My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
This is going to sound a little rough but I can’t come up with any other way to say it. I am astounded by the hysteria that accompanies every announced change with Facebook. A couple weeks ago I posted an e-card on my profile that reads “I am appalled that the free service that I am in no way obligated to use keeps making changes that mildly inconvenience me”. My advice for everyone is when Facebook changes - relax, suck it up and move on. I mean really, is it worth the level of angst that shows up every single time?
Some of the changes are stupid I give you that much. This new ticker thing on the right hand side strikes me as pointless and annoying. Fortunately it’s easily ignored. And I have to admit that Facebook’s head honcho Mark Zuckerberg shows every sign of major geekdom when he starts rhapsodizing about the future. The Z man sees our entire world kind of being organized through his beloved Facebook. I think this is probably a sure sign that Mark needs to step away from the computer more often. As much as he hated the movie “The Social Network” he really does sound just like the rather pitiful movie version of himself at the very end of the movie. Sitting alone in a conference room hitting refresh to see if someone accepts his friend request. Sad really.
So let’s take a look at the next idea that is headed our way and see if we can’t limit the hyperventilation a little bit. There’s a new look for your profile page coming and it’s a big change. The new concept is called the Timeline and I’ve already been trying it out for the last week or so. Here are my thoughts.
For a purely aesthetic point of view I like it. The old Facebook profile was spartan and a bit dull. This one gives you the chance to use your own cover photo and make it more your own. You get two columns of stories, the ones you post and the ones that Facebook has identified as important. Yeah, that second part doesn’t thrill me but it’s based on what I do on Facebook anyway so it’ll be interesting to see how they tweak it. The reality is that not much changes about how you use Facebook. You’ll be able to post even more nonsensical, pointless trivia about your life if you so desire. And people will be able to find all your old embarrassing moments more easily (time to do some editing for some folks).
The end result is that within six months it will seem perfectly normal to you just like all the changes before. And if you really hate it that much you can always go to Google+.
So spare us all the hysteria.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
View From the Phlipside Radio - R.E.M. Farewell
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
It’s been a couple weeks since the rock group R.E.M. announced they were retiring. I’ve been thinking about that announcement and trying to come to grips with it in my head. It just feels peculiar somehow. Some groups end because the band can’t get along any more, the majority simply run out of creative juice. At the other extreme of course are the Rolling Stones who simply refuse to die. R.E.M. doesn’t seem to fit into the usual scenario. They seem to get along just fine and their last two albums debuted in the Top 10. “Accelerate” released in 2008 was called one of their best albums ever by some critics.
But then R.E.M. has always done it their way rather than anyone else’s.
Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Bill Berry and Mike Mills came together in 1980 without any grand plan according to Stipe. Their first gig was playing at a college friend’s birthday party. The name was chosen at random out of the dictionary. Musically Stipe and Buck were fans of punk music and with their band they would lead the way into the next wave of music. R.E.M. stands right at the birth of the alternative rock movement. It’s not that they created it but in many ways they led the way for the success of all the now many flavors of alternative. From their debut album “Murmur” they became the first recognizable name for most mainstream listeners. They had been approached by major label RCA but signed with the much smaller I.R.S. Records. It hasn’t been without a few bumps along the way. During the 1995 tour following the release of “Monster” 3 of the 4 members of the band would end up the hospital. When Bill Berry announced he wanted to retire two years later he said he would only do it if the rest of the band promised not to break up. I’m hard pressed to think of a similar situation happening with any other band.
Along the way R.E.M. made some incredible music. They tried some different things along the way, some succeeded and some not so much. They took the energy of punk and wedded it with melody and intelligent lyrics and became part of the vanguard of a vital new music style. So if they’ve decided it’s time to step away all we should really say is “Thank You”.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
It’s been a couple weeks since the rock group R.E.M. announced they were retiring. I’ve been thinking about that announcement and trying to come to grips with it in my head. It just feels peculiar somehow. Some groups end because the band can’t get along any more, the majority simply run out of creative juice. At the other extreme of course are the Rolling Stones who simply refuse to die. R.E.M. doesn’t seem to fit into the usual scenario. They seem to get along just fine and their last two albums debuted in the Top 10. “Accelerate” released in 2008 was called one of their best albums ever by some critics.
But then R.E.M. has always done it their way rather than anyone else’s.
Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Bill Berry and Mike Mills came together in 1980 without any grand plan according to Stipe. Their first gig was playing at a college friend’s birthday party. The name was chosen at random out of the dictionary. Musically Stipe and Buck were fans of punk music and with their band they would lead the way into the next wave of music. R.E.M. stands right at the birth of the alternative rock movement. It’s not that they created it but in many ways they led the way for the success of all the now many flavors of alternative. From their debut album “Murmur” they became the first recognizable name for most mainstream listeners. They had been approached by major label RCA but signed with the much smaller I.R.S. Records. It hasn’t been without a few bumps along the way. During the 1995 tour following the release of “Monster” 3 of the 4 members of the band would end up the hospital. When Bill Berry announced he wanted to retire two years later he said he would only do it if the rest of the band promised not to break up. I’m hard pressed to think of a similar situation happening with any other band.
Along the way R.E.M. made some incredible music. They tried some different things along the way, some succeeded and some not so much. They took the energy of punk and wedded it with melody and intelligent lyrics and became part of the vanguard of a vital new music style. So if they’ve decided it’s time to step away all we should really say is “Thank You”.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
This is a boring football post - you have been warned
So I'm bored and working on next week's football pool. I'm trying a more systematic approach this week and want to write it down in case it works.
The pool I'm in is a straight pick the winner so I don't need to worry about point spreads or any of that fantasy football crap. Don't even start with me about fantasy football. The complication is that I have to rate my picks based on my confidence. High confidence scores high points, most points win. So I'm trying to find a system that gives me an indication of who will win AND some way of differentiating among the games. Here's what I do:
First I use the Brother Guy quantifiers of home field advantage and better quarterback. (These are named for their creator, my brother Guy). Home field is easy. Better QB can be tricky. New England vs New York Jets is pretty easy but how do you choose between say KC's Matt Cassel and Indianapolis's Curtis Painter? Neither of them have been very good. Or worse yet what do you do about Matt Hasselbeck of Tennessee who is having a career year so far vs Pittsburgh's Ben Rothlisberger who is historically better but not this season? So I'm using QB rating for it. It's not a perfect metric but it's a standard one.
Then I go with points scored as an offensive metric and points allowed as a defensive one. Since I'm only concerned about winning it's points, points and points. Then I look at Take away/Give away differential. Finally just as a way to try and deal with overall performance I use ESPN's Power Ranking. If the difference in position on any of these is more than 5 places they score a full point, less than five is a half point, a difference of only one is a push. That's totally arbitrary. So max points is 6.
So this week here's my pool. Number in the left column is my confidence points, points on the right are the ratings from my system.
13 Detroit 6
12 NY Giants 5.5
11 Green Bay 5
10 New England 5
9 Tennessee 5*
8 Buffalo 5 *
7 San Diego 4.5
6 Cincinnati 4
7 San Francisco 44 Houston 3.5
3 New Orleans 3.5
2 Indianapolis 3
1 Arizona 1.5
Yeah the Arizona-Minnesota game scores out as majorly ugly. Virtually everything is a push.
*It breaks my heart to pick Tennessee but they are out performing my beloved Steelers on offense, defense, turnovers and at the moment I think Hasselbeck is better than a gimpy Big Ben. Meanwhile Buffalo is the major gulp inducer of the week. Right now they are on top on offense, take aways, home field and yes, quarterback. Fitz has performed a lot better than Vick. Both teams have serious defensive issues so who knows but a 8 point pick is making me sweat. We'll see how the system performs. Ties were decided by several things. Teams that scored both of the Brother Guy factors were given the edge. Otherwise I just tried to look who seemed to have the more impressive set of scores.
We'll see.
Of course if it turns out this is a winning formula I'll probably regret posting all the details here.
The pool I'm in is a straight pick the winner so I don't need to worry about point spreads or any of that fantasy football crap. Don't even start with me about fantasy football. The complication is that I have to rate my picks based on my confidence. High confidence scores high points, most points win. So I'm trying to find a system that gives me an indication of who will win AND some way of differentiating among the games. Here's what I do:
First I use the Brother Guy quantifiers of home field advantage and better quarterback. (These are named for their creator, my brother Guy). Home field is easy. Better QB can be tricky. New England vs New York Jets is pretty easy but how do you choose between say KC's Matt Cassel and Indianapolis's Curtis Painter? Neither of them have been very good. Or worse yet what do you do about Matt Hasselbeck of Tennessee who is having a career year so far vs Pittsburgh's Ben Rothlisberger who is historically better but not this season? So I'm using QB rating for it. It's not a perfect metric but it's a standard one.
