The Beer Up Here - Alaskan Beer App - And Ben Kerosky's Last Anchorage Stand - iPhone 5c

The Beer Up Here is an iPhone app that allows folks to track down all the Alaska breweries, their beers, and the places that serve them.  Two guys from Eagle River put it together  - one a beer fanatic and the other a software guy.  If you're looking for a place to get a good local beer, this app will tell you where they are available, how they are made,  
and what's on tap that day.  I was impressed.  

Joe Tranquilla

At Wednesday night's Alaska Apple Users Group (AAUG) Joe Tranquilla sounded pretty obsessive in all the details that he has in the app, plus serious photos.  Anyone looking for places to drink Alaskan beers or just to know what all is available, should check out this app.  As he explained, they keep things constantly updated.



Here's The Beer Up Here blog's latest post (Sept. 7, 2013):

"We just added the 300th beer to the app! The Broken Tooth Beg, Yarrow or Steal – a saison with hand-picked Alaskan yarrow and juniper berries. Our initial release included 255 beers. So we’ve added 45 beers in the 35 days the app has been live. That’s an average of more than one beer a day. If you buy the app, you get all those beers and a growing database for the price of a beer. Thanks for the support!"

Someone asked about the cost of the app.  It's $4.99.  He said he gets about $3.50 for each one bought and Apple keeps the rest.  Also says he gets his check about every six weeks, though Apple says they pay monthly.  If they hold the money on 1 million apps for an average of three weeks, they could pick up a nice amount of interest every month.  I bet they get more than my credit union is offering. 

The second half of the meeting was a presentation by UAA grad and long time Apple representative in Anchorage - Ben Kerosky.  Ben's leaving tomorrow by car for Seattle where he takes on a new job which will include visiting Apple outlets around the Seattle area.  (J and I will follow him a few days later down the highway.) 

Ben's last hurrah at AAUG was a presentation on the new iPhones 5c and 5s.  He had a 5c that he demonstrated with.  I still have a dumb phone, but I attend

Ben Kerosky and Apple 5c Demo

these meetings  so I at least know what others are spending their money on and figuring out if anything does things I need bad enough to spend the money on. 

One nice feature I didn't know about is a Do Not Disturb button that lets you shut off the phone when you don't want to hear from others - like during the night. 

It does allow, he said, someone who calls twice in a row to break through the barrier, so he suggested you only let friends do this.  And I'd be careful which friends. 

He also answered one of the questions I had about the 5s' new fingerprint id.  You can have up to five different people and you can also use a pass code as a back up. 

Ben has been one of the youngest folks to attend on a regular basis and he does it as part of his job.  I suspect with the younger crowd, all they friends give them the info that the older crowd gets at these meetings.  We're going to miss Ben, he's been a great resource at the AAUG and at Best Buy. 

The Alaska Apple User Group meets on the (as of this month) second Wednesday of the month at the BP Energy Center.  You can check the AAUG website too.  They have some spectacular iPhone Photography winners for 2013.  These are really fantastic images.

Record Your Skype Calls Easily With Call Recorder

Back in October I talked to Brent Scarpo via Skype before his trip to Anchorage.  I wanted to record it, so I used my digital camera on a tiny tripod to do it.  It was ok (the problems were more in the quality of his cam), but I realized what I needed was software to do it through Skype directly.

I quickly found ecamm's Call Recorder - made especially for Macs.  One of the perks of being an Alaska Apple User Group member is that if you review books and software and other products for them, you get to keep the item.  So I checked to see if they could get Call Recorder for me.  Actually, it was only $19.95 so it wasn't that big a deal.  But I figured writing up the review and this post, got me twenty bucks.  And I can buy my wife some flowers or use it for a dinner out.

click to make clearer

This software is really easy to use.  You download it, turn it on (and they walk you through all this), and there it is.  You turn on Skype and you get this little Call Recorder box (upper left.)

Click the middle circle with the yellow dot and it starts recording.  The dot turns red when it's recording.  And the green volume indicators get bright.

Click the circle to the left of that and you get the skype preference box with the Recording options.

