Populuxe

Clone Wars

2008-08-14T06:49:00.000-07:00

How will it do this weekend? Could it open huge? Even a $20M opening
would be big for what is essentially the premiere of a TV show.

Lego Donkey Kong

2008-08-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks Gizmodo!

AlterEgo

2008-08-09T18:06:00.000-07:00

Night at Pixar

2008-08-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

Transitions

2008-08-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

In Apple's recent earnings call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that margins would suffer in the following quarter due to a product transition Apple would announce in September. Since then, everyone has been trying to figure out what the hell he meant.

Some of the speculation is that Apple is going back to PowerPC because they purchased PA Semi which specialized in embedded PowerPC applications. I am going to go out on a limb and say that is not going to happen. Apple just completed the Intel transition and that transition has been paying off in spades. Major corporations are starting to buy Macs because they can run both Windows and Mac OS X and many companies - including my own - are using Parallels as a workaround for the continuing lack of full support for Exchange on the Mac. But more than that, there's no problem on the Intel platform. Remember that Apple left PowerPC for a reason. They could not get new chips. They could not get lower power chips. That situation has only gotten worse and Motorola and IBM aren't even making the PowerPC chips Apple used to use. Going back to PowerPC so quickly would be crazy and capricious. Apple is getting everything they need from Intel and MacBook Air proves that. So this is just not happening.

The second bit of speculation is that Apple is moving to its own chipsets (northbridge and southbridge). I find this pretty likely. Buying the CPU from a company that spends billions a year to be the leader in that area is one thing, but chipsets are another. Chipsets have become commodity, thrown in for free in the processor price. If you use the same chipsets as everyone else, you have the same features as everyone else. And I could totally see Apple developing its own chipsets to stay unique and to improve in areas like power management where the current Intel chipsets do a pretty crap job.

Now Cringeley is saying that he thinks Apple is going to add H.264 hardware to all its computers that will allow it to compress a 1080p stream down to 2 Mbps. This is an interesting one because if it is possible, I am sure Apple will try to do it. Apple needs to differentiate itself from NetFlix and Amazon and Tivo and this may be it. I have an Apple TV. For the first year, I never used it. When they announced the 2.0 software, I tried the VOD feature and it took so long to download a movie, I gave up for a few months. Then recently I tried it again and it worked great. Even on my pokey DSL connection, it only takes about 2 minutes to be able to start your show and I have never really had it hang up after that. The quality looks terrific and frankly I don't care if its not HD. But if Apple could make the move to 1080p HD video with a broad selection of content, that would be a big deal, sort of.

The biggest problem with Apple TV is not the video quality, its the windowing and the rental window. 24 hours is just not long enough. By the time I get home, put the kids to bed, and can start watching TV, its 9 pm. If I rent a movie, I will probably fall asleep in the middle and so I need to pick it up the next day. But by the time I can do that, the video rental window has expired. Blockbuster and most disc rentals give you a couple of days to a week to watch your movie. And if you don't watch it in that time, you can hold on to the disc and pay a late fee. With Apple TV, the second your movie expires, it deletes it and you have start all over. So if you were half way though the movie, you have to download it all again and wait for the movie to get back to the part where you left off. Not a great experience. The other issue is the window. Apple TV rentals come out in the VOD window which is 30 days after the movie comes out on DVD. Movie studios do this to protect their DVD sales, although they allow Blockbuster and others to rent movies day-and-date with DVD sales, so you might ask yourself why VOD is treated any differently from my local Blockbuster. There are a lot of movies that I miss in theaters and I want to see them as soon as they come out on DVD. I can't get them on Apple TV yet, so guess what, I go to the grocery store and rent them from the DVD kiosk there. How exactly did the studio win on that one? In any case, its the studios that are holding Apple TV movie rentals back. As usual, the studios make extremely stifling decisions when it comes to new technology and it hobbles it to the point of uselessness.

Meanwhile, let me make my own prediction. Apple will introduce free-to-watch TV advertised content this Fall. The writing is on the wall really. ABC and others have served a lot more streams of TV content that Apple has of downloads. Ad-supported streaming is working and it only makes sense for Apple to be there too. After all, there is nothing that sells hardware like free software. But will Apple meet the industries demands? Apple will need to lock play controls during TV ads forcing users to watch the commercials. And they will have to track user behavior and report back what ads got watched. Will they do it? You bet your ass. If Apple can do ad-supported TV, it will be a bonanza for Apple TV and iPod/iPhone.

Let me finish my own off-the-wall prediction that not even I believe. What if Apple's big transition is not Mac related at all. What if its from iPod to iPhone. What if Apple is phasing out the Classic and the Touch and forcing people to buy an iPhone. What if Apple introduces a Nano phone for $100 and starts to do the same thing for Nano. That would impact margins in the short term. But like I said, I'm not so sure.

I think Apple's more likely move is to drop the touch wheel on the Nano and move it to the touch screen. The future of that platform is about apps. Apple has done almost all it can with video and audio. Touch and iPhone are still a small part of the user base. Nano is the lion's share of the users. If Apple can get Nano users using apps they will solidify themselves as the Microsoft of portable devices (as if they aren't already) and have a great position to upsell people to iPhones.

Journey's End

2008-08-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

TV Squad says of the Doctor Who finale:

"The latest season of Doctor Who gets resolved with a story that seems rushed, confusing and filled with self-love on the part of showrunner Russell T. Davies. But that doesn't necessarily mean it was bad."

I agree with the first sentence, but not necessarily with the second.

I will forever be grateful to Russell T Davies for bring back Doctor Who. I thought the first season was terrific and David Tennant has proven to be an equally great Doctor with many strong episodes, some of which are among the best Doctor Who stories ever. But...

As TV Squad always says, the man can't write science fiction. My continual pet peeve are the over-the-top confusing silly sensational season enders he insists on and with them this retarded insistence on killing off all the Daleks every season only to bring them back the next. Its just dumb. I hate it in superhero movies when they do this and I hate it here. Why is it necessary to kill all the Daleks? You know they are going to come back. What's the point? Its become a cliche with each new Dalek episode starting with "I thought you were destroyed!" Just let them get away as they did in the old days.

I for one cannot wait for Stephen Moffat to take over so we can be treated to his excellent writing and taste every week.

New Muppet Skits

2008-07-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

The Disney Blog posted these new Muppets skits. A new movie is on the way written by Jason Segel who wrote and starred in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Disney Blog says there is talk of a primetime TV show.

All I can say is its about time. The mishandling of the Muppets has been a tragedy. I think this notion of doing YouTube shorts is terrific and I hope they keep it up. Its a great way to keep these characters alive until a movie or TV show.

Honestly, I don't know how you screw the Muppets up. Just about everyone around the world knows Kermit the Frog and the gang. They should be as big as Mickey Mouse. And the performers who do these characters are incredibly funny. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon. Just put The Muppet Show back on TV. That formula worked. You had celebrities and Muppets doing funny stuff. In today's celebrity obsessed culture, I would think the formula would work even better. Put it in the earliest slot in primetime right after the celebrity gossip shows like Xtra which is a good lead-in and early enough in the evening for the whole family to watch.

I really hope Disney finally gets the Muppets right. Until then, we have this....

Calacanis says blogging is dead

2008-07-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

Jason Calacanis (founder Weblogs Inc) has quit blogging and is instead sending an e-mail newsletter to 1k friends. He says blogging is dead:

"Think: Nick Denton has reworked the bloggers pay at Gawker Media to reflect not the quality of the words but the number of page views those blog posts get. He doesn’t pay by word count, he pays by page views. He’s closed the loop between editorial and advertising, turning the Chinese wall into a block party. It’s the publishing promised land while simultaneously being the death of publishing. Gawker is growing page views while simultaneously destroying it’s brand equity. This will either result in an implosion, or the perfect id-driven magazine where our core desires are synchronized in relation to their marketability. It will be fun to watch, but I wouldn’t want to be one of those bloggers in the cage, running on the Denton’s wheel....

My good friend Xeni Jardin, who I had the pleasure of working/playing with for a couple of years in another life, faced massive assault from the audience she herself built at Boingboing.net. These folks were not attacking her because of what she did (she deleted some old posts for personal reasons), they were attacking her because they could. They were attacking her because open-media (i.e. blogging) has turned into an excuse for bad behavior. It’s outrageous to think that an audience would turn on the author they love and built up for years over something so trivial as deleting some posts....

Why should we all build our homes and give residence to the trolls under them? Comments on blogs inevitably implode, and we all accept it under the belief that “open is better!” Open is not better. Running a blog is like letting a virtuoso play for 90 minutes are Carnegie Hall, and then seconds after their performance you run to the back Alley and grab the most inebriated homeless person drag them on stage and ask them what they think of the performance they overheard in the Alley. They then take a piss on the stage and say “F-you” to the people who just had a wonderful experience for 90 or 92 minutes. That’s openness for you… my how far we’ve come! We’ve put the wisdom of the deranged on the same level as the wisdom of the wise."

Reich on the home lending debacle

2008-07-13T18:27:00.000-07:00

"Here we have another example of socialized capitalism. The executives of Fannie and Freddie have been among the best paid in all of corporate America. We're talking tens of millions a year in CEO pay alone. Fannie and Freddie are treated like giant investor-driven entities as long as they're healthy and their investors and executives are doing well. But when they start to go down the tubes they become public entities with public responsibilities, the rest of us have to bail them out.

The technical details of Midway Mania

2008-07-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Design News goes into extreme technical detail on how the Imagineers built the Toy Story Midway Mania attraction and all the innovations that they can up with in the process.

"Midway Mania’s overarching control system actually consists of three sub-systems, one each for the ride vehicles, the games, and show elements. Ethernet is the common thread tying everything together.

The ride controls, which govern the movement of the vehicles through the attraction, run on two kinds of industrial controllers. The central wayside controller, a Siemens 319 PLC, manages the vehicle flow through the attraction. “The wayside controller is the traffic cop,” Gerstner says. Each vehicle also has an onboard controller, a Siemens 315 PLC that handles programmed speed profiles, position data gathered from sensors, safety measures and diagnostics."

More after the jump...

Of Maes and Macs

2008-07-13T17:41:00.001-07:00

How the "Maes" and the "Macs" got their names. Very timely with the dissolution of IndyMac in my backyard.

Bourdain on Columbia

2008-07-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

"In a world where the bad guys seem to win with a relentless regularity, and where even the presumed good guys appear, usually, to be their own worst enemies, it's really gratifying to see things get so dramatically better somewhere--especially a place where at one time, it really and truly looked hopeless. It is inspiring, when you've gotten used to the notion that some problems probably won't ever be fixed in your lifetime, to see some of the very worst kind of seemingly insurmountable problems so quickly and effectively improve. When you see a real change in the conditions and in the human hearts of a place where just a few short years ago, one neighbor couldn't walk twenty yards over without risking death from another, where drug cartels recruited their murderous young footsoldiers by the hundreds, where even the police feared to tread--it makes one hopeful again--about the whole world....

It was against this backdrop of bubbly goodwill, that I watched Ingrid Betancourt and her fellow hostages freed from captivity a couple of weeks ago--in what appears to be yet another in a series of spectacular and effective strikes against the FARC, a particularly unlovely bunch of hardcore commie/narco-terrorist kidnapper/"guerillas" who've been getting knocked back on their heels in recent years.

On one hand, the government seems to be killing and capturing bad guys with skill and vigor. On the other hand, the local government in Medellin (for instance) has been improving transportation and social services for the working poor--and throwing an incredible FORTY percent of total budget at education. It looks and feels like a working combination."

Read the whole thing. Don't be fooled Bourdain puts on so much more than a travel show.

Boing Boing TV interviews Sid Mead

2008-07-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

The man behind Tron and Blade Runner's awesome designs speaks!

