Archives for "Culture"
Twitter’s Propensity for One Liners
I’ve recently begun using twitter on a more consistent basis. I sometimes find it difficult to attract new followers that aren’t spam bots trying to sell me porn. I recently started trying to understand what I need to do to get new followers. I find that most of the people I follow own some company or service that I’m interested in. I don’t have a company or service to attract followers, so I decided evaluate how I make friends in the real world.
Usually I tend to make friends by offering comical insight or odd perspectives on topics of interest. I provide a view of a situation that might warrant some attention. Sometimes this involves rather lengthy debate, but sometimes all it takes is a series of one liners that create interesting juxtaposition. Interestingly enough Twitter caters to these one liners quite nicely. The character limit imposed by twitter prevents the lengthy debate style conversations I might prefer to have. It instead forces me to simply add my two cents worth to a conversation. But cming up with 40 or 50 one liners a day can be quite difficult.
One liners don’t enter my mind very easily. It takes some work, and sometimes some knowledge of the people your presenting them to. You need to understand your audience to pick up on things they’ll find funny or witty. The problem with twitter is that the view of any one persons life only comes via the same short snippets I’m trying to make an impact with. And because the birds I follow are usually organised around undustry not character similarity, it’s hard to find one liners that don’t alienate some while appealing to others. I’ve been taking shots in the dark on a one off basis hoping someone might find me humourous/insightful to moderate success. I’ve also been toying with a the option of just not caring how many followers I have. Resigning myself to this option (at least for now) seems a little bit like quitting. Whatevs!
Cheers,
Tarandon
The Capacity for Greatness
Some people have it, some people don’t. I don’t know what differentiates the two. But I do know what’s missing in my life that prevents that capacity from being realised.
I lack a basic sense of inspiration.
I get frustrated with the obstacles far to easily.
I get really frustrated with the fake it till you make it types, slowing me down because I have to explain everything to them.
I get tired at the uphill battle and the falling rocks and the stolen ideas and misplaced credit that continuously keeps me from realising the greatness I know I’m capable of.
I’m tired of the lying and the backstabbing stupidity of the corporate agenda. I’m infuriated by the incompetence of the enabled, who enable the incompetent to fail repeatedly; and they do so by using that failure to justify the need for their incompetence.
I realise that as I ramble the pronouns get muddied and my lack of an ability to communicate that which burns me so sharply makes my soul ache all the more. Inspiration cannot thrive in this environment.
The parade of the uninspired masquerading in and out the revolving door of this disfunctional business unit brings a cold and icy wind that chills my flame and saps the strength of my inner awesome.
A George divided against itself cannot stand.
When the worlds collide, change will follow.
GoodBye Pownce!
Pownce is dying on December 15th! I used this tool from Andrew Curioso that allowed me to find the majority of my Pownce contacts on Twitter. It also exports your Pownce friends/following data in a handy CSV file for download. Sweet!
Huge props to Leah Culver and Mike Malone for their hardwork on Pownce. I hope you both enjoy your new roles on VOX with sixapart. Things are going to be interesting in 2009!
Cheers!
Tarandon
HDCP and Apple
There used to be a time when joining a record label was a huge achievement for an artist because it enabled them to increase the range of distribution for their music. In current times it’s unfortunate that record labels have positioned themselves for reigning in that distribution instead of nurturing it. The internet has presented itself as a tool for distribution that is unprecedented in our history. I find it saddening that major record labels aren’t using this to their advantage.
I figure that each record label should be selling their brand experience, not their music. Musicians would be inclined to associated themselves with a record label based on the ideals associated with their brand, and their webportal experience would be an extension of those ideals. An entire culture of loyal users would visit the website on a daily/weekly basis to find out what new music there was available, and the record label would be happy to give that new music away for free. Why!? Because it creates the potential for new fans at absolutely no cost to the record label, and increases ticket sales for the little guy who just got signed.
The potential exists today for a record label to subsist on several lesser known artists pulling in medium sized crowds with lots of tour dates. Labels could even go so far as to give their users the option of providing location in their user profiles and then map the fan base geography to optimize tour locations for each band.
Instead, they force one of the largest distribution networks they have to piss of their entire viewership and in the end loose out on the potential to capitalize on what people want most. Good music.
Cheers,
Tarandon
Book Meme
Blank Page… no seriously page 56 is blank. Visual QuickPro Guide: Flash CS3 Professional Advanced – Russell Chun.
Meme from James Tauber, Greg Newman, Justin Lilly and Brian Rosner.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
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