Now that my ban on bloggers in the locker room has been lifted by the NBA , the "Joes" of the blogger world will have the same access as the "Pros". Those that get paid. I can't wait to see the results.

The people who have complained and dismissed the blogger ban the loudest are those that have the most to lose. They are the ones getting paid. If the unwashed blogging masses have some masters among them, who knows what could happen to the balance of power in the sports media world.

Of course, my preference had been to avoid having to make any qualitative decisions about which bloggers should be in or out of the locker room. Since that is no longer possible, I'm happy to share my feelings about the state of the sports blogosphere.

What sports blogging has become, in most cases, is the internet equivalent of Talk Soup or VH1's "Best ..... " series. On Talk Soup a host throws out witty comments about some TV show. On VH1, a series of guests throw out their comments about some video relevant to the show's topic. If it is witty enough, the show draws an audience.

On the net, the most popular sports bloggers do the exact same thing. They troll the net looking for other people's work and then throw out some witty comments or a simple rant to complement a link to that work.. Or they sit in front of the TV and throw out posts/comments about the game.

I'm not saying that there isn't a market for this. There is. Just as there is a market for Talk Soup on E!, and all the Vh1 shows. It even takes talent to be able to be witty and hold an audience, whether its on TV or online. But, the talent and the success from that talent doesn't require access to the locker room.

The people that complained the loudest about the ban, really didn't have a good reason to be in the locker room. And from what I can tell, non of their readers complained that their blogs suffered in any way shape or form when they didnt have access to the locker room.

Rather, they did the smart thing and used the ban to promote themselves. Which is fine by me. I hope it drove them a ton of traffic.

So I invite any blogger to post samples of their work here as a comment. if its good, and I am the only judge, then you will get an email invite to get credentialed to cover a game in Dallas (its up to you to get there). I don't care if you work for a major company, or are in 8th grade. All will be given equal access.

Just as I did with Ben Collns. I think I gave him his first shot to write for the Mavs website when he was 13. If you can write, you deserve the same opportunities to communicate about the Mavs as someone who works for ESPN, a major newspaper or network. In the blogging business, the Joes can be better than the Pros.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Monday marks a very special day in Mozilla history — the 10 year anniversary of the Mozilla source code release. We’d like to give you the chance to hear from some folks who have been with us from the beginning. Mitchell Baker, Brendan Eich, Mike Shaver, and Chris Hofmann will join us for a special one hour retrospective. Asa Dotzler, will be hosting and asking our guests to reflect on the early days, major inflection points for the organization, and what’s in store for the next 10 years of Mozilla. Prior to the live broadcast you can catch “Mozilla Memories,” video messages from community members and Mozilla employees, starting at 10 a.m. PDT.

So please join us on Monday for this special Air Mozilla Live.

Who: The Mozilla community, host Asa Dotzler, and guests Mitchell Baker, Brendan Eich, Mike Shaver, and Chris Hofmann.
When: Monday, March 31, from 11:00:00 - 12:00:00 PDT (UTC-07:00)
Where: View the webcast and join the chat at air.mozilla.com.

Also: As part of the year-long celebration of Mozilla’s 10 years, we’re gathering up video memories from our community of contributors. If you’d like to share some of your experiences with Mozilla, please upload them to YouTube and tag them with “mozilla-anniversary” so that we can locate them. You’ll be able to see the first batch of video memories starting one hour before Monday’s show and we hope to add another batch at least once a month.

(If you do record a video memory, hold onto the clip so that if we decided to put it into the Air Mozilla program, we can use the higher quality footage rather than YouTube’s downsampled version.)

A special thanks goes out to Mogulus for supporting this production of Air Mozilla.

Share This

I first read this statement on techmeme, which took me to Mathew Ingrams Blog, which revealed that the line came from a college student who was part of an Intelligence Group focus group. The words have stuck with me ever since. Put it right up there with "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog" . It says everything about what the internet is, what it isn't and how it has matured to the point that we use it far differently than even 5 years ago.

