Damn, that Nine Guy has all the fun. Here he gets a kiss from Amanda Congdon. The famous face in Rocketboom. I didn’t recognize her at first. I said “you look different when you aren’t in a 320×240 square.”
Seriously, she has a nice set of, um, archives! Rocketboom has become a huge success story. 130,000 daily viewers. Let’s see. There are 130,000 people at CES. Now imagine they all sign in every day to watch Amanda. That just is nuts. Here’s a picture with her and Andrew Baron, the other key member of the Rocketboom production crew. Oh, and how much do they spend again? How about almost nothing?
I met them at CES Camp, which was organized by Albert Lai of Bubbleshare. Great idea, and lots of fun! I left about 200 Channel 9 guys in their hands. We’ll see what happens with them! Bubbleshare is a cool photo sharing service.
The Tablet PC geek dinner was a big success (Rob Bushway has a nice writeup, oh, and everyone got free dinner!) Monstercable’s Chris Greene showed up and gave everyone tickets to see Stevie Wonder. Just got back from that, it’s always fun to see a guy who is a master at what he does.
Oh, and Chris showed off a new remote control that Monster Cable is working on. Controls everything in your entertainment center plus your home automation stuff too. I’ll drop by their booth tomorrow for more details.
Unfortunately today I didn’t get to see much. I had tons of stuff I needed to work on (email, email, sigh). Tomorrow I’ll try to get to everything I missed and then head home late tomorrow night.
I’m excited. Tomorrow morning I get to see our finished book for the first time. Joe Wikert, our publisher, writes that he’s already had his hands on one.
I’ll tell ya what. We forced Joe to start blogging. And what a great blog that’s turned out to be. Special thanks to Jim Minatel. He is a dream to work with. Responsive, caring, professional, connected. I’d recommend the Wiley team to any new book author.
Scobleizer 
“Oh, and how much do they spend again? How about almost nothing?”
They spend nothing? What about their time, their most valuable asset?
And oh, I didn’t know bandwidth was free. Unless they use BT or other P2P network of course.
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“Oh, and how much do they spend again? How about almost nothing?”
They spend nothing? What about their time, their most valuable asset?
And oh, I didn’t know bandwidth was free. Unless they use BT or other P2P network of course.
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Your Snarky Cyncial Trollish News Report… 😉
RocketBloom reminds me of bad photocopy of early early MSNBC, back when they had geek content. And her sing songy up and down voice, makes my teeth hurt. Someone buy her a teleprompter please, and a voice coach and a screenwriter. But the internet is good for this weird-off stuff, takes all kinds. And you can’t help but like her good-natured take. Might of had an outlet on TechTV maybe, back before the audience margins disappeared with a geek focus and they morphed into the fantastic G4 Video Game TV, (which actually is quite good, esp. Icons, Adam and Morgan).
Saying she get’s 130,000 views, and comparing to CES, is not even in the same ballpark, as big deals, mutlti-millions of dollars get allocated and bought and sold with the CES 130,000. Her 130,000 (I don’t buy the figures, but assuming so) get a 3 min zap of weird video and internet content links. Your bubble ‘eyeballs’ accounting again. 😉
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Your Snarky Cyncial Trollish News Report… 😉
RocketBloom reminds me of bad photocopy of early early MSNBC, back when they had geek content. And her sing songy up and down voice, makes my teeth hurt. Someone buy her a teleprompter please, and a voice coach and a screenwriter. But the internet is good for this weird-off stuff, takes all kinds. And you can’t help but like her good-natured take. Might of had an outlet on TechTV maybe, back before the audience margins disappeared with a geek focus and they morphed into the fantastic G4 Video Game TV, (which actually is quite good, esp. Icons, Adam and Morgan).
Saying she get’s 130,000 views, and comparing to CES, is not even in the same ballpark, as big deals, mutlti-millions of dollars get allocated and bought and sold with the CES 130,000. Her 130,000 (I don’t buy the figures, but assuming so) get a 3 min zap of weird video and internet content links. Your bubble ‘eyeballs’ accounting again. 😉
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The Monster guys are great. They’ve been sponsoring the Mac-Mgrs Pre-Keynote party at Macworld for years, and always have great stuff for party favors.
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The Monster guys are great. They’ve been sponsoring the Mac-Mgrs Pre-Keynote party at Macworld for years, and always have great stuff for party favors.
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I worked with Joe Wikert at QUE Books and Jim Minatel at Fawcette Technical Publishing. I, too, found Joe and Jim to be great to work with. Joe convinced me to write my first book for WROX/Wiley.
