Back in town, almost recombobulated

Posted on May 13, 2008 by Thomas Purves

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Sorry for the lack of posts and general lack of comments around here, I was in a better place. Just now getting caught up on emails, posts, ideas and a lot of work to catch up on. If I haven’t responded to you, I should by the end of the day.

As a side note, it turns out we noticed there’s wifi all about the British Virgin Islands. Tall mountains and long horizons being, as you might guess, fairly optimal for wireless signal propagation. So you can signal from the deck of your boat either through edge/3G/Wifi from the deck your boat.

But it’s really hard to want to turn it on. Which may (maybe?) explain why the hell it is we work from wherever we do, instead of someplace like this.

This photo by David Anders [more]

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Trouble at the Video Store Part 2

Posted on April 22, 2008 by Thomas Purves

My last post [Trouble at the video store] seemed to have caused a bit of an “OMG I Know” stir in the comments.

Here is the other shoe.

Clearly the video rental model, like that of the CD store is well known, even by it’s owners, as obsolesced industry coasting through it’s sunset years. Despite a diminishing base, they can probably make money a while yet provided they don’t have to invest heavily to change anything. Sure it’s increasingly anachronistic, but if the system still works for now, what the heck right.

What’s bigger though is the much broader parable to retail in general.

There’s a lot of the connected and information-rich experience we now take for granted in online shopping world which is still conspicuously and almost entirely absent not just at Blockbuster but also at your favourite clothing retailer, home/office despots, grocery store or nifty boutique for that matter.

So much thought, tech and innovation poured into eccommerce shopping. Yet the grand prize, the retail retailing market is still out there and nearly 10 times as big. A few innovations like credit cards and elevator music aside, in 2008 we’re still shopping at retail with pretty much the same experience we had in 1908.

what gives?

There’s a general category to file this thought under: Easy Web2 stuff + thinking outside the screen + ubiquitous rich connectivity = the next big thing

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Trouble at the video store

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Thomas Purves

I don’t think Michele will be taking me to the video store again. Just too much trouble. All stemming from incident a few weeks back. I hadn’t been to one in years, but an evening of unlikely desperation found us at the local blockbuster-esque corner video store. What surreal and bewildering experience. I recommend not visiting to a music or video store for 3-5 years then suddenly trying it again. Trippy.

One immediately strange thing you’ll notice is that some shelves would be taken up with 10 or twenty boxes containing the exact same movie. Meanwhile lots of other perfectly good movies that I seem to remember weren’t anywhere in the store at all. I don’t know why, but there didn’t seem to be any option to download or transfer in any of these movies from some central archive.

It was hard to choose a movie. First there was the limited selection problem, and then for some reason I wasn’t able to tell just from looking at the shelves if my friends had seen any of these movies, which ones they might recommend, get a tomatometer score, or even google-up some independent reviews of them. hmmm.

Finally though, after some deliberation, I pick one out. No you can’t rent that she tells me. Why not? It’s out. What do mean it’s out? Somebody else has it, the disc has left the store. I don’t understand. How can’t you understand? Well I have money and I want to rent this one, why can’t the guy at the front just burn me another copy? [big sigh] Tom, you know it doesn’t work that way.

Perfectly digital media stuck on individual spinning discs. What a crazy business model. How would you ever explain it to your grandkids?

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