So, it's been almost a year since I signed up for Google advertising on the right side of this humble blog. Year One earnings statement below:
No one told me you have to actually click on the ads to make money! I'm going to take that as a sign of the intelligence of my readership.
Look for the ads to be 'phased out' in a future update.
I know I said no politics on this blog but it's late and my resistance is weak.
Point is, I want to support Bill Keller's latest initiative to reduce his organization's carbon footprint. Here's some superfluous language I suggest they might cut out of tomorrow's paper—actually this whole story:
Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan
The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants’ main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.
Uh, so they're going to side with the corrupt landlords! You have to admire their commitment to demonstrating their position in nearly every word of the lede. If this were neutral, it could have been titled something like "Taliban Seen as Engineering Revolt in Remote Area of Pakistan" or "Taliban's Dictum Appeals to Pakistan's Rural Working Poor" or something (these are their words). But no, we have "exploit" (how dare they?) and "class rifts" (my favorite) right there in the title. Class rifts? Talking about "class" instead of "poverty" makes it seem like the difference is part of the natural order. "Rifts" reinforces that. To my ear, "rifts" connects with the "fissures" below, like it's a geologic rock formation.
Now of course I'm not a fan of any religious extremists, nor of bloody uprisings, but what's the story here? It's that there is a society of people (poor Pakistanis living in a remote northern corner of the country 100 miles north of Peshawar) who have been enduring an untenable hardship for a long time, and that they joined a cause that promised to improve their lives. At the expense of "about four dozen landlords" [aka oligarchs]. The story goes on to say just that only a few paragraphs down.
But in the Times's language, it sounds like these criminals are subverting the very laws of nature to "advance" their vast armies in a linear fashion toward the dreaded soft target of Punjab.
Taliban don't give the poor people money, they offer "economic spoils." I suppose they have to because listen to the heartbreaking plight of the exiled oligarchs:
A landlord who fled with his family last year said he received a chilling message last week. His tenants called him in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, to tell him his huge house was being demolished, he said in an interview here.
The most crushing news was about his finances. He had sold his fruit crop in advance, though at a quarter of last year’s price. But even that smaller yield would not be his, his tenants said, relaying the Taliban message. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban instead.
The story ends on that. Chilling indeed.
ZOMG epic fail with the Tropicana rebranding.
After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars.
… several of Tropicana's competitors appear to have benefited from the misstep, notably Minute Maid, Florida's Natural and Tree Ripe. Varieties within each of those brands posted double-digit unit sales increases during the period …
They announced Feb 23 that they were going back to the old packaging.
Via Gawker
Well, this is hard to post since Metric is clearly my favorite band of the last few years, but their new album Fantasies leaked onto the internets yesterday and it doesn't sound great.
I wish I could say why, exactly. In their own words, according to Prefix Magazine,
Vocalist Emily Haines has stated that she set out to write "genuine" and "simple" lyrics, while Metric's guitarist Jimmy Shaw describes the sound on Fantasies as "very big," and "very dreamy."
It just sounds empty to me (not in the same way as the great opening song Empty on their last album) and the production seems flat and ordinary, like they were overthinking everything and making bad decisions. For example, I cannot fathom not including the amazing Waves that's available with their limited deluxe edition. Maybe it was finished too late for the album?
I'm holding out some hope that this was a demo that leaked, because I think a lot of this could be fixed with a remaster. The basic songs are good. Gimme Sympathy, for example, is fantastic. But it sounds like they weren't having any fun at all recording it. It sounds rushed! Maybe this was the "especially intense experience for us making this record" Emily refers to in her post from 11/5.
But this song in particular is highly fixable. They might need to re-record the drums and the guitars, but just bring them up a lot. And then bring them up some more. Slow down the tempo a bit. Do it with about half as much keyboard, and no backup vocals.
Thank the lord this blog is not popular enough for them ever to see this post. I bet it'd be the most irritating thing ever! Particularly if this *was* a demo that leaked.
Anyway, I'm still looking forward to getting it when it's released at the end of the month. I'm definitely still glad I paid for it; I think it's clear judging from my last.fm that I owe them some money!
Reader Scats introduced me to the transcendent Failblog tonight—as he points out, it's a great meme.
UPDATE!
What did I do right after posting that? I upgraded the last.fm plugin and broke my site. Fail within a fail!
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!
The project is seriously progressing. I'm using the site all the time now to make lists. It's great that the project results can help me as I develop. My four 'objects' in the system as of this writing are:
The 'competing services' entry above represents (the current state of) my market research. I've identified at least eight different services that approximately deliver the product that I'm trying to develop. They are QuickBase, eUnify, baseportal, Intranets.com, Caspio Bridge, DataWeb, Lightspoke and WorkSmart.net. Once I get a fully-functional site together (along with, hopefully, some readership), I'll make a more in-depth post about my 'competition' and how I hope to position my product in relation to theirs. For now, though, I'm still at least 10 months away from beta. Who knows what the internet will be like then.
In other news, I've bought the full version of Navicat to help me with my (now) 17 mySQL tables. I recommend this product to any developer, particularly on the Mac platform. Absolutely no complaints thus far, and that's saying something because I'm using it all the time.
Welcome to my new web site! I've started work today on a new project that I'll be calling the 'Objects' Project. It's an idea I've been kicking around for a while now; I guess you could call it a 'database abstraction architecture.' Essentially, it'll be a website where you can build do-it-yourself databases. No software or real technical experience will be necessary.
Until I develop it out some more (and come up with a real name), it'll sit here at objects.joshreisner.com.
I think it'll take at least a year before it's in Beta. In the meantime, this page will provide project updates, and be a test bed for the blogging software.
Update 7/22/2005: I'm promoting the site to live. The new address will be http://joshreisner.com/.
