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The Daily Loper – March 7, 2006

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Todays links of interest:

  • MGM, Weinstein Set to Roar Again
    MGM, down to a skeleton staff and without a studio, decides it’s time to get back into the movie-making business.
  • Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in P.R. Campaign
    Not sure if this is about new media or old tricks, so note to all bloggers out there: reprinting press releases verbatim, without attribution is selling out to The Man.
  • Shadows reveals truth behind Barry Bonds’ steroid use
    The chickens come home to roost. It is a simple as this: if you are going to break the rules, it is not best to spend your entire life pissing the media off, and thereby giving them a vested interest in nailing you for breaking the rules.
  • Natalie Portman, Rap Star
    That Natalie Portman Rap — which isn’t quite as good as "Lazy Sunday," but still pretty goldurned funny — has of course turned up on YouTube, as well as NBC’s official site. Check it out if you missed it this weekend.
  • How much cheaper is the iPod going to get?
    This article could be the roadmap to the Apple iNvisa player

A History of the Ricky Gervais Show

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As these things go, I’m a relative latecomer to the podcasts of The Ricky Gervais Show: I only got ’round to listening to them a couple of weeks ago. Better still, I came into it totally cold, not knowing what to expect, and I was instantly hooked on the mad ramblings of Karl Pilkington.  So much so, that as a matter of fact, I have no issues with paying for the podcasts of the second season.

It totally passes my Blackjack test:  do I anticipate getting more pleasure out of this than playing a single hand of Blackjack?  And in this case, the answer is a resounding “yes.” To be fair, Ricky was on Letterman last week, and explained that they are charging for this season to recoup the hosting and bandwidth costs for all of the downloads.

However, for those of you who don’t want to pay for your monkeynews, or you want to see to find out what the buzz is all about  prior to  paying — it looks like the Podcast Series  1 archive will also cost $5 to grab in one fell swoop — I’ve discovered a secret online stash of dozens of episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show.

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The Battle Royale: Download Royalties

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In Saturday’s “The Daily Loper”, I linked to a Los Angeles Times about the Hollywood guilds and their clamor for better treatment when it comes to download royalties. Make no mistake about it — the guilds (SAG, DGA, WGA, etc) might have chosen to play nice when it came to DVD royalties, but it wasn’t due to lack of interest. They were saving their energy for the real battle: downloadable media.

The LAT and Hollywood Reporter have made note of this brewing battle: the first target in the guilds’ sights is ABC. Which makes sense considering the popularity of Lost and Desperate Housewives.

Right now, Hollywood is in a bit of disarray (note to studios: never let them see you in disarray). Some studios treat downloads similarly to television; others are taking the “same as DVD approach”. While both treatments will ultimately come under scrutiny, it is those studios who use the so-called home video royalty calculation who will be on the front lines. Reason?

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The Daily Loper – March 6, 2006

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Todays links of interest:

It’s All About the UI

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Here’s an interesting little tidbit: a recent study showed that nearly half of all products returned to stores for malfunctions worked just fine – the problem was that the users couldn’t figure out how to get them to work.

While we all still laugh at jokes about the “any” key; VCRs flashing 12:00 for eternity; and RTFM; the simple fact is that this is not user error, but poor design. In terms of users, we are talking about people who know that they are living in the middle of a technological revolution, who have installed software, set up home entertainment systems, built their own networks; entered numbers into their cellphones and filled up their iPods. These are the people having the problems:

The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working, before giving up, the study found.

Product developers, brought in to witness the struggles of average consumers, were astounded by the havoc they created.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how cool your gadget is, how fast it is and how many bells and whistles it has the bottom line for everything is User Interface, because if the user can’t find all of that great stuff, they are just going to give up. As we get deeper into the convergence of communication, services and entertainment into single handheld devices, those who define and design those products would do well to pay attention to studies like this, or the convergence revolution could be stillborn.

