June 9, 2008
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It’s official: the iPhone 3G will drop on July 11, with a base price of $199. That’s pocket change compared to last year when prices were in the $500-600 range when the first iPhone was released. The turtle-necked guru himself, Steve Jobs, delivered the most eagerly waited (tech) announcement of the year so far at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the week-long convention that is pretty much MacWorld 2.
While streaming and listening to the big announcement on iPhone Alley, my eardrums were nearly blown up by the roars of the thunderous applause every time Jobs opened his mouth to reveal a new feature on the phone. And that was before he even got to the price drop (and I had my volume settings on “low”). Naturally, there’s going to be lots of cheers when in the presence of Apple’s CEOs as much of the crowd is filled with Macheads who paid to get into the keynote event.
Even though I couldn’t hear the price upon first listen (since it was drowned out immediately with a roar of applause so loud it could have been equivalent to a jumbo jet taking off), it was worth the wait for those who haven't gone iPhone yet. But I have to admit I was delighted to hear the price drop and GPS features and improved wireless/EDGE network download speeds (not to mention my jealousy, having paid $399 + AppleCare for the first iPhone in December). I checked the Apple Store website (which has been closed all of Monday for a mysterious update), and 10 minutes after the announcement, the site was already crashing.
But how was the blogosphere reacting immediately after? Aside from the price drop, GPS is obviously on the minds of many.
Erick Schonfeld for TechCrunch noted aside from the 3G upgrade, “what is really going to be a game-changer, though, is the higher speed in combination with the GPS chip, which will open up a whole slew of location-aware apps (some of which we’ve already seen).” He also predicted “this price drop and the new features should put Apple over the 10-million mark without a problem.”
Paul Miller for Engadget praised the new GPS system along with improved WiFi, “which should give users a pretty solid lock on where the heck they are on this planet.” He was disappointed, however, that “there's no front-facing cam, which syncs with what we were hearing.”
Also on the GPS feature, Gizmodo bloggers asked “Two unspokens: What's it do to that otherwise nice battery life? And where's a carmount?” They also said, “It has been a long wait, but the final version of the iPhone SDK has turned out beautifully.”
Damon Darlin for The New York Times expressed a little surprise, that there was not the “classic ‘one more thing’ from Mr. Jobs, followed by another big surprise.”
Maybe next MacWorld in January 2009.
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June 9, 2008
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It’s all things Apple-related time again. The Worldwide Developers Conference commences today at 10 a.m. PST in San Francisco, and many tech industry insiders (and Mac fanatics around the globe) are eagerly awaiting the potential announcement of the new iPhone during Steve Jobs’ keynote speech. Here are a few ways you can keep updated live:
Live Blogging
Mac Rumors Live
Tech Crunch: Blog Coverage
Live Streaming Video
iPhone Alley
Tech Crunch: Streaming Video
Live News
Techmeme
Twitter Keyword and Tagging
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June 2, 2008
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Sure Sex and the City has become a cultural phenomenon regarding relationships and the challenges 30-something women face. But let’s get real -- this film is all about the money.
And money it has certainly delivered. According to Variety, the New Line Cinema film raked in $55.7 million in opening weekend ticket sales (the film’s budget was only $65 million), proving that a film with a predominately female audience can rule the box office. Not only did it break every box office record for an R-rated comedy, it is the strongest opening ever for a film headlined by a female lead. Furthermore, it proved that a female-led comedy could hold its own with summer action blockbusters, traditionally geared towards male audiences.
SATC is for sure a product placement goldmine (Hello, Manhattan Mini-Storage boxes!), and designer label commercial all in itself (how many women will be buying -- or copying -- Vivienne Westwood wedding gowns this year?) Additionally, the film has spawned a number of New York City tourist attractions, including a bus tour of show sites, such as Carrie’s famous Upper East Side apartment stoop and Magnolia Bakery. The show has also laid the groundwork for the four ladies to start their own businesses, such as Sarah Jessica Parker’s fragrances and her (very successful) discount clothing line, Bitten. Today, Kristin Davis announced that she will jump on the celebrity clothing brand bandwagon in partnership with the North Carolina-based company, Belk, Inc.
