3D provides depth to the bottom line, for now

Originally posted on the Berkeley DMEC blog page.

The movie industry is experience some better times with box offices revenues already running 8.8% ahead of 2009 figures (itself a $10B year). A huge driver has been the versioning for 3D and IMAX for tent-pole movies.  Increased traffic for 3D coupled with significant price increases (reported as much as a 26% bump) have continued to feed the hype.  This has been some positive news in terms as revenue as studios expect a 12% drop in DVD sales.

The question is how marginal traffic will making a 3D movie bring in?

With How to Train Your Dragon opening at 27% lower than Dreamwork’s Monster Vs. Aliens may indicate that new features like 3D may not necessarily trump good ole word of mouth. Indeed, the willingness to pay for a superior 3D experience for the family may not be enough to cover the $40-$60 required to take a family to the movies.

To convert a 3D movie, it takes studios an estimated $30 M, will the ROI remain? Wish three more 3D movies coming down this season’s pipeline, 3D may fast becoming the new normal.

Crowd-Sourced Mapping [Bing]

I've been a fan of Photosynth since I first heard of it during a TED presentation. While traveling to Jordan, I made a synth of El-Dier Monastery in Petra (Transformer 2). With geotagging, this will help to create a visually stunning and detailed user experience.

To compete with Google Maps, Microsoft has laced photosynth technology to create Bing Maps. Competition is always good. Both Google and Microsoft have been making incredible improvements to their mapping technology.

You can read more about it at Fastcompany.

Convert Evolution [iPhone App Design]

Tap tap tap has a short video taking us through their design iteration process. It's amazing the number of little tweaks that result in a highly consumable product.  When thinking about your processes, how often do you tweak them? How often do you iterate?



Convert Design Evolution from tap tap tap on Vimeo.

More info about Convert is at taptaptap.com/convert

Twitter 101

I've been playing around with twitter the past couple months, but haven't been able to move beyond the inane, "I'm on a plane, stuck on the tarmac" tweets. While there has been an explosion of twitter accounts, few people truly generate content. However slow, I've been starting to explore more and more of what Twitter provides value for me:

1. Easier for me to follow people (Maybe I'm more a taker than a giver)
2. Twitter is my social networking gateway (I sms twitter which will automatically update my facebook and friendfeed accounts)

I've also noticed that while I "follow" 50 people, I truly only follow 15 people. Those 15 people tend to be people I've had personal connections with (@bryantng, @mcurren, @xenlogic). The other people I follow closely are CXO superstars like @padmasree and @stevecase.

For those of you who want to get in on the action too, but have been a bit too timid to test the waters, Infinite Thinking Machine cites a couple places to get you started:

1. Twitter in Plain English - a great video that explains Twitter in a nutshell
2. 7 Things You Should Know about Twitter -Educause publishes a series of excellent articles detailing new and emerging technologies.
3. Tweetdeck -Use this third party app to manage Twitter. It's much better than using the Twitter web interface.
4. TwitThis -Install this tool into your browser's toolbar so that you can share web sites on the fly as you surf.
5. Hootsuite -This is a great tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts. Try this out once you've mastered Twitter basics.

Little Red Riding Hood [Animated Fables]

In the age of information, people expect to be able to take a deep dive at any point in time. I can't tell you how many times bets are settled by accessing wikipedia via my mobile phone.

Tomas Nilsson created a 3 minute reinterpretation of Little Red Riding Hood for a (Swedish) university class project.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did:



HT: Thingamababy

Home of the Archives [Newspaper Archives]

With newspapers discontinuing their print editions to move online. Slate explainer, answers a question that I have been wondering:

What Happens to the Archives of Defunct Newspapers?

Surprisingly, "the competing newspaper typically absorbs the assets." I would've never thought of that...

Research Shows... [Data validity]

We've entered a linked information world. The emphasis for information distribution isn't focused on creation but the aggregation and filtering of information. The splicing, rebroadcasting, linking, editing, aggregation becomes one lengthy game of information telephone. We'll often take it for face value and begin quoting it for our own use. For example, given the current testimonials for the auto industry, the 1 in 10 US jobs tied to the industry has been given a lot of press. However, with some casual searching you'll find this on Economix, a NY Times blog.

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, writes in Times Higher Education about the assumptions, and sketchy data the term: "research shows"

As someone devoted to academic research, I feel increasingly embarrassed when I encounter the words "research shows" in a newspaper article...Last month a study by John Alford of Rice University proved that right-wing Americans are likely to be far more nervous than left-wing counterparts. Liberal readers will be delighted to learn that they are typically relaxed.

We know this is cutting-edge research because he interviewed as many as 46 people.

Image Source: Wessex Archaeology

Gorillaz goes Monkey

Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl and Gorillaz) and Damon Albarn (Blur and Gorillaz) are at it again. This time, they've collaborated to bring one of my favorite childhood stories to life.

The ad is inspired the Ming Dynasty book Journey to the West (西遊記), which one of the Four Great Classic Novels (四大名著). As a kid, I was fascinated with mythology and lore. Beyond reading all I could about the Greek mythology, my dad went Chinese on me and bought vividly colored books about Monkey King's escapades to India during the Táng dynasty in order to obtain Buddhist religious texts called sutras. In fact, I built a tiny diorama based on the Monkey King's escapades. If only we had digital cameras back then. Oh, the craft I could expose you to.

Through time, I've seen permuations of the character crop up all over the place:

• Cartoon
  
• Musical
  
• TV Miniseries
  
• 2006 National Book Awards Winner: American Born Chinese
  

OK, enough talk, check out the clip via BBC's Olympic site here.

