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Maureen Ryan posts an article detailing the most important changes in TV during the past decade. I think one important fact she left out (which I'd substitute for her discussion of the 3 Davids) is the shortening of the television season, something a critic at the L.A. Times wrote about this past week. I think this ties in to her first point about DIY viewing. Or at least that's what I'm calling it, given that I wrote about that a few months ago as being the single most important development in our lives in the last decade.( Read more... )

Something else I was disappointed to see Ryan only touch on as an afterthought, was the demise of the WB. Although the WB was largely a 90s phenomenon, I think it's a testament to its popularity and programming that its last surviving shows, Smallville and Supernatural, are the backbone of the successor CW network to the point where Smallville is being dragged out into a 10th season and SPN is clearly being pushed past its natural lifespan into a 6th (that's not official yet, but I don't see what choice the network will have). I know many people were angry with the cancellation of Angel, though I'm fairly sure it's something the network regretted. However before cable became some promised land for innovative programming targeted at neglected viewers, there were the netlets. I'm not sure anyone has any great nostalgia for UPN, but I'm certain a lot of people do for the WB, which had a great internal marketing department and which made a lot of savvy choices in terms of writer/producers. Most of the people I've come across on LJ are here because of something the WB commissioned. Without that network our viewing in the last decade would have been a lot poorer. So how about a little love for the long lost Frog, too? It's hard to believe it's only been 3.5 years since it took its bow.

Although we have a Wii, I could not count myself as a gamer. But I found this article about the popularity decline in music games specifically DIY rock star ones (there's that word again), rather interesting to speculate about. Not knowing that much about the industry, I'll buy the author's explanation that oversaturation of the market is behind the decline in growth. However, I found the general failure (at least failure to meet expectations) of the Beatles' game more up my alley. I have been a Beatles fan for decades but I wasn't rushing out to buy this game either. That probably has something to do with my general disinterest in video games and complete disinterest in trying to play along with them (if I wanted to do so that much I would have continued playing the piano). But I couldn't help wondering if part of the relative failure is a general decline in interest in the Beatles themselves as well as their catalog. A longstanding question among music fans was always "The Beatles or The Stones?" What I found remarkable about a report back in August was the absence of some major musical figures in the sales records of downloaded songs, including the Beatles. And while the Stones were represented with 2 tracks from the 60s, they remained musically relevant through the 1970s (in fact, I'm fairly sure that was their most successful decade financially). Why were they not on these lists then?( Read more... )

Lastly, I will be heading out for holiday travel tomorrow but will be back for New Year's Eve. I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable holiday.

Given the recent outcry about ending check service in the UK, I was surprised to see the statistic that 64% of Americans use online banking (which presumes more tech familiarity than, say, using an ATM). Most of this seems to be just checking balances rather than actively doing things with the accounts though, so maybe we're not in a better state after all.

I loved the Angel shout out in yesterday's Dollhouse, though I thought it went farther than simply a reference ( Read more... )

Second rec installment for 2009... ( Read more... )

Seems to me it was past time to be doing this but at least one cancelled show is going to air its already produced episodes on YouTube. Then there is the new reality show that is going to air on Hulu before it gets broadcast on TV (but hey, if you're a "select international audience" you'll be able to watch it, too.)

Picked up from meret, maybe we'd get more female writers writing in Hollywood if no one ever met them. (And if you think the story is depressing, the comments have got quite a few more stories).

To offset the depression, my favorite outtake from Colbert's Sports Illustrated photo shoot.

It's not the end of the year yet, but I'm leaving town next week, so I figured I'd start posting some recs for the year this week and wrap up when I return. ( Read more... )

Two interesting bits of info from Nielsen. One from last month noted that TV viewing hours are higher than ever in history, even though you wouldn't expect it from the all the constant fretting about declining network ratings. In fact "The average household watched eight hours and 21 minutes a day."

At the same time, the most time-shifted programming on TV is sci-fi heavy whereas the highest rated stuff is sports, reality programming, and the obligatory procedural. This data suggests that many sci-fi viewers (nearly half the audience for the top ten shows) have other things to do while the show is actually on.

And this isn't even counting all the people who watch it through torrents or streaming sites.

And now, a question. Does anyone use water filters in their homes that are either carafes, faucet attachments or counter top filters, and if so what do you use and are you happy with them?

I rarely look around YouTube, but when I stumbled over this tonight I suspected many on my cat-loving flist would want to see it as well. A lovely vid of firefighters saving (quite a few) cats from a fire.

I picked up a rec for this from veni_vidi_vids and have to agree that this is one of the best series vids for Queer as Folk I've yet seen. I love the way the various characters get their moments and there's a real feeling of the large ensemble that made up this cast. If you haven't seen it yet, check out Unconditional by dreamrequiem.

Wow, are we having a winter storm here. Barely any snow as of yet but I couldn't sleep this morning from the force of the wind outside rattling the building. It's even distracting me now that I'm awake, and we had to go rescue some of the balcony Christmas stuff already. I'm just really glad I don't have to go catch a bus today.

I've posted the following to sim_studies but also wanted to include it here.( Read more... )

1) ICONS! On DW: "You can now rename icon keywords and the comments that use that icon will continue to use it -- it will no longer revert to default."

One of the main reasons people need more icon space is so that their old icons don't disappear if they want to add new ones. This is a much needed, great new feature. (There are some nice new features for community maintainers too). Also, DW is running a poll asking people how many icon slots they would like to see offered in the future, so if this matters to you, go vote. Plus, there is another poll about whether you would like to be able to "retire" icons from your icon page. This means that the icons will remain attached to their old appearances in posts and comments, but you won't have them currently available for use, and thus won't have to sort through them on your icon page when you're looking through the batch of icons you currently are actively using.

Just as an aside, it's pretty nifty to have new options spring out of current discussions so quickly. There is a major personal touch in the way DW is run.

2) Reading this Sequential Tart posting that asked "Are Dolls at all culpable for crimes committed by imprints? Do we ever really stop being ourselves? Do our selves really exist at all?" made me think of the latest Castle episode. About partway through I asked Mike, "Doesn't this make you think of Dollhouse?" all the more so due to Marc Blucas' being a guest star. Then, too, the "ice holes" made me think of Stephen Colbert.

3) Speaking of that Sequential Tarts post, there was this line: "As Topher pointed out to Boyd …we're programmed every day, by the media and by our social interactions; does it really matter how the programming is done?" ( Read more... )

Whew, had guests for the Thanksgiving weekend and then much prepping for Christmas going on. Result? Many days worth of posts to catch up on through speed reading.

Speaking of reading, On the Media had a whole episode about the state of books and reading. While I am sure anyone reading this post will likely find various segments interesting, I thought the one on Books 2.0 was of particular interest with its discussion of interactive writing with authors and readers.

"I'm willing to bet you that there’s a young woman who’s getting her Ph.D. right now who grew up in MySpace, in Facebook, somebody who is comfortable and excited about working in a public collaborative space. She is a seed of the future."

1) For anyone looking to buy a laptop or netbook, you may be interested in the results of this study which indicated Asus and Toshiba are the most reliable models, but that regardless of brand, 1 in 3 laptops fails to last 3 years. I wish they'd also done a study on desktops which are presumably less vulnerable to accidents. Aside from the fact that these expensive purchases are exceedingly unreliable, what most made me blanch was the idea of the monumental amount of waste being generated by so many short-lived machines.

2) In more optimistic news, health care costs may go down if successful vaccines are developed, and apparently there are a lot of major ones in the pipeline.

"Among other possible vaccines out in the coming years: herpes simplex, rheumatoid arthritis and a better seasonal influenza vaccine. A malaria vaccine -- a development that would revolutionize public health around the globe if successful -- could be on the market in the next several years."

3) When looking at the tags being used so far at the AO3, I got the immediate mental image of the classic comedy/tragedy masks (Angst! Humor!). However, I was also quite struck by how many stories are apparently carrying the humor tag – far, far more than for some other stories we commonly see like an AU or crossover. It's not that we rarely see funny stories in fandoms, but I rarely see stories advertised as such (whereas, by comparison, people label their stuff "crackfic" quite often). So I just thought I'd throw the question out there: what percentage of what you read or write would you consider to be a humor story?

It's exciting to see contributions surging into the Archive of Our Own now that open beta has begun. I have hopes for the archive being a one-stop, highly searchable site for all kinds of fan content. LJ and its clones may be really good blogging/interaction sites but they're lousy for actually finding things. And unlike the Buffyverse, SPN fandom is not rife with archives.

Speaking of one-stop shops for fannish content, in case others weren't aware of it, Clicker.com is a search engine for finding places to see TV content online. Just type in the show you want to see and it'll show what episodes are available and where. You can also create playlists.

I was boggled today when I read this article about men, women and power at work. Funny how the entire thing is written to demonstrate how men are merely well meaning but baffled and women are always at fault for creating problems at work. Case in point:

"“Men often seem to think (heroically) that they should be masters at the conversation–that they should know the ‘right’ things to say.” His advice to men and women: “Be more curious about each other and their experiences."

It's heroic to be self-centered and domineering in a conversation! Who knew?

"Meanwhile, women’s tendency to be super-serious (as men perceive them, at least) compounds the workplace dysfunction. “Women can make anything a chore,” a former Microsoft executive told me. “They’re too serious and don’t seem to understand that work is a game.”"

It's wrong to be serious about serious matters! Now there's a rather fitting explanation for why our economy's in the state it's in. I look forward to the way men will turn unemployment into a game.
( Read more... )

I thought this blog post did a good job of explaining in comparative numbers how much more risky our unemployment situation is today versus the last time it was this high, which was in 1982. ( Read more... )

I thought the most interesting aspect of this CNN article on class differences in social networking sites were the figures on Facebook use. I'm rather amazed that college age kids make up only 10% of Facebook users, with three times as many users 35-49. What surprises me even more is that even at MySpace they only make up 15% of users. It's already not news that Twitter use has gone backwards in age, with use spreading down to younger users rather than up. But I'm surprised so few young adults are utilizing any of the major social networking sites. What are they doing online? And I wonder if one could consider YouTube a social networking site?

Lastly, with news of Dollhouse's cancellation, this news bit seems a bit ironic, in that FOX is following Joss' lead on creating original web content. But what stood out to me is how it sounds like they want to create their own version of fan content:

""We have a very active music consumer within MySpace Music, so it's not inconceivable that we would look to create a piece of content that resonates with a music audience that would be broadened for ubiquity across the web," Mr. Levinsohn said. "We would try to leverage the audience we have with gamers or sports fans on other sports fans on other properties in the same way. What's unique here is we're storytellers, and we can create content for any genre -- there are brands that make sense for any genre, too."

