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2005

Volunteering at MPR

About two weeks ago I received an email from Minnesota Public Radio that their annual winter fund raising drive was coming up, and a link to fill out a volunteer form to help answer phones during the pledge drive.

I had already pledged money to MPR to support 89.3, The Current, before the station even launched, in support of what they were doing. (See my other posts on The Current.)

So I decided what the heck, and filled out a volunteer form for the second day of the pledge drive, which was last Friday. Chose an early shift (5:45 a.m. to 9 am – ick) so I could get there, and still get some time in the office. I woke up about 45 minutes earlier than normal, and hopped in the car to St. Paul, an area of town I rarely go to. Security guard lets me in, I go up to the 4th floor, and I’ve missed about 2 minutes of the 10 minute orientation on the script, filling out the pledge form, etc.

It’s 6 a.m., and the phones are slow. In the room they had set up with the phone bank, they had about 30-40 phones in mini-cubicles for those filling out the pledge forms by hand, and about a dozen PCs for those that wanted to enter the pledge information on-line instead of filling out a sheet of paper (guess which one I picked). On two of the 4 walls, they had projectors set up. One showed the different promotional giveaways for different pledge amounts, by station. The other showed phone bank statistics, including number of volunteers on the phone, number of volunteers available to take a call, pledges taken, amount pledged and the goal.

Phone calls were slow coming in, but picked up around 7:45. Turns out that the heaviest times for call-ins are during the top of the hour (when the DJ’s are making the strongest pitch) and during corporate matching times, which 7:30 to 8 was one of. I’m guessing I answered maybe 20 calls, but I was floored at the number of calls for 89.3. Now most of them were calling to support The Morning Show with Dale Connelly and Jim Ed Poole, and guessing from the voices, ages ranged all over.

I love 89.3, but I’m not into the Morning Show, yet. It’s almost too eclectic for me, and I’m not necessarily into all of the genres played, but I respect them for bringing all kinds of music to the radio. I’m ecstatic about the amount of support they received during the pledge drive though.

Overall, it was easy work, met some interesting people, and gave back to something I believe in. Giving money is one thing, but I’m glad I made the time investment. My wife has pledged to the news station on and off over the years, and when I mentioned I was going to volunteer, she mentioned it was something she always wished she had done. I was glad to do my part, as little as it was.

Week in Review: Broadcast Flag in Court

A topic near and dear to my heart, which I’ve covered before, is the FCC & the Broadcast Flag.

The American Library Assoc. was in court this week, challenging the FCC on the legality of the Broadcast Flag. The 3 judge panel, while questioning if the ALA even has the right to bring a legal challenge, hammered the FCC on the FCC’s ability to mandate this without legislation from Congress. We’ll know the court’s ruling in a few months.

You can also read a blog with detailed coverage as the blogger attends in court.

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I've been slacking

I’ve been slacking, and there’s been so many things to write about this week as well (ALA vs the FCC, gaming, site updates, sports, MPR, I could go on).

I’ll try to get back in the swing of things, let’s see where we’ll start.

I love the Simpsons

Last night’s episode of the Simpsons was hilarious. After Bart single handedly ruins the tourism industry for Springfield, the city adopts gay marriage to fix the tourism problem. Homer quickly becomes a minister to profit from performing the marriage ceremonies.

At one point, the show flashes a URL on the screen, and sure enough, Fox & the Simpsons actually created a website: Springfield is for Gay Lovers of Marriage.

That, the subject matter of the show, combined with ripping on Fox for reality TV, had me rolling last night.

Even after all these years, the Simpsons keeps the laughs coming.

We the Media

I finished We the Media by Dan Gillmor last week on the flight to Atlanta.

It was a great book, and extremely topical at this time. Published last July, the book’s focus is grassroots journalism, through mainly, blogs. While the first third of the book is very high level, it’s a great starting point for folks who aren’t necessarily steeped in technology daily. The book shares some interesting history, just in the last few years, of how blogging and grassroots journalism can help hold Big Media accountable.

It also covered the ongoing fight around copyright, Big Media, with a focus on professional journalists and their role in the evolution of journalism.

