AppleTV + iPhone + Apple Remote (app) = Steve Job’s latest technologically-disruptive Trojan Horse?

Just penned a letter to Leo Laporte & Paul Thurrott (who’re just as likely to ignore this novel as not :), so thought i might as well resurrect this blog:

Hey Leo, Paul,

Leo, I reckon I’ve got your next MacBreak Weekly episode feature topic.  I reckon Sneaky Steve’s slipped in the biggest ‘technologically disruptive’ Trojan Horse of all right under our noses while we were all ooh-ing and ahh-ing over something new and shiny.

You better grab a coffee, but I think it’ll be worth it :)

I just got home from my friend PJ’s place, who was one of the dedicated lucky ones to snag an iPhone 3G here in Melbourne last Friday.  He’s got an all-Mac setup (although iTunes on Windows PCs will all work the same): iMac in the study, MacMini connected to a 32″LCD TV & 5.1 sound system with the gorgeous Apple Bluetooth keyboard; AppleTV connected to same (or could be in a 2nd room); a Mac laptop (doesn’t matter which type); and now the iPhone (3G or otherwise) with software v2.  And for good measure lets also throw in an ‘AirTunes’-capable speaker system in the bedroom (or simply any sound system with any old or new Airport base-station with AirTunes audio output connected to it).

You’ve undoubtedly seen for yourself or at least heard by now about some of the capabilities of Apple’s new free iPhone app ‘Remote’ (top free download?!?), how it can control an AppleTV (or even multiple AppleTVs!), very sweet!  You might also have heard that you can control any other iTunes ’source’ with it - run iTunes on any Mac or PC and be able to connect to it remotely from the iPhone using the Remote app.  And you might also have heard how you can use the iPhone’s Remote app to control iTunes on that computer to send its audio output to any AirTunes audio output device, including the AppleTV (ie. the media is coming from the Mac/Windows desktop or laptop, but being played on the AppleTV or any other AirTunes audio system.  That’s all working right now, just seen it all with my own eyes, and clearly fantastic!

Stay with me here…

PJ’s also got eyeTV running on his MacMini working as a DVR for free-to-air TV, using Australia’s excellent IceTV EPG.  Pure simplicity!  But there’s also an eyeTV/IceTV iPhone app that lets  you not only program your eyeTV DVR remotely, but also stream your eyeTV-recorded media over Wifi to your iPhone!  Because with the eyeTV software, you can export a recording to any iPhone, iPod (any type) or AppleTV resolution/format, so you get a perfect fit for the specific device’s LCD resolution.

So, we’ve got free-to-air DVRd content, an AppleTV full of ripped, &/or rented &/or bought content, content on any other Mac or PC, playable on any audio or video device in the home, all remote controllable from a single iPhone - or multiple iPhones!  *With the near promise of real-time transcoding capability using the GPU instead of the CPU, perhaps even a MacMini could do this in real-time, skip the post-process.  Almost any other modern Mac certainly could.  This is all in our (Mac) homes RIGHT NOW.  Lets collectively call this state of the art in domestic mass consumer a/v “Version 1″.  If this isn’t already a techy’s wet dream with even more just around the corner, I don’t know what is!

But lets not stop there.  Think of the potential:

Steve made a very specific point at MacWorld about how AppleTV v1 (and everyone else) got it wrong.  AppleTV Take2 was all about untethering the AppleTV from the compulsory need for iTunes on a Mac/PC.  But of course this is just AppleTV software Version2.  The only way is up.  Hold that thought for a moment…

Just one next version of eyeTV (or a competitor) could totally usurp Slingbox and its rather expensive ilk, if they choose to rise to the challenge.  On a suitably powerful Mac doing the transcoding / up/down-scaling in real time*, could send that recorded, or live, TV out over the ‘net to your iPhone 3G, all remote-controlled via the eyeTV/IceTV (or competitor) app on your iPhone3G (or any iPhone or iPodTouch using WiFi).

And there’s no technical reason why Apple couldn’t similarly allow iTunes content to be streamed via the home LAN (WiFi or wired) onto the ‘net (perhaps even SSL encrypted?), over 3G into your iPhone, anywhere, if they wanted.

