The answer will surprise you, and the background information given in the article will shock you. This is definitely recommended reading. The parallelisms between this “most famous Christian” and what’s going on today in the States may make you utter a nervous chuckle.
Tag Archives: people
Lawrence Lessig's presentation on free culture
I highly recommend viewing the presentation given by Lawrence Lessig on free culture. I’d been really annoyed by DRM and certainly recent implementations of it by Apple did nothing to help the case for it. Then I viewed this presentation, and it really opened my eyes to what’s going on out there, and why there are more and more restrictions on content. It was given in 2002, and if you look at what’s happened since, you can really see the changes! They’re for the worse, not better – so please, take 20 minutes to watch it or download the transcript, and do your part to save our collective works of culture! Thanks!
Saw a bumper sticker this morning
I couldn’t help chuckling a bit when I saw it. The fellow driving the car had a goatee and was driving on, oblivious to the fact that someone was looking at his car and at him, chuckling… I couldn’t help wondering if I should honk, but I just chuckled some more…
The Mohammed caricatures
I was listening to NPR as I drove home today, and heard yet more news about embassies being torched in response to the Mohammed caricatures. That’s in addition to the feverish demonstrations that have been going on for days. I’m not even going to discuss whether publishing the caricatures was right or wrong, or whether the Arab response is correct or not. What I want to say is this: where do these people find the time?
Every time something bothers them, they demonstrate. Don’t they have jobs? How can they get time off? Have they nothing better to do with their time than to tie up the streets in violent protest, chanting till their throats go numb? Have they nothing better to do than to burn flags and shoot bullets in the air?
Honestly, what kinds of people are these? Anybody with that much free time on their hands obviously isn’t working enough. No wonder most Middle East economies aren’t in good shape. Oil is the only thing propping them up (if they have it), and their countries, technologically and socially, are caught somewhere between the Middle Ages and the present. If they spent more time working and less time demonstrating, they might get somewhere.
Audience-inclusive advertising
After the new video iPod launched, and the possibility to purchase and download ad-free TV shows came to light, I realized that the advertising industry would have to come up with some clever ways to keep their audience if they were to maintain revenues. The following ideas sprung to mind:
- A site can be set up and maintained by a consortium of advertising agencies and brand owners or a neutral body, that would either track viewer product preferences through data mining and random surveys, or would actively encourage users to register and provide product preferences. Alternately, existing user data could be compiled from various databases.
- Advertising during TV shows that certain user groups watch could be more closely targeted to those groups by ad personalization. Users could register for the chance to have an ad dedicated to them. For example, a sample user we’ll call Jane could indicate that she likes the MINI Cooper, and so when an ad for the Cooper runs during a show that she likes to watch, names can be selected at random from the database of users, and if her name comes up, that ad could say: “This goes out to Jane” before it runs, and end with a “Thanks, Jane!” Quite simple, really, but it serves to capture the audience, since people will stay tuned during the ads just to see if their name will come up.
- This concept can be expanded to include groups of users, perhaps up to 3-5 identifiable users per ad.
- Through the medium of the website, brand owners can also take a cue from the users about the kind of products they need to advertise, this time in a more direct way, through hard data. Even more, they can more easily survey the users about the kind of new products they want to see.
- Another way to keep the audience is to offer prizes for watching the ads and picking through clues that are weaved through both the ads and the shows. Entries can then be registered on the show’s site or at this main site for a chance to win something, perhaps even products featured on the show, or something as banal as an actor’s coat, or the actual bottle of perfume used by an actress on the show. These aren’t things that cost much but mean a lot to the audience.
- People are making a big deal about product placement, but I think that reaches a saturation point very quickly. You can’t plaster products all over the screen and detract from the value of the story or the entertainment. Product placements works when it’s subtle, weaved into the story, and reinforced through the regular ads.
Raoul Pop 