media nightmare

the roles of art

2011-12-22T05:14:00.001-08:00

to accentuate the degree of something beyond any attempt to achieve or attain anything other than experience and through that, information. If at fails to impart experience, then it is decorative in nature and the intent may be to persuade. Persuasion is the bending of character perhaps into a place where it may not feel at all familiar, but which inhabits all the same, the shape of events that the story takes you being contrary or in conflict with the moral quality of the plot. Character is the division between actors. Actors carry their own sword into the battle that the story plays.

The Media Conglomerate

2011-07-20T02:28:00.000-07:00

Monopolies only serve the elite that own them. They reduce choice while increasing unjustified costs to the consumer. As long as they work "within the law" these increasingly global and increasingly bland enterprises reduce the quality of communication and considered action. Morality is given a bad name by all the false moralising, but the constant reminders that a tabloid may invade anyone who dares to rise into the public eye is a powerful reason to fear changing the status quo.

The committee seemed to want to simply ask for an admission that there was executive complicity with law breaking; crime by an individual is the assertion given in the defence of corporate malfeasance, but you only need look at the product of the organisation to realise our emotional responses are what they have become so expert at producing, because there is no other real value in exposing celebrity underwear than inducting a path for the lowest common values we all fear.

When you balance the thousands and thousands of unknown individual affected by privacy intrusion, it is a corporate liability of billions that Murdoch has confirmed is still to be settled. It happened as a result of the organisation's goals and activity. It is not a culture of corruption, that is still a euphemism. It is policy and it must start at the very top as the entire organisation is in the business of emotional manipulation, also known as entertainment.

Pandering to the lowest common denominator is the market. The "bell shaped curve" justifies the policy of producing media that anyone can digest and be drafted into prejudice. It is true that on occasion the product of the lurid investigations conducted explore areas too taboo for the mainstream, breakthroughs in reactionary media tend to be exposure of political corruption by embarrassment or of "criminal masterminds" and pedophiles - using the profane not just for its shock value but its induction of the herding instinct.

The basis of such attacks is to threaten hunger and isolation. It is not seen as a criminal activity due to the inherent popularity of its voices. But when that popularity is the product of what is in essence a pornographic portrayal of celebrity, or mud raking, it is inherent in the structure of the organisation.

See Guardian article

And listen to what Jon Stewart has to say. The Murdoch empire has more impact on US politics with its Murdoch owned Fox News outlet that makes News of the World look less committed to its cause. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, but freedom to distort is not.

Hackers revenge

2011-07-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

The furore that has erupted since our analysis of media corruption two weeks ago is extraordinary. The demise of the News of the World was a long time coming, the exposés of that tabloid were rarely of any value, more commonly savaging the careers of footballers and the less than deserving. The blow up of the alleged criminality that reaches all the way into No 10 with the Prime Minister defending his hiring of Andy Coulson way past the use by date he should have respected, leaving any apology to the British public limp and soggy.

And as we witness the demise of News International's bid for BskyB, and effective control of more of the political mind set, we appear to be experiencing a political tectonic shift.

And the corrupted appear to have made terrible mistakes in their own security. Lulzsec have infiltrated an old server nobody remembered to switch off, and have gained access to emails from The Sun. The potential time bomb for the Murdoch empire no longer relies upon questionable or corrupted political influences, it is a new definition of democratic power. Lulzsec made it obvious to The Sun that a cloud was moving in front of its big red face by publishing a prank article on the Sun's own servers that Rupert Murdoch was found dead in his garden.

The media and banking empires of today and yesterday will not be able to continue to abuse their position of privilege as the new rules of publication and the new economics of information eradicate their advantage, their voice and their access. As a metaphor, the prank hack article is indeed symbolically accurate. The career destroying tabloid media is a big old dinosaur rotting on the soil.

Will the demise spread to the USA and sink Fox News? One may assume that now entirely possible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/19/how-lulzsec-hacked-sun-website

British Media

2011-07-08T22:51:00.001-07:00

The newspapers are fruit dying in the tree, falling off trunks already crumbling with rot, branches sweep low, drop into the swamp.

The television channels blurt out judgements by the hour as politicians entertain their captains who seem to believe they are creating reality and have therefore some right to listen in to their creations so employ people to collect information turning a blind eye to the methods, legal or illegal, that may have to be employed to arrive at the articles they have published. The failure to question this and for management to be subject to a level of discipline that befits the crime the board would have to have examined this, so instead of putting it right, a news institution is hijacked for dark purposes and then to essentially commit crimes of some magnitude, from which it published salacious details that seemed extraordinarily personal and indeed were the result of wire taps into the private lives of people, thereby subjecting them to criminal intrusion and electing to play puppet master and implicate themselves into police investigation.

The application of the law by police who have accepted bribes to not investigate serious breaches of personal integrity and basic law by a commercial organisation that intends to control a much larger slice of things than anyone should, thus weakening democratic intelligent examination of truth by certifying salacious lies and exposures of illegally obtained information they had no legal right to obtain let alone promulgate and which they did with no regard to the actual harm they may have caused to potential legal positions.

And the discussion is not of what to do about things but how to appear to the voters.

Technical directions

2011-07-04T01:17:00.000-07:00

Facebook announces integration with Skype.

What is next? Twitter integrated with Wikipedia?

The obvious problem with this is that Skype is a utility and FB is a platform that has morphed from being a list of your true friends into a promotional tool of connectivity and a platform for ap development - like iphone and andriod.

So instead of making better distinct products, the software giant are combining essentially into homogenised communications platforms that are remarkably similar in effect (how we use them). They all essentially want to be our phone company?

Meantime, Google fights its war on six fronts.

Strangely, that opens up opportunities for innovation.

The Rise of the Smartphone

2011-06-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Handheld terminal devices have been around for years. But to make it a useful object more technology was required to connect data with the very business of living. The radio is an increasingly strange medium until they caught on to publically available channels. The creation of interesting content is not a technology, it is an art. So the established institutions had a head start, if only they could get a handle on the technology. The artist invariably benefits as the technology becomes a commodity but in the early days of Psion organisers and electronic diaries. That the organiser supported a decent programming language that programmed input that could then be loaded into the central server only existed locally. No wireless. The Psion organiser carved a little market out from the otherwise dull landscape of personal organisers because it had a logical language.

What is so interesting about obsolete technology that was not network aware and the current ap revolution in the mobile sphere?

It is that a certain set of logical evolutions are supported: interoperability, online access and video capability as well as voice means along with communication there is a plethora of useful goodies that could be downloaded and used for free or near free.

So what is next? What makes a mobile ap useful and how to make money from it? How to build a business with mobile aps.

Consider this: Your company gives you a smart phone. You can work on it at any time, entering data on a blue

Security and Big Companies

2011-04-27T00:47:00.001-07:00

Big companies that hold personal information of their client base have an inherent duty to protect this information properly. It is utter nonsense to claim that this is not possible - it is entirely possible. But when constructing a huge edifice of systems it is very hard to see potential bugs and entry points.

