The inimitable B-don is displeased. It vexes him to have a TV mos’ def and yet be forced, by nature of his location, to cope with some standard-definition programming. Why, he wonders, does the cable company provide duplicate (standard def) network feeds from two different cities, yet still fail to offer even one HD signal from either of those same stations? Why isn’t there a satellite network that provides all the broadcast nets?

Worse, he continues, why is it necessary to deal with “tiers” (such as Basic, Expanded Basic, Digital, HDTV) each of which require additional fees? When will it be possible to access just the programs he watches? I’ve often wondered the same thing (and not just for PitS shows.)

I also wonder: how much will these shows cost? How much should they cost? A recent study (quoted here) estimates that $1/episode is the magic number, and, indeed, you’ll find DVDs that charge you more: based on list price, an epsiode of “Buffy” is about $2.75, while “Friends” weighs in at $1.40.

Of course, that’s to own the shows. How many things that you watch would you want to own? For me, the answer is “all”, because I watch a total of perhaps 3 shows, which would set me back a whopping $12/mo. at the $1/ep rate. But most people watch a lot more TV than I do.

In fact, any household that watches more than two shows a day (on average) would have to pay more than $60/mo, so that gets expensive fast. Could they go cheaper?

Let’s do some back-of-the-envelope math. According to Nielsen Media Research, the highest-rated non-live show for 14-20 Mar 2005 was “Cold Case”. The CBS show came in at #3, with a 17.0 share of HUT for total of just over 12 million households.

“Cold Case” is an hour-long show, which means it has roughly 18 minutes of commercials. Now, keep in mind that some of that time will be used for network promos, some given over to affiliates, etc. But we’ll ignore that in our calculations, and assume it’s all sold at the highest rate. So if these figures, which purport to be lifted from Advertising Age, are correct, CBS charges about $153k per 30 sec. spot on this show. That means the most recent episode of “Cold Case” could have brought CBS as much as:
18 minutes * 2 spots/minute * $153,305 = $5,518,980

So the highest possible figure for that episode would be $5.5m. Not bad for an hour, eh? Let’s further suppose that B’s household contained at least one “Cold Case” fan. If they wanted to download an episode, and pay CBS what they would have earned, how much would that be? I’d say:
$5,518,980 per episode / 12,041,000 households = 46¢ per household

Well! Not bad at all, there. Of course, there’s no easy way to charge so small an amount, and without multicasting or a similar solution, the bandwidth costs would be extortionate. (I can hear Pech now: BitTorrent! BitTorrent!) But if we could solve those problems, we could all pay CBS our 50¢/show and go on our merry commercial-free way.

Except: why does CBS deserve a cut? CBS and the other networks are merely methods of delivery. It’s the production companies that make what we want to see: Sony brought us “Seinfeld”, Warner Bros. Television creates “ER” and “The West Wing”, and so on. The nets have been buying into these production companies as a way to control their costs, but according to my searches still only tend to pay in the $2-3 million/episode range (except for extremely expensive shows like “ER”).

At $3m, the production company needs just 25¢ a household to cover its nut, which even B-don would probably pay. And hey, if he didn’t, there’s always another solution: advertising companies that pay us to watch the ads…

For Further Discussion

• How fast a “pipe” would we need for HD downloads not to suck?
• If internet delivered TV, what would CableCos charge for broadband?
• If every TV show (ever) was available on demand, what would happen to ratings?
• How would we find good, new stuff?
• What would happen to the “water-cooler” effect if everyone’s watching TV-on-demand?

From S.686 (“For the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo”):

SEC. 7. NO PRECEDENT FOR FUTURE LEGISLATION.
Nothing in this Act shall constitute a precedent with respect to future legislation, including the provision of private relief bills.

From Bush v. Gore:

Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances…

When government crafts narrow decisions and laws solely to benefit certain people, is it really holding true to the ideal of the rule of law, and not of men humans?

I have a text file in which I collect fragments of ideas that may or may not make it here. One of them was “iPod = defacto car connection”, an abbreviation meant to remind me that it’s the unique, breakthrough popularity of the iPod that’s finally pushed car manufacturers like BMW to provide direct connections to its stereo.

