We're Number 1!

I did it! I am officially the first entry in Google for Shake Shack Spider-man. My co-worker Viviana was unimpressed since that's probably not a particularly popular search term, but whatever. As someone whose name has been co-opted by both a famous rock musician and a well-known journalist (not to mention a photographer and a voice actor(?!)), I'm just happy that I'm the first to show up for anything.

It does make one wonder, though...

What if everyone--well, anyone with a web presence--secretly has one slightly random search topic that they're the first entry for and they've just never happened to search for that one specific thing? Try it, oh loyal but silent readers (I know you exist... yes, I'm talking to you, Lizzie.)! Try it and let me know if you find anything. I figure I can milk this whole thing for at least one more post if you do, right?

Bad Apple

For a company that is generally so consistantly right, Apple sure has been making a lot of missteps recently.

The first I noticed was with iLife '08. In addition to updating Garageband and iPhoto (both of which are MUCH better, by the way), they also launched a heavily-hyped completely overhauled iMovie... which was uniformly hated. I can sort of understand what they were going for. The program effortlessly syncs up with Youtube; combine that with the Macbook's built in iSight and you've got the videoblogging tool for the masses. Never mind that all the advanced functionality that iMovie HD (that's what the old version was called) is gone, because what's really important is that you can upload to Youtube with one click.

The second blunder came this week. In his Keynote address unveiling the wholly-retooled iPod line, Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone was dropping in price to $399. That's a $200 price cut if you're bad at math. Obviously, this sort of thing happens all the time in the tech industry. Prices are always dropping as the next new thing comes along. But the iPhone's only been out a few months now and pretty much everyone who purchased one in the first wave is, understandably, feeling scammed.

The nice thing about Apple, though, is that you can still count on them to own up to their mistakes and make things right. Anyone who gets a copy of iLife '08 can download a copy of iMovie HD and you can actually have both versions of iMovie on your computer without any problem. On the iPhone front, Jobs put an open letter on the front page of the Apple site apologizing and letting current iPhone owners know that they'll soon be getting $100 credit with Apple. It's a canny business move--maybe it'll go toward one of those nifty new iPod nanos--but it's also just being legit. You gotta respect that.

I don't know why I felt the need to rant about this since anyone who cares probably already knows all about it. I guess I was just shocked to see Apple screw up so flagrantly and twice in as many months. It makes me a little concerned about a company that has always impressed me. Let's hope they go back to doing that.

Whoa!

Apparently my last post has brought me ever closer to a position as the foremost authority on the topic of the Shake Shack and Spider-man as they relate to one another. That is to say, I'm now number 3 on Google if you search for Shake Shack Spider-man.

This post is in no way an attempt to move myself up to number one. I swear.

No, seriously?

So yesterday I couldn't help but notice that there were several newspapers that ran the Caroline Giuliani story as front page news. Ignoring for a moment the politics of the situation, I'd just like to point out that A GIRL JOINED A FACEBOOK GROUP AND IT MADE THE FRONT PAGE OF SEVERAL NEWSPAPERS.

Does anyone realize how big a deal this is in terms of the importance of Facebook in modern American life? And more importantly, does anyone realize how big a deal this in in terms of its status as one of the signs of the impending apocalypse?

whoa.

I dunno if this is old news or not--I mean, I'm sure it is, but I'm not sure whether it's old news that anyone's heard about. I was reading some article on the New York Times website just a moment ago and discovered that if you double click on any word, the site will launch a new window with a dictionary definition of the word. How cool is that?

(this is the part where you tell me everyone has known about this for a year...)

So I am officially moved into the city for the next month and a half or so, and I will not have internet besides at work until the 13th when Time-Warner gets off their lazy collective ass and installs it in our apartment.

It occurs to me that this announcement will not be particularly useful since nobody actually reads my blog as far as I can tell. This is why we're going to play a new game called "Comment if you read this post." The rules are pretty simple. Comment on this post if you read it. Optionally, also tell me who you are. Don't be shy. (that means you, Dad.) Okay, ready... GO!

Filesharing is Caring

note: this post is theoretically crossposted on the Columbia Spectator's Steps Blog, but since that site is down and the post probably won't go up for a month anyway, I've decided to put it here as well. Enjoy.

Ever since I saw Grindhouse on Friday, I’ve had an unhealthy obsession with the soundtrack, and specifically a song called “Chick Habit” by April March. It’s the sort of song that makes you want to run out and play it for everyone you know, or, in this day and age, the sort of song that makes you want to sign on to AIM and send it every single person on your buddy list. Sadly, I can’t. A combination of desperation, laziness, and an iTunes gift certificate has left my album with a veritable mark of Cain, also known as copy protection.
We all know the two main sides in the music piracy fight: those who argue, validly, that downloading music is stealing and those who argue, with less legal validity but roughly equivalent philosophical validity, that they should be able to get music for free. The sides make the issue into a cops and robbers battle. But in setting up the debate in this way, I think an important aspect of filesharing has been lost in the shuffle; I’m referring to the sharing part.
It seems to me that sharing is a good thing. When people make the argument that stealing music exposes them to new artists whose albums they will then go out and purchase, it seems pretty flimsy, but who can deny the power of sharing in its ability to expose people to new things? I don’t know how many albums I’ve bought based on a song I’ve stolen, but I know I’ve been introduced to many of my favorite bands by friends who gave me their music. Sometimes, the music came in the form of a mix CD. More recently, we’ve taken to using AIM. It’s sharing in a very pure sense. I hear something awesome and I just need to have my friends hear it.
Since the radio taping scare back in the day, nobody’s really been too concerned about mix tapes and CDs, and I wonder if, when everything’s said and done, filesharing is really all that different a phenomenon. Is it really that different than, say, me lending my friend a book that I really enjoyed. Sure, we can’t both have the same book at the same time, but is my friend going to buy that book? Unlikely. If I open his eyes to an author he really likes, though, he’s pretty likely to buy the author’s next book. Perhaps the key to winning the music copyright war is just reframing the debate. Maybe all we need is to remind everyone that filesharing is not just using some program to find some anonymous dude in Seoul who has the newest Kelly Clarkson single. Perhaps that’s filesharing at its worst, but at its best, filesharing is about sharing, sharing the things you like with people you care about. Call me immoral, but I can’t see the crime in that.

(I’m actually sort of lucky, in that April March is one artist who is considerate enough to share her music with the public. You can hear the song on her myspace page.)