The Skinny White Boy KastPod

Not that there is anything wrong with changing your company name, I quite happily work for a company that has changed its name three times in the last six years. I am not complaining. But it is what that name-change represents that makes it a good thing… or not. You may know that PodShow, the company owned by Adam Curry and a fellow by the name of Ron Bloom, officially changed its name to Mevio, a name that seems to be created by the same random password generator that forces us to remember things like @fE37>b, but what does this name shift give us?

As far as I am concerned, BIG, FAT LIES! I have always been skeptical of the activities of Curry and cohorts. I am naturally paranoid, so that is just me, but I was absolutely floored when I read what Ron Bloom had to say in one of the company’s own press releases. Here, Mister Bloom is quoted as saying “We have never believed in user-generated content as a business, or even as a sustainable entertainment offering.”

Excuse me? This is coming from the CEO of a company that up until 2 days ago was ALL about user generated content. What about giving us the means to “quit your day job”? Setting up a music network so us amateurs didn’t have to pay ridiculous fees to play music in our podcasts? That’s all just down the drain now? Because we have “never believed in user-generated content”?

Mister bloom is sadly at odds with… wait for the drum roll… Himself! On his own web site (www.ronbloom.com) he is proudly claiming to be the author of the media’s 5/50 rule. As he puts it, “Within 5 years over 50% of all media consumed will be created by other consumers.”

Yeah, Yeah, I know. The former and latter statement are not mutually exclusive. Nonetheless you can’t help feeling like you just got kicked in the nuts. I have never believed that creating a podcast from your basement or back room can get you famous or even financially independent. And even that is strictly personal. I know others have done it. But they have been feeding the quit your day job line to 1000’s of people for several years. And now they are quitting what many perceived to be their day job. Feel left out in the cold? You should! I will quite happily turn over and go back to sleep. I never bought into their bullshit anyway, but maybe someone should ask the 25% of their work-force they just canned what they think about the name change.

The gasoline prices in this part of the country are around 3.20 (in USD) on a good day and about 3.40 in the “nice part of town”. Before my European friends start shouting, yes I know that is still only one fourth of what you pay out there, but that’s not what this is about. You have a budget, and when an essential ingredient of your daily life hikes up with about 30 percent, it’s gonna hurt. Whether you live in the US (where the gasoline prices are still ridiculously low) or in Europe where these prices are insanely high (by comparison).

Anyway, back to those rising fuel prices. You can’t turn the radio or TV on or there are people on talking about. It should come as no surprise then that I am also finding it in personal blogs. One idea that keeps circulating around the soc-nets and blogs is that consumers should force the price back down. The idea is simple…

If enough people avoid buying gas from one oil company, that company will be forced to lower their prices. At that point the other distributors will have to follow suit to stay competitive.

As with most things that sound to good to be true, this is another one of them. My apologies to people that think this can work. Surprise, surprise, I disagree. Matter of fact, I think you are nuts!

First of all there is the issue of mobilizing enough bodies. That’s hard work! For instance. Earth Hour is organized by an extremely professional bunch. They buy TV ads, space in the news paper, banner ads, you name it they’ve done it. And after all that, did I see any lights off on my evening walk? Not any more than usual. Furthermore, whether it’s a group of professionals or grass-roots type folks. Try putting one ad in the paper to boycott Exxon (or Shell, or Texaco, or, or, or). They will slap a lawsuit on you so quick you can’t even blink, keep you in court for years and drain you financially.

But even if you overcome that hurdle… You have to ask yourself: Where does this company get barrels of crude oil? Do they own their own oil fields? And if so, do they produce enough of it to turn it into fuel for your car? The price of a barrel of oil is a complicated matter. It’s not just controlled by the oil mogul you are boycotting. And by the way, if the oil company slashes their price for fuel, you may have just put your local filling station out of business. Gas stations make only a few cents per gallon. That’s why there is always a giant store behind it where they sell a bunch of other things. You can’t survive selling gas at retail prices. You need the up-sell, the cup of coffee, the donut, the pack of gum to make real money. As a gas station owner you have to sell fuel at a certain price. This is made up by what the oil company charges and what the competitor down the street is doing. If the retailer just had the tanks under his store filled for the whole sale price of 3.10 a gallon and the oil company decides to lower the price to three dollars, the poor guy now has to sell the remaining gasoline with a 10 cent loss.

Then there is the reaction of buyers to the changing prices. Say your boycotted filling station is going to lower their price by ten cents. With gas prices soaring, people who typically buy another brand of fuel are going to switch. So yes, the other brands will have to follow suit to stay competitive. But once they do, the playing field is leveled out again and now we are right back where we started. Again, that is assuming you can mobilize enough people to boycott the station of your choice.

But bigger than all that, transportation is one of the largest industries. Air, rail, road, water… They all need to “gas up”. the companies that transport goods (or people for that matter) are already seeing their profits diminishing. You yourself are feeling the effects when you go grocery shopping. Your dollar isn’t just going as far anymore. The stuff that goes into your cart is simply more expensive to ship to you. And while you may be able to pump your gas anywhere you want, A trucking company has far fewer options. Telling a truck driver he has to go 20 miles out of his way because he isn’t allowed to fuel up on brand X, is simply not viable. The truck now uses more gasoline to travel the same route, the driver will be on the road longer (and thus have to be paid more) and that 18-wheeler will put more polutants in the air. Surely we don’t want that!

If you want the gas prices to go down, you gotta stop wasting it. Buy a more fuel-efficient automobile. Stop spending billions of dollars topping of the tanks of Hummers in foreign desserts. In other words: end the war in Iraq. Sell of less of our own oil supplies to foreign nations and thereby become less dependent on foreign sources of the stuff. If you really want gas prices to come down, the smartest thing you can do is go vote!

So… I get this email from PodShow (www.podshow.com). This was on January 20th of this year. Yeah I missed it. It was buried under 500 spam messages in my gmail account. Turns out some other podcast played a tune by skinny ole me!

In an episode of my own podcast, way way way back, I played the opening notes of Amazing Grace. I was just doodling around on my guitar. Gobs of distortion and soaked in reverb, I recorded it. And then used it in the Kastpod. So, as a joke I dropped it on the podsafe music network. And lo and behold, another podcaster played it. Woooohooooo! The Narangba Baptist Church in Queensland Australia has a podcast (they did 100’s of them!) and they used it in episode #253. Go here: http://www.narangbabaptist.org.au/ and check it out (It’s all the way at the end).

Kind of ironic, as irreverent I am, but I am honored nonetheless… Thanks guys!

And then the lights fail. Yikes!

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My last article may have been a little too righteous. I was getting on a rather high horse, but it’s one I don’t ever want to come down from. I believe there is no such thing as being too righteous when it comes to personal safety. I grew up in a big city. I live in a city that many consider dangerous. There are things that happen in certain places that are best avoided, and most of us agree on what they are. There are certain things you shouldn’t do (like leave your keys in the car, even when you are dumb enough not to lock it), and again, most of us agree.

It surprises me that people don’t carry over that same common sense when they are moving about online. A co-worker forwarded me a spam-message claiming he had won a foreign lottery (without ever entering the drawing, imagine that) and asked if people ever fall for those scams. The answer is simple: There is an idiot born every minute. And while you and I may not respond to requests from foreign government officials in exile wanting our bank account numbers, we do equally silly things. I’ll be the first to admit, I do them too and I should know better, I’ve been putzing around online long enough. It’s entirely too damn hard to keep track of what piece of information you give about yourself in what place… But we have to remember, someone will connect the dots given that the incentive to do so is big enough. Call me paranoid, fine with me.

Putting your cell-phone number on a public web site. Not very smart. Giving out your location other then in vague generalities. Not so smart. Tell me have you ever done this: Putting your full address on someone’s (or your own) Frappr map? Jay Finelli did! You may not know him and neither did I until today, but you can find his address. And since he is the host of a religious podcast, someone, someday may have some beef with him. If you are boasting on your blog about your new Ferrari, you better make sure that the street sign doesn’t show in the pictures, or tomorrow your Christmas present may be gone. Call me Paranoid, fine with me.

I have of course no proof of a Ferrari ever being stolen after a picture of it was posted online, but how far fetched is it really? We use the internet every day, what makes you think criminals and lunatics don’t? Serial killers use the internet, here is an example. The good news of course is that it works the other way around as well. While it’s a slap in the face to your civil liberties that your internet usage can be so easily traced, nobody would argue that finding a serial killer is a violation of anyone’s privacy. Sorry buster, you start killing people and your privacy goes out the door.

