"The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers." Arthur Koestler

"Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing." Paul Valery

"The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly." Vance Packard

Today's image: Kauai Postcard by konaboy. Great shot. Thanks for sharing.



AOL Radio (with CBS Radio on board) on the new iPhone 2.

Tech maven Leo Laporte posted the following on FriendFeed yesterday morning...

"Pandora is great, too. It's the death knell for broadcast radio."

Clearly, CBS Radio gains an advantage with iPhone users.

There are still some issues here, it's early. One comment on Leo's post said "Useless, until I can run it in the background" (pb30).

Perhaps the biggest issue is not with this single app but with iPhone penetration. One million units sold in the first weekend is impressive but in context still a small number. Apple is saying iPhone and iPod users have downloaded ten million apps from the new App Store.

This all gets interesting when developers offer AOL Radio, Pandora and other radio/music apps across more mobile platforms.

My thanks to Leo Laporte for the image.

Doh!: My sense is Leo and Jeff Jarvis [related], have both missed the big picture here. They are enjoying broadcast radio content on another platform. This marks not the end of broadcast but a beginning, access of broadcast content via another media.

Reviewing the bidding: Aaron Landry provides a good overview of iPhone mobile social networking apps. All the usual suspects are here. Kudos, Aaron. Well done.

Last.fm: iPhone demo


Last.fm iPhone Demo from Toby on Vimeo.

Congrats & cheers: BuzzFeed & Jonah Peretti on securing their $3.5 mil first round [via CNET]

LATER: Kelly O'Keefe weighs in via comment...

"What this suggests is that those people (myself included) who won't give up their iPhones and iPod, prefer these devices with a healthy serving of radio. After all, AOL Radio, mentioned above, is powered by broadcast radio."

Bravos, Kelly! Well said.

"I have also thought about calling a conference, since a conference is a gathering of important people, who, singly, can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done." Fred Allen

"Applause is the only appreciated interruption." Arnold Glasow

"Chance is a word devoid of sense, nothing can exist without a cause." Voltaire

Today's image: Sunset at the blue lagoon by asmundur. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

Some great stuff from recent reading, listening...

Killer quote by Timesman David Carr during last week's IWM The Future of Media event: "Free, the only price point that matters." Bravos, David!

Spot-on observation by Michael Ruhlman quoted in the NYTBR "Recipes are guides and suggestions for a process that is infinitely nuanced. Recipes are sheet music." Brilliant! Kudos, Michael.

Closed circuit to the CBS Radio Player (beta) team: Pop-unders are so not cool. Please tell David Goodman he needs to find another way. Listening done via the AOL domain. Hint: where are they hiding the radio option in the nav? Had to use search to find it. The assets need to be discoverable!

The Steve Jobs 3G iPhone WWDC announcement, edited to less than 90 seconds here via Mahalo...




Radio programming and marketing ace Lee Arnold delivers on the basics, again. Read Rocket Surgery Pt. 2 here. Kudos, Lee. Well done!

"Men count up the faults of those who keep them waiting." French proverb

"The net of the sleeper catches fish." Greek proverb

"The silent dog is always the first to bite." German proverb

Today's image: Hot Club lead guitar by slambo 42. Cool shot. Thanks for sharing.

Started The Craftsman, the new book by Richard Sennett. Richard is professor of sociology at NYU and The London School of Economics.

"The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake. Theirs is a practical activity, but their labor is not simply a means to another end. The carpenter might sell more furniture if he worked faster; the technician might make do by passing the problem back to her boss; the visiting conductor might be more likely to be rehired if he watched the clock. It's certainly possible to get by in life without dedication. The craftsman represents the special human condition of being engaged."

"All craftsmanship is founded on skill developed to a high degree. By one commonly used measure, about ten thousand hours of experience are required to produce a master carpenter or musician. Various studies show that as skill progresses, it becomes more problem-attuned, like the lab technician worrying about procedure, whereas people with primitive levels of skill struggle more exclusively on getting things to work. At its higher reaches, technique is no longer a mechanical activity; people can feel fully and think deeply what they are doing once they do it well. It is at the level of mastery, I will show, that ethical problems of craft appear.

The emotional rewards craftsmanship holds out for attaining skill are twofold: people are anchored in tangible reality, and they can take pride in their work. But society has stood in the way of these rewards in the past and continues to do so today. At different moments in Western history practical activity has been demeaned, divorced from supposedly higher pursuits. Technical skill has been removed from imagination, tangible reality doubted by religion, pride in one's work treated as a luxury. If the craftsman is special because he or she is an engaged human being, still the craftsman's aspirations and trials hold up a mirror to these larger issues past and present."

The Craftsman, Chapter One, The Troubled Craftsman. Amazon info. My thanks to radio programming ace Tom Teuber for the tip on professor Sennett.

Bonus: Charlene Li, a Forrester researcher, has written an interesting post, The Future of Social Networks: Social networks will be like air. Read her post here. Related slides from her talk are here. She suggests in future business models "Each person will have their own 'personal CPM'" endorsing a notion put forward by JWT's rock star of trendspotting Marian Salzman - my sense is Charlene and Marian are exactly right. Kudos, Charlene! Well done.

Closed circuit to Sean McManus: Now that you've decided to look for a new EP for The Early Show, you and Rick Kaplan should take a meeting with Michael Rosenblum. My suggestion is any further attempts to "get better" in order to close the gap on NBC and ABC will not be productive. Think "get different" and reinvent the breakfast show. Michael can help. P.S. He once worked at CBS.

Congrats & cheers: Dan Mason leading CBS Radio in joint streaming venture with AOL, CBS will manage ad sales across the combined 350 audio channels. Smart, innovation via creative collaboration. Steve Friedman and Nanci Ross launch consulting firm Vir2L Media.

Charlie Rose interviews Chris Anderson curator of TED



Charlie Rose interviews Chris Anderson of WIRED Magazine



Charlie Rose interviews Michael Arrington of TechCrunch