Of course, the actual point is to produce product placement vehicles (and who knew someone had a job in order to do this in comics?)

Yesterday I went to a lecture on "Media Life: A Life Lived in Media" by Mark Deuze after having heard an interview he did regarding his new book. I found the interview rather more informative but there were some interesting tidbits in the lecture. (You can access his slides here.)

The speaker's previous book was about people who work in the media industries, and how there is now a shift to creating content about content. What we once called marketing is now considered a form of content creation itself, as it is used to push attention to other content. That book explored the frustration of people who had gone into these industries to tell their own stories, only to find themselves instead promoting the work of others.

With the new book he is looking past changes for those working in the media to what the general public is going through. He has turned this into a philosophical question about media as an environment that we live in rather than something external that we access or utilize through tools. ( Read more... )

But before I get to that, just a shout out to Mad Men's finale. Now that's the way to close a season, where your plot points and character development all dovetail into a satisfying resolution. It should be interesting to see where this goes next.

Although it's been pointed out before that fan viewing habits (especially of the shows they are fannish about) tend to be atypical of general viewing habits, it has so far been the average viewer who has been driving TV ratings, with their live viewing being considered the important measurement due to their intake of commercials. Now a new study suggests that even though Mr. and Mrs. Passive Viewer will continue to be the most important market to capture, the DVR will help broadcasters do it. ( Read more... )

I imagine many have already heard of Joss Whedon's offer to buy the Terminator franchise rights. I was reminded of it when I read this short piece about falling DVD sales, slow Blu-Ray adoption and how this impacts movie profitability. "[T}he DVD business has been the most profitable part of the film industry with many films becoming profitable only after the film is released on DVD." But falling sales are leading to price increases in DVDs. Because this article focused on movies only it didn't mention how TV series DVDs were being affected, but presumably they are also declining since the article talks about streaming video online, and that's being done with TV.

This made me think of the Terminator issue because people who are real fans tend to buy DVD sets (either that or people with small children and no cable). And Joss does seem to make shows that sell DVDs out of proportion to their original ratings. It's a pity he won't get the rights, I'm sure he could do something interesting with it.

On a different note, SPARC has put out a report on different income models for open-access publishers that reviews current practices being employed. Seems a good time to consider this. An open-access journal that I was a peer reviewer for has closed down after ten years of publishing and three sponsorship moves. I suspect it won't be alone.

I heard a story on the BBC about how Africa is starting to follow Japan's lead in downloading novels to mobile phones, including those with interactive elements. I was looking for a link to it on the BBC website and didn't find it but did come across this story about how UK publishers are completely uninterested in eBook development.

On the Media had a whole episode devoted to a look at the evolution (or devolution perhaps) of the music industry. Of particular interest was their segment on what the music charts actually mean today and the dramatic changes that can occur when the data collected changes. I had to wonder if the same thing might happen to TV ratings in the future.

Of particular interest though is that musicians are coming up with their own definition of fans. While academics still can't seem to agree on a common definition, unsurprisingly money is a key issue for the artists:( Read more... )

I imagine many people reading this already know about Classic Recs weekend, but if you don't, it opens Oct. 29 (Oct. 28 evening in the U.S.) and celebrates all fan-created works created prior to 2009 in the Buffy, Angel and Firefly fandoms. And given that this is Angel's 10 year anniversary, it would be great to see lots of recs involving our broody vamp and his Avengers.



Oct. 20 is the National Day of Writing. Seeing as how every day is writing day around these parts, participation should be pretty easy. On the other hand, these stats from Nielsen suggest that the LJ/DW groups are ( very much in the minority when it comes to online behavior. )

There was a lot of attention paid to Merriam Webster's addition of fan fiction into its entries this year, but I realized this week that not just fan fiction, but fanfic, fangirl, slash and even K/S are all in the OED (the last since 2003). Yaoi is also used in a quotation but doesn't have its own entry, unlike slash:

"orig. and chiefly Science Fiction. [After the written form of K/S n.] A subgenre of fiction, originally published in fanzines and now esp. online, in which characters who appear together in popular films or other media are portrayed as having a sexual (esp. homosexual) relationship. Chiefly attrib."

What do you think of the definition though? To me it essentially combines het and slash, and also makes it a subgenre of fiction rather than of fan fiction. I'm not sure how they came up with this. Speaking of definitions, if fandom starts to work on something that was originally Kripked from fandom in the first place...what is that called?

###

So, does anyone think that this technology is likely to produce better entertainment? This is still focus group testing only it's testing money shots on a moment by moment basis. What does that have to do with storytelling? Remarkably, it seems to me that simply hiring better writers, having some courage in doing things differently, and not messing with a product until it's unrecognizable is likely to produce better movies.
( Read more... )

In Rethinking the Long Tail I thought there was an interesting challenge to the idea that niche sales are the way to go for businesses. The authors argue that actually there is a greater concentration of popular entertainment now than there used to be. I was also interested to read this discussion of how ads tend to appeal to people through Time vs. Money and to think about how this related to fan activities.

