Archive for 2010

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Did The iPad Kill The Kindle?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 30, 2010 by admin in Popular Media

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Not yet. But they sure forced a price drop. And changed a paradigm. Will YOU buy a Kindle now that they’re only 139 bucks?


My dream is that one day you’ll click
on my Amazon Kindle ads while
you read my writing on an iPad.

Amazon wants to rekindle their relationship with you. They’re really, really sorry they were charging you so much for just reading a book with them, so they want to offer you another chance at making things work. And this time they’re only charging you $139. That’s right, Amazon’s Kindle, which just last year was priced at $299, is now only $139. In spite of the press about how the Kindle’s sales accelerated last quarter, the fact is that the iPad made quick business of mopping the floor with the Kindle, and the only hope Amazon has is to do exactly what they’re doing, which is price-slashing. If you read that Business Week article, you might take note of the fact that while Amazon expects to sell over 3 million Kindles this year, Apple sold over 3 million iPads in just EIGHTY DAYS. We poked a lot of fun at the iPad this year, and even rounded up aspiring “iPad Killers”, but the fact is, if any of those devices really intend to do any killing, they’ll mostly be killing themselves by marketing themselves that way. In his seemingly unending genius, Steve Jobs made us think Apple was launching a new device, when what they really were doing was launching a platform and shifting a paradigm. Although I’m still anxiously awaiting a more full-featured iPad-like device from whoever builds a good one first, I’d buy an iPad hands-down over a Kindle for media consumption. But I don’t want to use an iPad or a Kindle, I want to be on them. As a media creator, this is possibly the most exciting new publishing channel since the web itself gained a wide reach, and I’m more excited than you could imagine about the possibilities; it’s the first time in a while that a platform with such broad potential reach is accessible to “the little guy”. As this Ad Age article about Virgin’s new iPad-only magazine “Maverick” points out, major publishers have their hands tied because they can’t charge less for an app than they do for the print version of their established magazines, so they have less incentive to get involved, because they’d potentially be damaging their own struggling profit model. Expect to see an explosion of new development much like iPhone apps, but with much richer content and easier distribution of content if you’re a media creator. And look for us there soon.

Elite British Photobomber Paul Yarrow

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 29, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

We really need a better term than “photobombing” for the weirdos that insinuate themselves into the background of news broadcasts.


Paul Yarrow’s Mentor, Rollen Stewart

About a month ago someone sent me a link to this site, where they were pondering the identity of a “mystery man” who was constantly popping up in the background of live British newscasts. At the time, I blew it off; to me, a few of the shots looked Photoshopped, and I thought it suspicious that there were plenty of screen grabs, but no video. Well, it turns out there was a mystery man, and he has a message. In his words: “I could have a valid point about something but the microphone is always passed to the person alongside me. The point I am making is that the more you push me aside, the more I’m going to be determined to make my presence known.” Well done Paul, glad you finally got the mike so you could share that. Just don’t become the next Rollen Stewart, who – after becoming a regular fixture in sport broadcasts wearing a rainbow wig and holding up signs reading “John 3:16″ – ended his “career” with a kidnapping and standoff with the police in 1992. While you have to give Yarrow some credit for his media savvy, you shouldn’t give him too much. While there have been hundreds of streakers over the last few decades, only one of them had the sense to cut a deal with the internet casino GoldenPalace.com, the casino best known for spending $28,000 on a decade-old grilled cheese sandwich. Unfortunately for GoldenPalace, they paid him to streak at the same event at which Janet Jackson had her wardrobe malfunction. We really need a better term for this kind of behavior; the term “photobombing” doesn’t really capture the meta-significance of a fat man devoting his life to appearing in the background of a newscast. Suggestions welcome. Read the rest of this entry »

Candidates That Make The Tea Party Look Like, Er, A Tea Party

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 28, 2010 by admin in Politics

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

A quick roundup of 2010 political campaigns fueled by Jesus, 9/11 conspiracies, and a poorly guaged Lithium prescription.


