Coldplay member sends Kraftwerk a letter "begging" for a sample

I'm not even sure what the details are behind this yet, but I just like the idea that a few top dogs in the music world reaching out to the old gaurd and getting permission to sample and rework music. There's a snazy tune here somewhere. I'll see if I can find it and blog it.

COLDPLAY - MARTIN SENT KRAFTWERK BEGGING LETTER: "COLDPLAY frontman CHRIS MARTIN was so desperate to use a riff by German rockers KRAFTWERK - he wrote them a pleading letter in childish German.

The YELLOW singer recently admitted he was hooked on the electronic band's melodies, and that his new single TALK includes a Kraftwerk sample.

But he was only able to obtain the riff by writing to frontman RALF HUTTER and begging him to let Coldplay use it.

He admits, 'The only thing I could think of was the pen pal letters I learnt in German lessons at school. I had no idea if they knew who Coldplay were so had to explain myself like a 15 year-old school-boy.

'Dear Ralf, I sing in a band called Coldplay, blah, blah. I drew a little picture. Everyone says it's extraordinary that they said yes.'"

The post-mediated world - ramblings from beyond media

Based on a conversation I had I needed to track down some really great William S. Burroughs. Suprisingly it was really hard. I found it on the Keith Haring site in its enterity, but the site is all broken and full of 404's, so I'm reposting it here. If anyone has a problem with me posting it here, then they should contact the owners of haring.com and complain.

This is at once dark, hopeful, sarcastic and witty. It's not for the faint of spirit, but powerful and has deeply embeded itself in my psyche since the first time I heard it on Dead City Radio.

I think it's more relevant than ever.

Video blogging, democratized media, open sources, wiki media, tagging, and indeed all things pushing the envelope beyond what is known and quantifyable by business, politics and law. These things are simultaneously art and science. playing with the fine edge of anarchy, and pulling back out something of order.. Something most people still don't understand, something seemingly more chaotic, more anarchist, but at the same time more capitalistic, more democratic and more beautiful than ever. Intelectually speaking, if I am in fact an intellectual, we have our world cut out for us; to make the world understood, to simultaneously keep the it all glued together as others seemingly unglue it.

It's we the chefs who make the soup what it is. What we think is disruptive today will tomorrow will be the norm, endoctinated and and even quaint tomorrow. I remember when Mapquest was amazing, google has slain it thouroughly. Yesterdays news media is todays toilet paper. The universe expands forever outward... or is it inward. And anyway, hopefully you will enjoy this bit from William Borroughs.

I started to highlight my favorite points, but I realize it's impossible, it's just all so good. Enjoy.

From: The Valley | Keith Haring and William Burroughs — A collaboritive series of prints Haring created with William S. Burroughs in 1988.

Mariners sailing close to the shores of Tuscany heard a voice cry out from the hills, the trees and the sky: "The Great God Pan is dead!" Pan, God of Panic: the sudden awareness that everything is alive and significant. The date was December 25, 1 A.D. But Pan lives on in the realm of the imagination, in writing and painting and music. Look at Van Gogh's sunflowers, writhing with portentous life; listen to the Pipes of Pan in Joujouka. Now Pan is neutralized framed in museums, entombed in books, relegated to folklore.

But art is spilling out of its frames into subway graffiti. Will it stop there? Consider an apocalyptic statement: 'Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.' - - Hassan i Sabbah. Not to be interpreted as an invitation to all manner of restrained and destructive behavior; that would be a minor episode, which would run its course. Everything is permitted because nothing is true. It is all make-believe, illusion, dream...ART. When art leaves the frame and the written word leaves the page - - not merely the physical frame and page, but the frames and pages of assigned categories - - a basic disruption of reality itself occurs: the literal realization of art. This is a very different direction from Duchamp, Klein and Manzoni, of appropriating everything in sight by signing it or putting it on a pedestal. Instead of appropriating by framing and signing, remove the frames and the pedestals, yes, even the signatures. Every dedicated artist attempts the impossible, Success will write APOCALYPSE across the sky. The artist aims for a miracle. The painter wills his picture to move off the canvas with a separate life, movement outside of the picture, and one rent in the fabric is all it takes for pandemonium to sluice through.