I’m not very familiar with the options available to you in the US, but I’m guessing there’s existing technologies/products for getting cable-TV content under similar control/availability.  Where ever you are with 3G or WiFi, there’s all your TV and media, without having to hold it on your iPhone.  No expensive Slingbox/etc box needed, it’s all potentially doable now with the devices we already have, with the very next generation of this collection of software!  Sure, 3G bandwidth coverage and/or cost is currently an issue in some places, but that, as always, is a rapidly improving issue.

Or how about this:

Apple have just sneaked into our homes - without any of us realizing it until it’s under our noses - a complete infrastructure for remote control of ANY device in the home that has a LAN connection (WiFi or wired).  This is the first reason why I’ve CC’d you, Paul :).  The whole gamut of Home Automation, and home security, if suitably equipped with LAN access, and adhering to a hypothetically open Apple Remote protocol standard, could all be controlled from your iPhone or iPod Touch, completely usurping an entire - and expensive -  segment of the Home Automation market: integrated control.  And, pending the license availability of the Apple Remote protocol (unless it is already?), all possible right now to anyone so inclined to design it in.

Whilst these HA devices could, if they wished, still retain the various techniques/protocols/proprietary-standards currently used to integrate them, they could also support the Apple Remote protocol, and open up their HA & security market not only from the sales growth potential brought about by the unprecedented ability to mix-n-match previously incompatible products, but also a broader target market more able to afford the product.

Have I just been smoking too much, or Is this not a HUGE opportunity, and threat, for so many players in the home media and home automation and home security arena?  All from just two cute little devices, and one deceptively adaptable OS?

Put the next AppleTV Take 3 (or oh-so-easily hacked AppleTV), or any Mac, back into the equation, with new apps, and you’ve got your media - anywhere you want, home automation, and security (including CCTV low-frame-rate video recording?) integrated, on your living room big-screen TV, remote controlled from your iPhone, potentially all with existing hardware (barring of course the cost of HA & security devices around the house, which runs a huge range of capabilities and prices).

Will Apple finally realise the much speculated potential of this little wonder-box?  Is the AppleTV Apps Store just around the corner, finally?  No more illegitimate hacks needed to bridge its gaps?  All the building blocks are now there.

First came the Apple Computer, then the Macintosh, then the iPod, then the iPhone, each almost universally regarded as revolutionary or at least extremely progressive leadership.  Has Steve Jobs just laid the foundation for his next coup - as well as those of many others thus far barred entry into these traditionally expensive up-market dedicated-hardware market segments (nirvanaish home media, home automation& home security) - right under our noses?  Has he just demonstrated yet again the repeatedly delivered promise of general purpose computers replacing multiple dedicated devices (and often closed/proprietary ones) at a fraction of the cost, size and user-complexity?

I don’t know if anyone else has published similar predictions for iPhone Remote technology and its potential capabilities, but just for the record (cuz he’d kill me if I didn’t ;), my friend PJ foresaw embryonic versions of many of these ideas (current reality and imminent possibility) well over a year ago when we first laid eyes on our AppleTVs.  So I wonder how much of this Steve Jobs foresaw before that, when the AppleTV was just a twinkle in his eye?  Or do these things almost inadvertently have a knack of growing into something far greater than their constituent contributors, with Jobs merely a pro surfer of the front wave of personal technology, rather than the hand of God pushing the wave along?!?  We do call it the Jesus Phone!

OK, RDF Mode: OFF, you can stop puking now :), but I labour the point, Paul, because I read your WinSuperSite blog a couple of weeks ago that was essentially a call to action/arms for Microsoft to wake up and pull their finger out, and I fully agree with it.  But, as (a) a long-time & rather techy Windows non-fan-boy, who (b) for the last 5 years has progressively been trying to elude the offensive mundanity of commercial broadcast TV in preference to “what i want, when i want it”: DVDs (purchased, and rented via Bigpond’s a-la-Netflix), podcasts, bittorrent, Joost, (etc. etc. etc.) and now finally in Australia iTunes TV & movie downloads, I’ve (c) just spent a difficult 12 months switching from Windows to Mac, based only in part on a whiff of the promise of “a better way of life” and the demonstrable surperiority-in-a-simpler-way in many ways (though not all) of the Mac / iPod / iPhone /AppleTV platforms.

