19 June, 2009

Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com

SETH’S BLOG A VC

Two ways to build trust Why I’d Like To Be In SF On

JUN 19, 2009 06:45A.M.
June 23rd
You can be a trusted institution or a trusted individual. JUN 19, 2009 06:13A.M.

A few weeks ago, I set out to buy some imprinted items. I probably If there was one event I’d like to be at next week it would be the “people’s
looked at a dozen t-shirt options online before I picked CustomInk. Why choice awards” on Tuesday night at 7pm at Mezzanine in San Francisco.
did I pick them? It’s actually not called “the people’s choice awards”, it’s called the Boxee
Dev Challenge.
They weren’t the cheapest (but it’s actually very hard to compare). I
picked them because the site is clean and professional. I liked that But I call it the “people’s choice awards” because Boxee is going to show
they’re not weasels (they quote actual prices and actual ship dates) and what happens when you let the viewers determine what channels they
they have non-trivial, easy to use software that makes it easy to upload want on their TV. Instead of the “500 channels and nothing’s on”
graphics and build a shirt. programming that the cable companies deliver, Boxee is going to show
what hackers working on open source software for your TV can do in less
Taken together, they earned my trust. There were plenty of sites with than a month.
lousy typefaces and come-on pricing and bait and switch and clever
Google ads, but none of this works on me. What works is someone Here’s a taste of it:
walking the walk while they talk a good game.
The Amie Street channel
Interestingly, I bought the hats from a totally different business. Roberts The Any Clip channel
Specialty couldn’t be less formal or carefully built. It’s clearly a family The We Are Hunted channel (my personal favorite)
run business, and their lack of spin and hustle hit exactly the right tone. The National Film Board channel
When you want to order, you send an email to Tony Bennett (you gotta The WatchUWant channel
love the fact that his name is Tony Bennett) and he sends an email back. The PokerStars channel
How old fashioned. How trustworthy. The Twitter channel
The Movie Times channel
One reason that so many hard sell businesses fail is that they are neither. The Local Video channel
They aren’t (or don’t appear to be) trustworthy institutions, nor are they The Radio Controlled Devices channel
trustworthy humans. So we move on. You do 95% of it right, then use The ABC7 News (KGO) channel
cheesy fonts or lie a bit or try too hard and boom, that’s it. The Twitter/YouTube/News channel (another favorite)
The Videogames channel
The BBC channel
The Mozy Backup Your Media channel
MARSHAL SANDLER .COM The Ethnic TV channel
The I Can Has Cheeseburger channel
Two ways to build trust The Cobra Snake channel
JUN 19, 2009 06:19A.M. The Open Courseware channel (talk about hacking education!)
The UK Open University channel
Two ways to build trust: You can be a trusted institution or a trusted The L8R channel (watch later project)
individual. A few weeks ago,... The C Dans L’Air channel
The Bass Fishing channel
The Boxee Queue channel (watch later project)
The Weather channel
The Daily Kitten channel
The HotForWords channel

1
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

The Guild channel

The Facebook Photos channel
The Drop.io channel
The White House channel

and that is just what has been submitted so far. There’s another five days
left in the contest so I expect the final list will be twice as long.

Imagine if your set top box had an “app store” like the iPhone has. That’s
what Boxee is all about. You put Boxee on your TV and let hackers
around the world build channels and you pick which ones you want on
your TV.

That future vision will be on display full tilt next Tuesday night in SF. If
the turnout is anything like the Webster Hall Boxee meetup this spring in
NYC, it will be one hell of a fun night. And so I am totally bummed that I
can’t be there. I hope you can.

