media

Tom’s Best of 2012 Indie Mix

I’ve been sitting on this one for too long. Well not so much sitting, as bopping in my chair. The dog’s been looking at me funny. You will be too. I mean the bopping, more than the looking funny. You are beautiful. I swear. So much good music this year. And I just have to [...]

Why the hell don’t all cameras have SIM cards in them yet?

It’s been half a decade or more since phones started getting cameras, and yet cameras still don’t have cell phone connections. WTF? To me this is classic case of industry disruption. An entrenched industry refuses to take seriously a disruptive new technology. Holding their noses high, no serious Photographer (with a capital P) would shoot [...]

Where the heck is the ad-free “pro” version of streaming sports?

Let me say this. I love being able to stream big events like the Olympics, the America’s cup or the world cup over the internet in HD. As someone who has dumped subscription cable years ago it is a godsend. Occasional glitches/hiccups notwithstanding, HD streaming is fantastic. And it feels like the future. But omg [...]

Will Tablet Computers Save Us From Vampires?

I don’t know what to say about the state of publishing anymore except to tell you that Penguin sent me (I’m on their blogger list) a list of 10 of their hottest titles for summer 2010. 40% of which concern Vampires. Blood Oath (Christopher Farnsworth, May 2010, HC): The ultimate secret. The ultimate agent. The [...]

Things you can learn from Google on how to redesign your industry for the web

Have you ever heard Google’s [VP of Product Design] Marissa Mayer talk about product design? Great stuff. From a recent interview with Michael Arrington at this year’s Le Web. Pay attention to this question (about 12min in) about google news and redesigning journalism. If we invented news today as a delivery channel for journalism, through [...]

the music industry is only a $22 billion or $23 billion business worldwide. You can easily calculate how much it would take for all users to raise enough money in the network to pay for this.

I’m torn about this, the future of old old media in the digital world. What should we do with all the old and wonderful dead forms of media, culture, journalism that we used to print on flattened wood pulp, or encoded as 1′s and 0′s but shipped around by truck(!) on laser engraved spinning and [...]

Smartest idea they’ve had in a while

The Motion Picture Association of America has tried any number of tactics to fight piracy, but its latest scheme might actually prove useful to movie consumers on the Internet. The group is supposedly working on a new website that will offer information on how to find legit sources of movies so that users won’t have [...]

And then there was one, Warner Music drops DRM

Following EMI, and Universal, Warner is the next and now second-to-last major label to drop digital protections and offer it’s whole catalog of digital music DRM-free though the Amazon media store. This is a big win for Amazon and one wonders if Itunes will follow. The lone holdout? Of course, the company that practically invented [...]

Goodbye DRM, you won’t be missed

“The slow death of digital rights” – The Economist Radioheads success is just the latest signal that DRM is dying a welcomed if unanticipated early demise. “iTunes Plus DRM-free tracks expanding, dropping to 99 cents” – Ars Technica There’s now no reason to buy any other kind of music. I just thought I’d point this [...]

And the crowd says Yaaar. How Hollywood is losing the War on New Media

On Monday, it started with a few scattered pranksters shouting Arrr at the opening screen of the film premiers at this year’s Toronto International Film festival. By week end the meme had caught on. I just caught the best part of it mid-yarrr, but I love this piece of film I shot, of the screen [...]

Owen Wilson & Media Sensitivity

Not business or tech related, but I am amazed at the MSM/tabloid coverage of Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt. The metro today paper yesterday in the celebrity BUZZ (buzz in huge letters) section, the headline read along the lines of Owen Wilson SUICIDE attempt confirmed. With the word SUICIDE called out in giant pink letters complete [...]

The Robotification of Usability Design

1998-2000 Human to web interaction, Web Usability, Human factors. The great bubble of Web-enabling networked databases and applications – like Online Banking, Amazon.com, lets sell pet food online etc. (eBay never heard of usability) 2001-2005 Website to robot interaction design, the golden age of Search Engine Optimization 2004-2006 Human to Human and social web interaction, [...]

Has Facebook killed blogging?

Have you noticed the blogosphere growing quiet? The pros and the a-listers and the corporate blogs are still at it as strong as ever. But tumbleweeds blow through the empty feed folders of personal friends. Flickr too is fading away. Maybe it’s just summer and we’re all outdoors, as we should be, instead. But I [...]

The Science of Hits and why you can’t pick them

New research shows us the old adage “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like” – is just not true. We don’t know much about art -or- what we like. A recent study shows that intrinsic quality of a work (in this case a song) is at best a 50% predictor [...]

 

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