Ed Batista

Last.fm: One of Us, One of Us

Thanks to a great suggestion from friend and colleague Ruby Sinreich, I've started an AttentionTrust group over at Last.fm.  Here's my hastily-scribbled raison d'etre:

This is a group for Last.fm users who are interested in making more effective use of their "attention data" (including, but not limited to, all the data we're sharing with Last). We're big fans of Last, and we love their service, but we'd also love to know what Last is planning to do with this data. We hope this group will prompt some interesting discussions between Last and its users.

I really do love Last, and I hope the folks running it realize that eager, engaged, heavy-duty users like us make the best evangelists.

I also anted up and subscribed, figuring that $3 a month was a very cheap way to show my support for the best working attention service out there (and that's what they are, whether they realize it or not.)

I'm obviously a fan, but a few nagging questions remain: What's happening to all of that attention data?  Can I get a copy?  Can I manage it in any way?  Who else has access to it?  What will happen to it if Last tanks?  I have no idea--and that bothers me.  I'd love to see Last join AttentionTrust and give users the ability to exert more control over our data.  What about it, Last?

If you're not a Last user, here's the bullet: 1) It's a plugin that allows you to record your iTunes metadata (which songs you play and when, favorite songs and artists, etc.)  2) It's a web service that allows you to analyze your own metadata as well as others', matches you up with "neighbors" who share your musical tastes, and recommends music you'd like.  3) It's an online community that allows you to create groups with common interests, communicate with fellow members, and keep music-related journals.  You can use the basic service for free, and if you get addicted like me, you can opt for the paid service and get a few extra goodies.

And if you are a Last user, join the AttentionTrust group and become...one of us, one us.

UPDATE: Answering some of my own questions above...

• What's happening to all of that attention data?  Almost all of Last's data is available via the Audioscrobbler Web Services API.  (Audioscrobbler was the original name for the Last plugin.  The two entities merged under the Last name a while back, and the Audioscrobbler site now serves to support the Last development community.)  The data is available under Creative Commons' Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share-Alike License.  The data is also available for commercial purposes, but you have to contact [email protected] to obtain a separate license.  (There's no info available on the site about commercial licensing terms, or who's obtained them.)
• Can I get a copy?  Kinda sorta.  You and anyone else adhering to the terms of the CC license can grab a range of feeds in .txt, .xml and .xspf formats.  Some feeds are related to a specific user profile, and others are related to specific songs, artists, etc.  But you can't grab all of your user data--for example, you can only get the top 50 artists, albums and tracks from a user profile, not the full lists.
• Can I manage it in any way?  By this I meant, "Can I delete any shitty music I don't like anymore, so that it doesn't screw up my recommendations?"  The answer appears to be no.
• Who else has access to it?  Anyone who adheres to the CC license, and (I'm assuming) anyone who successfully negotiates a commercial license with Last.  I want to emphasize that for me at least, this is really about transparency, not privacy.  I assume that everything I do online is being tracked, recorded, analyzed and monetized by someone, and that's the price I pay to insure that my actions, my preferences, my interests are attributed to me.  It's a way of expressing myself, really.  Anonymity has its uses, and like everyone I have personal data that I want to keep private, but I'm not worried about keeping my Last data private.  But I would like to know more about who else has access, and under what terms, so that I can make an informed decision about using Last.
• What will happen to it if Last tanks?  Still no idea.  And this is a big concern of mine.  I've invested a lot of time and energy amassing attention data in Last's system, and it's become a valuable resource to me.  I'd feel a lot better if I were capturing and storing my data on my own (in an open, portable format, of course), and then opting to share it with Last.

tags: last.fm attention attentiontrust

Mission of Burma: Snapshot & The Obliterati

Um, can someone please tell me where the hell I've been?  Mission of Burma's had a new live EP out for over two months and I hear about it for the first time today?  Snapshot is only available as an iTunes download (standard Apple pricing, so it's $7.92 for eight songs).  Here's a track by track review on first (and second) listen:

• Tremolo: Great stuff.  More...thoughtful than the version from The Horrible Truth About Burma.  I wouldn't say it's better, but it's a worthy addition to the canon.
• Mica: In the same vein.  Not quite as urgent as the kick-ass original on Vs., but still solid.  Bob Weston fills in for Martin Swope really well almost everywhere, but I do miss Swope's work here.
• Youth of America: Cover of a Wipers song, which I think Burma might have played when I saw them in May 2005 in DC.  Sounds vaguely familiar, at any rate.  A nice psychotic break by Roger Miller mid-song, but otherwise just so-so.
• Absent Mind: The only song from 2005's ONoffON, and not the cut I would have chosen.  I always want to like Peter Prescott's songs more than I actually do.  I don't begrudge him the airtime--I have to assume that Burma's egalitarian approach to songwriting has a lot to do with their overall aesthetic and even helped get them back together.  But...oh, well.
• Red: The neglected gem from Signals, Calls and Marches.  Great song, great version, with an outstanding Bob Weston/Roger Miller freakout.
• That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate: Can I say "anthemic" without calling down the Poseur Police?  OK, then: anthemic.  Gets my sclerotic heart racing every time.
• Max Ernst: Solid effort--very heavy and dark.  It's a bit overrated because Rykodisc left it off that compilation years ago, and only elderly punks who bought the original 7" had heard it...but I digress. 
• Dirt: Great song, one of my favorite Burma tunes...and I know I sound like a dipshit math rock nerd when I say this...but the version here--basically the same as the one from ONoffON--seems just a little slower than the one from Mission of Burma/Peking Spring.  Doesn't it?  It doesn't?  Well, I just like the old one better--my sclerotic heart needs the boost.

Bottom line: Probably only for obsessive Burma fans--but are there any other kind?  David Raposa has a good review in Pitchfork as well--I think he went a little easy on them (8.2!), but it's a well-written piece.

And on top of all this Burma's new album, The Obliterati, will be released on May 9th, and they're about to start a tour that will bring them to little old San Francisco on February 23rd.  See you there.

tag: mission of burma

Wikipedia Edited, Dog Bites Man

Verne Kopytoff has a "What's Web 2.0?" article in today's SF Chronicle, and in general it's a fine primer on the concept, neither too credulous nor too cranky.  I particularly liked this quote from Dave Winer, which Kopytoff pulled from Winer's Scripting News:

Web 2.0 is a way for certain marketing people to claim they invented stuff that they didn't invent, without actually claiming they invented it.

Although Kopytoff doesn't include the full quote in the Chron, Winer's original post goes on to say:

[Web 2.0 is] the kind of double-talk marketing guys love.

In a sense people are right when they say it's another bubble. It's dishonest like the bubble was. Yet the technologies they're hyping are honest.

Winer's full quote gets at the essence of Web 2.0: a marketing buzzword that nevertheless represents something real. I understand Winer's resentment of marketing bullshit and appreciate his ability to cut to the heart of the matter, but some buzzwords which start out as pure marketing-driven hype gain traction because they effectively translate technical issues for non-geeks like me.  Of course, they're subject to abuse by unscrupulous flacks, but that doesn't make the terms themselves illegitimate.  (For more on buzzwords, Tim Oren had some interesting thoughts on the useful purposes they serve, which I excerpted last year.)

But Kopytoff goes astray when he backhands Wikipedia:

The reputation of Web 2.0 was recently sullied by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written by volunteers. Held up as a shining example of Web 2.0, it suffered a scandal after one of those amateur contributors rewrote history by accusing a former government official of being involved in the Kennedy assassinations. [emphasis mine]

Scandal? Really?  That strikes me as absurd. Crackpots screw around with Wikipedia entries every day.  That's the price of having an open system which anyone can edit--it's not called Wikipedia for nothing.  But errors are typically corrected within minutes. And debates will rage over controversial and highly politicized topics where a definitive answer can't be found, but that's as true within Wikipedia and other user-supported systems as it is anywhere.

This isn't a scandal--it isn't even a story.  It's the way Web 2.0 (sorry, Dave) works.  It's the wisdom of crowds. By allowing everyone--no matter what their authority or credentials (or lack of same)--to contribute to the intellectual marketplace that is the Web, we guarantee the system's fluidity and maximize accuracy at the macro level.  Of course we sacrifice accuracy at the micro level--with no editorial apparatus constraining the system, anything you read at any given moment could be total bullshit.  But in a free, open and fluid intellectual market, bad ideas will eventually be driven out by better ones--and sooner rather than later.

