*michael parekh on IT*

ON A VIDEO HOMAGE RE-IMAGINED

ROCKS AND ROLLS

One can't be too sure about most things these days, but one thing that is almost a sure thing is that the query "#TBRB" is going to be one of the top trending topics on Twitter within a day or two of September 9th.  TBRB, as Dan Neil of the LA Times explains, stands for "The Beatles: Rock Band", and

"... will consume much of the industry's advertising bandwidth this summer ahead of its Sept. 9 release.
A collaboration between MTV Games' Harmonix and the Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd., TBRB -- which had its press debut at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles this month -- lets players stand in the Beatles' pointy Italian boots, singing and playing along on peripherals fashioned to look like Paul McCartney's Hofner bass and Ringo Starr's Ludwig drum kit. That's coolness measured in Kelvins."

The reason this piece merits a complete read in my view is this description of how the game is introduced to millions who are both familiar, and not too familiar with what made the "Fab Four" so cool:

"Summing up the Beatles' story is no easy task, and yet -- as per the conventions of video game design -- a summing up of the story, a reprise of the narrative world, must be built into the game itself. These mini-movies are called "cinematics," and they usually appear when the game is booted up. They are also crucial parts of a game's advertising campaign, amounting to online commercials that air endlessly and freely on YouTube and Hulu. These films are a rare instance of meritocracy in advertising art; the better they are, the more they get watched.
For TBRB, Harmonix called on London's Passion Pictures and director Pete Candeland, who have created one of the most beautiful and compelling animated sequences I have ever seen, a pocket masterpiece that in its surrealistic bravura is worthy of "Sgt. Pepper" and "Yellow Submarine." It's also startling in its economy, telling the Beatles' saga in 2:45 minutes. Not bad for a video game."

He goes on to describe in detail how this piece is laid out, and is worth reading even though it may be a bit of a spoiler when we all get to see the clip on YouTube, and when the game is out.   Sounds like it's quite a bit of work, and does it's subject ample justice.

ON GRASS-ROOTS ADVERTISING

FROM THE HEART

With the exploding popularity of social networks and social tools to leverage them, the question arises...what if consumers produced their own ads for products or services they really cared about? What would these "user-generated" ads look like?

Certainly, this movement has already started a few years ago, with marketers in recent SuperBowls fielding ads conceived by users.

But what if it was even more grass-roots than that? Might it look something like this ad done by a fan of Trader Joe Supermarkets? With his Blackberry? Take a look:

Who knows, the song may even become a standalone hit, like some of the tunes from those Apple commercials.  And they'd give a whole different twist to Fan Pages on social networks like Facebook.

ON ROLLING WITH MERCY

VIDEOS THAT RHYME

One of my favorite ways to pass the time on a treadmill is watching music videos on an iPod.  The last few weeks, this video by Duffy, performing her hit single "Mercy" has been getting constantly repeated in my work outs.  If you haven't seen the video and/or heard the song, here it is via YouTube.

Somewhere around the sixth or seventh repeat, it hit me. 

The video was reminding me of another one of my all time favorite music videos from over twenty years ago, Steve Winwood's Roll with it, Baby.

Both have very cool songs set in  dance joints that really starts jumping as the singer gets going.

As they'd say on American Bandstand so very long ago, both songs have a beat, and you can dance to it.  And then some.  Recommended.

ON MY FAVORITE iPHONE GAME

TOTAL HIT

Like so many iPhone geeks, I'd been waiting for this long-anticipated game to be released and it doesn't disappoint.  IGN has a review that puts it in context and explains:

"A few years ago, an oft-asked question at mobile games conferences was, "Where is mobile's Mario?"

It was essentially shorthand for the eternal search for the killer app, the game that brings serious heat to the platform that hosts it. For the NES, that was Super Mario Bros.

For the Genesis, it was Sonic the Hedgehog. Xbox had Halo. Unfortunately, mobile never really had a killer app; the closest it got was Tetris or Bejeweled, both perennial bestsellers. If the iPhone even needs a killer app is open to debate -- after all, the platform needs little help getting attention. But now it has one now, whether it wants it or not.

Rolando, developed by Hand Circus and published by ngmoco, is a brilliant puzzle-adventure game, loaded with fab personality. You must save the pop-up book Rolandoland from an invasion of nasty little shadow creatures by using your benevolent powers as the deity-like Finger. (That's what the little roly-poly Rolandos refer to you as.)

You can manipulate objects in the world, such as twisting windmills or releasing bombs from little storage boxes. But the main action is tilting. Since the Rolandos are little balls, you tilt your iPhone from side to side, rolling your friends ever closer to the exit inside each obstacle-filled stage. Each stage has a required number of Rolandos that must escape if you want to unlock the next stage."

This YouTube review of Rolando provides a glimpse of the game in action.

At $9.99 a copy, the App is not inexpensive in the universe of iPhone games.  The game has immense amount of replay value, and comes with a music soundtrack that I'd buy separately if available.  Available only on the iPhone and the iPod Touch, it's a game I'd highly recommend.

ON THE NEW SOUNDS OF CHRISTMAS

YET AGAIN

Another year, another Christmas morn. 

The gifts have all been opened and heart-felt holidays wishes have been expressed all around. 

Of course one  of the most popular gifts everywhere this year has made an appearance in our household, the Guitar Hero World Tour (Wii Edition).  As I type this, my sister-in-law (aka "The Doctorette" in the game), is treating us all to a rendition of Steely Dan's "Do it again" , to the crackle of a roaring fire *. 

It's one of my favorite all-time songs, and of course I'm not alone in this sentiment.

But it's something familiar heard and seen in a whole different way, on a very special day.

Here's what it looks and sounds like, courtesy of a contributor on YouTube, sans crackling fire. 

Merry Christmas everyone, and the warmest wishes for the Holidays.

* Image source.

ON MAGRITTE REMEMBERED

NOW YOU SEE IT...

Trust Google to celebrate the birthday of Rene Magritte, one the iconic surrealist painters of the 20th century, and a personal favorite, with the stylized Google logo on the left.
The logo of course refers to Magritte's famous Son of Man (1964) painting, which is described in Wikipedia as:

"The Son of Man (French: Le fils de l'homme) is a 1964 painting by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.

Magritte painted it as a self-portrait.

The painting consists of a man in a suit and a bowler hatsea and a cloudy sky. The man's face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple.

However, the man's left eye can be seen peeking over the edge of the apple. Another subtle feature is that the man's left arm appears to bend backwards at the elbow.

About the painting Magritte said,

"At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly.

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us.

This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.^[1]"

One of my favorite twists on the Son of Man painting was in the classic 1999 remake of the Thomas Crown Affair starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. 
Thanks to YouTube, here's a clip of the roughly 7 minute heist at the movie's end, complete with great music by Nina Simone (spoiler alert of course if you haven't seen the movie, or plan to some time soon).
Great movie, and I'd also recommend the 1968 original with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, another classic. 
Thanks Google for wishing a great painter a Happy Birthday.

ON WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS RIGHT NOW

CLARITY

As the markets await with bated breath how the future of the world's largest insurer AIG is decided shortly, and what if any action the Fed takes on interest rates later today, this commercial for iShares on CNBC seemed to hit the right note at the right time:

Don't know about iShares, but the song and the visuals do cover a bit of what's needed right now, do you agree?

ON A BETTER DEAL FOR AUTHORS

HAPPY ENDINGS

Forbes takes a crack trying to imagine how the book industry could be changed by the internet, casting Amazon as the potential savior of the humble author.  This is an exercise long imagined by many internet and media observers, and the "what ifs" have been going on for almost two decades.  Forbes begins to set up the argument as follows:

"Archaic beyond belief, it's an industry that treats its most important asset--the author--badly. Can this go on?

