16
AUG

Push vs Pull Filters for Content Sharing

The other night I was speaking with Courtney outside of the 12th Street Pub in Lincoln and the subject of information filtering came up, specifically with regards to Twitter and Google Reader. Since “this is what Twitter should do” posts are all the rage right now, I figured I would share some thoughts on the topic.

Courtney brought up the insightful and for some reason not obvious (to me at least) point that all filtering in 1 to many services like this is done on the receiving end, the “pull” end of the process. We talked about why this is a problem and how it could be addressed.

Generally, in a world of “information overload” there needs to be a better way for producers to selectively target and filter the information they send out. Not all of this burden should lie on the information consumer.  (Continue reading…)

Posted by Kevin @ 17:41 on August 16, 2009
Categories: rant, software;
16
JUL

The Selfishness of Apathy

Oscar: “What kind of muffin would you like?”
Alfred: “I don’t care.”

When faced with a mostly inconsequential question like this many people often respond like our friend Alfred. At first glance the use of this phrase may seem like an altruistic endeavor, deferring the power of judgment to your question asking friend. In reality this is often not the case. Instead of shifting a privilege, what actually happens is a burden is passed from Alfred onto Oscar. Oscar must now exert energy to make the decision himself rather than simply responding to the request of his friend.

In a perfect world, Oscar would not think at all and merely make a choice at random. I tend to think this sort of ideal is rarely manifested in daily life. Instead Oscar will spend a few moments weighing any number of factors: the number of muffins remaining of each type, a past history of Alfred’s choices, his own preferences for which muffins he would like to get rid of quickly, what Alfred actually wants even though he is saying he doesn’t care, etc. This results in a momentary deadlock and a small but unnecessary amount of extra stress. (Continue reading…)

Posted by Kevin @ 16:00 on July 16, 2009
Categories: rant; Tags: ,
19
MAY

Lincoln, NE

I don’t live in Lincoln anymore and probably won’t again for a long time. I would like to eulogize my experience there from the past 5 years by listing out some of my favorite things about Lincoln, Nebraska. Sorry if this gets a bit long, but it should be in an easily skimmable format. You can also check out all of the places on this list on a Google map I created here.

Food
I love eating out, and Lincoln has a surprisingly wide variety of food options available in a small radius. Below are a few of my favorite restaurants in Lincoln in no particular order. Every one of these restaurants (with the exception of Bison Witches) is locally owned/run as far as I am aware.

  • The Oven – Amazing Indian food. Definitely try their mulligatawny soup. The place also has a cool laid back atmosphere and is pretty reasonably priced.
  • Thai Garden — Pretty good Thai food and you can’t beat the price– or the bridge you cross as you enter. This is my favorite Thai restaurant in town.
  • Magnolia – When I first walked into Magnolia, I expected it to be quite expensive, but it turned out to be very reasonable. The atmosphere inside is as fancy as you’ll find downtown. The food is also delicious, and nearly half their menu is vegetarian options. It makes a great date restaurant.
  • Lazlo’s/Fireworks — Lazlo’s is a locally owned brewpub for Empyrean Brewing located in the Haymarket (original), South Lincoln and Omaha. It is the go-to place for delicious American food and good beer in Lincoln. Fireworks is another restaurant owned by the same people that specializes in wood-fired cooking.
  • La Paz — My favorite Mexican restaurant. Margaritas are a must here.
  • Bison Witches — Not your typical sandwich/soup joint. This place offers huge sandwiches and delicious bread bowl soups. They also have great happy hour beer specials from 4-7. This is a popular lunch stop so if you’re planning to go over the noon hour, be prepared to wait.
  • Yia Yia’s — Best bottled beer selection downtown, and it’s a Pizza joint. Their pizza by is also very good and is made by the slice to your liking. This is a great place to just hang out, have some pizza and beer, and relax to some good music.
  • The Watering Hole — 12 grilled hot wings please. Hands down the best wings in town, served with good beer. My friend also tells me they have the best veggie burger in town, but I was never able to actually order anything other than wings once I stepped in the door.
  • Bread & Cup — A fairly new sandwich/soup shop that offers other dishes at their leisure. They also have great people, good beer/wine, and fresh baked bread. This is one place I wish I would have gone more often while I lived in Lincoln.
  • Thé Cup — Another sandwich/soup restaurant, but is not open in the evening and serves good coffee rather than beer/wine.
  • Maggie’s Vegetarian Wraps — A small local restaurant in the Haymarket that makes delicious wraps/soups/etc. They strive to use local ingredients when possible so some of their menu items are seasonal. They also don’t take credit cards, so bring some cash.
  • Danny’s Downtown Deli — A nice local deli with very friendly people. Makes a good quick lunch stop.
  • Ivanna Cone — Homemade ice cream done right. They always have new flavors for you to try out as well as some of the classics. This is hands down the best ice cream in town.

There are quite a few other good restaurants in town that I considered mentioning on this list, but the ones above are as I said my favorites, and I had to draw the line somewhere.

Coffee
I spent a lot of time as a student at Coffee Shops around town. Below are a couple of my favorites with a brief description. All of these shops are local, offer wireless (except maybe a couple of the smaller Cultiva locations), and offer whole bean or ground coffee for sale.

  • The Coffee House — This is the college indie crowd coffee shop in town, and my favorite downtown coffee joint. They rotate original artwork fairly often and always have plenty of fair trade/organic coffee on hand. My only complaint is that the wireless is sometimes spotty and electrical outlets are sometimes hard to find during busy hours. They have two separate rooms which is nice– One for conversation and one for studying, with a smaller third back room that can be reserved for meetings/events.
  • Meadowlark Coffee — I started hitting this place more often once I moved off campus. Since it’s not near the university, Meadowlark draws a more age diverse crowed, with anywhere from high schoolers and retired people in there at any given time. They also host a lot of community events like open mic nights and poetry slam competitions.
  • Cultiva Coffee — Located near Meadowlark on South Street, this is one of Lincoln’s local coffee roasters. They also serve freshly brewed coffee while they are open. Recently they have started serving coffee in the back of Indigo Bridge Books across he hall from Ivanna Cone, and downtown out of the State Theater.
  • Kopeli Coffee — Almost did not throw this one in here. The coffee at Kopeli is so-so, but they have delicious lunch soups and paninis, their wireless is usually superb, and they are open later than most places, so it gets visited fairly frequently.

Bars
This list wouldn’t be complete as a University student without mentioning at least a few of my favorite bars.

  • Doc’s Place — Doc’s is a great lounge, but a little bit out of the way from most of the bars. They have a good beer selection and fairly reasonable prices for the most part. Typically draws an older crowd.
  • Zen’s Lounge — Zen’s used to be my favorite bar before they raised their prices, now it is probably the most expensive bar downtown, but is still worth visiting occasionally. They have a nice beer and cocktail list with some originals created by their bartenders. The lounge also has WiFi should you feel the need to work over a beer.
  • Duffy’s Tavern — The home of the fishbowl, Duffy’s is a great all-around bar with pool tables, live music, a beer garden, and a window into the gyro place next door for those late night munchies. They used to do karaoke with a live band on certain nights but I am not sure that is still going on.
  • Box Awesome — This is the place for local music in Lincoln, with shows every Friday and Saturday night at minimum. They also recently remodeled to make the place better for shows.
  • Zoo Bar – A jewel in the center of downtown, the Zoo bar is a blues bar that pulls some amazing acts, both local and national. They have posters on the wall of some famous past visiters and the list is fairly impressive. The drinks are good and the atmosphere is excellent. This is another place I wish I would have gotten too more often.
  • 12th Street Pub – Good drinks, good prices, good people, and live local music. What more do you want? If you get lucky, you might be able to see the famous Nate & AJ band perform.

Misc
Just some random places that don’t fit into the categories above but are worth mentioning:

  • Indigo Bridge Books – A new, independent bookstore in the Haymarket, featuring books on a variety of topics. As mentioned earlier they also have a coffee stand inside selling delicious Cultiva coffee. This place is also host to The Table, a pay-what-you-want community lunch endeavor focused on bringing people together. I will write more about The Table in a later post.
  • A Novel Idea – A locally owned used bookstore located downtown. They have a surprisingly wide selection of books and a good variety.
  • Empyrean Brewing — I mentioned Empyrean already when talking about Lazlo’s, but I feel the need to re-iterate that this is the best local brewery in Nebraska. They also do free brewery tours the first Monday of every month as part of beer school. Make sure you get there early though, as it’s a popular event.
  • Open Harvest — A local natural foods co-op. I believe they are currently raising money to build a new, bigger store.
  • Haymarket Theater — I’ve only been here a couple of times, but I was impressed with the quality of the venue and the shows. The building also hosts a youth theater as well.
  • Illuzion Glassworks – A new head shop in downtown Lincoln. Much of their glass is locally blown and I believe they have plans for a lounge or coffee shop in the front part of the building.

