As a huge lover of the sitcom Seinfeld, I loved this trailer. A great mashup of scenes to make the movie, “Jerry The Great”
Author: Mike P. Lewis
New Startup Ongo Raises $12 MM and Starts Sprinting Off a Cliff
The new company Ongo announced today that it’s raised $12 million from a handful of big media companies (Washington Post, NY Times, and Gannett who publishes USA Today). The service they are offering is, according to the NY TImes article about the investment:
Ongo is for readers who peruse a variety of publications every day and want to read them all in one place. It shows articles from about 20 publications, and is in talks with dozens more.
The catch: Readers pay $6.99 a month for the service, while most of the Web sites whose articles it shows are free. In exchange, readers see no ads or cluttered pages, and can search for articles, save them and share them with friends — all from one site.
The article then has this quote from the founder, “I just don’t think my friends are as good as professional editors in finding stories for me to read.”
I don’t see any way for this company to succeed.
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Apple is Crushing It
Say what you will about Apple’s product and their company culture. They can be closed (vs. Google’s “open”) and the company can be arrogant, but you have to admire how successful they are right now. Their domination of the consumer electronics industry is just staggering. Never before in my life have i seen a company firing on all cylinders like this. It truly something to witness.
Let me give you some facts from their latest earning’s call this week.
- The first astonishing statistic, is that Apple’s revenue grew 71% in the past year. Large companies like Apple’s just don’t grow 70% year over year. Apple is now on a revenue run-rate of more than $100 billion a year. Just as amazing, it is expecting to grow another 60%+ in the first quarter of this year.
All their products are crushing it.
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We Are What We Choose
I didn’t post this last year but it has stayed with me. It’s a great speech by CEO/Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. It’s the commencement speech to Princeton’s Class of 2010, delivered on May 30, 2010. Choices are incredibly important and now, at the beginning of 2011, it’s good to step back and think about what choices we’ll make this upcoming year. Here’s to you and me, building a great story also. Read on….
As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.
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Long-Form Content is Coming Back
I’ve noticed over the past year or so that the number of friends of mine who blog is decreasing. I’m seeing less posts. To me this is because Twitter and Facebook have taken all their thoughts. The “I love Tron!” thoughts are now going into status messages and not into blog posts. Which, to me, is fine.
But there’s actually been an increase in long-form posts i’m seeing. The blogs i’m reading are full of actual articles of great stuff. It’s great to get the “I love Tron” type comments on to Facebook and Twitter so the blog can hold longer form of actual thoughts and analysis.
I recently read a great article by Clive Thompson about just this topic. His theory is that something more complex and interesting is actually happening. He says, “The torrent of short-form thinking is actually a catalyst for more long-form meditation.” He states, “We talk a lot, then we dive deep.”
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Quora is About to Explode
I’ve seen it before. It happened with Twitter and with MySpace. Sometimes there’s a confluence of media attention and star power that makes a website just explode – and that is about to happen to Quora.
If you haven’t heard of this website, enjoy this moment in time. It’s probably the last moment you won’t hear or read someone talk about this great new Q&A site that’s emerged. By the end of 2011, Quora will be seen as one of the breakout hits.
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A Genius Ad
When you click on the Movies app on your iPhone, you get this popup advertisement:
The only way to get past it without being taken to the Living Social site is to click “I Hate Cupcakes”
Sure, it’s cheating and misleading, but I’m guessing the click-through rates for this one is off the charts. Who doesn’t loves cupcakes?
Next Three Days is a Throwback Suspense Film
Next Three Days is a new film with Russel Crowe and Elizabeth Banks. It’s also written and directed by Paul Haggis who won Oscars for Crash (writer/director) and Million Dollar Baby (writer).
I really liked this film. Imagine your wife is wrongly imprisoned and your life just falls apart. That’s what happens here. Russell Crowe can’t handle it and decides he’s going to bust his wife out. He doesn’t know how but he’s going to do it. The movie does a good job of showing how he plots the job as well as how he has to change psychologically. Mentally, he has to do things he never thought possible. The film is a good look at how how a man can change given the right motivation.
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The Film Unstoppable is Bad
Denzel makes a predictable train movie – again. Chris Pine seems like he’s on the train trying to think of the best story he can say about his wife that we’d find even remotely interesting. He does’t succeed.
Honestly, instead of seeing this film, you should just watch the SNL parody (below). It’s the same thing but funny. Movie 4 out of 10. Parody: 9 / 10.
Burlesque is not good but not bad either
I’ve seen a slew of movies over the past 2 weeks (read: 6). Instead of one monster post of all of them, i’ll do a short review of one each day.
Today’s movie Burlesque. This film has a really strong beginning. The scene where Christina Aguilera’s character earns a spot in the show was well done. We really care about her and then when starts singing, it really hits home. I was sitting there thinking that this might be a modern day A Chorus Line. But no, it’s not. Around 35 minutes in, Burlesque slips into a mediocre movie, and it doesn’t really tell us anything about any of the characters. We know where Aguilera comes from but not how she learned to sing or dance or got her motivation to be a performer. Similarly, the other characters couldn’t even be called 1-demensional. I would say maybe 1/2 demensional. We got no background on any of them – even the guy Aguilera falls in love with. Apparently she likes him because he works at the same place, he had a couch she could sleep on and is good looking. That’s about all we know of him and of her criteria.
As the movie continued, I was waiting for the True Hollywood Story death spiral that always occurs to a newly crowned star – see Ray, The Runaways, and Walk the Line for film examples. That doesn’t happen here. In fact, nothing happens. While it’s refreshing that Aguilera stays the same grounded person throughout the film, it’s also boring. Also, the Cher solo needed to be cut. She didn’t hold my attention at all. I know she’s had a #1 hit in every decade since the 50’s but this isn’t her song for this decade. It sucked
All that nastiness aside, this movie isn’t as bad as you think it could be. 6 out of 10.