Last act, the End, this is where we all came in. The final Apocalypse is when every man sees what he sees, feels what he feels, and hears what he hears. The creatures of all your dreams and nightmares are right here, right now, solid as they ever were or ever will be, electric vitality of careening subways faster faster faster stations flash by in a blur.

Pan God of Panic, whips screaming crowds, as millions of faces look up at the torn sky:

OFF THE TRACK! OFF THE TRACK!

The planet is pulling loose from its moorings, careening into space, spilling cities and mountains and seas into the Void, spinning faster and faster as days and nights flash by like subway stations. Iron penis chimneys ejaculate blue sparks in a reek of ozone, tunnels crunch down teeth of concrete and steel, flattening cars like beer cans. Graffiti eats through glass and steel like acid, races across the sky in tornados of flaming colors.

Cherry-pickers with satin brushes big as a door inch through Wall Street, leaving a vast souvenir postcard of the Grand Canyon. Water trucks slosh out paint, outlaw painters armed with paint pistols paint everything and everyone in reach. Survival Artists, paint cans strapped to their backs, grenades at their belts paint anything and anybody within range. Skywriters, dogfight, collide and explode in paint. Telephone poles dance electric jigs in swirling crackling wires. Neon explosions and tornados flash through ruined cities, volcanoes spew molten colors as the earth's crust buckles and splinters into jigsaw pieces.

The household appliances revolt: washing machines snatch clothes from the guests, bellowing Hoovers suck off makeup and wigs and false teeth, electric toothbrushes leap into screaming mouths, clothes dryers turn gardens into dust bowls, garden tools whiz through lawn parties, impaling the guests, who are hacked to fertilizer by industrious Japanese hatchets. Loathsome, misshapen, bulbous plants spring from their bones, covering golf courses, swimming pools, country clubs and tasteful dwellings.

Skyscrapers scrape rents of blue and white paint from the sky, shredding, peeling, nitrous ochres and red eat through bridges, which fall into the rivers splashing colors across - my back I always hear - piers, streets AMOK art - Hurry up please, it's time - floods inorganic molds - Time's winged chariot hurrying - stirring passion of - near. Closing time gentlemen - metal and glass steel - these our actors as I foretold you - girders writhe - actors frantically packing in theatrical - mineral lust - hotels... are all spirits.

Oh don't bother - burst from concrete - with all that junk, John - were all spirits, John - covers - the Director is on stage and are melted into - walls - h don't bother - burst from concrete - with all that junk, John - were all spirits, John - covers - the Director is on stage and are melted into - walls - air and you know what that means in show business - of glass - melt into thin air. Hurry up please it's time. Caught - burn - in New York beneath the animals of the village - with madness - the Piper pulled down the sky. This insub - billion crazed - stantial pageant faded leaves not a - roads buck - wrack behind. Closing time, hurry - sidewalks run ahead - up it's time.air and you know what that means in show business - of glass - melt into thin air. Hurry up please it's time. Caught - burn - in New York beneath the animals of the village - with madness - the Piper pulled down the sky. This insub - billion crazed - stantial pageant faded leaves not a - roads buck - wrack behind. Closing time, hurry - sidewalks run ahead - up it's time.

At my back - faster and faster - I always hear hurry up - energy ground down into - please it's time closing - sidewalks and street by billions of feet and tires erupt from manholes and tunnels break out with volcanic force let it come down careening subways faster and faster stations blur by, Pan whips screaming crowds with flaming pipes millions of faces look up at the torn sky OFF THE TRACK OFF THE TRACK the planet is pulling loose from its moorings, careening off into space spilling cities and mountains and seas into the Void faster and faster.

This is where we all came in blue and white paint from when Everyman sees color nightmares are right here warehouses and piers electric energy floods inorganic molds subways faster and faster, glass steel girder Pan God of Panic whips screaming concrete, faces look up at the torn sky and burn with madness. TRACK the planet is pulling bucking cars and trucks careening into space faster and faster into the Void spinning walks and streets flash by like subway stations in a reek of ozone.

Force let it come, skyscrapers scrape rents of the final Apocalypse in the sky, dream rivers splashing color across solid roads and buildings, AMOK art vitality stirring passions of metal blur by writhing in mineral lusts. Walls of glass melt OFF THE TRACK OFF a billion crazed eyes, the sidewalks run feet and tires, chimneys ejaculate blue tunnels break out graffiti village pulled across the sky in flaming colors.

Skyscrapers scrape rents of blue and white paint from the sky, the rivers swirl with color, nitrous ochres and reds eat through the bridges, falling into the rivers, splashing colors across warehouses and piers and roads and buildings, AMOK art floods inorganic molds, stirring passions and metal and glass, steel girders writhing in mineral lusts burst form their concrete covers, wall of glass melt and burn with madness in a billion crazed eyes, bridges buck cars and trucks into the rivers, the sidewalks run ahead faster and faster, energy ground down into sidewalks and streets by billions of feet and tires erupts from manholes and tunnels, breaks out with volcanic force:

LET IT COME DOWN

Caught in New York beneath the animals of the village, the Piper pulled down the sky.

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo - when it's so bad it's good

The first one was horrible. So horrible I had to watch it a bunch of times in order to fully appreciate it. So man this one's got to be bad, beyong bad. You've got to check out Roger Ebert's EXCELLENT review. The whole thing is awesome, but I'm going to snips some clips, which is pretty much most of the review, just because it's so awesome. Infamy is GOOD.

Re: :: rogerebert.com :: Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie. "Deuce Bigalow" is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience.

Rock!

Rob Schneider is back, playing a male prostitute (or, as the movie reminds us dozens of times, a "man whore"). He is not a gay hustler, but specializes in pleasuring women, although the movie's closest thing to a sex scene is when he wears diapers on orders from a giantess. Oh, and he goes to dinner with a woman with a laryngectomy, who sprays wine on him through her neck vent.

The brilliance is in the details.

... Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year's Best Picture Nominees and wrote that they were "ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that ... bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,' a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: "Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind ... Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers."

That is dishing it out... if not on the sceen than in the press. The man holds his own! :)

... As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

I'm sold! Thanks Ebert! I love it when a plan comes together just how it should. We're talking Crispin Glover, we're talking "Space Balls", we're talking Steve Buscemi, we're talking Tom Green and "Freddy Got Fingered". Sometimes when Hollywood is at it's worst it's at it's best. Just don't give me another Fantastic Four, another Mr. and Mrs. Smith or another Dukes of Hazzard. We're over Hollywood, let's stick a fork in it and call it done!

Trailer: deuce_bigalow_2-tlr_480.mov
(video/quicktime Object)

They say with some comedies if you see the trailer you've seen the movie, well?

BTW, You'll notice there slogan in the trailer. "Same ho, new low". Got to love it.

UofM customer satisfaction study

Intersting University of Michigan study on Customer Satisfaction. It touches on AOL, Yahoo, google as well as some other industries. I share Techdirt's sense of sarcasm. To bad there's no link to the study though

Article: Satisfy customers, make money | Tech News on ZDNet

from: Techdirt:The Shocking Truth: Happy Customers Are A Good Thing!

Ignore this, I'm claiming my feed in odeo

I'm finally getting around to checking out Odeo.

My Odeo Channel (odeo/5945123427c54c09)

My call for a Flickr based, RSS enabled, desktop picture / screen saver aggregator

My obsession with flickr has been steadily increasing for months now and as far as I can see the opportunities are boundless. It sort of kicked into high gear when I discovered the joys of Flickr friends feeds as a tool for intermediation..

It all comes down to this. As a tool for disinter-mediation photos are really second to none. Unlike blog posts or even video posts they transfer a large amount of information extremely quickly. A fraction of a second is all one needs to make a solid snap judgment about whether a photo is of interest or keep up on friends. I figure I could keep tabs on over 150 friends just a few minutes a day. Where there at, what there looking at, what there up too.. In fact I went out of town for the weekend and had a whopping 300 plus photos in my aggregator. Which took me a total of 30 minutes to go through here and there at my own leisurely pace.

Add in Flickr's endless tools for breaking down photos into trusted groups, tag groups, friends, and family and you have a very robust method for getting at the photos you want to see and the people you want to see them through. This is only one of many techniques I use for keeping up with friends. What follows is an extension of my flickr ideas for disinter-mediation.

Re: FlickrDesktop

My call for a desktop picture / screen saver photo aggregator for flickr.