The Daily Loper – March 5, 2006

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Todays links of interest:

The Weekly ‘Loper – March 5, 2006

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While you were getting your gowns and tuxes ready for the Oscar parties tonight, here is what was happening at the ‘Loper.

Hi Def DVD Roundup: March 05, 2006

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Because we love nothing more than to watch major corporations kill a good idea with a bunch of petty squabbling, here is some of the recent news on the HD DVD front . . .

Philips to Introduce Blu-ray Disc Products and Media – Philips is, of course, one of the big Blu-ray heavyweights, and they are going to announce a player, a PC drive and new writable media. None of which, of course, will be inexpensive.
Subpar wars: high-resolution-disc formats fight each other, consumers push back – Here’s a hardcore techhie look at both formats, the issues surrounding the formats, and why the copy protection schemes could sink both.

Toshiba Plans HD DVD Marketing Blitz: Because nothing says “please choose our next generation HD DVD format over Sony’s” like a tour of the United States. Tickets are available at Tickmaster, I guess. This major corporation’s tour is sponsored, strangely enough, by The Rolling Stones.

LG Kills Blu-ray model, considers combo player – Just two months after showing it off at CES, LG has decided to kill its Blu-ray only HD DVD player, considering a dual-format player, instead. This might be the type of thinking that will actually save HD DVD: keeping the fallout of the format wars away from the consumer. Y’all remember the consumer, right? Right?

    Don’t Call It Public Radio

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    WFMU is not a normal radio station.

    A normal radio station would have pulled the plug on its transmitter after the college it was affiliated with went bankrupt. Instead, WFMU’s staff and listeners banded together to buy the station’s broadcast license from Upsala College back in 1995. Not only did the station survive the transition, it eventually raised enough money from its listeners to buy its own broadcast facility in Jersey City.

    A normal radio station would have given in, or given up, when the RIAA began demanding that web broadcasters pay hefty royalties far exceeding what terrestrial broadcast stations pay. Instead, WFMU fought back and used the opportunity to lobby record labels for exemptions from the new fees.

    A normal non-commercial radio station drives listeners away with frequent pledge drives that are designed to elicit as much guilt as possible. Instead, WFMU has only one pledge drive a year, and it actually draws listeners in with entertaining and unique programming (like the annual Yo La Tengo all request show scheduled for Tuesday March 7th, at 8pm EST – make a donation and Yo La Tengo will play your request live).

    Normal public radio stations receive funding from corporate sponsors and go as far as they can to bend the financing rules imposed on public radio. WFMU accepts no corporate sponsorship or underwriting of any kind. The station is totally listener sponsored. As a result, there’s absolutely no conflict between what listeners might want to hear and what sponsors might find inappropriate.

    In a world of right wing talk and satellite hype, WFMU is one of the few broadcast stations keeping traditional radio relevant. Ironically, they’re doing it with the help of the Internets.

    WFMU began streaming its signal online in 1997. It was a costly and risky move for a station that had just gained it’s independence, and all of the financial obligations that went along with that independence. The bet paid off, however, and Internet listeners now make up a substantial portion of the station’s listening audience, contributing enough during the annual marathon to keep the station afloat.

    More recently, WFMU has expanded it’s programming to include podcasts and web-only programs that bypass the arbitrary content limitations imposed by the FCC.

    I’m frequently astounded that a small, listener supported station from Jersey seems to have a better grasp on new technology and its implications than any of the major media corporations. All of this innovation comes at a price, of course. Bandwidth and servers aren’t cheap — hence the annual Marathon.

    If you’ve never listened to WFMU before, consider this your invitation to tune-in. You might also think about making a small donation to a very worth cause (tax deductible, of course). Consider how much of your hard earned cash you’ve given to the mega-media corporations in the past year. And what have they done for you lately (besides canceling “Arrested Development”)?

    The Daily Loper – March 4, 2006

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    Todays links of interest: