Well, I’m just back from the first ever NH Media Makers get together. What a terrific idea, and what a great turn out. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, both in people or content, despite the post at the actual NH Media Makers site detailing who would be there and what to expect!
We had all types of people, with different disciplines, but the major unifying factor was our passion for all things internet. Which is extremely refreshing as a majority of people I’ve met here in New Hampshire have not been the slightest bit interested in the internet or tech in general. It was like a high school AV meeting with a million times more class.
After adamantly sucking down as much coffee as possible, I tuned in to each attendee’s introduction and background. Everybody had a great story to tell and a variety of really terrific projects they were involved in too. I don’t think a single person there had just one thing they were working on, interested in, or knew about. There was no shortage of great ideas, and everybody seemed tremendously passionate about their field of interest.
We had photographers, videographers, writers, entrepreneurs, search engine marketers, programmers, culture geeks, and often times most people were several of those things if not all of them! Had I been taking notes I’d have a lot more details about each person. Everybody I met was just terrific. There was a definite buzz in the air and I could tell a lot of really valuable connections were made. Separately we’ve got a ton of super ideas and talents, together we could really turn this area into a hub of internet and cultural activity.
Couple of points I want to shout out to any local readers:
One of the attendees is a film maker out in Manchester who will be looking for extras interested in dying. :)
Another wants to get interest up in late night monster movie showings in the area, preferably big screen. Who knows about theater in the area?
We’ve got film folks who might want extras, guest writers, feedback, or musical contributions/suggestions.
There are authors chomping at the bit for publishing tips or inspiration in general.
There’s me, looking for blog authors and people interested in helping my wacky friends commit some of their film ideas to the web.
There’s a niche marketer looking for ideas and feedback on how to incorporate things like video and blogs into his repertoire to strengthen his position as the top in his field(s).
And so much more. I’m hoping others took better notes. There will be a mailing list, and notes and attendee URLs will be posted over at the NH Media Makers site, so stay tuned. We’ll also have some pictures and video courtesy of a few folks who were there. (Phil, John, and Roger if I remember correctly.) There will be more of these in the future, so if you missed the first one, fret not, you will have a chance to join in the fun!
Tay Zonday’s managed to snag an endorsement deal. I’m sure you’ve all heard about it already. From the heartlands of Ectomo to Wired’s hipster hovel blog The Underwire and beyond, it’s being talked about non-stop.
Chocolate Rain, that agitatingly infectious little ditty from a little while back, caught the attention of the Dr. Pepper marketing staff and they decided the way to go would be a remix. The 25-going-on-14 Adam Nyerere Bahner, aka Tay Zonday, managed to snag himself a tidy marketing deal with the song that had everyone mezmerised for a good few weeks several months back. I think it’s foolish for a major brand to jump on the Chocolate Rain meme now. It’s well past its prime at this point, surely. Based on my own observations, it would seem that wide-spread things like this have a tendency to start small, flare up within a community, die out a little, spread to a series of other communities, and then burst into the general public for a brief flare of upwards of a month, then slowly die out. Think of it like the female sexual cycle. There are often spikes of intense “oh god oh god” followed by almost a total reset bordering on disinterest. Eventually there’s the actual orgasm itself, a plateau of enjoyment, after which it cools down to nothing again in relatively short order. Yes, further peaks can be coaxed out after the initial plateau, but it’s not easy and not every meme is capable of such repeated overtures.
At any rate, while I’m not much of a fan of the thinly veiled viral marketing of a carbonated beverage that is Cherry Chocolate Rain, I did get the opportunity to catch another tune by Tay Zonday that I actually enjoyed. See below and weigh in your thoughts on memes, marketing, and how goofy this kid is.
I came across an article in The Register a little while ago about one mom’s fight to keep a 29 second video clip of her son dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” up on YouTube.
In summary: The PA resident, Stephanie Lenz, had placed a 29 second clip of her dancing baby boy up on YouTube in order to share with family and friends. Universal (Prince’s label) contacted YouTube purportedly at the artist’s behest, citing the DMCA
Momma contacted the EFF and also filed a suit against the record label, Universal Music Group, to get the clip put back up as well as damages.
Current the clip is back up on YouTube, but as of the Register’s October 30th article, the lawsuit is still underway.
Without further ado, the “objectionable” clip.
I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this. I personally feel like the artist and recording company have lost face with this action, and that the more public this becomes, the worse it will look for the two of them. The mother has nothing to lose but time, and possibly some serious lawyer’s fees. In my mind this is not a landmark case in terms of establishing laws, but in enforcing them. And of course the neverending “Corporate vs. Consumer” idea that pervades the culture these days.
I use a few Linux distros at home and at work, and being a half-baked nincompoop, I prefer the shiny new ones that end in “buntu”. The 64-bit version of Kubuntu is what I run at the office, and I have installed my preferred web-browsing application, Firefox 1.5.x, with my favorite themes, and a ton of useful extensions, most of which I need for work.
Among these extensions, there is a slick little application called Sage. This is an RSS reader embedded into Firefox, which is almost unspeakably convenient. I am expected to do research at least some of the time because my job demands it. Therefore, I am subscribed to numerous feeds, some authored by unabashed marketroids in Manhattan, others by squirrelly black-leather-jacket types in exotic places like Prague.
