You may need a little Xanax after observing this. Equally, you may never want to take any drugs ever again.
For Quentin Tarantino, he who makes movies that contain blood, gore, and many homages to Asia, recently shot a TV spot for the Japanese cell phone company Softbank.
As well as an astute grasp of Japanese, you need to have a very firm grasp of existential philosophy to fully appreciate this spot. Without an astute grasp of Japanese, I can tell you that this is the latest in a series of spots that features the White family.
Just to give you a sense of how this ad follows in the rumbunctiously absurd tradition of much Japanese advertising, the regular members of the White Family are Me, a Softbank saleswoman, Older Brother, played by American actor Dante Carter, Mom, and Otousan, the talking dog who is, in fact, Dad. (Yes, I am entirely sober.)
I will leave you to create your own version of what is going on here. Though, to my untrained, pained eyes, the story seems to concern Tarantino, whose character is Uncle Tara-chan, and his parading a live dog as some kind of competition to Otousan, the plastic pooch who is, in fact, Dad.
The blond lady near the end of the spot appears to be playing Tara-chan's wife and, as so many wives of famous Americans these days, she doesn't appear happy with her husband. Though she is screaming down the phone rather than wielding a three-iron.
I have embedded the short and long versions of the ad, just because the long version doesn't seem to make the short version any more understandable. Several people made similar comments about Tarantino's "Kill Bill" series.
However, Brad Pitt has already appeared in Softbank spots, so one must suppose that the most understandable part of Tarantino's performance is the fee.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)
If orangutans can post photos to Facebook, then toddlers can certainly Twitter.
And now they have a prototype gadget for doing that--the Twoddler, a tricked-out Fisher Price Activity Center with pictures of family members and friends attached and an Arduino board inside.
When a child presses a certain picture for a select amount of time, software captures sensor data from the activity center and selects and sends a predefined text related to that data.
For example, when Bobby plays with Mom's picture for more than three minutes, a Twitter message will post to Bobby's personal Twitter account saying, "@mommy_bobby Bobby misses mommy and looks forward playing with her this evening" (or as the messages get more refined and personalized: "@mommy_bobby Bobby is having a temper tantrum and wants mommy home now."
Twittering toddlers can also communicate with their social-networking peers by pushing buttons that generate effects, such as colored, blinking lights, on their friends' Twoddlers (a scenario that could easily turn day-care into a disco). Twoddler is connected to the Internet and to other activity centers using the home area networking standard ZigBee.
Twoddler emerged from a course on mobile and pervasive computing at Belgium's Hasselt University. Earlier this year, Twoddler beat out around 40 submissions for the top prize at the 09 Innovative and Creative Applications competition, where judges called it a "good, well-implemented idea, with a lot of potential that allows people/children that are not capable of verbal communication to communicate through an inventive combination of hardware and software."
As we mentioned, Twoddler is just a prototype for now, so don't expect to get an endless stream of tweets from your overexcited 3-year-old just yet.
INCA Award 2009 WINNER: Twoddler from IBBT on Vimeo.
(Via Engadget)
DARPA says the balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads.
(Credit: DARPA)Update at 10:56 p.m. PST: The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team (PDF) has won the competition.
You may have heard about that DARPA balloon challenge, where the first team to identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 moored weather balloons across the continental U.S. wins $40,000? Well, as of Saturday, the balloons are up in the air. If you don't have a team yet, here are some places to report a sighting.
What's cool is how most of the balloon-hunting communities I've found are working toward selfless goals. Both DARPABalloon.com and this MIT group are proposing to gather a huge number of participants, and rather than give each contributor a measly cut, the 40 grand will be donated to charity.
DARPA is holding its Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet. The competition is meant to explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.
So, good luck to everyone involved. If you happen to stumble across one this weekend, consider reporting it to a group that's playing for charity. Just make sure it's not a red balloon some kid let go of first.
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.
Two days ahead of a new round of planned protests against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Internet access in the nation's capital is largely down, according to Agence France Presse.
During the post-election unrest in June, Twitter became a main avenue for Iranians' communication with the outside world.
(Credit: Twitter)Sources close to Iran's technical services say the cut to Tehran's outside access was the result of "a decision by the authorities" and not a technical breakdown, the news agency reports. Telecommunications ministry officials were unavailable for comment.