This Ad is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

In an Colombian advertising campaign, Toyota is printing its ads on recycled banana leafs. The ties are pretty obvious. I feel that I should be excited about the idea, but for some reason, I'm still on the fence on whether I like the idea or not.

With the entire world buzzing about being green, I'm starting to become a bit skeptical of all the PR. I really don't want to be jaded, but there seems to be a discrepancy between lip service and action. Sometimes I feel I'm stuck in a middle of a green marketing cacophony as companies increasingly try to outdo and outscream their competitors.

However, in this case, the banana plant only produces fruit once in its life and the leaves are typically thrown away. I guess I can give them kudos for that.



Ok, Maybe I just woke up on the wrong side of my bed today...

sighting

Dob seen in brooklyn

(Taken by my HTC Touch)

Clay Shirky on Web 2.0

Pretty interesting comments from Clay Shirky on the future of multimedia and the Internet-expanding beyond consumption to encompass production and interaction.

Innovation in a turbulent music industry

The future of entertainment is murky at best. Declining sales in music and increasing piracy a la P to P networks have disrupted the traditional business models. The entire entertainment industry is going through another growth spurt as companies struggle to determine how to leverage new technologies and paradigms.

History teaches us that established institutions react with fear and resistance as these new technologies take root and grow. Before they take root and grow, a lot of various business models will be thrown against the wall as the industry starts to filter the wheat from the chaff.

This creates an amazing and constantly changing landscape for consumers. Take Radiohead and Nine-In-Nails. Their innovation promotion strategies have elicited the buzz with their fans reaping the benefits. Wired.com compares the escalation of innovation between Reznor and Radiohead.

21, the movie

21 a movie based on the book Bringing Down the House comes out in movie theaters this weekend. It's a great story of how a group of MIT kids work as a team to win millions of dollars.

Jim Sturgess an up-and-coming actor plays the lead role. I think the the casting director totally got it right. there's such an uncanny resemblance between the actor and the character that it's really based on.

Side note, Jeff Ma quit the card counting business and started protrade.com

Meanwhile, on the other side of town...

For many of you, this year's presidential debate has been a very interesting one. With the democratic nominee still up to contention it's been one roller coaster ride. I recently went back home and found my parents deep into politics. Not whether Obama was experienced or whether Clinton could actually implement any change... no, it was about the scandals in the tiny island of Formosa (aka Taiwan... aka Republic of China).

The recent New York times article captures the type of politicking that we've all come to love.

a spin on the modern watergate scandal:

But an unusual fracas last week has lent resonance to the Democratic Progressives’ warnings to voters against giving too much power to the Nationalists. It started when four Nationalist lawmakers roamed through Mr. Hsieh’s campaign headquarters in an attempt to document whether the building lease complied with election laws.

Mr. Hsieh’s aides trapped the four in an elevator, accused them of trespassing and called the police. A crowd of Democratic Progressive Party supporters formed and smashed the windshield of one of the police cars that rescued the four.

Mr. Ma has apologized for the incident repeatedly since then, and the lawmakers, dubbed “the four idiots” by the Taiwanese media, bowed low in apology at a news conference as well.

My diagnosis

Starz.com has offers a free therapy session. You're asked to answer a series of questions. It's a bit tongue and cheek and an interesting way to highlight their show "head case," but seems to fall flat in the execution. It's no have it your way chicken.

Spend a couple minutes with Dr. Goode and see what she has to say about it. There are still available slots. I've posted my "diagnosis" below.

Warning: mature content.

Waxing the ear

Rcrdlbl.com (or record label... took me one or two seconds to get it) is where I hear of 80% of all the new music that enters my eardrums.

Rcrdlbl is a joint venture between Downtown Records (Gnarls Barkely and more) and Peter Rojas, an entrepreneur who founded the respected technology blogs (Gizmodo and Engadget). What is unique about it is that the music is free and DRM-free. What? How? The website is funded by advertisers--nikon, virgin, bmw, puma, and nokia so far.

In an era with shrinking CD sales, the rise of iTunes, and increasing music pipeline of mypace, its inevitable that the business model for music needs to change. The WSJ (yeah, WSJ) has a pretty interesting piece about rcrdlbl.

There. The cat is out of the bag.

Cinematical's magnificant 7

I just booked my ticket to SFIAAF! It's going to be awesome. No better place to see some emerging asian-american content than from my mothercity--San Francisco.

To kick off the countdown, I've added a link to Cinematical's top seven Asian-American actors ready to break out.

Read Cinematical's post here.

I can't help but fear that my inner demons of skepticism have conquered my angels of hope, but I would also like to add Aaron Yoo to that list.

I wish this was my job...

Honda recently launched its Honda Problem Playground ad for its new FCX Clarity model.



Looks like a lot of fun solving puzzles.

What rgb is your shoe?

This is an old but great campaign. The original concept, launched in 1983, were white sneakers sold with tools for individuals to customize it as they saw fit.

Fast forward about 20 years. To relaunch and promote adicolor, adidas commissioned a series of directors to create specific shorts. There are seven shorts from a slew of directors--Roman Coppola & Andy Bruntel, Neill Blomkamp, PSYOP, TRONIC, Saiman Chow, Charlie White, and HAPPY.

A nice touch small touch is how they reserved URLS based on the colors RGB code:

• White: www.r255g255b255.net
• Yellow: www.r254g245b006.net
  
• Green: www.r006g146b071.net
• Pink: www.r243g197b208.net
• Blue: www.r023g075b158.net
• Red: www.r213g037b053.net
• Black: www.r000g000b000.net

Subtitles make all the difference

If you've been following the HD-DVD and the Blu-Ray battle, this'll cheer you up--especially if you're in the Blue-Ray Camp:



Thanks filmguy78 for the laugh!