Henry Jenkins' post on the Future of TV surprised me by not mentioning what I consider the most important change to TV in the last five years -- shortening seasons.( Read more... )

For anyone who thinks that the next generation's technological experience of the world won't make them that different from their older siblings or their parents, there's this story.

Then there's this news story about a school that has decided to do away with its library collection in favor of eBook readers.

On the opposite side of things, a former classmate of mine passed this story on to me from her school's newsletter about a student working in Sri Lanka for a UN agency.( Read more... )

A few weeks ago I commented on how dead I was finding the communities on DW to be when I started looking around for some to join. DW launched its open beta at a time when I was pretty busy, and growing my reading list was not in any way a priority. But when I decided to look into it, the relative absence of communities on some hot topics, and the absence of activity at the ones that did exist, seemed a bad sign.

Back on June 2 in a DW news post, there was a section on how the beta stats page was not functioning correctly in displaying the Total Accounts, although there was no further comment on why that was occurring or if there were plans to fix it. As of now it only shows the number of paid users, which is under 4000 people. The regular stats page indicates a really high number of total accounts, nearly 450,000, so no idea if that's accurate at this stage. However, what I wanted to see was the number of active accounts, which DW defines as anyone who has at least logged into their accounts in the past 30 days. That's at a fairly healthy 20,000+. Of those who have posted an entry in the last 30 days, the number's 11,000+, nearly half the number of logins.

But there's a problem with those numbers. ( Read more... )

My favorite quote of the day, from Hugh Laurie answering who he considers the funniest American:

"I think we're all lucky to be living in the age of Jon Stewart. I think he is the greatest living American."

Maybe I'm missing it, but I really don't see the appeal of this new software, even if it worked properly. It seems to me that the killer app would be in creating video karaoke. But clearly, this setup is not geared towards public use. And as to uploading and sharing your clips? Who would be that interested in watching it?

Then again, someone always seems to want to watch online videos, but those in developing countries are likely to be cut off. "The part of me that wants to change the world says, ‘This is unfair, it shouldn’t be like this,’ ” Mr. Shapiro said. “On the other hand, from the business side of things, serving videos to the entire world is just not supportable at this time.”

Lastly, I heard news this morning that Google is going to be engaging in a separate agreement with European publishers regarding Google Books. This brought to mind an interview that I think provided some serious concerns about the future of libraries in regards to Google's plans. A small sample:

"[Google] would go and index these books and then allow people to see bits and pieces, but direct people back to the libraries or direct people back to bookstores to be able to get them. What we now find through this suit is Google’s ambitions were far greater than just directing people back to where they came from; they wanted to be the library or the bookstore themselves… they will be the sole organization to control access to these works… If they get to be the library that the next generation grows up with, then they get to decide who has access to works, and if you happen to be reading a book, they’ll know about it."

Even though our decade technically doesn't end until next year, I imagine the talk is going to start soon about the first decade of the 21st century. My vote goes to calling it the DIY decade. ( Read more... )

One aspect I only wish could be more DIY is health care. Mike had an ENT appt. this morning and I went with him because he couldn't explain what the doctor had told him after the last appt. a year ago, in which basically nothing was resolved and he continues to have cyclical sinus infections. I've had longstanding sinus problems myself and thought I'd be better able to get a handle on it if I was there. His doctor was unbelievably rude.( Read more... )
I have to wonder, given the health care debate going on, if anyone ever addresses the time/interest issue in medical care in the U.S. versus other countries. Because while this guy was one of the two rudest doctors I've ever run into, being under treated by disinterested physicians has been a longstanding problem in general in my life, and that's been a common complaint with everyone else I know as well.

So Disney's planning to buy Marvel. Hmm, that sure feeds in well to their idea of launching a Disney Expo. Wonder if they'll refuse to promote at ComicCon next time out in favor of their own convention?

Speaking of Disney, apparently they're not too concerned about reappropriation of their music in these difficult economic times. At least some of them realize it's free marketing. On the other hand, they're buying Marvel to appeal to men, so perhaps it's only true if you're a guy.

If you're a U.S. broadband user, I think you'll find these statistics interesting: "Despite high-speed Internet making up 25 percent of a cable company's revenues, they devote no more than 3 percent of their cable lines to delivering broadband. That’s according to Adam Lynn, Policy Coordinator of Free Press. Meanwhile, Lynn explains, it is estimated that a cable company’s typical profit margin for broadband service is 80 percent."

In the meantime a UK study has showed that users are getting broadband speeds that are half or less than advertised.

To the Best of Our Knowledge had a "library episode" with a number of interesting segments( Read more... )

And on a totally unrelated note, it's odd to be recognized when you haven't even realized you were being observed. ( Read more... )

I thought it surprising that in the series on "The Fangirl Invasion" they don't discuss how involved women have been in fandoms for decades. How can they ignore the fact that the first Trek con was organized by women? That they are frequently organizers of many cons today? I mean, look at this quote:

"I think if you look at the history pattern – Joss' work aside, which is wonderful but unusual – the success of things capable of attracting women in pop culture had women in a more significant creative role. Gene Roddenberry, although male, was very heavily influenced by Majel Barrett, his wife, during the creation process of 'Star Trek'," Levitz said, pointing out the female fans of that franchise.

Yes, women were fans of Trek because of Majel. What? ( Read more... )

I'm sorry I learned about the LyricWiki too late. This article suggests a lot of free lyric sites will be going away as record companies start actually adding content to music downloads. Since I've never bough a digital music track I was astounded to hear not long ago that this wasn't already the case. Could the music business be any more shortsighted?

Since when is Apple a net nanny? Along with various other dubious decisions about what apps it will sell in its store:

"Nine Inch Nails…was denied access to the App Store for, what Apple called, "objectionable content."… it's worth noting that the same exact album, unedited, was already available in the iTunes Store…The Nine Inch Nails update was eventually allowed into the App Store after Apple realized its double standard. "
"If there is a record for the number of times an application can be rejected by Apple, Ninjawords might have a shot. The dictionary app was denied access three times due to "objectionable" words users could find in its dictionary. "
"Apple didn't reject the South Park iPhone app once; it rejected it twice because of "potentially offensive" content included in the app."
"Eucalyptus, an e-book reader app, was denied access to Apple's App Store after the company found that it allowed users to read the Kama Sutra."

Supposedly these policies have changed since a parental control feature was available for the iPhone, but am I being oblivious by wondering when kids would be using an iPhone app like a dictionary or ebook reader for the Kama Sutra in the first place? Clearly it's going to be a while before your phone is like your computer.

There's a porn version of 30 Rock?

We just watched Being Human this week and it's definitely got a spot on the DVR now. It was funny and sad and I thought it had an interesting message about how we still have our monsters and witch hunts today, with just as little evidence.

This article on the nearly all female writing staff of Mad Men (including Buffy writer Marti Noxon and SPN writer Cathryn Humphris) had some interesting details: "Women comprised 23% of television writers during the 2007 to 2008 prime-time season, a 12 percentage point decrease from the same period a year earlier. Nearly 80% of TV programs in the 2007 to 2008 prime-time season had no women writers." (Emphasis mine)

Eighty percent? Well people, if you want to know why you're getting what you're getting on TV, I think we need look no farther than those statistics. Seems to me the world of women in Mad Men is not so terribly different than some sectors today.
( Cut for Mad Men discussion, no spoilers for S3 )

However a really interesting set of numbers revealed how important a cumulative audience is to a show, even though most get just a single airing:
( Read more... )

On a different note, is it my imagination or has this summer been particularly slow in terms of people being around? I was looking for some additional communities on DW and started by clicking on my profile interests. I was surprised by how even for some broad search terms, I'd almost always come up in the first dozen or so results, simply because I'd made a post the same day. (Exceptions: for feminists I came in on page 2, for Firefly I showed up on page 3). Maybe that just says more about activity on DW but it has seemed slow to me all around.

I find it interesting how this article suggests Disney is imitating ComicCon with their Disney Expo idea. Frankly, I think it's a good idea for Disney, which has a sort of comprehensive, demo-targeted brand that would work well as a standalone draw. Disney has also shown itself to be really strong in the areas of organization and crowd control, two things pretty important for an event of this size. Even though it's not responsible for the biggest teen draws in recent years, I think other studios or networks would have a tough time duplicating this. On the other hand, the late WB network probably could have. Even though I was wayyy over the target demo when it launched, I appreciated what they were trying to do. Then again, Disney is apparently also going to pitch all its ABC products, including Lost, at the event so it's really a corporate rather than teen event.

But what the article reveals is the death of ComicCon as anything resembling a fan event, as opposed to a marketing trade-show for the entertainment industry. I realize that for some people, especially in the more ignored comics areas, there's probably a good bit of the fan environment still at work. But in my only visit to the SDCC in 2003 it was already more of a marketplace than a con. Its massive size impressed me, its entrance fee was quite reasonable, (I could still buy day tickets at the door, too), and I really liked the setting, but it wasn't the sort of experience I wanted to have.

( One item probably not available at the Disney Expo for all those vampire fans )

Before I get on with the rest of the post I have to mention some things I loved. Along with the news that Jon Stewart may have contributed to this mouthpiece resigning from her job, I thought Colbert's Word (ostensibly about Archie, Betty and Veronica) was not only awesome sauce for its feminist viewpoint but also extended Colbert's usual political and media commentary into pop culture. Someone needs to be congratulated on writing that segment. Also, no DS or Colbert for three weeks? Something major is sure to happen in the world that we'll be wishing they were around to comment on (just, please, nothing on the scale of Katrina this time).

So speaking of pop culture commentary, I was thinking the other day about what we all do here, or more to the point, how we do it. This was because I ended up having an exchange of comments with crazypandabear over her marvelous set of icons (seriously, go check them out) where she said she'd never thought anyone would care to know about her icon making processes unless it was for a tutorial. And maybe she's right, maybe most of us in our busy lives just tend to look quickly at pretty things, and dash off an "OMG, I loved this!" when we do, just before logging off to go do something else.

But I just thought I'd put it out there that I actually do enjoy reading about people's processes, or explorations of one another's work, like the discussion millylicious has here about the new Firefly vid by bradcpu and laurashapiro. I like reading people's fic commentaries too, but I suppose there are a number of things holding people back from having such discussions. ( Read more... )

Contrasted to the news that September 22 will be One Web Day is this report from USA Today that half of U.S. adults polled don't use social networks and 70% didn't know enough about Twitter to have an opinion.

