando Scene." There's nothing to show you yet. We had our first meeting with him, two of the other hosts, and his brother, the cameraman tonight at the apartment of the owner of a new Orlando start-up, emurse, a resume site. (I know, I already signed up) We filmed brief intros. I loved it #1 because I got to wear my favorite coat and #2 because it was so much fun. I like hosting and talking to cameras. i don't know why. I am so damn shy most of the time. My first assignment is to record a phone interview with the founders of a new art gallery downtown. I couldn't attend the opening (it was last weekend and I had SAK shows) so he actually went through with my idea of getting some footage there without me, then having me record the interview later on Skype. Again, it's cool when people use your ideas.

I like using Mark's ideas. I consider myself very lucky to be surrounded by such talented and enthusiastic people. This thing really feels like it's in motion, and I can't wait until the rubber hits the road, so to speak.

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