YouTube killed the Blogging star?
The suffix at the end of the modern age of Internetz, 2.0, was originally coined as the second version of the Internet. But alas, it has been taken, not in a chronological sense, but in the speed of which time apparently passes, I even read of the apparent Web 3.0 coming up soon. This speed, it seems, is effecting even the media on the Internet.
Paul Boutin of Wired Magazine is one of that ideas RSS subscribers. Except it doesn’t have a feed, its just a bad pun.
“Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”
Paul Boutin @ http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay
The original idea behind blogging was the simplicity behind it, most everyone (even a few monkeys) were able to easily type and publish their own commentary, “part of that simplicity was a lack of support for pictures, audio, and videoclips” claimed Boutin. Take any look at the currently thriving blogs and you will see that is no longer the case. Blogging was a recycling of old trends, as radio was replaced by television for similar reasons. Unlike The Buggles would have you believe, however, video did not kill the radio star, it just had him slim down a bit and move from family rooms to their minivans.
But what do you wake up to? What do you not wake up to? What do you smack every morning, only to smack it again in 8 minutes? For this questionnaire to work, if we remove spouses from the equation (and annoying birds/ children) we are left with the answer: radio. Video is an ironically horrible killer.
I use that example because I like the song, its catchy, poppy and covered more often than Britney Spears is not. I do agree that blogging will not stay a dormant idea, as was the case of radio and theatres, but similarly, they are going nowhere. As with the move of radio from family room to car, movie from theatre to family room, blogging is just going to specialize itself.
As with most ideas, especially Interweb ones, blogging has been done to death. LiveJournal was the first one I remember hearing about, and looking back on my old (and since deleted) accounts, I thought myself actually retarded. To a pre-teen, blogging was just a rant and a rave and a tear-fest about how horrible their parents are, and either ridiculously long diatribes, or short, mid-tear posts of gloom. But really, near the end, LiveJournals were either abandoned or just a painful spam of few-sentence rants. The idea of a micro-blog was ripe for the picking, and although I am sure they were not the first, Twitter really got the cheese roll of that idea some mad speeds.
But that is how the Internet seems to work. The idea of blogging has been, for the past few years, overused, and in the past fewer years the idea has been specialized and socialized. You ever watch movies based in the past? Say, one of the bi-yearly racial-issue-football movies? Or even so, the war movies? Back in those days, radio was the form of communication and media. But then TV came out and took the majority of the radio market, and what did it do? It specialized itself, and moved the radio into a commuter media. Micro-blogging is the specialized turd-blogging.
Twitter — which limits each text-only post to 140 characters — is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004. You’ll find Scoble, Calacanis, and most of their buddies from the golden age there. They claim it’s because Twitter operates even faster than the blogosphere. And Twitter posts can be searched instantly, without waiting for Google to index them.
This argument reminds me, but with a little bit more credibility all of the * killers. But alas, Digg is still around, the iPod is still around, Firefox is still around. And y’know what? Blogging will never die, just like how Newspaper never died. It changed, not died.
Obamaniacism
I like this poster, and for reasons other than the fact looks like bacon. Although, to be honest, bacon does deserve its own column. If you doubt me, go and have some bacon and you will agree. That reason would be located, in blue letters, above the strips of greasy awesomeness; OBAMA.
Although I am very much a fan of ‘08AMA, that is not even where I am going with this, though I do find McCain to be a bloody wanker. You would have to have the current brain activity of the late Christopher Reeves to be unaware of the Design for Obama team, you could even almost call it a movement.
Canada just came out of a $290M waste of an election, giving Stephen Harper nothing but a ‘mightier minority’. Living as close as I do to the States, I saw, first hand, the difference in Canadian and American politics. Or, as ‘first hand’ as a Canadian (American, but more awesome) possibly can.
Historically, Canada and the States have had a few years between each form of media, be it radio, newspaper or television. The Internet arrived, en masse, about a decade ago, but it was during George Bush’s 8 years that the face of North America (be it, the world) received the but end of the mallet of the Internet(z) - and this time, Canada arrived just as soon as the States did.
Being the Internet-nerd (actually, just an all around nerd) I have sat a foot and a half away from the single most Internet’d debate in the history of the world. Yes, there are technological differences between now and then, but it goes beyond that.
Think as you may, but I strongly believe that 9/11, whichever side you are on of the issue, has helped the pseudo-Democratic nation to the south of us. Even now, there is a urban myth that, at once, Green Day did not suck. They actually existed before American Idiot (such an aptly titled, self-biographical title, don’t you think?), and although historians of years to come will formidably disagree with me, it was once true. But, this is a digression; with American Idiot came a nation of ridiculously retarded Emo-crats. And with their not-even-pseudo-political stances, teenagers of years past grew up. It has been 5 years since Billie Joe Armstrong started touring the world with his balls in hand, and if perchance, even a tenth of those Emo-crats keeps a lewd interest in politics, that is (5,000,000/10) 500,000 new voters. Of course, that is assuming that they are of age now to vote. Imperfect math? Yes. Point made? I damn sure hope so, because that took a while to get the numbers for.
And what do Canadians get? We got damn signs and a debate or two. Oh, and Jack Layton made some crappy cartoon ad and hired someone to play some mad Jenga.
The thing is, a poll of a few weeks ago showed that more Vancouverites gave a crap about the American election than the Canadian one. There are many a reason, but especially in direct comparison to bi-partisan debates in the States, arguing for a majority in a quint-partison debate seems pointless and a waste of time. Basically, Canadian politics just don’t matter as much as American, and we know this.
Whether you voted Liberal, Conservative, NDP or Green, or will be voting either Republican or Democrat - do so with the vigor of the Obamaniancs.
A second helping of Firefox Extensions
Because honestly, I cant write anything else lately… and I am not even kidding, it has been damn horrible! I am an extension whore, I operate my own, private, Firefox Burlesque parlor actually. It has been doing good, albeit a tad cramped. You may remember, but a while ago I also ran out of ideas, and also released a first serving of Firefox Extensions. Last night, actually, my good friend Leah S and it came to the conversation of extensions and how few she actually had. I then realized how massive my collection was… again!
Ubiquity (http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/)
This, my friends, is actually the single most amazing thing in the three universes I have been to. It is simple, it is powerful and it is light. Ubiquity is, essentially, a Terminal box inside of Firefox, with a near-empty Kernel that you write yourself. And by that, I mean you can search their database for tools you don’t have to write yourself. It is in near-past Alpha stage, so I assume the database will have better search tools later on, but it is totally worth it if only for the Ping.fm and Facebook status commands.
autoHideStatusbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1530)
“autoHideStatusbar is a Firefox extension that hides the statusbar. The statusbar is shown back when hovering a “sensitive zone” with the mouse and can be shown back when a page loads or when hovering a link, according to the preferences. Additionally, a statusbar icon and/or a toolbar button can be used to quick enable/disable”
Organize Status Bar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1759)
“This extension will enable you to organize your status bar icons. You can now rearrange or remove any item (icon or text) in the Firefox status bar. If your status bar is full and cluttered like mine was, give this a try.”
Personal Menu (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3895)
“After installing Personal Menu, “Menus Toolbar” is available in Toolbar Context Menu, and you may hide it to save the space of browser. Then you may open Personal Menu Option panel to gather all useful commands into “Menu Button”, and pleace it wherever you want; or you may add the items you want in Toolbar Context Menu.
When Menus Toolbar is hidden, although you may add “Bookmarks” and “History” inside Menu Button, it become inconvenient to access them. Therefore, here are also “Bookmarks Button” and “History Button”. You may also set what happens after you middle / right-click on them, like open Bookmarks Sidebar after middle-clicking Bookmarks Button, and Undo Close Tab after right-clicking History Button.”
The Runes, the are a changin’
I remember that time, like days of lore. To be honest, I do not even recall signing up for it, but well blogged was the day I received my invitation to round 3 of the World of Warcraft closed beta - right before Hunters and mounts were introduced, and the level cap was in the 30s.
I dare not claim my excitement had nothing to do with the “closed beta” portion of the game at the time, regardless, fun was had. But by round 4 I had totally forgotten about the game. After my near-half-year stay at the hospital, I was excited again (possibly an effect of amnesia?) for the land of Azeroth. It took me a few weeks of hard-grinding for me to realize that paying for 6 months, up front, was a disastrous waste of money. And as cheap as it may make me sound, I hated how paying that monthly fee gave me the constant feeling I was wasting money not playing it, feeling obliged to get bored somewhere else.
Guild Wars just didn’t work, some account problem.
That was many moons ago, many a ‘coons age, if you will. I have seen the rise, the fall and the lack of either from various MMORPGs, but the MMO market seems not one that is easily shifted (considering the hours and money invested into their level 70 Gnome with a Paladin’s mount). Lord of the Rings, a beta I was invited to, but didn’t bother too, seems to have taken the MMO fanbase community that isn’t playing WoW - no doubt helped by the license backing it. But that was really it. Star Trek and Stargate MMOs are in the works, but save for the respective television shows, I could not care much less.
It was an article on Kotaku a while ago. It brings something never before seen in the MMO genre: something never before seen in the MMO genre. And that was a colon there for a reason. MMOs have been a less released form of the FPS genre lately, especially the plethora of WWII ones - the same damn thing. Rune’s actually addresses some of my qualms over the genre, be it the fact that only high-level players’ outfits match (its not gay, okay?) and being stuck in a single character-class. When I read that alone, I was interested, the Rune system sounded really interesting, as well did the multi-class one - I hated being stuck with one style of game play, especially for how long MMO accounts last.
But then I read how Runes will bring a better social aspect to the game. Be it a personal living-space, a la Fable; Server wars and Guild wars; Dynamic Dungeons; as well as the apparent ‘dress dummy’;
By far the neatest function of player housing in Runes of Magic is the dress dummy. Place it in your home, equip it with a set of armor, and then with the click of a button you can swap out your equipment with what the dummy is wearing. Perfect for those who consistently change primary classes, as well as anyone who has ever played a WoW druid. You can set up as many dummies as you need, and the same functionality works with wall-mounted weapon sets.
— Mike Fahey @ Kotaku
Oh, and it’s damn free. Although it makes me wonder how they plan on making money, be that as it may, its still damn free.
"Soon I Will Be Invincible" by Austin Grossman
The thing with authors, they can get really damn good before their first published novel. In retrospect, I feel bad for waiting the months I did for Austin Grossman’s debut novel, “Soon I Will Be Invincible” to come on paperback. It is the first novel in a while (and I read a lot of novel), that I read through as frivolously as I did with this one.
A few years ago I actually had a girl in my bedroom. There were 20 seconds spent between the time she entered my room and the time she, on her exit, called my a bloody nerd. I really like superheroes, and I really like books, and I really like having 30+ posters and 200+ holes in my drywall - a portion of my posters are used to cover up the holes from other posters. Naturally, my friend at the bookstore (Black Bond Books) recommended this to me. Naturally, I bought it.
It took me 2.5 chapters to notice the two different icons rotating through alternating chapters. The ray gun denotes a point-of-view from the hilariously-stereotypical villain, Dr. Impossible; wherein, the eyeball denotes the cyborg-heroine Fatale. It is a really well done use of two different point-of-views, their connection is not mysterious at all, a la Lost, but are very nicely placed.
Soon I Will Be Invincible doesn’t so much play with the clichés of superhero comics as bathe in their pulpy froth.
— Austin American-Statesman
I have tried my own, but this quote really does describe this novel to a tee. I described this book to a friend as a well written B-movie in superhero form. They aren’t pulling any a Deadpool here and talking to the reader, but the characters acknowledge and sometimes argue about their character cliches, even while being interrupted mid-evil-scheme monologue. It is almost Heroes-esque, in the sense that we see more of these lives and the group dynamics than we would in a regular comic.
Take an example from CoreFire, the main super-hero in the book is an all-American, straight A student who got his power saving his writer girlfriend. His myriad of powers are listed in Wikipedia by a link to Superman’s powers; invulnerable, superstrong, superfast, he can fly and he possesses Heat- and X-Ray vision. Wherein Mr. Mystic, the resident magician, also found his powers on a trip to Tibet, a la Dr. Strange. By far, Doctor Impossible was my favorite character in the story, as it just brought a hilarious side to supervillainy.
The novel is a homage to comic books, featuring a mad genius supervillain, Doctor Impossible, who suffers from “Malign Hypercognition Disorder” (”evil genius” syndrome).
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Grossman
But it was during a discussion with a friend regarding the odds of Peter Petrelli regaining his body, I think I got the idea down. Stories are nothing to do with the beginning or the end. In the case of Peter, the idea is not just that he gets out, it is how. In the case of The (New) Champions, it was not a story of a bunch of archetypal meta-humans and superpowers, it was the personality behind them. As is the case with this genre in general, a good comic is not about the power in itself, but the power is used to add a more grandiose quality to the telling.