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Apple, it's time to bring this iPhone user back into the iPod camp

Yesterday it finally happened. For the first time since the iPhone was released, I actually listened to an iPod. Glancing at the calendar I was stunned to find that it had been two months to the day since I last plugged earbuds into an iPod and used it to listen to music. Seeing as how I own seventeen of them, that's a little bit shocking.

So what great failing of the iPhone drove me temporarily back into the arms of the iPod? Eh, more like a failing of mine. I was headed out for a morning walk and realized I had forgotten to charge my iPhone's battery the night before. Feeling compelled to take my iPhone with me but not wanting to use up what little battery life remained by listening to music, I also took my red nano with me in order to fill that role.

It's the compulsion part that's caused me to leave my vast collection of iPods gathering dust for the past sixty days. It's been at least five years since I've felt particularly comfortable going anywhere or doing much of anything without my cell phone on my person or at least within fetching distance. While I'm out and about I might not always be able to take your call, but I don't want to have to wait until I get home before I know you called. So for better or worse, my cell phone is pretty much with me non-stop, and this was even when I owned cell phones that I despised.

And for the past few years, the same had mostly held true when it came to the iPod. Except in rare circumstances, it just didn't make sense to leave the house without taking one of my iPods with me. But now that Apple has been kind enough to roll my cell phone and my iPod into one, I just haven't had occasion to carry both an iPod and an iPhone. And since the latter is always with me, what would also carrying the former accomplish? The only reason to carry a nano or a shuffle would be the smaller form factor, but if I'm also carrying to an iPhone, why not just listen to that? The only reason to carry a video iPod would be its larger capacity, but I learned awhile ago that confining myself to eight gigabytes in order to avoid carrying extra bulk is usually a worthwhile tradeoff, and carrying both an iPhone and a video iPod is quite a bit of combined bulk. So I carry the iPhone and only the iPhone - and I honestly don't miss having an iPod with me.

Don't get me wrong here; I'm not done with the iPod as a platform. Not by a long shot. But realizing that none of my current iPods seems to serve much of a purpose anymore has me thinking if indeed next week's Apple Event includes the next generation of iPod, it'll likely be the most important day in the product's five year history. The iPhone is so far ahead of the iPod, and so sufficiently a replacement for the iPod, that even iPod geeks like me are left concluding that we don't need to carry an iPod. That doesn't work for Apple, which has sold more than a hundred million iPods but likely hasn't sold more than a few million iPhones. It may well be that we all end up carrying iPhones someday, but we're nowhere near there yet and the iPod is still going to be the bread and butter of Apple's digital music division for awhile.

This isn't the first time in the iPod's history that this has happened. Two years ago Apple released the original iPod nano which rocket-launched the mini-sized iPod so far ahead of the full-size iPod that a number of users (including me) suddenly found themselves much more likely to reach for the smaller of the two given the choice. But just over a month later Apple engaged in a game of self-one-upsmanship by releasing the video iPod which immediately put the full-size iPod back on equal footing (most notably, for what it's worth, by giving the video iPod a number of cool features which the nano didn't have).

And now the company finds itself in largely the same situation. While using my nano yesterday I was stunned at how its interface, which I had always considered to be pretty darn good, now suddenly felt ancient and almost toy-like. Nevermind those few incredulous seconds I spent staring at the nano trying to remember how to use it to check the weather; the real problem isn't that the iPod doesn't do all the things the iPhone does. It's that the iPhone is a better iPod than the iPod is.

Given the current disparity between the iPhone and iPod platforms, I suspect Apple will once again upstage itself by doing something radical - and awe-inspiring - with the iPod lineup come next week. At least I hope they will, because it's vital. It's not that someone on a limited budget, who couldn't afford an iPhone anyway, is going to buy an iPod knockoff instead of a nano simply because the nano's interface is lame compared to that of the iPhone. But Apple has to do something to get iPhone users like me to want to race out to the store and buy an iPod that's so spiffy that we'll want to carry it right alongside our iPhone.

I have no idea how they'll do that, but based on past performance I suspect they'll be able to. I'm not going to speculate on just what needs to be done to the iPod to put it back on equal footing with the iPhone; I'll leave such things to Apple. But as someone who's been an iPod user since 2001, I'm sure glad a new iPod that'll make me want to actually carry it around with me is apparently only a few days away.



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Strange Los Angeles sighting of the day



Is this really a problem in the middle of Los Angeles?

Just when is that magical iPhone 1.1 update coming?

I suspect we won't see the fix-all iPhone 1.1 update until a little after MacOS X Leopard has been released. The logic being that if the Leopard team was pulled off Leopard back in the springtime to work on the iPhone, they likely went right back to working on Leopard the minute the iPhone was out the door. So in turn, I doubt they'll go back to working on the iPhone until Leopard is out the door.

If that logic holds up and Leopard ships early October, I wouldn't expect to see a huge iPhone software update until late October or early November. For as many members of the general public whom I've heard baselessly say "I'll buy the second iPhone that comes out in October," I think it would be in Apple's best interests to promote the 1.1 update-enabled iPhone as actually being the next-generation iPhone heading into the holiday buying season. Because as much as Apple seems to have on its plate right now, a hardware-upgraded iPhone before the holidays wouldn't seem to be in the cards.

Then again, Steve could announce 8 and 16 GB iPhones next week and make me look like a predicting fool...

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This week in 2007, the iTunes Music Store is dominated by...Lennon and McCartney

Last night I used iTunes to download music from John Lennon and Paul McCartney...and then I woke up. Because that had to have been a dream, right? Nope, it actually happened. And for some reason I didn't even have to pay for the McCartney stuff, but we'll get to that later.

For the past week I'd been marveling at the fact that every time I visited the iTunes Store homepage, the first two faces I saw were that of John and Paul, right next to each other, each having their own prominent banner along the store's top. John, because his solo catalog was just added. Paul, for something related to his new album. And every time I saw those two faces together in iTunes, it took me aback. Not because the Beatles were until recently embroiled in such a bitter legal battle with Apple over the whole iTunes Store thing. That's...whatever. No, what got me was the fact that, here in a digital music store, in an internet-based piece of software on a twenty-first century computer, it still comes down to Lennon and McCartney.



About the fourth or fifth time I saw that pair of banners I felt compelled to take a screenshot of them. But it wasn't until last night that I spotted a second banner further down the page proclaiming that Paul's new single was a free download, and although I almost never download the "free single of the week" unless I like the sound of the preview, I'm a sucker for free music from artists I actually like. It turns out that not only did I get Paul's new single for free, I also got the new music video for said single for free as well. I haven't yet watched the video, but the song sounds pretty good on first listen. Come to think of it, I've liked the first two singles from Paul's new album, maybe I should go back and bite on the whole thing. But then there's that free track working its marketing magic on me, now isn't it.

