Thinkcorps

I like shopping, exploring bookstores. I like looking for interesting books—interesting specimens of printed matter. See, now that I can easily get just about any book in the world shipped to me, I find that the quality of the physical object matters more to me.

But even though I have one of the nation’s great bookstores at my disposal, Powell’s, there’s something lacking the experience. Now, I’m just postulating here, but it seems there’s a balance that any retail store needs to strike between the inventory it stocks and experience it offers. With books, you have to warehouse (stock) many books on a wide variety of topics in order to satisfy your customers. At the same time, you need to find some room to create a shopping experience through which you can promote those books to customers.

Big chains like Barnes & Noble simply optimize their stock on sales data, leaving plenty of room to promote the “experience”. Since they’re large, this data allows them to hone their stock to only the titles they know will really sell. Smaller stores don’t have access to a large set of sales data, and they usually recoil at the prospect of optimizing toward lowest common denominator best sellers and the like.

This is of course a self-fulfilling prophecy in the retail space: you can’t sell what you don’t stock. So retailers can’t accurately explore their “long tail” without dedicating the majority of their space to warehousing titles. And since new titles are continually appearing, I imagine it’s very difficult to get any sense of a tail at all – you just can’t afford to waste time or space promoting older niche titles.

So I was wondering, what if Amazon, who probably has the largest and deepest book-related data set in the world, sold that data as a service to bookstores looking to optimize their inventories on a vector other than sales?

How a book sells is not necessarily the best indicator to how well it belongs in your inventory. How authoritative is it? How well does it do as it ages in your back catalog? How does it relate to the other titles you stock, your speciality, clientele, etc.?

I imagine that you could build a pretty amazing tool using this data, data that we couldn’t have collected before the advent of the Internet and Amazon, and which led to the decline of retail bookstores in the first place. So maybe, this is just a natural stage in the evolution of the bookstore, after all, and in a few years, we’ll all be marvelling at how wonderful our local bookshops (admittedly, the ones that are left) have become.
Silver lining, anyone?

Sometimes, I really regret having to leave the Bay Area. Today, I am reassured I made the right choice.

I just read Wired editor Chris Anderson’s column, The New Boom, and it smacks of the same boosterism (which, admittedly, is the reason for Wired’s existence) that spoiled the area in the late 90s, despite his measured reassurances that the current resurgence is not a destructive “bubble”. (disclaimer: I was an editor at Wired/Wired News from 94-98, and admittedly partially responsible for creating bubble1.)

In recent months, the breathtaking ascent of Google has lit a fire under its competitors, which include practically everyone in the online world. The result is all too familiar: seven-figure recruiting packages, snarled traffic on Highway 101, and a general sense that the boom is back.

What gets me about all this, and it may just be a personal prejudice, is the reality distortion field that never fails to be raised once money is on the table. On one hand, everyone is railing against the “bubble” and hailing the virtues of open source, cheap hardware/bandwidth, and techno-ubiquity (the unhalting spread of tools and the knowledge to use them), while the other hand is quietly snapping up investment on the promise of exit strategies, intellectual property and first-mover advantage.

Companies are once again minting millionaires, but venture capitalists are investing less than a fifth of what they were at the 2000 peak. About 50 technology companies went public last year, but more than 300 went public in 1999.

Anderson cites a lowered IPO rate, but let’s compare apples to apples. 1999 was the height of the bubble, not the beginning. So, what was the IPO rate in the early years of the bubble, say 1995? Second, given increased techno-ubiquity, making it easier to birth cool new startups, wouldn’t it be natural to have less investment? You don’t need it like before, plus everyone’s still scratching from their bubble burns. So, again, I don’t buy it.

So how do you justify a boom? All I see is the Yahoo/Google effect: the two companies left standing and strong, for whom it’s easier to buy up good technologies than build themselves.

In this “boom”, you’re either salivating about selling your company to Yahoogle, or you’re an investor looking to pump up a hot little startup so it’s attractive enough to bring Yahoogle a-callin’. Either way, everyone’s banking on winning the lottery and cashing out. Anderson says it himself:

Today, the typical exit strategy is to sell your startup to Yahoo! for a few million, not to maneuver for a rowdy IPO and an appearance on CNBC. Highway 101 is jammed with Prius-driving engineers, not biz-dev guys in Beemers.

Same song. Different lyrics. It’s a buyer’s market, since there’s really only a few companies (Yahoogle, M$) with open wallets. But without really knowing what Yahoogle’s future plans are, and discounting the curves of rising techno-ubiquity and falling costs, which are working against your ability to “own your market/niche” for anything close to the long term, you’re still operating irrationally.

And when you’re operating irrationally, I think that’s fertile ground for a bubble.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what model car you’re driving. You may save a few bucks in a hybrid, but the road signs are all still pointing to Bubbleland.

No sooner do I finish writing my little convergence post, then I stumble upon this: PricewaterhouseCoopers Recommends ‘Lifestyle Media’ as a Key Growth Driver for Media Companies in the Digital Convergence Era

Some gems (with translations):

Consumer needs are expanding beyond mass and segmented media to “Lifestyle Media.”

Sound awesome? We just took one in each hand and smashed ‘em together! Insight, baby!

Knowledge of consumer behavior will become the basis for competition.

Since when is this news? Since we made it seem complicated, of course!

The media marketplace provides a platform structure to capitalize on “Lifestyle Media.”

Yep, you can sell ads.

Early movers in establishing media marketplaces will build sustainable advantage over late entrants.

So not true, but it’ll make you feel better about paying us.

Media marketplaces will be economically viable only if operational efficiencies can be realized through consumer behavior measurement capabilities and supporting systems.

Insert escape clause. Look, we’re not promising anything here.

Convergence will require increased collaboration between value chain partners to drive new products and services to consumers.

Seriously, you really need our help. Just sign the check and leave a blank one here—just in case.

Understand and serve consumers’ “Lifestyle Media” desires by researching behaviors and needs. Assess readiness for the converged future.

Don’t worry about that one. Hey, that’s what we’re here for, buddy!

Develop strategies for owning social networks to capture consumer activity information, while meeting privacy requirements. Assess and build competence in alliances, partnerships and joint ventures.

Imagine your a pimp, right? You gotta work those bitches to get your money, no? Users are your bitches! Get it? Awesome!

As video consumption expands to many devices, understand the impact of one outlet on another and know the complexities of content security controls, and incorporate them into systems and processes.

This part is kinda hard, but we rock at it. Hey, wanna see a cool card trick?

Build advertising models for new consumer behaviors, especially video browsing, and establish standards for advertising and audience measurement metrics.

I told you already! Work them bitches! Now get your ass outta my sight ‘fore I bust a cap in your ass! Figuratively, of course, sir.

Quick note to myself. There’s been a flurry of articles on digital TV and convergence from the provider (TV networks) angle, and if anything shows “Web 1.0” thinking is still kicking, it’s this. First, companies are still trying to replicate pre-Net businesses on the Web. Second, there’s this idea floated by reporters that the young generation is Net savvy and companies better make their media components “converge” so they are “simple”, in order to capture their attention. I honestly haven’t read all the articles, but I think that’s more or less accurate.

