Month: May 2017

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Let’s do this.

1. NETFLIX, THE BBC, AND THE FUTURE OF SCREENWRITING

Anthony Horowitz, for the Spectator, writes:

There have been two revolutions in television during my lifetime. The first happened in 1975 when Sony launched its Betamax video system — which allowed viewers to record shows and see them when they wanted. Of course, Betamax was found to be clunky and unreliable and it was soon replaced by VHS but, without realising it, the networks had lost control of their audience. No longer would we watch the films they wanted us to watch when they wanted us to watch them. Never again, as the technology spread, would the whole nation come together as one to find out what the newscasters had been up to on Morecambe and Wise.

He continues:

The second revolution has been even more profound — and it’s happening right now. It can be defined in one word: Netflix. Founded in 1997, Netflix is the world’s number one television and film subscription service, even if there are other companies — Hulu, Vimeo, Amazon — snapping at its heels. It has 75 million users worldwide and an annual revenue of between $7 billion and $8 billion. Think of the most talked-about programmes of the past year: Narcos, House of Cards, Stranger Things and, most recently, The Crown. All of them premiered on Netflix. As a result of a Netflix documentary, Making a Murderer, half a million people signed a petition to free its main subject, Steven Avery.

And in that single two-paragraph setup, Horowitz begins a slow yet precise of both how we are indeed in a new golden age of TV and of how the damage it might be doing to the greats of old.

A really good read.

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2. WHERE OIL RIGS GO TO DIE

When a drilling platform is scheduled for destruction, it must go on a thousand-mile final journey to the breaker’s yard. As one rig proved when it crashed on to the rocks of a remote Scottish island, this is always a risky business.

An excellent long read from The Guardian (Long Reads section, natch).

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3. THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EYE OF MELANIA TRUMP

This one’s a doozy.

We can all picture the gilded monstrosity of the Trump home from publicity photos (chandeliers, sad boy astride a stuffed lion, golden pillars), but it is a different place through Melania’s eyes. She takes photographs inside her house at weird, skewed angles. It is a strange effect when the half-obscured objects, chairs and ceilings, are all so golden. It looks like what a terrified little girl held captive in an ogre’s fairytale castle might see when she dares to sneak a peek through her fingers.

Melania Trump’s social media photos – treated as a body of work. What do they say about her, her surroundings, her eye?

@Kate8 is doing God’s work.

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4. WHAT FILM SHOULD YOU WATCH NEXT? 

In last week’s edition, I asked one simple question: what’s your favourite movie (and why)?

I won’t go into the whys, but the whats? They’re definitely worth sharing. If you’re stuck with not knowing what film to watch one night this week, give one of these a go (it comes recommended by a like-minded person).

Readers of FTOF say:

• The Godfather
• Love, Actually
• Some Like It Hot
• The Long Kiss Goodnight
• Taxi Driver
• All The President’s Men
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• Smokey and The Bandit
• The Princess Bride
• Dead Poets Society
• Pelle The Conqueror
• Changing Lanes

The good news is: I’ve seen about 95% of this list (hurrah for like-minded folk!) and there are others I’m yet to enjoy.

Brilliant.

Thanks y’all. I hope you enjoy.

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 5. GOODBYE MESSENGER

I have to admit, my mate Olly told me about this a good few months back but The Verge has written about it now so I feel like I should bring it to your attention (perhaps again? I may have covered it before).

In short: Facebook Messenger as we know it is a heinous piece of messaging software with ripped-off and barely-used Snapchat-esque features that take up too much screen space and frankly ruin the entire experience.

The good news is: there’s an app for that.

Welcome to Messenger Lite.

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1. A NIGHT IN ATLANTIC CITY

This one is if you’re stuck. Stuck with a problem, stuck with writer’s block, stuck with…something.

This, from Stray Bullets:

“I’m stuck. I’ve got a grab bag of tricks for getting unstuck. They don’t always work. Here’s one that helps sometimes, and I’m putting it here because I have a tendency to lose this whenever I need it most. It’s the script for “Arctic Radar” the tenth episode of the fourth season of The West Wing, written by Aaron Sorkin. One scene in particular. Here’s the set-up: Communications Director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) is stuck. In the sort of peppy, verbose meet-cute that Sorkin excels at, Toby swaps speech drafts with prospective speechwriter Will Bailey (Joshua Malina). There’s a lot more going on than that (and you can read the whole thing here), but here’s the bit that I’m particularly interested in…”

And you’ll have to go and read the rest yourself.

Point being: I read it before headed out on an evening with my friends; I needed a night in Atlantic City.

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2. WHO TARGETS YOU? 