If you click on the image you can get it bigger and sharper.  (Blogger, why do they have to do that?  Why can't you make it sharper right here?)   Anyhoo, you can see that you can set it different ways.
The key ones that mattered for me were:

1.  Tell it where to save the files.  Once you click record, it starts recording.  When you stop it, it automatically saves the very compressed files (about 11 minutes was 14mb).  So you might want to figure out where you want it to be saved and do that on the preference window.  If you don't, the button on the right of the yellow dot, shows you where the files are.

2.  Set how you want the video to record.  It came set to record both cams, split screen.  I just wanted the person I was interviewing.  So I set it that way.  But you can also just record yourself or put yourself in a small box with the person you call.

3.  You can mark the recording as it is happening so it will have separate chapters.  I haven't tried that yet.

4.  You can record a voice chat as well.

Very cool and very easy.

Of course, this also means that your Skype chat could end up on YouTube so be careful who you chat with and what you say.  [Update Dec. 31, 2012:  People have been telling me that there's a red light on when it's recording.  Then I saw the red light too.  So, if the other person is paying attention, they may notice the red light and figure out they are being recorded.  I'm not sure if this was there the whole time or it was added more recently.]

Ecamm does note on their site that different states have different laws about recording phone conversations without the other party knowing.  In Alaska, just one person has to consent (me or the other guy).  You can check Summary of Consent Laws Requirements for Taping Telephone Conversations which has  a table of states (38+DC) that allow one party consent and all party consent (12 states).  But even if you are in a one party state, if you call another state, its laws and federal laws apply.  And there's no date on that website and laws change.

I was making videos for the blog, so I let the people know.  I think it's probably a good idea to tell the person you are recording and keep the clip that says they know in case anyone says they didn't know they were being recorded.

The video quality is only as good as the Skype video - and nothing I got was nearly as great as what ecamm shows on their website. 

I did three of these of film makers who had films at the Anchorage International Film Festival, but who weren't able to get to Anchorage.  You can see how it turned out.
1.  Nayeem Mahbub - He was in Nairobi, Kenya.  The video quality was terrible on Skype.
2.  Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter - They were in Tilburg, Holland.
3.  David Andrade - He was in San Diego, California. 

David's was the best video.  You could see his lips and the audio wasn't synched right, so I had to move the audio track a smidge to get it to synch.

For what I need, this is perfect.

[Disclosure:  As I said on top, I did get a free copy through the Alaska Apple User Group and I had to write a review for them.  But otherwise I have no obligation to the company and I'm posting this because I think it's neat and easy and some of you might be looking for a a way to record Skype conversations.  It doesn't do iChat or MSM.]

Check the website for more details.

Thanks Steve

Want to Make Your Own iPhone App?

A couple of months ago the question, "How do people make apps?," popped into my head.  I asked my computer savvy son and his answer was vague about writing programs for them.  So when Craig Hockenberry's iPhone App Development:  The Missing Manual showed up at the Alaska Apple User Group review desk, I grabbed it.  I wasn't planning on making any apps, but I was just wanted to get a sense about how they are made.  So the rest is basically the review I did for the Apple User Group.  The style is a little different from how I usually write.  I'd just say, writing an App sounds possible (for someone like me) but would take a fair amount of work to learn.  I'd need to have a killer app to do it.  One thing I learned is that you can write your own app for your iPhone or iPod Touch. You don't need to buy them if you can figure out how to make one.  [UPDATE 3/29: a reader corrected me here.  You can test the APP on your computer, but the iPhone is not open source so you apparently can't (without more complicated workarounds that void your warranty) make it just for your own iPhone.  But you can make your own Apps for Androids.  Thanks J.]

I was surprised, to find in the first chapter, there was something called Xcode already on my Mac startup disk, but it's one of the extras that aren't included in the basic package of software most people load.  And then once you get Xcode installed you have to get another free software - iPhone SDK - and you have to join the iPhone Developer Program to get that.  But then you have software set up especially to make Apps.

But by chapter 2 it already wasn't going to be that easy.  Hockenberry starts talking about Objective-C language.  Since the last computer language I could do anything with was Fortran - and some basic HTML for my blog - this was getting beyond what I might be able to  do without some serious effort.  For those who already program I suspect this chapter will mean a lot more.  It is just an overview and in the end he refers readers to Apple's free online book The Objective-C 2.0 Programming Language.