But an intrusion of this nature reveals a company is an emperor with no clothes. It is an absence of infrastructure methods and good practise as well as planning for intrusions. So many big companies executive boards do not understand how technology can protect them or where their risks lie.

"No system is infallible" followed by challenges to prove everyone wrong is not the solution to this huge problem. Sequestered validation services and heavy encryption of personal details is.

The opaque and ridiculously complex terms and conditions you sign AFTER purchase to protect such companies from their own failures is highlighted by this and similar incidences. The worst is obviously what we do not know and hiding behind lawyers is simply the wrong security policy.

Sony Playstation Hack

Who is at fault, and why?

Millions of Sony users will blame the company for inadequate protection of personal data. A class action suit is most likely impossible as a remedy, it achieves very little. That is why we have extensive terms and conditions, to protect corporate interests from predatory attacks.

Sony will blame the hackers for stealing their assets. 80 million online paying customers can expect a marketing onslaught. Using this data for criminal purposes is too obvious, short term and risky.

Legally and obviously the people at fault here is you and me. We must act to say no to unreasonable terms for software use. The law should protect you. It can not. Neither can many of the monolithic companies that sell stuff online. It is traditionally an anarchistic arrangement - you feel secure because nearly everyone on the web is equally at some risk so it is normally bad luck if you get hit with a virus. But the systematic theft of a user base is the fault of the law.

The law must keep up with the environment in which it operates. How? By regulating the big companies so they can not escape change due to the nature of their contracts with their consumers they so carelessly betray. The law must enforce certain checks and measures - the banking industry has learned the value of iron bound security, and now the globalised business needs to invest in the minds of clever security designers to foil attempts to steal their IP and their customers.

Instead of encouraging the politicians to talk about practical measures, the media tend to highlight the horror of credit card theft. They are just bits of plastic with numbers on them and the banks could be regulated into instantly replacing all Sony users with new numbers for their accounts.

So many applications rely on email as a valid point of contact. Until Google is raided at least gmail is pretty much that. Unless you type in the wrong address, you can still be fairly certain of a private channel without much effort.

Sony really should have protected their user information with better security design.

The real value of Media

2010-07-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

The state of civilisation is indirectly related to the fierce accuracy of its media. Not so much in factual reportage, although that is essential, but the ability to speak the language of a large a slice of people as possible.

The media is there to specialise attention. To bring about that Platonic wish reflected into Derrida that difference is essential to everything. The nightmare is when most media is similar enough that there is only a singular point to be viewed. The concentration of images and events that inform the public what is the effects of the decisions of power has a manifest value.

The rise of social networking is a false trail for newspapers. Yes some of it is useful. Being able to discuss the news with a like or different minded but similarly fascinated attention - the harnessing of a conversation that reveals seems to be the goal. More content we can read and consume and set fire to opinions with, discuss, digress, digest.

What is the point of the multifaceted view of the world? It is not exactly rational to tell lies or stories that are made up. It pays to be real, alive, truthful. The published media make money by selling advertising and spend it on writers and reportage. A news organisation can make stories and then license it to other players who make media. Television news has provided a face to go with the stories. Somehow it seems essential but tells you less than a newspaper yet it is far more popular.

The real goal of online media is to tell you more than a newspaper while doing so with the communication clarity of well concepted ideas.

The reason TV works in real time is the reason that it does not work as a library. Not as an advertising medium. It is too easy to avoid the advertising.

Which explains the medium of online communities. These harness a voice, an identity that people can grasp onto and talk with each other. But that should never be the limit, a news media is about something more than entertainment and presentation of the news.

The mistake with AI is to use it to replace humans. No reason to do that, we like what we like because we do not know what it will be and the moment of not realising that is better than one where all is predictable. We learn plenty from significant surprises.

A news experience engages its readership with a provocative compelling discussion.

It does not take contention, but directed irritation. Many planned paths of contention.

Muted design gives a paper a silent identity.

Free Information

2010-05-22T05:05:00.000-07:00

James Murdoch wants to keep his assets out of the British Library

"The heir to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation empire attacked the British Library yesterday for "harming the market" in print journalism by allowing online access to its vast newspaper archive. James Murdoch, head of News Corp in Europe and Asia, spoke out days ahead of his company's big gamble in introducing charges for access to the websites of The Times and The Sunday Times."

- The Independent

Our Response:

What is he? A protectionist? There has always been a market for free information, history is not for sale!

It is a legal human right to know what happened from many points of view. Every other news media organisation recognises that their copyright expires and their writings may become public domain in good time. This does not stop Murdoch adding value to his assets. Just look at how Fox and Friends embellish the news for the select audience of the fixed minds of Right wing fundamentalist Americans who love to see their fiendish representation of things. It is nothing more than an archive of fiction. Let them protect it and remove their opinions from the stream of common history.

Excellent idea James. Keep it out of human history.

How is social media not a bubble?

2010-01-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

The "real" or what used to be to sometimes called "bricks and morter" media - the news and magazine media who charge handsomely for advertising and pay well for quality content is being continuously pronounced "dead by social media". And then they go on about how social media will one day make money, but until then being content with dribbles of aggregating income for any old content (quality not being the issue).

In the serious matter of news reporting, online newspapers typically do one of two things:

a) try to sell newspapers by presenting a boiled down version of the printed news
or
b) try to sell advertising by harnessing a huge audience

or, if Rupert Murdoch has his way:

c) charging for content

At least c) drives the online media toward quality.

Aggregation of content means representing the same things thorough the filter of online networks to score points (or dollars, on google adsense) is what this (blogging) media seems to be about. For this writer, it is simply a way to write and get hundreds (or if successful a few million) readers. From there the sky is the limit.

A bit like the investment in the property bubble, or the sharemarket bubble or the dot.com boom/bust - the proliferation of "media media media" for its own sake continually dilates the audience. The differenced is, that what I write today can work tomorrow. What I publish in a newspaper is designed to expire tomorrow (or soon enough). The same can be observed with comment aggregation mechanisms (facebook, twitter, et al). What is published today becomes dead seaweed fairly quickly. And the most severe degredadation of content is the social marketers - these creatures demand you find out from them "how to gain 50,000 followers" using the same method they used? The age of media competition is not dead, and if I happen to find out how to gain 50,000 genuine followers, it is merely an illusion to say that I benefit by telling these 50,000 people how to compete. It is a co-operative ideal, and one that is bound to come undone when you consider the mathematics.

The concept that you "own your network" - that when an "important person" tweets or blogs, then their 50,000 followers will go crazy is just fiction. That 100 of them may be watching and relay your wisdom is the goal. Respect your network if the one you have is genuine.

There is wisdom in vertical markets. They do not have to be hierachial to succeed, however. Content may be "king" (what a silly metaphor, but it is one that stuck), but the king has to wear interesting clothes or eventually the signal to noise ratio does nothing for it.

The real trick (in my opinion) is to create something worth reading, which is why this writer needs an editor instead of a stream of irrelevance as comments or votes or whatever. In the end, if you do not care how popular you are, but prepare fascinating, dramatic and mouth watering content then your network will transmit it. If they are interested.

