Staying Focused in an Internet Age of Distractions

By James Bean

The folk musician Pete Seeger once said: "Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first." The same Internet that creates an avenue for cyber-attacks is also providing the opportunity for people from all nations (imaginary lines drawn on maps but not visible from space) to be able to communicate with one another, hopefully affirming their desire for life, love, prosperity, and working out their differences.

The Internet could save the world by empowering its people to collectively save themselves. Seeger often made coments about radio and "democratizing technology", expressing the hope that: "Maybe the 21st Century will be the Century of the Democratization of Technology. This is Pete Seeger signing off and saying don't forget to make music yourselves." Actually his famous song "Little Boxes" reminds me of the world of radio as it once was just a few short years ago, in what now can be described as the pre Internet age: "Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the same. There's a green one, and a pink one, and a blue one, and a yellow one, and they're all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same." The full song at Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywgJLw21UqU

The mediocrity (media-ocrity) of the "vast wasteland" of channels and frequencies, with all it's conformity, is finally being transcended in this Internet Age. Rather than being limited to a handful of local media outlets zealously preaching a gospel of rock, country, or right-wing political talk radio, the global "Democratization of Technology" is just a mouse-click away.

Now everyone potentially has a microphone, a blog, an ability to access information, to network, to share ideas and organize new communities as never before in all of human history. Now many with an urge to broadcast, can do so. One might say the creative human spirit is finally free, and: "This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything." (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") Yet, there is always the danger that the same dullness-of-spirit that reflected and echoed back to us a vast media wasteland of "five hundred channels and still nothing on", could end up dumbing down, slowing down, over-regulating, or filtering this great Type One Civilization means of global communication known as the Internet.

There are growing signs of this already, both near and far. Still, I think at present, the greatest danger for now is people failing to prioritize, failing to pay enough close attention to, and support, the causes that are most important to them. In the pre Internet Age the problem was denial or slowness of information - lack of access, only a limited number of speakers, microphones, and channels. These days however, the main concern is our attention being scattered. We are drowning in a sea of information ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, and hopefully not multitasking ourselves into a new vast cyber wasteland. Facebook for example. My opinion is that, for some, the Facebook experience is getting to be a bit scattered, out-of-focus. As people not only join a few groups and pages that reflect the causes they really care about, but also join ("Like") hundreds or perhaps even thousands! of additional pages, how can one pay attention to much of anything anymore?

It is the same for Internet radio. May the creative voices stand out, be heard, not submerged below the noise level, not lost in the static, not starving and dehydrating. May the creative people, the webcasters with a vision for a positive future for humanity and the planet we call home, the innovative, truly receive the support they need, so that these torchbearers may thrive, teach, transform -- being many stars collectively forming one light. HealthyLife.Net radio network holds a torch and has lighted the way in internet radio since 2002.

The metaphor of the musician: If a street musician is a masterful player, throw some "coins" into his hat or guitar case, and you may get to enjoy hearing him again and again. Without the musician there is no music. "A human being's attention is the most precious treasure he possesses." (Edward Salim Michael, "The Law of Attention - Nada Yoga and the Way of Inner Vigilance") "All peoples of this earth weigh equal. Heading as they are toward one goal, common to all....Let all come forth and march in loving union; The greater the trials, the more united we shall be. Together we shall overpower the onslaught of time, and learn to light the torch of love in one and all......Let us find the remedy which raises us from the wheel of life, Fills our whole being with love, and alchemizes us into the divine."(Darshan Singh, from, "The Cry of the Soul")

Listen to James Bean on Spiritual Awakenings Tuesdays, 12 pm PT at www.healthylife.net

Labor of Love: HealthyLife.net News@7

As another summer comes to a close many wonder where did the time go? Time and how we spend it is becoming just as important as how we use our financial resources, or make other healthy decisions on a daily basis. Children are going back to school a little sooner, and weather patterns have been changing recently too. Now it can be a challenge to find our rhythms that we are used to that can get us back on track.

The HealthyLife.net News@7 has been a "Labor of Love" for all involved since its launch in January 2010. Information is important and these days it takes a little more time to find the better news that is usually overlooked or goes unreported.

Every day of the week on HealthyLife.net News@7 there is a new and different feature with Heroes and Happy Living, Health news, Science and Technology, Environmental news, as well as, Arts and Entertainment. Guest opinions and daily updates are provided on World news, National topics plus Business and Sports News. If you’ve listened to HealthyLife.Net News@7 broadcast, I'm sure you know most of the information for potential news content that is considered by mainstream news media are topics that we feel are too saturated and therefore we are a bit more selective with our listener in mind.

