My Flame Bait

Terra Nova cancelled, can prime time Sci-Fi work today?

2012-03-06T10:23:00.001-08:00

So much potential, so little talent... in ad sales

I don't see how an ad sales person worth their salt cannot sell enough ads to the Sci-Fi fantasy audience to make a show like this work. This audience is skewed young, technically savy, gadget addicted, and with ample disposable income and / or a willingness to spend their limited income on all manner of stuff, even in a down economy. There are so few quality Sci-Fi shows and such a dedicated audience with money to spend. A show like this should also have appeal on new distribution channels like Hulu.com and Amazon.com instant video allowing them to reach an even greater, world wide, audience on the internet... on the cheap. On the high end you have internet connected smart televisions and on the lower end you have Roku. These options offer the chance for highly targeted ads. I don't understand why this total package can't be made to work.
I am left to contrast this seeming failure with the building momentum in new media networks like TWiT and Revision3. This is about momentum, as the ad spend in this space is not even a fraction of that of prime time television, but these new media networks are growing in a space with low margins, small, niche audiences, and offering essentially, slightly higher production value podcasts. They are able to attract and grow a loyal audience, even though some of the shows amount to little more than long form advertising for tech gear, granted, these shows are much more enjoyable to watch than their equivalent light night, paid advertising programs. These networks embrace their audiences in all their "Geekdom." Somebody will eventually figure out how to similarly embrace and attract the Sci-Fi audience and will be rewarded with a long running Star Trek, Star Wars, or Dr. Who type franchise that will mint money for generations. By all rights this should be one of the big networks, but the current climate requires immediate hits, or reality TV level, low production costs. Today a new show doesn't have time to find it's audience or give the ad sales team time to figure out how to sell ads to that audience.

Enter new media networks who don't have to please everyone, just a niche audience. There is a significant overlap between the technical podcast watching, new media audience, and the Sci-Fi audience (see this podcast, or sword and laser). I predict we will soon see new media companies start the new and "really independent" online film and TV space. As their profits grow along side their frustrations at the lack of quality Sci-Fi fantasy media content, some new media company will take up a fan fiction level show, increase the production value, please it's base, acquire a following, and grow it into a cash cow.

P.S. I say send your ideas to Leo LaPorte because he is a Sci-Fi reader and between him and Steve Gibson, they could spot a good story, his TWiT network is experiencing great organic growth, and sometimes he favors George Lucas.

Microsoft Strikes Back! Body Blow, Body Blow...

2012-02-23T14:32:00.000-08:00

Even given the title of this blog, I still feel compelled to offer a disclaimer of sorts, as I am taking a break from working on a Google Docs spreadsheet, to make this post using Google's Blogger site. I am impressed with how much Goolge Docs has improved and while it can't "replace" the function rich, Microsoft Office, it does handle a surprising number of complex tasks. Additionally, my fears of not having a local file are outweighed by the quality of the consistent, cross platform, user experience of Google Docs and Chrome Browser.

Even so, you gotta love this 'GoogleLighting' ad by Microsoft:

That was funny stuff, I just kept hearing "body blow", "body blow" as I watched it.

I think Google can take a punch and Microsoft needs to step up the marketing of it's cloud productivity apps in the wake of an ever improving Google Docs, and Apple's new iCloud extensions everywhere efforts or they risk losing mind share. Just yesterday I was surprised by the mention of the almost completely forgotten Microsoft's Sky Drive, which is really first rate. Is that a Microsoft marketing fail?

One thing is certain, the increased competition in cloud based productivity apps looks to make for some great applications for us users.

Ready... Fight!

Apple and Microsoft validate Google's "Cloud First" strategy

2012-02-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

Here's one that can be put in the category of unintended consequences: Apple's iCloud and Microsoft's Azure offerings validate a Google, "Cloud First" strategy. This was the thought that popped in my head as I listened to commentators, Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley discuss Apple's iCloud and Microsoft's Windows 8 Azure backed features on the TWiT network's Windows Weekly podcast. This was not the topic of discussion, but featured prominently in that discussion,was talk of the features added by each company that leveraged their cloud services. Without saying it explicitly, both these companies acknowledged that Google's cloud first approach is the future, or at a minimum is very important. Both iCloud and Azure represent "significant" investments on the part of Apple and Microsoft. These investments are rumored to be in the billions of dollars. Neither company would spend this kind of money and risk cannibalization of their current offerings if they did not think a cloud first, or cloud based desktop, was a valid strategy (or a competitive threat). Google's advantage in a cloud first future is that all Google's applications are built on this model from the ground up. Google's applications do not require "cloud extensions" or "new" cloud services. There is no desktop iTunes client or Office application that needs to be updated to support the cloud. Google applications are in the cloud now, and as the saying goes, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Apple and Microsoft are rushing to match or surpass applications like Google Docs, GMail, Google Music, and others. The upside for consumers is better online applications. The upside for Google is it legitimizes their "cloud first" strategy.

Kill Java (for C#)

2012-02-08T11:24:00.000-08:00

I love android development. A lot of my android love is due to the open nature of the platform, being able to delve into the source code is empowering. Also, Google's API(s) just ooze a "developer centered" feel. But android application development is done primarily in the java programming language, and lately I've started to realize something, I kind of hate java. Okay, so maybe hate was to strong a word, but the loss of object and collection initializers, delegates, partial types and methods, and events and properties as first class citizens in the language, is starting to irritate me.

I'm not sure how this all happened. I recall not so long ago, being almost a java fan boy. Coming from a c and c++ background, I remember how java's garbage collection wiped away hours of hunting the dreaded "segmentation fault (core dumped)" error (not that it didn't take me some time before I stopped setting objects to null at the end of methods, you know, just to be sure... ). But now, after using c# as my primary development language for a few years, java feels unfinished and stale in comparison. This issue is made worse by the fact both java and c# use a similar, c-style syntax. The syntax similarity indirectly points to a truth, that the features I listed above are more to do with the .NET run-time, than c# specifically, as they are supported in multiple .NET languages, but the similarity in syntax between java and c# adds to the feeling of loss as I develop android applications with java. I know it's popular to hate all things Microsoft, but with the c# and the CLI specifications being maintained in the open, I promise to pretend not to notice, and to sing to the praises of these "new" java features if the maintainers of java would only see fit to merge in these additional features somehow (...you know, just quietly kill java and replace it with c#, it's so syntactically similar no one will notice, I promise).