Vote for Basil Marceaux, and he’ll
“immune you from all state crimes
for the rest of you life”

I was recently lamenting the seriousness of American politics, but it appears the Patron Saint of Crazy has smiled upon us. The other day we talked about Alvin Greene, who campaigns as a Democrat for the US Senate when he’s not busy being an unemployed felon that lives with his mom, but it seems there’s a veritable epidemic of viral-campaign-ready loonies out there, with the infectious epicenters currently located in Tennessee and Michigan. In Tennessee, we have a heated gubernatorial race between Basil Marceaux, whose main pitch is “VOTE FOR ME AND IF I WIN I WILL IMMUNE YOU FROM ALL STATE CRIMES FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE” and James Reesor , whose Feet On The Street Reesor Sign Tour is built on a “95-county Grassroots campaign through Fast-food restaurants and car lots”. We won’t bore you with more copy that just regurgitates these candidates’ platforms; their slickly-produced videos deliver their messages much more eloquently and efficently. Video below. Read the rest of this entry »

The 80′s You Remember Never Existed

[ 4 Comments ]Posted on July 27, 2010 by admin in Music

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

When you think “80′s Music” you probably think of bands like Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode, New Order, or the Pixies. Think again.


Luckily, your selective memory has
protected you from things like this

In a vintage fern bar somewhere in some small Florida beach town, there’s a forty-something couple in matching white polyester pants and Hawaiian shirts, bombed on Slippery Nipples and dancing to Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical”. These two people are probably the only people alive who remember and enjoy the “real” music of the 80′s. I love it when people start reminiscing about all the great music of that decade, and proceed to name bands like Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode, New Order, the Pet Shop Boys, or the Pixies. Because that simply was not, in reality, the music of the 80′s. Although it may have been in some people’s reality, particularly those people whose reality was shaped by dark dance floors and copious quantities of alcohol and other drugs. But in the real reality, things were much different. A fact that is overlooked even in the erudite commentary of a piece like Justin Erik Halldór Smith’s Against Eighties Music, which features a picture of The Cure’s Robert Smith and references Stereo MCs, who didn’t really even break until 1993. No, the fact is that if – like me – you readily remember an endless stream of masterful electronica and epically brilliant alternative bands, you were probably doing what I was doing, which was hiding in a club behind a drug haze to escape the horror of the pop music that was REALLY dominating the airwaves and record sales. Below is a year-by-year look at the best-selling music of the 80′s. No wonder we stayed out all night dancing to the club music most of us remember, and then slept all day. We were just trying to avoid accidently hearing this crap by accidently turning on the radio or something! Read the rest of this entry »

Apple Gets EFFed In Court While Al Greene Runs For Senate

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 26, 2010 by admin in Politics

Monday, July 26th, 2010

While both the EFF and Alvin Greene have scored their own little victories recently, we’re still waiting for the Alvin Greene Day & The Chipmunks mashup.

I love it when the day’s news converges in such a way that politics, pop media, copyright law, and comedy collide in an amorphous mass of inanely entertaining foolishness. Like today. While the EFF scored major victories allowing you to jailbreak your iPhone and remix YouTube video content, the PR firm “Frank Strategies” forced a YouTube takedown of the Alvin Greene campaign rap video because it used a few seconds of crappy Tea Party protest footage from one of their videos. Except it wasn’t actually Alvin Greene’s campaign video , and and you can still find it on YouTube, ironically on the Fixed News Channel, which parodies Fox News. If you haven’t followed this story, Alvin Greene is an unemployed felon who lives with his mom, who in spite of these minor handicaps was also the recent victor in the South Carolina Democratic U.S. Senate primary race. Many believe he was a GOP plant. Just another campaign season in America, I guess. Given the media mashup nature of this story, the biggest surprise here is that there still is no “Alvin Greene and the Chipmunks”* parody. Until then, the only Al Green video that gets my vote is featured below…. Read the rest of this entry »

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