Chapter 3 is about Cocoa Touch frameworks - "the building blocks" - the parts of Cocoa Touch frameworks that get pieced together with your new adhesive [Objective-C].  The handy acronym to remember these by is MVC - Models, Viewers, and Controllers.

The Views are "all those buttons, scrolling lists, web browsers, and everything else that appears on your iPhone screen. . .Views know how to present your application's data.  Some views also know how to react to user input.‚" (p. 67)

Models  "are your application's heart and soul because they are responsible for managing the data.  . . A model's only function is to manipulate and process the user's data within the application.  Models often implement internal logic that provides these basic behaviors.‚"(p. 67)

Finally, Controllers "act as an intermediary between the view objects and the model objects."p. 68)  

Chapter 4 goes in a totally new direction, one that I was able to follow completely:  it's about the designing of tools.  It is aimed at the techie who needs to work with a non-techie designer and discusses designing goals, unique designing issues for iPhones (such as the small size and low weight, left and right handed users, display rotation.)  Then it goes through the design process - starting with paper and pencil - and how to get along with your designer, as well as getting feedback from beta testing and other methods.  I had no trouble understanding this chapter and it is well done.

Part II of the book gets into much more programming depth and I only skimmed it.

Part III gets back into language and culture I understand - The Business End.  It takes an App developer step-by-step from Beta testing through advertising. It covers pricing and user feedback and updating your product.

Based on the parts I could understand, I'd recommend this book to someone who was serious about getting into the App business.  It's an intro to the technical part with links to get more information and it's a well written guide to the non-technical parts.  I think that if I wanted to build an App, this book would be my basic guide and I'd be able to figure it out (going to the links it provides, of course.)  And it also avoids the cutesiness of a lot of computer books.

As you can tell, I'm not going to be designing any apps soon, but I achieved my objective of getting a basic understanding of the App building process.

Moving To Snow Leopard [UPDATE: The Black Screen of Snow Leopard]

[Update: I've joined an elite group who have their screens turn black. A Mac Forum came up with some possible work arounds, but not real fixes. People seem to think it has to do with the picture preview and I've been using iPhoto and now iMovie. I can get something back if I hit the F10 key or those around it, but the edges of the screen are black and then it all goes black.]

[Update Sept 23: for the progress of this still ongoing issue, see comments to this post and check the label (right column bottom) 'snow leopard.' As I write I'm waiting for a new adapter cord that is coming by Fedex from Apple. I've narrowed it down: the only time I get the black screen is when the adapter cord (the white cord the comes with the Macbook) is connected and I don't touch the keyboard for a few minutes. When it runs on battery and I leave, nothing bad happens.]

I bought a copy of Snow Leopard when it came out almost two weeks ago now I think. At the Apple User Group that following Wednesday I saw a copy of the ebook, Take Control: Upgrading to Snow Leopard. That seemed like something useful to look at before upgrading.

I did learn some things. I thought I had a bootable back up before, but apparently not. So I downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner at the book's recommendation. But after going through lists of all the things that can go wrong, I was less inclined to install Snow Leopard. (Snow Leopard is the operating system upgrade for Macs. It follows Leopard, Tiger, and Panther.)

Finally I realized that I was getting advice that was appropriate for going to the moon but I was just going for a bike ride. The odds were good that nothing bad was going to happen and if it did, I'd go back to the MacHaus and have them help me. So, today, I finally installed Snow Leopard. The instructions in Snow Leopard merely said to stick the disk into the computer and push the install button. (The ebook was about 80 pages of things to worry about.) Actually, it would be nice for installation material to tell people to have the 5 gb free that they told us at the meeting (the ebook said, well, you really should have 10 gb free). It took 1 hour and 25 minutes.

At the meeting, Ben, the Apple guy from Best Buy who comes to the meetings regularly and really knows his stuff, told us we'd get 7GB freed up when we had Snow Leopard installed. That's pretty cool - not only does it not take up more room, but it cleans up stuff already there and you have more room when you are done than when you started. Well I started with 7.53 GB free and when it was over I had 21.56 GB free. (Yeah, I know, it must have been a real mess in there. But at least the installation cleaned it up.)

