Curse of Detroits' Red Dwarf

Halloween is a "holiday" of ghosts and goblins, and a recent piece on WDET reminded me of a curse that is supposedly on the Detroit region dating back from it's founding by Cadillac in the early 1700's.

We apparently earned the curse, because instead of entertaining and showing respect to the dwarf as the natives had, Cadillac attempted to fight him (I've been reading lots of recounts of how Antoine De Lat Mothe Cadillac, let's just say, had an ego).

Rick Sperling had a fascinating piece about the Nain Rouge - and apparently, how the little, furry, bad-toothed dwarf has always been living here, even in the time of the Ottawa.

According to common folklore, the little monster would show up at all the worst events in Detroit history - the 1805 fire, the 1967 riot/rebellion, and more.

Part of this curse is a general negative feeling - and what Rick was talking about was how the young people he works with don't cite the traditional reasons such as job losses or other technical reasons that they have such a burning desire to leave for good.

The reason - is that we, as a region, are really negative. And, talking with some associates, I'd have to agree. We are the worst critics of our region, and for some reason find every way that we can't do something.

There is no reason for this malaise - no logical reason at all. Negative thoughts is a nasty spiral that builds on itself, over and over again. We can't think to our success, but without a positive attitude nothing will happen.

Since there is no explicable reason, I think Nain Rouge must of done it. And as for me, I'm not letting a little red dwarf tell me how to think about this city and this region.

p.s. If you're reading this, Mr. Rouge, I have all name-brand candy bars at my house. They're good. I've tested them.

Editors' Note: Thanks for entertaining the break from the seriousness of digital media.

ArbCamp Wrap

Spent Saturday at ArbCamp - it was fun, interesting, and informative.

Although I had to cut out before the Jaffe Keynote, the sessions I went to were diverse and informative, and were user-generated. In short, in the beginning everyone got together in a circle and decided the agenda by posting topics on the wall.

This allowed a lot of diverse topics to be covered. In the morning, I "led" a session on podcasting. Although we had some really useful conversation, near the end it devolved into a discussion the technical aspects of podcasting. It's frustrating as every event I seem to go to becomes a technical discussion - which editing programs, which mics, the basics.

To move the media format forward, I think it's critical we get together a higher-level group who wants to talk content and best practices. It is my opinion that there are a million and one resources out there for podcasting, including Podcasting For Dummies.


Although Detroit/Ann Arbor is not San Francisco, there is no reason we can't establish a strong community here. The resources are here, and there is a wealth of trained TV and radio talent here that need work. Yes, it's a democratic medium, but it (just like broadcast TV and radio) requires talent and skill to do well.

Some look at the low cost of theoretical entry and think it's for everyone - but anyone who's actually worked production is that it takes time, creativity and planning. I'll be putting together a conference/meetup on this soon. I've learned that if others don't want to create anything east of the Mississippi on this, sometimes, it's best to grab the horns and do it yourself. If you're interested in this idea, comment me - I'll get in touch with you.

Now, since these camps have multiple sessions running concurrently, I'll have to relate the pieces I know...

Checked in on the folks from oort-cloud.org about Social Publishing.

These guys are really bright - and knowledgeable. I think that with the services out there, self-publishing is a reality. Even hearing about groups that will be community editors of your writing... I think it's all great, and now it's time to talk what is the business model of some of these things - how do the dollars get flowing for this stuff.

All I can think of, post-session, is Jonathan Coulton - sure, he's a musician - but he's making a living all on his own, giving away parts, charging for others, touring... it's great to see. Again, the model isn't totally developed - but it's gaining some traction.

Startup funding is a very popular topic, and it was a good discussion about resources - and that people need to leverage contact networks, barter, etc. to make it. I mentioned one of my favorite books, Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time which has some very sage advice. One of the themes I particularly like is have goals - including the people you want to meet.

Blogging and PR is another hot topic in the space, and had some great conversations, with Mr. Jaffe joining us for the mini-session. It's really interesting hearing what different companies are doing with blogs - mostly outreach, but not much discussion of company people doing it themselves.