I thought of that when I saw that GM plans to include a mini-plug connection in the dash of some of their 2006 models.

That’s nice and all, but jesus! What took so damn long? We’ve been dealing with crappy cassette adapters for CD players for ages. Despite some admirable upgrades, they’re a poor solution (ours tends to get very hot.) Ditto FM adapters like the iTrip, which are nice enough, but a pain when you want to use shuffle.

Would it be so hard for the automakers to hash out a generic digital connection? Even if it required an adapter of some kind (such as something that plugged into the iPod’s dock connector), wouldn’t it be great if all cars had a standard connection that allowed you to bring your tunes with you? It might not have all the capability of each specific player, but hey, even some track/artist advance options and a connection for dash display would rock.

Twenty years after the CD, and several years post-iPod, I just can’t believe that the best GM can do is plug into the headphones slot. This is what happens when you don’t have common standards.

Wow, I don’t know about today. I’m in this weird mood, a combination of amped-up/fidgety and just totally emotionally drained; I’m waiting on a few heavy e-mails, pondering a few worries.

It’s one of my “press pause” days, when I wish I could just press pause on the world and chill out a bit. That’s not how it works, of course, so I just gotta play through.

I kinda think that this is the perfect frame of mind to work out. Get up a good sweat, get your mind off things. If only I wasn’t such a lazy bastard…

1. Could there possibly be a more annoying way to write “opportunity” than this:

I keep wanting to say “op-por-tehyoonity.” (From here.)

2. Who exactly is downloading these AIM icons:
     

It’s one thing to love the show, but are you going to pimp it?

3. Could I be any more obviously lazy than to put up filler for a day just to avoid breaking my string?

Ahh, the first few months of the year. First we’re urged to buy big-screened televisions for “the big game”, then we can win trips to L.A. for “Hollywood’s biggest night” and of course now in March, there are “double dribble” specials on pizza and the like.

I used to find these generic ways of representing trademarks mildly amusing, but now I’m convinced they’re doing more harm than good. How is that we can allow groups to create names and then control how they’re used? I’m not talking about counterfeit products, of course, but who really cares if Best Buy uses the words “Super Bowl”?

Even worse are the recent lawsuits against Google for its AdWords tool. Companies such as Geico, AXA, and various travel agencies sued, claiming that competing companies were misusing their trademarks. No doubt they’d love to control every mention of their names, but where does it stop? Does an ad that boasts “Cheaper than GEICO®!” need to be approved by that very company?

As usual, I must ask: who’s looking out for customers?

Does anybody know how to write a subject line anymore? I’m talking about something tight, meaningful, and sortable that actually summarizes the message.

Now, before I get into this, let me just emphasize this doesn’t apply to you unless we work together, and even then it’s only for predominantly work-related messages. To people who send me personal messages: I love you, you’re perfect, don’t change.

But for those who actually expect me to do something, could I maybe get a little more than this:

To: [me]
Fr: [him]
Subj: [company name]

Yes I do.

I just got this a few minutes ago, in response to one of three messages I sent to this guy. To what is he responding? I have no clue. Am I supposed to do anything? You got me. Perhaps the subject line would have given me a hint, but the huge, huge majority of messages I get from this person simply have the company name as the subject. (As if he’d be e-mailing me about anything else.)

Let me contrast that with a few messages from my outbox. See if you can guess what each message contains:

• Changes to Shift Summaries Page
• leave requests report active
• i'll kill the bitch myself
• quote/invoice customer experience [was: [Fwd: Re: quote format & project display [edited]]]
• To-Do List: Phase II bugs / Phase II+ wish list

(I slipped a personal message in there, see if you can guess which one it is.)

Of course, I cherry-picked those; like everyone else, I certainly have written several that are not at all clear. Often it’s because we’re rushed, or it’s a one-off. But I think much of the blame also falls on the standard layout of the message composing window. Perhaps it would be better if the subject line and “send” button were along the bottom edge of the window, so that you got to them when you’d completed writing. At that point, you’d have a much better idea what the message actually was about, and could try to summarize it there.