Simplicity is an extremely difficult beast when it comes to software and digital systems, and most old-school business folk will never get it. For a typical business, “simple” means less options, less confusion and less control. But in a digital system, simplicity hinges on the user experience: your power to get things done. Simplicity in software is achieved not by subtraction, but by addition: Creating several paths to a function based on user contexts, for example. The end result is a happy and productive user.

This is the great lesson of software: users are naturally complex; there are many kinds, with different skill sets and different objectives.

I’m not sure media companies will ever get this. For them, simplicity is a way to view the world. Convenient, for sure, but wholly inaccurate. And it creates a massive and growing gap between themselves and their users, who are gaining more power and skills every day.

If there’s hope in the world these days, it’s going to come in the form of an API. The only company I know that’s doing anything here is the BBC. Maybe somebody gets smart and follows them, maybe Cuban’s HD.net.

Convergence equals complexity and diversity. It means finally recognizing that there’s 100 million different people at your door—and addressing them individually, one by one.

... Tim was killed by the Undead, but brought back to life by their leader, the Graverobber …
... Tim was killed by an act of barbarity committed by a fellow human being in the name of his ancient cause …
... Tim, was killed by a terrorist bomb in 1993 …
... Tim was killed by a drunk driver …

(Google “[yourname] was killed by”)

Folks, I am pleased to announce the birth of a new magazine, SMITH, for your online reading pleasure. I have been working on this, among other projects, for fits and starts across several years now, and it’s nice to see the effort bear some fruit.

SMITH magazine is about exploring the personal stories that inform our collective cultural narrative. Everything from bloggers to the almost famous (both of which often overlap), from lotto winners to local characters. It’s about framing our personal stories and perspectives so that they resonate in a larger context. It’s about being a uniter, not a divider. :)

Check some of these stories out:
Personal Investigation: So I Married a Mortician
Back Home with Paul Reickhoff (an Iraq War vet and veteran activist)
15 Minutes: Mario Puzo, the Dalai Lama, and Mick Jagger
Close Encounter: Got Calf?

SMITH is also going to be a lot of fun. We’re starting with an online Web zine, which is built on Wordpress, and will be moving into print soon. A lot of what we do requires reader feedback, and not lame polls either, but features that are wholly comprised of readers’ stories. So drop on by when you have some time, and share a tasty anecdote with us. We will definitely publish it. We’re that nuts.

I’m also hoping to make the blog a public record of much of our behind-the-scenes efforts. Usually, magazines are very secretive about their plans. Not us. We’re going to put our experiences up online as much as we can. Hopefully, we can add something interesting to the conversation.

Here’s a few of Larry’s anecdotes on meeting with many of NY’s media elite: Graydon Carter (Vanity Fair), Doug Peabody (Health, Saveur, George), and Isolde Motley (Time). Larry’s doing press for SMITH this week (today is National Smith Day, you know), and I think he’s going to have some fun stories to share.

There’s a lot more to come—another magazine and hopefully a better way of doing business—so I hope you’ll follow along, especially if you’ve only stumbled onto this post. We’re going to have a big year.

From the NYT: Over the last few days, the length of bowl games has reached its annual state of temporal silliness. The triple-overtime Orange Bowl lasted 4 hours 49 minutes, the Fiesta 3:45, the Sugar 3:57 and the Rose an even 4 hours.

This explains how 2006 was probably the most frustrating bowl series for Tivo owners ever. I myself, am kinda pissed. See, I set my Tivo to record 30 minutes over the “end” of the Rose Bowl, which netted me an amazing game—up to the 5:15 min. mark in the 4th, at which point my recording ended.

So I missed the final two Texas drives and USC’s 4th and 2 gamble. Thanks a lot, Tivo. You suck.

(Note: My Comcast DVR neighbor did the same thing as me, also missing the end of the game.)

Maybe, just maybe, the networks will stop trying to screw us like last year (fiddling with show start/end times) and put some kind of flag in the feed, letting your DVR know that a particular show is not, in fact, over.

Until that time, the life of my 40 hr. Tivo (which is essentially worthless these days), will continue to depend on the whims of my favor—‘cause I’ll tell you, right now I’m seriously considering running over the damn thing with my car.

This post happened to catch my eye today, and I thought I’d trace it’s origin—for reasons that shall become clear below. :)

BoingBoing: Shower-tablet for writing down good ideas – Monday, January 2, 2006

via

Popgadget: Erasable shower note tablet – 01.2.2006

via

CNet Asia: Erasable shower note – 29/12/2005

via

OhGizmo! – Erasable Shower Note Tablet – 12.09.05

via

Gadget Review – Erasable Shower Note Tablet – December 08, 2005

Which is where the “via” link trail ends. Gadget Review does link to online items in other posts, so I’m going to assume that maybe the idea came from a non-linkable source. Perhaps a magazine? Oh, but which one?

Now, I’m going to insert myself into the story, purely on speculation. I am in no way implying that Gadget Review plagiarized anything, nor do I even care. I am only hazarding a guess—a guess that, of course, includes me in the story.

As editor (now ex-editor) of Business2.0 magazine’s Favorites section, I included a diver’s slate in the November Favorites section, in an item from Alex Hart. (B2’s “integrated” web site sucks *ss, btw.)

But I will admit freely that I had heard it even earlier than that (probably around May/June) from Merlin Mann of 43folders.com. There’s actually an item on the scuba slate in the 43 folders wiki from March 2005 created by an unknown author (IP address only).

And if I remember correctly, I think Merlin mentioned that he had heard about the slate on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, where it appeared in February of 2004.

And that, my friends is about as far as I think we need to go. I’m not sure what my point here is exactly. Maybe it’s a notion of recyclable content, maybe it’s a mapping of the flow of good ideas through the blogosphere. Maybe it’s a pat on my own back for being vaguely relevant for once in my life.

I recently got a comment from the author of an article that I panned in what the author considered a personal attack. To be honest, I can see his point. I write off the cuff most of the time, and there’s some frustration and hidden baggage I bring along to my posts, I think. That’s blogging, isn’t it? It can be a diary or it can be a newspaper, and it’s searchable and findable, so you can easily put it on the same stage as, say, The New York Times. Which of course, it isn’t. Just because you found my blog and you read it, doesn’t mean that it’s a public platform. I don’t answer to a community of readers, I answer to me.

So should I temper my writing since it can be considered ‘public’? Or should readers understand that this is a window … into my soul! :>

SF Weekly has published a hilarious smear of Craigslist, blaming him for the lost jobs of Bay Area reporters. Writer Ryan Blitstein has spent way too much time crafting his colorful turns of phrase to really understand, well, really anything.

Poor Ryan laments the downfall of the venerated newspaper, while repeating the sloppy reporting techniques and blatant sensationalism that got newspapers into trouble in the first place.

