Technically Speaking

Well you made it! Welcome to the New Year 2007! The first “official” day of the Technically Speaking blog here at rexduffdixon.com!

Technically Speaking – WELCOME ALL READERS!

Well a blog in my mind is somewhere people can write stuff. Whether it’s a news item, breaking story, or an opinion on someone else’s blog or article, as long as the writer of the blog can post an item with a click of a button – that is a blog.

I like comments, but I don’t think it is a requirement. Now what Mike was referring to about the Google Blog I can actual see a point. I guess if you can’t comment, there is no interaction between the writer and the reader of the blog. It’s still not that big of a deal.

This blog sometimes has allot of comments to posts, and other times I get the big fat zero goose egg. Now of course I blog several times a day, and sometimes it’s probably information overload. No big deal.

Technically Speaking, the cut over to this blog is approaching 5 1/2 hours away now. Most of you are already reading this blog, and have already picked up the new feed URL. That’s great. For others, the other version had such an online following that I can see you forgetting to grab the new URL and feed. No problem, I’m sure you will find this blog, which has comments, once again in 2007.

Yup, I finally broke down and saw how efficient a Link Blog can be. Here is the link to the Rex Dixon LINK BLOG. Just started it, so have no fear, it should get allot better!

It is a slow news weekend. Robert Scoble is apologizing for having so much coverage of the John Edwards campaign week. I say don’t apologize. You were given a chance to have an experience of a lifetime. I also found a link to another article stating that Hillary and Obama will be harnessing the power in Q1 of 2007. I think they better.

I am someone that does not watch much television. My better half does. I was just having a conversation with her outside and she stated,”The pundits on Meet the Press say John Edwards doesn’t have a chance. They are saying Hillary will take it all.”

That made me smile. Makes this post so much better already. I did a bit of research to see who was who in 1992. Bill Clinton did not win Iowa. He did not win New Hampshire. He did however tap the MTV generation and won the whole shibang in the end. I looked over the list of candidates that made up the 1992 Democrat run to the White House and it is like looking at a list of has beens and wanna be’s. Jerry Brown? Paul Tsongas? Yup, they were the ones to finish 2nd and 3rd that year. Al Gore was where? At the very bottom of the pack of has beens and wanna be’s.

I believe that John Edwards is on the right track to tap the internet before any of his opponents wake up to the fact. The 2008 election will be as I have already said here, the election or the first modern 21st Century election where the masses of people on the internet are more in tune, read more information, and have a better understanding of the world situation.

Meet The Press is probably a great example of a bunch of buffoons who are out of touch with mainstream society, but yet pumped into households all across America this morning. The mainstream media wants to influence the election of the American people. They are counting on the fact that they still have a large share of the non-internet audience. What they don’t realize is that the internet audience is allot bigger then they realize.

Technically Speaking, don’t apologize Robert Scoble. You had the experience of your life this past week. Share it, and well as you said already, there is nothing really going on out there this weekend. It is New Year’s weekend, and I can’t wait for the tech stuff to roll again this week. That interview with Mr. “Moore’s Law” should be quite interesting!

Is it coming? I have been saying it is already here! I’ve been talking about browser OS, Web OS, Google OS (maybe) for a couple of months now. I’m glad CNET finally thinks it’s here. I guess you have to take a poll or something to figure that one out? Well I usually just look for myself and see the advancement of such webtop’s as Goowy for instance to see the handwriting on the wall. If you use the built in “-k” option that is included in IE (yes, I have to use the “-k” with IE) – it becomes a full fledged “OS look and feel“. Try it.

The second thing is widgets. They are everywhere. They are cool. I personally have a widget from Spring Widgets on my MySpace profile page. It of course pulls in the feed from here ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/rexduffdixon ). I think it’s a rather cool widget, and if I wanted to take it further, I could have Spring Widgets on my desktop.

Well the official cut over of this blog is around 25 hours away now. The New Year 2007 is upon us, so as the article says – Look for Browser OS and Widgets. Technically Speaking, if you would have been reading this blog, you would have known that before you read it on CNET.

Then I have wasted the past quarter of this year trying to build up my blog readers. I have wasted my time trying to build an audience. IF social media is dead, then why are there over 55 million blogs (according to Technorati at least)? IF social media is dead, how come John Edwards and his campaign team asked bloggers to join them on the road? Do you think John Edwards would have wasted his time by inviting Robert Scoble to join his team on the road IF social media is dead?

I believe that social media is growing, and will continue to do so. I also believe that being tagged in the first round for my opinion of the 2007 crystal ball show proves that I haven’t wasted my time. I also believe that being selected as one of the 32 bloggers to be included in BloggerMania I, even though a bit funny when I first saw it, proves that I haven’t been wasting my time.