But if all you do is inform others how you tricked 50,000 people into registering interest with a non-existent free gift (the infamous give away ebook and selling webpages that go on and on scrolling for hours of fun persuasion) and expect to make millions, you are inflating a bubble that will not work as well as compelling, interesting or even valuable content.

Communication Breakdown

2009-12-02T23:53:00.000-08:00

The world has started to rely upon mobile phone technology that enables communication when people are, for example, travelling. Or visiting friends.

The life we live has been seriously changed but is it all for the better? Being aware of danger makes us alert. Driving a vehicle, for example, requires constant attention. Using mobiles when driving has been made illegal in this country, for very good reasons. Our brains are unable to do language and steering at the same time, it seems.

When mobile phones started to appear it was considered gauche to allow one to ring when at dinner or in a shared public space (like the cinema). These days if your mobile does not go off during a date, it almost like saying you are not all that popular.

Attention is now a commodity. No longer can you own or control your own time. It is randomly portioned out to the will of others. Is this entirely wise?

There is nothing wrong with mobiles, it is just they accentuate existing human foibles by increasing access, increasing interruption, and increasing anxiety.

And then the adverts that give you an IQ test requiring your mobile number to charge you for the answer. The test can not be an accurate IQ test. Is this valuable?

Disclaimer: I do not own a mobile phone.

Free content

2009-11-26T14:29:00.000-08:00

The web should always be free is one of the mantras that started back when the forefathers of the web were ordaining rules for the new medium. Except that in the beginning it was not a "medium", it was really a way to share academic research and so forth. Information should be free.

But the web became a place to buy books - with the rise and rise of Amazon. It became a place to buy anything with web shops everywhere - some that work and many that simply do not.

A catalogue of products obviously is not something you can ask for a subscription to, but the news media produce access to information that is not exclusive. It originates from the public domain so charging for it, per se, seems unnatural.

Charging for a document that carries advertising makes perfect sense. But the internet's evolution has deconstructed that idea. Now we are all so overloaded with information that the very idea of paying for any of it seems downright silly.

In this brave new world, journalists and content makers are expected to make a living for free.

The death of the blog

2009-11-26T03:58:00.000-08:00

No more boring blogs! The linked article is the most magnificently detailed and varied layouts more like a magazine than a traditional web page.

With a webpage, a blog like this one, a template is used to give the entire site a common look.

But who are we kidding. Looking at the same page design all the time may be branding, but it is boring. Therefore the blog is a dead medium. To make it exciting an alive requires design.

Maybe we will switch our templates around more often.

0900 Give Me A dollar for FREE

2009-11-19T14:20:00.000-08:00

The world is drowning in media-ocraty

If you had a message for others to listen to 2000 years ago, you stood on a mount, and raised your arms to the sky. These days there are a million ways to invoke powers you may or may not really have, to impress people. Primary amoung these is "design". Another is "compelling communication". Both are merely vehicles for something. What? Something!

The media is not the message. It took a long time to afford broadcast quality beta cam video and it restricted our air waves to only include "broadcast quality" images. Now the media analysts have just noticed that a handheld video device you can get for three hundred bucks can make fairly decent TV. The "real" world of artificially popularised journalism has newly reborn at TVNZ, with a tech revolution now only 10 years behind the rest of the internet. We have new channels to carry more local content, most safe and pedestrian, but one gem is radical new-school journo Russel Brown on Media7 quizzing the Minister of Broadcasting (who's on camera manner is truly dreadful) essentially if the show he makes analysing media can still attract Government funding? He could have been waving him arms in the air. Quite surreal.

Government funded TV should be find expressive arts, to develop a pool of talent. Sorry, Julie Christie may enjoy her own ideas. But Government funding is wasted if spent on quiz shows.

Reality TV is simply observing human behaviour. Sleezy setup journalism dressed in dapper graphics is still boring. The endless quest for yet another way to slice bread brings us a million ways to not make profit.

Real news and real drama take the breath away. Yet another way to scalp $2.50 for every sucker that puts their mobile number into your website is not art. It is crime.

The greatest friend the conman has is his next victim. These sites that invite you to call in on your teenage funded mobile account (they figure parents have lots of money to waste) to vote and be charged each time do nothing for the consumer that uses them.

And then they appear in millions of guises. They are annoying and do not advance humanity one little bit. The danger of the intrusion of "Web 2.0" into newspapers is like the intrusion of advertising into editorial. It does not belong.

Quality content is not dreamed up by "designers", they do the shiny part. Quality is dreamed up by thinkers, architects and designers create surfaces to represent them. The danger with Web 2.0 media is that everything is so designed, that nobody noticed what a waste of time most of the iPhone apps really are.

Computer software is an art, and every so often it is highjacked by those who only want a surface to slide upon, and do not want to be bothered with the detail.

Like my old boss kept saying "click the ticket" - he wanted applications that provided a minimal if somewhat useful service and took a few cents each time. It was a mantra gimmick he was after. A magic spell. A service that essentially gave you an excuse to click the ticket.

When I read a news story, I want the paper it is printed on to not be the best thing about the news. I want the writing to hold my attention. The product is human shock.

The New Media Wars

2009-10-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

Facebook vs Blogger. Facebook wins that in one sense. It loses in another.

Blogger vs Wordpress. Same conundrum. Blogger is better for instant publishing, wordpress is better for everything.

And if I posted that on Facebook, criticizing Facebook's latest new way of operating (their revisions are huge and jarring), I could expect Facebook to remove my ya ya yaing about them. At least that is what a friend said happened to her reactions to Facebook's new features. Maybe, maybe not.

Facebook is useless for art or idea development. They retain indefinite copyright on what you post there. Yuck. Read their terms and conditions.

When it comes down to privacy and copyright anything is better than Facebook. Here you are publishing actual details of your actual life, your connections and your hopes, and hopefully not your trade secrets or finished works of art.

It is like open book email. You must beware who you connect to unless you are a celebrity and have a public persona. But people seem to survive without being too concerned and not much goes wrong.

Facebook is very nosy - it wants to know which Rock Star you want to be so they can tailor which house ads you get to see. It is the pinnacle of intrusive marketing. Extremely smart to give you the ads you want rather than go for exposure with its mountain of failed impressions(google's only real mistake was to emulate publishing in this way).

The reason FB is successful is that is an approximation of real social connection. It is well exposed to quiet media giants enslaving your attention to their ideals. It is civil, people behave well and it is accurate. In the same sense that Wikipedia is accurate. A wall is a wall, with all its graffiti. Your own garden wall is something that you grow plants on (the Myspace model, and moreso youtube - most comments are garbage, so why engage?)

The hybrid to watch is Twitter. This models more truly the incidental nature of the web and the independence and fleeting nature of throwing your words into the cosmic pile. There is sufficient lack of focus on the author, more focus on the posts and where they lead. With Google Chrome you soon are overwhelming your machines memory with links to some interesting things.

