"Poetry is the shortest way of saying something. It lets us express a dime's worth of ideas, or a quarter's worth of emotion, with a nickel's worth of words." John Grier

"Most clear writing is a sign that there is no exploration going on. Clear prose indicates the absence of thought." Marshall McLuhan

"The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends." Andrew Carnegie

Today's image: Head Above Water by Philippe Sainte-Laudy. Amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Leadership: Robert X. Cringely offers us some wisdom, thanks to Janna Raye...

"Modern corporations suffer from systemic-level issues that emerge in top-down hierarchies. Managers are there to control staff and budgets, not to lead. Although you can make valiant and often successful attempts to control things and processes, you will never again be able to control people. We've evolved, basically, and the information age has had a lot to do with it. So we still "manage" companies the same way as when we actually operated assembly lines in America--the good old days! Now, people need leaders, not managers, and that's what a fractal organization enables.

"In fractal organizations, it's the staff deciding how to continuously improve processes in their functional areas for efficiency of time and resources. These organizations thrive with a new pay model also, based upon results or value of work delivered and not how much time it takes to do the task. Those who are really good will get to go home early! These are not the organizations that are shrinking. Like galaxies, they continue to expand, actually aided by a strong gravitational pull of the leaders at the center. Those who do it well create a compelling vision and keep it alive. They allocate resources to projects that align with the vision, and reward arm- and team-cluster leaders for the creative ideas their staff bring to the organization. It's a shared vision and collective goals that are missing from the vast majority of organizations, which is why failing projects continue to drain resources. Really caring about what you do and feeling proud to be a part of something special and wonderful is what every human desires, even if they say they don't."

Read Robert's entire post here. Bravos, Cringely, well done.

Thank you very much: Marketing maven Tom Asacker kind enough to send along his very cool new book, A Little Less Conversation, Connecting with Consumers in a Noisy World. [Amazon info]. More on Tom's writing after the reading.

Congrats & cheers: Radio programming ace Mark Pennington promoted to PD of legendary Detroit rocker WRIF. Well deserved. Thanks to Lee Arnold for the tip. Adult Alt bows on AccuRadio today. Kudos Tom Teuber, Kurt Hanson and all involved. NPR launches online community, smart. [Related: NPR]

"None are more liable to mistakes than those who act only on second thoughts." Luc de Vauvenargues

"Problems always appear big when incompetent men are working on them." William Feather

"Patience is bitter, but its fruits are sweet." Jean Jacques Rousseau

Today's image: Dreamy World by dhahi alsaeedi. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

The Slow Growth of HD Radio. The assiduous Tom Webster of Edison Media Research reviews the bidding and makes a suggestion...

"HD has to start with great, new digital brands first, with distribution over HD receivers AND online, and at least some of these have to be big, high profile national shows. Radio's goal should be compelling digital brands for the future, and in that context HD radio is just one means of distribution...The solution is not a programming issue but an HR strategy issue."

Bravos to Tom. He's right, it's not either/or, rather it's an issue of AND. Read Tom's entire post here. Thanks, Tom. Let's keep the conversation moving forward.

Let me suggest we run with Tom's concept of "big, high profile national shows" AND continue local innovation (e.g., The gifted programmer Mark Pennington and his award winning offering - RIFF2)

The national creative is getting better. My thought is it still lacks the power of localization. It needs the local tag, that specific and very local "door buster" to drive retail. It's what Rob Walker calls "the Desire Code...(his) name for the complex factors, rational and otherwise, that spark us to make particular purchase decisions." [via]. It's what Douglas Atkin refers to saying "The time has arrived for brands to take their place among others as new iterations of community in contemporary society." [via]. The first tribe of wireless has the ability to create communities from scratch practically overnight. Nothing subtle about this, what's needed now is full on, in your face, retail selling, take the gloves off stuff engaging the Reptilian brain. Let's agree to stop playing around and commit every industry resource to a full blown initiative of Manhattan Project or Moon shot scale. Let's agree to put every advantage available into play and create our own future. It's analog, it's digital, it's online, it's wireless in every configuration. Every platform matters.

Doc Searls: The new business of free radio. Doc understands the big picture as few do. Have to disagree with his notion of towers being less useful in the future. As it pertains to analog, agreed but HD Radio offers the potential of a unique depth and richness of practical apps. Wireless wins.

Stay tuned: I'm willing to wager that branding wizard Kelly O'Keefe and team have something special up their Radio 2020 sleeve.

Now, on the N=1 Tech desk: The uber-cool tech maven Dave Winer. Thanks to a wee bit of script this blog now features a preview of Dave Winer's TechJunk, Hot Product News for Tech Innovators. Check it out, left column. Use the link and put it in your reader. Thanks, Dave!

Summary judgment: Song of the Summer of 08 - I Kissed a Girl, Katy Perry [YouTube]. After conferring with radio programming aces Brian Kelly and Mark Edwards, advantaged, as well, by the considered opinion of pop music aficionado Austin Johnson, it seems fair to pronounce Katy the winner.

