Standing in the Niche, Trying to Hold Your Own

Grok Headline matches for Standing in the Niche, Trying to Hold Your Own

"Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist
to a higher standard than you hold the
president of the United States?"

"Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist
to a higher standard than you hold the
president of the United States?" 07/02/2004 09:14 PM

Last Man Standing

Last Man Standing 04/21/2004 02:26 PM
Dark Horse releases Star Wars: Empire #18 today, which concludes the three-part tale starring the soldiers of the Empire. "To the Last Man" is by Welles Hartley, Davidé Fabbri, and Christian Della Vecchia, and features the final confrontation of the Imperial army and the Amanin primitives. With the casualties piling up on both sides, which side will emerge victorious? Find out this issue! All under a fantastic cover by David Michael Beck and Brad Anderson. You can check out an online preview here< /a>.

Standing by their man

Standing by their man 04/08/2005 09:27 AM
Conservatives may worry privately about the scandal-plagued majority leader, but publicly they're denying he did anything wrong and blaming the "liberal media."

Niche out!

Niche out! 03/22/2005 03:24 PM
Doc's right.  People that buy or sell on the long tail shouldn't be considered consumers.  To prove a point, the long tail members I describe aren't passive, rather, they are in the driver's seat of the new distribution.  States and their passive consumers (of political goods) are the ones at risk.

Standing room

Standing room 06/23/2004 05:12 PM
Like some other well-known bloggers before her, Chris Nolan is working on turning her blog into more of a revenue-generati ng business. I like Chris's stuff, even as I sometimes disagree with it, because it's sharp and unpredictable and rooted in her years of experience as a reporter, and so I wish her well in her efforts to sell ads and subscriptions.

Lord knows it's not an easy road. Reading Chris's manifesto for "Stand-Alone Journalism" -- she argues that's a better label for what she does than "blogging" -- brought me back to some distant memories from the dawn of the Web. After learning HTML and participating in the San Franciso Free Press experiment, I thought to myself, hey, there's nothing to stop me from starting my own publication on the Web!

So I did. In January 1995 I took a week's vacation time from my job at the SF Examiner and published a site. I focused on what was then quaintly known as "multimedia"; I called it Kludge, as a nod to its essential clumsiness and improvised nature, and I posted an issue. This was years before personal content management software, needless to say; it's all just cruddy hand-coded HTML and crude self-designed graphics. But the articles weren't so bad (hey, here's an interview with Marc Canter! Here's a satirical take on the CD-ROM explosion/implosion!).

What I quickly realized was that, as much fun as writing, editing and designing all that material was -- bringing me back as it did to my teenage roots in mimeograph publishing -- it was just the beginning of getting a Web site going. If I was serious about making it something more than a labor of love -- if I wasn't going to do all that work on my vacation days -- I'd need to figure out how to get people to visit the site, and how to sell ads, and so forth. My best efforts involved dumping a pile of flyers in the lobby of a multimedia conference at Moscone Center. (While I was doing that, a couple of guys named Jerry Yang and Dave Filo stood at a booth under a big Yahoo banner, giving away T-shirts.)

After briefly toying with the notion of applying to AOL's Greenhouse program for funding, I thought, nah. When David Talbot started talking about a new publication he wanted to create, I helped persuade him that he should do it on the Web instead of in print. Salon turned out to be a great place for me to write and edit and build Web sites without having to wear all the hats myself (though there have certainly been times during the last decade when my pate has felt a little crowded).

Today, would-be "Stand-Alone Journalists" can rely on much better software tools to create and publish their work. They can plug into far better organized online networks to spread the word of their activities. And they can even turn to simple plug-in approaches to advertising, like AdWords or BlogAds, to try to bring in some cash. But being a "Stand-Alone Journalist" still requires a combination of journalistic and entrepreneurial traits that's rare. Being a good journalist requires the ability to not mind pissing people off sometimes (Nolan, whose career has had its share of controversy, is no shirker in this regard); being a good entrepreneur demands the ability to charm people as often as possible. Both pursuits, of course, demand persistence, patience, and, in the face of indifference, a stubborn belief in the value of one's undertaking.

