Mar 15

Touching Mobile Screens with All Ten Fingers

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Just got done with updating the case study on mobile advertising for the Newspaper Association of America — I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised that market conditions had changed so very much since mid-2008.  You always hear that “Internet years are like dog years,” but man, did that ever hold true. Just a few [...] [...more]

Just got done with updating the case study on mobile advertising for the Newspaper Association of America — I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised that market conditions had changed so very much since mid-2008.  You always hear that “Internet years are like dog years,” but man, did that ever hold true.

Just a few examples:

1. One of the big segments I wrote lumped Alternate Reality and Apps into the same category. This was obviously before Apple’s App store completely blew up. 
2. QR codes were this crazy technology that strange Japanese advertisers were using. Seemed like Sea-urchin sushi. Something that would never really catch on here. Guess again, eh?

• 3.And the biggest one of all – mobile is now an actual line-item in marketing and advertising budgets, not just a throw-in with “digital media.”

So here’s something that I just couldn’t figure out what to do with – the touchscreen guys just pinged me last week and showed me some stuff about multitouch displays that allow you to use all ten fingers to manipulate & add things.

Now, I’m not sure – yet – if this really represents some kind of massive leap forward in getting the damn central processors to recognize input from the user … or if it’s like the ridiculous razor-blade wars, where Schick & Gillette seem locked in a strange battle to cram more blades onto a razor than you see in The Bride’s big samurai-sword fight scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Anyway – 3M has a 22-inch monitor that can recognize all ten of your grubby digits, and a whole gallery of videos showing how the Microsoft Surface-type tech is making its way into your pocket.  Wish I could show them to you here directly, but 3M has not provided any sort of embedding functionality. I’ve played with this kind of cool stuff at Flash conventions, where artists have custom-wired motion-sensitive controllers to track all kinds of kinetic input (i.e. dancers painting via moving their feet, swaying their hips, arching their backs, etc.). 

I’m not sure how much of an impact it’ll have on the cellphone market, but I can certainly see a day when having enhanced touch for iPad-like devices really makes working with photos, video or database navigation that much more intuitive.  Get me my mirrorshades!

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Mar 15

Mobile 2D Barcode Explanation from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Thanks to Eric Schwartzel at the Post-Gazette for sending me this great, funny video.  The P-G has rolled out 2D barcodes (aka QR codes) in their print product that are designed to be used by smartphones. I’m all in favor of videos like this, that guide our readers/users through the process of learning what 2D [...] [...more]

Thanks to Eric Schwartzel at the Post-Gazette for sending me this great, funny video.  The P-G has rolled out 2D barcodes (aka QR codes) in their print product that are designed to be used by smartphones.

I’m all in favor of videos like this, that guide our readers/users through the process of learning what 2D barcodes are all about, and how to use them.  I’d like to see a little more of an explanation of what these codes do, to make the case to the readers as to why they should use them.  One of the real interesting possibilities is using these codes alongside of reviews of concerts or movies to take the readers to m-commerce sites, where the paper will get a slice of the ticket sales.

Of course, that’s going to take some time/development money, but for an industry looking for a viable business model to replace the dwindling dead-tree advertising revenues, shifting towards a more PPC-like biz model makes a lot of sense.

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Mar 01

Epic Beard Man: Unconventional Web-based Documentaries

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Not sure what this all means – it’s a fight on an Oakland transit bus that has morphed into something of an online cultural phenomenon, now chronicled by this two-part documentary. Part 1: Part 2: The “star” of the show is Thomas Bruso, now known as “Epic Beard Man.” [...] [...more]

Not sure what this all means – it’s a fight on an Oakland transit bus that has morphed into something of an online cultural phenomenon, now chronicled by this two-part documentary.

Part 1:

Part 2:

The “star” of the show is Thomas Bruso, now known as “Epic Beard Man.” He has a long and somewhat tangled history – he’s apparently the unruly fan who got tasered at an Oakland A’s game last summer (he tells the story in Part 1, to the rather disturbing approval of the little gang gathered around him in his tiny apartment).

