Worrisome for me

by _titi

The Unbearable Lightness of Branding
[Via Doc Searls Weblog]

Lots of trackbacks (or pingbacks) are spam, and I don’t approve them for the comments section. But some pass the first sniff test, and some are interesting enough to warrant a reply. That’s what happened with the post “To be (a brand) or not to be (a brand)”, at a blog called Daily Breaking News Update. I’m not linking to either, because I think I fell here for a splog (a neologism I like, coined by Mark Cuban, for a spam blog).

What got me interested in the piece, naturally, was this paragraph…

It may be that some of the fallout from the Tiger Woods scandal has made the idea of personal branding seem trickier – people are people, after all, not objects and not cattle. As Doc Searls has argued in two recent blog posts, brands are “boring” at best and “bull” at worst.

The post ended, provocatively enough, this way:

Undoubtedly, building trust is fundamental to business success. Maintaining reputation is crucial, whether or not you want your name to be synonymous with a product, a service or a company.

What are your thoughts on personal branding? Has it become impossible? Or has it become ubiquitous?

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Doc then spends some time writing out a reply to a post that was simply a copy of someone else’s. These splog sites scrape text off of other sites, add some links and then post them, making it seem like they were the original authors. It is all automated and the hope is that you will come across them, think they are ‘real’ sites and click on some of the advertising. Or that having copies of popular articles will increase their ranking on Google searches.

They are parasitic sites. living off of the works of others, adding no comments or added perspective. Luckily, since the text is automatically scrapped from other sites, it is relatively easy to find the originals using Google.

These spam blogs or splogs have generally been relatively easy to spot if you go to the site and look around. So I don’t link to them or use them in any news aggregators.

But it makes me worry about the style I use for my blog. A lot of my blogging uses short quotes from posts I like or want to comment on. I like to synthesize a lot of information and present it in new ways. I don’t generally create a post where I say simply “Joe Blow comments on the latest controversial development at Apple” with a link. Those are useful blogs for increasing information flow but I want to add my own thoughts and demonstrate why the original post was of interest.

So I include a little bit, with appropriate links to the original. I then add something, either a few words or a longer piece, maybe a figure or two. But the jumping off point for many of my posts is this sort of collaborative effort between me and the original ideas of the first post. I bounce off of why their post holds importance.

And I want to make sure that their original post gets a bigger highlight than a simple link. I want my readers to get an idea of how the original post made its connections with me. So I include a portion – not all; just a taste. I’ve been writing these sorts of blog posts for over 7 years.

But the ubiquity of splogs raises the possibilities that my approach could look splog-like on first approach. Since I usually use snippets of someone else’s post – because I want others to not only see directly what was written, hoping to actually send readers on to the original article rather than just stick with me as some sort of mediator, but I also I want them to get a real sense of why the original post was important to me – it is possible that to some eyes my site could look like a splog.

It is like having to pass a Turing test.

For any who worry, I am a human being. As John Merrick would say ” I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!”

Further evidence of iPad’s rapid penetration

by Ben Atkin

Web use of Apple iPad already rivals Android, BlackBerry
[Via AppleInsider]

With more than 500,000 units sold in its first week, Apple’s iPad has tracked as high as 0.04 percent of total daily Web browsing, a number equal to March averages for the Android and BlackBerry platforms, according to a Web analysis firm.

[More]

I wrote about some of the numbers that are coming out regarding the usage of the iPad online. Now another one indicating that the iPad may already be used more than either Android or Blackberry platforms.

It was so hard for those devices to get to where they were and the iPad is there in a week. It will interesting to see if the iPad maintains these numbers.

Its a path that a lot of us are on.

by wirralwater (where to next?)

For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path
[Via NYT]

By the time Matt Eich entered photojournalism school in 2004, the magazine and newspaper business was already declining.

But Mr. Eich had been shooting photographs since he was a child, and when he married and had a baby during college, he stuck with photography as a career.

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New technologies change everything. The make things that were scarce, plentiful.

The reduction in scarcity, something the digital age produces every minute, means that lots of professions will have to change. It used to be that only well-trained people could produce the sorts of photos required by the press. But, new technologies has now produced multitudes of photos that are almost as good, for a fraction of the price.

I use photos from Flickr that people license through Creative Commons. I almost always find a nice photo for the post. without having to pay a thing.

So, the need for as many professional photographers, at least with respect to media, is greatly reduced because of the explosion of possible sources.

To maintain a living, these professionals will have to adapt, creating new business models and finding ways to leverage their talents – there had better be a need for their talents or they will have to find something entirely different.

Figuring that out will be a journey that they have to make. Along with a wide number of us.

A nice business model

by FlyingSinger

Photographer Makes One-Third Of His Living Expenses Off Only 94 Fans
[Via Techdirt]

Jim Hein writes “a very well known Fine Art photographer is using the CwF+RtB model. He breaks things down into actual dollars and cents. He has figured out how many “True Fans” he needs to make a living.”

Photographer Ctein’s “Contributor Program” gives his fans the opportunity to collect his prints and allow him to focus on creating. He shared the latest results:

Make no mistake, I didn’t get anywhere close to 1000 True Fans (didn’t expect to), I got 94. But those Contributors provided me with approximately $15,500 gross revenues, $12,500 net. That’s about one third of what I need to live on, not a life-altering level of support but certainly a life-enhancing one that provides me with considerably more time to work on my art — the point of this.

