Blogumentary [chuck olsen]

Letter to Travelocity: Air America Blacklisted?

An email to Travelocity.com: I just read that travelocity.com has requested its ABC networks advertising be banned from airing on Air America programming. This greatly concerns me, as I'm sure it will lots of other Travelocity customers who are fans of liberal talk radio. Before I boycott Travelocity and encourage others to do the same, can you provide an explanation? Link: http://mediamatters.org/items/200610310008 Sincerely, C. Olsen Travelocity customer and Air America listener No response yet. Write them here.

Cool Brit Videoblog

The Delicate Museum, a lovely name for a videoblog. I found it searching for "museum videoblog" - anybody know of any actual museums harnessing the power of online video?

Protest: Only $1

Dollar Bills - the protest flyers people can't afford to throw away.

Rocketboom for Travel?

Check out Travelistic. A global travel site with user-submitted video has been a good idea waiting to happen - so far, I like what they're doing. Apparently it's headed up by a former head of MTV's online strategy. The bad news is they want to do pre-roll ads instead of post-roll. Big THUMBS DOWN to that -- if they really want to be the Rocketboom of travel, they'll go with user-friendly post-roll ads.

I've uploaded a few videos from Minnesota Stories and one from Korea. They liked those enough to make me a "User Spotlight" which is very nice. Uptown Art Car Parade is currently the #2 rated video. I do wonder, what's the benefit for a video producer to share content with Travelistic? Traffic, more notoriety, public service... cold hard cash? They probably won't pay if they don't have to, but I'd sure like to see a little revenue sharing in return for sharing my content.

I know, I'm so demanding.

VlogWarz

I got an email from BusinessWeek's vlogxpert Heather Green looking for a comment on the Rocketboom - Ze Frank dustup. I sorta don't care, and didn't think I had anything to add, but then I burped up a few thoughts:

I'm glad you made the point about Alexa, because it's really apples and oranges. iTunes and Tivo obviously don't have an Alexa toolbar.

A long time ago Andrew said "Since every RB page has an embedded video, a page view is intent to watch a video." Make of that what you will. I'm personally happy to host Minnesota Stories video on Blip.tv now because it clearly shows me video stats, separate from general site stats.

Rocketboom is coming up on two years of being a leader in videoblogging and forging lots of partnerships. Ze has every right to question the stats but I would not be surprised if Rocketboom really has 10 times his video traffic.

UPDATE: Scoble says we need to look at engagement, not just stats. I guess that's pretty obvious but worth repeating. I'd rather have a small engaged audience than a large passive one. Both Ze and Rocketboom have high engagement, I'd say. As for likability, well, I'm staying out of that one!

In other news, I'll be at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington tomorrow with Jen Simmons talking to their Film Studies Department about vlogs and film. Chasing Windmills, Lost, lonelygirls, oh my!

Helpful Candidate Links

Courtesy of MyDD:

AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
AZ-01: Rick Renzi
AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
CA-04: John Doolittle
CA-11: Richard Pombo
CA-50: Brian Bilbray
CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
CO-05: Doug Lamborn
CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
CT-04: Christopher Shays
FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
FL-16: Joe Negron
FL-22: Clay Shaw
ID-01: Bill Sali
IL-06: Peter Roskam
IL-10: Mark Kirk
IL-14: Dennis Hastert
IN-02: Chris Chocola
IN-08: John Hostettler
IA-01: Mike Whalen
KS-02: Jim Ryun
KY-03: Anne Northup
KY-04: Geoff Davis
MD-Sen: Michael Steele
MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
MN-06: Michele Bachmann
MO-Sen: Jim Talent
MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
NV-03: Jon Porter
NH-02: Charlie Bass
NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
NM-01: Heather Wilson
NY-03: Peter King
NY-20: John Sweeney
NY-26: Tom Reynolds
NY-29: Randy Kuhl
NC-08: Robin Hayes
NC-11: Charles Taylor
OH-01: Steve Chabot
OH-02: Jean Schmidt
OH-15: Deborah Pryce
OH-18: Joy Padgett
PA-04: Melissa Hart
PA-07: Curt Weldon
PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
PA-10: Don Sherwood
RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
TN-Sen: Bob Corker
VA-Sen: George Allen
VA-10: Frank Wolf
WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
WA-08: Dave Reichert

