Geek Force Utterz #023 - Books as Souvenirs
This morning I got to thinking about whether books, like CDs and DVDs before them, are becoming (or should become) little more than souvenirs to remember the pre-release experience by. We often hear entire CDs leaked before their official release dates, and then buy them only if we enjoyed the illegal listens that we had beforehand. It’s probably the norm that we buy DVDs only after we’ve seen the films contained therein. So, why not books? I think it might be moving that way, with people Scott Sigler leading the charge.
Listen in and leave your comments below.
Oh, and remember: If you can’t see/hear the embed above, remember that you can always listen to this call directly on Utterli.com.
The Cider Press #001 - Ladies Prefer Macs
The first installment in a new column, where we’ll crush a hot Apple news story down to the sweet, sweet nectar of a single paragraph.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports that 43% of college women prefer Macintosh computers. Of course, the study they’re quoting involved the surveying of a whopping seven students at a single college in British Columbia, but let’s just ignore that. Because, after all, announcing that any old study has found that women prefer any old thing provides the perfect excuse for featuring a photo of a hot chick (like, say, Gisele) posing with said thing. And pictures of hot chicks certainly don’t hurt us when it comes to Google-based referrals, now do they? Ugh.
Geek Force Utterz #022 - TVs by Apple
At the conclusion of yesterday’s NH Media Makers meeting, the last few stragglers got around to talking about this week’s Apple notebook event. One of the rumors that came up was one that I hadn’t heard in a long time (the Apple rumor mill is cyclical, and you’ve almost always heard a rumor before; it’s just a matter of whether or not you’ve heard it lately). And that rumor was the rumor that Apple might soon be releasing a TV set with a built-in Apple TV. Today’s episode of Geek Force Utterz is about my reaction to that discussion.
If you can’t see/hear the embed above (which includes an amusing mumbling of my standard introduction), remember that you can always listen to this call directly on Utterli.com.
Geek Force Utterz #021 - NH Media Makers (October)
Continuing a tradition I started last month, here are my thoughts on the October New Hampshire Media Makers meeting, recorded during the car ride home from Newmarket. Leslie Poston’s own Utterli call can be found here, John Herman’s full report on the meeting can be found here, Steve Garfield’s Flickr photo set can be found here, and Roger Goun’s photos of the event start here (with a very creepy photo of me).
For the most part, I spent today’s episode talking about the announcements I made at the meeting, including the news that you can now buy short stories from my collection Those Little Bastads a la carte at Lulu.com.
If you can’t see/hear the embed above, remember that you can always listen to this call directly on Utterli.com.
Zack and Miri Can’t Remember My Birthday
Kevin Smith’s struggles with the MPAA continue, and I’m getting more and more aggravated by what’s going down.
This week, you see, Smith and company launched a “Making Of” series for Zack and Miri Make a Porno. This is the same kind of thing that the View Askew crew (along with Chop Shop Entertainment’s Zak Knutson and Joey Figueroa) put together for Clerks II, and it’s already turning out to be just as awesome. There’s only one problem though, and that’s the annoying age verification form that I need to fill out every single time I watch an episode!!!
Last week, our friends over at News Askew broke the story on how the MPAA was refusing to let even Web-only documentaries fly below its radar now. But, even when I read that piece, I had no idea that the Association was going to go to such draconian lengths to keep us from enjoying what Knutson and Figueroa had put together.
There has got to be a way (a cookie, or something) to allow me to enter my birthday only once per visit, but I’m guessing that just wouldn’t have been kosher with the morality police. So, instead, I have to go through the same rigmarole every damn time. And I’m telling you, the idea may be to deter kids from watching these “naughty” videos but it’s going to end up deterring me and other busy, law-abiding adults instead. Kids’ll sit there and come up with a dozen different birthdays (they aren’t stupid, and they’ve got plenty of time), but I have shit to do.
