*michael parekh on IT*

ON SAYING GOODBYE TO GEORGE CARLIN

SAD STUFF

George Carlin passing away at 71 over the weekend is obviously big news for his fans worldwide.  Like millions, I've been a fan of his comedy for a very long time.

It was especially ironic since my wife and I spent part of the weekend spring cleaning around the house and there were several vigorous discussions around how much stuff had accumulated in the closets.  Of course there were debates about which bits of stuff should be kept and which should go.

It all brought to mind my favorite bit by George Carlin around STUFF.  Fortunately, I was able to find it on YouTube.  It's five minutes long, and if you haven't seen it, it's a treat.  Fair warning, George has always used "salty" language:

It's a great perspective on Stuff and the real meaning of life, and one that bears reminding ourselves constantly over time. 

And these days, we've got even more digital stuff to worry about that wasn't even on the radar when George raised the very important issues around stuff.

R.I.P. George, and thanks for all the great belly-laughs.

ON JUDGING BITS AND ATOMS

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

This Reuters article highlights how difficult it is being a shopper of analog goods in terms of trying to discern quality from where things are made:

"These days, many fashionistas are still confused over what is real, what is fake, and whether a product's country of origin says anything about its quality.

Even a "made in Italy" label no longer guarantees that a bag or a pair of shoes was hand crafted by artisans in a Tuscan workshop.

Instead, the bag could have been stitched together by illegal workers in clandestine Italian factories, and the shoes assembled from plastic soles and leather shipped in from China."

The piece goes on to describe how the perception of quality differs depending on not just where a product is made, but where a buyer is coming from:

"Asian shoppers are particularly origin-conscious as French and Italian luxury goods are important status symbols in the newly affluent region. And the opinions of Asian shoppers are beginning to matter more and more as growth in more mature markets slows down.

"In Asia, in a certain segment, you can't offer a product made in China or made in Asia," said Patrizio di Marco, president and chief executive of Bottega Veneta, on the sidelines of a luxury goods conference in Tokyo."

What's funny is how perceptions are blurring in the realm of digital goods as well.  The example that comes to mind are the area codes for phone numbers, be they old-fashion land-lines, cellular lines, or internet phone (VOIP) lines. 

In a world where almost everyone has a cell phone, and the geographical location of the phone no longer matters, the area code on the phone still does.

My 917 cell phone number from New York, which is my primary number, almost always causes a double take in stores and restaurants around the country.

It's one of the reasons why vendors of internet phone numbers like Vonage, Skype, Yahoo! et al, do a thriving business in offering the area codes of your choice.  With these numbers you can be "local" to all the people that matter to you whether it's business or personal.  You can be all things to all people, for a small fee per year.

My wife was extremely chuffed last year, when she won the area code lottery while activating her new iPhone with AT&T, and getting a 212 number for a CELL-PHONE.  I of course felt gypped a few minutes later by the same phone company with my prosaic 646 assignation for my new iPhone.

It's reminiscent of the famous Seinfeld episode, "The Maid", where the status of a New Yorker was, and is still judged by whether the seven digit phone number is preceded by a 212.

I guess geography does matter, regardless of whether it's bits or atoms.  And it will for some time to come, regardless of how much technology blurs our land lives.

ON STAR TREK MUSICAL "MALARKEY"

REMEMBERING

Like millions around the world, I've been a life-long fan of all things Star Trek ever since the original series launched on TV in the 1960s.  So this sad weekend development deserves to be noted and remembered in my book.  Here's the headline item from CNN.com:

"LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Alexander "Sandy" Courage, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated arranEdit Post | Post | *michael parekh on IT* | Your Weblogs | TypePadger, orchestrator and composer who created the otherworldly theme for the classic "Star Trek" TV show, has died. He was 88."

Don't remember the original Star Trek music theme?  Let me help you with this one minute clip from YouTube:

Now Mr. Courage obviously accomplished a great deal more in his life than just this iconic theme that went onto the be the basis of every Star Trek music piece over the last four decades.  But this piece of course is what he'll be most remembered for in the mainstream consciousness.

Of course, how the piece got developed is an interesting story in itself.  Here's an account from the Washington Post:

"His fanfare-style introduction to "Star Trek," eight notes played by the brass section, followed by the wordless melody with a prominent soprano voice won him enduring recognition among generations of "Trekkies" and even casual viewers of the science fiction show.

"Star Trek" originally aired on NBC from 1966 to 1969 and has been in perennial syndication.

He told an interviewer that he never was a science-fiction fan. "I think it's just marvelous malarkey," he said. "So you write some marvelous malarkey music that goes with it."

Apparently, the show's creator, the legendary Gene Roddenberry, didn't want any modern electronic music.  So Mr. Courage had to look elsewhere for inspiration.

"To write the "Star Trek" theme, Mr. Courage thought back to a pop song from his childhood that conjured images of going into the far distance. He came up with "Beyond the Blue Horizon," popularized by Jeanette MacDonald, and featuring a fast, train-like rhythm pulsating beneath the soaring melody.

Mr. Courage adapted the idea to the "Star Trek" job, which he completed in a week. His vision of the music included a soprano singer (Loulie Jean Norman), a flute, an organ and maybe a vibraphone. But he said the show's producer, Gene Roddenberry, wanted to accentuate the female voice. When Roddenberry was done, he said, the music "sounded like a soprano solo."

And like most great show biz stories, there's an interesting twist about money, as the Washington Post piece goes on to explain:

"Burlingame, author of "TV's Biggest Hits," said Roddenberry went further to annoy Mr. Courage by adding words to the instrumental theme. The lyrics begin: "Beyond the rim of the star-light/My love is wand'ring in star flight."

"It was horrible," Burlingame said. "Courage was never consulted, but Roddenbury from that point on was entitled to take 50 percent of royalties. . . . This upset Courage, understandably, not that he wrote a lyric, but that he wrote a lousy lyric that would never be sung anywhere."

Exploiting that loop-hole, Gene Roddenberry managed to get a 50% discount on the theme for a long, long time.  Given that this is the music business, it's not anywhere that others have not gone before.

