I caught a little blurb for this in this month’s Wired.
Surface View is a UK company that has licensed various photo and art collections and made them available as customizable wallpaper, blinds, or pre-sized canvases.
The comic panels caught my eye, but there are many other amazing collections ranging from the Royal Photographic Society to The National Gallery to Getty Images.
Maybe I can convince the wife to get one of the Silver Surfer ... for our son’s room, of course.
In “the olden days” movie viewing was a one-way relationship. The studios pushed out the movies, and we sat in a theater or in front of our TV’s to watch.
With the advent of DVD technology a layer of interactivity has been added to the consumer experience. Interactivity, and all that that implies, is not part of the dna of the movie industry.
This video is probably the most succinct, comprehensive, and entertaining critique of everything that’s wrong with DVD movies. It shows us how, over a decade after the birth of the DVD, the user experience hasn’t significantly evolved. And how they continue to blatantly disregard the consumer.
Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief at Wired, and author of The Long Tail has recently released his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
With the publishing industry currently imploding, “free” is very controversial these days. Malcolm Gladwell slammed Free last month in The New Yorker.
To put his money where his mouth is, Anderson released the entire book as a free audiobook available on iTunes. While his book cites compelling examples of how “free” translates into profits, I’m not sure how that will work for him here. Probably from enough chaps like me writing about it and linking to Amazon for the real book.
I’m about half-way through and haven’t hit anything revelatory. But maybe that’s because I’ve been listening in on this conversation for some time.
A few weeks ago QuickSilver Software Longbox, Inc. announced that their LongBox Digital comics reader would be forthcoming. Longbox is being called the iTunes for comics.
Demand for this type of service is being generated by several factors.
Printed comics are expensive ($2.99 and higher). LongBox issues are .99
Your local comic shop can’t carry everything. And some comics quickly sell off the shelf.
Customer expectation. Everything is becoming available digitally: music, movies, TV, books, news.
A few weeks ago I met the first person I know who reads all his comics on his computer. He truthfully told me that he downloads them all illegally as he can’t afford the print editions.
Longbox has its own proprietary format (LBX), but it will also support the CBZ and CBR open formats. Meaning that my acquaintance will still be able to read his bootlegged copies, but maybe he might consider purchasing legal ones that now cost a third of the price.
I have to be honest that between being a collector in my younger years and now a casual reader, it’s hard to imagine replacing the experience of visiting the comic shop and the tactile experience of flipping through a beautifully printed edition with a computer screen.
But Longbox’s announcement combined with the success of the Kindle and the recent rumors of the Apple tablet are clearly signaling to me that digital comics’ time has come (or near enough).
And while hesitant, I think I’ll be a convert.
Cnet has a good write up. Interesting to see the user comments there too.
I just got off the phone with Chase in response to an offer to upgrade one of my credit cards. The key driver for me was the rewards program.
This free plan even sounded better than the one I was paying for on my “prestigious” World MasterCard. I asked the representative to help me compare the other card benefits. She informed me that this new card was better.
“That couldn’t be”, I protested. MasterCard sent me several mailings touting the premium services on the World card, while this new Chase card was really just about the rewards.
I decided to do a little research. Which brought be to the World card microsite.
Firstly, the site is useless. It communicates card benefits as sound bite-rollovers on a 3D interface. A simple text-based list of my high-touch services is no where to be found.
Meanwhile, fluttering birds keep beckoning me after each 3D transition to “register and customize your world”. Customize what world? This crappy 3D one? There’s no information about the value of registering. Simply put, this site doesn’t give me enough information whether I’m a prospect or a customer.
The site reeks of an agency that is more accustomed to attempting to deliver on marketing “wow”, than on delivering consumer value.
Lastly, the visual execution is just wrong. The materials I received in the mail had a sense of exclusivity to them. This microsite feels more like a bad version of Mario 64. It’s just off-brand.
Furthermore the design caliber of this microsite (and the Priceless.com site framework) is amateurish at best. It’s not even worth a design critique.
It’s just hard to believe that the destination for one of the most iconic ad campaigns in recent times.
I just got off the phone with Chase in response to an offer to upgrade one of my credit cards. The key driver for me was the rewards program.