–rj
http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/expert-one-on-one-visual-basic-2005.html
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I worked with Joe Wikert at QUE Books and Jim Minatel at Fawcette Technical Publishing. I, too, found Joe and Jim to be great to work with. Joe convinced me to write my first book for WROX/Wiley.
–rj
http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/expert-one-on-one-visual-basic-2005.html
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PS – Boy were the Google and Yahoo keynotes even worse than Microsoft’s vaporware flame-up. I get headaches from listening to Gates’ future-waffle speech shrill scrawl, two Excedrin needed, but gosh that’s nothing compared to Larry, ack, whiny little Nerf ball, in a Charlie Brown’s teacher high-pitched mumbling ‘wonka wonka’ voice, waving around a thick pad of notes.
Yahoo! Plays! With! TV! And! Phones! But! All! So! Very! Murky!. Google Software Pack of Nothing, also tinkering with phones. And mumbles up a generic Video Store something and mulls connecting all your devices, blah blah, with Robin Williams being too darned annnnnnooonying throughout.
CES is not Comdex. GYM fell flat, imho. Yahoo with the normal Yahoodda yadda yadda, and Ellen DeGeneres doing growner stupid stand-up one-offs. Google a big mess of vague nothingness, with Microsoft all vaporware and money-losing dead-ends and soon-to-be-coming-next-year tech, with that ‘Project Looking Glass’ thing (rather Vista).
Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but he’s the Supreme Master Majestic King of Demos, GYMs were a buncha amateur-hour toothpaste commercial rip-offs, in comparison. Expect Jobs to home run at the top of the inning, no matter what he announces, as last inning was three quick strike-outs.
Biggest disappointment? No SPOT 2. 😉
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PS – Boy were the Google and Yahoo keynotes even worse than Microsoft’s vaporware flame-up. I get headaches from listening to Gates’ future-waffle speech shrill scrawl, two Excedrin needed, but gosh that’s nothing compared to Larry, ack, whiny little Nerf ball, in a Charlie Brown’s teacher high-pitched mumbling ‘wonka wonka’ voice, waving around a thick pad of notes.
Yahoo! Plays! With! TV! And! Phones! But! All! So! Very! Murky!. Google Software Pack of Nothing, also tinkering with phones. And mumbles up a generic Video Store something and mulls connecting all your devices, blah blah, with Robin Williams being too darned annnnnnooonying throughout.
CES is not Comdex. GYM fell flat, imho. Yahoo with the normal Yahoodda yadda yadda, and Ellen DeGeneres doing growner stupid stand-up one-offs. Google a big mess of vague nothingness, with Microsoft all vaporware and money-losing dead-ends and soon-to-be-coming-next-year tech, with that ‘Project Looking Glass’ thing (rather Vista).
Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but he’s the Supreme Master Majestic King of Demos, GYMs were a buncha amateur-hour toothpaste commercial rip-offs, in comparison. Expect Jobs to home run at the top of the inning, no matter what he announces, as last inning was three quick strike-outs.
Biggest disappointment? No SPOT 2. 😉
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Placemarker for when Scobleizer jumped the shark.
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Placemarker for when Scobleizer jumped the shark.
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“morphed into the fantastic G4 Video Game TV, (which actually is quite good, esp. Icons, Adam and Morgan).”
WTF are you smoking?! I can’t believe anyone would utter the words “fantastic” with “G4 TV”. G4 killed whatever soul TechTV had and replaced it with contrived “wackyExtreme” hosts and content that maybe 12 14-year old boys care about. Once you are syndicating “The Man Show” for cryin’ out loud, you’ve pretty much hit rock bottom. Icons is occasionally entertaining. But they CONSTANTLY re-use footage within each show. So they only have about 4 shots that just get repeated ad nauseum. (“Oh look, there’s Mario jumping over the barrel at the bottom of the screen AGAIN. What’s that? 40 times so far since the commercial?”
re:Rocketboom. It reminds me of Saturday Night LIve. And not from the 70’s or 80’s. The current wasteland that is SNL. On occasion a funny bit will emerge, but is it worth sitting through all the Jimmy Fallon skits to get to it?
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“morphed into the fantastic G4 Video Game TV, (which actually is quite good, esp. Icons, Adam and Morgan).”
WTF are you smoking?! I can’t believe anyone would utter the words “fantastic” with “G4 TV”. G4 killed whatever soul TechTV had and replaced it with contrived “wackyExtreme” hosts and content that maybe 12 14-year old boys care about. Once you are syndicating “The Man Show” for cryin’ out loud, you’ve pretty much hit rock bottom. Icons is occasionally entertaining. But they CONSTANTLY re-use footage within each show. So they only have about 4 shots that just get repeated ad nauseum. (“Oh look, there’s Mario jumping over the barrel at the bottom of the screen AGAIN. What’s that? 40 times so far since the commercial?”
re:Rocketboom. It reminds me of Saturday Night LIve. And not from the 70’s or 80’s. The current wasteland that is SNL. On occasion a funny bit will emerge, but is it worth sitting through all the Jimmy Fallon skits to get to it?