It’s difficult to read an article with facts as twisted as this without smiling. As an old acquaintance once said (actually the market researcher father of a college girlfriend), “Statistics are like a woman in a bikini. What they reveal is interesting, what they hide is crucial.”

First, Blitstein paints Craig as a sinister “geek”, who’s month-and-half-old apartment doesn’t have a finished bathroom, but does have 2 operational, wall-mounted flat-screen TVs.

Well, yeah, those are the same. Ryan, have you ever set up a stereo before? Have you ever remodeled a bathroom before? How are these two activities equivalent?

Then, he paints newspapers as unwitting victims of the sinister Newmark, who’s craigslist classifieds site has apparently sucked the oxygen out of every newsroom within a hundred miles.

Explain to me again how newspaper publishing companies are like defenseless little girls? Explain how the decline in local coverage, decreases in circulation, and a serious lack of “new media” smarts is not the fault of newspaper management?

Business is about change. Hell, life is about change. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t need reporters. That is your job, after all, Mr. Reporter. You report stories about how things are changing.

The very fact that you and your management didn’t see this coming proves that you’re incompetant and don’t deserve your place in the community, our loyalty, or your jobs. It’s harsh, but true.

The upside, of course, is that we all are still here. We all still need to know what’s going on, and we need to connect to our local communities perhaps more than ever. We are still thirsty for the connection newspapers offered long ago and the Internet offers now.

You still have a chance to redeem yourself.

But hey, if you want to sit and whine about your plight, that’s cool too. I don’t have to wait for you to build a community, I can go out and do it myself—just like Craig.

I appreciate the furor over Web 2.0, but to me, it’s more of the same. Web 1.0 was started by hackers and geeks and was a bunch of “nobodys” creating cool stuff before the suits moved in and took over. I don’t see anything different happening this time.

As my friend Ted pointed out, greed is difficult to resist.

I think we’re moving into the late phases of Web2.0 already. All I see are companies mimicking moves by other companies, aggregating things together into “portals” or “one-stop-shops”. They can’t help themselves. When you have an audience, you’re first thought is to keep adding new features in the hopes of keeping your readers busy longer.

But we already know the future is niche. The future is small and highly targeted.

What you should do is focus on the three things you do really well, and only add new features as bonuses for your audience. Stay focused and be happy that you have a slice—any slice—of the attention pie.

What I’d really like to see is more cooperation, instead of consolidation. With all this XML-ized content sitting in DBs, it would be nice if there were companies that simply shared with each other. Why do photos when Flickr does it better? Why do maps when Google and Yahoo have the most bitchin’ APIs?

If we’re really into openness, then why not show it?

I do see a lot of people using Google Maps, for example, on their sites, but whenever it comes to something “mission criticial,” everyone builds their own app. And while I agree that it’s cheap and easy to do so these days, I think we’ve reached the point where it’s actually easier and better to use someone else’s “best of breed” app.

Think about sharing. Think about your web site sitting on a single page of code, and calling to 20 third-party best-of-breed web services.

The new app-building service Ning is the perfect example.

What does it mean when you’re business is a bunch of aggregated components? Do you “own” the audience any less? Do you have to fight for their attention more than otherwise? Are they less valuable? Could you potentially be more profitable and more nimble as a business?

I wonder.

I think I’ve mentioned my frustration with HDTV in the past. It’s too confusing with all the jargon and whatnot. I don’t want another complicated computing device, I just want a TV that works. Unfortunately, right now that’s probably a PC —or an Xbox. But there’s a couple content-related sticking points that I think are interesting.

First are TV torrents . They’re usually recorded off HDTV and distributed as almost DVD-quality files only hours after the show airs. If you’re on the West Coast, you can actually get East Coast recordings before your local show airs (or finishes airing). Torrents go up fast and populate even faster. Better quality, no commercials, archivable and you only have to wait a few hours (maybe a day) longer.

Second—and this is the ironical part—are HD programs downsampled to be broadcast over regular TV. These shows suddenly look just like DVD content. Watch Monday Night Football, for example. Sure it looks fantastic on an HDTV, but it looks really good on regular TV too.

As network executives air more HD content, they’re going to push us consumers to buy new expensive HDTVs. But simultaneously, us average Joe’s are going to find that these HD shows on our aging analog TVs look better than ever. And we may find ourselves putting off that new TV purchase for a few months more, flirting with that HDTV switchover deadline.

So, the more digital and HD programs that are available, the more life you can expect to get from your old analog TV set.

I have to admit, I didn’t expect that at all.

We are loving what I’ve dubbed the Africam. It’s a NatGeo webcam of a watering hole in Botswana.

Sometimes, the net can really open your eyes.

This movie was way funnier than I expected. I don’t think you can really begin to understand it without first understanding the joke, which the reviews I originally read passed over. I guess revealing the joke is considered a spoiler, but in this case, it’s the way the joke is told that’s really the point. The joke itself isn’t even that funny—but get the right comedian to tell it and watch out.

Described in the film as the “perfect” joke, The Aristocrats (or Sophisticates) starts with a simple line, “A guy walks into a talent agent’s office”. He then describes his act, which is disgusting. The agent, taken aback, says, “What do you call it?” The guys says, “The Aristocrats!”

What’s brilliant about the joke is that the middle, the disgusting description of the act, is completely open-ended and has evolved within the culture of comedians into a contest of one-upsmanship, where comedians put their own stamp on the joke, trying to outdo one another.

Since the joke is such a reflection of the individual comedian, it’s also become a kind of barometer of comedy over the years and between the sexes. Female comedians tend to tell the joke very differently (and more creatively) than the men, who focus on the gross-out factor. Sara Silverman’s take took the form of a bizarre reminiscence/confessional and was hilarious.

Robin Williams did have one great quote about the vulgarity of the joke: “Vulgarity is a very comedian-centered thing. You don’t see a lot of physicists saying ‘It’s a muon, you cunt.’” Which made me think of the New Yorker cartoons, and I couldn’t help myself.

I think it’s pretty clear that Steve Jobs wanted it to suck.

Everyone’s criticisms of the video aspects of the iPod are valid and all of them with the exception of battery life (which they’ll clearly improve over time) are most likely management decisions. Steve is clearly biding his time. He owns digital music right now, and the next logical step is video. If you look at what the company’s done in the last year or so, they’ve got their ducks so accurately in line, everyone else in the industry, including Microsoft and Tivo had better watch out.

See Steve knows that you have to combine a great device with great content. And there is no digital video available for legal download right now. Why? Because the studios are scared shitless. So what does Steve do? He compells them to take a baby step that in no way could possibly be threatening to them (320×240 is a ridiculous resolution, after all). And he adds them into the iTunes Store so he can arm himself with some sales data.

Eventually (meaning probably every day going forward), Apple is going to pitch these studios to death, and eventually pressure them into releasing more content and in higher-def. The video iPod is convenient for Steve, and I really don’t think he gives a shit about portable video. Most people commute to work. They’ll do podcasts, sure, but watch video? I doubt it’d really take hold in the kids market either, for cost and repetition reasons (kids watch the same title over and over). DVD has really got the kid’s market cornered for now.