So in short - thanks to everyone and the organizers, it was fun. To those who I got business cards from, I'll do my best to follow up this week. I look forward to next time. We need more like this around here.

I had high hopes for Vista, but there are still serious issues

I had really high hopes for Microsft Vista. But they've been dashed.

Yes, as a devoted mac user, lots of the features Vista looks to have are beautiful and useful. However, when it comes to day-in-day-out use, it's been less reliable than XP with the people I've been dealing with. It's very discouraging, as I even said, "Hey, if it's solid, I'll consider it - there are Windows benefits."

Today I talked to someone who is now the fourth complete reinstall I've had to recommend as course of action - their Microsoft Office 2007 decided that it didn't want to work anymore, save documents, and then crash randomly. Heard another report last week of a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death - a complete failure) - on a new machine!

Microsoft coming up with such a turkey - after the years of development - and all kinds of bugs with office that I'm seeing - critical, show-stopping ones - is without excuse. There are wonderful things like when opening office documents out of Outlook, it can cause damage to Office and lead it to have issues.

Let's not even get started on the fact that Office 2007 documents don't open up on anything but Office 2007 and the newest version of Keynote. I am all for open standards, but it's pretty useless if you have to save in another format so anyone else who works with you can open it.

Unfortunately, I have to say to people don't get XP on a new machine - why? Because Microsoft is going to leave it in the dust. If you have to do Windows, I believe, you have to do Vista with new boxes. With old ones, keep XP and don't upgrade.

Apparently, service pack one for Vista, according to Paul Thurott, isn't anything to write home about save for a roll-up of the software updates already sent - and that's a shame. There are still serious stability issues in the field (especially compared to my mac, which had it's first non-user-error issue in six years).

Of course, the Microsoft way is to create products you need to pay people to support - and so those people then recommend those products to get further business. Smart business, not great for consumers.

Great, Helpful Experiences

Do you ever have an experience with a person, and glad they were there at a crucial moment to help you?

I had such a moment today. One of my trusted macs was giving me all kinds of trouble (yes, I know, I know, it doesn't happen often) where some applications, out of nowhere, stopped launching.

I tried all the tricks in the bag - but Chris Burnham at Basics4Mac got me on the right path and was excellent in troubleshooting. We did some deep-level mac hackery fun, and suffice it to say, it saved me from buying a new computer and got us back to 100% productivity. Even if he isn't local to you, he can connect to your mac and work with you to do what you need to do over the phone. He was smart, courteous, and tolerated my geekery. Rarely do I just do this, but if you have mac problems, call Chris. He's Apple Certified and smart.

A Chill For Online Media: Corporations Ban Employees From Blogs, Podcasts and Forums

I got an interesting email from a friend, which has echoed a situation that many are starting to share - and we need to be aware of it as a media creation community.

More and more companies are dealing with forums, blogs, social media and podcasts by banning people's participation completely - their reasoning being that employees may say something damaging or secret.

In fact, they're banning participation or even attendance at recorded events because of that fear. I also wonder if those same people are banned from calling in to radio shows.

I'm not a lawyer, but this, in my opinion, is a clear violation of first amendment rights.

These people who work for these companies not allowed to speak or attend, period, without it being approved by the company, on anything? What if it's an event on greek mythology - and you're a real estate broker? What about church?

Many, many churches record and podcast their broadcasts. Guess you can't go to service. What if you want to speak at your local school board meeting? Forget about it, it's being recorded for TV.

Again, there is no trust by employers - and so why should employers expect any trust or loyalty back? I think this economy shows we're all free agents - and companies that block free speech are going to suffer long-term. The best and brightest won't accept this - or will temporarily until their next job a year from now.

Upside Down Map of the Day

I don't know what was in the designer's mind for this website, but, last I looked, the normal convention is to orient a map so that North points up, as it is "mentally taxing for users and sometimes even preventing a user from properly understanding a map."

Reversing it makes it extremely confusing - well some genius decided to do that. Unfortunately, they've also decided to make the map item a pop-under as well, which is also, somehow made to be even worse than a pop-up!