Advertising Age reports (via gulfstream) that despite having spent as much as a reported $100 million on advertising and promotion, the (RED) campaign has raised only $18 million to fight AIDS in Africa. (RED) CEO Bobby Shriver responds by saying that the amount will soon be $25 million, they're in it for the long haul, and that there are non-monetary benefits to all of the advertising -- "A phenomenal benefit is that Gap, Apple, Sprint and other sales people are meeting Americans and explaining that 5,500 Africans dying daily of AIDS is preventable".
The (RED) campaign strikes me as part of a larger trend in the US (and perhaps elsewhere too): the idea that if you, the consumer, spend normally (or even increase your spending), it is possible to break the law of conservation of energy and somehow save more money or lives. Other examples of the spend-to-save trend include the Discover Card Cashback Bonus program, the Bank of America Keep the Change program, and hundreds of retail promotions where, golly, if you spend another $20 on something you don't need, you get a free something that you really don't need.
It seems to me that if The Gap really cared about stopping HIV/AIDS in Africa, they would just donate the $7.8 million they spend on (RED) advertising to the Clinton Foundation. If Discover really cared about saving you money, they'd lower their APR to prime + 1.
I realize that the entire US economy is a house of cards kept standing by the escalation of spending and credit card debt by American consumers, but the sad fact is that to save money, you need to cut spending or increase income. And if you really want to help fight AIDS in Africa, instead of buying that (RED) Gap t-shirt for which Gap will donate 50% of its profit to The Global Fund, buy a cheaper one at American Apparel and send the $13 difference to the Global Fund yourself.
Harris Interactive recently released a list of products ranked by brand equity, a measure of the brand's popularity with US consumers. Here's the top 10:
1. Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil
2. Ziploc Food Bags
3. Hershey's Milk Chocolate Candy Bars
4. Kleenex Facial Tissues
5. Clorox Bleach
6. WD-40 Spray Lubricant
7. Heinz Ketchup
8. Ziploc Containers
9. Windex Glass Cleaner
10. Campbell's Soups
Marketing can be a double-edged sword. The companies who manufacture these products have done a fantastic job in marketing these products, so fantastic in some cases that the brand name is in danger of becoming a genericized trademark. From the list above, I routinely use Ziploc, Kleenex, WD-40, and Windex to refer to the generic versions of those products, even though we sometimes use Glad products instead of Ziploc, Puffs instead of Kleenex, or another glass cleaner instead of Windex. If the companies on this list aren't careful, they could lose the trademarked products that they've worked so hard to market so successfully.
Here's a list of American proprietary eponyms, or brand names that have fallen into general use. Some of the names on the list are so old or in such common use (escalator, popsicle) that I didn't even know they had been brands. Two current brands I can think of that might be in danger of genericide: iPod and Google. (via rw)
Spotted this on my walk to the office this morning:
If you can't tell, it's a bus covered with laundry. This had to be an advertisement for something (MTA employees aren't that eccentric) and after a little poking around online, I found out it's part of All's "Spot the Bus" sweepstakes:
From May 15th to 26th, two all small & mighty buses covered in clothes will cruise the streets of New York City. When you see one, send a text message of the time and location to 96787. You'll be entered in the Spot the Bus Sweepstakes.
If you'd like to take part without actually spotting the bus or even living in NYC (and have a chance at winning $5000), I took the above photo at 10:41am near 14th Street and 10th Ave in Manhattan. Good luck!
The 419 Nigerian spammers are getting smarter. This letter I received the other day offered URL references:
Dear Friend,
I am Larisa Sosnitskaya and I represent Mr. Mikhail Khordokovsky the former C.E.O of Yukos Oil Company in Russia. I have a very sensitive and confidential brief from this top (oligarch) to ask for your partnership in re-profiling funds US$46 Million. I will give the details, but in summary, the funds are coming via Bank Menatep. This is a legitimate transaction. You will be paid 20% as your commison/compensation for your active efforts and contirbution to the success of this transaction.
You can catch more of the story on This website below or you can watch more of CCN or BBC to get more news about my boss.
http://www.mosnews.com/mn-files/khodorkovsky.shtml
http://www.mbktrial.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3213505.stm
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/04/11/041.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/633/000025558/
If you are interested, please do indicate by providing me with your confidential telephone number, fax number and email address and I will provide further details and instructions. Please keep this confidential as we cannot afford more political problems. Please do send me your response as soon as possible via my personal email :larisacoll@walla.com OR larisacoll@netscape.com.
look forward to it.
Regards,
Larisa Sosnitskaya
Seems like pretty good evidence to me...where do I send the check?
**That's right, evolution. Sit on it, Potsie.
In reaction to some ads of questionable value being placed on some of O'Reilly's sites (response from Tim O'Reilly), Greg Yardley has written a thoughtful piece on selling PageRank called I am not responsible for making Google better:
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the other big search engine companies aren't public utilities - they're money-making, for-profit enterprises. It's time to stop thinking of search engines as a common resource to be nurtured, and start thinking of them as just another business to compete with or cooperate with as best suits your individual needs.
I love the idea that after more than 10 years of serious corporate interest in the Web that it's still up to all of us and our individual decisions. The search engines in particular are based on our collective action; they watch and record the trails left as we scatter the Web with our thoughts, commerce, conversations, and connections.
Me? I tend to think I need Google to be as good a search engine as it can be and if I can help in some small way, I'm going to. As corny as it sounds, I tend to think of the sites I frequent as my neighborhood. If the barista at Starbucks is sick for a day, I'm not going to jump behind the counter and start making lattes, but if there's a bit of litter on the stoop of the restaurant on the corner, I might stop to pick it up. Or if I see some punk slipping a candy bar into his pocket at the deli, I may alert the owner because, well, why should I be paying for that guy's free candy bar every time I stop in for a soda?
Sure those small actions help those particular businesses, but they also benefit the neighborhood as a whole and, more importantly, the neighborhood residents. If I were the owner of a business like O'Reilly Media, I'd be concerned about making Google or Yahoo less useful because that would make it harder for my employees and customers to find what they're looking for (including, perhaps, O'Reilly products and services). As Greg said, the Web is still largely what we make of it, so why not make it a good Web?
Perhaps this is impossible or unfair, but can we have a discussion about where technology and user experience on the web are headed without using any of the following words or concepts:
Ajax, web services, weblogs, Google, del.icio.us, Flickr, folksonomy, tags, hacks, podcasting, wikis, bottom-up, RSS, citizen journalism, mobile, TiVo, the Long Tail, and convergence.
That all seems like the present and past, not the future, no? "Web 2.0" arrived a year or two ago at least and we're still talking about it like it's just around the corner. What else is out there? Anything? (Note: This is not an attempt to bring the current "is it really Web 2.0?" discussion (I could care less) here. I'm genuinely interesting in what's out there, if anything.)
At GEL the other day, Rick Smolan, creator of the Day in the Life photography books, told the crowd about his newest project, a pair of books called Cats 24/7 and Dogs 24/7. Both books are composed of pet photos submitted by professional and amateur photographers. One of the ways that people will be able to purchase the book will be direct from a company who will offer the book at a discount in exchange for printing that company's logo somewhere on the book (sorry for the lack of details...I think the company was either Kodak or Proctor and Gamble, the discount is $5, and the somewhere on the book is the cover but don't quote me on any of that). Anyway, a bit of evidence that advertising in books may be a viable business option in the future.
As you may have noticed by reading the site in the past year, I've been reading and thinking a lot about companies...how they succeed, why they fail, how to approach them from a holistic sense so they make sense on a human scale and not just from a business perspective, that sort of thing. In deciding to start my own little company of one, here are a few things I've run across that have influenced how I'm approaching it.
Coudal Partners is a design studio based in Chicago. Like many blogs (their site is a little more than a blog, but we won't get into that now), their site features advertising in the form of text ads in the top left corner of the page. But they only accept advertising from companies whose products they have used: "sell us something then we'll sell you an ad." I love this because it ties advertising back into its word-of-mouth origins, makes it more human, personal, and believable. (More on advertising stuff in a few days.)