Even though the tiers start at only $9.50 a month, his average sale was around $165 — demonstrating that he has given his customers a real reason to buy. Additionally, Ctein recognizes that his subscribers are his most passionate fans, so he takes this as an opportunity to further solidify his connection to them:

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I’ve written about this model before. Creating fans and then servicing them with different approaches can provide money in very important ways. Particularly for creative talent.

I expect Joss Whedon to do something similar soon. He has already demonstrated the technical ability to create works that really get fan attention (i.e. Buffy) at very low costs (Dr. Horrible). Without a lot of direct fan servicing, Dr. Horrible made back twice what it cost. And he did this by first providing the film for free and then charging for the fans that wanted their own digital copy through iTunes and then those who wanted their own CD.

Could he leverage those fans into permitting new productions along very different models? There were say 2 million views of Dr. Horrible online. If 1% of those people could be converted into putting up an average of $100, he would have $2 million to work with. Not too shabby.

How about a movie? How many would put up money to fund a new Firefly movie? Or a new speculative Whedon project?

Or what about fans that just will not wait?The ability to create very high quality work for low cost means that providing more of what fans want will be achievable.

And artists such as Felicia Day have leveraged her creative online series, The Guild, into a whole slew of appearances on genre shows fueled by fans. The intersection of creative talent with innovative producers who understand ways to service fans has created an entire group of actors who keep making guest appearances on shows that appeal to similar fan demographics.

So, Wil Wheaton, from Star Trek, appears on Big Bang Theory and Leverage. Morena Baccarin moves into V. Felicia Day moves onto roles in Whedon’s Dollhouse, which also stars Eliza Dushku from Buffy and Tahmoh Penikett from Battlestar Galactica. (Watch for Fran Kranz, Enver Gjokaj and Dichen Lachman to start making appearances on genre shows, because of their breakout roles in this gener series). Alan Tudyk, from Firefly, has appeared in both Dollhouse and V.So actors as well as producers can leverage their creativity in ways that provide real interest to genre fans and perhaps larger audience

Perhaps this manifestation of the Long Tail will provide work for a large group of people, as well as providing works for fans to watch. Maybe not blockbuster numbers. That requires transition to a mass audience, something studios are very good at.

BUt the fan audience seems to be quite large enough that, with modern technology, creative talent can make a decent living.

All the data and figures you could want on climate change

The complete guide to modern day climate change – All the data you need to show that the world is warming
[Via Climate Progress]

According to the IPCC 4th Assessment Report (2007):

• Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.
• At continental, regional, and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.
• Paleoclimate information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1300 years. The last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions in polar ice volume led to 4 to 6 metres of sea level rise.
• Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the [Third Assessment Report's 2001] conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”. Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns.

Let us take a look at some of the evidence:

This post is by guest Blogger Scott A. Mandia, Professor of Physical Sciences at Suffolk County Community College, Long Island, NY. Mandia holds an M.S. Meteorology from Penn State University and a B.S. Meteorology from University of Lowell (now called UMass – Lowell). Mandia has been teaching introductory meteorology and paleoclimatology courses for 23 years.

Temperature Trends

20 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 25 years. The warmest year globally was 2005 with the years 2009, 2007, 2006, 2003, 2002, and 1998 all tied for 2^nd within statistical certainty. (Hansen et al., 2010) The warmest decade has been the 2000s, and each of the past three decades has been warmer than the decade before and each set records at their end. The odds of this being a natural occurrence are estimated to be one in a billion! (Schmidt and Wolfe, 2009)

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There is more data here demonstrating just a part of the huge amount dealing with the increasing temperatures of our globe and the effects this has on a range of terrestrial processes.

People can try and deny parts but even this small portion makes it lunacy to deny all of it. So let’s just admit that climate change is happening.

This will have huge economic effects, no matter what we do. So why not try and do things that might actually help and plan for things that will be beneficial. Aren’t we the species that controls its environment?

No matter whether someone denies AGW or not, we should be doing things the ameliorate the effects of climate change. And soon.

Harming others

by alvi2047

More antivax hammering
[Via Bad Astronomy]

The antivaxxers are getting more media attention, and it’s not good for them. NPR has a story about measles being on the rise in Vancouver, and make it clear that it’s due to antivax fear-mongering. Money quote:

CDC officials are watching the Vancouver outbreak closely, as neighboring Washington state has sizable populations of vaccine refusers.

“If measles crossed the border into those populations, there’s a potential for a sizable outbreak,” says Dr. Jane Seward of the CDC.

The antivaxxers are nothing if not ironic: they say they want to protect our health, and yet put it at grave risk, and the fear they monger about vaccines is the exact opposite of what we really should be afraid of: outbreaks of preventable and potentially fatal diseases.

Tip o’ the syringe to Evan Wilson for the NPR story.

[More]

Herd immunity is one of the most important social impacts of vaccination. Measles is a very contagious disease. Without vaccination, a single case could infect sixteen other people. Then those sixteen could infect sixteen. Very rapidly you have an epidemic.

With people dying.

To maintain herd immunity for measles, over 90% of the population should be vaccinated. Anti-vaxxers hurt us all, and increase the possibility of an epidemic by not vaccinating against measles.

This is because in every community there are people who for various reasons can not be vaccinated. They are young infants or the elderly or have weakened immune systems.

We get vaccinated for ourselves but our vaccinations also help our communities, protecting the lives of those who can not be protected by vaccination.

Anti-vaxxers, in their personal selfishness, put those people at risk. It is one thing to make a decision about your own life, wrong and ill-informed as that decision may be. But it is another to put other people’s lives at risk.