NPR API, the back story: Steve Gillmor delivers the goods with NPR's Dennis Haarsager, Zach Brand and Daniel Jacobson via The Gillmor Gang here. Kudos to Steve for a good show. Bravos to Dennis for his refreshing and exceptional leadership. Highly recommended (the show and Dennis' leadership)

Run that by me one more time: WGCI is a top ten no show in the 12 to death pre-currency Chicago PPM data. Here's the 12+ ranker. 1. WGN 2. WDRV 3. WBBM-AM 4. WTMX 5. WUSN 6. WLS-FM 7. WVAZ 8. WLS-AM 9. WLIT 10t. WLEY, WOJO. 25-54 pers, WDRV #1, WTMX #2. The headline news for me was reach. 12+ cume - WDRV #1. WLIT #2. WTMX #3.

Congrats & cheers: Early happy birthday wishes to the one year old My Damn Channel (7/31). Web 2.0 ace Rob Barnett and his gang of co-conspirators are writing their own sheet music. It sounds, and looks, mighty cool. Facebook signs search and advertising deal with Microsoft (MySpace has a somewhat similar deal with Google).

Closed circuit to Google: I'm lovin my iGoogle but what's up with the slow loading of GMail? Seems to be getting even slower, more often than not requiring a reload prompt..."This is taking longer than usual. Try reloading the page." Is it a bug that is part of the iGoogle "experiment"? Have anything to do w/Firefox 3?

It's a social thing: Best line of last week, Jason Calacanis..."FriendFeed drinks Twitter's milkshake." My thought is last summer Twitter was white hot, this summer it's FriendFeed that's clearly on. Twitter fail?

"The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are." John Burroughs

"Whatever we succeed in doing is a transformation of something we have failed to do. Thus, when we fail, it is only because we have given up." Paul Valery

"In prosperity, caution; in adversity, patience." Dutch proverb

Today's image: untitled by melinka!. Great shot. Thank you for sharing.

Early returns: Pandora kills on iPhone. Adding a new listener every two seconds, average time spent is over an hour a day. Jason Kincaid blogs Pandora Usage Stats Prove It's iPhone's Killer App here. Kudos, Jason and congrats to team Pandora.

This is how he rolls: Frank Gruber drives to work in DC and listens to Chicago radio thanks to AOL Radio and his iPhone. Check out the vid. Thanks for sharing, Frank. Very cool.


AOL Radio iPhone App [Episode 33 - SOMEWHAT FRANK TV] from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

Bonus: Apple's walled garden. Dave Winer puts it out there (again) and he's right. Bravos, Dave.

Congrats & cheers: NPR opens new API. Very smart! Public media leads, commercial media follows, or not.


Social Media Landscape graphic thanks to Fred Cavazza [Related post] Click graphic to enlarge. Closed circuit to Fred - you need to add disqus.

"Obviousness is always the enemy to correctness." Bertrand Russell

"The most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences." John Allen Paulos

"The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future." Mark Twain

Today's image: Dancing with clouds by Beat. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

New NewsGang Live: The latest podcast w/ Steve Gillmore and Doc Searls featuring NPR iCEO Dennis Haarsager and Stephen Hill from Hearts of Space. Listen in here (MP3). 80 minutes.

First tribe of wireless gets the order: Yahoo! turns to radio ads to lure Google Web searchers. CNET's Elinor Mills has the story here.

Congrats & cheers: Jeff Jarvis signs a book deal. Microsoft to debut Blews, an aggregation of political blogs.

"Painting changes space into time; music time into space." Hugo von Hofmannsthal

"Art produces ugly things that frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things that always become ugly with time." Jean Cocteau

"Art is the cult of error." Francis Picabia

Today's image: Gokce by rimedhitaf. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Interesting stuff learned on the way to other learning. Crossword puzzles were first published in 1913 by the World, a Pulitzer paper in New York city. Crosswords became all the rage in the late teens and widely adopted in the popular culture of the 1920s. Timesmen looked down on the crossword as a "game" not worthy of space in the news hole. The first Times crossword finally debuted in 1942. There's a lesson in adoption here. Further, another exhibit in the case against so-called first mover advantage, the canard "first in wins" (the finest examples remain Hydrox v Oreo and Yahoo v Google). You heard it here last - incumbency is practically irrelevant.

400 year death spiral continues: Who won the National Headliner Awards for Online Videography? The winners were all dead tree guys. Michael Gay has details via LR here.

Being afraid (denial at end-stage): Newsweek embraces the flawed arguments of Andrew Keen and claims experts are "in" while amateurs are "out" (Revenge of the Experts). Howard Owen opines here, Terry Heaton's take here. Kudos to Howard and Terry!

The NPR shakeup: Dennis Haarsager breaks it down here. Bravos, Dennis! Good luck. Related - Trouble for NPR by Jeff Jarvis w/comments here.

Bonus: Brooke Gladstone interviews Clay Shirky via OTM here. Thanks, Brooke! The gap between "thought and action" has become a click.

Congrats & cheers: Branding and marketing ace Michael Fischer has started blogging here. Jeff Jarvis for pointing out the obvious during his conversation with Howie on Reliable yesterday. Jeff said the POTUS race is really all about the "job interview." Amid all of the inside baseball about the campaigns kudos to Jeff on some needed perspective. Ken Stern leaving NPR in better shape than he first found it (stay tuned, his finest hour is yet to come). Bobby Rich, my favorite rich guy and radio legend, gets well deserved recognition via Erica Farber's Publishers Profile here.

Spanish red: Garnacha de Fuego. Old Vines 2006. 100% Garnacha. A very good value at $10.