“Apple to NBC: Go Fuck Yourselves, You Greedy Morons”, says Daring Fireball regarding this press, release simply titled, iTunes Store To Stop Selling NBC Television Shows. $4.99 an episode?!
31 August 2007
NBC Will Not Renew iTunes Contract
Like its music division, NBC/Universal is reportedly declining to renew its contract with Apple to sell TV shows on iTunes. I get that movie studios are never satisfied with their cut, but where do they intend to go from here? Apple supposedly makes almost no money from downloads, so it’s unlikely to cede any part of its revenue, and the prices can’t really go up much further before they’re the same price as DVDs. A movie for $9.99 that you can watch within a few minutes of clicking is a good deal, but if it’s the same price as a DVD, all you’re gaining is convenience while losing portability, surround sound, higher definition, special features, subtitles, and alternate languages. And for TV shows, lots of networks are already offering free online viewing supported by ads, so I can’t see people paying even more to download single episodes. Or maybe they’re trying to get Apple to agree to rentals instead of ownership, hoping to snare 100% of their customers by suckering them into bad agreements instead of offering them products they can actually own and enjoy? Hmm…
30 August 2007
In the Year 2000
In the Year 2000, a photo pool of pictures of what people thought the future might look like.
29 August 2007
Douglas Wolk on Reading Comics
Newsarama has an interview up with Douglas Wolk about his book, Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, which looks great. Part two of the interview is here, and an except from the chapter on Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles is also online (part one, two, three).
Tags:
comics,
douglaswolk,
grantmorrison
Social Networking License Agreement
stevenf proposes an affordable Social Networking License Agreement.
Putting your Facebook Friends' Updates into Twitter
I linked to a method for doing this yesterday, and wanted to share my experience with it so far. If you have friends on Facebook who regularly update their status messages on that service, and you’re a Twitter user, it’s possible to get those updates out of Facebook and into Twitter using Twitterfeed. The big question of course, is why, and it’s a bit hard to answer, as every news article about Twitter has tried. Basically what you discover is that it’s just fun to get a stream of updates on what your friends are up to. None of them are typically anything ground-breaking, but when your friends are spread all over the world, it’s cool to hear the mundane updates. (One thing about Twitter: it’s designed around SMS, but you can easily turn that off and just get the updates via chat, by going to the webpage, or via RSS. Depending on how often your friends post, getting all their updates via text message can get expensive.)
Twitter does its thing very well, but lots of people use Facebook, which has a similar feature. The instructions I linked to before left out a few settings, so here how to get your friends’ Facebook updates out of Facebook and into Twitter:
- Go to twitter.com and set up a dummy account. Be sure to go into its settings and click “Protect my updates”, as your Facebook friends haven’t consented to you putting their updates out in the open.
- Add your real Twitter account as a friend of your dummy account, and add your dummy account as a friend of your real account.
- Go to twitterfeed.com and log in using an OpenID (LiveJournal, Vox, TypeKey, AOL, and others are all already OpenID-enabled).
- In Facebook, at the top there’s a tab called friends with a little triangle by it. Click on that menu and go to “Status Updates”. Copy and paste the URL of the RSS feed of your “Friends’ Status Updates” from the bottom of the sidebar on the right.
- In Twitterfeed, create a new feed. Enter your dummy twitter feed and password, and paste in the RSS feed from step 4. Set it up update every hour, and leave the setting to post up to 5 updates at a time. Tell it to include “titles only”, and uncheck the box to “Include item link”. Tell it to prefix each post with “FB”, for “Facebook”, or some other identifier to remind you where the update came from.
That’s it. Once an hour Twitterfeed will check your Facebook friends’ status updates and post any new ones to your dummy Twitter account.
A similar method can also be used to publish your own Facebook status updates to Twitter, but I haven’t messed with that. The concept of Twitter is inane enough as it is to deal with two different services that do the same thing. I’d certainly set it up if it went the other way, from Twitter to Facebook, but for now I’ll stick with the Twitter application in Facebook.
