StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Getty, Corbis, National Geographic, ASMP, ASPP... Everyone Loves Adobe´s New .DNG Format

Adobe announced yesterday at the Photokina a new file format (DNG, Digital NeGative Specification) and

"hopes that the new [single file] format will solve the problem of multiple formats and multiple software packages by introducing a single format that can store information from a diverse range of cameras.
Adobe, who will be offering The Digital Negative Specification free of any legal restrictions or royalties, hopes that in doing so integration of the .DNG file format into digital cameras, printers, and software products will become widespread.
Where it sees the strength of the new file format is in a set of metadata that must be included in the file to describe key details about the camera and settings.
Of course the .DNG format is immediately supported in Adobe Photoshop CS as part of an updated Camera Raw Plug-in, as well as Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0" (Pocket-lint.co.uk: "Adobe tries to unify digital camera market with new file standard").

Link to the Press Release and the Adobe DNG website with the freely available Adobe DNG Converter:

Raw file formats are becoming extremely popular in digital photography workflows because they offer creative professionals greater creative control. However, cameras can use many different raw formats — the specifications for which are not publicly available — which means that not every raw file can be read by a variety of software applications. As a result, the use of these proprietary raw files as a long-term archival solution carries risk, and sharing these files across complex workflows is even more challenging.
The solution to this growing problem? The Digital Negative (DNG), a new, publicly available archival format for the raw files generated by digital cameras. By addressing the lack of an open standard for the raw files created by individual camera models, DNG helps ensure that photographers will be able to access their files in the future. (Link)

Link to the complete pdf-file "Introducing the Digital Negative specification".

Comments from Getty, Corbis, National Geographic Magazine, American Society of Media Photographers, American Society of Picture Professionals and other people here in the Adobe Press Release.

First more technical oriented review here: "Are Raw Files Forever?":

The cumulative effect of numerous manufacturers producing dozens of new cameras a year, each one of which has a slightly different raw format, has lead us to the point where there are now a huge number of different raw formats. This places a burden on photographers, as well as a concern about the accessibility of these images in the future. It is easy to imagine a day when a photographer turns to his or her raw files taken ten or twenty years previous, and finds that they are unreadable. This has nothing to do with physical media, but simply whether or not the files can be read by then available software that can interpret them. (Michael Reichmann/Luminous Landscape)

Billy Sells Andy...

"When the [Andy Warhol] foundation sought a suitable partner to facilitate the licensing and use of Warhol artwork, Corbis was a natural fit," said Martin Cribbs, director of licensing for the Andy Warhol Foundation. "Corbis has the most experienced and capable rights clearance team in the industry. In addition to enabling its advertising and editorial clients to license Warhol's imagery, Corbis can also clear rights for commercial use of Warhol work in a matter of hours. This was the key reason that we chose to collaborate with Corbis."
[Corbis and Andy Warhol Foundation Announce Content Distribution Partnership]
[© Image Rick Geary and David L. Wilson of Ready-Made Rubber, Link]

JPG Magazine: Another New Mag

Behind JPG magazine are Heather Champ [when she reads your blog you´ll notice that she uses Kinja =:-) ] and Derek Powazek:

"They're called "photobloggers" - a sloppy term for sloppy times.
[...]
In another time they would have been called artists. Personal documentarians. But we have a simpler word for them: Photographers.
[...]
JPG Magazine is for people who love imagemaking without attitude. It's about the kind of photography you get when you love the moment more than the camera. It's for photographers who, like us, have found themselves online, sharing their work, and would like to see that work in print" (read the Manifesto).

The first issue (theme: origin) will be published in November (submissions Due: 4 October 2004), but "only one submission per person, per issue, please." JPG Magazine will be published 6 times a year, every other month. Issues will be published as full color, perfect bound books, as high quality as possible.

So, after the hassle to convert your workflow from analogue to digital, photobloggers are starting to re-enter the publishing world of analogue and printed paper. After the launch of File Magazine ("File Magazine: A Collection of Unexpected Photography") another new and perfect place for picture researchers and buyers to scout for new talents.

The Digital Photography Weblog: Another Blog...