While I’m on the, erm, subject, I like to sometimes use the subject line as the “body” and write a brief message with “[eom]” appended to signify there is no more. Some of my coworkers (Pinky, this means you!) have also adopted this approach and it’s just great to be able to quickly see a subject line such as “Server has been restarted, as requested [eom]” and know you don’t have to open it up. (This is especially good for slow webmail.)

Finally, I’d like to single out two more subject lines. One is from a client, and I received it yesterday. It’s too long by half, but I’d certainly take that over yet another subject that says nothing. The second is from Jesse, and I think he deserves the last word:

• Enquiry regarding sales agents display in drop down menu when creating a new lead
• you know I don't like subjects and you just use them for your archives anyway

Okay, yesterday I was able to confirm that at least 3 separate messages were never delivered to me. I put this down to an overzealous server-based spam filter, but now it seems my hosting company reports they have misconfigured a mail server. Rather than delivering mail, it’s been queuing it. As a result, things have gone from bad to worse overnight: Thunderbird now times out, and Pech has confirmed he got a message rejected.

So, if you’re sending to anything other than this domain (which, thanks to the fine folks at easyDNS, has redundant mail servers) I probably didn’t get it. My Gmail account is johnperk /a/ gmail just so you know.

Might be time to go TextDriving…

Update [7:00p]: E-mail is starting to trickle in, some of it two days old. Should be back to normal.

A company called, oddly, “Serious Magic” wants to start a new trend: video blogging, or, in the rather painful neologism they have conceived, “Vlogging.” (I’m not even sure how to pronounce that.)

All it takes, according to the serious magicians, is the purchase of their “Vlog It!” product and you’ll be faux-newscasting like a champ. Why, just listen to this ringing endorsement from the WashPost: “…generates a personal video that looks much like a regular TV newscast or documentary.” Actually, that’s what the Post said in a photo caption, a fact you’ll have to resort to Google to learn. (The magicians don’t link to the article.)

Anyway, let me just take a stand (even without being able to watch the demo video, as it’s not Linux-friendly) and say I oppose this trend. Blogging is supposed to be for those of us can dole out the bon mots, carefully crafting quips and witticisms for you, the adoring public. The interweb was our refuge from the cruel world where the pretty people rule. Now they’re going to come roaring into this last bastion.

I think my African American friend on the company’s home page knows what I’m talking about:

(cropped version; full screenshot which also reveals my rampant addiction to tabs)

Seriously, what is this dude doing? At first I thought he looked pissed, which I thought was an odd choice for a happy-fun-buy-stuff page. Then I realized he was actually sad, nay, mournful at the prospect of blogging overrun by visual tyranny. “Please,” he seems to silently plead, “get me out of here!”

I hear you, friend. I hear you.

Back in the old days, when I was a grammar Nazi, there were a few phrases that really annoyed me. One was “giving 110%” (okay, that one still irks me) another, thanks to B, was “I’ll try and…” (hmm, ditto) and still another was “The score doesn’t reflect how close it was.”

On that last, I used to always have the same mental response: oh really? Then what does it reflect? That all changed once I started going to basketball games, where I had the chance to feel the wrenching agony and soaring joy that came with each minute of a hard-fought contest.

So that got me thinking: what would better encapsulate a close game? I reject box scores as not “scannable” enough. Ultimately I thought some sort of bar graph, with bars above and below the axis showing points scored. A tight grouping of high bars at the end could show a rally, a relatively consistent spacing and height of bars would show if one team was consistent.

A few days ago, I learned that these very things exist. They’re called “sparklines”, and they look something like this: (a baseball season.) Sparklines are “intense, simple, word-sized graphics” according to Edward R. Tufte in his book Beautiful Evidence. (I believe it’s still forthcoming, as it’s not in Amazon. I can recommend The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Visual Explanations though, if you’re a bit of a graphics/stats geek.) The goal here is to convey information in a tight little space, and the sample chapter linked above Tufte breaks out examples for everything from medical charts to how planets look.