Now I’m twelve months on from that leap of, erm… faith?, and now that we’ve reached this post-iPhone3G / AppleTV-Take2 point, I feel even more confident that I made the right decision ALSO because neither 12 months ago nor now are we seeing anyone or anything from Microsoft, let alone anywhere else, that suggests it has a hope of catching up to what we all (can) have right now.

But who would have thought all of this would come so far so soon?  It was only less than 4 years ago, with Australia’s beligerantly stupid 3 free-to-air commercial TV station oligarchy (who, seeing their writing on the wall, tried to sue IceTV, and failed) ensuring that the only way I could watch Battlestar Galactica was to  anxiously wait for someone on the other side of the planet to post it on ThePirateBay & download it via (comparatively slow) bittorrent, dragging my recliner arm chair into the study to watch it on my 17″ LCD monitor!

Now I can just press play on my AppleTV when it’s automatically downloaded.  They get their money, and I’m tickled digital.  Is this finally not win-win, a truce with the big-media industry?  Can we now just get on with it?

What of the next 4 years?!?  Maybe, finally, DRM will be gone completely, seen for the needless sham of scared old-media executives who for years resisted the inevitable, clinging to their unsustainable business models and brandishing thier lawyers club?  Yeah you’re right, probably not.

But we’re still living in awesomely interesting times!

Cheers, Anthony.
nocomply2007@gmail.com

Ribena - 4 times as deceitful

Ribena’s damage-managementPR department have taken to the TV to try & salvage any semblance of respect they might once have had (albeit undeservedly). In an evening 30s ad-spot, GlaxoSmithKline Australia’s casually dressed MD, John Sayers, strolls through healthy-looking rural scenery to apologise for screwing their customers.

Their own product’s labeled nutritional advice didn’t stand up to the rigours of two New Zealand high school students’ science class experiment performed in 2004 to confirm the veracity of the product’s labeled nutritional advice, and thus drew their attention to other aspects of the product’s label - a long-standing claim of “4 times the vitamin C of oranges”.

These two high-school girls in fact found, using standard high school science lab equipment, that these Ribena Ready-To-Drink products had very little vitamin C, with the competitor products they expected to fare poorly actually containing 4 times that of Ribena (which doesn’t sound too hot either).

The girls approached Ribena directly by mail, but were ignored, then after a follow-up phone call were brushed aside with the glib response that the ‘4 times’ claim referred to blackcurrants vs oranges, not Ribena vs other juice products. So they look it to the media, and NZ’s TV ONE consumer affairs show “Fair Go” put it to air in late-2004, thus bringing it to the attention of NZ’s Commerce Commission (not to mention GSK themselves for the second time). Despite this, in 2005 Ribena proceeded with high profile advertising, including television, perpetuating its “4 times”claim.

Over two years later, the NZ regulator announced its findings a few months ago. GSK pleaded guilty to 15 representative charges (80 actual) of misleading consumers in both the nutritional information, as well as the claims of “4 times the vitamin C content of oranges”, ordered to pay $217 500, amend its nutritional advice to reflect reality & stop claiming the “4 times” bullshit.

GSK’s TV ad, and the accompanying www.ribenathefacts.com.au, has Mr Sayers claiming that “(our) testing method used to determine the level of vitamin C was unreliable” (how can one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world be less reliable than a high school science lab?), “and we were unaware of this at the time” (except for the 2005 ad campaign following the bad rap you got from ‘Fair Go’?), and that ‘vitamin C levels had deteriorated over time and didn’t meet that claimed on the label’. Who knows for how long Ribena’s Ready-To-Drink product quality has been “deteriorating”. Apparently they’ve now removed all references to vitamin C & amended their nutritional advice, and made amends in the NZ popular press.

Does anyone really buy the “we didn’t notice there was almost no vitamin C in the product we heavily advertise as having so much vitamin C” bullshit? GlaxoSmithKline’s Ribena fraud is a textbook example of Stupid Greedy White Men hard at work with their heads up their arses trying to make that extra buck. When any company (or individual) seeks to defraud its own customers, they create a climate of mistrust amongst consumers in general - one in which 14-year-olds, inculcated with such scepticism, seek to verify the labeled nutritional advice of innocuous fruit juice drinks, but find the truth lies elsewhere, thus reinforcing the climate of mistrust.

