Author Archive
Insanely cute kitten being fed with chopsticks
Posted by barb dybwad in digital entertainment on November 17th, 2009
The internet is trying to kill us, people. Set the Cute Threat Level to RED!
Also, is that a kitteh or an Ewok? Srsly.
This dude gets +7 to resume creation… seriously
Posted by barb dybwad in digital entertainment on November 12th, 2009
Auto-Tune the News does Kanye West, Balloon Boy
Posted by barb dybwad in digital entertainment on November 12th, 2009
Love. These. Folks.
First music videos shot entirely with iPhone 3GS start rolling
Posted by barb dybwad in digital entertainment, gadgets, mobile, technology on July 8th, 2009
Some of these might have to haggle over who was truly “first,” but the interesting point is it took so little time for them to appear after the launch of the video camera-capable iPhone 3GS. Those who hate on the relative lack of “image quality” including haters of the Flip Mino series really miss the point here — it’s about convenience, ease of use and the empowerment of a new breed of digital creatives. Much like the falling cost of recording equipment spawned a surge in bedroom production from talented (and untalented…) unknowns and amateurs in the realm of music, so too will we continue to see an uptick in compelling and relevant video productions from unexpected places. We’re lucky to be witnessing the era of read write culture kicking off.
Below is a track by Kenny Mosher set to video produced by Showdown Productions. After the break is “Love, Love, Love” by Reyna Perez.
Music Video Shot on iPhone from Kenny Mosher on Vimeo.
On the passing of Michael Jackson, pop legend and total enigma
Posted by barb dybwad in digital entertainment on June 25th, 2009
“His death may have stunned the world of music, but those who knew Michael Jackson say the warning signs of his fading health were clear. They claim his long-term addiction to painkillers is the obvious underlying health issue which – combined with the considerable pressure of attempting a showbusiness comeback – may just have claimed his life. Only last month, the Daily Mail reported that Jackson was struggling to make even a handful of the rehearsals for the comeback tour which was due to start in July at the O2 in London. He had been to just two out of more than 45 rehearsals.”
He’s steeped in my memory from childhood but I lost total interest during the creepy years (which, sadly, were the majority of the past 2 decades). Why is it then that his death finds me suddenly fascinated by such a strange personality and bizarre larger-than-life life — a sad, twisted product of childhood abuse and resulting psychological disorders, the intense pressures of superstardom, almost continuous medical treatment morphing into 25 years of prescription drug addiction, a disturbing obsession with plastic surgery and the peculiar two-sided coin of unrelenting media scrutiny combined with a reclusive, self-delusional private fantasy world enabled by wealth and a sycophantic entourage of opportunistic handlers.
Michael Jackson was a completely and utterly fascinating icon of the ravages and consequences of the American supermedia machine and resultant hyper-celebritism. He was also a phenomenally talented musician, singer, songwriter, dancer and entertainer who was loved around the world and broke so many records we’ve lost count. Whether he really was a child abuser or simply a psychological and emotional child himself unable to grow mentally into adulthood due to physical and emotional abuse from his father from a young age and complete sheltering from adult reality (or both), it was a sad and terrible long decline for a star once so bright. Whatever he became, it’s clear he so long and so desperately wanted to become someone else. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
Thoughts on re-imagining the music retail business
Posted by barb dybwad in digital entertainment, technology on June 23rd, 2009
Digital music kiosks take another spin
Reading this gives me crazy ideas about completely transforming the music retail experience into more of a social experience — get rid of 80% of the CD racks, keep some premium inventory around like box sets and limited editions, put in a coffee shop (seems to work wonders for brick and mortar book retailers) and create a space for music lovers to hang out and share tunes with each other. Put in digital “jukebox” computers, let people stream whatever they want (volume might be an issue… maybe the tables have headphone stands, or hire a brilliant sound engineer to baffle everything properly so tables/stations don’t bleed too much audio), and some percentage will buy MP3 files on site (and continue to buy some physical media). Others won’t buy anything but the occasional coffee but will be 100% free and avid promoters to others. Have concerts and special events in stores constantly. Hold workshops for would-be and independent music makers.
Even better: provide a celestial jukebox service to any customer who buys anything from you, ever. Store whatever tracks and albums they buy, ever, and let them stream it from any device they own. Let them re-download anything at any time when they have a hard drive crash, clean system install, get a new computer/NAS/PMP/phone/game console/etc.
Layoffs at MySpace… shocker!
Posted by barb dybwad in digital entertainment, social media, web on June 16th, 2009
MySpace slashes head count by 30 percent | The Social – CNET News.
The tagline reads “MySpace is a place for friends.” No, it’s not. It’s a place for scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, spam-spewing trolls to post mindless blinking affiliate marketing links all over creation. If “this hurts me more than it hurts you” Van Natta wants to turn that ship around they have to start treating the social network like a community that it sadly once was, heinous crimes against HTML and all, instead of like a wishful money-printing machine that occasionally requires light watering for maintenance.
Seriously, that place is a cesspool.
iPhone 3G S pricing kerfuffle shows phone subsidy not widely understood
Posted by barb dybwad in gadgets, mobile on June 10th, 2009
Current iPhone 3G users are up in arms about not getting the same discounted iPhone 3G S price as new customers would. Their argument is that AT&T should be “rewarding them” for being loyal customers. Man, I sure wish the world worked that way. I’ve been a “loyal customer” of Time Warner High-Speed Internet for over 6 years and my monthly plan keeps going up, not down, even as infrastructure upgrade costs fall. I’ve been a loyal customer of Apple for years too, and don’t get any special discount on my next MacBook Pro simply because I’ve bought one before. And phones don’t work that way either.
I wonder if the current spate of anger relates to two things: 1) a conflation of the general hatred being levied towards AT&T right now over their completely craptastic reception and service, and 2) a new market of iPhone 3G owners who have never previously purchased a smartphone, and thus don’t have much direct experience with how cell phone subsidies work in the U.S. and on carriers around the world. The actual cost of a smartphone device as sophisicated as an iPhone or G1 or Nokia N97 et al is many hundreds of dollars — I tend to think of it like “car trouble” price: whenever something goes wrong, I steel myself to be out $500-600 no matter what the heck it is. Some phones climb as high as a cool $1k for an unlocked GSM handset. The only reason smartphones can be had cheaper is because the carrier subsidizes them: you agree to be locked in to this 2-year contract and the carrier is guaranteed to extract $XXXX from you over that period, in exchange for which they discount the price of your phone because they’re guaranteed to make that money back from you (unless you cancel early, which people seem loathe to do even though a $150 early termination fee (or less, depending on how much of the contract has elapsed) is far less than you’d pay to stay stuck in the contract… maybe it’s the principle of the thing).
Thus, if you want to pick up a new phone before you’ve completed that 2-year contract you signed, you’re just plain SOL. There is no special deal for you, and if there were the whole phone subsidy house of cards would fall apart. What would stop me from popping in every month to pick up the latest hot smartphone on deep discount, and what incentive would carriers have to support that?
What these folks are really angry about is the underlying racket of the phone subsidy. It’s spurious to blame Apple or AT&T for “allowing” this pricing scheme — this pricing scheme is typical for the mobile market. Still, neither Apple nor AT&T have done much in the way of educating a First Time Smartphone Buyer market about how this works, and they could have softened some of the blow if they had. Nevertheless, it’s a rude but entirely fair wakeup call to phone buyers about how the subsidy system works.
