The Power of Syndication
Written by Paul Newnes
A nice little article first published here was re-published a lot. Doesn’t mean any of our trends for 2010 will be correct, but nice anyway.
Quake Live – A True Game Changer
Written by Paul Newnes
I’ve always been a huge fan of the FPS (first person shooter) game and can remember being awestruck the first time I played Doom on the PC way back in 1993. I even handcoded some custom levels using the first version of DEU.
So, to see the Doom sequel, Quake come to be a browser based game is pretty exciting. The fact that it is an amazing port of the game is even more amazing.
Check out Quake Live.
Good News for Entertainment
Written by Nuri Djavit
News in today that Kazaa will follow rivals Napster by legitimizing and moving to a subscription based service. This must be good news for the entertainment industry who is still struggling with ways to muscle through the problems they perceive with illegal downloading and sharing of content by imposing bigger fines and greater sophistication in digital rights management and copy protection.
I just had lunch yesterday with two leading executives from one of the big TelCos, who looked on me with suspicion when I suggested the following notion: “people will do the right thing, if you give people them opportunity to do so through an enjoyable and transparent experience”. I referenced iTunes, and they response almost suggested that it was a fad, because Apple are not a music/entertainment company, only enforcing the notion that duopolies are bad and innovation is key to a sustainable future.
But beyond the argument over financial models, what interests me here is a lifestyle change where I no longer have media stored locally, whether it’s in the form of hard media such as CDs or a hard drive full of digital files. Rather, the subscription based, all you can eat model, keeps everything remotely for you to draw on as you choose, constantly pushing towards virtual computing and cloud services to deliver them. Perhaps this is what the telecoms companies should be focusing on instead of exercising the strong arm of the law on every petty (download) thief?
Walmart PUshes Towards World Domination
Written by Nuri Djavit
I was horrified to read this morning that Walkmart was pushing through policy that would force the brands it sells in its stores to proportion some of their media spend to Walmart run campaigns. There’s already alot of ‘cajoling’ when it comes to getting your brands positioned on shelves and now you have to commit a, potentially, large part of your budget to their media strategies. Ad Age estimated that someone like P&G would have to divert approximately $1 Billion – th idea being that Walmart makes up 30% of P&Gs total sales and, therefore, they should divert 30% pf their media spend to Walmart!!
Is this legal?
Last Exit Presents II – ‘Inside-out – Royal Court Theatre’
Written by Gary Lockton
What an amazing location for our second Last Exit Presents!
The Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square, in the heart of London’s Chelsea, has an elegant and traditional 130 year old Victorian facade, yet everyting that happens inside is far from the traditional.
The theatre has become known as a hotbed for generations of talented actors and playwrights – the shaping of the ‘angry young men’ is a phrase synonymous with the work of this contemporary institution.
In the words of Diane Borger, Associate Producer at the theatre, the Royal Court is a ‘point of view’, a powerful ’set of opinions’ which happily takes sides, challenges taboos as well as the critics. Diane’s explaination was amplified by the words of two of the theatres youngest and most promising playwrights, who also spoke to our audience of guests.
Levi David Addai talked passionately about how he could never have imagined the theatre as his ‘home’, back in his early life in London’s deprived area of Lewisham. Another exciting young playwright, David Watson also hailed the Royal Court as a unique place to write and explore the telling of personal stories. “You may love or hate the end results on stage, but you will always get noticed” said David.
The huge number of thank you emails we have received from guests attending the event have left us in do doubt that ‘Inside Out at the Royal Court’ was a fantastic evening for our second Last Exit Presents!
Last Exit Twitter Updates for 2009-05-20
Written by admin
- La Esquina — home of a truly awesome chorizo breakfast burrito. #
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Last Exit Twitter Updates for 2009-05-15
Written by admin
- Last Exit is (finally) on Twitter #
- http://yfrog.com/0cvrxj
What will this be? Some are hoping for a gourmet joint, others for a park. Consensus is a burger joint in a park. #
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Cesna Has Big Balls – and so they should!
Written by Nuri Djavit
I Love this ad for Cesna by Grace/Dickerson, Denva. I’m sure it’s giving all CEO’s around the country a surge of positive defiance in this time of cut backs, layoffs, devalued stock etc. etc. I mean, if you can afford a Cesna, you can afford a Cesna right?
Four Philosophical Questions to Make Your Brain Hurt
Written by Nuri Djavit
BBC online today posted a great article posing four questions that really will test the old noggin. Check out the full piece by clicking here and below is a summary:
“It’s World Philosophy Day – an opportunity to contemplate one’s very existence and whether computer monitors really exist”, says David Bain.
1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?
Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?
2. ARE YOU THE SAME PERSON WHO STARTED READING THIS ARTICLE?
Consider a photo of someone you think is you eight years ago. What makes that person you? You might say he she was composed of the same cells as you now. But most of your cells are replaced every seven years. You might instead say you’re an organism, a particular human being, and that organisms can survive cell replacement – this oak being the same tree as the sapling I planted last year.
3. IS THAT REALLY A COMPUTER SCREEN IN FRONT OF YOU?
What reason do you have to believe there’s a computer screen in front of you? Presumably that you see it, or seem to. But our senses occasionally mislead us. A straight stick half-submerged in water sometimes look bent; two equally long lines sometimes look different lengths.
4. DID YOU REALLY CHOOSE TO READ THIS ARTICLE?
Suppose that Fred existed shortly after the Big Bang. He had unlimited intelligence and memory, and knew all the scientific laws governing the universe and all the properties of every particle that then existed. Thus equipped, billions of years ago, he could have worked out that, eventually, planet Earth would come to exist, that you would too, and that right now you would be reading this article.