I don't have many heroes, but Craig Newmark is definitely one of them. He's had offers to sell craigslist for millions of dollars, many offers from VCs, he could charge for all listings on the site, or he could fill the site with advertising, but this is what he wants out of craigslist (via Wired): "get yourself a comfortable living, then do a little something to change the world". The many articles I've read about Craig have really reinforced for me that you need to let your values drive business decisions and not the other way around.
I've mentioned this a few times on the site before, but Ludicorp, the makers of Flickr, has the one of the best quotes about business I've ever read on their about page. It's an excerpt from Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action and the Cultivation of Solidarity by Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores & Hubert Dreyfus:
Saying that the point of business is to produce profit is like saying that the whole point of playing basketball is to make as many baskets as possible. One could make many more baskets by having no opponent.
The popularity of Flickr has put Ludicorp in a tight spot and it seems like they'll need to get big somehow in order to keep up with it (rumor is they've been purchased by Yahoo!). It's a reminder that you may succeed beyond your wildest dreams and you need to be ready for it to happen. Whatever their path is, I hope they can keep true to the values that have guided the company thus far.
When Google decided to pursue their IPO, the filing included an "owner's manual" written by Larry Page, one of Google's two founders. Google is aiming high -- focusing on the long term, trying not to be evil, taking on risk, not giving too much control of the company over to shareholders -- and it will be interesting to see how they fare over the long term. Google's gotten a lot of shit for aiming so high, especially about the "don't be evil" stuff, just like the NY Times gets criticized for attempting to produce objective journalism, but I think that's unfair. I'll choose a company with ideals they're trying to live up to over a business that's aiming for the status quo any day of the week.
TextDrive, a hosting company, eschewed venture capital and went right to their users and asked them to pay their startup costs (in exchange for lifetime hosting). They raised $40,000 in 75 hours from the VC200. That's what's called "creative thinking".
Dave Eggers gets a lot of crap, but I like the way he's trying to run McSweeney's:
But the way that McSweeney's is run is, "Can there be a way that what they call mid-list authors, people who don't sell in the Danielle Steel category, can still have an audience and still make a living?" McSweeney's has very little overhead, to the degree that we can sell 6,000 copies of somebody's book, and he can still get a decent amount of money, because he's getting more per book because of the low overhead. That's still our goal. I was just sort of going along with the same business model, like, "If we sell 50,000 copies, then everyone will do fine, and life will stay quiet."
Not trying to take over the world, just doing something in balance with the lives of everyone concerned.
David Bull is an artist who makes fantastic woodblock prints. He doesn't number his prints, doesn't sell through collectors, doesn't even offer individual prints, and yet he's been making a living from his art for more than 16 years. He sells subscriptions of his prints through his site and here's a bit of his philosophy on that:
I like making prints, and am not afraid of the physical work of printing them. Unlike many artists, who prefer to keep their edition sizes small (to save work, or to keep things 'exclusive') and who must thus charge high prices for their prints, I prefer to make more of them and keep the cost to each collector as low as possible.
There are lots more people other there doing wonderful things with their business lives (37signals, the independent Mac developers like Ranchero, Delicious Monster, and Panic, etc.) but that's enough for now.
I recently quit my web design gig and -- as of today -- will be working on kottke.org as my full-time job. And I need your help.
I'm asking the regular readers of kottke.org (that's you!) to become micropatrons of kottke.org by contributing a moderate sum of money to help enable me to edit/write/design/code the site for one year on a full-time basis. If you find kottke.org valuable in any way, please consider giving whatever you feel is appropriate.
This will be a one-time "fund drive" lasting 3 weeks, you may make contributions via PayPal, credit card, or check, there will be some great gifts as an incentive for you to give (more details here), and your contributions will be the primary means of support for the site. And yes, I have absolutely no idea if this will work and I'm completely nervous and exhilarated by the challenges ahead.
If you're uncertain as to whether you want to become a kottke.org micropatron, please read on. I'm going to explain what it is I'll actually be doing, why I'm doing it, how the site might change, and what I'll be doing with your hard-earned money.
Why are you doing this?
I've been self-publishing on the web for almost 10 years now, first with a little site on my school's web server, then on various ISP accounts, then 0sil8, and finally kottke.org for the last 7 years (almost). Looking back on it all, this little hobby of mine has been the most rewarding, pleasurable, maddening, challenging thing in my life. I've met so many nice, good people, formed valued relationships with some of them, traveled to distant lands (and New Jersey), procured jobs & other business opportunities, discovered new interests, music, movies & books, and lots of other stuff, all for putting a little bit of me out there for people to see.
And yet, I almost quit last spring. The site was getting out of hand and wasn't fun anymore. It was taking me away from my professional responsibilities, my social life, and my relationship with my girlfriend. There was no room in my life for it anymore. As you can imagine, thinking of quitting what had been the best thing in my life bummed me right the hell out.
After thinking about it for a few weeks, I had a bit of an epiphany. The real problem was the tension between my web design career and my self-publishing efforts; that friction was unbalancing everything else. One of them had to go, and so I decided to switch careers and pursue the editing/writing of this site as a full-time job.
Ok, but why else are you doing this?
- Blogging -- or personal publishing in general (not that they're synonymous) -- as a pursuit has been somewhat marginalized as a hobby or something one does to support other more worthy and/or lucrative pursuits. People leverage their blogs in order to write books, write for magazines or newspapers, pursue art or photography, go work for Gawker, Mediabistro, or Weblogs Inc., get jobs at startups, do freelance design (as I used to), start a software company, or as a vehicle to sell advertising. All worthy pursuits, but I'm interested in editing kottke.org as my primary interest; blogging for blogging's sake, I guess.
In the recent comics issue of McSweeney's, Chris Ware notes that "in the past decade or so, comics appear to have gained some greater measure of respect, due in no small part to the number of cartoonists who have begun to take the medium seriously". This is me taking online personal publishing seriously because I feel it deserves as much. - With decreasingly few exceptions, media is supported by advertising. Content on the web in particular is heavily ad supported. I'm interested in exploring other avenues with a special interest in discovering sustainable ways for other folks to do things like this as well.
- I'm attempting to revisit the idea of arts patronage in the context of the internet. Patrons of the arts have typically been wealthy individuals, well-heeled foundations, or corporations. As we've seen in many contexts, the net allows individuals from geographically dispersed locations to aggregate themselves for any number of reasons. So, when you've got a group of people who are interested in a particular artist, writer, etc., they should be able to mobilize over the internet and support that person directly instead of waiting around for the MacArthur Foundation or Cosimo de Medici to do it.
- I'm interested in too many things to settle on design or programming or writing or a particular topic. kottke.org indulges my desire to be interested in too many things (as Neal Stephenson put it recently).
- And not to get too mushy here, but this has been a dream of mine for a long time now. Thought it was high time to stop dreaming and start doing.
How will you doing this full-time affect the site?
First, let me tell you what won't change. The content on kottke.org will always be freely available to everyone who visits, regardless of whether you have contributed or not. No special "member" content or services. Think of kottke.org as non-crippled, fully-supported shareware...you only pay if you feel it's worth supporting.
kottke.org will also not become any less personal or any more professional. This is still my personal web site and is not going to mutate into a vertical blog about tech, design, politics, pop culture, or even asbestos. I'm not turning into a journalist. I'm still going to write and post almost exclusively about things I am interested in, whatever those may be at any particular moment. Just so you know, I may occasionally post cat photos, as is my right as the editor of a personal web site.
What might change on the site will be driven mainly by two conditions:
1. kottke.org is now my main professional priority. At long last, focus!
2. I will have available to me, for the first time in years, large uninterrupted chunks of time with which to produce creative works.
The goal is to use the increased level of focus and time to create a (much) better site. More time means there will be more content of a greater variety. Some days, that may mean more posts and more links. I'll be able to go to more (hopefully interesting) events in NYC (& elsewhere) and write about them. I'll have time do the occasional bit of real journalism, collaborate on neat projects like Dropcash, and do larger projects that require longer time scales to finish...dare I hint at a return to more 0sil8-like projects? (I dare.) And there are opportunities that I'm sure will present themselves as I settle into the luxuriant folds of full-timeness.
