Retired

It’s been a busy week for the ‘Loper households. These are just a few of the things that caught our attention.

• Bloggers Just Wanna Have Fun – Bloggers just want to express themselves and let the world know they exist. Duh!
• 10 Things You Need To Know About Zune – As the title says, Kirk gives you a rundown of what you need to know about Zune.
• NBC: Getting Smarter – Jim takes a look at NBC’s new promotional strategy for their new fall shows. It’s a step in the right direction, however, there is no guarantee the shows will be any good.
• Googlin’ Mobile, Keep Me Movin’ – Much to Jim’s delight, Google has introduced one more way for him to drive me crazy in the car. Real time traffic maps. ‘Cause all the fiddling with the Thomas Guide and the iPod and email wasn’t enough.
• Is Zune A PlaysForSure Killer? – Kirk further examines Microsoft’s Zune and the DRM issues that may come with it.
• That’s What I Like: Robert Anton Wilson – Kirk introduces a new generation of conspiracy theorists to Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy. Too weird for me but Kirk and Jim seem to like it.

While you were watching the Weather Channel in disbelief — 111 degrees, WTF!?! — here’s what we were looking at:

• Graying, Balding, Is The Record Store Ready For Retirement? – Probably, but I’ll always have fond memories of the amazing amount of time I spent in places like Tower, Ragin’ and Amoeba, pouring over the racks, trying to find something that was new and different and surprising and maybe even life-changing.
• CBS Eggvertising: The Yolk’s On Us – Are there any surfaces that aren’t covered with ads anymore?
• The RIAA and the Blogosphere – Like Oil and Water – The RIAA really needs to just pull its head out and realize that criminializing your customers might not be the best way to keep those customers.
• Reaching Operatic Heights — Why isn’t Opera reaching a wider audience?
• CinemaNow Steps Up (A Little) — After Movielink announced that they were going to let people burn movies to DVD at some point in the future, CinemaNow just went ahead and offered the ability. Just once. And not with new releases. And for Windows XP users only.
• Blogosphere Without Pity — In which another hotshot TV producer professes to be shocked — shocked! — at the speed and fury of internet conversation about his show.
• That’s What I Like: Robert Christgau – Jim discusses his favorite rock critic. In case you assumed that it would be Lester Bangs, that’s a good guess, except Bangs has missed the last quarter-century, and who knows where he would be right now. I’ve always figured that he would have quit writing about music eventually.
• How Can I Get My TV Pilot Picked Up? — This may mark the peak of YouTube’s power. Especially if Nobody’s Watching doesn’t live up to the promise of the pilot. They’ll have to reshoot it anyways, and that’s where it will get interesting.
• Hong Kong’s Anti-Piracy Sweatshop – My understanding that the merit badge for this like a bootlegged “Pirates of the Caribbean” DVD case with a circle slash over it.

While you were wondering when you were going to get indicted for Tax Evasion because they couldn’t pin anything else on you, here’s what we were looking at:

• Hyping The Music, One Song At A Time – Communities that form around online blogs are different — smaller, but more passionate — than communities that formed around radio stations.
• The Perfect DVR – My Wish List For the Ultimate Television Machine – Kirk tosses out a wish list for what will tempt him to dumpt his venerable Series 1 TiVo.
• Only Spielberg Can Mess With His Movies, Dammit! – A judge rules that self-selected censors can’t remove the good bits from movies prior to renting them to the public.
• More Fun In The New World – How will AT&T’s foray into the online concert world fare? Hopefully, it will work better than the phone “service” they provide me.
• ABC: Always Being Clueless – Yeah, because the viewing public is clamoring for DVRs with disabled fast-forward buttons . . .
• Baby Eisner Is Losing His Grip On Reality – Two words: Baby NASCAR.
• Fools Go Forth: Digital Distribution And Artist Compensation – Since digital distribution is significantly different from physical distribution, how long will it take artists to rebel against digital distribution deals that are essentially the same as the physical deals?
• That’s What I Like: Marketplace – Kassia finds an actual reason to listen to NPR: a show that is smart, educational, and has some snark.

