Our friends from Variety Shac are celebrating the release of their new DVD with a special performance at the Knitting Factory this Friday night. Big party = you don’t just get entertained by the lovely and talented Shonali, Heather, Andrea and Chelsea, you also get superstar guests like shey.net fave artist Cory ARRRRcangel, SNL’s Fred ARRRRmisen, the awesome Zach Galifianakis, and Eugene Mirman (Flight of the Conchords, Super Deluxe). Apparently you can buy tickets by texting SHAC to 467467 but I’m afraid to try it myself — just click on the poster below.
We’ll be there — hope to see all ye at the show. Yar.
Today we launched our first original animated series from Next New Networks, Channel Frederator’s Meth Minute 39, by genius animator Dan Meth. The first episode — Internet People! — is a tribute to everyone who’s entertained all of us on the web the last couple of years. Here’s the whole story behind its birth, but what’s untold (for now) is the amazing support the NNN team gave Dan and company to make this thing internet-ubiquitous in less than 12 hours. We published at noon, and right now the video is already on the front of MySpace, YouTube, DailyMotion, climbing on Digg, and embedded on dozens of sites and blogs… and I feel like it’s just getting started.
Hope you like it, and stay tuned for more episodes of Meth Minute 39, coming soon. Believe me, they actually get better than this one.
Stopped by the MoMA today, figuring it would be a good day to see the Richard Serra sculptures outside (although it’s the three titanic pieces inside that turned out to be truly mindblowing). Among the happy surprises there (including the automatic update show with a piece by our friend Cory) was a huge installation of drawings, “WHAT HAPPENED TO US?” by Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, covering one side of the four story atrium.
The drawings, wry commentary on contemporary society and current events, are a version of something Perjovschi’s done in museums, newspapers and journals all over Europe since the 90s, and must have been a blast to watch him draw. While we were there, there were dozens of people doing the same thing we were doing, looking up and reading the wall and laughing and pointing out drawing after drawing to their companions. A free accompanying newspaper you can pick up at the show features pen and ink versions of many of the drawings (like the ones above this paragraph) in a tabloid format (PDF download).
[Nick Douglas mentioned in the comments that this is “like a more obvious version of ‘Indexed,’” which was definitely a site I was thinking about at the show.]
I’ve always expected to live in New York City for as long as I remember; it’s where both of my parents are from, where I stole away as often as possible as a music-obsessed kid on Long Island, and the place I always came back to recharge for the twelve years I lived in DC. But now that Rachel and I live here, as much as I love it, I’m astonished every day by how fast it’s changing, and the place I knew is slipping away. So many things I thought could never change are changing, and often the city feels overrun, overpriced, and sometimes just over.
I’m sure this is something people have always felt in New York — the only thing that’s probably constant here is change, and the feeling that the city you imagined is somewhere else — but sometimes something just hits you in the gut. Like reading a few minutes ago that Pasticceria Bruno has closed down, or earlier this week that the Chelsea Hotel is getting Schragerized. A couple weeks before Christmas last year, I was walking down Bleecker Street and happened to pass by Bruno, and looking at the cookies in the window, felt my entire childhood coming back to me. On the way out to visit my parents for dinner for the holidays, I made a point to stop and pick up a couple of pounds of cookies and struffoli, honey balls like my great-Grandma Anna used to make. I knew my mom would get tears in her eyes when she saw them, and she did. I couldn’t believe my good fortune, that I lived in a city where I could still get something like this, something I remembered from almost thirty years ago, whenever I wanted. I figured I’d be going to Bruno’s, like the people double-parked that evening outside the bakery in cars and SUVs from every surrounding borough and state, to buy holiday cookies for the next thirty years, for sure.
Veoh and founder Dmitry Shapiro are the subjects of an article in today’s NYTimes about the upcoming release of their VeohTV player, which is similar to Joost in that it’s a downloadable app that offers a more television-like experience in viewing internet video. Unlike Joost, however, and as TechCrunch notes, Veoh isn’t asking permission and striking deals with all the content creators up front — if it’s available on the web as Flash video, the promise is you’ll be able to shift it from its original website it and watch it with VeohTV instead — from YouTube videos to Heroes episodes from NBC.com. Hence the NYT article: Veoh’s basically onto something I think people will want — a convenient single way to watch their favorite web videos — but we won’t know until the software’s out whether the many content owners on the web will cooperate, or whether the public will respond in droves.
For one thing, I feel like the world is moving away from downloadable apps, and towards the browser for everything, whether its technically feasible to power something like VeohTV in a browser or not, and this could limit early adoption. More importantly, when Tivo disrupted the TV industry, there was a prevailing business model and billions in advertising revenue on the line; Veoh’s now offering similar tools for online video viewers at a time when most major media sites make very little off advertising on their television content online, and instead use the shows to attract visitors to their own destination websites, and keep them there. Many will see the idea of web users watching individual shows elsewhere, whether advertising goes with them or not, as a threat to their web traffic and banner advertising, which they use for cross-promotion and merchandising as well. Rick Cotton, the EVP and general counsel of NBC Universal, already has a starting position in the article to that point, stating, “this material has value… The notion of taking it and generating traffic with it needs to be negotiated and needs to be done with the agreement of content owners.”
But big media could benefit by letting Veoh run free for a little while, especially because their download-only experience will limit the application’s use to early adopters and tech-savvy customers who probably avoid or dislike watching video on big media’s portal sites already, and are sophisticated in how they avoid and ignore online advertising. You can pretend not to see the elephant in the room and try to lock your customers to the way things are done now — or you can take a risk and try to give them something new. That’s what little startups are supposed to do, and what big companies have a very hard time doing. So if VeohTV’s any good at all (I confess I haven’t had enough time in front of a Windows PC to try it myself yet), they’ll be the first of a wave, and should inevitably create new opportunities for big media to do what it does best, and make even more money. I think there’s a direct line between the availability of Tivo — which allowed people to easily find their favorite shows on their own time and grow incredibly loyal to them — and the explosion of TV show DVD sales, which are now a major revenue stream for networks and studios. Making web video easier to watch could create a lot of opportunities for all of us, big and small.
Of course, my company is partnered with Veoh and distributes our videos there, and we share some investors in Spark, so I’m rooting for them. What they’re doing is so natural, it seems inevitable — but big media companies are extremely well-practiced at fighting the inevitable, so Dmitry’s probably in for a scrap.
Watching Sicko today (go see it), heard in passing that the British National Health Service Act went into effect on July 5, 1948 — meaning UK citizens have essentially had free, universal health care for 59 years today. The NHS figures prominently in the movie as a point of comparison to our own system, and it was largely unknown to me. It hasn’t been perfect, but it seems a lot better for the great majority of the UK than what we have here in the US, which means the bad teeth jokes might start coming the other direction across the pond pretty soon.
Last night, as I looked at all the photos tagged “iphone” rolling in on Flickr, I wanted to capture all the iconic first photos people would inevitably take with their new iPhone once they got it. At the same time, I wondered, can an iPhone buy happiness*? So I started two competing groups at the same time: Photos of me with an iPhone, and Photos of me without an iPhone. Here are some of my favorite photos posted in the last 12 hours so far:
A Comicbook Orange is really hitting its stride now, so I’m embedding it again. I honestly don’t know what more comic book fans would need. Girl in Wonder Woman costume? Check. The same girl talking straight in the next segment about why a new comic sucks? Check check. Go, Casey! Everyone else, spread the word. If you’re trying to make your limited comic-buying funds stretch and only get the good stuff, if you want to find out why people like comics, or if you just want to be entertained for a few minutes — you should be watching this show.