ON A NOTABLE TV NEWS MOMENT

CANDID CAMERA

This is a priceless moment in talking head political punditry and interviews, from a couple of weeks ago in case you missed it.

It's MSNBC's political talk-show host Chris Matthews asking Kevin James, a conservative radio talk show host, what Neville Chamberlain did in 1938 that tagged him an appeaser to Hitler in the history books.  The clip is 9 minutes long, but it's worth it. 

By the way, Chris Matthews' line at the end of the clip is a great punch-line.

Here's to more candid interviews on TV news, regardless of party lines.

ON LONG-AWAITED SEQUELS

MOVIE MAGIC

Indiana Jones fans of course will be lining up this holiday weekend to catch the fourth installment of the franchise, given that it's been two decades since we saw the last Indy flick back in 1989.  Regardless of the reviews, which have been lukewarm to positive, it'll be on the must-see list of even the most casual Indy fan.  As the New York Times reminds us:

" “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is a movie for boomers of all ages, though you can bet the bank that plenty of tots will be tagging along with Mom and Dad, Granny and Gramps.
Like the 1981 blockbuster “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the first in a monster franchise that has spawned two previous movie sequels, a television series, comics, novels, video games and Disney theme-park attractions, this new one was directed by Steven Spielberg, cooked up and executive produced by George Lucas (with Kathleen Kennedy) and stars Harrison Ford as the archaeologist-adventurer-sexpot with the sardonic grin, rakish fedora and suggestive bull whip."

The movie apparently brings lots of old characters back, along with a sprinkling of some new faces:

"The bad guys this time are cold war Reds first seen poking around an American military base and led by Irina Spalko. A caricature given crude, playful life by Cate Blanchett, Irina owes more than a little to Rosa Klebb, the pint-size Soviet operative played by Lotte Lenya, who took on James Bond in “From Russia With Love.”

Dressed in gray coveralls, her hair bobbed and Slavic accent slipping and sliding as far south as Australia, Ms. Blanchett takes to her role with brio, snapping her black gloves and all but clicking her black boots like one of those cartoon Nazis that traipse through earlier Indy films. She’s pretty much a hoot, the life of an otherwise drearily familiar party. Among the other invited guests are Ray Winstone, John Hurt and Shia LaBeouf, who plays Mutt, the young sidekick onboard to bring in those viewers whose parents were still in grade school when the first movie hit. Karen Allen, who played Indy’s love interest in “Raiders,” is here too, with a megawatt smile and a bit of the old spunk."

But speaking of long-awaited sequels in movie mega-franchises, we all have a new Terminator movie to look forward to soon, as Gizmodo notes:

"Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins has started production in the New Mexico deserts, with Christian Bale and Sam Worthington on board to star in the film as John Connor and Marcus Wright, respectively...

"Terminator Salvation will be set in 2018 where John Connor is fighting Skynet to ensure the future he's destined for..."

""Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins" marks the latest installment of the multi-billion dollar Terminator franchise and will be the first film in a new Terminator trilogy. The film is scheduled for a North American theatrical release May 22, 2009."

Hopefully, the second and third movies in that trilogy won't keep us waiting for a couple of decades.

ON CRICKET RE-MADE

SLICE AND DICE

The Wall Street Journal has a great story on how Cricket, one of the world's biggest sports, and almost a religion in India, is being dramatically morphed and gussied up for big-time media commercialization in that country with over a billion fans:

"A new cricket league in India is attempting to take over the sport, backed by nearly a billion dollars, loud music and cheerleaders.

The Indian Premier League, which began its first season three weeks ago, is a massive departure for cricket. In the traditional format, team members dressed in white play eight hours a day for five days, with breaks for lunch and tea.

In the new format, games last about three hours total. During breaks, spectators sing and dance along to Bollywood songs. One team flew in the Washington Redskins cheerleaders for three weeks to train its squad of dancers and perform at matches.

The league consists of eight teams based in different cities around India, and they will compete in 59 games total over six weeks. It is the first ever city-based cricket league in India and the first to allow foreign players. Foreign players make up about 35% of the league, but each team can play no more than four per match. (A team can have 11 players on the field at a time.)"

The money commitment to date is also big, as the article goes on to explain:

"Backing the teams are some of India's best-known names from business and entertainment. Mukesh Ambani, head of part of the Reliance corporate empire and one of the world's richest men, and liquor baron Vijay Mallya each paid about $112 million for a franchise. India's biggest Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan, spent $75 million along with two partners for a team in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta.

The total paid for all eight teams was more than $700 million. Sony Entertainment and Singapore-based sports agency World Sport Group paid $918 million for the 10-year broadcasting rights.

Games are also being shown globally. Willow TV, a California-based company that provides live video of cricketing events on its Web site, owns the rights to distribute the games in North and South America across television, radio and the Internet."

It's too early to tell how successful this venture will be, but there are signs that the new cricket format is attracting new viewers, especially women. 

It also remains to be seen how successful the new format and league team end up being with the broader population of Indians around the world.  In recent years, this Indian diaspora has also been a great growth market for traditional Bollywood movie fare in the form of DVDs, Pay-per-view, and theater exhibition.  Perhaps Cricket 2.0 will be as well-received around the world over time.

ON SOME FUN WITH AN APPLE AD

ZING
A few weeks ago I highlighted the new Thinkpad X300, an ultra-portable from Lenovo going head to head with Apple's MacBook Air.  It's a good competitors to Apple's ground-breaking machine, with each device offering it's own sets of compromises.
Apple of course has laid the gauntlet down for the category, forcing every competitor to fit their offering in a common , office manila envelope.  Apple's ubiquitous commercials have made that point well.
It's good to see that someone at Lenovo has a sense of humor, given this competitive parody commercial that's sprung up on the web in recent days:

It's a good response to Apple.  But to be fair, see how the X300 really fares in a manila envelope, at the end of this 5-minute video review from PC Magazine:

As they say in the review, it brings to mind OJ and his court-room antics with the infamous glove.  Apple, consider yourself zinged.