Why not advertising?
Like I said above, there's got to be a way to support media that doesn't involve advertising. But more than that, I don't want to disrupt the relationship dynamic we've got going here. There are currently two parties involved with kottke.org: me and the collective you. Advertising introduces a third party. In my experience, the third wheel of advertising often works to unbalance the relationship in favor of either the author or the readers (usually in favor of the author). If ads were involved, I might feel the need to change what or how I write to appease advertisers. I might write to increase pageviews and earn more revenue. I could fill pages with ads, earning more revenue but making the content more difficult to read or pushing some content off the page entirely. You could block advertising and deny me needed revenue.
None of that is appealing to me. If I'm writing, you're reading, I'm responding to what you've got to say about my writing, and we're mixin' it up in the comments, why do we need a middleman? Why not keep that dynamic intact if we can?
What's your monetary goal?
Quitting my job to run kottke.org full-time is possibly the dumbest economic decision I've ever made in my life. This undertaking so isn't about the money. (I'm gonna link to Ludicorp's about page here because their corporate philosophy matches well with my philosophy in approaching this.) At best, my goal is to make about 1/3 to 1/2 of my former yearly salary to support my efforts here for a year. I have no idea whether this goal is even remotely achievable...only the hope that it is and the desire to make it happen. Like I said, dumb economic decision.
As with anyone starting a new business, I've tightened things up in order to give myself the best chance of success. I've moved to a (way) cheaper apartment in Brooklyn, cut way back on eating out (I'm learning how to cook properly instead...hey, if I can learn to cook, you can pony up a couple of bucks), will be using my cache of frequent flier miles when I need to travel, and am curtailing my spending in general. It feels a lot like right after I got out of college...without the ramen noodles.
Are you excited?
If by that you mean "do you feel like you're going to throw up?" then yes.
Ok, that's about all I've got for now. That's definitely the most difficult thing I've ever had to write; I hope it came out OK. Thanks for reading and I hope you'll consider supporting the site. If you've got any questions, send me some email or find me on AIM (I may be a little slow on the IM uptake...I'm anticipating a busy day or two). I'll probably end up compiling questions I get into a later FAQ post of some sort (or making corrections/clarifications to this one).
Again, thanks for reading.
(Oh, and I should be on the webcam most of the day today. I guess you should be able to tell roughly how the above is going by how much I'm smiling. If instead you see me rocking catatonically in my chair clutching an empty pill container, call 911.)
Update: Hi there. Not a lot of time (today has been crazy! have you ever gotten IMed by 300 people in one day?) but things seem to be going pretty well. If you've emailed to ask to be put on the micropatrons list and don't see your name up there, don't despair...I've got a bit of a backlog. I'll get the names up there as soon as I can. And more later..but for now, thank you to everyone who contributed, you're too kind. Off to dinner before I starve.....
When I first watched the cool new VW Golf GTI commercial featuring an updated Gene Kelly poppin' and lockin', I guess I wasn't paying that much attention to it.
Then the other day a friend IMed me and asked, "hey have you seen this Golf GTI commercial with that guy from the crazy Kollaboration video?"
"It's the same guy? I know that guy!" I watched the video again and sure enough, Gene Kelly was dancing with the unmistakable style of Elsewhere, aka David Bernal. After a quick search, I found a message board post from Elsewhere himself that it was indeed him in the commerical:
yup that was me along with Crumbs and another popper named Jay Walker.
I emailed David to ask him about the experience and he graciously took the time to answer a few questions.
Jason: How did you get the Golf GTI gig? Audition or had someone seen your stuff and specifically wanted you for it?
David: They specifically wanted to use me for it. I had done a Heineken Commercial several months prior and the special effects people for that commercial were going to do the effects for this VW commercial. I got an email asking me if I could dance in the rain with a prosthetic mask on and several weeks later I was in London doing just that.
jkottke: That scene from Singin' in the Rain is one of the most famous in film, and certainly the most famous dance number in film. What was it like to be a part of an attempt to recreate and update it?
David: It was an honor and a privilege being one of the dancers in this commercial. Gene Kelly was a great dancer, singer and actor which is a lot more than I have to offer. It's extremely flattering having a commercial that essentially implies that my moves are an updated version of Gene's dance skills.
jkottke: Some folks have complained about the crassness of using a dead guy's likeness to sell automobiles. As one of the actors playing the deceased, do you have any thoughts on that?
David: Yeah it's kind of weird, but imo it kind of comes with the territory when you're a legend. I don't know if Gene would be too hot about the whole thing but obviously the Gene Kelly Estate approved it, so it's apparently not that crass to them.
jkottke: I've read that you often freestyle when you dance, making it up as you go along, but that you also have little micro-routines that you rely on as you do. In shooting the commercial, how much of the choreography was scripted and how much did you get to ad lib? How much did you need to change your style much based on specific shots from the original film or Gene's style?
David:It was different for each shot. For example with the close-ups they would say just do a bunch of wavy stuff, so I would simply freestyle with some waves. Most of the full body shots were more routine based. They would specifically want me to do a list of moves, but to connect everything I would naturally freestyle.
I didn't have to change my dancing stylistically at all. They wanted me to dance the way that I dance. In fact they had us watch the original Singing in the Rain scene so many times that I started unconsciously moving a bit like Gene Kelly. The director at one point even told me that I was moving too much like Gene and I needed to move more like me.
If anything the parameters and conditions of the shoot inadvertently changed my style. The sound stage was cold and we had to dance under artificial rain for hours. To avoid freezing we wore wet suits under our already thick, tight costumes. This restricted my movement a lot. My shoes were quite uncomfortable and fake flooring we danced on was soft and spongy. I had to keep my head up and smile constantly which was very unnatural for me. Yet the biggest difficulty for me was the rigid time restraints. Since it was a commercial we had to do a lot within a small amount of time. This forced me to speed up my style more than I usually do.
jkottke: Thanks, David.
You can see more of David's stuff on the Detours Video site, by purchasing some DVDs, or by doing a search for "david elsewhere".
Out of Technorati's top 100 most-linked weblogs**, only 16 don't feature advertising or are otherwise noncommercial:
Scripting News
Doc Searls
kottke.org
Jeffrey Zeldman
The Volokh Conspiracy
Scobleizer
Lileks
Joel on Software
Rather Good
Joi Ito's Web
RonOnline
USS Clueless
BuzzMachine
Vodkapundit
Baghdad Burning
Crooked Timber
Lots of interesting observations to be made about the commercialization of weblogs...the quick uptake of advertising on blogs, the increasingly false perception of blogs as inherently unbiased by commercial interests (and therefore preferable to "big media"), the continuing shift from blogging as a hobby to blogging for a variety of reasons, the number of weblogs launching lately that have ads from day one, the demographic difference between the typical circa-2002 blogger and the blogger of today, etc.
Just a couple of years ago, almost every weblog on a top 100 list would have been noncommerical and the blogosphere in general was mostly opposed to advertising on blogs. Now it's accepted to the point where I haven't heard anyone complain about it in months...even Boing Boing's audience didn't protest too much when they added advertising a couple of months ago.
** In compiling this list, I ignored the many entries on the top 100 list that weren't weblogs, are no longer being updated, or are artificially popular, so the total sample is somewhat less than 100.
Update: I just wanted to clarify that when compiling the above list, I counted sites with tip jars or non-ad affiliate links (e.g. Amazon) as primarily noncommercial. In specifying what was commercial, I was most concerned with advertising (text, banner, popup) and overt commercial situations (company blogs, blogs for magazines & newspapers, etc.). There's no clean distinction between commercial and noncommercial sites, but I think the "ads & pro blogs vs everything else" distinction is useful in talking about how the situation has changed in the past couple of years.
On the way home from work this evening, I stopped by Times Square and played a video game on one of the jumbo videotrons:
Yahoo! partnered with interactive agency R/GA to produce the car racing game to promote their automotive site. The game play is pretty simple...you call an 800 number (1-800-660-4402), listen for your race, and when the starting flag goes down, you press 2 to speed up and 8 to slow down (like slot cars). I crashed twice, once into a cab and once while going too fast around a corner, but I still beat the stuffing out of the other car.
Paul Ford on the word "consumers":
The word "consumers" makes me sad for this world. Whenever someone tries to convince you of advertising's nobility, remember that word -- the industry looks at you and sees not a human, but a gobbling creature with money to spend.
I can't recall where I heard this, but my favorite definition of a consumer is "a wallet with a mouth".
More than four years ago, I ordered a CD from buy.com. The album was a new release and widely available everywhere, but it took them two months to process and ship the order...and then it never actually showed up. I haven't shopped there since.
This morning I got an email from buy.com announcing their "NEW Cellular Store", one of many I've gotten from them since that initial shopping experience despite never opting in to any of their mailing lists. Every time I get one of these emails, I think of my bad buy.com shopping experience, reinforcing my low opinion of them and my decision not to patronize them in the future, not to mention eventually prompting me to tell thousands of people about it here. Perhaps not the result they were after with their email marketing.
Some random notes from my three days at the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine:
- The substrate of complexity is irrelevant, whether it's carbon or silicon. That is, a computer is a computer is a computer, be it a Powerbook or a human being. The level of complexity is the important part.
- Patent clerks spend an average of 4-6 hours per patent on a prior art search. Yikes.
- Lessig imagines an 18th century DMCA: the (D)aguerre (M)achine (C)ontrol (A)ct. I've seen Larry speak three times now; it's interesting to see how he's refined his argument.
- URLs cribbed from Golan's presentation: Danny Rozin's Wooden Mirror and Kelly Heaton's Furby wall.
- Audience member on the Jewish perspective on stem cell research: "A fetus is a fetus is a fetus until it becomes a lawyer."
- Cloning + embryonic stem cells is a powerful combination. Cloning takes "old cells" back in time, creating identical young cells. Embryonic stem cells can then be harvested from the cloned embryo and used to create new cells and organs for the original organism. Wild stuff.
- The Methuselah Mouse Prize is encouraging work on anti-aging, giving out prizes for the longest-lived lab mouse.
- Q from the audience about humans possessing indefinite life spans: "But doesn't this mean there won't be any children?" Answer from Aubrey de Grey in a most straight-forward tone: "Yes, it would mean a world without children." At that point, a chill went up my spine.
- A population pyramid for the US from the US Census Bureau's IDB Population Pyramid page.
- The shortest summary of the past 100 years I've ever heard: "the 20th century had its ups and downs." - Clay Shirky
- James Kunstler: "We are creating places we don't care about [living in]"
- Overheard about Virginia Postrel's talk on the Age of Aesthetics: "for someone who thinks aesthetics is so important, you'd think she would have used something better for her slides than Comic Sans on light purple." That and her increasing shrillness toward the end of her talk turned much of the audience off her argument I think.
- David Martin raised a question I've been preoccupied with for a couple of years now: "How much of the global economy is just an hallucination?"
- Geoffrey Ballard on the future: 12% of the population is currently ruining the planet. What happens when the other 88% get involved?
- Here are the goals that the 191 United Nations Member States have committed to meet in the next 12 years.
- An audience member asked space architect Constance Adams about sex is space (within the context of designing habitats for procreation), and she indicated that erections in space are difficult to achieve because in zero gravity, blood tends to collect in the head and feet.
- Robert Wright, author of the excellent Nonzero, is tall, handsome, witty, so very smart, and possesses impeccable timing. I think I am in love.
Have you noticed that Google is acting more and more like a stupid marketing/advertising company lately? It's one of the side effects of not really being a search engine company and seems to fly in the face of Sergey Brin's Google rule #1: "Don't be evil".
According to this post on Russell Beattie's site, Google recently changed their Terms and Conditions to prohibit criticism of their AdSense "service" terms and conditions on participating sites. Yuck. This move follows Russell's analysis of the AdSense T&C as a result of Erik Thauvin's removal from the program.
Since when is Google providing a service by paying people for advertising placed on their sites? This seems backwards; people are providing a service by placing the Google's ads on their sites. Google has every right to place whatever limits they wish on people who use their "service", but terminating said service without recourse when money is potentially owed by Google *and then* not allowing any site using Google AdSense (which may eventually include media sites like Salon, NY Times, MetaFilter, Slashdot, and even kottke.org) to comment on the Terms and Conditions that brought about the termination is just plain bad (evil?) and should give serious pause to anyone considering using any Google service.
You Google employees out there in weblog land, take a look at these links and see if it's worth taking this issue to someone internally who can do something about it. I might run into Larry Page at a retreat next weekend...we'll see what he thinks about it.
Update: Lest you think I'm aimlessly Google-bashing here, Cory Doctorow's comments on this matter sum up my feelings very well:
But that doesn't mean that they should get a free ride. Google wants to be a company that makes money wihtout being evil, and I support that goal! Being not-evil is good, and so's making some dough. But part of being not-evil is that you have to incur liability over and above that which your counsel recommends as the safest path -- just as a shop-owner can't reasonably ask all her customers to submit to a strip-search to contain shoplifting liability, Google shouldn't ask all its users to submit to an unreasonable restriction on their speech in order to contain the spread of negative information about its service.
Derek Powazek got the boot from AdSense for "inappropriate clicks" as did Kathy Shaidle. Kathy writes:
When I complained [about the ads that were showing up on the site], they explained: my blog, which deals with religion, politics and other non-dinner-table topics, was 'potentially negative'. I asked (on the blog) if there was gonna be a 0th Amendment drawn up to protect 'potentially negative' speech.
We back and forth'd a bit, my readers complained to them on my behalf, but Google wanted me to go through my archives, delete everything I'd ever said about them, good and bad, then republish. You can guess my response.
From Criminal Records, an article from the Sunday Times Magazine on UK pirate radio:
There is a studio mobile too. It vibrates every few seconds like a faulty alarm clock, as listeners call and text. Scrolling through its inbox, I notice scores of "missed calls". Big N explains that this is how pirates gauge a record's popularity. If listeners like a tune, they call in and then ring off, so the studio mobile registers a "missed call". This costs callers nothing. If Xtreme receives over 20 missed calls from different numbers before a track ends, the DJs play it again. This is why teenagers listen to pirate radio: it's interactive in ways legal stations can't match. Some tune in on their mobiles - on the bus, in the high street, even at school.
The big record companies are (smartly) using statistics from file-sharing networks to get a TiVo-level look at what people are listening to, but are keeping it on the downlow because it weakens their legal case against those networks:
According to on-the-record statements by many major labels, the scene I witnessed in Fleischer's office couldn't possibly have happened. But Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, says his firm is working with Maverick, Atlantic, Warner Bros., Interscope, DreamWorks, Elektra, and Disney's Hollywood label. The labels are reticent to admit their relationship with BigChampagne for public relations reasons, but there's a legal rationale, too. The record industry's lawsuits against file-sharing companies hang on their assertion that the programs have no use other than to help infringe copyrights. If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance. "We would definitely consider gleaning marketing wisdom from these networks a non-infringing use," says Fred von Lohmann, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco-based cyber liberties group that's helping to defend Morpheus, Grokster, and Kazaa.
I was wondering when this issue would arise. There's just too much information available about people's music-listening habits on file-sharing networks for the labels to ignore, even if it means that those networks would be legally allowed to exist. The labels and the RIAA must have some inkling of this because their tactics have changed in recent months; they're now going after individuals in addition to the networks. Might they are willing to concede a distinction between legal and illegal use of file-sharing systems? (via bb)
The Virtual Book Tour is off and running with author Mary Roach and her book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. The idea of the VBT is to have authors tour web sites much like they do bookstores. kottke.org is a stop on this tour (view the tour schedule)...Mary will be taking over the posting duties here next Wednesday, July 16.
kottke.org also participated in the first virtual book tour for Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard by Greg Knauss.
Update: Keep an eye on the Amazon Sales Rank for Stiff to see if this virtual tour business directly affects sales.
