A Blog about Life In-N-Out of New Media

1000 Tweets!

Posted by on Jun 3, 2008 in blogging, musings, tech culture | 1 comment

Today I hit 1000 Tweets! I’m not usually one to celebrate round numbers, but I love Twitter and all it’s plurking hang-ups.

Screen shoot of my 1000th Tweet

Plurk, by the way, is now my official curse word.

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eBay is Way More Fun than I Expected

Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 in Big Trip, blogging, Cali/Luria | Comments Off

I’ve never been good at getting rid of stuff. I’m a pack rat. Doing it on eBay makes it a game and even though I don’t like games, I’m still having fun. We’re selling stuff that’s been in a box for years. It’s stuff that has huge sentimental value to us and it’s exciting to see it sell for a reasonable amount of money on eBay.

A Geek Brief viewer asked Cali what she wants for her MacBook Pro. She said $1,000,000 or whatever the market decides. The truth is, we’re trying to make a tremendous amount of cash for our Big Trip, but the fun is watching something we love sell for the amount that the market chooses…even when that amount is only $1. 

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Boy, I Missed Having a Blog

Posted by on Nov 18, 2007 in blogging, Cali/Luria, TV | Comments Off

About 3 weeks ago, I realized several WordPress sites we run were inadvertently setup under an FTP username that we give out to people for uploading large files for us.  I deleted that username which then disconnected access to the various databases that feed the sites.  It wasn’t a hard fix and it wasn’t pressing enough to take care of right a way so I just now got to it.  

There have been times during this down time that I felt really frustrated because I couldn’t post something I wanted to remember.  Like the other day, we saw the news on the wires that Paige Davis was returning to host Trading Spaces.  The production let her go after photos were published of her stripping on a bar to raise money for charity.   That was a mistake.  Without her, the show floundered and couldn’t hold it’s audience.  Having a charismatic host is gold, and we’re excited she’ll be back.  The show is in production now and it’ll start airing again in January in HD.  The original series was such a phenomenon, and my guess is that re-creating that success isn’t a given.  I hope she can do it again because she is magic on screen, and I don’t think she deserved being dumped.

SO THERE!  I’ve written, I’ll post and I’ll start thinking about something else.  I might get serious about blogging for an audience some day, but for now, it’s just personal record keeping for various thoughts and memories.  I hadn’t realize how much I have started to depend on the blog as an emotional release.

The moral: start blogging and save on therapy! 



UPDATE: There are still some issues. I’m having to put HTML in to make paragraph breaks and the sidebar is down at the bottom. Wacky.

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Jason vs. Dave

Posted by on Sep 11, 2007 in blogging, tech culture | Comments Off

The whole Jason vs. Dave thing at Gnomedex makes a whole lot more sense, if you read this post from Fred Wilson’s blog.

Since I was there, I didn’t really appreciate Dave Winer’s perspective. I was on Jason Calacanis’ side.

Dave blogged,

Bottom-line, he needs to figure out a way to build the company so that many others can profit from it. Otherwise I don’t think it has a prayer against Google, which we like less and less as a company, but who basically offers an equitable proposition to the users of the Internet, who the Gnomedex crowd represent in a loose kind of way.

That was really nice advice, if you think about it. We make money from Google because they have a system that makes it possible. Will Mahalo provide a way for it’s users to profit? I don’t know, and I think that might have been the point Dave was making. His point was overshadowed by his inappropriate shouting during Jason’s speech, but in hindsight, I think he was really trying to help.

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I want to be a better blogger

Posted by on Jul 27, 2007 in blogging | Comments Off

Earlier this week, Cali and I went to a blogger event hosted by Monster Cable. I met Alexander Grundner from eHomeUpgrade.com. He’s one of my absolute favorite blog writers. I can safely call myself a vlogger, I guess, because I produce video podcasts, but I want to be a better blogger. I want to write something people want to read, so I’ll start with this:

GeekBrief.TV is blessed to be a part of the PodShow network. We love them and they don’t ask for much in return, but they give us a lot. Before we released Brief 203, they asked us to promote Port City PD. It’s a very commendable Podcast drama series. It’s probably the most ambitious Web video production effort so far. The problem is that it’s violent and we HATE the fact that people are entertained by violence. We’re “make love, not war people.”

So…PodShow doesn’t ask us for much, but they asked us to promote a show that we think is too violent, and since we love and appreciate PodShow, we don’t want to say no. I think we found a happy medium on brief 203, but I’m not entirely sure.

Cali and I love a show produced by Ricky Montalvo at TheDailyGeek.TV. We’ve been trying to get PodShow to sign Ricky, but we’ve gotten no response. TheDailyGeek.TV webisodes have the look and feel of This American Life (TAL). TAL is at the top of the iTunes charts so why PodShow wouldn’t jump at the chance to have a similar show, I’m not sure. They seem to think a hip hop thing is a better strategy. I’m just not sure the Web is all that hip hoppity, yet.

So, we love PodShow because they’ve blessed our production efforts, but I want them to embrace what works on the Web as opposed to what works on TV. There is a difference.

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The Business of Blogging

Posted by on Apr 19, 2007 in blogging | Comments Off

Where there is demand, there is value. Cali, host of GeekBrief.TV, gets 50 to 200 email messages a day. A good number of those messages are tech questions. To date, Cali has answered the questions privately. Starting this weekend, she will start answering them publicly on a blog we’re calling Dear Cali (ala Dear Abby). It’s online at dearcali.com.

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