Currently I'm using NetNewsWire as an RSS aggregator for my friends feed. There are quite a few other apps aimed directly at aggregating flickr friends feeds specifically. What would be absolutely AWESOME would to be to use the Flickr API to create a desktop image switcher / photo aggregator that can take ANY RSS feed from flickr, be it your favorite photo group or friends feed and to put those images as your deskstop. Alternatively a screen saver.

I can't believe I haven't seen something like this... perhaps I've overlooked it?

There would have to be a bunch of different settings and a lot of experimentation. Settings might include.

- displaying only photos over a certain resolution

- displaying multiple photos at once

- automatic display vs. having a button or widget in the menu bar or dock to automatically jump to the next photo

- the ability to show the title/artist/comments on top of the dekstop pick or screen saver and various settings to control how where they display

-the ability to handle multiple different feeds

I've seen some Mac desktop widgets for flickr, but I could see an increased variety of more robust widgets for Windows and Mac.

Chicago for sale

Go Chicago go. Something need be said about giving new meaning to the "windy city".

"Chicago could be planning to sell naming rights to and advertising on the Chicago Skyway and other city assets so that Chicagoans won't have to pay higher taxes to fill a $94.1 million budget gap, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. A plethora of city assets is up for grabs.

The roster of possible assets include everything from airports, libraries and water filtration plants to police and fire stations and vehicles, the 911 emergency center, bridges over the Chicago River and even Lake Shore Drive.

Chicago cut a blockbuster $1.83 billion deal that privatized the Chicago Skyway earlier this year, but naming rights and advertising were intentionally 'held back' to set the stage for a future transaction"

This fits right in line with the occurances this spring of the Chicago police stopping anyone who looks like a professional photographer from taking pictures of giant metallic scuplture, the Cloud Gate in the new Millenium park because the city sold exclusive reproduction rights to a company. Great stuff Chicago, you're so completely a whore, you give the term "windy city" new meaning.

From: Chicago May Sell City Asset Naming Rights @ Media Buyer Planner

(via)

Three Trends for 2005 - looking back to lookforward

This is from Forbes back on January 31st, 2005. Just a perspective.

Three Trends for 2005 - Forbes.com: "This year video Weblogs are sure to be the 'it' thing. The shape of the v-blog trend began to emerge late last year during the election campaign. Example:A half-million people watched CNN's Crossfire on an October night when comedian Jon Stewart happened to be a guest. Stewart played it mean and bitter, ripping apart hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. The segment made its way onto blogs, and there it was clicked by2.5 million unique visitors--five times as many as had watched it on TV. (Earlier this month CNN took Crossfire off the air.)

The Asian tsunami tragedy brought a secondary wave ofv-blogs. Sites such as the Australian Waveofdestruction.org were logging 1 million unique visitors per week at the peak. The curious clicked in to watch home videos of giant waves swallowing Thai hotels. Had John F. Kennedy been murdered in this day ofv-blogs and digicams, the Zapruder film would have been uploaded within hours for the world to see. Whether that would have been good for our souls is a separate issue. The Warren Commission, however, surely would have proceeded under different pressures. "

NPR on video blogging

Josh Kinberg posted an MP3 of yesterday's NPR segment on video blogging. Representatives from NPR were apparently present at the "Meet the Vloggers" session at the San Francisco Apple Store. There's a really good write up on it on The Social Software Weblog.

Listen to it: npr_vlog.mp3
(audio/mpeg Object)

From: sandbox films: Vlogs on NPR: Schlomo, Ryanne, Jay, Clay Shirky

NPR's Laura Sydell reports on Videoblogs for Weekend Edition: Saturday.

Check out the RealPlayer stream from NPR, or listen to the MP3 audio clip here: MP3 audio

Mentioned in this story are:
Schlomo Rabinowitz
Ryanne Hodson
Jay Dedman
Clay Shirky
Christina Rapacki
René Amini

Also, check out Ryanne's videoblog post recorded during her NPR interview.

Support NPR and buy something at their shop.

The Found Footage Film Festival

This is my kind of film fest, the Found Footage Festival. It's been making the circuit since April 2004 and is still traveling the local theatre circuit with many upcomind screening dates. If there's one thing I could suceed at it's curating a found footage festival. If they gave out oscars for it I could win one in the found footage category I have hundreds of gigs of primo stuff. In fact I have half the clips in this little preview of the festival.

