Changed My Mind on the PMA

Originally, I stated that I wasn’t going to get involved with the Performance Marketing Alliance on GeekCast.

I was nominated for the formation advisory board and originally thought I would probably decline as I said on GeekCast. However, I changed my mind on Thursday night after some very good conversations, including one with my very wise wife (who has nothing to do with affiliate marketing, but has been to an Affiliate Summit).

I’m working to be the change I want in the world… are you?

GeekCast 23: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

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This most recent episode of GeekCast is the best we’ve done.

We spend a great deal of time talking about the ABW and Performance Marketing Alliance controversy and our own frustrations with how things are playing out.

GeekCast 23: Can’t We All Just Get Along? : GeekCast.fm: “The show kicked off with discussion around the ABestWeb forum thread on the Performance Marketing Alliance initiative and whether or not affiliate marketing as an industry is being helped or hindered by the organization and whether or not some of the comments there were helpful to the industry as well. This theme comes around at the end of the show. So, make sure to listen to the whole thing for the proper context.”

Be sure to listen to this one if you’re interested in the industry organization movement.

There’s lots of other good stuff in the 80 minute podcast as well (you can find the whole description on the GeekCast page as well as link to the streaming player).

And here’s the mp3 for your downloading pleasure

RedHatBlueHat

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Since we’re on a political kick here, head over to GeekCast and listen to the latest RedHatBlueHat podcast.

Despite Shawn’s rather biased show description, it was a well balanced and heated show where I do what I do every week… ask policy questions and have to fend off the politics of personal destruction that the Red Hats keep retreating to any time the water gets warm.

RedHatBlueHat : GeekCast.fm: “The fourth installment of RedHatBlueHat featured Tim Jones, Shawn Collins, Mike Allen, Sam Harrelson, and Todd Crawford getting worked up about money and war.

This week focused on a John McCain interview on the Today Show where he made comments about Iraq and ‘big oil’ that got the Obama camp worked into a tizzy.”

Even if you’re not a political junkie, it’s a fun show.

Here’s the mp3 for your downloading pleasure.

If I get some time this weekend, I’m going to make a dedicated site for the show at the www.redhatbluehat.com domain. Thanks to Jim Kukral for the logo!

Can You Be Anonymous on the Web?

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GeekCast 17 was literally epic in terms of length. Jim Kukral, Lisa Picarille, Shawn Collins and myself went just over 100 minutes this week.

Despite the length, I think it’s one of our best podcasts yet. We covered everything from the recent Marky Zarc disturbance in the force to Brightkite to Twitter to Hulu.com to politics.

You can subscribe to the podcast to receive it weekly in your iTunes or podcatcher over at GeekCast.fm.

Cloud Computing IS the Future (Not the Web OS)

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I talk a good deal about cloud computing. If you listen to the GeekCast podcast, you might here me arguing with Shawn Collins over our cloud-based future and how it will be a reality as soon as variables, such as ubiquitous highspeed internet connections are available and accessible here in the US as well as the continued maturation of “cloud” based web apps such as GMail or Google Docs, are made more reliable.

I also talked with Andrew Wee about the cloud computing issue on his latest Friday Podcast and how I thought cloud computing was not only the future here in the West but also presented an amazing opportunity for more “developing” societies to leverage and improve increasingly complex web apps using cheaper and thinner computer machinery.

In other words, I’m a major proponent of cloud computing and see our futures there. However, I have to disagree strongly with this new post from Mashable…

The Web OS. It’s Coming, Just Not Too Soon.: “I’ll offer up my own prediction here that cloud-based operating systems will advance and grow to become popular, mainstream options for computer users in less than a decade’s time. Yes, 10 years from now, I imagine a portion of both the corporate and consumer populace will be logging on straight to the World Wide Web, without need for Windows Vista or Windows 7 or whathaveyou. If wireless broadband is to become a far-reaching utility and relatively inexpensive commodity – which I think it very well might, if telecoms really know what’s good for them – then there really will be no need for much of the public to continue to straddle the offline-online divide. The paradigm will shift. It is already doing so to large degree.”

My basic argument with this premise that we’ll be operating on a “Web OS” is that there’s no need for such a platform or system. In a decade’s time, the web will be omnipresent on our mobile devices, our HDTV’s, our AppleTV’s/DVR’s/TiVO’s/PS5’s as well as our more traditional web terminals that we have traditionally associated with desktops. However, we won’t need a web OS.

Web apps that work on our mobile devices, entertainment devices and more traditional computing machines will be OS agnostic and the browser will slowly but surely be the main “program” needed on a “computer.” Welcome to the fracturing.