I can’t quite decide if this guy is a rambling nutcase who should be incarcerated before he goes off with his homemade “shank” on some random individual – or just a deeply damaged burnout, blinking in the unexpected glare of internet celebrity.  The stories he tells about his past make it clear that his life has been no bed of roses, but the rapid-fire aggression of his half-yelled stories are immediately recognizable to anyone who’s spent time among hair-trigger tweakers.  Maybe he is actually a Vietnam vet, and that’s why he’s always yelling.  Maybe he’s just a delusional pathological liar. Maybe all of the above.

But the thing to pay attention to, is the technical skill and obvious love that went into making these short films. The camerawork, the original music, the multiple locations and moving camera — this ain’t just a kitty dancing on a piano.  This is at least as good as 90% of the indie documentaries I’ve seen in theaters, shot on 35mm film with a crew.  This was shot with a Canon 7D, and the distortions from the fisheye lenses used in the establishing shots really make you feel the queasy hyper-reality of the world this guy exists in. I gotta say that the sound quality is not all that bad; they must’ve been using some sort of external recorder, though, because the mike on these SLRs is still pretty vestigial.

DamnifyIknow what the revenue stream is for the filmmakers here – I do know that Epic Beard Man is now getting snarfed up by internet squatters, trying to figure out ways to sell t-shirts, supposedly speak for him via a blog, and generally adopt him as some sort of White Power symbol.

As with most pointless & inexplicable internet memes, this one started out on 4chan.org and then to a wiki page where all sorts of pencilnecks & assorted anonymous cretins poured out the ugly dregs of their racial hate. I won’t do those pages the favor of linking to them; if you really want to see them, do a search for “Epic Beard Man Wiki,” which brings up a page with the flashing read warning “This page is a WARZONE.”

When analysts start the joints-after-midnight pontificating about the “emerging visual language” of the internet, I think that the the Epic Beard Man meme is the kind of thing that they mean – but that, were they to actually dive deep into what’s going on, would make their hair pretty much fall out. It doesn’t take much to figure out that outside of the well-policed & civilized areas like the discussion boards on The Daily Beast and Huffington Post, the reality that is emerging on the net is raw, disturbing and in yer face.

Kinda like Epic Beard Man himself.

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Feb 24

Bad Sign

Posted: under Uncategorized.
Tags: missing, serial killer, unsolved

On a day in which prosecuters announced that they had established a DNA link between the Trailside Killer and an “unsub”, I saw this sign: Single women, walking alone through the deep, dark Redwood forests, are starting to disappear again… [...more]

On a day in which prosecuters announced that they had established a DNA link between the Trailside Killer and an “unsub”, I saw this sign:

Single women, walking alone through the deep, dark Redwood forests, are starting to disappear again…

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Feb 19

Martin Bosworth is gone, and the world is a little less fun & bright

Posted: under Community, Uncategorized.

Martin was also tormented by self-doubt, but he didn't let that stop him from writing about the things that he cared deeply about; the world of comic books, heavy-metal music and cheesy sci-fi movies that are the Nerdcore Holy Trinity frequently appeared on his blog, and to read his reviews was to feel as though you were hanging out on a friend's couch, relaxed and free to express your deeply held beliefs that Liam Neeson used the same fighting moves in "Taken" that he learned all those years ago on "Krull." [...more]

I’ve posted on the Facebook tribute page for Martin, Twittered about his passing, and appealed to others to not let Martin’s sudden death go unnoticed. This really blindsided me, because only Monday I was having a typically great conversation about Martin – it was the subject of the last blog post here.

Martin sent this to me as part of a discussion we were having about health care & the stalled reform bill. We'd talked about his health problems last summer, and he seemed to be getting better. His final message here is now almost painful to read.

Which is why I decided that to really do the man justice, it is necessary to use the format that Martin loved best, and that he was a master of: the blog post.

