DIY press kit time

Quite worried by the Web Economy Bullshit Generator in that I could swear the first three times I spun its random wheels I came up with phrases I'd already come across in press releases last year.

deliver transparent solutions

monetize viral ROI

mesh plug-and-play supply-chains

Not quite up to the standard of my all-time favourite from Drop The Dead Donkey- synergising nowness with excellence - but getting perilously close.

Work - More Citizen Journalism stuff

Caught an interesting doc looking at the whole citizen journalism thang buried in the deep dark depths of the BBC News 24 schedule called Have You Got News For Us.

The Boxing Day Tsunami probably started it all, with all the major footage taken by amateur cameramen. By the time we get to the London Bombings, the BBC was getting 300 pictures and 3000 SMS messages. And, of course, December's Hemel Hempstead oil fire saw over 6500 contributions pour in.

So, now you have agencies like Scoopt which firmly emphasises the ability to make money out newsworthy and celeb pics, charges a whopping 50% and demands three months' exclusivity on everything sent to it. At the other end of the scale, the technology is allowing the likes of Felixstowe TV to set up broadband-based pico-stations, and these semi-pro outfits are often first on the scene of a breaking story.

Issues? Oh yes. Rights and copyright, privacy, danger, ethics...the lot. Broadcasters are going to have to wrestle with all this in '06, not to mention have enough staff deployed to handle the deluge when anything noteworthy occurs in front of the mobile-wielding masses. Plus, of course, the term 'Citizen Journalism' itself could probably do with an overhaul, unless of course the news orgs of the planet really want the rest of us to start interviewing people for reactions and intoning sonorously about 'scenes of terrible devastation' or 'close-knit communities in shock'.

Strewth etc

Google to 'launch own PC' | The Register

Quoth El Reg: Google is planning to provide an own-brand Windows-less PC and sell the low-cost system through a partnership with retail giant Wal-Mart.

Looks like this year's CES is going to be veerrryyy interesting.

Life - The Ideas of '06

Interesting things I read in thegrauniad today, part 2
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Ideas: Emergence, diaspora, the 'imperial consumer': which ideas will shape the coming year?

Some really interesting stuff in here, including Tom Bentley on Amartya Sen's new book, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, which promises to be another influential Sen masterpiece.

Naomi Klein's entry was interesting too, especially given the continuing WTO tensions:

It's an old idea that is being reclaimed and retro-fitted for a new economy: worker control. For the past four years, and largely under the media radar, workers in Latin America have been responding to rampant unemployment and capital flight by taking over traditional businesses that have gone bankrupt and reopening them under democratic worker management. The wave of takeovers began in Argentina, where some 200 abandoned factories are now run through direct democracy, employing roughly 15,000 workers. It has since spread across the continent, and the past few months have seen the first takeovers in Canada and Spain. In October, the government of Hugo Chavez hosted the first Latin America-wide meeting of "recovered companies" in Venezuela. Six hundred workers from eight countries came together with a simple idea: if the capitalist class can't find a way to make their businesses work, workers deserve to have a go.

Life - Return of the Zombies

Interesting things I read in thegrauniad today, part 1.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Steven Wells: Zombies come back from the dead

Zombies are everywhere, in particular on Showtime in the US:

Homecoming - a made-for-TV movie where Americans killed in Iraq rise from their flag-draped coffins and slaughter their way to the polling booths so they can vote out a warmongering president. When the Republicans then steal the election, the disgusted dead of other wars also rise. The climax of the film sees a GI zombie army storming the White House.

Sounds cool. Rest of it is a short piece about the rise of zombiedom, which can only be classed as A Good Thing. Is that Steven Wells as in the NME's venerable old Seething Wells I wonder?

Life - Donkey Kong

Was it just my imagination, or was King Kong not very good. Too long, too over-indulgent, too flaccid and a bit too much of Weta Digital going Nyaa nyaaa nya nya nyaaaa at ILM. Yes, that whole dancing through the legs of the Brontosauri was stunning vfx work, but it didn't make for good film-making IMNSHO.

Jack Black was surprisingly good, Peter Jackson surprisingly bad. Lop an hour off it though and you might have a good filum.

Misc - Cycling across America

CNN.com - A bicycle built for seeing America - Dec 30, 2005

A nice tale for New Year's Day; a lyrically written piece about cycling from Washington over to the Pacific. Not a journey I'd fancy, about 30 miles is tops for me on a bike, but definitely a good way to see the country. Hell, a good way to see any country; the Campaign for Real/Slow Tourism starts here.

Colorado offers many features not encountered since the East. Among them: coffee chains, suburban sprawl, wide shoulders and Democrats.