On the one hand, sure this could lead to helpful uses but does anyone else find this alarming?: "U.S. researchers said on Thursday they have found a way to make large-scale flexible display screens that can be stretched to fit the contours of a bus yet are transparent enough so riders can see out windows." Uh, I'm not worried about the riders, I'm worried about all the other drivers being distracted by an LED bus.
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I thought others would be interested in seeing the results of the top downloaded songs by decade. I rather wish, though, that they'd released this before Michael Jackson's death as I suspect the surge of song purchases have skewed the results. I don't even remember his "You're Not Alone" track.

It also fascinates me that there's not a single Beatles song on the list. On the one hand, so many people probably own the CDs and albums that there's not much reason to download tracks. Plus there's so many Beatles hits that maybe they cancel one another out, in a way. But the same could be said of the Rolling Stones. Hmmm.

I quite liked Journey in its heyday, and they were widely popular so it doesn't surprise me they have a song on this list, but I'm not sure I would have guessed it was this one. ( Read more... )

I quite enjoyed reading this examination of the original Buffy film, which looks at, among other things, the meanings invested in the original screenplay vs. the finished film. And given the recent presentation on genre at Writercon I found this part particularly interesting: "The relevant question is not "what genre is it 'really'?" but "to which familial genres does the film belong?" and "what cogent argument can be made when viewing the film as a member of a particular genre family?""

I've also been enjoying Leverage. ( Tiny spoilers for aired eps )

Has anyone been watching Dark Blue? I wasn't all that taken with the first episode, but I like Nikki Aycox. I didn't think she had much to do in the pilot. Has that changed?

Scarlettgirl moderated the community panel on Saturday morning, and the panelists each had a particular area to discuss. They were Kristina Busse (OTW), Versaphile (Archiving) Kalichan (Reccing communities), Shaddyr (Pre-Internet bandfic communities) and Scarlettgirl (Newsletters).
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Although I'm not a particular h/c reader myself, I knew that if Shadowscast had been able to go this year, she would have been at this panel. So these notes are for you!
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On Saturday afternoon, Kristina Busse did a presentation from a paper she had written on Affect and the Individual Fan: The Role of Genre and Tropes in Writer Creativity and Reader Engagement.

Busse started out saying that what makes us write is the love, the affect, and she had started with a 40 page paper that discussed it but most of it got cut out of the presentation, so she was left with 18 pages on genre She started with a quote from Charles McGrawth of the NY Times about how people look for the predictability of a formula. It’s what contributes to the quick and voluminous reading of genre works. Busse argues that both difference and repetition appeals to us, but that scholars are often focusing on difference rather than the uses of repetition. Genre is important because it creates a reader-writer contract, allowing us to expect certain events. Genre includes intended effect, formal criteria, subject matter and historical subject. It gives us a framework.
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Jinjurly began the panel by discussing how podfic is not as new as it seems, but that there is a lot of experimenting going on right now. Because she’s archiving podfic she feels a certain freedom, herself, in doing different things. Currently the archive’s shortest fic is 32 seconds and the longest one is an AU Due South hockey fic which is over twenty-six hours. There was a brief discussion about the difference in listening to something “cold” versus knowing a story, perhaps quite well, before listening to the audio version, and how it can be difficult to listen to very long fics.
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I'll be making some posts about our trip and Writercon panels as time permits over the next few days. This first is from today's morning session. ( Read more... )

Did anyone else get excited about DW's new search function only to deflate a few moments later when you realized it only allowed you to search on a blog by blog basis instead of site wide?

I thought this post on what the purpose of romances is was an interesting conversational salvo. ( Read more... )

Went out to a play last Friday which was the first time I'd been to a live performance in ages. It was a really small, courtyard production of Bleacher Bums, which I figured Mike would like for the baseball setting. One of the entertaining aspects was seeing various people involved with our local public radio station in the cast. And speaking of familiar voices, I was also surprised to see a familiar name in the Playbill as one of the original cast/creators, Keith Szarabajka. I swear everyone is 2 degrees from Joss.

Does anyone know if the LJ tracking feature (something LJ seems to call subscription notification) has always been an LJ feature, or if not when it was instituted?

I tried searching the FAQ but it just shows the most recent update for the entry, which is no help. I also tried LJ Seek but no joy there either. (Although it did make apparent how many spam accounts LJ has now since they made up 95% of the search results.) I was hoping to come across some posts discussing it.

ETA: Found!

I took a look at Participate: The Revolution of Fan Culture (which made me wish that, as in most cases where "revolution" is used, people used the more appropriate "evolution.") About 16 minutes in, it discusses fanfic and references LJ. However it gives only a passing nod to the vast amount of participation in places such as FFN and LJ, to focus instead on fan films and the fans who have become part of the entertainment industry (all the interviews are with people who make a living or make money from fans). This odd skew was perhaps most apparent in one interview segment where Lucas is referenced as the fanboy who changed things by being a geek and making a geek film. I thought an even better argument for Lucas being a fan and a revolutionary was what Lucas did for the technical side of filmmaking, not to mention the financial side by demonstrating the incredible empire-building power of merchandising. What troubled me is how "Participate" skewed the definition of fan, and also suggested that the "revolution" in question was in fact the commercialization of fandom.
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Fan fiction has finally made it into the dictionary. I think that's still more evidence for my earlier post declaring 2009 as the year in which it's become recognized by the culture at large.

