Ths interesting history of the term “flash mob” struck me as funny because one of the first ones we had within UO looked just like the engraving: a bunch of players showed up and mooned Lord British as a form of protest.
The city where it happened? Moonglow, of course.
IV.
Tiger-Shape
I hear the ancient creaking of trees too mighty
to support themselves tonight, the tired cackling
of monkeys, like men grown too old to understand
the world, or to stop pretending that they had, once.
This article on how TV execs want to stop you from skipping commercials is a great example of misunderstanding customers.
Mike Shaw of ABC says,
“I’m not so sure that the whole issue really is one of commercial avoidance. It really is a matter of convenience–so you don’t miss your favorite show…People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can’t skip commercials.”
I’ve told the story of the ukulele I inherited from my grandfather. But I only briefly mentioned the banjo and electric guitar that I inherited from my father-in-law.
The guitar wasn’t in terrible shape — a bit of elbow grease and she came right back to life. I’ll post something about that instrument later. Today, though, my mother-in-law called and wondered about the banjo. It was in terrible condition: when I found it in the basement, the case (once chip cardboard) was mostly green with mold, and lfiting it resulted in the banjo falling out of the bottom. The head was a cheap Weather King plastic head, and had been ripped. There was a random rusty screw embedded in the fretboard by the fifth string — maybe as a poor man’s capo, who knows. The strings were rusted clean through, and had been on it the whole time in storage, which didn’t bode well for the neck.
All in all, a sad case. Most of my father-in-law’s instruments were low end ones when originally purchased, and only accrued value because of their age. So we didn’t know whether it made sense to fix the banjo up given the likely cost.
Then I went on the net to see what I could learn…
Another entrant into the social online space sweepstakes: NightLife Interactive Gaming, yet another club-themed space, aimed primarily at women. (The old club-operation adage: “get the women in the door, and the men will follow.”) The thing that caught my eye about this one, however, was their overall approach:
And as you might guess–with a game being developed by a marketing firm–there’s another objective, at least for the game’s makers. In Touch has filed a patent application for a form of “seamless,” in-game product placement that lets players click on items and receive an e-mail from the advertiser, with no interruption in the game.
