One of my favorite pictures, because it’s with a great friend. Don’t let the happy smiles and dresses fool you. We are bad ass business assassins!

it’s been a while…

…since I’ve done a style post.

I know the male readers have missed these important posts about my shoes.

Just kidding!

My wardrobe rebuild is almost done and I am so excited! It’s the exact wardrobe/style I was going for when I set out on the effort a year ago. I was a former stylist for someone on a major network TV show for a time and then I owned a style-focused site about shopping and styling yourself for three years, so figuring out what I wanted wasn’t hard. It was finding the stuff. I am glad to get it almost out of the way and that it’s worked out.

I’ve always had my own sort of thing when it comes to dressing, what I wear, like, etc. My earliest fashion memory was before kindergarten - I was obsessed with this one pair of pajamas I had. In middle school I was all about outfits, and later trends.

After selling my company in the fashion space a few years ago, I didn’t want to think about fashion and wore Hard Tail foldover pants and flip flops for three years unless I had a meeting or a speaking event. I do not feel bad about this.

But I am enjoying it again. Condiment won’t focus much on fashion so today it’s just personal fun/interest. It’s funny but when I shop and style I am just as strategic as I am in business. My friends and family make fun of this but a lot of them have used my insight and strategy in their own closets. What’s cool is that you can work with a range of people and needs this way, versus straight styling which is almost always a little specific. I love serial media/internet/entertainment entrepreneur as my day job but I still love style and fashion.

I will make sure to take pictures at things I’ll be at when I can to share.

hi

There are almost 20,000 subscribers here. Really cool. Thanks for adding me to your list.

I’m a serial media and internet entrepreneur. I look for and anticipate gray areas and try to create positions in them. I worked in the internet telecom engineering and information delivery and communications platform (broadcast, broadband, print, phones) business before becoming an entrepreneur. This was on purpose (serial entrepreneur) and not on purpose (internet telecom/platform business). I founded and sold a digital magazine/social media company a few years ago. I now own 9 which makes things in internet, television, etc. 9 has a new project called Condiment, which is a digital lifestyle magazine that uses a print magazine format.

For the past three years I’ve been working to build 9’s position broadcast TV business, which was necessary for the work there. This year 9 was able to expand back into the internet market again. Condiment is a cool project for me personally because it really represents where I’m at, and it had been a vision for a long time to create a digital media property that looked and felt like a print magazine.

I describe Condiment like Lucky magazine — Lucky is a magazine about shopping fashion products to create your wardrobe/look. Condiment is a magazine about shopping unique, upstart and independent food, lifestyle and other products to create your life experience.

We’re in a cool time where people, more than ever, are tuned into upstart and independent product producers and creators, the Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s generation. We’re all becoming foodies, we drink wine/coffee/etc, we are into cool and interesting stuff, in part thanks to the global exposure we all now get from the internet.

I really love this. I also love that upstart producers are getting a place in the world because for a long time that wasn’t the case. So Condiment is a bit of a mix of all the passions I have at the moment combined with the gray areas I think are ahead.

Producing a digital magazine is a lot of work. I’ve got a lot of experience in it and it’s fun and exciting to be on the build again.

Thanks for subscribing guys (and girls). If there are things you want me to post about here, questions, etc. let me know.

Patricia

p.s.

Voice calling over the internet will be sick. There are already a ton of people who use the internet in this way, of course. The platform has always been designed to do this functionality from the start and has been able to since around in a real way since 2006. The quality isn’t always great, in part because the packet that carries things over the internet like phone calls needs to be provisioned (given priority) over the internet and not every carrier/ISP does it with internet calls today.

But when it becomes a mainstream functionality and offered everywhere it’ll mean no more landline/cell phone — calls will all in one. But the really cool part will be in the features — voice to text, voicemail to text messages and/or email.

this

There was an article today about how internet-based texting is becoming increasingly popular, and how this was a threat to mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T.

Here is the thing about this: Verizon and AT&T own internet infrastructure. Which means when internet-based texting becomes popular, they are in position.

