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The perks of being 'somebody' online
The web was supposed to be the great equalizer. But, it turns out, the haves and have-nots exist online too. And they're separated by a mark of distinction: verification. A month ago, William Shatner got into an unfortunate public spat on Twitter with John Colucci, our social media manager, over why he was verified on Twitter. Shatner argued that recognition should only be given to public figures who are in danger of being impersonated. In Shatner's words, "nobodies should not be verified because it shows a huge flaw in the Twitter system." This spiraled into a big kerfuffle involving several other Twitter users. When our Editor-in-Chief Michael Gorman stepped in to defend Colucci by saying he was verified because he's good at his job, Shatner interpreted that as an abuse of the verification system. Things died down eventually, but Shatner held tight to his belief that verification is a privilege for a select few.
Peripheral Vision 014: Will Bates on how a viral William Shatner mashup helped kickstart a film scoring career
"When I was 6 years old," Will Bates begins, with a touch of nostalgia, "I sang the whole score of Star Wars to my parents. From then on, they figured out that I was going to go in this direction." We're sitting in a dimly lit studio at Fall on Your Sword's Williamsburg, Brooklyn office. And while the film and commercial scoring company certainly marks a fulfillment of the musician's childhood, John Williams-fueled dreams, such career paths are rarely so straightforward. "Fall on Your Sword began as a video art project and a band," says Bates. "It really became an umbrella for all of the different projects I found myself involved in: scoring movies, scoring commercials, short form stuff and viral videos. The idea of the company was to have a home for all of these different facets of music production and allow them to cross-pollinate." Fall on Your Sword, the band, garnered a fair bit of notice online when it began translating its live multimedia performances into web videos, going viral with remixes of celebrities like William Shatner and Michael Caine. "It's done us really well in the end, because, in terms of notoriety, that's how things really kicked off. The 'Shatner on the Mount' video went crazy. Suddenly I'm playing at science fiction conventions and film festivals. All the sudden we're starting to score commercials based on the fact that some creator fell in love with that video. "
Shatoetry iPhone app lets you put... words... in... William Shatner's... mouth
William Shatner and technology go way back, but it's taken him until today to get his own smartphone app. Then again, he is a man known to take long pauses. Dubbed Shatoetry, the new app (iPhone-only, for the moment) lets you string together a variety of pre-recorded words -- each with three different versions -- and have the resulting "Shatism" read aloud by Shatner himself. You're then able to send the message to your friends through all the usual means, or even take advantage of a co-op mode that lets you collaborate on a phrase. Of course, spoken word Shatner on-demand doesn't come free -- the app will set you back $2.99.
WoW Archivist: WoW's craziest TV ads
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Nefarian swallows a truck. Two women duke it out in a supermarket. A trio of singers shouts, "No means no!" Mr. T introduces a new race and Chuck Norris roundhouse-kicks a kodo. Those responsible for advertising World of Warcraft have hit on some crazy ideas. This week, Blizzard debuted its first TV ads for Mists of Pandaria. As I'm writing this, I've just watched them air live on Monday Night Football. That's a big-time slot for a commercial here in the States and runs a cool $325,000 per nationally televised spot. The ads feature clips from the official trailer. If only the Bengals had put up as much of a fight as that panda. But not all of WoW's commercials through the years have been quite so ... straightforward. Let's take a look!
William Shatner explains what microprocessors are and do... from way back in 1976
For a man that spent the best part of his acting career representing a savvy dude from the future, William Shatner looks pretty well at home in the past as well. This video, dusted off from AT&T's Tech Channel archives, shows Shatner dressed in a casual tan ensemble and dropping some knowledge on the subject of microprocessors. Aside from the retro visuals and presentation, what's great about the vid is that the seemingly lavish claims about where computers could take us -- and their own move toward increasing importance, utility and ubiquity -- actually seem pretty tame in light of what we know today. Beam yourself past the break to see this golden nugget from the Bell Labs archives. [Thanks, Dan]
Quark releases QuarkXPress 8
Love it or hate it (with the burning fire of a million angry suns), Quark yesterday released QuarkXPress 8, which features new tools for developing for the web, workspace enhancements, and refinements to tools to finally bring it into the 20th century. Steve Sande mentioned back in May that it was coming, and now it's finally here. Quark 8, the William Shatner of page layout software (old, bloated, sweaty, and desperate to stay relevant), allows you to create content for the web using HTML and Flash without writing any code. This has been a feature of Quark since QuarkImmedia and Quark Interactive Designer, but now appears to be fully rolled into QuarkXPress, to the abject horror of web designers everywhere. Also, a new feature: A measurements palette. That's right, it's 2008, and they're adding a measurements palette. Also: east-Asian language support and hanging punctuation. Wow. Well done, Quark. I've been using QuarkXPress since version 3, and having very briefly tried the new version, it's a little depressing to see them keep trying to reclaim their glory years. Small design shops, freelancers, and many printers have largely moved to InDesign for their page layout software. Yes, Quark 8 is light-years ahead of where they were, but still light-years behind where they need to be. Quark makes its money on giant-scale installations at newspapers and magazines, so we'll see how quickly their enterprise customers adopt this new version. My guess: not very, as many printers I've dealt with overseas, especially in Asia, are still using QuarkXPress 6. A 60-day trial is available, and is a whopping 517MB to download. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 and a G5 processor or higher. New licenses are $800, and upgrades are a scant $300. Discounts are available for education and non-profit customers, too.
