According to George Will (on ABC’s This Week), Americans have 105 billion credit cards (9 per card holder); $12,000 in average credit card debt per household; household debt is 139% of household income and no concept of deferred gratification.
Category Archives: Media & Culture
Kevin O’Keefe on Twitter
“Just anecdotal evidence, but I find Twitter users a fairly affluent and upwardly mobile group. They tend toward being business people, as opposed to kids. I’ve not only met people I am now following, but I’ve been turned onto upcoming events of interest that I would have never known of but for Twitter. In one case I ‘direct tweeted’ a person who just moved to Seattle to head up a new group at Microsoft. On another occasion I connected with a leader in the Search Engine Optimization industry. And this doesn’t include the local Seattle lawyers I am making connections with via Twitter.”
It’s probably just frustration with trying to get some “hot new thing,” but I frequently encounter an almost angry tone on the subject of Twitter:“I don’t get it! This is bullshit! What a waste of time!”
I try to remember it took me more than a year for the Twitter to click [Twitterclick: noun. Small, sub-audible sound in the frontal lobe associated with Twittercognizance]
MacBook product placement in top TV shows
In the season premier of The Office, Pam heads off to art school with what appears to be a new MacBook. Back in Scranton, Jim has a MacBook Pro so the two love birds can chat. Of course, Michael has to get in on the fun (“Put me down, Michael. Take me back to Jim.”)
Pretty good product placement. But no better than what we saw in the season premier of HBO’s Entourage (I would have sworn I posted on this but can’t find it), when Johnny Drama carried on an LA/Paris relationship via his MacBook Pro.
I’m sure PC users assume this is just Hollywood horse shit but it really is that easy to video chat on the Mac.
We’re not talking about a bottle of Budweiser on the kitchen table. In both instances, the Mac’s were written prominently into the story line. Would love to know how much Apple paid for these two placements? [via Cult of Mac]
Webcasting high school football games
“Beginning this Friday, Gannett will have 12 live high school football games showing on widgets posted to USAToday.com and many of our local broadcast and newspaper sites. The games are being produced by our broadcast and newspaper sites as well as a high school AV department. Most of the games are single cam, laptop, aircard + Mogulus productions.” — Liz Foreman, Lost Remote:
“Virtual Immortality Made Easy”
Regular readers know smays.com is all about getting those photos and home movies out of the closet and up on flickr and YouTube. I’ve even posted a time or two about digital immortality.
Scott Maentz and his wife are actually doing something about it. From their website: “Our mission at RememberGranny.com is to help technology challenged Baby Boomers create a legacy for future generations using today’s rich digital media and the latest Internet applications.”
RG.com has packages starting at just $99 but my favorite is the Complete Virtual Immortality Package ($499). Need some f2f help? Then you’ll want to consider the Virtual Immortality Mini-Vacation.
PS: I just went looking for some of my earlier posts where I talk about putting your life on line; paying flickr to keep your pix up forever and a day… and I can’t find them. Poor tagging. If anyone remembers some of these posts and happened to bookmark or link, drop me a line.
I’m closing in on 4,000 posts and it’s getting damned hard to find stuff.
More US mobile phone than Americans 13+
The following stats were featured in a marketing piece I received today. And I’m guessing the numbers are even higher in other developed countries.
85% of Americans have a cell phone (there are actually more US mobile phones than Americans age 13 and older) Source: CTIA Wireless Association- 66% of cell phones in America are equipped with a camera Source: comScore
- 40% of Americans with cell phones send/receive text messages (80% among 13-24 year olds; 63% among 18-27year olds) Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
- 24% of Americans with cell phones send/receive photo or video messages (up 60% in the past year) Source: M:Metrics
And it will just get easier and easier to share those photos and videos. I’m not feeling particularly left out because I probably shoot-and-share more video than the average bear. But I can’t deny my mobilness much longer. Holding out for video iPhone.
The photobooth is back
Last week I pointed to a book called American Photobooth, a new illustrated history of photo booths. Seems like photobooths are making a small comeback as a novel way to take photos of weddings.
You’ve probably been to a wedding where they leave disposable cameras on each table for guests to use and leave.
Barb attended a wedding/reception last weekend that featured a photobooth (a new digital one, I assume). Guests jam inside for group shots. I’m unclear on whether you get the pix on the spot or they mail them to you later. The former, I think.
Not sure why the photobooth sounds like more fun than the cameras on the table but it does.
“Growing new crops”
Chris Brogan observes “the bigger or older or more successful the company, it seems, the more difficult this experience” of finding the next new hit. An observation he feels applies particularly well to media companies.
Brogan would call his approach to this problem the “escape pod” model:
- Pick a small core team, half insiders, half raw new outsiders.
- Stake them a startup seed round.
- Let them go a few months on that.
- No corporate oversight, only report backs. It’s spend/try/live-or-die.
- Assess. Good? Then raise an A round or give them more corporate assets.
- Revise revenue targets.
- Observe. Kill, or green light.
He ends is post with the Big Question: CAN media organizations put new crops into the ground without pulling up the roots to check how they are growing? [via David B.]
Cyborg Anthropology
I doubt there’s any shortage of scholarly papers on the sociological and anthropological effects of the mobile phone. I’ve never had a desire to search out and read any of them.
But my interest was piqued by Amber Case, one of the attendees at Gnomedex 8.0. A recent graduate, Amber describes her area of work and study as “Cyborg Anthropology.” Ooh. She was kind enough to send me a copy of her thesis: “The Cell Phone and Its Technosocial Sites of Engagement.” Here’s a snippet from the introduction:
“Mobile telephony has ushered in social geographies that are no longer entirely public or entirely private. The mobile phone allows place to exist in non-place, and privacy to exist in public. Never before have people been able to disembody their voices and talk across any distance, in almost any place. Cell phone technology has thus changed the dichotomies of place and non-place as well as the private and public dichotomies into a technological-human hybrid.”
I think I’ve had a whiff of this idea from all the time I spend communicating online. And when I break down and graft an iPhone to my hip, it’s only going to get better/worse.
No satellite or cable TV? No problem.
Our DirecTV works great until a heavy rain rolls in and blocks the signal. It’s called “rain fade” and you lose your signal a couple of minutes before the rain actually reaches earth.
That happened last night while we were watching the Democratic National Convention. It wa getting close to time for Obama to speak and, since we didn’t know how long it would last, I grabbed the MacBook and started streaming CNN’s live feed.
It was a little small and I didn’t bother to go full-screen because we were on the floor in the bedroom and could see it fine.
This has become so easy and mundane, it’s hardly worth mentioning. But that’s my point. Distribution is becoming –has become– a non-issue. In four years I have no doubt I would just swipe the iPhone and watch the speeh there.
Perhaps I’m still awestruck by this because I remember a time before color TV, cable, VCR, DVD, computers, web, etc.