by cameron | Nov 11, 2006 | Podcast
Yesterday I caught up with Helene Juguet, Director of Marketing, Ubisoft. Among many other successes, Helene was responsible for marketing one of my favourite games EVER – Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. Sam Fisher was in foyer of the Ubisoft offices:
During the interview we talk about:
- The Frag Dolls
- The latest edition of the Splinter Cell franchise – Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent
- What a complete GOD Michael Ironside is.
- The idea of a Splinter Cell film – starring Clive Owen.
- The whole Tom Clancy connection and some history of Ubisoft
- What it’s like being a woman in the gaming industry
- Violence in gaming
- Developing games for girls, kids and mature adults
- The future of gaming, MMORPGS, and more.
Hope you enjoy it.
by cameron | Nov 11, 2006 | Uncategorized
Last night I went out on the town with Brian Walsh from Castfire and his business partner Trip. Brian took me to dinner at their restaurant SAUCE. Great food and we had a big night. I’ve been suffering the after-effects of it all day so have decided to avoid the parties tonight and stay home and watch the net. Here’s a random selection of interesting stuff I found.
Mac Spoof: Gaming – These guys from TrueNuff TV have some great stuff. Also check out their Undead Insurance commercial.
Sam Has 7 Friends – a short-form video drama. I’ve got something in the works along these lines and so I’ve been checking out what else is out there. This is a great show.
Well it looks like AllOfMP3 really has stopped accepting MasterCard and Visa. What other mp3 sites are you using?
A few people have uploaded videos of Lou Reed’s recent US tour up to YouTube. Check out this version of Femme Fatale. Brilliant. Apparently Lou was the surprise entertainment at the Web2.0 party and he was pissed off because everyone was talking and not paying attention so he turned up his amps so loud they hurt everyone’s ears. 🙂 Here’s the full story on JustInsomnia. Ben Metcalfe doesn’t think Lou is hip enough for a Web2.0 conference. Here is some footage of his opening number, What’s Good from the album MAGIC & LOSS, which is about losing your friends to cancer.
Following on from my recent post about Van Halen, here they are in their prime – Unchained.
Have you seen the slasher version of Office Space? Brilliant.
by cameron | Nov 11, 2006 | Uncategorized
This clip of Bush admitting to journalists that he lied to them a few days before the elections about his ongoing support for Rumsfeld is amazing. Have you ever seen him this squirmy?
A couple of nights ago I was strolling around Chinatown and stumbled across the City Lights bookstore which is apparently pretty famous. I picked up a copy of Kalle Lasn‘s 2000 book Culture Jam
and grabbed a seat in a cozy little bar called Tosca on Columbus near the bookstore to start reading it.
I’ve been admiring Lasn for sometime. I first heard of him a year or so ago when he launched the Blackspot Sneakers and then I learned about his magazine called Adbusters. He’s trying to get people to wake up to the way that corporate advertising is conditioning us to live lives which are killing us and destroying the planet. I invited him onto the show last year but was palmed off to one of the marketing folks at Blackspot and it was a pretty boring interview so I never aired it.
Anyway, Lasn’s book has really messed me up. It made me remember why I started TPN in the first place – to create a new kind of media that is small, intelligent, passionate, informed, global, viral and for the people. To fight the system. To change the system. To change the world. Now the problem is that these thoughts don’t sit nicely with thoughts about raising venture capital and doing the whole Silicon Valley thing. I’m having an existential crisis. I keep asking myself over and over – “what is my definition of success?”.
I hate questions like that.
by cameron | Nov 8, 2006 | Podcast
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So tonight I went to see Lou Reed play a gig in Redwood City, an hour by train outside of SF. It was HUGE!
As some of you know, back in Jan 2005, as we started TPN, I published my dream list of people I’d like to interview on my podcast. At the top of the list was… Lou Reed. Next was Noam Chomsky. Well I got Noam out of the way about a year ago. And tonight…
While I was standing in line I started chatting with some of the other folks in the line, and eventually realized that if I can’t get a chance to actually interview Lou Reed, I can at least interview his fans! So I pulled out my iPod asked the people who they were, where they came from, what they did for a living and why they were going to see Lou. I kept doing the interviews while we were sitting inside the theatre, waiting for the show to start. I also recorded 99% of the show, but that’s just for my personal collection. 🙂
In the interviews I met a fine art photographer, a sci-fi author, a landscape gardener, the manager of a comedy club, a psychiatric nurse, the president of a search engine optimization company… and a german. A fair cross-section of Lou Reed fans. I’ve always suspected Lou Reed fans are more intelligent than your average rock fans.
By the way, the show was brilliant. No drums, no keyboards, just Lou on guitar and Rob Wasserman and Fernando Saunders both playing bass! The set list included mostly tracks from Songs For Drella Magic And Loss and The Raven. There was one VU song, a brilliant version of Femme Fatale, and one encore from New York. During the show, Lou announced that the Democrats had taken back the House of Reps and he, along with the crowd, clapped and cheered for about five minutes. Lou made a comment about how convenient it was that Saddam was sentenced the day before the US Elections and then said how he’d like to see George Bush hung. I think the election result must have buoyed his spirits because he did TWO encores – the first was a new track called “Gravity” and the second was “Dirty Boulevard”. Anyway… this show is about the fans, not a review of the concert, but let me just say that it was awesome. And today there was news that he is touring Australia again next month!! And will be performing the entire Berlin album!! Rock on.
Enjoy.
by cameron | Nov 8, 2006 | Uncategorized
I know what you’re thinking – Flickr is all about photography, so how can it equal the death of photography?
Hear me out.
I was on the Caltrain this afternoon, heading down to Redwood City where I had a meeting and then a Lou Reed concert to attend, and I realized I hadn’t taken my camera with me. Immediately I thought – ah well, it doesn’t matter, someone else will take photos of the concert and I’ll be able to find them on Flickr within hours.
Sure enough – check these out.
Now I could have bothered lugging my camera around. But why? Those photos are exactly what I would have taken and he probably did a better job. What’s the point of 1000 photos of the same thing?
Here’s an example – pick your favourite holiday destination. Pick something iconic about the place that you would normally want to photograph when you were there.
Now search for that thing on Flickr. Find a pretty good photo? So what’s the point of taking your own?
Now, of course, you might be the kind of person who wants to have photos of yourself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, just in case no-one believes you actually did go to France, or perhaps to prove to yourself you really did go when the Alzheimer’s kicks in.
But really… do you need photos of yourself? What percentage of photos taken on holidays contain people versus icons? I wonder.
By the way, when I was standing in line at the concert, and sitting inside the theatre waiting for the gig to start, I interviewed a bunch of people. It was a lot of fun, I met some great people and it should make the gig tax deductible, right? It’ll be up tomorrow.