Watch it: fff.mov
(video/quicktime Object)



We need to see more of this. I'm thinking a currated festival in NY or Chicago or LA with websites to take submissions and judge entries. Perhaps we can put something together with the residents of the vlogosphere, and make it like an open mic night. Channel 101 has the right idea, btw they just started a New York chapter, channel 102.

Everyone loves a film festival.

(Thank's for the tip faster panda kill kill)

More slightly obscure architecture

Spotted by Chuck Olsen of Blogumentary in Woods Hole, Mass.

"This geodesic dome was built by Buckminster Fuller when he was still at MIT in 1953 and is the oldest standing geodesic structure still standing. It's in Woods Hole, Mass. in Cape Cod. Sweet eh?"

From: I am King Shit of Geodesic Dome Mountain on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Found in a dollar store, Fred and Barney hocking Winstons

Andrew of Apollopony.net found this over on a live journal blog. Apparently the postee found it on a CD he bought at a dollar store and redigitized it in all its glory. Not only is it entertaining, it's downright must see.

flintstones.mov

Updated URL: flintstones.mov
(video/ Quicktime)

Update: I decided to host it, the original host appears to be dead. Copyrights be damned, this is an issue of free speech. Where else do you get to see cartoons hock Winstons to little kids. Sort of throws a kink in the old "we never targeted kids" defense by big tabacco. Just wow.

P.S. I'd love to know where this cool dollar store is. No dollar store I've ever found sells CD's with old ads on them.

Good prospects for the video iPod and Apple movie store

Well the latest tidbit about Apple floating around blogosphere may seem like a little thing it's a sure sign Apple is gearing up to make a major move into movie and possibly TV based content the same way they've conquered the digital music market. Possibly as soon as September. It's a rumor that's been gaining credibility and attention for quite a while now.

That I'm so excited and interested is not that I'm a mac fanatic (although i am a fan) it's that I'm a media fanatic and Apple just happens to be the only one who's able to competently put together digital media solutions that will heal the huge void between the stodgy traditional media who refuse to set foot in the digital world and the p2p crowd that's going there without them.

In case you haven't heard already the little news with big ramifications is that Apple has updated their trademark for the iPod to include video.

"Well, this will certainly add some fuel to the fire on those
video iPod rumours — Apple has updated its trademark for
the iPod from “portable and handheld digital
electronic devices for recording, organizing, transmitting, manipulating, and reviewing text, data, and audio files” to
read “portable and handheld digital electronic devices for recording, organizing, transmitting, manipulating, and
reviewing text, data, audio, image, and video files.”"

— from Engadget

This would seem to give a whole lot more legitimacy to the rumors that the iPod will soon support video and even more importantly the rumor that Apple will soon have a movie download service similar to the Apple music store, as rumored to be called iVideo by famed PBS technology columnist Robert X. Cringley. When and if Apple does start selling movies for download I'll be the first one to ditch Netflix and Blockbuster and go nuts buying movies on Apple. In short though I've held out an not bought a single song from the Apple Music Store I can't wait to drop some money on downloadable movies.

Do to the fact there are no other solutions that are profitably or otherwise delivering movie downloads means all Apple needs is a decent selection to start with and to find the right price point. They've already proven their business model works for digital music and established a trusting market with the Apple Music Store. Why would movies and/or TV shows be any different?

I would have though the mac fanatics at Spymac would have created fifty different mock prototypes by now, but this little picture is all I could find. Usually they're as creative as they are prodigious.


A full size version is available here.

To expand on Apple rumors and perhaps start some of my own...

I'm basing this on nothing but my own speculation but I'm thinking $3 or $4 per movie would compete nicely with Blockbuster and Netflix. Rumors have it that videos could start at as little as a $1.99 and while I am hopeful I wouldn't be surprised if they started at $5 or more per movie. I could argue value points all day, but basically it won't change that we just don't know what Apple will find a good starting price point. There are far more interesting subjects worthy of debate.

First, of course much like Apple's music store all this video content will have DRM (digital rights management), but I'm not too worried about that because I have faith that the open source community will put every effort into breaking it, and rightfully so. DRM won't work on 3rd party portable video players, without cracking the DRM it will be the iPod or nothing. Second and more importantly Apple has never supported Linux and hence videos won't play on linux without a DRM crack.

