French Maids Plus Lingerie Does Not Equal $25

There is a web conferencing company called Dimdim (perhaps the worst corporate branding since DumDum lollipops) is teaming up with the sucessful French Maids TV to launch a new paid webinar service.

This all sounds fine until one discovers that Dimdim wants to charge folks $25 for the following:

“The hot, funny, sexy girls of French Maid TV will be giving an online webinar via Dimdim. Join these tantalizing French Maids as they demonstrate the different types of lingerie and how you should go about purchasing bras, panties, corsets and other unmentionables for yourself or that special someone. The French Maids will also be previewing Sexy Halloween Costumes. This Webinar is for ages 13 & up and may contain content inappropriate for some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.”

Now, maybe I’m wrong, but does it seem a bit optimistic to think that people, even sad, horny men, would pay that much money for something lacking even brief nudity?  I mean, they’ve even released a free video (below) as a promotion that is pretty much all anyone needs to see in the first place.   Did I mention that this video is free?

On top of that, all the existing French Maid TV videos are free.

Where’s the value, Dimdim, in charging $25 for something widely available for free?

Oh, Dimdim…

Related articles by Zemanta

• French Maids, Lingerie, and Webinars: Social Media Marketing Genius? [VIDEO] (mashable.com)

Kindle Actions Explain Popularity of Piracy

While the major publishers, studios and labels bitch and moan about how piracy is destroying their business they continue to make decisions that only reinforce the reason people resort to piracy in the first place – and no, it’s not all about price.

Take this for example:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.      LINK

Now, Amazon has backtracked slightly, claiming these titles had been released without proper authorization but that doesn’t change the underlying issue.  In the good ol’ Industrial Age, if you went to a store and bought a book and took that book home than that book was yours forever.  No matter what some publisher decides later, nobody could come into your home and take back that book without being charged for theft, even if they left a few bucks on the shelf.

In a similar manner, when I acquire a song or film or ebook via a file-sharing service and I download that file to my iPhone or laptop, that file is mine and, without a fair amount of hacking, nobody can take that file away from me.  I can move it around, copy it and even share it with other friends because it is mine.

With a Kindle, the fact is your never OWN anything.  All you really are buying is an extremely limited license to read the book on your Kindle unless Amazon decides otherwise.  This is not the same thing as buying a book.

Unless the major content distributors of the world figure out the difference they will continue to lose to the gray market that allows people to truly own their content.

thehumanprinter and the Value of Sweat

I’ve read an overwhelming number of posts about something called “thehumanprinter” this week.

As described by PSFK (the last post I read on the subject):

Adding an element of handcrafting to the mechanical process of printing, thehumanprinter is a group of people that translate and hand-render images in the style of a digital printer.

In the same vein as my Print/Vinyl post, this is another fascinating example of taking something easily accessible, and usually free, in its digital form – a photo – and turning it into something people will pay to own.

See, as digital photos approach a price a free, they lose a certain value as a collectors item, or something others might pay to possess.  But take that same image and recreate it through a painstaking human process with a resulting one-of-a-kind object and suddenly you have a potential business model.

Lot’s of lessons here, people, if you’re paying attention.

Giant Boobs, Pig-Faced Men and Shocking Violence – Now That’s a Book Promo

Publishers continue to make small forays into using short videos to promote their books.  This has taken every form from a simple talking head to an elaborate webseries.

According to AdRants, “Champagne-Fueled Jungle” a first novel by James Palumbo, is:

…about a society gone wrong. A society in which reality channel Shit TV (yes, that’s what it’s called) has overtaken the small screen and filled it with “homicidal dwarfs on rollerblades and obese mamas in tutus.” Title character, Tomas, has had enough and with the help of his tommy gun, he hopes to eradicate the world of this filth.

And if that doesn’t sound good enough for you, check out the lavishly animated promo video.  Beware, while entirely in black and white, the violence is quite graphic:

It’s great to see this level of attention and artistry dedicated to a book promotion.  Currently creeping near 4000 views, if just ten percent of viewers go get his book it would seem worthwhile.  Of course, that might be asking a lot from your average YouTube viewer.

Still, the combination of great animation and a violent, sexy story make this a video that could catch on and spread to some potential new readers Palumbo would never reach through traditional marketing.

Dresdon Doll’s Amanda Palmer Makes Almost $20k Via Twitter

Go to this link and read an amazing email written by Amanda Palmer of the band Dresdon Dolls in which she explains how, over the course of three weeks she was able to gross almost $20,000 using Twitter.

In contrast, she also points out that she has made exactly $0.00 for selling over 30,000 solo albums this year.

A sample:

WEBCAST AUCTION, $6000

a few nights after that, i blogged and twittered, announcing a “webcast auction” from my apartment.
it went from 6 pm – 9 pm, my assitant beth sat at my side and kept her eyes on incoming bids and twitter feed.
while we hocked weird goods, i sang songs and answered questions from fans. we wore kimonos and drank wine. it was a blast.

people on twitter who were tuned in re-tweeted to other fans. the word spread that it was a fun place to be and watch.
we had, at peak, about 2000 people watching the webcast.

The biggest take-home lesson for musicians is that Amanda made none of this money by selling albums but she played a ton of music and increased her fan base while having fun and making money.

Now that’s rock ‘n roll.

Should Care Bears and My Little Pony Sue Atom.com and Dan Meth?