While you were BBQing tequilia-marinated chicken during a 4th of July thunderstorm in Seattle, here’s what we were looking at:

• How iTunes Can Help The Publishing Industry – Simple: combine the ubiquity of the seemingly indestructible Portable Document Format with the ease of iTunes.
• How About Independence From Demagogues? What better way to celebrate our nation’s 230th B-Day than a with a rant about asswipe Congresspeople trying to whip up their base in an election year? Well, for starters, with that BBQ chicken.
• New Online Media Sharing Service, New Model, Same Problems – What if you got paid for those crazy wacky homemade videos that you keep uploading to the Web? eefoof is willing to do just that. Cool! Er, that is if enough people find your video. Good luck with that. Also, have we really run out of even brand-new madeup words for Websites? Is any random combination of vowels and consonants now good enough?
• How The Pilot That Nobody Watched Got Itself Seen By Everybody – Or “Everybody’s Watching Nobody’s Watching.”
• The Universal Plan To Save CD Sales – I’ve got a plan: lower your prices and release better music!
• That’s What I Like: SubEthaEdit – If you thought that SubEthaEdit was how the Galactica communicated with its Viper pilots, Kirk & Kassia will set you straight with this explanation about a powerful writing collaboration tool.
• Emmy Noms: Two-and-A-Half Cracksmoking Monkeys? – BTW, no disrespect meant towards Martin Sheen, who’s always owned that role, it’s just that he wasn’t in West Wing enough this season to deserve a nomination, that’s all. On the other hand: Charlie Sheen? Are you fracking kidding me?

While the rest of America was worried about protecting the flag we spent the week figuring out how to protect our music collection. We’ve got priorities you know.

• Four Ways To Protect Your Digital Music Collection: In case you haven’t noticed, technology fails. Here are a few approaches you can take to protect your music when the unexpected happens.
• Bare Bones “Backups” For Your Digital Music: Not content with the four backup approaches Kirk offered, Jim has a few more suggestions — because he’s that sort.
• You Can’t Take It With You: Kassia ponders the trend towards tethering content to specific services and devices. Why should consumers pay full price for digital content that will be rendered worthless when they switch to a new mobile provider?
• Memo To Eisner: It’s OK To Just Retire: Life post-Disney is probably not shaping up to be what Michael Eisner’s expected. His latest endeavor looks like a real winner.
• New York Times Blog Not An Online Video Milestone: It’s amusing when Old Media thinks they have the power to lend credibility to New Media. Especially when they’re six months to a year behind the curve.
• File Under: This Is How They Run A Business?: Kassia notes that magazine publishers are still trying to figure out how to measure their readers response to stories. Better hurry, they might not be around to measure much longer.
• Tom, Thanks For Not Suing The Chili Peppers!!: Well this is a relief. There’s actually someone in the music business who isn’t hell bent on suing everyone in sight.
• Video iPod Delay May Be a Bad Thing After All: Will the video iPod be delayed until 2007? Shawn Wu may or may not know, and Tony Fadell isn’t talking to us — so who the hell knows for sure.
• That’s What I Like: The Residents: A tribute to the new media pioneers and longtime Medialoper heros.

While you were trying to score, you know, just one lousy goal, here’s what we were looking at:

• More RIAA Madness: Part 1, In League With The Terrorists? – Some people might wonder why the RIAA hates normal, ordinary Amercans so much.
• Naked DSL and Beyond – My VOIP Adventure: Part I – Kirk wonders: why pay four times more for his phone service when he can go with VOIP? It used to be because DSL was bundled with the land line, but not anymore. So he’s switching to Vonage.
• Nickling and Diming New Media – None of those payments are exactly “micro.” And they add up pretty quickly.
• More RIAA Madness: Part 2, The All-Seeing Ear The All-Seeing Ear hears all. And it’s coming for you . . .
• It’s Not A Pirate’s Life For Them – Oh Disney, why do you insist on continually fracking with our collective childhoods?
• That’s What I Like: Google – We sometimes forget just how life-altering Google really is. Kassia reminds us.
• Thank You For Choosing AT&T – My VOIP Adventure: Part II – In which AT&T thanks Kirk for disconnecting his service. And Kirk uses Vonage to order Indian food.