I met Martin for the first time about a year ago, at a session for the Los Angeles chapter of the Online News Association that I had helped organize.  I was moderating a panel of speakers talking about online video, explaining how indie web journalists could kick their page views (and careers) up a notch by adding some video to their sites.  I had just got done explaining how I had recently researched the End-User Licensing Agreements (EULAs) on all the video-sharing sites, to see which ones were OK, and which were abusive, and would claim ownership over the copyrights to video you produced, whether or not you ever decided you wanted to take it down.

“I mean, has anyone here ever really read the EULA on these sites before clicking, the “I Agree” button?” I asked.

Towards the back of the room, a hand shot up in the air. “I have,” Martin said loud & proud. And then, a little softer, “But then, I’m kind of a freak about such things. I read all the licensing fine print before I agree to anything.”

That, right there, was Martin in a nutshell.

He wasn’t afraid to speak up in groups, to add to the conversation. But he was also careful to be self-deprecating – he was never obnoxious, overbearing or insulting, the way so many in the blogosphere are, in their attempts to vie for attention.

But most of all the man put in the work. However you want to say it, Martin sweated the details, because he knew that it was in those details that all the Devils of Corporate America lurked.  And Martin had a bone-deep indignation at seeing the little guy get fucked over, and he devoted his life to working to balance things out a little.

He came up to me after the meeting was over, a balding, roly-poly guy who frowned and concentrated fiercely on whatever conversation he was having, and then burst into laughter unexpectedly. I got my first taste of Martin’s boundless energy, deep knowledge of online culture, and enthusiasm for all things nerdly.  He was a bit shy at first to talk to me – he later admitted that he was a little intimidated, saying with his characteristic self-deprecation and honesty, “Man, you looked like everything that I aspired to be. You were tall, good-looking, married to a beautiful woman, and you traveled the world doing important work for freedom-loving journalists in distress.”

Coming from someone else, that would have raised alarm bells in me – in L.A., especially, I’ve come to see any form of compliment as flattery preparatory to some kind of manipulation. But coming from Martin, the words were heartfelt, sweet, and totally at odds with how I felt at the time, because, like so many of us working in the New Media content game, I had a deep  suspicion that I was making a complete ass out of myself in public. It was that kindness and honesty from him that I found very endearing.

Martin was also tormented by self-doubt, but he didn’t let that stop him from writing about the things that he cared deeply about; the world of comic books, heavy-metal music and cheesy sci-fi movies that are the Nerdcore Holy Trinity frequently appeared on his blog, and to read his reviews was to feel as though you were hanging out on a friend’s couch, relaxed and free to express your deeply held beliefs that Liam Neeson used the same fighting moves in “Taken” that he learned all those years ago on “Krull.”

But he also had a real empathetic sense, and last summer when I was writing about the untimely death of my cat, Martin sent me several emails telling me how what I had written had brought tears to his eyes and choked him up, and sent dozens of people to my site to read what I had written and offer me words of encouragement.  I’ve struggled with that while writing this post, because I don’t want to for even a microsecond equate my cat Duce dying with Martin’s death; I know the difference between human and feline, thankyewverymuch. I just wanted to illustrate that the guy had a real big heart in him, and that when I was feeling down, he would go out of his way to try to offer some kind of comfort. And then maybe a few laughs and a link to something new & interesting that he wanted to tear apart & put back together.

I will miss these discussions. I will miss reading his wit, and honesty and willingness to bare his soul.

I will miss Martin.

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Feb 15

The Creative Class War: FIrst Casualties and Collateral Damage

Posted: under Uncategorized.

This started as a long comment in response to Martin Bosworth’s well-sourced screed on Boztopia …but I realized about 1/2 way through that the points I wanted to make were starting to get a little elaborate for just the “Comment” space – and besides, I have far too much experience (and distrust of) the commenting features [...] [...more]

This started as a long comment in response to Martin Bosworth’s well-sourced screed on Boztopia

…but I realized about 1/2 way through that the points I wanted to make were starting to get a little elaborate for just the “Comment” space – and besides, I have far too much experience (and distrust of) the commenting features to see it all disappear when I hit the “Submit Comment” button. FYWP. Also.

I hadn’t read “Noir” – but it doesn’t surprise me that Jeter has his dander up about all the freeloading whippersnappers threatening The Way Things Are (which, not coincidentally, is also the way Jeter puts biscuits’n'gravy on the dinner table). The actions of the RIAA/MPAA hitman read like a pure revenge fantasy, and track rather close to what friends of mine who are (or used to be) in the music industry spit&mutter whilst indulging in their mid-afternoon mood enhancers. Music was definitely the canary in the coal mine, for a lot of reasons – the intersection of 1) the young early-adopters who were on the internet, 2) their perception of music as “high-value content”, 3) the utter dickishness of the major music labels towards their customers for decades, 4) the rise of open-source technology like Napster, and 5) starting in 1999, it was suddently affordable to get internet connection speeds in the 56k (or better) range that allowed users to download a 3-6 megabyte song in less than an hour (unlike the previous 2400 or 14.4k modems prevalent prior to that time).

All those forces then empowered those in category #1 to give the finger to those in category #3. A very well-deserved finger, BTW.

Unfortunately, the Law of Unintended Consequences has kicked in, and the rot has spread from the over-coked, over-sexed & over-paid music industry weasels to … well, pretty much everyone else who produces content/intellectual property. News, movies, computer programs, video games … anything that can be digitized and put on Pirate Bay.

I think that the nut graf in Martin’s piece is here:

“What we have now is the worst of all possible scenarios — a world where so-called fans will pirate material, distribute it freely, and then spend endless days on blogs or forums bashing it for not being good. The creators lose money, and the “fans” get to indulge their resentment of them for their work.”

Yeah, I’ve long felt that we’re in a particularly nasty place, both culturally and business-model-wise. Culturally, we’ve reached pretty much the end of the big-ass centralized media behemoths that cram content down our throats by putting it through what Woody Allen called the “de-flavorizing machine.” We’ve seen in the current economic/foreign-policy debacles what the results of too much Groupthink on the national discourse have been. Too few dissenting voices were raised to de-regulating banks & mortgages; to taking on mountains of debt. Too few dissenting voices were raised about the wars we’re fighting, or the whole adventurist foreign policy we’ve pursued for the last 30 years.

So yeah – the move away from the existing news/information models towards a new ecosystem are happening because of the flipside of the teenage disdain for Big Music; the news/information providers (by which I mean the massive conglomgerates that actually own just about every major newspaper, magazine or TV news network) got it into their heads that they could squeeze some really impressive profits out of the beast by cutting back on the costs of production as much as they could, while broadening their market share by making the product as bland and appealing to as many people as possible.  Like taking gourmet Kobe beef stuffed with melted Roquefort and turning it into a McDonald’s Happy Meal.

I was there when it started. I saw it happening. When even the editorial department upper managers gushed on and on about the new super-fancy printing press, rather than even knowing the slightest bit about the intense stories that we on the I-team were working on … I knew that the war had been quietly lost. That even the people who were supposed to be in charge of making sure that the news was important & gripping, were now themselves in the grip of some kind of greed fantasy.

So that’s why you hear more & more people griping about “the media” because they’re not getting enough of the core product – The Truth – from it. (Or in the case of some wingnuts, they are getting too much of The Truth, but that’s another argument.)

The alternative to this has been fairly well delineated by various Digital Triumphalists over the years – a disaggregated, disintermediated army of indie/citizen reporters, all reaching out to the audience to broaden the stories & suggest new avenues via comments and, well, trackbacks like this.

The problem is that the economic model to make this pay – consistently pay, mind you – is not there yet. Google AdSense? Don’t make me laugh. Partner/Affiliate programs? OK, if you’re in a tasty niche. But for the vast majority of indie content creators, the internet gives just enough revenue to do the absolute bare minimum for survival. Not enough to produce any kind of long-term or complicated content effort – no long investigative journalism projects here. Or moves with a special-effects budget that’s more than the costs of craft-service chili dogs.

I think that there are some interesting models emerging, that blend all sorts of revenue streams. They’re just not completely baked yet – but the interviews that I’ve been doing lately, for my next big case study for the NAA, are starting to make me think that they are not as far off as I had feared.  I think that online video, social media, and mobile – all combined (as or Mr. Creosote would like it “All mixed up in a bucket”) will make it possible for us grimy content creators to keep doing high-quality work.