This Should Be a Good Fish Fry

MARSHAL SANDLER .COM
Devin Scillian (born January 11, 1963) is an American journalist and
No Snitches children's author. His ten books include the national bestseller A Is For
JUN 19, 2009 04:30A.M. America (2001), Fibblestax (2000), and Cosmo's Moon (2003). His most
recent book is Pappy's Handkerchief published by Sleeping Bear Press in
No Snitches 2007. S Is For Sunflower, cowritten with his wife Corey and illustrated
by Doug Bowles, won the Bill Martin, Jr. Picture Book Award [2]in 2007.
Among his fans is First Lady Laura Bush who invited him to read at the
MARSHAL SANDLER .COM White House for the 2004 Easter Egg Roll.
As a broadcast journalist, Scillian rose to prominence for his marathon
How Search Engines Might coverage of the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building from the
anchor desk of NBC affiliate KFOR-TV in 1995. The coverage he led
Identify and Handle Soft 404s brought the station a Peabody Award. He currently anchors the primary
newscasts for WDIV-TV, the NBC affiliate in Detroit. In 2007, his
and Login-Required Pages documentary on the American manufacturing crisis, "The China
JUN 19, 2009 03:47A.M. Syndrome," won an Edward R. Murrow Award, one of the highest honors
in journalism.
How Search Engines Might Identify and Handle Soft 404s and Login- While still a student at the University of Kansas, Scillian began his
Required Pages television career at WIBW-TV in Topeka, Kansas. After graduating from
the William Allen White School of Journalism at Kansas, Scillian worked
from 1985 to 1986 at WAND-TV in Decatur, Illinois. He spent the next
MARSHALSANDLER.COM three years as the main anchor at KLTV in Tyler, Texas, before moving to
KFOR in Oklahoma City in 1989.
No Snitches « Wdivflashpoint’s
No Snitches Excert
Weblog (It shows in their sentencing guidelines; Rosendall gets a year and
JUN 19, 2009 03:36A.M. Jackson gets up to five.) But I pressed Morgan on this topic and was told
that not only did he not believe Jackson should cooperate, Morgan says
he wouldn’t take any client who would. As I suggested that once Jackson
had been caught perhaps it was in everyone’s best interest to clean up the
mess and root out corruption, Morgan told me that he would hate to see
“any politician good or bad be taken down by one of our own.”

2
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

Think about that. He’d rather allow illegal and corrupt behavior than
expose it, the very act of exposing it apparently worse than the
trangression brought to light. We’ve known for some time that on the
street, there is nothing worse than being characterized as a snitch.
Threatening hip-hop laden DVDs make the rounds which serve as
warnings of what happens to those who squeal. Our prisons include
quite a few inmates who’d rather do someone else’s time than rat them
out. But I thought it was fascinating to see this fight for “street cred” find • Local newspapers, blogs and the future Image via Wikipedia “The
its way into the expensive suit of Rayford Jackson. I’ve feared that the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” —From Hamlet (III, ii,
prohibition against being a snitch has long cost Detroit too dearly in its 239) Queen Gertrude speaks these famous words to her son, Prince
fight against crime. Morgan’s logic has me wondering how much it Hamlet, while watching a play at court. Gertrude does not realize
might cost the city in its effort to move out the corrupt ravines that have that Hamlet has staged this play to trap her and her new
too long swamped it. husband,......

You’ll see the interview with Morgan and a conversation with Sam Riddle
on Sunday morning at 10 AM on Flashpoint.

-Devin

No Snitches « Wdivflashpoint’s Weblog.

