February 2012
35 posts
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MOCA TV: The Global Contemporary Art Channel « The... →
Speaking of the Google initiative with original YouTube programming, I completely missed this part, about LA’s wonderful Museum of Contemporary Art being one of the 100 channel creators, and the first contemporary art museum to partner with Google or any other big media company to make something like this happen. Most interesting, and good luck on this process. Quite ambitious.
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Pelosi Presents Haim Saban, Hollywood with... →
Big Hollywood Democratic backers Haim Saban and Steve Bing host Nancy Pelosi and a few dozen entertainment-industry movers and shakers on a presentation about the key seats Dems think they can take back in an attempt to recapture the House.
Bottom line: they think 50 to 75 seats are “vulnerable” and they can realistically grab back 25. Interesting, interesting.
Oh, and of course,...
January 2012
89 posts
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Media Innovation Goes Bicoastal - WSJ.com →
Extremely interesting split bequest to Columbia and Stanford by Cosmopolitan magazine founder Helen Gurley Brown to fund the development of technological innovations in journalism.
I’m not sure the structure of this will ensure better cooperation between two esteemed institutions on opposite coasts, but at least there’s a possibility, especially with the inclusion of seed grants for...
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With Original Channels, YouTube is Building a... →
Can Google create an economically sustainable alternative to the cable TV universe. It’s invested $100 million in 100 channels of original content, which is both a) a lot of money in absolute terms and b) nothing at all compared to launching 100 cable TV channels, even really crappy ones with hideously low production values.
This piece outlines some of the more notable early launches. I...
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NPR First Listen: Sharon Van Etten's new album,... →
Free stream of the entire new album, “Tramp,” from Sharon Van Etten. Lots of good stuff here, especially “Serpent.”
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Curate, create and conquer: Journalism 2.0... →
Good rundown of numerous emerging content creators and curators online trying to figure out new business models. It’s a rather incomplete list (in that I think there must be some other categories of companies trying to re-think the content business online, but I’ll need to spend a little more time thinking about who those categories and companies might be.
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The New York Times vs. Mail Online: Who’s Got The... →
NY Times is superseded in monthly online traffic by a somewhat unlikely competitor, the UK’s Daily Mail, and its even more unlikely business model, which is an online staff completely separate from the big London machine that sells print editions to 4.5 million readers.
But this one makes money, with only a few dozen dedicated journalists, and clearly is a hit with a substantial (if not...
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Teri Everett Leaving as News Corp.'s Top PR... →
Congrats to Julie Henderson on her promotion as News Corp.’s top public relations executive, succeeding another old associate, Teri Everett. Good luck to both of them.
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Defying Gravity With Creativity in Wall Trampoline... →
Great video and accompanying story about the emerging sport of wall trampoline, which combines trampoline, gymnastics and park our in one rather heady brew. Very cool stuff here.
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Facebook Timeline Looms: What You Need to Know |... →
Like it or not, Facebook is going full frontal Timeline, rolling out the new look to everyone in the next couple of weeks.
That means you’ll need to, once again, attend to your privacy settings so that all the stuff you shared only with friends years ago don’t get shown to the entire universe.
This story lays out some of the tweaks to settings that can allow you keep at least a...
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Robert Kagan: Against The Myth Of American Decline... →
TREMENDOUS piece by Robert Kagan on our current perceptions of American decline. He convincingly shows that we’ve NEVER had the hegemony we thought we did, even in the post-war unipolar world.
The biggest threat, he rightly points out, is that we will talk ourselves into believing we have declined at a time when we still wield more military and economic and “soft power”...
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Wael Ghonim to talk about Egypt, social media and...
REVOLUTION 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater Than the People in Power
Earlier this week tens of thousands of protesters reassembled in Tahrir Square to mark the first anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian uprising. After a year of incredible change for Egypt, join ALOUD in a conversation with Wael Ghonim, one of the key figures behind the uprising. Ghonim’s new memoir REVOLUTION...
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Where my daughter will be for the next few... →
My daughter is flying to Ecuador on Saturday morning to work at the 4 Volcanoes Lodge, located in the country’s northeast corner outside of Otavalo, for the next three months, learning to teach “natural” horse-riding methods. It should be quite an adventure. I’ll miss her a lot.
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Writer William Gibson on Science Fiction and... →
As always, an engrossing interview with author William Gibson about now and a little bit ahead of now. Good news: he’s in that “strange liminal state that precedes the actual writing of fiction.” He’s processing, he’s processing.
