The Matrix in Lego Form
In Legos, Movies, Video on Nov-27-2009 with no comments
A pretty cool a stop-motion recreation of a famous scene from The Matrix done entirely in, you guessed it, Legos.
Google, News Corp, Bing And Access To News
In Media on Nov-25-2009 with no comments
Rupert Murdoch is literally pointing a loaded gun to Google’s head, and Microsoft appears more than happy to help pull the trigger. It is that simple. Murdoch and various executives at News Corp. have been very vocal about their disdain for Google linking to their content (without paying them) and their desire to lead other media companies in a boycott of all things Google.
Basically the back story is Murdoch keeps threatening to stop (via a simple line of code) letting Google index the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and his many other media outlets. In fact they have taken it to another level and are now actively courting other media outlets to join him in this self-imposed ban. The Dallas Morning News and the Associated Press (AP) are the two largest news organizations to voice support for Microsoft’s idea (and yes I know we can live without News Corp. and the AP).
Well the folks at Microsoft’s Bing, a distant third (behind Google and second place Yahoo!) in search market share at 12.8%, think this is the greatest idea since sliced bread. Such a good idea in fact, that the Financial Times has reported that Microsoft is in discussions with News Corp. and other publishers about the possibility of paying them to remove their sites from Google’s search index. $15M is the amount being thrown around Bing is offering News Corp. The payment is supposed to help off-set the lost ad revenue News Corp. online media properties would loose if almost all Google traffic stopped.
Lets me be very clear, Microsoft is not afraid to buy search market share, which is exactly what it’s doing with the Yahoo! search deal. But with these latest talks, Microsoft appears to be literally trying to buy the news, or at least exclusive access to the news.
So what does this mean?
Bing can’t buy all the news, it can only buy exclusive indexing access (how a news article shows up in a keyword search you enter) to certain media outlets. However, at least to me $15M sounds like a small price to pay to basically “own” all of Murdoch’s content when Microsoft has around $40B in cash on hand.
Therefore, is it possible Bing could throw around $15M here and $15 there and somehow become the only place you can find news results and working links to the Wall Street Journal and other top papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times? Would that be a reason for a lot of folks to switch from Google to Bing? From a geeky search engine analysis site, Searchblog:
In order to actually make a dent in Google’s market share, Bing would have to pay such exorbitant sums to so many different news companies that it would be difficult to recoup its investment. Bing would certainly get some marketing buzz out of any such move, but that’s about it.
Agreed. But this is an analysis from a search engine market share point-of-view. Not the point-of-view of a news consumer. Our “major” media outlets are all owned by a handful of companies. If Bing would strike a deal with say News Corp (they’re only talking $15M/year), a wire service like AP, MSNBC (the MS in MSNBC actually stands for Microsoft), the Washington Post Company, and Hearst, or heaven forbid somebody like Time Warner you are talking about a vast amount of news being gone from Google.
Just follow those links above, that go directly to all the company’s various media holdings and you can see with just a half dozen companies following Murdoch’s lead and you are talking about a massive amount of “popular” news content.
I can’t stress this is a huge issue that should be getting a lot more coverage. I mean do we really want an online world where if you are looking for a Time article heard referenced on the NBC Nightly News, you have to stop and pause and think, “Is their stuff on Google or Bing?”
Now I have some faith cause of the nature of the Internet this won’t work. I think the flaw in Murdoch’s and Microsoft’s logic is that information spreads so quickly these days, exclusives last about 30 seconds. Any information “hidden” from Google will quickly end up on a site that is indexed by Google.
Plus exclusive indexing goes against the Web’s inherent openness at dozens of different levels. But then again I am not usually in the habit of betting against either Microsoft or News Corp.
Pujols Wins Third NL MVP Award
In Sports on Nov-25-2009 with no comments
Albert is just the man, I mean his stats say it all:
Pujols led the majors in homers (47), runs (124), slugging percentage (.658) and intentional walks (44), and topped the NL in on-base percentage (.443). He was second in the league in doubles (45) and third in batting average (.327) and RBIs (135). He was especially dangerous with the bases loaded, going 10 for 17 with five grand slams, three doubles and 35 RBIs.
Keep in mind he is still only 29 years old.
Screaming-for-Screaming’s Sake
In Opinion, Politics on Nov-24-2009 with no comments
I find Matt Taibbi to be one of the most insightful writers around. He hits the nail on the head here about where political discourse is in our country today, and at the same time pounds Sarah Palin into the ground.
The really beautiful thing about the culture war, from an entertainment standpoint, is that it is fundamentally irresolvable. There isn’t a concrete set of issues involved, where in theory both sides could give in a little and find middle ground, reach some sort of compromise.
That’s because there are no issues at all. At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant—like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).
It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.
And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we’ve now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.
Lieberman Health Care “Excuse a Month” Club
In Politics on Nov-23-2009 with no comments
Steve Benen at the Washington Note does some nice “historical” reporting:
In June, Lieberman said, “I don’t favor a public option because I think there’s plenty of competition in the private insurance market.” That didn’t make sense, and it was quickly dropped from his talking points.
In July, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because “the public is going to end up paying for it.” No one could figure out exactly what that meant, and the senator moved onto other arguments.
In August, he said we’d have to wait “until the economy’s out of recession,” which is incoherent, since a public option, even if passed this year, still wouldn’t kick in for quite a while.
In September, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because “the public doesn’t support it.” A wide variety of credible polling proved otherwise.
In October, Lieberman said the public option would mean “trouble … for the national debt,” by creating “a whole new government entitlement program.” Soon after, Jon Chait explained that this “literally makes no sense whatsoever.”
Well, it’s November. And guess what? We’re onto the sixth rationale in six months. I actually like the new one.
“This is a radical departure from the way we’ve responded to the market in America in the past,” Lieberman said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “We rely first on competition in our market economy. When the competition fails then what do we do? We regulate or we litigate …. We have never before said, in a given business, we don’t trust the companies in it, so we’re going to have the government go into that business ….”
You’d think Lieberman could find one excuse and stick with it, but then again maybe he realizes that lies and misreprentations don’t work so well anymore.
Maserati’s Garage Competition Winner
In Miscellaneous, Stuff on Nov-23-2009 with no comments
The luxury car brand Maserati organized a competition to search for the finest architectural garage. Here is the winner.
The BCS Hires A PR Firm (Epic Fail)
In Sports, Twitter on Nov-22-2009 with no comments
The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has hired Ari Fleischer Communications, run by the former press secretary for President George W. Bush, to help rebuild the tattered image of college football’s postseason system.
One of their first moves was to set-up an official BCS Twitter account. This maybe one of those rare cases where interacting with the fans is not such as good idea, especially when it is so easy for them to respond. They are being torn apart. It’s brutal, and the account hasn’t even been active for 12 hours yet.
Tommy Young is a marketing consultant, tech geek, designer, writer, and sometime thinker based in St. Louis. More »
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