The end result? A company essentially drags itself through the mud & damages its own genuine good potential as a supplier of nutritional products, and takes us all a step closer to life as a consumer being such a risk/rip-off that we must test products ourselves - what a fracking drag! :-(

p.s. when i first saw the TV ad, hearing Sayer’s statements escalate, i was actually waiting for a punch-line like “but no!  our products in fact have FIVE times as much vitamin C!”.  but no such punch-line was to be heard.  see!  i can be an optimist, it’s just that i’m perpetually prepared to be disappointed by large corporations.  i wonder how that came to be…

no comply - the film :)

just stumbled across this tiny masterpiece…

an inconvenient truth

modern society considers many acts of metaphorical bell-ringing to be taboo, the proponent tarred with the brush of the boy who cried wolf too many times - particularly if the prescribed actions threaten to detract from someone’s profit margin. it’s as though the merest possibility of overstatement or marginal error were a sin a hundred times worse than that being warned.

i’ll postpone pondering the roots of such a passive status-quo-maintaining culture, but suffice to say, when it comes to this topic, i have no intention of censoring myself any further.

there are 3 film/tv documentaries that have genuinely literally changed my life, each personally epiphanal, for which i hold the opinion (regardless how unlikely) that every single person on the planet should see. the first was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos 8/13-part tv series (1980). when i saw it in ‘88, it gifted me a sense of perspective about the natural world and my (our) place within it that formed a lasting foundation for my worldview.

it was a long time between drinks to the second, The Corporation (2004). unfortunately it was instrumental in triggering 2+ years of dysthymic depression, but ultimately painted for me a very clear picture of what’s wrong with our modern world, and what needs to be done to achieve a capitalist society that’s also genuinely fair, sustainable & democratic, rather than one run mostly by stupid greedy white men.

the third, An Inconvenient Truth (2006) helped bring me back to life, & contextualise what i think is the most pressing challenge our civilisation has ever faced.

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore pulls together a wide range of examples of climate change, history, political distortion, & human nature that doesn’t just explain what global warming is in simple & eloquent terms, but also why global warming concerns have been ignored, discounted or marginalised for so long, as well as the need for prompt & substantial action.

if you think there is anything remotely resembling a raging equally-sided dispute amongst scientists that global warming is real & caused by our fossil-fuelled emissions, or might instead be some climatic natural phenomenon whose cause we’re still unaware; if you think global warming probably won’t affect you personally all that much; if you think an extra 2 billion Chinese & Indians rapidly adopting the same consumerist lifestyle as ours using the same greenhouse gas-producing power sources & transport won’t make much difference; if you think you can’t make a positive difference, directly & indirectly; then this DVD is for you. it’s for everyone.

some have suggested that Al Gore is using An Inconvenient Truth as a political tool for the 2008 US presidential elections. no surprise i say ‘bring him on!’ - if it hadn’t been for 11+ years of Little Johnny’s politically expedient amorality, i’d still be wondering why American’s kept the Evil Chimp in power for 8 years too. others accuse Gore of scare-mongering. well, quiet little debates in science labs & school rooms, & government scientists being silenced or censored by their own government just isn’t getting the job done.

the dots have been connected.

the nay-sayer climate change ’skeptics’ (a shameful miscarriage of the term) have been revealed as the self-interested greedy few, or their pandering politicians, posessing little or no scientific merit to justify further inaction (to say nothing of amoral cynical pseudo-skeptic-fanboys like Tim Blair who sprout vitriole & peddle inane examples of cold climates as supposed counter-proof, a policeman for the anti-bell-ringer mindset it would seem).

for many years Earth has been showing major signs that it is reaching saturation point in its ability to process our fossil-fuel emissions, and beyond which corrective action may take hundreds of years to reverse due to a run-away domino effect. almost every biological system on earth is in decline. how bad must it get before we wake up?

how can we possibly convince the rapidly developing world to adopt low greenhouse gas emitting technologies & techniques if we hypocritically don’t follow our own advice?