Based on opening weekend numbers alone, it would be worth it to most studios to start talking sequel by now. But a bigger question: will it be worth it to the fans? The reviews have been mixed from both fans and critics alike, and a sequel could potentially alienate some fans. In a radio interview with Ryan Seacrest on May 27, Parker said that there was no talk of a sequel -- nor does the film necessarily leave room for one. It’s quite wrapped up into a nice little package like one of the episodes of the six-season show. The film has wrapped up the essential questions that left most viewers hanging when the show concluded in 2004. Now that all of the characters are out of the thirties, and the biggest storyline of the show has been finally wrapped up (trying to avoid spoilers here, fans), it is questionable where writer and director Michael Patrick King could take the story next.
But if Indiana Jones can make a comeback with a less-than-satisfying additional adventure years after his prime, so can the four heroines of Sex and the City.
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May 23, 2008
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Guest stars on major primetime television programs are old hat. But there is a new trend: fallen Hollywood starlets trying to reignite their careers through a new (and still A-list) method.
While rehab is the new spa, “it-girls” aren’t having the best of luck getting work when released back into the world. Reality shows would drop them to the D-list immediately, and based on their irresponsible and tabloid-ridden reputations, movie studios won’t hire them.
Being a pop star these days is essentially being a brand, and that brand is in jeopardy when one suffers public embarrassment. So how are these twenty-somethings just out of rehab supposed to regain their star-studded status?
Example A: Britney Spears. Once America’s pop music princess ruling over an empire of music, film and endorsement deals, she has fallen beyond far from grace. After a few trips to rehab (but still managing to avoid the DUI trend common among Hollywood’s girls-gone-wild), and getting rid of the people who were bad influences in her life, Spears is on the road to recovery. Slumping to the pitfall of even losing custody of her children based on her antics displayed on every cover in magazine stands, Spears will have to pull all the stops to get back on top. She needs more than just releasing another album (Her most recent release, Blackout, despite being her most critically-acclaimed album, hasn’t helped her). A complete image and brand makeover was needed. The answer was to get into American lives at home. Thanks to a couple of well-received guest spots on CBS’ How I Met Your Mother, Americans are starting to remember the bubbly songstress they fell in love with almost a decade ago. It’s a small step, for sure, but a solid one in the right direction.
Example B: Lindsay Lohan. It’s hard to begin where this actress went wrong. One can hardly remember the solid comedic performance she delivered in Mean Girls. Lohan once had it all: she was a successful actress and even released a few albums, but has now gained the reputation of being a heavy partier and irresponsible on-set. Now a free woman again after two stints in rehab (in particular, the newest Hollywood hot rehab spot, Cirque Lodge, in Utah), Lohan is trying to regain her career as well. Not being able to get the A-list roles she once was sought out for, Lohan has to carefully plan out her next move. The wrong decision would be for her to join her mother and sister on their upcoming E! reality show, Living Lohan. Her best decision as of yet was to sign on for a recurring guest role on ABC’s darling show, Ugly Betty. While she only appeared for barely over 60 seconds on last night’s season finale as a high school classmate of the title character, Lohan has signed on for at least six episodes, with the rumor mill hinting at a possible permanent spot. With even just a small role on a hit television show, Lohan has the potential to regain her A-list status and remodel her reputation.
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May 8, 2008
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At age 100, Elena Bautista became a movie star. For a woman who doesn’t even have a physical memento or photograph of her own mother, it's significant that Bautista, now 101, is the subject of her filmmaker granddaughter’s documentary directorial debut, Kuna Ni Nanang (My Mother Said).
The film was born when Jessica Sison’s family asked her in August 2006 to put together a slideshow for her grandmother’s 100th birthday the following April. She answered no. “Anyone can put together a slideshow,” Sison said to me outside of the Village East Cinema Theater in New York before the film’s final screening at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, May 4. “I’m a filmmaker, and I have to do better.”
Sixteen film festivals later, the five-minute documentary has become an international success, from screenings at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival to the Women in Film Festival in Vancouver. “I wasn’t going to submit it,” Sison revealed, “Then my friends and other filmmakers said I should.”
Most recently, Sison’s tour of the film stopped in New York, where I had the great opportunity of seeing it for myself. The Tribeca Film Festival sorted through some 2,500 short films. Sison’s film was one of the 79 shorts picked. Sison admitted that she had no idea it was that competitive. “This film was only supposed to be for her birthday,” the 35-year-old filmmaker said.