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MARSHAL SANDLER .COM
No Snitches
JUN 19, 2009 03:33A.M.
Date: June 19, 2009 2:14:24 AM GMT-04:00 Subject: No Snitches
Source:...
MARSHALSANDLER.COM
How Search Engines Might
Identify and Handle Soft 404s
and Login-Required Pages
JUN 19, 2009 02:49A.M.
When people in the mideastern United States don’t hear something that
someone says, they may say “excuse me,” to ask the person whom they
are having a conversation with to repeat what they just said. If you’re
having a conversation in the Southern United States and you say “excuse
me” to get someone to repeat themselves, it might evoke a blank stare
(I’ve seen it).
Non-verbal communication that doesn’t seem to match the message sent
with words might also cause confusion and misunderstanding (been
there, too).
Many websites are set up incorrectly, in a way that when a visitor or a
search engine crawling program attempts to reach a URL that doesn’t
exist on the site and is redirected from that inaccessible URL to a
dedicated error page showing the visitor a 404 (not found) or 403
(forbidden) or 5xx (server error) message on their screen, the message in
the header from the site’s server may be a “200″ ok message, which
indicates that there isn’t a problem - even though there is.
Sometimes visitors are redirected from inaccessible URLs to a site’s main
homepage as well.
That kind of miscommunication creates confusion and can mean that
non-existent pages at accidentially mistyped or miswritten URLs or
pages that may have been removed from a Web site may be added to or
kept in a search engine’s index, even though those pages shouldn’t be
included or should be removed. And would possibly be removed if the
correct 404 or 403 or 5xx error message was sent back to a search
engine.
Some other links that might be found on the web may point to pages that
aren’t acccessible unless someone is logged in to a site, and if they aren’t,
a redirection may take them to a login page or to a page that tells them
4
19 June, 2009
that authorization is required to view the page. And those pages on the
other side of the redirect may also send 200 (ok) messages back to a
search engine, which can’t login. These links point to pages that also
shouldn’t be included in a search engine’s index.
Because a search engine receives the 200 (ok) message, it may treat
those pages as if they are actual live web pages.
When a visitor sees a page that tells them there has been a 404 error, but
the header message sent from the server indicates a 200 (ok) page, those
errors have been called “soft 404″ pages.
A new patent application from Yahoo tells us that soft 404 error pages
exist in large numbers on the Web:
According to one article, “Sic transit gloria telae: towards an
understanding of the web’s decay“, by Z Bar-Yossef et al.
(2004), it is estimated that soft 404s account for more than
twenty-five percent of the dead links on the web. The Z Bar-
Yossef article proposes a method to detect whether a
particular web page is a soft 404 page.
In an ideal World Wide Web, the right error messages should be sent
through a server error message, and miscommunication should be
avoided. Site owners should check to make sure that this kind of
misunderstanding doesn’t happen. But, as the quote above indicates, this
kind of soft 404 problem happens frequently. It is to the benefit of site
owners and search engines to avoid problems like that.
The patent application tries to identify soft 404 errors, redirects to login
pages, and other similar problems by clustering together web pages from
a site that share many similarities based upon “characteristics of the
content of the web pages” in each of those clusters.
After pages are clustered together like that based upon their content, the
process described in the patent filing tells us that it looks for a metric
involving a similarity between the URLs For each of the pages in each of
the clusters, and the similarities based upon content and URL structures
can be used to determine “similarity classes” for the URLs of pages on a
site. For example, one such class might be a “soft 404 similarity class”
The patent application is:
Unsupervised Detection of Web Pages Corresponding to a Similarity
Class
Invented by Mahesh Tiyyagura
Assigned to Yahoo
US Patent Application 20090157607
Published June 18, 2009
Filed December 12, 2007
In addition to a class for soft 404 error pages, other classes might also be
determined, such as for pages that indicate:
• Out of stock
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com
• Program exception
• Permission denied and
• Login required
The crawling of web pages usually happens independently of the
indexing of content on those pages. Before the pages are indexed, some
analysis of the content and URLs found on a site may take place,
including a process like the one described in this patent filing, which may
determine similarity classes of the web pages.
Why a Search Engine Might Want to Identify Soft 404s
Some of the reasons why a search engine might want to determine if
there are soft 404 pages on web sites can include:
1) A recognition that that the soft 404 pages and their URLs do not
pertain to useful information, which means that a search engine
wouldn’t need to index those pages.
2) Reducing (or decaying) a “freshness” value for pages linking to those
soft 404 pages, which those pages might have gained based upon a link-
based ranking algorithm. In other words, pages with dead links may rank
less highly in terms of “freshness.” If a search engine doesn’t recognize
that one or more links on a page point to soft 404 pages, it might rank
that page more highly based upon a freshness factor. Identifying soft
404s means that a search engine won’t give a page a ranking boost based
upon freshness.
3) For pages on sites that might show advertising from search engines,
where a soft 404 is shown or a requirement to login, or another
similarity class that doesn’t provide useful information, the patent filing
tells us that it is assumed that visitors are likely to want to navigate
quickly away from such pages. We’re also told that more generic
advertising might be shown on those pages, or ads that occupy more
screen real estate than for other pages on a site.
The patent filing provides some details on how pages might be clustered
together based upon their content, and how URLs might be determined
to be similar. The paper Syntactic Clustering of the Web is mentioned as
an example of a clustering and shingling technique that could be used, as
is the process described in the patent Method for Clustering Closely
Resembling DataObjects.
Conclusion
This patent application from Yahoo describes a process that might be
used when a site isn’t set up properly to communicate such things as a
proper 404 (not found) server message when a visitor might see a 404
message on a page that they view, but their browser and search engine
crawling programs get a 200 (ok) message instead.
It’s recommended that site owners fix problems like soft 404s rather
than relying upon processes like the ones described in this patent filing.
5
19 June, 2009
It’s to the benefit of the search engine and site owners to reecognize
when miscommunications like soft 404s happen, but it’s even better if
the wrong messages weren’t sent in the first place.
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MARSHALSANDLER.COM
No Snitches
JUN 19, 2009 02:14A.M.
A
MARSHALSANDLER.COM
The Future of Customer Service
JUN 18, 2009 11:50P.M.
I have talked about it before, but Customer Service across all businesses
has been changing, whether it is known externally or internally. First
and foremost the Customer has changed. I always credit this to the
popularity of Amazon reviews, Ebay ratings, and Google in general.
Beyond that the typical Customer Service workforce is changing, they
are now filled with the Gen Y, Millennial Generation or whatever the
name is today. This is a group that prefers a more flattened approach.
They want to share their feedback, and they will provide it to whoever
will listen, no matter the title of the person. They are not out to impress,
but they will drive their point home.
So what does this all mean for businesses? The approach for everyone
needs to change. Lets start off with the Gen Y group, they want to be a
integral part of the decision making process, they want to fully
understand the reasons why decisions are made and they want to be able
to provide clear feedback regarding how the business is being run.
Internally it is important to provide tools to allow team members to be
able to take this bottom up approach. Engage them in decisions and take
the time to teach them why certain decisions are made. They are eager
to learn, and they will be even more dedicated to the company when they
feel involved. In my observations, I have noticed the baby boomer
generation to be more accepting of leaders decisions. I remember at my
prior employer, when I started you would always hear “it is what it is.”
You are not going to change it, so accept it. Well that was never my
style! Anyway, the Gen X’ers, of which I am a part of, will question
things but usually in the end support the decision and move on. That has
never been my style, but for all groups I am generalizing, and I know
there are people with other styles. For companies to better run, and have
a cohesive team, it will be important to better explain and involve all
levels. The other thing to realize is if you do not, Gen Y is very
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

resourceful, and will find ways to move the needle in their favor. I have
seen many stories of this, so this will definitely be an important aspect to MARSHAL SANDLER .COM
managing. They will communicate with friends (”rally the troops”) or
even engage the topic in public via social media. But the good news is, iPhone 3.0 problem with
they are really striving to do what they think is right for the company,
and, actually in many cases, the Customer. I have been in Customer camera
Service management for many years and I have seen this many times. JUN 18, 2009 08:18P.M.
Have you ever had a call and thought the representative was not up to
par, maybe even down right rude? Many times this is not because of the iPhone 3.0 problem with camera
agent, but because they disagree with the policy and they are sending a
message to the company through you. Trust me, in my prior company I
managed quality assurance, and I did it by evaluating the company as MARSHAL SANDLER .COM
well as the representatives. You learn a lot when you start to dig into
what is occurring. Bad Hair for Everyone!
JUN 18, 2009 08:18P.M.
Now on to the Customer. From what I have seen the Customer is tired of
companies telling them what they like or dislike. Amazon reviews (I Bad Hair for Everyone!
know there were others prior, but it really took off from there in the US)
started shifting that power. Today if a product is bad, a Customer is
going to try to tell as many people as possible. This can be done through MARSHALSANDLER.COM
Amazon, but now with the popularity of places like Facebook and Twitter
there are now many places to do it. Companies have to recognize this Small (but popularly requested)
and make sure their products are at the levels they would want to
represent the brand. Now, more important then ever, service will be update to SquidThemes
leading the way. Companies have depersonalized interactions through JUN 18, 2009 07:56P.M.
self-service. There will also be a shift to personalize service again.
Measurements will shift, and in many places already have, from handle Just wanted to let you know that you can now pick a theme and add it to
time to first contact resolution and Customer satisfaction. all your lenses at once. In one click.

Beyond all this Customers are going to demand more support in ways Oh, and you don’t have to publish your lenses in order for the theme to
not noticed before. How many people have called their internet service work. Just select a theme for the lens and voila: it instantly shows up.
provider and the trouble was reported to be the router. Well from
experience I can say it may be, but companies are going to have to find This is what you’ll see in your Workshop:
ways to help with all aspects. This is not easily done, but what I foresee
is working with the entire web community to build help that is used with
Customers on calls, and for someone surfing the internet looking for
help. I am in the process of designing a way this could be done across
many spaces. Customers will be a part of the answer and they will have
the opportunity to help others. This is not new, but really has been
limited to help forums. But in the future this will be part of the help
through all channels.