To Whom It May Concern:
The most recent issue of your magazine, the Début Fiction issue, arrived in our mailbox yesterday. Forgoing for now an exploration of your reasons for accenting the "e" in the English word "debut", I would like to direct your attention to pages 98 and 99 of that issue. Page 98 is to the left of the crease of the magazine and contains part of an article entitled Our Perfect Summer by David Sedaris, an article I was keenly interested in reading when I saw it in the table of contents. Page 99 is to the right of the crease and contains two vertical half-page flaps that open to reveal an advertisement for UBS. Let's call the flap that opens toward the crease page 99A, the flap that opens away page 99B, and the revealed advertisement page 99C.
Here's my problem. Page 99A keeps opening up and flopping down in front of the Sedaris article I'm trying to read on page 98 because the thumb on my right hand is not nearly long enough to clamp it down with the rest of the pages on the right hand side of the magazine. I had to resort to an unorthodox, complicated, and uncomfortable magazine-holding position in order to keep page 99A from interfering with my reading, a position that, had it lasted any longer than the two minutes it took me to read the text it was covering, would have driven me completely bats.
I realize that with all the excitement around the Débuting Fiction in the magazine, you probably forgot, just this once, to run the magazine through The Condé Nast Magazine Usability Lab. And also that UBS probably loves the fact that their exhaustively-honed advertising copy is flopping down in front of the hilarious literary stylings of David Sedaris like a pop up ad on the web and precipitating a post (with a link, no less) on a personal web site of modest acclaim. But this flap, it's seriously annoying. Please make it go away from all future issues of your magazine.
Yours very sincerely,
Jason Kottke
ps. Please do not print this letter in your magazine. I do not wish for my, how you say, inelegant grammar, odd punctuational choices, and inadequate vocabulary to be snickered at by your discerning readership.
pps. I love this bit from the Sedaris article:
"But it's perfect," my father said. "A real beauty, just like your mother here." He came from behind and pinched her on the bottom. She laughed and swatted him with a towel and we witnessed what we would later come to recognize as the rejuvenating power of real estate. It's what fortunate couples turn to when their sex life has faded and they're too pious for affairs. A second car might bring people together for a week or two, but a second home can revitalize a marriage for up to nine months after the closing.
Gareth Lloyd offers up an economic analysis of online music (mit graphs!) using consumer theory in How to make money from internet music (and make everybody better off in the process):
Moreover, I hope to show that despite our present gains, the internet retains great untapped potential. Apple's new iTunes Music Store is, I believe, an important precursor of what is to come. The strength of Apple's business plan lies in reducing search costs below those of the best file sharing software. If other record companies embrace internet distribution, they can do the same, and music listeners will gain access to a huge library of music. I will show that this gives a way for music companies to make money from the internet while simultaneously increasing the welfare and satisfaction of their customers.
The conclusion seems to be that music listeners have a very bright future. The only way that companies can succeed is to stop trying to exploit search costs and make their customers better off. In addition, a general reduction of search costs will lead to important secondary effects. By making it easy to search for new and better music, the internet will force companies to pay close attention to listeners and improve their products. They've long been able to make large profits on inferior products, but once listeners can find better music with minimum effort, the output of major record labels will have to improve in order to maintain market share.
That's a pretty hopeful view; it would be nice to see it come to pass, if only partially. I wonder if the music companies are doing any of this kind of analysis?
I just had a horrible, horrible thought. What if books had advertising in them? Not product placement in the story like "quoth the raven, eat at Burger King", but real honest-to-goodness ads every three or four pages, just like in magazines. Publishers could print two versions of every title:
1. A normal version of the book at the current regular price; let's say $36 for a hardcover.
2. A version with advertising that costs, oh, 50-75% less than the normal version. That same hardcover would cost $9-18. The ad version of the same book in paperback might go for only $4.50.
Supported by advertising, publically available texts like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, or Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels could be free. Free books!
Financial issues aside, I believe the world is a better place without advertising absolutely everywhere. But if advertising makes books more affordable -- and in some cases absolutely free -- and therefore accessible to more people, it's hard to argue that it wouldn't be a good idea.
More evidence that Google is not a search engine company:
Danny Sullivan, who edits SearchEngineWatch.com, estimates that Google, with about 100,000 advertisers, is a "several-hundred-million-dollar" business. He may be guessing low. The newly revived search site Ask Jeeves, which carries ads from Google and pockets a portion of the fees, forecasts revenues of about $100 million this year. It operates around 13 million searches per day, compared with Google's 200 million. It's impossible to do a direct comparison, but Google clearly could be a $1 billion company soon.
Visa is now offering a Titanium credit card. We can only imagine the marketing meeting that led to this:
Head of marketing: "Alright, we need a new credit card. Something for 99th percentile of the wage-earning population."
Marketing flunky #1: "Isn't that what the Gold card is for?"
Head of marketing: "Gold isn't exclusive enough these days. We need a metal with more cachet."
Marketing flunky #2: "We've got Platin..."
Head of marketing: "Platinum's no good either. Too many Platinum-level products these days. They've cheapened the whole thing. Anyone can get a Platinum anything."
Marketing flunky #1: "How about Diamond?"
Head of marketing: "Good, good. But not a metal and De Beers would sue our ass."
Lawyer: (nods)
Marketing kiss-ass: "Plus, Diamond has that whole carbon connotation. We don't want people associating their premium credit card with pencil lead."
Marketing flunky #2: "Lead? I thought we were talking about carbon?"
Everyone: (blink)
Marketing flunky #1: "You said premium just now. How about that?"
Head of marketing: "That was just an expression. God, think harder."
Flunkies: "Ummmm..."
Head of marketing: "OK, does *anyone* here know *anything* about science? What's better than platinum?"
Designer: "My computer is made of titanium. It's pretty solid. And the screen is huge. Have you seen that commercial with Mini Me and..."
Everyone: "Titanium! Of course! That's the answer!"
Designer: "That word's gonna look great on a brushed metal background."
Head of marketing: "It sure wil...wait, who let him in here?"
Daryl Westfall, the creator of the thank you for financing global terror stickers writes in to say that his ad got pulled by Google. The ad in question reads:
A Full Tank Of Terrorism?
Controversial sticker educates them while they're standing at the pump!
Here's an excerpt from the letter he received from Google:
"At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of 'Hate/anti' on our website. We also do not permit sites that sell these products to advertise on Google. As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site."
Others have called Google's rejection of ads "censorship", hoping to cash in on that term's Constitutional connotation, but Google has the right to reject whatever ad they want. It's just advertising and Google isn't the U.S. Government.
Because of Google's position as a nearly essential Web tool, it's unfortunate that they won't run this particular ad as is and I wish they'd change their mind, but they've got legal liability to worry about. Not running certain types of ads, even though some legitimate ads might get pulled unfairly, limits their liability. Hopefully Daryl can rephrase his ad and get it back on the site.
If you want to point fingers, point them instead at America's lawsuit-happy citizenry and corporations. The duels of yesteryear are outdated; there's plenty of satisfaction to be had in the courtroom and everyone from insurance companies to the families of tragedy victims to goofy Hollywood-backed cults to computer manufacturers to people too stupid to know that coffee is hot is glove-slapping the faces of anyone unlucky enough to get in the way.
Google now has this bit of text on the bottom of each of their results pages now:
"Try your query on: AltaVista Excite Lycos Yahoo!"
Click on Excite (for example) and it takes you directly to an Excite search results page for whatever term you were searching for. What's going on here? Google linking directly to competitors' Web sites? Have they gone insane?
What Google is doing here is instructive for most companies offering online content or services. Google knows their search results are good and displayed in a useful way. You want to wander off to Excite? That's ok because they know you'll be back soon. Google doesn't care about stickiness (which is a nearly unattainable goal unless you're AOL or Yahoo!)...they know that you're not going to spend all your online time at their site.
They care much more about making their site elastic: vistors aren't stuck in the site, but when they leave, Google knows there's a good chance they're coming back. Loyalty without lock-in. Elastic sites work well because they embrace the "Webness" of the Web...they allow people to interact and communicate with each other as they prefer to do in the real world. Human relationships are elastic in nature. Like a clingy friend, nothing is worse than a needy Web site sucking all of your time away and not letting you spend any time on other sites.
