Freyburg

The New Yorker has a great article up about the dire straits the newspaper industry finds itself in, and how they can best move past what is clearly a dying business model.

…as arbitrarily decided by the Guardian. An interesting list, though I’m sure everyone’s got 50 of their own favorites that didn’t make the cut.

Today on the Lab with Leo I did a segment about refilling ink cartridges. Throughout the course of the day magenta ink spread from my workstation to pretty much everyone and everything in the station. My hand took the brunt of the inky assault, as you can see here….

Chris Anderson, who wrote “The Long Tail,” (a great book, btw) has a new book in the works called “Free,” all about how digital goods are plummeting in cost and hence are driving the new gift economy. Wired has an excerpt from the book, along with video.

neato!

…but mostly at Techvibes, so go check out my wordsmithing over there.

And with that Variety-esque headline, here’s a story abut how the Washington Post (paper version) and the washingtonpost.com (series of tubes) don’t get along all that well. I’m not privy to the WashPo as a paper, but I know the website is doing good work on the net, including a heavy emphasis on video.

I don’t often put work related stuff on the blog, but I figured it’s probably a good idea to show what I’ve been up to for the last little while. First, here’s a promo I cut together for Chow Restaurant (through Industryblender.com):

Second, I’m continuing to do video work for Urban Mixer TV:

And third, I just started Monday at a new full-time gig as the Tech Content Producer at “The Lab with Leo“, a technology show that airs on CityTV and Tech TV here in Canada. I’ll be finding guests, creating segments, reviewing gadgets, and appearing alongside Leo Laporte as one of his co-hosts. The shooting schedule is structured in such a way that you won’t see any on-air appearances from me for a couple of months yet, but stay on the lookout for your favorite bald, Doctor Who loving nerd.

update: Here’s an excerpt from the show, also starring Kris Krug, Vancouver tech renaissance man.

Microsoft wants to spend 44 BILLION dollars to buy Yahoo. Is it just me, or does this remind anyone of the AOL-Time Warner disaster? Neither company can compete with Google, so together….they can’t compete with Google? This deal strikes me as phenomenally stupid. By the way, when this story hit Digg, the assembled wisdom of the site’s users cited it as “possibly inaccurate.” That’s right, Diggers, the BBC is questionable, while 9/11 conspiracy sites and Ron Paul advocacy rants are completely above board.

According to a recent article in Slate, movies appearing at the Sundance film festival by and large don’t get pirated, and instead wallow in obscurity. The author’s contention is that pirates only pay attention to big releases, but I think it may have more to do with the fact that the average Sundance filmmaker probably isn’t tech-savvy enough to get their film onto torrent sites in the first place. After all, 90 percent of the films at Sundance and other film festivals go on to virtually no distribution, so why not at least try to get some eyeballs on all that hard work?