Every once in a great while, the workload becomes, um, constipated. Don’t get me wrong, there’s never a shortage of things to do around the place, but lately we tend to hyperfocus on a few high-priority items at a time - as opposed to taking a more holistic view (as in “HOLY FUCKING SHIT WE HAVE SO MUCH TO DO HOW THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO THIS GIMME A CIGARETTE YOU PEEEN-ARSE YES I KNOW I DON’T SMOKE” etc). It might be perceived as inefficiency but our deliberately selective awareness of imminent doom allows us to actually get things done without the embarrassment of pissing our collective pants in abject terror after suffering massive aneurysms.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Slow day at work. Reason: we have a balky cms built in deprecated php. The code is liberally commented in at least one Central European language, but aside from that, documentation is scant. This cms has the quirky habit of eating posts according to some fiendish glitch. Programmatic functionalities combine with traditional meatbag error and really weird things happen to our precious data. We would like to begin serious repair of the website but there is no way to do this, at this time, without using this cms. (By the way, if you want to know what using our cms is like, imagine if Franz Kafka wrote Catch-22).
So, we must wire Switzerland and tell them to put their finest gnomes to work. By tomorrow, we expect these gnomes to be busily engaged in pulling meaningless strings of ones and zeroes from the mysterious innards of the database and weaving them into more or less normal html.
In the meantime, there’s various personal crises and dramas to fill the available time. All this stuff, on top of a two-long-island-iced-tea lunch and a nasty sugar crash caused by socially mandatory birthday cake, makes me stupidly susceptible to opening up the feedreader and clicking links. As a result I am now fully briefed on a variety of current events in the nerd universe.
First, let’s start off with what we already know. At 9pm EST yesterday, instead of deleting forum spam like a good boy, I was glued to my monitor, drinking a beer and watching as Digg rioted. This was absolutely fascinating. I’ve tried to spam Digg a few times so I know what kind of raw power was needed to unleash something like that, and believe me, the power level over there was waaaaaaaaaaay over nine thousand. A few places like the nefarious Forbes.com (more on those assholes later) were Diggbaiting this story earlier today (reposting a similar story at their own url in an attempt to attract backlinks), and earning upwards of 1000+ diggs. If I was into AdSense arbitrage I would have done the same thing. Digg is famous for funneling huge traffic to popular pages, enough traffic to crush a server. Some of those visitors will click an ad or two. Wash, rinse, repeat - voila! There’s your business model.
What was most interesting was Kevin Rose’s attitude. I was really impressed that he decided to side with the majority of Digg users. Unfortunately this flies in the face of all business sense (wherein you are supposed to avoid getting sued and do nothing except increase shareholder value, regardless of the collateral damage). In the more profit-minded areas of the intarwebs he has been damn near vilified, not so much for taking a stand, but the manner in which he took it. However, this issue involves more than just money. This is a matter of ethics. The future is at stake here, and rather than defer to the corporate interests involved, Kevin Rose did what was right. We won’t know the outcome for a while, but a line has been drawn in the sand, and a million computer enthusiasts are loudly saying with one voice “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
But, I’m beating a dead horse with all this Digg stuff. We all know about that shit. What I am really interested in is space.
So here are a couple of interesting links: Opera Equivalents to Firefox Extensions Part 1
And Opera Equivalents to Firefox Extensions Part 2
Both articles are pretty interesting if you are a Firefox user or an Opera user. I have come to the conclusion that as IE alternative browsers go I prefer Opera over FireFox for a couple of reasons. Namely that it’s got a bunch of neat stuff built right in (translation: too lazy to find extensions) and I really like the GUI layout they have going for them. Granted: I have mine augmented like whoa at this point, but out of the (virtual) box it’s got a lot of neat tools. No browser is perfect by a long shot, but I’m rather fond of this one.
My most diligently read blog has tipped me off that it has a new baby brother. In true nerd style, they have named their new military tech blog “Danger Room“. Ten points to whomever says the reference first. [Points not redeemable in all locations, or at any time. The Mgt.]
Speaking of ToM and Opera… I typically read the blog in RSS format, because quite frankly it’s the only way for me to stay up to date. However, they recently posted about their new look. It’s pretty awful. It’s one of the few corporate redesigns I can think of to date that has succeeded in further obfuscating their navigation while making the site look uglier at the same time. Typically when these kinds of things happen, form is sacrificed for function, or function brutally maimed for form. It’s as though a vile cabal was formed for the sole purpose of getting together and saying “How can we thoroughly spoil the user experience for visitors so they are driven to our banner ads in hopes of viewing a site that’s less of an eyesore?” Best of luck, you brave four bloggers. Content, in my mind at least, is still king in your virtual lands, and you’re all valiant knights of the realm to me!
Speaking of my unnatural loyalty to ToM, I drummed up a couple banner ideas yesterday. I’m not terribly happy with the first one so I won’t bother posting it here. The second concept turned out a lot better, click the mini version below to get the full effect, it opens in a new window by default. Let me know what you all think, and maybe how we can make it better.
The Norweigan government has cut two companies who have frequently been found guilty of human and environmental rights breeches from their country’s pension fund investments.
Wal-Mart and Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc have had their stocks “dumped” from Norway’s investment plan, and there are currently no plans to buy back into these companies at any time in the near future.
More details within the article, but I wanted to help spread the word. It’s always encouraging to see a large group who can make a difference putting the hurt onto big companies like Wal-Mart.
My question now is this: Who will see the hurt from this action? Corporate, the buying public, or the people they unethically employ and underpay already?
If you guessed the third answer, then you agree with me.
I cannot presume to be a purist in this matter, I have deliberately visited my local Wal-Mart stores when I needed a handful of random crap. However, most of the time I much prefer going…. anywhere else. A lot of the customers in Wal-Mart - at least around here - are creepy and rude. That alone is enough to set off my periodicially piercing fear of humanity and keep me away.
Some kids play in the sandbox. We play in the.... litterbox??? The RKNet staff is pleased that you decided to stop by. Currently this is a multi-author project, with a rotating cast of totally kooky characters. Contact giania [at symbol] gmail [dot] com if you'd like to play here too.
