Category: Uncategorized

While commuting on Metro North last month, I watched Cool Hand Luke on DVD. I’d had it out from Netflix for, oh, three months, so about time. I’ve heard some of the famous lines, so figured I had to see it for myself. I don’t know. I never was a rebel, so they aren’t heroes to me… but the time passed quickly on the train.

Last month I enjoyed two different types of live theater in the space of three evenings. That’s approximately two-thirds of my annual live performances, squeezed into about 50 hours.

First, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival presented The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The classic tale is told with modern attire, and modern musical interludes amused me. The intro was set to a riff on “My Sharona,” by The Knack. My Verona! It took some careful listening to understand the Bard’s English at first, but I settled in and enjoyed the evening. The setting, overlooking the Hudson River, helps give the outdoor (under a tent) performance some extra grandeur. Thanks, Mom.

Two nights later, the wife and I laughed our way through Monty Python’s Spamalot. No Tim Curry that evening, but Arthur and the rest of the bunch were top notch. The whole evening delights in just how ridiculous it is that Python is on Broadway. Damn expensive tickets (a story for another time), but fun. If you want to go, plan way, way ahead (unlike me).

Shakespeare to Monty Python… all Brits, all the time.

Steve Rubel checks the current tumult in the media environment, and suggested yesterday “Big Media, It’s Time to Go All Blog.”

As a result, it is my belief that media companies that are heavily invested online need to consider going to an all-blog format. Social media is not an add-on. It’s not a feature. It’s a way of life that evolves journalism from monologue to dialogue.

Steve also throws out CNET as a possible leader in this transition, and mentions me by name. We’ll see, won’t we? I’m not sure the definition of the end goal matches what Steve suggests, perhaps because “blog” means many things to many people. But I do know that being relevant and important to an audience is absolutely the end goal, by whatever label.

Coincidentally, I also read Paul Graham’s latest yesterday: “What Business Can Learn from Open Source.” One tiny snippet:

Actually, the fad is the word “blog,” at least the way the print media now use it. What they mean by “blogger” is not someone who publishes in a weblog format, but anyone who publishes online. That’s going to become a problem as the Web becomes the default medium for publication. So I’d like to suggest an alternative word for someone who publishes online. How about “writer?”

Makes sense to me, especially because I don’t think readers care about the labels at all, especially if they are not blogging themselves. I believe that my editorial colleagues, whose work is the foundation of our business, would be happy to be thought of a writers worth reading, whether the product is an article, an essay, a blog, a book (some have written those, too), or even an audio report. (Thanks, Dan, for alerting me to Paul Graham’s latest essay, even ahead of my aggregator.)

I absolutely agree that media is changing, and that’s exciting. People don’t move as fast as ideas yet, even if the spread of ideas is happening ever faster. There are a lot of people, at every brand within CNET Networks, thinking about — and acting upon — the new possibilities in media, social and otherwise. And it’s happening everywhere outside CNET Networks, too… ain’t competition grand?

What’s a domain worth? A lot and a little, and never as much as you imagine. Yesterday, at work, I received an offer to buy a domain. (As a courtesy, I’m not going to mention the actual domain.) The suggested amount was extraordinary, especially for a domain which is too specific, and therefore limiting, in the long run.

An easy to remember, easy to type, easy to say, relatively short, descriptive URL is a fine thing. But without a service that works for people, solving a problem, or providing entertainment, a URL is just an address, not a business. CNET Networks has many brands live at some memorable domains, but it’s not the domain that makes the difference.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have tv.com, for example, as the location of your site about television.

I wished yesterday’s seller luck. I think that is partly what it will take, but maybe I’m misinterpreting the marketplace. I’ll be curious to learn one way or the other.

If a company is really going to gain the trust of customers, it must be prepared to offer the products and services of other companies, even of competitors.

– John Hagel, Restoring the Power of Brands, July 12, 2005

Worth remembering, though especially difficult for original content/product companies to trust and enact.