Besides the information and content out there, we seem to be using technology at an ever increasing pace. We are all working with the choices of how we like to communicate and receive our basic and sometimes recreational news. It's really at a point where if you haven't done so recently, you have to do a tech inventory just to keep up with the basics today. I personally like being in a world where I can use the "older", if you will, medium of radio with a new twist of being online. Online radio can not only be listened to on your PC from any where in the world, but on your mobile phones and devices, as well as being accessed in many of the new cars - sitting in the background for your multi-tasking life style or in the foreground to soak it all in.

With the Fall season on our doorsteps it can be another chance to make some positive shifts in your life if you feel the need. I'm working on some steps behind the scenes here at the Network to make the HealthyLife.net News@7 even better for loyal listeners like you. Keep an eye on this Blog for more info and updates specifically relating to the Healthylife.net News@7 and its featured stories and topics. Your feedback here or on any of our social media sites is always encouraged as well.

Happy Labor Day (Don't work too hard).

Jay Cruz
Anchor HealthyLife.net News@7
Monday - Friday 7am and 7pm Pacific Time
and archived all day for 24 hours

In the Crystal Ball: More Regulation for Psychics

Radio Host Linda Mackenzie referenced in Time magazine article. Check it out!
In the Crystal Ball: More Regulation for Psychics

9 Healthy Home Tips

9 Healthy Home Tips
by Faith Ranoli

Do you wish you could live a healthier lifestyle? Do you feel your life is too busy to implement simple steps to improve your health? Here are 9 simple changes we can all make in our day-to-day behaviors that will improve our health.

1. Don't use pesticides, insect repellents, or mothballs, because they are designed to attack living cells.

2. When you bring your clothes home from the dry cleaners, try to air them out and don't store them in your bedroom. Harmful dry cleaning solvents can be released into the air you and your family breathe.

3. Computer printers and copiers should not be used in a bedroom, because they release pollutants and often times the electromagnetic frequency they emit will interfere with your ability to have a good nights sleep.

4. Leave shoes used outside at the door to avoid tracking dirt and chemicals through your house. Tracking in dirt and chemicals from outside and on to your flooring and then walking on that dirty flooring barefoot can allow the outdoor dirt and pollutants to enter your body through the pores on the bottom of your feet.

5. Have your basement evaluated for mold growth and moisture problems. Have your heating and cooling system professionally inspected, including outdoor air intakes, room air supply and return grills, air filters, air handlers, and drain pans. If you have mold in your home, your air ducts may be contaminated too. First deal with eliminating the source of the contaminant and then have your ducts professionally cleaned.

6. The bedroom is the most important room to keep toxin-free. When we sleep, our bodies are in a state of rest and repair, and we don't do as well if we are trying to combat toxins at the same time. Open a window every night for fresh air. There is usually less pollution outside at night than inside your closed up home.

7. Transformers of low-voltage lighting and ballasts in fluorescent lighting can emit high magnetic fields. Both these types of lighting should be avoided in areas where occupants spend a lot of time and should never be located on a ceiling below a bedroom.

8. When placing furniture, check for magnetic and electric fields to avoid placing your easy chair, bed or baby's crib in a hot spot. Watch what is plugged in on the other side of the wall, because fields penetrate walls. Beware of placing your bed near sources of radiation such as TVs, VCRs, stereos, clocks, filtration devices, heating units, refrigerators, humidifiers and dehumidifiers, stoves, microwaves, computers, electric baseboard heaters and radiant systems. Keep your distance from all electric devices.

9. Avoid sleeping on beds with innersprings, box springs, or metal bed frames. Metal serves as an antenna for electromagnetic fields. Anything steel can become magnetized and give off magnetic fields.

Faith Ranoli is the Radio Host of Heart And Home Show, Thursday 1p.m. at www.healthylife.net Faith is a Life Coach, Author, Teacher, Speaker and Holistic Home Inspector HeartAndHomeHealing.com

In Trenches of Audience Metrics

As published in Talkers Magazine - June 2010

In Trenches of Audience Metrics
Internet radio lights a way for talk radio
By Linda Mackenzie

LOS ANGELES ––Numbers! Numbers! Numbers! Shrouded in mystery of sample sizes and extrapolated numbers has there ever been a real count of audience size? It’s the never ending bane of radio – even in my arena as General Manager of an Internet-only talk network.

The real internet radio pioneers started broadcasting in the late 1990s. As a former 18 year datacom engineer with an 8 year stint as a talk radio host I started my internet radio network in 2002. At that time the majority of people knew very little about internet radio, however today, according to the Bridge Ratings Feb 1, 2010 study, Internet radio’s audience size is about 60 million a week.