See, Steve’s got everyone excited because he made a video iPod—except he really didn’t.

What he did was add a couple ducks to his media PC. Look at what Steve’s holding. He’s got a video-enabled iTunes Store; a Mac Mini perfect for home entertainment; a new remote; media center software in Front Row. Content? Check. Hardware? Check. Software? Check.

He’s ready. So what’s he waiting for? Well, the content, for one thing. Without enough popular content in the store, he doesn’t have a business model. And I think because of that, he’s probably content to wait for higher HDTV penetration, which you really really need to do anything with a media PC.

The best part? I’m excited to see what happens if Apple opens up the iTunes Store so anyone can add video content. That would be pretty amazing. Plus, maybe Steve will relent on the a la carte pricing and we’ll start to see all-you-can-eat subscription plans (non-portable video only, perhaps?).

Portland, Oregon—home of the bike move. And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. This guy made an excellent movie of a recent cross-town bike move. Watch it here.

How can you not live this city?

Since we live near Forest Park here in Portland, we have a lot of ants (I think they’re water ants, but they could be sugar. I don’t really know the difference). Sometimes I think they’re more resident than we are. Now, Portland being what it is, there seems to be a dearth of your typical hyper-toxic pest sprays for sale, not that my girlfriend would really let me use that stuff anyway. Besides the fact that our main problem is around the kitchen counters—pretty much exactly where you don’t want to be spraying stuff.

I have tried just about every non-toxic solution offered, and most of them don’t really work all that well. The problem is that we have ants everywhere, so there’s really no telling where they’re going to show up next.

There are two strategies I found that do seem to work pretty well. First, a mixture of boric acid and sugar in water, poured on a cotton ball. I did this inside a small plastic cup (a spray can top where I cut down the edge to about a half inch) and placed it outside along an art path. It’s important to place it outside if you can, since it will attract a lot of ants. You don’t want to teach them to come inside. I covered this cup with an upside-down salsa container with areas cut from the lip to allow the ants in, but keep leaves and other stuff out.

The ants eat the poisoned sugar water and take it back to the nest, hopefully killing the queen. I don’t think I succeeded in killing the colony, but I sure slowed ‘em down for a while. I kept extra boric acid suare water in another container to refresh my little trap when it got dry.

The strategy I just put into place I think is going to work really well. I took a few tablespoons of petroleum jelly, scooped it into a ziploc bag, cut off the tiniest corner, and piped the jelly around the edges of my counter like icing. I piped along the inner underside of the counter and on the ege of the backsplash. I now have a thin almost invisible line of jelly around my entire counter. I also piped around the outlets, running my fingers around the edge to smooth out the jelly. The jelly is non-toxic and since it doesn’t dry out, the ants won’t cross the sticky stuff.

It’s only been a day, but I haven’t seen any ants on the counter, even though I’ve seen them wandering around underneath.

The folks at Universal/Grace Hill Media are getting some props for the fan screenings of Serenity that ran frequently during the summer and the blogger screenings they just completed. I am going to echo these props here, but with an explanatory note for the curious.

These blogger screenings were not special, inspired, or genius—they were simply smart marketing. What Universal did was simply skim off a tiny percentage of the preview tickets they would normally give to local papers and radio stations. Yup, that’s all they did. Instead of winning a contest, you simply entered a first-come, first-serve signup for which you promised to write a review.

So, the studio really did nothing extra beyond suffering through a deluge of emails. There was a nice Universal rep at the theater, he crossed my name off a list, and I was soon waiting in line with everyone else.

This is just really smart Web marketing. They get tons of exposure online in search-engine friendly blogs, for the price of a ticket they were going to give away anyway. You can’t game Google, but you can game the bloggers that feed Google. And in a fair exchange too, I might add.

The best part is that my girlfriend, not an especially rabid fan, has already committed to seeing the movie again, because she wants to support the film and Whedon. So, Universal, you’re getting boku blog love from me, and on top of it all, you’re gonna get my money too.

And that, my friend, is the smartest marketing of all.

Well, Universal kept their end of the bargain. I was chosen as a blogger-attendee to the Serenity screening here in Portland, I arrived and was on the list, got my tickets, waited in line, and ended up with great seats in a packed house. All in all, it was great. Hats off to Universal/Grace Hill Media for getting us bloggers in the door, which as it turns out was not as magnanimous as it was cunningly strategic, but I’ll get to that later. First, the review, or rather, the reviewing.

Stadium seating is wonderful, but you should pick seats further back than you’re probably used to.

I haven’t been to a preview screening since I was a film reviewer in college. Once, I was lucky enough to see Wes Craven’s Shocker in a packed house in downtown Philly on a Friday night, which was probably the best time (the audience participation was brilliant) I’ve even spent in a theater. So, upon finding a pair of seats and watching the theater fill, I recalled bits of this past and what to expect.

Upon getting up to pick up some snackable goodies, Patricia discovered a keychain taped to the arm of her chair. It was emblazoned with the name of a local radio station, and since there didn’t seem to be anyone else around with one, I figured Patricia just won something. But what? During her snackbar absence, I had nothing to do but conjure up possible winnings this little keychain might unlock. Perhaps it was the big grand prize? But the keychain was silver. Did that signify second place? Or some other rank in the winner’s circle? Would we be able to fit her spoils in the car for the ride home? Would we want to?

Alas, as it turned out, there is inherent value in an embossed keychain—it can hold keys. And that, apparently, was more than enough of a prize for the radio station folk, who deemed the slightly more useless stickers they had also hidden out in the audience as more worthy—and those winners got a T-shirt. One hapless teen, followed by his younger brother/sidekick did walk down to the front of the theater to attempt a keychain/T-shirt trade-in, but was rebuffed by radio DJ man, much to the delight of the audience. If there was ever a kid who didn’t need emotional scars, this was him.

If you ever see great seats front-and-center in a preview screening, they are for professional film reviewers, not you.

Now, as the film began, I realized I had a problem. I always walked into film prepared (i.e., with pen and large notebook for scrawling huge illegible notes in the dark) and with mind open. In this case, however, I was as biased as biased come. Patricia indoctrinated me to Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer years ago. We watched Firefly’s (Whedon’s TV show which Serenity is based on) run on TV and bought the Firefly DVD set before it was released. We’ve seen ever episode of the TV series at least twice, finishing our latest viewing only a few weeks ago. In addition, I am a big fan of Cowboy Bebop, a recent anime series set on a very similar sci-fi western backdrop. I like old Kurosawa films and the spaghetti westerns he spawned, though most proper American westerns I can do without. In short, I am 100% unsure how to review this film. I deeply need this film. I want it to succeed.

You can’t avoid the talker/giggler in a preview screening. In fact, this is really more their turf than yours.