Made on Final Cut Pro and using Bautista’s own voice to narrate the story, from her arranged marriage and emigration from the Philippines to her present life in California, the film covers Bautista life in a fraction of time. Sison’s blending of party scenes with her family and Bautista singing a short cadence in Ilocano (a dialect from the northern Philippines) strikes an emotional chord in the viewer’s heart. (You will want to call your own grandmother at the end of this movie. I certainly did.) One doesn’t see a frail 100-year-old woman. Instead, Bautista is strong and fearless, saying in the film that she doesn’t fear death, “because it happens to everybody.”
The film will have a few more screenings this summer, namely in Texas, Colorado and back in New York in July for the Asian American International Film Festival. Since it’s a five-minute film, DVD might not be the ideal wide-release venue, but Sison might release the film for purchase online.
“The whole online thing is really new,” the Filipina director said, “There are so many competing distribution companies that are startups. I don’t want to go with one until they are established.” She would be interested in releasing it on Apple’s iTunes, which releases and sells numerous short films, but acknowledged that they‘re extremely selective.
Sison might be selling herself a little short. For a film that stemmed from the idea of a slideshow and made its way to the Tribeca Film Festival, it seems to me that anything could be possible.
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May 8, 2008
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Women’s lives are developing and changing drastically every year -- particularly the daily lives of mothers. Lifetime Networks just released data from their FemiNation Poll, a survey on mothers nationwide and their thoughts on Mother’s Day, work and life balance and relationships.
While Valentine’s Day is often viewed as marketing scheme by the greeting card industry, mothers are people we don’t celebrate enough. And, in case you haven’t bought a card or bouquet of flowers for Mother’s Day yet (or if you’re just remembering that its this Sunday while reading this), don’t worry. Those choices come second to what our mothers really want -- a simple “Thank You” will suffice for now. 73 percent of mothers indicated in the FemiNation Poll (which surveyed over 2,000 American moms), said that those two words of gratitude are what they want most on their special day. Gifts, of course, are welcomed (and hoped for) too. 82 percent of the surveyed mothers expect to get a gift of some sort from their children, but 15 percent doubted their kids will give them anything at all.
After the most desired gift, a card (which is far more personal than an e-mail, maybe even more so than a phone call), moms said they would like “a day of no chores or responsibilities.” So much for flowers and candy. (I’ve actually never understood why flowers are such a popular gift. They expire in days, and a meaningful Mother’s Day gift should be timeless.) But a fine dinner at a fancy restaurant ranked highest among gift selections from their husbands. From these selections, it appears that moms don’t need lots of bows and ribbons to know gratitude and affection -- just something from the heart.
While Mother’s Day is big business for card, candy and flower industries (and this country needs plenty more consumer spending right now), the sentiment behind the day shouldn’t be neglected. Mothers make countless, and many unseen, sacrifices. Despite the juggling act most mothers perform daily, over 75 percent of mothers believed that they are doing an above average job, and that they have a harder job now than their own mothers. (I’m curious whether moms feel advances in technology has helped or increased their workloads. Isn’t it easier to reach kids with cell phones these days? Or does that just make them more spoiled?)
Even Mother’s Day, however, can’t escape the presidential election madness. Lifetime’s Every Woman Counts poll discovered that more women would want to introduce their moms to Hillary Clinton (28%) than John McCain (25%) or Barack Obama (20%). It’s hard to dispute that with the success of a child like Chelsea Clinton, the New York senator deserves a nice Mother’s Day gift this year. Who would you bring home to meet Mom this Sunday?
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May 2, 2008
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Redesigning a magazine's layout doesn’t just update it – it revolutionizes it. Luke Hayman, an art director with the design firm, Pentagram, spoke to an audience of about 50 students and professors at the final meeting of the Delacorte Lecture Series at Columbia Journalism School on April 24. Hayman explained that any redesign has to be a careful process, as a magazine represents a brand and a particular audience base.
“Part of the magazine is pacing and making sure you don’t jar anyone,” Hayman said, “It's a delicate balance of variety and sameness.”
During his design career, Hayman has worked on the redesigns of magazines such as Brill’s Content and Travel + Leisure, and most recently he worked as a design director at New York. Rather than offering advice on how to break into the business, the British-born designer described the nitty-gritties involved in art direction, including how fonts exude particular emotions and appeals, and the importance of good photography.
For example, most of the identity of Travel + Leisure (whose target audience, Hayman said, is “wealthy, 50-year-old women”), comes from its simple typeface. In addition, he and his fellow designers made sure that the editorial distinguished was from advertisements by a white border around the page. “If you have good content, good photography, good imagery, you don't want to compete with it,” he explained.
