How to make alive your blog or web page

The Internet has still a lot of unveiled possibilities to offer.
The first applications in a new invention are usually a better copy of the existing ones.
The Internet is nothing else that "dumb pipes"....with intelligence at the edges, the opposite of the pre-existing networks.
The dumb network in a world of intelligent networks.
But the Internet is much more than that.
It is a "universal content delivery", but even though the "universal" would make it already the winning application, most do not see that its innovative feature is not only in the widespread footprint but in the fact that it is the first network that can afford the delivery of "moving content" besides the usual "static content" to which we are used.

Radio, TV, Satellite, they all were means of distribution of "static content" or "one way network".
The Internet is the first "two way network", in the sense that the customer can be in the same time consumer and producer.
I can download, but I can also upload.
This small detail changes dramatically the full picture.
And this is something the young teenager understood since long, while the big companies still do not see.
And there is something very new and exciting that I found out: RAZZ Mixer: Personalized Recordings for Blogs
The RAZZ Mixer is a flash-based app that lets users record their voice, upload background tracks, and mix in RAZZ sound effects to create personalized greetings and comments to be used on blogs, MySpace, etc. The RAZZ player can be embedded on any webpage

Try the RAZZ Mixer Yourself,if you want to improve your web page or blog with interactive audio and music.




Make your own Razz!


Make your own Razz!

Content is NOT king (but could be)

"Unfortunately for these companies, content is not the key. Content certainly has all the glamour.
What content does not have is money. This might seem absurd. "

It seems because it is.
The Internet is the Network of networks and certainly IS the Network.
But not because it is mere "dumb pipes", but because its peculiarity is in the features it offers.

Radio, TV, Satellite have been for decades the WAY to spread content, the Mass Market content.
They were great and in some ways the precursors of the Internet.
But we have gone far from then.
Yes the Internet can be seen and used as a good copy of TV, a copy with a better footprint.
But limiting it to that is throwing away the best of it.
"The annual movie theater ticket sales in the U.S. are well under $10 billion. The telephone industry collects that much money every two weeks! Those "commodity pipelines" attract much more spending than the glamorous "content."
Because the Internet is the TWO WAY network, the one in which the consumer can be also the producer.
Do you know why the telephone industry IS more attractive than movies or TV?
Because people can deliver their own content, in a few words, people can talk about themselves.
Which is by far the most attractive past time for every individual.
It has nothing to do with communications or relationship.
It is wrong to say ours is the "relationships age".
The fact that people use a lot cell phones, phones, internet chats, has nothing to do with relationship.
Ours is the age in which people can more effectively and in many ways talk about themselves.
The success of sites like MySpace is the proof of it.
They are nothing more than a collection of millions of web pages .
It is the Wep page of the web pages, in which everybody can promote its own, he can promote and show himself.
In fact the most catching feature is "Add this or that as a friend..."

Yes, you are right, who needs a copy of TV? On the Internet?(worse on a cell phone)
Everybody has a TV set and undoubtedly it is much cheaper to broadcast a program or a movie from a satellite, and the output is, at least for the moment, a much better quality than any Internet compression.
Why wasting bandwidth for something like that?
Let's use the Internet for the kind of content it is more congenial.
Let the Internet be the Network of networks, the broadcasting mean of the billions of broadcasters: ourselves...

Sex and DIY

This seemingly most immutable of all social habits changes too, and changes fast.
And, no doubt, things will go on changing.
I do not know for certain, but I feel sure that AI "Artificial Insemination" was invented by a man as labour-saving device.
Knowing certain people's character, and their marked lack of enthusiasm in this particular field, I am convinced that AI will grow immensely popular in no time and that soon it will be the rule rather than the exception.
I foresee the time, not in the distant future, either, when a shy young man will be asked at a party:
"How are you old man? And how's your wife?
Have you AI-ed any more family lately?
What is going to be this time: a boy or a girl?"
And the bashful young man will blush and reply:
"I can't be sure...You see, we don't AI our children.
We are fond of DIY.
We normally use the Internet to solve all our daily problems, we find beautiful hints at home repairs
They include home repair, DIY, remodeling, home makeover (but not DIY sex).
But for this particular matter, we didn’t even need the Internet.
Anyway, if I had to give them a suggestion on future possibilities, THEN I would really invite them to think about it.
A company HAS to program its business plan based on the future development of society and this special field SHOULD'T be overlooked...
They could begin with manuals "How to reproduce yourself in the natural way..."

Education

Our is a society with an overall level of intelligence of roughly 8th grade, but a professed belief in "education".
So deep that most of the people have taken to teaching.
On Monday mornings there are thousands that know how the Sunday football game should have been played.
As many as the ones who know how politics and economics should be run.
At this point I wonder why such important matters as politics and economics are always in the wrong hands, while there are so many out there who could make tham right...

