At lunch on Friday with one of our site partners, I was talking about how the predicted slump in spending might actually increase online ad dollars while it decreases those for more “traditional” media like TV and radio. My reasons for this were the facts that (a) online is increasingly taking dollars away anyway and […]

Yesterday, we took the family to a local fair to enjoy the sights, sounds, rides, and food that go along with it. My wife, Lisa, a vegetarian, took great interest in the fresh veggie wraps at one of the food stands. While we were there, Amanda Dumond, a reporter from the local paper, was doing […]

Joe Zawinul passed away this morning at the age of 75. No other details have been released yet. Terrible news. Though, of course, he outlived most of his peers by a longshot. First concert I ever saw was Weather Report at the Beacon Theater. I think I was 9. Still remember it like it was […]

Everyone who bought an <insert name of gadget here> on day 1 *knows* that it’s going to be cheaper at some point down the road.

The fact that this is a *headline* today is news in and of itself.I can’t believe this even needed to be considered. Of *course* privately-run blogs unfunded by candidates are exempt from FEC regulations!

Garrick Van Buren had an interesting post yesterday about a sponsorship he remembered from a 17-month-old episode of Evil Genius Chronicles, a podcast that we represent.Though Garrick’s words say that podcast advertising doesn’t work, his very post proves the opposite…. If it were within the last 6 months, I can bet you he would have remembered that it was iPodJuice who sponsored the show.The best part is because he blogged about it, Dave Slusher (the host) responded, and now the sponsor is getting even more traction from an ad that was written off on *last* year’s taxes.

I’ll post more about the results of the others when we’re ready in a few days, but today I can talk about the Association for Downloadable Media, which had it’s first “member” conference call today.The ADM’s mission is to bring together the podcast/portable media community, help define some best practices, and make it easier and more comfortable for advertisers to sponsor the content…. With that, BackBeat Media is happy to be a corporate member of the ADM, and you can expect us to take an active role in furthering the cause here.

It’s time to change my cell phone number. A year ago I migrated to a New Hampshire number and got 603-781-9445. Ever since, I’ve been getting wrong numbers, often to the tune of 3 or 4 daily. The problem is that parts of northern Massachusetts use area code 781 and, yep, there’s a 944 exchange […]

When I had my Eames drumset built back in 1997, the original intention was to use a rack to hold the toms. When I mentioned this to my bandmates at the time, they couldn’t have been more adamantly against that. Apparently, they had a bad experience with a drummer whose rack was too big. So […]

The Mac Observer will be on hand providing live coverage, if technically possible, and we look forward to seeing what happens.The “technically possible” part was complicated this time because Bryan, our on-site editor, recently converted to the iPhone, a device that technically doesn’t allow tethering — that is, using it as a wireless modem for a laptop. Thankfully, Michael Johnston of iPhoneAlley.com pointed us in the right direction and got Bryan set up with a WiFi-to-iPhone bridge that will hopefully allow him to post easily.