So I still have to send in a review for the ebook. It's for people who really want to take precautions for every possible thing that could go wrong. My suggestion is to make sure you've got 5 gb free and then go for it. Well, back up all your files first, at least, on an external hard drive. The ebook is for people who want to know the details of every possible illness they could ever have.

Now I'm checking things out. It says I should have a download 'stack' but I don't see one. One of the coolest new features is the ability to draw Chinese characters on the trackpad, but I haven't tried that either. If it were Thai letters, I would have tried by now.

So now I can start plowing through all the other manuals for electronic equipment that have been pouring into my life.

[Update Oct. 3 - see this later post for what the Snow Leopard problem was for me. Doesn't mean it will work for you, but it seems to have solved my problem.]

Begich Fund Raiser - Long Time No See

We rode over to a Begich Fund Raiser tonight downtown. On the way, something flew up from under a car it seemed. The car stopped as I was passing what turned out to be an envelope, a check, and a checkbook, all of which I gathered and took to the man who I knew slightly. When we got to the fund raiser, there he was. And while he was in a car and we were on bikes, we arrived just a little after he did at the fund raiser about two miles away. We also picked up Ron ZZ on the bike trail and he was going to the same place.

The young woman in the picture surprised me by asking what my daughter's name was. Well it turned out to be the daughter of my daughter's physics teacher who took students on outdoor adventures in the summer.

I'd gone along for one - a ten day kayak trip in Prince William Sound - with this young woman, who was seven years old at the time. I found an old picture of the trip. She's the young one in the middle. But this sort of things happens a lot in Anchorage. She's finishing up college next year, headed for four months in Africa if things work out.





And this man walked into the crowded living room. He said to me, "Everyone's having a good time, I don't think you need me." I agreed. "You're right, just put your check in the basket and you can go." But, he stayed and talked a bit. Nothing earth shattering.








Then we were off to the Alaska Apple User Group meeting at the museum.

On the way home, we caught some late sun. It's setting earlier and earlier - this was taken about 9:30pm.

Is there any hope for the Anchorage Daily News?

[I didn't hit the post button when I finished this last night. Is this even worth writing about? Well, yes, I think McCoy's (see NAMES at the bottom if they get confusing) comments are significant, but I'm not really sure what the significance is. My instant gut reaction when she said them was "oh geez, the ADN is doomed." My logical side says, "You need to have a totally tech savvy person doing this, not some nice, smart, tech 'immigrant' [in her words]" But something kept me from hitting the post button. She's so nice, she's so enthusiastic, and she has gotten a bunch of blogs up onto the ADN website. Is her personality and their obligation to have a position for her after her fellowship year blinding them from doing what they really need to do? Or maybe they can't find (translation: won't pay what it takes to get) a real tech guru with journalism smarts too.

I've posted on this topic and Kathleen before when she made a brief announcement at a previous AAUG meeting about starting to post community blogs and inviting bloggers to sign up. This was then followed up by an in-depth analysis of the contract the ADN wanted bloggers to sign - a contract I felt was totally out of touch with the reality of the blogosphere. I did try to say hello Wednesday night, but there were lots of other people around her. I did want to know how the contract issue got resolved though.

And I think there is one more big reason I'm hesitant to click on the post button. I think Kathleen's candor is fantastic. I applaud her honesty about herself and about her newspaper and the industry. But I can just see her being called into the office, "YOU SAID WHAT? IN PUBLIC? ARE YOU CRAZY?" I don't really want to be responsible for that. The media often are beat up by politicians for what they report. Their response is we are only reporting the news, don't attack the messenger. To the ADN and McClatchy big shots, remember those words. Kathleen McCoy isn't the problem, she's just the messenger.