Then I go with points scored as an offensive metric and points allowed as a defensive one. Since I'm only concerned about winning it's points, points and points. Then I look at Take away/Give away differential. Finally just as a way to try and deal with overall performance I use ESPN's Power Ranking. If the difference in position on any of these is more than 5 places they score a full point, less than five is a half point, a difference of only one is a push. That's totally arbitrary. So max points is 6.
So this week here's my pool. Number in the left column is my confidence points, points on the right are the ratings from my system.
13 Detroit 6
12 NY Giants 5.5
11 Green Bay 5
10 New England 5
9 Tennessee 5*
8 Buffalo 5 *
7 San Diego 4.5
6 Cincinnati 4
7 San Francisco 44 Houston 3.5
3 New Orleans 3.5
2 Indianapolis 3
1 Arizona 1.5
Yeah the Arizona-Minnesota game scores out as majorly ugly. Virtually everything is a push.
*It breaks my heart to pick Tennessee but they are out performing my beloved Steelers on offense, defense, turnovers and at the moment I think Hasselbeck is better than a gimpy Big Ben. Meanwhile Buffalo is the major gulp inducer of the week. Right now they are on top on offense, take aways, home field and yes, quarterback. Fitz has performed a lot better than Vick. Both teams have serious defensive issues so who knows but a 8 point pick is making me sweat. We'll see how the system performs. Ties were decided by several things. Teams that scored both of the Brother Guy factors were given the edge. Otherwise I just tried to look who seemed to have the more impressive set of scores.
We'll see.
Of course if it turns out this is a winning formula I'll probably regret posting all the details here.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
View From the Phlipside Radio - Talk Show Caller 101
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
OK something a little different this week. Call it Talk Show Caller 101, a Phlipside guide to being part of the media. I was a talk show host here in Jamestown for about a year and there are certain things that just make talk show hosts crazy. First remember that after commercials, the news and various other obligatory stuff the talk show host really only has a maximum of about 40 minutes of program time in each hour. Given that most talk show hosts like to hear themselves talk they need a fair portion of that time to show you how smart they are. This means they need their callers to be good. So here’s how to do your part.
Rule number 1 - don’t ask the host how they are doing. This is NOT a social interaction. This especially annoying if you are the sixth caller in a row to enquire. This just a waste of time. The host showed up for work and is talking. They’re fine. Move on.
Rule number 2 - don’t say what a big fan of the show you are. While talk show hosts have ENORMOUS egos they know that people who hate their show DON’T CALL. If you are calling you probably like the show at least a little. Another time waster. The only exception to this is “Long time listener, first time caller line”. You can use this exactly once.
Rule number three - introducing yourself “Hi this is Jay from Jamestown”. If the host introduces all his callers “Next up is Bob from Bemus Point” then the host has a screen with all this info on it. By repeating his intro you sound idiotic and waste time (seeing the pattern here). If the host DOESN’T do intros then it’s OK, but don’t linger over it.
Finally we have the most important rule, Rule number 4 - pick a single topic or subject before you get on the air. There is nothing more annoying than a caller who gets on and rambles for a minute or so then just when the host is going to say “Gotta move on, thanks for the call” the caller says “But what I really called about is...”. When I was a talk show host I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle the person who said this. Why are you wasting my limited air time with stuff that isn’t what you really wanted to talk about?
Follow these simple rules and you will become the darling of your favorite talk show. When your name comes up they will always make sure to get you on the air because you will be talk show gold.
And I won’t have to listen to any more awful talk show callers.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
OK something a little different this week. Call it Talk Show Caller 101, a Phlipside guide to being part of the media. I was a talk show host here in Jamestown for about a year and there are certain things that just make talk show hosts crazy. First remember that after commercials, the news and various other obligatory stuff the talk show host really only has a maximum of about 40 minutes of program time in each hour. Given that most talk show hosts like to hear themselves talk they need a fair portion of that time to show you how smart they are. This means they need their callers to be good. So here’s how to do your part.
Rule number 1 - don’t ask the host how they are doing. This is NOT a social interaction. This especially annoying if you are the sixth caller in a row to enquire. This just a waste of time. The host showed up for work and is talking. They’re fine. Move on.
Rule number 2 - don’t say what a big fan of the show you are. While talk show hosts have ENORMOUS egos they know that people who hate their show DON’T CALL. If you are calling you probably like the show at least a little. Another time waster. The only exception to this is “Long time listener, first time caller line”. You can use this exactly once.
