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News — 1 Comment
24
Jun 10

Petaluma’s Big Box related lawsuits sedated

Congratulations Petaluma, your next soulless big-box shopping center strip mall is once again on track to dominating one of the most valuable pieces of land the city has to offer. While that may sound particularly negative and uninspired, it should. There is no way in hell the potential for the geographical center of Petaluma is going to be met by this shopping center in any form. This land could have synergized the East and West sides of town. Could have increased tourism by boosting individuality. And could have encouraged urban innovation in future projects.

But at least we’re getting something more modern. The original and previously envisioned designs were even less inspiring. Some essentially called it a 1970s architectural abomination requiring travel by car exclusively which, among others, alienates key concepts from the city’s General Plan.

This is precisely the platform the Petaluma community coalition (PCC) folks are standing on with the lawsuit and appeal filed against the city for Regency’s East Washington Place. It created a sort’ve trifecta of inaction with the City, PCC and Regency occupying corners and preventing ground-breaking of the project.

The latest is a deal involving all three that meets some each’s criteria requested; I imagine it as a precarious compromise at best. First off, Regency will drop their “unjustly delays” lawsuit and pay for the city’s legal fees required to defend itself against the suit. PCC has also agreed to drop their lawsuit contingent upon a few design changes.
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News — No Comments
28
Apr 10

Beware CA GOP Governor hopeful, Steve Poizner

Never have I heard such a blatant recount of a politician so out of touch with the common American. His book, entitled “Mount Pleasant” about his one-month teaching stint at an average middle-class public high school in San Jose, is full of exaggerations and misconceptions.

The latest episode of This American Life takes an act to investigate the book’s colorful descriptions and quite effectively establishes solid facts contrary to billionare Mr. Poizner’s published perspective. When confronted about the lies, including city & police statistics as well as quotations from those he worked with at the school, Poizner blindly sticks to his own account. He places blame on unmotivated kids and an imaginative neighborhood full of crime.

The only hopeful moment comes near the end of the TAL act in which Ira interviews the school teacher who oversaw Mr. Poizner’s class. This teacher says that inspite of Poizner’s inaccurate interpretation of the setting, he seemed to genuinely care about the kids future.

Even so, Steve’s unwillingness to concede even the slightest admittance that he may have gotten it wrong, is a frightening reflection of his inability to produce objective judgement. His narcissism is so thick it’s suffocating. He squirms and flakes off in his answers to Ira’s straight – are you sure you got it right – questions.

A person unable to concede mistakes and misuse facts to self-serving ends (to get elected) is not someone we want heading our State.

Internet Technology / News — No Comments
12
Apr 10

How to win at the “platform” game

A contemporary story brought to you by Twitter… who arguably, would have never risen to its present great heights in popularity, and thereby valuation, if not for the labors of its creative users… and now, we shall see their true colors…

“…Twitter investor Fred Wilson speculated that Twitter would edge out third-party developers whose add-ons for the microblogging service merely filled feature holes that the company ought to have built itself. Then Twitter, which previously hadn’t developed its own mobile apps, bought Tweetie, a popular Twitter service for the iPhone, and released its own BlackBerry app.”

With apparent lack of long term reputation strategy, their latest purchase is not well timed as ”…these announcements came right before Twitter’s big developer conference, Chirp, which opens in San Francisco tomorrow.”

Twitter also purchased Summize nearly two years ago to fill the former void of search.

And the lesson to gleamed from Twitter’s totally tubular tale is… ”The real reason to build a platform is to boost your company’s valuation. An open application programming interface lets third-party developers donate their labor and ideas to the cause of enriching your investors. And through their creativity, investors get inspired about the potential to make money.”

The moral of the story is: be the foundation (platform), not the pretty structure that sits above it. Because if you’re a company building off of some other company’s platform, being bought out is the only way to achieve a big pay day. Good luck with that.

Quotes from VentureBeat’s “How Twitter won the platform gamble“.

Also worth noting, as another prime example, Apple’s App-store.

News — No Comments
5
Feb 10

iPad to raise the cost of eBooks

With all the hype, leverage potential and uber proprietary platform, why wouldn’t publishers jump ship to Apple?  It’s a rather sad state of capitalistic greed, out to scrooge the consumer.  Isn’t more competition suppose to reduce prices? Seemingly not, what with a third [large] publisher set to switch from camp Kindle (Amazon) to iPad (Apple).

ipad_vs_kindle

Apple’s infamous stance on DRM makes the move seem sadly inevitable, as it stacks up as another reason why they begin to hold a majority of publishers favor.  Amazon on the other hand, is renowned to fight for DRM-free low cost content – check out their awesome mp3 store for example – thusly taking the side of the consumer.  While Apple’s stores oft take to exploiting its platform popularity to permit for higher cost content and superfluous copyright protection.