Jennicide: Male players "need to be more accepting of women ingame"
Allakazaham has posted an interview with "Jennicide," who, as we reported previously, is not only a poker player and Playboy poser, but plays World of Warcraft as well. Unfortunately, she doesn't sound all that into the game (she does claim to have raided during a poker match, which is pretty awesome if true), but she does make an excellent point about Blizzard's marketing: as cool as William Shatner and Mr. T are, their ads could use a little more feminine touch, and they could certainly acknowledge all the women playing this game a little better.She also says that "guys need to be more accepting of women in game," and unfortunately she doesn't offer any solutions on how to make that happen, but it's good to hear someone say it -- just ask any girl who's been afraid to come on Ventrilo for fear that creepy guys will come out of the woodwork.All in all, Jennicide sounds like she's got a good head on her shoulders (and she does actually win a few nerd points for playing The Realm). Maybe she's right -- more high profile female players might help turn the image of gender in game a little more close to equal.
Welcome to "noob season"
I don't know if I quite buy this one, but it's an interesting idea: Jias says that this week begins a period of time in the World of Warcraft known as "noob season": all of the folks who found WoW under their tree, or decided to use their gift cards to try out "the Shatner game" are going to be rolling their first character over the next couple of weeks, and will probably have lots of questions and very little learned etiquette.Jias sees it as a bad thing (we have to deal with noobs), but I tend to go a little more toward Neth's side of the argument: it's a chance to be veterans of the game, and to help players who haven't seen all this stuff before figure it out. Just last night, I was leveling my Hunter and decided to join a PUG in Blackrock Depths out of the blue-- for some reason, only one of them had ever been in the instance before. But being an old hand, I led them through all the twists and turns down there, and we finished all the quests through the Attunement rock (The Lyceum gave us a little trouble, but it was late, so we called it).Will there be a few more players asking for gold or not quite clear that all tanks should be carrying a shield? Probably. But we should probably be as welcoming and patient with these folks as possible-- they'll be the same people listening on the LFG channel when you ask "LFM for Utgarde Keep."
WoW Insider Show Episode 13: Review of every patch from 1.2 to 2.3
Though we had a long list of news items from the past week to cover on Saturday's podcast, we threw it all out the window. Instead we honored WoW's 3rd Anniversary by covering every patch since launch. Relive three years of new content additions, class revamps and expansion mudflation with me, Krystalle Voecks and Turpster.This special podcast had to run an extra 30 minutes for a grand total of an hour and a half in order to get through all the patches!We also snuck in a quick discussion about the Shatner and Mr. T WoW commercials. Krystalle adds in her own Top 5 list of celebrities she feels should star in future WoW commercials and what race/class they should play. I don't think anyone disagreed with her number one pick (hint: not Chuck Norris.)If you missed the live podcast, you can now hear it stream on WoW Radio's site. Join us this Saturday for another live episode covering all the hot issues in our beloved World of Warcraft.
Mr. T and William Shatner ham it up for World of Warcraft commercials
There are two new commercials for World of Warcraft featuring Mr. T and William Shatner. Mr. T is a "mohawk" warrior and Shatner is a shaman. We have no idea why World of Warcraft needs to be advertised, but if it gives us gems like this -- we'll take 'em!Both ads can be found after the break and on the WoW site for download. There is also an ad with Verne Troyer (Mini Me) expected in the near future -- we're hoping for something less obvious than him being a gnome. Keep these types of ads coming Blizzard, we know you've got the money.[Thanks Steve, Via Massively]