Tokyo Disneyland Hotel

2008-07-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

The Tokyo Disneyland Hotel has finally opened and The Disney Blog links to plentiful pics. I have to say, it is very beautiful, if not a little on the stuffy side. It looks easily like the highest end hotel to carry the Disney name. (Although the HK Disneyland Hotel is very nice.)

The Disney Blog goes a little too far in my opinion and postulates that Disney should shut down all the domestic budget and moderate price hotels to follow the example of OLC. A big part of Walt's vision was to make the parks accessible to everyone and by extension, that should hold true for the hotels. I think its great that Disney World has price options at all ends of the spectrum for families who want to visit there. I think we all have to remember that beyond the 1% of us who LOOOOVE Disney so much that we will pay any price for the highest end magical experience, that the bedrock of the brand - and yes the fan base - are average families with kids who simply can't afford Four Seasons prices for a family vacation for four or five. And the millions of people I am talking about here are not complaining about accommodations at Pop Century or any of the other affordable hotels. It is a major upgrade from the Orlando Holiday Inn and a thrill to be on property and have access to all the great things the resort has to offer.

What this line of thinking misses is that while the OLC has done a great job on its new high end hotel, the Disney Ambassador Hotel is very average. Having stayed there many times, I can tell you, the rooms are nothing special, nor is the bar, or the restaurant. Its very forgettable and that's also from the OLC. My point is, not every hotel on property can reasonably be the crown jewel. You need to serve a broader audience than that and even OLC knows that.

While I'm on the topic, I always chuckle a little bit about the sanctification of OLC. No doubt, they do a lot of great stuff, but there's a lot to complain about too. For starters, Tokyo Disneyland is too small and as a result eschews many of the rules of Imagineering that bloggers often complain about in DCA or Epcot. But there are also issues with Disney Sea. Disney is terrifically themed and the detail is amazing. At one level, it is the triumph of Imagineering everyone talks about....except, it has way too few attractions and many that it has are not worth writing home about. Journey to the Center of the Earth is a prime example. Its a long slow ride that is fairly boring with a nicely themed climax scene and about two seconds of thrill. Not really worth the wait except its original to that park and you can't ride it anywhere else, so at least it has that going for it. Raging Spirits is one of the least themed most-thinly veiled excuses for a Disney attraction on earth. Almost zero story here. It belongs in a Six Flags park. And most of the rest of the park is sorely lacking attractions with many lands having only a few attractions and a noticeable lack of either awesome E-tickets or memorable D-tickets. So yes, OLC has done a terrific job with theming, and you can call me old fashioned, but where are the rides? No kidding, I once did all the E-tickets in both Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea plus shopping in four hours. I would much rather take my family to the Magic Kingdom or to Animal Kingdom.

So back to the hotels, I would actually make The Disney Blog's point another way. I don't think the moderate and budget hotels are the problem. I think its the premium hotels that are the problem. It is totally ridiculous to pay top dollar price for the motel accommodations of some of Disney's premiere hotels. The lobbies are nice. The restaurants are nice. The pool is nice. But the rooms don't match it. If the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel displays anything, I think its that Disney can do a much better job in the premium hotels. Innovations like the alcove are terrific and need to find their way around the world.

Curious

2008-06-30T06:55:00.000-07:00

Wall-E opened at $62.5M this weekend and all the analysts seem to be talking about what a great number that is. That's $2.3M more than Kung Fu Panda so at that level, its a moral victory. Both were strong films in their own way and I predict both will have some longevity to them, although Wall-E will be seen as a masterpiece in 100 years and I'm not sure the same will be said of Kung Fu Panda.

But I digress...

Here is what is curious to me. Cars opened in 2006 at $60.1M and it was declared disappointing. It was held up by the press as an example of how Pixar was losing its magic and became cause to doubt the merit of the Disney*Pixar merger.

What gives? Is $2.5M really the difference?

