things » media

Clearspring Hearts Radiohead

Will — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:38:11 +0000

Ok so sorry for the pseudo-spam, but like everyone else, I really like Radiohead. So I had to share the fact that they have a widget on the Clearspring platform, and they used that widget to release their live New Year’s performance, Scotch Mist. Coolio.

Check out it’s Clearspring home page too.

WidgetDevCamp DC

Will — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:31:41 +0000

Fun for the whole (geeky software types) family!

I’m glad to be a part of helping to organize what should be a super fun local DC tech event: WidgetDevCamp DC. Come one, come all, and let’s talk about modular web applications (psssttt it’s not just widgets anymore), Facebook, start pages, blog sidebars, and the rest. Want to write code? Want to design some UIs? Want to learn what the heck we’re talking about? Join us! Check out the site or join the mailing list.

When did video game ads get so cool?

Will — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:02:33 +0000

I’m by no means a serious gamer — with kids and a busy job and such, free-time comes at a premium. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t get seriously blown away occasionally by the craziness that is the gaming industry, as well as the increasingly amazing art direction. And beyond the actual games, even the whole ad/trailer space has somehow gotten really interesting and short-film-like in the last little while. And yes, the opportunity cost of watching some good trailers is way lower than that of staying up all night playing an actual game. The Xbox360 crowd, especially, has some really great ads. Couple highlights for the folks who live without game culture…

Kind of a classic at this point, here’s a game ad, for a shooter no less, that’s really more of a mood piece. Its all about the music, obviously, but someone over at the ad agency (McCann-Erickson San Francisco) had a pretty inspired idea here — focus on the game, yeah, but in a totally new way. Gears of War is the game.

Another interesting ad, though this time more of an interesting urban set piece with absolutely no connection to video games whatsoever. A good ad nonetheless.

And lastly, a trailer for Bioshock (which doesn’t appear to be at all suitable for playing with my toddler). Holy cow.

So, um, go out and buy yourself some video games and waste a bunch of time. Just tell yourself its “art”.

Fight of the Conchords === Funny

Will — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 06:47:59 +0000

Ok, I realize Flight of the Conchords isn’t exactly a secret, but if you haven’t seen them, they’re funny. And I wanted to share that. Folk parody duo, I guess you’d call them. They have a show on HBO, too. Here’s a song. “Business Time”.

New Jobby Job: Clearspring

Will — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 20:06:24 +0000

On the day-job front, I’ve recently joined the team at Clearspring, a distributed app/content/widget startup in the area. I am psyched — they’re well-positioned, smart, and have a solid model and big customers even at this early stage. Check out the site to learn more, but as you know I’m a big believer in high-value infrastructure for the distributed web, and think Clearspring has the right idea. Well, now that I work there, I guess I can say that I think we have the right idea.

I’ll be heading up the developer platform outreach side of things, and blogging at the Clearspring Community Blog. Drop by if you’re into it.

Last.fm and the big-boxification of the web

Will — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:06:55 +0000

Ok so for anyone that doesn’t agree with my general premise that big media and big tech will turn web 2.0 into American Idol style boredom, CBS acquiring last.fm is arguably a good example. I am a long-time user of last.fm, and a huge fan of the AudioScrobbler stuff underneath it. It was great before it was a social network. I was a user when the blogosphere was down on them. The CBS news is great for the last.fm team (congrats), but as a general sign of the consolidation trend…hmm. There’s nothing inherently wrong with CBS buying them, but for anyone that believes in the culture of innovation, startups, and the true long tail, this situation in which increasingly the only exit for web startups is acquisition by one of 15 or 20 big players is nothing to be happy about. I loved FeedBurner, I loved Keyhole, I loved last.fm. It’s the “big-boxification” of the web, my friends.

Iterative Media Distribution Strategies

Will — Tue, 29 May 2007 14:16:45 +0000

Just posted a short piece on the cruxyconsulting blog, here. If you’re into this kind of thing, the premise is basically that media companies would do well with more incremental, iterative strategy rollouts than whole-hog approaches to digital media distribution. No one likes to fail, but the fact of the matter is that there will be failures, so thew trick is to control and learn from them rather than try to avoid them altogether (which is impossible). The strength of incremental iterative approaches is one of the great lessons of recent years — it’s been seen most obviously in software development but has applicability to all kinds of product management and corporate strategy domains as well.