commbasics

(08-29) 06:23 PDT LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) -- via www.sfgate.com I've never owned one of these because I could never justify the cost. I've also never known anyone, other than a public library, who could justify it. I'm not sure it's the internet that killing this off.

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Before we get into how one expands into your social network, Brian Solis  poste a video today about the myth of numbers that makes a good seque into what I want to say next.

I've been having some interesting conversations of late on the subject of engagement, including one short argument over whether the term was overused and understood within the context of social media.  I don't think it is overuse but neither do I believe it is really understood.  So I started pondering how I might help with that understanding.  Amazingly enough, I found my inspiration from a Ragan Report post on Ray LaHood (DOT Secretary) and his social media approach . You can read the entire report in the link, but let me summarize it for you:  Offer content readers can't get anywhere else, don't chase numbers, use other mediums other than just text, open the site to participation, learn the value of each medium, and give up control. Most of those points are anathema to marketing and sales people... maybe even to engineers.  But the spell the difference between success and failure in social media.  This is probably going to be come a...

The hot weather must be making me cranky.  I'm stewing over the return of competitive litigation over competitive innovation  and then I read Bill Schweber's blog over at EE Life  about a potential mandate from Congress to put an FM chip in every cell phone. So I decided to do a little research and found   an article on Information Week  finding that this non-taxpayer funded bailout of the radio industry and the recording industry. In exchange for bumping up bogus listener numbers to boost ad sales, the NAB is promising to to pay the recording industry $100M annually for broadcasting music.  If the adage, The road to economic recovery is through innovation" I guess this means that we are recovered since we seem to be moving to an attitude of stopping people from doing something different and making sure the government and the courts are helping us do it. Really folks, isn't there something better we can be doing right now?

Vpype has been adding some new functionality this week and one of the things they were playing around with was the embedded player.   So if you were trying to watch it yesterday and couldn't I think it's fixed now.

I concluded a great week with a sit-down with Paul Miller, CEO of EE Times Group  for United Business Media, regarding what the new format and philosophy for the venerable publication will mean for entrepreneurialism and investment in the electronics world. To me, everything looks to be moving up and to the right.  This interview was sponsored by Magma Design and Vpype . Watch video live on Vpype Live Broadcaster