Put the same event on Saturday and Sunday (or, heaven forbid, a *holiday*), and it’s a royal pain in the ass — something which they’re likely not going to attend unless they’re absolutely forced to go…. Of course, those of us in business for ourselves know that work often extends into hobby time, and often the lines are blurred between what’s work and what’s a hobby, but we’re not the ones who need to be convinced and educated about new mediums like podcasting.

In my view, the only valid reason to be a reporter is a strong desire to have a front-row seat so as to rush out and tell everyone else what you have seen…. Politics, next door over.This comes from my friend, Dennis Powell, now writing a column for The Athens News (yes, in Ohio).

On Friday, it was all over the AP that Universal Music plans to go after YouTube and MySpace in an attempt to pierce the “safe harbor” veil that’s been protecting these online services from the actions committed by their users…. This egg *is* going to crack eventually, and the companies that change their strategy first will be in a much better position than those who fight tooth and nail down to their last dollar.

Joe Consumer, who has nothing and is looking to get a DVR to go along with his spiffy new plasma screen, is going to sit in his living room and compare this to the one his cable company offers…. And *because* the Comcast box sucks so much, we’re actually considering the $1000 to TiVo just to get the same (basic) functionality but with a much better user interface.

So, for almost 5 hours, my “main” gmail account has been unavailable, but other accounts are fine.I did a little bit of web searching and found some people saying this has happened for days at a time…… Let this be a lesson to you kiddos: never trust anything you don’t own, and certainly don’t trust the stuff you don’t even pay for!All that aside: anyone got a contact at Google that wants to sort this out for me?

In the last 24 hours, I’ve received at least three distinct offers (via three different forms of communication) from Vonage to get in on their IPO, an offer being made to existing customers who meet a certain set of criteria. While this certainly sounded tempting when I got the first notification via e-mail yesterday, especially to someone who was investing in the market “back the the day” when “tech IPO” meant “gravy train to the bahamas,” by the time I got my second notification in the PO Box this morning, I started scratching my head.

…otherwise they’ll just keep on stealing, and that couldn’t possibly be good for them or their general karma, could it?I’m referring to the add/drop scheme, described in great detail by Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy. In a nutshell, folks “in the know” can register domain names (by paying their fee), sit on them for 5 days (earning search engine affiliate revenue all the while), then cancel the registration and get their money back.

My friend, Ron Marks, posted a great note in his blog that really highlights the fact that, as a society, we’re way too over protective and litigious than we used to be (and yes, obviously the two go hand-in-hand)…. protect them TOO much, though, and I truly believe you actually wind up *hurting* them, and in a very big way.

this thing is bigger than all of us. We all need to take a big step back and accept that the pie is going to get sliced up, the direction is going to be decided by everyone involved, and some things may happen that piss some of us off…. Hell, The Mac Observer shows up, too, and we throw our own kick-ass party, but that doesn’t mean we don’t invite the folks from Macworld to it.

The RIAA and the MPAA are frantically trying to thwart anything that gets in the way of their stodgy old business model…. heck, it’s a mafia.In between your downloads on bittorrent, Kazaa, and Gnutella, go tell ’em we’ll break their kneecaps if they try anything like this again…