Protests are scheduled Monday to mark Student Day, the anniversary of the December 6, 1953, killing of three of University of Tehran students by Iranian police. The students were protesting then-U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon's visit, which followed the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq.
As the nation gets ready to mark the annual day of remembrance, several Web sites have reported that Iranian opposition groups are preparing to hold fresh protests against Ahmadinejad. Scores of arrests have already been reported in advance of Student Day.
Since widespread post-election upheaval broke out in June amid charges of government vote-rigging, Internet lines, texting, and even mobile phone service have been cut or scrambled. But the weekend's Internet outage marks the first such occurrence to take place this far in advance of protests, AFP reports.
I had a fascinating conversation with MediaNet CEO Alan McGlade on Friday morning. Unless you're deeply involved in online music, you probably don't know MediaNet, but it's the back end powering a lot of music services you might have used, including MOG's subscription service that launched earlier this week, as well as Microsoft's excellent Zune Pass subscription service and iLike's online music marketplace. (MySpace acquired iLike in August, and in November, links to iLike's service began appearing directly in music-related search results on Google.)
Fox Interactive used MediaNet's technology to embed this list of Aerosmith songs in a story about the band. Readers could then listen to a sample or buy the song.
(Credit: MediaNet)They've also got more history in online music than just about anyone. The company started off as MusicNet, with part-ownership by three of the then-Big Five major labels: BMG, EMI, and Warner. They powered RealNetworks' music initiatives before RealNetworks bought Rhapsody. They powered Yahoo Music. They powered MTV's online music store.
These early stores went nowhere. Content owners insisted on digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, which meant that content from these stores had restricted use rights and couldn't be played on every device--including, in most cases, Apple's iconic iPod. Setting up a store using MediaNet's platform often took 18 months and significant technical expertise. In the meantime, Apple focused on a dedicated online store for its own devices, and completely dominated the market for music downloads.
But the landscape has changed. Labels don't want to be beholden to Apple. They no longer insist on DRM for single-song downloads, and have realized that the more outlets there are for their digital music, the more customers they'll reach, and the more sales they'll have. (Amazing it took this long to figure out.) MediaNet is, in my opinion, incredibly well positioned to take advantage of this sea change.
In October, the company released a set of technologies called MN Open that make it almost trivially simple for companies to add a wide variety of music consumption options to their Web sites. Sure, companies can still use MediaNet to build an end-to-end service like MOG.
But say you're Fox Interactive and want to make a story about Aerosmith more engaging. Using a MediaNet component, Fox created a link for the first mention of the word Aerosmith that took users to a page with more information about the band, and links to play and buy some of their popular songs. Fox also posted Aerosmith songs in a box directly on the story page.
MediaNet handled all the heavy lifting: licensing the music, streaming the samples, and fulfilling the transaction. Fox kept its brand and design throughout the process, and users didn't have to leave the site to buy the song. Best of all for Fox, it didn't have to make any up-front payment to use MediaNet's technology. Instead, MediaNet takes the customary cut of any song purchased through the site (about 60 percent, if it's anything like Apple). The model's the same for sites that offer free ad-supported streams or subscriptions--MediaNet takes a portion of each transaction, then handles payment to the content owners.
Now imagine this kind of integration on sites for radio stations, record labels, or your favorite bands. Imagine your ISP or cell phone carrier offering you a music subscription service bundled with your Internet service or smartphone. In this world, users won't have to go to iTunes or Amazon MP3, or subscribe to Rhapsody (or MOG for that matter). Music will be available for consumption everywhere. And content owners will get paid regardless of where users buy it.
According to McGlade, it's already happening--he said MediaNet is adding about one new distributor per day, and has already got about 50 customers using the Open ML platform. One site, GetPlaylists.com, was able to add playable song samples and downloads-for-sale in only two days with Open ML, according to McGlade.
Thanks to this upsurge, the company--which is owned by a private equity firm and no longer has any direct ownership affiliation with the major labels--has recently crossed over into profitability. A rare situation indeed in today's online music landscape.
