norayoung.ca | At the Corner of Technology and Culture
Calendar Girl
The other day, I was going on and on at our podcastwww.foursevens.com/thesniffer about how sick to death I am of Web 2.0. Admittedly, here I am with my blog and my podcast complaining about the wankistry of so many of the ‘hot’ new web 2.0 sites, but the obsessive connecting and sharing seems tedious, pointless, [...]
A Real Pandora’s Box
I never thought I would like music recommendation software, but pandora is my new addictionwww.pandora.com
The Way of Oprah
I actually like Oprah, God help me, but this whole Frey business has got me thinking about authentic authorship and our North American naivete. Writers who blur the lines between memoir and fiction, or present a literary ‘discovery’ as something other than what it is, go back a long way indeed. (Just think of Ossian, [...]
Java Jive
Starbucks continues to extend its brand. As well as coffee, cds–including exclusive artist offers–and other accoutrements, the coffee chain has plans to start offering mp3 downloads of music. This follows up their news that they’re getting into the film promotion game.http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/01/12/starbucks-movies.html Is this a natural extension of the Starbucks ‘lifestyle brand’, the way that Japanese [...]
Googlopoly?
Very interesting article in today’s Guardian http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,16376,1580142,00.html on the future of Google, fastest growing company in history, apparently. I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the way the ‘real’ world and the online world have been merging. An obvious example is the way gaming culture is evolving into a live action/virtual hybrid. It’s also [...]
OK Long Tail is the New Black
Here’s a link to Chris Anderson’s blog about his evolving book project on The Long Tail. It’s what my friend Mary Anne would call, quoting I’m not sure who, ‘loose and baggy’, but it’s certainly thought-provoking. http://www.thelongtail.com Actually, the most interesting part is the subtitle “a public diary on the way to a book”. Will [...]
Long Tail The New Tipping Point
In the past week, I have come across the term “long tail” or “long tail business” a good half dozen times. I’d never heard of it before that. I sense a buzz word coming on. The ‘long tail’ now refers to businesses that are able to aggregate niche markets; wikipedia describes wikipedia itself as being [...]
Ouch Gauch!
Gauchos are back. Not the free-spirited and hard-working cowboys of the South American Pampas. The clothes. Not quite pants, not quite skorts. If this is my last post, I may safely be assumed to have hanged myself.
Tom Waits For No Man
Tom Waits, God love him, is suing a German ad agency and the German wing of General Motors for allegedly using a soundalike, according to cnn: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/15/tomwaits.gm.lawsuit.ap/index.html He cites his personal policy of not appearing in ads. You’d think the ad agency would remember that he already did this with Dentyne, and that, since they [...]
Visions, or Seeing Things.
I was a speaker at a conference on the weekend for winners of the Millennium Scholarships. 300 really, really smart young people. Holy impostor syndrome; I felt like a dolt. I stayed in a ’boutique hotel’, which was a little like living in a big Caban. Met the new North American bureau chief for New [...]