Furthermore since dinosaurs still roam the free market, their influence is impossible to outright ignore.

“We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99 . . . We think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books . . .And now Amazon is willing to sit down with us again and renegotiate.”

Ahh Rupert, Mr. Murdoch you stay classy, what with your intense inability to expand beyond your traditional business models.   Paid web content?  Not going to happen, at least not the way you invision.   But, I digress.

A lower priced product makes perfect economical sense, lower the cost to the consumer and you’ll sell more.  Raise prices, sell less, profit less.  Amazon already takes a loss at the current price point of $10 for new book releases.  I imagine this is in effort to promote their own platform’s (i.e. Kindle) vitality.

And that’s ok, because they understand the economic balance. So, this means either publishers are simply getting greedier, as the cost to produce an eBook is about as close to $0 as it gets.  Or Amazon is expected to make up for the cost of producing a hardcover book that is predominantely sold at retail stores that are far & wide going out of business.

News — 1 Comment
29
Jan 10

The Last Story’s not so subtle similarities

the last story logo

The Last Story is a new RPG for the Wii by Mistwalker studio, which is headed by the very fellow who created the Final Fantasy series, Hironobu Sakaguchi.  So let’s take a cursory look at the new game:

Last = Final.  Story ≈ Fantasy. Any monkey with a thesaurus could come up with that. And as you can see, the logos are also rather similar, almost formulaic.

final_fantasy_vii_logo
ff10-logo

Additionally, rumor has it that the famous Nobuo Uematsu, who composed so many Final Fantasy games – including FFVI & the amazing Dancing Mad piece - is composing the soundtrack.  This comes as no surprise however, as he’s worked with the studio on previous titles.

One such is Lost Odyssey for the XBOX360 and just so happens to be the game I am currently entrenched in.

Will Square-Enix (or squeenix) extend its muscley legal arm towards this potentially IP infringing new game (series)?

Computers / News — 3 Comments
27
Jan 10

Apple’s new shit, the iPad

Apple has officially become predictable and trite.  Their newest product was unveiled today, by the big Apple ego, Jobs.  It is a super-sized iPhone/iPod.

big iPod

big iPod

It can’t play Flash, is tied to Apple’s various stores, intended for AT&T’s network, can’t <acronym title=”Meaning: only one application may run at any one time”>multi-task</acronym>, and its design is utterly and completely devoid of originality.  It is a “giant” [~10"] iPod touch with 3G [certain models only].  Thankfully MadTV already made fun of the name, which also screams of routine.

I’d love to see this product flop, but I hold no such delusions.  Apple’s golden age is in full effect.  Their shit is gold to a vast array of much-disposable-income consumers.  It will sell and probably pretty well.  Fact is, there isn’t anything quite like it.

My biggest complaint is that there are zero surprises.  None of that unique innovation that got Apple where it is today, is evident in this “new” device.  Do not pass go, but somehow collect $200 million dollars.  We know you’ll find a way.

News — 2 Comments
17
Dec 09

Twitter hacked by “Iranian Cyber Army”

twitter_defaced

Why? Ideological objection to American pop-culture? Sanctioned by Iran officials? (Not likely, and certainly not officially.) Will first-world governments (US?) notice or care? Nah.

Even so, twitter has got a shitload of attention as of late. It’s a rarity to see any commercial/ad-spot that doesn’t divulge a corporate twitter addy at the end of it. This is exactly what happened with myspace when it hit the peak of it’s popularity.

Will twitter fade away into obscurity as myspace certainly has? Perhaps, though probably not. A big difference being that twitter has secured a lot of “biz-trade” deals. Meaning, twitter will stay relevant (longer than MyS) because it is being integrated into well-established structures such as the big Goog. Even if there is no major money exchange, twitter will remain above water.

The lack of a business plan and the fact that they subsist on VC (venture capital) may actually turn out to have been an advantage in acquiring these relationships. In a way, it is more attractive get involved with another business if they don’t really know what they’re doing yet whatever it is, they are popular. Less barriers to change more easy to meld…

But, I digress and do congratulate the “ICA” as Twitter was an excellent target. The only one better would probably be Facebook, but they most certainly have enterprize-grade security in full effect. Judging by Twitter’s track record in tech, I am not surprised. These folk seem like the popular kids, they look pretty and are pretty dumb.

Twitter is a great target to get the attention of young American’s and contemporary culture. Kids will be buzzing about it in school. Stars will notice. And whether we admit it or not, everyone wants to be popular w/the younglings.
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