Strangely, there’s little talk of downgrading to a “dumbphone.” You know, a plain old cell phone that makes calls, sends texts, and not much else.

About six weeks ago, I sold my used iPhone 3G, and I’ve been living with just such a dumbphone: a Motorola L7. As it turns out, I’m not the only one living life without a data plan and full QWERTY keyboard. Only 15-17% of the world’s cell phones are classified as “smartphones,” which means the vast majority of cell phones are not smart.

Still, the smarties get all the press.

So, what’s life like with a dummy? After the initial shaking, tears, and denial, I was surprised at how easy it was to shed my data plan. And there have been noticeable benefits:

• I’m way less compulsive about checking email/Twitter/random trivia
• I’m way more observant about the world around me. I pay more attention, because I’m less distracted.
• My dumbphone is way cheaper to operate. My Fido bill for July was $15.63, compared to $80-85/month with the iPhone

For my CBC tech column this week, I’m talking about the virtues of the dumbphone: why regular old cell phones aren’t necessarily sexy, but are still a good choice for many people.

Do you have a dumbphone? Do you love it? I’d love to know why. Leave a comment or shoot me an email: dan@misener.org

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cbcjobs

This feed is completely unofficial, and comes with no guarantees. You can also follow @cbcjobs on Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.

You’re welcome.

—

Here’s the longer version of the story: The CBC’s jobs website (“Powered by Taleo“) is basically pretty terrible. And astonishingly, it doesn’t have an RSS feed. If you want new CBC job postings via RSS, you can get them from a couple of places, but these sources aren’t exactly what I was looking for:

• The Tea Makers HR Department (appears to be a human-powered cut/paste job, sometimes delayed by days)
• CBCJobsBC on Twitter (seemingly official, but only posts jobs in British Columbia)
• MediaJobSearchCanada’s main RSS feed (updated frequently – by a scraper, I suspect, but contains every media job in Canada, and links point back to MJSC, where you can’t directly apply for any jobs)

So, using Yahoo Pipes and Feedburner, I cobbled together a feed that I hope will be useful to some people. Basically, this pipe takes the frequently-updated MJSC feed, and then filters out postings that don’t have “CBC RADIO-CANADA” listed as the Company. Then, it grabs the 8-character CBC job number (e.g. EDM00183) from the title, and appends it to

https://cbc.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=

to create a permalink. Feedburner makes the feed pretty, and periodically sends new postings to @cbcjobs on Twitter.

Obviously, it would be much better if the CBC made official job RSS feeds available, but until then, I hope this helps some people out.

Stop courting the audience that doesn’t care about you, and stop alienating the audience that does.

If you ask me, a whole lot of CBC programs would be smart to take the same advice.

There’s a photo gallery at the GO website, and courtesy of Tom, YouTube clips of Jimmy the Uke playing “When You’re Smilin’”:

and Jimmy, Steve McNie, and me playing, “We Will Rock Uke”:

At around 46 minutes into episode 79, Joel Spolsky mentions brochureware-style web design:

You know the kind of site I’m talking about? It’s just like you can imagine it printed on glossy paper and being given to you by hand. And it just doesn’t look like a web page.

But it’s the next line that’s the kicker:

It’s on the web. But it’s not of the web.

And right there, Joel put his finger on exactly what bugs me about so much of what CBC does online, particularly with radio show websites. Yes, it’s on the web. But it’s not of the web.

You can check out all three animations on DNTO’s YouTube page. The CBC “Entertainment” “Portal” has copies too, but lacks permalinks, so I won’t bother linking there.

There are solid business reasons for making transcripts free. Sales have been dropping over the years. As people search for, discover and share content, offering free transcripts will boost the traffic to NPR.org, traffic that can be monetized with sponsorship. Finally, search engines like text. Many of our stories could not be found by the search engines because they did not have enough text. Now it will be easier for the search engines — and ultimately the users — to find and enjoy NPR’s stories.

On the Media from WYNC puts transcripts of all of its interviews online, and they’re extremely helpful. It’s something we’ve tried on Spark, and would like to do more of. And, as Julien Smith says, “the web is built around text, not sound.”

