It’s 2012 officially.

And so far, things are off to a good start. Of course, when you go vacationing to an awesome place with some of your best friends, you tend to have a good time. That has been the case for this New Year as well.

Just like NYE 2011, Kelly and I spent time on the Oregon coast with our friends Kevin and Stacy. This year, Chris and Corie visited with us as well and we all had a really nice dinner at the Saffron Salmon in Newport.

On New Years day, we woke up late (not surprising) and went back down to the waterfront area for a nice little lunch at Local Ocean, then on to a whale watching boat in which we actually saw 4 of the elusive humped-back critters. They are super difficult to get caught on film, but I did get a few shots of their spouts nonetheless.

As we’re getting ready to go back out again for dinner, I have been reflecting on the upcoming year and my previous post in which I laid out my resolutions.

I feel like i need to amend that list and add “go to the coast” more often. It quite simply is awesome. Looking at the view just from our rental condo, if I showed you a picture (which i am) you might be hard pressed to say that I wasn’t in Hawaii or something. Absolutely stunning, and to think its only an hour away from our house.

I also would add to the list to “vacation with friends more” because that always makes things more interesting. It’s fun to experience things with your closest friends.

Its almost January 1st, so its time for me to make some resolutions for the coming year that I most likely won’t bother trying to achieve. Seeing the video above inspired me to come up with a list. Some of his resolutions actually mirror my own.

Be less concerned about what people think

I chortled when Ross (above) mentioned this one, because he was clearly joking. Me? Not so much. I actually unhealthily obsess on what people think about me and I think thats pretty much a waste of time. I could have rephrased this one to be less paranoid, but whatever.

Eat more healthy

I really, really need to do this or I am toast. I’ve been with the same old cold now for like 3 months and a lot of that probably has a lot to do with how I eat. Burritos and chinese food on an alternating daily basis probably isn’t doing wonders for my immune system.

Hate less

Pure and simple, I’d like to hate less. Notice I said less and not “stop hating.” I know that isn’t going to happen.

See my parents

Would like to get out back east to visit the parentals and my grandmother this year. We’re all getting older…

Do something more meaningful professionally

Whether it is at my current job or elsewhere, I need to challenge myself a little more this year or I am going to go absolutely fucking crazy.

Don’t hate them for trying
I have started an experiment. I’d like to see how many days I can go without being a hater. Sounds weird, but too much of my daily routine centers around ripping stuff that other people do. I’ve really noticed this happening a lot recently, even before starting to listen to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast which I must admit, has had a profoundly positive influence on my life.

Rogan always talks about negativity being something that clouds constructive or deep thinking. He talks about haters and the fact that they believe they can do everything better, that everyone else is a douchebag or somehow doing it wrong. I really don’t want to be THAT guy.

Something occured to me this afternoon. Ironically, it occured to me as I was silently crtizicing something I saw someone else do on YouTube.

The difference between the hated and the hatee is that the hated actually tried and succeeded. Now, they might not have succeeded in creating something great – in this case, I am referring to video content referencing a popular video game that I play. But, they succeeded at least in the sense that I even know their content exists, which in this day and age is a big accomplishment. There are so many people out there posting video to YouTube, writing blog posts, and generally looking for attention, that it is no small feat to get your name out there and your content noticed.

Sure, I happen to think that I do have more creative things to say than most people do, but if I never say them, or don’t succeed in getting those thoughts heard/read then I can’t really criticize what other people are doing. Therefore, the observations I should be making (or, the kudos that are deserved or should be given) is that someone succeeded in how they got their creation into the world, not that their creation was great or not to begin with. That, of course, is totally subjective.

Examples of this:

This Week in Tech – a show I find to cover extremely basic information. On the merit of its content I don’t find it that interesting, but it has amassed a large following – large enough that the guy who produces it has his own studio, at least. Everytime Leo LaPorte criticizes Apple my skin crawls, but there are many people out there that listen to him just for that.

Ashton Kutcher – a favorite punching bag of mine on this blog. I don’t find his acting very good, nor do I think he is the tech genius he portrays himself as, but he’s pretty well connected now in Silicon Valley and on a hit tv-show. Can’t really deny him that I guess.

Michele Bachman – alright this is getting harder for me to do. There is no love at all in my heart for this person, but she has made it pretty far in life. I don’t agree with anything she stands for, but its undeniable that people find her either enteraining or that some take her seriously, therefore I can see why she would be on the cover of Newsweek or whatever.

Just coming to grips with all of these things above is difficult, but hopefully will help me sort out some of my hater issues. It is going to be a slow process, but together (with me writing and you, reading) we’ll get through it.

Here are 5 reasons why YouTube is a superior platform for creatives to post their video content than Vimeo.