Carriers didn’t spend the money to bring the internet platform to market for nothing. The internet is here to replace the existing communications platforms in our society (cellular and PSTN/landline). You can be sure carriers understood this when they put the money into building it. The reason why the internet platform was lucrative to a carrier is because it’s less expensive to maintain, enables a broader reach to people, can go beyond traditional devices that typically attach to legacy platforms, enable them to go towards new markets like information delivery in a larger and more efficient way, and to increase their margins. Which are not very great on the legacy mobile and PSTN platforms.

Where and why voice calling and communications over the internet hasn’t come to market yet is likely because there’s more money to be made in having consumers pay for both mobile and/or PSTN and internet, given that most major carriers own internet infrastructure or are buying it wholesale. It’s hard to say but there’s likely a reason no less.

Eventually the internet will do what it’s here to do, and the era of real communications over the internet platform will come in. It won’t likely be the carriers, however, that are at the loss. In fact in the end they are likely in the best position.

The end of the rainbow, literally, a few blocks from my office today. I wonder if its close enough to count in getting the pot of gold…

condiment week three

It’s three weeks into 9’s latest project, Condiment.

If you’re newly reading here, Condiment is a digital lifestyle magazine that uses a traditional print magazine format and style. It’s among the early first sites of its kind. I have wanted to create something along this line for some time to experiment with the format and create content in this way. Digital media, which is really just print media over a different delivery platform (the internet), will likely expand and change in formats over the next couple of years.

Here’s a look at the cover from yesterday’s edition:

It’s been great to work on the project so far!

social networks

‘Social networks (by my general definition and among which I count Plancast) are essentially systems for distributing content among people who care about each other, and the frequency at which its users can share that content on a particular network is critical to how much value it’ll provide them on an ongoing basis’ - from an article today

I loved the article above.

But, social networks historically have never really been about ‘sharing’ but communications — people talking to people. It is the internet platform’s communications functionality in action. Social networks, email, instant message, video and then of course eventually voice are all formats that can and will exist on the internet.

They’re one of the oldest applications on the internet dating back to the days of user groups, forums, chat rooms, etc. Today’s version is just an evolution of the above.

It’s not to say that some sharing exists. But ask the average social network user why they use social networks and they will likely say ‘to talk to my friends,’ or connect with other people. That encompasses a lot of things. You could in theory tap into one element of this but for large scale, hitting the core purpose is the bet. Regardless all of this doesn’t change the core functionality of social networks: Communications. Me, you, whoever talking to other people.

The article above has little to do with this, but I had me thinking about this point.

on legislation

I was thinking about legislation today, as it relates to the internet.

I haven’t gotten very into SOPA, PIPA, etc. because while those issues are important issues to solve, they are not the larger issues that need to be thought about and handled in relation to the internet.

I don’t agree with stealing and I don’t agree with censorship. That’s my stance. I think the OPEN bill seems a lot better of an option (thanks to Mark who pointed it out to me here on Tumblr). I don’t believe websites should be exempt of taking some degree of responsibility to illegal activity taking place on them, if any. Anything else would be similar to us saying the shopping mall has no responsibility to protect shoppers or retailers from theft, crime, etc. Just the same I don’t think the right approach is to empower the government to shut down sites.

What’s good about all of this is that it has everybody paying attention, involved and taking a stance/control over what will be. It is very likely that the right things can happen with relation to the issues of SOPA, PIPA, etc. and it has 100% to do with the power of people taking action. Imagine how many things get passed without most paying attention that ultimately affect us all. Imagine if people in America did this about everything.

But where and what the concern/interest should be about is in the other areas that legislation is and will be needed both globally and nationally as the internet moves into its final place of being the world’s unified information delivery and communications platform, among other things. To understand the scope of what could be needed it’s important for everybody (governments, lobbyists, advisors, activists, etc.) to understand where, what and how the internet can do. It isn’t just a place where people get information. In the very near future it will replace our communications infrastructure (both cellular and PSTN/landline platforms) as well as begin to integrate into objects beyond ‘mobile’ devices to cars, appliances, homes, buildings, etc. And then it’ll equally go into the infrastructure of public utilities, identity, payment processing/money and all kinds of other things.

From here, the platform is designed to closely monitor, track, find, identify and potentially block people from it. This is at the infrastructure level, not the software (websites, apps, search engines, etc.). Which means that in the world above that I described — which is about 2-6 years away, globally, and likely not going to be led by the country that invented the internet (ours) — can be shut off to the citizen. Today that means people don’t get to ‘Tweet’ or share their stories on Facebook. Tomorrow that’s going to likely be whether or not they can buy food, access buildings, potentially drive their car, etc.

In India, a large government-driven effort to identify citizens using the internet as a core hub was put into place. This is then tied to a financial aid infrastructure that enables citizens to receive and spend money. Which is awesome as long as a government doesn’t then have the power to control that access to oppress or control its citizens.

We can hope that will never happen, but the internet as a platform is designed for it, and that means that if it can do it you can be sure somewhere, someone might take advantage of it.

When the internet is an infrastructure threaded into all areas of our world, its kill switch is going to matter much more than somebody stealing a movie.

Guess how much legislation is in place for all of the above: Little to none.

All platforms have, in reality, the potential to do some of the above. But the internet goes far beyond it. It is also available everywhere/anywhere, device-agnostic (can go into anything) and fault-resistant (difficult to take out).

So to me, SOPA, PIPA, etc. are small things to something much bigger. The U.S. should be leading in all of the above, proactively, both nationally and internationally.

People talk about the ‘open’ internet. In reality, the platform isn’t really designed to be open — it’s only open for business, and that’s to anybody. Beyond this, it is designed to monitor, track, identify, locate and potentially control its users, at its core infrastructure. That’s not freedom, or ‘open,’ and that’s where people need to be concerned and ensure the right laws and legislation for all exist and are appropriately put into place.

It’s a more (and not so much more) complicated discussion than this, and I wouldn’t pretend I have the answers or know what will matter or not, or what to do about it. But in terms of what the internet really is, it’s almost entirely unregulated. That’s going to matter in the future and very soon.

this

…makes me sad.

For those who might not click through, it’s a blog post about ‘killing Hollywood.’

This being, it appears, because of the studio support of SOPA.

Two wrongs never make a right. What matters about SOPA isn’t that content or websites or ‘freedom of speech’ might be in jeopardy alone. It’s about the larger picture of overall blocking people and things on a platform that is designed (by a government) to enable such a thing. The worry that it might be a movie or a website is far away from the larger things it could bring.

By the same token, the crux of the argument on some sides is — who do we go to when someone is stealing — not borrowing, paying for, etc. but stealing — things? I’m not going to agree with SOPA because I think it is a short-sided, misguided and misunderstood legislation by people (mostly government) that don’t have the experience and possibly, the real interest, to decide on such things. But to ignore some elements is similar to saying, ‘you’re Best Buy, but if a person comes and punches somebody in the face as they shop, you’re not to do anything.’

Ok — not exactly. But, theft isn’t right. Neither is censorship. It’s not possible to support one and not see the other. That’s what everybody is doing.

While it’s great to encourage innovation, and even breaking down barriers, doing so without the replacement of what was in play before isn’t ever a win. It shouldn’t be advocated to create a loss of jobs from people unless the replacement of what is lost/destroyed/torn down is put in place of it.

The internet industry way is almost always about the cash out to the giant, not the long range. It makes no sense, then, to kill the hand that feeds. If not make the replacement, then make what the buyer needs. The dumbest thing to do would be to destroy it, at least not without becoming its replacement. Not to mention it’s the telcos not anybody else that everyone should be worried about. That’s whose house the party is in and that’s who is going to ultimately be the giant to fear.

Hollywood is in the business for what we all are: Money. I would propose creating what can help the industry adapt than a hit job, as what is at stake is more than just content. It’s people, jobs, etc. and that is worth preservation. Guaranteed, the industry would listen and it has far more money to spend on so much as a marketing budget than the average relatively meager in comparison internet capital raise.

Not to mention at the end of the day it is who controls the infrastructure, which on the web application side (Google, Facebook, ecomm, etc.) only Google owns infrastructure. Hollywood can circumvent all by going direct to the carrier, who has the reach, budget, and organic customer base, etc., and most of all owns the platform and has the cash to move things. In the past, the software side was at an advantage. As the internet moves into its intended position in society, this will increasingly diminish to be. 

There is plenty of room for everybody on the new (internet) platform. Helping all to adapt helps us all, period.