Rule number three - introducing yourself “Hi this is Jay from Jamestown”. If the host introduces all his callers “Next up is Bob from Bemus Point” then the host has a screen with all this info on it. By repeating his intro you sound idiotic and waste time (seeing the pattern here). If the host DOESN’T do intros then it’s OK, but don’t linger over it.
Finally we have the most important rule, Rule number 4 - pick a single topic or subject before you get on the air. There is nothing more annoying than a caller who gets on and rambles for a minute or so then just when the host is going to say “Gotta move on, thanks for the call” the caller says “But what I really called about is...”. When I was a talk show host I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle the person who said this. Why are you wasting my limited air time with stuff that isn’t what you really wanted to talk about?
Follow these simple rules and you will become the darling of your favorite talk show. When your name comes up they will always make sure to get you on the air because you will be talk show gold.
And I won’t have to listen to any more awful talk show callers.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
View From the Phlipside Radio - Movie Madness
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
I’ve talked before about the challenges facing artists in the new digital world when it comes to getting paid for their work. The new paradigms seems to work on the basis that many people will only pay for something if they are absolutely forced to do it. This creates a real problem for the creative people. They make their living from the sale of their product, music, books, movies, TV shows and the like. Because make an infinite number of digital copies is infinitely easy trying to figure out a way to be fair to everyone is a huge issue.
The recording industry tried the blunt instrument approach by basically suing everyone for as much money as possible. This created a huge negative reaction and turned out to be a financial flop. It cost more in court and attorneys fees than they ever made by suing college students who were downloading the latest Eminem tunes through internet sites. There are also the DRMs, that’s digital rights management which is computer code that restricts your ability to make copies of the product. That gives much better protection the artist or copyright owner but makes it largely impossible for the buying public to do simple things like loan a book to a friend. There’s a booming business in circumventing DRM codes. So the search goes on for some kind of middle way.
Maybe the dumbest attempt is the one by the folks at Warner Brothers, the great movie studio. According a lawsuit filed against them Warner Brothers went to the online file hosting site Hotfile and complained about people putting pirated materials belong to Warner on the site. Hotfile responded by giving the WB folks a tool that allowed them remove any illegal content from the site. The idea was that they would eliminate anything that belonged to them. It appears that the power went to their head. They began to eliminate all kinds of files that had nothing to do with Warner Brothers and then went to Hotfile to make a deal where they could offer Warner Brothers materials to folks who had lost files on Hotfile because of Warner Brothers unethical eliminations. Hotfile repeatedly warned the studio to knock it off and finally went to court claiming, quoting now “...violation of the DMCA, intentional interference with a contractual or business relationship and negligence" driven by economic interest.”
Once again an industry has tried to protect it’s legitimate economic interests in a way that will end up costing them a small fortune. You’d think these folks could be more creative than that.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
I’ve talked before about the challenges facing artists in the new digital world when it comes to getting paid for their work. The new paradigms seems to work on the basis that many people will only pay for something if they are absolutely forced to do it. This creates a real problem for the creative people. They make their living from the sale of their product, music, books, movies, TV shows and the like. Because make an infinite number of digital copies is infinitely easy trying to figure out a way to be fair to everyone is a huge issue.
Maybe the dumbest attempt is the one by the folks at Warner Brothers, the great movie studio. According a lawsuit filed against them Warner Brothers went to the online file hosting site Hotfile and complained about people putting pirated materials belong to Warner on the site. Hotfile responded by giving the WB folks a tool that allowed them remove any illegal content from the site. The idea was that they would eliminate anything that belonged to them. It appears that the power went to their head. They began to eliminate all kinds of files that had nothing to do with Warner Brothers and then went to Hotfile to make a deal where they could offer Warner Brothers materials to folks who had lost files on Hotfile because of Warner Brothers unethical eliminations. Hotfile repeatedly warned the studio to knock it off and finally went to court claiming, quoting now “...violation of the DMCA, intentional interference with a contractual or business relationship and negligence" driven by economic interest.”