But we have to remember that, while the good guys are using the internet to track down the bad guys, the bad guys are using the internet looking for their next victim. Righteously paranoid.

No, it has absolutely nothing to do with sex (although it easily could), but when I saw this I was absolutely dumbstruck. At its best, it’s giving telemarketers a highly targeted list of phone numbers, at its worst it’s a sinister ploy by a serial killer. Anyone that knows me, knows I don’t like Facebook too awful much to begin with. The site is a collection of privacy concerns, an example of how not to run a social network, and the constant back-peddling about it by the company’s executives is… well, vomit-inducing. The only reason I even have a Facebook account, is so that I can form my own opinion. Trust me, it isn’t a pretty one.

But while I don’t like the site, millions of others do, use it on a daily basis and seem to be quite happy with it. All the power to them. Have fun super-poking, naughty-gifting, bringing sexy back, finding out which Winnie the Pooh character you are, pillow fighting, pack-ratting and iLike-ing. While you are at it, however… You should keep an eye on your safety. Your personal, physical safety that is. Remember, when your mom told you not to take candy from a stranger? Or when your dad said not to get in a car with someone you don’t know? Those rules still apply!

So when I was surfing Facebook and came across a publicly visible message (that means anyone that logs into Facebook can see it) that read:

Peyton Couch (***** High School) wrote at 10:04pm yesterday - 555-5555

I was dumbfounded! Here is a girl who openly lists where she goes to school, and gives the world her cell phone number to boot! Yes her name is really Peyton Couch, but I did change the rest of the info to protect the innocent. But Peyton, my stars, how naive can you be? A serial killer probably doesn’t care about your phone number. He has seen your profile picture (so now knows what you look like) and he knows which school you go to. One afternoon he might just follow you home. Come to think of it, you are probably doing yourself a favor listing your cell phone number. When you lie in the woods, raped, with your throat slit, all those hundreds of morons you don’t know that are going to ring your phone, may just help get you found quicker. Better yet, one of the telemarketers that now also has your number, might be selling funeral arrangements… Wouldn’t that be a hoot.

No even better, why don’t you forward your cell number to Mallory Cowan’s. She is also on that list. Maybe she is still alive when the calls start pouring in. Hopefully she can figure out what happened to you. So what am I going on about? Let me quickly clue in the uninitiated.

Facebook allows you to join a network. A network is a group of people with similar interests, or maybe the same geographical proximity. Within those networks anyone can create a group. Sort of like a network within the network. The group this story is about is called “New phone, please join”. When Josh Hill created it, he probably thought it would be nice (now that he has a new phone) to quickly collect a list of numbers to add to his address book. I don’t think Josh is very savvy, when it comes to privacy and/or safety. And neither are the 70 people who put their phone number in. As of this writing, the latest sucker is Robyn Peete, she put her number on a web site for the entire world to see… some 20 minutes ago.

That same Robyn Peete, can also be found in another group that has the sole purpose of listing phone numbers. The Facebook group “New phone, please join” links to: “OLIVIAS PHONE BROKE AND SHE NEEDS NUMBERS PRETTY PLEASE”. Our friend Robyn put her number on that one at Christmas day of 2007. 76 people gave their phone number in that group! At least Robyn was smart enough not to list her school. But how hard can it be to get her address? All I have to do is dial the number she listed and make up some excuse as to why I need it. That’s called social engineering. I have at least 3 books sitting on the shelf that describe how hackers used to steal passwords that way from unsuspecting system administrators. Can your teenager be trusted not to fall for such a stunt? She has already freely given out her cell number!

I seriously wonder what these kids watch on TV. Obviously it is not the news (or even the commercials in between) or they would by now, know about identity theft. And that, is really the least of their problems. There are whole law-enforcement units specialized in catching online perpetrators, they sit in chat rooms all day to catch people trying to lure kids into having sex (the perps, not the cops). Maybe some of their money, or more of their money, needs to be put towards educating our youth that the internet is really not as friendly as it seems.

But it starts with us! We need to teach our kids to be careful. I mean, you told them them not to take candy from a stranger, right?