Being in radio you can imagine the effort it took in 2002 to get quality talk hosts and listeners, much less advertisers. By 2004 when I started streaming 24/7 our audience numbers grew. Numbers now became part of my equation to get advertisers who were weaned on audience metrics. Being that old datacom engineer I set out on my quest to find real numbers.

I can remember being at the RAIN internet radio meeting held at the NAB 2004 Convention. The web-based radio audience size at that time was about 40 million a month. After the Arbitron presentation, I raised my hand and asked them a couple of questions which were perplexing to me at the time. “How can Arbitron determine numbers using an infinitesimally small sample size in comparison to overall audience size, how could these numbers reflect the listening audience of my particular talk station and why did I need Arbitron when as an Internet-only station I have actual numbers?” At that point the moderator came up to the podium and said, “We’re going to take a short break.” My mouth was agape as they walked off the stage leaving my questions unanswered amidst a plethora of murmurings from the attending audience. The speaker from Arbitron, who was extremely nice, came over to talk to me during the break and ended up by asking me questions.

Unlike any other broadcast medium, internet radio can get actual audience counts today.

This data is available on streaming servers. A streaming server can get the actual listener’s IP address, how long they listened from the time they log on to the stream to the time they log off, and even the zip code. All that information can be captured into what is known as the streaming server log. Administrators can specify how much or how little information they wish to capture into the server’s log file. All the way down to every last event or transaction that occurs.

However, processing the log to glean the desired information is quite time consuming and therefore expensive.

In 2004 our numbers were smaller and I received reports from my streaming aggregator displaying all this data. We had a 50 State breakdown, what cities in those States by listener count and how long they were listening. At that time we went to 108 countries with 82% of our numbers coming from 1,240 cities in all 50 states. We also had a count of our on-demand archived shows which are real streaming server numbers based on the individual retrieval of the listeners IP address. We were getting 8,000to 10,000 listeners a month on our archive.

Today with so many listeners there is so much data in any given day that it is impossible to process it. It’s too time consuming to warrant the cost. So at this point in time, even though the data is there, no one processes it. But it’s just a matter of time before the solution on processing these individual transactions is found and then we will get real numbers.

This leads us to a bigger question, if real numbers were available would we really want them and would they be ‘true’ numbers?

Internet radio has the capacity to reach more listeners than any other method of single radio delivery.

My network is distributed (carried or rebroadcast) on over 50 channels of distribution including the internet, WiFi, smartphones, private radio networks, mobile, podcasts, in dashboard of the BMW Mini cars and we even are on an Iphone App for an alarm clock.

As to ‘true’ numbers, now here comes the rub. On the streaming server, each one of these 50 distribution channels appear as one individual IP address. The distribution channel picks up my stream, broadcasts it out 24/7 to their listeners, they get the audience metric - which I never see. Take the case of my network being 1 of 300 content providers on the Microsoft Windows Media Player Radio Tuner. That makes us available on every Windows Media Player in the world, but I don’t know how many people are listening. I would assume we are getting a lot since they haven’t thrown us off, but the bottom line is that it brings us back to extrapolated numbers, at least for distribution channels.

Now let’s throw into the muddy waters of radio measurement, the advertisers. The advertising agencies seem to want ‘Page Views’ as their preferred measurement of decision for placing their advertising dollars. Page views are the website statistics of how many people request the website, people who may or may not listen to the radio stream. Most advertisers are unaware that the actual numbers of listeners come from the streaming server.

However it is still my opinion that any Internet audience metric is infinitely more accurate and better, especially for talk radio, than a sampled base audience metric system that is geared towards music.

Internet radio websites provide the ability to get real listener demographics

In 2007 I realized that although I knew the listener count and could somewhat glean from our show topics my station’s approximate demographics I didn’t have a male/female composition split or any real measure of the age group breakouts. So I initiated the Listener Clubhouse. People sign up for the Clubhouse, answer a few demographic questions and I get a view of my actual demographics which I can apply to my overall listener numbers. Surveys and polls can also provide a method for audience demographic accumulation.

Talk radio hosts interaction with listeners is a real source of audience measurement.

When all is said and done the most important key to audience measurement are the talk show hosts themselves. As General Manager I know my hosts are the core to my whole operation whether this is reportable or not. Our hosts get the on-air phone calls, emails, mail, appearance requests and interaction with their unique listeners on the network’s radio stream and web site, the host’s website and both our network’s and their own social media sites. That’s a lot of potential for numbers. That’s a lot of feedback. The activity that we get and the phone calls, albeit the ones in the middle of the night, show me we are doing a good job at our first priority which is - the listener experience.

In these times where face-to-face and social interaction is being replaced by the computer, I believe the voice of talk radio is going to grow to fill that gap of this lost interaction. People need and relate to people – and that’s talk radio.
Automated music, which can be gotten in so many various forms on the internet other than radio, (and don’t get me started about .mp3 versions that are playing on air that cut off the bottom bass sound of a song) it is amazing to me how talk radio seems to be getting the short end of the stick when it comes to current measurement practices. Maybe it’s time to re-think the whole measurement company paradigm. The data is there we just have to find a way to process it.

Linda Mackenzie is the Founder and General Manager of HealthyLife.Net Radio Network (www.healthylife.net). She can be emailed at linda@healthylife.net

Listen to Julia Roberts on HRN News@7

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20 AT 7am & 7pm PT & ARCHIVED ALL WEEKEND.
TUNE IN TO HEALTHYLIFE.NET News@7
http://www.healthylife.net/HRNnews7.html

Every week on the HRN News@7 A& E segment Gayl Murphy interviews the stars and tells you the scoop on what's happening with who in the Entertainment industry this week! This week listen to actress Julia Roberts talk about her new movie "EAT LOVE PRAY"!

ABOUT JULIA ROBERTS
Julia Roberts was born in Smyrna, Georgia. Her parents, one-time actors and playwrights, met while performing theatrical productions for the armed forces. While her mother was pregnant with Roberts, she and her husband ran an acting school for children in Decatur, Georgia. The children of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King attended the school. As a thank-you for their service, Mrs. King paid the hospital bill when Roberts' mother gave birth to Julia.

She has been nominated for many Golden Globe awards and has won 2 and as for the Oscars she has been nominated several times and won an Oscar for Erin Brockovich. Julia Roberts was one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, topping the Hollywood Reporter's annual "power list" of top-earning female stars from 2002 to 2006. Roberts was the first actress to appear on the cover of Vogue and she has been named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" eleven times.
In 2001 Ladies Home Journal ranked her as the 11th most powerful woman in America. Her production company is called Red Om Films.

Chef Gordon Ramsey on HealthyLife.Net

FRIDAY, AUGUST 6 AT 7am & 7pm PT & ARCHIVED TUNE IN TO HEALTHYLIFE.NET News@7
http://www.healthylife.net/HRNnews7.html

You can count on Gayl Murphy to give you the headsup on what's happening with who in the Entertainment industry this week! Tune in to the A&E segment on HRN News@7 and you'll also hear an interview with Chef Gordon Ramsay - the Award winning British chef, restaurant owner and focus of the reality television show, "Hell's Kitchen"!

ABOUT GORDON RAMSAY
Gordon Ramsay has been awarded a total of 12 Michelin Stars and, in 2001, became one of only three chefs in the United Kingdom to hold three Michelin stars at one time. Ramsay was born in Johnstone, Scotland and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, England from the age of 5. Ramsay has described his early life as "hopelessly itinerant", as his family moved constantly due to the aspirations and failures of his father. In 1976, they finally settled in Stratford-upon-Avon where he grew up in the Bishopton area of town.

Ramsay played football and was first chosen to play under-14 football at age 12. He was chosen to play for Warwickshire. His football career was marked by a number of injuries, causing him to remark later in life, "Perhaps I was doomed when it came to football". In mid-1984, Ramsay had a trial with Rangers, the club he supported as a boy. He seriously injured his knee, smashing the cartilage during training. Ramsay continued to train and play on the injured knee, tearing a cruciate ligament during a squash game. He never fully recovered from the double injury.

By this time, Ramsay's interest in cooking had already begun, and rather than be known as "the football player with the gammy knee" at age 19, Ramsay paid more serious attention to his culinary education. In the late 1980s, he worked as a commis chef at the Wroxton House Hotel, then ran the kitchen and 60-seat dining room at the Wickham Arms. Ramsay then moved to London, where he worked in a series of restaurants until being inspired to work for the temperamental Marco Pierre White at Harveys.

After working at 'Harveys' Ramsay, tired of "the rages and the bullying and violence", decided that the way to further advance his career was to study French cuisine. In 2007, Ramsay opened his first Irish restaurant, Gordon Ramsay at Powerscourt, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow, Ireland.

In May 2008 Ramsay opened his first U.S. west coast restaurant, in Los Angeles, California. Situated in the former Bel-Age hotel on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, the hotel has been renovated and re-named The London West Hollywood. The restaurant is called Boxwood. Many episodes of Ramsay's U.S. series Hell's Kitchen are recorded in Southern California.