That pretty much sums it up. Make sure to check out the map if you’re interested. I’m sure I’ve missed something, but I am leaving with a fairly good impression of Lincoln overall as a city (or at least the downtown area). I was skeptical when I first arrived but something I’ve realized is that if you look hard enough, you will find the right kind of quality people and establishments in almost any city. Lincoln might actually have more than most.

Posted by Kevin @ 2:06 on May 19, 2009
Categories: food, rant, review; Tags: , , , , ,
07
APR

My Ideal Music Distribution Model Part II: The Solution

In my previous post I outlined some of the problems with current music solutions in the digital age. In this post I will detail my vision for how I think things should work.

To begin with, I am going to make the following assumptions:

  1. People will pay for music but have a limited budget for it
  2. People want to be able to own their music, and do what they want with it (e.g.. no DRM, no network connectivity required, etc)

My solution also attempts to meet the following goals:

  1. Get artists as much of a cut of the proceeds as possible (i.e. fuck labels for the most part)
  2. Allow people to choose how their money gets distributed
  3. Keep it affordable yet sustainable (tough to find numbers for this one)

The Details
The general framework for accomplishing these goals is to offer a music subscription service similar to Microsoft’s Zune Pass or Napster, but without all the bullshit and DRM. It would have the following general features.

  • For a monthly fee you can stream/download as much music as you want
  • Your account is accessible from anywhere with a connection (any computer)
  • No ‘net connection is necessary to actually listen to your downloaded music
  • Music is DRM free and sharable/transferable/etc to any device
  • Music you have downloaded is still available on your devices after your subscription ends

None of the above presents any really new ideas, but the interesting part of the scheme is in how the money is handled. I will go into this in some detail below.

Distribution of $$$
The big thing I would like to see is to let people dictate how their money gets distributed. This is important for two reasons. First, it lets people actually understand that they are supporting artists allowing them to make more music. Second, it shows people that their money is not going to some middle man, it is actually going to pay for the value the are getting out of the system.

There could be different options available for where your monthly fee actually goes. A few that come to mind off the top of my head are listed below.

  • Audioscrobbler style – This is really where my idea originally stemmed from. In this model, your money would be distributed based on what artists you listen to in a given month. So lets say 35% of the songs you listen to in that month are by Murder by Death. 35% of your individual contribution would then go to Murder by Death for that month. Sites like Last.fm already have the infrastructure in place to track what you play and log it to your personal profile. It would not be a stretch to extend this and monetize it.

  • Socialist style — In this model your money would get distributed based on the artists who needed it most. There are a number of ways you could determine need, but an easy way to do it would be based on popularity. A user could apportion their subscription fee to the 10 least popular artists they listened to the past month or something. The idea here is that the user is then helping support artists he/she likes so that they are able to keep making music and delivering value to the user.

  • Choose your own adventure — Why not let users just choose which artists the money goes to specifically? Let Sarah give 50% of her subscription fee (minus the service cut) to Rob Costlow if she wants. If Sarah really likes Rob’s music that much then she can decide to spend her money that way.

It is very important with the above distribution schemes that users be given a choice in what to use. I think the audioscrobbler method would make a good default, but if you tried to force people to use the socialist system or something, it would raise an outcry from many other users/artists in the community. Giving users the choice makes the most people content.

As far as the distribution of the money is concerned, Goal 1 is to let artists keep as much of it as possible. Obviously the service itself would need to take a cut, but this can be mitigated in a few different ways.

  • BitTorrent — BitTorrent could be used to legally distribute and share the music where possible to help cut down on server and bandwidth costs for the service. However it could not be used exclusively, since many artists would not be popular enough to have seeders willing to share. Basically when a user requests to download a song, the service should check the BitTorrent ratio first, then fall back to an actual server if the ratio is insufficient. Alternatively you could have a set of servers dedicated to being BitTorrent seeds and used as a backup for when the number of seeders is too low.

