RockMelt: A New Browser? A Planet Vaporizing Death Ray?
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on August 18, 2009 by admin in Technology
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009I know the answer, but if I told you, I’d have to kill you.
The mysterious new startup RockMelt is creating more of a subdued hum than an actual buzz with their mysterious press leakage. Is it a browser? A social networking tool? A planet-vaporizing death ray? The most informed guess so far is that it’s an all new browser built from the ground up to more effectively take advantage of social networking and the social web. The fact that Marc Andreessen (creator of Netscape Navigator) has invested in the company has fueled speculation that it’s some kind of all-around Firefox/Google Chrome/IE Killer. But why would Andreessen back a new browser, especially in light of remarks like those of Xoogler-turned-venture capitalist Salman Ullah (say that name out loud for a good laugh) in this Esquire piece a while back in which, when told that the next pitch he was going to hear was for a browser, he said “Tell them to go fuck themselves…what value do I get as an end user? Why would I install a new browser?” Well, there’s a lot of quiet speculation that it’s just an irrational expression of Andreessen’s frustration with ultimately losing the Browser Wars to the Evil Forces In Redmond. But if the anger is directed at Microsoft, Google, or Mozilla, why does the RockMelt logo so closely resemble an exploding-Earth version of the .Mac logo? Read the rest of this entry »
Bigipedia – You Think, Therefore We Am
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 12, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009Written by you, for you, for free, for money, for us.
Even before Time Magazine picked you as the person of the year (don’t feel so special, they picked this guy one year, and this guy twice), life and popular media were starting to take on these blurry edges. I’ve never understood your fascination with Reality TV; I mean, even a professional writer only has at most 30-some plots at their disposal, and you’re an amateur, so your storyline (like most people) really only revolves around whether you’re happy or not. Plus, you usually die. That’s why I was pleased to discover – amongst our ever-expanding world of user-generated content, the new BBC Radio program Bigipedia. Forget Wikipedia, forget Dickipedia. With Bigipedia, you don’t even have to be able to read! And since 70% of you use multiple forms of media at the same time, take note that with Bigipedia, you can still take some stupid Facebook Quiz or Twitter while you listen. On the other hand, those of you who are American may need either subtitles or a dictionary. The program – since it’s produced by people who actually speak English – manages to seem highbrow in spite of its clearly adolescent, internet-oriented humor. Welcome to Bigipedia – written by you, for you, for free, for money, for us.
So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star – Part II
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 4, 2009 by admin in Music
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009Well, since your music probably sucks, you might as well plan on getting naked.
 If you play your cards right, you could end up as happily successful as this fellow! |
If you really have an interest in succeeding in pop music, there’s one way to avoid having to do many of the things we’ll suggest in this piece: be an absolutely f***ing brilliant songwriter with solid musicians to play your broadly accessible music. Then some top-notch management will find you, and your only battle after that will be not getting screwed by all the deals you’ll be offered. Since you almost certainly don’t have that particular set of attributes in your possession, ask yourself a few more questions about why you’re seeking to promote your music: Do you want to make a living at it? Are you convinced for some reason the world just needs to be exposed to your genius? Do you think you might have some reasonably marketable music, and wouldn’t mind getting paid for it? Have you been hitting the crack pipe pretty hard again? The fact is that even the established music industry has one of the highest failure rates of almost any business, and you’ll be entering one of the “noisiest” markets on the planet, alas, with a “naked” product. For some interesting thoughts about the new marketplace, check out Digital Music Can’t Be Marketed, which points out that you can’t really package and Read the rest of this entry »
We’re All So Meta
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on July 31, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, July 31st, 2009I want my Verfremdungseffekt back. Our collective tech and media savvy makes me feel like I’m living a fictionalized version of my own life.
William Shatner Gets Meta |
Sometimes I feel like my friends and I are living a fictionalized version of our lives as products. How many times a day do you hear someone reference what they said or heard on Facebook or Twitter that day, rather than talking about something that occurred in reality? How many times a day do you hear someone who doesn’t even have a job in advertising or marketing talk about branding, or someone who does have a marketing job talk about utilizing social media as if they have the secret that makes it work? We live in a culture that thinks itself so media-savvy that the best source of news is a comedy show , the most revered art form is reality shows, and the hippest people totally aren’t. I mean, once you move to Williamsburg to be hip, how hip are you? I love metafiction, in fact, I have a half-written novel (Don’t we all? Here’s an excerpt of mine, 116KB PDF) which uses the narrator’s time-traveling and alcohol abuse as the device to explain the writer’s block that prevents him from resolving the story for you. To add an extra layer of “meta” to the whole thing, I plan on not finishing the novel. This kind of hip media self-awareness was cool back when AdBusters was new, or when William Shatner acknowledged his own absurdity in things like this parody trailer for the movie Seven, but now it’s so pervasive that it’s actually cannibalized back into advertising. It’s gotten to the point that I honestly can’t suspend my disbelief about my own life any more, let alone a movie or a product. My fourth wall is gone. I want my Verfremdungseffekt back.
Is The Internet Becoming A Giant Flesh-Eating Robot?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 26, 2009 by admin in Technology
Sunday, July 26th, 2009The human race. It’s what’s for dinner.
Great. Not only does the Internet eat all our time, now it’s going to start eating us. We treat the idea of a self-aware Internet as science fiction that only exists in the form of the Terminator
