In a recent episode of Everybody Hates Chris, a class assignment entailed taking care of an egg as if it were a child. Of course this plot is familiar to those of us who watch more than a modicum of television. Like a light version of cinema’s trains, falling leaves, and sunsets, sitcoms repeatedly invoke their own set of classic vocabulary. Here’s my top-10 list of TV cliche’s… (more…)
So I finally broke down and got a cell phone. After weighing my options for ten years I found a plan that makes sense :-). Since I can’t use a phone at work, and I don’t often get calls requesting my assistance with open heart surgery, it was hard for me to justify a lengthy contract. I was almost ready to sign a 2-year Sprint contract when a friend of mine suggested that I consider a prepaid plan. (more…)
Microsoft is taking a decidedly muted marketing approach with Zune, their potential iPod competitor. We’ve been inundated with ads for the incrementally improved iPod Nano and Shuffle, but there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent Zune campaign, despite the imminent November 14 release. Zune Insider offers a peek at some TV ads, and my opinion is mixed. (more…)
Console gamers like myself are largely insulated from problems that plague PC gamers. Just insert game, press power, and play. No specifications or tweaking to worry about, no drivers to upgrade, no crashing… Here, let me turn on the X-Box 360 and show you. Wait, what?! No, Dead Rising is not supposed to look like colorful HD noise! I’m sure it’s a fluke, I’ll just reset… Uh oh…… the pretty green lights around the power button have turned red and the 360 refuses to boot! (more…)
Even in a society preoccupied with cleanliness, one might expect the restroom — in particular, the toilet — to be slightly unclean. We wouldn’t want to eat off of a toilet seat, for instance, or do anything with the water but flush it. But unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10 years, you’ve heard at least one “dirtier than a toilet seat” study. Here is a compilation thereof, and you don’t even have to wait for the news at 10:00. (more…)
Hewlett-Packard’s deceptive practices are not limited to their outrageous figure-slimming cameras! Apparently HP feels that what happens in the boardroom should stay in the boardroom. So vehemently that in order to investigate leaks, HP resorted to questionable techniques to obtain phone records, contacted journalists under false pretense, and mulled the possibility of undercover operations involving clerical or cleaning staff. (more…)
Earlier today I came across a Chartreuse editorial that likens Paris Hilton’s fame to that of YouTube and Digg. Ironically, several hours later, I found a Forbes.com article describing a deal between Warner Music Group and YouTube that manifests the comparison. (more…)
Traditional media tends to offer package deals. Television networks, magazines, albums, … — each of them aggregates content in wholesale manner that, when done successfully, offers the consumer more than they want. But why should consumers pay for the excess bundled content that they don’t want? (more…)
Gas prices have almost doubled at the pump over the past three years, from an average of $1.60/gallon in April 2003 to $2.74 in April 2006. What would cause such a dramatic increase? Opinions range from vast oil conspiracies to classic supply and demand. However, these perspectives are not mutually exclusive — oil demand is largely inelastic, while oil companies have a significant influence on the supply, and therefore their own profits. (more…)
Warner Bros. announced yesterday that it will sell movies and TV shows online, and distribute them using BitTorrent. In the same vein as my editorial Pirates are customers too, Warner Bros. realises “If we can convert, 5, 10 or 15 percent of the illegal downloaders into consumers of our product, that is significant.” (more…)
Media companies are reluctant to embrace electronic distribution of music, movies, and television. The entertainment industry tends to view the Internet as a threat to traditional sales rather than as a new way to reach customers. The RIAA and MPAA have been addressing the “problem” by suing P2P users into submission, and these efforts have left a wake of diminished privacy, innocent victims, and reduced freedoms. (more…)
Apple’s marketing has effectively garnered mindshare for over twenty years. GUIdebook posted an early Macintosh ad campaign from a 1984 Newsweek wherein Apple bought all 39 pages of the advertising space. Here’s an Apple to Apple comparison to today’s ad campaigns. (more…)
Video games have long been a hobby of mine. Asteroids at the local laundromat, Super Mario Bros on the NES, and several generations of increasing bits later — I’m still a casual console gamer. I recently happened upon my friend Nuch Vader’s “favorite games” discussion of Wonder Boy, and I decided to write a simpler top-10 list. (more…)
I’ve long felt that the vast technical disparities between societies are rooted in commensurate historical resource gaps between the haves and the have-nots. This exact theory is articulated in Guns, Germs, and Steel, a PBS-aired TV adaptation of Jared Diamond’s 1997 Pulitzer Prize winning book of the same name (wikipedia). Although the subject matter lay outside of my expertise, I find the premise of the documentary to be logical enough. (more…)
VH1 recently aired I Love Toys, top-100 list of toys using the same format as the other “I love…” shows. Inspired by Matthew’s post on Hard Blog Life, I annotated the VH-1 list as well. (more…)