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re: X-play. Morgan Webb is on there for the 12-15 year old boy hard-on demographic and Adam Sessler is annoying. But I’ll say this, he hasn’t changed any throughout all of the mergers. So he may really be that wacky-in-a-contrived-and-phony-way all the time.
But the reviews seem honest.
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re: X-play. Morgan Webb is on there for the 12-15 year old boy hard-on demographic and Adam Sessler is annoying. But I’ll say this, he hasn’t changed any throughout all of the mergers. So he may really be that wacky-in-a-contrived-and-phony-way all the time.
But the reviews seem honest.
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Wireless World: Carriers losing focus?
Wireless carriers have lost their focus and are concentrating on the wrong priorities, like trying to recruit as many new subscribers as possible, rather than properly serving those customers they have already contracted with, experts tell United Press International’s Wireless World.
Mobile-phone-network operators are under competing pressures this year. New technologies are coming to market, like 3G cellular networks, next-generation network Internet Protocol multimedia subsystems — so called NGN/IMS technologies. By Gene Koprowski
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Wireless World: Carriers losing focus?
Wireless carriers have lost their focus and are concentrating on the wrong priorities, like trying to recruit as many new subscribers as possible, rather than properly serving those customers they have already contracted with, experts tell United Press International’s Wireless World.
Mobile-phone-network operators are under competing pressures this year. New technologies are coming to market, like 3G cellular networks, next-generation network Internet Protocol multimedia subsystems — so called NGN/IMS technologies. By Gene Koprowski
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Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but he’s the Supreme Master Majestic King of Demos, GYMs were a buncha amateur-hour toothpaste commercial rip-offs, in comparison. Expect Jobs to home run at the top of the inning, no matter what he announces, as last inning was three quick strike-outs.
Biggest disappointment? No SPOT 2. 😉
Comment by Christopher Coulter — January 7, 2006
LOL, I knew this was leading to some I think Steve Jobs walks on water and I must Kiss His Ass Statement.
G4 is fantastic ?, how old are you?
That channel has dived into mindless drivel aimed at the high school aged male.
Tech Tv, they are not.
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Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but he’s the Supreme Master Majestic King of Demos, GYMs were a buncha amateur-hour toothpaste commercial rip-offs, in comparison. Expect Jobs to home run at the top of the inning, no matter what he announces, as last inning was three quick strike-outs.
Biggest disappointment? No SPOT 2. 😉
Comment by Christopher Coulter — January 7, 2006
LOL, I knew this was leading to some I think Steve Jobs walks on water and I must Kiss His Ass Statement.
G4 is fantastic ?, how old are you?
That channel has dived into mindless drivel aimed at the high school aged male.
Tech Tv, they are not.
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CES seems so cool this year. If I was you I’d be getting my hands on all of those gadgets!
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CES seems so cool this year. If I was you I’d be getting my hands on all of those gadgets!
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Damn! That’s one lucky Nine Guy 😛
Chris C must be the first person I’ve ever heard of that likes what happened to G4/TechTV. ZDTV and TechTV were great. I’m talking about back when they had Laporte, Dvorak, Norton, Botello, and Pirillo.
I have to wonder how successful G4 is these days – having given up their “geeks of all ages” programming in favor of “Gamers geeky enough to watch TV about games but not geeky enough to have more reliable sources of gaming news/entertainment.”
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Damn! That’s one lucky Nine Guy 😛
Chris C must be the first person I’ve ever heard of that likes what happened to G4/TechTV. ZDTV and TechTV were great. I’m talking about back when they had Laporte, Dvorak, Norton, Botello, and Pirillo.
I have to wonder how successful G4 is these days – having given up their “geeks of all ages” programming in favor of “Gamers geeky enough to watch TV about games but not geeky enough to have more reliable sources of gaming news/entertainment.”
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I Googled for something completely different, but found your page… and have to say thanks. nice read.
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I Googled for something completely different, but found your page… and have to say thanks. nice read.
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Sigh. Remind me never to hire you guys as TV programming Execs. Extreme Geek TV doesn’t fly, mainstream video game TV does. Sure the demographic isn’t at your cutting-edge geek point, but given that when they tried that with Tech TV the audiences went to almost nil. So they went for a more mainstream approach. And you have things like Judgment Day, Filter, Cheat, Street Fury, the Specials and Award Shows and just the plain video game trailers of Cinematech. All in all much much better programming, the unoriginal syndicational reruns annoy me too, but then I guess they know their numbers.
Example: World of Warcraft is a major phenom, Star Wars Galaxies is not, Star Wars is trying to make the switch-over to massive Warcraft-like audiences, but lotta gamer geek old timers are screaming bloody murder. All fine and well, but not enough of you geek twizzleheads to run a service. 😉
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Sigh. Remind me never to hire you guys as TV programming Execs. Extreme Geek TV doesn’t fly, mainstream video game TV does. Sure the demographic isn’t at your cutting-edge geek point, but given that when they tried that with Tech TV the audiences went to almost nil. So they went for a more mainstream approach. And you have things like Judgment Day, Filter, Cheat, Street Fury, the Specials and Award Shows and just the plain video game trailers of Cinematech. All in all much much better programming, the unoriginal syndicational reruns annoy me too, but then I guess they know their numbers.
Example: World of Warcraft is a major phenom, Star Wars Galaxies is not, Star Wars is trying to make the switch-over to massive Warcraft-like audiences, but lotta gamer geek old timers are screaming bloody murder. All fine and well, but not enough of you geek twizzleheads to run a service. 😉
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LOL, I knew this was leading to some I think Steve Jobs walks on water and I must Kiss His Ass Statement.
Eh? I think the guy is a preening hot-tempered megalomaniac royal asshole JERK with a messiah complex, who ruins Apple with his style over substance fit, and keeps them under 10% marketshare. But he does give a good show, you can’t argue with that. I can’t.
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LOL, I knew this was leading to some I think Steve Jobs walks on water and I must Kiss His Ass Statement.
Eh? I think the guy is a preening hot-tempered megalomaniac royal asshole JERK with a messiah complex, who ruins Apple with his style over substance fit, and keeps them under 10% marketshare. But he does give a good show, you can’t argue with that. I can’t.
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“which actually is quite good”
LOL. Idiot.
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“which actually is quite good”
LOL. Idiot.
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Yeah, well the only idiot is one that doesn’t pay attention to marketshare. And for Media buyers the G4 story is way better now.
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Yeah, well the only idiot is one that doesn’t pay attention to marketshare. And for Media buyers the G4 story is way better now.
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Great comeback. Instead of defending what you said, you’re changing the subject. Newb.
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Great comeback. Instead of defending what you said, you’re changing the subject. Newb.
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Much of RocketBloom’s traffic comes from prebuscent boys and horny men awaiting the day Amanda Congdon bares all. Half the searches related to video blogs have to do with her, so it’s obvious why their site took off – it’s not a novel idea, but I’m sure everyones jealous they didn’t think of it first!
Tech TV is more for, pardon the term, noobs than anything else. Much of their content is stuff that most users have already discovered, as well most of the programs serve as advertorials, I for one am glad that the channel is on its last legs! Again Tech TV depends heavily (as Christopher Coulter mentioned) on their Gaming Shows, which is again sold with that girl on the show (I can’t remember her name..let’s call her bimbo #1 – not like its bad thing
)..
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Much of RocketBloom’s traffic comes from prebuscent boys and horny men awaiting the day Amanda Congdon bares all. Half the searches related to video blogs have to do with her, so it’s obvious why their site took off – it’s not a novel idea, but I’m sure everyones jealous they didn’t think of it first!
Tech TV is more for, pardon the term, noobs than anything else. Much of their content is stuff that most users have already discovered, as well most of the programs serve as advertorials, I for one am glad that the channel is on its last legs! Again Tech TV depends heavily (as Christopher Coulter mentioned) on their Gaming Shows, which is again sold with that girl on the show (I can’t remember her name..let’s call her bimbo #1 – not like its bad thing
)..
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hi Robert,
i read the press release about this book, it was very interesting and i wish i could get the book down here in Sri Lanka, if it’s possible please make arrangements for a LPE of this book so that it will reach the sub – continent and Sri Lanka
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hi Robert,
i read the press release about this book, it was very interesting and i wish i could get the book down here in Sri Lanka, if it’s possible please make arrangements for a LPE of this book so that it will reach the sub – continent and Sri Lanka
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“I left about 200 Channel 9 guys in their hands. ”
Indeed, captured in this video moment:
http://rodrigo.typepad.com/english/2006/01/live_from_las_v_14.html
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“I left about 200 Channel 9 guys in their hands. ”
Indeed, captured in this video moment:
http://rodrigo.typepad.com/english/2006/01/live_from_las_v_14.html
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