Having added Paul's solo music to my Purchased playlist, it seemed only appropriate to take a dip into John's solo stuff as well. I ended up downloading four of his songs. Maybe I'll go back for more later. Four is enough to chew on for now. But there's a ton of solo stuff in there that I never even knew existed (I guess that comes from growing up in a household where Paul's music was more prevalent than John's) that I'll have to go back and check out later.

But whether I liked McCartney's new song or which of Lennon's songs I downloaded doesn't really matter, does it? The real story here is that this stuff is now finally at my (and everyone else's) digital fingertips. Younger generations will continue to seek out Beatles music, whether it be through iTunes, compact disc, or two cups and a string. But the post-Beatles solo stuff needs to be in iTunes in order to be discovered by the younger ones, and now it is.

The fun part for me was when I started listening to my iPhone this morning and, without necessarily remembering what I'd downloaded the night before, fired up my newly constructed "Recently Added" playlist and found 1970 Lennon flowing right into 2007 McCartney. I'm not sure which of the two being on my iPhone makes for the more surreal experience.

When I glanced at the iTunes Store homepage this morning, this being New Music Tuesday, the big banners for both Lennon and McCartney were sadly gone. But check out what was taking their place:



I suspect that, wherever they are, all four Beatles are collectively getting a kick out of this. I know I am.

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Newbie's Guide to Facebook: six months later I'm still a Facebook newbie, but here's what I've learned

When people ask me how I had the foresight to dive into Facebook before it started appearing on the covers of magazines, I'm always left wishing I had some profoundly impressive answer to give them. But the truth involved much less foresight on my part: the new co-host of my podcast was college-age and she decided I should be on Facebook, so she signed me up for it. Not only can I not take credit for having the foresight to see the impending value in doing so, I can't even take credit for picking out my original profile picture. So I'm the last person who should be giving advice on Facebook, right?

Half a year later and I still feel like something of a Facebook newbie. But in these past six months I've found a number of ways to make Facebook both an interesting activity and a valuable tool...even for a thirty year old college dropout like me. I've learned a lot about what to do to make your Facebook experience a rewarding one, as well as some of what not to do, and so despite my relative newbie status I thought I'd go ahead and share what I've learned. Because I know of no other way of doing so, my advice comes in story form.

I'd spent a lot of time trying to like MySpace but never could take it seriously. You already know why. So when first presented with the idea of Facebook, which back in March was just a few months removed from its college-only status, I thought "great, it's another MySpace but even more juvenile." What I found, though, was that despite the overwhelming youth of most of its members at the time, Facebook was actually a more mature environment. I might actually like it, I thought, if I could just manage to find anyone on there I actually knew.

You see, unlike MySpace where you can see a good deal of information about most members without having any connection to them, Facebook is more like a game of "Match" where all the cards start off face-down and you have to work to gradually uncover bits and pieces of the playing field which relate to each other until you can see enough of it to begin to know what you're looking at.

The first thing I did was to find the rest of the iProng Staff, or at least the college-age ones who were already on there, by sending them friend invites. Then, at the behest of my co-host, I created an "iProng" group and invited the rest of the staff to join it. And at that point in the game that was about all I could do. Missing from the Facebook community were any real-world friends my own age, any business acquaintances, or even any of the people I had met earlier that day at PodCamp Atlanta. But if nothing else, I thought that perhaps Facebook would serve as a tool for keeping in more regular contact with the rest of the iProng Staff, as we do tend to be spread out across the country.

It wasn't until three weeks later that I had my first Facebook revelation. When I finished up the day at PodCamp NYC and headed back to the hotel, the very first thing I did was to check my stack of newly acquired business cards against the Facebook search tool. And what do you know, a few of them (four of five perhaps) were actually on there. It came as no surprise that they were generally the youngest people I'd met that day, but nonetheless I'd found a more substantial way of keeping in touch with my newfound friends and acquaintances than the typical "it was nice meeting you too" email exchanges which too often peter out before any lasting bond can be established.

Now that I'd managed to find a few people on Facebook outside of my own staff, I felt emboldened with the prospects of finding more such people and making something happen with it. So I dusted off my stack of business cards from last year's Podcast Expo and, sure enough, found that some of my fellow podcasters were indeed on Facebook. Many of them were in the same boat as me, with just a few friends and a fairly sparse profile. But some others had apparently been on there for quite awhile and had already carved out their Facebook identity quite nicely. Clearly they'd been at it longer than I had, and that gave me a sense of confidence about pushing forward. If it was working for them, then I could make it work for me.

Once I'd finished friending all the new media-types on Facebook whom I'd already met in real life, I invited them all to join the iProng group. And to my surprise, most of them accepted. That left me with the dilemma of figuring out what to do with this group. No longer comprised of just my own staff, the group now included some iProng readers and listeners as well as a whole lot of people who were neither. My initial instinct was to try to use the group, whose membership was now pushing fifty people, to boost listenership of my podcast.

So every time we released an episode of iProng Radio, I'd send out a message to the entire group announcing the new episode. But as the weeks went on, I noticed that with every new message we'd lose a few group members. And in a group of fifty, losing two or three of them each week is bad news. After getting past wanting to take it personally, a few rather obvious things occurred to me. Anyone who had joined the iProng group was likely already aware of the podcast, and turning such a small group of people into listeners wasn't the point anyway. Instead, it was about staying connected to these people and being able to reach them when there was actually something worth engaging them over, not just anytime we had happened to publish new content.

Once I stopped sending out weekly messages, the group stopped shrinking. Around this time I also noticed that most of the other groups I'd joined which were sending out weekly messages had ceased doing so as well. Maybe we all figured it out at the same time. In any case I turned my attention instead to making the group more worthy of these people's membership by adding lots of relevant photos from events such as Podcast Expo, Macworld Expo, and various PodCamps. I learned sort of by accident that by tagging the other Facebook members who happened to appear in those photos, they received an automatic ping letting them know that they had been tagged. Finally, I'd found a way of letting people know about the group that was at once less invasive than mass-messaging and also more relevant to those individuals.

Soon I found that people were joining the iProng group that I'd never met nor in some cases even heard of. Whether they were iProng readers who'd found their way to the group, or people who happened to be searching for iPod and iPhone related groups, didn't matter. What did matter was that I now had a choice: did I want to start friending these people? On the one hand I didn't know who they were. On the other hand, they'd joined my group. Since there were just a few of them at that point, I figured I'd go ahead and reach out to them. It turns out it was the right call. To date I've never had an iProng group member decline my friend request, and I've come to know some rather interesting people as a result of taking this backdoor approach to meeting them.

Then summertime came and everything changed. People started finding me on Facebook. Lots of them! Had I suddenly become that much of a celebrity? Hardly. As it turns out, the world was finding Facebook, or I should say that the portion of the world older than age twenty-two was waking up to the idea that Facebook could indeed be a worthwhile activity. People I'd met at previous new media events, who weren't on Facebook at the time I met them, were now seeking me out because they'd just signed up. And it occurred to me that there had to be plenty more friends and associates who were just now finding their way onto Facebook but who didn't know I was on there. What to do about this?

I resolved that the best way to proceed was that anytime I made Facebook contact with someone I already knew, I would then go through their list of friends and look for other people I already knew. This "mutual friends" theory allowed me to uncover many real-world friends that I had somehow missed in my earlier attempts. I found, however, that I had to avoid the temptation to go "friend shopping" while doing so, which is the term I've applied to the practice of sending a friend request to people just because they happen to be a friend of a friend, live in the same town, or have a name which vaguely resembles someone else you know, even though you have absolutely no idea who they are and no actual interest in them. That's cheating, and it's unproductive anyway. Let's not forget why MySpace sucks so much.

What I've found, however, and I picked up this tip from Jeff Pulver's blog, is that you have to keep going back and checking for real-world friends who've just now found their way onto Facebook, as they're still filing in through the door in a rather irregular fashion. It's easy to just say that the newbies can come find you when they're ready, but when I think back to how clueless I was about finding my real-world contacts on Facebook when I first started out, I'm left to conclude that it's better for me to go find these folks than wait until they finally figure out how to find me.

But in my continued search for existing real-world friends on Facebook, I encountered another dilemma. What should I do when I came across someone like the aforementioned Jeff Pulver? I'd never met him or even been in a room while he was speaking, but I knew of his role in the creation of the VoIP industry, and through (friend and occasional columnist for iProng) Chris Brogan's blog references to his boss Jeff Pulver, I felt like I sorta kinda knew the guy. So I sent him a friend request, which to my relief, he quickly approved. As a result of my Facebook friendship with Jeff I found links to posts on his blog, which I've now started reading.

I'll probably never meet Jeff in real life, and may never even have so much as an email exchange with him, but thanks to my little leap of faith on Facebook I found my way to a wealth of content on his blog (which it wouldn't have occurred to me to go read if I hadn't seen the links he posted). Then again, if not for the fact that I knew he was a friend of a friend and a public figure who was probably used to receiving friend requests from people he'd never heard of, I might not have taken that leap in the first place. I'm still struggling with whether, or to what extent, I should be friending people on Facebook simply because I know who they are, when I know that the converse is not true.

While that dilemma goes unresolved for me, my big breakthrough came earlier this month when someone invited me to join the event that Emile Bourquin had created for his Podcast and New Media Expo. Until that point the only "events" I'd seen posted on Facebook typically involved college keg parties, but here was the CTO of the biggest annual event in the podcasting community using Facebook to promote his event. Since iProng is both an exhibitor and a media partner in this year's Podcast Expo, I didn't need a Facebook invitation to help me decide to attend. But it did give me an idea.

If the Expo itself qualified as a Facebook event, then perhaps our booth at the Expo was worthy of being turned into an event on Facebook as well. So I created an "iProng booth at Podcast Expo" event and then proceeded to invite everyone in the iProng group (which by this time was more than a hundred people) as well as my friends who weren't part of the group. After the initial few minutes of "is anyone actually going to take this seriously?" anxiety, I found that most invitees were in fact replying with a yes, no, or maybe. This was great. Suddenly I knew which of my Facebook friends I could look forward to seeing at this year's Expo, which ones were on the fence, and which ones I needn't bother with Expo-related stuff.

It was at that point that I had perhaps my biggest Facebook dilemma of all. There were people, plenty of them, who had RSVP'd for the Podcast Expo event but whom I'd never met nor heard of. What should I do about them? Here was my logic: my primary goal at this year's Expo, as it was last year, is to make as many new friends and acquaintances as I can. Sure, our reason for exhibiting is to boost readership, but in this kind of community event you don't do that by sales pitch-ing them. You do it by getting to know them, and letting them get to know you, and if and when they need what your publication has to offer, they'll know how to find you.

So if I'm going to try to meet every Expo attendee I can while I'm there, and if as soon as the Expo is over I'm going to sit down and send a Facebook friend request to every single person who gave me their business card, and if I'm staring at a list of people who have publicly announced their plans to attend the Expo, shouldn't I take the proactive step of sending them friend requests now? That way I can match a name to a face ahead of time and find out something about what they do in this industry, and hopefully have a more rewarding conversation when I do finally meet them in person next month.

With great trepidation, I did something I swore I'd never do. I sent friend requests to everyone who said they were attending the Podcast Expo event on Facebook, even if I'd never before heard their name. Now before you go crazy on me, we're talking about a few dozen people here at most, so it's not like I went all MySpace on them. As a precautionary measure, while I never bother to include a personal message when sending a friend request to someone I already know, in this case I explained to each of them that I was hoping to meet them at the Expo and wanted to get the process started a little early. While a few of them ignored the invite or politely wrote back and said that they prefer not to approve people they've never met, most folks approved my request.

This year's Expo will have three thousand or more attendees, so it's not as if the few dozen new "friends" I picked up in the process represent a significant portion of the overall attendance. But if these are the people who are forward-thinking enough to have RSVP'd the Expo event on Facebook, then I suspect that these are people I'll be glad I met, particularly in light of the fact that the ever-growing size of the Expo means that I will likely in fact not get to meet every single attendee in person. The cool part now is that if I happen to walk past any of these folks at random next month, I stand a good chance or recognizing them and starting a conversation that might not have happened if I hadn't. I've taken to referring to this as "predictive friending" and while you have to be careful not to overdo it, I believe there is value in establishing an online friendship with someone whom you hope to eventually meet in real life.

Although I had no intention of doing so when I started out, it then occurred to me that since these people were now my Facebook friends I could invite them to both join the iProng group and attend the "iProng booth at Podcast Expo" event. Many of them accepted on both counts, thereby creating a conduit to let them know what to expect from our Expo booth. They could easily have declined, so I've interpreted their acceptance as a sign that they're indeed interested in what iProng will be doing at this year's Expo. But, keeping in mind my earlier lesson learned about overdoing it with group messages, I have yet to send out a single message to the people who've RSVP'd for the event; I'll save that until we get closer to the Expo and I'll be sure to make it count.

Somewhere along the line I found out that Jason Tucker had created a Facebook event for the PodCamp SoCal that OC Podcasters and LA Podcasters, both of iProng's Expo partners, are organizing the day before Podcast Expo at the same convention center (with the Expo's full blessing, if you're wondering). Following the logic that Expo attendees would want to at least know about PodCamp SoCal, I went through the list of people who had said yes or maybe to attending our Expo booth, and invited them to attend PodCamp as well. The last time I checked, a number of them had accepted the invite.

When the Expo arrives next month we'll see if all of this cross-pollination across Facebook will indeed pay off in any meaningful way. Will people come up to me and thank me for letting them know about the iProng booth and PodCamp SoCal ahead of time? Or maybe they'll come up to me and say "Hey, you're the idiot who sent me a friend request and I don't even know who you are!" Maybe a little of both. We'll know soon enough.

