Another Godfather “What If”

in Film | July 30th, 2009

What if The God­fa­ther had been shot with­out Mar­lon Bran­do? (It almost hap­pened.) Or with­out Al Paci­no? (It almost hap­pened too .) Or with­out Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la? (Yup, even that almost hap­pened as well.) Then, what if Robert De Niro had played the role of Son­ny, which even­tu­al­ly went to James Caan? Here’s what it would have looked like (and, by the way, we’ve added this clip to our list of YouTube favorites):

The New Yorker Knocks The Kindle

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, iPhone | July 30th, 2009

It’s not often that The New York­er does the gad­get review. But here we have one — Nichol­son Bak­er break­ing down the Kin­dle. The upshot? He’s not a big fan. Why? Let me give you some of the mon­ey quotes. And also note the iPhone/iPod Touch rec­om­men­da­tions at the end (where I added some use­ful links):

“The prob­lem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had real­ly been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The prob­lem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a green­ish, sick­ly gray. A post­mortem gray. The resiz­able type­face, Mono­type Cae­cil­ia, appeared as a dark­er gray. Dark gray on paler green­ish gray was the palette of the Ama­zon Kin­dle [DC note: This is why I returned my Kin­dle].”

“Despite its smoother design, the Kin­dle 2 is, some say, hard­er to read than the Kin­dle 1. “I imme­di­ate­ly noticed that the con­trast was worse on the K2 than on my K1,” a review­er named T. Ford wrote. One Kindler, Eliz­a­beth Glass, began an online peti­tion, ask­ing Ama­zon to fix the con­trast. “Like read­ing a wet news­pa­per,” accord­ing to peti­tion-sign­er Louise Pot­ter.”

“Ama­zon, with its list­ma­nia lists and its some­times inspired rec­om­men­da­tions and its innu­mer­able fas­ci­nat­ing reviews, is very good at sell­ing things. It isn’t so good, to date any­way, at mak­ing things. But, for­tu­nate­ly, if you want to read elec­tron­ic books there’s anoth­er way to go. Here’s what you do. Buy an iPod Touch (it costs sev­en­ty dol­lars less than the Kin­dle 2, even after the Kindle’s price was recent­ly cut), or buy an iPhone, and load the free “Kin­dle for iPod” appli­ca­tion onto it.”

“There are oth­er ways to read books on the iPod, too. My favorite is the Euca­lyp­tus appli­ca­tion, by a Scot­tish soft­ware devel­op­er named James Mont­gomerie: for $9.99, you get more than twen­ty thou­sand pub­lic-domain books whose pages turn with a volup­tuous grace. There’s also the Ice­berg Read­er, by Scroll­Mo­tion, with fixed page num­bers, and a very pop­u­lar app called Stan­za. In Stan­za, you can choose the col­ors of the words and of the page, and you can adjust the bright­ness with a ver­ti­cal thumb swipe as you read… Forty mil­lion iPod Touch­es and iPhones are in cir­cu­la­tion, and most peo­ple aren’t read­ing books on them. But some are. The nice thing about this machine is (a) it’s beau­ti­ful, and (b) it’s not imi­tat­ing any­thing. It’s not try­ing to be ink on paper. It serves a night-read­ing need, which the light­less Kin­dle doesn’t.”

Dylan & Cash Together

in Music | July 29th, 2009

Vin­tage video…

Solving Stonehenge?

in History, Science | July 28th, 2009

Is Wal­ly Walling­ton onto some­thing?

Thanks Jil­lian for send­ing this one along…

Ira Glass, Host of This American Life, Explains Why Creative Excellence Takes Time

in Life | July 27th, 2009

Ira Glass, host of the beloved radio show This Amer­i­can Life, offers a help­ful reminder that excel­lence doesn’t come auto­mat­i­cal­ly. It takes effort, years of it. And he revis­its some of his ear­ly radio work in order to prove it.  A good reminder for any­one with seri­ous artis­tic or cre­ative ambi­tions.

