Updates from admin RSS

  • Steve Spalding 8:50 pm on July 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,

    As fun as it is to make twenty copies of every piece of information ever made

    People are far too concerned about owning the data, when they should be a lot more interested in shaping the workflow.

    Media has never been about the manufacturing of ideas, media is about guiding the way that people see concepts, where they choose to find information, and the highways and byways they seek out to think about problems.

    Anyone, anywhere can create something – creation is cheap. The really hard thing, the valuable thing is developing platforms to guide consumption.

     
  • Steve Spalding 5:30 pm on August 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:

    Sunday Newspaper Are Unethical

    Back in the 1800s, there was a good long ethical debate over newspapers. It had nothing to do with the sanctity of journalism. It was, in fact, all about whether newspapers should be published on Sunday.

    ‘All the morning newspapers,’ he is reported to have said, ‘are Sabbath breakers. The Sunday newspaper is unnecessary, is issued in violation of divine law, and is disreputable, in some cases unspeakably so . .’

     
  • The Three Act Play Our first video fo...

    Steve Spalding 5:20 pm on August 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: filmmaking, movies, , three-act-play

    The Three Act Play

    Our first video for 93 Studios. It’s on storytelling, the three-act play and well…just watch.

     
  • Steve Spalding 5:36 pm on August 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: journalism,

    Yellow Journalism

    “W. R. Hearst, New York Journal, N.Y.: ‘Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return. ‘Remington.’

    Remington, Havana: ‘Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war. ‘W. R. Hearst.’”

    This is one of the most famous exchanges in newspaper history, purportedly between photographer Fredrick Remington and newspaper baron William Randolf Hearst. Supposedly it took place in 1897 and it’s cited as one of the major reasons that the U.S. entered the war in Spain in 1898.

    There is a good chance that this exchange never really happened.

     
  • Steve Spalding 5:30 pm on August 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: hearing, link, science

    Tone Deafness May Be A Brain Defect

    According to the Journal of Neuroscience, tone deafness could be caused by a very particular brain defect.

    This region, a neural ‘highway’ called the arcuate fasciculus, is known to be involved in linking music and language perception with vocal production.The arcuate fasciculus was smaller in volume and had a lower fiber count in the tone-deaf individuals. More notably, the superior branch of the arcuate fasciculus in the right hemisphere could not be detected in the tone-deaf individuals. The researchers speculated that this could mean the branch is missing entirely, or is so abnormally deformed that it appears invisible to even the most advanced neuroimaging methods.

     
  • Steve Spalding 4:50 am on June 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,

    I’ve always liked Mark, he has the sort of chutzpah you can only pick up when you’re worth $2.3 billion. He’s willing to swing wide, take chances and talk about them. It’s the same reason I like Richard Branson (who happens to be worth $2.4 billion).

    Well Mark was talking about entrepreneurship in Esquire sometime in 2006 and he raised some points which are particularly apropos now with the economy in its heels and everyone searching for a way to punch their way through to the other side.

    Here are two, you should click through to the article to see the rest.

    Wherever I see people doing something the way it’s always been done, the way it’s “supposed” to be done, following the same old trends, well, that’s just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.

    For HDNet, I’m just looking for programming that I think is going to be memorable, that is going to impact people personally, and stuff that people will think is funny — kind of like a baby HBO from a content perspective. Most companies, most media companies or public companies, are geared toward earnings per share, and that drives everything: hitting the numbers, hitting the quarter mark. But to me, it’s not about that. It’s about: Can we have an impact? If it’s Dan Rather or Dennis Rodman, it doesn’t matter — I don’t care, as long as it’s something unique. Everybody else does nothing more creative than following the trend. It’s like: Let’s do another poker show. Now let’s extend that to blackjack. Now let’s mix blackjack with poker. Now let’s pimp my ride, let’s pimp my house, let’s get tattoos, let’s get bounty hunters. If everybody else is doing it, I don’t want to do it. Rather than trying to grovel for an extra share of viewers like most media companies do these days, I’d rather just throw it up against the wall and take some chances.

     
  • Steve Spalding 11:09 pm on June 14, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: product-design

    “There is no such thing as a perfect Pepsi, only perfect Pepsis”

     
  • If wish there was a stronger word than t...

    Steve Spalding 5:49 am on June 14, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:

    I wish there was a stronger word than true to describe this.

    It’s very easy to write. It’s very hard to cut down and edit. It’s very easy to write lots of nonsensical blog entries, God knows I see enough every day on the interwebs. That’s without even trying to tell a story. Pare down what you need to tell a story. Watch Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe on television writing, it’s on iPlayer or, on certain sites of dubious virtue. Tell a story using the minimum that you need and don’t subscribe to bloggorhea. This applies to both text and A/V content. Your audience just doesn’t have the time to wade through that stuff.

    It’s of extreme importance that you take some time to read this blog post on storytelling and ARGs.

     
  • Steve Spalding 4:35 am on June 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: facebook

    For anyone keeping score, if you happen to have the vanity URL facebook.com/yourname, as of this posting facebook.com/your.name works as well. In fact, ANY permutation will work. facebook.com/y.ourname or facebook.com/you.rname will work as well.

     
  • Steve Spalding 4:24 pm on June 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: pr,

    There needs to be a word for the feeling you get when you click on what you think is content and end up on a “sales letter”

    - @sbspalding

    While I have no problem with Sales Pages or affiliate marketing, I think I have a profound problem with ambling across content that isn’t what it makes itself out to be. If I am being linked to something, I want to be sure I get whatever that something is — if suddenly I find myself learning about how you can help me make a 6-figure income playing backgammon in my PJs, not only will that deter me from following any link you push out again but it will almost guarantee I’ll make sort of smart-arse remark about it.

    If you think I’m alone in this, I’m not.

    @sbspalding See, I have a word for that feeling, but I’m not allowed to used it in polite society ;-)

    - @smlacy

    Is there a lesson here?

    Sure.

    When you are worried about conversion (as you probably are if you have a big, bad sales letter) then you should recognize that trust is currency and it’s really not worth it to waste it all for a quick click-thru.

     
c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
esc
cancel
ss_blog_claim=95c4a241b66b975cba010f667506de2d