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Posts from the ‘media ramblings’ Category

Aug 10

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Panning for gold in the sewer: Fun with internet critique

Friday’s post about Scott Kurtz’s take on interpreting critical feedback eventually generated a couple very interesting comments.

One thing everyone agreed upon was that that the “signal to noise” ratio for feedback (incorporating all pro/amateur/literary critique/”you suck” e-mail) for any creative work on the Internet is astoundingly low. So the question remains – as a creator of any subjective work on the Internet (comics, films, poetry, bonsai kittens) – how can one filter the responses one gets to get useful information out of the mire? Read more

Jul 30

Pssst… want to buy some unfiltered Chinese Olympic internet access?

In all the recent hooplah about China (gasp) reneging on it’s commitment to provide unfiltered Internet access for Olympic journalists, I’m quite surprised that more media outlets aren’t coming to the plate to publicaly announce that they’ll be circumventing any attempts made at censorship.

I suspect that it will come as a shock to absolutely no one that filtering the internet is almost impossible, and there are a wide range of public and private options to circumvent filtering. As well I know many (I suspect most) major media outlets use VPNs, or other secured on-line platforms to submit their stories… obtaining web content through this “protected corridor” would be trivial.

More interesting to me than the global hand-wringing going on (which gives the impression that the Chinese government has all the power in this equation) would be if more organizations would publicly come out and state that filtering web access based on URL or even content keywords would have absolutely no impact whatsoever on their operations, or their ability to access whatever information they want while in Beijing.

Heck, why isn’t a major news outlet vowing to take a stand and provide their own encrypted internet corridor for any accredited journalist who wants to use it while in Beijing? Then we’d have a story.

Perhaps, as Chris Matyszczyk posited at CNet the real censorship issue doesn’t start with the Chinese government, but with Western press reluctance to rock the boat.

[Edit 07/30/08 – Only hours later it looks like The IOC knew China had no intention of honouring their commitment – and even did a deal with them allowing this. While making the IOC seem unusually feckless, even by IOC standards, it doesn’t change my underlying position. If the media is truly outraged, let’s see them stand up and resolve the situation publically (instead of privately). I have no doubt they’d start getting tossed out of the country left and right, but it would be a lot more interesting to see the IOC try to worm it’s way out of that situation with a “well we’re only concerned about the sports themselves”.]

Jul 21

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Logo Mash-Ups

Mario Amaya’s collection of logo mash-ups and his follow up sequel have been well circulated around the internet by this point – but I noticed something interesting today for the first time.

While my initial pass through the list was just enjoyable for the novel sake of the visual puns, if I ask myself “what do I think about this company” I can get some truly stellar cognitive dissonence building up (especially in situations where Mario has combined a company with which I’ve had positive and negative experiences).

As someone who always thought that the concept of “visual branding” has been somewhat overstated – I found it interesting that by modifying the logos I no longer was entirely sure what I thought of companies that I had snap-opinions on for years. While I’m not sure this has any great insight for improving the perception of one’s brand, I now know the first thing I’d throw-out if ever asked to turn around a struggling company.

Jul 9

6 Comments

C-61: Attack of the Comments Thread

My previous post on C-61 sparked some interesting comments from Russell McOrmond (a programmer from Ottawa who raised some interesting points vis-a-vis software) and Tim Harwell (a musician from my hometown of Calgary who… just didn’t agree with a lot of what I said).

Since I know many/most of you don’t read the comments – I thought I’d take a minute to summarize a couple of points (and Tim’s latest e-mail, which I think deserves a full response as it echoes a lot of things I’ve seen both in e-mails, and on other sites about this issue.
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Jul 3

12 Comments

Bill C-61 isn’t great for producers either.

Yeah, you had to know this was coming.

So here’s the standard disclaimer – I make the entirety of my income off profits from the exploitation of copyrighted works. Far from being a piracy apologist, I believe content creators have the right to monetize their creations as much (or as little) as they like. I have walked into certain Toronto malls and seen, no hyperbole, an entire wall of near-professional quality Asian bootleg DVD’s of a film that I worked 60-hour weeks on for more than a year. I watched people (multiple) purchase said bootlegs, knowing that not a cent of that money was going to anyone who slaved with me on that film, (or the dozens of companies that put up serious money to make that film a reality). By all accounts I should be drinking the RIAA/MPAA Kool-aid and throwing a Jim Prentice party… but I’m not.

Because this bill is just bad policy for both consumers and content producers.

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Jun 30

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Confidential to Disney / Pixar PR & Marketing – A Proposed Deal Regarding WALL-E…

Presumably your corporate fiefdoms contain (somewhere) a vast staff who does nothing but Google your various interests all day, in order to quantify and relay “the buzz” of people with websites in lovely digest reports. I desperately cling to this belief (come on Google spider – hook a brother up).

I have nothing of any consequence to add to the already widespread discussion (and near-unanimous love-fest) of your current feature film. I viewed it seated next to a little girl – I’d guess she was about eight? Maybe? She was extremely tired upon arriving which troubled me as sleep deprived and cranky children seem to be an increasing trend at the late movies I frequent.

(A digression: Hey Parents! Your kids do not want to see 10pm movies. They want to be sleeping. They are children. It is your job to say things like “I want to see the movie too sweetie, but we’ll go tomorrow”. The film will still be playing then. It is a Pixar movie. It will still be playing at Christmas.)

Where was I? Read more

Jun 23

I’ll tell you where Matt is…

Ooh! Ooh! I know where he is!

… he’s all over the freaking internet and still going strong.

I remember Matt Harding’s 2005 “Dancing” video pretty clearly. A friend of the family was doing a world tour around the same time, so I’d often contrast his e-mails with what Matt was up to.

But this… this is just awesome. It’s raising the game both technically and artistically. Stupidly inspiring and sentimental, and speaks to something so primal I could watch it all day. Furthermore, Stride Gum, (who financed this whole venture) is so hands off with their branding (outside of their own site) that as soon as this is posted, I am going to walk to the convenience store on the corner and buy a bunch of their freaking gum. I don’t even like gum.

Where the Hell is Matt 2008 (thanks to MGK for the hook up… I should just start scraping his feed).

Jun 12

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Rise of the pop-culture tribes

A weird combination of Chris Sims awarding winning comic-blog-stylings and an interesting interview on Jazz FM got me thinking about the concept of tribalisim today, and how the future may be ruled by distinct groups with unique languages, customs, and idioms – based on how much they loved “Alf”.

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