OK, now that I've said this and you have no idea what I'm talking about yet, I feel a little more comfortable hitting the post button]

I went to the Alaska Apple User Group (AAUG) last night[Wednesday]. There were two longish presentations. The first was by Kathleen McCoy and her husband Peter Porco on her fellowship year for journalists at Stanford. It was depressing. [I like reading my hard copy newspaper in the morning and I want the ADN to find a way to survive in both the print and web worlds.] I wasn't going to post about it.

But then I got home and got Brendan's [see NAMES at bottom]email with the links to this week's Anchorage Press and a story about Howard Weaver on the future of newspapers. Weaver was the editor of the ADN and has moved up the McClatchy corporate ladder and is now Vice President for News and he's upbeat about his papers doing just fine on the web. The Weaver piece the Press covers takes on the doomsday arguments made against newspapers and offers his reasons for believing the McClatchy newspapers will adjust and thrive. I like people who take on the prevailing opinion, but he's hardly an objective observer and what I heard from Kathleen certainly contradicts the image he was painting of McClatchy doing this right.

So why was the first presentation depressing? In a nutshell, because Kathleen McCoy is billed as the person at the ADN in charge of community blogging [I stopped writing at this point and looked at the ADN website newsroom contacts page to get her exact title, but I couldn't find Kathleen McCoy on it at all. Nor could I find her on the contacts page which listed the eight men and one woman (Jane Lee) on the "Senior Management Team."]

In any case, Kathleen McCoy's talk was interesting, but depressing. She and her husband were both very enthusiastic about having the year off at Stanford and enjoying the chance to do whatever she wanted - sit in, or take, or not, any class at Stanford. And she got a week of tech training for journalists at UC Berkeley. Here are things that she said that really struck me:

A Talking about the newspaper field, she said:
So you have print journalists who are saying, "what do you mean I have to take a video camera" or "this blogging stuff ..." and then you have other people who are jumping in whole hog, and just training themselves. The truth is we're getting no training in the field. I was lucky to get this Berkeley thing that gave me some training.

B
When I was at Stanford I saw all these kids making movies and blogging and having Wikis and doing all kinds of stuff and I realized no one was training them either. They were just doing it. I do believe that it is in their DNA and I do believe that they are the digital natives and I'm the digital immigrant.

C
I came back to the Daily News and I was put on the Web, with no training about the Web and I'd learn one little thing I could do on the web, eventually I learned that if you could get into the back door of the web, our website, you can just see all the things and how they are built and I could learn how to build them myself so eventually I've become more useful...

McCoy sounds like a bright person who genuinely wants to make all this work. She has jumped in and gotten the community blogging page full of blogs on different topics. She has some tech training and brings to that the values and ethics of MSM journalism. Maybe she knows just enough and can keep the techies straight on those parts of traditional journalism that are important to keep.

And the ADN has an impressive web presence. Matt Browner Hamlin,, the national blogger brought to Alaska to be the Begich campaign’s Online Communications Director, told me he thought it was one of the best newspaper websites - particularly because it has good web presence in all areas, not just one or two.

But if the web is the future - or at least a major part of the future - of the newspaper industry, why would you put someone with no web experience on the web? If her DNA comment (I'm assuming she's talking metaphorically here) is accurate, why not get a tech native to work on this job? After years of paying some of the lowest professional salaries of all industries, is it that the newspapers just can't mentally cross the salary bridge to pay what good techies get paid?

Why are staff getting no web training? (Did Kathleen exaggerate here or overlook some training opportunities the paper offers?)

I could be wrong on this. Kathleen's total candor is refreshing. Her ego is barely visible. And she brings to this web endeavor (there are other web people at the newspaper) traditional journalistic values and ethics, that perhaps you can't find in the tech natives. But if I owned an airplane, I'd hire a natural pilot who feels totally comfortable flying, not someone who's going to learn on the job.

Do McCoy's comments from the trenches belie Weaver's optimistic view from headquarters?

I hope he's right that the ADN will adapt and succeed in the new digital age. I hope I'm wrong.


Oh yeah, the second big presentation of the evening was by Scott Slone and Kevin Kastner of HDTV Alaska. They make and post Alaska adventure videos. They're the tech natives making up this new world as they go. They too are struggling with the issue of how to earn a profit online.