When I read Nolan's proposed label for the solo-blogger-journalist, the first thing that popped into my mind was the famous quote from Ibsen's Dr. Stockman in "Enemy of the People": "The strongest man in the world is the one who stands most alone." Standing alone has many wonderful advantages -- it's a stirring posture. But remember what happens to old Dr. Stockman: He is right to blow the whistle about the polluting of his town's waters, but he's dreadfully naive about the world around him, he's ultimately ineffective, and he fails to accomplish much besides his own martyrdom.

So I'm not sure the "Stand-Alone Journalist" label is one that will stick. The linked nature of the Web is ultimately even more important than the independence of the blogger. Standing alone is useless without being connected.

Operators Standing By

Operators Standing By 06/16/2004 04:50 PM
You Too Can Profit From The War on Terra "You’d think with both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars well under way and with the war on terrorism being more than two years old that the share price of any bullet proof vest manufacturer would be fully valued. Not so! The company that manufactures the amazing life saving bullet proof vests that Sgt. Travis L. McKinney wrote to from the Iraq front line is not only undervalued but is a screaming takeover candidate that is poised to enjoy an up to 450% increase in its stock price." Operators are standing by...

Chinese Standing Up

Chinese Standing Up 04/02/2005 01:52 PM
When the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, Mao Zedong famously said “China has stood up.” While it took another forty years to get started, the recent economic explosion has been a world-changer. But that story isn’t over; there’s a remarkable piece in the NY Times this morning outlining how the Chinese are doing a bit of standing up on their own, economically. They’re walking away from those “cheap labour” manufacturing jobs that have served as one of the main economic drivers of the last couple of decades. At the end of the day, cheap labour doesn’t stay cheap. And while there are probably some more “cheap labour” places for businesses to move—India, Africa—the consequences for China have to be profound. And I can see the day coming, maybe not in my lifetime but not that much further out, when the whole notion of moving businesses around the world so you can pay people less has become, finally, self-defeating. What happens then?

Standing at the Gate

Standing at the Gate 05/05/2004 05:03 PM
Churchill Downs' earnings projections fall flat.

Standing firm

Standing firm 09/13/2004 11:52 PM
CNET Asia Sep 14 2004 4:22AM GMT

Voice Over Wi-Fi a Niche App

Voice Over Wi-Fi a Niche App 11/11/2003 03:11 PM
A There is a lot of talk and some confusion around the value of voice over Wi-Fi: It will take some time for the market to figure out how extensively it should be used. I think voice over Wi-Fi can be really useful to certain workers, but the current products have so many shortcomings that a company must have enough of those workers and be able to benefit enough to suffer through the headaches. Voice over Wi-Fi will become a routine service only if the products improve significantly....

Identifying your Niche

Identifying your Niche 05/03/2004 07:21 PM
WebDevInfo May 3 2004 10:45PM GMT

Losing a Niche

Losing a Niche 06/17/2005 07:16 PM

Popular Science magazine gives us the following five things You Didn’t Know You Could Do with RSS:

1. “Package Deliveries
2. Library Books
   “ Avoid late fees and fruitless trips to the library with ELF (libraryelf.com), which generates a feed to inform you when books you've requested are available at your local branch (including a link to operating hours) and when your checked-out books are almost due.”
3. Local Weather
4. TV Listings
5. Yourself” [via del.icio.us/merlinmann/ 43folders]

I love the ELF and even subscribe to the service myself, but how does it make your privacy-loving, patron-protecting, librarian self feel that a company in Canada is providing this service that gets highlighted in PopSci instead of you?

" ?Fahrenheit 9/11? gets standing
ovation"

" ?Fahrenheit 9/11? gets standing
ovation" 06/21/2004 04:14 AM

Lotus Domino Still Standing

Lotus Domino Still Standing 01/16/2004 11:03 AM
Ambuj Goyal GM leads ibm's recommitment to core products.

Standing up to the State of the Union

Standing up to the State of the Union 02/05/2005 09:14 PM
Iran and Syria, cited as "sponsors of terrorism" by the president, strike back: Tehran calls the U.S. one of the heads of a seven-headed dragon, and Damascus chides Bush for being selective in his definition.

