June 2005

I remember watching Live Aid with my mom and sisters on our farm outside of Scribner, Nebraska in 1985. Seems crazy that it was twenty years ago! Fast forward to today and they’ve got Live 8 in the works. Technorati is tracking blogging about Live 8 and they’re doing a “blog for tickets” promotion that looks like a lot of fun for a really good cause. {Thanks to pc4media for the pointer to the ticket promotion.}

If you’ve got a blog and want to help out, Technorati is trying to get 100,000 blog posts out before the G8 summit on July 8, 2005.

Update June 27, 2005: Pete Caputa wrote a related blog entry titled “Bloggers vs Journalists: Agendas.”

A couple weeks ago Pete Caputa introduced me to a reporter who was working on a “getting paid to blog” story for the Boston Globe. Thanks, Pete! (That’s sincere despite my rant throughout the rest of this entry.)

Unfortunately the tidbits about me in the story weren’t accurate. Maybe they were honest mistakes. I’m not sure but I wish I would have had a chance to go over the information with the reporter.

For other bloggers, the compensation can be a windfall. Somerville resident Susan Kaup received $2,100 this winter for writing a dozen times about Marqui — a Portland, Ore., marketing software company — and linking to its website on her blog, www.sooz.com. Though Marqui disclosed it was paying bloggers, Kaup did not always mention the compensation on her site.

First: It was $2400. $800 times three months = $2400. Windfall?

And second, I did always mention the compensation on my website. I had this icon on my website throughout the program and several weeks afterwards. It said “I get paid to talk about Marqui.” The reason it’s not on my site anymore is because the program is over. At no point during our brief conversation did the reporter ask me if I disclosed my arrangement. She did ask if I ever wrote negative things about Marqui and I said I didn’t think so but searching for “Marqui” on my site would be an easy way to find out. As it turns out, I was critical at least once. I usually included a tidbit about the program in each entry. In hindsight, I think I should have placed that button inside every entry. But her indication that I did not always mention the compensation is misleading.

At least we have our blogs to set the record straight.

While expressing frustration about this to a friend who is excellent at being the voice of reason in curious times, he passed on this humorous link that somehow I had never seen before. For the record, I don’t think all reporters are bad or anything. Robert Weisman was awesome when he wrote the Sunday Boston Globe article about Meetup.com that included the Wi-Fi Meetup that I organize. He spent at least an hour with us in person at the Meetup and exchanged emails with me.

While looking for some information on the Capitol Records website I found a link to this page about missing royaltors. Kind of funny. I don’t recognize any of the artists on their MIA list. I’m assuming POWER STATION is not the same Power Station that Robert Palmer was in. I’m particularly amused by their last line in the second paragraph noted below.

Over the course of time, some of our artists and producers have changed addresses without notifying us and without leaving a forwarding address. As a result, royalty payments have been returned by the Post Office.

The names listed below are royaltors who have either moved or with whom we have lost contact. We would appreciate it if you or your authorized representatives would contact us because we may be holding royalties that are payable to you. If you know any of these people and are aware of their current address, please let us know.

Cameron Marlow is conducting a weblog author survey in conjunction with his Ph.D. studies at MIT. The study runs through Monday, June 27, 2005.

Exploit Boston has always been a little heavy on music related events because that’s the sorts of events I’m personally most interested in. Michael has stepped up as book/literary editor so the site is going to see a lot more in that area. I’d like to conspire with another human who would like to contribute arts-related listings and another human who would like to contribute theater-related listings. Is that you? More than one person in each area would rock, too. As would infrequent contributors: it’s all good!

I’ve written about wanting to collaborate with other people before but I think it’s taken a while for me to get this damn website organized to a point where others really could contribute easily. And I’ve probably chilled out a fair bit, too. My contributor expectations noted below are modest. (Yeah?) It looks like some improvement in the area of structured event blogging might be happening sooner or later and that will be a huge help, too.

There’s no pay (for now) but there is a nice perk: getting into events for free with a press pass/comp ticket and/or photo pass, too. If you’re a professional writer this is probably nothing to write home about: you get this stuff already. But if you’re a blogger who has a passion (borderline obsession) with art, music, theater, books, etc … then this might be right up your alley.

Since this is a labor of love project (for now), requirements are modest: contribute at least five event listings each week and then eventually start to write an experience review 3+ times each month via your complimentary ticket and/or photo pass. As far as the press tickets and photo passes go, I do the work to line those up. You just need to tell me where you want to go (three weeks in advance is ideal), show up and write a well-written first person account (no need to be “objective” or “unbiased”) of the experience. You own your words so if you want to publish your review on your website at the same time the words get posted at Exploit Boston, that is great. Cross-linking between the two sites is how I usually have arranged it. Photos are a different story and would be on a case-by-case basis. For the most part I probably won’t be enlisting many others to take photos at events.

Andrew Teman has posted contributor requests for Music Post on Craig’s List and that seems to be going very well. I’ve thought about doing that, too. If you want to pass this on to anyone you know, that would be super.

I am happy to offer a smooch or twelve to whomever decided to include Michael’s BunkoSquad.com on boston.com’s new “Greater Boston Blogs and Podcasts” page.

We’ve been talking about having a party in August or September for his website’s seventh anniversary. Maybe we can combine a long - overdue - but - hey - the - site - really - is - being - updated - again - and - will - get - a - proper - makeover - this - summer party for Exploit Boston, too.

Speaking of Exploit Boston, I’ve updated the RSS feed so if you keep tabs on it, you’ll want to subscribe to this new feed.

Michael and I had a blast at last night’s Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ concert at The Tweeter Center. The Black Crowes put on a great show as the opener, too. I was up front with five other photographers during the first five songs of Tom Petty’s show. Words and photos are over at Exploit Boston and at flickr.

If you live near a city where Mr. Petty is playing during the rest of the tour, I highly recommend going. He puts on one hell of a live show. I hadn’t realize just how many hits this guy has had. I haven’t followed his career as much as Michael has but I recognized a lot of the songs he played. Hopefully I’ll have a new camera in time for the next time he’s at The Tweeter Center on July 29th.

I’ve got a long entry in the works regarding “WordPress vs Movable Type” and why I decided to keep Exploit Boston on Movable Type. But I’m running late to get some errands done before the Tom Petty concert tonight so I thought I’d try to appease the CSS gods out there in the meantime. I’ve attempted to modify an awesomely simple and straightforward two-column CSS layout that I stumbled into online recently. As-is it works on browsers running on both Windows and Mac (including IE!) but it looks like my modifcations may have messed something up. Michael reports that the sidebar is messed up on IE6 on Windows. Oh, fun.

If you have any tips, I would be immensely grateful. I’ll probably figure it out eventually … maybe. In the meantime, if you visit Exploit Boston and you’re wondering why (if) it’s all messed up: it’s because I am a lowly CSS tinkerer.

I’m curious who out there in sooz.com readerland uses flickr. Send me an email and point me to your photostream on flickr or post the tidbits in the comments of this entry. Thanks! If you subscribe to my RSS feed via FeedBurner you’ll receive pointers to the latest photos I’ve added to my photostream.

Last night I finally met Jack Saturn in person. We’ve known each other online since 1998. One of his bands from Portland Oregon, The Culottes, played a show at ZuZu in Central Square. They’ve got free MP3s and an EP for sale on their website. Good stuff!

The Culottes play simple short songs, mostly in the key of B. Currently, the Culottes play drums and guitars. The Culottes is an everchanging project that usually consists of 3 members. Most of them live in Portland, but historically others have lived in Germany, Sweden, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, and other parts of the Pacific NW.