Hayman also explained why a redesign is so valuable (not to mention, expensive) for preserving a magazine nowadays. Readers often flip through pages, he said, and an eye-catching design is essential to keeping a reader from tossing the magazine aside after a quick glance." Visually, things get tired,” Hayman said. “Some of it is expression. They get stale.” With New York, in particular, it was all about adding little bits of detail and fun, while trying “capture tone and smartness.”
He cautions however that it is important to preserve the heart and soul of a magazine throughout the redesign, since a layout can define a brand.
Editorial content can get cut to make room for art’s sake, which can be good or bad, depending on your personal tastes. “It’s really hard because you can be there with an editor, and cutting 500 words is hard, but if the page is solid gray, you'll have less people reading,” Hayman said. He also warned that a magazine layout shouldn’t come off looking like a brochure. But with every magazine, he emphasized, a magazine’s purpose is to provide essential information, and typography and art design involves a great deal of work weaving all of the pages together.
Within a magazine, there are several mini-magazines,” Hayman explained, “They all have to fit together well.”
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April 23, 2008
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Three weeks ago, he drunkenly told a reporter from The Times of London that he once pushed a man off a cliff (which he later retracted). Last Thursday, Felix Dennis, chairman of The Week, appeared (sober, I think) at the Columbia Journalism School to by far the largest turnout for our weekly Delacorte magazine lecture series. Occasionally, the lectures draw some outside reporters in.
Dennis alerted his audience right off the bat that he knew a few reporters were there purely for a scoop on the scandal. The brash British magazine exec, however, disappointed them, steering clear from the subject for the rest of the evening. Dennis, dressed in a black suit with white shirt under a red and white tie, a blood red handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket, and his brown glasses hanging low on his nose, did not hold back on blasting other frank opinions, possibly to the dismay of his American staff/entourage in the front two or three rows of the audience. His key point on the future of magazines: Don’t change them.
“Readers on the whole don't want innovation,” Dennis said frankly. “What they want in their magazines is the same for any in the world. They want to be informed, and they wanted to be entertained simultaneously.”
The founder and former publisher of the men’s magazine, Maxim, advised the professors, students and reporters in the audience to “relax” about the explosion of new media and the possible end of newspapers. While we might be in the “autumn of the glory days called paper,” Dennis said in a haunting voice reminiscent of a narrator on Masterpiece Theatre, the web only requires “a change of mindset, and the young are pretty good at that.”
“During the infancy of the web, my company made two crucial decisions: we refused to throw money at this new media,” Dennis recalled, “Instead we would grew our web presence as the web grew. That was a brave decision at the time. Editors were running around like chickens with their heads chopped off throwing money at the web."
Despite his now-kicked cocaine habit and a reputation for being a loose cannon, Dennis has had an enviable career. He’s worth over a billion dollars, one of the 100 richest people in Britain, and has bought and sold hundreds of magazines since he was in his thirties. Some of his journalistic firsts include being the first reviewer of the debut Led Zeppelin album, first biographer of both Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali, and even the founder of a “poverty-cooking column.” Sadly, it was probably born before the web and didn’t show up on Google.
Being the businessman he is, Dennis took the opportunity to share his new “anti-self-help” book, How to Get Rich, which he described as “how to be richer than the chump sitting next to you.” My neighbor and I glanced at each other suspiciously and giggled. Speaking to a crowd of journalists in a time when much of the media is doing nothing but losing money, the title was a bit laughable. But since its advice coming from a self-made billionaire, it couldn’t hurt to peruse the book.
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April 16, 2008
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On the first truly warm evening of spring, last Thursday, about 50 journalism students, including myself, sat inside the main lecture hall of the Columbia Journalism School. We listened to Susan Lyne, CEO and president of Martha Stewart Living, recount the high and low times in her career. From founding and editing the now defunct Premiere magazine for eight and a half years to running one end of Martha Stewart’s empire, Lyne iterated that key to a successful magazine is producing a product with a new concept that “somehow feels right,” that has a voice and that has an approach to its topic subject manner. And of course, it has to be unique.
Her perspective on the future of magazines and the Internet: a magazine can’t survive without a decent website. “We've tried to do something different,” Lyne told the audience full of budding journalists, “We look at our content with fresh eyes for a web user. It is organized around categories not around our brands. We produce a fair amount of original content, but its really about repackaging and rethinking content libraries that is more intuitive for an Internet user.”