The book market in the United States is worth about $32 billion a year; the rest of the world, an additional $36 billion. Who makes the money? Not the author.

Retailers take almost 50%. The agent takes 15% to 20%. The publisher gets squeezed--it's cause for huge celebration if they make 20%.

"On a book that costs $24.95, the author gets at most $1 to $1.50," says Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, an online print-on-demand publisher of photography books."

The article then goes on to posit how Amazon could change things in the author's favor:

"Amazon is poised to revolutionize the book printing business through vertical integration. Let’s look at the numbers. Assuming that Amazon already pockets 50% of the retail price of a book, it could directly engage with authors and cut out the middlemen: the agent and the publisher. That would free up 30% to 40% of the pie, which can easily be split between Amazon and the author.

Let’s say, in the new world, Amazon becomes the retailer, marketer, publisher and agent combined and takes 65% of the revenues, offering 35% to the author--we end up with a much better, fairer world."

The piece doesn't offer any particular reason why this should happen now and why it hasn't happened already given that Amazon has been a big player in book retailing for over a decade now.  Neither does it mention new channels of possible distribution via Amazon like it's fledgling Kindle electronic book reader.

But more to the point, there's no reason why the split to the author needs to stop at 35% via online distribution.

In a separate but related example, Apple is about to unleash an online distribution store for software applications via it's iTunes store for the new and improved 3G iPhone to be related in a few weeks.  The split in that case for third-party application developers would be 70/30, with the developer keeping 70% and Apple keeping the smaller 30%.

And of course the same potential has been long anticipated in the music business, where the artist today makes a much smaller piece of the revenue pie and online distribution has for now merely expanded their ability to make more selling not the music but concert tours and related goods off-line.

The authors/creators/artists in all these industries are waiting for the split to get much better in their favor.  And it's been a long wait for all for some online nirvana.

ON THE FIRST MP3 PLAYER

MEMORIES

This Engadget post reminds us that a decade has gone by already since the first MP3 player:

"...take a ten-year look back at the world's first MP3 player -- the MPMan F10 -- and you'll get a sense of just how far we've come.

Manufactured by Korea's Saehan Information Systems, the device was launched in March of 1998 at CeBIT, and went on sale in the Summer through Eiger Labs for $250.

The player featured 32MB of flash memory (which could be upgraded to 64MB via mail-in scheme), connected to PCs via parallel port, and had a miniscule LCD for playback info -- but it laid the groundwork for the tech we have today.

Following the MPMan's release, Rio unleashed its PMP300, which received a warmer reception and all-but eclipsed the F10's status as "first" amongst players..."

It's a long way indeed from today's iPods and iPhones. 

How long do you think before the F10 is a collectible on eBay?

ON KICKING OFF APPLE'S MOBILE PLATFORM

IT BEGINS

Well, we're getting close to the end of February, which means about the time Apple promised to roll out it's SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone.

It's one of the critical elements that should help Apple to merge it's iPod and iPhone franchises into a global mobile computing platform with few equals over the next couple of years.  With a little help from Apple's iTunes store.

As this piece in Wired News reminds us:

"Apple's upcoming iPhone software development kit will do more than enable programmers to create new software for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

It will also turn iTunes into a software store, because Apple will probably use iTunes as the primary distribution vehicle for what's likely to be a massive community of iPhone software developers. In so doing, it could usher in a new way of buying low-cost software that's both easier and faster than downloading shareware or purchasing shrink-wrapped boxes."

And it's a substantial platform already:

"An estimated 35.7 million people use iTunes, according to Nielsen Online. Based on the figures Apple CEO Steve Jobs provided at this year's Macworld Expo, Apple has now sold more than 4 billion songs through its iTunes Store. By some estimates, 20 percent of the U.S. population now purchases its music through iTunes.

Whether the store is ultimately the only venue for distributing iPhone and iPod Touch software or not, using it for app distribution means that many third-party developers will have the chance to get their software noticed by a huge base of users."

It all kicks off at the end of this month.  Ready or not.