More from Shachtman on Los Alamos: "The
Last Man Standing"

More from Shachtman on Los Alamos: "The
Last Man Standing" 03/13/2003 10:24 AM
Noah Schachtman of Defense Tech tells BoingBoing: "My latest article on the Los Alamos scandals focuses in on Frank Dickson -- the "last man standing" among the accused in the lab's senior management."

"Give Frank Dickson, general counsel of the beleaguered Los Alamos National Laboratory, some credit: He's a survivor.

"Allegations of discrimination and espionage in the 1990s swallowed up a generation of lab-management staff; Dickson remained. Accusations of corruption and mismanagement have forced his bosses to resign and his subordinates to relinquish their responsibilities; Dickson hung on.

"Now, the nuclear weapons lab's new director has proclaimed that he's ready to "drain the swamp" and give it a fresh start. But Dickson, singled out by Los Alamos whistleblowers for repeatedly interfering with FBI investigations into lab shenanigans, clings to power -- for now...

Link to Wired News story, Link to more discussion on Defense Tech, Discuss

Another Niche Filled in Libraryland

Another Niche Filled in Libraryland 12/02/2003 01:27 AM

And speaking of library-related blogs, N ew Library Career Blog Available!

"Sarah and Rachel writes 'Sarah and Rachel (the Library Job People) announce the creation of a brand new site, Beyond the Job, a career development blog for information professionals. Find calls for contributors, job search advice, articles on the profession, scholarships and grants, conference info, and more! Got ideas to submit? Send them in. RSS feed available for all those aggregator folks out there. Thanks to Steven of Library Stuff for suggesting such a thing in one of his recent posts.' " [LISNews.com]

Ultra-niche marketing

Ultra-niche marketing 12/24/2004 01:06 PM
TrackCap.com trackpoint.com sells nothing but the nibs, nubbins, caps or whatever you call them for the IBM ThinkPad Trackpoint - you know, the little sticky-uppy thing between the G and H on Thinkpads. $10 for 2, so maybe they're doing ok, especially since you can get 6 for $10 from IBM. (Shipping is free at both places.) Trackpoint.com also sell screws for the IBM Ultrabay at a buck each, so apparently they're branching out. Radical....

Niche Publishing - Engadget

Niche Publishing - Engadget 03/06/2004 01:59 AM

Niche publishing really isn't just for Nick Denton anymore... Peter Rojas, the original blogger behind Gizmodo has broken out of that gig to start Engadget... a competitor to Gizmodo.

Denton still has a leg up (first mover advantage we used to call it) on individuals launching one or two focused sites on their own, as he can aggregate his entire Gawker media property audiences if he wants to for an advertiser, or he can sell the advertising piecemeal... but, folks like Rojas can probably make enough money off their sites short-term to support themselves, and long term to build a living that they enjoy.

Best of luck Peter...

XML-Deviant: XQuery's Niche

XML-Deviant: XQuery's Niche 12/29/2004 08:49 PM
XQuery has been much hyped, but is it sufficiently different from XSLT to be successful? Edd Dumbill follows a debate looking for XQuery's niche.

Kerry still standing despite ads' damage

Kerry still standing despite ads' damage 06/18/2004 04:04 PM

Bush Standing by Rumsfeld at Pentagon
(AP)

Bush Standing by Rumsfeld at Pentagon
(AP) 05/10/2004 07:11 AM
AP - President Bush is standing by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as both men brace for the anticipated release of more pictures and video images showing Iraqi prisoners being abused by American soldiers.

FOXNews.com - 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Gets
Standing Ovations

FOXNews.com - 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Gets
Standing Ovations 06/16/2004 05:30 AM
a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail .. FOX News actually gives a fairly positive review of the movie .. Fox News on Fahrenheit 9/11

foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,122678,00.html
track this site | 6 links

"standing by the authenticity of the
Bush documents"

"standing by the authenticity of the
Bush documents" 09/11/2004 09:47 PM

Pope 'considered standing down'

Pope 'considered standing down' 04/07/2005 10:34 AM
Pope John Paul II's will indicates that he considered resigning in 2000, when he reached 80.

