Author: Mike P. Lewis

Paranormal Activity

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Paranormal Activity is a clever little horror film that scared the crap out of me.  Not because of big surprises but because it’s just eerie.  Let me explain:

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A girl is continously haunted by noises and strange occurances.  Her boyfriend, Micah, buys a camera and becomes obsessed with it.  Like any guy, he wants to get all of the strangeness on film.  The genius of the movie is that he places this camera on a tripod and films them sleeping to see what happens in the middle of the night.  And things happen.  When you see stuff occur, you see it happen through a static camera while their eyes are closed.  You feel for them and are legitamitely scared.  As Ebert says, “for extended periods here, nothing at all is happening, and believe me, you won’t be bored.”

If you like being on the edge of your seat, go check it out

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Startups: The Open Road

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There’s an article in this week’s New Yorker (link) that i found on Caterina.net about the painter Luc Tuymans, who describes how he creates his work: “It’s like I don’t know what I’m doing but I know how to do it.” The article’s author, notes that “uncertain ends, confident means is about as good a general definition of creativity as I know.”

That quote made me thing of the activities around launching a company.  You never know what’s going to hit you but you know that you’ll be able to solve it when it comes.  It makes me think of one of my favorite quotes:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road

– Walt Whitman

I have found that you must be both excited and confident and if you are, it’s very fulfilling.  Just some words to think about over the weekend

Techtacky

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This is an interesting chart that i found on Seth Godin’s blog here:

Techtacky

As he says: “The challenge is in designing structures and transparency that will attract the good guys while burying or repelling those that seek the new technology (because they can’t find anywhere else to go). In other words, you either need to move the top left to the top right (not easy, but possible*), or educate the bottom left of the grid in how to contribute to the culture (really difficult indeed). The best new media (like blogs and possibly twitter) open doors to people who didn’t used to have a voice. The worst ones (like blogs and possibly twitter) merely create new venues for scams and senseless yelling.”

People like to bemoan new technologies but it’s just lazy to criticize the entire sector.  Some innovations move you ahead (upper right) and some introduce new problems (lower right)

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The Music Business and Days of Radio

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I’m reading the book Free by Chris Anderson on my iPhone Kindle.  It’s the only book i have on it – and i got it because it was free.  It’s actually turning out to be a good read and having it on my phone allows me to read it when i normally wouldn’t read anything (subway rides, waiting in lines, etc.)

radioaniIn the book there’s a good passage about the music business and radio.  In the late 1930’s, radio was emerging as a popular entertainment format but also one that made a mess of the old ways of paying musicians.  At the time most radio broadcasts were live, and the musicians and composers were paid for a single performance but to musicians and composers payment for a single radio performance alone did not seem fair when that one performance was being received by millions of listeners.  To them, if those millions were packed into one concert hall, the musicians share of the receipts would have been huge.

Broadcasters argued that it was impossible to pay licensing fees based on how many listeners tuned in b/c no one knew what that number was.  But ASCAP, which had a near-monopoly on the most popular artists, made the rules and insisted on royalties of 3 to 5 percent of a station’s gross advertising revenues in exchange for the right to play music – and it threatened to raise the rate in 1940 when the contract expired. Whoa.

Understandably, radio stations were pissed and took matters into their own hands and cut live performances entirely.  Recording technology was improving and more and more stations began playing these new things called “records” instead.  Music labels responded by selling records stamped with “NOT LICENSED FOR RADIO BROADCAST” but in 1940 the Supreme Court decided that radio stations could play any record they had purchased.

So ASCAP convinced its most prominent members (including Bing Crosby) to stop making recordings.   Let me repeat that, ASCAP convinced artists to stop making music because of how it was being distributed.  Amazing.

With a shrinking pool of music to play and a crappy deal on the table by ASCAP, the broadcasters struck out and formed their own royalty agency called Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) which had much better terms.  At first it was a magnet for regional musicians such as R&B or Country artists who were usually neglected by New York-based ASCAP.  Because these musicians wanted exposure more than money they agreed to let radio stations play their music for free – and thus business model for charging radio stations to pay a fortune for music collapsed. ASCAP never regained the right to get large royalties.

The irony is large is amazing.  Worried about a bad business model, ASCAP’s bad terms practically drove free music into the radio stations.  A free inferior version of music (radio) turned out to be a great marketer for the paid version.

