Saturday, June 14, 2008
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Cleansing the Palette Hey Rizznites,
I really don't have a lot to say today, I'd just like to cleanse the palette of my blog a little bit, since the last several entries are largely about how I've been wronged, offended or otherwise been made to feel sad inside. I'm really not that big of a complainer, usually.
That's not true. I love to complain and make it sound like I've got this over-reaching point to make. I'm a blogger, I've got a big ego, and so I pontificate. I'm just tired of hearing myself rabble-rouse so darn much (a lot of editorials and opinion pieces at Mashable, lately), so I'm going to try to dial back the fervor over here a little bit.
Don't hold your breath.
I've really been enjoying putting a lot of time and effort into our video initiative at Mashable. There are still some aesthetic and technical glitches I'd like to work out:
- Not all of the slates I designed for the video made it into the hands of my editor in time for the first two episodes to be compiled.
- The compression quality needs tweaking. Things are looking a little pixelated at times for my taste.
- Conversion and transferring takes up too much time. We have to convert to FLV, MP4 and MP3. Blip does some of this, but transferring the files around is a bit of a pain.
Additionally, having Alana, Sean and Kristen helping out with the interview workload (as well as Art with the editing) makes my life worlds easier than when I was trying to do five of these a week by myself. I send my heartfelt thanks to the entire team on that, and can't wait to see what else comes of this.
In the mean time, check out these two videos we've already put out, and see if you can tell me we aren't going to have a great series ahead of us.
/rizzn
Labels: alana taylor, art lindsey, kristen nicole, mashable, sean p. aune, tom green
posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins at 2:53 AM[Blog] | [Home] | [Robots]
Todd Cochrane: Making Dumb Moves. Even For Him. It's late, and I'm tired.
I was going to do this whole long thing with veiled references to yet another Web 2.0 business that's decided to pick a fight with me, and make it a sequel to this one I posted last Thursday.
As I said, though, I'm late, and it's tired. Or something like that. So I'm just going to post the email thread and a quick summary at the end.
I briefly mentioned on Wednesday a tiff I had with RawVoice CEO Todd Cochrane.
He emailed me late tonight (emphasis added):
It is nice how you bend the story on your blog to make yourself look completely innocent. You have never acknowledged that you were as much to blame over the payment issue. You were the one that changed stats keywords mid campaign, you make it sound like it was all our fault. I have never had someone continue to spread mis-information like you have.I replied:
I have had it with you and will turn this over to our attorney he will decide what the next course of action will be. Todd..
Todd, it was all your fault. You were the one who made the error of looking at the wrong stinkin' podcast network. I don't understand how that could at all be considered my fault. I tried to get your attention several times over it, and it wasn't until it was plastered all over the front pages of Mashable till you did something.He replied:
Do what you will. The best defense against claims of libel or slander is the truth. That's what's on my side. Get with the program.
Truth is fine when you tell it. Not when it is convenient to make yourself look better. Your a class act.I replied:
Class act or not, if you could do your job right, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It was your mistake, and you aren't big enough to admit that without casting blame on me. Sue if you like, but it'll be you with egg on your face. Who between us has the bigger reach? Who between us is right? Are you sure you're completely in the right here? Given the fact that you never responded to the emails I sent, I'm gathering a lot of stuff falls between the cracks for you. I, on the other hand, have the entire exchange archived and saved from start to finish, not to mention documented in thorough detail in daily episodic format on my podcast.He didn't respond.
You don't want to go to war with me, Todd. It's a dumb move, even for you.
If you ever listened to my old podcast, you're probably well aware of the the trevails we experienced when Todd sort of re-defined on the fly what a download was. I've gone into great detail on Mashable in posts and comments over the story, so I won't rehash it here.
The bottom line is that he promises that checks or PayPal payments will be sent out for payment in a Net 30 situation. His accounting system is so screwed up that my most recent payment was about a month ago on ads that I did almost a year ago (money that he claimed up until recently I wasn't owed because I somehow cheated the system).
At some point along the way (my email records indicate it was right around Christmas last year), I had enough waiting for money that was evidently not coming, so I removed all my links and profiles from the RawVoice system. This is what he's referring to as "changed keywords."
Todd is a perfect case study on how not to behave as a CEO. The man literally wrote the book on podcasting, and ever since then seems to have the attitude that he could never possibly be wrong about anything. This leads to personality conflicts, his heels being dug in, and very public displays of anger and superiority at anyone with even the slightest philosophical differences on technology, let alone legitimate business disputes. When you react so violently to the slightest provocations, how can you expect to generate anything but bad PR?
But I love a good fight, and Todd has frankly been nothing but a jerk to me since I left the Tech Podcast Network, insisting on blaming me for his accounting error. If he wants to waste a bunch of money on lawyers and filing lawsuits, I'll gladly oblige him.
I'm sure there's some way for me to come out on top for being wrongly harassed (if not monetarily, maybe with a ValleyWag headline or two?).
Labels: jerkwad, rawvoice, todd cochrane
posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins at 2:14 AM Wednesday, June 11, 2008[Blog] | [Home] | [Robots]
Google Deadpooled by CrunchBase; OmniDrive Not So Much I saw a note on FriendFeed from Duncan Riley earlier today indicating he'd posted on OmniDrive, the back-up solutions company that's had an uncertain future for quite some time. Duncan and Nik Cubrilovic, both of which who have history at TechCrunch, also have history with each other.
I know exactly what it's like to have piss-poor relations with someone in the Web 2.0 world and subsequently blog about it. Todd Cochrane of RawVoice and I had a serious misunderstanding on the amount of money a podcast series I ran on his network was owed, and blogged about it over at Mashable. A lot of nasty words were said at the time as he rallied all his allies against me and organized a smear campaign to impugn my words, but when he and his employees went about doing a forensic accounting, they found that I was right, and a check was eventually sent out to rectify the situation.
The situation seems to be similar with Duncan and OmniDrive's Nik Cubrilovic (without the Omnidrive eventually working to repair its rift with Duncan part). It isn't hard to see why things are being seen as so bad for Nik and his company. There are rumors that he's been unable to pay folks for quite some time, as well as the fact that he seems to be working for Mike Arrington again to pay his bills.
So when the line "Omnidrive entered The Deadpool 2008" showed up on the CrunchBase entry for the company, Duncan was not at all surprised and took the opportunity to blog it. I'm not sure of the exact nature of Nik and Duncan's disagreement; I vaguely remember something about Duncan briefly contracting for him and then not getting paid or something. If it wasn't 5 am, I'd dig up the old Inquisitr post referencing that.
Thats awesome work Duncan. Just ignore that anybody can edit the page and mark a company deadpooled. Hey, I just marked Google dead, you gonna write about that too?Duncan replied:
news to me. All changes have to be approved last time I looked, unless you have admin rights...which I'm guessing you may do. Further the account used to make this change would appear to be an internal TC user account. The user has a long list of admin style changes. My guess: one of the interns. None of the changes made by the user were vandalism, and they are too frequent for anyone outside of TC to have made them.There was some clever back and forth after that that is definitely worth reading - I'll link to it and you can read it there (giving the Inquisitr the benefit of about 30 extra pageviews or so. Never said I didn't give you anything, Duncan).
I suppose I could go all highbrow and ask some questions about how this is a great example of PR gone wrong, and that Nik's inability to manage his corporate image is leading him closer to this mythical Deadpool for OmniDrive, but this is my blog and not Mashable (and especially since I haven't yet finished my FriendFeed powered comments module, leaving no place for that type of discussion).
The real point is here that it's sometimes just plain amusing to see how disconnected from reality folks can be. OmniDrive has had more negative press about it than just about any Web 2.0 company I can think of aside from Facebook during the Project Bac'n debacle. The only organization I can immediately recall with more folks running around saying that they haven't been paid is that Blognation Global River of News thing.
So does OmniDrive really deserve to be in the CrunchBase deadpool? Who cares. Is it amusing to see Nik run around and try to debunk statements from credible folks with longstanding reputations in the blogosphere? Definitely.
[Disclaimer: My words in no way reflect the opinions of my employers or co-workers at Mashable. I'm guessing. I didn't really ask them, but this is a personal blog, so don't suddenly start blaming my boss for something I said. Unless he says it, too. Then feel free.]
Labels: deadpool, duncan riley, google, inquisitr, nik cubrilovic, omnidrive
posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins at 2:26 AM Monday, June 9, 2008[Blog] | [Home] | [Robots]
Twitter is Poo Poo Bad Hey folks. There's a lot of folks who've Direct Messaged me lately on Twitter.
I'm real sorry for not getting back to you. I'm used to Twitter sending me my DMs via Twitter. Unfortunately, I've been missing them all since Twitter's IM functionality has been all goofball for a good long while.
You probably know this.
At any rate, apologies go out to @technosailor, @duncanriley, @markdykeman, @patrickruffini, @micah, @calilewis, @seanpercival, and @sampad. Those that are timely for me to reply to, I will, for the rest, I extend my apologies.
/rizzn
Labels: direct messages, twitter
posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins at 1:37 AM
