Based on the number of requests I've decided to transcribe the CalacanisCast Beta 7.... you can read the transcript below. I'm thinking about having folks (i.e. the audience) insert links in the content at the wiki. This would take some responsibility... but would be helpful. So, the idea would be to put a link on Dave's name to his blog (or wikipedia page), a link to a product mentioned on the show, etc.

I've got a great person helping me with the transcription.. he might be able to start us off with somegreat links.

best j

Jason Calacanis: Welcome to CalacanisCast beta 7:
I am here with Dave Winer the founder of RSS, OPMS...

Dave Winer: How many times are we going to do this...

Jason: I gotta do it because there are people who listen to the podcast who don't know what any of this is – so I try to be a little magnanimous about it. So...

Dave: Why don't we try this version of the CalcanisCast that we are all real jerks. No that that wouldn't come real hard to any of us, right? Based on what I've heard about all of us...
Well, not you Peter, Peter is...

Jason: Not Peter, actually. Peter is known as...

Peter Rojas: Well, I keep a low profile...

In my "what next" blog post last week I put in an inside joke about starting a gadget company with Peter designing the products. Peter picked up on it and now others are pinging me about it--but taking it seriously.

So, that leads me to the question: Could two guys in a garage create an indie gadget company?

If anyone knows what a gadget should be, and where the market is going, it's Peter. Dave Winer joked with me at dinner this past summer that Peter would make a better iPod than Steve Jobs--I think I agree. So, back to the origional question: What would it take/cost to make a gadget hardware company?

I've been to China and seen the knock-off devices (in fact, Engadget's "keeping it real... fake" covers the knock offs), so it's clear that you can make devices cheap. So, what if Peter designed a wifi-enabled media player for geeks. Like something with built in podcasting software and the ability to sync podcasts whenever and IP device is detected?

Adam Curry mentioned that someone should make a super cheap podcast MP3 player on a recent DSC.

Is this something we could actually do? What would it cost to design a media player? How many do we need to order? Who would design it? Who would built it? Anyone have insight into how to make an Mp3 player out there?

I can just imagine the "Rojas vs. Zune vs. iPod" shootout on CNET.

CalacanisCast Beta Five... if you have feedback please send me an MP3 or WAV file.

No show notes--ever!

Here is the MP3 file

If you want to subscribe go into iTunes and hit "Advanced -- Subscribe to Podcast" add this feed:

http://podcast.calacanis.com/rss.xml

Solving the "giving credit" problem in social bookmarking.

One of the things that really frustrated bloggers when digg became popular was the fact that digg insisted that users link directly to stories--not the bloggers who found the stories. So, if Boingboing or Engadget found something interesting digg instructed the community to bypass those blogs and link directly to the source information.

The result? It looked like digg found the story and the people doing the hard work--the bloggers--got no credit.

The result? digg gets credit for being the place where cool things break, when in fact many of the stories are--for lack of a better term--stolen.

Now, I understand why digg came up with the rule. There were folks acting as "middle men" between good content and digg users. They would post a good story and link to their blog which provided no value. We have the same problem at Netscape today and we tell folks to not break the "middle man" rule which states that if you link to yourself you have to provide some significant value that the original source does not.

However, this doesn't solve the giving credit for finding something cool problem.

To solve this I've asked the Netscape team to add a [via WEBSITE ] link at the end of story capsules to give credit to the bloggers who work so hard to find these stories (see image above in yellow). I understand the issue because I'm on both sides of it running a blog network and a social news site.

Bloggers should be very wary of social news sites that don't respect them with the via link. If you find the story you should get some credit for it--credit where credit is due.

This feels like the best way to solve the problem. Thoughts?

OK, it's a commercial contest... I made up the superbowl part (but heh, you never know right! :-), but this contest is super cool...

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/22/the-engadget-commercial-contest/

Update: DIGG did the right thing and turned a bunch of spammers off. The spammers are upset--total non-issue. Rock on TeamDigg... and don't let the bastards get you down!

Gosh I love/hate the blogosphere... Mena was right, you're all a bunch of #$%@#$% and we should all just be @#$%@$#% nice to each other! :-)

Today's candidate for hate: Digg!!!

It's funny... the reward for being successful in the blogosphere is now pure hate (check Scoble, Gawker, Engadget, MySpace, etc). The Internet industry used to be competitive, but because the freak contingent didn't have blogs you could basically ignore them.

