FAIR USE bill pointless?
If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.
According to Ars Technica, the bill absolutely fails to provide anything useful to consumers:
Yet again, the bill does not appear to deliver on what most observers want: clear protection for making personal use copies of encrypted materials. There is no allowance for consumers to make backups of DVDs, to strip encryption from music purchased online so that it can be played anywhere, or to generally do any of the things that the DMCA made illegal in one fell swoop.
When are media owners going to realize that their content needs to be available everywhere. You can’t lock consumers into specific players or services and expect them to be happy. If I buy a song I want to play it on my iPod, my phone, my computer, and my home stereo.
If I got 60 minutes (viewers are basically 55 and up) as a daily video, commercials and all, that played on my iPod, phone, computer, and TiVo–I’d probably watch it.
The difference is that the younger generation of media consumers (this is me) want to consume media on our own terms: when we want to, where we want to. The first group to figure that out, and monetize it, will be the big big winners.
Fake currency for e-mail? What a horrible idea
I don’t know about anyone else, but I think this WoW-inspired Attent system is a bad idea:
Known as Attent, Seriosity’s system is essentially a new currency–called the Serio–that corporate e-mail users spend to indicate a message’s importance: the more important they believe the message is, the more Serios they spend on it. Recipients keep the Serios in the messages they get.
But Serios is a currency, and therefore a scarce resource, so people get a limited amount. The idea is that they have to spend the currency wisely, always making sure they have enough to send more with future messages.
Wha??
It sounds as though e-mails without any Serios attached to “pay” for them don’t get through the system. That’s stupid. What if I spend all my Serios and then NEED to get an e-mail through, quickly? Tough luck.
Also, the system says it’s supposed to help big companies manage the time people spend sorting through e-mails. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m the type of person who would write an e-mail, and then spend 5 or 10 minutes trying to figure out the right number of Serios to attach. My productivity would drop through the basement.
Fake currency for e-mail delivery is *not* the spam solution, the same way that *real* postage for e-mail is not the solution.
Blogging 101: Tip #2 - Always include a picture
Last week I decided to start a series of posts explaining the obvious non-obvious fundamentals of blogging. It’s a series of ten tips, and if you follow them all you will win fame, money, and more importantly, traffic.
Last week’s tip can be found here.
Tip #2: Always include a picture
Blogs come in all shapes and sizes, some are really ugly, and some are really pretty. Back in the day, having a blog engine run your site was enough of a novelty to get things going. Now, everyone has a blog. Part of getting new readers is standing out, and including a picture in your posts can help do that.
When TechCrunch first started pumping the blogosphere full of tech news, they were one of the first blogs to consistently use images. You’ll notice that they still do, and it really helps make each post stand out a little bit more, and look a little bit prettier.
A picture makes a post a little bit friendlier to look at, and sometimes that’s just enough.
At Whistler
I’m out at Whistler this week and internet access is scarce, so posting will be light.
I took the right class
Sometime in early January, before I started this semester of school, I drafted the beginning to a post creatively titled The Humorous Essay:
I think that my favorite form of writing is the humorous essay.
I think that covers everything from Bill Simmons’ weekly column to the chapters in Chuc Klosterman books. There’s something I love about the two thousand word essay that makes you laugh and then think a little bit; it’s funny but poignant. This is entertainment at its best.
The other thing that makes it special is that it’s not easy. Funny is not something that happens if you just squint and concentrate really hard; that is frequently undiagnosed constipation.
At this point I believe I wandered off looking for a better joke, or possibly a laxative, and never really returned to the keyboard.
It occurred to me yesterday that I unintentionally signed up for exactly the right class this term. The three-hour behemoth titled “Principles of Journalism” could more accurately be called “Writing Narrative Non-Fiction,” or any host of other literary and pretentious ways of saying “how to write a funny magazine article.”
The class focuses on “explanatory journalism” and writing profiles. I don’t really know what either of those things are yet, despite the fact that I’ve written several of each already. I like that - I’d rather learn the craft by trying and by reading examples than by having it explained to me.
