Electric Shadow

Goodbye, Google Reader

On 1 July, Google Reader is no more. For a few years, we've been watching it recess further out of the primary view of our Google Accounts. I'm surprised it made it this long, but the upside is that Google is no longer mining all of my reading habit data, and Reeder already exists.

Bring Ditko Public Service Package #2 Back Into Print

A Kickstarter with a great cause. The comics legend's satirical 1991 work deserves to be made available, and they're already 3/4 of the way there:

The Ditko Public Service Package #2

A 112 page, black-and-white reprint

This is the 2nd edition of this book and a sequel to an earlier book, Ditko Package. As such, it is nearly ready to go. The story and artwork are finished.  Most production work is complete. One addition to this book will be the inclusion of the list of backers and our 'thank you'. 

If you have seen our earlier work, you know what to expect. The material we publish is unique and one-of-a-kind. 

If you are not familiar with the type of material we publish, you can expect to be pleasantly surprised.

Bold (and true) words.

Read of the Week: How Disney Bought Lucasfilm

An excellent piece from Businessweek describes the due diligence process undergone by Disney chief Bob Iger, which is just one of many good bits of the piece. It reveals a bit of Lucasfilm trivia I didn't know about, the Holocron:

His company maintained a database called the Holocron, named after a crystal cube powered by the Force. The real-world Holocron lists 17,000 characters in the Star Wars universe inhabiting several thousand planets over a span of more than 20,000 years. It was quite a bit for Disney to process. So Lucas also provided the company with a guide, Pablo Hidalgo. A founding member of the Star Wars Fan Boy Association, Hidalgo is now a “brand communication manager” at Lucasfilm. “The Holocron can be a little overwhelming,” says Hidalgo, who obsesses over canonical matters such as the correct spelling of Wookiee and the definitive list of individuals who met with Yoda while he was hiding in the swamps of Dagobah.

Devolver Digital Adds Film Distribution Arm

I reported on this over at Ain't It Cool News, to wit:

Devolver has not just been helping indie game developers publish games, but they have become known (as you can see in this piece over at The PA Report) for helping the developers promote their games. In this case, "promotion" does not just mean sending out some press releases and tweeting about it a couple of times. They're right there in lock-step with their developers, helping the games get noticed and, more importantly, purchased.

This is the same sort of model they're applying to film distribution. Devolver Digital Films will look to acquire movies that they believe in as well as know how to sell and promote.

Mike and his business partner Andie Grace are joining me for the second interview segment on this week's Screen Time. Should post later today.

Time Warner Spins Off Time Inc.

The Wrap reports that this includes all publications under the Time banner move to this new public company. The CEO is splitting too:

"A complete spin-off of Time Inc. provides strategic clarity for Time Warner Inc., enabling us to focus entirely on our television networks and film and TV production businesses, and improves our growth profile," Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said in a statement. "Time Inc. will also benefit from the flexibility and focus of being a stand-alone public company and will now be able to attract a more natural stockholder base."

...

Time Warner reported $6.1 billion in profit that fiscal year, and $463 million of that came from publishing. That figure represented a 20 percent decline from the previous year. 

Time Warner also announced Wednesday that Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang will depart once Time Inc. can stand on its own but will remain until a successor is found. She has been in the post since November 2011.

"Laura indicated to me that we should find a different kind of CEO for this new public company, and I respect her decision," Bewkes added. "She has been a great partner who has given Time Inc. forward momentum to make this transition possible, and I look forward to working with her to select the right leader to head the company as an independent entity."

In plain English, Time Inc. was dead weight that Time Warner thought was weighing down their stock performance. They had been trying to sell all of their "female lifestyle"-leaning publications to Meredith Inc., and that deal falling through lead to this. Lang's departure is a "good luck rats, I'm getting off the ship now, while the golden parachute rate I can get now is available".

The old magazine/periodical business, like other Old Media slawarts, continue their decline. None are trying to reinvent their revenue model. Where are the bold publishers of yesteryear?

Long dead.

New SimCity Hit by First Natural Disaster

...the widely expected, always-network-connected, DRMed-to-hell problems. Ben Kuchera at PAReport:

 

It’s sad that EA couldn’t launch an online game this large smoothly, but when have they ever done so? It would have been news if they had gotten it right, not the other way around. This sort of situation makes reviewing SimCity nearly impossible.

Polygon is updating their score as the servers go up and down, and that’s one way to handle it. We’ll be following the game with ongoing coverage, and that’s another. Both approaches have their flaws, and it may be that SimCity is simply immune to the idea of a classical “review.”

Reminds me of wanting to throw my copy of Diablo 3 through the internet at Blizzard in unplayable frustration. It was the first $60 computer game I'd bought in around ten years. People wonder why console or "traditional" gaming is on the wane.

I think both review approaches are flawed. Reporting on "live-connected" content experiences requires a new style of reporting. Publish a light pre-launch "under ideal conditions" preview, with the review following the launch week with data of the content performing in the wild.

 

Jon Stewart's Directorial Debut & Daily Show Hiatus

Rosewater is based on a journalist's account of leaving London to cover a period of strife in Iran:

Jon Stewart will take a 12-week summer hiatus from hosting Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show to make his feature directing debut. In his absence, Daily Show regular John Oliver will be guest host for eight weeks of fresh shows. Stewart has written the script for and will direct Rosewater, an adaptation of the book Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story Of Love, Captivity And Survival. Published in 2011 by Random House, the book is Maziar Bahari’s harrowing ordeal of leaving London in June 2009 to cover Iran’s presidential elections. With a pregnant fiance left behind, the BBC journalist expected to be away for a week. Instead, he spent the next 118 days in Iran’s most notorious prison being brutally interrogated by a man he knew only by one thing: he smelled of Rosewater. Bahari wrote the book with Aimee Molloy. Scott Rudin will produce with Stewart and Gigi Pritzker. Pritzker’s OddLot Entertainment is financing the film.

Roku 3

I bought a Roku 2XS around a month ago. It's just been replaced by a new $100 Roku 3 that is:

over 5 times faster (so maybe they'll finally be able to support a YouTube channel in the Channel Store)
dual-band WiFi support (5GHz presumably)
features a new UI that my old one can get in a month or so
has a headphone jack on the remote

More info buried throughout this page.

Only the first and second items bother me. As much as I've been preferring the Roku experience to my now-neglected AppleTV, unlike Apple, I doubt Roku is going to replace my 2XS if I complain. Fry's definitely doesn't care.

The centerpiece of this update is the revised UI, which is much cleaner and indexes search universally, across all of your channel subscriptions. Search for a title or an actor or a director, and it spits out all of your viewing options.

Bye, "where/how can I watch it?" services. Unified search is a feature, not a platform.

Daily Grab 87: Duck Rogers

From the staggeringly great Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume 1 set, this is one of about 30 favorite frames from "Duck Amuck".

Whether you just love these cartoons from when you were a kid, or have kids yourself, this and the second set are must-haves.

Daily Grab 86: Fantastical Realism

I had not seen Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart until I popped in last year's Blu-ray. I had seen its pseudo-sequel The Cat Returns, but not the much more grounded-in-reality original. Unlike what many people think of as the trademark, fantastical Ghibli style, Whisper is entirely grounded in the real world with its few fantasy sequences happening within dreams.

It's lovely, subdued, and one of the best animated transfers of last year.

Daily Grab 85: Painting on the Wind

Growing up, I didn't see this one as often as other Disney Animated Masterpieces (I think that's what they're still called). I was more into Pinocchio, Oliver and Company, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Daily Grab 83: Deluxe Edition

"Sense and Sensibility...oh, ah...Random House...Deluxe Edition."

Another stunning black and white transfer, this time from Universal. This Best of Blu-ray 2012 thing has been an enormous undertaking. It has its pleasures but...boy howdy, what a lot of work.