Back in 2002 and most unsurprisingly, Fox screwed Whedon right out of the gate when it decided that his 2-hour Firefly pilot was “too slow”, and insisted that he give them something peppier. What can you say about that? He entered into an agreement in good faith with a network known as much for Animals Attack as it was for the X-files and The Simpsons. Who didn’t know that Firefly, a sci-fi series of one-hour episodes, was going to need time and nurturing to find its footing? I’m sure Joss knew it, and probably reiterated it to studio execs at every turn. Firefly aired during the peak of “reality” TV fever, however, and before the implications of the war on terror really began to sink in.

I , like others, am especially glad Universal is going to make money off the franchise, and hope that along with sequels, there may be some Sci Fi Channel (owned by NBC Universal) magic in our futures. Fox, for its part, must be extremely happy now that its running Bones. (Ack!)

“I aim to misbehave.” You just gotta love lines like that.

Despite its original bad timing, Serenity/Firefly is about as American as you get. It swathes itself in the themes of freedom, frontier spirit and self-determination. It talks in “period” dialogue and numerous gun battles. The crew’s Firefly-class spaceship is not especially fast, pretty or armed. They travel the frontiers of populated space looking for jobs that will bring the money that will keep them in the air and moving. They are sexily dirty, crude and dangerous. Everything a good American should be.

I admit having trouble with the first few minutes of the 2-hour long film. Here Whedon introduces our characters, our universe and the major forces involved. Necessary for everyone else, boring for me. Even the actors seemed to be going through the motions here, reciting the straight-laced dialog needed to set up the rest of the story. Once passed, however, the tale begins to accelerate and you find yourself rocketing around Serenity’s universe. Whedon maintains good pacing throughout the film, and introduces a few more twists and turns in the plot than you expect from similar Hollywood fare.

What will be most glaringly obvious for fans of the TV show is how (necessarily) uneven the character development is. Even with his 2-hours, Whedon stuck to his guns to tell his story, which will leave some fans feeling short-changed when their favorite character doesn’t get as much screen time as they would have liked. Unless of course your favorites include captain Malcom Reynolds and damaged psychic River, who dominate the storyline.

Serenity is primarily character-driven, meaning it doesn’t go too far out of its way to show off its CG effects, though they are plentiful. There’s some very nice martial arts work by balleria Summer Glau (River), and plenty of gunfire. All in all, a balanced effort, which is difficult to find anymore, and some viewers might find strange (talking AND shooting?) in a movie.

Reynolds has already been described as Han Solo, and I think I’d go one further and throw in a bit of Indiana Jones, though I suppose any Harrison Ford antihero will do in a pinch. In fact, when you add it up, Serenity is replete with a wonderful array of cinematic DNA, a fantastic cast, and a loving creator. This is all summed up in a nail-biting climax that pushes you much further than any Star Trek movie ever dared.

No intended spoilers here, but Whedon clearly takes some chances that will dismay hard-core fans, though I think it makes for a better, more suspensful film. What it means for the future of the franchise, I don’t know. I’m excited to find out, however.

Let’s give it 8 out of 10 straight out, and tack on another point for the promise of more to come.

Official Serenity Synopsis:

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® – and Emmy – nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

Oh yes. Oh yes. Monday, Monday, we will be braving the madhouse that will be the Serenity preview screening slash “Blogger Bonanza” (apologies to Lorne Greene)!

Today (Saturday) we go to the Guild Theater at 1pm for the Firefly/Mercy Corps Benefit to watch selected TV episodes on the bg screen. Thank you PDX Browncoats!

Well, here’s what is hopefully the first in a short series of posts on the upcoming movie Serenity. They’re doing another round of preview screenings, this time for bloggers like me. So get over there and sign up. It’s probably going to be a madhouse, but who cares? At the very least I’ll get to see just who shows up at these screenings. (I’ve never been much of an opening night/weekend kind of guy.)

We’re also probably going to the PDX Browncoats Firefly benefit at the Guild Theater in SW PDX on Saturday, 24th. They’re going to be showing 3 episodes of the TV show and tickets benefit Mercy Corps. Plus, there’s costumes!

But back to Serenity.

Universal’s been doing fan screenings all summer, ever since the opening date got pushed back to September. This is an interesting strategy, and one I’m sure contradicts other traditional opening strategies. Which is best? What will work? I guess it all depends.

In Serenity’s case, Universal’s abandoned the idea that the only way to build anticipation and support for a film is by teasing us with graphics and videobytes (?). This is a tried-and-true strategy used by just about everyone, to the point where today, I see previews all the time that I swear I’ve seen several months before. This teasing gets so ahead of the film’s actual release that, in many cases, it seems inevitable that release dates are pushed back and money is wasted as whatever early buzz was generated evaporates. This really just leaves us consumers confused, as everyone’s teasing us with everything. The competitive advantage disappears.

Consensus I’ve read seems to indicate that since Serenity only cost $40M, Universal figured the film to be more or less a gimme profit-wise, giving them a golden opportunity to do some experimenting. Getting fans and bloggers together to support a film is a great idea, but I’ve never heard of so many advance screenings being held. These happened throughout the summer all across the US. They essentially popped that anticipation balloon and gave the product away—or did they?

Because we, as consumers, are bombarded by teasers, commercials, etc. begging for our attention dollars, there is a threshold a movie has to cross before you can consider it our “watch list”. We can’t see every film that comes out. This watch list is different for every person, but also includes levels—things we “must” see, things we “will” see, and “might” see.

Let’s face it, Hollywood makes its money on “will/might see” consumers. This is the majority of moviegoers, who want some entertainment but don’t care so much how they get it. The “must sees” are the fans, always a niche group.

So what Universal did was use the extra time they got from the later release date to marshall their “must see” audience into the theaters. This does one simple thing: it gives them word of mouth. You can’t get word of mouth from someone who hasn’t seen the film. If you expect that your film is good, then you should do whatever you can to generate your word of mouth before opening weekend.

This opening weekend is SO important, we know, and yet studios are still relying on a handful of reviewers, movie clips and TV appearances over the course of maybe 2 weeks beforehand to make that weekend opening a hit.

There’s just too much competition (read: media noise) for that to work anymore.

I don’t think that this strategy is in any way unique to Serenity. Every film has some franchise value to it. Serenity had its TV fans, but there’s all kinds of fans—movie star fans, indie film fans, genre fans, etc.

I think you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a film for which you couldn’t find fans. And if you did, then you should probably reconsider whether that film’s worth making.

[Say what you want about Katrina, Bush, FEMA, et al., just make sure you leave your money in the Red Cross tip jar first. Pony up or shut up.]

Like most people, I’ve absorbed about as much as I can take from the sidelines here. Talk is really all it is. But there’s a few things that should be set straight(er).

Looters or Finders? Truth is, there is latent racism or at least ignorance underneath the media’s characterization of NOLA scavengers. I don’t really care what it is they were carrying out of the stores.

These people are poor—they started this tragedy with next to nothing. Now, they have absolutely nothing. No food, shelter, clothes, insurance, transportation, medicine, communications, and probably no jobs to return to either. When will these people have homes again? When is this all expected to end? Months from now? A year? Two?

Taking a TV may seem stupid, but when you have nothing—NOTHING —and no prospects in the forseeable future, you’re gonna damn well grab whatever you can. Maybe it’s food and water which you can use now. Maybe it’s clothing you can barter with next week. And maybe it’s a TV set that you can trade for a sandwich in a month while you’re still waiting for the water to drain.

Give me a definitive answer that this is going to end soon and well for these people, and then I’ll consider judging those who chose to “loot” a few TV sets. Otherwise, shut it.

On Kanye West: Far be it for our entertainers, whom we pay to endorse every product imaginable, to express an individual opinion, especially one born of overwhelming emotion. But Kanye, you know what, it’s not that George Bush doesn’t care about black people—America doesn’t care about black people.

See, in America, we like capitalism and capitalism is about profits and losses. It’s also about managing risk, and understanding that eliminating all the risk cuts into the profits. We’re taking this knowledge and we’re putting it to use in our governments, our schools, our healthcare. See, the government says it’s acceptable to let people be really poor, and starving, and sick, and ignorant, and unemployed, and uninsured. Why? Because it’s expensive and difficult to solve these problems—besides, it’s not as fun as defense contracts and you don’t get elected solving the problems of people who don’t vote.

So, you see, it’s not really even racist. America has abandoned blacks because the numbers simply don’t add up. Until we decide that the most pitiful human life is worth saving, then there are always going to be a lot of people who are left behind to linger, wander and die.

Is It George’s Fault? A lot of people are angry with Bush and his administration over the handling of the response to Katrina. I want to ask the Louisiana governor why the poor weren’t evacuated on buses as per the state’s own evacuation plan. I want to see Chertoff fired immediately. The guy is clearly a douchebag. I also find it deeply troubling that in a time of war, a time of supposed preparedness, we can’t coordinate rescues because of flooding. Imagine what it’s going to be like if chemical weapons are released. It’s gonna be a damn sight more difficult to navigate than water, I’ll tell you.

So, the changes the Bush Administration has made to protect us have failed miserably and certain high-level folk should be held accountable. But it is George’s fault?

Yes, you’re damn right it is. He is the President, the Commander In Chief. He leads this country, he controls the budgets, he administers our agencies. The buck stops on his desk and nowhere else. If Clinton were in office, I would expect no less from him. George, these are your people. They needed your help, and you were not there.

For once, ask your President to be the man he is supposed to be. He needs to step up, shoulder the blame, and get to fixing this mess.

Your attempts to inject spam into my comment form are not working. Go away.

Given this recent Wired News article in which the record industry purports that the mob is taking over CD/DVD piracy, all evidence within leads me to assume that record industry executives (and their spokespeople) are genetically predisposed to be morons.

“The markup for a kilo of heroin is 200 percent,” Hoffman says. “The markup for pirated CDs and DVDs is 800 percent.”

This just struck me odd. I mean, come on. Drugs are not that cheap and pirated CDs sold by street vendors are not that pricey. What’s wrong with this picture? Come on friends, let’s do some math.

Google gives me this page, where I learn about South Asian heroin:

The fee for smuggling heroin from Bangkok to New York can go as high as $5,000 to $10,000 per unit, according to DEA intelligence reports. The risks are high, as are the potential profits. The 6-inch by 4-inch white brick of pure Southeast Asian heroin (described as a unit in the opening paragraphs and priced at $3,000 at the refinery) generally is sold in New York City at a wholesale price of $70,000.

This generally jibes with DOJ info from 2000 on NYC heroin prices.

MATH TIME: Based on our data, we can safely guess that it might cost you $15,000 to get a 700-gram brick (adding some misc. expenses) to NY where you could sell it for $70,000. The markup? 367%

Now, how about pirate DVDs? An 800% markup means that a $10 disc costs $1.11. Hmm, I don’t know. Based on some informal research, I think we can assume that it’s gonna run around $1.50 per DVD-9 disc including packaging for 5,000 units. Now, there’s still middlemen to deal with. Let’s be conservative and say you can get the discs for $1.60 each to sell on the street for $10 or so. That’s a 525% markup.

But wait! We just quoted a street price for DVDs. What about a street price for heroin? Apples to apples and all that.

Well, going back to our SE Asian heroin info, we read near the bottom that a single delivered brick at $15,000 will generate $280,000 in sales on the street. Now our markup looks a little different at 1,767% doesn’t it?

Still, I think the pirated DVD markup is high. That $1.11 figure seems closer to a base production cost than anything. You’re not doing massive volumes of each DVD title, after all. If we assume that, then we should compare the base production cost of heroin, which is only $3,000. Now our heroin markup spikes to 9,233%.

So, recording/motion picture industry, if I were you, I’d focus less on markups and more on quality.

Street heroin is averaging 60% purity these days. Can you honestly say your movies beat that?

I often worry about the state of our culture, and then somebody does something like this:
superballs unleashed in SF (Flickr image)

Now that’s happiness. Wish I had seen it live.

For those interested in importing Blogger posts into Wordpress and maintaining your old permalink structure for single post pages, here’s what I did.

The problem: Blogger creates permalinks using the post title differently than Wordpress. For one thing, Blogger doesn’t require a post title, and will build permalink using the first few words of the post content. Now, WP doesn’t really need a title either, but you certainly have to have a post_name or you’ll get an unusable permalink and won’t be able to access the post.

Rather than trying to guess Blogger’s method, I decided to modify the import-blogger.php script (NOTE: i’m using the already modded Skelton script to bring in both posts and comments. The code will be different if you’re not using this version of the script.)
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I have to admit that I’ve lost some respect for pretty much everyone circling this GTA: SA unlockable sex mini-game dust up. I mean seriously, how is having raunchy cartoony graphic sex much worse than 1) going on a citywide killing spree, which is basically what GTA’s all about, or 2) having raunchy non-visible sex with a prosititute in your car (if I remember correctly, this increases your health) then running her over after to get your money back?

The best part is that the vaunted ESRB, protector of that nation’s vid-playing children, responded with extreme prejudice, raising the game’s rating from ‘M’ (mature) to ‘AO’ (adults only), prompting retail stores to rip it off the shelves. What’s the difference between the ratings? With AO, only 18 year-olds can buy vs. 17 with M. A sum total difference of—one fricking year!

You know, I seriously worry about this country. Toss in a little sex on top of the most popular, violent immoral game around, and what was accepted and tolerated is now taboo. TABOO!! Why is extreme violence tolerated when sex is not? If we’re really a culture of life (Mr. President), then why is sex, the act that creates life, worse than killing a person?

Unfortunately, logic follows that we are not a culture of life, but rather a culture of havoc and death.

And that my friends, sucks balls.

Let’s get this outta the way: I did not like this movie for so many reasons. I don’t recommend you see it. There’s better ways to spend 2 hours. Lots of ways.

It has no plot (and no real suspense, either, since if you’re breathing, you should know the storyline). Morgan Freeman as narrator supplies every single bit of plot description and defuses any and all suspensefulness in two nuggets at the film’s beginning and end. So for the remaining 1:56, we just follow along while Tom “He’s cocky, but he’s the best” Cruise scurries from Jersey to Boston with daughter and son in tow.

