I’ve been remiss in not keeping closer tabs on the excellent CinemaTech blog. Having finally surfed back through yesterday evening, I caught an entry (Link) that was of particular interest concerning the indy bio-terror flick “Waterborne”. The blog’s author references Anne Thompson’s Hollywood Reporter “RiskyBiz” blog entry and includes a portion of an interview from rediff.com. Extremely interesting stuff (from my perspective, anyway).

I’d suggest keeping an eye out for the film’s revenue numbers in the weeks ahead. But it’s not the numbers themselves that matter; it’s how the industry reacts that will be worth watching imo. This might actually be as much or more important than Soderbergh’s “Bubble”.

In the meantime, you might also want to read some of Cinematech’s other entries. I very much enjoyed the “Other Digital Stuff” (Link) entry – especially since I offered up one possible option in the comments section of an MIT Convergence Culture blog entry (Link).

And in related news, he posts about UltraStar Cinema being the first theater chain to go 100% digital… capable; an important detail Cinematech highlights in its entry (Link). However, if you take a look at the UltraStar website, it appears they might be experimenting with ways to make up for the lack of available digital content (Link):

a) Make money from tickets to a “dinner event”
b) Make money off of the concessions
c) All of the above
d) All of the above and more

Nice.

If it’s not an urban vinyl toy (see example – Link) or a skateboard deck (lots of examples – Link) or someone’s crazy PC case mod (do you really need an example?), then it’s probably an article of clothing… like an old French-style shoe. Seems like nothing is safe from the public’s growing urge to tag their stuff. If they’re lucky, they can turn it into a business. From the String Republic website (Link):

Stéphane Bucco, the graphic artist, internationally renowned as Sockho, has created STRING REPUBLIC in 2004 to illustrate what happens when graphic arts and daily life merge.
…
The good old know-how of a family-company of South-Western France together with the new creations of young grafic artists.

There are some interestingly decorated shoes on the site which appear to be part of an upcoming Summer ’06 collection. I’m unsure if this is part of a larger trend in the shoe industry, but am curious to find out.

In any event, seems everywhere I look I see detailed graphics getting applied to almost everything. Isn’t it about time for paisley to make a big comeback?

via Josh Spear

{Image Copyright © The String Republic}

Excellent piece of commentary over on gameindustry.biz discussing Apple’s disruptive influence and how their gutsy approach to product development is having an effect on how some other corporations do business… most notably underdogs like Nintendo. From the article (Link):

Both approaches, he noted, are aimed at bringing “disruptive” products into the market; devices which interrupt the standard progression of escalating technology by being more low-tech than their competitors, but innovating in terms of usability, pricing and broad appeal. The iPod has often been criticised on the entirely true grounds that it is less powerful, boasts less functionality and supports less music formats than rival products from other companies, but that’s not the point of the product.

The point is that it offers an end-to-end experience in hardware and software which is unrivalled by any competitor, which appeals to consumers far outside the gadget geek demographic who were the sole consumers of digital music players before Apple entered the market, and which is supported by a fantastic branding exercise that has made “iPod” into a generic term for all such music players.

What’s to say? If everyone understood that products are more than features that can be added to a tradeshow “sell sheet” or rattled off in a 30-second commercial, we’d not be laughing at jokes about all the useless buttons on a blender or the number of blades in Gillette’s new razor.

Most of the entries on the RepRap blog have been geared towards the technical. For those who’ve either not made time for or have no interest in following the actual development of the device itself, there’s another reason to head over: a thread discussing what the project means and what this kind of technology holds in store for all of us. The discussion (Link) has only just started, but hopefully there will be plenty of commentary… some of it yours I hope.

And btw, you might also want to check out Bruce Sterling’s talk at Lift06 (Link). I’ve not yet made time (partly because I’m familiar with the topic) but I do intend to watch the presentation. For a quick review of what’s discussed, you can read about it on Networked Performance (Link).

Sometimes you just never know from where the cool news is going to originate; hence my somewhat eclectic linklist. So in an effort to gain additional insight into something that’s recently piqued my interest, I surfed over to Appliance Manufacturer and read the surprising announcement of a “virtual tradeshow”. From their breaking news article (Link):

Responding to the need for a trade show devoted to space and water heating equipment and products, the Gas Appliance Manufacturers Associaton (GAMA) announced the launch of its first “Heating Technology Expo,” a virtual trade show to run online concurrently with GAMA’s 71st Annual Meeting scheduled for April 8-11, 2006 in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.

Sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it? It does to me. Probably because about ten years ago I suggested my employer use CAD files for more than cutting steel molds; they could be released as branded videogame content, embedded in sales and marketing presentations, composited into television commercials, aso. I just couldn’t understand why no one was looking to leverage all the content we were creating (at considerable cost I might add). And here it finally looks as if commodity appliance manufacturers are finally coming round; they’re finally starting to understand that just because they manufacture low-tech, low-margin product in a fiercely competitive market, there still might be something going on over in the high-tech industry of worth to them (even if “smart appliances” didn’t pan out).

Whoops. Not so fast, young man. This may not be quite what it sounds. To continue:

“Booths” in the virtual trade show will have an area where attendees can “drop”their electronic business cards, and each exhibitor will receive a list of all Expo attendees and a list of those who visit their specific booths.

I think we’re going to need a definition of the word “booth”. This certainly sounds like nothing more than a website with some Guestbook code – a long, long way from the 3D virtual trade show I was imagining. Instead, it appears this might be an example of why I visited the site in the first place: limited horizontal expertise. I hope I’m wrong.

There was an article on one of the “home product” websites last year. It pointed out how CEO’s from high-tech companies typically crashed and burned when they were given the reins of a low-tech, commodity product manufacturing company. I wish I had a link to it.