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How to adapt online news in the age of sharing |... →
What if you could embed text news stories on your site the way Google makes it easy to embed YouTube videos? Would that transform the business of online news? Still some problems that would need to be worked out, but the opportunities are certainly interesting for an organization that could make it happen.
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Freakonomics » How Much Do Music and Movie Piracy... →
Another, reasonable challenge to the numbers the entertainment industry uses in estimating piracy losses. It’s difficult to believe the loss of $250 billion and 750,000 jobs. It’s just difficult to believe.
And when the GAO says the basis for the numbers can’t be substantiated by an underlying data source or methodology, all it does is undercut the reliability and reputation of...
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Online Voting Comes Of Age (But Don't Expect To... →
How long before online voting becomes widely available? California is one of three states under a pilot program making it possible for military and other overseas Americans to vote online in this year’s elections.
As this piece shows, the technologies involved aren’t particularly complicated, cutting-edge or costly. We’re just all afraid to make them happen, though the...
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Stephan Paternot’s Slated aims to disrupt... →
Interesting project from Stephan Paternot to create a certified investor marketplace to finance upcoming indie films.
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By the Sword: The Science of Sword-Swallowing |... →
Ever wonder how they do it? Scientific American looks at the Science of Sword-Swallowing, and the side effects, too. No illusions here, and occasional pretty serious, even fatal, effects for the careless, distracted or untrained. Definitely don’t try this at home.
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In State of the Union address, Obama steps up to... →
Good EJ Dionne piece on Obama invoking the Greatest Generation’s values in SOTU speech, but misses that Obama was speaking in terms that Millennials love too. He knows who got him elected last time.
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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: 'We Expect DVD... →
Hard to disagree with Hastings, who was out front with sending DVDs by mail back in the day, when he founded Netflix. DVDs weren’t even a big part of the market quite yet, and there was no feasible way to deliver huge movie files over the web in any kind of consumer-friendly experience. Now, technology is catching up and the USPS and DVDs are both slipping off into buggy whip territory. That...
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What the Downtown LA Skyline Would Look Like... →
Startling little Photoshop exercise, but it makes you wonder what doesn’t get built going forward with dissolution of the agency and no obvious successor capabilities for the city.
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How The Magazine Industry Can Save Itself (Hint:... →
Smart piece about ways that magazines could actually improve their chances of surviving a few more years, like improving woefully antediluvian subscription/renewal systems. Hey, THERE’s an idea, guys!
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Apple's Biggest Quarter Ever: 37M iPhones, 15M... →
I’d say somebody had a very merry Christmas. Sheesh, $46 billion quarter, QUARTERLY PROFIT of $13.1 billion. And all WAY past even the analyst estimates, which were well above typically conservative Apple guidance.
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“Ai Weiwei told me recently that he thinks the government’s decision to detain...”
– Love this quote of doc maker Alison Klayman, about the great Chinese artist and troublemaker Ai WeiWei.
Alison Klayman directed and produced the feature documentary, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” which premieres at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
Back in October we had a chance to interview Klayman...
Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year. Celebrate it particularly if your Western New Year wasn’t so great, or you just like to celebrate
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Twitter Buys Summify, Gives Everyone a Reason to... →
Good piece on why Twitter’s acquisition of Summify will give the buyer substantially increased relevance to millions of people who currently don’t quite understand why Twitter could be of any use to them. With Summify’s functions, Twitter will be able to distill the firehose into the droplets of news that are relevant to a specific user, based on an analysis of who you actually...
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LinkedIn realizes it totally botched Tweets...
Keep trying to get this material LinkedIn sent out but Tumblr won’t show it. Re-editing again: LinkedIn finally gets it right in explaining what they plan to do with Twitter and the Tweets application:
Earlier, you may have received a message from us about our Tweets Application. We could have done a much better job communicating about this change, so we want to clarify what this may mean...
Great NYT piece on Mizzou alum Justin Smith, “a Force to Be Reckoned With,” including running down Mizzou alum JMaclin http://ht.ly/8AXX1
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Global Consumer PR Experts Provide Insights on... →
Some useful, if extremely high-level, meat here on the impacts of several key trends in social media and what they mean for PR.
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WatchBeautiful, man…
washingtonpoststyle:
Stephen Colbert’s super PAC releases attack ad against Stephen Colbert.
More here.
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In customer-friendly move, LinkedIn makes Twitter...
I’m sure there’s a long and annoying backstory of dueling social-media platforms battling for online primacy that explains why LinkedIn is killing off the module that automatically displays your tweets on your profile. Regardless, their proposed work-around is unnecessary and lame and anti-customer. And, despite what they sent me this morning announcing this bone-headed decision, I...
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Five Albums You Should Be Listening to Right Now:... →
Nice, Raul Campos of KCRW picks five albums to listen to right now, with streams of a song from each.
I can vouch for Wilco, Black Keys, Alabama Shakes. LOVE the Sharon Jones version of “Wild Horses,” which transforms a fabulous song. Novalima looking pretty interesting too. Coolness.
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For more retweets, rely on verbs, buzzwords and... →
Some small lessons from an analysis of the most re-tweeted NY Times tweets:
Brevity is the soul of virility.
Verbs, naked verbs, work better. Ditch those qualifiers in your 140 characters.
Sometimes no link (at least when attached to highly urgent and high-profile news) gets retweeted more than something with a link.
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Sunk! How Hollywood Lost the PR Battle Over SOPA |... →
TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman gets this one about right, I think: The MPAA, relying on its traditional relationships with legislators, bolstered by those of its president, former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, pushed the Stop Online Piracy Act and its PIPA sibling in old-school style through Congress, but then found out there are new ways to engage literally millions of outspoken voters.
More...
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TERRIFIC free song on iTunes this week. →
I LOVE this song, “Emmylou,” by First Aid Kit. KCRW has been playing it for awhile. It’s a lovely, romantic song, with great shout-outs to two of the most notable couples in the history of country and country-rock music: June Carter and Johnny Cash and Gram Parsons and the eponymous Emmylou Harris. And to top it off, the singer here’s a dead ringer for Emmylou’s...
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Chobani Yogurt Tickles The Tastes Of Pinterest... →
I’m still exploring at a very preliminary level how to take advantage of Pinterest, but this piece about Chobani’s use of the new social-media platform does reinforce some things I’m seeing and reading. I guess I’d have to say I’m getting more Pinterested.
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“I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. And then I...”
– There are days when I just don’t know how the Mittster gets by.
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Out-of-touch Republican presidential front-runner MITT ROMNEY, who earned $374,327.62 in speaker’s fees from February, 2010 to...
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The YouTube Laugh Factory: A Studio System for... →
I love this Wired story on the emergence, largely in and around Los Angeles, of a new kind of “studio” system involving young creatives leveraging their talents and YouTube while working with each other to make a decent (and occasionally substantive) living. They won’t replace the big studios any time soon, but this clearly is where some portion of the talents of the future will...
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Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will... →
Impressive recounting of the many things Obama has done right, and why ideologues on both ends of the political spectrum don’t get it.
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SPIN Reinvents the Album Review: Introducing... →
Spin magazine tries to rethink the hoary rock tradition of the album review. About 1,500 albums, EPs and mixtapes a year will get 140 characters on Twitter. The best of the lot will get the long-form treatment, as Spin Essentials in that month’s issue. Probably a pretty rational approach, but reviewing 150 albums a month is still a process, even if you only write a Twitter post to describe...
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John Mayer Scrubs Tumblr After 'Retro' Photo Posts... →
There he goes again: John dumps out of yet another long-running social-media platform after building up a big audience. It’s less clear from the Spin story here what predicated the pull-out, but could it really be rage of Instagram-tweaked photos?
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'Oh Sit!': CW Announces Hard-Core Musical Chairs... →
How is this NOT a story from The Onion instead The Wrap? How is this even possible? The good news is, they won’t have to invest a lot of money in the show if, somehow, it doesn’t prove to be a massively lucrative success.
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Consumed by their passion for rare Chinese teas -... →
Deeply amusing story about total tea geeks, in some cases former coffee aficionados or vinyl album collectors who’ve found something else to obsess about.
At least now I don’t feel so bad about infusing the same batch of tea leaves more than once. But you won’t catch me springing for $20,000 batches of pu’er anytime, well, ever.
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What's the Afterword
On my long perambulations exercising the Wild Pomeranian and myself, I’ve turned to a near-antediluvian source of entertainment as I tramp around the back corners of North Hollywood: the audio podcast. The latest discovery: The Afterword, a new addition to Slate’s vast stable of podcasts, focused on non-fiction books, i.e., mental crack for me.
Host June Thomas, possessed of a plummy...
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