NAMES
I'm not happy with how I'm using names here and on other posts. Some people I feel like I'm on a first name basis with, others not. And so sometimes I use a first name in one place and a last name in another. But I know that is confusing to the reader, but I haven't resolved how I want to do this. In here:
Kathleen McCoy - ADN community blogging person and speaker at AAUG meeting
Brendan Joel Kelley - writer and editor at Anchorage Press
Howard Weaver - former ADN editor and now McClatchy VP for News
MSM - main stream media

Rufus Hummingbird, Sky's Big Mouth, Bike Before Flying

After the meeting was over yesterday, I had lunch with S, then met M&J. Before heading out to their place I stopped to see if I could find Mike. He wasn't home, but his wife and Sky were.

While we were talking, hummingbirds were stopping to fuel up at their feeder. And everytime Sky would tell me there was one, it would be gone before I could get a picture. But one rufus hummingbird actually sat on the perch and took a long drink.

I'm used to hummingbirds, having grown up in LA. I've even held a couple of hummingbirds. One I rescued from a cat who split when I came running over. The bird was lying flat on its back, wings outspread. It was so light. I put it in a box and gave it to a neighbor, since I'd just been pulling out of the driveway with my son in his baby carseat. The bird flew off when the neighbor opened the box a while later. The second time was more recently when I found a hummingbird lying on the grass with an apparent broken wing in my mother's backyard. After calling the bird rescue, we ended up taking it to the nearby city animal shelter.

I've never seen a hummingbird in Anchorage, though I've heard they get as far north as Girdwood, and rumors of sightings in recent years in Anchorage. The web found me this from Stacy at Elmendorf:

If we increase people's awareness of the possibility of Rufous Hummingbirds here in spring and summer (and Anna's or Costa's hummingbirds in fall), will they be noted in higher numbers than previously? Or are there simply so few hummingbirds in this area that we won't notice an appreciable increase in reports no matter how widely we publicize the possibilities? How about Anna's Hummingbirds specifically? There are a few records of this hummingbird for Alaska. Can we generate more just by encouraging people to report ANY hummingbird they see in fall? Hmmm! I think so. Let's try it!

SO -- if you see a hummingbird in the Anchorage bowl (shucks -- how about southcentral Alaska) at any time, please send an email to: stacy[at]trochilids.com. Replace the "[at]" with "@" of course! If you can get photos, send them along, too.

I won't kid you. I'm a federally licensed hummingbird bander (permit #23148), and part of my hummingbird research involves the opportunity to personally come to your yard to catch, measure, photograph, band, and release unharmed your hummingbird.

Sky is growing fast and talking so politely and clearly.
















He also showed me how wide he could open his mouth.















We went back to J&M's house after a few errands, including rescuing some nice lumber from a dumpster. M showed me her recycled hot tub.


Then J and I biked - he to pick up the other car in from the repair shop, and me off to get a quick preflight bike ride in the Mendenhall Glacier valley. I was going to add a little bike video, but I don't have time to finish it now, maybe later. Headed to the Alaska Apple User Group meeting tonight at the Museum. If you're an Apple user and don't know about these folks, you should give it a try. Seven tonight. But normally the second Wednesday of the month - except July.

Frittatas, Hawaiian Music, Apple, People We Don't Know We Know

I once thought I was cooking omelettes, but long ago someone told me I was cooking a frittata. Just to be sure today I checked and by Wikipedia definition, it's not technically a frittata either. Mine never makes it to a grill.

A frittata is a type of Italian omelette that frequently features fillings such as meats, cheeses, and vegetables. Like a traditional French omelette, a frittata is prepared in a skillet. However, whereas an omelette is cooked on a stovetop and served folded, a frittata is first partially cooked on a stovetop but then finished under the grill (broiler) and served open-faced.

This is my normal Sunday breakfast, but we had a friend coming over today, so I made a bigger one. And while I was cooking, Island Style was on the the radio, another Sunday tradition. Hit the yellow button to get a bit of Island Style. This one is half with egg yellow and half with egg white only.

Island Style Hana Guy by AKRaven

And some fruit salad and a few other tasties.



Have you ever met someone you knew about, but you didn't know it was him? At the Alaska Apple User Group (AAUG which meets this Wednesday at 7pm at the Anchorage Museum) there was a man named Guy who was in charge of the products you can take home and keep if you review them.

One day something came up and in my head, finally, Hana Guy on Island Style, and Guy at the AAUG merged into the same person. Hana Guy is on the right (Kalihi Boy and Honey Girl) and in this picture from the Island Style website.

Blog, Blog, Blog

Blogging stuff keeps piling up in my life. Here's two posts in one, first on ADN blogs and then on Quarterlife and Marshall Herskovitz.

Anchorage Daily News (ADN) wants bloggers
At the Alaska Apple Users Group meeting last night, Kathleen McCoy from the Anchorage Daily News announced the paper was soliciting local bloggers who cover a specialized topic - community council news, local horse news, etc. They already have 13 blogs that I counted here tonight from gardening and barhopping to hockey. I got to talk to her a little during the break. Seems as the print version - and the employee base - shrinks, the ADN is trying to fill the void by using the free labor of local bloggers. On the one hand, that's good in a number of ways. It means

• ordinary people are writing about what they're passionate about
• we'll get coverage with different perspectives
• there won't be anyone to force a certain look or perspective
• there will be more room for comments - and maybe individual bloggers can do a better job of monitoring the nastiness of some of the current ADN blogs
• featured blogs will get more attention than they might otherwise
  

But on the negative side it means:

• the inconsistent quality we see online in general
• corporate exploitation of community public citizens - they aren't likely to share any ad revenue and they are cutting staff and replacing it with unpaid bloggers
• hit and miss coverage as unpaid bloggers have to earn a living and miss their posts, decide they don't need to subsidize the ADN with their blogs, and otherwise skip posts and/or drop out

I think the ADN has no choice but to figure out ways to create an electronic presence. Kathleen has been around the ADN many years and I think she's trying to make this work. So far their stance on monitoring the nastiness of some of the regular blog posters seems short sighted to me. I can't find the posts I was looking for, but here is a little after Andrew Halcro quit his ADN blog.I'll hold judgment, though I'm on the wrong side of neutral in my expectations at this point.


Quarterlife

One of the best television programs I ever saw was "My So-Called Life." One of the producers, Marshall Herskovitz, was on Fresh Air this morning, talking about the television industry (the effects of corporate consolitdation and the end of the ban on networks owning the programing) and his new effort - an internet tv program called Quarterlife that has been bought by NBC. Quarterlife has been on the periphery of my consciousness, but the interview brought it front and center. I watched the first two shows today. (You can watch it online at Quarterlife.com- there are 11 episodes so far, all available.)

The show is about a young woman who... you guessed it, has a blog named....did you figure it out yet? Quarterlife. It is very real, very unlike most television. And no commercials. And you won't have any late fees.

I suspect blogs are a transitional genre, and maybe corporate World will end up buying up or otherwise coopting the best - or at least most profitable - but something is happening here. Stay tuned.

[More recent posts at ADN Blogging Policy - 1 and ADN Blogging Policy - 2.]

Alaska Apple Users Group

Second Wednesday of the month is the AAUG meeting at the Anchorage Museum. I've posted on these meetings before here, here, and here. I really look forward to them. All of us oddballs who prefer macs to pcs come together and get shown different ways to take advantage of our machines. And then there are all the freebies. Well, tonight I scored. At the review table was a macbook case to be reviewed.
If you review something, you get to keep it. In the past I've mostly reviewed books and software. I did a wrist pad once. That was more like today. But I've been wanting something slim to slide my laptop into and here it is. And the review should be easy.

You can see it is just big enough for the MacBook. It has great zippers with indentations that fit my fingers. It doesn't have a handle though. But it does have thick, but light, padding.

And I sat next to a guy named Zack who showed me some cool things I can do on my keyboard and also helped me change the default screensaver file type from tiff to jpg. And saw some good friends. And had some nibbles. Oh, it's called LA robe protection from be.ez. And I just checked, it's $24.99 on Amazon. So the first draft of my review is done. No nagging emails at the end of the month asking where the review is, right Guy?