i’ll cover this more in a separate post, but addressing climate change in a sensible, global, prompt but staged manner holds enormous potential for commercial success, without horrific economic consequences. but to cut to the chase, it ultimately comes down to ordinary consumers becoming aware of the issues & the solutions, taking what steps they can as individuals, AND pressuring their elected representatives to do something. nothing will happen or change until we do. John Howard is living proof that Political Will is a renewable resource that springs from the Eternal Well Of Opinion Polls - all we need to do is point him in the correct direction.

someone once told me that a reasonable definition of stupidity is always doing the same thing, but expecting a different outcome. someone else once told me “for things to change, first i must change”. and another “think globally, act locally”. they all seem to have currency on this issue. we are all part of the problem, and we all can and need to be part of the solution.

it’s time to walk our talk that we care about the world we live in.

buy, borrow, beg, or download a copy if you must, but please watch this movie. watch it with a friend or two & talk about it afterward. watch the end credits seeded with ideas on how to do something.

like visiting www.climatecrisis.net for heaps of ideas we all can do to reduce our impact on global warming. some are easy, some are cheap, some just require a different way of thinking & aren’t really all that inconvenient. some will even keep you fit. ALL of them will make for a better world, a better home, in our own lifetimes.

and stay tuned here for details of my own efforts to reduce my ‘carbon footprint’ :-)

Happy New Year little piggies!

How Green is my Coat?

few things twist my knickers more than Little Johnny (described by Dubya as “a man of principle” - high praise indeed) demonstrating he has no principles (other than a tendency to foist his Christian doctrine views on Australians), and in its place an amoral stance for the sake of political expediency.

while being interviewed by Tony Jones on ABC’s Lateline 5/2/07, these are a few of his latest words on global warming & what he thinks Australia’s ‘response’ should be, now that he’s suddenly donned on his new green coat:

“We have to play our part, but we have massive advantages because of our fossil fuels. We have uranium and, therefore, the potential of nuclear power, and we want to behave in a way that plays to Australia’s strengths and protects Australia’s employment. We don’t want to give all of that away in some kind of knee jerk reaction that damages the Australian economy.”

“…and the whole focus of our policy should be on reducing carbon emissions in a way that doesn’t damage the Australian economy unreasonably or unfairly”

when asked if he thought coal-fired power stations were a major, if not the major contributor to global warming:

“Stationary power is certainly, yes, all round the world, and that’s why getting cleaner coal, it’s why looking at nuclear, which is the cleanest option of all, to run power stations you can’t run power stations, on the Australian experience, on wind and solar. You either run them on the way they’re run now, it’s predominantly coal or gas or sometimes hydro, or you run them, in the future, with nuclear. Nuclear becomes more viable economically as the cost of running coal fired power stations increases with the adoption of cleaner technology.”

more on nuclear being the “cleanest option” in a later post, but which will it be, PM, “clean” coal (a political tool/term for a technology that doesn’t exist yet), or nuclear? if you think “clean” coal will be too expensive & therefore nuclear is the only way to go, then just shut up about “clean” coal, ok?

“We are lucky as a country because we have the vast reserves of coal, and we’re the largest coal exporter in the world and we employ a lot of people in that industry and I’m determined that any response we provide doesn’t unfairly disadvantage or hurt them. The issue is, how can we, maintaining our economic strength, reduce the amount of carbon we’re putting into the atmosphere? Now, that’s the challenge and that’s why we want to keep the nuclear option on the table, and that’s why we want to look at clean coal technology.”

“lucky”, if you ignore the flip-side that our coal exports are a substantial part of the biggest problem in human history.

how can you even start the decade-long process of replacing coal with nuclear & still not unfairly disadvantage or hurt the coal industry? even using carbon sequestration to delay the inevitable will take just as long to develop, commercialise & roll out as nuclear, & also involves huge infrastructure costs, all of which adds up to higher energy costs for consumers. or is all this hot air about carbon sequestration just to make sure the coal industry vote for you later this year?

when pressed further on the question of whether continuing to export coal for use in dirty power stations (as virtually all of them are) is in Australia’s best interest as regards our share of global warming’s impact, i believe he’s correct - if you keep your morals out of the equation - that doing so would kill most of our coal industry and still not achieve much impact on global warming, as our cheap coal export recipients (Japan takes the lion’s share of our exports, & China is likely to become a major component too) would simply buy it elsewhere &/or use their own…

…unless all coal exporters put their balls on the block & stop selling it at the same time they stop using it themselves; a lofty & unlikely-at-this-stage goal to say the least.