1. Unlimited uploading: YouTube carries no restriction on the amount of video content you can upload. Too often, I found myself having to compromise on my videos due to Vimeo’s arbitrary upload limits. Even with a Vimeo Plus membership, you’re locked down to 5gb of video uploads per week. Some of my longer form videos were 3-4gb each, meaning that if I wanted to upload more than 1 per week I’d have to severely compress them, compromising video quality.

2. Cost: YouTube doesn’t cost you anything in order to upload your content. Vimeo, on the other hand, has a free version but that access only gets you 500mb of space. The paid version of Vimeo, aka Vimeo Plus, gives you 5gb per week but that is going to set you back $59 for a year subscription.

3. Guidelines: Vimeo comes with, in my opinion, absurd community guidelines for the content they will and won’t allow. For example, if you want to post videos about ‘gaming’ you might as well forget it. They explicitly call out in their rules that you can’t post videos of playing video games. Pretty damned arbitrary. Also, their enforcement is very suspect, because one rule is not to post any compilation of television or movie content, but then you find this as one of their “featured videos” which is just that (link: The Apocamix). YouTube has rules of course, but much more open to different types of content that don’t include just boring student film reel projects.

4. Community: YouTube is one of the largest sites on the web, with millions of users. I honestly am not sure how large Vimeo is, but I am guessing their community is more in the thousands. If you want your video to be seen, better to host it on YouTube.

5. Support: You really need to look no further than Vimeo’s support forums to see the numerous reports of Vimeo Plus members not having their content uploaded. As a Vimeo Plus member I had nothing but issues, and while one of the promises of Vimeo Plus is that you cut to the front of the line for your video content to get encoded, I frequently had to wait 3-4 hours per video for the process of encoding to even START. On YouTube your video uploads and is processed almost immediately. What’s even better, as soon as it uploads it is visible to everyone – first at a lower level of quality, then higher as their system full encodes.

As an aside, I’ve had video content uploaded to YouTube which has been flagged for removal for various reasons (e.g. the music playing in the background of one video was from an EMI artist which doesn’t allow YouTube to play it). However, that content was never just “removed” and I was issued a warning and opportunity to remove the music. Vimeo seems to have a policy where if they don’t like your content they’ll just delete it. In my case, they deleted my PAID account and offered no refund.

Usually you’d say you love to hate something, but in actuality, at least in my case, i hate to love advertising.

Even though i work in the marketing and advertising world, i still get really tired of ads. Not only just the viewing of ads pretty much everywhere i look, but the creation of them, the measuring of them, etc. Let’s face it, most of the time people aren’t looking to see an advertisement when they click on a youtube video, open their email, or talk with friends on Facebook.

But i realize that there are entire industries based on ads – online and offline, that without, wouldn’t exist.

Here is one in particular which I am thankful for – eSports.

A few years ago, I thought the idea of “computer athletes” or “pro gamers” was ridiculous. Today, i spend hours upon hours a day watching competitive Starcraft 2 games either on YouTube, or Justin.tv.

The prize pools for these competitive tournaments comes largely from advertising. So does the funding of these pro gamers. Sites like Justin.tv allow gamers to stream their ladder matches and/or tournaments and collect advertising revenue based on the number of people who watch their stream. It might not be a lot, but the needs of a pro gamer would appear to be relatively small – probably just internet access, food, shelter and upgrades for their computers occasionally. Since most pro gamers seem to do it full time, practicing 8 or more hours per day, I am going to say that they probably don’t have other means of income.

I don’t see how an industry like the pro gaming one would exist without advertising dollars.

Then i look at a site like grooveshark, a relatively old site which allows you to stream music all day for free essentially. I have a free account, and haven’t been hit up for money or run into any restrictions using their service on my mac (aside from not being able to listen to songs on my phone, unless i pay for an upgrade). The site seems to be funded by ads for my free use, and it is great.

How many hours of entertainment can be found on YouTube? Limitless? Free, with ads.

So there is a lot to like about the end result of advertising, which is something i hate to admit.

Dr. Drew seems to think so.

Today I deactivated my Twitter account, and I partly have Howard Stern to thank for it.

I started on Twitter back in 2007, after it was debuted at SXSW. Back then you had to really convince people why they should be on the site. It was common to hear people say, “ok that is just dumb – do I really need to know when my friends eat a sandwich or brush their teeth?”

Yes, status updates back then for the most part were that stupid.

Then it kind of blew up slowly. A few businesses got on board with Twitter and used it for their online PR and/or customer service.

I remember a few years back when I worked at an advertising agency I was the resident Twitter evangelist. They’d put me in front of clients to sell social media services on Twitter as well as provide training/education on best practices.

The tipping point for me though was when the site got REALLY popular and a bunch of B-List celebrities (cough, Ashton Kutcher) found out about it. It used to make me violently ill when that guy would complain that the guys behind Twitter weren’t giving him enough love, and that he made the service big.

My involvement with Twitter has slowed down a lot over time. In the past few months I’ve hardly been on it. That is, until Howard Stern signed up and started using it.

My interest was rekindled, because Howard (if you have read this blog you know) is one of my personal heroes. I listen the shit out of Howard’s show every day. Usually, I listen to each show about 2 or 3x daily. I have a nearly complete archive of all of his Sirius shows. Yes, I love Howard.

But to be honest with you, Howard also kind of ruined Twitter for me. For as big a fan as I am, the King never responds to any of my tweets. True, it is stupid to think that someone with hundreds of thousands of followers would bother. When I listen to Howard on the radio, it feels very intimate. It kind of feels like I am in the same room with those guys. But Howard on Twitter is not intimate at all. When he does respond to tweets it is almost always the most inane ones (ones where people get him confused with Ralph, for example). In the beginning, Howard used Twitter to speak to everyone – sharing his thoughts, maybe a photo of Beth and Bianca. Now it is just re tweets which I think is the worst thing to happen to Twitter since Kutcher.

I guess I feel like the radio is the best place to experience Howard, and that Twitter or even the television, to be honest, spoil the magic of the show. I don’t feel like I’m a part of it like I do when I listen, which is funny because for the most part the show is over before I even wake up in the morning (being that I am on the west coast).

The rest of Twitter is a barrage of links and statements which 90% of the time bare no relevance to me. It’s just noise.

This isn’t a rant against Howard by any means, and I’m sure for many people the added interaction online is a treat. Twitter just isn’t the place for him in my opinion.

We are witnessing what I think can only be described as the first social media meltdown of a celebrity. That might not be the most descriptive term to describe what Charlie Sheen is doing to himself, because truthfully Charlie was melting down before he ever signed up for Twitter or decided to stream his life on ustream.

Clearly, social networks are providing a looking glass into Charlie Sheen’s unraveling and I can’t really think of another celebrity who has so brazenly opened up their disintegration to the world.

In the midst of being fired from his job today, having his children taken in the middle of the night from his home, and losing touch with reality as evidenced by his gibberish on his ustream and twitter streams, Charlie is still defiant.

This is only going to end really, really badly for him.

I say it is alright to harbor a negative, or critical thought every once in a while. Some people do not, and I guess that is their right. But the truth is, if you never have a negative thing to say, or that you think EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is awesome, all the time, then something is seriously wrong with you.

Its perfectly acceptable to say that:

• Cameron Diaz is a terrible actress
• Jaden Smith shouldn’t have been allowed to perform at the Grammy’s
• HP is blatantly copying Apple with the ‘TouchPad’
• Ashton Kutcher is the antichrist

And a bunch of other provocative statements. We don’t have to agree. In fact, agreement is kind of boring most of the time. I’m an individual, I have my own opinions and readily accept that some people don’t share them. I just happen to not care if people disagree with me.

Howard Stern has a big decision to make.

His contract is going to be up here in a few months, and while his soon to be “free agent status” will give him a lot of options, I am actually hoping that he will decide to not re-sign with Sirius.

Why? Because I’d love to see Howard go out on his own and take his show to the Internet.

Been a huge Stern fan for years, all the way back to the first time I saw Howard on the E! channel. And, i got used to downloading Stern episodes from the net before (and honestly, after) he went to Sirius mostly because I lived in a place where he wasn’t syndicated. But ,there are a few reasons I haven’t followed my favorite radio performer to Sirius.

1. I used to subscribe to XM and it stunk. The commercial free aspect really is a joke because for the channels I listened to (talk, sports) there were as many commercials on paid radio as free radio.

2. The cheapest Sirius radio device (clearance section on sirius.com web site) is about $79. Thats a refurbished device without a car kit.

3. A Sirius monthly subscription is $13, which isn’t a big problem except…

4. I don’t listen to Stern on either a car device or home stereo. The iPhone app for Sirius lets me listen to everything BUT Howard, yet that is what is always on my person and what I take with me everywhere.

The take away is that while I feel like Sirius subscription is worth it for Howard, it isn’t worth it for anything BUT Howard, and i’m paying for something I want to listen to that is inconvenient at best.

So, clearly my decision to just download Stern shows over the net fits in with my preferred way of consuming his show. But that is also why I really hope Howard goes out on his own, sets up his own web site and sells his show online.

The truth is Howard is the draw, not Sirius programming. I’d gladly pay HIM $13 a month (or even more) for his show, delivered to my own devices that I can listen to on-demand wherever I am. Going out on his own he would be able to keep all the profit, reach what I suspect would be a much larger audience, and do his show whenever he felt like, especially if he did a pay-per-episode model.

Stern on Sirius has been great, but Sirius isn’t great without him.