Here's one difference. Cars had mediocre reviews. Wall-E has incredible reviews. There's some truth in those reviews. Cars was a great film that kids loved, but the middle of the movie was too long and slow. But I think Cars was also the victim of Pixar bashing. The media having heaped so much praise on Pixar was looking for them to fall on their faces, and when they didn't with Cars, the media kept with the narrative.

Another difference. Wall-E has the benefit of coming out after Cars and Ratatouille, the latter of which only opened at $47M, a still very respectable number. Wall-E breaks the alleged declining trend in Pixar films. (Although Ratatouille went on to be globally Pixar's #3 best grossing movie ever. But, come on, who really cares about the rest of the world, right?)

Someday Wall Street will realize that not every movie can open bigger than the previous one and that as long as Pixar continues to perform at a certain level, its all going to be okay. Because each film adds to the value of the vault. Classic films that people continue to care about don't go away. They become the corner stone for more things. If Pixar continues to create great classic stories, that means more great park attractions, more great consumer products, more great online world experience, more great video games, and on and on. And those things last a lot longer than the year of the movie. So it scales.

Predictably, DIS sits at the time of this post 13 cents down on the good news. When will the street ever learn?

The scoop on Snow Leopard

2008-06-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

Roughly Drafted explains Apple's new feature-less Snow Leopard. In short, its going to be fast. Apple is completely overhauling the OS under to hood to take advantage of GPUs and 64-bit. That will allow Apple to smoke Windows. But it will also ready the Mac, finally for Enterprise. The only big new feature not under the hood is Exchange support. Better get to work Microsoft.

Silence in the Library

2008-06-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Another coup from Stephen Moffat on Doctor Who last night. Silence in the Library is by far the best episode this season. Last season, he wrote Blink and before that The Empty Child and The Girl in the Fireplace. All are some of the best Doctor Who episodes of all time. There have been some really shitty episodes last season and this season and I am glad that Moffat will take over the show from Russell T Davies in 2010. I just don't want to wait that long.

Yahoo, I quit!

2008-06-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Everyone is quitting Yahoo these days. So someone has created this hilarious madlib that will help you tender your resignation...and it really sends it to Yahoo! My was titled "Get stuffed, ass hat!" Ha!

More Tokyo Toy Fair

2008-06-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

Tokyo Toy Fair

2008-06-21T07:18:00.001-07:00

The coolest new toys!

Oswald the Luck T-Shirt

2008-06-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

Disney has licensed Lucky Jeans to make an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit t-shirt. Get it? LUCKY Jeans. Oswald the LUCKY Rabbit. Its licensing genius! Me wants!

MAPOut

2008-06-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

According to the OC Register, Imagineering has made some big cuts in Manufacturing and Prototype Operations team (MAPO for short) and has cut many of its animatronics people. The article says that Disney plans to focus only on complex figures internally and outsource all the less complicated figures. I guess I can understand at a certain level. Is Disney's value add really in manufacturing? But its really sad to see people with decades of AA experience on the street. And all that experience can now work for Disney competitors. More than that, I had hoped we were past the point where Imagineering was cutting back. Surprised there hasn't been more discussion of this on the Disney blogs. Has it escaped their attention?

Lost Lands

2008-06-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

Blue Sky Disney has a good retrospective of Disney lands and parks that never saw the light of day. Dark Kingdom, the Disney Villain theme park, and DAK's Beastly Kingdom are my faves from the list. I think there still hope for a re-birth of Mineral King now that Disney is expanding beyond the berm a la Hawaii. Which reminds me, hey Honor, update us on the Hawaii project.

I'm removing my name from Emmy consideration

2008-06-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't blogged in a while, but I have had something big on my mind. After heavy consideration, I have decided to remove my name from Emmy consideration. Like Linday Lohan and Katherine Heigl, I do not feel I was given Emmy worthy material this year, and so I do not want to deprive others who had such material from winning, because after all, we all know, the academy would have given it to me, good material or not.

BTW, read this.

DIY Wall-E

2008-05-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of a fan who made their own Wall-E. Pretty good!