I also think Customer will have a greater say in the service they received.
We have already seen this through all the surveys companies are doing,
but I think involvement will go from teaching representatives, to talking
with senior leaders. A lot of the future involves a theme I have always
said is the most important part of management: “Listening.” The funny
thing is when I interviewed for a management role at a former employer,
Vanguard, I provided that as my response. The feedback I was given was
management was much more than that. The funny thing is I used the
same response for a different management role at Vanguard a few
months later and I was hired. To this day I still believe it is the most
important aspect. Many people around you, including Customers and
staff members know so much more. It pays to listen.

6
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

2. Afterwards, grab the generate link and start dragging it:

MARSHALSANDLER.COM

Tutorial: Zemanta bookmarklet

for Google Chrome
JUN 18, 2009 07:43P.M.

Google Chrome is gaining market share and we’re getting more and more
requests for details on how to get our Zemanta Google Chrome 3. Drop it into your Bookmarks bar, on top of Chrome window, just
Bookmarklet to work, as not everyone is familiar with how bookmarklets below the address bar.
work.

1. To start, go to http://labs.zemanta.com/bookmarklet/ - and click on

the Generate button:

7
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

4. That’s it. Now Compose a new blog post or email and Click Add
Zemanta button.

2. Afterwards, grab the generate link and start dragging it:

There are a few things that you need to be careful about. “Add Zemanta”
only works when you’re composing a blog post or email in one of our
supported platforms. At the time of writing, these are: Wordpress.com
and self-hosted Wordpress.org, Blogger, TypePad, MovableType,
LiveJournal, Drupal, Ning, Tumblr, MySpace blogs, dotclear, GMail and
new Yahoo! Mail.

Zemanta Bookmarklet works with Chrome 1 and Chrome 2 as well as

Safari 4.

3. Drop it into your Bookmarks bar, on top of Chrome window, just

ZEMANTA LTD. below the address bar.

Tutorial: Zemanta bookmarklet

for Google Chrome
JUN 18, 2009 07:43P.M.

Google Chrome is gaining market share and we’re getting more and more
requests for details on how to get our Zemanta Google Chrome
Bookmarklet to work, as not everyone is familiar with how bookmarklets
work.

1. To start, go to http://labs.zemanta.com/bookmarklet/ - and click on

the Generate button:

8
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

4. That’s it. Now Compose a new blog post or email and Click Add station featuring some of my favorite DJs, including Paul van Dyk and
Zemanta button. Paul Oakenfold. As my last car started to die, I always imagined my next
upgrade would include Sirius Radio, letting me get crystal-clear music no
matter where I drove.

As you already know, I got my next car after all, and it didn’t come with
Sirius Radio. So I’ve been holding out for the company’s iPhone
application to debut. I now had this fantasy of using the line-in feature to
my car, streaming satellite radio through the iPhone and essentially
reproducing the experience. That I already have thousands and
thousands of songs in my iTunes library was really not an issue - for the
geek in me wanted it anyway.

There are a few things that you need to be careful about. “Add Zemanta”
only works when you’re composing a blog post or email in one of our
supported platforms. At the time of writing, these are: Wordpress.com
and self-hosted Wordpress.org, Blogger, TypePad, MovableType,
LiveJournal, Drupal, Ning, Tumblr, MySpace blogs, dotclear, GMail and
new Yahoo! Mail.

Zemanta Bookmarklet works with Chrome 1 and Chrome 2 as well as

Safari 4.

MARSHALSANDLER.COM

Sirius for iPhone Solves a

Problem I Don’t Have
JUN 18, 2009 07:34P.M.

Ever since I rented an Audi in 2007 while traveling that came with
satellite radio preinstalled, I have been smitten with the idea of Sirius
Radio, and specifically, the station Area, a great Dance and Electronic

9
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

Browsing Sirius Radio on my iPhone

Last night, following the release of the iPhone’s 3.0 software, I picked up
the Sirius Radio application, registered for a seven day trial, and
practically ever since, I’ve been hooked into the station Area. No
commercials and outstanding music. I’ve had my headphones cranked
up when at home, and I even hooked up Area when I have been at the
office, preferring good music to being on the phone or engaging with co-
workers.