ON A BUSH REDUX

HE'S BACK

Just had to share this in case you'd missed it.  Will Ferrell returns with one of his classic George Bush impersonations with Jon Stewart no less.  It's all for a good cause.

It really starts rolling when the discussion turns to microfiche.

Hilarious five-minute bit regardless of party affiliation.

ON HOW WE BOUGHT THE WAR

ROLLING WITH IT

This documentary by PBS's Billy Moyers titled "Buying the War", is head-shaking stuff, regardless of one's party affiliation.  It changes what we think we ma know about how we came to invade Iraq.  Here's what it's about:

"Buying the War" examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what's changed?
"More and more the media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration," says THE WASHINGTON POST's Walter Pincus. "We've sort of given up being independent on our own."

In particular, the piece tries to:

"...document the reporting of Walcott, Landay and Strobel, the Knight Ridder team that burrowed deep into the intelligence agencies to try and determine whether there was any evidence for the Bush Administration's case for war."

The program is important not just because it explains how the mainstream media was lead by the nose on the "evidence trail" convincing us of the need to invade Iraq, but in understanding how sophisticated this process can be, regardless of political affiliation.  Especially since the nation was so shaken and fearful after 9/11.

Other contributing factors were the consolidation of mainstream media, and the group-think that can hypnotize otherwise rational folks.

Household media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, 60 Minutes, and even Oprah, amongst many others, got caught up in this orchestrated group-think.

In addition, the piece tries to explain how the embattled business models of mainstream media, also contributes to the situation, and leads to an unintentionally unbalanced media.

It's also an object lesson on the devolution of journalism in recent years, despite all the marvelous technologies that have sprung up over the last decade or so. 

It shows how the mainstream media, driven by economic pressures has traded expensive reporting and global news bureaus for pundits, experts and other talking heads "debating" issues on TV.

Pretty powerful stuff.

ON THE STATE OF ONLINE VIDEO

SAME OLD, SAME OLD

This spot on if somewhat depressing assessment by Techdirt, on the state of today's movie download services, is worth a quick read:

"Here's a roundup of movie-download services -- Apple TV, Vudu, Movielink, Unbox -- all of which have underperformed expectations. This won't come as a surprise to Techdirt readers, as we've panned these products before. And the reasons they've flopped are frankly pretty obvious: high prices, restrictive DRM, and no easy way to move videos to the device of your choice...

Right now, Hollywood has veto power over innovations in the video space. They've made some dumb mistakes, like charging too much and mandating the use of DRM. Unfortunately, thanks to the DMCA, competition hasn't had a chance to kick in.

People can't route around Hollywood by using DVD-ripping software the way they routed around the record labels in the 1990s using CD rippers. So if somebody has a great idea for a digital video product, they have to go begging to Hollywood before they can implement it. But Hollywood isn't run by technologists, so they make bad decisions. And because nobody else is allowed to enter the market without their permission, the whole world suffers for it."

Promising, new video startups like Joost are mired in this very dilemma.

In the meantime, the world is routing around the video content that people really want, with the "user-generated" video content found on services like YouTube.   And that may scratch the itch for a bit, but doesn't solve the long-term problem.

Video (TV and movies for sale and for rent) on Apple's iTunes, has been a bit of a bright spot in all this, even with it's DRM (digital rights management), pricing and usage restrictions.  But the selection and flexibility of use still leave a lot to be desired.

To be fair to the mainstream media industry, it's not all their fault, and it's not just about DRM and protecting old business models.  As Steve Jobs pointed out in the Q&A at Apple's recent shareholder meeting:

"...the studios are working on difficult issues with gaining clearance for content created before anyone had contemplated Internet distribution.

Existing films need to have rights lined up from talent and copyright owners who had never outlined their rights and royalties in terms of downloads, and work in those areas is accelerating."

So for all these reasons and some others, it's going to be a bit longer to the promised land in video online.  We'll have to cool our heels here for a while.

But at some point, the tipping point will be reached, the time when the amount of professional video content online, with all the restrictions, becomes so overwhelming relative to the underwhelming demand for the content in that form, that the restrictions will start to give way to new compromises on mutually workable business models.

And that time though a bit far away, is not that long from today.  My guess, two to three years from now.  What do you think?

ON "FOLLOW-ME" MEDIA AND 27-HOUR DAYS

HOLY GRAILS

A lot of discussion and debate has ensued following Steve Jobs' 2008 Macworld keynote a couple of days ago, with the new Macbook Air getting more than it's fair share of it (see Techmeme discussion).

But what caught my eye the most was this teeny, unheralded feature on Apple's new digital download rental option for Hollywood movies and TV shows.  It was described by the New York Times' David Pogue as  follows:

"And you can start watching a movie on the computer, and finish it on your iPod or iPhone."

So for three or four bucks, the library or new release movie you just downloaded, could be watched on different Apple devices as you go through your day.  It's the most reasonably priced version of what I call "Follow-Me" media, available to date.

Apple also announced revamped software for it's Apple TV product, so I presume this also means that you could start to watch your rental movie on your big-screen TV via Apple TV, then later watch it on your computer, iPod and iPhone, as you move through your day.

The phone and cable companies have been pursuing the so-called "three-screen" strategy for some time now, whereby digital content can be delivered to a customer on the phone, the PC or their TV.  Witness this AT&T media kit and TV ad for an example.

In fact the AT&T Trickplays TV Ad is a demonstrative visualization of what I'm referring to as "Follow-Me" media, even though the 15 second commercial it not quite the likely way a viewer would watch a movie (sorry, couldn't find an embedded YouTube video clip of the commercial...I tried).

What AT&T doesn't clarify in the commercial of course is that under current "defensive" economics of the media industry, the consumer would likely have to buy each version of the movie, for each of the "screens" separately, in effect paying for it several times over...until of course the Apple service announced this week.

But "Follow-Me" media is easy to dramatize in a TV commercial, but a lot harder to make it really work for mainstream customers in the real world.