That said I'm not here to debate DRM, I'm just going to assume most readers understand that DRM puts itself directly in conflict with the individuals rights for fair use while creating fundamental accessibility and usability issues. DRM is in my an many other more qualified peoples opinions, simply a bad and very misguided attempt to thwart piracy.

The truth is that majority of piracy simply does not happen in the home, but in large scale professional operations around the world. Fingerprinting technology would be much more effective and detecting and understanding piracy so that in the future we can understand it better.

That said, I apologize but I can't help but talk about DRM for a couple paragraphs, please just skip this if you find it tedious.

DRM is bad because it assumes that the few can determine with a high degree of exactness all the possible usage rights for the content. By placing those rules in the code they take the choice that law provides for us over right or wrong out of the hands of the people and the courts and embeds the content owners ideas of what is right or wrong into the technology itself.

In order for law to be just and equitable it has to be open to reinterpretation. Put another way, in order for law to retain the respect and authority of the people it has to be accessible to the people for they are what give it authority in the first place. Removing the courts and human judgment from law has in the past, just as it is now, created era's of epidemic lawlessness. DRM assumes an authoritarian control that presupposes law a very, very scary future where legislation in effect like the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) effectively hands the creators complete control under the law regardless of wether the DRM contradicts fair use rights or if the proposed usage is even good for society at all.

Luckily while the act of breaking DRM for the purpose of fair-use remains illegal under the DMCA other allowances in the law still allow tools to be created and distributed that can break DRM on the basis that they have "legitimate legal uses". A precedent established by court case simply referred to as the Sony Betamax Case. However this precedent is being threatened with the recent MGM vs. Grokster case which would suggest that any software or services created with the "intent" to break the law could be held liable. Intent, being an impossible thing to prove and opening software creators, service providers, and businesses up to tremendous liabilities and potential court fees though they in theory may have done nothing wrong. In short we're treading a very fine line with seaming no easy solution and having catastrophic consequences for the future of digital media.

That said I'm not writing this to bitch about DRM, so I'm getting back off this point. Wether Apple's rumored movie store has DRM or not I'm buying in because I'm certain that when the DRM gets in the way of my right to fair use under the law, that they'll be tools around to simply break the DRM so I can function within the spirit of the law when the overly exacting letter of the law as codified in DRM fails as it inevitably will.

The real unanswered question therefore is not "is DRM acceptable", but will I truly be able to "own" videos or will Apple just "rent" them?

For what my opinion is worth, I'm guessing Apple will offer "ownership" of purchased content not just "rental" because ownership, as Apple has found with music, is a very important part of the value proposition for customers in the digital realm. Just because customers of digital goods don't have anything physical or tangible such as a DVD or CD doesn't mean that ownership is any less important to them. In fact it would seem that ownership is even MORE important to purchasers of digital goods if only because "rental" prospects for digital goods are so fraught with technical problems.

Rented music services like the new Napster and Real Media's music service are doing very poorly even though they offer "all you can eat" music specials, because they offer no ownership. As soon as you stop paying Yahoo and Real Media the entire music library you've built becomes useless and unplayable. For the majority of people I know life is to short to waste time putting together a music collection that one day will just cease to exist.

That said, movies may be a slightly different beast than music for Apple. These files are going to very likely be around 700mb in size. That makes long term management of movies a much more complex issue than music which has an average file size of around 5mb. Also, given that the movie industry is driven by movie rentals Apple will be competing with movie rental businesses like Blockbuster and Netflix. This as opposed to the music business where Apple is competing not against rentals, but purchased music. The business of movies is admittedly quite different than music.

It may well be that Apple sees the value proposition for videos differently than they see it for music. It may be that they see movies as a one time use media, a purchase that people watch once or twice and which then looses its value. Therefore Apple may well go into the digital movie rental business. It's unlikely given their stance on music ownership, but it is still possible.

Personally, I'm really hoping that Apple continues to recognize the importance of ownership in the digital age. I do personally agree that digital goods consumers are to savvy and to jaded to put their faith in digital "rental" services.

So now that we've discussed the potential Apple movie store, what does the video iPod bring to the digital media equation?

