Random Tweets

A few tweetbits from my twitter feeds this morning:

An impressive demonstration of the new Wolfram Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine. CNET News reporter Stephen Shankland runs through some sample (and sometimes amusing) searches.

Also, the announcement of the Kindle DX, the long-awaited electronic book solution from Amazon. Its main advantages seem to be the viewing size (large enough that they claim that you won't need to zoom in to any part of a document), its slimness, which would be good for students who want to avoid lugging heavy (computer science) textbooks around with them all day, and its battery life. It can apparently run for days on one charge.

Disadvantages? The price is around 500USD, and... it's in shades of grey. I'm old enough to remember when computers used grey-scale displays. The old Hercules 256-shades-of-grey displays were pretty impressive back when EGA 16 colours was tops (pre-VGA) and the standard was 4-colour CGA for PCs. What was impressive about the Hercules display was the fidelity of the images it produced - like a black-and-white photo, your mind could fill in the missing colours while your eyes bulged at the intricate detail you were seeing on-screen. This would have been in the early 90s, so the display would have been probably twice as crisp as a regular TV at the time.

However, fast-forward 20 years, and I'm not sure how many people are going to want to drop $500 on a device that might be made obsolete by the magical colour Kindle that is likely to come out next year. So I think the device's major disadvantage is the price point vs. the display. If it was $200, then it might be worth it. But at that price, I'll wait for the colour version, thank you very much.

But what's this? Is The Book making a comeback? Don't call it a comeback! Just as the world's forests were heaving a sigh of relief from the downfall of newspapers and books in general, along comes the insta-book ATM, dubbed The Espresso Book Maker. It is billed as the invention that could level the playing field for smaller bookstores that can't afford the space or money to stock the same quantity of books that larger stores can hold. As appealing as that sounds, I have to Call Bullshit on that piece of PR nonsense. If anything, it's another signpost on the long road that leads to Demise, the place where bookstores are heading. Why would I want to lift my fat ass from the couch when I could just as easily order the print online and have it delivered to my door for free? And anyway, leveling the playing field is not a good thing for small stores, because it takes away whatever niche market they had working for them. Want that rare copy of a particular edition of your favourite arcane novel? Why not head over to Chapters and print it up on one of their twenty printers. Beats searching all those old second-hand bookshops for it!

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Follow the Moose!

So for all you peeps who have Google accounts - GMail included - you should check out Google Reader. Why? Well for one, it's a pretty neat universal feed aggregator that lets you follow a variety of frequently updated sites. And two, it's an easy way to follow this blog!

For those of you who are a little sick of the suck on the Internet - otherwise known as Facebook ennuie - and are looking to follow publications that provide a little insight, then this can be a very useful tool. And hey, if you think this blog doesn't suck, then feel free to try it out by Following my blog. Just click on the button in the Follow the Moose panel to your left, and this fine publication will be added to your Reader reading list. Go ahead and try it. Do it. DO IT. Or you know, subscribe to the RSS feed. I guess you could do that too.

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Jing Screen Captures

Just wanted to give a shout-out to a really nifty WPF program called Jing, from the folks at TechSmith. This screencapture tool is extremely streamlined, allows you capture images and videos seamlessly, and you can post them online at the click of a button. The free version uploads them to the TechSmith hosting site, screencast.com, while the very cheap Pro version lets you upload straight to YouTube. It also supplies an MPEG 4 codec that produces better, smaller video files. And there's a Mac version too!

Other than being a great program, Jing is also a great example of what can be done with WPF. I found out about the program while browsing this very useful WPF resource, Jerry Lin's WPF WTFs, a blog that accumulates WPF knowledge gathered while creating Jing. Check it out!

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Trent Reznor Interview

Variety.com is hosting this excellent interview with Trent Reznor, headman of Nine Inch Nails. It's really interesting to see him discuss the business side of music and how he perceives the reality of the music industry these days. He has been ahead of the curve in terms of mainstream bands and how they distribute their music. He no longer has a label, but rather self releases now, and he discusses the success of their latest album The Slip, which emulated the release strategy of In Rainbows (which, for some reason, is no longer available for download) except they were more honest about the release and took a price-point strategy. Basically, the music is free, but if you want the album, DVD, limited edition stuff that fans might be interested in, then they are available at a modest price. This lowers manufacturing costs, since they know exactly how many units to produce.

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Podcast Review: Adam Carolla

I'm not a big podcast guy, but I do have a few regulars. I'm a fan of Bill Simmons, the ESPN Sports Guy and probably the most read sports columnist in the US, and I love the CBC Radio: Search Engine podcast, but lately I've found myself regularly tuning in to the digital musings of Adam Carolla.

It seems to me like Hollywood works in posses. I'm not sure if this is a certifiable trend, but the Judd Apatow phenomenon is not unique to Seth Rogan and Co. In fact, this phenomenon might be another instance of viral marketing - or maybe "marketing through networking" is a better term. With Apatow films (and some mimickers, like Zach and Miri Make a Porno,) the same cast of actors each take turns starring and guest starring and making cameos in each other's movies. Even Kevin Smith, with Porno, got an honourary pass into the Apatow guild when he got Rogan and Elizabeth Banks to star in his film. Hollywood loves this because it garantees a certain minimal box office and makes marketing easier for them.

The same could be said for the Jimmy Kimmel crew. Kimmel and Carolla started off in radio, but they eventually hosted The Man Show together. Kimmel has gone on to great success on ABC, while Carolla went back to early-morning talk radio on CBS. Carolla's show was #1 in many parts of the US, but CBS pulled it recently when they shut down their radio operations (or at least the station that was producing Carolla's show - I'm not sure of the details and it's not really that important.) I only caught the last couple of days before the show went off the air, but it was consistently funny and surprisingly touching at the end. Carolla plays the persona of a a-hole with a heart of gold down to a tee. Carolla, Simmons, Kimmel, Sarah Silverman (who dates Kimmel) and others, including Dave Dameshek, have all worked together, hang out together (we hear and read about the Sunday afternoon football games at Kimmel's house from multiple sources) and give each other props by supporting each other's projects.

The day of the announcement, Carolla was on Bill Simmons' podcast (see how that works?), who coincidently worked with Kimmel on his show in the early days before returning to his post as a fulltime columnist at ESPN. Carolla announced that he was fine with the layoff, since CBS will pay him out for 2009, so instead he's going to do a podcast for free and have some fun with that.

Which brings us full circle. Carolla is now pulling in the biggest numbers of any podcast available via iTunes, ever, and he's almost done it by accident. However, this is not really surprising - he's getting plugs from Simmons (who has a several million per column readership) and Kimmel. He's also gotten some very good guests. And finally, since he's doing this all on his own, he's producing a semi-professional show with professional entertainers that has no limits to the conversation - anything goes. No FCC, no sponsors, no nothing. The result is a surprisingly intimate (if you want to call it that) experience. You get the feeling that you're sitting in a room with these guys, just shooting the shit. But the guys are real stars - some of them are the best at what they do.

What's also intriguing is that you're getting that feeling with some recognizable personalities: Kimmel, Simmons, Andy Dick, Seth McFarlane, Tom Arnold, Dave Dameshek, Aisha Tyler... these are pretty big names. And what's more interesting is what they talk about - Andy Dick goes into his substance absuse issues, Tom Arnold discusses his relationship with Roseanne Barr and why he hates Jason Alexander, Seth McFarlane explains the origins of Stewie from the Family Guy (my girlfriend was thrilled to find out that he based him on Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady), and so on and so forth. And throughout, Carolla uses his radio host experience to draw out interesting tidbits from his guests, while chipping in some hilarious stories of his own.

But the best part is the regularity - I think one of the most underrated reasons why podcasting isn't the new radio is consistent scheduling. I'm a creature of habit, and I like the idea that every morning I can wake up, and before I step out the door to head to work I can grab the latest Carolla podcast from iTunes. He's managed to do this on a daily basis during the week - and has a bonafide guest to boot. If you have the discipline to produce content that regularly, you'll beat out everyone who only drop a podcast whenever it's convenient for them.

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