FB does that too. Myspace is more like an arcade of your own talent. Leads nowhere. The page is the destination, and everyone else plasters their ads on it. You are the free entertainment for Rupert Murdoch to sell ads.

So what does this lead us to? Social Networks are at an evolutionary stage. Another new entrant can still upset the jelly wobbling it's evolving ways. It is still amorphous because it does not really have a formalised way of succeeding. Like most things it is also transitory and will be outmoded by more refined communication.

As drivers in vehicles are starting to discover by rapid elimination, cell phones and control on the roads do not go hand in hand. I also believe that cell phones and the billions being ploughed into linked advertising campaigns require a social network to survive. And if that is the driving force behind a social network then are we not engaging in a collusion of mass delusion? My phone told me I wanted an ice-cream and the company hired the best psychologists to make that desire nearly unbearably linked to my subconscious sexual instincts.

For this reason, I feel that the current trend of "smart marketing" will go the same way as "smart drugs" - people will realise they were better off without them.

If I want to have an ice cream, I want it to be on a hot summers day - not late at night.

And if a driver is controlling a car I do not want then to receive a text message. It would make a whole lot of sense for cars to have a mobile receptacle that creates limited call time hands free with verbal dialing (but car firms have no money for R&D).

The next big social network development - the one that could transform the way we think and survive Facebook is Google Wave.

I just got invited to Beta Test it. More soon.

Distribution

2009-09-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, distribution used to be a controlled, expensive and very restricted activity. Suddenly it is unrestricted and a perception has developed that there is an increasing demand for triviality. With a hope that people will buy into this on their mobiles. Buying a series of 5 minute dramas seems like a producers dream. Cheap plentiful content with very little need for sustained writing, can be written and donated by contributors and the random hit and low cost guaranteeing a return.

Is not fantasy the suspension of disbelief? As everyone in the universe attempts to attract a following on the momentum of a digital tidal wave of media access, it is a mistake to commodify availability to the exclusion of a cultural progress.

It is inevitable that overreach into false entertainment will eventually suffer competition of actual genius. The television formats were false regimes, but suitably gripping content was required to sustain decor for advertising.

It is not that people want or need insubstantial content. It is that the medium is not the same medium. Will the advent of rapid broadband world wide change our perception of privacy?

Content vs Social

2009-09-18T18:56:00.001-07:00

Is there a war on between content and the social connectiveness illusion we call social networking? My experience tells me that there is a friction between reporting facts and creating a fictional society in relation to news media. Fictional society? Magazines are well familiar with "fictional society" making up stories that keep up hooked usually about the king and queen of the celebrity planet, where-ever that is.

Frankly, socialising with the kinds of people who contribute to the newspaper is not my idea of fun. The idea of doing it behind a non-de-plume, to me, is plain dishonest.

Creating a fiction or a character to interact with the likes of Twitter lends itself to a business application in the same way as being a Facebook artist or a myspace artist, but which is best? All are. But should an artist be spending all their time creating social networks or creating art?

What newspapers should be doing

2009-09-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

The Wire

Twenty years ago, worked with a system that linked all the newspapers in New Zealand over a modem network. This was a "packet switch network" - what we worked with before TCP/IP changed how most networking works and created the Internet.

There is a continual friction in the evolution of computer software between central control and remote intelligence. Networking wise. You either have lots of intelligent nodes with their own databases interacting, or you have a design where the bulk of the data is held at one or more central locations.

Both have been shoved aside for the client-server model that works for data exchange by building protocols at the correct level of a stack.

But have we lost something in translation? More important for the media industry, is there an answer in news presentation that is a) not expensive and b) instantly more interesting than what passes today as online news.

What distinguishes news from plain old blogging? Factuality.

News is all information, no muddled thinking about it.

Blogging is all muddled thinking about it, no real information.

So the way to distinguish media "you should read" from media "you should ignore" the media giants have formed a sort of closed information cabal where they share propriety information, or IP if you like. Much of what you read in your local newspaper is similar to what is published in a local newspaper half way across the world.

Facts are just facts. Writing is the art however that a newspaper is selling. The best writing should evolve with a news brand instead in award winning news sites we get snips. Like radio news. Skims over the surface.

"The Web is not a medium for long articles because people's attention span is short..." is just marketing bollocks. The web is not a visual medium. It is hardly just for the consumption of idiots. It is ultimately the greatest economic and academic asset we have.

To evaluate business requirements based on human behaviour is the wrong business model and then charging for what drags the most eyes is really how you run a sports channel.

The news is a differentiated media. It employs entertainment (mainly sports) to gather the larger audience. No longer really reading news, we are instead led by an unexpressed desire for a staged entertainment experience while listening to short pithy headline delivery with surface analysis or interviews.

The news media adopts a media player clip approach to video ("as that is what works on the web, its all eyeballs"). Nothing wrong with that. Like the Apple I, it is a stage of media evolution.

On the other side there is youtube.com and thousands of similar user posted video sites. News does not appear to work on these sites.

Mashing the two together to provide public news bulletins will be done wrong hundreds of times badly before an accurate model for public contributions selectively rewards great content capture. Will this mean a vast network of ipod nano carrying part time journalists? Only when something happens while the reporter is there. But too much shaky low grade video, and it loses its edge. Becomes just more blogware.

It is hardly a business model.

But mashing together the idea that contributors are a competing community who have a market with news rooms is a business model.

To enforce copyright to save the "music industry" is deemed impossible as sharing undermines the economic model. The musicians are turning the economics of the industry upside down by being so cheaply visible on the web.

The real need for record companies is to finance large scale tours, large scale distribution/promotion and provide audio upgrades. Technology will make MP3 an obsolete and hated format. Compressing all the art out of music is just criminal. It is like selling thinned down paint. Bad copies of music are the worst disservice to the artist.

Apple have saved the computer audio industry. The FREE iTunes experience means being able to hear the music. Erase all MP3s and use complete music formats!

Delivering news over the web as a business model is not the same as music. Not at all. Both have made evolutionary blunders in the transition.

"Free" is only best if we did not have an economy. iTunes replaced the old music economy with a greater one. Music is an archival medium. If it can be continually improved, over the net, there is still a rational for music companies who respect or buy artist copyrights.

News delivery is a hot instant medium with many archival background accumulations which can be repackaged and sold as for example Time Life books.

The opportunity for the news media is not just becoming a clearing house of public opinion. It is creating the full framework of an accurate, reliable reportage and matching democratic discussions to political trends with a history machine that is far more focused on detail than the television can be and delivering engaging video on the spot within seconds of real time events.

For the sake of the business model the net should spell an end for syndication. The networks of 20 years ago are no longer appropriate. They now produce bland undifferentiated news stories.

Different titles, different content. The iTunes of journalism will be invented and absorb those who believe the way ahead is to charge for content.

The Future of Advertising

2009-09-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

" The websites we visit, the online links we click, the search queries we conduct, the products we put in virtual shopping carts, the personal details we reveal on social networking pages - all of this can give companies insight into what internet ads we might be interested in seeing."