Weblogs are a good example of the effectiveness of elasticity; they continually direct people away from themselves yet people have very strong connections with the weblogs that they read and often come back for more. I can't possibly hold your attention here for more than a few minutes a day, but I'm fairly confident that if I am consistant in what I offer here in terms of quality and theme, you'll be back within the next week.
Many companies can't offer products or services with the quality or necessity of Google or the crack-like nature of weblogs, but they can stop worrying so much about fencing customers in like cattle and start dealing with them in human terms.
Hello! TNI Books (tnibooks.com) has occupied this website for a brief period of time. It will be over before you know it, and odds are good that if you've come here in search of something interesting, you won't go away disappointed.
Welcome to the LITTLE ENGINES Issue Three Electronic Reading Tour!
The Pockets by Paul Maliszewski
"There is nothing that makes one feel so much at home in a foreign city as knowing a good bar: a place where on can feel comfortable quickly, and go back to, in the hope, if not the certainty, of being recognized." ---Financial Times
Let me give you this example: In Marrakech, at Tapster's, everyone knows my name. Because I tell it to them, straight out. In a way I instruct them, but totally without guile, mind you. I say to them, I say, Sound it out now. I say, Listen to me. I say, Watch my mouth. See my lips? It's easy. I say, Listen, a wise man once told me that no sound is sweeter to a man than the sweet sound of his own name. And I say to them, Ergo, because I like the sound of that too, Ergo, I will pay you, right now, right here, understand? to tell me mine.
I've discovered that money, when strategically deployed, assists the process of memory formation and, in particular, promotes the cementation of certain long-term memories. The upshot there being that everywhere I go people know who I am.
I carry all the funny little pink and yellow and orange currencies of the world, in my pants pockets, my wallet, and stuffed in my back-up billfold. Some I have zipped into my belt, in a discrete pouch. I line my shoes with the stuff; I walk all over it. In my hotel room, alone, before venturing out into the night, I sit on the edge of the bed and fan a sheaf of bills into a thin layer and spread it over my calves. The TV in the corner is tuned to VH-1, replaying an in-depth documentary history of rock history documentaries. My gold-toe socks, pulled smartly up and over the bills, hold the thin layers of currency in place.
The wondrous elastic properties of my socks have never once embarrassed me. Disinterested third-parties have commented that the subtle effect on my legs' musculature is somewhat stunning, provocative even, so long as I'm seated just right, and there's the sort of light that not so much hides as forgives flaws and perhaps a little of that music they play, in the background, not blaring, never blaring, and so long as I have my one good leg dangling jauntily over the other, and then the cuff of my pants (worsted wool!) creeps up just so. It's quite perfect.
You may have to work at it, but they'll remember your name provided you get a fix on their price. Don't let the "language barrier" grind negotiations to a halt. Use your hands, gesture if you have to, speak loudly. My name, I say, pointing to myself. My name, I repeat, thumping my sternum with cupped hands. Cupped hands being what you call your inclusive, gentle, and warm body language.
I have inner pockets, coin purses, money clips, a beautiful chrome change machine hanging from a leather strap around my neck. My checkbook's the size of a photo album, one for a big family. Everything's monogrammed, embossed or engraved or otherwise emblazoned with the initials that spell the very names by which I'm known and are sweet for me to hear. These days I pad the shoulders of my suit with rolls of American quarters, which coin seems to be hot with the kids. Used to be nickels were. Even my pockets have pockets, and they're all full.
My bad leg doubles as a bank safe. The Vault is what I call it. It's got a surgical steel, triple-tumbler combination lock machined right into the kneecap, just set right into the sucker. The combination changes each month. Has to, for security. Additionally, I possess a killer fanny-pack whose equal is not known, will not, in fact, ever be known, because I had it custom-tailored in southern Italy, out of Spanish leather and the finest Libyan thread. This southern Italian guy did the stitching using a fossilized pine needle from a rare tree found only near the very top of the western face of Mt. Sinai, he told me.
You can hold your fingers up to show how high you're willing to go. For instance, two fingers means you'll give them two of whatever it is they happen to want most of all in the place wherever you happen to be at the time. My name, I say, gesturing openly and warmly, and then hold up seven fingers in front of my face. Then I look at my fingers outstretched like that, nodding at them from left to right, to emphasize the sheer plenitude of digits I'm abstractly offering in place of what they want most of all.
When in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, you have to track down Lou's or Tip-A-Few if that's closed the night you go. The Kazakhs moved their capital last summer sometime, I think, or maybe the year before, so neither place is overrun with miserable administrator types anymore. You get a whole different crowd, friendlier and polite like you wouldn't believe, while still not compromising the frisson of danger thing I associate with all those breakaway republics.
Which reminds me, there was a place on the island of Borneo, this is in the interior, that used to be called Olde Ale House. It got bought out five or six years ago by Slim's. Slim's is sort of a semi-local chain of similar independently-managed establishments in the western Pacific Malay region. In spite of the new owners and what have you, it's still good. They kept the same bartender on. Definitely worth the trip if you have time off in Jakarta and just want to get away from everything for awhile.
In Cabo Frio, which I prefer to Rio de Janeiro - same coastal clime, same access to airports, same etc. - do yourself a favor and inquire about this place that's a bar disguised as a fully-operational eighteen-wheeler. It doesn't even have a name. Say the truck/bar is driving by, on the outside it looks every bit the spitting image of those trucks that carry the poisonous gases, all plastered with red signs and stern prohibitions, saying whatever 'notice' and 'warning' are in Portuguese. But inside they've got a teakwood bar that will quite simply impose a stiff excise tax on your lungs.
The next time you're in Djibouti, try Ed's. I met an Account Rep for Barbasol in Gdansk who told me about it. He was there creating some new popular thinking about facial hair. And go to The Pub in Perth. That's what they call it, everyone'll know what you mean. At the South Pole, there's a little place, Eddie's Tavern. It's quaint but not too. Not so many people know about it yet. You can walk in there a second time with every certainty of being recognized as a regular. You don't get that whole expense-account crowd in there.
For a paper copy of this story, along with other fine surprises, check out the newest issue of LITTLE ENGINES at tnibooks.com.
Apple's switch campaign (featuring BoingBoing's Mark Frauenfelder) comes at an interesting time for me. My first real experience with a Mac was in college. At the time, WYSIWYG word processing on the PC didn't exist (at least on the slow PCs they had at the computer lab) so my friends and I all used the Macs in the tiny Mac lab to write our papers. We wondered why everyone else seemed to be making the wrong choice.
Then I got a 486. Windows 3.11. It worked enough like a Mac to satisfy me...you know, being that it was in my room and all. And it crashed less.
When I started working as a Web designer after college, I got the chance to work on Macs again. It wasn't pretty. Compared to similar Windows-based PCs, they were expensive, they crashed frequently, and they were slow. My 486/66 Mhz machine running Windows 95 was faster, cheaper, and more stable than any Mac I encountered at the work place, even a top-of-the-line 300 Mhz PowerMac that crawled like a little baby when I gave it any sort of task more taxing than opening a file. I made my decision then and there: Windows forever, Macintosh never.
That is, until last week. Last week I bought a shiny new iBook to use as my primary computer...and I love the damn thing so far. Here's why I decided to go with the iBook:
- Unix. Command line on Windows is a joke. I wanted a computer that could easily run Apache, MySQL, and Perl in the environment for which they were originally programmed. Windows can run all that stuff, but why bother when you can go with BSD?
- Professional GUI to go with the Unix. Linux will never be big on the desktop until they have a professionally designed GUI to go with it. I don't care how much power the OS has under the hood if the UI is clunky. I want the command line, but I also need to use the latest desktop applications like Photoshop (and spare me your GIMP recommendations. As if.).
- Portability. My Sony Vaio laptop has plenty of power and a big-ass screen, but it weighs a metric ton and lasts about 20 minutes on battery power. The iBook is small, light, and the battery, as near as I can tell, lasts forever.