I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about how we live in an Open Book World. That there is no such thing as information overload, that when we need information, its so easy to find, that we just google it. There is no value for memorizing information , unless of course you are on Jeopardy. Value comes from knowing how best to look. Being an expert in using search and community tools. Call it being the SEOs of our own lives.

But what does "If the news is important, it will find me" really say ?

To this college student, there really is no reason to know anything but what is right in front of you. If you put your virtual self in enough networks, facebook, myspace, twitter, wherever, someone is going to ping you with "the latest".

We always talk about entertainment on the net and on tv as being different because TV is lean back, and internet is lean forward. It looks like information distribution has become delineated in the same way.

In this day and age, there are the things we are specifically interested in. The groups we "lean forward" and join, whether they are message boards, social networking groups, or websites we bookmark and visit, the tv shows we watch or DVR. Then there is everything else , which we trust will find us. The lean back information.

Its exactly what I do. I have a declining (although slowly) number of RSS feeds that I follow, and a stable number of aggregation sites that I "lean forward" and read. Everything else is extraneous and "lean back". If its important, someone wlil email me, post on my profile (and I will get an email alert for it), or one of the email newsletters I subscribe to will send me an E Lert and "it will find me"

This is what Facebook was trying to commercialize with its beacon. Its what Spokeo and FriendFeed are trying to consolidate and simplify. Its what twitter is trying to further enable. It will be interesting to see if it works o if people like things the way it is now.

Its the natural evolution and maturity of the internet. We have moved from discovery to activation to optimization to ubiquitous utility that allows the information you need to find you.


Put another way, we have finally reached the digital equivalent of Timothy OLeary's "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out"

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Best Efforts. That is what you get when you try to send internet video. Its absolutely impossible to assure anyone , anywhere that a video you or any Content Delivery Network hosts will be able to be delivered at the equivalent quality of any TV show being broadcast today.

There is a reason why Content Delivery Networks exist. They exist because the internet is a best efforts medium. The internet will always be a best efforts medium, if only because of Net Neutrality. If all bits are created and delivered on an equal basis, then there is no way to be sure that the bits carrying your TV show will be delivered with any Quality of Service assurances.

For some reason, every Internet bigot out there seems to think that there is some magic bullet that will cure this problem. There is a reason why Cable companies spend so much money on equipment and engineers to make sure that your favorite TV show shows up when you change the channel. Those same engineers do everything they possibly can to make sure that you get that show at the highest possible picture quality. Delivery is not just about bandwidth allocation, there is an incredible amount of engineering that goes into getting TV signals to your screen. It works because those engineers control the signal end to end. Its deterministic, not best efforts.

Its for this reason I have turned away from the internet as the future of entertainment and am focused on Digital TV, whether its delivered by a satellite, telco or cable company. While its true that the companies offering TV often step all over themselves and make things far more difficult than they should be, all of the real innovation is happening on the Digital TV side of the ledger. Why ? Because its a stable, deterministic platform.

With digital video, particularly for cable and telcos, there are specifications and tolerances that developers can use to design interactive applications. Satellite has different advantages in terms of broadcast solutions.

in addition, those set top boxes that continue to be upgraded and swapped out more often than you swap out your computers ? They are application specific platforms. They are being built at the software and hardware level to drive digital video and interactivity. Contrast that with the Windows /Vista platforms that most users have.

Cable has Tru2WAY, Dish Network and DIRECTV have their development platforms. They are not perfect, but the feature sets are expanding and the application base and number of developers are expanding as well.

Call me crazy, but when given the choice of developing new applications for a deterministic platform connected to a specialty application box connected to a high definition TV with a remote control or a best efforts internet platform connected to who knows how fast a connection to a PC running who knows what operating system connected to a monitor and a keyboard, I will take the first option.

But thats just me.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments