iPhone Will Track Your Happiness

Someday we will all be asking ourselves, “what did we do before our cell phones told us what make’s us happy?”

Thanks to Matt Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University, iPhone users may now take part in a completely free study exploring just what it is that makes us happy:

To participate, volunteers sign up for the experiment through the study’s Web site, fill out an introductory survey and schedule the number of times each day they want to be alerted by an e-mail message or text message reminding them to take another survey. Periodically, volunteers are also provided with a “happiness report” that could provide some insight into the factors — like amount of sleep, exercise and other daily activities — that affect their own happiness.

“The more that people adhere to it, they more they will learn about themselves,” he said.         LINK

Not only will your data help the overall experiment, but you will also receive personalized reports on what make you happy.

One might argue that iPhone owners, as a sample pool, are already a skewed group, but I love the use of the device in the name of science.

Kinda makes that iFart app look a little more pointless…

4Chan Versus AT&T Highlights the Perils of the Digital Age

According to a number of sources, AT&T’s DSL internet service is blocking access to the very popular 4Chan forums.

Users of AT&T’s DSL internet access across many states in the US are reporting that they are being blocked from the infamous /b/ message board in what appears to be an act of internet censorship by the phone company. This started today Sunday and no one has yet been able to get any official confirmation out of AT&T as to why. Moot, the founder of 4chan, has confirmed AT&T is filtering/blocking the site.        LINK

Now, aside from the sort of “big question” of why would AT&T block a website in what seems to be a pretty clear violation of the FCC’s net neutrality rules, there is something much more interesting happening.

There is the very real danger, as shown in the snips below, that the 4Chan community will exact some sort of revenge on AT&T.  Not only that, but the general consensus seems to be that, were the global telecommunications giant that is AT&T actually go to battle with 4Chan, the money would be on 4Chan to win handily:

Predictably, the 4chan crowd is already mobilizing both inside and outside of their online community. AT&T didn’t just open a can worms, they dove headfirst into a den of vipers, and this will be very interesting to watch play out.       LINK

Not coming out with a clear and concise explanation just looks bad, and seems to be stirring up 4chan folks to make a statement — something AT&T almost certainly does not want. AT&T may be able to tap your phones, but getting on the wrong side of 4chan seems like a bad, bad idea.     LINK

One wonders if anyone over at AT&T even considered the potential threat of a counter-response from the 4Chan community.  In fact, one has to wonder if any of these corporate giants realize how much the power has shifted to the consumer.  Look at what happened to United Airlines after they refused to fix a broken guitar.  Many are blaming the very popular YouTube video “United Breaks Guitars” for a rather substantial drop in share-price.

Pez Candy Company Threatens a Super-Fan in Classic Copyright FAIL

The deeper one digs into copyright laws and how they are wielded the more confused I become.

First, I hear a story on NPR about a guy who runs a tiny Pez “museum” where lovers of the iconic candy dispenser often travel from miles away just to share in their obsession.  Sounds harmless, right?  In fact, I’d go further and say, we’re I the head of Pez, “Wow! That’s fantastic.  This guys is providing us with a wealth of free publicity and keeping our product firmly in the minds of our customers and we don’t have  to do anything but reap the rewards!”

Instead, the Pez people have done nothing but harass this guy…

Doss says this is not the first time he and Pez have crossed dispensers. When he first opened the place, Pez made him change the name from the “Pez Museum” to the mouthful it now is — “the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia.” Doss calls it harassment.

“It’s as if we’re making something here and putting their name on it. That’s not what we’re doing,” he says.

But Pez Candy Inc. says that’s exactly what the museum is doing. If it was just selling all things Pez, that’d be fine, they say. But, they add, you can’t sell things that aren’t official merchandise, like Pez T-shirts the museum printed up. And you can’t use that 7-foot-tall Pez dispenser the museum made, that stands just inside the front door.

Alan Behr is the lawyer for Pez in Connecticut. He says it’s not really a giant Pez dispenser because Pez doesn’t make a giant dispenser.

“It’s only Pez if we say it’s Pez. The same way you will not see a Mickey Mouse in the United States made by anybody but Disney,” he explains. “It’s only Mickey Mouse if Disney says it’s Mickey Mouse. Otherwise, it’s an infringement. You have to control what is core to your brand.”      LINK

Yes, the boldface is my own addition.  I didn’t want you to miss that last point.  According to the Pez Candy Company it is more important to control your brand (whatever the hell that means) than it is to support super-fans who have the potential to create sales both directly and indirectly.  Rather than give this guy a big pat on the back, they are turning him against them! Where is the profit in this? Where is the logic?!

It’s enough to drive a guy insane, I tell ya…

Also, will Pez Candy come after me for using an image of their dispenser with express written consent?  Stay tuned.

Five Bucks a Month for New York Times Online? Yeah, Right.

Lot’s of people are talking about a New York Time’s survey asking if folks would pay $5/month for full online access to the “paper.”

Gawker thinks its a great and necessary idea while Business Insider says they should charge more.

They’re both wrong.  Here’s why:

1) If the NYT erects a pay wall bloggers will be far less likely to link to them and their own readers will be less likely to share links. This is the life-blood on the online world and without it no site can survive.

2) There is FAR too little original content to convince readers to pay the New York Times for news that is widely reported by, well, everyone else.  Unless every single news reporting site agreed to similar pay walls (not gonna happen) the New York Times simple places itself in a barren desert with nary a reader in sight.

There are more minor reasons this would fail, but those are the big two.

Oh, and in response to Business Insiders comment that:

Kindle pricing also forces the question: If Times stories without video, without interactivity, without color — and without all the other stuff at nytimes.com — are worth $14 a month on the Kindle, why in the world is the web site only worth $5?

Except, how many Kindle owners are actually subscribing to the NYT via their Kindle?  Even if a good number are doing so, Kindle owners are by definition affluent and so what’s another few bucks.

Quincy Jones Speaks the Truth, Will Try to “Save” Vibe

Yesterday came word that Vibe Magazine was folding.  Not all that surprising in this climate.

Now comes word that the magazine’s founder, Quincy Jones, is trying to take the title back and create an online-0nly version of Vibe.  One can argue that plenty of magazines are or will try this approach and will or already have failed.

That said, it is refreshing to hear someone from Jones’ generation say something like this:

“We gotta get into the 21st century you know,” Jones said. ” “Print and all that stuff is over, we gotta remember that. The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Post Intelligencer. The Miami Herald. They’re over the same way as the record business. We have got to get into this century.”      LINK

If more publishers and studio execs would make the same admission they might at least have a fighting chance in the digital age.  But I’m not going to hold my breath.

Will Some Cultures Leapfrog the Industrial Age?

I was just taking a walk and listening to an NPR podcast about an Afghan version of American Idol that recently finished its first hugely popular and wildly controversial fist season on what I assume is the bravest television network in Afghanistan.

The emergence and popularity of this show in a country often portrayed as America’s polar opposite says a lot about how we are all more alike than different.  However, that’s not the point of this post.

During an interview with one of the Afghan show’s creators, it was mentioned that the SMS voting in final rounds was so intense that it literally overloaded the network and temporarily shut it down.  The creator said he wasn’t surprised since this was the first time Afghan audiences had had the opportunity to participate in a show in this manner and that many were not familiar with sending text messages.

Well, no shit! As far as I understand it, Afghanistan is still largely an agrarian society.  While some of the innovations of the industrial age are present, this is not a part of the world that ever made the true transition that we saw in the United States and Europe.  This means that Afghanistan, along with numerous other cultures from places like China, India and throughout Africa, will be simply skipping the Industrial Age altogether as the Digital Age takes shape.

We are already seeing amazing examples of how the Digital Age is able to be adopted by each culture in unique ways that tend to support and expand on existing societal foundations.  Think of how rural farmers are now able to use cell phones to check on the price of produce at markets a two-days walk away, allowing him to cart the proper amounts of the most valuable items.

While the Industrial Age certainly created sweeping changes in the Western world, it is going to be fascinating to see what happens to those cultures that simply skip it altogether.

