Archive for April 2003
Apr 29th, 2003
The commercial, by Wieden & Kennedy, London, for Honda, is a two-minute masterpiece that simply follows the progress of what may be the most elaborate and wonderful Rube Goldberg machine ever assembled. Composed entirely of parts from a disassembled Honda Accord wagon, the machine begins its task with one cog rolling down a plank and touching another, sending it into motion.
What follows is…
Okay I'm not going to ruin it for you… Just go watch it. One note; this is the version of the Accord that is available everywhere but the US. It's actually known as the Acura TSX here and only comes in sedan form.
Apr 28th, 2003
This article from Fortune does a great job of explaining how revolutionary this new service could indeed be:
Steve Jobs loves music. But as with a lot of geeks in Silicon Valley, his musical tastes are a little retro. He worships Bob Dylan and is the kind of obsessive Beatles fan who can talk your ear off about why Ringo is an underappreciated drummer.
So Dr. Dre, the rap-music Midas whose proteges include Snoop Dogg and Eminem, is the last person you'd expect to see huddled with Jobs, for hours on end, at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. No, they weren't discussing whether John or Paul was the more talented Beatle. Rather, Steve had invited Dr. Dre up from Los Angeles for a private demonstration of Apple's latest product. After checking it out, Dre had this to say: “Man, somebody finally got it right.”
Apr 23rd, 2003
I know it's been done before… and with bigger artists. But the implementation of this new matieral is revolutionary in it's simplicity. At it's core there are downloadable MP3 files for those who have bought the album to do with what they please. This is how it simply should be. I don't want WMA files that may or may not play on my portable music player. I don't want some strange copyright scheme that only permits me to listen to the file on my computer. I want something that I can do anything with - burn onto a cdr, throw onto my iPod, or use as my ringtone on my mobile phone.
I can't think of a better way, short of releasing a new album, to support an upcoming tour. I really hope the industry wakes up to what the public wants. How many people got good vibes tonight and decided to check Pollstar to see when Wilco will next be in town. How many people surfed over to Amazon to check out the Wilco catalog? It would seem this way of a band promoting themselves and making a living is so much healthier than the payola schemes we see today in commercial radio, clear channel concerts, and MTV.
Three seperate sets of printable PDF artwork is even included. Well done indeed.
Apr 16th, 2003
This story is from The London Times:
THE rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the most difficult periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by the US military, but a staged operation that terrified patients and victimised the doctors who had struggled to save her life, according to Iraqi witnesses.
Doctors at al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had met no resistance and was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and Baath leadership had fled the city.
…US soldiers videotaped the rescue, but among the many scenes not shown to the press at US Central Command in Doha was one of four doctors who were handcuffed and interrogated, along with two civilian patients, one of whom was immobile and connected to a drip. ?They were doctors, with stethoscopes round their necks,? Dr Harith said.
Even in war, a doctor should not be treated like that.?
Interesting in that this story comes from a historically pro war conservative paper. It would be nice to see the US media dig into their subjects like this.
Apr 14th, 2003
The Onion inteviews Jack White from the White Stripes - here's a excerpt:
O: This year has been appointed, by whoever appoints these things, as “The Year Of The Blues.” Do you see more people getting turned on to the blues in the future?
JW: I hope so. I think it's the pinnacle of songwriting. It's never been topped, and I don't think it ever will be. It sort of accidentally broke songwriting down to its three basic components: storytelling, melody, and rhythm. And that's the way I see it. It's so truthful, it can't be glamorized. If people really love music, they're going to start being drawn toward honesty, and if they're drawn to that, it's a direct line right back to Charley Patton and Son House. I'm very skeptical of musicians who say they love music and don't love the blues. It's like someone saying they don't like The Beatles: It makes you think they're in it for the wrong ideas….
…O: Is it true that you turned down a million dollars for a Gap ad?
JW: [Laughs.] No. It wasn't a million dollars, but we did turn down a Gap ad. I think a couple of them. There were so many insane offers like that. There still are, as you can imagine. I'm sure that any band that gets that kind of attention, that kind of buzz, gets stupid offers from people trying to leech off them.
O: How would you assess the current state of music?
JW: MTV and radio have taken over so much of it, and they're so focused on the major record buyers, which are 10- to 12-year-old kids. The radio stations are a monopoly. They're all owned by these corporations. MTV is a monopoly. They have so much power. I feel bad that we never got to experience the things that they used to have in the '50s and '60s, when you could be a band and have a local hit in your own town. You could release a 45 that was just a hit in Columbus, Ohio, or something. Radio stations had real DJs, who had their own shows and played what they liked. Now the DJs are just playing what they're told to play by some corporation. It doesn't have any personality anymore. You talk to those people at MTV and those radio stations, and they all love really great music, and they're just so under that thumb of money that they can't… That's the thing we were getting last year. All these journalists and people who work in that industry were like, “Oh, thank God I can finally write about a band that I like.” Or “I can finally play a band on my radio show that I like.” We were getting that so much, and we were just laughing and shaking our heads, saying, “Why can't you just play what you like?” “Well, it's out of my hands, you know?”(The Onion)
You can read the rest of the article here.
Apr 11th, 2003
This story from today's LA Times (Chicago Tribune/LA Times registration required):
A deal could yield up to $6 billion for parent firm Vivendi and make tech maverick Steve Jobs the most powerful figure in the record business…
…Defying conventional wisdom, Jobs apparently is betting that music is finally on the verge of becoming a profitable presence on the Internet. Apple has been quietly testing a service that some music business insiders believe could pave the way for widespread online distribution of songs.
People who have tried the service, expected to debut by the end of April, say it makes downloading and purchasing music as simple and nontechnical as buying a book from Amazon.com. It allows users to buy and download songs to their computers with a single click and to transfer the music automatically to their portable MP3 players…
…People close to Jobs say he is convinced that the music industry is about to turn a corner in the copyright war. With the government shutting down pirate Web sites and the record industry now going after individuals for alleged piracy, the Apple chief believes digital theft will become increasingly more complicated, prompting fans to migrate to legitimate services, sources said.
Here's an appended version of the story you don't have to register to read.
Okay it took me awhile but after two days with my jaw dropped from this rumor here are my thoughts: If any industry is read for wide sweeping changes it's the music business and if there's anyone that could be bold enough to implement the right changes it's Steve Jobs. Good or bad I'm willing to bet Job's vision of the technological future is a vision we'd be best to follow. Now whether that vision would be commercially successful is another story. So I guess you could say without hearing the specifics I'm a very nervous supporter at this point.
Apr 9th, 2003
A Jordanian in Amman reacting to the fall of Baghdad.
Iraqis reacting to the fall of Baghdad. More (from Occam's Toothbrush)…
Apr 9th, 2003
The guys over at SVN have put up a great collection of links dealing many Arab's disbelief of how easily the US toppled Saddam's regime.
Apr 9th, 2003
Apr 8th, 2003
“UK military forces may be making strides on the battlefield in Iraq, but it was a different story on the soccer pitch for 11 Royal Marines.”(BBC New.com)
Via Marusin.com
Apr 3rd, 2003
On April 3, 1973, Motorola vice presidents Marty Cooper and John Mitchell went to New York to show off a new type of phone. It was the DynaTAC, a 30-ounce portable, cordless phone, described affectionately as the “boot,” based on its shape. Cooper made a point of placing the inaugural call on the boot to a friend and rival who headed the mobile phone project at Bell Labs of AT&T. (phonescoop.com)
For more information on the history on the cell phone check out today's article in today's “Technology” section of the Suntimes.
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