on the issue of carbon taxing or trading schemes, and whether - as an alternative - the government should simply legislate that Australia’s coal-fired power stations adopt the carbon sequestration technologies Howard himself disingenuously espouses:

“That doesn’t sound very much to me like a market mechanism, when you compel somebody to apply a particular technology. It is far better, if you want to keep faith with the market approach, to develop a carbon pricing or carbon trading system”

legislating the population toward self-preservation worked for the transition away from leaded petrol, and away from ozone layer depleting CFCs, to name just a couple off the top of my head for which we & our children are already reaping the benefit. oh, that’s right, it was the former government that lead those changes (in Australia) for the public interest, despite the financial pain.

“It’s a question of how you do it and it’s a question of ensuring that Australia doesn’t become the international mug and introduces a system that penalises us, to the disadvantage of this country internationally. That’s why I’ve been very keen to link what we might do here with what is done internationally.”

i’m suddenly reminded of the two dorks interviewed in The Corporation who paid for their college tuition fees by announcing to the mass media “hi, we’re proud to be sponsored by <major coporation name>!”.  It was a totally unsustainable technique for anyone stupid enough to follow their footsteps when the media ceases to give a shit after the first stunt.  One of them (not the blond one!) went on to say “I have alot of faith in the corporate world because it’s always going to be there so you may as well have faith in it, because if you don’t then it’s just not good”.  nice to see those corporate funds creating some insightful future Suits poised with undoubtely more unsustainable tactics with which to take the world by storm.

when not placing their faith in a system that allows a collection of people to behave typically amorally, and sometimes totally imorally (by legislation requiring the bottom line to be put ahead of all other interests, even the public good), economists sometimes talk about the need for “destruction” to make way for “creation” in economic markets. and they would be right. as a society & its needs mature, old industries die out and new ones replace them - it’s been a frequent reality throughout industrial history. you do what you can for the displaced employees, but ultimately their jobs have to go, whether they’re blacksmiths, whalers, photolab film developers, or coal miners, whether it’s because we don’t need, or don’t want, their industry. when baking the cake kills you AND your neighbours, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an Australian or a Chinaman doing the eating.

it seems to me that John Howard:

• doesn’t have much faith in the economic benefit of carbon sequestration for coal-fired plants & merely talks about it because he needs to be seen talking green instead of just Nuke Nuke Nuke.

• will lead us invariably to nuclear power despite its massive infrastructural costs which we the consumer will ultimately pay for, all the while the “not in our backyard” mentality towards locations for both generation &, critically, the storage of nuclear waste permeating every Australian electorate (from hypothetical local consumption, as well as from that we already export) - especially South Australia which already has vast areas cordoned off from WW2 nuclear testing and some of the most geologically stable areas of the continent, good safe water port access, & despite loads of money to be made from providing world-class much-needed storage facilities.

• has no intention of setting the stage for a prompt but graceful move from coal to any other technology (other than decade-hence nuclear, or hypothetical clean-coal) for fear of losing coal votes while he is in office, & obviously leaving that political suicide job to the next guy.

• as usual intends to play Follow-The-USALeader, having no intention of being a leader of Australia, or on the world stage, by seriously & promptly encouraging the commercialisation & roll-out of proven renewable technologies, in deliberate preference to insisting that an alternative to coal has to fit with the existing Big Power generation paradigm & infrastructure (refer to my previous post on the decentralisation & democratisation of renewable technologies).

in other words, John Howard is STILL putting short term Big Business interests way ahead of the long-term sustainability of Big Business & the habitability of the country in which they & we reside.

this issue is too important to be influenced by comparatively insignificant political concerns & partisanship. if we do not address the issue now, there will not be a pleasant blue-green planet on which to play the game of politics. yet political posturing is the best John Howard can come up with - yet again.

next PM please.

Goliath vs countless Davids

i’m suddenly struck by the parallels between “old media” vs “new media”, and the fossil fuel vs the renewable energy industries.

“old media” (large monolithic tv/radio/newspaper organisations) are feeling the threat of “new media” - smaller (sometimes tiny) nimble online sites serving news & insightful commentary & entertainment, from various styles of social-networking sites (in words, pictures & video) to millions of networked blogs & podcasts.

‘new media‘ and ‘Web 2.0′ are a democratisation of media at a time when old/big media amalgamated ownership elicits even greater conern about diversity & vested interest. it’s an enabler for anyone sufficiently motivated to reach to a hitherto inaccessible public audience (and talented enough to keep them!). this is a time of transition & experimentation, and the end-point - if there will ever be such a plateau again - is unknown, and certainly old media will reinvent itself (it already is) to adapt to our rapidly evolving preferences for how, when, & where we ‘consume’ media. i suspect the already slightly fading line between old media and new media will disolve into a continuum that offers the best of both worlds more seamlessly than it does now.

the fossil-fuel industry - despite being fundamentally entrenched in almost every facet of modern life & will fight like hell to stay there - is facing the question of its fundamental long-term viability (global warming) & sustainability (Peak Oil). we & they know it’s just a matter of time. in the orther corner, we have the renewable energy industry, who, rather than waiting for the hard ground to meet our fall, are slowly but surely proving - most on a small scale - their viability as substitutes for fossil-fuel sources.

in particular, renewable energy’s ubiquitous, small-scale, distributed nature flies in the face of the few large monolithic power stations, distributors & retailers. it promises to give consumers greater choice, and less reliance on a few god-like utilities, for some even complete independence from ‘the grid’ or even the ability to feed their excess back into the grid.

renewable energy represents a much finer-grained redistribution & democratisation of the energy industry, from selection of type (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc) according to the natural capacity of the local environment, to choices of source - from an installation small enough to fit in your own back yard or roof, through facilities powering a neighbourhood or town, right up to massive systems rivalling fossil fuel output.

and you can bet the thought of this has the fossil fuel industy’s knickers in a huge twist!

Happy Valentine’s Day fossil fuel industry. but i just don’t love you any more! please don’t be offended, it’s not you, it’s me…

FALSE LIES by Exhausted

while channel-surfing past a re-run of the ABC’s “4 Minute Wonders” segment late one night recently, i watched the music-video “FALSE LIES” by Exhaused. it wasn’t the music but the video that caught my attention - some local guys did the captivating annimation of an annimated LeggoLand-style young man being drafted into the Iraq war. although the war (& this video) is old news now, it’s still far from over.

Watch the music video here.

Skool nights

sunday night will be my first genuine “school night” in about 15 years! …although my classes start at the end of the working day, 5:30-9:30pm Mondays & Wednesdays.

having kinda changed careers from electronics design engineering to technical middle-management in ‘96, and then after an interstate relocation in ‘00 to self-employed IT consulting with the occasional forray back in electronics, i’m setting the scene for another career change in the not too distant future. as yet, my exact destination is unknown - all the more reason to enjoy the journey.

i’d electrocuted myself and nearly burned down the house at an age i can’t even remember. then my grandmother (RIP) gifted me my first Tandy Electronics 75-in-1 Electronics Kit when i was about 7 (followed by the 150-in-1 several years later!). at first i used to think there must be an amazing rats-nest of wires underneath that board to make it do all those things, until the penny dropped that i was the one who had to make all the connections :). i remember being fascinated by solar photovoltaics from about 10yo, & at 11yo up the front of my class gave an oral presentation of what i’m sure for them was a tediously technical assignment :). after saving all my pocket money for what seemed an eternity, i still have & regularly use the Micronta digital multimeter i bought around the same time also from Tandy Electronics (back when they, like Dick Smith who followed their footsteps, were a real hobbyist electronics shop). btw, i’d love to see a Fluke DMM of that era last this long in the prerilous hands of a kid-tinkerer ;)

anyway! solar (and other renewables) always seemed like an incredibly obvious way to go, although i later learned it wasn’t going to be quite so simple to replace the fossil fuel industry :(. 25 years on, the world’s a bit different, and the need to seriously employ various renewable energy technologies appropriate to the location has become an obvious imperative.

so too the need to drag our Government kicking & screaming to the same conclusion…

isn’t any skateboarding good skateboarding?