"While Congress has waded into internet privacy issues before, this measure could break new ground, as the first major attempt to regulate a nascent but fast-growing industry that represents the future of advertising."

Privacy is going to be regulated in the US and that may well affect the internet as we know it. If the likes of doubleclick and other media click measurement is able to intrude into our "privacy" to then work out what to sell to us, we have the philosohphers stone instead of attraction.

There is no magic formula to human interest. It is an instinct. The advertisers (the old school advertising agencies and campaign magicians who can, with a single image, influence a percentage of behaviour) do not crave intimate details of your preferences in order to sell. It is the wrong equation.

It is as though the internet has made everyone forget what drives people. It is not what we did yesterday, our normal habits - that territory is the burnt out old fields we must plough to return value. And when you are marketing "intimately" (selling into the areas already marked "SOLD") and to everyone, are you not risking customers who may not attach themselves to the brand, so much as be made less interested as the more exposure to the common, the more interest is going to wane.

And what is "private" anyway? Which bill board you read as you whisk past them on a train is your own business, but which newspaper you read on line or distinct patterns of habit, how often you play an online game for example, or do things that privacy is there to protect. For example, you become a little curious about a subject and use the internet to dip your toes. Do you want a salesperson on the phone inviting you buy what you are just a little curious about? Of course you do not.

Advertising is attraction.

That is the basic law, and if you forget it it is easy to remember, A = A

Your advertising is bait to attract interest. Interest is instinctive. You show interest in things that correlate to enhanced survival and part of our survival algorithm is being surprised by change.

The secret is to BE NEW. Not to dredge up all those things we are getting bored with. The advertising industry can either FOLLOW what we do, or INNOVATE and SURPRISE.

It is all very well for everyone in the world to hammer on your door with a better dish washing liquid. But that is not the future.

It is new ideas. New ways to wear them. New things to excite and attract interest.

Social Media takes over

2009-08-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

Social Media is Bigger than you think

This video makes the point that social media has grown more sharply than anything has before and its ready adoption by Generation Y is causing an international revolution.

Brands used to be led by symbolic logos and instant recognition. Now brand managers both in the media and product worlds have to think more clearly about customer service. It is not just hooking a fish anymore. Now people will hear about it - from the fish.

My opinion is that the social media revolution has not finished taking ground. It has crippled news outlets by making their product over supplied. It affects many other things by being intensely distracting!

Barack Obama's election both in the primaries and the presendential elections brought social media into politics for real. It is the democratic equation that is changing countries that seek to restrain their citizens.

For the revolution to take hold, a way to fund the activity of the medium other than advertising, other than subscription, other than trickery - has to be developed.

It is the lifeblood of democracy. Social media has its own rationale. To save the news papers, and the elephant in the corner, television - by using social media is an interesting ploy, more interesting than charging subscription for content.

But it is still not the best idea. Ultimately - the news media will become a different entity, entirely.

My prediction is that since social media was introduced as a commodity that adding charges to it will fail. It is simply oxygen, a carrier wave for information spreading that has no real cost, apart from your time.

Photography - Public journalism

2009-08-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

inverted pyramid theory

2009-08-10T04:01:00.000-07:00

The current trickle down theory of economics is all well and good except that nobody is bothered trickling down. Weath is sticky, and levering it away from the masses in small quantity is the art of becoming a large economic force.

That is what drives the news industry. If they get their circulation figures high enough their real estate is more effective and so goes for a higher price. They do not so much make money selling individual copies - they may even lose if they do not sell most of them. Many Saturday editions may be sold at a loss, if it causes the other 5 editions to be profitable, thats business.

And then along came the internet and a plethora of free indexed content always available and relegating all other news sources as secondary to it. How can journalism survive?

Now that delivery is virtually free, news can be free. But news sources are not free. To finance these a team of specialists are required at every location. American capitalism has produced the news sponsor as a solution to funding such activities. New Zealand does the same. Plus lots of advertising.

The charging of users a participation fee is not that unusual. The assumption that any particular loyalty to a publication is not so present as before as the emporer has nothing to hide that most of the newspaper we pay for is received by lots of news sources and we can see them all simultaneously. So wny pay for it?

The fate of Newspapers

2009-08-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

It used to be true that establishment and solidity was required to make a newspaper. Where the finance world has Wall Street - the news world had Fleet Street far longer.

Major newspapers are making huge losses. Due entirely to the online availability of fresher competition?

Rupert Murdoch started the Fox News Network - the most powerful news medium he has and one of the most influential in recent American political destiny making.

The rise of the blog - the Huffington Post is in the ascendant - it is taking ground from the liberal voices in the American media. The problem for newspapers is that the way they make 95% of their revenue is the chain about their necks - a declining market for print journalism means their destiny is manifest.

The way for newspapers to make money is to invert their thinking. Their brand is the voice of the journalist and that was lost before the world erupted with inconsequential viral memes.

Value Proposition

What exactly do newspapers make that is of value? Political mediation? How is that valued by taxpayers? It is not. We value the opinions we hold and expect read the journalists we agree with. I prefer to read journalists I disagree with as it inspires thinking. Discussions full of insults are useless.

People never really wanted to think, they have to be bribed, cajoled and tricked into it. Politics requires friction to excite discussion. We need opponents to compete with at the height of our powers and the media is there to stimulate thought by exposing controversy.

We pay the media for making us mad. Of course we do. I am as mad as hell and can't wait to read the morning paper. But we are fed on the soft stuff of television news and the insipid thinking presented by "in depth" reportage that is frankly less than surface level mush that attempts to excite prejudice.

The media is led around by its hunger. It is trying to play the same game in the vapid world of internet communication as it does on paper. The rules are so different. Establishment and fixity are not helpful in the age of broken attention spans.

The problem is that there is an inverted value equation at work here. The better the online version is, the less need there is for the paper version. It is a question of market aging. Like inflation, this is a slow process, a slippery slope. It will be harder to fix next year.

Companies who have not embraced the obviousness nature of this equation will fritter away their assets.

And some of the more established and most successful Newspaper websites (NY Times, Guardian) still "lose money". These criticisms do not apply - they have some of the most well read and intellectually stimulating journalists around. Is there a way to make money from the journalistic art?

Do we prefer to be herded by an increasingly unbelieved democratic choice or would we prefer to keep an active and vigilant press? We choose to be sheep.

Purposeful Enterprise

Some enterprises are simply not there to make money today, but to enrich the future. Like education. These are the focus of a progressive agenda. If objectivity is not present in our world, it is not just as damaging as closing down schools?

There is a future for good journalism, because it is necessary. But it needs to be a different product and not a subset of the print edition. The real enemy online is not the bloggers. It is sites like craigslist - it devalues online advertising past the point of commodity. It is deconstructive - and perhaps governments should define the playing field for information a little more intelligently. There is no value if the potential for trade is obliterated.

Free == Gimmick

It is a mistake to think that "free" is a term of trade. It is always a gimmick or a trick. It is also where progress points. And newspapers that can not outsmart college kid projects may not survive. They call this "disruptive media" - its sole purpose seems the undo-ing of the establishment. The establishment mimics this with its own free services but they have costs. Therefore Murdoch's equation seems simple. Focus on a smaller audience for paid content.

