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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
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"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, October 12, 2006
Future Boy Spins DVDs
The latest Future Boy column takes what is a very contrarian position in the tech world today: that DVDs will not only survive the streaming media/movie download revolutions, they will blossom. The takeaway message, and the key news:
Their quality is far superior than streaming movies wirelessly - which, by the way, are going to look horrible on a regular Wi-Fi connection. You can lend DVDs to friends and family. They're easy to mail. And you get instant access to all of their features and every scene in a movie, instead of having to wait for the download to end. What's more, DVDs cost pennies to manufacture. Movie buffs take great pride in their DVD collections. And there are, by last count, 1.1 billion DVD players in homes around the world ... Some 120 million devices in the United States are capable of burning DVDs - more than enough for every household.
That's why a little-noticed deal this week between software developers Sonic Solutions and Macrovision Corporation makes a lot of sense. Sonic (Charts) makes software that helps consumers burn discs, while Macrovision (Charts) sells copyright protection services to the entertainment industry. So for the first time, consumers will be able to download and burn movies onto DVDs legally - that is, with the copyright protection technology that the movie studios demand.
Jim Taylor, a former DVD evangelist at Microsoft and now the general manager of Sonic, says most consumers don't yet understand how restrictive movie download services are. "For most people, it hasn't quite sunk in yet that download-to-own is not download-to-burn," explains Taylor (no relation to this author). "Yet the number one demand from consumers [who download movies] is the ability to burn to DVD."
Taylor is confident that the Sonic-Macrovision technology will hike studio revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars a year between now and 2008 - and by billions of dollars a year thereafter.
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