The reading list for this class is also surprisingly good. I’ll admit that I am not the type of student who does the assigned readings. Last semester I bought only one book, secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have opened any of the other even if I had bought them.
But these books I have avidly devoured. I have mentioned Letters to a young journalist before, which is a collection of exquisitely crafted and inspirational advice capable of convincing even the smartest person that a career in journalism is a good idea. I just finished this book, and I’m only supposed to be halfway through it.
Sin and Syntax is, as the name might suggest, is a refresher on middle-school grammar coupled with a large set of examples on how to use words well. Of the four books for this class, this is the one that improves my writing the most.
The other two books, The Art of Fact and The New New Journalism seem to be anthologies of good journalism and good journalism technique. The former is a collection of famous writings, and the latter is a collection of interviews with famous writers. After discovering that good journalism is fun to read and good journalists have good advice, I realized that these books also are going to be invaluable on my path to better writing.
In the end, I hope that my writing does improve this semester. I feel like it’s almost inevitable, given the sheer volume of ink I’m consuming, but you never know. Maybe someday I’ll even write something funny (but poignant), and then get it published.
Where’s that damn CD?
The quiet snap of a button launches a tray from the odd looking box on your desk. A long row of white CD sleeves stares upward, numbered but not labeled.
Flip through the drawer and you’ll find a wealth of gaming history. Diablo, Civilization II, Privateer II, Half-Life, TIE Fighter, F-18 Korea, Max Payne. Except Privateer II is missing a disk. Max Payne is missing a CD key.
In fact, the only game that is likely to make it to the next computer is Half-Life, and that’s because the words Valve, Steam, and Digital Distribution are essentially synonymous. Every gamer who has upgraded to a new computer knows the pain of realizing that the move means giving up all their old games with missing CDs.
Digital Distribution as a whole is a phenomenon that has been gaining ground over the past three years, largely in the independent games market. Back in 2006 I had the opportunity to interview Greg Costikyan, then in the process of founding Manifesto Games, a completely digital small-time publisher/distributor for independent game companies. His theory is simple: cut out the middleman, and everybody wins (except, obviously, the middleman).
Twitter is not for me
As an extension to the ideas bouncing around over at the BBS blog, I thought I’d explain why I’m not excited about Twitter at all.
The question at the BBS is: can Twitter be used commercially? People seem to think that the answer is yes, through sponsorship. Twitter is a service that lets people keep a running feed of status updates for anyone that wants to subscribe to your whereabouts.
I’m sure that some enterprising person is going to figure out that any RSS feed with a large readership has commercial value. It’s an audience. So you could carry ads or the feed could be the ad itself.
But twitter doesn’t get me all hot and bothered. Facebook has had a “status” option for ages, and I never use it. Teresa talked about AIM away messages, and I can’t even think of anything good for those. I just don’t think people need to know what I’m up to minute by minute, and even if I did, there’s no way I’d do it consistently.
Maybe I’ll be proved completely wrong, but I just don’t think it’s that interesting.
Studio 60 makes me want to write (and other thoughts)
It’s ironic I guess that I’m surrounded right now by things that make me want to write, or force me to, somehow or another, and I can’t find any real inspiration.
Studio 60 is in its first season, and it hasn’t been doing as well as it probably should be doing, so it’s getting shelved next week for another show. My guess would be that it’s down for the count. But the episode I’m watching write now (last week’s) is a lot about writing.
Matthew Perry (yep) plays a character named Matt (yep) who is the lead writer for a sketch comedy show like SNL. In this episode there’s a lot of back story (or exposition) about how Matt started writing sketches that made it on the air.
There’s about twenty or thirty minutes of him hustling around with a legal pad, scratching sloppy sketches on to the paper and foisting it into people’s faces, trying to get an opinion or a laugh or a spot in the show.
It’s the kind of dramatized sequence that’s supposed to make you want to do it, and it totally works on me. I feel like applying for staff writer positions on a sketch comedy show. Who knows, maybe I could make SNL not suck again.
I’m also taking a screenwriting class, which means I’m writing a feature length screenplay this semester (it sucks so far). My journalism class makes me want to run around and be a journalist, but not enough to actually do it. I’m pitching a book to a publisher right now, which I hope goes forward. More writing.
Gosh I hope I’m good at it.
Also, I’m using parentheses way too much right now. It’s a phase.
In-house linking
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could link to things on your computer the way you can link to pages and posts on the internet?
I was just making a list in Stickies to help me sort my mind around the things I need to get done today, and I wanted to make an entry that linked to a particular e-mail. I can’t do that, of course, so I’ll just have to make a note of the sender and some keywords so I can search for it later.
But I think it would be a really great feature to be able to pick an e-mail, a file, a saved AIM conversation, a sticky, or a calendar entry and be able to “link” to it in any other application. I could make an entry in my calendar (I think I can link those to e-mails, but I’m not sure) and add a link to a related file.
Someone should do this.
Caffeine really keeps me up
Caffeine works on me. Mostly because I don’t usually have a lot of it, and also I think drugs that keep you awake and drugs that put you to sleep both work on me very well.
I just enjoyed a Barq’s and a tall glass of Iced Tea. As I was writing my last blog post I caught myself rapidly bouncing both of my legs–I think I’m going to be up for a bazillion hours today.
Samus statue!
I can’t say that I’m a really big Metroid Prime fan, but I do find this amusing.
From the press release:
This version is based on the Zero Suit seen at the end of Metroid Prime 2 Echoes. First 4 Figures has used the official game files in order to create an extremely accurate recreation of the Zero Suit. She comes armed with her signature pistol and has curves in all the right places!
Curves in all the right places? No way!
This thing is about 9″ tall and apparently costs just over $100. Not something to add to my shelf, but then again I have a giant Yoda taking up all the space, so I’m not one to talk. If this is your bag, go nuts.
Silly site statistics
I was doing some quick checking on some statistics that I’m writing up, and site statistics can do some weird things when you’re not looking. I used to check my stats almost constantly, but I’ve given up that habit as my available time has disappeared.
For some reason my pageviews went through the roof last November, while my number of visists kept going on in a sensible incline. Check out this graph:
I have no idea what’s causing the disparity, and I’m pretty damn sure I don’t legitimately get almost as many pageviews a month as Fred Wilson does, so I wonder what happened in November that sent those numbers soaring.
Reading non-fiction
The funny thing about reading non-fiction is that it almost always makes me want to write. As everyone who makes a habit of writing knows, there are times when you’re in the mood to write, and there are times where you’re not.
When I read non-fiction—either a book or a good magazine article or an essay in a book—I get myself stuck in the nether world of wanting to write but not being in the mood to write. So I end up furtively setting the book aside and staring at a blank word document for a while just in case inspiration strikes.
It rarely does. But it’s an annoying habit because I really do enjoy a lot of good non-fiction. It’s just harder to really get into it if I spend the whole time thinking about what I could possibly be writing, myself.
Lounge Chair Journalism
I’m reading a book called Letters to a Young Journalist for my journalism class, and it’s a really great read. If you have any interest in either being a journalist or hearing a really astute set of advice to people who are looking to be journalists, this is the book.
At the part of the book where I am, he mentions briefly the pitfalls of the internet:
There was a history before Nexis, and there is research beyond Google. The very ease of online reporting makes it seductive and dangerous. In both the blogosphere and the ever-expanding field of media criticism, I see a version of reporting that eschews human contact and firsthand observation, two things that have an inconvenient way of complicating or contradicting one’s preexisting opinions.
He does have a point. I carry no pretense of being a journalist on this site. That would be laughable. This is a constant stream-of-consciousness thought experiment, where I dabble in things than amuse me, and nothing more.
I think there is definitely a place for journalism in the blogosphere, but I think people need to careful of what they call the real thing.
Grindhous trailer contest
The new “Grindhous” double feature from Tarantino and Rodruiguez (I probably just misspelled both of those, didn’t I?) apparently has a fake trailer contest running, and the winner gets to throw something in between the double feature as a prize.
My friend Phi-Phat apparently threw this together with his friends. Check it out, it’s really impressive for two-week’s work:
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