It's a great vision, and something that Microsoft, the original platform company, could have done. But Microsoft spent years pushing the Windows Media Platform, which made heavy use of Microsoft codecs and file wrappers (instead of MP3s, which were becoming the industry standard). Microsoft also spent a lot of effort trying to enable the labels' DRM demands--for example, by building a platform to enable subscription-based downloads to be transferred to portable devices. Then, just as the labels were getting ready to abandon DRM, Microsoft basically gave up pushing Windows Media as a general-purpose platform for distributors and device makers, and instead started trying to mimic Apple's end-to-end software+service+device with the Zune strategy.
Talk about an opportunity lost! Instead of struggling along with something like 2 percent of the digital media player market, Microsoft could have ended up powering the music technology on thousands of Web sites.
Another aside: while MusicNet offers a lot of flexibility for distributors--downloads, samples, free streams, or subscriptions are all supported--McGlade is most bullish on subscriptions as the digital business model of the future. He admits that old fogeys accustomed to CDs and vinyl will have a hard time giving up the concept of ownership, but suggests that today's teenagers don't care--they want music on demand from any device, any time, in any location, and don't need to have the files physically present. McGlade thinks that subscriptions will have the best chance of taking off if they're bundled with some other product, like ISP service.
Scoff all you want about subscriptions, but the concept keeps coming up: music industry expert Donald Passman also believes they're the best chance for the music industry to thrive in the future. Even Apple finally seems to be bending to the idea of streaming music with its acquisition of Lala, although Lala isn't a straight subscription service, but more of an online music locker with some free streams, plus fee-based individual streams.
Is this man unbeatable in the digital-music sector?
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)Update 6:21 p.m. PST: The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple and Lala have struck a deal.
Apple acquired Lala on Friday, unlikely offering much for the streaming-music service.
Sources with knowledge of the discussion told me Apple is interested in bringing some of Lala's engineers onboard. According to the sources, Apple is impressed by Lala's technology. The 4-year-old Lala scans users' hard drives and creates a duplicate music library that they can access from Web-enabled devices. The company also sells songs for a dime each.
I posted a story on Friday about the acquisition talks. Apple declined to comment on "rumor and speculation" and a Lala spokesman did not respond to an interview request.
Over at The New York Times, Brad Stone posted a report citing sources who also said Apple had a special interest in obtaining Lala's engineering talent. But the Times also added this:
"The talks (between Apple and Lala) originated when Lala executives concluded their prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim," Stone wrote. "(Lala) initiated discussions about a potential investment with Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president in charge of iTunes."
That Lala was struggling to turn a profit is consistent with the kind of bleak news that has come out of digital music the past year. Many of the newer and experimental business models, such as ad-supported music, have flopped. The only reasonable question now is how much longer will this shakeout continue?
We saw Ruckus falter and close in January. We saw SpiralFrog flameout spectacularly in March. In August, MySpace picked up iLike, and sources said that MySpace acquired Imeem last month, but the news has not been announced.
What seemed to be different about Lala is that the company had received positive reviews from the music labels for a long time. Executives at some of the biggest recording companies have told me in the past that they respected Lala's management and its focus on the bottom line. This spring, label execs said they saw some encouraging signs after Lala had revamped the service for seemingly the umpteenth time. It initially made a name for itself by trying to enable users to swap CDs over the Internet. It never went anywhere.
Then came the announcement in October that Google would offer Lala's music to users searching for information on music acts. That could mean a boon said some of the pundits. Apparently, by that time, Lala's fate was sealed.
So, we're kind of right back where we started. The only proven winners in digital music are Apple and download sales.
Michael Robertson, the serial entrepreneur and MP3.com founder, told me earlier this year that it doesn't matter if Imeem, Lala, and their competitors went away because there is always a new crop of players longing to jump into the music industry.
"It's sexy," Robertson said.
In that case, who's up next? Let's see your ideas and technology. Better bring a lot of nerve.
Update 1:32 p.m. PST to include some of the reasons sources say Apple is interested in Lala.
Apple is close to acquiring digital-music service Lala, according to two sources with knowledge of the discussions.
Talks are very advanced, the sources said Friday. One said that the sides have already agreed on terms and have only to sign a final agreement. (Update 6:21 p.m. PST: The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple and Lala have struck a deal.)
Steve Dowling, Apple's spokesman, said the company doesn't comment on rumors and speculation. A representative from Lala was not immediately available for comment.