1. Watch videos anytime.... You'll be able to get movies and possibly TV on demand, no more schlepping to the store, waiting for Netflix, programing the Tivo, or sitting through commercials. For broadband users you should be able to pick out any movie or show you want to watch from Apple's selection and watch it immediately or with some minor delay while it downloads or caches.
   
   
2. Watch videos anywhere... with the Video iPod, you'll have the additional benefit of taking this media with you on the subway, plane, el, train or wherever it is you're off to so you can watch it not just anytime, but anywhere.
   
   
3. Anyone can create and broadcast their own media. Finally we get to the REALLY, REALLY important point. Pardon my beating around the bush with all of the above, but once Apple comes out with the video iPod video for the first time will start to be as portable as audio.... Given Apple's great support of audio podcasting it is quite likely that video bloggers and anyone with a video camera, computer, and internet access will be able to create their own videos and share them over the internet with a simple RSS syndication feed.
   
   Not only will everyone be able to share videos for watching on computers, but with the video iPod these videos will be able to be watched anywhere and anytime they want. This includes plugging the video iPod into the TV or watch videos while flying in a jet at 30,000 feet. Personal video communications will finally be ubiquitous and on par with professional communications. The playing field for rich media will be level. ...for some of us. ;) The rest of the world may take a long time to catch up.
   
   But, it hasn't happened yet, so just keep praying and anticipating Apple's release of the video iPod and an Apple "movie store". It'll be a one-two punch that absolutely no one else is in a position to pull off, and it's looking like it might be in time for Christmas. :)
   
   Mac Rumors: Apple Expands iPod Trademark to Include Video

Declaration of Revocation

I think this is old but it's very funny.

"To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories.

Except Utah, which she does not fancy."

It goes on and on: Declaration of Revocation? by John Cleese

According to MobuzzTV it's wrongly attributed to John Cleese of Monty Python fame.

Just some old movie trailers

Sometimes I just like to post things for pointless fun. I love these old movie trailers. I could tell you what this video was but it would ruin the suspense so you'll just have to watch.

Watch it: evilOf______.mov
(video/quicktime Object)

More: Bedazzled!: AMC TV Monsterfest Classic Horror Trailers

Graham Walker's TravelVlog

I stumbled upon this video blog over at We Are The Media, the new blog about video blogging.

Graham Walker's TravelVlog is a brand spanking new video travelog by Gaham Walker, a Candian living in Prague and currently traveling in Tibet. So far there are just four or five videos, but they are all absolutely amazing. There are no voice overs, just simple classic editing, a short well written introductory post and the sights and sounds of modern Tibet in a nice high definition format.

It was hard for me to pick a particular clip to entice you with, but the following clip of a blind banjo player was particularly captivating.

Watch it: Tibet_Blind_Banjo_Playerlarge.mov
(Video / Quicktime)

More Info: Travels in Tibet: Blind Banjo Player

Be sure to check out Graham Walker's travelVlog in it's entirity. And if I may recommend, download FireANT and subscribe to his video feed so you don't miss any of his future videos.

2005 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Awards

This is my kind of writing contest. A thorough and fanatical remixing and parodying of fine literature.

"It was high noon in the jungles of South India when I began to recognize that if we didn't find water for our emus soon, it wouldn't be long before we would be traveling by foot; and with the guerilla warriors fast on our heals, I was starting to regret my decision to use poultry for transportation."

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About the contest.

[The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is] an international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" Beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

The contest began in 1982 as a quiet campus affair, attracting only three submissions. This response being a thunderous success by academic standards, the contest went public the following year and ever since has attracted thousands of annual entries from all over the world.

macTV Videocast - WWDC 05 Coverage humor

I've been checking out macTV a brand spanking new videoblog on all things mac. So far they're just shilling some mac commercials and video propaganda, but then I came across this gem created by Macteens. A wonderful bit of original humor.

Enjoy: macteens-WWDC05-macTV.mov
(30mb)

It's central bit of humor stems from the shocking announcement from Apple at the World Wide Developers Conference that they were switching to Intel chips. In many ways the community is still reeling. I though it was great, very subtle in it's humor, but watch it, it's high def, 853x480 and 30megs. Not for the week of bandwidth or small of screen.

You can check out more macTV goodness and subscribe to their RSS video feed at the following url. I'm not quite sure who's behind it yet, but if they can get some original content it might really take off.

macTV Videocast

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