An assortment of important things

• Check out my sweet-ass interview on Amanda Across America. It's fun.
• Today is Rocketboom's 500th episode. They're coming up on 2 years - wowzers.
• I'm excited to make something for the Halloween Videoblog Festival.
• CBGB closed. Glad I got to see some punk rock there. I remember The Go closed their set with a cover of Gloria. I remember Joey Ramone asked me for a light. (Just kidding.)
• Stranger Than Fiction - I'm a sucker for "meta-" themed movies. I'm also a sucker for Will Ferrell. And most certainly for Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Iowa: Land of Meat, Liquor and Vlog

Super giant thanks to dynamic vlog-duo Jennifer Proctor and Aaron Valdez of Iowa City Microcinema for hosting a sweet vlog weekend in America's heartland. My co-conspiratoree was played by none other than Chris Weagel, he of Human Dog.

I arrived just in time to screen Blogumentary and have a couple pitchers of Shiner afterward. I met some cool philosophy grad students who drank lots of delicious single malt Irish whiskey, which they followed up with Eraserhead and Nintendo. Those are my kinda people. Weagel acquired some excellent meat-and-doll-themed antique postcards for The Pan. I followed suit with some creepy postcards for the Koven.

Also, apparently one of the kitties be-gifted us with a dead chipmunk. I slept near it on the couch, unaware yet feeling protected and loved.

CHUCK'S NEXT STOPS:
University of North Carolina - Wilmington
Chicago (King Tut, Robert Pollard show, etc.)
San Francisco (The Vloggies!)

WATCHY WATCH:
Vlogging AllStars - Jennifer's vlog class in action
This Week in Mind Control - supplementary evidence of Valdezatronic genius
YONO, pt.3 - Jon Yono is many things. American is not one of them.

Brr!

In the background: Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack interviewed by Amanda Congdon. Here's Part 1, Part 2 will be even better I think.

A Letter from Christopher Tolkien's Lawyer

I never imagined, when attempting to read The Simarillion in high school , that I would one day get a letter from Christopher Tolkien's lawyer. Today is that day!

The letter is a response to this blog post ("CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN IS A BIG PRICK") from January 2004. Yes, it was a little harsh. But many Tolkien fans were upset by published news articles saying  Christopher Tolkien was unreasonably opposed to the Lord of the Rings films and was impeding any possibility of The Hobbit reaching the silver screen.

Tolkien's lawyer looks like quite an affable fellow, doesn't he? I have complied with their requests to the best of my ability, all detailed in the revised blog post ("CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN IS APPARENTLY A CHARMING AND NOBLE OLD CHAP, PRONE TO OCCASIONAL BOUTS OF STUBBORN PRICKISHNESS."). My very favorite part of this whole affair is their demand that I publish the following statement:

(5)  Christopher Tolkien does not guard his house with a wild boar.

Of course he doesn't... (barely suppressed laughter) Tolkien's Internet Movie Database bio says otherwise. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to make up your own mind on the presence of boars on Mr. Tolkien's estate.

On a more serious note - can any legal folk tell me if I need to worry about comments on my blog post calling Tolkien a "big prick" (my words) "friggin' bastard" (blog commenter)? This was a common reaction among some Tolkien fans to news reports that Tolkien was holding up a film adaptation of The Hobbit.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Blogger's Guide to Defamation strongly suggests I'm well within my legal rights, due to Tolkien's status as a (obviously rather sensitive) public figure, my lack of "actual malice," my quoting of published news articles on this controversial matter, and this web site's status as a blog – which are opinionated forums by nature.

SITES LINKING TO THIS POST: Tolkien News, MNspeak