(emailed to Thrasher Magazine editor)

dear Thrasher Magazine,

i flip through the monthly skate mags in the shop, & usually buy one from the range, & have sampled most of what’s out there. while flipping through Thrasher, i flipped. who ever came up with a couple of your recent subscription advertisements should have their balls nailed to a popsicle & be pushed back into the Jurassic era for being so dumbly exclusive. the first was a picture of a tragically weed-overgrown abandoned vert ramp and the caption “ADAPT OR GO EXTINCT”. The second was a young kid, surrounded by other skater kids in what appeared to be a contest setting, doing a skateboard flip-trick while wearing roller-blades, & the caption “DON’T BE A DORK… SUBSCRIBE”.

as a 35yo skater who’d literally never picked up a skateboard until a year ago (& lovin it!), i’ve invested a lot of time learning my skate history too. the attitude behind this sub ad is emblematic of mainstream skate media/culture - an overwhelming focus on street skating & its narrow, youth-directed, fashion-focussed, insane-stunt-performing culture. if it’d been yet another ad for a skate shoe company (etc), i would have dismissed it & kept reading. but i didn’t think i’d see it so dumbly pushed in a sub ad from Thrasher. kids will - quite by themselves - often try to boost their own ego’s by criticising anything outside their direct experience. Thrasher is preying on that (normal) juvenile mentality, and as an organisation in a position of power & authority is essentially saying “that’s OK kids, fruit-booters ARE dorks to be ridiculed, street-skating is the only way to go”. WTF???

i don’t mind that the mainstream market is (currently) mainly 9-19 year olds and catered to accordingly. but it’s being promoted almost to the exclusion of everything & everyone else. has it not occurred to the marketers that it’s the oldies who were there skating all those years ago developing what’s now considered niche skating styles, some of whom would love the opportunity to get back on a longboard & carve their local streets, hills or beach boardwalks, with or without their kids in tow? and for those still up for it, get back into a bowl or vert-ramp, or local slalom scene? do the marketers forget that it’s us oldies who have a hell of a lot more disposable income than 9-19yo kids, ready to spend it on quality gear advertised in quality inclusive media? but all they see as they _walk_ around their neighbourhood is magazines for kids, boards for kids, shoes & clothes for kids, & attitude for kids.

yeah, i know skaters have prided themselves on having an almost impenetrable club, and it’s obvious this exclusivity mentality is partly what’s driving the current direction of mainstream skate culture. but can’t you guys see where it’s heading?!? you should, ’cause it’s been happening for over a decade! the definition of what it is to be a skater - from sponsored pros & ams, to even just ordinary suburban kids - is getting narrower every year. if you’re not jumping down 10 or 20 stairs, leaping 10 foot gaps, or sliding down a rail into hospital, no one in the mainstream skate media wants to know you! the pool of talent capable of pulling off these increasingly amazing stunts will continue to dwindle (that’s a simple demographic fact).

an industry that mainly produces products for such an ever-narrowing market is ripe for cheap competition and will continue to disappear up its own butt hole, for example street decks able to be manufactured so cheaply resulting in blanks & shop decks which undermine name brand market share, which undermines their capacity to support their teams, which undermines the sport & competitions. Thrasher’s pages are dominated by advertising to make its cover price kid-friendly. you’re painting yourselves into an ever-decreasing corner. you call this adaptation?!? any economist, not to mention some within our industry, will tell you it’s slow, painful suicide.

why the hell isn’t “any skating is good skating” a guiding principle for a skate mag, most of all for Thrasher who’s literally been there through it all? us ‘oldies’ are out there, there’s lots of tiny niche groups & websites for us, but we exist _despite_ the prevailing attitude, not because of it.

and don’t give me that shit that you’re just “reflecting what’s out there”. the skate media holds the keys to what we see outside our own little worlds, just as much as the skate-fashion marketing departments - you are linked at the hip - for better, or worse. for evidence of that, just download Transworld’s “2007 Media Kit” to see they’re totally hell-bent on the youth market ‘at all cost’ - even their long term sustainability. but Thrasher Magazine & your local & overseas peers, and the sport in all its diversity can (or at least could) be seen not just on paper, but web, DVD, podcasts & even tv. i believe you still have the muscle & capacity to afford to broaden the scope of what’s covered, and thus create a sustainable future that keeps skaters rolling beyond their 19th birthday.

question is, have you got the balls for it? or will you just walk away when the kids say you’re too old?

Anthony May
Melbourne Australia