Oh, and lots of stuff gets blowed up—reeaal good.

This is as close a remake of Day After Tomorrow that’s not a remake of Day After Tomorrow as you will ever see. (And somehow, I saw both of them. Ouch.)

I just have to ask: why do aliens bury their war machines deep in the Earth millions of years in the past, only to show up later to get in and drive them over our cities? I mean, if they were here already, why not just drive ‘em around then? Get it over with? And how is it that man, who’s basically instinctually driven to dig holes in the ground like a dog, hasn’t happened to unearth at least one of these machines? I mean, they’re supposedly buried everywhere, right?

Then there’s Spielberg’s genius scene in which the Amtrak goes hurtling by in flames for no apparent reason but to let us know that “No, they couldn’t have just taken the train up there.” Thanks for clearing that up, Stevie.

The film also suffers from those “moments of inane dialog” where the characters don’t do the obvious normal thing. When dickhead teenage son blows up in front of CruiseDad in the middle of fleeing the ginormous hoovering death machines, I kept thinking – no hoping – that Cruise would belt the kid and drag him off. (That’s just good parenting, IMO.) But no, they only reach an impasse of wills, and not having the space or a nearby Starbucks to talk it out, they simmer until later when the son demands to scurry over to his own death (because he “has to see”), despite the clear fact that there’s nothing anyone – anyone – can do. To his fault, Spielberg never makes clear whether you can actually defeat aliens just by “keepin’ it real”.

And Tim Robbins? Why is he in this movie?

Luckily, the movie evenutally ended and we left, getting a snack on the way home. So, “Thank god for Voodoo Donuts.” Seriously, those are some good donuts.

So I just got through cleaning the crap out of my garage, and there’s this image of Darth Vader in my wall! I swear it wasn’t there before! Where did it come from?? I guess because I work at home and I’ve been having doubts about, well, stuff, and now I feel like he’s brought the dark side to me so I can wish for things and stuff. w00t!

I told my friend Rod about it and he came over and was like, no way man, that’s crazy, that’s just a big water stain, but I don’t believe him. I emailed a copy of the picture to George Lucas, and some other people I thought might know him—6degrees!—but I haven’t heard anything back yet. [fingers crossed]

I invited some other folk over to look ‘cause Rod is a hoser, and the tv news too. “When you come down here—that’s why I wanted to come down here and see for myself—when you come down here and you see it, it’s real,” Joanne Grabnik, of Alderan. “It is beautiful.” That’s a quote, man! She was at my house!

People are saying that I should have people over and charge them like $5 ($10!!) to see Vader and maybe pray and they can give me some cool figurines (no ewokZ! or JarJar StinkZ!!) but I don’t know if that’s sacrilicious ‘cause Vader vs. Jesus and all. (tho that’d be supercool kung-fu-fightin!!) Plus there’d probably be haters like Rod and they’d be hasseling me and the neighbors and the TRU BELIEVRZ!! I don’t care what they think anyway.

I know it’s Vader and it’s awesome!! I can now smite all my enemies and snuff out all my problems. HAHAHA!! Watch out!

Also, I haven’t seen Revenge of the Sith yet, so maybe I should go do that soon.

Big picture:

Here’s one that I enhanced:

Yay! Dogster.com won a Webby for best community site. Congratulations Ted and team! This is the first Web site that I’ve been involved with that’s won such an award, as far as I know. It’s pretty cool to be associated with it, even though my role is small. I’m so glad for Ted and hope this will further help propel him and Dogster down the road. Woof!

So, this is actually the first time this has happened to me, but I suspect it’s already happened to others.

You email someone a question, and instead of replying to your email, they choose instead to blog a response—veiled enough that it apparently addresses not only your question, but those of others as well.

Now, I’m assuming a lot here: I don’t know the person I emailed except through their blog, I don’t know what other questions this person gets asked throughout the day. I do know that I had established an email conversation with said person, and I feel that I was polite and professional in my dealings. The question I asked was an entirely separate matter (based on said person’s domain expertise), but I feel that if you want to know something, you ask someone who knows.

The problem with email being impersonal, of course, is that said person could have inferred just about anything from my question, though I tried my best to phrase it properly. And so, the blog post, which I have to assume was in response to my email (the timing was uncanny), ended up pretty flip and dismissive, in my opinion.

This pissed me off, since I believe that it was rude not to respond directly, and it didn’t answer my question at all.

The fact is people, Google is not some all-encompassing panacea that can answer all questions. Some questions demand an informed human opinion. I had researched my question extensively on the Net and through friends, and hadn’t found a suitable answer.

So I had the opportunity to ask someone who might actually have a good answer, and they blogged me. I have to admit, I didn’t see it coming.

I saw this movie a few weeks ago, during a short run at the local Cinema 21 here in Portland. Having lived in California during this whole debacle, I was having a little trouble not being totally sick. But I grew up in Texas, so I’m also not surprised at all.

The thing that gets me is that I know that Skilling is still sitting around wondering how those traders screwed up his brilliant, perfect idea. He has no clue, and maybe whe the trial really starts next year, and every cable news outlet has its cameras trained on his every lip twitch, he will start to realize how many people’s lives he has destroyed. I don’t believe in the death penalty, because I don’t think it’s the right thing to believe in, but man, I look at Skilling, and I have to admit that this guy has worked his ass off to deserve it.

The most interesting part of the whole mess is the intricacies of trading electricity, which weren’t covered in the film much at all. When your politicians and regulators don’t understand what their governing, you’ve got a big big problem. And you can see the same problems with Internet regulation, copyright, etc.

What do you do when the world rises above the heads of the politicians?

One of the cool things about living in a wetter climate is that you can do things like this. Moss graffiti, brilliant.

There’s a fundamental disconnect between life online and in meatspace, one that’s creating clashes on many different fronts, as you probably well know. However, it’s a mistake to portray these conflicts as battles between rights holders and pirates, laws and lawlessness. Again, most everyone knows this. Information wants to be free, and all that. What is interesting to me is that this is really a culture war in which two societies (not individuals) are battling for supremacy.
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So this guy tries to smuggle in some bologna from Mexico (on a bus) and he gets caught. Which is not surprising since he had around 850 lbs. of illicit bologna and 100 lbs. of cheese with him in 14 suitcases and hidden on his person. Naturally, Customs and Border Patrol is pleased.

First: it’s a frickin’ miracle that there 1) weren’t any drug-sniffing dogs around and 2) they didn’t tear him to pieces. (Actually, said smuggler is apparently unaccounted for … hmmm.)

Second: the reporter (after tossing in a lame aside about how the agency didn’t know if the guy had any bread on him—get it? bologna, cheese … and bread? HA!) mentions that the poor slob stood to make a tidy profit on his sandwich fixin’s which in the US sell for 3 to 4 times the $7 to $8 he paid in Mexico.