I don’t expect sparklines to show up in the sports pages anytime soon, but I think it would be fun if they did.

(Not like we didn’t know that.) I was poking around Travelocity today, looking up some fares, and I was dumped into a page I hadn’t seen before. One of the links was called something like “Search by budget”, and it brought me to this Dream Maps page.

It’s pretty slick. You choose your home airport, specify your max budget, and it shows you destinations. It even allows international segments using the link alongs the top. Almost exactly what I wanted! Now if they can just de-clutter the display a little bit. Maybe talk to the guys who made Google Maps…

I’ve been pondering an article by Paul Graham called “How to Start a Startup” (courtesy the Slashdorks.) There’s plenty in there that’s got me thinking, and maybe we’ll discuss that another time. For now, let me focus on one bit:

There are plenty of other areas that are just as backward as search was before Google. I can think of several heuristics for generating ideas for startups, but most reduce to this: look at something people are trying to do, and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t suck.

For example, dating sites currently suck far worse than search did before Google. They all use the same simple-minded model. They seem to have approached the problem by thinking about how to do database matches instead of how dating works in the real world. An undergrad could build something better as a class project. And yet there’s a lot of money at stake. Online dating is a valuable business now, and it might be worth a hundred times as much if it worked.

This got me thinking. First, how valuable is online dating, anyway? The answer shocked me: according to Hoovers, industry leader Match.com collected $185m in 2003, for 48% growth. That, friends, is a truckload of money. Consider my interest piqued.

So am I ready to launch my new super-dating site to get my piece of the pie? Well, no. Maybe I need to hire an undergrad, but damned if I know how to better approximate “how dating works in the real world.” Yes, I can see his point about how the focus seems to be on databases: I am a (blah) seeking a (blah) for (blah) within (blah) miles of (blah) ZIP Code is lame. But on the other hand you have things like eHarmony, which (supposedly) does all sorts of fancy slicing and dicing of your questionnaire to find your match(es).

Obviously these seem more analagous to store locators and online job applications than actual, you know, dating, but damned if I can think of a better approach. Have to ruminate on that one when I have a free moment. (Feel free to jump in on the comments if you’ve got a thought.)

Update [Mon 03:45]: Okay, I randomly remembered a friend’s story of how one of his friends was using the “social network” services such as Friendster to meet people for casual sex. That’s not really dating, but maybe it’s prelude. Or not. Anyway, it fascinates me. I wonder about the specific mechanics. Do you e-mail somebody and say “Hey, you know Todd, I know Todd, let’s fuck?”

I suppose it’s more complicated.

Also as it happens I’ve been sorting through various stuff on my hard drive, and in the “random stuff that amuses me” category I found this:

Now of course I hate any banner ad that uses fake pulldowns and submit buttons to incite you to click. But this one did work, because I had to follow through and see if you could actually choose “I am a Man / Looking for a Man” on the site itself. Alas, you cannot.

Not to worry, though. Church doesn’t want you? Site operator FriendFinder Network, Inc. still wants to serve you, whether you’re Indian, Korean, Filipino, or just good old-fashioned horny. In fact, the same servers that bring you BigChurch provide this, which limits your “I am seeking” choices in a very different way…

Slashdot just ran a story referring to “AIM‘s New Terms of Service” including a provision granting Time Warner rights to everything you post with it.

License excerpt:

Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses. [emphasis added]

This doesn’t even appear to be new (the opening clause references 5 Feb 04), which says something about how many people actually read those click-through licenses.

I know most of the stuff on AIM is ephemeral, but this really horks me off all the same. I don’t expect my friends and family to switch to Jabber en masse (though wouldn’t it be nice if ISPs ran Jabber servers like e-mail servers?) but I hope they will consider taking two steps:

• Uninstall the AIM official client and switch to Gaim. Gaim’s free, ad-free, open-source, with multiple network support and the ability to sign in as multiple users simultaneously, plus tabs and all that goodness. (You can even group friends’ accounts under one alias so you know that HotisK, WendysisA, IHateA, etc. are all one person.)
• After getting accustomed to Gaim, add in Gaim Encryption. That way you can talk about, say, your plot to overthrow the government (or even just your love for naked Matt Damon) with the knowledge that AOL won’t replay your conversation in their next asinine commercial. As one Slashdot commenter put it, “Folks, it is time to start putting your letters in an envelope. You can no longer trust the letter carrier to protect your privacy.”

In the long term, however, we need a solution that allows us to track “presence” (available, busy, away) without resorting to services that are little more than walled fiefdoms, subject to the latest corporate whim.

I just discovered Yahoo! Next, which is apparently a sort of Google Labs-like proving ground for developing technologies.

One of the things Y! is cooking up is a service called FareChase, which does a good job of aggregating prices from various airline sites and breaking them out by time/price and other factors. It’s a good idea, especially when the airlines are only offering their best fares on their own sites and not the Tr/Ex/Or triumvirate. However, it needs to search a lot more airlines and allow for more flexible dates (I really like the +/-1 day feature on Orbitz, and like it even better on Travelocity, since you can do entire months, as well as choose non-U.S. destinations.)

What I really want to see is a fare chaser to which I can say “I usually fly from ORD, what’s a good deal right now?” Often, I don’t care about dates, or even destinations. As my friends can attest, I’m open to going just about anywhere.

Which is why I find the whole days/destination prompt so limiting.

Can we all agree it’s time to rename “reality” shows? Maybe we should call them “reality-derived.” Or “based-on-a-true-story TV.” (Hmmm. Clearly we’ll need something catchier.) We need something, though, because the men and women who work to craft these programs have toiled behind the scenes for too long. They need to stand up and claim credit.

Now, true, some of it is clear. If we’re very alert we might catch the work of the sound editor, adding a dot matrix sound to an inkjet, or a dialtone to a cellphone (or pomp and circumstance to Donald Trump’s every entrance.) The eagle-eyed amoung us may notice how, as a participant makes an observation, during the course of a few sentences (s)he may seem to occasionally change outfits, hairstyles and locations. (A favorite on The Real World.)

But the “loggers” who record this data, the writers who re-arrange it, and the editors who make it all happen — where’s their love?

Or look beyond the craftspeople who gather the raw materials and begin to shape a finished product. Good effort, but let’s not forget the folks — also un-sung — who work to shape the events themselves.

I’m not talking about casting, desiging tasks/challenges, or other components. I’m talking about the people who step in and say “Nope, reality just ain’t good enough.”

For example, take a look at our friend Jeff again:

Not there; look at his hair. That, my friends, is a little something we hometrosexuals like to call “product.” Unless these islands have a salon we don’t know about, it seems a stylist has dodged out from behind the green screen and helped out.

No big deal, you say? Fine. I’ll agree that we all want to look good, even when we’re ostensibly stranded on an island. But you’ve gotta admit this next one gives you pause.

In the last episode of Survivor, competing players had to swim out and retrieve a life ring, then bring it back and throw it on a pillar.

Here’s on overhead shot of the first two competitors, Tom and Jeff, with Tom down-frame, holding the ring, and Jeff blocking his path to the targets:

Now, we’ll allow that they have a helicopter, glider, or perhaps even a UAV for the overheads. But look at the next shot that’s intercut in the scene a few seconds later:

Obviously, that’s tight in on Jeff, waiting for Tom to bring it. But hold on a second. Look back at the frame above. Where is the camera that’s shooting Jeff?

Another: here are the next competitors, Annoying Girl 1 and Annoying Girl 2. First we see them headed out, upper left:

Then, a moment (30 frames, ~1 second) later, we’re in tight:

Two seconds (65 frames) after that, we’re overhead again (note the clear blue water, nothing is submerged except the device that launches the rings):

Obviously, time has elapsed between these shots; that’s the whole purpose of editing. That said, there is no chance in hell you could capture all of these, then get out of range of an overhead, all in one take while leaving no wake.

Which is why, again, I applaud the people behind the scenes. That includes the directors and producers who mandate the pretty shots, the camerapeople who capture them…

…and the body doubles who make it all possible.