28 August 2007
Facebook to Twitter
Here’s a method for funneling your Facebook status updates to your Twitter account. I’d prefer it to go the other way, but it’s useful nonetheless. Not sure if I’ll get around to setting it up. You can also direct your friends’ status updates to Twitter.
Pre-Order Twin Peaks
Amazon now has available for pre-order a new [complete boxed set of Twin Peaks][1], including both seasons plus the US version of the pilot, previously very hard to find on DVD.
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000UX6THK/davextreme-20 “Amazon.com: Twin Peaks - The Definitive Gold Box Edition (Seasons 1 & 2, Pilot): DVD: Kyle MacLachlan,David Lynch”
27 August 2007
Michael Vick vs. Alberto Gonzales on CNN
At present [this story about Michael Vick pleading guilty][1], which we already knew he was going to do, is placed higher on cnn.com than [the resignation of Alberto Gonzales][2].
[1]: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/08/27/michael.vick/index.html (Vick pleads guilty in dogfighting case - CNN.com) [2]: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/27/gonzales/index.html (Attorney General Gonzales resigns - CNN.com)
Tags:
albertogonzales,
cnn,
media,
michaelvick,
reporting
Metroid Prime on Wii
If there is a game that proves the potential of the Wii remote for first- person experiences, this is it. [IGN’s review of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption][1] has done a good job of selling me on a game I wasn’t even considering. The series just never really did it for me, and I actually returned the DS one because I just couldn’t handle the stylus controls. Really I’d like to play Halo 3, but with no XBOX 360, this will probably satisfy that itch.
[1]: http://wii.ign.com/articles/815/815424p1.html (IGN: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Review)
Wall Street Journal on LoLcats
The Wall Street Journal does [a very good job of summing up the LOLcat joke][1]. I’m impressed with the writing here. Most newspapers, even on their blogs, don’t do a great job of hyperlinking. This article has linked sources and photos.
[1]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118798557326508182.html (Time Waster - WSJ.com)
iPhone Screen Aspect Ratio
This is my daring expose revealing the aspect ratio of the iPhone. After writing it, I realize it’s incredibly boring.
I’ve watched a few episodes of Weeds on my iPhone. The iTunes downloads of season one were sold in the standard TV aspect ratio of 4:3, while season two’s downloads are widescreen (16:9). I noticed that when watched episodes from each season that there were black bars on either the sides or top of the screen. Turns out the iPhone’s “widescreen” display isn’t actually the standard widescreen aspect ratio. The tech specs list the iPhone’s display at 480x320, which is an aspect ratio of 3:2. This means that no matter which format the video you’re watching is, either the sides or the top and bottom will be letterboxed. The 3:2 ratio is a little odd, as it actually turns out that the screen is closer to 4:3 than 16:9. A standard video illuminates 89% of the iPhone’s display, while a widescreen video only uses 84% of the screen. So if you zoom in on the video to get rid of the black bars, you’re missing about 20% of a non-wide image and 25% of a wide image. This isn’t exactly breaking news, of course, and in fact all of the iMacs and MacBooks that Apple sells are 16:10, just a bit taller than the usual widescreen 16:9.
26 August 2007
RFJ on Michael Vick
rfj writes eloquently about Michael Vick, animal cruelty, vegetarianism, and the idiocy of PETA. We ate in a Japanese restaurant recently at a table with some random people. I told the cook I didn’t eat meat, but did eat eggs. One of the other diners was like the people Gabe describes. She asked why I ate eggs when they come from the chicken, but I wouldn’t eat the chicken. I replied rather tersely without thinking, “because you don’t have to kill the chicken to get the egg out.” I don’t actually claim to be a vegetarian because I think it’s wrong to kill animals. In fact, I think that’s a naive view of nature. Still, I at times have to bite my tongue when it tries to remind people that killing dogs for fun and shooting deer for fun isn’t much different.
Tags:
animalrights,
michaelvick
25 August 2007
Older stuff
Another relaunch, I guess. I’ve been writing online since August 2002 or so, bouncing from LiveJournal to Movable Type to TypePad to Movable Type to TypePad to Vox to Movable Type to TypePad (think that’s right). I lost about a year’s worth of entries at one point, but most of the stuff from davextreme has been moved over to Vox, where hopefully Six Apart will do a better job at not screwing up the data than I have. It’s neat to have a running archive of what one has written, though, so one day I might end up importing it all back here.
