August 3, 2008
McSweeney's lives
Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Short Imagined Monologues
Jeff Bezos
Says Hi to You
in the Waiting Room
of Your Doctors' Office.
BY Evan Johnston
- - - -
Hi, it's me, Jeff Bezos. I was just catching up on some summer reading with my Kindle, which is currently retailing for $359 plus shipping through Amazon. Would you believe we sold out of these little darlings in the first five and a half hours they were available?
Yes, that's a bandage on my hand. I have a massive paper cut. But that's not important right now. Instead, I want to tell you a little bit about myself, and about the common reading experience we all share.
As a small child, I loved books, and dreamed of a way to read them on my Etch A Sketch or calculator. And dreams, as we all know, have a way of coming true.
Now, like you, I get a lot of my reading done in the least hospitable of places. There's the airport, the ensuing plane flight, and the subsequent crash in the middle of an ocean, followed by being marooned on a deserted oil rig.
Well, all right, that last scenario is a bit dramatic. But let's take it as a test of the Kindle's power. You read the Kindle at the airport, catching up on all the blogs you're missing out on. Once on the plane, you start reading a legal thriller about a lawyer who successfully sues the pope. Sorry, gave away the ending. But now let's get to the oil rig.
Assuming it doesn't get wet, the Kindle could become your best friend on that oil rig—unless there are other survivors. In the likely event that those survivors turned against you—let's say they know that you caused the accident by demanding that the pilot look at your Kindle—you would be forced to deal with them. Harshly.
The Kindle can't help you with that particularly gruesome task—but it can help you recover from the psychological trauma of successfully sending your accusers to a watery grave. Reading, of course, is the best therapy a marooned murderer can buy.
Now, if you turn off the wireless function, you could be marooned for up to a week and still have enough battery charge for your Kindle. Not bad! And, unless you can read 125,000 books in seven days, I don't think you'll be getting bored. Unless trying to read in the gloomy light of the oil rig, wondering what will become of you, and what happened to your fellow passengers, is something you would consider boring.
Did I mention that your Kindle knows your name? You can't say that about the fish you'll be catching with your bare hands and killing with your teeth. I can't imagine they'd be too helpful in buying books, either. And if you're curious about any of the kinds of fish you're eating you can look them up on Wikipedia.
But right now, of course, I'm not on an oil rig. And neither are you. But here we are, together, waiting for a doctor.
Posted by amol at August 3, 2008 5:37 PMApril 6, 2008
Listen to my muxtape
Radiohead plays the Smiths. Cool find from Chetan.
Posted by amol at April 6, 2008 9:12 PMJanuary 28, 2008
Best 3 albums of last year?
What were the best 3 albums you got last year? Help me out! Email me at drwn dot com.
Posted by amol at January 28, 2008 3:40 PMDecember 14, 2007
Perfection vs performance
I think this is an interesting observation. Some people explore all the wonky features of an app or a website or a technology or a philosophy or a formula or a phenomenon. Other people want what is practical and useful in all that. In different cases, different approaches make sense.
Posted by amol at December 14, 2007 9:41 PMNovember 8, 2007
Be my last.fm friend
One place I'm actually having trouble recruiting buddies is on last.fm. Be mine.
Posted by amol at November 8, 2007 9:34 AM
September 9, 2007
Focusing on crossing the chasm with a disruptive innovation into a tornado...
Many of the "classic" 1990s business books say the same stuff:
- focus narrowly on specific customers and specific product attributes
- worry about having too much stuff going on (if you are a big guy)
- worry that your existing business will make it hard for you to see the new wave that will crush you
This is true in Focus by Ries, The Power of Simplicity by Trout, Crossing the Chasm by Moore, and The Innovator's Dilemma by Christensen.
One guy who doesn't get enough credit is Utterback who wrote Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation and essentially compiled a terrific research library of chapters chronicling how electric lights beat gas lights, refrigeration beat cut ice, and so on. The inexorable conclusion is what Christensen writes -- that the new technology often has advantages of ease and cost that gain initial traction in the low end, where the dominant players ignore it as a cheap alternative. It gains steam, it blows the top, and the dominant players die.
Watch out for it in your business. I am trying to do it in mine...
Posted by amol at September 9, 2007 10:07 PMAugust 17, 2007
Wes Anderson
I have really enjoyed Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic -- though not Bottle Rocket for some various reasons. They are great movies -- richly detailed alternative universes based roughly on all the neatest stuff you know about from this universe. (I'm looking forward to the new one, Darjeeling Limited). I was interested to notice, as I was re-watching Rushmore recently that this scene was based on this photograph by Latrigue.
Dividing
I read a great book yesterday called Focus . You may have heard what it's about since Ries (and Ries & Trout) have written lots of marketing books that you have probably seen (like Positioning, which I think I read in the 7th grade!). The bottom line is your strategy should be focused, because that's how to win. Don't cover bases, don't spread across the segments, don't create features and variants, and so on. Create a product with a brand and a strategy that addresses a need for a certain group of people. And don't clutter it.
The very interesting insight that he takes as a premise has had me noodling for a counterexample. His point is "convergence never happens, the opposite does". The aspirin market divides and turns into the aspirin and acetaminophen and then again. Cars becomes sports cars and sedans and minivans etc. Phones become long distance and local and mobile and broadband.
I can't think of a product introduction or new category that actually collapsed two distinct ones -- despite how often heralded the PC + TV or phone + cable or mobile phone + music player or any other combination happens to be.
Think about the things that mobile phones do. Consider that perhaps the interesting features they are adding are in fact not "the phone absorbing some other piece of functionality" but rather the emergence of specialized types of devices that will one day be very different from phones!
Posted by amol at August 17, 2007 9:44 PMAugust 4, 2007
Some Kind of Monster
I was never really into Metallica -- though I remember my junior high school friend Kevin had the coolest t-shirts from Master of Puppets, And Justifce for All, and so on.
Well, I watched the doc Some Kind of Monster. Did you know that the lead guitarist who founded Metallica with them -- Dave Mustaine -- got kicked out of the band in 1983...and founded Megadeth?! Man. Oh yeah, and the classic heavy stuff -- like the early 1990s festival shows -- I can appreciate it now.
Though I have to say that watching these guys go through their Tony Soprano-like "rockers on therapy" session totally destroys their power. They are so pathetic.
Posted by amol at August 4, 2007 10:01 PMJuly 28, 2007
Sidebar: Google reader saves
Last.fm widget
Posted by amol at July 28, 2007 10:50 AM
July 24, 2007
links for 2007-07-25
July 23, 2007
links for 2007-07-24
July 20, 2007
links for 2007-07-21
July 19, 2007
links for 2007-07-20
July 18, 2007
links for 2007-07-19
May 5, 2007
Founders at Work
Founders at Work
Great book. First person accounts of how founders made Paypal, Hotmail, Apple, Yahoo!, and lesser but more recent startups like 37Signals, Bloglines, etc.
Nuggets:
Levchin of Paypal: they were a Palm Pilot to Palm Pilot payment platform at first. Remember that?
Bhatia of Hotmail: Tim Draper is a liar. He didn't invent "viral marketing" by telling them to put "from Hotmail" at the footer to every email. Plus he dragged them over the coals on financing the bridge round pre-acquisition. Clearly, Sabeer didn't leave the deal feeling warm towards DFJ!
Woz: the guys is a real friggin' genius and Jobs is the classic salesman-CEO to his classic engineer-nerd founder. By the way, before founding Apple, he created the Atari game Breakout...as a part-time job. Man!
All I've got is the Rescue Ring....
April 27, 2007
Morrissey favorites
He's coming to town June 30.
March 19, 2007
Walk the Line
As my flu continues, last night I saw Walk the Line. Pretty good. Cash story is fantastic of course, and the performances are very good. I loved both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.
One disappointment is the role of truth against fiction in the formulas of Hollywood. Of course his wife was kind of evil and of course his dad was unrepentant, what else could motor his black heart's story into the arms of June Carter? But somehow I'm sure the truth wasn't quite so clean or tidy, and the "Johnny Cash as redeemed sinner" story under it all is melodrama for "prone to physiological addictions".
Posted by amol at March 19, 2007 12:51 PMMarch 17, 2007
New York Doll
I'm stuck reclining with my second illness of the last 8 weeks -- viral, due to "tiredness"? Baby related I'm sure!
So we are watching movies. Including this excellent Morrisseyania about the New York Dolls, and in particular their sad bassist. I have to go get the David Johansen/Buster Poindexter stuff on Netflix now... (he was the lead singer pre-Buster days).
Posted by amol at March 17, 2007 5:05 PMNights of Cabiria
Now I have seen all the major Fellini films except the late and more strange Satyricon. At long last, really, since I first saw 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita years ago when I was educating myself on the classic European postwar films. Having seen De Vico's The Bicycle Thief, I never got around to seeing the early realist Fellini La Strada until a few months back. Along the way I saw the terrific Amarcord, which is a kind of blueprint for the early 90s sentimental realist Nuovo Cinema Paradiso by Tomatore.
Here in Cabiria we see again the actress Giulietta Masina as the lead, this time a naive prostitute and last time in La Strada a performance troupe orphan. In both roles she has a terrific comic poise -- boyish, optimist, jocular. Almost a nun like Julie Andrews in a later role. "I don't need anything" she says a number of times in this film.
One of the best things that this film shares with La Strada is the pastoral, Comedie Italienne style storytelling. It's more like theater -- groups of characters on a roadside, in a street, gathered at a restaurant, in the woods. It has the feel of the Pierrot paintings.
Well, she keeps getting into unlucky situations, and in the end Fellini's message is severe.
Posted by amol at March 17, 2007 2:32 PMFebruary 1, 2007
American Pastoral
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
A prescient book - written pre-9/11, pre-Iraq, pre-my having a daughter. Gripping psychological narrative about a) being a father and husband, b) being a prosperous second generation nose-clean type of guy, and c) living in a time of cultural and political upheaval punctuated by a difficult war (Vietnam), terrorism (anti-war left), and youth rebellion (the Sixties).
Scary setup to having a daughter, as I just did.
But also part of why "I don't read fiction", to put it in my crassest philosophico-scientific formulation. I left the enterprise feeling it was a form of idle entertainment, even if about weighty matters (an Oliver Stone movie perhaps, but still a lame Hollywood blockbuster). Sure, Roth gets the characters really right -- a vivid photorealism in his craft. But, as is the question for realist painting in the era since the photograph, what's the point? Maybe I should just chill out and like it (which I did) but it doesn't seem to be "paying its way" so I don't (as Charles Peirce would have said about the truth).
Posted by amol at February 1, 2007 12:12 AMJanuary 6, 2007
The Bad Sleep Well
Kurosawa noir effort.
Posted by amol at January 6, 2007 10:23 PMJanuary 2, 2007
Reel Paradise
The best kind of travel doc -- wimpy, nebbishy Americans move to shockingly-"state of nature" Fiji and open a movie theater. Instead of a bloodbath (in the style of classical colonial disasters), the Occidentals get mugged and cry their whole way home. Very funny.
Posted by amol at January 2, 2007 8:19 PMWinged Migration
The key question is: how do they do it? Visually incredible -- part travel film, part nature documentary, and part video game from a true bird's eye view.
Posted by amol at January 2, 2007 8:17 PMSweet and Lowdown
Possibly my favorite Woody Allen film (of the contemporary era, because he's not in it). And the music changed the way I thought about the 20th century (and 1,000 Django Reindhardt recordings later, changed the way I think about me!).
"I'm the best jazz guitarist there is, except for this French gypsy..."
Bananas
Woody Allen's sendup of Latin American political disasters and the soft-headed American leftists who love them. Very funny film that at its best is a seedbed for Wes Anderson mis-en-scenes a la Royal Tenenbaums or at it lows is mere Naked Gun hilarity.
Posted by amol at January 2, 2007 8:10 PMKing of Comedy
Scorsesee and DeNiro in a fine...dark comedy from 1983. The guy is nuts about his favorite late night comedy superstar. Secret ending: when he finally gets up there and does his spiel, he's funny. Jerry Lewis in an impressive serious role and an early Sandra Bernhard.
Posted by amol at January 2, 2007 8:07 PMBattle of Algiers
Great film -- the big ideas are the cinematography (on the street, handheld, pseudo-doc) and the political insight into insurrection. No wonder they were showing it all around the Pentagon pre-Iraq war. The wonder is how naive they must have been to have actuall watched this very knowing account of the doomed Colonialist's too-smart tactics against grassroots insurgency -- and still ended up where we are.
December 22, 2006
Chetan's favorite albums of 2006
My favorite albums of 2006 at international geographic
My top four in alphabetical order — these got the most listens this year. According to iTunes, about 30 listens each and probably the same amount in winamp!
* Sure Juror - Sure Juror
I saw them at Pianos where they played a ridiculously short four song set but they rocked it anyway. Wish their upcoming NYC shows coincided with my trip next month…
* The Format - Dog Problems
Indie pop at its very best.
* The Long Winters - Putting the Days to Bed
No, wait.. THIS is indie pop at its very best!
* The Thermals - The Body, The Blood, The Machine
Saw them at Fontana’s in NYC and again in Zurich. Of my top four, these guys rock the hardest.
December 7, 2006
My favorite year
My Favorite Year (1982). Wow, lame movie. Featured Larry Appleton from Perfect Strangers...and oh yeah, Peter O'Toole. How did I let Netflix recommend this to me?
December 5, 2006
An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) was an impressive film, stitching together the "yes there really is a big problem" with "yes you can do something about it" messages very effectively for me.
The call-to-action was the very powerful part for me; the macro scale is discouraging. I have been aware of warming since we spent a year studying it intensely back in high school. The idea that we have done nearly nothing collectively in that time is really very discouraging. Makes me think it is pointless to try anything to effect HIV, development, warming, nukes, and so on.
But this film and Jeffrey Sachs' recent development book made me see the problems differently and as tractable. Of course, I haven't exactly dedicated myself to solving these issues yet.
Posted by amol at December 5, 2006 11:09 PMArt School Confidential
Art School Confidential (2006) was an awful movie. Weakly wrought love story set in a bunch of cheap shots at college-age art students. Not that they don't merit ridicule, but so do pretty much all college students (and all-aged artists).
Posted by amol at December 5, 2006 10:59 PMNovember 25, 2006
Sidebar: My recent Netflix
Posted by amol at November 25, 2006 3:32 PMSidebar: Movie watchlist from Cin-o-matic
Dynamically updated every time you reload this page (though I don't change it all that much)
Posted by amol at November 25, 2006 2:03 PM