What some people were expecting: the new blog "The Digital Photography Weblog" (written by Amit Malhotra/Dallas; belonging to Jason Calacanis´ Weblogs, Inc.) went online a couple of days ago. Let´s see and wait... . The subtitle "A picture is worth five megapixels" is obviously not a too bright idea moving us to streams of tears of truly felt admiration. But maybe we all can read other and better stuff than the streamlined crap "XYZ reports today that ABC will report tomorrow that yesterday 123 reviewed the new digital camera xyz" of the other digital photography hardware blogs (which means loosely translated: "Hey, you DSOAB, click here to read the reprint of that press release I discovered yesterday, cause I gotta pay my rent with these Google Ads"). Hopefully from someone with a personality and a viewpoint and not that Copy´n´ Paste-attitude.

Another new blog (?) which recently came to our attention is "Cameras – Digital Camera Reviews, Comparisons and Ratings".

The Next Generation Of Miniature Cameras For Mobile Phones

"Camera lens company Carl Zeiss has partnered with Dialog Semiconductor to built what they claim is the next generation of miniature cameras for mobile phones. Their first joint project is a camera module for phones that measures smaller than a pea, yet, they claim, delivers "a very high image quality". The companies plan to start selling the modules to phone manufacturers soon.
The companies believe that with the right application of technology, 10 megapixel camera phones are within reach."
[infoSync World, via "Digital Cameras to have built in cell phones in the future?"]

Sign The Blog Sourcing Petition!

No need to add a word. Just sign: "We endorse the Blog Sourcing Petition to The Blogosphere Community", more information here: "A Petition to Commit to Proper Blog Sourcing" (Steve Rubel).

[via Tiffinbox]

The Moblogging Chaos At The Republican National Committee

"A moblogging operation should be taken as seriously, and as with as many resources and people, as a regular news operation ... Moblogging is suitable for breaking news or events with good visual images. It is not good for in-depth stories... ."

[© Image: guess who?]

A nice story ("Lessons learned from the RNC", Learning about mobile weblogging at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism):

Ladies and Gentlemen: it is now possible to leap to the forefront of journalism with technology available on the street. This is moblogging. The future is now.
Sort of.
Whoever thought of this was on to something when he or she decided to hire journalism students to use camera phones and the Internet as a nouveau wire service on the cheap. The idea was to be able to capture the ambiance of a political convention by assembling a mosiac of grainy images of the events via the camera phone. The images would give the viewer a near-real-time sense of the convention, taking advantange of the fast upload capabilities of the phone without the need to download images to a computer to edit or send. We would be a swarm of imagetakers and reporters, filing a photo every ten minutes on average, for the entire convention. Our editing team at the University of South Carolina’s Newsplex would edit our pictures and text, and receive dictation for longer stories, and post them to the moblog.

In practice, this operation worked only somewhat. The problems:

The picture quality is pretty poor...
[...]
We found it difficult to shoot some pictures, then take a time-out to jam out a sentence on the keypad. Typing any text of length on a numerical pad is s-l-o-w. Even with intelligent text... .

Continue to read the list of the little mishaps here.

Corbis, Gates, Microsoft And Potential Conflicts Of Interest

Brier Dudley/The Seattle Times in "Microsoft bonuses a bit leaner, but still fat":
"They won't go hungry, but Microsoft's top executives saw their bonuses fall over the past year, according to a proxy statement filed yesterday.
[...]
The proxy also has disclosures about potential conflicts of interest, including a note that Microsoft paid Corbis — a Gates-owned Seattle company — $1 million for digital-image licensing fees in the past year. It said Gates was not involved in the negotiations, and that the terms compared with those of other big customers."
[© Image David Icke]

New Blogs On The Block: New Digital Image

John Schott, creator of the blog Camera|Iraq and Director for Media Studies Concentration and Media Studies (MEDA) at the Carleton College, Minnesota, recently created a new blog called "New Digital Image".
The blog -- Schott is the producer of "American Photography: A Century of Images" -- is dedicated to moblogging in general (actually to teach his class) and brings up some interesting links.

Again: Blogs, Photo and Copyright

After his comment here and few emails later regarding the topic "Blogs, Photo and Copyright"/"Blogs, Photo and Copyright: The debate continues
[Copyright => Garbage?]"/"Copyright Protection -- How to Register Photographs" (a discussion that started with the post "Fair Use for photos on the web and in blogs: a modest proposal to avoid a major battle" by Jason Calacanis), Bahar Gidwani of Index Stock gives his view in "Industry Comment #6--Art is a private, personal product": "When people “rip” our art (Web slang for stealing it”), we should object loudly!"

No, Not This Again ... No Relations Whatsoever To Getty Images

[© Image Father Brown Tired]

Over the last weeks emails popped up with the question "Is this blog related to Getty Images? In any way?". The response to these emails is a very time consuming task. So: no. And it will stay this way. Except for talking about John´s diet and photographer´s choice. The latter will take over the bills when this blog exceeds the Typepad limit of 5 GB bandwidth usage. This will be the case, very soon.

Pictures of Jakarta Bombing: Has Flickr Beaten Textamerica In The Race To Beat CNN?

After the Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta "Photos ... appeared on Flickr before any of the major news services had gotten it up on their sites." (Caterina Fake/Flickr, via Hypergene Mediablog: "Citizen reportage, digital photography and Flickr").
Similar at MetaFilter: "Found a photo from a bombing before the story even broke on any of the major news sites". Two reader commented: "I think it's significant that news could be received first from a "raw" source such as those, rather than pre-packaged and pre-interpreted (and pre-linked to al Qaeda) through CNN" (Link) and "no damnable copyright/license issues as money isn't involved" (Link).
So, "How much specialization and differentation can we expect in the moblog arena?" (Link)

After Corbis and Superstock, Getty Images Supplies Content To The Mobile World

Shortly after the recent story "Traditional Stock Photo Industry Player Delivering Content On Mobile Phones" the Wireless Developer Network comes up with a story "Getty Images to Supply Content to Sendandsee's Mobile Magazines":

Getty Images supplies editorial imagery content to Sendandsee's mobile magazines Whopla! and Riento!. This content partnership guarantees the quality of content and enables a virtually limitless development of Sendandsee's mobile magazine concept.
The agreement is an important bridge between the classic media and the new, emerging mobile media industry.
[..]
Sendandsee - a ... visual content distributor for the mobile media - has developed a mobile magazine concept that will go into production in several world markets during the third and fourth quarter of 2004.

Sendandsee is privately held and has its offices in Helsinki, Finland (Link to the press release). The Company has launched three weekly magazine titles for viewing on mobile phones, among them "Whopla!" (Celebrity Magazine) and "Riento!" (Sports Magazine). Each magazine will contain at least 16 pages of news, images, sound and video and will cost around two Euros per week.

Who -- older than 25 years -- will ever watch a magazine on a mobile phone? Or is the word "magazine" an euphemism in this case? See a snapshot of a page of "Whopla!" (Celebrity Magazine) here.

Related: "The world's first magazines for viewing on mobile phones"

Do-It-Yourself Image Retrieval: Swiss Online Agency Imagepoint Adds Self-Developed Feature "Search For Colours"

It is amazing if a photo agency develops a sophisticated keyword-related image retrieval system (including the feature "show me similiar pictures") without the apparent help of specialists from outside (like Idee Inc., LTU Technologies, piXlogic, VIMA Technologies, to name only four prominent companies) and then claims that this technology and implementation was an inhouse "self-development". Questions arise... .

The swiss online photo agency Imagepoint.biz now has added the possiblity to "search for colours" to the website. Special URL: http://www.imagepoint.biz/farbsuche.php.

Reto Baumann/Imagepoint said that "the system is scanning the real image for colors and searches a matched based on the actual picture. There are no manual steps involved like entering keywords for colors." Questioned if they have plans to licence the technology, Baumann responded "at the moment, there is no real licencing schema, but in case some other agencies would like to adapt our search, we could consider selling licences."

Related: "MediaLens Photo by DDD: Is it the new way of finding images?"

[© Image "CBIR: Content Based Image Retrieval", Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada]

Traditional Stock Photo Industry Player Delivering Content On Mobile Phones

[© Mike Shapiro]

It was only a question of time when companies which mainly operate in the “traditional” Stock Photo Industry (and some of their technology suppliers) would start to enter the world of mobile devices. 800 million camera-phones are forecast to be in use worldwide 2007 and 100 billion images will be captured with camera-phones in 2007 (sources: IDC and Nokia; keep in mind: these numbers are estimations).

Corbis recently have joined with mobile phone company Infospace to collaborate in providing photo and video content for delivery to mobile phones (downloadable video clips that include time-lapse cinematography, backgrounds and visual effects, action sports, Link).

Recently Superstock announced an agreement with wireless content provider 9 Squared, Inc., a provider of wireless entertainment solutions, to provide images to 9 Squared's network of mobile service providers and handset manufacturers ("more than 900,000+ contemporary, vintage, historical and fine art images" ... "We're excited by the prospect of this market segment", said Haim Ariav, President of SuperStock, Link).

Also a company dedicated to Image Search Technology has started to operate in this field. piXlogic´s software offers features as "Quickly find personal photos" (categorize and suggest a caption to each image), "picture based translation services" for multilingual environments and "shopping with an image", details here.

One Of Digital Railroad´s New And Completely Unknown Customers: VII Photo Agency

As the lucky people who visited VISA Pour L' Image in Perpignan this year might already know, Digital Railroad (1; 2) has signed (Link) contracts with AINA Photo/Afghanistan, VII Photo Agency and Webistan.
(Link 1 and Link 2)




Related: "[Update] Digital Railroad: A New Hub For The Professional Photographer To Organize And Sell His Work"

[© Image ZuDfunck]

Teckie Talk: Metadata (EXIF, IPTC, DC) for the PNG format

A nice post recently discovered (via Anders Jacobsen´s Blog) in gisle's blog (Gisle Hannemyr works at University of Oslo, Department of Informatics) regarding "Metadata (EXIF, IPTC, DC) for the PNG format":

PNG is my preferred format for archival storage of photographs. It is lossless and more compact than TIFF and TIFF-LZV.
While the creators of the PNG format anticipated that metadata should be embedded with images, by the provision of allowing a single file to consist of several “chunks", there is yet no standard for embedding metadata in PNG image files. (Link)

Gisle mentions some research papers he discovered.

NYC Authorities: Plans To Ban Photography And Videotaping

... on New York subways, buses and the Staten Island Railway:

The MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] Board is considering several proposed changes to the current Rules of Conduct which govern conduct on MTA New York City Transit (NYCT) subways, buses, and the Staten Island Railway (SIR). ("Proposed Changes to New York City Transit’s Rules of Conduct")

and

No photograph, film or video recording shall be made or taken on or in any conveyance or facility by any person, except members of the press holding valid press identification cards issued by the New York City Police Department or by others duly authorized in writing to engage in such activity by the authority." (Link)

Visitors and tourists will be happy. But:

In accordance with the rule-making procedures required under the State Administrative Procedure Act (SAPA), public comments on the proposed rules are permitted during a 45 day period ...However, as feedback from our customers and the public is very important to us, we are posting the proposed changes at this time in order to facilitate the public comment process .. . Comments may be sent by clicking on the e-mail link below. All comments received, both prior to and during the official 45 day comment period, will be reviewed and considered. [Link]

Click Here to e-mail your comments on the proposed changes to the Rules of Conduct.

[© Image Magiclegends]
[Via Ellen]
[Related: "No Phonecams in NYC: Ban on Unauthorized Photography on City Subways?"]

Getty Images Offering Investment Grants To Photojournalists: 5 x $20,000 Bucks For Hiring New Talents

Getty Images has announced (Seattle and Perpignan) a "Global $100,000 Program to inspire and empower ... the best worldwide talent in photojournalism" and "to fund visionary new work by established and rising photojournalists." The grants should empower photojournalists "to step outside the deadline and news-driven marketplace."
The view from the other side of the table: "The work of the recipients will be marketed through gettyimages.com ... Getty Images will hold a one-year exclusive rights deal with the photographers to market and license the images to its customers, delivering contributor royalty fees to photographers ... The photographers will always retain copyright".
Agonizing: "Stephen Mayes, director, Art and Commerce, commented, "... I expect to see some terrific new work that will challenge my view of the world."
Breaking it down to real numbers, the $100,000 package results in $1.666/Month for each of the five photographers. The way is a long one: "Applications for the first two grants, to be awarded in February 2005, must be postmarked by December 1, 2004. Applications for the three additional grants, to be announced in September 2005, must be postmarked by June 15, 2005."
Challenging the view of the world.

[© Image Space Joe-ks]

File Magazine: A Collection of Unexpected Photography

[COVER PHOTO: Cornfield on Fire, ©by Narayan Nayar]

Nearly every week new online photo mags appear and it has become very difficult to follow all the links to nepalesian photography of the twenties, relaunches of well-known sites and the birth of brandnew sites.

File Magazine, launched August 1, 2004, describes itself as "FILE Magazine publishes images that treat subjects in unexpected ways. All amateur and professional photographers are encouraged to submit their work to FILE magazine. Alternate takes, odd angles, unconventional observations - these are some of the ways photographs collected in FILE reinterpret traditional genres. We leave the Kodak Moments to the family album, the glossy fashion spreads to Vogue, and the photo finishes to ESPN. Rather than taking the well-trod paths, we veer to left and get a different perspective. Confused? Browse The Collection. The photos say it better than we can."

The people behind File Magazine are apatrick, the Photo Editor, a working photojournalist in Northern California and Beerzie Boy, the Content Editor and Webslave, an Information Developer at a large technology company.

Two weeks ago, File Magazine called for submissions on Photoblogs.org (read the File Magazine submission guidelines). Photos are presented in the "The Collection" and the newly created "Karaoke Camera" ("unlike The Collection, Karaoke Camera has pre-selected categories", Link).

Although File Magazine is not "a photoblog, photo challenge/contest, or group photo album", this might become a place where photo-/moblogging and photography meet (to quote a privately interviewed serious photo editor, researcher and buyer "the place where the stupid art directors from ..... might get new inspirations") and some agencies hunt for new talents and new views ("contributors to File Magazine").

Support File Magazine! => "We are also selling FILE paraphernalia. Click here to buy t-shirts, mugs, mousepads and other crap you don't need. Keep in mind we make little from these and what we do make we use to defray hosting and other costs."
Well, someone who uses the words paraphernalia and crap can´t be wrong.

The Return of the Venture Capitalists

Shortly after Technorati received a $6.5 million USD in VC funding valuing the company at $12 million dollars (the round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the guys with the gold fingers; source: Om Malik), the New York Times has a two-pages story (September 2, 2004) "The Return of the Venture Capitalists":

Four years after the Internet bubble burst, the venture-capital industry is stirring back to life. Investments by venture firms rose 22 percent in the second quarter of this year, to $5.8 billion.
[..]
For all of 2004, analysts project an 11 percent increase in investments, to $20 billion, from $18 billion in 2003.
That is a far cry from the $108 billion in the heady days of 1999, and nobody in the venture-capital business is predicting a return to that flood of cash.
[..]
The competition among venture capitalists to get their foot in the door of promising companies has also heated up. The time that elapses for a deal to close has been cut by more than half, from six to eight months two years ago to two or three months today, said Bill Ericson, a general partner with Mohr, Davidow Ventures, another Menlo Park firm.
Perhaps the most encouraging development for entrepreneurs is the increase in venture-capital investments in early-stage companies, to 231 in the second quarter of 2004, the highest number in two years.
[..]
At the same time, it is unlikely that start-ups will see a return to easy-money days anytime soon, in part because many firms are not raising the kind of funds they did during the bubble.
[..]
The real test, then, is whether company management has already proved its mettle with appropriate industry and small-company experience. "Even if they were unsuccessful, at least we know they tried and learned from what they did before," Mr. Brown said. Recently, he said, the firm added a psychological test to the last step of the decision-making process "to sort out the wheat from the chaff."

Rumors has it that recently a new and young company in the Stock Photo Industry received a first round of $12.7 million USD (today, this is a incredible high amount). When we asked some people over there, their CEO said what seemed to be exactly what David Sifry replied when asked by Om Malik whether or not Technorati got funded: "I'm sorry, it is our policy not to comment on questions on funding" (Link for Om Malik). More to report when they go online.

An Audioblogging Manifesto

Finally: "I demand four minutes and twenty seconds of your life" (mp3). Link to Idlewords.com. (via Joi)

IPTC: Updated Subject Codes and Subject Qualifier

For the freaks: IPTC.org (Matadata for News) today has updated the Subject Codes (IPTC topic set to describe the subject of a news item) to Version 14 and the Subject Qualifier (IPTC topic set to add qualifiers to the subject of a news item) to Version 11.

Soldier and Photographer Giles Penfound: Iraqi lives through a lens

[Boy with a gun. Young children playing in the backstreets of al-Amarah and reacting to a British Army patrol. "It is a dangerous place and time to be a child pointing a toy pistol at soldiers with real weapons" (LINK). © Giles Penfound]

The BBC News UK Edition features some photos and lines from british soldier and photographer Giles Penfound:

Giles Penfound is a soldier in the British Army's Royal Logistics Corps and chief media operations photographer for the army.
While working in the southern Iraq cities of Basra and Al Amarah he began a personal project, documenting ordinary Iraqis' lives.

(Thx to Photoblogs.org/Anders Jacobsen)

["These people are snapshots, a reminder of my prejudices and lack of understanding but also, thankfully, a reminder that despite our differences we are very much the same." (LINK). © Giles Penfound]

Alan Meckler/Jupiterimages: The Next Picture Business CEO Starts Blogging

Before Bahar Gidwani of Index Stock Imagery opened his blog Dimdump, Alan Meckler, the CEO of JupiterMedia (publicly traded; Jupiterimages is a division of Jupitermedia) had started a blog called "Internet Media Commentary". The blog is not entirely dedicated to the Picture Business (Jupiterimages is only a division) and actually started already in December 2003. However, after the acquisition of Comstock and recently of Thinkstock (July 29, 2004: Link 1, 2 and 3), there a some more entries regarding the Stock Photo Industry.

Meckler writes in "BUILDING A NEW NETWORK" (August 26, 2004):

Little did I know when we made this acquisition that it would start Jupitermedia on an exciting journey into developing a large network of image and graphics sites. Since the June 2003 acquisition, we have acquired numerous digitized image libraries and recently purchased Comstock Images and Thinkstock. More acquisitions are on the way.
Which brings me to the word NETWORK in the title of this post. When we entered the business fourteen months ago, I was told that the selling of images and stock photography was "locked up" by Getty and Corbis. This reminded me of television history. When Rupert Murdoch started to put the Fox Network together I am sure he was told that the television network business was "locked up." Of course we all know that today the Fox Network is the equal of if not better than the CBS, ABC and NBC networks.
And now Jupiterimages has become the third great image network along with Getty and Corbis.

In "STOCK IMAGERY CHANGED BY THE INTERNET" (July 29, 2004) he writes:

Now Jupitermedia is going to further evolve the stock imagery business beyond what Getty has accomplished, much like Wal-Mart was able to better K-Mart and a host of other discounters in the past 30 years.
[...]
Our company is right in the middle of grabbing chunks of a $2 billion industry. I will report in future posts on how we are fast becoming the Wal-Mart of stock imagery. A hint: lots of our success is coming via the use of our community sites and our massive base of unique visitors. As I said --- stay tuned.

We definetely do not want to comment the Wal-Mart or K-Mart theory. But it´s surprising to experience how different blogs with the same topic can be. One speaks to a theatre, the other one to an audience of colleagues, as a sort of an undergoing investigation... . But take a look at it for yourself.

PS: Alan Meckler recently was email-interviewed by Steve Rubel (Blog: "Micro Persuasion. Steve Rubel on how blogs and participatory journalism are impacting the practice of public relations") in "Alan Meckler: Few Blogs Will Generate Money", June 03, 2004:

MicroPersuasion: You are the first and one of the only public company CEOs who blogs. Why do you feel CEOs should blog? Which CEOs do you wish would start blogging?
MECKLER: I do not necessarily feel that CEOs should blog. I have chosen to do so in order to get out the message about doings at Jupitermedia. Also I feel I have an interesting perspective on media so I enjoy providing observations.
[..]
MicroPersuasion: What's your view of the blog vertical business model that Nick Denton's Gawker Media and Jason Calacanis' Weblogs, Inc. have developed? In some ways they're emulating what you created with Internet.com way back when. Business 2.0 reports Denton pulls in $250k per year. Not too shabby for blogs.
MECKLER: Very few blogs will be able to generate money. Within the Gawker and Weblogs Inc. empires one will find a handful of blogs that can generate income. Therefore I am not a big fan of the concept as a way to make big income.
[..]
MicroPersuasion: Finally, what lessons can you share with CEOs who want to start blogging?
MECKLER: Writing even once per week can be a chore. I have to really think about the fact that I should be posting. Therefore, if one sees posting as a burden, stay away from starting a blog.

[© Interview and courtesy of Steve Rubel]