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George Carlin, who passed away yesterday, was funny because he understood how language works. His running commentary on the relationship between language and culture was the foundation of his comedy.

I’m lucky - I did see Carlin perform in Honolulu on New Year’s Eve 2004. At midnight Pacific Time, he whipped out his mobile phone, made a call and had the audience scream “Happy New Year!”

We also shared the same hobby - WheresGeorge.com. It turns out that Carlin was the long-rumored “celebrity Georger”. His identity was revealed on the site today.

This YouTube video includes my favorite Carlin monologue - his comparison of baseball and football.

Jerry Jones, owner of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, has encouraged his architects to make the new Texas Stadium a bigger, better facility.

The new facility still has the rectangular hole in the roof, although it can be covered by a set of sliding doors. The wind makes a fierce howl as it whips through the construction site. In this YouTube video, the howl is audible over the freeway noise.

Beneath the hole is a set of 4 HDTV monitors that are suspended 110 feet over the football field:

The board will run from the 20-yard line to the 20-yard line — measuring 180 feet in length and 50 feet in height - making it the largest video board installation in the world.

There’s more information in this article from the Dallas Morning News, including a graphic that compares the board to city buses (Stack 4 large city buses. Repeat 6 times!), as well as the stadium’s web site.

Image of the stadium construction site courtesy of Brandon Cripps through a Creative Commons license.

From the Associated Press via Sports Illustrated and Forbes: National Football League commissioner Roger Goddell has announced that the league will enact and enforce tougher regulations regarding technology and spying for the 2008 season. The NFL has allowed radios for offensive play-calling since 1994, but mobile computer and video technology have advanced far faster than the league’s regulations ever anticipated.

The three-time NFL champion New England Patriots have been the subject of intense scrutiny after a staff member was caught videotaping defensive coaching signals during the team’s 2007 season opener. The NFL and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) are each investigating multiple allegations that the Patriots had been videotaping opposing teams since coach Bill Belichick was hired in 2000.

Former Patriots employee Matt Walsh recently sent 8 video tapes of Patriots opponents to the NFL office for analysis. According to Mike Fish of ESPN, at least one tape included offensive coaches from another team. Previously, it was believed that the Patriots only taped defensive coaches.

What about the FCC?

Most of the discussions I have read about the so-called Spygate scandal have missed an important legal point. The NFL depends upon large multi-billion dollar contracts from US television networks for a significant portion of the league’s revenue and market power. Every regular-season and post-season game is televised. The NFL also owns and operates its own television network, which carries 8 regular season games, many pre-season games, and a 24/7 stream of interviews, documentaries, replays and other NFL content. See this article from CBS Sports for more details.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has specific regulations on how sports may be broadcast in the United States. One key rule is that live televised sporting events must be “free of artifice”. In other words, games cannot be rigged or fixed in any way.

This is one reason that professional wrestling broadcasts use a great deal of taped and edited content. Pro wrestling is marketed as , not a sporting event.

“When we met with [the] commissioner, the discussion was how we proceed in an era when technology is expanding exponentially,” Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian said. “The question is how do we keep on top of that. This is far less about what happened in the past and how we deal with it in the future.”

The New York Times published an article that analyzes why bloggers get into the business. More bloggers are using their sites to earn revenue from advertising links, promote their products and services, and gain authority in their fields of interest. As the economy stumbles, bloggers face a variety of choices. Should they concentrate on their regular jobs and abandon their blogs? Should they leap full-time into the blogosphere and try to make a living from the web?

One thing’s for sure: few bloggers really do a reasonable income from their blogs. It is possible to make a living from blogging, although it can take years to build enough readers and advertisers to generate sustainable revenue streams. I mentioned Perez Hilton on 20 March 2008. His income has increased quite a bit over the last year, although keeps getting sued in court over his blog’s content, according to this Wikipedia article.