Perhaps it's not surprising that a newspaper article completely misses this point, but it is sad.  I love newspapers, and I don't want to see them die--I want to see them adapt and thrive.  I'm hopeful that publishers and journalists--the smart ones, anyway--will find a way to do that.

tags: web 2.0 wikipedia verne kopytoff dave winer

What's Up, Doc?

Just for you, Amy.

That's Totally Pop!

Ever since Cat Power's cover of the Nerves' "Hanging on the Telephone" has reawakened my obsession with that song, I've been searching for a copy of That's Totally Pop!, the 1992 CD released by the French Revenge label, which includes the Nerves' first 7", Jack Lee's 1981 solo LP, a and Plimsouls EP.

If you have a copy or know where I can find one, please let me know by dropping a comment below.  Many thanks.

UPDATE: Ask the Internets, and ye shall receive.  I was recently in touch with someone who owned "That's Totally Pop!" and he offered to send me a copy for free.  As if that weren't generous enough, today an anonymous donor or donors, known only as Friends of Power Pop, sent me a copy in the mail, entirely unsolicited.  That's a little creepy, but it's a thoughtful gesture nonetheless, and I appreciate it.

I've been listening to it pretty regularly for a few weeks now, and...it's a mixed bag.  The Nerves' EP is intermittently brilliant.  "Hanging on the Telephone" seems to be the same version on the Come Out and Play comp, but it sounds richer somehow--making it merely the best version of the best pop song in history.  I admit I'm probably imagining the enhanced sound--but don't even think that another pop song could come close.  Just don't.

A live version of "Are You Famous?" sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a well, but I still find it unbelievably haunting and compelling.  "Paper Dolls" and "Give Me Some Time" are near-perfect pop nuggets, and I know some people feel the same about "When You Find Out" (here in live and studio versions), but it's not really a personal favorite.  Four other, lesser songs round out the EP--good, but not great.

The Plimsouls' songs are a smile-inducing time capsule from the early '80s.  I wasn't listening to them back in the day, but their sound--rootsy power pop, with some jangly guitars and Farfisa thrown in for good measure--brings to mind any number of small, earnest, wonderful bands I loved back then.  And although they never hit the heights scaled by the Nerves, every song's solid.

Tragically, the same can't be said of Jack Lee's "Greatest Hits, Vol. 1," the solo album that takes up nearly half of "That's Totally Pop!"  Given how much I love the Nerves' best work, this was really disappointing.  It has all the makings of a neglected classic--unfortunate band-breakup backstory, hubristic title, and a killer cover.  It even has some potentially great songs, including four Nerves cuts, most notably a re-recorded "Hanging on the Telephone."

But it's simply not a good record--it's not really power pop and definitely not postpunk.  It's just flabby, listless, boring rock.  The soul-sucking '80s production hurts even the best songs--"Hanging on the Telephone" is a ghost of its former self.  It's depressing, really.  I'll always wonder what might have happened had Jack Lee, Peter Case and Paul Collins found a way to keep the Nerves together--hey, they could have been The Knack--but based on "Greatest Hits" it doesn't appear that Jack was cheated out of a great post-Nerves career. 

So there you are.  If you love the Nerves or the Plimsouls, track down a copy of "That's Totally Pop!"--it'll be worth your while.  If you're just curious about Jack Lee's solo work, well, I'd let it go.  But the guy did write the greatest song ever--a little respect, OK? 

tags: nerves jack lee plimsouls peter case paul collins power pop

Bay Bridge

Cold, rainy, dark, perfect.

On Ombudsmen, Objectivity and Infotainment

I post on a sports bulletin board that often veers into other topics, and I wrote the following yesterday in a discussion about the relevance of ombudsmen (I saw Jeff Jarvis use the gender-neutral "ombudsers" recently, but since I think they're dinosaurs anyway, I'll stick with the traditional usage).  I seem to be covering similar ground a lot lately:

1) Ombudsmen: They were (marginally) relevant when media was strictly a one-way, broadcast channel. The media told us the way it was, we listened obediently. But sometimes they screwed up. This happened very, very rarely, because the media were "objective," but they're human and occasionally made mistakes. But no one in the audience had a platform to talk back to the media directly, so ombudsmen were invented to play that role. They were toothless pariahs in their own organizations, disliked by both the publishing and editorial sides of the house, but having them around was a price you had to pay.

Today the audience can and does speak back directly. We talk among ourselves on bulletin boards, we launch our own websites, we podcast, and when the media gatekeepers deign to let us in, we comment on their own sites. There's no way an ombudsman can claim to represent my views better than I can myself, and now that I have plenty of platforms through which I can speak back to the media, the ombudsman is a superflous relic. Get rid of them all, and compel all journalists to accept responsibility for communicating directly with their audience.

2) "Objectivity": The media's pretense of "objectivity" that some people feel is being lost today was, at best, an illusion and, at worst, a shroud that masked more active agendas. Of course, we should strive to distance ourselves from preconceived ideas and emotions and seek to understand and address issues dispassionately. But we, all of us, still have those preconceived ideas and emotions, and we need to be transparent about them, rather than pretend they don't exist.

I don't lament the loss of "objectivity," and I think we're more likely to get to the truth in a post-Internet world where the diversity of voices insures that every issue will be subject to the wisdom of crowds.  This is why Wikipedia works. No one of us can be completely objective or accurate, but if you get enough of us thinking and talking about an issue, an approximation of objective, accurate truth will emerge.

Will unscrupulous individuals and organizations seek to promote their biased agendas in this wide-open intellectual marketplace? Of course. But free markets work so well because they distribute information so effectively, and the true "value" of any information will be ascertained more quickly the more free the market.

3) Infotainment: The rise of infotainment and the supposed decline of more serious fare is a red herring. Hand-wringing over the tabloidization of broadcast news ignores the meteoric rise in serious exchanges being enabled by the Internet and the increasing intellectual complexity of every form of culture, from sitcoms to video games. In Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson makes a compelling argument that we're constantly getting smarter as a society and that many supposed examples of our decline are actually just the reverse: kids spend hours playing video games because they're learning incredibly complex sequences that allow them to continue playing; we flock to reality television because it taps into our wiring as social animals and challenges us to predict participants' reactions, etc.

This isn't to say that the world's just fine and dandy. But Cassandras are a dime a dozen--it's a lot more interesting to me to figure out why so many things continue to improve despite all the challenges we face.

tags: journalism ombudsmen infotainment james surowiecki wisdom of crowds steven johnson everything bad is good for you

Organizational Culture in the US Auto Industry

Hearing that GM and Ford are planning to cut 60,000 jobs over the next six years, my heart goes out to the families and manufacturing communities that will be affected. At the same time, I can't help but feel that this passage from Wednesday's Wall Street Journal op-ed by John Schnapp, who formerly led the auto industry practice at Mercer, rightly suggests that the entire American auto industry, from the boardrooms to the union halls, is to blame:

[In the late 1970s, when Nissan opened the second Japanese-owned auto assembly plant in the U.S., they] chose to reject UAW overtures to unionize its new Smyrna, Tenn. plant... Nissan also adopted a number of important symbolic gestures. All employees, including top executives, wore identical work uniforms. Production workers were empowered to stop the assembly line if they perceived any problem affecting quality.  There were no reserved parking spaces nor was there an executive dining room. Smyrna quickly became the most productive auto plant in the U.S., with the highest level of objectively measured product quality, an eminence it continues to enjoy.

Three separate UAW organizing efforts have all foundered at Smyrna. No later Asian auto maker plant unaffiliated with the Big Three has ever been organized either.

Walter Reuther [president of the UAW from 1946 until his death in 1970] was an undoubted great man. However, the persistence in the contemporary UAW of his intractability, understandable though it may have been in his own time, ensures a continuation of the worst of all outcomes--a shrinkage of employers and the disappearance of jobs.

Schnapp alludes to the U.S. auto industry's violent history (including 1937's "Battle of the Overpass," shown above), which insured that labor and management would regard each other with distrust at best and outright hatred at worst. No one ever figured out how to bridge that gap, and for decades it was simply accepted as part of the natural order. It was a less than desirable state of affairs, but acceptable as long as Americans were buying enough American cars.

But that gap between U.S. labor and management is what allowed Japanese manufacturers to do things differently--and allowed them to demonstrate that an organizational culture that works to bridge, rather than reinforce, such a gap contributes to better results: more profitable companies, happier (and employed) workers, and most significantly, better cars.

The Big Three have worked hard to improve quality and enliven their designs in recent years, and they've met with some success...but not enough. And this week's dramatic announcements are an explicit admission that in a predominantly healthy, growing economy, the U.S. auto industry is a dysfunctional relic of the past.

Although I don't define myself as liberal or conservative today, I come from a liberal background and over the years have often supported union causes. Many, if not most, of my colleagues and friends will side with a union in any dispute with management.  But I've come to believe that the antagonistic stance between labor and management that we see in the U.S. auto industry (and throughout the public sector--witness the recent New York City transit workers' strike) is part of the problem and is a major barrier to creative solutions.

I'm not suggesting that the Japanese model should be adopted wholesale--the promise of lifetime employment in exchange for total loyalty to the company hasn't worked out so well for them, and many of its elements are totally inappropriate for our much more heterogenous and independent society. But American labor and management need to recognize that they need to work in concert rather than in opposition to each other--and that an organization's culture will play a key role in creating that solidarity.

I don't have much hope for the public sector. Those bureaucracies have a monopoly stranglehold on the services they provide, and they'll never face competitive pressure sufficient to induce change.  But the private sector is a different story, and I am hopeful that the Big Three and the UAW will work together to save their industry from the ash heap of history.

Unmarketing: SteelerBaby Speaks!

SteelerBaby speaks!  I'm honored.  And a little frightened.

 

tags: unmarketing steelerbaby

Andrew Sullivan at Time

Andrew Sullivan moved to Time last week, and it's interesting that  what once would have seemed like a major event almost escaped my notice entirely.  Sullivan did more than any other single writer to get me reading blogs, not just because he was so early to the game or because 9/11 and the War on Terror gave his writing a uniquely compelling context, but because (as I wrote last February), he "blazed a path for people like myself who don't feel particularly well-represented by the reigning ideologies on the Right or the Left."

When Sullivan temporarily retired from blogging last year,
I missed him, but it wasn't difficult to fill that void.  Perhaps not suprisingly, Sullivan couldn't stay away from blogging, but I never got back into the habit of reading him--partly because I was simply tired of the shrillness of the blogosphere's political discourse and found myself more fulfilled by reading and writing on other topics, and partly because I felt that Sullivan himself had become somewhat shrill in response to his critics.  (While I'd praised him as "a sassy, snarky writer with a keen bullshit detector," I suppose the line between snarky and shrill is finer than I once thought.)

But reminded of his presence by the move to Time, I've added him back to my Bloglines subscriptions--I'm curious to see if I stick with it.

On a related note:  This is a win-win for both Sullivan and Time--he's freed from the headaches of maintaining his site while sacrificing relatively little (so far) in the way of branding, and they get the attention and traffic that come with a bigfoot blogger.  But I also sense that missed opportunities in the past have brought Sullivan and Time together today, and they're hoping to make up for lost time.

For example, a number of serious political bloggers who followed in Sullivan's footsteps have turned their sites into sustainable and freestanding destinations: Daily Kos, Instapundit, Eschaton, Michelle Malkin, and PowerLine, to name just a few that get more than twice Sullivan's daily traffic, according to the TTLB rankings.

And plenty of media & news sites are far more popular than Time.com, according to Alexa.  As of today, Time is a respectable #1,087 in Alexa's traffic rankings, but the BBC Online is #22, CNN is #26, the New York Times is #72, the Washington Post is #196, USA Today is #240, Forbes is #270, Fox News is #290, Reuters is #291, and the Wall Street Journal is #399.

Those are perhaps unfair comparisons, but I think its fair to say that neither Time nor Sullivan took full advantage of their respective opportunities (Time as the leading pre-Web newsweekly, Sullivan as the first political blogger with a national profile), and that perhaps this union will be a fresh start for both of them.

tags: blogging journalism andrew sullivan time time magazine