there are 4 posts from February 2007

February 26, 2007

it's like christmas over there

It’s the day after the Oscars, which means this is absolutely the best day of the year for Go Fug Yourself.

February 21, 2007

and sorkin didn't

So there’s apparently an indeterminate future for Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60, where “indeterminate” means that the show most likely won’t get renewed for next year, and it’s currently unclear whether NBC will even air the remaining episodes. (Yes, the ratings have been that bad, and the show reportedly costs more than $3mm an episode to produce.)  Tim Goodman (linked above) does a good job outlining the problems with the show (a flawed premise, a show about comedy that wasn’t funny, a series of bad casting decisions), but  I have to give props to Hugin on the Television Without Pity forums for his take…

If you launch with an extended Network-esque rant about the state of TV (including actual namechecks of Paddy Chayevsky), then proceed to repeatedly declare your main characters brilliant saviors, then go on several extended riffs on your disdain for reality TV and every small mind that slighted you, the writer, in your professional career, make dozens of pedantic (if not always actually correct) references to drive home just how smart everyone is, and generally dump a steaming truckload of hubris on your show’s front yard and then plant your flag, then you’d better fucking bring it.

And Sorkin didn’t.

I’m hoping Sorkin finds another TV vehicle soon, lest our national broadcast airwaves go without their recommended weekly allowance of  pediconferencing.

February 16, 2007

appletorrent

So Cringely’s vision of a million networked Apple TVs acting as a torrent-like P2P distribution network for digital content is very interesting…especially the part about taking the bandwidth cost out of the bottom line and the potential lift in AAPLs market cap. But it’s Yet Another Chicken And Egg, since they would still have to get a million of those things out into the market before lighting up the network.

The Apple TV product offering as I understand it today is still too complex for mass market adoption (Requires a host PC or Mac? Bleh), so the near term interesting question is not “What’s v2 of Apple TV,” but instead, “What’s v1.1?” What capabilities will they ship to propel them to a million installed, connected and configured boxes?  (For reference, according to their latest numbers, TiVo’s currently at 1.2 million TiVo-Owned subscribers.)

February 12, 2007

wanted: auto-twitter

Really, I’m just Too Damned Busy to update Twitter in real time with status updates about my life.  My “followers” are thankful for this, because if I were to update them with the truth, boredom-induced tears would fall from their face, land on their cellphones and short out the circuitry.  So to save my friends and their cellphones from death by boredom, I hereby beseech the LazyWeb to create the auto-Twitter generator to periodically post messages on my behalf about my “alternate” life.

  • “On my way to that conference in Rome; thank god for upgrade certificates, otherwise would have been stuck in business class.”
  • “Lunch with Don downtown talking about the new book.”
  • “Leisurely enjoying some well-brewed Blue Bottle coffee while crushing the Sunday crossword puzzle.”
  • “Wii!”
  • Etc.

Extra points for integrating user-submitted Twitters along with a Digg-style voting system.  Let the community build my alernate life!

(Of course, blogging about my lack of Twitter updates qualifies me for some kind of ridiculousness prize, so I’ll shut up now and point you to my latest entry.  Because what else is all this multi-billion dollar infrastructure good for if not going oh-so-meta on the latest celebrity scandal?)