Monthly Archives: January 2010

The Book of Eli

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They did it. The finally made a Denzel Washington movie that completely sucked. The story is Kwai Chang Caine goes to Deadwood with a good dose of Road Warrior.

I can only assume the studio hopes the reps of Denzel and Gary Oldman will pull enough people in the first week or two to make a little money. The film could not have been expensive to shoot.

As for why two fine actors like Washington and Oldman would sign on for this… no idea.

If you’re the type that makes a mental list of “reality errors” in the movie (where do they get gasoline 30 years after the end of the world?), don’t bother. The Book of Eli has too many.

Poll: 2 in 5 Americans read paper daily

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One of the findings of an Adweek Media/Harris Poll taken in December 2009. Only 43% of US adults say they read a daily newspaper – either online or in print – almost every day, while 72% read one at least once a week and 81% read one at least once a month. The study found that one in ten adults say they never read a daily newspaper.

“Daily newspaper readership skews heavily toward the older age groups. Almost two-thirds of those ages 55+ (64%) say they still read a daily newspaper almost every day. Younger Americans read newspapers less often. Just more than two in five of those ages 45-54 (44%) read a paper almost every day as do 36% of those ages 35-44. However, less than one-fourth of those ages 18-34 (23%) say they read a newspaper almost every day and 17% in this age group say they never read a daily newspaper.

Though many newspapers are exploring the possibility of charging a monthly fee to read a daily newspaper’s content online, the poll results suggest this tactic is unlikely to work. Three-fourths of online adults (77%) say they would not be willing to pay anything to read a newspaper’s content online. Among the minority willing to pay, one in five online adults (19%) would only pay between $1 and $10 a month for this online content and only 5% would pay more than $10 a month.

The average monthly amount consumers are prepared to pay ranges from $3 in the US and Australia to $7 in Italy.

I want to be depressed by these findings but must confess that I do not read a hold-it-in-your-hands newspaper and I’ve never been better informed. I spend the first two hours of every days gobbling up news from dozens of sources. And much (most?) of the real news comes from newspapers that are bleeding red ink.

What will I be reading if/when those traditional sources are no long? I have no idea.

First live video from capitol hearing room?

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As far as I know, I did the first live video feed from a committee room at the Missouri state capitol. I know, you’re asking yourself why would anyone bother. You could ask that about a lot of important-but-not-too-interesting news.

We’ve been streaming audio of debate in the Missouri House and Senate for 8+ years and recorded audio of lots of hearings, but never video. Finally all of the pieces of the puzzle seemed to be in place: hardware, software, wifi.

I used a little Logitech webcam (on the tripod); the Casio Exilim for back-up (on the small tripod) and ran it (the LogiTech) through CamTwist up to USTEAM. I think I can skip CamTwist next time. You can sample a few seconds below.

It ain’t CBS but I didn’t have wait on the sat truck, either. Next time, I might just try this on the iPhone if I can get close enough.

Back to Google Reader Shared items

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On several occasions I have gushed about Posterous, the life-streaming/blogging tool. I used it for most of the past year but put it aside a couple of days ago. At least for my personal use. Several of our company blogs are using posterous.

I had to stop for sort of a silly reason. I kept sending personal stuff to one of the company blogs. Not good. The only sure way to avoid this was to pull the plug on the personal account.

I like having a place I can quickly share something of interest and it was there all the time, in Google Reader. For me it does all that I liked about posterous (with a few bonus features). Latest links are back in the sidebar.

Bruce Sterling: State of the World 2010

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Every year the Well (one of the early, pre-web, online communities) invites Bruce Sterling to chat about the state of the world. This year, he paints a grim picture of where the “present” is heading:

“Various entities and institutions have scrambled together safety pins and gobs of glue to rig the global economy so that it appears to be ambling along, but isn’t it a great conceptual Jenga, ready to fall if you move the wrong block? What kind of shuffling and reshuffling can we expect, if there’s a global economic meltdown? And has the collapse already happened – are we like the coyote, run far beyond the edge of the cliff, waiting for gravity’s effect?”

On Google News and Twitter:

“I’m looking over my Twitter stream here, because it seems a more useful barometer to me now than Google News. Google News definitely has that rickety Jenga feeling that JonL is talking about. Whenever you see something on Google News nowadays, you have to wonder: “who owns this so-called news organization now? What’s left of them financially? Is there even a shred of objective fact in this?”