- Power and price. 95% of my time on the computer is spent writing email, browsing the Web, listening to MP3s, coding HTML/Perl, and a bit of Photoshop & Flash. I don't need a top-of-the-line 2 Ghz processor to do any of that. The 700 Mhz G3 in my iBook, along with 640 Mb of RAM, gives me all the power I need to do all those things at a pretty reasonable price.
- Happy customers. I know lots of people who know things about stuff. You know the type...they have the answers to all of your technical questions. I trust the opinions of these people about computers and personal technology. They all have iBooks and TiBooks...and they love them.
- The Apple benevolent dictatorship. Apple closely controls both the hardware and the software associated with the Mac. I used to think this was a bad thing...a de facto dictatorship that drove prices up on the hardware and discouraged innovation on the software side. At this point, after wrestling with hardware incompatibilities on Windows for years (No Win2000 driver for some weirdo graphics card in your laptop? Too bad...you can't upgrade, sorry.), I still think Apple has that dictatorial power over their system, but I'm willing to embrace that. I just want my computer to work for the things I want to do with it, and if I have to pay a little more for it or not have access to all the latest software, so be it. Sometimes a benevolent dictatorship is better than a system with no accountability (Dell tech support: "Must be a software problem. Did you call Microsoft?" Microsoft tech support: "Oh, that's a hardware problem. You need to call Dell." Intel tech support: "Did you call Microsoft? That's a software problem for sure.")
I'm still in the very early stages of ownership, so I guess I'll see how all this works out for me in the next couple of months.
Top Ten New Copyright Crimes. Even more funny (if it weren't so scary) is Jamie Kellner's remark that "your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots". I don't recall signing any contract or making a verbal agreement with NBC to agree to watch Toyota commercials during The West Wing. My only contract with regard to the TV is my cable bill, which entitles me to watch as much or as little of 50-some channels as I want. How the networks make money is their business...if advertising isn't working anymore, you need to try something else. Don't come crying to me about some bogus contract that exists only in your mind.
The downside of this is what happens if ad-supported television can't function profitably due to PVRs and such? Will TV go away? Will it become for-pay across the board with $300-500 monthly cable bills? Are consumers going to get screwed or will a better form of TV broadcasting emerge from the rubble (imagine all your favorite shows on one network)? The future is so fun that way...impossible to predict.
Eldred v. Ashcroft: "Just as Walt Disney used the works of the Brothers Grimm to produce some of the best of the Disney stories, so too should the next Walt Disney be able to build upon the stories told by Disney."
Free the Mouse. When Copyright Attacks. Create Like It's 1790.
The PR flacks are coming! The PR flacks are coming! Hide your children! PR folks are starting to wake up to the weblog world. Merlin got an email from a PR agency about a Spider-Man game because they noticed a post about the movie on his site (I got the same email). A few weeks ago, Nick and I (and many others) got an email promoting an article about weblogs in Business 2.0.
Advertising as something other than advertising (a non-exhaustive list): historic 1950s-era advertisement for Shasta Cola, AdCritic to charge for looking at TV ads, movie trailers as entertainment, vintage television commercials collected for entertainment and historic purposes, the Smithsonian has a set of Burma Shave signs. With apologies to Arthur Clarke, perhaps the sign of any sufficiently advanced society is its ability to make advertising indistinguishable from traditionally-accepted forms of creative output.
It's been awhile since I did a mini interview for this site, so here we go.
G. Beato, who Web veterans might remember from Soundbitten, Suck, and a bunch of other places, has been busy recently with Cooking with Bigfoot, an online, animated cooking show featuring "an aggressively bisexual, substance-abusing Sasquatch". Mr. Beato shares his thoughts about the business of indie Web media with us. (It's a long answer to a short question, but it's worth the read.)
Q: What's the thinking behind selling subscriptions for Cooking with Bigfoot, besides the obvious riches involved?
A: When I first decided to create CWB almost a year ago, I knew that if I wanted to do it on an ongoing basis I'd have to figure out a way to make some money doing it, because the shows actually do cost money to create: I pay an animator, I pay the voice talent, etc.
Initially, my plan was to license episodes to other sites. Advertisers were getting increasingly frustrated with the limitations of banner ads -- they wanted bigger ads, they wanted ads that moved, they basically wanted TV commercials on the web. But as sites like NYTimes.com and WSJ.com now prove on a daily basis, TV-commercial-style ads plunked down in the middle of newspaper-style sites are really annoying -- reading is not the same activity as viewing, so when you go to a site to read, it's frustrating when the ads there are designed to be viewed...
But if you insert a 10-second TV-commercial-style ad at the beginning or end of a 3-minute Flash cartoon, it makes a lot more sense. So I figured I could license episodes to sites that wanted to offer a better context for rich-media ads to advertisers, but didn't actually want to incur the costs of producing their own series. I used to write scripts for one company that was already doing this, but they were targeting portals and other fairly large sites: my idea was to make the licensing fees low enough so that any kind of website could afford them: alt.weeklys, radio stations, portals, etc.
As I began to implement this plan, however, a few things began to sink in: (1) Selling this concept would be a full-time job in itself, (2) Even if I targeted sites where the standards for content were a little more flexible than a daily newspaper, I still had to worry about keeping the show "advertiser-friendly", and (3) in order to convince anyone that I could deliver X number of episodes on a weekly/biweekly basis, I would probably actually have to do that for 6 months or so, and I didn't have the money to do that.
Since I really created CWB mainly because I wanted the freedom to write an online animation series exactly how I wanted to write it (I had been writing scripts for a bunch of other online series before that...), I ultimately decided that instead of trying to sell the show to advertisers, it'd be a whole lot simpler just to try to sell it directly to viewers.
Of course, it's not as if trying to convince people on the Web to pay for cartoons is simple, but at least this way I can write the show I want to write and not worry about whether or not the marketing director at Sprite will consider a show starring an aggressively bisexual, substance-abusing Sasquatch a good place to sell soda...
Also, I really do think there's a larger issue at stake here, and that's the future of independent content on the web, and the varieties of content that the web will support. While there has been a lot of debate about whether web content should be free or paid or sponsored by advertising, I think an important point has largely been overlooked -- and that is that an environment where the majority of content is free or sponsored by advertisers ultimately favors corporate-created content.
On the one hand, this seems counterintuitive -- after all, if content is free, then business models don't exist, and neither do businesses. And, indeed, when lots of dot-coms started crashing because they couldn't figure out a business model, many people rejoiced and said, "Good! The web's going back into the hands of the people, where it belongs! People who create content for the love of it, not because they want to make fast IPO millions."
But while there are now hundreds of thousands of independently produced blogs thriving on the web these days, how much *other kinds* independent content is being produced? Obviously, sites like MP3.com distribute a lot of independent music, and various other sites (ifilm.com, newgrounds.com, animationexpress.com) aggregate a lot of independent animation and video. But all of that stuff is mostly one-offs -- i.e. a film-school student does a short and posts it on ifilm. A couple years ago, there were at least a couple hundred ongoing online animation series, because corporations were subsidizing their production. Now, there's probably only dozens of regularly updated series like Cooking With Bigfoot, because it simply costs too much to do without some form of revenue or subsidy. (Similarly, there are very few independent news-oriented sites that do actual reporting on a regular basis, with Salon.com being probably the most notable example).
So the ultimate irony is this: while the Web has huge potential to distribute off-beat, unconventional, non-common-denominator media that traditional corporate media channels will never touch (i.e., the kind of content often favored by people who believe that web content should be free and corporate media sucks), it won't really be effective at doing that unless viewers/readers/users support that content in a direct financial way. But if content remains free or ad-sponsored, then the corporate colonization of the Web that has characterized these last few years will likely continue. (Currently, 60% of all web usage occurs on sites created by AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and about one dozen other corporations.) And so we'll have a web of a million weblogs talking about the content created by a dozen corporations.
