WUWT Radio

I’m rather happy with WUWT as it is, but hey… if it’ll reach more people and you feel up to it, I say go for it! You can always go back to blogging if it doesn’t work out, right?

I like your voice. If you slowed it down half a beat, you’d sound more calm and confident. NPR announcers do it that way.
As for all the technologies and formats available to you, I don’t have a clue and trust in your judgement. I suspect that live radio is too much work for someone who has too many other things going on. Recorded 1-minute commentaries might be a good way to start.

Dear Anthony.
I observed the rise and fall of one of the first ‘blogs’ that became the hot spot for vital and scarce information on Iraqwar.
There gathered those desperate for information – wives, children, comrades- including experts.
We read the KGB diplomatic reports daily during the invasion – and eventually msm reporters learned of it.
When Fisk showed a piece of missile from a market, in 20 minutes we knew it was a HARM, what jet mounted the rack it was designed for, where it was made. We knew they aren’t fired at markets – they have to home in on a radar. Then we heard from the Serb who used to set up microwave ovens with doors propped open to draw fire from the NATO jets and how many of their recorded kills were probably microwave ovens.
We each one of us felt proud and superior because we knew. We knew first and we knew best and nobody else seemed to know foxtrot apple.
We read the much valued but understandably erratic posts of a Baghdad resident, Salaam Pax, while Steve Forbes claimed he was a fraud – before the BBC found him and hired him months later.
Agonist.org was, during the period, ranked higher than Drudge.
It was intensely engaging.
Eventually it didn’t matter and the interest flagged and the experts and others got on with their lives, the site creator and the tech manager – and others who fancied themselves vital- they underwent withdrawals, for they had begun to conceive of careers as online celebrities. But the unique content was no longer compelling. So naturally they tried to substitute personality because it’s easier to generate. The infighting that resulted made mock of the virtues that had been demonstrated.
Agonist.org is now a lonely liberal who chats about his cat.
The popularity of WUWT rose on the tide of climategate. That is unsustainable and expectations based on the ‘trend’ of growth seen in this unique (read aberrant) situation will teach the lesson of the hockey stick that the church of global warming is struggling not to face. Of course, we know it was never about climate, don’t we?
The real danger now is cap and trade. There is always something serious that needs to be prepared against or repelled.
Being the one with the goods at a critical moment with a vital issue is a rare moment. Doing a spectacular job of rising to the occasion was championship work.
That occasion is close to expiration date, so I understand a bid for diversification.
Don’t depend on the net. Produce something people pay cash for. That’s where to use what you won, IMO.
With deep respect and sincere best wishes,
D.

Hi Anthony,
Your voice works well.
Listen to ‘Guns and Butter’ KPFA in Berkeley and No Lies Radio. Both formats provide AUDIO only with archived iPodcasts.
There are advantages to ‘audio only’. Less setup and operational costs for the listener the freedom to ‘put you into their background’ while they continue to with personal chores. The listener can always dig for more information on the Internet.
I am technical with regard to communications technologies. While I do not have specific hands on experience with UDP radio streaming, I do understand the issues. You should consider the following:
1: Isolate new stuff from existing stuff. Don’t integrate audio with website stuff. You don’t have the money or resources to do this well.
2: Consider using MacMini it is cheap. $1000 for hardware and operating system with unlimited user connections. Max the memory out to 8 GB. Max the disk to 2 TB.
3: Isolate the streaming server from the iPodcast archive server.
4: Estimate the following:
A: How many concurrent communications sessions (listeners) you will have at any one time.
B: Determine the holding time each listener will remain connected.
C: Determine the peak busy hour.
From this you can calculate the performance requirements of the hardware/operating system/streaming server software.
You may find that the MacMini will do what you want, or at least in Phase 1. My point is to keep things simple.
Sounds like a good idea.
jds

“REPLY: In a few days, WordPress 3.0 will be out, and this will (hopefully) give me better control over the look of the format.
I’m curious as to why the new layout doesn’t agree with you. Is it becuase you are running on older hardware/software that can’t handle it or is it more about style? -A”
I have a Core 2 Quad running XP – 4 Gigs RAM, 250GB hard drive, good NVIDIA graphics card, Firefox 3.6.3, broadband, and a 19″ flatscreen monitor: not a bad machine and everything reasonably up-to-date plus regular defragging, etc.
It’s a matter of style. As I said in the earlier thread, the text is thin (grey?) and serifed (TNR?), designed for reading on the page, not on a screen; there is a huge amount of white space, not helped by the wide line spacing, and everything is blindingly white. Reading before was effortless (although I always used a certain preferred level of text zoom) and engaging. Now, no matter what I do (including changing background colour), I can never achieve the density of text and general visual comfort I used to like. It’s hard to pin down exactly what was so good about the old site – as it’s no longer there, I can’t go back and analyse what it might have been that always used to pull me in and make me keep on wanting to read more.
Besides that, an additional annoyance, remarked on by others, is that every time I want to post something, I have to fill in my name and email address again. It’s also noticeably slower to load than formerly. I sometimes have to wait while typing for screen characters to appear in this comment box. But my machine isn’t slow!
It wasn’t broke, Anthony, but then you fixed it. I know you meant well and must have put quite a lot of effort into it, but as a consequence, though 50% seem okay with it, you may be losing others, and that could be a gradual, ongoing process. “Style” sounds like a trivial word, but I never realised till now how much of a difference it can make psychologically. Sorry to seem so negative. I want more than anything to regain my former enjoyment of, and engagement with, WUWT.
Maybe WP 3.0 will help a bit. I’m just hoping that you will keep this issue alive for a while… it could be vital for your site stats.

I can’t wait – this will be awesome! I really like the idea of having video, but if you do that, please make an mp3 version available as well. Thanks!

Video means higher production costs but gives the opportunity of advertising and turning it into a business. You could sell a weekly program to cable channels. I don’t know the business case but my guess is that reading is just too much work for all the couch potatoes out there (the mass market). Blogging will always be a minority persuit.

Anthony,
A word of caution.
You already do so much!! And with great impact, for which you have the well earned thanks of the “moderate” community.
The use of a particular medium is a solution: so whats the problem to be solved??
Like some previous posters, my view is that traditional radio and television, as “synchronous” communication devices with real time, one time transmission of programs, are dead in the water. To go in this direction is to invest time and effort unnecessarily.
The trend is asynchronous, read/hear on demand using recorded programs. There are good reasons : flexibility, repeatability, return on investment etc.
The “You Tube” model follows this trend for future communication, and it reaches a wide audience. The impact is unlimited.
The only sort of content I would be interested in would be a real discussion of the evidence to get a common view. But I honestly think this is asking too much of human nature.

Mp3’s sound like a Dalek underwater with a blanket over it,
go with something a bit more modern…
AAC/MP4/ I tunes