Today, as a startup, the freak contingent (aka haters) can take over your life if you let them. They bait you all day long, they look for your weak spots and attack them, and the facts are--of course--secondary to the splashy headline. Anything social runs the risk of being taken over by the bastards... look at Wikipedia. It's becoming a field day for flammers, haters, stalkers, and freaks. The whole thing is on the verge of coming apart. It's total chaos.

To be honest... I kind of like.

These freaks are the best focus group you could ever have, and frankly people are learning who the freaks are who the cool people are. I don't know all the details of this case, but we all know DIGG does have some issues. Anyone doing something innovative is going to have problems.

The "wisdom of crowds" quickly becomes "the madness of the mob" in this world. DIGG is learning the hard lessons around these issue and they're are going to be just fine. However, they are going to be *first* (along with Delicious) to many of the mistakes... the person who makes the mistakes first tends to win. Finding the right solution is often a process of elimination--and you eliminate based on your mistakes.

Peter and I have talked about doing an Engadget store for a long time... looks like someone in the Midvalley Megamall in Malaysia has beat us to the punch.

Right now I can't figure out if I'm more excited or infuriated...

The Engadget birth celebration continues... amazing what folks will do for an Alienware rig!!!

This has to be the most amazing thing I've ever seen in 10 years in publishing... I've never seen such love for a brand. Amazing.

You gotta see this... 140 cakes!!!
http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/16/engadgets-birthday-cake-winners/

Bake Engadget a second birthday cake.... win this:

(Slashfood bloggers can't win!)

Whoa... four years later Peter starts a personal blog!

My old pal Tristan does a great job debunking the myth of the blogging A-List (which redeems him for the insane "value your blog based on inbound links" post :-).

The fact is the top 100 blogs represent < .01% of the traffic in the entire blogosphere... in what other medium do the top 100 artists account for the minority of the work??!?! Chris... any ideas here?!?!

Anyone can break into the "blogging A-list" in about six to 12 months if they a) blog every day and b) have something intelligent to add to the conversation.

Nice job Tristan

Whoa.... this is gonna be very cool--if true!

Wow, this is kind of scary. I wrote how YouTube was a business based on copyright infringement and used all the SNL skits on their service as an example. Now SNL has come down hard on them. [ Update: Rafat took the time out to mention my last post in relation to the SNL action--Rafat is so on point. ]

Now, let me say that a couple of things:

1. YouTube does not deserve the #1 listing on Google for Lazy Sunday. YouTube's traffic is based on exactly this phenomenon: content owners don't put their content online, some users pirates the content, and YouTube--the only place to get the pirated content--becomes the #1 Google search results.

2. SNL obviously got more from the viral nature of this promotion than anything they could ever buy. They should put every single one of the skits on the Internet *for free* and put an advertisement in front of them. They would be making at least 1M a month from this within six months. SNL should also put skits that didn't make it on the show on the Internet, as well as bloggers and other colaterial material. In fact, in short period of time SNL will have more value online than offline.

3. YouTube knows they are a heaven for pirates, but I don't think they should be shut down for it. YouTube is the telephone company and they provide dialtone. What people do with that dialtone is up to them. I beleive that.

4. YouTube is not a real business (or an innovative business). This is my main point. Let's not look at YouTube's page views and claim they are some amazing business. Napster and Kazaa had a ton of traffic too--it just wasn't web-based. If you could do an Alexa graph of Kazaa, BitTorrent, Usenet, and the old Napster they would be number one through four on Alexa!

Watching DIGG, Engadget, and MySpace climb in the rankings? Those are real businesses. If those sites added the ability to distribute stolen video in two clicks they would shoot up to the top 10 sites!

Let me break it down: YouTube and other video hosting sites have made it easy to pirate stuff on the web (which is where piracy started), but they shouldn't be positioned as some revolutionary business. It's a silly, little business that anyone could setup in a week. The fact that folks are talking about them being bought for some large amount of money by Newscorp is commical. They are a glorified FTP site with TAGS people! I could set this up in a weekend with two kids in high-school and a couple of cases of Red Bull. In fact, the first two programmers to email me with a decent resume I'll back you guys to build a YouTube compeititor--provided you can build it in under five days.

3. SNL has the right to have their stuff taken down, and taken down quickly. As do the other folks who are having their content stolen daily (think MadTV, Dave Chappelle, etc). However, those folks should put some free stuff up and link to paid stuff to strike a balance between piracy and not having their content available.

Really.

Folks checking in on this post: Fred, Paul & Ben. (if you have commented on your blog feel free to post the url in the comments).