It's not just technology, but a lot of business models across a number of industries, and stakeholders that have to come together, before true Follow-me media is really possible at affordable, mainstream prices.

The Apple rental service is likely the closest we've come to this vision, at least on paper.  And it's not just limited to download services.

As part of the new service, several major studios have agreed to bundle an iPod/iPhone version of a movie or TV show in a DVD package a customer would buy or rent at retail. 

So in theory, one could start to watch the DVD on TV, then be able to continue to watch the iPod/iPhone version on the mobile device later.  Not sure how it all works in terms of the ease of transferring the content from one device to another.  I look forward to trying how it actually works in real life. 

And "Follow-Me" media is not just about movies and TV shows.  It could also apply to other media like books.

So imagine you buy the latest Harry Potter best-seller book and it comes with two additional digital versions, the "e-book" version and the audio-book.  And the product is designed to allow you to start reading the physical book at night, fall asleep, wake up the next morning, continue to listen to the book in the car commuting to work, and later continue reading it on your e-book reader like the Amazon Kindle, Apple iPhone or other hand-held device at lunch.  Then of course finish reading the physical book later at night.

Of course ideally, there'd be technology built-in so that the media would "remember" where you left off in each version during the day, in the form of auto-bookmarks.

It's a far different world today of course, where the defensive economics of various industries force the consumer to shell out three times the price of the book (or more), for the physical, audio, and the ebook versions.

And if they could get away with it, the publishers would love to put time limits on each version so that they could keep charging you for the stuff again and again.

Speaking of time-limits, especially when it comes to digital downloads of movies and TV shows, we need to re-think the 24-hour downloads that the industry is offering customers to date, including Apple with it's announcement this week.

A reader to David Pogue's blog captured it best in this statement of the problem and solution:

"The 27-Hour Day

This e-mail message blew my mind with its logic…

Hi David–You know what this country needs? A good 27-hour on-demand viewing time-frame.

Typically, you get 24 hours to watch your on-demand movie. Here’s what happens time and again to my wife and me. We get the kids down, and about 8, we click an on-demand movie to watch. I get sleepy by 9:30 (I work hard, okay?) and turn it off but I want to see the rest of the movie the next day.

Next day, I get the kids down at 8 and—poof—the rest of the movie has disappeared. If it’s free, I have to fast forward through the movie (which is particularly slow and annoying). If I paid for it, then it’s particularly enraging.
With a 27 hours to view the show, all problems solved.

Only you can mount the sort of sensical (sic), nationwide campaign that’s needed."

We can all so relate to this problem, which has totally slipped through the cracks of every industry offering on-demand or digital download services.

I think this is one of the most brilliant innovations I've heard so far in 2008.  Sign me up for the campaign.

We'll eventually get to true "Follow-me" media and 27-hour days...it's only a matter of time.  But there's going to be a lot of false starts and frustrating product/service offerings before then.

Patience. 

Just like the 2-3 weeks I have to wait to get the MacBook Air I pre-ordered* two days ago.

* Yes, the SSD version, I couldn't resist.  Please don't tell my wife...just yet.

ON AN UNBALANCED MEDIA

EXTREME WAVES

Driving to a meeting this morning, I decided to catch up on the morning's political news on the news stations on my Sirius radio.  Flipping through the channels, I saw channel 144, titled "Patriot".  This of course, was a conservative, right-wing talk radio channel, with a guy called Mike Church holding court under the moniker "Sirius Patriot" (get it?). 

Just below the "Patriot" channel, was a channel titled "Left".

First question that went through my mind,  Why is the presumably liberal radio channel called "Left", when the diametrically opposite channel can get away with calling itself "Patriot" instead of "Right"?

Since when did one side of the vapid, over-the-top partisan combatants in America get to expropriate a wonderful word like Patriot to describe their corner of politics?

Why can't moderates call themselves Patriots?  Or anybody else in America? 

When did Patriot become the the property of the right-wing fear and hate-mongers (as opposed to the left-wing fear and hate-mongers who've also done their share of damage from their corner?)

Where do moderates and centrists go for news and talk on mainstream media?

Why are there channels just for the right and left?

What about the all-important center?

I guess now we know why we're called the "silent" majority.

Anyway, I listened to the Mike Church dude for a few seconds...he was giving a weather forecast in Iran, as follows:

"So, I understand it snowed heavily in Iran yesterday.  One question, how does one know when snow falls on a turban?"

He of course started chuckling following his best attempt at a Don Imus' "nappy-headed" humor.

It was of course OK to do that since Iranians are not part of a political and advertising constituency in America that bring the world of hurt on his head that befell his peer Don Imus.

But as I flipped past the "Patriot" channel, the thought that went through my mind is whatever happened to feeling good about being a moderate conservative and a Republican?

Why do I feel like taking a shower after flipping through a conservative radio show or watching Lou "Broken Borders" Dobbs doing his "news" cast on CNN?

I have no problem with the freedom of these folks to say what they want on the air.  I just have a problem with them doing it on airwaves, cable and satellite channels that are regulated, auctioned and apportioned for the "public good". 

Deregulate the airwaves and other communications channels and then we can have a true  free-for-all for ideas across the political spectrum.  Put it on an even playing field.

Give the free market an opportunity to dilute the bigoted bilge down to a far less poisonous trickle.

ON ULTIMATE SPENDY DVD SETS AND STORAGE

DIGITAL DREAMS

For lovers of TV and movie fare, Amazon has an enticing list to peruse titled "The Ultimate List of Spendy DVDs".  These are not your average boxed sets of DVDs, but the "Ultimate" sets. 