Lala is a streaming-music site that sells songs for 10 cents apiece and enables users to store their music libraries on the company's servers. But it has gone through multiple iterations and was once known as a CD-swapping service before reinventing itself as a streaming site.
Exactly what Apple intends to do with Lala remains unclear. Right now, Apple is the largest music store online or offline and has made more money than any other music service by selling downloads. CEO Steve Jobs could start a streaming service, but my sources told me Friday that Apple managers are very interested in working with Lala's engineers, who have come up with "a payment and fulfillment system that could save Apple millions of dollars a year."
In addition, Apple wants Lala's founder Bill Nguyen to come over as part of the acquisition, another source said.
Nguyen is a well-known and respected Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has tried for years to find a music service that is both popular with users (meaning cheap and easy to use) while also generating profits.
According to music sources, the affable Nguyen is also considered my label insiders as one of the more popular figures from the tech sector. Nguyen has typically focused on generating profits as much as whiz-bang technology, which is not always the case with many of his competitors, the sources said.
That said, Lala is not believed to be profitable.
If the deal goes through, it would be the third acquisition of a digital-music site in recent months. MySpace acquired iLike in August and sources said last month that MySpace purchased Imeem.
If Apple is planning some kind of streaming service, the public has shown an appetite for streams that are free of charge and ad-supported.
Many music fans have also clamored for a better way to store music. Right now, most music libraries can be found on an owner's computer hard drive, which can malfunction and potentially destroy thousands of songs. Lala enables users to store songs on the company's servers and access them from Web-enabled devices.
Google is making a new move to lower language barriers, offering the ability to translate search results from one language to another.
The search giant is in the process of adding the feature to the "show options" button that shows at the top of search results page. "We've offered this feature in Google Translate for a while, but now we're integrating it fully into Google search, making it easier for you to find and read results from pages across the web, even if they weren't written in a language you speak," said Maureen Heymans, the project's technical leader, and Jeff Chin, its product manager, in a blog post.
Clicking the option can dramatically change the results you see. For example, my ordinary search for "Taipei Museum of Fine Art" produced mostly English-language results. The translated results, though, featured Chinese Web sites with a different perspective (see the result below). Among other things, there was a Chinese Wikipedia entry--also conveniently translated by Google when I clicked the link--where there is none written in English.
... Read moreExecutives of online music video service Vevo are close to finalizing an agreement that will bring content to the site from EMI, the smallest of the four top recording companies and the label of Coldplay, Katie Perry, and Norah Jones.
EMI's New York headquarters.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)The deal between Vevo and EMI could be announced at any time, sources familiar with talks told CNET.
"EMI is in discussions with Vevo," EMI spokeswoman Jeanne Meyer acknowledged, though she declined to disclose the current stage of the talks.
Scheduled to launch on Tuesday, Vevo will soon be able to offer music videos and other content from three of the four top labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI.
The only major record company not partnering with the venture is Warner Music Group. Sources said talks between Warner and Vevo continue.
Universal Music founded the service earlier this year, aiming to cash in more on the popularity of music videos. At YouTube, which is powering back-end operations for Vevo, Universal's videos have accumulated the most views of any YouTube channel.
Universal has long wanted a standalone site to showcase video content, which includes traditional video but may also include other video content produced by artists.
Of YouTube's 25 all-time most watched videos, 14 are music videos. EMI recently signed a video-licensing deal with Hulu.
Immediately following the Friday night broadcast of MTVU's alternative-music awards show, the Woodie Awards, viewers will be able to watch a 360-degree video of it online.
The Immersive Media technology supporting the online video, scheduled for online availability at 8 p.m. PST, is designed to enable users to freely navigate around a video, 360 degrees, letting them explore angles and shots that they wouldn't normally have been able to see.
While I haven't seen the Woodie feed yet, I did have a chance to play around with the technology on some test videos. The video experience seems perfectly suited for a concert format. It's certainly something worth checking out, even if you don't particularly care for the music, which is scheduled to include performances by Death Cab for Cutie, The Dead Weather, Matt and Kim, and Passion Pit.
This is the first big event for the IM Live technology, so it should be interesting to see how the experience of the fully produced show on TV compares to the IM Live video experience, in which site visitors essentially become their own producers. If you end up making your own comparisons, let us know what you think.
