Fucking Facebook is starting to piss me off. Between 1-3 times per day, it’s now sending me notes that people I no longer really wanted contact with (mostly during my highly awkward high school phase) want to be my friends again– whether they were in the first place, who knows.

I’ve already sacrified present and future privacy to the internet. It probably knows all of my friendships, acquaintances, relationships, and wrongdoings over the past 5+ years. Now, it wants access to my past as well.

I remember a point in human history where we had the opportunity to leave the person we were behind as we moved forward. Now, this is being lost… and I’m not sure it’s with consent.

Filed by Julien at 12:19 am under community, random
11 Comments

My 150th show, done from the balcony of a hotel room during SXSW 2007. The state and future of the web and of media personalities, my position within the structure, and where I hope to be. It all came out.

This was a great show to do.

Filed by Julien at 1:30 pm under community, travel, music, trends, hip hop, podcast
14 Comments

w00t, so I was tagged by Bill and Charlotte for this 7 song thing. You basically choose songs that you’re enjoying right now, share them through the post, and then spread it to more people. Here are mine. All of them I’ve discovered recently– I hope you like them:

• Up All Night, by El-P (eMusic)
• Baby’s Coming Back To Me, by Jarvis Cocker (iTunes)
• Ave, Lucifer, by Os Mutantes (eMusic)
• Let My People Go, by Darondo (eMusic)
• L’idole, by Adonowsky (iTunes)
• The Captain, by The Knife (iTunes)
• Never Gonna Give You Up, by Rick Astley (Try it, it’s good again.) :)

I tag the following 7 people: Patrick, Anji, Clyde, Marko, Emcee, Ed, and Leesa.

Filed by Julien at 4:25 pm under community, music
3 Comments

So I’m in San Francisco right now, chilling in a house we rented with Patrick and a certain girl. The next few days involve recording a podcast and general vacationing, getting together with some Podshow peeps and listeners to the show. Yesterday was Flickr’s 3rd anniversary party, which was super fun.

The Podcamp Toronto thing thatweall organized was seriously awesome. Here’s a few things I learned:

1) Mitch said one thing that I suspect will ring true for us a number of years from now– that social networks and dating sites will soon cause a drastic drop in the divorce rate.

2) Twitter is all over the place! Chris Brogan had it on his slides; Chris Penn did too. Scoble just added his 700+ fans to his friends list, as a radical listening experiment. This may be the coolest thing I’ve seen someone do in 2007.

3) Podcasting may finally be ready to move beyond the simple monetization methods that have long held the medium hostage. Through ourTrust Economies session I feel that some momentum is pushing the idea of networks-as-ROI forward. Take a look at the video here (it requires Quicktime), and please leave your comments if you’re so inclined– I’d love to hear them.

Filed by Julien at 9:23 pm under projects, travel, community, podcamp toronto, trends, podcasting
6 Comments

Holy crap, this is nuts. Talib Kweli, a conscious rapper best known for his work in Black Star with Mos Def (but also his albums Quality and The Beautiful Struggle), just joined Second Life.

Go read it on his website. This is nuts. Here’s his island.

Filed by Julien at 12:23 am under community, trends, hip hop
1 Comment

Hey, I hadn’t blogged it yet, but Anji and I talked a little bit ago for a show we put on Sirius. The recording ended up being over an hour, and that’s what I put online. So, you know, be prepared for a hella long recording. :) Here’s the transcript, in case you guys are looking for it.

(Please note: There is no enhanced file for this ’show’. It’s way too long for me to bother.)

Filed by Julien at 10:24 pm under community, download, podcast
16 Comments

Today is our last full day at the Banff Cross Platform Mentorship Lab. Our presentation went over really well earlier- last night, we decided to scrap the way we were selling the idea, starting over entirely about 12 hours before needing to present it. This change and the presentation was really well received, and we are starting to see a lot of potential for HAL.

There were a lot of other projects here, all doing great work that deserve mention. Here are a few of the ones I’ve already found on the web:

FierceLight, Go Ball Glow, NanoBodz, Jig-Sound, Stranger Says, Inanimate Alice, Jargonition.

Filed by Julien at 5:05 pm under HAL, projects, community
3 Comments

(And I’m not being facetious here.)

Here is a list of some A-list bloggers I read and enjoy: Smart Mobs (because of flashmob and mobile stuff), Dave Winer (yeah yeah, laugh it up), Seth Godin (marketing, branding, etc.), and Scobleizer (no idea why, really - but at least he admits it). There are others I can’t think of right now, but the point remains the same whomever we’re talking about: Why are some bloggers ‘allowed’ to be boring?

The question could more precisely be phrased as follows, though: Why are A-list bloggers allowed to break all the rules that regular bloggers would get chastized for? Consider the following ‘rules’:

Choose a topic or niche (link)

High traffic blogs have the liberty of talking about whatever, while regular bloggers have to narrow themselves to a niche in order to attract traffic. Regular bloggers can do nothing but narrow their focus more and more to attract traffic. Lord knows what effect this has on their work on pride in it.

Write snappy headlines (link)

Many A-list blogs write the vaguest headlines imaginable, or no headlines at all, yet the traffic continues and the devotees increas in fervour.

Be respectful of your readers’ time

I have found that some of the highest traffic bloggers post the most often possible, occasionally with one-sentence posts. Some of these may be good, but others could be strikingly banal.

Conclusion

Some could argue that ‘regular’ bloggers don’t have the audience, so they need to strategize more and find niches where they can gain some interest. They may say that the time for vague blogs is done. Bloggers that have somehow caught the attention of large audiences already have those readers, don’t need to struggle to attain more, so they have a lot more liberties than we have.

But let’s try phrasing this otherwise: In order to be successful, they’re saying that you should blog unnaturally, using only a few dimensions of your interests and personality, so that when you get up to the top you’ve either forgotten you wanted to have a wide-ranging blog in the first place (like A-list bloggers appear to be allowed to have), or are too afraid of breaking out of your niche for fear that you’ll lose the audience you built as precariously as a house of cards.

My manifesto is this:

I will talk about whatever I want, whenever I want, attempting to amuse my readership (and podcast listnership) as I amuse myself, without constraints. Never mind niches, and never mind rules - I want to be part of a trend of bloggers that are uninterested in strategies and constraints, in niches or blogging as if it was a 12-step program.

Traffic be damned; social media, blogging, podcasting - all of these are about people, and people are who I want to get to know. Niches? No thanks. I intend to retain my right to be boring. I suggest you do the same.

If you have any other rules you hate, or want to break, leave a comment.

Filed by Julien at 9:32 pm under blogging, community, podcasting
7 Comments

Je travaille depuis quelque temps sur HAL (Hub d’Artistes Locaux), un projet où nous rassemblons la communauté d’artistes locaux avec les usagers d’internet sans-fil Montréalais. Le vidéo ci-dessous est une introduction au projet, monté par Véro B, une vidéobloggeure locale très talentueuse.

Si vous êtes nouveau visiteur, bienvenue à mon blogue! Vous y retrouverez régulièrement des nouveaux podcasts ainsi que des liens à pleins de projets intéressants! Restez-y un peu! :)

((I’ve been working for on this HAL project for a little while - a great community thing where we bring together local artists with Montreal’s wifi community. The above video is a little introduction I did with Véro B, a local videoblogger who is going to be huge I tell you.

If you’re a new visitor, welcome to my blog! You’ll regularly find new podcasts and links to other cool stuff I find. Stick around!))

Filed by Julien at 4:00 pm under HAL, projects, community, podcasting
8 Comments