Mr. Gillmor makes the point a few times that really sticks with me: most of the hundreds of thousands of blogs are too self-centered, nothing more than online journals. It’s those blogs that find a topic, and become experts through commentary, analysis, or news that really make a difference. And he’s right – those blogs I have bookmarked are exactly that, where my blog is nothing more than an online journal.

It was a very good book, easy to read, and the timing is definitely right. Mr. Gillmor has also released it under a Creative Commons license, so you are free to read it on the web without having to buy it in a bookstore. That’s putting your money where your mouth is.

Updated, again!

WordPress 1.5 is officially out, so it’s a good thing I I downloaded a nightly build a week ago to play with it. I’ve updated the site accordingly, and downloaded a few themes to play with as well.

I like the black, but spent two hours playing with the header graphic in GIMP, and didn’t really get anywhere. I’m going to leave the black theme up for now to see how I really feel about it. If I like it, I’m going to heavily modify it, including adding the links & meta back, probably adding a second column for that stuff, and seeing what I can do with the header graphic.

Get all of Napster for free

So yesterday I’m talking about Napster, and what do I see on BoingBoing today but a link to a how-to on burning all of Napster – for free.

There I go again being ahead of the curve. But seriously, sign up for the Napster 14 day trial, download Winamp 5 and a couple of plugins, configure them, and stream the albums on Napster. The plugins will take the stream, and convert it to wav, which you then burn. The only catches are that one, it works in real time, so you have to listen to the music, and two, you have to provide the CD-Rs.

From the site:

Three computers, one fast networked drive, and a few dedicated people: Turning Napster’s 14 day free trial into 252 full 80 minute CDs of free music.

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Have fun!

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Busy Weekend



living_room, originally uploaded by silwenae.

Mom & Dad came up to visit, with Dad coming up to box out the basement in preparation for getting the ceiling drywalled. Spent all of Saturday, and half of Sunday working in the basement getting the soffits built and put up.

Now it’s time to get some tinning done from the heating & cooling guys, finish off the electrical, get the insulation up and then have the drywallers in. Need to get it all done ASAP so we can get the drywallers in before the new housing construction season starts.

It was a good way to finish off a fairly lazy vacation with some good old-fashioned hard work.

See all the basement photos on my Flickr site.

Napster 2 Go Reviews Start

Boing Boing links to a Washington Post review of Napster to Go. Let’s just say WaPo found it… wanting. Napster’s PR firm has been running full steam lately with numerous mentions in the press (after their post-Super Bowl Ad) where they’re trying to show the math hat an iPod with 10,000 songs = $10,000 or Napster can get you the same thing for $15 / month. That is, $15 / month for forever. Because once you stop paying your songs go poof.

Now I have a friend, who shall remain nameless, that loves Napster for their streaming service. He’s had various MP3 players over the years, but they were clunky, so he bought an iPod mini mid-last year. Loved the Apple experience when it came to digital music – he’s fairly technical but Apple made it easy to get and transfer music. Yet he comes back to Napster to use their radio stations. For $10 bucks a month (or whatever it is, somewhere in that ballpark) you can listen to any song Napster has. You want to burn it? Just like iTunes, that’s 99 cents please. So Napster to Go will be the premium version of their monthly fee based service.

I can see both sides – if you have a Microsoft powered (codename Janus) player, or in Microsoft marketing speak, Plays for Sure, Napster to Go can fill up your MP3 (or should I be saying WMA?) player until you stop paying for Napster. That’s pretty cool – I can get thousands of songs to go work out to, or listen to my car, my choice of songs, for $15 month. Compare that to Sirius or XM, and it could be a better option that satellite radio.

But on the on the other hand – DRM makes bad business sense as I’ve noted before. Think about it, as Xeni points out so eloquently on BoingBoing:

What if Napster To Go were Napster The Grocery, and milk you bought could only be consumed from proprietary square mugs (known for continually sprouting holes you have to patch on your own), and milk cartons vanish from your refrigerator shelf if you don’t re-up your subscription? You’d get milk elsewhere.

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I’ll let you figure out the allegory on your own.