The beauty of the Virtual World:everything is CHEAPLY POSSIBLE

"It is vital — for the survival of news(papers) that we have guts enough to rediscover our real value and essence and build from there."
It is much simpler: just follow what the consumers want.
In a fast changing society the communication means HAVE to change FAST.
Or to die.
"Everything must change in order to be always the same"
Do newspapers want to attract customers as they used to?
They have to understand that life has changed and so the consumers' needs.
When TV appeared Hollywood slowly adapted to the new reality and came to people's home.
Now the Internet has revolutioned the way people buy, entertain and inform themselves.
So that stores, entertainments and information HAS to come to them or just loose them.
This is the choice to do.
And it won't be painless, because gone are also the big revenues.
In a virtual world everything has got very cheap, because there is no paper, no printing, not even few almost monopolistic newspaper, and many which recooked the same news.
There is a huge world which is slowly opening, which could mean huge revenues because of the number.
Yes, in today's world what makes good revenues is the huge number.
What about a newspaper on line for a 10 dollars yearly fee?
Or even less.
It looks very cheap, but it could be profitable.
What about a newspaper made by many selected articles, to suit the tastes of the people.
What about many niche markets?
What about real news in real time?
What about a newspaper which is international and in the same time has local news?
What about the end of "the same size fits all?"
This is the beautiful of the Internet and the virtual THING: everything is cheaply possible.
And the one who will have the best ideas in the shortest time, HE will be the winner.
No, the newspaper time is not over, it just began...

TV

The big problem of TV is that it is getting boring.
And not just because the content they broadcast IS boring, but because people, especially young people, are getting more sophisticated.
In the sense that they have found something much more entertaining than just consuming, they HAVE FOUND OUT that it is so much more amusing creating than watching, talking than listening.

In a few words they have found out THE INTERNET.

The old style TV is dying, and NOT because the NEW TV is better.
No doubt a program made by professionals IS Qualitatively better than the amateurish one,it is just more entertaining, and that is what entertainment should be, shouldn't it?

The Pellet business

I live in an old, huge house.
It is more a building than a house.
It is three stories and 500 square meters.
I love it in Summer and hate it in Winter.
Because in Summer you can always choose between melting on the last floor and cooling down in the cellar, while in Winter it is icy cold on all the three floors (including the fourth which is the cellar).

We have a central gas heating which is getting so dearly expensive that the moment you switch it on is already a few minutes too late for shutting it down completely.
That is, there is the moment you feel so desperately cold that you forget the price, but as soon as your limbs get warmer you remember the last bill and you decide that a little bit of cold never killed anybody and certainly it won't kill you.

They said Pellets heating is much cheaper also because the State, which is always late when it comes to progress, hasn't realized yet the growing number of users.
So, said and done.
On Monday we'll get a brand new pellet stove and this morning we got 150 bags of 15 Kg of nice, good smelling pellet.

It already began to warm us.
Those 150 bags were delivered on the first floor, while the stove will be active on the last floor.
The reason being that this is "just" mt.2,70 ceiling compared to the mt.3,70 of the other two floors and so easier to warm.
So, the 150 bags, each of 15 Kg. have to be moved up three floors, 34 steps for floor, that makes 74 steps, easier to say than to do.
After the first 17 you already feel much warmer, when you reach the top you are terribly hot.
They were right, this pellet business will keep us comfortably warm...

The humanization of technology.

The worker of the industrial revolution has participated in the economic progress of capitalistic society, profited from it, and, indeed has a great deal more to loose than his chains.
The social machine works more efficiently if individuals are cut down to purely quantifiable units.
In order to reach this result men must be de-individualized and taught to find their identity in the corporation rather than in themselves.
To enhance the company's efficiency may mean endanger feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and frustration in the employees which may lead to either indifference or hostility.
The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
A high standard of living doesn't make people happier, on the contrary, makes them passive, depersonalized and manipulated.

This modern society gave birth not only to goods, but to expectations and needs as well.
Man has always had needs, but they came from his inside, now they are created from the outside.
"If you want to be the best, you must have the most."
Man sees himself not for what he is, but for what he has.


The increasing dissatisfaction with our present way of life, its passiveness and silent boredom, its lack of privacy and its depersonalisation and the longing for a joyful, meaningful existence, which answers those specific needs of man, which he has developed in the last few thousand years of his history and which make him different from the animal as well as from the computer.

This tendency is all the stronger because the different part of the population has already tested full material satisfaction and has found out that the consumer's paradise does not deliver the happiness it promised.
The poor of course, have not yet had any chance to find out, except by watching the lack of joy of those who "have everything a man could want".


At the moment, one of the gravest symptoms of the American system is the fact that their economy rests upon arms production (plus maintenance of the whole defence establishment) and on the principle of maximal consumption.
They transform the individual into a total passive consumer and this deaden him, and they created a bureaucracy which makes the individual feel impotent.

Must we produce sick people in order to have a healthy economy?
Must people be passive and dependent in order to have strong and well functioning organizations?
The dehumanized society won't be the victor, the people sooner or later will fully be aware of the thread the technological world poses to man's personal and spiritual life, and they will assert their freedom by upsetting the course of this evolution.

