Media

The Inevitable Amazon Reaction, And Of Course, Kobo

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Of course you knew it was coming, right?  Like I could resist?  So what are my takes on the Amazon Kindle announcements?  A bit expected – and unexpected.

  • First I figured something was coming and it’d be more advanced.  No surprise there.
  • The moving away from Tegra chips intrigues me – and I wonder if this is some kind of experiment.  Having experienced some of the tetchyness of Android and chipsets I’m wondering if this could be a bad experiment.
  • The prices are actually a bit higher than I’d expected.

In short, except for a chipset change, nothing that truly amazed me or was unexpected.  Amazon’s got to keep evolving this.

Of course now the Kobo is broadening out and this surprised me.  This is a rather diverse release that suggests the Kobo plans are pretty bold and that they’re going to cover a lot of ground.  Time to pay more attention – this diverse set of releases really surprised me and I think we need to get a grip on their overall strategy.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Oogieloves experience Oogiehate and Oogieindifference

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I’m sure you’re disappointed to hear that the Oogieloves film has tanked terribly.  This may be record tankitude.

I of course don’t follow children’s television much, unless it’s about Hasbro’s marketing departiment going “WTF” over brightly colored pony fandom.  However I had seen the posters for this film when I went to watch a Rifftrax and figured it was some other franchise I’d ignored.

Turns out as I dug deeper it was an independent kid’s film, best summarized by a commenter at gawker as trying to look like a franchse.  I thought it was a franchise and am kind of surprised to discover it’s bounced around for 3 years before coming to theaters to fail.

So I’m getting the impression this little failure is an example of trying to create “insta-franchise” that didn’t work.  Can I understand why it was tried?  Sure – if people think it’s a franchise they may feel it’s reliable or predictable – franchises don’t even have to be “good” per se to succeed.  The thing is that a franchise builds on a series of past experiences, of which people had none to go on.

I also think a lesson can be taken in the internet age, the one of instant fame and viral effects.  Yes those things can build a franchise, yes you can create something fast, yes you can get attention.  But you can’t pretend you have something you don’t have.

The Oogieloves could learn a lot from the Kardashians and Honey Boo-Boo.  This, by the way, is probably something I’ll never type again.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

50 Shades Of Shut The Hell Up

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So, yes, we all know the story.  Woman writes Twilight fanfic.  Twilight fanfic gets repurposed as erotica series known as “50 Shades Of Grey”.  Woman makes money.  People make fun of situation.

Really the only problem as a progeek for me is the latter one – the mockery.

From what I hear about “50 Shades of Grey” is, to put it mildly, is rather purple and the content is may disturb some.  It’s not Shakespeare or Pratchett, and there’s elements that sound rather squicky.  But really the only criticism that seems relevant to me may be some of these quality issues, and even then there’s only so much I can say because I actually watch films like “2 Headed Shark Attack.”*

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