media

………………..Emily…………………

This week, Michael Phelps signed a deal worth more than $1 million to advertise Mazda in China. Jerry Seinfeld earned a reported $10 million to appear in Microsoft’s recent television campaign. But the person who may be the biggest celebrity pitchman in the world is not earning a penny for his work.  For BlackBerry, Obama’s [...]

“It requires neither imagination nor acumen to predict that our current conglomerating, lowest-common-denominator, demographically targeted publishing industry will soon achieve its streamlined apotheosis—a single, worldwide, Exxon Mobil–owned literary empire offering up seven books twice per year.  …”  If Books Could Kill

“The bulk of Wikipedia is written by 1400 obsessed freaks who do little else but contribute to the site, says a post racing up the Hacker News charts. The post pulls this number from an essay Aaron Swartz wrote more than two years ago, based on some comments by Jimmy Wales.
“Wikipedia’s growth has exploded [...]

It’s fun bitching and sniping, and believe me I’m not about to stop.  But it’s easy to bitch and snipe about the wrong things.  We need to stay on message, the same as Barack and everyone else.
The Galloping Curmudgeon: Buckling Down and Paying Attention

I’m the first one to admit that I know nothing about programming (and don’t care to, truth be known) and the competition amongst the various platforms for streaming video is of little interest to me except based on what I see on my screen.
By that criterion, my first experience last night with Microsoft’s Silverlight, while [...]

I suppose FOX News’ lack of integrity will come as a surprise to no one else, but it still occasionally surprises me — not the lack of it, as much as the poor job of demonstrating it. It’s not even good ’shopping. Apparently they have no more respect for themselves or their viewers [...]

Andrew O’Hehir’s blog in Salon examines Peter Askins’ new film “Trumbo,” about the life of the most famous of the blacklisted filmmakers in the ’50’s witch hunts, along with the lessons the three generations since can take from the history of censorship and political gagging of Americans.
If the Hollywood blacklist and the entire Red Scare [...]