MainStreamMedia
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Mag+ digital magazine concept makes e-readers cower with envy (video!)
As the decade comes to a close, we're seeing a bevy of real and mythical devices bent on saving main stream media through the execution of a variety of proposed content partnerships. Unfortunately, it's still hard to imagine how all this will play out in reality. That's where slickly produced concepts can be of benefit. Like this one from the R&D wing of Bonnier, the publisher of Popular Science magazine among others. While the concept still treats electronic magazines as periodic issues, the interaction is entirely new and immersive compared to their printed forms. Interestingly enough, our future is ad free if the video (and not Google) is to be believed. Compelling stuff and a possible glimpse at our not too distant future.%Gallery-80485%
Dear Mainstream Media: Obama's new phone might not be a BlackBerry, might not be a phone, and he might not be getting it
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Obama_s_new_phone_isn_t_a_BlackBerry_might_not_be_a_phone'; This morning we've been barraged with tips alerting us to the news that President Obama has won his struggle to keep his (apparently deeply loved) BlackBerry -- a device which has historically been verboten in the White House due to security concerns. Unfortunately for the mainstream media outlets, a little conflation here and a little lack of fact-checking there does not a BlackBerry make. Just about everyone -- straight up to CNN and the AP -- are sourcing a post by Marc Ambinder in the Atlantic stating that Obama is "going to get his blackberry [sic]," though the actual news may be far different. Ambinder seems to be conflating two stories which he doesn't source at all, one saying that the NSA will jack-up Obama's BlackBerry with some kind of "super-encryption package," and the other stating that the President will get a Sectera Edge -- an NSA approved (but not issued) device we reported he might be getting last week. Here's the news in the exact (confusing) wording Ambinder uses:On Monday, a government agency that the Obama administration -- but that is probably the National Security Agency -- added to a standard blackberry a super-encryption package.... and Obama WILL be able to use it ... still for routine and personal messages.With few exceptions, government Blackberries aren't designed for encryption that protects messages above the "SECRET" status, so it's not clear whether Obama is getting something new and special. The exception: the Sectera Edge from General Dynamics, which allows for TOP SECRET voice conversations.The problem is that Ambinder (and the mainstream media) doesn't seem to know the difference between some NSA smartphone and an actual RIM BlackBerry... and there's a big difference. Of course, we won't tell MSM (or even solo bloggers) how to do their job, but we think there's some serious air-clearing called for here. We have yet to hear official word on what, if any, device Obama will be using in the White House, and recombining two separate pieces of information that may not be related (or fully understood) seems lazy at best, and dangerous at worst.Read - Obama Will Get His BlackberryRead - Obama 'to get spy-proof smartphone'Read - No decision on whether Obama will keep BlackBerryRead - Obama thinks he can keep his BlackBerry
Another man dies after three day gaming binge
CNN is reporting that it's happened again in China-- a man has died after a three-day gaming binge in a cyber cafe.So many things wrong with this story. First of all, how does someone sit in an internet cafe for three days without anyone else noticing? I'm sure that it must have been a huge, 24 hour, windowless warehouse type of place, with people coming and going all the time, but still, what business would allow people to basically live in their building?And then, of course, there's the gaming angle. Videogames and the Internet didn't kill this man, people, despite what CNN says:The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.Actually, I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure he died from exhaustion brought on by staying awake for too long. If he'd been playing ping pong for three days straight, he probably wouldn't have come out of it very well either.The article says they don't know what game he was playing, so this may not even be World of Warcraft. But while it is a very sad story, it's too bad CNN fell into the old lines of "omgz internets killed a man" instead of actually pointing out that this man made some very serious mistakes of his own.