Weblog software does great for proving handy templates in which to stick text, but I’ve always disliked that you’re stuck with one template for everything you’ve ever written. Right now I’m using a very simple white page, but I’ve toyed around with flashier layouts, and I feel like the old stuff should be able to hang around looking like it did when it was originally published. Importing older content into here seems wrong, in a way. Plus, whoever goes back and reads people’s old posts? Some of it is almost embarrassing. But I guess that’s part of growing up.
Anyway, here’s stuff from August 2007 onward. Poke around the web and you can probably find the older stuff if you really want.
BBspot - Wil Wheaton Indicted for Role in Robot Fighting Ring
BBspot - Wil Wheaton Indicted for Role in Robot Fighting Ring
What really worries me is the gambling.
Tags:
michaelvick,
robots,
satire,
wilwheaton
24 August 2007
Talking Faith & Buffy with Brian K Vaughan
Wow, the setup for his Faith arc sounds awesome.
Tags:
briankvaughan,
buffy,
comics
22 August 2007
YouTube - Andy Kaufman Does his "Mighty Mouse" Routine
Thought of this today, YouTube provided. Great moment in Comedy.
Tags:
andykaufman,
comedy,
mightymouse,
snl,
tv
21 August 2007
Macworld: Mac Gems: HandBrake 0.9.0
How to rip your DVDs to a Mac for watching in iTunes, AppleTV, an iPod, or an iPhone.
Netflix: Army of Darkness
For some reason, this was unavailable from Netflix until recently. Enqueue!
Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play
Neat article about how much work Bungie puts into testing games so that players get a good experience out of the game.
Official Google Blog: An update on Google Video feedback
Google offers some more reasonable options for people who had bought videos from them.
Tags:
google,
googlevideo
"Maybe" is one option too many
Every time I go to rate a movie from Netflix I think about this argument in favor of using 4-star systems instead of 5-star systems.
20 August 2007
"Daily Show" comics venture to Iraq - Yahoo! News
The palpable unease in reporting this story is interesting. It's okay for the Daily Show to make fun of the news at home, but everyone's a little too nervous that they're going to upset anyone over there. The troops are real people with senses of humor, t
Facebook Messaging just got better...
Do they really want me to use their little message program instead of email? Maybe the kids already do.
A Variation on the DVR, Without Ad Skipping - New York Times
A Variation on the DVR, Without Ad Skipping - New York Times
Funny how they're trying to turn in the ability to fast forward, present in every VCR since the 70s, as a feature that you might want to pay for. This is typical of the big media approach to DRM, conflating it with actual features.
Tags:
drm,
dvr,
media,
technology,
timewarner,
tv
17 August 2007
Brad's Thoughts on the Social Graph
Start of a project to let sites talk to one a other so that, for example, Facebook could figure out who your LiveJournal friends are so you don't have to re-add them.
Tags:
socialnetworks
16 August 2007
Rename an iPod via iTunes
A solution so simple I didn't think of trying it. (Works with iPhones, too.)
15 August 2007
Facebook for iPhone
Nifty little view. Mostly I don't log into Facebook except to approve friend requests, but from a quick glance they did a nice job with the page.
DrawerBoxes
Problem: it’s hard to store comic books. You can put them in boxes, but when you stack the boxes you have to constantly move the top ones to get to the bottom ones, which discourages one to file them, leading to big stacks of comics lying around because you’re too lazy to unstack the boxes.
Solution: DrawerBoxes. Each box pulls out like a filing cabinet, so you can stack them up and still get to the ones on the bottom. I just bought five of them, and they work great. Detailed reviews can be found here and here.
Has Facebook opened up? (Scripting News)
Nice. RSS feed of your notifications in Facebook. Now I'll know how many zombie invitations I can ignore without even having to load their website!
