Category: General

I’m horrible at photo editing. I know nothing about it. It is what has prevented me from chaning the default image for my website.

I’ve created a few test images. If I’m really ambitious, I might do some sort of random image thing.

The current image up top I ripped off from other guy’s website that uses the same wordpress theme as me.

Here is what I got so far:

Here is one I made from my summer in Colorado.

Here is one from Buenos Aries.

The Louvre in Paris. What makes this one great is the couple on the bench.

Again with the Louvre.

The UN

Paddington Station, London

Crater Lake, Oregon

I’m going to try a few more. Unfortunately, all I have is the default photo editor that comes with windows, and that sucks.

Here is where I’m spending most of my time now days. I’d say its like a cell, but cells have windows. The nice part is the walls are thick and my music doesn’t travel very far. On sundays it doesn’t really matter because I’m the only person here.

I’ve just discovered Visqueen. As usual with music, I’m always a day late to the party.

Anyhow….

I heard “Crush on Radio” driving home on 89.3 The Current (The MPR alternative station for those of you not in the Twin Cities) I immediately went home and purchased it on iTunes.

89.3 has a huge variety of music, which is a good thing. Its a way to hear stuff you’d otherwise never hear. They also keep a log of all the songs which have played going back at least a month. I think they are going to begin archiving their playlists.

What I don’t understand is that they only have links to their own public radio music store, and no links to something like iTunes. I’d guess there is a lot of money they are leaving on the table from people who don’t want to buy and entire CD right away, they just want the song they heard on the radio. I’ve probably purchased a half a dozen songs from iTunes based on what I’ve heard on their station, and for every one I had to go to their website to get the name of the song, and they never got a penny of my purchase from Apple. I don’t think I’m alone.

If they are going to annoy me to give them money, the least they can do is take advantage of the money making opportunities they have.

If you haven’t seen it, you really need to check out rocketboom.com. Its probably the most popular, daily video blog on the internet. They have been doing it for a year just for fun, but recently decided to sell advertising.

They sold the rights to be the first advertiser on ebay. It sold for $40,000.

What did they sell? From their ebay listing:

For the highest bidder, we will create five original, fifteen second (minimum) – one minute (maximum) post-roll commercials that will span five days of programming, Monday-Friday, March 6 through March 10, 2006. Each day that week a different commercial that we create for your company will be played at the conclusion of the Rocketboom episode.

Rocketboom reaches a minimum of 130,000 people per day and each day’s video, over the course of several days, receives over 200,000 complete views. Thus, the advertisement reach for this auction is currently a minimum of one million views.

From a strict CPM (Cost per thousand) basis, that’s a $40 CPM. Given that they are producing the ads (which also reduces costs for the advertiser), I’m guessing most people will watch them because they’d probably be entertaining. From a quickie google search, a cheap 30 second TV spot can easily go over $100. Buying advertising on Rocketboom will get you 1,000,000 viewers and a 60 second spot. Moreover, the people who watch Rocketboom do so because they went out of their way to visit it. They probably wont sell every ad at that high of a rate, but it establishes a good point from which everyone else doing video blogging can work from. There is an argument that certain video blogs could command a much higher CPM that some network or cable shows becuase they have such a highly targeted audience.

Rocketboom is a 2 person operation. $40,000 is a huge amount for an show like that. Its a good deal for everyone. Its a great deal for the advertisers, its a good chunk of change for Rocketboom, and everyone who watches Rocketboom will get to keep doing it and can skip the ads if you want.

This is just a first salvo in the war, but if they’re smart, the television networks need to pay attention to this. Networks are vehicles for production companies. If you produce a show, you don’t need the network anymore. Sure, the reach of a network is a lot bigger than what your going to get online, but you don’t need to be a geologist to understand that trends in this area are not looking good for them.

Another group that should be interested in this are the ad agencies. They got bypassed totally in this affair. The sale was done in an open auction, and the creative is being done by the same group showing the ad. There is no middle man.

Rocketboom FTW.

Its amazing what people are finding on Google Maps Satellite images.

My high school in Appleton, WI was a round building. Like a three story squat silo. One year, as the senior prank, some kids got on the roof, and painted a giant yellow smiley face on it that you could see from an aircraft. They probably still have a photo of it in the office. Most of the paint has probably worn away by now. It would be cool if it could actually show up on a satellite photo…

If any enterprising Appleton East Patriots out there are reading this…….you have your assignment.