Limbaugh: Don't scapegoat games for VT massacre
Despite the mainstream media's tendency to scapegoat video games as a cause of senseless violence, we should remember that not all mainstream talking heads feel the same way about our hobby.Take Rush Limbaugh, who on his radio show yesterday took calls theorizing on the motivation behind the recent Virgina Tech killings. One caller, Mark from Centreville, Va., tried to lay the blame at gaming's doorstep. "I will guarantee you, I'll bet my last dollar in my pocket, that this shooter will be found to have been a compulsive video gamer," he said.Rush was quick to jump in, pointing out that even if the shooter played games, "not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There's more to this than that." Limbaugh granted that playing games "may desensitize people, but it doesn't turn everybody into mass murderers."Limbaugh later went on to compare video game censorship to gun control. "How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns? If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this. You have here a sick individual, an evil individual who committed a random act. But if you want to start blaming the video games, this guy was this or that, well, then you've gotta maybe talk about banning them because that's the same tack that's taken with guns. You got one guy who used a gun, that's it."So remember, the next time you're griping about mainstream media coverage of games, that said coverage is not a monolithic force with only one point of view.[Thanks Jonathan]
USA Today calls out Sony: 'from top dog to underdog in record time'
USA Today, who purports to have the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, published a story today discussing Sony's fall from an almost monopolistic first place with the PlayStation 2 to less-than-stellar sales with the PlayStation 3.Drawing from the February NPD figures, writer Mike Snider places Sony in third place with 127,000 in PS3 unit sales, behind home consoles Xbox 360 (228,000) and Nintendo Wii (335,000). This is in addition to anecdotal evidence that the PlayStation 3 is easily available in stores while the Wii is still hard to find. Total Wii sales in the U.S. are estimated to 1.9 million while Sony has 1.1 million.Newsweek's N'Gai Croal chimes in on reasons for Sony's ranking, including price, software lineup and negative press. Of course, early runnings mean nothing long-term, and the PlayStation 3 could easily pick up steam following release of heavy-hitting games, PS Home and a possible price drop. Still, when you got one of the biggest newspapers giving less-than-complimentary status reports it can't be good for business.
Clueless man plays WoW, writes about it for the media
I think MBAzeroth is right, this has to be the most clueless, uninformed piece of junk journalism ever written about World of Warcraft. And I'm including the Australian video.You've gotta read this thing-- I don't think I could make up something so out of touch. And World of Warcraft is the granddaddy of online communities. On one hand, it's a sprawling, seamless fantasy, where you choose an avatar -- a rogue, fighter, Mage -- and go forth in this virtual world to hack, slash and maim your way to glory. On the other hand, it's supremely social. Players band together, chatting incessantly. They hook up for virtual drinks at the inn, share a slab of wild boar meat. They dance, they have picnics in the woods, they even share a bed on occasion. But do they love? That's exactly what I aimed to find out in my social experiment - without crossing that fine line into creepiness, of course. It goes without saying that the age range can be anywhere from 10 to 110 in the virtualverse. And gender identification is notoriously spotty. The idea is no more ambitious than to connect with someone in cyberspace. So I dress my online persona for success, a slick sorcerer in a long blue robe, flowing Magely locks, and, of course, nice shoes. Footwear, I'm told, proclaims the man. I name my avatar Prufrock -- and wade into Warcraft. There are dozens of people running around the entry point, the old stone abbey, and chatting and obviously getting adjusted to the control scheme. "Yay! I got my Voidwalker!" some warrior declares in the general chat window that runs along the bottom of the screen. He is, I assume, referring to some fancy piece of equipment earned in battle."Share a bed"? "Fighter"? And don't even get me started on the warrior/ voidwalker thing.MBAzeroth thinks he thinks it's a dating service (and not a hack and slash), and they might not be wrong. But the craziest thing is that this guy is supposed to be a videogames journalist. He's played with a PS3, for Thrall's sake! How can you possibly be a gamer, and yet so completely clueless about what WoW is?Of course, there is the possibility that he's trying to be funny. For someone that names their character after a T.S. Eliot poem (about a clueless loser--- oh, the irony), maybe this is what passes for a joke.
Wright rocks out with the mainstream media
Will Wright has had a very busy month thanks to his upcoming game, Spore. Everyone that saw the gameplay video from GDC '05 knew that the real highlight of this May's E3 would be Wright's presentation. Although his presentation at E3 didn't reveal too much that we didn't already know about Spore, the slightly more mainstream appeal of E3 has resulted in some well deserved coverage from the mainstream media. The positive endorsement by Robin "Sniper" Williams can't have hurt either.The two most notable examples of MSM picking up this story are featured in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and the BBC. The Beeb covered Spore and Wright from an angle of user generated content, comparing it to current and past titles that have popularized the concept (e.g. Second Life, The Sims and the popularity of mods like Counter-Strike). The quirky video interview with Wright that runs alongside the article also gives a good idea of how much Wright values user generated content (i.e. a lot). The WSJ picked up the story from a more general "profile of Wright" viewpoint, although it was displayed very prominently. If you picked up last Saturday's edition of the paper it's possibly the first article you would have seen, it being on the front page and all. One of the world's most recognizable and respected business publications profiling a game developer on the front page: they've finally wised up!Read - BBC video interview with WrightRead - Wall Street Journal Spore article
