What goes around....

Weird how things come full circle if you give them long enough.

Here's something from today's Wall Street Journal:

AT&T to 'Reintroduce' Itself
With a Big Campaign

By DIONNE SEARCEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 29, 2005; Page B4

In a bid to re-energize one of the country's best-known brands, the new AT&T Inc. plans to kick off a massive ad campaign on New Year's Eve.

The campaign, which includes television commercials, billboards, airport signs and a theme song by the rock band Oasis, comes a month after SBC Communications Inc. acquired AT&T Corp. and decided to keep the historic phone company's moniker. Executives said the new campaign is bigger than any marketing buys in the history of both SBC and the old AT&T.

AT&T won't say how much it is spending on the campaign, which is being handled by Omnicom Group Inc.'s GSD&M and Rodgers Townsend. Advertising experts estimate it will cost $800 million to $1 billion.

This got me to thinking: This 'new' AT&T is one big honkin company. And, as big companies go, they have only one primary goal: Increase shareholder value.

How? By growing their sales and revenue. How to do that? Good products and BUYING OTHER PHONE COMPANIES. I yell this because, damn it.... they're gonna buy all the other phone companies and reconstitute AT&T! MaBell wants to live yet again.... Even the US governments anti-trust department can't stop her long term.

You heard it here first. Heh.

A very personal iPod accessory

Tell me that your iPod isn't becoming a very personal part of your daily life.

This 'accessory' is available for your iPod now. Plugs in and vibrates/pulsates to the beat of the music.

This is what I call PERSONAL entertainment.

Thanks to the engadget guys for clueing us in on this. More from them at: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000727071936/

Here's my del.icio.us tag cloud!

http://del.icio.us/scottgconverse?settagsort=alpha

My Del.icio.us tag list. If you're not a del.icio.us user, think about starting. It's a great way to quickly 'tag' things of interest so you can find them later. I use it half a dozen times a day to mark things I don't want to lose track of, and, it ranks them for me over time showing me what my thought process flow is in a semi-graphic highly alpha mannor. Cool stuff.

Too much sex saps male brains

DAMNIT!

This just isn't fair.

It's official: too much sex saps male brains

By Roger Highfield in London
December 8, 2005

MALE animals can produce a lot of sperm or grow big brains but cannot do both, according to a study that may confirm the suspicions of many women.

The study of 334 bat species suggests that energy-hungry brains can evolve only at the expense of other tissues.

Writing in Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, Scott Pitnick, of Syracuse University, New York, reported that species with promiscuous females had evolved extra large testicles but smaller brains.

"The general rule that is emerging is that sperm production can be incredibly costly," said Dr Pitnick, who first found the relationship in insects. Male fruit flies, for example, can make sperm 7.5 centimetres long.

"This led me to examine bats, as sperm competition is rife, and so testes can be ridiculously large," he said.

"Brains are metabolically expensive organs to develop and maintain, so looking for a trade-off there seemed obvious."

The most interesting implications of the study are for the co-ordinated evolution of brains, behaviour and extravagant sexually selected traits: ornaments such as the peacock's tail and armaments such as antlers.

Dr Pitnick said: "The road to sexual success can lie in being clever, in being a dull yet well-armed brute that can fight for paternity, in being spectacularly ornamented, or in providing a rich cocktail of seminal fluids and costly sperm."

Sexual selection could favour any combination of these.

Dr Pitnick carried out the study with Kate Jones, of the London Zoological Society, and Jerry Wilkinson, of the University of Maryland

Podcast is 'word of the year'

Well, you've gotta love those wordsmiths over at the New Oxford American Dictionary. We here at ClickCaster, being in the podcasting business, say: hat's off! We love the word too.

NEW YORK, Dec. 5/PRNewswire/ -- Only a year ago, podcasting was an arcane activity, the domain of a few techies and self-admited ‘geeks.’ Now you can hear everything from NASCAR coverage to NPR’s All Things Considered in downloadable audio files called “podcasts’. Thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store, and websites such as iPodder.com and Podcast.net track thousands more.

That’s why the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have selected “podcast” as the Word of the Year for 2005. Podcast, defined as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,” will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.

Well... that didn't take long:

Wikipedia Tightens Submission Rules

By DAN GOODIN, Associated Press WriterMon Dec 5, 6:10 PM ET

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, is tightening submission rules after a prominent journalist complained that an article falsely implicated him in the Kennedy assassinations.

Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles, Jimmy Wales, founder of the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Web site, said Monday. People who modify existing articles will still be able to do so without registering.

Full story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051205/ap_on_hi_te/wikipedia_rules&printer=1;_ylt=AujlxiWuF_KWrP7LDqbtFiJk24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

Graffiti and Wikipedia

Graffiti. I’ve been thinking about that last post on Wikipedia and the uproar over how anonymous posting there can be troublesome and, in some cases, potentially libelous. It brings me to some personal experiences, both recent and in the past that tells me: anonymous isn’t necessary goodness.

I’m CEO of a podcasting startup called ClickCaster (www.clickcaster.com). We had some debate among the development team on whether to allow anonymous podcasting or not and, after going back and forth, decided that there needed to be some degree of accountability for what you say in your podcast. At the very least, you needed to supply a verifiable email that someone would complain (or send praise) to. You can still browse and listen to podcasts, but if you want to post something, you’ve got to supply a working email.

And this reminded me of a program developed internally at Apple computer back in the late 80’s, early 90’s by a fellow (Harry C) that had a somewhat profound effect on the company. It was called Graffiti, and that was exactly what it was. It was a small program you installed on your Macintosh, and it had two fields, one for text that you’d enter, and one for text that others entered to appear in. Super simple. Super fun and it, for a while, brought the Apple Campus network to it’s knee’s (thousands of copies running on virtually every employee computer in Cupertino).

Harry wrote it while working for ATG (Advanced Technology Group) and then, worked for me in the AOS (Apple Online Systems group). The sheet hit the fan, unfortunately, when he went to work for me, so I got a front row seat (as his manager) to what unfolded.Since you didn’t have to name yourself when you put text in and blasted it all over the network, making it anonymous and very graffiti like (hence it’s name), you also could say anything you wanted. Some people did, and it was fun.
But some people posted rumors, and gossip. One in particular was started about an HR exec who was sleeping with his administrative assistant. No biggie, most people at Apple back then were single and it’s was pretty common, This guy was married though, and in a sensitive job that interacted with a lot of people. And, unfortunately, it might have been true. This exec found out, went to the engineering VP (I think it was Larry Tesler… can’t remember) who, eventually, got to me, the software authors manager.
Because the software assumed a small (Apple only) audience, and it was a closed system, Harry thought it wouldn’t be a problem that it was anonymous. He was wrong. He was forced to pull the software from the network (although, if you had it, you could keep running it) and he was almost fired over it (I intervened, of course). But the lesson was learned.

Anonymous posting is almost always bad. There are a few (rare) cases where it makes sense (political, personal or professional repercussions if you associate your name with something for instance) but, in general, it’s better to have accountability than not to.

Hopefully, the Wikipedia folks have learn this lesson as well.