Similarly today, free music on the web is driving more and more people to concerts. Music consumption continues to rise but record labels are collapsing.   You’d think today’s issues are unique but you only have to look back 80 years to see what we continue to repeat history.

Do What You Want

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There are a lot of times in the world where people tell me what to do. Things like, “I 0444_20innovaneed the deck by tonight.” or “Can you meet me on Sunday to talk about the deal?” Sometimes i like doing it and sometimes i don’t. Here’s what i do know though: I always like doing what i believe in and i always hate doing what i don’t think is right.

This is why i love stories about people who were told they were wrong and they persevered and proved their naysayers wrong. Three stories stick out in my head:

Steve Jobs got forced out of Apple because he had a crazy idea that hardware can be beautiful. Years later he came back to prove that he was right 20 years before.  Now he’s dominating the music industry, the largest shareholder of the largest media company (Disney) and revolutionizing the mobile technology industry

In-N-Out Burger was a fast-food joint just like all the others in the 50’s. Ray Kroc wanted to buy it and franchise it. That was the thing to do.  McDonald’s was doing it, so was Taco Bell and Wendy’s and everyone else. But Harry Synder (the founder) of In-N-Out told Ray to pound salt.  He had a different idea. Instead of “lower costs and increase sales” it was “do one thing and do it as well as you can.” That one thing was the In-N-Out burger.  He never sold. The Synder family has purchased every In-N-Out with cash.  He wanted to know every meat distributor by his first name. That’s why the #1 requested meal backstage at the Oscars is In-N-Out and why there’s over an hour wait at a place where burgers are $2.

toystory_woodyJohn Lasseter lost his job at Disney back in ‘86. He was fired by an old line animator who said there was no future in computer animation. Lasseter slept under his desk, and a decade later delivered Pixar’s first hit, “Toy Story”.  After story he and Pixar have gone for 10 for 10.  Nothing is a sure thing in media.  And John is 10 for 10.

All of these guys did it their way and the world is a better place because of it. We can only hope that we have the conviction and passion and talent of them in our own lives.

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The deal with Google buying reCaptcha

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Google 收购 reCAPTCHA
Image by Fenng(dbanotes) via Flickr

I had no idea why Google would buy a company, reCaptcha, that does captchas. For those of you who don’t know, captchas are the little squiggly text that people enter to prove they are human. The word “captcha” actually stands for: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart

With these things are all over the internet, why would Google buy this specific company? I found out a few reasons. First, they are the original gangsters – it turns out the guy who invented captchas is the founder of reCaptcha. Second, they way they do the captcha words is quite innovative. Check this out: reCAPTCHA takes scans from newsclippings, articles and old books that can’t be read by machines (because they are scans) then feeds them to humans in a captcha one at a time with other words that it knows. The user then enters both words. The word that reCAPTCHA knows is tested – if correct, it now learns an additional word to use on other challenges. This is how they build up their database of words from scans.

Google has for the past 6 years been scanning books like crazy. They have millions of books scanned. What they don’t have is text of those books available to be searched. The thought is that if you use captchas to surface all the words of those books one at a time, this will enable a massive crowdsourcing project to build a database of literature. Very interesting experiment. I never really hear of such clever business development deals. I love it.

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Getting Beyond ‘Z’

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Was reading The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine the other day and it had some great quotes from Theodor Geisel, a prominent alum and extremely successful author under the name Dr. Seuss.

dr_seussWhile at Dartmouth, Theodor was editor of Dartmouth’s comedy magazine called The Jacko. That is  until he got caught drinking on Easter eve and got kicked out.  By his fraternity (Caste and Gauntlet) he was voted least likely to succeed and he graduated with a 2.4 in 1925.  Given all that he managed to go out and sell  more than 222 million books (66 titles).  That’s pretty amazing

Here are some good quotes:

My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It’s the letter I use to spell yuzz-a-matuzz. You’ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond ‘Z’ and start poking around

Nonesense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It’s more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack

If you sat 50 years with your worms and your wishes, you’d grow a long beard before you catch fishes

I’d like to get beyond Z soon. It sounds like a good place to be.

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Horror Films are for women?

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There’s an interesting article in the NY Times called Taking Back The Knife: Girls Gone Gory in which it talks about the recent increasing in horror movies being made and the strange findings of recent box office receipts showing that women have an even bigger appetite for horror films than men.