Traditionally, the two mediums that have the worst reputations for bad content are TV and radio -- the two mediums where the content is mostly free (and mostly controlled by large corporate interests.) So, really, the best way to ensure that the web doesn't turn into TV or radio is for users to start paying independent content creators directly. And while it's clear that one of the things people like best about the web is that everything is free, the practicing of supporting content creation directly has its good points too. For example, when a TV network decides to cancel a show, there's nothing you can really do about it except write a letter and hope that the network listens -- but on the web fans will actually be able to make or break shows based on their support, and because the costs are so much lower, it will only take a relatively small number of fans to wield that kind of power. Take Cooking With Bigfoot -- if I can attract 1000 subscribers, the show will survive (albeit just barely). If I can attract 3000 viewers, I'll be able to create around 20 - 24 episodes a year. If I get over 10,000, it'll go weekly, the episodes will get more complex, etc. In other words, each subscriber really has a stake in the show/site and can help make it better, and if enough people subscribe, they'll eventually be able to see the impact of their collective support. To Disney or AOL Time Warner or News Corp. of course, an audience of 10,000 is fairly meaningless, but to an independent content creator on the web, an audience of 10,000 can be really powerful -- and they can increase their power dramatically just by spending a few bucks here and there to support the content they like. So, ultimately, that's what I'm hoping to tap into... ::end
What do you think?
BTW, I'm participating in Cooking with Bigfoot's affiliate program. If you have a Web site and are interested in supporting Greg's efforts while making some scratch, you can too.
Hello, and welcome to the first stop of the virtual book tour for "Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard," the surging juggernaught of virtual book tours. My name's Greg Knauss, and I've commandeered kottke.org today to pester you into dropping six bucks for a big wad of dead tree. Jason will be back tomorrow, ma'am, please put your shirt back on.
"Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard" is a collection of stories about kids -- birthing them, caring for them, confusing them for your own petty amusement -- that originally appeared on An Entirely Other Day. There are plenty of good reasons to buy a book composed of Web pages -- several of which revolve around bathroom accessibility -- but I'd like to start with a reading, to give you a flavor of what you'll find inside:
[Cough. Clear throat. Sip water. Read aloud. Lament my ineptitude at producing MP3s, and rue this lame substitute.]
Imagine how much better that would have been on paper, away from your computer, outside in the sunshine without all that pesky money weighing you down! Yes, "Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard" makes the perfect gift! Unless the person you're giving it to has children, in which case it will make them cry.
We're scheduled to begin the question and answer portion of the event here, but I'd like to say a few words to those of you who haven't been convinced to buy a copy by the reading:
C'mon, you weenie! It's only six bucks! If you don't want a book about kids, look at the rest of the So New catalog! Buy something else! Buy "Help Wanted" or Words! Words! Words! or "The Brick." Or Little Engines, which isn't even from So New Media. Or buy Macros, or back issues of Beer Frame, or, God, something other than another freakin' Grisham novel. How many of his books have you read? Six? Eight? Can you even tell them apart anymore? Here's a hint, sparky, the youngish white male lawyer is the good guy! You dropped six bucks on that, why not spend it on something that isn't extruded from the ass of the publishing industry like crap from a horse overdosed on Metamucil? Instead of your next Big Burger Value Pak, how about you grab an apple and some independent media? Huh?
And, now, Q&A:
You're a complete hypocrite, aren't you?
Yes. Total. Today at lunch, for instance, I'll be finishing "A Painted House" over a Western Bacon Cheeseburger.
But you still want me to buy your book?
Oh, yes. I did -- I bought six copies. You should, too.
Six is an awful lot, don't you think?
Yes, you're right. So I'll cut you a deal: order in the next ten minutes, and I'll only make you buy three.
These aren't real audience questions, are they?
No. It turns out that the Web is about as interactive as a box of cereal. But if you've got a question, please mail it to greg@eod.com, so I can answer it when the "Rain Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard" book tour pulls into Stating the Obvious tomorrow morning. See you there!
Except for you, ma'am. No, you can't camp here until Jason comes back. Yes, I'm sure he'll like the embroidered pillow. And, please, put your shirt back on.
Rebecca Mead strikes again with Shopping Rebellion in this week's New Yorker. Her description & analysis of Japan's fashion culture reminds me generally of several other threads floating about in the popular ether: mp3 ripping/trading, the weblog circle jerk, Web-enabled hypercollection, DVRs, the idea of a creative commons, the death of scarcity. The mantra of the moment seems to be "rip, mix, burn, consume, repeat, faster!" It's always been like this, but technology and our cultural evolution has shortened the lifecycle of the process so that the time from "rip" to "repeat" is a few minutes or hours instead of a few weeks or months, meaning that sometimes we can't tell why we're laughing at something anymore.
Simply Porn gets some more press on Wired News.
Simply Porn got some play on ZDTV's Silicon Spin today....in a roundabout sort of way. If you want, you can even watch the entire show via RealVideo....or fast forward to 23:45 for the good stuff.
Have you seen that Kodak Advantix commercial on the TV? I can't remember what the commercial is all about (lots of yellow?), but the music is quite - as the kids would say - bumpin'. Does anyone know the techno tune playing in that ad? Mail me: jason@kottke.org.
James Lileks over at the Star Tribune writes about those annoying severe weather warnings during tv shows. I couldn't agree more. Some of the persistant warning garbage they put up on the screen is akin to having your microwave continue to beep loudly even after you've removed the food from it. A small scrolling bit of text (and no sound!) at the bottom of the screen every once in a while is sufficient. Anything more ruins the viewing experience.
Have you seen those commercials with the URL that's briefly flashed up on the screen, but the URL is so weird that you couldn't possibly remember what it was? Well, I've seen it so many times that I finally figured out what it is: http://www.iydkydg.com/. If you don't know, you don't go.
For fun, check the source code and look at the keywords meta tags. Looks like they're trying to attract the teen crowd from the search engines.
I never realized just how clever the "by Mennen" jingle is. Not only are they telling you who makes Speed Stick, it's also a command: "buy Mennen." Of course, it can't be too clever; I use Old Spice.
A new episode of 0sil8: Simply Porn. It's a parody of 3Com's new ad campaign featuring a nude woman holding a Palm V organizer. The ads are tastefully done (sort of), mine are not.
Excessive advertising & promotion makes everything about products, services, events, movies, songs, and companies irrelevant except for the fact that it is being advertised and promoted in an excessive manner.
Speaking of backslash dot com all day long, what does the backslash have to do with the Web?
I got my first cease and desist letter today. Sort of. Here's the letter:
Jason,
I am contacting you to let you know that the site:
http://www.0sil8.com/episodes/98/05/06/index2.html
is in violation of logo usage and copyright infringement and you could face legal litigation if the usage continues.
Thank you,
Matthew Barnes
Senior Multimedia Designer
This letter is really strange for two reasons:
a) It's not from a lawyer. It's from the "Senior Multimedia Designer" from a company called Rossroy Interactive. I guess this guy is cheaper than a lawyer. Of course, the lawyer might have realized that the Apple Dodge Neon page is a parody of both the Dodge Neon and the Apple iMac and is therefore probably protected under copyright laws.
b) It's unclear what is wrong with the page. Is it the Dodge logo or the Apple one? I did some checking and Rossroy Interactive is in Michigan...making it a good bet that the Dodge logo is the one in question. It might have been nice of them to mention that.
Anyway, I don't think I'll be taking the page down right now. I've got a couple letters to write and some legal codes to pore over.
The way I see it, there's two ways to go about your business. Well, there's significant mixing between these two ways, but one or the other is usually dominant.
The first way is to offer a product/service (usually shitty) that people buy and they don't ever come back for seconds. How do you make money this way? You nickel and dime the customer to death until they leave screaming. Makes you lots of money fast, but no customer loyalty.
The other way is to offer a product/service that everyone likes. Your customers are happy because you're not continually jerking them around and they come back for more. And your reputation grows and you get more customers. They're getting what they want and you're having lots of fun giving it to them. And you're proud of what you're doing. Everyone is happy.
I'm currently in the midst of the first scenario, trying to get to the second. The problem with that is the first scenario is easy to achieve while the second is not.