Stephen Waddington, writing for The Drum:

“A group of activists called Who Targets Me? is calling on the Electoral Commission to apply the same level of transparency that [it] applies in other areas of political campaigning [against those on online].

“Traditionally, when you print a leaflet, there’s a physical copy that’s there for all to see. Online ads vanish without a trace, potentially making them a haven for the dark arts of politics. This project shines a much-needed light on the hidden side of electioneering,” said Dr Seth Thevoz, a political historian at Nuffield College, Oxford University.

Analysing the aggregated data will enable the Who Targets Me? project to determine which demographics are being targeted. It will seek to draw insights from the language that campaigners are using to influence voting behaviour.”

Whether you believe in any of the voting influence stories floating around the news cycle(s)or not, this is important work.

You can find out more at the ‘Who Targets Me?’ website. I’ve installed the Chrome extension. You should too.

Lots of links in the above section.
All of them worth clicking. 

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3. OUR MOTHERS AS WE NEVER SAW THEM

I haven’t seen any old photos of my mum when she was young for a very long time. Next time I visit, I’m going to ask to do just that.

All because of this excellent opinion piece, courtesy of the NYT.

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4. THIS ISN’T AI

In the same week that I heard a very popular ‘AI’ solution described as ‘an over-complicated spreadsheet’, here’s Terence Eden on excellent form writing about his (eventually successful) attempts at coding his first Alexa skill.

“I kinda thought that Amazon would hear “solar panels” and work out the rest of the query using fancy neural network magic. Nothing could be further from the truth. The developer has to manually code every single possible permutation of the phrase that they expect to hear.

This isn’t AI.

Voice interfaces are the command line. But you don’t get tab-to-complete.allow you to test your code by typing rather than speaking. I spent a frustrating 10 minutes trying to work out why my example code didn’t work. Want to know why? I was typing “favourite” rather than the American spelling. Big Data my shiny metal arse.”

That final sentence is probably the best thing I’ve read all week.

If you’re building an Amazon Alexa skill (or even if you just have a passing interest in what it takes to build your own voice interface) then Terence’s post is worth a look.

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5. PAY TO PLAY

This is super interesting.

• The paid-for players were found via UGC ‘service’ site, Fiverr.com. We’ve used Fiverr folk before (on client work at Ogilvy, would you believe – it was awesome) and it the wide variety of things you can pay people to do never ceases to amaze me. Not a bad way to make a quick buck.
• D’Anastasio also took the time to interview her part-time gaming employees(?!) and explores some of the wider issues that come with being a female gamer (read: guys).
• I play a game called Destiny (the full collection is dirt cheap at the moment, if you’ve not played it and the sequel is out in September so y’know, get on that) and you can actually pay people to do this kinda thing on that game. Although it’s never appealed to me, I wonder if this kind of thing is done (sometimes) just for the company of having someone to play with.

AND FINALLY, THE QUITE FRANKLY, AMAZING, CONFERENCE ‘ONE QUESTION’ IS BACK NEXT WEEK. SPEAKERS INCLUDE PIXAR, OBAMA’S WHITEHOUSE, MONZO, YOUGOV… AND SOME BLOKE FROM OGILVY. 

You should go. And stuff.

Also: follow @OneQuestionConf on Twitter.

Things of note for the week ending Friday May 5th, 2017.

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Shall we?

1. JAMES, WHAT PHONE SHOULD I GET? 

Now, I have to admit, I don’t get this question as often as I used to. Way back in the late noughties when yours truly used to be a big shot mobile blogger (HAHAAHAHAHA) I used to get it all the time. And that was fine. In fact, I welcomed it (the rationale being: there is NO REASON AT ALL for anyone to have a bad phone – like, NONE, at all – so if you didn’t know which one to get or worse, how to get it, then you could just ask an expert / me).

It got so bad/good that I genuinely used to have complete and total strangers call me up and say things like: ‘

‘Hi there, we don’t know each other but my friend Sarah said I could just call you and you’d give me mobile phone advice – is that OK?’

‘Yes, of course… what phone do you have?’ – etc etc.

I DIGRESS.

The reason why I’m writing about it this week is that I’ve had this question come up a few times over the past month or so and I figured I’d write it all down so you could refer back to it should it come up in conversation.

If I had to go out and buy a phone TODAY, I would go and take a serious look at the:

• Google Pixel (or XL)
• Samsung S8 (or S8+)
• Huawei P10 (or P9)

Reasoning as follows:

THE PIXEL is a gorgeous phone. I picked one up last year, on launch day, and still swear by it. Not only is it ‘pure’ Google Android but it also comes with free unlimited Google Photos storage for life (for anything uploaded and backed up from the phone). Oh and the camera is AMAZE.

THE SAMSUNG S8 is the newest kid on the block. I literally just played with one and the screen is INCREDIBLE. Sidenote: the man said S8 belonged to did tell me it was his second device already (the phone has been out A WEEK) as he dropped it once and the, admittedly ridiculously, shiny/massive screen smashed to smithereens. That said, if you’re a careful phone user, you should check it out.

THE HUAWEI P10/P9 I like to throw into the mix because I had a P9 on loan for a month or so last year (pre-Pixel, post-Sony-Z5) and it was a fantastic little phone. Dual-camera, Leica lens – it was the right form factor with a frankly brilliant camera to match. The P10 is its successor and for all intents and purposes is equally as good. But, with the P10 being out, the P9 is now a cheaper option. Meaning that if you’re running a slightly lower budget, a decent flagship phone should still be within your grasp.

It should be worth noting that many iPhone-owning friends of mine are making the jump to Android. This recent comparison shoot-out from The Verge (also including the LG G6) has this quote –

“What surprised me the most is how the iPhone now feels a generation behind. It was harder to see last year when we pit the iPhone 7 against the Pixel and the less capable S7. But the S8, along with the Pixel and the G6, illuminates the extent to which Apple has fallen behind.”

Sounds about right.

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2. OBLIQUE STRATEGIES

First published in 1975, Oblique strategies: Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas is a deck of 7-by-9cm printed cards in a black box.

Created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, each card offers a challenging constraint intended to help artists (particularly musicians) break creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking.

I bought a set a few years ago (not cheap) and I don’t actually know where are right now. Probably on a bookshelf somewhere. I really enjoyed using it (when I knew where it was – I may try and find it at some point) and I actually miss using it.

If you want to use it but don’t want to spend fifty notes on a little black box of potentially thought-provoking cards, then you’ll be pleased to know that some bright spark has put them all online.

Go give them a go and see how you get on.

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3. IP + HASHTAGS

This is one of those things that if you and I had spoken about it a good few years back, I probably would’ve laughed you out of the building. ‘Copyright you say? On a HASHTAG? Are you for real?!’ – but not today. Not anymore.

This article – ‘Protecting IP from bloggers and tweeters‘ – digs into some of the details of where and how we got here (eg: the Olympics has a lot to do with it). But also, some of the numbers here are incredible. The article states:

“Research by Thomson Reuters CompuMark showed that 1,398 applications were filed globally during 2015, up from seven in 2010.”

That’s a phenomenal increase.

If you work in branding or in/around social and digital – then this article is worth a look.

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4. IS ANYONE USING FACEBOOK STORIES?

This, from Mashable, is as great as it is unsurprising:

“Facebook is the world’s most successful social network — but it shows you an abject failure every time you open its app.

One month in, no one’s using “Stories,” the Snapchat clone that sits on top of your News Feed on the mobile app. Facebook wants this to be the place where you “show friends what you’re up to,” but it’s amounting to bupkis, a worthless void taking up a prime slice of the internet’s most important real estate.”

Every time you open the Facebook app on your phone, taking up a decent finger’s width near the top of the screen is your ‘Stories’ feature. People I know with THOUSANDS of ‘friends’ on Facebook literally stare at a bunch of greyed out faces on this list because literally, no one is using them.

Why? Well, maybe it’s because they’re a generational/demographic thing. Maybe it’s a platform thing (I mean, the Facebook-owned Instagram has more daily users of its Stories feature than Snapchat has users). But, whatever the reason, Facebook Stories just doesn’t seem to be taking off…

How long before we see it disappear?

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5. BLADERUNNER 2049

Oooo look! Two new posters for the incoming BLADERUNNER sequel.

Pretty.

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BONUSES THIS WEEK ARE AS FOLLOWS: 

I used to leave three or four bonuses in each week but I think from now on there may be a few more than that because why not. 

• Want to wear pyjamas to work? The suit onesie is for you.
• Tristan Harris is ‘The Binge Breaker’ – I think I’ve written about this guy before but he was at TED again recently and figured I’d link to his Atlantic piece again. Good reading. 
• Mark Kermode’s top 50 films. 
• British food explained for Americans. 
• Wait But Why’s latest with Elon Musk (seriously worth reading).
• There’s an ALIEN: COVENANT prologue kicking around that’s worth a look – it demonstrates the links to the Alien prequel, PROMETHEUS (so many plot holes) quite nicely. 

OH! AND ONE LAST ONE BEFORE WE GO TO PRESS!

I caught this on the train this morning. HAIM are slowly coming back with new music. Their latest track ‘RIGHT NOW’ has a fantastic video (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) and is worth YOUR TIME right now. 

And that’s me…

I’m out.

Thanks for reading, y’all. Hope you have a stellar weekend.

Much love,

JW x