Would you pay for his content? No? But someone who wants it may, because it embraces a point of view, loudly. Online media can be too "objective". The common wisdom is "brand". His successful brands are market focused brands.

Old school journalism loved the big printed edition, the authority, the centralised economics that make one big brand. A masthead. It has to be balanced, show all views in proportion for its broad reach audience.

Online the dynamics are entirely different. It is crowds of people agreeing with a point of view and opposing others. It is unbalanced. The opportunity for a media organisation is huge and untapped. By splitting the "balanced media" into many unbalanced media faces that actively oppose one another, by building lots of brands they can engage more readers.

Creating a symbiosis with a future based on the democratic values of news, instead of hunger for the same advertising dollars requires online news departments to employ their own journalists and more locally. Then they would develop their own brands/audiences and increase their cachet of value. And that is simply their audience.

The End of Free?

2009-08-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Rupert Murdoch announces the end of free access to news sites, the UK Times, The Sun as well as the WSJ and New York Post. He believes that by his charging for access to the news, the rest will follow suit.

Online news media is dominated in New Zealand by two players. Stuff.co.nz and NZHerald.co.nz. Both have won awards for content presentation. They represent two distinct divisions in media interests in New Zealand - the Herald is an Auckland based but nationally focused paper with a big circulation and that includes online. Stuff accepts feeds from various local papers. Both are free, presently. However the online content is abridged versions of what is published in the paper.

Online advertising has going through many hoops trying to find a business model and NZ Herald has used banner advertising as well as google. Stuff does the same.

What is wrong with Murdoch's idea? It is a reaction to a huge loss. If he had changed things a year ago, that loss would not have been. So why wait?

Because the competition is continuing to give the same news, the same vital stories that we read newspapers for, they are free elsewhere. This makes selling it online difficult unless you add value.

There is considerable antipathy in the online media world for the old world dictating conditions. For this reason it is doubtful that Murdoch will lead the world by charging for content. His brands have compelling content for its audience, so adding value to it seems natural.

The UK Guardian has added new lines of business - including a dating site - and paying for the print edition as online PDFs, and an excellent online discussion community. The NY Times has interesting social networked discussions. I even have a NYT follower. I can see a summary of all my posts. I would not mind paying a periodic subscription for either of these papers - but if the subscription was a barrier to involvement, maybe not. It is what other people write that is interesting.

The NZ Herald has a similar reader response zone - full of rants that are usually partisan anger that reduces the value. Contributions usually hide behind a web non-de-plume. That also reduces their value. The blogs carry zero comment icons too often. Stuff blogs seem a little more connected with their audience possibly due to attracting a younger set and more perceived balance in discussion? (Disclaimer - I have previously worked for the company that publishes the NZ Herald).

For a news site to charge it has to deliver something other than just re-blogging the news wire services. You can read the same stories in every paper. It is a long standing cabal - journalists share the news and thus appear to have far more to offer. There are a few journalists that are really worth reading.

Part of the reason is the business strategy of devaluing online content so the newspaper sells. The other reason is the devaluation of the art of discourse. It is impolite to say much more than a paragraph these days.

The "brand" is the current focus. The newspapers maintain an identity. The online version reflects the identity of the print version as that is where the advertisers are. They relied upon printing as the cost of entry but now suddenly have a million competitors. The online version has to have more value than the print version, but "social" networks they are not. Their forums should be democratic thermometers but social mediation occurs elsewhere.

The way for newspapers to make money is ... [sealed section]...

Maybe it runs deeper than I thought?

2009-07-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

My previous article, below, concerns why we need professional journalists and when I tweeted this, I lost more followers than any other tweet, so it made me think.

Just because the law needs to be respected and our media organizations are firing long standing voices with the journalistic vernacular I did not mean to sound like I particularly appreciated them, nor necessarily those left behind, neither.

The broad public have noticed how their rights in relation to their governments are more democratic now that the establishment media do not rule what is published - however legal responsibilities exist. Previously, when a tabloid did something that was covered by defamation laws, there was a pile of money for redress of such terrible sins. If you commit contempt of court as a journalist, then it may be career advancing as your media body rescues your butt from her majesty's service.

But, if a blogger comments on what an outcome in a trial should be, and they have a following who spread their view, they may feel immune from contempt charges as they are publishing to a "club" or select audience. In other words, privately.

This difference between public and private is indeed a sticky one. If for example I were to tweet the winning numbers in the next national lottery, the outcome is most likely to be a number of fools who take my word for it and rush down to the local newsagent. That is a system the truth can not cheat due to the nature of time.

But if I were to simply say I thought that Jack the Ripper was guilty as charged, then Jack may end up citing my prejudice as swaying the jury leaving him free to execute a few more sex workers with few legal hassles. Not such a great outcome.

Professional journalists are becoming extincted by free alternatives. How many other professions are facing similar redundancy due to evolving efficiency? You can not object to the phasing out of the old as we rush for the new, but in some cases we must hesitate. For example, TXTSPK is all well and good but is not a reason to forgo the beauty of the English Language.

But perhaps the problem with the media is that polarisation that used to work for them now does not. In some small way, Jerry Springer brought Oprah more viewers and vice versa. Now, the audience is far more cynical. The turn off factor is far greater now that you can get TV from all sorts of different places. Not just an authoritarian filter. Not just what the Press Barons have colluded with The Powers That Be should be inflated by the breath of authority.

The Balance of Truth

2009-07-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

The Solicitor General's Office is investigating a Facebook page that seeks to predict the outcome of a case before the courts while the trial is in progress, thus prejudicially affecting the outcome.

Bloggers have to beware and be aware that saying anything about a case before the courts may affect outcomes. The above Facebook page may prevent a conviction whether one was a good idea or not, by attacking a defense, these vigilantes make the job of the police impossible.

They may have found justification from the other "publicly perceived" case of recent times. The supposed perception (or result of polling) of the public or the gathering of people prior to fair hearing is just a lynch mob.

The Media partly exists as a means for the public dissemination of the putrid details that we can discuss without damaging the state's ability to put away the monsters and dig out the unfortunates that get caught up in the justice juggernaut.

Blogging is a freedom of communication but does not replace the primary responsibility of the journalist, except for the most committed train spotters - bloggers only really can comment, most often they are not witnesses, but perhaps at their most relevant is when eyewitness to events feed the media with an immediate point of view. If blogging were the feed for the media there is a danger of an absence of any investigative journalism.

Where does the authenticity go when it is all just republishing? No, the media is more about local news and businesses than ever before.

As the major media outlets let people go with the lack of trust that the wheels will turn and people will spend and respond to advertising and online means are explored - a never ending experiment on the web. Those with software vision like Amazon now command great Empires of the new world.

But the Media has now to play its trump card. Before it lets go too many of its very talented. Hosting better public political debate and commentary will engage a huge audience and we have all the tools to produce a genuine public discussion where all voices can have meaning.