For example, top on this list is "Seinfeld-The Complete Series", which is every Seinfeld episode done of course, plus a lot of extras.  Amazon's selling it for around $205.  Here's what it includes:

• DVD Features:
  • Available Audio Tracks:  English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
  • Features 32 DVDs with all 180 episodes
  • More than 104 hours of amazing extras
  • The Official Coffee Table Book: a 226-page bound anthology filled with photos, quotes, and trivia from every episode
  • Bonus disc featuring the reunion of the cast plus Larry David on the ninth anniversary of the series finale
  • Packaged in a handy collector's case that will look great on your shelf
  • Documentaries for all nine seasons
  • Inside looks
  • Not That There's Anything Wrong With That (bloopers)
  • In the vault (deleted scenes)
  • Yada Yada Yada (commentaries)
  • "Sein-Imation"
  • Notes about nothing

That's about $6.40/DVD for 32 DVDs of entertainment about nothing.
And that's just the first set. 

Others in the list include the complete and ultimate sets of everything from James Bond to the X-Files to Star Trek (most of the series) to Ray Romano.

It's not just TV or movie franchises from a specific brand title.

How about the UA (United Artists) 90th Anniversary collections of 90 movies for $650?

Or the Warner Mega Classics Collection of for $3,800?

A veritable cornucopia of pop American culture.

Amazon's even got a convenient button at the bottom if one wanted to buy all forty "ultimate spendy DVD box-sets.  Just add them to the shopping cart with one click.

It'd run you about $14,000, or an average price of $350 per "ultimate spendy" set.

Wouldn't be too portable though, with 40 "ultimate splendy" DVD sets easily filling up most of the bookcases in the average home library.

I did some back of the envelope calculations based on some assumptions.  Here some resulting observations:

1.  Assuming that the average set has about 30 DVDs, this would be about 1200 DVDs.
2.  If each DVD takes about 2 hours to watch, and one sets aside that much time per day to watch a DVD, one would be done with this collection in a little over 3 years.   One set would take 60 hours of non-stop viewing.  We're talking about 2400 hours of programming here.
3.  Each physical DVD would cost about $12 per DVD.  Note that most of these are regular DVDs, not HD or Blu-Ray High Definition discs, which typically retail for more per movie or TV show.
5.  If each DVD represents about 4.5 Gb of data, the whole collection would be about 5.4 Terabytes. 

With hard drive vendors like Seagate promising 37 Terabyte hard drives by 2010, we may be actually be able to put these drives to use.  As this piece in Blorge.com points out:

"Seagate says a 300 Terabit hard drive, or one that stores 37 Terabytes, will be available to purchase by 2010. That means over 6000 Blu-ray discs on a single hard drive!

The way technology moves forward, 37 TB on a 3.5-inch hard drive may not seem so big in 2010. But here in 2007, it’s a lot of data, especially when Seagate’s largest single hard drive capacity is a paltry 750 GB in comparison."

We could probably get an iPod that'd have a 5-6 Terabte hard drive by then.

Consider this prediction by a Google executive at a conference in Asia a few days ago, via Macworld UK:

"In the foreseeable future, all the world's content will fit in the palm of your hand, according to Google, which made some fascinating IT predictions at the 2007 Captains of Industry Conference held in Singapore in November.

The forecasts came from Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, the vice president of Google's Asia Pacific and Latin America Operations. She told the conference, entitled "Innovation Drives Growth & Creates Opportunities in the Marketplace" that...

"...if this trend continues, and the cost of storage continues to decrease, we estimate that somewhere around 2020, all the world's content will fit inside an iPod, and all the world's music would sit in your palm as early as 2015," Cassidy surmised, "rendering the CD format unnecessary."

We'd better get the media industry working on how to price that ultimate splendy collection.

ON A NEW LATE NIGHT SHOW

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

This two and a half minute promo for a new, late night comedy show, Frank TV, on TBS made a good enough first impression for me to check it out. 

The host is Frank Caliendo, a terrific comedian who does great impressions.  The trailer off YouTube gives a sense:

It's a skit-driven show that seems promising.  This Seinfeld 2027 skit is a good example:

The show is likely affected by the Writer's strike like most other late-night shows, but think I'll have to Tivo it.

ON THE STUDIOS vs. WRITERS CHESS GAME

HARD-BALL

This LA Times article from Dec. 11th, titled "The Big Picture:  In the strike, the studios are playing to win", is one of the best piece I've seen on the Hollywood writer's strike. 

Particularly, because it outlines the longer-term chess game being played by both sides, and explaining why for now, the studios seem to be playing a much better opening game.  Some excerpts on that to highlights the points:

"DESPITE what they say about global warming, it's going to be a long, cold winter for the writers of Hollywood. The studios pretty much made it official Friday, when they walked away from the negotiating table after giving the Writers Guild an abrupt "put up or shut up" ultimatum. Considering that the studios were asking the writers to give up much of their core Internet residuals proposal, there was little left to negotiate.

The studios' message was obvious: They're going to play hardball. Believing they have comparatively little to lose by letting the strike drag on, the studios will try to weaken the guild by letting writers spend Christmas out of work while studio operatives sow seeds of discord among the membership, hoping to persuade some high-profile writers to cross the line and go back to work."

It goes on to highlight the chess moves ahead:

"The studios' behavior appears shortsighted unless you look at the negotiations in a broader light. While attention is focused on the writers strike, a bigger confrontation looms down the road. No one expects that the studios will have much of a problem settling with the Directors Guild of America, whose contract is up June 30, 2008. But the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract is also up that day, is another matter.

The largest union, with 120,000 members, SAG also has a relatively new president, Alan Rosenberg, who came to power after promising a much more aggressive stance about new media revenues. For the first time, SAG also brought in an outsider, former NFL Players Assn. executive Doug Allen, to be its executive director, another sign that the guild is preparing for a hard-nosed negotiation."

The studios are also playing hardball on the PR front, as the article pointedly illustrates:

"...the studios last week hired Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, former aides and advisors to Bill Clinton and Al Gore with reputations for canny damage control and bare-knuckled attacks on political adversaries.

It is widely believed that the new consultants had a hand in a recent studio proposal designed to portray the studios as willing negotiators. Although it offered precious few concessions, it was labeled a "new economic partnership," which brings to mind the time the Bush administration described a pro-logging proposal as a "healthy forests initiative."