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Feb 09

Newspapers to TV, Movies: “We arrived in separate ships, but we’re in the same boat now”

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Signs were there that DVD sales were about to implode; industry ignored all warnings To anyone in the newspaper industry, the parallels are eerie. The disruptive technology is introduced, and people with the ability to look beyond this quarter’s P&L statement say, “Oh-oh. Something’s in the wind. We gotta take a look at this, maybe start [...] [...more]

Signs were there that DVD sales were about to implode; industry ignored all warnings

To anyone in the newspaper industry, the parallels are eerie. The disruptive technology is introduced, and people with the ability to look beyond this quarter’s P&L statement say, “Oh-oh. Something’s in the wind. We gotta take a look at this, maybe start shifting some resources into R&D, or we could blow up in a couple years.”

To which the guys at the top of the company, whose fat year-end bonuses are tied to keeping costs to a bare minimum, while sucking off as much spare cash as possible, say, “You’re out of your mind. Things are going great. You wanna break them? Siddown and shut up – we know what we’re doing – look at all the money we’re making. Instead, we’re going to double down on our bets, and buy up & consolidate our monopolistic position.”

And then the day arrives. The P&L shows a massive die-off in the one area that the whole house of cards depends on as a crucial revenue stream.

The guys at the top immediately point fingers at the internet & start screaming.

That day arrived last week at Sony Pictures, and The Media Wonk has a great write-up, running down all the relevant stats and the various time-wastes along the way.  He points fingers at Blu-Ray as a massive time, money & effort Black Hole that hasn’t stepped up to replace the revenues that are being lost via plain old DVD sales going bye-bye. Viz:

The need for a viable post-DVD digital strategy has been blindingly obvious for most of the past decade. But instead of focusing on that existential challenge, the industry wasted four years on Blu-ray, an absurd format that addressed no identifiable consumer demand that could not have been met years earlier, more cheaply and with less consumer confusion with readily available alternatives, like HD DVD or even red-laser DVDs.

The industry is still wasting time and resources trying to invent uses for Blu-ray to justify the time and cost sunk into it.

Hitting the snooze button when the alarm goes off doesn’t mean that what happens in the meantime is beyond your control. It means you’re asleep.

If I can extrapolate from the behavior I’ve witnessed in my friends, some of whom are the greatest TV & movie aficionados I’ve ever met; the type of people who can go one for an hour about how David Duchovny’s characterization of Fox Mulder owed more to John Wayne in The Searchers than, as is commonly (and erroneously) thought, the seminal Darren McGavin in Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

When DVDs came out, they were such an improvement over the jittery, fragile VHS tapes that we loaded up on them. All the extras – the audio tracks, the Easter Eggs – oh, they were sah-weet. We’d have parties where we’d go through our favorite movies and break it all down – because now, when we freeze-framed, it was a perfect picture, not that damned bent image with static bars at the top & bottom, the way VHS shafted us.

And then something happened. We had a whole shelf – maybe a coupla shelves. Maybe even a whole room – full of DVDs.  Alphabetized, categorized.

And we didn’t watch them anymore.

Why should be drag out a DVD, fire up the player, switch the Video1 to Video2 – just to sit through something we’ve already seen … when the TiVo has something fresh & new?  There has to be a real dearth of new material that’s any good before we’ll go to the archives for some nostalgia.

The success of the studios & networks in setting up all these TV channels & alternative means of distribution of content has also been its undoing.  If I don’t have to shell out $24 for a movie – when I can just stream it over Netflix, or better yet, see something new on my DVR – then why would I spend my increasingly scarce hard-earneds?

Technology alone didn’t change consumer behavior. It wasn’t the internet’s fault. It’s just that when alternatives opened up – when true competition arrived on the market – all of a sudden, the old Walled Gardens, with their high price to enter and their restrictive DRM – those places became not so fun to hang out it. So we all left. Gradually, but in increasing numbers.

