meryl’s notes: September 2003 Archives – some good ideas pointed to at listamatic.

We live in fascinating times. The channel for recorded music is collapsing. JD’s New Media Musings points to Moby’s advice for the music industry, all good points. I am especially intrigued by his counsel to stop spending large sums to produce music and videos. As music prices drop, it would seem like we’ll have to get back to fairly raw recordings with very little production, and videos will either have to get very simple, or alternatively will be funded in other ways – by advertisers, as part of going to a movie, etc.

Personally I think this is all good, we get back to music for the sake of music. The funding for all the other ancillary “value-add” activities around the music is just going to dry up. 100 years ago there was no recorded music industry – you went out and listened to artists if you wanted music. It would not be terrible if we ended up listening to more live music.

SEC College Football - Fanblogs.com: Vandy Eliminates Athletic Department – this seems dumb. Running an athletic program is a significant body of work, quite distinct from that of running an educational program. NCAA rules and regulations, budgeting, facilities, recruiting – it is all different than what your normal university administrators deal with. One way or another you are going to have dedicated staff focusing on the issues; denying their existence is not going to help the quality or professionalism of the effort.

Here’s the transcript – -- Andy seems quite testy in the interview, this has clearly been a trying process for the school. And I am sure he is still worried about the implications for the school and program – there is a strong denial in the interview that this will affect the school in any way but I am sure it is a concern.

Found via a comment on Rich’s site – Venture capital is hazardous to your company’s health in 9 out of 10 cases – ouch! On the other hand, maybe he isn’t talking about me:

With the first dollar of venture capital accepted the entrepreneur?s control slips away to 28-year-old MBA wonder-boys with only the shallowest of operating experience.

The age 28 is long behind me, I was off in the shallow end of the operating pool at that time, hopefully I’ve learned something.

Windley’s Enterprise Computing Weblog – gosh it seems like there must be some great software companies to build in this space.

Scott Hanselman’s Weblog : Scott Hanselman’s Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tools List – what a great list of utilities. I am still perusing the list. Whiteboard Photo looks like a killer.

Big 10 College Football - Fanblogs.com: Clarett done at OSU

This seems inevitable to me – Techno-News Blog – we need a stronger system of identity on the net if we really want to stop spam. I would switch to a mailsystem today that had a stronger notion and in fact I am evaluating all kinds of solutions currently.

Update: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. So I decided to start acting on my words and I thought I’d get a certificate so I could start signing all my email sent from Outlook. I clicked on the link in Outlook to get a certificate and I was take to this page – my guess is that NO ONE tries to get certificates for Outlook based on this.

I’ll be cross-posting some of my football posts on fanblogs going forward – Site News - Fanblogs.com: Welcome John Ludwig! – it’s a great college football site, worth a read.

Regular column from the NYTimes charting the weeks most popular media – Digital Downloads Decline – yet again showing how out of touch I am with pop culture. This weeks illuminating fact – I don’t own a single one of these CDs, nor do I visit any of the most sticky websites.

I need a cheap longdistance solution for calls within the US. The calling location is deep inside a building at Pomona College and cell coverage sucks.

Option A is prepaid cards. Genuine ATT cards are availabe on ebay for about 3.4 cents per minute. Or you can go even cheaper if you go to a site like CallingCardPlus -- rates down to .5 cents per minute. I am sure quality on some of these cheap plans is iffy.

The location does have 10mbit ethernet and so VOIP is an option – I wonder what will happen when every student starts using VOIP, I bet the campus net is not engineered for that case. Free World Dialup - by pulver.com is a way to start, seems pretty geeky tho, you have to be a NAT expert – OK for me but not sure this will work for the caller. I wonder if Vonage is any easier to use. I definitely want an option that uses a SIP phone or a regular phone, I don’t want to use a PC mic and headphones.

Great news for Pure Networks – Applications: Home Is Where The Network Is – as more and more homes get home networks, more and more people are going to need help with these networks – managing, securing, sharing, monitoring, etc.

hit-or-miss points to the Beloit College Mindset List – while maybe the list isn’t as good as in the past, it is fascinating to see the world thru the eyes of an 18 year old – Paul Newman makes salad dressing, not movies.