Truthfully, the first time I blogged (and that blog is still around) was back in 2003. It’s my personal blog that I don’t advertise outside of friends and family. IF social media is dead, then how come other bloggers have come along since I launched my blog in 2003 and smoked right past me? They took the flame and ran with it. I thought at the time, “Okay, blogs are cool, but what can come of it; I’m looking for an IT gig?”

I was wrong back then, and I will have to say – social media is alive and well at the end of 2006. It will be just as strong and growing in 2007. Technically Speaking, I think the original article was written so that we social media types would have something to write about today and over the long holiday weekend.

Well it didn’t take long from taking NSFW from an idea to a Firefox extension did it? Technically Speaking, I think this is a very useful attribute for web sites and their readers.

Q1: Today I am interviewing Matt Rubens, of Jamglue. Jamglue is that new remixing site that was talked about here on Friday 12/15/06 as well as on TechCrunch and other media and blogging outlets. So Matt, what was the inspiration in creating Jamglue? The reason I ask that is I have seen so many online “music” type of sites come and go. What do you think is not only the inspiration, but also are you trying to create a music social network of sorts of remixers?

Why isn’t there a hugely popular user-generated content community like YouTube for audio? That’s the big question that motivated us to create Jamglue.

We believe that the answer is that music is a fundamentally collaborative form of media. While it’s possible for one person to shoot a funny video and post it on YouTube or take a great photograph and send it to Flickr, it’s a lot harder for one person to make interesting audio on their own. Specifically, desktop music mixing software can be expensive and complicated to use, and it’s difficult to collaborate and share the music you create with your friends.

With Jamglue, we’re trying to make making music easier and more fun. To do this, we provide free tools for remixing songs and clips from within your browser and a vast library of searchable content to use in your mixes.

We’re hoping to build up a social network around our mixing tools that appeals to music fans and musicians of all sorts. Musicians who want to give their listeners more freedom to interact with their music can import their songs into Jamglue. Remixers can showcase their skills on Jamglue and build up a fan base. Music fans can discover new songs through their friends and find new friends with similar musical taste.

Q2: How has Y-Combinator, your investor, treated you and your company? I wrote a bit about them, and I think they are a “smart” investor company. Have they let you have creative and artistic control of the Jamglue project?

Working with YCombinator has been a great experience for us. My co-founders and I are all first-time entrepreneurs, and they provided us with exactly what we needed to get started: a little bit of money, a little bit of advice, and a little bit of involvement.

We consider YCombinator to be trusted advisors and we have a lot of respect for their opinions, but we’ve always had creative and artistic control of the project.

Q3: What are some of the obstacles you have run into while building Jamglue? Things I would imagine would be such things as copyright law, bandwidth, etc. Can you maybe share some of your experiences in building a music site to help out the aspiring or future music site creator?

To be honest, the things you listed haven’t actually been huge obstacles for us. We take copyright seriously and have the infrastructure in place to respond to takedown requests, but it hasn’t been an issue to date. Thanks to Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Service (S3), bandwidth hasn’t been a problem for us either. We stream all of our audio files directly from S3, which only costs us $0.15/GB/month for storage and $0.20/GB for bandwidth.

With these issues out of the way, we’re able to spend most of our time thinking of ways to make Jamglue fun and easy to use.

Q4: As stated above in Question #2, we all know you have the smart investor backing you. This question is usually reserved for you telling everyone a bit more about the company. Where you are located, how many of you are there, if you are looking for new employees, etc… If you think you can reveal it or to help people to understand your company, go ahead and let the readers know.

Jamglue is located in Seattle, WA. There are four of us working on the project now, but we’re always looking for more good people!

Q5: I want to thank Matt Rubens from Jamglue for spending a few minutes of his time today to answer the questions. Now, it’s your turn Matt. Anything you wanted to say or want the readers to know – say it here.

Thanks for having me, Rex!

I hope that your readers will take a few minutes to check out Jamglue. We’re currently holding a remix contest with Nettwerk recording artists The Submarines ( http://www.jamglue.com/contests/thesubmarines), and even people who haven’t tried remixing before are having a great time making their own mixes for the contest.

Technically Speaking, I still have a few more interviews that I’m waiting on return answers. Hopefully we will have them online in 2007.

If you are going to put out a new video site, you really need to have something unique. Yes, you will survive, but with YouTube being the dominant site, you won’t be noticed. There are a number of video sites that have come alive this year. I saw this a couple of days back, and I definitely think that VideoJug is a nice niche site.

This site has “how to” videos on there. It answers questions in video form on such topics as:

How to tie a full windsor knot?

How to perform the perfect Golf Swing? <--- this should interest my bud in Addison, TX

I think that this site will become more popular in 2007. You can never have enough help when you are trying something new, or even if you would like an opinion on how to do something correctly.