Reporters are needed to dig up the truth. To professionally find out. Most of us are too embarrassed or shy to persist long enough to dig up the dirt on the Bernie Madoffs that would deceive us. Criminality takes more than just enforcement to conquer. Information is freedom. Democracy can not be claimed without a free active and digging media, keeping them honest.

Social Integrity is not guaranteed without it.

How to save the media

2009-06-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

Democracy is the product of the media.

Look at Iran. The state does not support a free press. As the government clamps down democracy breaks out all over the place supported by twitter and other free communications media. We in the West may be stupid at times, but hooking humanity together with the Internet may have been the best thing we could have done to ensure lasting freedom for the individual.

The way to save the media from this implosion of free information abundance seems to be to start to value the input of the free media and that is pretty much what happens - the online blogger becomes part of the media.

But it is a slow process as the displacement of real journalists by opinionated people who do not do the leg work is NOT the media. Which is why twitter works so well, it employs the masses to do something they were already doing with their mobile phones, and in 140 chars there is a certain equality that transcends many barriers.

It is a place where unlikely subjects also thrive, philosophy is best exposed to the masses in small chunks. Poetry is possible in 140 chars.

Twitter has taken the bloggers away from competing with the media and into a new role, - that of sustaining the media with information. We know what is happening in Iran due to the fluidity of the medium that the government is unable to suppress. That is a new thing for dictators to contend with, it is technocrats who are revolting now.

Twitter has another effect. It has got us reading newspapers again. Newspapers are publishing our opinions and democracy is more tangible than ever. Does the market want this? Of course it does.

The Real Journalist

2009-05-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

The art of Journalism is under threat. In this article, it seems that the internet is to blame, that news blogs such as this little family unfairly use the news medium for free. This blog rarely quotes from news media but does link to their stories, and if all bloggers were to subscribe to a code of non-parasitic behavior, it would serve the media to some degree but I do not believe that bloggers really have that much power or relevance. If someone reads your little rant, well its great - but this is not Journalism in the true sense. It is also true that real journalism has arisen from blogs - such as the Huffington Post or TPM - both which are successful media outlets in their own right.

Who ever said that the media should not charge subscriptions to content was simply lying. Of course they should. But to have a shared wire service and claim copyright to it is disingenuous if a local paper does not also produce and submit great local coverage. Or balanced political coverage.

The rise of blogging was due in part to a failure of the media to respond to 9/11 more accurately. The media analysis of the Bush administration took too long to become objective. Weblogs were ahead of the media in speaking out without a muzzle. But ineffective in the main. The political sway of a blog is usually not that great.

Newspapers have far more political influence and effect. It is that they should be paid for, but as political transparency is a right rather than a product, it is hard to charge for it. Nobody would support tax payer subsidies for journalism, but if we citizens expect good quality news, we have to be prepared to support the efforts of the great news outlets, the ones that have embraced and evolved on the web have a far great chance of dominating the future.

Newspapers need to become online publications with full copyright protection. A more nominal annual subscription should become the norm. For growth, a free model is important also, but the news media had better be careful what they are claiming is exclusively theirs.

When news media publish online photography, youtube videos or quote bloggers they should also be paying a reasonable fee for these services. The internet lends itself to community news sites. News papers are replacing TV reportage with online video. So what is next?

Computer Time

2009-04-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

Its not business time. Its computer time.

Time spent staring at the screen. Computer addicts are sometimes surrounded by multiple screens, no doubt despairingly unwrapped for a me tube video expression.

Expression. The democratization of art. The dilution of the power of it.

By littering the information highway with absolute tosh, we are constantly exposed to anyones' choice of media fodder. Not just what clever reporters in their overcoats could muster with their sharp pens and hammering keys; not even what an educated person has to say, it no longer has such sway as the grey breath of Ms, Mrs and Mr Average (listed in order of importance).

The next pink hairdye wash is going to tickle you with inanity. The next smart alec who can grab your attention. The next viral gimmick that generates instant audiences of millions has democratised fame, its advantage. Suddenly as we all become the reflections of our selves we feel our horizons are being expanded.

Nothing that a good brisk walk in the Himalayas would not fix. Especially this miasma of media chuck sized, boiled down snippets of instinct we somehow should show our democratic will by counting our viewer statistic and there you have it - in a marketable package - fame for the common man. Big brother for everyone. Our private lands have become open to the minds of strangers and our mental horizons out-pace our social or ultimately business connection in the virtual world, our senses are bombarded by instinct activating messages to give you that thrill and excitement you so crave, along with that "sticky" medium. Chat.

That other humans are the ultimate addiction is now apparent. That what we sense, a social bond, is now able to follow paths of instinctive desire has meant an extraordinary pattern of intellectual leverage is now possible. These computer games prove that there is more to social contact than our bodies pressing together in a collaboration that thrills with its inherent sin. That sensation is also sold and delivered. Another instinct served.

So why not food. Try eating an electron, or the image from your 32 inch flat screen monitor. Not that tasty. The stimulation of other senses (the scratch'n'sniff product line) online is more Matrix like than Orwellian. 1984 was well dated. My daughter was born that year. For me it is the start of the new future, and thus the death of the old. 1984 thus stands as the spiritual division of the millenium. No doubt some contorted calendar variances will be discovered to account for that difference. News fills the gaps we leave for it to fill the media with its fodder, information. It does not matter so much if it is relevant, or even reverent. It happened, so lets trust that people out there will be interested.

Most markets work upon expectation. Working against that is the task of the speculator. Second guessing everyone, they only really pay when most of the rest of us are doing extremely well, thank-you. The most conservative investors control huge rivers not just of capital as money, but more of capital as debt. The world's balance sheet could be more properly called an Imbalance sheet.

Maybe it is time to question the inherent nationalism and racism that independently traded currency enables. Maybe interest rates are in fact a good thing. Perhaps, instead of a theory about economic mathematics, we could just plan to do what we want to see happen - in a budget - rather than always cutting back to what we must afford and thus eliminating qualitative improvements while supporting a commercial imperative like "market research say make more SUVs!" when clearly, the US economy and the world could never really sustain them; but the point here is that by providing economic logic that supports doing something that is not the result of intelligent assessment but the brute force of market conditions we are selecting things like extensive unemployment, violence and war, false social morality disguised as Christianity - are these things valuable? Economists are like med-evil surgeons, with a "we will hack off your limbs until you feel better" approach to human existence. Economists have a religion that requires you to fit into the social hierachy of a tax bracket. If you did not, you would be treated like a heretic.

Social order means the protection of wealth by any means possible, and that is an economy in its own right. And so is catering for the security guards. Social independence is not an option, unless you win the lottery and then society may develop lower meaning for you. If you make a fortune in business, then it must make you feel worthy to give it all away. Going to work every day to save the lives of people who live somewhere else is morality. Killing people because "we will never see eye to eye" is simply a lie.

What convinces recruits to sign up for war? What convinces people to engage in virtual war? Are these two things at all similar?