People seek a new orientation, a new philosophy, one which is interested on the priorities of life, physically and spiritually and not on the priorities of death.
This new fact is a movement which combines the wish for profound changes in our economy and social practice with its most general form, its aim is the activation of the individual, the restoration of man's control over the social system, the humanization of technology.

America's lifestyle

"Islam does not hate freedom, democracy or even the "American way of life". It is the price other people have to pay for America to have that way of life - that is what has everybody so pissed off.
I have for years tried to tell anyone interested in discussing the subject this very thing against reassurances to the contrary by every single person. They insist that foreigners love Americans and everything American.
I believe it to be irrelevant in either case as it will and has been decided at the macro-economic level. When goods stop crossing borders Armies do. When western hegemony can no longer be enforced and it is no longer in China's interest, that is when U.S. consumption becomes detrimental to their growth and development decisions will be made regardless of what ordinary citizens think."

NO COMMENT.

About pay-blogging

The insidious effort to buy bloggers’ voice and credibility in the name of buzz just won’t stop. So I want to make my own blogger’s pledge to you:

1. No one can buy my editorial voice or opinion.
2. No one can buy my editorial space; if it’s an ad it will clearly be an ad.
3. No one should be confused about the source of anything on my pages.
4. I will disclose my business relationships whenever it is relevant and possible.

Jeff Jarvis


Everything you say is wonderful and I am sure it would be difficult to find somebody who disagrees.
But there are several points which you do not mention.

First: you can blog as a hobby and you can shout whatever you like.
But then you need a real job and may be you do not have so much time left for blogging.

Second: is it so important to know if you really like or enjoy something or you say it because you are paid?
There are millions on this earth who like things I do not, and I usually do not buy something because Madonna says it is great.

Every idealism is wonderful on the paper, but the moment it reaches reality is not as shiny as it looked.
Because it doesn't consider the humanity as it is.
It is wonderful to be honest, to pay the taxes till the last dollar (or euro) not to cheat your wife, not to drink, not to swear, not to eat too much, to do exercises every morning and so on...
Ideal life should be like that.
But life is usually lived by human beings who have to make ends meet, yes also the ends of their need to be a little less perfect and a little more human.
All this to say:
How many of us would like to be offered 5000 dollars to write a post on a blog...
Why do they always ask the ones who are too honest to accept...
Do not misunderstand me, I am just trying to be a little more understandable, a little less God...

About TV

Once television was a kind of entertainment and not a widespread disease.
There was even a period in which it was considered something belonging to the lower orders.
The middle class was almost proud of not possessing a television set.
Television however, has slowly conquered-in varying degree- all layers of society and, whether we like it or not, it has come to stay.
The main and most glorious achievement of television is that is killing the art of conversation.
If we think of the type of conversation television is helping to kill, our gratitude must be undying.
The trouble is that it has not yet killed enough of it.
On the whole I like television very much indeed.
The reasons for my devotion are these:

1) Television is one of the chief architect of prosperity.
If you are able to scratch your left ear with your right foot blindfold and watched by ten million giggling spectators, then you are practically certain to be sent to Majorca for a three weeks' holiday.

2) Television has united the family, by keeping the family at home, gaping at it round the family heart.

3) Television causes more friction in family life than any other single factor by offering unique scope for quarrels as to which programme to watch.

4) Television is of great educational value.
It teaches you how:
a) to kill
b) to rob
c) to shoot
d) to poison

5) Television puts a stop to crime because all the bulglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and rob, sit at home watching TV.
This is valid for the national language speaking bulglars and robbers, that is why it is of the utmost importance to broadcast programs in multilanguage.

6) Television has undeniably raised the general level of culture throughout the country.
Some people allege that it has killed the habit of reading and thinking, but there is no truth in this.
I have yet to meet a person who gave up his methodical study of, say, Early Etruscan civilisation in order to be able to watch more of the "Big Brother".

Consumerism: the American dream

"I contend that if we had honest leaders and media - it would not be so. The People are so mind controlled thru the media, at the direction of the monopo men. Consumerism is the American dream
Yet we know how to conserve, if given reason, but that would not advance the monpopoly men - so the masses are deluded."
Consumerism is not only the American dream, is what made America (and the West world) what they are.
It is the basement of our economy, of our society, of our life.
If we stop consuming the whole society goes bust.
We have to consume and always consume more, because we have to produce and always produce more.
The answer is not suddendly change our habits, our mentality.
The answer is finding what will allow us to go on this way for some time more, as long as we need to have a gradual change.
Because oil or not oil we cannot go on forever consuming more and more.
The media cannot go on controlling more and more. Sooner or later people will wake up, but let it be a gradual waking up.
Revolutions feed on sudden changes, progress feeds in gradual improvement.
Let us change our mentality, consuming less and caring more for the real values of life.
But let's not make it a conditio sine qua non.