The extremely talented Dan Meth has made a very funny animated short that imagines what it would be like if the cuddly toys of our childhood were remade into violent action films.

Among the characters used are the Care Bears, My Little Pony and a number of other recognizable copyrighted characters.  Now, logically, this would fall under the “fair use” clause of the copyright laws since Dan Meth actually drew his own versions of these characters and placed them in completely original scenarios.

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

However, look at the J.D. Salinger v. John David California case in which Salinger is claiming that California’s book, an imagining of Cauldin Hauffield as a 76-year-old man, is infringing on his copyright for the character as it exists in “A Catcher in the Rye.”

In both cases, the later artist has taken an existing and well-known character and transplanted a new version of that character into a foreign landscape.  In both cases, it could be argued, that the later artist has used the original character in ways that it’s first creator never intended.  It could even be argued that these new versions could have an effect on how people feel about the original versions.

In both cases, a major reason anyone would be interested in the new work is exactly because it is a reimagining of a well known pre-existing character(s).  Without our original understanding and knowledge of the Care Bears as sickly sweet, plush, pastel bears, Dan Meth’s version of those bears as violent, blood-dripping My Little Pony killers there really wouldn’t be any point to the video at all.

The multi-million dollar question is does this mean that Dan Meth should have to a) get permission from the underlying rights holder prior to making a cartoon like this and b) does he owe that rights holder a percentage of any profits derived from the new work?

Even more complicated is deciding where to draw that line.

Just another example of why our current copyright laws are inadequate both for everyone involved.

Dunkin’ Donuts Hires Shaggy Buskers in New York City

Walking to work today I came across a rather unusual site.  On the corner of 8th Ave and 50th St., just outside the C/E subway stop, there were two scruffy guys playing guitar and singing.  In front of them, they had a guitar case open in hopes of donations.

Now the weird, part.  As I drew closer I saw a professionally printed poster inset into the inside of the guitar case cover:

Yup.  It appears that Dunkin’ Donuts is not only using these guys to advertise their watery coffee and artery-clogging pastries but they are also discouraging anyone from donating to the arts.

Way to go, Dunkin’ Donuts.  That’s the spirit!

Will 3D “Printers” Be the Next Big Copyright Fight?

One of the coolest concepts of many a sci-fi novel and movie, is a device that can basically spit out any object, fully formed, based just on some basic data.

The days of having just such a device get ever closer to home, as Engadget points out with its look at the Cupcake CNC:

The thing extrudes Lego-type plastic into fairly detailed shapes, and MakerBot sells it as a kit for $750, or fully assembled for $2,500. What’s most exciting is that the MakerBot folks are now working on a 3D scanner kit, which once combined with the CupCake CNC will make a full-on homegrown replicator.

Imagine how disruptive, in a game-changing way, this could be for so many of the industries and business models we now take for granted.  We’ve see what happened to the music labels when their products, hard-good records, tapes and CDs, became obsolete.  What happens when we no longer have to go to the store, for, say, a new set of dishes.  Instead, we could power up the 3D Printer, find a great image of our perfect plate online, press a few buttons and within a few minutes a whole new set of dishes could be yours.

Now, imagine what happens when people realize they no longer need to buy the expensive designer dishes from the over-priced boutique but can just take a few pictures and go print out the plates at home.

While these sorts of innovations are a boon to the consumer, something like the Cupcake CNC should terrify and lot of older businesses and should inspire younger entrepreneurs to start building new models that will maximize the opportunities presented by this new technology.

Oh, check out this sweet video of Cupcake CNC in action:

Music Tee Another Savvy New Media Music Model

While the major labels sue their way into oblivion, many smaller concerns are taking truly innovative and compelling approaches to monetizing music.

Today, via the enviable Josh Spear, I discovered Music Tees.  These are extremely cool looking t-shirts with a great graphic on the front and track listings for an album on the back. Oh, they also come with an added bonus:

The coolest part? The hang tag sports a unique code used to download the album which is a compilation mix of said musicians. LINK

Ok, so the t-shirt is $60 and that could put some people off but perhaps the combination of a great shirt and a killer album are worth the cost.

I will say that my good friend Waz is one of the featured artists, so that is damn cool.

Gillette Gets Ripped Off By Ad Agency for New YouTube Videos

I shudder to think what some big ad agency charged Gillette for the videos on their YouTube channel.

Purportedly aimed at teaching men how to shave various body parts, the animated how-to’s are really just a platform for the Gillette products which would be fine if, instead of getting legitimately useful information we were given a touch of authentic humor.

Sadly, neither is on offer.  The advice is minimal and redundant and the attempts at humor result in more cringing than grinning.  Adding insult to injury, only the link-bait‘y “How to Shave Your Groin” has attracted over 10,000 views, with the other videos languishing under 2,000.

Since the videos are neither entertaining or helpful, it is unlikely they will ever find much of a viewership.  Gillette surely isn’t going to be satisfied by these sorts of numbers but I’m sure their ad agency will convince them it had nothing to do with the crappy value of the content itself.

UPDATE: Well, thanks in large part to lots of blog mockery, the Gillette YouTube spots have “exploded” with Groin shooting up to over 140,000 views.  Still, the other videos are failing to reach 10,000.  A combined total of less that 250,000 still can’t impress Gillette.

See for yourself: