Wednesday 17 October 2007
Save an alien t-shirt
http://www.saveanalien.com/ is a viral application growing fast via Facebook that already includes print-on-demand merchandise availability. Fans can have their own alien design made into a t-shirt or mug.
Facebook faker reveals Spiderpig-naming is web of lies
"When a group was set up on the social networking website Facebook entitled: "If 100,000 people join, my wife will let me name my second child Spiderpig", the result was inevitable.
The petition dangling the prospect of a child being named after a pet pig character in the Simpsons movie attracted signatures like bees to honey. Members soon rocketed to well above the required number and founder Oli Young was under pressure to deliver. But to the disappointment of the thousands of people who joined the "Spiderpig" group, Mr Young, from Adelaide in Australia, has now revealed it was all a hoax. The web developer posted a message on the group's page informing people the idea was just a practical joke. "This was never more than a couple of bored geeks kicking around an idea. We hope you had fun. We really didn't mean to offend anyone and we hope you aren't too disappointed in the truth." Mr Young has one daughter, called Amélie, but his wife is not pregnant and he says that in any case he would never be so irresponsible as to call his child "Spiderpig". He and his colleagues instead took delight in monitoring the success of their creation, which gained worldwide attention. But even after Mr Young revealed the truth, the group was still gaining new signatures yesterday and heading for 120,000 members." Scotsman October 2007
The petition dangling the prospect of a child being named after a pet pig character in the Simpsons movie attracted signatures like bees to honey. Members soon rocketed to well above the required number and founder Oli Young was under pressure to deliver. But to the disappointment of the thousands of people who joined the "Spiderpig" group, Mr Young, from Adelaide in Australia, has now revealed it was all a hoax. The web developer posted a message on the group's page informing people the idea was just a practical joke. "This was never more than a couple of bored geeks kicking around an idea. We hope you had fun. We really didn't mean to offend anyone and we hope you aren't too disappointed in the truth." Mr Young has one daughter, called Amélie, but his wife is not pregnant and he says that in any case he would never be so irresponsible as to call his child "Spiderpig". He and his colleagues instead took delight in monitoring the success of their creation, which gained worldwide attention. But even after Mr Young revealed the truth, the group was still gaining new signatures yesterday and heading for 120,000 members." Scotsman October 2007
Kids' TV in Crisis
Greg Childs, Secretary, Save Kids' TV October 2007: "The Save Kids’ TV Campaign, allied to other organisations, like PACT and the Voice of the Listener and Viewer, has spent the last 12 months trying to alert the public, Ofcom and the Government to the disaster facing kids’ TV in the UK. The Ofcom Report on Children’s Broadcasting released on October 3rd finally told the story officially. Kids’ TV production in the UK is in severe decline. ITV has exited completely, Five has pulled back to pre-school only, Channel 4 has made no kids programming for several years – and the international channels, while trying their best to make content here, have nothing like the budgets of the BBC and formerly ITV. Parents and kids Ofcom surveyed spotted there are fewer and fewer home-grown shows (only one per cent of the 113,000 hours of kids programmes last year were new shows made in the UK.) They also recognise the need for kids to see programmes about themselves, the lives they lead, and the society they live in.
Save Kids’ TV would go so far as to say that a society which stops telling its own stories is heading for trouble. Great kids’ TV is pat of the glue that holds us all together. We can’t afford to lose it. So the Lego deal highlights two of the key issues in this rapid decline in kids’ content production. From being the second largest funder of kids’ TV in the UK, with a raft of great home-grown shows like Art Attack, My Parents are Aliens, Jungle Run and How2, with a spend in excess of £25m a year, ITV have closed down their in-house production department and commissioned nothing in the last 18 months. From being a public service provider of children’s programmes all year round on ITV1 (even though it a cost them to lose the adult impacts) ITV has reduced its commitment to kids to two hours a week (Saturdays) for most of the year. The only time they make significant returns on their advertising is when Santa’s on his way, so the schedule responds. Ofcom are powerless to regulate against this, and equally unable to insist on levels of production or spending. Why should this matter for the licensing industry? Well on one level maybe a diet of internationally produced shows is a good thing – bigger brands, wider impact, lower costs. But audience figures and research show that kids like local programming – they want to see people like themselves and hear their own voices. Drama and factual are the two areas identified by Ofcom as in significant decline. Drama is expensive and more and more international co-pros mean fewer local stories that play to kids’ real-life concerns. Factual programmes are notoriously difficult at crossing borders, so they could disappear.
In both these cases opportunities could be lost – opportunities for brand owners to connect with kids in a meaningful way. The pressures on advertising revenue caused by the fragmentation of the children’s TV market, migration of kids and advertisers to online, and the ad ban on certain types of food are the root of the funding problem. Save Kids’ TV is campaigning for the Government to step in. A petition on the Downing Street website backs that up. But maybe this is also an opportunity for other players to consider their role in keeping alive great content for UK kids. At the annual UK kids’ media conference – Showcomotion (held in Sheffield each July) - programme-makers, broadcasters, distributors and other potential partners like the games industry came together to consider new ways of building funding bases for kids’ content production. Advertiser-funded programming was on the agenda, but the toy and licensing trades were conspicuous by their absence. We’ve got a world-beating industry struggling to find backing for great creative content for our kids. Isn’t it time we started taking a fresh look at the relationship between brands and content?"
Save Kids’ TV would go so far as to say that a society which stops telling its own stories is heading for trouble. Great kids’ TV is pat of the glue that holds us all together. We can’t afford to lose it. So the Lego deal highlights two of the key issues in this rapid decline in kids’ content production. From being the second largest funder of kids’ TV in the UK, with a raft of great home-grown shows like Art Attack, My Parents are Aliens, Jungle Run and How2, with a spend in excess of £25m a year, ITV have closed down their in-house production department and commissioned nothing in the last 18 months. From being a public service provider of children’s programmes all year round on ITV1 (even though it a cost them to lose the adult impacts) ITV has reduced its commitment to kids to two hours a week (Saturdays) for most of the year. The only time they make significant returns on their advertising is when Santa’s on his way, so the schedule responds. Ofcom are powerless to regulate against this, and equally unable to insist on levels of production or spending. Why should this matter for the licensing industry? Well on one level maybe a diet of internationally produced shows is a good thing – bigger brands, wider impact, lower costs. But audience figures and research show that kids like local programming – they want to see people like themselves and hear their own voices. Drama and factual are the two areas identified by Ofcom as in significant decline. Drama is expensive and more and more international co-pros mean fewer local stories that play to kids’ real-life concerns. Factual programmes are notoriously difficult at crossing borders, so they could disappear.
In both these cases opportunities could be lost – opportunities for brand owners to connect with kids in a meaningful way. The pressures on advertising revenue caused by the fragmentation of the children’s TV market, migration of kids and advertisers to online, and the ad ban on certain types of food are the root of the funding problem. Save Kids’ TV is campaigning for the Government to step in. A petition on the Downing Street website backs that up. But maybe this is also an opportunity for other players to consider their role in keeping alive great content for UK kids. At the annual UK kids’ media conference – Showcomotion (held in Sheffield each July) - programme-makers, broadcasters, distributors and other potential partners like the games industry came together to consider new ways of building funding bases for kids’ content production. Advertiser-funded programming was on the agenda, but the toy and licensing trades were conspicuous by their absence. We’ve got a world-beating industry struggling to find backing for great creative content for our kids. Isn’t it time we started taking a fresh look at the relationship between brands and content?"
IBM Teams With Second Life To Build Portable Avatars
"IBM and Second Life creator Linden Labs are teaming up in an effort to create avatars that can jump from one virtual world to the next. Under the plan, the companies will work together to develop standards that, if broadly employed, would allow online Web users to move their digital personas seamlessly across virtual environments like Second Life and other 3-D worlds.
To kick start the effort, Linden Labs has launched an open forum called the Architecture Working Group -- where some of the more tech savvy Second Life citizens can help create a roadmap for the project. Other virtual worlds that Second Lifers could potentially connect to include Dreamville, There, and The Sims Online. IBM says universal standards will help drive the use of virtual worlds beyond gaming and entertainment and make them more practical for businesses. Among other things, the company envisions online malls where avatars can stroll around, chat with "sales avatars", view product demonstrations, and make purchases. "We see users demanding more from these environments and desiring virtual worlds that are fit for business," said Colin Paris, IBM's VP for digital convergence, in a statement. IBM has already embraced Second Life for internal use. The company has held staff meetings and other employee events in the virtual world, and CEO Sam Palmisano has his own, persistent avatar. The company also recently issued a list of employee conduct rules for Second Life. However, some IBM employees are using Second Life in ways the company likely didn't intend. A group of disaffected workers at IBM's Italian operations recently held a virtual demonstration against IBM in Second Life to protest wages and working conditions." Information Week October 2007
To kick start the effort, Linden Labs has launched an open forum called the Architecture Working Group -- where some of the more tech savvy Second Life citizens can help create a roadmap for the project. Other virtual worlds that Second Lifers could potentially connect to include Dreamville, There, and The Sims Online. IBM says universal standards will help drive the use of virtual worlds beyond gaming and entertainment and make them more practical for businesses. Among other things, the company envisions online malls where avatars can stroll around, chat with "sales avatars", view product demonstrations, and make purchases. "We see users demanding more from these environments and desiring virtual worlds that are fit for business," said Colin Paris, IBM's VP for digital convergence, in a statement. IBM has already embraced Second Life for internal use. The company has held staff meetings and other employee events in the virtual world, and CEO Sam Palmisano has his own, persistent avatar. The company also recently issued a list of employee conduct rules for Second Life. However, some IBM employees are using Second Life in ways the company likely didn't intend. A group of disaffected workers at IBM's Italian operations recently held a virtual demonstration against IBM in Second Life to protest wages and working conditions." Information Week October 2007
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