‘Showcase, Dank Showcase’
I was logging in to moderate comments this afternoon and accidentally clicked on the link to Dave Johnson’s blog in my blogroll where I found that sometime in the past year — much to my amazement — he had actually published a page of old audio clips from the “Peak Computing Hour,” a call-in radio show that he and I did ten or so years ago in Colorado. I hadn’t heard the clips in a quite a while and it was a fun little trip. (He was smart enough to keep the clips rather limited.)
We did have fun on that show, despite the fact that — to this day — Dave suspects that I “never really liked” him. Well…I’ll leave the answer to that question to your imagination.
Let’s just say the pay was good.
(Oh, and gas was only like 8 cents a gallon at the time, so I was more than happy to commute up to Denver from Colorado Springs for a two-hour radio show once a week. In a Jeep Cherokee. Can you imagine?)
Dave focuses on old clips of “Dank Showcase, Cyberspy” because, well, he wrote them. (So, BIG surprise there.)
Truth told, though, Dank Showcase was the best part of the show…that single experience has caused me to occasionally yearn to do a little “real” radio theatre at some point in my life. The fact that no one would listen it — just as they did then — is somewhat beside the point.
But he captured the high points — the megadingos, the callers, the silly stuff we would do. Almost makes me want to do it again.
Hmmm.
Whatdaya say, Dave? We could use uStream or similar to put together a show like TuesdayNightTech, but not so…juvenile. Heck…using Skype or something we could take callers. (Do you still know anything about computers? I might have to brush up a bit on PCs. Yuck.)
Maybe you could get us a sponsor from up there in the techie Northwest? If we got enough of a following, we could write books together again. Maybe they’d even put us on ZDNet. TechTV. TechTV G4. PBS!
Dave?
No?
You never liked me, did you, Dave?
Enjoyed the Pic, Beer Dude
I was surfing Ning sites and came across this guy’s profile page and pic. If I’d have been drinking Coke, it would have come out my nose. (I love that he’s shooting from a little Heineken mini-keg.) He’s a member of Bobalicious in Canada, which is apparently a social network supporting an online online magazine up there.
I didn’t get too deep into social networking in HTDE/Web 2.0 Blog in part because services like Ning weren’t quite in full swing. But the truth is, as these services mature, Ning-like social networks offer a great way to mash up a blog and a forum to get a community of folks focused on getting to know one another better and having a little fun.
You need to have some momentum in terms of readership (three nerdy guys hanging out on a Ning is just about as exciting as three nerdy guys hanging out at one of their mother’s house without a Ning site) and it REALLY helps to have a reason to bring folks together, whether it’s regional or topical. (And if you can get people together IRL based on their social networking, all the better.)
But, that said, Ning is cool, and it can be “blogging” if you want — you can set up a Ning so that it’s very much like your personal blog (or a group blog) except you surround yourself with pictures, events and blog entries by others as well.
Anyway, if you’re reading the book and want to see if thing’s have gotten any further toward the “next big thing,” check out Ning and see if maybe it qualifies.
Nice Review of ‘HTDE with Web 2.0 Blog’
I appreciate what this reviewer is saying about my book…sometimes it’s tough to “hit” just right with the marketing, cover design and so on. The truth its, a lot of folks worked hard on the book (editors, tech editors, copyeditors, publicists) and not just me. But it’s a pleasure to receive glowing praise such as this:
Do yourself a favor: don’t judge this book by its (awful) cover. I’ve had this book by my side every step of the way while setting up my very first blog, and I have to say it has been a huge help. Stauffer’s style is direct and engaging, not cutesy. He tells you what you need to know to get started, without a lot of fluff.
I wanted to write a review here because I think this books deserves a big audience, and because the Amazon listing tells you little about what’s covered.
Bob then goes on to talk about the different topics in the book.
Actually, he brings up one problem I’ve had with Amazon on past projects — the book descriptions often come from very early entries in whatever cataloguing systems are used for book orders and sales. So, many times the descriptions of the books just aren’t as accurate by the time they’re written; this book, for instance, moved away from some programming coverage in part because the “rise of widgets” took place as I was writing. It took a long time to get the description changed to reflect the new outline.
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