BoingBoing grows

BoingBoing’s four co-editors each have paying writing jobs that they promote heavily on BoingBoing. For years, the web site has posted weird news items focused on technology and the Internet. Over time, the blog became one of the most popular sites of its kind on the Internet. According to an article on Wikipedia, BoingBoing added a business manager in 2004 to administer the site’s operations.

Advertising was added to the site and its RSS feeds soon afterwards, to defray the site’s bandwidth charges. Popular web sites can rack up a large bill for their Internet connection. Adding ads to the site’s pages and overall design is a key success factor.

In the last few months, BoingBoing’s web site has been redesigned to include discussion threads and a subsidiary blog focused on electronic gadgets. The core writers still post articles every day, but they have brought in more people to administer the site and run the site’s discussion forums. Honda has signed on as a sponsor. There’s also a video site, although BoingBoing’s writers seem stiff and uncomfortable in front of the camera. Perhaps they will get better over time, as they build an independent media empire from their quirky web site.

A uniform approach

Paul Lukas’ Uni Watch is a good example of how to build income from a blog. Paul is a freelance journalist who has appeared in the New York times. His blog is an obsessive study of sports uniforms. Paul posts one article each day, with a long trail of links and miscellaneous items. By the end of the day, users have posted at least a hundred comments as they debate the topics of the day.

The blog had been funded by advertising links and user memberships. A basic membership included a uniform-themed wallet card, while more expensive packages included a custom designed logo and an interview posted to the blog.

A few days ago, Paul announced that ESPN had picked him up as a regular contributor. Paul had been writing freelance articles for ESPN’s Page 2 web site. He had already hired an intern a few months ago to manage the discussion boards and post articles on the weekends. Paul has decided he can scale back the blog membership program to the basic level, now that ESPN is supporting him. After almost 2 years of blogging, he can take a vacation or two without shutting down the blog completely.

Scott Clark asked a question on LinkedIn earlier this week:

I’m putting together a magazine article about how arenas/venues may use social media, such as blogs, twitter, facebook in innovative ways.

I’ve discussed some of these issues in previous blog posts, which I’ve listed at the end of this page. So I wrote a response and posted it to LinkedIn on Tuesday.

Scott has published an article about live events and social media, so I am reposting my response to his LinkedIn question:

Live blogging at a conference makes more sense to me, simply because computer usage and Internet access are much more common at academic and professional events than at performances.Many performance and sporting venues have posted rules about mobile phones and cameras, partly because of intellectual property issues and contractual obligations. Mobile blogging through smartphones and PDAs is the only practical way to implement social media interaction at these events.

These restrictions are also in place to minimize disturbances and distractions for the audience and the performers. It might be interesting to see a real-time Twitter display of comments during an event, but would everyone want to see that information? Would the performers want to limit access?

Because “big name artists” tend to use established business models, including the recording industry and concert venues, these artists have limited room for innovation with social media.

Artists who use a more open license such as Creative Commons might welcome and encourage audience interaction and moblogging as part of the event. As more musicians decide to release their own music online, some will embrace social media as an essential part of their marketing and community-building plans.

Another exception might involve visual and performance art. Event sponsors could invite and encourage attendees and exhibitors to moblog their comments, as long as the participants accept the event’s licensing scheme. Social media can provide a means for real-time transcribing and recording an audience’s reaction to a gallery opening or museum exhibit.

I’m assuming that in all of these examples there are some content filters in place. Event sponsors usually don’t want guerrilla marketers to post or send comments that promote a rival brand. Local regulations might punish event sponsors if the moblog included indecent or illegal content.

Collegiate sports are a case in point. During the current basketball season, mainstream journalists and sports bloggers have student sections at several universities for rude and unsportsmanlike behavior. Taunting, intimidation and name calling happen at sporting events and on social media every day. While most collegiate athletic departments hold themselves at arms length from Facebook groups and blogs, these departments always have some interaction with student sections at the actual events.

Related posts

• 25 February 2008: Social Media 101
• 10 August 2007: Forty-somethings flock to Facebook
• 4 June 2007: Illinois high school holds diplomas after crowd celebrates
• 5 August 2006: Isolated Americans are trying to connect