While you were wondering how the officiating could be so bad at the world’s biggest sporting event, here’s what we were looking at:

• Could ‘a la Carte’ Cable kill Pat Robertson? – No, not literally. He’ll go when the Lord calls him, and not a moment sooner. However, the a la carte cable that the Evangelical Right wants (in order, as always, to protect us from ourselves) may seriously damage the viewership of his network. Ah, sweet, delicious irony!
• The World Cup Goes Mobile – A small prediction: with the advent of video for the mobile phone, they’ve gotten as small as they are ever going to get. They will start trending larger, though probably not back to 1980s size.
• Do Consumers Care About DRM? – Not nearly enough, it turns out. Yet. In other news, flash mobs? Dead.
• Convergence Gone Bad – In the 1970s, convergence was still a pretty new concept, not a fact of life, so that lead to debacles like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring contemporary megastars Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees — as well as a host of others — strutting around lipsynching to Beatles tunes. And yet somehow, it bombed. We await the remake with Eminem and Green Day.
• That’s What I Like: IMDb – Another fun use for the IMDb: find all of the connections between Joss Whedon’s shows, JJ Abrams’ shows, and 24.
• Un-Spun – Like TV Guide, which reinvented itself as a gossip-laden spoilerfest, Spin magazine responds to marketplace pressures by going in the wrong direction.

While you were planning all of your World Cup parties, here’s what we were looking at:

• Tom, Don’t Sue The Chili Peppers! – Why Tom Petty suing the Red Hot Chili Peppers over the potential nicking of his song “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” really isn’t a great idea.
• All Hail Digital Publishing! – Digital Publishling, on the other hand, is a great idea.
• Stop With The Fracking Robo-Calls Already!!! – A plan to stop those annoying political phone calls, once and for all.
• In Defense Of The User-Generated Content Culture – You’d think that, in 2006, it wouldn’t need defending. Oh, wait, the media gatekeepers are afeared of the barbarians who just wanna, you know, express themselves.
• There May Still Be Hope For Google Video – Of course, despite their newfound cross-platformness (cross-platformity? cross-platformitude?), they still have that suck-ass UI.
• That’s What I Like: Audible.com – Speaking of UIs that could be improved, Kassia can live with Audible’s UI problems because they have such an impressive selection of content.

While you were praying for the strength to leg press 2001 pounds, here’s what we were looking at:

• Books And Bytes – It’s All Good – There is no one perfect method to store human knowledge and information. Just as long as we keep storing it in every conceivable manner.
• How Can I Burn iTunes Videos To DVD? – In the inaugural edition of yet another new feature, “Dear Lopy,” we tackle the thorny issue of why you can’t burn those cool iTunes videos you legally downloaded to a DVD for easy viewing.
• Some Saturday Suggestions – In the age of time-and-space shifting, perhaps the networks oughta rethink their wholesale abandonment of an entire evening.
• Long Tail: Introduction Version – Among many many other things, the Long Tail is also good for niche artists, who can have long, fruitful careers without ever becoming actual household names. Just ask Yo La Tengo.
• That’s What I Like: Jennifer Crusie – Kassia looks at an author who helps her get through the summer that has already exploded upon us with a thousand points of heat.
• Forget 2.0 WSJ Is Going Straight To 3.0 – Is the Wall Street Journal going turn into the first true newspaper of the 21st century?
• Teaching Kids About Copyright Laws – You know how The Joker or Lex Luthor would periodically pretend to perform great acts of public service, all the while furthering their nefarious purposes? Say hello to Captain Copyright, who just might be the Medialoper’s mortal enemy. What will happen next? Tune in tomorrow: Same Lope-Time, same Lope-Channel!

While you were trying to figure out exactly the hell was going on with that Lost finale, here’s what we were looking at:

• That’s What I Like: O’Reilly Media’s Safari Bookshelf – Kirk likes how O’Reilly migrated their essential technical books seemlessly into the eBook space.

• Publishing Versus The Net Generation – What that the rest of the publishing world could learn from O’Reilly’s success instead of fighting the inevitable.

• Copyright And The Artistic Process – Kassia wades into the continuing struggle between artists recontextualizing existing art to create new works and the copyright holders of said existing art.
• Why Not The NiPod? – It is, of course, entirely possible that the two greatest advertisers of our age will use their combined muscle to make the Nike+iPod Sports Kit the must-have item of Summer ’06. But I doubt it.
• The RIAA Is “Feeling Pretty Good” – Next up for the RIAA: suing a fetus for “future intent to download copyrighted music.”
• That’s What I Like: The Lightwedge – I’m really still amazed at how simple it is, and wonder why it took so long for somebody to come up with it.
• Lopetop Theater – Series One, Episode The First – Lopy is excited to be the emcee of our latest feature, and hopes that you’ll think of her as the Ed Sullivan of the 21st century.