Once again an industry has tried to protect it’s legitimate economic interests in a way that will end up costing them a small fortune. You’d think these folks could be more creative than that.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
View From the Phlipside Radio - Self Inflicted Wounds
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
I spent a lot of time trying to come up with just the right metaphor or image or whatever for this story. And none of them seemed to fit. Then I remember a basic rule in my family. There’s no sympathy for a self inflicted wound. If you hurt yourself by being stupid you get no sympathy. So I have no sympathy for the folks at Netflix. They are on a truly horrible roll and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Earlier in the summer Netflix drew immense negative reaction when they suddenly announced they were splitting DVD service and streaming video services and changed the fee structure. They lost significant numbers of subscribers. So you’d figure they be trying to smooth things over at this point. On Sunday Netflix CEO Reed Hastings found a way to make it all worse. Netflix is in fact splitting the company spinning off the DVD section. And they are making every possible mistake along the way. First they are sacrificing one of the most valuable assets any business has, name recognition. The DVD service will no longer be Netflix but something called Qwikster. Beyond losing the brand loyalty built into the old name they’ve chosen a meaningless, stupid name. Netflix combines two familiar terms for the internet and the movies. It’s a perfect name for the service. What the heck is a Qwikster?
But it keeps getting worse. Because these will now be treated as completely different companies they will now have two completely separate web sites. So if you actually decided to hang onto both the DVD and streaming services after the price increase you are now stuck having to deal with two different bills and two websites. That’s right Netflix has decided to make your more complicated as well as charge you more money for it. It’s a truly astounding example of self inflicted wound after self inflicted wound after self inflicted wound.
How bad is it really? One day after the Netflix announcement you found news stories titled “Are Netflix’s Best Days Behind Them?”, and “Is Netflix Committing Suicide?” and an article exploring all the other companies whose services could replace your Netflix account. Netflix stock has lost almost 50% of its value just this year.
And they get no sympathy from this corner. Not for self inflicted wounds.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
I spent a lot of time trying to come up with just the right metaphor or image or whatever for this story. And none of them seemed to fit. Then I remember a basic rule in my family. There’s no sympathy for a self inflicted wound. If you hurt yourself by being stupid you get no sympathy. So I have no sympathy for the folks at Netflix. They are on a truly horrible roll and they have no one to blame but themselves.
But it keeps getting worse. Because these will now be treated as completely different companies they will now have two completely separate web sites. So if you actually decided to hang onto both the DVD and streaming services after the price increase you are now stuck having to deal with two different bills and two websites. That’s right Netflix has decided to make your more complicated as well as charge you more money for it. It’s a truly astounding example of self inflicted wound after self inflicted wound after self inflicted wound.
How bad is it really? One day after the Netflix announcement you found news stories titled “Are Netflix’s Best Days Behind Them?”, and “Is Netflix Committing Suicide?” and an article exploring all the other companies whose services could replace your Netflix account. Netflix stock has lost almost 50% of its value just this year.
And they get no sympathy from this corner. Not for self inflicted wounds.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Monday, September 19, 2011
Football pool update
I'm going to focus on the positives. I'm going to focus on the positives. Still have the Monday night game to go but I only missed two games this week. Atlanta was a better team than I thought. Tip my hat to Matty Ice and the Birds.
On the other hand THE BALTIMORE RAVENS SUCK! Losing to a very mediocre Tennessee team and killing me by losing my 14 point game. Atlanta was only my 4 point game.
At the same time I was #20 for the week and if the Giants win I'll move up another handful of slots. If they lose I shouldn't be affected. Pretty much everyone has the Giants so a loss is a wash. I have more points riding on this game than most of the folks right above me so a win is a win for me. I'm also #20 in the season standings now with a 68.5% correct pick rate. A Giants win probably won't move me more than a slot or two in the overall. But Top 20 isn't a bad place to be right now.
Otherwise the Bills were truly impressive and I may have to re-assess my opinion of Cam Newton. It's only two games but fairly amazing two games. Pittsburgh did what I expected, got nasty after being humiliated.
On the other hand THE BALTIMORE RAVENS SUCK! Losing to a very mediocre Tennessee team and killing me by losing my 14 point game. Atlanta was only my 4 point game.
At the same time I was #20 for the week and if the Giants win I'll move up another handful of slots. If they lose I shouldn't be affected. Pretty much everyone has the Giants so a loss is a wash. I have more points riding on this game than most of the folks right above me so a win is a win for me. I'm also #20 in the season standings now with a 68.5% correct pick rate. A Giants win probably won't move me more than a slot or two in the overall. But Top 20 isn't a bad place to be right now.
Otherwise the Bills were truly impressive and I may have to re-assess my opinion of Cam Newton. It's only two games but fairly amazing two games. Pittsburgh did what I expected, got nasty after being humiliated.
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