Captain Digital

Random musings on politics, society, and pop culture from the Internet's marketing curmudgeon.

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Read All About It.

I hear that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, like many other once-proud newspapers, is up for sale. Even worse, if it’s not sold inside of 60 days, it will cease to exist in print (but might continue in a greatly scaled-back online form).

Sad. Very sad.

I was thinking the other day about how the newspaper biz has changed since I was a kid, throwing a paper route in Shreveport, Louisiana. It’s changed a lot – and not for the better. Of course, you could argue, and many do, that the Internet killed the Newspaper, just like it’s kill(ing) CDs and will soon kill DVDs. But if you’ve ever tried to get all your information from the web, you’ve probably seen that there’s something that you lose, when you ditch paper. So, I’m not convinced the problem with newspapers lies at the feet of the World Wide Web alone. No, I think it’s something(s) much deeper, and will, in fact, cause the destruction of an entire industry in no less significant a way than what happened to the dinosaurs. [Read more…] about Read All About It.

New projects…

I have a couple of new projects to talk about. I’m a member of an indoor pistol/handgun range, set up as a non-profit. They had a really bad website, in desperate need of an update. I”m still tweaking the new stuff, but here’s a before-and-after look at the project:

The old site: http://www.lsgc.org

The new site: http://www.letsshootgunclub.com

Part of the challenge is going to be to get the old site (as well as another one on Tripod.com) shut down, as the people that set those sites up are no longer with the club – and apparently there’s some bad blood between folks that’s caused these sites to remain in limbo.

Another project I’ve been working on is the recently-updated site for my church: http://www.allsaintsamarillo.org. I’m using the Slideshow Pro  Flash component to deliver not only a picture gallery, but a front-page “splash scren” style rotating banner thing, that can be updated by way of SlideshowPro’s excellent CMS tool.

I’d be interested to get some feedback on both projects, if you’re so inclined.

Flying blind…

I recently (four days ago, to be exact) updated the software this blog runs on, to the latest and greatest version – i.e., WordPress v.2.7. The upgrade was surprisingly easy to do, and by all appearances, went off without a hitch. Um…ALMOST without a hitch. Seems that one of the things that got trashed along the way was the settings for my Google Analytics code. Whoops.

I usually check my GA stats on a daily basis, just to see what’s going on. Check more often, and it will drive you nuts. Less frequently, and you stand to miss a trend…or a problem.

It had been four days since I’d checked my GA account. Color me “surprised” to learn that I’d (according to GA) gone from a significant readership to ZERO hits for the last four days. That’s like going from 60 to zero in, oh, about 0.0 seconds.

Once I saw the stats, I knew something was wrong. I dialed up the New! Improved! control panel, and found that my GA settings were pooched. No code – no tracking. No tracking – no results. No results – unhappy blogger.

I’ve restored the tracking code, and all should be right in my world.

But I’ll keep checking. As Joe Bob Briggs (Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas) says, “Without eternal vigilance, it can happen here.”

As scene on TV…

One of the many benefits of having a home office is having a TV on my desk. I keep it tuned to Fox News or the Sirius Classic Jazz channel for most of the day – having either a background of news or jazz suits me just fine. I also have a conveniently-located mute button, in case I need to take a call, work on audio, or if it gets distracting.

This time of year, most companies pushing gifts spend a year’s worth of ad budgets in 30 days or less. Where as before November 2nd we were assaulted with All Political Ads, All The Time, now it’s ads for Omaha Steaks (making me hungry), has-been singers pushing a Greatest Hits album, or the latest and greatest kitchen appliance, each and every one guaranteed to be The Perfect Christmas Gift.

I’m sure you’re as annoyed with this kind of dreck as I am – at least you would be if you left your TV on all day. My vote for the most annoying ad in the Fox News rotation? Christy Lane’s 30 Christmas Classics. [Read more…] about As scene on TV…

New site launched. Read all about it.

We just lit up a new site for RiverFields – an Amarillo-based sporting goods shop that specializes in fly fishing, hunting, and self-defense. Their old site was, dated, to put it mildly. The reason was, it required a web guy to make any changes. It was just way too difficult for RiverFields to make changes conveniently. Therefore, they simply didn’t change anything. For several years. At all.

We began the new site by designing it with an eye towards how they’d be able to update it easily. That meant designing it for Adobe Contribute (so they could make changes to the text and static pictures) and implement a content management system so they could easily make changes/additions/deletions to their photo galleries (using the worth-its-weight-in-gold SlideShow Pro Director).

You can see the new site at www.riverfields.com. You can compare and contrast it with the old site, which (for a while yet) is online at www.riverfields.com/oldsite.

Let me know what you think.

Ayn Rand was Right.

I think most people go through life paying attention to their own specific interests, all the while blotting out what’s happening around them. They only wake up when something dramatic happens, or when it’s too late to do something about whatever it is that’s suddenly captured their attention.

9/11 is a case in point.

Aside from CIA, FBI, and NSA people, most people living in the pre-9/11 world had no concept of the danger we face from Islamic fascism.

That’s human nature, I suppose. We tune out most things that happen around us, because, frankly, we just don’t have the bandwidth. But that’s a dangerous habit when it comes to personal safety/homeland security. I’ve also come to believe that it’s equally dangerous when it comes to society and culture – specifically pop culture. [Read more…] about Ayn Rand was Right.

Once more, dear friends, into the studio…

I actually used to own one of these dinosaurs. Really.
I actually used to own one of these dinosaurs. Really.

It’s come to my attention that I am like the cobbler’s children, shoeless, in spite of their father’s profession. I am a musician, without any recent recorded samples of my work. This is an inconvenient, but not insurmountable problem. 

 

So today, I’m gonna fix it. 

Of course, in my own, inimitable, Captain Digital fashion, I can’t resist a little feature creep, allowing the scope to grow past the prime purpose of the mission.  [Read more…] about Once more, dear friends, into the studio…

Let me entertain you.

It dawned on me, as I was creating some ‘quickie’ bizcards, that I needed a website specific to the musician-side of my life. I’m a big believer in perception versus reality, and the reality is, people perceive a certain degree of “serious” in regards to an email address. If you want someone to take you seriously, a Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo address is not gonna cut the mustard. On the other hand, if you have your own domain name, it’s almost like instant street cred. So I bought bradkozak.com and set it up as a site dedicated to my singer/songwriter/entertainer biz. Of course, since I create websites for a living, it didn’t take but a couple of hours to throw together a website. (It took longer to get Mrs. Digital to help me with the photos, and to do the Photoshopping than it did to write the site code.) [Read more…] about Let me entertain you.

The “Voice of God” has passed away…

I am sorry to report that Don LaFontaine, master voiceover artist, has passed away on Labor Day. He was 68.

I never met Don in person, but I had the opportunity to work with him on some TV spots, and I know his wife, Anita, well. (She’s from my hometown of Shreveport, LA, and my Dad wrote the arrangement she used of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to go to the Miss American paegant, as Miss Louisiana.)

By all accounts, everyone that knew Don called him a great guy. My cousin (who visited Don and Anita in California a bunch) tells me he was witty, with a wicked sense of humor, and not at all pompous or distant in the way that celebrities can be. I can attest personally to the fact that he was generous to a fault, and was willing to “put his money where his mouth is” when it comes to causes he would support.

It’s hard for me to think about Don in the past tense. While there are other voiceover artists that mimic’d Don’s style and delivery, there will never be another Don LaFontaine. My heart and prayers go out to Anita and their kids in what must be a very difficult time. Please keep them in your prayers.

In a world of advertising, where too few voiceover artists have the ability to create a distinctive sound, Don LaFontaine will be missed.

I love pundits.

A couple of quick observations…

  1. Pundits are often wrong. (See the last few weeks of coverage on “McCain’s pick for V.P.”
  2. Pundits are sheeple, too. (They don’t always think for themselves, and there’s a pecking order…an influential pundit will say something, and the under-pundits will immediately start echoing his opinions as their own.
  3. Pundits LOVE their own talking points…and hate having to answer questions that force them to abandon using the talking points as answers. [Read more…] about I love pundits.