If repeating our experiences is what enjoyment is about, then it seems a little odd that a game should in fact teach us anything. It teaches us the human value of cooperation. We do not learn it from television.

It has occurred to many that a great big computer game with political consequences would be a way to replace physical war. What is to stop a bomb going off anyway?

Human instinct. The game would be more important than anything. There is no point in death when you are ahead in points. Or have to catch up. The game would be protected and enshrined as the source of the world's common currency.

Falseness in Advertising

2009-04-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

Ever see an ad that says "Kiwi Mum makes it big"? Or does the one you see say "Japanese Mother shows wise investment path" or "American Mom gets the big bucks"? All these lead to the same site. I only see the Kiwi version, being from New Zealand but after seeing Kiwi Bloke and Kiwi Grandma also making it big, I realise these ingenious little ads are computer generated. Look up the IP address and blammo. You got yourself a "personalised ad". But you have not. You just have a bunch of labels that are approximate guesses at your demographic based on something you already know about yourself. Where you are.

Being told things that identify your demographic is deceptive. Sure they may be making google money and they may even be true in a generalised sense - yes - it is true - a Kiwi mum has made it big - somewhere. It does not mean that the advertising is going to lead the interested to the same pile of dosh, does it.

The great thing about disingenuous advertising is that it helps pay people who have nothing to offer. Ponzi/Pyramid schemes get shut down but time wasters? "Find out who has a crush on you" sounds harmless enough, until you get sucked into paying for the text message saying something like "It is someone you know, better than you think!" for $3.49

The explosion of "new media" - conversational software like Twitter - is partly due to the totally variant and interesting voice of random individuals. It is a delightful modernist exercise. It so often publishes our inner voice. It's public nature mimics the walls of denial we throw about ourselves called "privacy". Twitter shows this to be a construct. We have built walls about ourselves to prevent the intrusion of the generic. The advert that attempts to sucker us into a scam.

Free web tools that do so much more than the gimmicky rip offs that ramp up the mobile bills for the 20 something set are becoming the default method of communicative socialising. This is not due to their efficiency but the degree of broadcast spread potential. Anyone can be "famous".

But the same old ads get churned up because only the mobile companies have masses of cash. This is the next bubble. Generational wealth transfer by provision of the useless to the mindless. The problem is not that google makes money from running these ads - it is that it loses relevance as people learn to ignore them.

Advertising is about to evolve hugely. We have not yet found the answer to prevent the death of the medium. It seems to want to convince us that it is annoying and irrelevant. Google should provide an editor to provide some value to their ads.

Television commercials in France are sometimes works of art. The return of art to the medium of advertising means great writing, great imagery and a really good product behind the advert.

The boom in social networking is due to a postmodern need for authenticity combined with the modernist need for historical relevance and place. If celebrities use the service and I make friends with them, then the idea or promise of it is the value imparted. It is an illusion - but entertainment is a product.

You do not need to pay $3.49 for a text message joke or chat room access. Advertising fake products can not survive in this connected world.

The Fruits of Obliteration

2009-03-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

Frankly, I have had enough of it. Constant star in the news, this long dark night of financial destitution hanging over the world. What a stupid mess we humans go and create. People's life of saving for nothing.

Republicanism used to be an ideal. Now it is avoiding taxation. But our complex world requires it to continue with the progress machine without which we would still be feudal farmers and serfs.

Money is the friction between the relative actions of different humans. Animals are not familiar with it. Objects are exchanged for it, including living things, dead things and things that rush about for us.

Money is that token of one's power that is vacuumed up by everyone else. Money is always wanted, and it seems the more you have of it, the closer you want to protect it. It is like protecting the village from the flames. The closer they get the more you risk by protecting it.

Insurance is a huge business, one that is challenged to inspect those making claims with an eye to detect fraud. Of course. But in so doing, they avert their gaze from their own mistakes. Clearly you can not be an insurer of risk and take risks with the mountains of capital collected for payout in cases of extreme emergency.

Clearly you can not promote high priced products to an audience wondering how it will feed its children. The value of paper can not sustain the multi million dollar spends on a single campaign. The UK give money to the very poor as the government knows they have to spend it. The middle class will silently tuck it away, giving the bank more relief when the tax payer has already forked out grandly.

Advertising is the next aspect of the media that has to adopt a new face to work in the new acoustic economy of regulations and limits. The compulsive gamblers are still ranting about how letting the bad banks fail is the way back to a climbing market. That is like saying the way to solve the common cold is to imprison everyone with a symptom for two weeks. The few survivors will be extremely immune and soon enough the common cold will have less and less to infect. It may work but only due to complete collapse of the world from which rebuilding can start in earnest.

Our world is one we are made aware of by the very astute people in the media. So let us respect their value to the world. It requires a leap of faith.

Someone is going to start charging for online news and information will again have a value. The future of advertising is in the balance. Next read about its terminal destination.

What is the point of advertising?

2009-03-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

We all do everything we can to blank out the adverts on television so much that it spawned TiVo - now ironically being licensed by state owned TVNZ as it sacks a large segment of its staff in preparation for rumoured privatisation along with every thing else the Labour government nationalised. Our banks are mostly Australian so nationalising these is not necessary or possible.

As everyone else in the world knows - TiVo is a the future of TV watching. Or it was. The interesting thing is that selective TV is a larger step away from being able to FF control the offerings of a state channel here that does not produce any but the most asinine and commercial content.

Unlike the BBC who have the moral decency to spend the money they are given by the British public to create programmes that are better than most and tremendously informative.

If I never see another episode of Friends, Buffy or any of the crud dished and then redished as "essential family time viewing", it will be too soon. Nothing wrong with these programmes - it is just the way that they are sliced up by crap ads. It sickens me that the opportunity to excite enquiring minds is in fact peddling soap to the smelly football yobs and the chivs from whatever.

TVNZ remain behind the times. They should just produce great content and sell it to the world. Pretty soon the sense of advertising on the tele will be less compelling as less and less people will prefer the infinite selectitude of internet or cable tv over the last bastion of "you are what you have to watch" - interruptable streaming broadcasts by a monolithic organisation that has no dice.

Media Failure

2009-03-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

During the financial crisis - one thing has become obvious. Since the rise of amateur journalism and self obsession on the internet, rational debate has become confined into smaller circles. This has created a deprivation of authority, a universal disbelief in culture and a new form of social equivalence.

Now the media are writing about the death of journalism after a time when a too ready acceptance of perverse leadership led America down a terrifying path. Now the actions of red-blooded Americans have done more damage to the American dream than terrorism. The media lagged behind bloggers criticizing the actions of the Bush Administration. It was not until after 2004 that mainstream media started to question the Bush agenda. By then it was already too late.

The media had failed to inform the public and it just gets worse. The financial crisis "could not have been predicted", but it was. By many. But the media restrained itself from investigating the biggest crimes in history.

Individuals with no investigative journalism out did the media on many counts. Our respect for media authority has been assaulted. This is entirely due to the dumbing down from talking about facts into talking about celebrity diets and fads that the media felt is necessary as that is what people view on the internet.