MSL isn’t meant for your average housewife and there is a definite high-end, highbrow approach to the layout and content of the magazine. “What she (Martha) was able to do was serve an audience that was underserved,” Lyne said, “It was for the homemaker, for a woman who saw her work not as drudgery but with pleasure.” Indeed, while the content and stories filling the pages (well, the spots without full-page photographs or white space) the magazine has an exquisite layout and talented art direction team. (is this sentence missing something?) My magazine production class has even copied the fonts!
The magazine was so successful that it spawned a television show, versus Oprah Winfrey, whose show spawned a magazine. The company has produced several other magazines since, including Everyday Food, Body + Soul, Martha Stewart Weddings and the now closed Blueprint, a magazine targeted towards younger audiences, who Lyne said researchers never found. Several daytime television personalities have tried to spawn magazines and create a brand for themselves. Lyne said the difference between MSL versus Rosie O’Donnell’s defunct magazine is that “[O’Donnell] though it was a magazine about her, and that whatever she was interested in was what the reader was interested in.” A successful magazine has to cater to its readers’ interests – not be a mogul’s platform.
While in college at the University of California, Berkeley, Lyne said it was there that she realized she wanted to be a journalist. After graduation, she got her first real job at City Magazine, Francis Ford Coppola’s attempt at a New York magazine in San Francisco. In 1978, she moved on to being the managing editor at the Village Voice until 1982. She briefly got involved in the movie industry, and, in 1987, pitched Premiere to Rupert Murdoch. After describing in detail her days working at Premiere (although, several people around me and myself were quite unsure if she ever mentioned the movie magazine’s title until brought up in the Q&A session), she noticeably glossed past talking about her time at ABC. Perhaps since it was a lecture for magazine students, she didn’t feel it was relevant. Or just maybe, she didn’t feel the Disney magic anymore.
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April 9, 2008
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I admit it: I fell into the American Girl obsession/love fest/cult when I was nine years old. Times have changed since 1993. The brand has exploded from a few stories and dolls to an empire of stores, teashops and even hotel packages. American Girl will even make its Hollywood debut this summer with the company’s first, full-length feature film. The brand would appear to be unstoppable, leaving one to wonder what they could possibly do next.
Last week, when a friend of mine (who happens to have Molly and Samantha dolls from her childhood) was booking her trip to visit New York from California next month, she came across a number of American Girl hotel deals. While it is increasingly tricky to find an affordable hotel room for just a human in Manhattan, not so for the American Girl doll. For instance, at the New York Marriott Marquis in Midtown, American Girl hotel packages come with a number of “surprises” for child and doll, as well as a travel bed to take home after the trip. Rates start at $314 per night, but your American Girl doll will sleep and be well rested for her day at the salon and tearoom.
Originally, there were only four girls; now there are nine main characters along with four supporting roles you can also squander your child’s college fund on (not counting American Girl’s expansion to baby dolls and stuffed puppies and kittens). Although the brand has expanded into the live-action realm with made-for-TV movies for Felicity, Samantha, the Victorian girl with women’s suffrage ideals, and Molly, a girl living on the home front during World War II, American Girl will be hitting the big screens nationwide on July 2 with the release of Kit Kittredge, An American Girl, based on one of the more recently released dolls. Kit’s story is of a young girl who aspires to be a journalist and is set during the Great Depression.
My personal favorite was Felicity, the spunky Colonial girl from Williamsburg, Virginia. Behind the book collections, the American Girl doll collection has always had a plethora of (expensive) accessories to tag along with the dolls. Back then, as much as I wanted the $100 wooden 18th-century English-style wardrobe meant for Felicity’s vast amounts of attire (albeit I only had two outfits for her), the biggest accessory I could receive from my parents was a faux-Colonial American embroidery set. (I can still barely sew a button.)
Don’t get me wrong – I love the idea behind the American Girl collection (promoting strong female characters from an early age) and I love teaching young girls about history through vibrant and motivating stories. But I think some things have gotten out of hand, as do most brands aimed towards children in America. For those of you who grew up fixated with the American Girl collection, had a sister who did, or if you have a little girl now, you’re probably familiar with the American Girl store. With locations in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, you can find yourself in a sea of little girls screaming with delight, whining for more toys or begging their overwhelmed parents for one of the très chère amenities available for dolls. For those interested in taking their toys to the salon, prices go up to as high as $25 to pamper your doll’s hair to the fullest, while I spent $35 on my last haircut at the Aveda salon on 114th and Broadway. It’s your call.
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