This surprised me although i have seen it first hand; last weekend both Diane and Althea put Halloween 2 tops on their “want to see” list.  Some of the reasons that the NY Times said were:

  • Women can identify more with horror films as their are other women as the main characters. Diablo Cody (writer of “Juno”) said, “When I watched movies like ‘The Goonies’ and ‘E.T.,’ it was boys having adventures. When I watched ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ it was Nancy beating” up Freddy. “It was that simple.”
  • Women enjoy pure adrenaline rushes. As Cody says, “Some of us just like that stuff. We like suspense, we like to be scared, we like to have visceral reaction in the theater. Maybe I’m starved for adrenaline, but for me watching a horror movie is very pleasurable. So making one was kind of a dream.”

Diane, the resident expert here, claims it’s because horror films are much more emotional than other genres.  Most movies are event driven or just visually pleasing which caters more to the male.  Horror movies, on the other hand, are all about messing with your emotions – which is much more powerful to the woman than the male (in theory).

Whatever the reason is, i was surprised to hear this gender preference.  Any one else have any ideas?

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LA, You’re Fired!

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The fires in LA are both incredible and sad. The sight of them is unlike anything i’ve seen. Take a look at this video that Toby put up (click on it to watch video):
Picture 3

It makes me reflect on my time here in LA.  As some of you know, i’m moving to Denver in the next few weeks.  I’m out of here. While i’m excited about moving closer to the mountains and friends, i’m sad to leave LA.  The past 17 months have been an interesting time. Some thoughts on LA:

  • The people are not as bad a place as people think.  Sure, there are some shitty people – and most of them work in “the industry” but if you avoid the industry and industry parties, then you really don’t run into these people that often.
  • Side note: it’s interesting moving from one town where “the industry” was the government to LA where it is the film business.  As i see it, these are the two largest growth business the US will have in the next 30 years (except maybe health care) or if not the largest grown maybe the largest export
  • LA is very entrepreneurial. However, the people i met here are quite different than the entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley.  Up there, a startup is typically an academic thought-based exploration.  Down here in LA, it’s much more about the hustle.  When i think about the two types of startups, i’ve found that  LA is more focused on making money and less on the ideas and philosophy behind the deals.
  • Nature, nature, nature.  It’s all around LA.  People talk about Colorado’s proximity to mountains and nature – well it’s right here too.  You’ve got beach, mountains, desert – all within 2 hours.  And it’s beautiful.  If you can see past the smog, you’ll see some amazingly beautiful scenery. I wish i had spent more time exploring
  • The beach is underrated.  There are lots of parts of LA.  You’ve got the Valley, Hollywood, West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills.  But what all of those don’t have is great weather year round and the beach.  The beach brings a calm to people’s attitude and a coolness to the air.  Both make a big difference day in and day out.
  • Related to the above post: Beach Cruisers. I’ve always loved biking but it wasn’t till i moved to the beach that i discovered the cruiser.  This has 3 key characteristics: (1) a big comfy seat, (2) a basket for carrying stuff, (3) handlebars angled up so you can sit straight up and not hunched over.  All of these dramatically change the bike riding experience so it can be done recreationally and comfortably .  I love my cruiser
  • Food: I love the Tacos.  Cactus Tacos, Dos Burritos, Loteria or all the others.  My taco standards have been raised forever.   I also love In-N-Out and ate there almost twice a month the entire time, as noted by JT and Jstreet and Nader.
  • Movie theaters. As i’ve written before, LA does movie theaters the right way.  This means that they are big comfy seats and that you can pick your seat before you arrive so you can get there 5 min before showtime and have a nice center seat.  Or you can see that there are no good seats and wait for another show.  Game changer
  • Dartmouth surely represents.  No matter what i wanted to do in LA, i found that there was a Dartmouth alum and friend who had figured it out and could take me along.  I was so fortunate to have soccer teammates, pong partners, business thinkers, rock band drummers, talent agents, concert goers and providers, and lots entrepreneurs all over the place.  They made LA an easily place to join and a hard place to leave.  I see lots of vacations back in my future.
  • The Garfields.  Todd and Julie were one of my highlights of LA.  I’m very fortunate to have roped them into many meals and movies.

Of all of these, i think i’ll miss the beach and the people around the beaches the most.  Waking up to salt water in the air and a cool breeze is amazing.

Santa Monica

Thank you LA, i’ll miss you.