Will wonders never cease? I never thought I see the day when an octopus is born with 6 legs.
Why is this under “food” — because octopus is tasty, of course. I especially like baby octopus in that tasty red sauce. Yummy!!!
Henry the Hexapus
Daily Archives: April 25, 2008
L.A. Times Digital Billboards
LA Times is using 10 billboards scattered around LA to play 8-seconds news spots for vehicles struck in traffic. This is cool, yet scary at the same time. Cool in that it’s a great way for the LA Times to remind potential customers of their existence and great for customers because in an emergency, important news can be relayed to them (although, this purpose is not stated in the article. It seems their initial intent is to broasdcast human interest stories). It’s scary because it distracts drivers from their primary task of driving. I wonder whether these signs are timed to only broadcast during times of heavy traffic so as to avoid being the cause of traffic. It could be doubly cool and scary if they integrate a small radio transmitter into the sign so you can hear sound from the billboard too. They already have a still sign like this near LAX. It broadcasts on an AM frequency.
I wonder who is providing the service for Clear Channel, or whether this is technology that was developed within Clear Channel. Regardless, providing the infrastructure for this could be a good business. I imagine the ultimate intent of who ever own this technology/business is to selling ads across their network of signs. What about this on a smaller level? Like providing digital signage for fast food restaurants? or stores? It would be nice to be able to quickly update menus, prices, and sale signage without having to print something new. It would be nice to own the infrastructure behind it … opportunity maybe? I’ve seen a few small companies trying to do this.
As for the billboards themselves, I’m not sure if I would like this in my neck of the woods. Fortunately, in SD, billboards are tightly controlled, so there aren’t very many of them around the county. I personally like the regulation because I find billboards distracting and tacky.
L.A. Times Posts News to Digital Billboards
Daily to Target Commuters to Increase Awareness of Local News Content
Published: March 05, 2008
Tivo Unleashed
TiVo has finally won its lawsuit over the cable providers who infringed upon its DVR patents. With this over, TiVo is poised to be the only DVR in town … well not necessarily. Why do I say this? Because over the air, cable, and satellite are not the only means that entertainment is conveyed anymore. What if there was software that harvested entertainment from the Internet and made it possible to watch that content on TV? It’s possible and the parts already exist out there waiting for some one to integrate them. Whatever company figures this out, will in essence “Drink TiVo’s milkshake” (if you haven’t see “There will be Blood” you must. Then you’ll understand the milkshake reference.) For now, though, enjoy this article on TiVo and think about the milky sweet goodness we could drain away from them before they ever get started.
How TiVo won
Once viewed as a pariah of the media industry, TiVo’s ease of use and aggressive defense of patents have made it the only game in town.
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Advertisers Bewildered in the Digital Age
Here’s an interesting article from Ad Age that summarizes the bewilderment of advertisers as digital media rises. Most of the frustration seems to come from how to quantify the effectiveness of an advertising campaign because the traditional methods of measure no longer apply to digital mediums. And if they can’t figure out how to measure the effectivenss of advertising, then how can the service of advertising be valued (in other words, who gets the money and how much money do they get?). It’s a tough problem and this smells of “revolution” to me. Just what things will become, though, is unclear because the Internet and digital methods of distribution and consumption are vast and fragmented. Well, um, good luck with that guys … May I suggest letting go of the past and immersing yourselves in the digital trends as a first step?
Here’s a link to the article
4A’s Media: How Do We Measure Up?
Annual Confab Raised Questions About Digital That Many Media Owners and Agencies Are Far From Answering
Published: March 10, 2008
Trent Reznor's Online Album Experiment
In a short time this has become an interesting tale of how the future of the music industry could be. I am in awe of how well Trent Reznor knows his fans and how he used that knowledge, for both the “Ghosts I-IV” and “Year Zero” albums to make some money for himself while giving his fans a uniquely NIN experience.
First of all I would like to make a link to an article that Will Hertling posted in a comment to “The Story of Trees” posting. Here’s the link to the
Wired article on immersive ad campaigns .Within this article is the compelling story of how Trent Reznor in conjunction with a company called 42 Entertainment created an immersive game experience as advertising for NIN’s “Year Zero” album.
“Ghost I-IV” is a 36 track instrumental album that is being distributed online rather than through a tradition record label. The first 9 tracks are free and there are several options to purchase the rest of the album, from a $5 album download to a $300 deluxe package. The $300 deluxe package was offered only to the first 2500 customers who bought it. It sold out in less than 2-days, bringing in $750K to NIN directly. I have no idea what the material costs were, but I imagine there was some hefty margin built into that package. This package offered CD’s, DVDs, Blue-Ray discs, vinyls, high quality digital files, and other goodies in a package that was signed by Trent Reznor — perfect for his most ardent fans (I wonder whether any of these have shown up on E-bay yet. Wow! This is a great example of how to work the Internet! Offer goods for free or very little and subsidize with premium goodies to the fanatics. Anime and manga have a similar base of ardent fans who will pay high prices and go through a lot of trouble with get exclusive goodies. I think a similar strategy can be used with them too, if the exclusive goodies are designed by the artists themselves. It seems the important thing with exclusive goodies is genuine love of the craft and love of the fans of the craft.
On a personal note, I purchased the $5 download via Amazon. During the process I had to take a small detour to install an Amazon download widget (most likely a Bittorrent program). The process was dropdead easy and the files were downloaded directly to my iTunes library. It was an impressive customer experience.
Here are some blog entries with further details. Enjoy!
From Techdirt:
Nine Inch Nails Sells Out Of $300 Deluxe Edition In Under Two Days
From Mike Linksvayer’s Blog
MIN US$750k for NIN
From Infomationweek
He also licensed Ghosts I-IV, a 36-song production, under a Creative Commons license that allows fans to copy and distribute the music they buy.
More Rambling 