The crisis that newspapers have faced for the last 5-10 years — the TV and movie industry is about to fall into that same Black Hole, for the same reasons, and apparently is determined to attempt the same half-measures to turn the clock back to where it used to be.  Look for a lot of appeals to Congress for restrictive legislation, blaming “piracy” and “content thieves,” and then resorting to a death spiral of cutting costs and putting out shoddier products.

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Dec 23

Crowdsourcing lessons from the Guardian

Posted: under Uncategorized.

I’ve been using the brilliant experiment by the Guardian this summer in my trainings – they [...more]

I’ve been using the brilliant experiment by the Guardian this summer in my trainings – they

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Dec 18

Buying Music to Sabotage Pop Culture: A Webconomics Puzzle

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Music purists who despise the pre-packaged “X-Factor” (British version of “American Idol”) songs always hitting #1 on the charts are buying Rage Against the Machine’s incendiary “Killing in the Name” as a form of protest I’ve been wondering WTF is going on with Killing in the Name – a track that introduced me to Rage Against [...] [...more]

Music purists who despise the pre-packaged “X-Factor” (British version of “American Idol”) songs always hitting #1 on the charts are buying Rage Against the Machine’s incendiary “Killing in the Name” as a form of protest

I’ve been wondering WTF is going on with Killing in the Name – a track that introduced me to Rage Against the Machine, and which I still use to get the adrenaline flowing. It’s been showing up in Twitter trends for the last week or so, which is unusual for a 15-year old minor hit by a band that no longer even exists.  I just figured that the protesters in Denmark were using it for their soundtrack – even though it’s aimed more at the LAPD police culture that got exposed in the wake of the Rodney King beating.

But it turns out that the story is a lot more complex than that.  Check out this excellent post by blogger FreakyTrigger that explains it in-depth.

In a nutshell:

• It started with Alterna-punks hating on the type of syrupy (treacly?) disposable pop that gets rammed down our throats by these music contest shows
• To try to prevent the winner of “X-Factor” from dominating the charts, they’ve started buying multiple copies of RATM’s “Killing in the Name” – a song that is pretty much as anti-pop as you can get. A scream of pure fury against The Establishment. Perfect. 
• RATM even launched into the heavy cussing chorus live on BBC5 and had to be censored
• Buying Killing in the Name online is actually somewhat convenient, because you can buy as many copies as you like electronically, and it only costs .69euro (99cents)
• But what this really boils down to is paying 99 cents to vote against something that millions of other people are voting for

FreakyTrigger sums it up thusly:

Plenty of people have pointed out that these are good times indeed for
Sony, who make money off both tracks. But it’s also a fascinating case
study for marketers, because it pits two of the big “social media
marketing” ideas of the late 00s up against one another. On the one
hand the crafted, immersive, interactive experience – on the other the
power of the flashmob and the viral. Who’s gonna win?

Is there a business model for media here? Probably somewhere – in some kind of controversy, if you give people a frictionless way to express their anger and resentment, and make the price barrier low enough, you could hit on something.

Check out MoveOn.org raising $1 million so far against Joe Lieberman, ever since he started threatening to filibuster any kind of decent health care reform.

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Dec 14

Leaf Boats

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Leaf Boat, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. The heavy rainstorms of this past weekend were much-needed, and therefore much-welcomed in Los Angeles. The anticipated apocalyptic mudslides in the fire-ravaged areas never materialized, but that hasn’t stopped the local TV news crews from speculating on how horrible the damage would have been. If only Mother Nature had cooperated. [...] [...more]

Leaf Boat, originally uploaded by Wordyeti.

The heavy rainstorms of this past weekend were much-needed, and therefore much-welcomed in Los Angeles.

The anticipated apocalyptic mudslides in the fire-ravaged areas never materialized, but that hasn’t stopped the local TV news crews from speculating on how horrible the damage would have been. If only Mother Nature had cooperated. Which it still might. So stay tuned.

Any little touch of fall-like weather always makes me somewhat homesick for the Upper Midwest in October. Even though it’s December in Los Angeles, and that means that the weather there is sub-Siberian.

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