Snippet from Bill Carter’s forthcoming book about this year’s Leno/Conan farrago.
eHattip
A moment’s hearty hurrah for the fine, forward-thinking folks of O’Reilly Media
While catching up on a chum’s splendid bloggish-thang, I noticed that the new book by Rands is now available. On the Amazon page, the dead-tree hardcopy was still on pre-order, but the Kindle version was available straight away.
Normally, at this point, I would have hit that tempting, orange, A/B-tested-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life “Buy Now with 1-Click®” button and been on my merry way. But then I noticed that the book was published by O’Reilly.
O’Reilly (and can I just interject here to show off that I’m old-skool-geek enough that I still hit their website by typing ora.com into my browser, because that’s what their domain was when I bought my first animal-woodcut-covered book, dammit. Also: Get off my lawn!) have a smart attitude to eBooks purchased from their own website. You can download your eBooks in various DRM-free formats: PDF is almost always available, but often so too are ePub and mobi, and occasionally something called “Android”. (I believe that’s some sort of Chinese iPhone knockoff)
Because of this, by purchasing eBooks directly from O’Reilly, I can carry them around and read them in a variety of fashions. If it’s a mainly wordy book, then the soothing-to-the-eyes e-ink screen of my Kindle is just dandy. The reflowable ePub format works a treat in iBooks on my always-in-my-pocket iPhone and increasingly-always-in-my-bag iPad. And with Apple’s recent iBooks update, I can quickly switch to and from the designed-and-laid-out-by-a-professional view of the PDF which perfectly mimics the physical original.
So thank you O’Reilly and Associates Media for your top-notch splendiferousness. I hope more publishers start taking this approach too.
Brilliant clip of TV news clichés in action.
ZOMG Moral Panic! The things that have doomed America over the last 40 years.
Counting the illnesses and deaths that could have been prevented by the MMR vaccines that Jenny McCarthy (and others) advise parents not to give their children.
Amanda Palmer on her song “Oasis” being rejected for airplay by the British music media. While I could understand the “mainstream” (Radio 1, MTV, The Box) knocking it back, it’s sad to see that 6 Music, NME et al are also afeard of perceived offense.
We need a better class of conservative
Taken from a comments thread on Current.com:
I agree, this site is supposed to be in the hands of the people, but it seems to be serving as a liberal propaganda machine. I am liberal but I still think there should be some sort of equality in the way news is reported. I do realize the majority of the people on this site have liberal views and therefore the site would have more liberal stories, but I would still like to see some conservative reporting and then discussed by the rest of the viewers. Also, has anyone noticed the conservatives on this site are borderline retarded?
It’s the last sentence that really gets to the root of the problem, IMO.
“QUEEN’S CHICKENS STABBED TO DEATH”, “TV CROCODILE AND CAMILLA TO WED” and other randomly generated news-stands.
You can buy and/or rent movies or TV shows from Amazon’s Unbox service, and have them show up on your TiVo. Bigger library than Apple’s movie service — Could this help keep TiVo afloat a smidge longer? (Your first $15 hit is free. I just “bought” The Departed)
Studio 60 going off the air in a month, return date “to be announced”. The writer sums up my feelings towards the show pretty well: “I don’t hate it, but I find it incredibly frustrating. All that talent—Sorkin, the blue-chip cast (led by Matthew Perry)—and all those lofty aspirations, marred by weak execution, lazy writing, dramatic issues that are hard to care about, and a lack of verisimilitude”
TC sums up yesterday pretty well: Police did the right thing, politicians, mainstream media *and* bloggers overreacted all over the shop. Favourite line: “Note: If the MBTA were truly Fascist maybe the damn trains would run on time.”
NBC will stream an extended version of The Office on their website this week after the normal-length episode airs on TV. Considering how good (and plentiful) the deleted scenes are on the DVDs I’m watching, this’ll be worth checking out.
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sitcom
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the office
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Mitch Hurwitz’s new project is a US port of the low-key British political sitcom “The Thick of It”.
A Winer-Watcher for the BBC — Tracking revisions to BBC News articles.
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bbc news
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For all the US version of DoND is bright, brash and loud, the UK version is subdued, complex and, from the sounds of this report, completely fucking barking insane.
Montage of the eight new idents for BBC One continuity announcements. The “hippos” one (starts at 3:35) is my favourite by far.
BBC One’s done a revamp of their Idents, and they’re brill — especially the synchronized hippos. There really seems to be an element of humour about them that was missing from the politically-correct dancers.
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idents
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Predict which shows will be canned by the TV networks, and possibly win some goodies.
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tv
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usa
“Overall, the findings … show that for young people, no other news source drives cynicism toward the candidates and the political system more than The Daily Show.”
Hee! An episode of CSI:Miama had a Big Expensive Computer. The sounds generated by the computer? A ZX Spectrum loading Knight Lore.
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zx spectrum
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