  • Advertising – The service itself could make money through advertising on the website you use to browse/download songs. This could be further enhanced by providing profile and social tools for people to use based around the music (see Last.fm again) to get people to go to the site for reasons other than just search & download.

  • Peripheral products — Artists could also be given the opportunity to sell other items through the site, such as concert tickets, limited edition vinyl, shirts, etc directly to fans. This would also help supplement artist income and could possibly drive revenue for the service.

  • Bulk passes – Offer people the opportunity to pay for a half or full year at a slightly discounted price. This money could then be invested and paid out to artists monthly based on the chosen scheme, with the interest from the investment going to the service provider.

Ideally the combination of these would increase revenue and reduce costs far enough that a maximal amount of the proceeds could be distributed directly to the artists.

How much would it cost?
I don’t have the answer to this one offhand, I think it would take a decent amount of research to find a price-point that would most likely be profitable to both the service and artists. One option might be to experiment with a “pay what you want” scheme, although that might be too risky without setting a minimum price as well (say $10?). However by setting a minimum price I have the feeling that it would entice people to pay just the minimum.

Summary
The general theory behind all of this is that music has value and people will pay for it. Artists should be receiving most, if not all of this compensation since they are the ones providing the value. Paying for individual songs/albums is no longer a feasible model in today’s world, but people should still have a way to make sure their favorite artists are getting paid and supported. I believe this model has the potential to do that, even in a world where people can download music for free (albeit illegally).

Just a final note, I think user feedback would be very important in this system. Showing people a results sheet of exactly how much of their money is going to which artists could increase buy-in and participation.

In the next post I will explore the feasibility of implementing this, who stands in the best position to do it, and possibly speculate some more on the current state of the industry.

Posted by Kevin @ 18:24 on April 7, 2009
Categories: idea, music, rant;
06
APR

My Ideal Music Distribution Model Part I: Background Info

There has been a lot of talk over the last few years about how the music industry as we know it is dying. Awesome. I’m glad. People also like to speculate on where things are headed. Some think iTunes is the future, others think that music will soon be free and become simply a marketing tool for merch/performances. I honestly don’t have a clue how the whole drama is going to play out, but in the next series of posts, I am going to describe my ideal music distribution and pricing model.

My basic assumption here is that people are willing to pay for music. Recorded music does have a value and people recognize this. The problem with most of the current and traditional models for monetizing music is that people are unable to afford the amount of music they would like to own. In a nutshell, the value per song of recorded music has dropped significantly, but I don’t believe that the aggregate value of music to an individual has dropped at all. It might even have increased.

To put it another way, before P2P file sharing, the medium and distribution of music limited the amount of music a single person was able to access and own. Labels could easily control the price of music because it was a physical good just like any other. There was a certain limit to the amount of music you could put on one disc. With the advent of the Internet and digital music, people all of a sudden were no longer restrained by the physical product. Music libraries increased exponentially. With this new ability, it no longer made sense to limit yourself to the 10-15 songs you could get on one CD for $15. Instead you could have thousands of songs at your fingertips. The problem was that these thousands of songs didn’t have a price on them, they were free.

I tried to find some statistics on the average size of a music collection over time, but my brief searching turned up no results. Just to speculate though:


Year # Songs Cost ($1/song)
2000 600 (~40-50 albums) $600
2009 8000 (~40GB) $8000


As you are probably aware, 40GB is a modest amount for a music collection these days (I assumed 5MB/Song). Let’s assume this is one person. From 2000-2009, that person would have had to spend ~$68/month ($816/yr) on music at the old prices. Few people I know are willing to do this. If it took that person 4 years to get the original 600 songs, that would only be $12.50/month. My assumption is that people on average probably find enough value from music to allocate that much of their budget for music.

So this brings us back to the original problem. The quantity of and access to music has changed drastically, but the pricing models really haven’t allowed people to pay for the value they see from it.

Most current solutions to music in the digital age fall far short of understanding and correcting this problem. I’ll just canvas a few of them below.

