Product Placement: It Will Be Big in 2007

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Marketing people have been saying that product placement is the next “big thing” in advertising, but up until recently it’s been fairly subtle in most instances. Sure, there are the blatantly obvious “pass me a can of Coke” shots in TVs and movies, but most of the things I’ve seen have been noticing a Dell logo as the camera passes an LCD monitor in a CSI episode, or seeing a brief glimpse of a Nikon logo as the characters use the camera to take pictures (also in CSI). The image above was taken from a recent episode of Smallville, and it was probably the most blatant product placement I’d seen in years. The camera must have stayed on that shot of the Sprint logo & phone for a good two seconds – far longer than the user needed to grasp that it was Chloe that was calling. Is this the future of advertising? Some would say yes – we live in the era of the PVR and Tivo, where commercials are irritating distractions that we all want to skip past (I fall into this camp – I loathe real-time TV now). Advertising is what pays for most of the shows we want to watch however, so eventually there’s going to be a fall-out with advertisers who know no one is watching their ads. Until that happens, there will continue to be experiments with product and brand promotions inside our TV and movie content. How bad will it get before we start to feel like we’re watching one long commercial? That’s a topic for another day…

The Best Banana I Ever Ate

I just finished eating a banana, and it was the best one I’d ever eaten. Why? I just finished a 72 hour fast. Prior to tonight (Sunday night) I haven’t eaten any food since Thursday night. Why the fast? Primarily for detoxification purposes and to stabilize my digestive system – I have a lot of gastric issues, with all sorts of foods bothering me, and sometimes it’s nice to punch the reset button on my body. Water fasting is my fast of choice – people who fast without water are in for some serious suffering. I’ve been experimenting with fasting over the past year, and the physiological responses my body undergoes is very interesting. As long as I keep a sufficient level of water in my body, going without food is surprisingly easy. Sure, there are some hunger pangs, but for the most part it’s not difficult for me to fast. On day one and day two of a fast, I find that I’m more mentally alert and can think very clearly. Dropping from 204.5 pounds down to 197.5 pounds is just a side benefit.
I’d like to write a longer entry on fasting at some point, but I have to get an article finished for the Two Inch View before I can eat my first real meal in three days. Mmm. Food.

Amazing Spam Volume

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I’ve owned the kensai.com domain for a very long time – since 1997 – and early on no one knew it wasn’t a good idea to put email addresses in plain text on a Web site, postings in Usenet forums, or sign up for newsletters and forums with your real email address. This was before the era of spam harvesting bots. Over the years the level of spam got to be so high I changed my real email address from [email protected] to [email protected]…but even that wasn’t enough to stop all the spam to the domain. The domain is so old it’s practically “spam tainted”. About a month ago I set up the domain email to forward all email to a Gmail account…and the screen shot above is showing how much spam has flooded in over the past month or so. 129,000+ messages…! What’s amazing is that 99.9999% of it is spam, and this shows that Google’s spam blocking is having a hard time with it seeing as 25% of the messages are still in the Inbox and not the spam folder. Overall I’ve found Gmail’s spam filtering to be quite good, although perhaps in this case it’s just given up. 😉

TV Worth Watching: Battlestar Galactica

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“The Cylons were created by the people of the Twelve Colonies. Intelligent robots, they were used as slaves and soldiers to fight humanity’s wars. But the Cylons became sentient and they rebelled. Man and machine fought to a bloody stalemate, then the Cylons withdrew to a remote region of space. A truce between the Twelve Colonies and the Cylons lasted for 40 tense and silent years. Each year, on the anniversary of the treaty-signing, humanity sent an envoy to the neutral ground of Armistice Station to meet with a Cylon envoy. For 39 years, no Cylon envoy came. Then, on the 40th anniversary, a stunning blonde — a Cylon in human form — met the human envoy … moments before the Cylons vaporized the station and launched a genocidal attack on the Twelve Colonies. In one devastating day, billions of human lives were consumed by nuclear fires. Only those souls fortunate enough to be aboard starships were able to band together and escape and flee into deep space, led by the sole surviving Colonial warship, the battlestar Galactica…”

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Every so often, there’s a TV show that comes along the accomplishes it’s task better than almost any show before it and sets a new high-bar for quality. These are the shows that people will remember 30 years from now. The Sopranos, ER, The Simpsons – shows that, for better or worse, make an impact and stay with you. Battlestar Galactica is an unlikely entry in the pantheon of such shows, but it’s a TV unlike any other I’ve seen and is executed upon so masterfully I’m honestly in awe of Ron Moore and his team.

It’s easy to see a trailer of Battlestar Galactica and think “Oh, it’s a Star Trek-type show in space” and think that’s the end of it. Battlestar is, at it’s heart, a drama about people – it just happens to be set in space. The best shows are always like that – they focus on the people, the characters, and the sci-fi action is merely the backdrop for the events that propel the characters to evolve and adapt. The show is gritty, harsh, and all too real. When you’re watching it, you can very easily believe it’s a documentary – the acting is convincing, and the characters are all flawed, just like everyone in real life. Regardless of whether or not you enjoy sci-fi TV shows, I’d urge you to watch (on DVD) the four-hour mini-series that started the whole thing. If you enjoy that, you’ll enjoy Battlestar Galactica.

Why is it so Hard to Find Good TV Reviews Online?