New MacBook

After over a year of being a squatter on my wife's Mac Mini, I have finally bought my own Mac Power Book. Ben, whom I met first at the Alaska Apple Users' Group, is the Apple rep at Comp USA on Dimond. He also graduated from Stellar Alternative School in Anchorage (as did my daughter) and is a philosophy major at UAA (my daughter is doing her graduate work in philosophy) and I know his faculty adviser. But I'd already been impressed by his knowledge of the computers and his helpfulness. So, any Anchorage folks interested in Apple products, I highly recommend calling Ben.

AAUG - Goodies, Prizes, Auction, and Info

The Alaska Apple User Group met last night. While there are tons of places on line to get information, there is something nice about being able to ask a live person questions. This picture shows the table of books, software, and accessories that you can take and keep if you do a review. Last night I took a Mouse Pad with a gel wrist rest, a book on podcasting, and "internet cleanup" - software to 'Protect Your Privacy on the Mac.' So far, I've tried the mouse pad and I'm not sure there is an improvement. The book looks good because my wife - who has a strong audio background - is looking for a digital recorder, with possibly podcasting in the future. Haven't loaded the software yet.

I also talked with an ichat video conference user whose going to help me work out the connection to my mom. I've got a friend with a pc and we haven't been able to make that connection work. What I downloaded from the web said he needed to disable his firewall and he wasn't willing to do that. But my mother has a Mac and we haven't been able to make that work either. This guy is also exploring Skype as an alternative cross platform video chat forum. We'll see.




This other picture shows the library, where you can check things out for a month. And then there is a raffle and auction. All the goodies are donated by manufacturers who obviously want some exposure for their products. Seems like a good deal all around. Even my skeptical nature sees this all as a good thing. Am I missing some lurking evil here? Again, this is a community, like the automaticwashers.org, that exists pretty much below the radar of most people, but has proved to be a real help. Oh, did I mention their free weekend seminars? Actually, I may have in a previous postabout our first AAUG meeting. And also the post on Naked Conversations, a book on blogging I reviewed.

Naked Conversations

Before we left for India, I posted about going to the Alaska Apple Users Group (AAUG) and starting to read and review the book Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. I finished the review in that hectic week before we left and never got to post the review. Actually, I just give you a little synopsis here and there's a link to the full review below.

Basically the authors are arguing that large companies need to get into the blogosphere for two reasons:
1. People are blogging about you. You need to subscribe to service (such as Technorati.com) that emails you when your company is blogged about. Then you can jump into the conversation - get good feedback, answer questions, clarify misconceptions, etc.
2. Companies should let employees blog about the company as a way of engaging all your stakeholders - customers, suppliers, employees, etc.


They also give tips for small businesses (and this could apply to non-profits). Basic advice is not to 'sell' on your blog, but to show your expertise by talking about your business, giving information that would be interesting to people.

All this advice is based on the notion that old style marketing is out, that nobody trusts the hype that comes out of big business. Rather, the essense of the market, they say (citing the Cluetrain Manifesto that I've had up as a link since I first mentioned this book review) is conversation between buyers and sellers. Blogs give this opportunity to have such direct conversation between the customers and businesses.

I think this is something marketing folks and CEOs ought to read. They give lots of examples of how organizations have blogged successfully and not so successfully. It isn't a technical how-to book as much as a 'why you should' book. For the whole review, click here.

Alaska Apple User Group Meeting

Tonight we went to our second meeting. They have a library of books and dvd's to borrow and books to review. If you review, you can keep the book. So looking through the pile I found "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers." Since one of my purposes on this blog is to learn more about blogging and what it means, I took it and committed to a review.

The book is about the impact of blogs on businesses. Their argument is that blogs totally change the way businesses and customers (as well as employees, vendors, etc.) communicate. This is threatening to those who want to maintain centralized control and the risk management types, but the benefits of putting a human face on the organization and allowing customers to talk directly to employees (while the rest of the world can watch) way outweighs the risks. Also threatened are the traditional PR types.

I've read two chapters and learned a lot already.

Didn't know about Technorati or PubSub. Two blog search engines they suggest businesses use to keep track of who's talking about them, what they are saying, and joining the conversation.