With shows on hiatus we've been watching more movies lately, which has included Slumdog Millionaire and The Other Boleyn Girl (which I liked, but which seems to have cut out a lot from the story). We also watched Marley and Me, which was better than I expected but which I still didn't like. ( Read more... )

Some other movies we've seen were rather fannish. The obvious one was Lost in Austen, which we could rename as Mary Sue Steps Through the Mirror. I found it disappointing. I thought the movie was on the right track in the bits where she discovered that her imagining of Pride and Prejudice was far too rosy. But there wasn't enough of this, and most of the entertaining bits in the film were Austen's own lines. I don't know if I would have enjoyed the movie more or less if I were a big Austen fan. (I've seen a few productions of her books and enjoyed them, but have never read her myself). I mean, if I'd been watching a movie like this about Buffy, I think it could have gotten on my nerves pretty quickly.

Lars and the Real Girl, on the other hand, was not a fannish film in any explicit way. However, I got that vibe from it. I wasn't sure what to expect, I thought maybe a quirky film about a protagonist with mental illness. But it was surprisingly funny and surprisingly meaningful. I would definitely recommend it. And I think it struck me as fannish for two reasons. First, it was as much a fantasy as Austen, in that I could never see things playing out this way in real life. This story was a fairy tale that centered on the power of imagination, the goodness of human nature, and, of course, a happy ending. But the extreme social awkwardness of the hero and heroine, and the use of the doll as a transitional object, reminded me of aca-fans who have also used Winnicott's work to describe fan objects. (The fact that in the film, an actual stuffed toy makes an appearance, which is paralleled with someone's action figures, suggests to me that the transitional object idea was intentional).

I was curious if other people have seen movies that struck them as fannish even if, unlike Lost in Austen, they didn't seem to be explicitly designed that way?

This post by Nielsen on where people were searching for Iran election coverage is rather interesting. Where they looked depended on what related term they used. The mix of sources continues to show priority of official sources but also reveals the importance of unofficial sources. Of course, as Stephen Colbert's brilliant segment on Jeff Goldblum reacting to news of his own demise points out, the gap between unofficial and official news is pretty tenuous these days.

This article which suggests Jeff Bezos is the Steve Jobs of the book world posed an interesting scenario.( Read more... )

Speaking of publishers, this post about university presses and their differing nature from commercial presses had some interesting discussion:

"Moreover, university presses are in the unusual position that their authors and their readers are interchangeable and share a professional community, a community that has strong opinions about the print/digital transition, and, in the aggregate, exerts considerable influence on university policy. Though the press may have strong financial, logistical, and institutional incentives to go digital, if a significant segment of their academic authors/readers insist on printed books while shunning the digital product, the transition is bound to be troubled."
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This news about the spread of institutional repositories struck me as a real contrast to the other recent news about Elsevier and Merck. It seems to me that institutional repositories for academic work are a much better alternative, both for preservation and access, than commercial publishing today. What I also wonder is if they wouldn't be a more legitimate source of material than for-profit publishers who don't seem to offer any great benefit compared to non-profit outlets. (Just as an aside, take a look at the tactics Merck is employing during the court case that inadvertently revealed the campaign Elsevier helped Merck produce.)

Of course, libraries have long been under a terrible crunch from the escalating cost of periodicals, so open source publications are simply a must in the future. But just as there is current discussion about the necessity for print journalism, and what its unique and important qualities are, it seems to me the same discussion needs to be going on about academic publishing. One difference, of course, is that news is a prized commodity to the recipients but spread in many ways, of which print is only one. But academic publishing is a must for the producer for indirect reasons that have less to do with distribution than prestige. It seems to me in the discussions I'm reading, that the people most objecting to the loss of print journalism are …print journalists. And while I can understand the upset over the loss of a steady paycheck versus the job insecurity of freelancing (this article pointed out how people make more money in larger corporations than small businesses) this doesn't really tell us anything about the value of the end product based on its form of production. It seems to me that rushed deadlines and competitive urges are as likely to skew news reporting as the lack of resources hampering independent journalists. And then there's the motivation factor. In the same program that discussed how local bloggers had already been covering news neglected by Seattle's two daily newspapers, was the story of how the NY Times may have had a major lead on Watergate before anyone else, but did nothing about it. As a commenter pointed out " Media scholars have long observed that because the Post's reporters weren't part of the sometimes cozy relationships between reporters and officials, they were better able to follow the story. The administration wasn't going to provide the everyday leaks and "background" briefings that so much Washington journalism depends on to this day."

All of which is to say, can institutional repositories provide not just better access and lower costs for academic publications, but perhaps provide other benefits in terms of the quality and reliability of research? In what ways are for-profit publishers needed?

A little over a year ago I took a look at IJ's popular interests page and thought it made an interesting comparison to LJ's given that IJ's population was largely fannish whereas LJ's was not. I thought I'd do the same comparison with Dreamwidth and LJ now that it's been about a month since open beta began and many people who intend to use their accounts have set them up.