Here’s the backstory on why I’m looking at new TVs. This post is a rant about why it’s so hard to find reviews of big screen TVs. I suppose from a PR/marketing standpoint I know how difficult it would be to freight-ship a 72″ TV to a review site, let them keep it for a month, then arrange to get it back. Much pain. But, still, as a consumer I want to read more than just marketing fluff. If I do a specific search for “toshiba 72MX196 review”, I get only one result, a completely useless entry over at Digital Trends. If I remove the quotes, I get far more results. But are any of them quality? Let’s take a look at the “review” posted on the Yahoo page:

“i have never owned a tv that is bigger than 32 inches and i want my first one to be at least 90 inches, not only is this tv to small but it doesnt even hook up to my hairdyer. i know what i am talking about because i have a pHd in male nursing from rhode island tech new jersey state located in oregon. another con is when i am trying to cook my curi in it i cant seem to make it work, it has also become covered in wierd food substance and my friends say the picture isnt as clear anymore. that is all.” 

Great, that was super helpful. Oh look, here’s another review from the Amazon.com page:

“all i can say after my research whuich was very thorough, it came down to toshiba and mitsubishi the samsung was good but not there the toshiba came ot on top vivd colours wow sharp and crisp is what you want this has it all its a must see in person buy this tv you wont be disappointed dont be fooled if you buy this toshiba make surew its the cinema series pro edition makes a big difference 72MX196”

Slightly more useful, but not terribly intelligible. Looks like AVS Forum is my only good source of information.

My Technology Life is On Hold

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That’s a picture of the guts of my Shuttle SD11G5 rig – 2 GB of RAM, 2.13 Ghz Pentium M CPU, 16x DL DVD burner, and a 150 GB Western Digital RaptorX drive. Where’s the Shuttle? I had to send it back to Industry City, California, under RMA to get looked at because of that problem with the video cards. So I’ve been using my 17″ widescreen Fujitsu laptop to do all my real work on. My friends sometimes laugh at how many computers I have in my office, but this is one instance where having computing redundancy saved me. The combination of hosted Exchange and FolderShare remains absolutely killer and core to my ability to work on any PC I have configured with those two solutions.

The good news about my Shuttle is that it was shipped back to me as of the 16th, though they use UPS Ground so I won’t see it until the middle of next week. But it’s on it’s way back to me – at which point I’ll slam Vista Ultimate on there. Assuming, of course, that the defective XFX 7600GS video card that I shipped back to XFX is also replaced at some point so I have a video card for the Shuttle. I’ve dealt with more RMAs in the past 30 days than I have in the past year! Oh, and I’m still waiting for those other two Dell 24″ monitors to show up (they’ve shipped, no tracking number yet)…and the Velocity Micro Media Center PC (Velocity Micro is being a bit frustrating with the lack of information about the status of it). Basically my entire technology life is in hold as I wait for all the pieces to come back together again. And this time, hopefully it will all work!

Belkin Cable Clips: Yeah, They Suck Too

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Remember my rant about how Belkin sucks? Well, they really do, because they can’t even make cable clips worth a damn. When I re-did my office early last year, I want to make it really slick, so I purchased a whole bunch of cable clips from Belkin I put those suckers everywhere, and they worked really well…until after about six months they started to fall off the wall because Belkin used cheap adhesive. I searched and searched for better products, perhaps something metal that would screw into the wall. I couldn’t find anything, so I’ve opted instead to use Crazy Glue the Belkin clips to my wall and desk. So far they’re holding up very nicely – when in doubt Crazy Glue!

Post-CES Business Card Backlog

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CES for me is all about making contacts, and I came back with a stack of business cards that will doubtless prove to be highly valuable. Since I don’t have one of those handy business card scanning things (do they actually work?), I had to rely on the next best thing: my amazing wife who used her 100+ words per minute typing skills to enter all the business cards into an Outlook contacts folder that was then exported to a PST file, which was then imported into Outlook. You know, now that I think about it, Ashley’s far better than a business card scanner because she’s self-correcting. I’m a lucky man!2

Public Service Announcement: GIFs and JPEGs Are NOT the Same

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Here’s a really quick tip for all you would-be graphic designer gurus out there: there’s a reason why GIFs and JPEGs have different file-type names. They’re not the same, and one should never be used in place of the other (perhaps with rare exception. The above screen shot is from a survey Web site I went to for a restaurant called Kelsey’s. They used a GIF for photo-quality images, and the results are horrific: look at the patchy, blotchy skin on the woman’s face on the right. Does going to Kelsey’s result in eczema? No that’s just what happens when a GIF (which only has 256 colours with which to create an image) is used instead of a JPEG (which supports millions of colours). Now look at the food photo on the left – it looks somehow…wrong. Again, GIF used instead of JPEG, and the luscious colours have been pulled out of the image. Kelsey’s is a sizeable restaurant chain, so you’d think they’d be able to afford some real talent. Next PSA: remember to spay and neuter your pets!

Star Trek DVDs Finally Affordable?

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After years of trying to ignore the chorus of requests from consumers who wanted to buy their favourite TV shows on DVD, the movie studios finally relented – and ushered in a new pipeline of profit as nostalgic consumers and collectors alike snapped up all their favourite TV shows. The Star Trek DVD boxed sets have always been ridiculously expensive – where most TV shows are around $50 CAD for one season – the Star Trek boxed sets usually cost around $110 CAD (give or take). I was looking on Amazon.ca today and noticed something very surprising: you can purchase the entire seven seasons for Star Trek: The Next Generation for $429 CAD, which is only $61 per boxed set. That’s a great price compared to what I’ve paid for them over the years. I also noticed that Amazon.ca doesn’t have purchasing links for most seasons of ST:TNG – you can only buy them used. Why is this happening? I believe they’re preparing the way for the HD-DVD releases of the entire Star Trek boxed sets…which, unless they’re re-cut for wide screen, I will not be purchasing. Hell, even if they are, I doubt I can bring myself to drop all that $$$ on the same content. Although I will say that if Paramount prices them in the $60 range for each boxed set, rather than the $120 level they were previous at, the odds of me buying them will definitely go up.