Geez, I hope you didn’t have stock in Blockbuster! The CEO gave an interview last Thursday where he demonstrated his jaw-dropping cluelessness about where his industry has been headed for the last oh say decade.

Hilarity: he uses this practically unreadable chart to demonstrate how great his physical infrastructure is and why he is “confused by this fascination that everybody has with Netflix.” Dude, even your chart is subtly pointing up and to the right. You want to say the business is going to stay on the left. And how busted are those graphics? And don’t say you’re confused, obviously!

Then he really gets going on kiosks.

…we picked a technology partner so that when we deploy a vending machine, it’s a vending machine that turns into a digital download kiosk.

Right, but for now it’s only a DVD machine. [translation: when?]

Keyes: Correct, but it’s intelligent. It’s wired. It has a server on board [I don't think he knows what a server is] and it has full capability to do digital download and that’s critically important because as this transition occurs from vending to digital download, there are going to be many customers that want both.

Ahhhh! When = “As the transition occurs?” Let me get this straight. Kiosks. All the capital investment of an online strategy, PLUS the physical cost of the huge devices, MINUS all the benefits of having an online strategy because the customer has to GO to the kiosk. AND it doesn’t work yet? BUT it will transform when the time is right? Well… you’re fired!

I want a DVD for my kids to throw in their DVD player in their room, but I want to download a movie to take on the airplane with me on my Archos device or on my PC. [Archos? PC?] We’ll be able to provide that flexibility of use occasion that our customers have. Those who are only in one segment will only be able to satisfy one use occasion. [Is this even English? And dude, syncing!]

Right, but for the kiosk are these kiosks to be in Blockbuster stores or other locations besides the stores? [Translation: why kiosks, again?]

Keyes: What they do for Blockbuster stores is they allow us to have greater title depth in smaller space. [Translation: I'm not answering.] Imagine in the future the ability to have the entire library captured on a kiosk.

ZOMG dude! Do you understand the internet? You’re all like “Imagine every movie is on our huge, physical device.” Imagine every movie on every computer, tv, phone, whatever! I remember a national tv ad campaign that did 10 years ago!

Honestly, I couldn’t read the whole thing it’s so sad. Looks like the stock has been taking a real dive. The top of the article has an editorial note saying the headline was changed. You can tell from the URL that the headline used to be, appropriately, “Dazed and Confused.”

Bonus: Here is a press release of a similar kiosk initiative at Tower Records in 2006.

Special Bonus: Blockbuster’s amazing transparent late fee policy.

Via Daring Fireball and Wired.

Update 8/20
Ok so I just signed up for AdSense tonight, and so the first ad ever on this site was for… Blockbuster! Doh. I feel bad for them now!

It’s been a while since I stopped reading the news (that’s been going great, btw!) so I don’t know if I would have seen this on NY1 or whatever, but apparently this road-rage incident was a big story in Portland this summer. Reason I bring it up? Via BoingBoing I see that the accidental photographer, Rick Adams, did a helpful but all-too-short writeup about his experience dealing with the media. He notes that there should probably be some type of FAQ for when you’re in this increasingly-common type of situation, and gives some helpful advice:

First off, and remember this: make the arrangements with everybody yourself. I didn’t understand how this works and it cost me some money. You don’t need to speak to agencies that represent the networks; you can speak to them directly yourself, and if you’re in the middle of something like this where they are running your footage right now they will actually call you back. You won’t know who to call but start with your local TV station, tell them they are running your copyrighted footage and you’d like to get paid for it. Then, while you’re doing that ask for a contact number for the parent network itself so you can do the same thing there. It really is that simple.

This reminds me of the tourist this summer catching the NYPD officer attacking a bicyclist. I wonder if he knew to negotiate a deal with the media? I think this FAQ sounds like a good idea!

I know from my limited experience dealing with the media over a thing in college that they can be unbelievably persuasive in getting you to give them things for free. I’m doubting that tourist got anything for filling the space between their commericals. I hope I’m wrong!

Via Daring Fireball, “iPhone Customer Calls Jackass TV Reporter a ‘Jackass’”

I was so happy there were no TV ‘journalists’ at the line in Soho yesterday!

So Trent Reznor released another album today online. (Here is a post about the last one.) The music sounds really good so far, but this post is about how impressed I am by his web presence. From a usability perspective, it’s just the perfect method of distributing music. And behind the scenes, Trent and his web designers are elegantly balancing a number of other factors.

• First of all, the music is free. As he writes on his blog, “this one’s on me.” In exchange for your email address, you get sent an email link (expires in an hour) which you click to get to the download page. By doing it this way, he’s ensuring that people submit actual email addresses, and that they don’t forward the emails around (much).
• Beyond that, he’s distributing the parts of his music as well, encouraging people to remix the tracks at his extensive remix site. I don’t know of any other artist that’s doing that so successfully.
• Furthermore, he’s giving you several
  download quality options, which are exactly the options people want (see below).
• The method of download rocks: if you choose the V0, you get a ZIP file, which makes it easy for most users. Other formats are .torrent, which is a P2P method that eases the bandwidth on his server and doesn’t compress the high-quality music files.
• And finally there’s no Digital Rights Management (here’s what happens when you buy music with DRM).

Here are the options that I’m so impressed with (quoting from the download page):

From 1990-94 I thought that NIN was just the coolest thing. These days I still do, but for new reasons!

This is the first and last post about politics ever on this blog, and it’s only to say that I’m fed up with it, and am no longer going to follow it.  I stopped watching the Sunday talk shows a few years ago, and recently I unsubscribed from all my news feeds (eg Yahoo, NYTimes) and also from political blogs that follow the news, such as Atrios, ThinkProgress and AmericaBlog.  The only way I’m going to read the Times is if BoingBoing, Kottke or Gawker links to it.

Why?  Nothing could be more frivolous and deceptive than the traditional, international news freakshow.  Things that become ‘issues’ of the day (I’m thinking of Jeremiah Wright here because that’s what’s on right now) almost always turn out to be the exact opposite of the story that’s presented as news.  Of course, you have to read the story to the jump page.  (Usually I find the fragment of truth that invalidates the whole thing in the third-to-last paragraph of the story.)

No traditional news organization is exempt from this.  People tend to blame Fox and say that NPR or the BBC is better.  Well, it’s not.  A comedy show on Comedy Central better informs its audience than any of them, every single time.

So, why the announcement?  Because I think you should too!  Strip that negativity away and you’ll be so much happier.  Read the papers if you must.  But keep it to yourself, ok?

Forwarded to me from several friend-sources, I learned that Nine Inch Nails released an album (sans record label) on Sunday Monday.  Like Radiohead, it’s available in different formats directly from the site.  In a twist however, there’s also an ‘official’ BitTorrent release on the Pirate Bay.

Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.

Ack.  In internet time this is old news: WSJ / NYT / LA Times.  I will say: it does come with a nice PDF booklet!  Support independent music!  Spend $5!

Update 3/13: Total sales for the first week: $1.6 million.  No word on costs yet, although I think we’re likely to find out.  In related news, TVT files for bankruptcy.