Rather feeling Freeped, but standing by
his story

Rather feeling Freeped, but standing by
his story 09/10/2004 08:14 PM
Dan Rather appeared miffed that he even had to spend five minutes of his broadcast tonight responding to what he called the none-too-surprising counterattack led by partisan operatives against his 60 Minutes segment on Wednesday about Bush's Guard service. Putting the whole superscript frenzy into perspective, Rather recapped the central points of his piece: Did Ben Barnes use his influence to get Bush into the Guard? Did Bush refuse a direct order from his commanding officer? Was he suspended for failing to perform? Did he take his physical as ordered, and if not, why not? And did Bush complete his commitment to the Guard?

Last Female Muslim Comic Standing

Last Female Muslim Comic Standing 09/21/2004 08:50 AM
Controversial stand-up comedian Shazia Mirza isn’t afraid to joke about 9/11, sexist Muslim men, or the fact that she's a 28-year-old virgin. But not everyone is laughing.

standing quiet in loren's photobooth

standing quiet in loren's photobooth 12/19/2003 02:26 PM

luck has left me standing so tall

luck has left me standing so tall 04/09/2004 04:08 PM
This will probably be my last weblog entry this week, because I'm in the final few miles of the Just A Geek rewrite marathon.

standing in line with mister jimmy

standing in line with mister jimmy 07/15/2004 12:14 PM
I was looking at the ACME schedule for the rest of the year, and if I'm in both Zebra and ACME Main company, I'll pretty much be living down at the theatre. I'm conflicted about that, because I've really grown accustomed to working from home, and hanging out with my family whenever I want. On the other hand, some of the happiest times and best performances of my acting life have been in that theatre . . . and performing twice a week will certainly give me something interesting to write about on a more regular basis.

I'll be on The David Lawrence Show again tonight, to talk about Just A Geek. When I was there for Dancing Barefoot, David and I used the entire three hours, so we just planned on that for tonight. It's 7-10 Pacific time, and all the listening details are on the Online Tonight website.

'Ms. Wheelchair' Loses Crown for
Standing (AP)

'Ms. Wheelchair' Loses Crown for
Standing (AP) 04/01/2005 07:03 AM
AP - Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin has been stripped of her title because pageant officials say she can stand — and point to a newspaper picture as proof.

Summer 2005, Must be the Season of the
Niche

Summer 2005, Must be the Season of the
Niche 06/24/2005 03:05 PM

Search sites itch for a niche

Search sites itch for a niche 01/09/2004 09:54 PM
Yahoo and Google up the ante in search, offering new search tricks for Web surfers, with the ongoing goal of becoming indispensable.

21 Hot Niche Minisite Profit Ideas

21 Hot Niche Minisite Profit Ideas 05/12/2004 05:18 PM
WebDevInfo May 12 2004 8:18PM GMT

Social reading -- A niche to be filled?

Social reading -- A niche to be filled? 09/11/2004 08:54 AM
There's a niche in the blogging/media ecosystem I hope someone fills. Aggregators are wonderful, but I find using them makes me as lonely as a night watchman making his rounds. So, between the solipsism of aggregators and the impersonalism of mainstream newspapers, I'd like a site where my friends and I can read stuff together. We suggest blogs and sites, and the aggregator surfaces the hot posts based on clever metrics and heuristics (mumble mumble handwaving). And we get to comment and annotate for one another. That last point is important because I find that I often don't leave comments...

Making Microsoft a niche player

Making Microsoft a niche player 08/30/2004 06:46 AM
Novell engineer and manager Allison Singh recently predicted in an Africa-based tectonic magazine article that Windows will become a niche operating system, replaced by Linux as the new standard. A gestalt of recent trends, events, and stories should tell you that this prediction is right on the money. A gestalt, by the way, is a perception or conclusion that goes beyond the sum of its parts. Here are three of the many parts that comprise the gestalt.

Gaming PC Makers Take Aim at Lucrative
Niche

Gaming PC Makers Take Aim at Lucrative
Niche 06/04/2004 01:58 PM

Niche internet retailers hit their
stride

Niche internet retailers hit their
stride 02/16/2004 08:12 PM
Sydney Morning Herald Feb 17 2004 0:06AM GMT

Morse buys niche consultancy biz

Morse buys niche consultancy biz 04/21/2004 06:18 AM
'De-risking projects'
Grok Description matches for Standing in the Niche, Trying to Hold Your Own
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Standing in the Niche, Trying to Hold Your Own

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