Funny Twitter Video
“…Twittering is just randomly bragging about your unexceptional lives…” Awesome!
Listing of Entries Tagged as 'Entertainment & Media'
Savings Account Comic Released
A true labour of love, my friend Maurcio just released his latest comic, Savings Account.
“A short comic book story about an old woman with nothing to lose. Written by Juliana Azevedo and illustrated by Mauricio Pommella.”
The artwork is splendid and the story is an original. So please consider supporting independent artists and buy it now!
Banned by Metallica!!!
I was having lunch with the Erics today, and the discussion turned to the new Metallica album. Suddenly I remembered a screencap I took back in the day (8 years ago, actually).
It was summer 2000, and the Internet was a wild frontier: usernames couldn’t have @ symbols or spaces, Google was not a verb, people thought downloading music illegally was awesome, and Metallica set the tone for years to come.
Not with their music, but with their hot and fast legal action. It seemed an abstract thing to see Lars cart away crates of seized download records from Napster HQ on TV. But it hit closer to home to me when one Monday I came into work, booted up my computer, and was informed that my Napster account (Woody_the_Bear) was BANNED BY METALLICA. Sweet!
(Click image for larger version)
That just sounds so frickin’ cool, though, don’t it?
Ironically, I didn’t even download ANY Metallica at the time (nor have I ever), because I thought they sucked and sold out. And now I just encourage everyone to Bittorrent the new Metallica album and bootleg their concerts with their cellphone cameras (I would never do that myself, of course). Or, better yet, I encourage people to support and BUY music from some of these lesser-known, but quite deserving artists instead. (Not that they sound ANYTHING like Metallica, but whatever)
Some of the faves on my current iPhone playlist include:
- http://www.tvontheradio.com/
- http://www.amazon.com/Ruun-Enslaved/dp/B000F1HGW4
- http://www.oceansize.co.uk/
Radiohead’s House of Cards
Man, I love Radiohead. Always innovating. Check out this post on PaperVision about their new “video”. They freely distribute their tracking data so that others could make new visualizations for their music. Very cool.
Guest Post on the VIDBLOG
Feel free to check out my guest post on the VIDBLOG, where I wax cranky on the further erosion of mystery in modern life (thanks to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the internet at large):
http://2008.vidfest.com/2008/05/20/losing-my-mythology-to-the-social-machine/
From Pretty to Hyper-Beautiful
“No Wonder Our Perception of Beauty is Distorted”
Fight the Power, Arrogant Apple
(Photo from http://www.newlaunches.com/)
Dear Steve Jobs:
Did you know this is the age of Web 2.0? Mash-ups, multi/cross-posting, distributed computing, virtual storage, shared media, crap loads of video, and consumer choice… this is reality today. You even use YouTube and Google Maps as services on your iPhones.
Yet, if you know this, then why is my iPhone crippled unless I use a hack to reclaim it? If I want to use my iPhone as a PDA, sans-AT&T, I should be able to.
And how come I lose my entire non-backed-up iTunes library if my computer crashes? Even your smaller competitors let me download my music again if I lose it.
Otherwise, you guys rock. Thanks for listening, most of the time.
Crowd-sourcing for Ketchup
Crowd-sourcing is being utilized again by our advertisers, this time for the next great Heinz commercial. Starting August 27th you can vote online for your favorite from a group of 15 finalists, all hosted on YouTube. As with the Doritos piece, the caliber of some of the work is quite impressive. Of course, with the nearly 4000 entries, it’ll be tough going wading through tons of real stinkers. I wish the judges good luck and good speed in narrowing thousands down to the top 15!
The advent of user comments may make it easier to find and qualify the jewels, but given that the best comments will come from the most-connected submitters, it may boil down to a popularity contest. Despite the hopes for the great media democratization that the web provides, it’s still marketing and promotion that’s king. It just looks different now than ten years ago.
$57,000 for the winner? That’s a real bargain for Heinz. Near-infinite proposals, cheap labour, great content, Darwinian selection–it sounds like Nettwerk CEO, Terry McBride’s prediction at the VIDFEST 2006 keynote that the creative services will be crowd-sourced within 10 years is coming close to fruition (a prediction for which the keynote crowd itself was quite vocal over in the extreme negative)!
But getting back to Heinz, this is one of my favorite entries:
mod7 Motion Graphics on TV Tonight
If you’re in Canada tonight, and you’re itching for some YouTube-2.0-meets-Survivor-Idol action, and you’re young enough (or cool enough) not to have to be in bed by 10 so you can get up for work early tomorrow morning, then check out the season premiere of Exposure on CBC Television, at 11 pm.
Why? Because it looks like it will be a cool show. And because mod7 designed the graphics and titles. And because the lovely Lara (of TikiBarTV fame) is hosting. Need any more reasons?
Inventive Guerrilla Marketing Stunt Misfires…
Apparently, the placing of mysterious electronic devices at major transportation hubs is cause for concern. Go figure.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070511/ap_on_re_us/suspicious_devices
What a boon for these guys, I’m sure. As the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, even if Turner is a short a little cash for legal fees. But what about Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens? Sounds like a bit of scapegoat-ism going down… Hopefully the bonus covers it.
