GoldbergBlog

Losing Profits For The Sheinhardt Wig Company

This past week, NBC announced it would not be renewing it’s contract with Apple’s iTunes store. While it’d be nice to know who is responsible for this monumentally bone-headed decision, I imagine it’s a conglomerate of lawyers, accountants, and executives who were likely profiting (they never would have bothered to be the first network to sign up with iTunes video (after ABC, of course) if it didn’t mean they’d profit) but decided they could be making that ever-elusive, oh-so-sexy “more“. But iTunes didn’t want to create a confusing pricing scheme and it doesn’t do the Apple Store any good if people are complaining about over-priced product. You can tell them that all the other shows are still $1.99, but people will keep whining about the three dollar jump for a half-hour episode of The Office. And while I believe that The Office is worth every penny, $4.99 for twenty-two episodes adds up over the course of a television season ($109.78, to be exact).

The Internet has been aflame with this news, almost to the point where I thought a blog entry would be superfluous since others had already covered it so well and so much better. But looking around (and by looking around, I mean whatever Digg and Reddit brought to my attention), I saw that while people were definitely picking up on how NBC was in for a world of lost-profits and higher rates of piracy and they deserved the utmost condemnation for their rejection of new media in distributing their shows, I realized that no one was talking about the shows.

Do you love The Office? I know I do. Once Arrested Development went off the air (a show I honestly believe could have been saved by Internet distribution), The Office became the funniest show on television. Even if AD were still on the air, it would have stiff competition from the crew of Dunder-Mifflin. But without iTunes, there would be no Office. The problem is that most shows don’t explode right from the pilot. In fact, the pilot tends to be the worst episode because it has to serve up a ton of exposition and set up the world. The only show I can recall in recent memory with a killer pilot was Lost and that was a show that was trying to obfuscate and confuse rather than lay down all the rules of the world and the series. The Office had a tremendously difficult first season as it struggled to find the right tone and step out from the shadow of its British fore-runner of the same name. Unless they’re really fascinated by the premise, really love the cast, and really see the potential, viewers don’t want to fight for a show. They don’t want to make an appointment to sit down in front of their television and support a show that may not last longer than a month. Sure, they can use a DVR (if they have one) and record the show but it’s still taking time to sit down in front of the TV when they may want to be out with friends. Isn’t it better to be able to download shows and watch them on the go?

Furthermore, the iTunes store offers shows in such an easy to find form and relatively-high quality download, that it does something the limited power of television couldn’t do before: give audiences a chance to see a new show. I watched the first couple episodes of 30 Rock and while I thought it was funny, I didn’t think it was anything special. It wasn’t until the iTunes store offered the episode “The Rural Juror” for free that I watched the show in its groove and saw how painfully funny it was. This is the show I was hoping it would evolve into but I didn’t have the patience to wait and see if and when that transformation would occur. Earlier this week, I bought Friday Night Lights, a show that I never would have paid a second glance if not for the critical adulation and the opportunity to download the pilot episode for free.

Yes, NBC offered episodes of these shows for free from their own website, but the poor quality of streaming downloads coupled with ads made this option less preferable, especially when I couldn’t save these episodes to my computer to watch at my leisure. There’s no wi-fi on most airplanes and I’ve needed my iPod Video many times to get me through the long flights and entertain me with TV episodes.

Apple has already stated that they will not carry any of NBC’s new episodes of the fall season because they’d have to cut off midway through the season when the contract expires in December. So are shows like Chuck, Bionic Woman, Journeyman, and Life all going to find their audience? Of course not, and it’s going to be even more difficult by closing down a proven source of revenue.

I understand that NBC wants more money. They’re a business and their business model is changing right before their eyes and they don’t know how to embrace the technology that’s going to force them to either adapt or suffer (I would say “die” but I don’t think NBC is going anywhere for a while). Yes, it would be nice if Apple allowed them to jack the prices for their shows, but in their quest to get more, NBC is going to come out with much less.

NBC. Apple. Come back to the table, renew the existing contract and be smart about this so we can all end up winners. Especially me, since I want to be able to legally download new episodes of The Office.

Note to WordPress: Burn in Hell

I will no longer feel guilty about not using WordPress. I made an honest to God attempt to try and switch. I read the documentation, I went through the help forums, and I even moved each post one-by-one. But when it came time to design my own WordPress theme, it was yet another hurdle and I was tired of setting up a blog instead of just doing what I wanted to do which was blogging.

Champions of WordPress can sing about its ease of use from now till the end of the Internet, but it’s not easy. I support open-source but I don’t support things that make my life more difficult. Blogger may not be perfect but it serves its purpose.

Also, a giant screw you to Firezilla. It’s a fickle, pain-in-the-ass FTP client with poor navigation (it’s called a back-button; implement it). I’m sticking with SmartFTP.

And I don’t feel bad about going back to Blogger/SmartFTP because I gave both of those other programs an honest shot and that’s all that anyone can ask of anything.

But now that the nightmare is over, prepare for the big articles. I’m halfway done with my recent batch of reviews, the Top 10 of 2006 WILL go up before tomorrow night’s Oscars as well as my WILL WIN, SHOULD WIN on the major categories.

Blog Eat Blog

So what’s with this crazy Matt fellow? He blows for a couple weeks, comes back with a splooge of posts (yeah, I just used that word…”posts”), and then he’s gone again. And where’s that Top 10 he promised us? And where are new reviews? Does he just sit around and diddle himself all day and that’s why he can’t be bother to bring us the blog we deserve?

If this is what you’re thinking, you think a lot like me and we probably have a lot in common. Let’s be friends.

I’ve been having a blog identity crisis as of late. I partly wanted to change the name because it’s hard giving out my web address when I speak it “w-a-n-t-o-n-distraction.com” not “wantindistraction” or “what the hell does ‘wanton’ mean?” Also, this blog is a little, well scatter-shot. Yes, I know how to make money with blogging. Focus on a niche and write to it constantly and build your following. Use ads, so on, so forth. But I don’t want to constrain myself. If I just write about movies, then I can’t write about TV, videogames, politcs, tech, religion, or Robert Goulet (this year’s best Superbowl commercial).

Then there’s the matter of ads. On the one hand, I like money. And the more people I can get to this site to see ads they’ll never click on, the more money I get. On the other hand, I don’t want to make this a shitty place to visit. So as you can see, I have the conflict.

But as for this blog, it needs a revamp. Blogger isn’t giving me what I need and I want to switch to WordPress. Unfortunately, the Blogger-to-WordPress importer isn’t doing what needs to be done ever since Blogger upgraded to 2.0.

So what now? I’ll tell you what now: I’m going to upload TEN new reviews. I’m also going to upload my Top 10 of 2006 (it’s all finished, just needs to be published). But first, I have to go through the super-duper fun process of re-posting each of my SIXTY posts through WordPress, one-by-one.

All I ask is a little bit of patience and I will shower my wordy goodness down upon you.

It’s nicer than it sounds.

Sloth: Not to Blame?

So why haven’t I been posting since the end of last year? Well, I wanted to switch to WordPress. Unfortunately, WordPress hasn’t gotten its shit together to make it so that I can easily import this blog over to WordPress.

Every time I try to switch to WordPress, I have to deal with some shit. People talk about how easy it is, but it’s easy in the same way that Tony Hawk thinks skateboarding is easy. If you’re web-tech savvy, then I’m sure it’s a breeze. For a simple-minded web-guy like me, this remains a chore, but one I’ll keep trying at because Blogger ain’t as great as I thought it would be.

Also, CHUD.com just went down during the live-commenting on tonight’s Globes, so that kind of sucks.

Anyway, expect my Top 10 Films of 2006 tomorrow (what was published in INsite this month is really more Bret’s list than mine; no offense to him but I am a strong independent woman with hopes, dreams, and opinions of my own! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to baking a pie).

