Archive for 2010

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What Do Kate Moss And An iPad Have In Common?

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on January 29, 2010 by admin in Technology

Friday, January 29th, 2010

My obligatory “Why I’m Not Buying An iPad” monologue.


Help Us Name This Product

Here we go again. I get to admire an Apple product from a far. It’s sort of like admiring your friend’s gorgeous model girlfriend who has a drug problem, while being absolutely confident that you’d have no interest whatsoever in dating her. Why do you tease me, Apple? It happened with the Cube, the iPod, the iPhone…in fact, it even happened with the Newton in the 90′s when you ditched the product. In each case, an amazingly conceived and engineered product just barely didn’t suit my needs, and in your brilliant obstinance, you offered no options. So what is it, that after months of drooling over its arrival, will stop me from buying an iPad? Well, this time it’s a few things; some of them simple. Like the lack of USB, and the lack of Flash. And the proprietary Safari Mobile browser. Who do you think you are? Microsoft? It’s also the lack of multi-tasking. That’s just absurd. But what it really is about for me is that I don’t want to pay someone 500 bucks to buy an advertisement and a retail store, which – aside from its amazing interface and innovative hardware – is what the iPad represents. It’s like Apple is saying “We will develop amazing technologies for you, but only if you buy lots of stuff through it“. Which is brilliant on their part; I really admire the genius. The closed loops of iPod/iTunes and iPhone/Apps have made billions for Apple, and I’m sure the closed system that is the iPad will do the same. Unfortunately, I’m from the No Logo subset of the Free generation. I don’t wear advertisements, beyond things like the tags on Levis. Actually, I’ve been known to remove those too. And I don’t like being told where and how to buy things. No, if you want me to walk into your store, Apple, make it free or affordable. Why would I pay you money for the ability to buy things from your closed markets? You should pay ME. You’ve proven that you could afford to do so by developing a product that typically could and should cost a thousand dollars (remember, the iPhone was 600 bucks on release), and then choosing to price it just low enough to kill the Kindle. No Apple, I’m onto you, and I won’t play. But I do have to thank you once again for pushing the envelope and raising the bar. Other vendors will certainly enhance their products because of you, and maybe even create one that I’ll buy in the near future. I’m sad I won’t be able to multi-touch your gorgeous glassiness for now. Maybe I’ll see you at the price drop.

More Mashups: Girls Aloud Allowed, But EMI Goes GooGoo Over Gaga

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 28, 2010 by admin in Music

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Will major labels ever figure out the equation of rights management versus free exposure?

We’ve touched on mashups before, but hadn’t realized how deeply they’d been cross-infected with mainstream pop culture, and hadn’t considered the daunting task they bring to record labels operating with a Jurassic attitude toward media distribution and rights management. First of all, let’s look at an example of how not to do a mashup, and then take a look at an example of why issuing takedowns to mashup artists is probably not all that productive. So how not to do a mashup? Fox TV’s Glee “got hip” and jumped on the mashup train by taking the Police song “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and Gary Puckett’s “Young Girl”, and having one of the stars of the show sing them as a mashup. The result was predictably horrifying. The problem? The music was obviously licensed, played by studio session players, and badly dubbed over by the actor. The net result is comparable to watching your friend who majored in drama but ended up being an MBA singing “Halo” at karaoke night. If anyone should get sued in the world of mashups, it’s the producers of Glee. On the other end of the spectrum, we have situations where a label like EMI issues a takedown when the repurposing of their property would probably do them more benefit than harm. The piece just linked to explains why EMI issued a takedown for NirGaga, the Lady Gaga Vs. Nirvana mashup. What’s wrong with that scenario? For me, the mashup made me remember Nirvana, who I hadn’t thought of in ages, and exposed me to Lady Gaga, who I would otherwise not go out of my way to listen to. In either case, it’s doubtful that the free distribution of the mashup would dent EMI’s profits, and in spite of EMI’s takedown, the video and song remain “in the wild”, and fairly easy to find, as evident with the YouTube link above. Another example of reaching a new and unlikely end-user (i.e.: me) is a series of mashups of Girls Aloud, the British reality TV superstar girl band that’s made millions and that I’d bet a million that – like me – you’ve never heard of before. Below are examples of Girls Aloud and a few other mashups (Devo vs Souljaboy, Lady Gaga vs Eurythmics) that – at least to my ears – make the unlistenable fairly listenable. I doubt major media companies will ever get this property management vs exposure equation, and will continue throwing the baby out with the bath water until they’re bankrupt. If you want a quick roundup of some of last year’s best mashups, check out CultureBully’s list, or Best of Bootie 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Things I Wish Obama Would Say In A State Of The Union Address

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 27, 2010 by admin in Politics

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

It really boils down to simple things, like HEY AMERICA! You’re fat, rude, and greedy! Chill out!

For quite some time, I’ve wished that when a president says utterly irrational things in a State of the Union address, he would say positive things instead of things like “everyone wants to kill us because we’re so great and they’re jealous so we’ll just have to bomb someone”. So when I voted for Mr. Hopey Changey, I think I was fantasizing that in one of his speeches he would say something like “Our team of political and social analysts has spent the last year reviewing the key problems in America, and have reached some simple conclusions and developed some simple solutions. First of all, you’re all too fat, lazy, greedy, rude, and watch WAY too much TV. Y’all need to stop eatin’ those sticks of butter and supersizin’ all six meals each day. Get off your butt and at least GO FOR A WALK if that’s all you can manage. Once you’re off your butt, when you run into people, make eye contact and say things like ‘HI! HOW ARE YA?’ and hold doors for them and let them go first in line, and say ‘EXCUSE ME’ if they’re in your way instead of snorting and having a hernia. If you’re one of those fortunate enough to own six cars, two houses, and have more than a million in cash at your disposal, THINK ABOUT SHARING some of that. How many houses can you live in at the same time? We’ve also decided that corporations and government should BENEFIT PEOPLE OTHER THAN THE ONES THAT RUN THEM. Therefore, we’re stripping corporations of their human rights (um, they’re not human, right?) and stripping legislative, executive and judicial pay back to nearly nothing, so that whole “public servant” thing makes sense again. You’re also no longer allowed to sue people every time you stub your toe on their sidewalk, but all medical malpractice suits are hereby judged in favor of the patient. We all know that even the flippant ones were the result of the greed and mismanagement of  the health care industry, right? And this whole lawsuit thing extends ESPECIALLY to kids. Children can no longer sue their parents, and parents can no longer sue the kids’ teachers. If the neighbor’s kids are acting up, BUST ‘EM. And you and the teacher are the grown ups, remember? TALK IT OUT. Oh. And no more padded playgrounds and helmets. All the dumbest and clumsiest kids are surviving grade school and creating a really feeble gene-pool for the next generation. I think that should cover it for this year. We’ll be back next year to see how things turned out. There may be a pop quiz in June though.

Repo Man’s Bastard Spawn: Repo Chick & Repo Men

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 26, 2010 by admin in Popular Media

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Two new movies are being released that claim no connection to Repo Man, yet both are framing all their marketing around its cult brand. I’m Lookin for the Joke with a Microscope.

As countercultural post art-punk film lovers in the 80′s, my unjustifiably snobbish friends and I weren’t too taken with Repo Man on its release. We felt that punk that called itself punk was nothing more than a cartoon of rebellion, so a movie with a soundtrack featuring Black Flag and the Circle Jerks just didn’t fly with us. I came to my senses a few years later when I re-watched the film during the heyday of indy film in the late 80′s and early 90′s, and although I haven’t seen it in a while, it remains on my mental list of cult favorites. Which is part of why I’m tremendously amused with the buzz surrounding the release of both Repo Chick and Repo Men! (YouTube trailer links) this year. If you haven’t followed the story around the release of the films, it goes something like this: Repo Man director Alex Cox was busy developing “Repo Chick”, which he emphatically stated in early press was not a sequel to Repo Man. With movie studios being the litigation-fueled monsters that they are, Universal Pictures (which has rights to Repo Man) sent Cox a cease-and-desist, pulled a film they had shelved since 2008 called “Repossession Mambo” from the vaults, and rechristened it “Repo Men!” for release this year, almost concurrent with Repo Chick. Universal’s strategy is both fitting and ironic in a time of auto-industry bailouts and mortgage foreclosures, and adds an amusing media backdrop for the release of both films, which probably couldn’t have less in common. Repo Chick was produced by David Lynch, and was shot on green-screen with Red HD cameras. It’s been called a “farcical anti-golf parody”, and if the trailers are any indication, looks like it’ll be brilliantly campy. Repo Men, on the other hand, is a rather expensive looking action/adventure flick in which Jude Law plays a repo man who works for a company that reposseses your body organs when you miss a payment. Personally, I’m looking forward to both. I just hope Universal doesn’t manage to repo the rights to Cox’s non-sequel while cashing in on the name with their own “non-sequel”. Cox has an interesting spin on the whole story on his blog, which is impossible to link to directly, so we’ve included it below, along with trailers for both films.

Read the rest of this entry »

Social Media Is Like Sex – Everyone Thinks They’re Good At It

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 25, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Does the ability for virtually anyone to create a book or a movie diminish the overall quality of media in general? Clay Shirky wrote “Here Comes Everyone”, and now he seems to be saying “And There They Go”.


Yes, getting published
these days is child’s play.

I joked back in the 90′s that the proliferation of literacy and availability of desktop publishing tools would decimate the general quality of available reading material across the board within a few years. My implication being that if EVERYONE has the ability to write and print a book, they WILL. It seems everyone’s an expert on something, and everyone has an opinion, and frankly, I’m inclined to agree with what Dirty Harry said about opinions. In any case, when I originally said this, the web was in its infancy. Little did I know that not many years later, this same principle would apply to virtually any topic or any aspect of life, and with a multitude of new channels (YouTube, Social Networks, Blogs, Podcasts) for delivering content. This obviously has its upside, in the form of things like crowdsourcing, but it clearly has its downside as well. One of the obvious examples of this would be splogging by multi-level marketers or search-rank-obsessed bloggers; organic search results lately are cluttered with blogs, and as this article points out, the quality and credibility of the information provided by these sources is often questionable (and yes, I’m aware of the irony of making that remark on a WordPress-powered web site). The same sort of access that makes this user-generated content possible also exists in the fields of design, manufacturing, and communications technology, so we end up with a mind-boggling array of ways to do things we didn’t know we needed to do, using nicely-designed devices. I’ve had several experiences in just the past few months with failing to connect with someone in my social network, precisely because of the multiple channels available, i.e.: Facebook, e-mail, texting, and mobile phone. Because of all of this, I sometimes feel like the dystopian future suggested in the movie Brazil is happening around us, right now. And sometimes I feel like I’m the only one pondering these ideas regularly. Which is why I was glad to run across The Shock Of Inclusion, an insightful piece that Clay Shirky wrote for Edge.org. I still haven’t read his book Here Comes Everybody, but I certainly will after reading this article; he broadly touches on these topics in a much more articulate fashion than I have here, pointing out, for example, that “It is our misfortune to live through the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race, a misfortune because surplus always breaks more things than scarcity. Scarcity means valuable things become more valuable, a conceptually easy change to integrate. Surplus, on the other hand, means previously valuable things stop being valuable, which freaks people out.” Well said, Mr. Shirky. I’ll just be getting back to creating some surplus now.

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