Update: My pal Rhiannon makes another excellent point:

i like when radio puts up transcripts. it’s really useful for me if i’m listening to something, say on a morning show (especially pre-coffee), and i’m like “wow! this would be great info for my/ someone else’s research!!” listening to the radio is great, but to be able to pass the info along to others (or save it for myself) who can use it at a later time is really useful from an academic’s perspective. i wish cbc did more of this all around.

Our idea was to treat content as a composition, and to treat the listeners as active participants in the listening experience.

If you haven’t heard The Wire (or the follow-up series, The Nerve) find a copy now and listen. If you can’t find a copy, email me and I can probably help.

MP3 download

I have a couple, specifically geared towards making money for CBC Radio, which faces a planned cut of $14.4-million from its budget, as part of a plan to make up a $171-million shortfall. Now, these ideas won’t necessarily save CBC, but they could generate some extra cash.

If you ask me, CBC Radio is missing out on some really simple ways to generate revenue online.

Yup, I think we should do that. Make money online. Because as Mark Ramsey said during his keynote at las year’s Public Radio Program Director’s Conference:

It’s a different world online. Don’t go online and create the expectation that this is going to be as non-commercial as offline. Because if you create that expectation you will be held to it. And you will be worse for it. You will be worse for it.

Here then, are three ways off the top of my head that CBC Radio can make some dough, online, right now.

1. Help sell books, take a cut

FACT: CBC Radio puts a lot of authors on air

FACT: Amazon and Indigo are in the business of selling books, and both have affiliate programs that’ll pay referring sites up to 8.5% commission

What could this mean for CBC Radio? Let’s take Canada Reads for example. We know that Canada Reads generates books sales: “sales of Michael Ondaatje’s In The Skin of A Lion increased by 80,000 in 2002, the year of its appearance on Canada Reads. Its publisher, Random House of Canada attributed much of this increase to Canada Reads.”

So, a nationwide bump of 80,000 books. Let’s (optimistically) say you could drive 10% of those books sales (8,000 units) through an affiliate link at cbc.ca/canadareads. The current Amazon price for In the Skin of a Lion is $15.33. So then:

8.5% of 8000 books at $15.33 = $10,424.40

Ten thousand bucks for sending a little traffic Amazon’s way? Consider that Canada Reads picks not just one, but five books every year, and you’ve got a halfway decent way to offset production costs for that show. Set up affiliate links on the Writers and Company and the Words at Large sites, and literary programming might just get a financial shot in the arm. Would a little “Buy at Amazon.ca” and/or “Buy at Indigo” link be that offensive?

2. Help sell music, take a cut

FACT: The CBC Radio 2 site has an incredibly helpful Playlists page that tells you what music was played at what time on what shows

FACT: There’s no way to actually buy any music from that Playlists page

Again, one revenue opportunity is affiliate links. Apple has an iTunes affiliate program that pays 5 cents per song. So write a script that scrapes the existing playlist data and generates iTunes affiliate links. I can’t say I have any idea how many 5-cent drops in the bucket you’d get, but I’m positive it’s more than zero, which is what the Playlist page is making now.

Also, why can’t I buy any music from CBCRadio3.com via iTunes, kicking some dough to both the indie artists and the broadcaster that helped me find them?

3. Sell some freaking podcast ads sponsorhips

Hundreds of thousands of CBC podcasts are downloaded weekly. Smart, connected Canadians listen to those podcasts. That’s a valuable audience, reachable for cheap.

Remember back in 2007 when CBC Radio started running “sponsorship messages” at the beginning of each podcast? Something like “The delivery of this podcast is sponsored by GM” or some such thing. Those messages brought in a large amount of money. They’ve since been replaced with promos for other CBC programs.

Personally, I certainly wouldn’t mind hearing podcast sponsorship messages again, so long as they were sufficiently separated from the editorial content of the shows, and especially if they helped keep shows on the air.

And the CBC could be smarter about how they sell those sponsorships. They could sell them on a show-by-show basis, not just the blanket-style GM ads that ran in 2007. For example, why not sell tech sponsorships on the Spark and Search Engine podcasts?

Also, if I wanted to sponsor a CBC Radio podcast, where would I go? Who would I talk to? I have no idea. Here’s a thought — why not use those 20-second bumpers at the beginning of each podcast to say “Your sponsorship message here!”

What do you think? Should CBC Radio’s online presence be as non-commercial as the radio service, or could you handle ideas like these being put into place to help keep shows on the air?