This is why it costs so much to make movies

Wow even for a crappy low cost movie like "The Sitter" - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1366344/fullcredits#cast

You should see the amount of stuff they have setup for this movie. The photo below is about 1/4 of it-the other stuff is star trailers, catering and power generation trucks.

Gerrymandering

I was watching NY1 news this morning and they were commenting on the redrawing of political boundaries in NY State - interesting "Factoid" the word gerrymandering is from America.

Basically it was coined in 1812 regarding "the look" of a Boston election redrawing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

...lol useless things you never needed to know.


Cheers,
Dean

PJ Harvey

Was working on my pc today when this came on, man i forgot how much PJ Harvey rocks. Something about her says "stranger danger" and yet you cant help but just want to be ensconced......deeper and darker, never to return again.



Little fISH BIG FiSH swimming in the water......

Cheers,
Dean

Wall Street 2

Wow - Oliver Stone is a genius.

(btw spoilers below dont read until you see the movie).

It's the same as Wall Street but different. You end up loving Gordon Gekko all over again but for different reasons.

Michael Douglas is a perfect actor, you dont ever see him as an actor, but as the actual "Gordon Gekko" ingrained in your reptilian greedy mind. (btw amazing how much he looks like Kirk Douglas in some scenes now).

The Federal Reserve scenes are perfection, you almost feel like taking a bat to the next Goldman Sachs executive you see on the street (shortly followed by taking the same bat to the next federal politician for being spineless and mortgaging your future - love the NINJA acronym).

The cameo role with Bud Fox was superfluous and felt cheesy, btw did anyone notice they brought back the real estate agent out of formaldehyde? that was a nice touch (especially if you have ever dealt with any NY brokers).

The Met scenes were perfectly shot and felt like they could have been shot during the fall of Rome.

Would i recommend someone see it, 100% Yes (even if they didn't see the first one - btw I was surprised how empty it was last night for only the 2nd night?)

At the end of the day this movie is an instant classic, they should have ended the movie differently without the cheesy happy feel good scene but apart from that this movie was practically flawless.


Cheers,
Dean

Repetitive TV ads

Does it bug anyone else that it seems the same crappy companies repeat the same crappy ads on TV all the time?

I mean does anyone really care about BDO or Swiffer Dusters enought to really need to see the same ads ever day?

And seriously if you are going to run your ads over and over and over....can you spend some of that money on "decent content production"?

Am i watching too much tv that this bugs me or is it everyone?


Cheers,
Dean

Content or Curatorial?

I heard the statement at a TV industry panel event "Television leads the market in delivering focused content and will continue to do so"

My thoughts are more....is it quality video content or is it the curatorial nature of television that makes it attractive to people to watch?

One of the missing elements i feel is missing from online video content is the plethora of choices it is almost paralysing, i think the sit and lay back 6ft experience will always need some form of curatorial input - is there a business model in this? yeh i think so but not sure what form it would take yet.


Cheers,
Dean

Banner Ad Exchange

Some of you already know I’m involved with the startup http://www.livechatconcepts.com/

We run a number of destination websites featuring live chat such as http://www.livebaseballchat.com/ , http://www.livefootballchat.com/ , http://www.livenascarchat.com/ etc (10 in total), and whilst we are just starting to get traction we still have a long way to go with the final product (about V0.7 so far).

The reason for this post is we serve our ads on our sites using our own dedicated http://www.openx.com/ ad server.

I'm interested in setting up some reciprocal banner impression contracts with people in similar sporting spaces. e.g. Basically we'll run 50,000 banner ad impressions for your website on one of our Live Chat website and you'll run 50,000 impressions for http://www.livebaseballchat.com/ (or one of our other sites) on your platform.

Live Chat Concepts inc places a single banner at the base of all our chat pages that is rotated every 60 seconds. This banner is 468 x 60 and is very cleanly and prominently displayed above the fold without any distracting clutter. If you need to arrange a swap with less than 50,000 impressions it can be done just get in touch to discuss.

You'll be emailed updates every 24 hours on delivery rate etc from our OpenX ad server with number of impressions and number of clicks etc (as we'd like to see something similar from you).

If this is of interest to anyone on the newtech list get in touch and I'll send you a formal proposal along with our sample banner ads we'd like to run.

I’ve offered these free banner exchange contracts to other people in the past who have taken me up on the offer so get in touch if you’d like some contact details about people who have participated previously.

Cheers,
Dean

Paula Cole

Went to see Paula Cole at City Winery last night , it's great to see someone who doesn't have her live act "totally polished" and you know is getting as much from the audience as they are from her.

She has a new album out today that is available on Amazon - Ithaca (though my favorite of hers is This Fire).

BTW if you get a chance to see her play, check out her guitarist Ben Butler, i was transfixed watching him play, he has a very understated way of playing and almost no guitar solo's but he was doing some freaky "electric accoustic" techniques i've never seen before, almost using it like a theremin (oh and he's an aussie - :).


Cheers,
Dean

Angels getting nervous? or just business as normal?

Two sides to the same dinner


http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into-a-bar
and
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/09/fire-in-the-valley.html
 
 
What are your thoughts?
 
Cheers,
Dean

Intel threatens to sue anyone who uses the HDCP master key

Intel threatened legal action Friday against anybody who uses its proprietary crypto key — leaked on the internet — to produce hardware that defeats the so-called HDCP technology. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/intel-threatens-consumers/

Ha ha - this comment cracked me up, totally agree.

“Intel Threatens to Sue Anyone Who Uses HDCP Crack” …and a village in China building the new “universal set-top box/player/recorder/microwave” laughs.

Anyone seen a HDCP tshirt yet?

Cheers,
Dean

Locked up user/admin names-passwords

Ever forgotten the admin username or password for a windows server?

Check out - http://www.pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/ 

It's a free bootable iso that allows you to log in and edit the local usernames passwords (or just blank them). Saved my butt tonight from something stupid that i did without thinking.


Cheers,
Dean

SBS 7

SBS 7 is due shortly.


Although this is a walk through of Aurora (the cloud/on premise version of sbs7) it’s worth a watch.
http://sbs.seandaniel.com/2010/07/windows-server-codename-aurora-video.html

Interesting about the “active directory federation” abilities for third party developers, anyone see that taking off?

My only question is what are people doing about firewalling? (i never moved off sbs2003 so still have isa 2004 running on the same server - dumbest move ever that MS dropped the on server firewall for sbs2008).


Cheers,
Dean

Amber Lyon - what a pompous ass

I'm watching Amber Lyon on CNN this morning acting all smug about how she feels she was directly responsible for the Craigslist changes.

Unfortunately she couldn't answer the question about how this action is like "Whack a Mole" in that you close it down here and it's just going to pop up somewhere else.

Something about her makes me want to smack her on the side of the head and say - stop grinning you jerk you haven't done anything that wasn't solved 24 hours later well before that goofy grin left your face.


Cheers,
Dean

The People Vs Larry Flynt

Just finished watching The People vs. Larry Flynt again tonight.

The message that struck home with a extremly poignant message considering the CraigsList decision last week. It almost brought a tear to my eye when they were reading the supreme court decision in the final scene and also made me think about why we dont make a bigger issue about our freedoms "to be" in Australia.

I guess at the end of the day the people get the politicians they deserve and the people are apothetic but it still made me appreciative of the need to continue to be outspoken.


Cheers,
Dean

Craigslist - GFYS

The most important thing I read today;
- http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/10/all-you-did-was-weaken-a-country-today

Very dissapointing, considering Craigslist are well within their legal rights.

Cheers,
Dean

Napster peaked at only 26m users

Chilling out on the deck this morning came across an interesting statement in the current issue of "CED-Broadband Technology" magazine (yeh i know i read some esoteric crap at times, all about cable headends and video technology).

The article wasn't significant but what was interesting that caught my eye was that Napster peaked with a user base of 26 million users (15m USA, 26m in total internationally).

Wow it is an amazing fact that the entire music industry was changed forever with only 26 million users. What other industries could be changed forever if 26 million people got together around a singular cause? (electric cars? public transport? political change with encouragement around sustainable policies?)

Now here is the kicker - what changes are going to come about from Facebooks 500 million user base?


Cheers,
Dean

Dual Core 1.5ghz phones coming in less than 12 months

Wow is that a phone in your pocket or did you just get a boner?

Way to take the wind out of our sails, ARM -- no sooner does your dual-core Cortex-A9 finally ship, do you reveal an even more powerful smartphone, smartbook and server-slaying beast. The Cortex-A15 MPCore picks up where the A9 left off, but with reportedly five times the power of existing CPUs, raising the bar for ARM-based single- and dual-core cell phone processors up to 1.5GHz
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/09/arm-reveals-eagle-core-as-cortex-a15-capable-of-quad-core-compu/


Cheers,
Dean
P.S. Yes these days it's more important than ever only to sign up for 12 month carrier contracts (my 12 month Verizon Motorola Droid contract comes up for renewal at the end of October - well worth the $30 that Verizon charged me to shorten the contract period from 24 months to 12 months).

Fixed Menu?

I was watching the Anthony Bourdain - No Reservation Paris show this week. Lots of comments about up and coming superstar restaurants in Paris with single fixed menu, some with only a fixed single seating as well......

Personally i think this is a great idea, everyone in the restaurant going through a joint dining experience, just delivery at the same time is the issue depending on the number of people.
 
Thoughts?
 
 
Cheers,
Dean

Toyota Prius

Drove a Toyota Prius today for the first time, what a POS. Who designed this crap? Last time i'll be renting that model from Zip Car.


Apart from the great gas mileage everything else in it is sub par. (audio, controls, mirror placement etc).

BTW Toyota, what the heck is with the split rear window? cant see jack through it.
#Fail Toyota.


Cheers,
Dean