Author: kempton

Another insightful and wonderful interview from Qtv “Canadian rapper K’naan sat down for a rare feature length interview in Studio Q with host Jian Ghomeshi.”

Filed under: CBC, Music, people, Video, YouTube

New quotes I love.

“Never memorize what you can look up in books.“
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. […] The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity.“
– Albert Einstein

Filed under: Quotes I Love

Saw a few interesting articles in the last few days,

• James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora
• Paul Samuelson Memorial by Paul Krugman
• Words from Richard Edelman, CEO of PR firm Edelman
• JTF2 – Canada’s elite commandos and the invasion of Afghanistan
• What Einstein Left Behind – from Life Magazine 55 years ago, on April 18, 1955

Filed under: Business, Canada, Economics, Movies, people

Check out “The Adventures of BeetleCam” (with sample photos of Elephants, Lions, African Buffalos). Very cool.

“And so BeetleCam was conceived; a DSLR camera mounted on top of a four-wheel drive remote control buggy.”

Filed under: Business, Entrepreneurship, Photography, Video

Cute ad. [HT Bud]

Filed under: advertising, Business

I like to capture these two articles (at the same place) for the record.

Buffett Rented Good Name to Goldman Too Cheap: Alice Schroeder (Bloomberg) [HT Alice]

Warren Buffett Has ‘Great Confidence’ in Goldman Sachs Says Berkshire Director (CNBC Warren Buffett Watch)

Filed under: Business, investment, united states, Video, Warren Buffett, YouTube

Check out this wonderful TorStar piece “How K’naan’s ‘Wavin’ Flag’ became anthem for the world“. Here is The Young Artists for Haiti version of K’naan‘s “Wavin’ Flag” that was released March 12, 2010.

P.S. See my previous blog entry about K’naan (with link to song Wavin’ Flag and Q interview).

****

The TorStar report claims this next one is the FIFA version, but the video info said it is not. Well, it is a good version.

The Coca-Cola version.

Filed under: Canada, Music, people, politics, Video, World, World Affairs, YouTube

This is a cute movie about P and NP.

[HT Lance]

Filed under: Computer Science, Math, Video, YouTube

Congrats to MT Carney for being appointed President of Marketing, Disney Studios.

1. Carney to Run Disney Marketing (The Wrap)
2. Disney Studios to Name Naked’s M.T. Carney as CMO (AdAge)
3. Disney Studios hires outsider M.T. Carney to head marketing (LA Times)
4. Disney Names a New Marketing Chief (New York Times Blog)
5. MT Carney named head of Disney marketing (The Hollywood Reporter)

Here is an excerpt from AdAge,

“In one of the more surprising moves of an agency executive moving to the client side, M.T. Carney, partner at Naked Communications’ U.S. operations, has been hired to lead marketing for Walt Disney Studios.

As first reported by The Wrap, the hire is expected to be announced by Disney Studio Chairman Rich Ross later today.
Ms. Carney and Disney couldn’t be immediately reached, but Naked confirmed the move to Advertising Age.

“We are very proud of M.T.,” said Paul Woolmington, founding partner at Naked. “Now we have a Naked inside Disney, and we anticipate working in a new capacity,” he said, calling the move a “win-win.” Mr. Woolmington stressed that the move wouldn’t cause disruption at the agency as it’s “bench strength is amazing.”

In 2006, when Ad Age positioned Ms. Carney as a media executive to watch in its “Media Maven” report, John Harlow, co-founder of the U.K. based communications planning shop, described the Scottish-born, former Ogilvy & Mather account planner as having a “fierce intellect, and clients are just taking to her.”

It now seems one of those clients she won over was Richard Ross, who for many months is said to have been hunting outside of Hollywood for a new marketing leader who could shake things up at the entertainment company and better position it in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Other candidates for the position reportedly came from packaged-goods companies and beverage brands such as Pepsi.”

Footnote: For the last few years, I felt a small connection to MT because her personal site “mtcarney.com” used to have one sentence & a link to this 2006 AdAge article page on my site. Since MT’s page and her LinkedIn profile are both wiped clean now, I suspect thats the price for being marketing boss at the big mouse studio! 🙂

Good luck and all the best MT!

Filed under: advertising, Movies

The Economist has posted the videos of the “Innovation: Fresh thinking for the ideas economy” conference. Here is the programme. Check out the videos.

Some of my fav (so far):

1. The Hybrid Problem Solver: Can design thinking save the world?
2. Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, talks about the power of opensource
3. Hannibal and me: Timeless lessons about life, success and failure by Andreas Kluth

[HT Andreas Kluth]

Filed under: Business, Creative, design, Video, World

Check out Gizomodo’s “This is Apple’s Next iPhone” for the iPhone 3GS + 1 model. Now I just hope the mobile chip set will run on WIND Mobile’s AWS.

Filed under: Apple, iPhone

A very interesting piece from Sunday Times: David Duchovny is not quite the man next door.

Check out the trailer for The Joneses, seems quite smart independent film.

Filed under: Movies, people, Television

Here is a summary of “Alex Jones on losing the news” (with video)

“Alex Jones discusses the historical role of newspapers as a profit-making industry that provides a public service in delivering particular types of high quality reporting. Jones discusses the traditional values embedded in newspaper reporting, of journalistic objectivity and ethical journalism. He argues that these values are being eroded with the rise of digital journalism, and that accuracy, fairness and significance are being increasingly replaced with speed, edge and entertainment value.

Newspapers are increasingly inclined to solve their business problems by giving people what they want rather than what they need. It is crucial to retain the oversight over the powerful. Jones takes the view that newspapers making an operating profit are those that have made cuts when previously complacency was rife. The economic downturn has catalysed the re-tooling for a digital age – meaning less profitable, smaller, and leaner.

He concludes by explaining that the only thing that can save newspapers is to provide valuable content that people will want to pay for. The values embedded in serious reporting should be sold and demonstrated to people to convince them to pay for that reporting. Ultimately, it is the public who should hold newspapers accountable for those traditional journalistic values.”

Filed under: media, united states

After previously putting Lexus/Toyota on the watch list for possible downgrade, today, with some reluctance, I’ve eliminated Lexus/Toyota from my personal list of “Admired Companies” and Lovemark: Sample news – “CBC News – Toyota halts sales of Lexus SUV – Rollover hazard attributed to deficient stability control” and “BBC – Toyota suspends sales of Lexus GX 460 worldwide“.

Filed under: advertising, Business, Japan, Love, Lovemarks, Marketing

3D TVs related production gears are everywhere in the 2010 NAB Show. You can’t miss them even if you try.

Had a wonderful first day at NAB Show and I want to capture some of my thoughts about 3D before I head out to another exciting day at NAB.

3D & Money – Billions and hundreds of millions

Yes, we are talking about billions (Avatar, today’s figure: worldwide $2.7b) and hundreds of millions (Alice, as of today: 780m). And the millions of dollars spent by Sony, Panasonic, etc in R&D and making the production and consumer gears.

As a potential major new source of revenue for film studios, broadcasters, electronic gears makers, and others, I don’t fault them for wanting to backflip from a cliff  in the dark of night into a rough sea that is also known for its golden opportunities like Avatar and Alice.

3D & Dramatic Content – The lessons from Avatar, Alice, and Titans

Jim’s Avatar was a story told with care, plus deep insight and understanding about the 3D technologies (both its pros and cons).

In contrast, Alice and Clash of the Titans were films originally shot in 2D and “up-converted” to 3D. Have a look of these two posts to see why I avoided them like the plague, “2D, 3D, IMAX fake 3D, and IMAX real 3D” and “Titans’ director underwhelmed by 3D conversion“.

3D & Sports/Live Content – The foreground trees, hands, and guitar headstock

I will check out more of the 3D sample footage in the NAB Show today, but from the footage I’ve seen so far, 3D’s strength is also its deadly weakness, I think.

It is human to pay attention to what is closest to us because it is in our gene to pay attention to things closer to us (is it a tiger?). But when watching 3D TV, tell me why I should care/pay more attention to the trees closest to the camera? Should I be distracted by that clipping hands in a concert just because it is closer to the camera? And in another concert footage, the guitar headstock happened to point at the camera, so it makes sense to have it become the focus?

My problem with the current iteration of the 3D technologies is that it seems to be too “distracting”. I am not sure will I articulate the following well, but step away from your computer later and try this. Look out into the distance. When we see things in the real world (our 4D world), we sort of “see everything and nothing at the same time“. We see everything but actually nothing until we focus our eyes onto something particular (like a building in the distance, an ad on the wall, or a pretty girl/guy in the crowd, etc). With the current iteration of 3D, the camera decided what our focuses are. And in the demo footage showcasing the best capabilities, unfortunately what stood out for me were the trees, the hands, and that stupid guitar headstock!

This may seem unconventional and paradoxical, but can 3D actually reduce our entertainment experience? Can the foreground objects become too distracting?

3D & Your money

If you are a consumer:

Are 3DTVs ready for prime time yet? Should you rush to buy a brand new 3DTV to replace your newish HDTV? Well, unless you have lots of money and nowhere to spend it (and have given lots to charity already), then may be buy one and be prepare to buy a new new one soon.

For the general public and for me, I don’t see the need to have a 3D TV set at home yet. They still need to come out with engaging programs plus sort out a common standard first (side by side or up and down).

Hmmm, this just come to me: How do you watch sports in 3D in a large group in a pub or a friend’s home? Will it be BYO-3DG (Bring Your Own 3D Glasses)?

If you are a TV or film producer:

I want to spend a few more days at NAB first before I make a more informed call on this. My gut feeling is the current iteration of 3D cannot be applied like a magic bullet. A new set of considerations along the transitions like silent to sound, and B&W to colour may be needed to be carefully thought out first.

I will write more later.

Filed under: Digital-Revolution, NABShow

In Memoriam: Lech Kaczynski. A very insightful piece from The Economist.

Filed under: people, politics, World

Here is an interesting video comment from Greg O’Brien re 3DTV.

P.S. I am in Las Vegas and all ready for the NAB Show now. Very excited and looking forward to see some cool stuff.

Filed under: Science & Technology, Television

Cool ad. 400K+ views in 9 days. Good job and good idea.

“They wanted to be able to show speed, basically, and there are some challenges with that — they can’t show an actual car driving like that for obvious reasons,” said Trevor Campbell, director of earned media at TBWAToronto, which launched the ad virally last week on Nissan Canada’s YouTube channel.

[HT FP Blog]

Filed under: advertising, Marketing, Video, YouTube

Norah Jones is charming and Jian Ghomeshi is one of the best music interviewer I know of. So what more can you ask for? 🙂 Check this out,

“Norah performed/sat down in Studio Q with host Jian Ghomeshi to talk about her latest album ‘The Fall’.”

‘Young Blood’ by Norah Jones on Q TV. Enjoy.

Filed under: Canada, CBC, Love, Lovemarks, Music, people, Video, YouTube

Check out Jeff’’s take on the iPad which he reboxed and returned to Apple.

P.S. Thanks to Jeff mentioning about Cory’s comment. I’ve now looked up this comment by Cory Doctorow and confirmed something I tried to block subconsciously when I was simply looking at the excitement of iPad. But Cory is right in writing,

“But the company that sells you your dishwasher doesn’t get to tell you which dishes you’re allowed to use. They don’t get to sue companies that make dishes that might possibly be loaded into the dishwasher. They don’t get to sue you for figuring out how to cook salmon in your dishwasher. They don’t get to sue O’Reilly if it publishes a recipe for dishwasher salmon.

Apple’s DRM isn’t useless. It is performing its function perfectly: scaring off innovators and sources of capital for innovation that seek to work outside its monopoly. To miss this is to miss everything.” [via Cory]

Filed under: Apple, Science & Technology, Video, YouTube