All podiobooks, all the time

Five O'Clock Shadow 89

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

Cripes, people. I mean I dig the fact that you creative types are going to town on your stuff and all, but do you have to do it all at once?

• Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty is now live. I read the book ('cuz I rock) and really enjoyed it. Can't wait to hear Mur read it to me.
  
• Scott Sigler launched Nocturnal, and you know I have to listen to that. Oh, and Scott promises that we'll have The Rookie up and loaded in a few short days.
  
• Dairy of an S&M Romance is live, and it sort of behooves me to listen to the first adult-oriented book on our site, don't you think?
  
• I've been waiting to hear The Secret World Chronicle for over a year... and it will be live on Podiobooks.com by the weekend.
  
• ... and there are still dozens of damn fine books I have had the time to get to. Gah! Someone clone me, please!
  

Masking yourself

Five O'Clock Shadow 88

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

I'm what you'd call a moderate reader of Laughing Squid. It comes in my RSS feed, and I'd say about 30-40% of the articles interest me. That's actually fairly good, as I tend to blow through news items only looking for the tasty morsels of goodness.

But I must take exception with a recent post entitled Social Network Message Autoresponder.

I get the complaint. I really and truly do. We have this fantastic communication tool called email, so why don't we just get folks to use it more often? Well... three reasons:

1. One size does not necessarily fit all - Email may be your chosen way to communicate, but it's obviously not the preferred method for the person who reached out to you via some social site. And unless I'm mistaken, the only way they can contact you through said social media site is if you already have a profile on said social graph, yes? This look like a cake-eat situation.
   
   
2. My grandma makes the same argument for paper letters - This works really well for my grandma, but not so much for me. The same in reverse holds true for my son. If I email him, it takes him days to respond. But if I send him a message on MyFace, he responds in minutes. This one relates to #1 above, but I felt it was strong enough to stand on it's own.
   
   
3. Email is overloaded - While it may still be hailed as the killer app, it's losing its charm for many of us. I dread opening the inbox some times, and I even keep the damn thing cleaned out! Thank the gods for RSS feeds and readers, or I'd be out of my gourd. And if there was a way to route email to an RSS feed, I'd be in hog heaven!

As I stated earlier, I sympathize. Heck, I was in your camp for a while. But since every single social media site I belong can be set to send me an email when someone messages me, and since my browser tends to store my login details, and since the person decided that's how they communicate best, I'm happy to take off the mask an talk to them over there. On my schedule, of course.

Do you try and force the conversation on your terms? Or are you happy to talk where they want to talk? Tell me about it...

Five O'Clock Shadow 87

Five O'Clock Shadow 87

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

A list of things on my mind. Won't make a lot of sense to all of you, so feel free to move along:

• I'm liking Utterz. But I'm hesitant to stick it here on the blog. I just got the blog cleaned up and I don't want to clutter. And unlike everyone else, I'm not sticking it in my Twitter feed. If you want a feed with all my junk, follow me on Jaiku.
  
  
• You sure about this, Geo?
  
  
• Went back to the gym today and am thinking about going back tonight. Time to get serious about this shit. Have decided that Traineo is the right way to go, but I wish it was easier to add friends. You know... the cornerstone of social networking?
  
  
• We added the first ever erotica title to Podiobooks.com. Nobilis has a short story collection of erotica rumored to be on the way, but ThornDaddy and Dollie beat him to the punch.
  
  
• For those that asked: I'm going as nothing tomorrow.
  
  
• Have made interesting connections with certain individuals in the city of Chicago. Quite.
  
  
• Two author friends of mine didn't know I'd left tDP, though I did that long before I left FPM.
  
  
• Am taking the rest of the night off.

End trans.

Five O'Clock Shadow 86

Five O'Clock Shadow 86

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

So... I'm not so sure this is working out. Well, for one thing, I know that I'm not working out. That's probably part of the problem.

So I've fired up the Traineo profile, hoping that some of you may have one and are using it a lot more than I. With luck, you can get my ass moving. Just hard to crawl out of bed or drag myself away from the 'puter. But I need to do it.

PodcampAZ next weekend. I'll dry to post more between now and then.

And heck, I forgot to mention that my fantastic narration of The Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd is live. It was on SE#015. Apologies for the audio quality. Seems something happened and everyone was overmodulated. Sounds a lot worse on my since I'm pretty loud by nature.

Didja miss me?

Five O'Clocks Shadow 85

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

Sorry for the longer-than-anticipated hiatus.

When I returned from the trip to NYC, I spent my time hanging out with Philip from Australia and my father. I wasn't sure how that paring would go, but it turned out rather good. I think they both found the other strangely fascinating. :)

Today I had a great surprise. It turns out that some of my tips on promoting your podcast were picked up by Entrepreneur.com. So thanks to Catherine for running them, and also for cleaning them up and making me sound a lot smarter than I really am.

See you next week

Five O'Clock Shadow 84

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

I'm going incommunicado for the next several days. I have another trip to NYC coming up, and I don't know when I'll update.

So you know the drill: play nice.

Oh, and I updated the Theme for my blog. Perfect time to do it, don't you think? I'm hoping that since it's an updated version of the same thing, there's less of a chance for breakage. But if not, report it here and I'll deal when I get back. Or Dan might tweak, if he's watching. :)

E.

Found Things - Social Network Just Made for Two

Hey look! New audio from Evo, and it's not a CultCast!

Nope. Here's a little something I found and thought I'd share. It's an audio file by Ze Frank that is fitting for the topics covered on this blog.

Were you having trouble subscribing to my feed?

Huge huge props to the lovely and talented Donna for pointing out a major fubar with my site. If any of you have had trouble subscribing to my feed (and you know it's free, right?), I implore you to try that again. It has been fixed.

For the technodweebs out there who care what was wrong, read on:

Strange days, indeed

Five O'Clock Shadlow 83

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

Not a lot of time to update tonight. A very strange day work-wise. I have a huge project that was due last week -- and I still haven't finished it.

Yeah, I procrastinate.

My mom is in town, plus there are lots of cool things which have been taking away my attention. They are just so much more fun than... well, work.

So I may disappear on you all for a few days. I have to get this done. And hang out with mom.

Scheming up new media ideas

Five O'Clock Shadow 82

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

Today the value of social media came up in a few conversational threads I'm following. I'm not here to justify your usage of one social media site over another. Nor am I here to try and convince you that you should follow lock step behind me as I play with latest shiny thing. I figure you can make you own decisions, and that you look to me and others (and we're all honored, I can assure you) for occasional commentary on the latest meme. I'm here to help.

But tonight I want to talk to you about the true power of social and new media. It's about the real opportunities involvement in a community can bring. Please understand that "opportunities" means many different things to many different people. For some, it's simply about extending friendship. For others, it's about developing real "offline" relationships. Many are trying to build their professional credentials. And a few of us are just playing around to stay ahead of the curve.

I'm all of those things. In fact, my involvement with new and social media has allowed me -- just in the past few days -- to start scheming up some pretty cool things with some pretty cool people. Steve Eley and I are talking about ways of making Escape Pod and Podiobooks.com work closer together. Kris Smith and I are playing with the idea of 'friendship'. C.C. Chapman and I are pondering the definition of 'perfection'. I wouldn't have met these guys were it not for social media.

So am I an evangelist? You bet. Because that's just the tip of the iceberg. And all of us involved in this destination-less wave of new and social media are just getting started.

Twitter vs Jaiki - Round Two

Jaiku, a Twitter-like service that caught the eye of Leo Leport earlier this year, is being purchased by the Daddy of Big Dogs, Google. I first told you about Jaiku some time ago. After that, I pretty much left it alone, though I did manage to feed in all of my various RSS feeds into it. Great as a "what is Evo doing on any given project right now" feed, but less a place for communications to develop.

So what does this mean to new media content producers and social media mavens? Well... nothing specific, really. Twitter, Jaiku... lots of services are being employed by many of us in the new media space as ways to distribute information to our audiences.

In practice, it means that I'll spend the better part of tonight and the next several days adding lots more friend requests, as Twitter folks decide to create a Jaiku profile as well. If the balance shits -- and the interface remains solid -- I may start pushing that more and more.

But right now, I'm pushing 600 folks following me on Twitter. So I'm not going any where... yet.

The spreading of social media

Five O'Clock Shadow 81

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

Heard today that a new social media site, ViewPoints.com, has just come on line. Like all good new social media sites, this one has a focus and is breaking into relatively new territory: Social Reviews.

The concept is simple to anyone who has ever created a profile on any social media site, so I won't belabor that point. What I will rave about is their use of the "I am" tags, which is simply brilliant. When filling out your profile, they give you the chance to choose several statements about yourself in different context. In the "About my Work" category, you can say that you are a movie star, a college professor, a CEO... lots of different choices. Think you have one better? Add your own tag. Then do that about 20 more times and you've developed quite the tag repository about yourself.

Armed with that information, the system then suggests tags to you that may be relevant to the reviews that you are writing. How cool is that! Very helpful to others who are reading your review to help them understand if you are the same type of person that they are.

All and all, I found the site easy to use and friendly. Looks like a lot of thought was put in to this one, and I think they'll do well. Heck, I've already created my first review.

New Social Media Discoveries

Five O'Clock Shadow 80

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

I've made a few discoveries in the last few days. So rather than waxing philosophical on this fine Saturday afternoon, I thought I'd share them with you.

Shelfari seems quite cool. Thanks to Brad P. for pushing me in the direction. In a nutshell, it's a social network for book lovers. Explore, share, friends... all the classics, but all centered around books. I made a group for Podiobooks.com fans, too.

Zachary R. then asked how it compared to Goodreads. Very similar. Goodreads has less of a Web 2.0 fill, but actually has more activity. So another Podiobooks.com group was formed there, too.

And I finally understand that TextMarks is not a Twitter-clone. You could use it that way, sure. But it's true power comes with the dynamic calls and SMS broadcasting. Still pondering the best way to utilize this, but I've set it up for me and for Podiobooks.com just a placeholders for now.

I wish Twitter would let me send mobile updates to more than one account. But it won't, and I get it. Why? Because I've set up a Twitter profile for NJ's high school hockey team (Hamilton Huskies) as well as his travel U16 midget team (Thunder on Ice). I'm really enjoying using Twitter as my update medium and archive for the games, even if not many people are following. Trouble is, I have to hope the rink has wifi, since I can't do phone updates to multiple accounts.

So how are you spending your weekend? Found anything worth noting?

Life as a professional trailblazer

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Originally uploaded by evo_terra

I'm a bit less manic than I was last night. Many things on the day-job side of life managed. Tonight it's all about fun-job stuff that's been piling up too.

As I wrote that sentence, I almost wrote "professional" life instead of day job. But that doesn't work, as it must mean that things outside of my day job are less professional. Not true. At least, it doesn't feel true.

Does it take a paycheck to be a pro?

Does it take an advanced pedigree of some sort?

What if the things you are trying to be a pro at don't come with paychecks, or if you are a trailblazer? What if you are a professional trailblazer? Maybe we need some sort of certification program for that...

I feel like Flash Gordon...

Five O'Clock Shadow 78

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

This is me in a manic mood I've finally realized that I've been piling and piling and piling things up, leaving them stuck in various folders Well now it's crunch time, as I've fallen behind on some key projects So it's time to hunker down and get it done Couldn't have come at a worse time, as I had to get estimates for the body work on Sheila's jeep and sort out a mess with the dry cleaners Hey, when did Twitter get a new look Well, no time to worry about that right now, and I really don't have time to post this Lots of work ahead of me tonight to dig myself out of this cave Will make for a tired boy tomorrow, but a caught up boy And as Sigler says, sleep is for pussies.

That'll teach me. Let me be lesson to you all.

Knowledge versus opinion

Five O'Clock Shadow 77

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

When I was a young man (a boy, really) I hungered to know things. It was important to me that I have an understanding of things and how they fit in the larger universe as a whole. I wasn't particularly good with fixing or building things (and I still am not), but I was pretty good at remembering facts and figures, as well as breaking down complex and abstract ideas. I was once asked by a childhood friend what I would wish for, and I replied "to know everything".

Now that might have been a stretch, because I wasn't big into studies and was happy to skate along in school rather than buckle down and crack the books. There were many things to learn outside of school, not just within the hallowed walls of the pissant schools I attended.

But now that I'm an adult, I make my living by telling people what I think, which is very different from what I know. I know a lot, but I rarely get to directly apply that hard-and-fast knowledge in my daily life. Instead, much of what I do relies on my experiences and intuition. Today I'm paid pretty well to tell people what to do -- and I can't say for certain that I know what the outcome will be.

And of course I see the obvious correlation between acquiring knowledge and synthesizing that down to the thoughts and opinions requested of me. But at the end of it all, I'm still telling you what I think, and rarely what I know.

Is that wisdom? Finally?

Get a private and local phone number with Jangl

Prior to leaving for the PNME last weekend I played around with this new thing I saw called Jangl. While at the PNME, I met up with Chris Breshears who works with the team that put the tool together. This is one of those things I was instantly enamored with, but my conversation with Chris got me even more stoked. Here's the headline: Sign up for a free account and start using it. It's about to get a whole lot cooler.

If you are already bored of me talking about it, check out this video to get a fast-pace summary of what it does. And if you are already using Jangl, you can follow that link to get a groovy Jangl button to put on your site. I added one to my Contact page, since this post won't live on top for ever.

Curious what the hell this is? It's a way to keep your privacy when giving out your phone number. And even better, your callers get a free local number with which to call you. Doesn't matter if they live in Memphis and you are in Nome. The system does one better and gives you a local number to call them back. And it's all free to use. And no one has anyone's 'real' phone number. But 'real' phones ring.

If you still aren't convinced of the value, that's OK. It took me a while to get it. But I like what they are doing and what they are planning on doing, so I recommend you get a login already. It's free. Or at least try the service. Heck, I'll be your lab rat. :) The fancy looking phone up there should generate a local number for you that will call me. It'll go to voice mail, so don't worry about waking me up. It's cool.

Five O'Clock Shadow 76

Five O'Clock Shadow 76

Originally uploaded by evo_terra

Today was a good day. I haven't been feeling like I've had many of those lately, so it was a welcome change. And rather unexpected, as I may have pulled 6 hours of sleep out of the Friday-Sunday insanity that was the 2007 PNME. Not to mention that ETOH-laced sleep isn't nearly as helpful as "true" sleep.

But after all that, the day was good. And it's not like the things in the day changed. Clients continue to be clueless, inane questions were answered in email, day-job challenges were increased because of my Friday absence... nothing there that you would point to as really positive.

I chalk it all up to the total recharge I got from the PNME. I feel better about myself, the world and my place in it. Oh yeah... and I don't particularly mind you sharing it with me either. Of course, all of that is subject to change.

Off to work out. And watch Heroes. Two more things that should continue the good mood.