But my most recent and perhaps most useful lesson learned on Facebook came last week when I realized that it was once again time to expand the iProng Staff. While I followed all the traditional routes as usual, it occurred to me to also attempt to leverage my presence on Facebook in order to let people know that I was looking for new blood. Since I hadn't sent out a mass-message to the iProng group in a few months, I felt safe in sending them all a message which simply stated who and what I was looking for.

The good news is that as best I can tell, sending out the message didn't cause a single person to leave the iProng group. The better news is that I received replies of interest from a double-digit number of people, several of whom I believe will actually end up coming on board when it's all said and done. Among them are friends with whom I've had ongoing real world contact, acquaintances I met once at a conference and then found on Facebook afterwards, and startlingly, total strangers whom I'd found through my recent "predictive friending" activities. So not only were folks not offended that I attempted to friend them based simply on the fact that they were planning on attending the Expo, some of them in fact wanted to be part of my team.

It's way too early to know how any of this is going to work out, and my continued trepidation leaves me convinced that I'm still a newbie when it comes to Facebook. But as much as the Facebook platform and community are still continuing to evolve, I think it's safe to say that we're all newbies at this. In the six months I've been at it, I've gone from having no idea what the heck I was supposed to be doing on there, to connecting with my existing staff, to promoting an upcoming event, to finding new staff members - and I've learned some things not to do along the way. There are still moments, plenty of them in fact, where I continue to wonder what the heck I'm supposed to be doing on there, but I believe that's the beauty of it. Like so much of the social media experiment, it's all still new enough that there really are no rulebooks to follow, meaning that we all have to collectively try to figure out how to play, or how not to play, this game in a way which provides the most benefits for all involved.

I hope my experiences will in some way serve as a guide to help you as you find your own way through the Facebook experience. But I know that something like Facebook ends up being a vastly different experience for each participant, so it's my hope that each of you will use the comment section below to share something you've learned about Facebook which might help the next person. I know I'm still seeking any advice I can find on how to make my Facebook experience a more rewarding one, and you should be too. Remember, we're all still newbies.

You can find me on Facebook here. I look forward to receiving your friend request whether we've already met or not.

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Gateway's gone, Dell's next, who'll be en vogue tomorrow?

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It wasn't so long ago that Gateway was considered en vogue among Windows users, praised for their retail stores and their cow-spotted boxes and...I guess that was about it. Never really understood why Gateway was so popular among all those makers of identical Windows PCs, and I predicted that eventually they'd go by the wayside. Although that actually happened awhile ago, today it became official: Gateway has been swallowed by Acer (ouch, the indignity) for $710 million (double ouch, that's less than a billion dollars!).

Here's the rub: back when Gateway was all the rage I said that they would eventually fall, and at the time no one believed me. Well, they fell. And before that, way back when Compaq was all the rage I said they'd eventually fall too. And they did. At least Compaq got swallowed out of existence for a less embarrassing dollar amount than Gateway did, but nonetheless they're both about to exist in name only. Never relevant in the first place, never offering anything that you couldn't get from any generic whitebox PC, no one really missed them when they went plop.

So why is it that no one wants to hear it when I say that Dell is the next to fall?

Not only is Dell's fall from grace coming, it's practically guaranteed. You see, the Windows-using public doesn't just cycle through PC brand names for the heck of it. No, there's a method to their madness. A fatally flawed method, but a method nonetheless. You see, most Windows users have yet to figure out that Microsoft, and not whatever brand name happens to be on the side of their Windows PC, is to blame for everything that's wrong with the Windows platform. And so everyone bought Compaq, and then wrongly blamed Compaq for the crappiness of Windows. So then everyone started buying Gateway as an alternative, and when everyone wrongly blamed Gateway for the crappiness of Windows, Dell became the next in line. Dell has held the title for a bit longer than one might have expected, and to be honest I think some of that has come from the fact that some Windows users are in fact figuring out that blaming the hardware maker does nothing to make Windows less crappy, making them slower to switch away from Dell and on to the next maker of PCs running crappy Windows.

But Dell's fall is coming. And while the Windows-using public's slow awakening to the fact that Windows is actually what's wrong with PCs would seem to benefit Dell for now, it's bad news for PC makers in general. Because once they figure out that getting rid of Windows is the only way to get rid of the Windows experience, there's only one thing left for them to do. And much to the chagrin of some of my geek friends, that doesn't mean they're moving to Linux.

Could it be that when Dell falls, it'll give way not to yet another PC boxmaker, but instead pass the torch directly onto Apple? Or do we have to go through one more PC maker going in and out of vogue before the Windows-using public really truly starts to get that Microsoft -- not Gateway, not Compaq, not Dell -- but Microsoft is what's wrong with their computing experience?

Gateway's demise gets the headlines today. But if you want to follow the real story, take a look at this this chart for an idea of which computer maker just might be next to top the charts. Just a thought.

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Are you screwing over your audience?

I love pro football. So much so that when my team isn't playing, I'll gladly watch any other two teams play each other, regardless of whether either of them is in contention, even if it's a lopsided score. So much so that I've had Dolphins season tickets for the past fifteen years, despite the Dolphins being the only one of Miami's four pro sports teams not to make it to their respective championship round in those fifteen years. So much so, in fact, that even after I packed up and moved to Los Angeles, I still renewed my season tickets merely in the hopes of making to back to Miami for at least a couple of their home games this year. You get the idea.

As a long-time Dolphins season ticket holder I've endured years of non-playoff seasons, lame coaching, terrible quarterbacking, lousy parking, bad concession stands, etc., all for the love of attending the game. And since putting up with all of the above has been by choice, I've got no complaints. Here's what's not by choice: the regular season has sixteen games, eight of which are at home, so as a season ticket holder you're buying a package of eight equally priced tickets, right? Wrong. You're buying ten equally priced tickets, two of which are for exhibition games which take place before the season and have no meaning whatsoever.

These "preseason" games, as the league refers to them in an attempt to make them sound more meaningful, are used by teams primarily to figure out which new players belong on the team, which aging players still have what it takes, with just a little bit of breaking in the highly regarded new guys and implementing new schemes and playbooks. The star players might play for the first quarter of the game before they head for the bench, as much to make sure that they don't get injured before the season begins as anything else.

And you know what? I kind of get a kick out of it. You see things in the preseason you just don't see in the regular season. Third-string rookie quarterbacks getting significant playing time. Coaches having the guts to go for it on fourth down from their own twenty yard line. All kinds of fun, silly stuff.

But this is all because, when it comes down to it, these aren't real games. If a team is losing by a few points with a minute left, they'll automatically follow whatever path ensures the game doesn't in a tie, so as to avoid having to go to overtime. The two Dolphins players non-football fans are most likely to have heard of, Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas, both sat out the first two preseason games because they're a little old to be playing in games that don't count. This past weekend, one game was called off due to lightning in the third quarter (as it should have been), and no one involved with the game even considered rescheduling the remainder of the game for another time because, well, it's the preseason and no one cares. Season ticket holders generally give away their preseason tickets if they don't want to attend, because these tickets have no resale value whatsoever. So you give them away to friends, and not your good friends either, because they'd be insulted.

So why on earth does the NFL force season ticket holders to buy tickets for these preseason games, at the same price as the real games? In short, because they can. The popularity of their sport allows them to get away with things that a less popular sport couldn't. Want proof? The baseball Marlins, who play in the same stadium, sell tickets for as little as four dollars and yet they can rarely fill more than fraction of the stadium unless it happens to be the World Series. And yet the football Dolphins (and every other NFL team) can gouge their season ticket holders with a ridiculous twenty percent surcharge which amounts to little more than a scam, and we football fans swallow it.

For better or worse, the NFL has recognized that it's in a position where it can get away with screwing the most loyal members of its audience, and has chosen to go ahead and screw them. Does your organization do business this way? The NFL seems to have gotten away with it - for now. A few more Michael Vick type scandals and maybe the NFL's greediness catches up with them, but I doubt it. They're screwing their customers. Are you?

If you said yes, then the next question is whether your organization is as popular and bulletproof as the National Football League. Do people wear jerseys featuring your company's name and get drunk while watching your employees carry out their workday? If you said no to that last one, then maybe you want to think about whether it's a good idea for your organization to screw its audience the way the NFL does.

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If you emailed me Saturday afternoon...

...please send it again. My email was down for about four hours, and although it's since come back up, there's a four hour gap during which I supposedly received no email at all. Since that doesn't ever happen, it presumably means that the email I received during that four hour block was lost in the ether. Sorry about that, and please do re-send. It's working just fine now.

iProng Radio #45: interview with Silverchair

On iProng Radio episode #45, co-hosts Bill Palmer and Dana Sanders interview Chris Joannou from the Australian chart-topping band Silverchair. Chris joins us from a tour stop in Paris, France to discuss the surprising success of Silverchair's new album Young Modern in the United States after a long absence from the U.S. charts, which influences Silverchair relies on most heavily these days, the band's recent experiences at Lollapalooza in Chicago, and more.



Chris also gives us the dish on iPhone buzz in his native Australia ("there's a lot of curiosity about it"), and Dana scores points by getting Chris' last name right ("that's probably one of the best pronunciations of my last name I've ever heard").

- Listen to iProng Radio's interview with Chris from Silverchair right now in your browser

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- Check out Silverchair's Young Modern in the iTunes Store

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iProng TV #3: WHO do you want to see at the iProng booth at Podcast Expo?

Watch to iProng TV #3 right now or subscribe for free!

On iProng TV episode #3, Bill Palmer asks WHO you want to see, hear from, and meet during iProng's live episodes at next month's Podcast Expo. Which tech gurus, podcasters, or musicians top your list of people we should be bringing in for interviews and panels at the iProng / LA Podcasters / OC Podcasters booth? Bill really wants to know.



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Watch to iProng TV #3 right now or subscribe for free!

Missed iProng TV #2? You can find it right here.

Why the iPhone hack doesn't really matter in the real world

I wrote this in reply to someone on an email list who told me I wasn't "thinking big" enough when I said that this week's hack which makes the iPhone theoretically usable on any cell phone carrier is simply not a big deal...

You guys aren't thinking about the fact that the other 99 percent of the world (the ones not on lists like this) aren't geeks, and aren't going to plop down hundreds of dollars on a hacked device with questionable continued functionality, even if it IS an iPhone. The geeks here in LA will go for it, the geeks in Europe will go for it, etc. But don't expect the general public to go anywhere near it.

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iProng TV #2: what do YOU want from the iProng booth at Podcast Expo?

Watch to iProng TV #2 right now or subscribe for free!

On this episode of iProng TV:

On iProng TV episode #2, Bill Palmer reveals some of what iProng is planning for next month's Podcast Expo, and asks what YOU want from this year's iProng booth.



- Reader feedback: radio@iprong.com

- Miss us between episodes? Visit iProng.com, the Publication for iPod and iPhone usersª

Watch to iProng TV #2 right now or subscribe for free!

- visit my iPod+iPhone publication iProng.

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A few more words on Word

I wrote this on another site in response to someone I respect who was sorta kinda defending Microsoft Word while also sharing his frustration with its overcomplication, after I referred to Word as being unusable...

Microsoft's single most damnable failing with Word is that tying words on the screen should be the absolute easiest thing you ever do on a computer, and they've unforgivably turned it into one of the most difficult things a typical consumer will ever do on their Mac. Think about it: if you're a Mac user using Word, then typing a simple letter to someone is a more daunting task than using the internet or editing photos. How on earth can that possibly be the case?

But it's not just that it's overcomplicated, it's that there's no logic or sense whatsoever to the complication. It's one of those apps that you can't teach yourself through any other method than metric tons of ongoing rote memorization, and that fits my definition of unusable. Such practice also tends to ruin people as computer users. They get so used to using a computer through time-wasting memorization of nonsensical procedures that they're both unwilling to try new software in the first place, and then unable to learn new software through intuition. Just like years of memorizing the steaming pile of nonsense that is Windows tends to make abused Windows users afraid to try the Mac for fear of more years of rote memorization and more years of abuse.

It's amazing how difficult it can be to transition from doing things the hard way to doing them the easy way, no?

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No wonder they had to retire AppleWorks

This month's formal retirement of AppleWorks 6 was a long, long, long time in coming. In my opinion it was one of the best apps ever created in the OS 9 era, although there were a couple of false starts before they nailed it in version 6.2. But Apple never did properly update AppleWorks for MacOS X. It worked okay, but its interface lacked basic such basic OS X tenets as proper save dialog boxes, leaving AppleWorks feeling like a Classic app which just happened to sport an OS X Kaleidoscope theme (you've been around for awhile if you can spot that reference). And on the newer and faster Macs, AppleWorks can ironically run mercilessly slow.

Although I've gradually pared down my AppleWorks usage to the point where I only launch it when relying on a handful of templates which I've never bothered to recreate in a more modern app. I have AppleWorks open a few times a month at most, and never for more than a few minutes. But that having been said, I have yet to find a proper replacement.

Despite having the latest version I don't use MS Word ever, not even when exchanging Word documents. It's not that I'm protesting against anyone or anything, it's just that Word happens to be the single most unusable piece of software ever created. It's not that I can't use it or don't know how to use it, it's that I'd rather pull my own teeth than spend time wrestling with that pig. What a phenomenal waste of money that pig was. And no, I have no interest in any of the open-source Word clones, either. It's not Microsoft's disgustingness that keeps me from using Word; it's the disgustingness of Word that keeps me from using Word.

Lest ye think I'm merely picking on Microsoft here, Apple's Pages has never come close to being a replacement for AppleWorks either. I love what Pages can do as a page layout program, and I've used it on a few projects to that end with really cool results, but as of its first two versions (both of which I shelled out for), Pages was simply not a word processor. I've been told by people I trust that the latest version actually has a "word processor" mode that allows you to, you know, process words, and that'll be great to explore when I find the time to go grab the latest iWork.

So what do I use to process words? I should preface this answer. Nearly everything I write is for the web, which means that it's all going out there in plaintext with bits of hand-coded html here and there anyway. So there's no need for fancy formatting, and in fact the lack of any attempted auto-formatting is a plus when it comes to cutting and pasting the html. So for the past couple of years, my word processor of choice (er, default necessity I suppose) has been TextEdit.

Hey, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're largely in the same situation I am. It works for my and my workflow. Your mileage will almost certainly vary. I've been too busy lately to even consider breaking in a new word processor and seeing if it fits my workflow, but when the time is right (read: soon) I'll give Pages '08 a try. So no need to write in and try to convince me to rush out to the store; I'm with you. And please, don't even waste your time trying to convince me of anything related to Word. Yes I'm using the latest version, yes I've spent plenty of time with it, yes it sucks even more than the previous version, and no I'm not shelling out for the next version.

I've been kicking around all of these thoughts since I read of AppleWorks' demise. But none of the above is what motivated me to actually commit my thoughts to words today. Instead, it was the fact that this morning was one of those rare instances in which I was compelled to use AppleWorks. And if I hadn't just happened to flip over to list view in the Finder, I never would have spotted it. But as I glanced at the listings for the AppleWorks document I had just updated, and the PDF file I had created of that document, something stunned me:



The AppleWorks document itself, annotated by the old-school ".cwk" suffix? Forty-four kilobytes. The PDF of said AppleWorks document? One hundred and eight kilobytes. That's right, the AppleWorks file format is so antiquated that even a simple PDF with no user-editable data ends up being twice as large of a file.

And that, my friends, is the real reason why Apple finally had to retire AppleWorks - symbolically, of course. The file size thing merely goes to demonstrate just how ancient AppleWorks 6 really is. If Apple had kept up development, we'd be looking at, what, AppleWorks 11 by now? And maybe Pages '08 will be AppleWorks 11. I'm open to that possibility; I just know that Pages '06 wasn't. And in any case, in an era where AppleWorks would need to be at version 11 in order to fit in with modern computing, trying to do much of anything with version 6 is just asking for it.

You either know why or you don't. When I worked in the school system we were relying on a district-wide email system which had been discontinued seven years earlier. I had a heck of a time trying to make the educators understand why that simple fact alone was enough to mandate that we move to some other mail system. You don't use software that old on a new computer and expect good things to come of it. I also had difficulty preparing them for the fact that the transition to any new email system was going to be painful, specifically because of the fact that we were used to something that was so many versions behind, so distinctly from another era.

You don't leap five versions overnight without some bumps and bruises during the transition. And that's where Apple went wrong by allowing AppleWorks to wither long before they even began to think of carrying forward with it in a different manner, and even after they realized they needed to, it took them far to long to figure out that their modern alternative was no more suitable of a replacement than Microsoft's modern alternative.

I hope Apple has gotten it right this time. With my workflow, I really can't say that using something as child-like as TextEdit for my word processor has caused me any grief. It's just that doing has made me feel like I've been sitting on the sidelines.

But all that aside, I'm feeling rather philosophical about the recent symbolic demise of AppleWorks. For awhile there, I felt that AppleWorks defined the Mac platform more than any other single aspect of the platform. What a long way we've come, eh?

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Should I care why your restaurant is closed today?

I walked past a restaurant on La Brea which gets quite a bit of foot traffic and spotted this sign in the window:



If a restaurant is closed for the day then the end result for me is the same: I can't eat there that day. The reason doesn't really have an effect on that status. So why go into detail about the reason for the day's closing? Do you suppose it has more to do with not wanting passers-by to think that they've closed for the day for no good reason, or because they wanted passers-by to know that their food is good enough for a billion dollar movie studio?

You tell me in the comments.

iProng booth at 2007 Podcast Expo - it's that time already

The iProng.com booth at the 2007 Podcast Expo will feature everything an iPod or iPhone user could want, from hands-on demonstrations of the new iPhone and all current iPod models, to free iPod and iPhone accessories as prizes. Podcasters can take a look at how their own podcast displays on the iPhone (hint: it's different than the iPod), and we can help you with buying advice and those iPod/iTunes/iPhone questions you've always wanted answered.

This year's iProng booth will be flanked by the LA Podcasters booth on the left and the Orange County Podcasters booth on the right, opened up to create a thirty foot wide mecca for live podcasting. OC and LA will be offering non-stop live podcasts all weekend, and iProng Radio will be doing live episodes at both booths, including the iProng Music Panel, the iProng iPod/iPhone Panel, and more. Stay tuned for additional details on who will be appearing, what you can win, schedules for the LA and OC booths, and more!

The 2007 Podcast and New Media Expo will take place in Ontario, California from September 28-30th. Attendees can enter the Expo FOR FREE by registering in advance.

Join iProng a day early for PodCamp SoCal on Thursday, September 27th, at the same convention center -- organized jointly by the good folks at OC and LA Podcasters.

Is the internet over?

Add MySpace to the list of internet entities that are currently mis-firing.

Or as someone on Twitter put it, "Is the internet over?"

I can't remember the last time so many portions of the internet melted down on the same day. Why is no one in the mainstream media covering this? Or am I just missing it?

Is the internet broken? And yeah, I'm finally on Twitter

Sometimes it seems like internet is just plain having a bad day. Today appears to have been one of those days.

After close to a year of encouragement from podcasters on both coasts, I've finally taken the dive into Twitter. So far so good. Except that less than twenty-four hours into it and Twitter has already taken a dump to the point that users are complaining left and right. Despite the outage, I'm not sorry at all that I chose now to dive in; wish I'd done so a lot sooner, and at this point better today while it's up-and-down than let another week or month go by. I just wish it would stay up long enough for me to get a good feel for how it's supposed to work. If you're on Twitter and you want to follow along, my username is unsurprisingly "billpalmer" and if you have no idea what Twitter is, Chris Brogan does a nice job on how to get started and Joe C explains why he thinks it's been so successful. I personally like the idea of being able to keep up with the friends in the industry I've made during my travels (or met online and may never even meet in person) without having to fill their days and mine with one-to-one email exchanges.

But back to the broken internet. It was during an iChat audio conversation with MyMac's Guy Serle that I learned Skype had been down for the better part of the day. And it isn't just the traditional internet channels that are acting funky today, either. The iPhone's EDGE network has seemingly been a mess for the past twenty-four hours, which I found striking because I've generally had such good luck with it since I first got the iPhone.

By the time iProng's Mike Strum hit me up with a terrible-looking video iChat tonight, I was ready to assume that iChat wasn't working right either, until he pointed out that he was actually testing out a troublesome router.

In times like this I usually just figure that my own internet connection is off-kilter. But with Twitter and Skype being down for many users across the country, and EDGE also being out of whack, I can't help but wonder if the entire internet has just been having a really bad day.

Or maybe so many people are excited to see my arrival on Twitter that they've overloaded the thing. KIDDING!

Minnie Driver can sing - and she's a sweeatheart

I imagine I'll have this conversation more than once over the next few days:

"I met Minnie Driver last night at a music club in Hollywood."

"Oh really? Who was performing?"

"She was."

It seems that actors, even the famous ones, all secretly dream of being rock stars. But Minnie Driver has taken things a step further, having released two full-length commercial albums over the past three years. I'd heard bits and pieces of her latest release and thought it sounded rather good. But then again, the studio gods have managed to make Paris Hilton sound like she can sing, so when I heard Minnie would be playing a local club, I was curious to find out whether she could really sing or not.



The verdict is, in a word, yes. Her voice is as lovely in a tiny nightclub as it is on her record, she can play guitar, and her stage presence included the kind of humor and grace you'd expect from an accomplished actress.

So what does her music sound like? Picture the kind of music you'd expect Minnie Driver to make, but give it a bit of a folksy, almost-country twinge, and you're pretty much there. You can sample both albums in iTunes if you like, and she's got a few dates scheduled around the country.



And oh yeah, she's a real sweetheart in person too.

Ten things I'm thinking at the moment

1. You can play games with Firefox all you want. But if you're not developing for Safari, you're not developing for the Mac.

2. RealPlayer is the same crappy mess of an audio experience it was eight years ago. Back then it was excusable.

3. The Miami Dolphins preseason home opener is tonight. Wish I was there. But not enough to get on a plane.

4. Disqualifying a player from a tournament because he signed an incorrect scorecard makes me less interested in professional golf.

5. It never ceases to amaze me that here in LA, a musician who's sold millions of albums will stand there and sell five dollar copies of his own EP in the back room of a tiny nightclub as if there was nothing odd about it.

6. RealPlayer is the same crappy mess of....buffering....

7. The iPhone's music interface is far from perfected and has enough rough edges to keep the boys and girls at Apple busy for awhile, but after using the iPhone almost exclusively for more than a month, the iPod's music interface feels like a toy from a bygone era.

8. I think the rise of email-enabled consumer-friendly cell phones (read: iPhone) will do to text messaging what the original rise of cell phones did to beepers. If you've grown up with text messaging then you're probably too young to know that a decade ago, beepers were once the wave of the future.

9. Kickoff is in ten minutes.

10. RealPlayer....buffering....

Further proof that being photographed by the iProng staff can put your name in the headlines the following week for completely unrelated and non-causal reasons:



http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sns-ap-cyc-discovery-disbands,0,7808458.story

Two new iPhone commercials: what do they mean?

Seems interesting that Apple is continuing to roll out new iPhone commercials on a quasi-frequent basis since the iPhone's launch, and running them ad nauseum. Apple's pattern in the past has been to show off product-specific commercials during the event in which the product is first announced, then allow some of those commercials to find their way to the air after the product is shipping, and not run them nearly often enough.

The new plan of attack could signal a few things:

- The iPhone is such a new concept (to the average consumer) that Apple feels it needs to take every opportunity possible to explain it to mainstream consumers

- Apple has finally figured out that product-specific ads can and do work, and are worth running

- Apple knows it's already bet the farm reputation-wise on the iPhone, and sees no reason to stick to its usual reserved nature when it comes to product-specific ads

- iPhone sales have begun to slip already and Apple is trying to be proactive.

I suspect that it's some combination of the first three. I saw enough iPhones at O'Hare Airport alone this past weekend to make me think that there's no way it's the latter. But I do find it interesting that one of the new ads does seem to go for the jugular in explaining that the iPhone is an iPod, whereas an earlier ad took the "iPhone is better than an iPod" tack. Could it be that Apple hasn't done enough to make people realize that the iPhone is a fully functional iPod-like music player in addition to forty-two other things it does?

And I met all twenty-four of them last week...

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/505311,CST-NWS-homeless10.article

Hello there, earthquake

So I've been living in Los Angeles for less than two months and we've already had our first earthquake. Okay, so it consisted of two seconds of slight shaking that make me think someone had slammed a door, and I didn't even know what it was until someone explained it to me. I thought I was feeling the reverberation of an item falling off the shelf in the next room perhaps.

But I guess it was technically my first earthquake. I'm going to bed.

Lollapalooza 2007 celebrates its own history, looks to the future

This weekend's Lollapalooza festival in Chicago may have ended with a blast from its own ceremonious past, but not before spending fifty-six hours introducing the world to newly famous and not-yet-famous artists from all corners of the musical spectrum.



By the time Pearl Jam took the stage Sunday night to close out this year's festivities, frontman Eddie Vedder was on his third Lollapalooza performance of the weekend. Vedder made his first appearance on Friday night, joining Ben Harper late in his set for a classic cover of "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan, and then joined Kings of Leon onstage just a few hours before his own band's headlining set. Since Pearl Jam is not on tour this year and doesn't have a new album to promote, the band used their two hours of stage time to deliver an eclectic set which included dusted-off versions of everything from "Why Go" from the band's debut album to their fan-favorite early 90's cover of "Crazy Mary" by Victoria Williams.



As with any Pearl Jam performance, the intensity was fierce throughout, even when the tempo slowed for "Better Man" and other ballads. Although the band left the stage apparently for good at about a quarter to ten, Ben Harper's surprise appearance on the Kids' Stage on Sunday afternoon signaled that he was still in town, meaning that his appearance during Pearl Jam's second encore shouldn't have come as a surprise. And given Vedder's penchant for using his music as a platform for making political statements to his fans, the nature of the second encore could have been predicted as well. Even the choice of final song, a cover of "Rockin' in the Free World" by Neil Young, was fairly predictable given the band's penchant for closing out regular tour stops in such a manner.



But no one in the crowd could have predicted the spectacle that Pearl Jam's second encore would grow into by the end of the evening. Disabled war veterans joined Pearl Jam, Ben Harper, a number of other musicians, dozens of other unidentified individuals, and retired Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman to commemorate the festivities, leaving the stage so crowded with bodies as to invoke memories of 1985's Live Aid finale, and causing the diminutive Vedder to take refuge on Rodman's shoulders.



But if Pearl Jam's return to Lollapalooza fifteen years after the festival helped launch the band's career was star-studded and historical, many if not most of the other seventy-plus performing artists were still in grade school when Lollapalooza initially kicked off back in 1991. Performing on the BMI stage on Saturday afternoon was blues trio Back Door Slam, a band comprised of twenty year old Brits from the Isle of Man whose collective blues proficiency belies their youth. "This is all we've ever wanted to do," said frontman Davy Knowles when iProng caught up with the band between gigs before they took the stage at the nearby House of Blues.



Perry Farrell, who founded the original Lollapalooza and is also responsible for the festival's current Chicago-based incarnation, took the main stage with his latest band Satellite Party and appeared to be in a reminiscent mood as he tore through no less than four of his Jane's Addiction classics including "Jane Says" and "Been Caught Stealing" and invited former Porno for Pyros bandmate Peter DiStefano for a rendition of the Pyros hit "Pets" as well as Satellite Party's current single. Farrell and DiStefano joined forces again on Sunday at the Kids Stage to perform a second rendition of "Pets" followed by a cover of the Led Zeppelin classic "Whole Lotta Love" which featured DiStefano emulating Jimmy Page by taking a bow to his guitar.





There were other collaborations, including Silversun Pickups' Nikki Monninger joining Snow Patrol for a duet, and other star sightings such as cyclist Lance Armstrong being spotted watching Pete Yorn's Saturday afternoon performance from the side of the stage (for iProng's late 2006 Pete Yorn interview, click here). There were also notable veteran performances from Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, and Australian chart-toppers Silverchair, now in their fifteenth year as a band despite no band member having yet reached the age of thirty.



But as signified by the massive fireworks display which took place during their rendition of "Even Flow," the three day festival known as Lollapalooza 2007 belonged in the end to Pearl Jam, the band who has spent the past fifteen years evolving from early-afternoon newcomers to two-hour performing headliners. It leaves one to wonder if perhaps one of this year's up and coming Lollapalooza artists might end up being the festival's headliner in another fifteen years.

Things you don't want to hear when you've been waiting all day to get on a plane...

"Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize, we've stopped boarding because the room temperature of the plane is very hot."

I ramble some more about the trip because they won't let me out of Los Angeles

You know you're in trouble when you arrive at your gate and there's no one there and nothing on the marquee. Just as I'm starting to think I might have accidentally shown up too late, I get a recorded voicemail on my iPhone informing me that my flight has been delayed because the plane will be late in arriving, and since that means I'll miss my connecting flight, I've been automatically re-booked on a new flight path which will take me from Los Angeles...to Denver....to Kansas City...uh, wait a minute. Nope, not getting on three planes in one day just because some computer tells me I should.

So a quick visit to the customer service desk and now I'm booked on a direct flight from LA to Chicago (my original flight wasn't direct), with the caveat that I'll leave four hours later than scheduled and arrive two hours later than scheduled...and they think my luggage will be there waiting for me when I get there.

Could be worse, I suppose. I'm just a little stunned at the fact that I woke up at three in the morning in order to catch what has now become an afternoon flight. I think I might sleep on the flight after all.

See you on the Chicago side.

I ramble about the trip before I leave on the trip

As lazy as this'll make me sound, I don't do mornings. I'll feel better and have a more productive day if I sleep til eleven and stay up working til three in the morning than if, say, I try getting up at sunrise and turn in around prime time. It's just the way it's always been. And while I had a day job I didn't really get a choice in the matter, one of the nice thing about working for yourself is that you usually get to make your own hours.

Today is not one of those days. You'd think that flying from the nation's second-largest city to the third-largest city would be A) direct, and B) available during various times of day, but it turned out to be neither. I'll be having lunch in Denver today, and although I'd have been perfectly willing to arrive after dark for the sake of leaving in the early afternoon, I'm instead leaving at nine in the morning and arriving around dinnertime (the time zones are against me on this one). Get there two hours early, allow for traffic problems and leave time for a last-minute re-check of the equipment I've packed, and I went to bed last night knowing that my alarm would be clanging at five in the morning. And somehow, anytime I know I'll have to get up that early, I usually end up waking up even earlier, as if to punish myself being so foolish as to scheduling something which required getting up that early in the first place.

So here I am at just after three in the morning, feeling deceptively perky, a feeling which I know will have fully faded by the time the sun rises. The irony is that my Chicago-based plans for this evening (a personal visit not related to iProng) have been cancelled at the last minute, leaving me with nothing to do when I get there this evening. Don't get me wrong, it wouldn't have changed by flight itinerary, as the only other option would have been to fly at about the same time tomorrow, which wouldn't have loused up tomorrow's plans. It's just that, aside from the fact that I couldn't have flown later today even if I'd originally wanted to, there's now literally nothing for me to do in Chicago this evening.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. My short night and long day will have caught up with me plenty by then, so grabbing dinner and turning in early will suit me just fine...especially considering that I'll have to be up not much after five o'clock the next morning. Maybe tonight my body will let me sleep. After what I'm going to put it through today, I suspect that'll be the case. Thursday will be the only brutally early morning, packed with sightseeing or whatever it is we're doing on Thursday. It'll start back at the airport, involve trains and cabs, at one point we'll be at the Sears Tower, I'm pretty sure there's a medical school involved...I'm glad someone else is planning it out that part of things. I've got enough to worry about when it comes to the three days that follow.

The nice thing about covering a music festival as opposed to, say, a technology conference is that nothing much happens at a festival before noon. That means you can get up at a comfortable time and even get a little work done before you have to be on-site each day. Of course the day's performances don't end much before ten or eleven, so after-events can still cause morning-after pain if you don't manage your schedule with a bit of propriety. But still, festivals employ my kind of hours. Unfortunately, Chicago in the summertime doesn't employ my kind of heat (dry and hotter than anything I ever faced in all my years in Florida), but I suppose that's nothing that the right clothes and a ton of bottled water can't rectify.

On the other hand, I can't help but think back to last year's Lollapalooza, where I took off my sopping wet sweat-soaked T-shirt at about midnight, hung it up over the shower rod in the hotel, and found that it was still so soaked as I was packing the next morning that I couldn't put it in my suitcase and had to leave it there. Now that never happened to me in Florida, not even when Lollapalooza used to travel to Florida back in the day.

But despite Pearl Jam coming back to headline this year's Lollapalooza fifteen years after using the festival to introduce themselves to the world, despite the fact that Silverchair is using the festival to relaunch themselves in the U.S. after essentially a twelve year absence, despite the fact that this is still Perry Farrell's baby after all these years, now is not a time for reflection. Of the dozens of bands I'll see perform over the next few days, many of them have found there way to stardom fairly recently (or are still working toward finding it), meaning there'll be a ton of fresh talent to watch, listen to, meet, interview, and enjoy.

Speaking of interviews, scheduling them has been a rather interesting game of speed-chess over the past week. A few of them are locked down hard and fast on the schedule, while others are still dangling like a participle, and so I think I'll wait at least another day or two before announcing anything on that front. I will reveal, however, that we've been invited to an after-party at the Hard Rock Hotel during which I've been told we will likely meet Ashlee Simpson. And I thought weird things happened here in Los Angeles.

Anyway, if you've been reading all of this, bless your heart, as there's a reason why I don't often write at four in the morning. Hey, I said that some of the stuff I write in and around this trip would be worth reading, not all of it. I suspect there will be more interesting topics upon which to pontificate once I touch down in Chicago, or at least once the fun starts on Friday. Or is it Thursday? It's too late at night to be remembering such things. Or is it too early?