But, surprisingly, I couldn’t get Sirius to connect when I was driving, as I

toggled back from Edge or 3G on AT&T’s network. The one place I
thought I could really use Sirius radio, so far, has been a complete zero,
saying it was unable to connect.

10
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

More: louisgray.com | | FriendFeed | E-mail | Cell: 408 646.2759

LOUISGRAY.COM

Sirius for iPhone Solves a

Problem I Don’t Have
JUN 18, 2009 07:34P.M.

Ever since I rented an Audi in 2007 while traveling that came with
satellite radio preinstalled, I have been smitten with the idea of Sirius
Radio, and specifically, the station Area, a great Dance and Electronic
station featuring some of my favorite DJs, including Paul van Dyk and
Paul Oakenfold. As my last car started to die, I always imagined my next
upgrade would include Sirius Radio, letting me get crystal-clear music no
matter where I drove.

As you already know, I got my next car after all, and it didn’t come with
Sirius Radio. So I’ve been holding out for the company’s iPhone
application to debut. I now had this fantasy of using the line-in feature to
my car, streaming satellite radio through the iPhone and essentially
reproducing the experience. That I already have thousands and
If Only I Could Pay for Just This Station...
thousands of songs in my iTunes library was really not an issue - for the
Given I already have days and days and days of music to catch up on,
geek in me wanted it anyway.
which is already at my fingertips at home or at the office, with my laptop,
and also given that I can play this music in the car whenever I want,
Sirius’ offer fits a very small niche that I would have to work very hard to
justify. And while others are complaining that Sirius has not preloaded
the app with shock jock Howard Stern or some of its sports coverage, I
don’t care for Stern, and can get all my MLB games, in audio, using the
MLB application for the iPhone.

I admit I love the station Area. Part of me wants to close my eyes and
hand over the credit card, paying $12 or so a month to get that station
alone - and just maybe I will, if I can get it to connect to the car
consistently. But realistically, the debut of Sirius radio for a platform that
already has formidable competitors in Last.fm and Pandora, not to
mention my own bloated music library, is a tough one. Only if I feel a
nagging itch to throw away more money on my music will this happen,
and if I ever get too loopy, there’s always the option provided to me by
Apple of updating my entire library to iTunes Plus for about $400.

So for the next 6 or so days, I will crank up Area. And when that free trial
ends, something dramatic will have to have happened to get me to do
more than just uninstall. (See Also: Sirius Radio Now Looks Like an
Outer Space WebVan)

11
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

Browsing Sirius Radio on my iPhone

Last night, following the release of the iPhone’s 3.0 software, I picked up
the Sirius Radio application, registered for a seven day trial, and
practically ever since, I’ve been hooked into the station Area. No
commercials and outstanding music. I’ve had my headphones cranked
up when at home, and I even hooked up Area when I have been at the
office, preferring good music to being on the phone or engaging with co-
workers.

But, surprisingly, I couldn’t get Sirius to connect when I was driving, as I

toggled back from Edge or 3G on AT&T’s network. The one place I
thought I could really use Sirius radio, so far, has been a complete zero,
saying it was unable to connect.

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

If Only I Could Pay for Just This Station...

Given I already have days and days and days of music to catch up on,
which is already at my fingertips at home or at the office, with my laptop,
and also given that I can play this music in the car whenever I want,
Sirius’ offer fits a very small niche that I would have to work very hard to
justify. And while others are complaining that Sirius has not preloaded
the app with shock jock Howard Stern or some of its sports coverage, I
don’t care for Stern, and can get all my MLB games, in audio, using the
MLB application for the iPhone.

I admit I love the station Area. Part of me wants to close my eyes and
hand over the credit card, paying $12 or so a month to get that station
alone - and just maybe I will, if I can get it to connect to the car
consistently. But realistically, the debut of Sirius radio for a platform that
already has formidable competitors in Last.fm and Pandora, not to
mention my own bloated music library, is a tough one. Only if I feel a
nagging itch to throw away more money on my music will this happen,
and if I ever get too loopy, there’s always the option provided to me by
Apple of updating my entire library to iTunes Plus for about $400.

So for the next 6 or so days, I will crank up Area. And when that free trial
ends, something dramatic will have to have happened to get me to do
more than just uninstall. (See Also: Sirius Radio Now Looks Like an
Outer Space WebVan)

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR marshal.m1@gmail.com 19 June, 2009

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