The Lost Experience Loses Me

So today the ARG (Alternate Reality Game) of “The Lost Experience” finally came to a close. Along the way, we did learn the meaning behind the word “DHARMA” (Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications) as well as the meaning of the numbers (they represent core values which need to be changed in order to prevent the end of humanity).

However, tonight was the big finale of the experience and I’m just glad I didn’t invest more time and energy into this endeavor. After subjecting myself to DjDan’s live broadcast for the first and thankfully last time, I was led back to the ABC.com website where I got to see Rachel Blake’s (the female protagonist of this side-story) final video. Half of the video was the completed Sri Lanka footage already uncovered a few weeks ago. The other half was Rachel going to the home of Alvar Hanso, learning that he was not the big bad but rather it was Thomas Warner Mittlewerk. Rachel also learned that Alvar Hanso is her daddy. Awwww.

Unfortunately, this DOESN’T bring down the Hanso Foundation (although apparently Mittlewerk blew up the building in the middle of the podcast) nor does it really give us anything juicy about Lost itself. Granted, I wasn’t expecting a show-altering revelation, but at least something that may tie to one of our characters. How about Penny Widmore? She’s new. Give us a taste of her backstory. What about Henry Gale? Just a peek for people who have followed this quest all summer.

I’m not a big ARG guy (I feel only pity for the ilovebees.com followers of Halo 2), but do these things ever pay off? Does this roundabout marketing ever lead to a convincing sell or just a load of frustration?

Oh well. At least next week the real Lost experience begins as Season Three kicks off with the Jack-centric episode “A Tale of Two Cities”.

Leave LonelyGirl Alone

Okay, after the awkward seriousness of the previous post, let’s get back to the tasty inconsequential stuff.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported the true identity of the videoblogger lonelygirl15, a.k.a, “Bree”. Some feel betrayed by this “hoax” and that they were “scammed”. To these people, I say, “why?”

First, let us all just admit the perverse pleasure we got out of the lonelygirl videos. Over 30,000 people subscribed to see a shy, pretty 15-year-old confess her inner-most thoughts and feeling to the entire Internet. The character was designed to appeal to a fantasy and I think some people are upset not that their fantasy was shattered, but that they realize what they’ve been fantasizing about.

Second, is this revelation all that shocking? I loved people who would point out things like “Look closely when she yawns! She has molars that are too developed for a fifteen-year-old!” or “She’s in a field with a type of flower that is indigenous to California! The plot thickens!” This isn’t LOST people. You have a teenager who never comments on the fact that she’s the most popular person on YouTube. There’s shy, there’s sheltered, and then there’s just plain gullability.

Finally, you didn’t get “scammed”. Did anyone pay to see the lonelygirl videos? At any point was anyone asked to send money to Bree or her friend Daniel? Did Bree put a lot of product placement in her videos? No, and if anything, the kids who put this together should be applauded, not condemned. They embarked on an artistic project that would get them professional attention and did so by utilizing new technology and combining it with a charming teen drama done in cinéma vérité style.

Personally, now that it’s been confirmed as fake, I can just enjoy the story, which is just starting to get interesting. Bree is rebelling more and she still has this weird ceremony coming up. I’m going to enjoy the story as a story, strange as that concept may seem.

As for those who continue to whine about someone pretending to be someone they’re not, Welcome to the Internet.

When there’s no more room in hell…

Last week, there was an uprising on Facebook about the added features of news-feed and mini-feed. While there is a slight privacy infringement, your privacy was still in your control and as another blogger said (I apologize for not recalling who), if Facebook had made this standard from the beginning, people would get pissed at its removal.

But now there’s a real reason to let Facebook know you’re pissed: Facebook will basically turn into MySpace. That’s right: now ANYONE can join. Sure, there are fictional characters on Facebook, but the service isn’t over-run with spammers, ads, and sexual-predators. And hey, there are times that I wish I could reach friends who don’t have access to Facebook, but that’s why there’s MySpace.

If anyone can join, then it’s clear that Facebook is definitely trying to compete with MySpace, both in popularity and in revenue. Be on the look out for annoying ads, crappy profile music that plays automatically, atrocious personal pages, and basically the complete breakdown of Facebook’s nice clean layout.

I believe a new fight is coming to Facebook. This one matters so show up (unless you don’t belong to Facebook in which case, I hear some emo kid wants to be in your top 8).

I’m Spreading Like Herpes

The videos may be on a brief hiatus (new one on September 1st – promise!), but I haven’t been diddling myself and ignoring the site. I’ve been diddling myself and improving the site! Blogger is running the site nice and smooth and I’ve been out trying to spread the good word of distraction. Of course to do that, the first stop is…

I’m currently ranked 1,500,715 which is great because if I was 1,500,716, I would feel like a LOSER. So favorite this blog, tell your friends about it, threaten them with violence and call them a homo if they don’t visit this site. They say you win more flies with honey than vinegar, but I say FUCK FLIES.

Next up, there’s MySpace, which I has gone up in my estimation from “Bane Of My Existence” to “Necessary Evil”. Right now I only have 17 friends and I’ll tell you why: Because I don’t accept friend requests from friend-whores. If you have thousands upon thousands of friends, you’re not popular. You’re just a FRIEND-WHORE. If I put you on the list of my friends, it’s because either A) I want to be able to contact you; B) I value your product (like CHUD.com or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia); and/or C) I need your sweet, precious organs.

If I ran MySpace, there would be distinctions. There would be “Friends”, “Acquaintances”, “Companies”, and “Arch-Enemies” (regular enemies would be listed under “Acquaintances”).

Oh, and Tom? You’re not my friend and it’s pretty fucking presumptuous of you to think that just because I signed up for your service, I would want you as a friend. My friends aren’t presumptuous. I’m filing you under “Acquaintances”. You’re not good enough for the “Arch-Enemies”. Maybe as MySpace grows and you get closer to world domination, but not yet.

Anyway, if you want to be my friend, just write a few sentences saying why. And when you write, I do care about basic grammer and spelling. You can probably slip a couple spelling errors by me, but I don’t have time for people that don’t have time to write out the word “you”.

I did a brief stint in college and thus wound up on Facebook. I actually like Facebook because it lets me look at all the people who were mean to me in middle and elementary school and then point out their shortcomings. Oh, and it helps me stay in touch with friends and all that crap. It also doesn’t molest your eyes with terrible page layouts and fifteen-billion ads like MySpace.

1UP.com is one of the few good gaming sites left. Back when I was a lad (read: no more than eight years ago), there was a holy trinity of gaming sites: Gamespot, IGN, and TheGIA. But then Gamespot and IGN became subscriber-based and TheGIA became non-existent. But 1UP is the goods. Solid writing, great interface, no subscriber bullshit, and great personal pages. You can check mine out here. The reason for only one friend? See above.

Digg.com is a site I love and apparently other people love as well since the “Digg Effect” has a nasty habit of overwhelming sites that manage to hit the main page. Still, about 60-70% of sites listed withstand the effect and it’s just great place to find cool sites, especially if you’re a gearhead (or a wannabe-gearhead like me; i.e. someone who loves cool gadgets but can’t afford the Sharper Image’s proverbial pot to piss in). But it’s full of great stuff. As I write this, there’s a story about how to improve blog traffic. Serendipity!

When you spend as much time on the net as I do (meaning entirely too much), you need to find new sites. But where? The internet is a fairly large place (or so I’m told). Well, that’s where StumbleUpon comes in. If you haven’t found a way to completely kill your productivity at work, StumbleUpon is overkill. Just click “Stumble!” and find your new favorite site. Click the “I like it!” button and save it for later (which is good if you’re not sure you want to add it to your favorites or just check it out for later). The link above is some of the awesome stuff I’ve StumbledUpon thus far.

That’s all I’ll subject you to for now. Tell your friends about this blog. Explain to them that it is AWESOME. When they ask for examples, make something up.

Time Management

If anyone has been wondering about the slow updates, this graph I found on the internet should help answer some questions: