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No, the blogosphere won't change the global economy...with sycophants like this asking the questions.
Remember the video that went around in '04 showing how to open a Kryptonite lock with a bic pen? According to business blogger Dave Taylor, it didn't hurt Kryptonite at all. How does he know? He interviewed the public relations manager at Kryptonite.
Q: How long did it take for your company to be aware that there was negative publicity in the blog community?Hope you caught that last part: The p.r. person can't definitively say Kryptonite isn't suing the individual who posted on an online bike forum about the lock--a product the company ultimately replaced as deficient, in numbers up in the hundreds of thousands. That's a great way to restore confidence in the brand, leaving the impression that truth can be clouded with litigation and that the truthteller will be punished by an entity with better resources.
We were aware of the Internet involvement with this issue from the first day. This included blogs and forums.
[The common "myth" of the Kryptonite story is that the company wasn't paying attention to the blogosphere and that it took weeks for it to learn that there was a problem, but as you can see it isn't true and Donna and her team were aware of the problem from the very first day. --DT]
Q: When you did learn about the negative publicity, did you see it as a crisis management problem, or did it not seem that dire?
Dave, we were working around the clock to research the allegation and create a plan for our customers. We took this very seriously from day one. Contrary to popular belief, the media attention didn't make us take notice of this situation; we were already well into creating a plan by the time the traditional media were publishing their stories. I've seen in print that only after the New York Times article on day five did we come out with a plan and talk to the media. That's not true. We were talking to the media from day one.
[Again, the "myth" of the Kryptonite story, that the company was out of touch and didn't know anything had happened until the New York Times broke the story is completely false. Indeed, it is the desire to debunk the untruths and myths about this entire situation that motivated me to produce this interview with Donna in the first place. --DT]
Q: Did your company ever consider legal action against the person who disseminated the information about how to defeat that particular type of lock?
Need to go corporate here. We don't discuss any legal matters publicly, be they in process or in theory.
"String Quartet Piece 1" [mp3 removed]. Haven't decided if this is a first movement that stops and then turns into something else, or if this basic structure will continue, with other themes gradually woven in. A bit of a departure from the electro and "new/old digital sounds" side of things I've been pursuing. More of a swerve than a change of direction--it's all made the same way.
Final version here.
Video trolling
Home movie clips of babies throwing up set to the 1812 Overture. Some serious projectile hurling here. From the mainstream media.
Japanese kids spazzing out to hardcore beats. Incomprehensible, strangely liberating mashup from a German (?) novelty (?) site (?).
"Look Around You," a BBC spoof of educational/science programming, investigates...music. I love the kids on the quiz show.
(hat tips to singe and mbs)
Bonus online animation from Michael Bell-Smith: "The Gates." You know, that piece by the couple who bamboozled the city last year.
"Cyphering" [mp3 removed]. Bears passing resembling to a monster hit by a certain German proto-techno foursome, so I called mine "Cyphering," which is Jethro Bodine's word for arithmetic. None of my music has vocals, even robots reciting cyphers--don't know why, maybe vocals are too concrete. I am working on a string quartet piece (no, really) and hope to have something up in the next few days.
"Counterdemo" [mp3 removed].
Factory drum demo with MIDI interpreted as both rhythm and melody.
"End Notes" [18.8 MB .mp4]
The .mov file above [converted to .mp4] is one version of this piece. It is a video using (i) my own music and animation and (ii) the collaborative animated GIFs I did with jimpunk in 2004 (including the opening GIF seen above in freeze frame).
I more or less composed the video for the the 13 inch screen above. The music was mixed to monaural and plays on the TV speaker or through headphones. It also looks pretty good in "full screen" mode on the computer, but I was trying to work for the worst case scenario of a cheap TV that cropped a good bit of the border. The TV version is grittier and more aggressive than the .mov file.
Below: Daisy Rock Girl Guitars, from the 2006 NAMM show (the big musical instrument trade show). Other pics, mostly of big wire-festooned analog synthesizers and the dudes who love them, are here. I wondered what NAMM stood for, so I looked it up on their website and here's what I learned:
What does NAMM stand for? NAMM stands for the global music products industry. NAMM stands for you.(The FAQ page says "National Association of Music Merchants.")
Cheney shooting an old man in the heart seems to have given the late-night yukmeisters carte blanche to joke about everything--the war, domestic spying, Administration incompetence. Where was this all this hilarity when we needed it most, that is, before the 2004 election?
Late-Night Jokes About Dick Cheney's Shooting Accident
"Happy Valentine's Day. Good news, good news today -- so far Dick Cheney has not shot anybody." --David Letterman
"Everybody is in the Valentine's mood. For example, earlier today Dick Cheney shot his buddy in the ass with an arrow." --David Letterman
"The real question now is, is this a one-time thing, or will the vice president try to kill again." --David Letterman
"If this story gets any bigger, pretty soon they're going to have to tell the president." --David Letterman
"You can't blame [Cheney]. Bush says you can spy on people without warrants, you can torture people, you can hold people without a trial, so Dick Cheney thinks, 'Oh what the hell, I can shoot a few guys.'" --Jay Leno
"I'm surprised Dick Cheney loves to hunt so much.
The five times the government tried to give him a gun, he got a deferment." --Jay Leno
"What a nightmare I had last night. I dreamed I was at a Washington party and I had to choose between Dick Cheney taking me on a hunting trip or Ted Kennedy driving me home." --Jay Leno
"The rumor is that Cheney may have been drinking and he wanted to wait until he sobered up. So he may have been drinking and then he shot a guy. And you know what's really scary about all of this -- what if it turns out all this time Bush was the smart one?" --Jay Leno
"The guy Cheney shot is a Texas lawyer. While he was lying there on the ground he actually handed himself his own business card." --Jay Leno
"After Whittington had a heart attack, Cheney said, "You big baby. I get those all the time. Walk it off." --Jay Leno
"Mr. Whittington is doing fine, but based on this development, we're going to downgrade the condition of this story from 'Incredibly Hilarious' to 'Still funny, but, mmm, now a little sad.'" --Jon Stewart, on the heart attack Harry Whittington suffered (Watch video clip)
"It turns out now that Dick Cheney did not have a license to hunt, and coincidentally, turns out we didn't have a license to go into Iraq." --David Letterman
"Kind of a sad study out today that single women over the age of 35 are more likely to be shot by the vice president than to find a husband." --Jimmy Kimmel
"Remember when the most embarrassing thing to happen to a vice-president was misspelling the word potato?" --Jimmy Kimmel
"Police are still investigating. They want to know why Cheney was unable to see the hunter at the time of the accident. And, they also want to know how Cheney wound up with his wallet." --Jimmy Kimmel
"The administration has been getting a lot of criticism for how they handled the situation. First, they didn't tell the media for almost a full day after it happed. The White House press corps was furious. They expect to be told when the vice president shoots a 78-year-old man in the face." --Jimmy Kimmel
"Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It's Dick Cheney." --David Letterman
"But here is the sad part -- before the trip Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy's request for body armor." --David Letterman
"We can't get bin Laden, but we nailed a 78-year-old attorney." --David Letterman
"The guy who got gunned down, he is a Republican lawyer and a big Republican donor and fortunately the buck shot was deflected by wads of laundered cash. So he's fine. He took a little in the wallet." --David Letterman
"Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt ... making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, (was) shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird." --Jon Stewart (Watch video clip)
"Now, this story certainly has its humorous aspects. ... But it also raises a serious issue, one which I feel very strongly about. ... moms, dads, if you're watching right now, I can't emphasize this enough: Do not let your kids go on hunting trips with the vice president. I don't care what kind of lucrative contracts they're trying to land, or energy regulations they're trying to get lifted - it's just not worth it." --Jon Stewart
"The Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now, according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be a 78- year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Wittington's face." --"Daily Show" correspondent Rob Corddry
"Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter, a 78-year-old lawyer. In fact, when people found out he shot a lawyer, his popularity is now at 92 percent." --Jay Leno
"Cheney's defense is that he was aiming at a quail when he shot the guy. Which means that Cheney now has the worst aim of anyone in the White House since Bill Clinton." --Jay Leno
"I think Cheney is starting to lose it. After he shot the guy he screamed, 'Anyone else want to call domestic wiretapping illegal?'" --Jay Leno
"When the ambulance got there, out of force of habit they put Cheney on the stretcher. No, the other guy!" --Jay Leno
"Dick Cheney is capitalizing on this for Valentine's Day. It's the new Dick Cheney cologne. It's called Duck!" --Jay Leno
"You know what they say, if Dick Cheney comes out of his hole and shoots an old man in the face, six more weeks of winter." --Jimmy Kimmel
"The Vice President says that it was an accident.
He claims the guy got in his line of fire, but the good news was he was delicious. Eat what you shoot!" --Jimmy Kimmel
"The man who was shot is named Harry Whittington. He's a high powered Republican lawyer, he was very lucky. They say the only reason that he wasn't killed is he was wearing the body armor that never got shipped to our troops." --Jimmy Kimmel
"This is a great story. You've got the Vice President, a shotgun, a bunch of rich guys hunting tiny little birds. The only thing that could possibly make this story better is if he shot Michael Jackson." --Jimmy Kimmel
"But all kidding aside, and in fairness to Dick Cheney, every five years he has to shed innocent blood or he violates his deal with the devil." --Jimmy Kimmel
"So in summary, the Vice President of the United States shot a 78-year-old man in the face. Congratulations Mister Vice President, you are now a Crip." --Jimmy Kimmel
"He is a lawyer and he got shot in the face. But he's a lawyer, he can use his other face. He'll be all right." --Craig Ferguson
"You can understand why this lawyer fellow let his guard down, because if you're out hunting with a politician, you think, 'If I'm going to get it, it's going to be in the back.'" --Craig Ferguson
"The big scandal apparently is that they didn't release the news for 18 hours. I don't think that's a scandal at all. I'm quite pleased about that. Finally there's a secret the vice president's office can keep." --Craig Ferguson
"Apparently the reason they didn't release the information right away is they said we had to get the facts right. That's never stopped them in the past." --Craig Ferguson
compiled here (hat tip shm)