And it offers some advice to the writer's in the face of this strategy:

"For the writers, their best defense now is a good offense. As I've argued before, their future lies in becoming more entrepreneurial. This would also be good strategy for future strike negotiations. With the studios stuck churning out reality sludge, the barriers for entry for an outsider are lower than ever. What's to stop Google, Yahoo or Mark Cuban from striking a deal with a top TV show runner who has a proven ability to create characters and stories that would bring eyeballs to the Internet?"

From where I sit, the internet, though very important in the long-term, is still not robust enough an opportunity to offer meaningful, short-term income to the writer's through deals with various internet outlets.  Although, as the article points out, it would be a good symbolic gesture.

For now the studios seem to have the tactical and strategic advantages in this chess game.

What we're seeing here is a long-term war being fought with many battles to come.  In the meantime, as ordinary television viewers, we may all get a chance to finally make a dent in all the books we've been meaning to read.

ON MORE ANTI-CONSUMER MEDIA LEGISLATION

HERE WE GO AGAIN

No, this is not a picture of Santa Claus before he gets all gussied up to bring goodies down chimneys.  Rather, it's Congressman Howard Berman, who as Ars Technica explains:

" Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), also known as Congressman Hollywood, is one of the most powerful members of the House when it comes to intellectual property issues, so when he muses aloud about "revisiting" the DMCA, people listen.

Unfortunately, Berman wants to reform the DMCA because it doesn't go far enough, and his ideas sound like they're ripped right from the pages of the Big Content playbook."

Read on for a full list of how he'd make the DMCA even more onerous for consumers, giving some Christmas cheer to the big ol' Media companies.

Makes for some not so cheerful holiday reading.

ON THE FORCE OF FARCE

BLURRY LINES

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has a tongue-in-cheek letter to Iranian President Ahmadinejad, purportedly written by the Head of Iranian Intelligence. 

It's a hypothetical and farcical take on what such a correspondence would report about U.S. policies and directions. 

Most of it was just ho-hum until it came to this little bit:

"We have to note that obtaining open-source intelligence in America has become more difficult, because traditional news shows have become more comedic and more comedic news shows more authoritative.

For instance, CNN’s nightly business report is hosted by a man named “Dobbs.”

Real journalists come on his show and present transparently propagandistic stories about immigration and trade and then he fulminates about them, much the way our ayatollahs used to do about “Satanic Americans” on late-night Iranian TV.

So viewers have no real idea what’s happening in the U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, at 11 p.m., something called “The Daily Show,” which appears on Comedy Central, has fake journalists presenting what turns out to be the real news."

Ironic that an op-ed piece written in jest also hits the nail on the head when it comes to the state of our news media.

ON GIVE A GARMIN CAMPAIGN

PITCH PERFECT

Don't know about you, but this 30-second Garmin commercial for the holidays hits just the right notes of the warm and fuzzies for me:

Here's a darker version of the ad with the same musical theme.  How many of us can't relate to this one:

Garmin's previous ads have not all been great (see this Superbowl ad as an example).

But this holiday season, they've found their stride.  Well done.

ON A COOL MAC AD

SEEN AND NOT HEARD

This 30-second Mac vs. PC ad from Apple is interesting in that it's written not for TV but for use in online publications.  Titled "Don't Give Up on Vista", it meets the foremost requirement for an ad in this series, be funny:

And it is that, as seen embedded with a PC Magazine article.  I've seen it used in other online publications, like the Wall Street Journal when I first saw it. 

Besides being funny the ad is notable to me for two other reasons:

1.  It's designed to constantly run as a video WITHOUT sound.  It's got a polite "Click here for sound" button if the reader decides to actually listen to the commercial. 

That's great online etiquette in my book.  More video commercials online should follow this example.  Commercials with sound that start to play whenever a viewer surfs to a web page is bad form in my book.

2.  The ad's also notable in how it creatively combines a banner ad with a non-adjacent video commercial.  That's thinking different.

Now that the Clio awards, the Oscars for commercials, accept web ads, this one deserves a nomination in my book.

ON CURRENCY CLASHES

BREAKING OUT

This is one of the more innovative financial services ads I've seen in a while.  Titled "The Arena", it'll keep you scratching your head trying to guess what it's trying to hawk.

It's not as heart-warming as the Mastercard ad I highlighted a few weeks ago, but it does depict market forces with a sense of humor.  Well done.

P.S.  The next version of this ad could have Cowboy Dollar trying to free Mandarin Renminbi from it's cage, and join the fight.

ON MUSIC AND LARGE NUMBERS

DIMINISHING RETURNS

In the spirit of my post a few days ago, I've been trying to get my music organized online in recent days.

While ripping some new CDs into iTunes the other day, a tedious chore at any time, a recurring thought came to me...wouldn't it be great to have all the world's published music on an iPod? 

How much storage would that take?

A quick Google search brought up this great post by ZDNet's Robin Harris, who asked himself the same question a few days ago in a post titled "The Paradise of Infinite Music":

"Infinity is bigger than you think, padawan
How much music has been recorded by humanity? No one knows for sure, but here’s an approximation: a lot!

The iTunes music store reports they have over 6,000,000 songs, not including the Beatles. But let’s start there.

Coming in 2017 - the 24 terabyte iPod!
The largest current iPod is 160 gigabytes. According to Apple’s bonded and insured marketing it will hold “up to” 40,000 songs, presumably at Apple’s anemic 128 KB AAC encoding, or 4 MB per song. That equals 24,000,000,000,000 - 24 TB - of storage, today."

Yowza!  All the personal storage I own today in the form of various hard drives, USB sticks, Solid State Drives AND all my iPods don't add up to a quarter of that.  Maybe they will by 2017.

But then I thought about the question from another angle.

What good is it having all the world's music, or even just iTunes' 6 million tracks, if one doesn't have the time to listen to them?

At 3 minutes a track, 6 million tracks add up to 34 years of listening, without any coffee-breaks.

I don't know about you, but it takes me a little while just finding the tracks I want to listen to;  assume it takes a minute to find the track one wants.  So that's over 11 years of SEARCHING for the music one wants JUST in the iTunes library...today.

Which all comes down the obvious...in a world of practically infinite choices in music, the biggest problem will be finding the time to listen to the music you want.

The second biggest problem will be finding the music you want.

Technology can't do much about the first problem, but the second problem sure looks like an opportunity for existing and future search engines, aggregation sites, and distributed social network services.

And one doesn't live just on music alone of course.

We haven't even started discussing how much storage and time it'd take to view all recorded TV shows, movies, and other recorded material.

Oyvay!  I think I'll just go read a book.

ON APPLE GIVETH IN...FINALLY

PRAISE BE TO JOBS

Well, a lot of recently wound-up Apple geeks and fans should breath easier today. 

Apple is inching back from the Dark Side and opening up it's blessed iPhone AND iPod Touch to developers with an SDK in February. 

Techmeme's front page runneth over with all the giddy celebration (image source).

And Apple announced this with a missive from Steve Jobs no less, on it's "Hot News" page. 

Furthermore Steve, or should I say "Real Steve Jobs" (aka RSJ), almost seemed to be channeling Fake Steve Jobs (aka FSJ) in his quasi-blog entry:

"Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.

We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users.

With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers."

Even his "blog entries" have an implicit "One more thing" in them:

"P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]"

Once a show man, always a show man.

Of course we still don't know if this is something Apple had been planning all along, or is it something in reaction to all the "closed iPhone" backlash from geeks and fans in recent weeks.  It's kind of like the last-minute rebate to early iPhone buyers, following the backlash to the very quick price cuts the iPhone recently.

We'll have to wait for the answers to both questions in the fullness of time.

One has to admit that Apple's been pretty "generous" lately, what with them also announcing price cuts on their DRM-free tracks, along with an expansion of that part of it's inventory on iTunes yesterday.

Now my only major wish on the iPod/iPhone front is a hard-drive based iPod Touch and an iPhone by the end of the year, to go with all the other goodness.

RSJ, you listening? FSJ?

ON LIVING THROUGH A MUSIC REVOLUTION

PAINFULLY FUN

Anecdotally, it has all the makings of a major trend.  First Radiohead decided to forgo a major recording contract for their new album In Rainbows, and distribute it directly via their website (see Fred Wilson's take on the album).  Then, some other established Acts announced that they'll try something similar.

And today of course, the major papers and sites are covering Madonna's nine-figure deal with a concert promoter for her next major albums, in lieu of re-upping her recording contract. 

Echoes of Howard Stern and Sirius not so long ago.

Anecdotally, music discovery and consumption has been changing for me too. 

So many of the artists and songs I've discovered, sampled, and then bought for my iPods and Sonos networks have been through watching TV shows and commercials.  They've somehow become the new radio in recent times.

The rest have been through music blogs like the Hype Machine.

There are so many of them, and it's hard to keep on top of it all.

Revolutions can be good things when they're over, but they're hell when you're living through them.

Ironically, buying music has become so much more hard work, even though albums can be downloaded in the blink of an eye.

If more acts go the way of Radiohead, you'll have to remember which sites to go for which music.  As it is, I'm still having difficulty buying the Radiohead album due to what seems to be high traffic loads on the site.

Once you get the tracks/albums you want, you then have to worry about which tracks will play on which devices, both in the home, on the road.  Which MP3 player will play which tracks?  Are the tracks compatiable with the player in your car?

Then it's the question of managing all the digital downloads.

Did you buy them through iTunes, Amazon, Yahoo!, eMusic, Rhapsody, or Microsoft?  Each one stores stuff in different folders by default.

Are they MP-3 tracks with no DRM or if they have DRM, which tracks have which DRM system?

Which PCs hold the various libraries?  Are they all constantly synced and backed up?

Oh, and did I remember to rip that new pile of CDs from Amazon into both Windows Media and iTunes formats (don't ask).

Of course, none of the music libraries can be managed easily from one network drive. 

Even Apple expects their rabid users to jump through all kinds of hoops to make sure the music in the iTunes library on the Mac or PC is synced with the iTunes library that's the back up on the network server.   "It can be done, but it's not an officially supported feature", intoned the Mac Genius at the local Apple store.

And don't forget about the iTunes library on the PC, since the wife uses a Windows laptop instead of a Mac.

And of course iTunes libraries on a network server won't talk easily to iTunes on BOTH Windows and Mac PCs, due to different hard drive storage formats (needed a two-hour trip to a Mac Genius at the local Apple store to figure that out).

And then even when you do discover new music on sites like the Hype Machine, you realize that many of them are "covers" by new bands (bands doing their versions of old, classic standbys), that you can't buy legally yet at any store online or off...of course, you spend 15 minutes just checking to see if you can find that track on half a dozen online stores.  Talking about chasing needles in a bunch of haystacks.

Of course, you can always enjoy live performances of the tracks on YouTube, like this cover of Cupid by Amy Winehouse, or this version of Careless Whispers by The Gossip (top-ranked on the Hype Machine today after the Radiohead In Rainbow tracks).

So you have to make sure to write them down the tracks on a To-do list with a tickler to remind yourself to check if they're for sale in a month or so, when you're next in the mood to buy some music.

Of course you can always download SOME of the tracks from some web-site found through a music blog.  But then you're worried about the music industry gun slingers slapping you with a law-suit and/or infecting your computer with a virus attached to that tempting little MP3 file.

If you do find a track you CAN buy and download legally, you then have to remember to make sure it's copied over to all the various online libraries that you have to maintain (see above).

And before you tell me that I'm making all of this way too complicated, as my wife has already suggested several times, do let me state that there is some well-thought out method to this madness. 

The civilians in the household don't appreciate the complexity entailed in the simplest request, as when my wife requested I play Billy Joel's Piano Man via the Sonos in the upstairs living room.   Of course it happened to be the ONE CD I must have missed ripping when I was methodically trying to rip several hundred CDs into the network server a few months ago.