Of course, he also throws out what is becoming a hoary chestnut: “No matter how powerful our technology becomes, it will never give us more than 24 hours within the day.” But I repeat it because I believe in it.

As an aside, hoary is in the dictionary, but not yet in Wikipedia. That’s appropriate, but worth noting that when I decided to sharpen my fuzzy internal definition of the word, I thought of three sources, in this order: Google (define:), Wikipedia, and then Dictionary.com. Mindshare, people.

I was looking forward to seeing Batman Begins. So was my wife, so during our recent vacation, we left the kids with family for an evening and caught this most recent tale of Gotham’s defender.

None of the movies has really captured the aura of The Dark Knight, the graphic novel by Frank Miller. Still, Batman Begins takes a different, darker cut on the tale than the earlier films. The focus on the roots of Batman’s obsession with revenge (more than justice) makes Batman less lovable, and therefore more interesting. That’s only fitting. The team of villains is hardly convincing, but maybe that’s partly due to my not recognizing another group of Batman’s traditional foes.

The series of important smaller roles filled by leading actors is a nice touch, especially when the hero is played by a (relative) unknown. Morgan Freeman clearly enjoys being Batman’s Q, and Michael Caine plays the butler Alfred true. The strongest role player, though, is Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, the policeman who in most of the comics and movies is already chief of police. Here, he’s a sergeant, and the only honest man in the department, keeping his head above water.

I liked this film. I’m quite sure Batman will continue to spark more motion pictures, and I hope this new vein is heavily mined.

Since I knew I would finish Calculating God on the flight, I bought Tom Clancy’s latest paperback, The Teeth of the Tiger. I think I’m caught up now with the Ryan novels, at least to date. This one, though, includes Jack Ryan, Jr., instead of his father. Guess it’s hard to do much with a character after he’s been President of the United States. Ask Bill Clinton about post-Presidency life… even non-fictional characters can find the aftermath less compelling. Jimmy Carter has gone on to do more with his life (impressively so), but my imperfect view of history tells me that’s rare. But I digress… this is normal Clancy. Nothing special, but perfect airplane fare, and full of wishful thinking — a successful, secret non-governmental agency, privately funded, with Presidential authority (hidden and private) to be proactive in taking out terrorists. Riggghhhhttt.

Flying back to San Francisco alone a week ago gave me plenty of reading time, so I finished off Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer. Thanks, Mom… I’ll definitely have to pick up some more Sawyer, since it’s clearly intelligent, approachable science fiction. And I appreciate an author forward thinking enough to use sfwriter.com as their personal/professional domain.

Skip Codex by Lev Grossman. It was another silly vacation read maybe a fortnight ago.

Young investment banker looks for ancient book, assisted by slightly frantic graduate student, both of them caught up in some odd royal family power struggle. Even for a “beach read,” pretty dismal. I read it, so you don’t have to. It was sitting on a shelf, and the jacket promised another historical manuscript mystery, of a sort, and I’m clearly a sucker for those right about now.

By the way, I almost always finish the books I start, even if they are not worth the hours. Probably not the only place I waste valuable time, but one habit ingrained in my soul. I know others who find it hard to finish books they start, and I alternately envy and pity their different style.

A couple of weeks ago, while on vacation, I whipped through Angels & Demons, an earlier novel by Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code. This historical/religious/pulp thriller even pulls in the Illuminati. A quick summer read, but you can skip this one. Way back in high school, I think, I read The Illuminatus Trilogy, though I remember little.

I found one web oddity with the official book site. If you do some walking of the paths, you get to www.danbrown.com/novels/angels_demons, which shows you all the files in the directory rather than loading the index page. Oops. That lets you look at different versions of pages that are left over on the web server, like this versus this, where the content is the same but the headers are different. Here is the final version of the “interview” page. The difference appears to be the real one states loud and clear that this is “the official website of bestselling author Dan Brown,” which tells me only that various people have tried to earn a few pennies via mock sites which lead to book sites with their own affiliate codes instead of those of the publisher. Ah, the money to be made in the margins while preying on the unaware, though that kind of scam is one of the least offensive kinds. Sad.