The most popular interests on DW are perhaps not surprisingly, writing. and reading with music coming in fourth. On LJ music is first, followed by movies, then reading, and fourth writing. Writing is listed by only 45% as many as list music on LJ though, so even though these three interests are all at the top on both sites, the number of people claiming them show some big differences. On LJ, the fifth biggest interest is friends. On DW movies come in at 15 and friends comes in pretty far down the list, well after fandom, tea, video games, feminism, the beatles, sci-fi, literature, travel and comics. All of those interests, though, do show up on LJ's top list as well, albeit in different places.
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My inbox presented me with a hit on the term fan fiction which went in a direction I definitely didn't expect. With a headline such as My favourite television show has the most disturbing fans (and with the fandom being for Law and Order: SVU), I rather expected a complaint about how the fan fiction delved deep into the storylines that others have already noted are thinly veiled voyeurism. But no, surprise! It's the fact that fans are writing romantic stories about the leads that has her hyperventilating, not the incessant tales of rape, pedophilia, and exploitation.

And that reminded me of this article on the Huffington Post, which notes that many people find romance threatening. "Perhaps it's because romance, love and sex are among our most potent avenues for self-knowledge, self-expression, self-liberation, and societal liberation. Done right, these activities erode barriers and boundaries, both within us and between ourselves and others, and therefore pose a direct threat to the fear-based, control-obsessed "strict father" model that cognitive linguist George Lakoff, in his best-selling Don't Think of an Elephant!, says lies at the heart of conservative thinking:"

And while as this recent post made clear, fan fiction writers aren't immune to stereotyping characters either, at least they're working towards the goal of one conference speaker: "What we need to eroticize is the pursuit of equality."

Two stories caught my eye recently, one discussing how MySpace is declining while Facebook use continues to increase. My knee-jerk reaction to the MySpace story was that its users had always skewed young, and were now either using Facebook because it's so ubiquitous on college campuses, or simply wanted to try something new. And while most people are online to at least some degree, it strikes me that college-educated young people are still its heaviest users. I also wondered if Facebook is simply easier to use from mobile phones? Given how visually unfriendly I've always found MySpace on a computer, I have a hard time imagining it's all that phone suitable. I also suspect that whatever the application which demands the least time and commitment is going to get the greatest buy-in, at least in the short term for high volume use. Also important is that MySpace is going to lose a good chunk of revenue from Google soon. How will MySpace monetize itself, especially if use continues to decline?

Another article involved the growth of on-demand publishing. I thought it was interesting to see that on-demand book titles have now outstripped traditionally published titles. Given our current economic climate it hardly seems surprising that bookstores would want to cut down on inventory, and publishers would be acquiring fewer titles. Also not surprising is that many think eBooks are an area of future development, since its sales avoid the problems and costs of distribution associated with print. I do think the whole question of a standalone device for reading is still up in the air. Personally I think the Kindle will only ever be a niche product, but that may depend on how many services get bundled into it. I know of one person who wanted to get one solely for the built-in, low-cost WiFi which has apparently been boosting Sprint's numbers. But it seems like development may be going in the opposite direction as well.

I've mentioned in my personal blog that I think 2009 is the year when fan fiction has become, if not a mainstream pastime, at least a term understood by many in the media and requiring less explanation in the press. What interests me though, is how this term is being re-interpreted by a wider audience to become, less about actual fan fiction, than about what the speaker sees as related issues. In some cases we may agree with them, in others, the usage seems a little nebulous.

For example, this blurb in the L.A. Times discusses trailer vids as part of the "fan fiction universe." While I personally feel trailer vids aren't nearly as similar to fanfic as, say, AU vids, or commentary vids that do interesting things with POV, I would agree with the title which slots creative fan work in visual form along with its written form. In a similar vein, Jon Stewart's use of the term to describe FOX news' creative reinterpretation of facts, grasps the spirit of fanfic (even though I doubt much political fanfic has actually tread that particular ground).

On the other hand, this post about the accurate imagineering of a car seems to be using the title to describe creative speculation. While this certainly describes some forms of fanfic, it's a bit of a stretch to apply it to car design specifically. More importantly, while fanfic is certainly speculative, this seems to put a certain emphasis on anticipating canon which seems to be very typically male to me – as if the purpose of fic is to guess (correctly) where canon will go and "winning" if one guesses right.

Whereas it seems to me that most fanfic I read seems to take a very different POV about canon, in exploring areas it's not expected to go, or reworking areas where it's been. Whether with characters or storylines, the fanfic focuses on reopening doors that have been closed off, or blazes new trails, sometimes ones where the creators were unable or unwilling to go.

All of which is to say, in what ways do we see the wider media grasping the elements of fan fiction in its more traditional sense, and where is it being broadened or applied in rather different ways?

When reporting on Dollhouse's renewal, Maureen Ryan asked Could the tyranny of the Nielsen overnight ratings be over?. From what I can tell, at least that method has some accuracy. After participating in their sweeps week diary surveys, I'm really appalled that so many people's jobs depend on this sort of information gathering. ( Read more... )

A classmate passed on a link to the Chronicle of Higher Education's brief write-up of a study done by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He ran an experiment with his latest academic book comparing the peer review provided to his book on a public blog compared to the peer review commissioned by his publisher. His results were, I thought, unsurprising (although good to have some evidence for). "Blog commenters tended to focus on discrete paragraphs and points, and rarely compared ideas in one chapter to those later in the work. But the blog readers offered more detailed input than the anonymous reviewers solicited by the press."
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