Ideas to Die For

in Philosophy | July 23rd, 2009

Here we have philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett apply­ing Dar­win­ian thought to human think­ing, all of which gets him into the intrigu­ing con­cept of “memes,” infec­tious ideas that can sub­vert our sur­vival instincts and threat­en whole cul­tures. It’s anoth­er good bit of think­ing from TED Talks.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is a writer and musi­cian who hosts the pod­cast The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life and has just released this sleazy ver­sion of a Michael Jack­son tune.

David Lynch Favorite Movies and FilmMakers

in Film | July 20th, 2009

In a quick 59 sec­onds, David Lynch tells you the films and film­mak­ers that he likes best (see below). In equal­ly suc­cinct videos, though with a bit more salty lan­guage (read: lan­guage that’s not ide­al for work), Lynch also gives you his thoughts on prod­uct place­ment and the whole con­cept of watch­ing a movie on an iPhone.

The Beatles Look Back

in Music | July 15th, 2009

From The New York­er’s Goings On Blog:

The Bea­t­les’ “offi­cial Web site is fea­tur­ing short doc­u­men­taries, host­ed by George Mar­tin, on the mak­ing of the band’s orig­i­nal albums. The first one, about “Revolver,” is up now, though the site seems to be hob­bling along, pos­si­bly due to high serv­er load.”

Also, a lit­tle some­thing for U2 fans… Get MP3s of the Achtung Baby record­ing ses­sions. Find them here.

Free e‑Book of Chris Anderson’s “Free”

in e-books, Economics | July 8th, 2009

Chris Ander­son, the Wired Mag­a­zine Edi­tor who is best known for The Long Tail, has pub­lished his lat­est book, Free: The Future of a Rad­i­cal Price. You can buy it on Ama­zon, or read a free ver­sion on Scribd. As you may know, this book has already gen­er­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy. To begin with, Ander­son has had to answer charges that he pla­gia­rized mate­r­i­al from Wikipedia. And then Mal­colm Glad­well (the author of Out­liers, The Tip­ping Point and Blink) gives Free a rough review in The New York­er.

PS You can now down­load an audio ver­sion as a free zip file here.

View from the Bookstore Shelf

in Books | July 7th, 2009

I’m proud to say my first nov­el, JACK WAKES UP, is avail­able in hun­dreds of book­stores nationwide—Barnes & Nobles, Bor­ders, Inde­pen­dent Book­sellers, and most-like­ly the store clos­est to you. Three Rivers Press (Ran­dom House) has sent out 6,000 copies of the book for peo­ple to buy.

So now what? And how does it feel?

Well, appar­ent­ly, I keep blog­ging, pod­cast­ing, and doing my damn­d­est to get the book to sell. That’s fine with me. I’m com­fort­able in the social media/Web 2.0 space and I can tweet my head off and Face­book-share with the best of them. But is this the nir­vana I’ve pined for, worked hard toward and wait­ed to achieve? In a word: No.

My main point is this: as writ­ers we bet­ter enjoy the climb as we’re going up the moun­tain; the process has to be enjoy­able. For me, this hap­pened when I built an audi­ence by pod­cast­ing my fic­tion as free, seri­al­ized audio­books. Once I devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with fans, I had the feel of being a real writer, a suc­cess, way before my book ever hit a sin­gle store or shelf.

Why was that good? Because the old mod­el toward writ­ing suc­cess (get­ting fans by find­ing read­ers in stores, in print) takes a very, very long time. Even for the luck­i­est of us—and I now count myself among these (see para­graph one)—this takes mul­ti­ple books and at least a few years after your first major-mar­ket pub­li­ca­tion. I know many of us come to writ­ing for what it gives us in our rooms, the lit­tle vac­u­ums in which we work, but in all hon­esty it just feels bet­ter when you know there are peo­ple who actu­al­ly want to read what you’re work­ing on—especially peo­ple who aren’t relat­ed to you or going to cri­tique you. Let’s just accept that. It doesn’t make us bad writ­ers to admit we want read­ers. (more…)