So rather than say "No, honey, I can't find the track in our library", of course I buy it for a buck on iTunes, even though I know we have at least two copies of the CD somewhere in the house.  It plays instantly making the wife happy, but of course it rankles having to pay yet again for the same song again, and again.

If any of you can relate with EVERYTHING I'm touching on in this post, AND still have a suggestion or two to ease the pain, then I'm all eyes and ears.

Until then, or until this stuff gets easier over time, I'll continue to maintain that it's tough staying on top of it all as a music fan, in the middle of a revolution.

And forget it if you're just a mainstream, casual music fan.

Almost makes one miss the simpler days of Casey Kasem and the weekly Top Forty on the radio, and Tower Records.

And I haven't even mentioned keeping on top of favorite TV shows and movies yet in the midst of their respective revolutions.

ON ACKNOWLEDGING SOME WONDERS OF THE WORLD

PROSAIC WONDERS

During some late-night channel surfing, I chanced upon a travel show on TV showing the wonders of Northern Ireland. 

Normally, I would probably have clicked right through it, in my partly insomniac condition.  But this show was in glorious HD, and the story had to do with some pretty amazing images of a UNESCO World Heritage site called the Giant's Causeway. 

Of course, the information provided by the narrator wasn't enough, since the program quickly moved onto to other points in Northern Ireland.  But I quickly typed in "Giant's Causeway" into a Wikipedia search window on my laptop, and was rewarded with this:

"The Giant's Causeway (or Irish: Clochán na bhFómharach^[1]) is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns resulting from a volcanic eruption. It is located on the North East coast of Northern Ireland, about 3 kilometres (2 miles) north of the town of Bushmills.

It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, and a National Nature Reserve in 1987 (by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland). In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, the Giant's Causeway was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom. The Giant's Causeway is owned and managed by the National Trust.

The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal, however there are some with four, five, seven and eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres (36 ft) high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places."

While seeing these images at first blush, one wonders how this could be a natural phenomenon and not a man-made structure, so long ago.  In fact, the Wikipedia entry even has a wonderful, local fairy tale legend on how the "Giant's Causeway" came into being.

A couple of decades ago, seeing something like this on TV, I would have chalked it up as something interesting, to be investigated further when I next had the time to look it up in the Encyclopedia in the library.  A decade ago,  I would have put it off until I had a chance to look it up in the Encyclopedia on a "multi-media" CD-ROM.

But this was 2007, and I had a laptop right next to me at 3 a.m., with a Wikipedia entry written by several contributors generous with their time and knowledge.  The entry went on to explain:

Similar structures

"Although the basaltic columns of the Giant's Causeway are impressive, they are not unique. Basalt columns are a common volcanic feature, and they occur on many scales (faster cooling produces smaller columns).

Other notable sites include Fingal's Cave in Scotland, the Garni gorge in Armenia, the Cyclopean Isles near Sicily, Devils Postpile National Monument in California, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, Santa Maria Regla Basalt Prisms in Hidalgo, Mexico, the "Organ Pipes" formation on Mount Cargill in New Zealand, the giant "Rocha dos Bordões" ("Rod Rock") formation in Flores (Azores), at Gành Đá Đĩa in the Phú yên province of Vietnam^[8], and the "Columnar Cape" (Russian: Mis Stolbchaty) on Kunashir, the southernmost of the Kurile Islands in Russia."

Again, this being 2007, I opened up each of those sites mentioned in the entry above, in separate tabs in my Firefox browser.  And sure enough, these natural structures do seem to occur in quite a few places around the world.  No legends, no mystery...just some wonderful acts of nature. 

The picture above shows some place called "Devil's Postpile" National monument next door here in California.  This wonder had it's own man-made, folkloric story concocted around something that seemed so unique and unexplainable at the time.

These structures are yet another natural wonder that don't seem that way at all at first blush.  Kind of like the much larger structures I described in the post on the "Grand Canyons of China" back in July.

And it took me all of five minutes to learn about all these amazing places around the world, based on a random, chance, clicking through the cable channels on TV, on late night.

A decade ago, this might have take me 30 minutes to learn...two decades ago, an hour, maybe more.

There's no big deal about my experience.  Countless people today experience similar moments of serendipitous, sometimes mundane, insights via the internet every day.

But this experience made me step back and not take it for granted in this instance.  And recognize how far things have come, while most of us continue to click through the channels on late-night TV. 

It made me acknowledge again this man/woman-made wonder we call the internet and wonder how this experience might be different in another twenty years for someone else at three in the morning.

ON THE APPLE "CELLPHONE'S DEAD" STRATEGY

JUST THE BEGINNING

Back in June, after the release of the iPhone, I asked the following question:

"Wonder how long Apple will wait before unveiling new video iPod models with the screen and touch features of the iPhone sans the phone features. 

I'll start the pool with a guess of three months, with a new line-up in time for the holiday season.  Any other takers?"

Apple didn't disappoint, despite some doubts in July, judging from their total refresh of the iPod line today, including the iPod Touch, which is an iPhone without the phone.  If you missed all the hub-bub, you can read all about it on Techmeme, and see Steve Jobs' keynote here.

The most striking moment in the keynote for me, was this slide from Steve's presentation, captured at the right moment by Gizmodo. 

While demonstrating the new iPod Touch, Steve chose to play a music video by Beck, titled "Cellphone's Dead" (click for larger image...You can watch the full music video here on YouTube).

Given that nothing in a Steve Jobs happens by accident, the choice of this video is telling. 

It subtly reminds everyone that the days of thinking of phones, be they wired or wireless, are almost over. 

Sure, Apple is committed to the iPhone and it's multi-year partnership with AT&T in the U.S., and the carriers they partner with in Europe on the iPhone next month, and Asia next year.

But in the long-term, Steve is reminding us that the iPhone is the transitional device.  He keeps reminding us that the iPhone at it's core is "the best iPod ever".

And if you think long and hard about the rich internet capabilities of the iPod Touch with it's Wifi, built-in Safari browser, and cool internet applications like the iTunes Wifi Music store, YouTube, and