OK, I’m just gonna assume that he can really get that much, though I would imagine that any poor soul loitering about a swap meet (?!) trying to unload 1,000 lbs. of hot, sweaty bologna and cheese is gonna take whatever anyone happens to offer. So, that’s gonna tally up to around $6,000 he paid, $18,000 sale price (doubtful), and $12,000 profit (more like $6,000—maybe).

Now, here’s the audience participation part:

Calculate for me the street value of the cocaine, heroin, marijuana and Mexican pharmaceuticals that passed cleanly through the border checkpoints while all the Border Patrol agents were busy unloading those dozen or so meat-and-cheese laden suitcases from the bowels of that bus.

Third: Anyone who eats bologna, let alone strange, sweaty, well-travelled Mexican bologna—deserves exactly what they get.

Subway called me this morning at 7am (they’re East Coast), and hung up after 2 rings. Wonder what that was about?

According to Mediaweek, Tracks is dead. My kneejerk reaction was to think that there just aren’t as many old music listeners—but the RIAA data shows that music consumption by age group has actually evened out of late.

I suspect that this might be another demonstration of the ‘Long Tail’—as you get older, you become more of a niche listener and less reliant on mass media recommendations. And this works both ways, as mass media itself has abandoned anyone older than 25 in the rush to capitalize on the young 18-25 demographic (“get ‘em young,” they say). So it’s not like us fogies have any other choice.

Tracks was a trailblazing idea, in many ways, but it was really swimming upstream. I bet it didn’t/couldn’t think of itself as the niche title it really was.

kottke links to a WSJ story about Smucker’s patent application of their “Uncrustables” frozen peanut butter sandwiches.

Having just now read (some of) the application, the real story is not that Smucker’s is trying to patent the sealed crustless freezable peanut-butter and jelly sandwich—because they aren’t. They are trying to patent the sealed crustless freezable peanut-butter and jelly sandwich WITH protein-fortified nut butter, the preceeding invention having already been patented by Kretchman in patent 6,004,596.

So, you see, the sandwich has already been patented.

This puts the story in a potentially different light. If the sandwich has already been patented by Kretchman (which Smucker’s admits, to my reading), then all Smucker’s is trying to do is procure an essentially defensive patent that would allow it to continue to innovate by producing its Uncrustables sandwiches without the fear of reprisals from Kretchman (or whoever currently owns its patents).

When you’re faced with a stupid patent, I guess all you can really do is get your own slightly stupider patent.

[UPDATE: Actually, Smuckers bought the Kretchman patent and were trying to extend it with two extension patent applications: one on the crimping method and the other the fortified nut butter. Both apps were rejected. Smuckers, fire your law firm immediately.]

A NYT article today on ensemble cast advertising (subscription req.) completely misses the opportunity these types of commercials offer, IMO. I’m always surprised when I hear someone dressing up the wolf in sheep’s clothing—TV commercials dressed up as sitcoms—do they think we are stupid? With everything that’s going on in our lives, the intense competition for our attention from everything, do they really think we are going to invest in the “plot line” of a 30-second commercial advertisement?

First, a lesson to advertising execs: love (or at least like) your product. Commercials are not TV, but they bring us TV. It’s a beneficial symbiotic relationship. Most people do not watch commercials these days, regardless of the presence of Tivo in their homes. We all have busy lives, we all are used to juggling what the world throws at us. Even the most technologically challenged of us get up or surf during commercials. Why do we do this? You, the advertisers, have failed to deliver on the basic promise of television, a sin too great to ignore.

Every week, we tune in to televisions shows—why? Because they are new. Some times, we watch the reruns, but that is either because we are catching up (and it’s new to us) or because we accept the comfort of that show’s regular programming schedule in our lives. For that season at least, we have invested our time. So what’s with advertising? When a slew of new ads are presented, like during the Superbowl, we all love it. We treat it as a big event, a showcase. And we’re all totally into it.

Advertisers accept that the Superbowl raises the bar, and yet it’s business as usual throughout the rest of the year. I have news, people, it’s not the Superbowl that’s raising the bar, it’s the entire mediasphere. The competition for our attention is fierce: to think that you only have to address that competition once a year is just foolish.

So, make a good commercial. Make it funny, emotional, give it impact. But more importantly, make it cheap. Do not expect us to worship your spot. Drop the projected frequency of that spot by at least half, and make twice as many spots. Make them resonate with your audience(s) and the TV environment they’re placed in. If you create a highly popular spot, only then increase its frequency.

The best example I can give currently is the GEICO insurance commercials. They are numerous and short with great creative. The fake reality show “Tiny House” spot is so brilliant, I (surfing and only catching part of it) thought it was a real upcoming reality show until I finally saw the whole spot. And I wanted it to be real. The GEICO spots know they are commercials, they announce it, in fact. And they are always giving us something new.

Too many advertising execs exist in this bubble where their client is only competing with a select group of competitors. No! You are competing against everything that comes through that TV set. Everything. It’s an intense sea of information of all types, and you have to catch and hold my attention over the very alluring prospect of finding something else good on another channel. That’s a very difficult prospect and certainly not one you’re going to win with another tired commercial retread.

I guess we’re always gonna want it both ways—eat our cake and have it, too. But it seems obvious to me that if you want people to embrace your “brand,” to create communities under its tent, to integrate it into their lives, then your going to have to be willing to give up control of that brand—for better or worse (hopefully mostly better). To that end, you should be providing those folk with the tools or elements to mold your brand into their identity. Not many people do this, actually. What’s viral about viral marketing is that the marketer creates an idea, packages it with any necessary assets, and pushes it out into the sea—just like a message in a bottle. The waves are going to take it where they will, you have given up control of that message. Now, it’s true that you retain the illusion of control because you’re sitting in a helicopter, dropping bottled messages wherever you see fit, but those are adjustments from the 30,000 ft. view. Give up control. Offer tools to manipulate your brand. And just put it out there. You can’t really have a conversation if you’re not willing to listen to what the other party has to say.

I don’t have a definition of blogging on hand here, but I’m beginning to think that the Gawker sites (Gawker, Gizmodo, etc.), by removing comments from their sites, have forfeited their status as “blogs.” They’re just tiny newsy sites now, link aggregators that don’t innovate much on the editorial front. I think comments are a key component of blogs, and one of the reasons blogging is so special.

I liked the idea that I think Doc Searls put forth the other day that old news stories are often little more than fishwrap, which calls into question the value proposition of a walled online archive. Now, I don’t totally agree with it, since there are many stories that involve collecting research and information that retains value over time. But time is an important factor in determining the value of editorial that I imagine most media execs are loathe to admit. There is a long tail in editorial, but it involves only a tiny fraction of your total archive.

The other thing that bugs me, is why can’t I customize the display of the NYTimes? It’s not a real paper, all the content is in a database. I would like to control what I see. I want stories from certain sections, over a certain time period, sorted in a certain way. I’d also like to see (on the originating site) some Technorati data, something visible like a popular icon, or something more graduated, colored degree of popularity. Something like that. Everyone will admit that people take the paper, and grab the sections they want to read, discarding the rest. It’s high time they enable that same kind of interface on the Web.