  1. Apple iTunes. Apple was sort of the first big player to step up and try to monetize digital downloads. They have until recently charged around $0.98 per song, but have now moved to a variable pricing scheme where songs can cost $0.69, $0.99, or $1.29 based on popularity. Some people are not too happy with this, for reasons I don’t really agree with. I just think it’s still too expensive to be a proper solution and some of their music still has DRM on it, which is just absurd. They have sold 6 billion songs through iTunes as of January 2009. Here is the best part, though. The artist cut on each song is probably around 10% if they are on a major label. Does that seem messed up to anyone else?

  2. Amazon.com. I’m not really sure when amazon started selling mp3s, and I’m too lazy to look it up right now, but it doesn’t really matter. Amazon’s prices vary some, but typically songs are priced at $0.99 each from what I’ve seen. Still too expensive, but at least there is no DRM.

  3. Microsoft Zune Marketplace. Microsoft offers mp3 purchases at around $0.98/song through their zune marketplace, but they also offer a Zune Pass for $14.99/month. The Zune Pass allows you to listen to (mostly) unlimited music from the Zune Marketplace as long as you keep your subscription going. You also get 10 free downloads per month. The huge downside here is that it’s basically just paying for on-demand radio… You don’t get to keep the songs after you cancel your subscription and you are limited to 6 devices total even while your subscription is going. Napster does something similar. (watch out for the annoying lady if you click that).

  4. Amie Street. Amie Street is a really cool site that does actual variable pricing based on demand. Songs start free or cheap and can rise to $0.98/song based on popularity. This is a cool little model, and probably close to the best thing out there right now, especially since artists get 70% of the proceeds from each song.

  5. Magnatune. Magnatune is a Berkely based little site that lets you choose what you pay to download an album/song. 50% of whatever you decide goes directly to the artist. They also refuse to work with major labels (I don’t blame them). 50% seems a little low to me, but the choose what you pay scheme is interesting. I’m curious to see how that works out.

Some of these services seem to be on the right track, but others miss the point completely. In the next post on this topic I will lay out how I think this whole thing should work and then possibly follow up with the feasibility of implementing it. I would love to hear what other people think as well as I go through this process so please comment if you have an opinion.

Posted by Kevin @ 12:35 on April 6, 2009
Categories: idea, music, rant; Tags: , , , , , ,
12
JUL

Project Charlie

“You can’t be somebody you’re not”
“Just be yourself”

These are both phrases that I have heard multiple times throughout my life. In movies, TV, and classrooms these are fairly common themes that are typically given a positive spin. A classic example is the scenario where a “socially challenged” student tries to impress a girl by doing various things outside of his normal routine. In the end he wins her over by just “being himself.” The morale of that story is to just be yourself and everything will work out in the end.

Here’s my question: Why?

Without delving too deep into exactly what is “self” and how each of us is really defined as a person, I’d like to just probe into this common theme a little bit. To start with, it would seem to me that by always being “yourself” you would remain in a static state of personality. I would argue that people grow and change (for better or worse) by doing things outside of their normal routine or set of actions. So in a sense you can only grow as a person by not being yourself until not being yourself becomes part of your self… Yeah that sentence sucked but hopefully you get my point.

Let’s look at a few other phrases that might pop up at certain points:
“You’re just not our type”
“You’re annoying”
“Why do you always have to be such a dick?”

Now if any of those statements were made in your direction, you could respond with “But I’m just being myself” and everything would be OK, right? Obviously not (in the majority of cases). So there you either have two options: to change your habits and personality to better fit in or please the other person, or don’t change and settle with the results.

So say you’ve decided to try to change your personality or whatever to better please the type of people making the three previous comments. This may have unintentional consequences. First, you may begin to displease people that were happy with the way your personality currently is. Second, you may just end up looking like a poser or trying way to hard. (Too bad there is no way to regression test your personality against cases like this…)

I’ve never been a big fan of trying to “fit in” or of fitting into a mold. However the point I am trying to haphazardly get across in this post is that change isn’t always a bad thing. It’s how people grow. Don’t be “yourself” all the time. Try being somebody else for a day. See what happens, see what you can learn and take away from the experience to improve your own lifestyle and how you interact with other people.

I’m calling from your house, in your room, in your name, lying in your bed, following your dreams.
Posted by Kevin @ 23:01 on July 12, 2007
Categories: rant; Tags: , ,
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