Dinosaurs with Jetpacks. at Shots Ring Out (on Universal and DRM music)
Dinosaurs with Jetpacks. at Shots Ring Out (on Universal and DRM music)
"By refusing to sell DRM free on iTunes Universal allows[them] to ensure that DRM-free tracks sell horribly."Boing Boing: Google Video robs customers of the videos they "own"
Boing Boing: Google Video robs customers of the videos they “own”
A case in which the doomsaying about DRM was totally right.
Tags:
drm,
google,
googlevideo
Bull City Headquarters is a hangout...
My friend Chaz helps run this concert space in Durham, NC. (registration required)
14 August 2007
09 August 2007
Strips
Dark Horse recently announced Dark Horse Presents, an initiative to produce short serialized comic books for MySpace. The first, Sugarshock, written by Joss Whedon no less, appeared yesterday. It’s good, but the computer screen just isn’t the right format. Newsarama syndicates one page of Powers each day. It’s one of my all time favorite comic books, but it wasn’t designed as a daily, so the pacing doesn’t work. You can’t get a whole page onscreen at once, so you can’t appreciate the artist’s layout properly, unless you shrink it down to a point where you can’t read the lettering (try Marvel’s digital comics on a 17” monitor). Marvel used to have a method where you could click on each panel and it would pop up and zoom in, but I’d imagine that took a fair amount of effort for their web team to craft, and it still meant you had to see isolated panels of what were drawn to be one whole page.
The web is just built for the short format. YouTube videos are great if they’re a minute or two long, but you don’t ever want to watch a full-length movie at your computer. Short news articles and blog posts, good, long, researched pieces or novels, bad.
What does work very well on the web is the comic strip. I regularly read PvP, Penny Arcade, XKCD, Boy on a Stick and Slither, VG Cats, The Perry Bible Fellowship, and Marmaduke (sorta). The traditional comic strip format works so nicely on the web. You can read a strip without scrolling. A funny strip is easy to email to people. You don’t need sound to enjoy them at work. And comic strips expose a true talent for compressing a story into a few small panels. If you want to tell a five-part story, each day’s installment still has to be funny. That takes real skill.
This isn’t to say that the web is perfect for comic strips. Few webcomic sites provide good indices of their archives. Try going back and finding a particular Penny Arcade strip you remember finding funny. Ideally each page would tag its strips by subject matter for easy reference down the road. And all that lettering on each strip is just part of the image, so Google can’t index the scripts. Still, as digital distribution of comic books continues to be a hot topic amongst the big publishers, and with DC launching its own online service soon, I’d like to see more attention paid to the comic strip than the longer form book. No matter how you try to shoehorn it in, you’re always going to want to read a full-length book in your hands, printed on paper. The strip, on the other hand, loses nothing in its conversion to pixels.
Google News Blog: Perspectives about the news from people in the news
Google News Blog: Perspectives about the news from people in the news
Intriguing idea. It occurs to me that Google could use OpenID to make sure the people are who they say they are.
Tags:
google,
googlenews,
news
Interview with Joss Whedon at The A.V. Club
I wouldn't link to every interview he gives if they weren't all so good.
Tags:
film,
josswhedon,
tv
08 August 2007
07 August 2007
06 August 2007
Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up
Slap in the Facebook: It’s Time for Social Networks to Open Up
It annoys me that I can't link to my Facebook profile without making people log in to see it. You should be able to expose simple biographical data at least.
Tags:
facebook,
myspace,
technology
03 August 2007
Twitter Identity Transference Syndrome (TwITS)
How the Twitterific icon become associated as the brand for Twitter itself.
COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Disney once had a series of Mickey Mouse comic strips depicting Mickey trying various ways of killing himself.
STATUS: True. Check out the strips.
Tags:
comics,
disney,
mickeymouse
02 August 2007
A timeline of TV censorship - CNN.com
Neat list, but why the lazy jump from 1979 to 2004? (via rfj)
Tags:
censorship,
culture,
tv
01 August 2007
Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
"If they hit enough correct notes in a row, the on-screen crowd yells 'huzzah' and 'bully.'"
Tags:
games,
guitarhero,
music,
theonion
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