Daily Show Nails New York Times for “Aged News”

There have been lots of posts about The Daily Show’s Jason Jones and his takedown on The New York Times on Wednesday night’s show.

For me, the deadliest moment came when Jason asked about the “aged news” in the paper.  He challenged an editor to show him anything in the paper that had happened today.  Clearly, he was unable to do this.

The point, however, is not that large news organizations are a dying breed but that the physical newspapers they continue to insist are their core business are basically obsolete.

Instead of worrying about how to charge for content online, newspaper companies should be wholly focused on how to get the hell out of the printing and distribution business.

NPR Kicks Fox News Ass

There is a very thoughtful post on Mashable that ventures the idea that NPR is the future of news.

I am a big NPR junkie and it is often the one charitable donation I make annually even when I can’t afford it.

Mashable lays out a number of strong reasons for NPR’s success in the digital age and I recommend you head over and read the post.

What leapt out at me was this:

Their 26.4 million weekly listeners are 11 times more than the daily circulation of USA Today, and greater than 9 times more than the prime time viewership of the #1 cable news channel in the US, Fox News. They have 860 local stations in their member network and operate 38 news bureaus around the world — 18 in foreign markets, which is greater than any other news gathering organization.

I find this statistic extremely encouraging, not just because it shows more of the nation is being informed via a non-profit news organization than a clearly biased and corporately controlled conglomerate but because it clearly demonstrates that there are more ways to deliver quality news to the masses besides the out-dated and inflexible newspaper.

Will “The Bannen Way” Be the Breakthrough Webseries?

We are all still waiting for the first legitimate webseries hit.  While we have seen some standalone videos go on to be viewed by tens of millions, there has yet to be an original webseries that has truly caught the attention and imagination of a substantial audience.  The web has yet to see its “Friends” or “Lost.”

Of course, this has not been due to a lack of trying.  Both major studios and independent producers have sunk significant time, effort and money into a slew of well-intentioned, and in some cases well-made, original webseries.  So far, not a single one has caused a real stir.

This year we should be seeing a lot of action in this marketplace and Sony’s Crackle.com seems very excited about their entry, the independently produced “The Brennan Way.”

The trailer looks great, even if it does feel and sound a bit like USA’s “Burn Notice” but the show lacks any real name talent.

Check it out here.

My fear is that, even if it is very good, unless Sony invests real money in promotions it will die on the vine like some many of it’s predecessors.  Without marketing support it will never reach the critical audience size needed to create national buzz.

And that is the next big goal for webseries producers.  Not a few million views.

The Nation’s Newspaper Solution? Collusion, of couse.

There are numerous reasons why traditional newspaper are facing the need to change or die.  Technology is evolving to a point where many people simply don’t see the need for a dead-tree format while at the same time the technology needed to obtain and transmit news has allowed many more players onto the field.

Of course, the majority of old school thinkers simply blame “the internet” for stealing the news and then giving it away for free.  This is such a Luddite view of the world and misses almost all the important factors that have led to a change in the way news is gathered and disseminated. This wrong-headed thinking has led to some presumably smart people making really dumb statements about how to “save” newspapers – a concept they often confuse with saving news or saving journalism, things that do not need newspapers to thrive.

For my money,  Michael Moran, writing for “The Nation” has made one of the most bone-headed suggestions yet:

The online information ecosystem that has grown up around their freely proffered content will barely notice if one–or even a half-dozen–major publications put their news behind subscription walls. The only way newspapers can save something of the franchise that took hundreds of years to create is to work together to stop giving away their content without charge.

Call it NOPEC–the Newspaper Owners Print and Electronic Cartel. Only when newspapers cast aside the ethos of free content can the revenues needed to support serious journalism at home and abroad return.

That’s right, Mr. Moran is suggesting that newspapers collude in a price-fixing scheme that will somehow remove any form of competition and force people to pay an artificial price for new reporting.

Besides being highly unethical and possibly illegal, it’s complete unworkable.  There will always be those who either want to provide news for free or who are able to make a profit through other revenue models than subscription or micropayments.

NOPEC is my winner for Worst Idea Ever to “save” newspapers.

LINK