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Yesterday, Russian Customs reclassified the iPad as a personal computer.  As a personal computer, the iPad will now avoid a 5% import tax in that country.  This development isn’t big news but it’s part of a mainstream trend in business, government and the media where the iPad is now being classified as a personal computer.

In general, almost every iPad that came off a shelf represents a PC that didn’t.  Think about that for a minute.  In the last quarter, Apple sold 15.4 million iPads, many of them headed to businesses both large and small.  The new reality is that people are using their iPads as more than just a companion to their PC.  iPads are replacing PCs and with the introduction of the iPad 3 tomorrow, this trend is only going to accelerate further.

The market share held by HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer and others is shrinking - rapidly.  As PC manufacturers spent the last four years asleep at the wheel, waging a price war with products like netbooks and sub $600 PCs, Apple hired through a recession, dramatically increased R&D, developed iOS to version 5, developed iCloud and a $1b data centre to power it, opened hundreds of high end retail stores, and bought up global supply of electronics and components.

In 2011, Apple took 75% of the profit from the entire mobile phone industry, leaving every other manufacturer to fight over the remaining 25%.  This isn’t Apple eating their competitors’ lunch - it’s cutting off their air supply.  This same scenario is now beginning to play out in the PC market.

With the iPad classified as a PC, Apple now commands 27% of the global mobile PC market.  That’s three times the market share of their closest rival, HP.  A year ago, I was bemoaning the notion that tech journalists and analysts disregarded the iPad as a fad and a tool that could never replace a PC.  Fact is, with numbers like the ones above, they can’t ignore the iPad anymore.

The only way PC manufacturers can turn a profit is to sell their low margin products in mass quantities.  Failing that, they raise prices, which will only exacerbate the transition to iPads.  As the market for PCs dries up, businesses will no longer be able to purchase the cheap Windows boxes they’re used to.  Businesses who don’t adopt iPads  will be forced to reexamine their strategy as PC prices begin to rise across the board.  Here’s what I’m saying: The transition from PCs to iPads is happening as you read this and it’s not a trend - it’s a paradigm shift that’s essentially unstoppable due to the upending of an entire global market.

For the last two decades, software for business has been built for PCs running Windows.  And over the past decade or more, businesses have become accustomed to low priced PCs that could be deployed for every person in the company.  Infrastructure has been built to support the hardware and software that businesses simply can’t survive without.

On the eve of the introduction of the iPad 3, IT managers, CTOs and CFOs need to rethink what the next five years will look like.  Most believe little to nothing will change - that the PC as we know it will continue to be prolific, and most importantly, cheap - and that mobile devices will remain as companion tools for the PC.

For 20 yers, the fate of the PC was decided by the collective decision making power of IT managers.  But we’re now living in an era dubbed the ‘commercialization of IT’, where consumer electronics have penetrated the corporate enterprise and IT managers have been forced to support devices their bosses brought in from home.  The fate of the PC is no longer in the hands of IT managers and CTOs.  It’s in the hands of millions and millions of consumers who’ve brought their devices to work.

The iPad is a PC.  It just happens that you can hold it, touch it, sync it with the cloud, use it all day without recharging, choose from hundreds of thousands of cheap and powerful apps, and buy the device for $550.  You could say the PC is dying, but in fact, it’s just being reinvented by the same company who created it in the first place.

On June 30, 2010, I told the world about my struggles with mental illness.

I suffer from intense anxiety. My claim to this glorious tradition is genetic, fuelled by years where I smoked pounds of marijuana and ate poorly, combined with one helluva quarter-life crisis.

I'd like to say I told my story to the world for some noble purpose such as combating the stigma surrounding mental illness.

That isn't exactly true.

My first love had just ended with the girl who helped me get through the worst time of my life. I wanted to explain how grateful I was to her for having loved me when I didn't love myself. I wanted to remember how much light there had been in the darkness because her shadow was cast next to mine.

The Cure began as a love letter to all the people who reminded me who I was when I forgot. Suddenly my blog went from having a few hundred followers to a few thousand. On the year anniversary of my breakdown, I signed with Anne McDermid and associates, the literacy agency that represents the cream of the crop of Canadian authors.

I didn't realize that I was changing the course of my entire life with that first post.

Any employer who wants to do a Google search on me will be able to read those same entries on my anxiety, the nightmare three months of insomnia, and my battle with depression. I've been told that health insurance will be more expensive when I'm in a job where they provide it.

Any girl I ever pursue will be able to read my vivid descriptions of the first girl I ever really loved and what she meant, means, and will always be to me. The last girl I dated read every entry. So did her parents.

With that first post I was out. And I'll never be able to go back into hiding.

Thankfully I'm a writer and mental illness is expected of me. Creativity and insanity are supposed to go together like peanut butter and jam, insomnia and anxiety, my eyes and a beautiful woman's naked body.

However it strikes me that there is a fallacy in this argument as most of the people I know who have mental illness aren't writers. Why would we associate writers with mental illness?

Simple.

Writers talk about their feelings. Maybe it isn't that creativity is inextricably linked to mental illness.

Maybe creativity just gives us the courage to talk about it.

I'm lucky. Somehow my mental illness gave me a career. The best moments of my artistic life have come after my illness, after taking medication and going through therapy. I was warned I would lose myself but I've never been more Mike Kimber.

I know a lot of people that aren't as lucky as I am. Coming out for them is more difficult.

Some are doctors and as such are sworn to secrecy in the knowledge that if they divulge their own experiences they won't be allowed to practice. Some are family men who don't want their life insurance policies to become more expensive based on preconceptions about mental illness and the ability to take care of yourself.

Lost in the shame of what we fear we might be, two thirds of us aren't getting help.

Everyday we lose more brothers and sisters to suicide. Everyday our people are getting killed because we are ashamed of something we have no reason to be ashamed of.

At one point the shame might have served a purpose when society was locking us in cages, cutting into our brains, and electrocuting us. Staying hidden meant staying alive. It's lucky that mental illness isn't confined to one area, one race. If the genetics that made us what we are was carried by one race the world would have come together and killed us to hide from what they didn't understand.

Let me show you the work of insanity.

Listen to the soothing and beautiful sounds of Beethoven's music, read the incredible words of War and Peace, see the works of Vincent Van Gogh, lose your breathe as your eyes dare to touch Michelangelo's David and his masterwork the Sistine Chapel. Abraham Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation that would free the slaves while battling crippling depression.

These are only some of the most famous examples that we know of. We are doctors, we are lawyers, we are artists, business people, revolutionaries, zealots, your friends, your parents, your lovers.  We are your homeless, your drug addicts, the people who sometimes make it difficult to love us when we need it the most.

We need help from professionals, from the people who love us, because the war against yourself can only end when you stop fighting and start living. The battle against yourself is where the terrors are built. In the shame of trying to be what we aren't we make ourselves worse. We can't allow our struggle to be a weekend boating trip for wealthy citizens looking for a good cause. We need to stand behind each other even when the person isn't eloquent, doesn't look damn good in a suit, and hasn't been lucky enough to fully recover from their illness.

No one can do this for us. Because they won't know who we are until we tell them. Until we reveal ourselves and kill the illusions that our silence creates.

I know the shame. I know the guilt. I have blamed myself for being weak, for being sick, for lacking the emotional strength to carry my small burdens in a world where so many people carry so much more. Yet how is it your fault? No one would ever choose to feel like this.

It's terrifying to know the world won't understand us immediately. To know that we can't change the world without facing that terrible life altering exposure.

To paraphrase Harvey Milk in his famous speech on the Stonewall riots:

Like a scene out of sci-fi to some, the year 2012 is upon us. The marketplace is flooded with the best of the best digital audio workstations, and hundreds of the “coolest” processing plug-ins ever. With so many choices out there, and so many ways to have fun, how do you decide what to put in the toy box?

  I think a good way to start is to determine what you actually need to do your job well. Not what you’d like for that one job that may pop up, but what you truly require for your everyday, meat-and-potatoes projects.

  Personally, I chose Pro Tools HD as my weapon of choice. It’s today’s industry standard in the postproduction audio world. When I do work that crosses over with other facilities around the globe, Pro Tools is compatible with most of them. 

  The HD version may not be a necessity for everyone. There are many less expensive versions that are great for home-project-type applications. 

  “In my humble opinion,” a good purchase begins with knowing what you need to get the job done.  Functionality first. In this day and age, speed is essential. As with everything else in the world, instant gratification seems to be the client’s order of the day. So we want high quality, stable and fast. 

  Next come the bells and whistles. The processing tools that we audio geeks, live and breath for. Reverbs, delays, thingmajiggers of every sort are flooding the market. It’s easy to come up with a mile-long list of toys we want. But what do we need? Here’s my shortlist:

  • Quality, transparent compression.

• Quality , clean EQ.

• Transparent reverb, delay, chorus, flange, and the like.

• One good noise-reduction plug-in is a bonus—for cleaning up that nasty location buzz.

• And last, but not least, a really good multi-band finishing equalizer/compressor, and of course, quality, transparent limiting.

  That should get you started on your journey to becoming the next big deal.

  Notwithstanding the million toys out there, at the end of the day, your most important assets are your ears and experience. Keep your hardware and software current and relevant to your application. And, most of all, listen with your ears and not with your company’s pocketbook. 

From tape to bits and bytes, it has been quite a journey. 

  I need more tracks and wider tape, so how many more ADAT machines can I daisy-chain together.

  From ADAT and the like, to where can I get more RAM for this DAW (Digital Audio Workstation)?

  It is all bits and bytes at this point, and not the sort that you eat.  What we do as sound engineers, and sound designers, has really gone from what can we do, to, what can’t we do? The answer would simply be: not much.

  As designers of soundscapes and environments, we now have new challenges. I have found, personally, that the greatest challenge is media management. 

  Where do I store all of these archive master tapes and source materials, is now, where do I get more hard drive space?

  The way that we receive our projects and source media has changed dramatically over the years. We no longer receive miles of tape, but rather, gigs of digital media. 

  As sound designers and engineers, we now receive all of our elements from the picture editors, as an OMF (Open Media Framework) or AAF (Advanced Authoring Format). In short, these files contain any audio that was used during the picture edit. This will usually include dialogue or voiceover, music, effects and, sometimes, room tone.  Some may even contain picture. 

  Once opened, these files create a Pro Tools session, with all of the elements laid out on the timeline. How organized these are depends upon the editor. I will leave that one alone. 

  After the session is created, I recommend that the OMF or AAF be deleted, as they take up unnecessary hard drive space.  

  The size of the session will depend upon how long the program is, whether the editor consolidated the timeline prior to sending it to the audio department, and how much stereo media is involved. 

  The steps of, ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement or Additional Dialogue Recording), adding sound effects and music, all contribute to the overall size of the session at the time of completion. Keep in mind, every change made along the way to dialogue, effects, music or anything else, will also add to the overall size of the completed project. 

  Why does any of this matter? Simply put, it all has to be archived. 

  If, down the road, anyone wants to revisit the project, it will need to be pulled from the archives and restored to a hard drive.  If the media has been managed efficiently throughout the process, most audio projects are fairly manageable in size. If poor judgment was used along the way by anyone that touched the project, the files can become astronomical in size, and very time consuming and cumbersome to restore.

  In the future, I will add to this blog entry, and offer some solutions for both technical staff and creative people.

I am ever hopeful that someday, in the not too distant future, the stigma of having a “mental illness” will cease to exist. In the meantime I try my very hardest not to allow society’s often misunderstanding view of my depression to make me feel more ashamed. In all my years of dealing with this, there have been few instances where I have felt comfortable revealing my issues, and fewer still when I have felt understood or accepted.

My older sister Meghan attended King’s College in Halifax, to complete a one year journalism program. As her final assignment she was instructed to shoot a documentary on a topic of her choosing. She chose to document my struggle with depression and how it affected my university studies. Meghan had put up with my taciturn and introverted behavior for as long as I can remember without impinging on my reluctance to share the embarrassing secret of my mental state. I was shocked at her interest in understanding my depression, and most deeply and gratefully touched that she thought it was important enough to study and document.

Over the next month Meghan developed her documentary entitled “She’s Not Crazy”, interviewing myself and another young female student at Dalhousie University, in an effort to identify the issues we faced in trying to complete our university degrees. 

I explained how my constant guilt and shame resulted in a feeling of utter worthlessness, which in turn made me reluctant to attend classes, lest my peers judge me further. 

Having my sister take to film, and question how and why I felt the way I did made me feel like there was someone looking in on my life, not to judge, but out of an interest in understanding me. Me. Not my illness.

As a result of Meghan’s documentary the alienation that depression often engulfed me in- lifted, and I was able to start accepting who I was separate from the depression which clouded my perspective. I was liberated.

This is my own personal experience with the link between film and mental illness. I can advocate confidently that the experience was formative in my emotional development and mental health.

My family got the chance to view “She’s Not Crazy”, and for the first time I felt like they saw all of me, everything I hadn’t been able to say without my sister’s help. They knew it all now, and yet nothing about the way they treated me, the way they loved me changed. 

 Dr. Andrew Starzomski of Nova Scotia’s East Coast Forensic Hospital, has organized a film festival which revolves around the support of a community of mental wellness. Part of the program includes films developed by mental health patients. His idea is to link the mental health sector to the film industry to fostering a program that would give patients better access to a medium which has the potential to make a big impact in treating mental health issues. This is a cause I can fully support.

 Friday November the 25th, 2011 the program, Atlantic Minds Wide Open, will be hosting their first ever mental wellness film festival, open to the general public. Admission is $15, it will be held at the Alderney Landing Theatre, event and ticket information can be found online at www.atlianticmindswideopen.ca.

Regardless of whether or not you suffer from mental illness, this festival promises to be an enlightening event. There are so many reasons to attend, and if you can’t think of one yourself I would be glad to help.

 As the statistics go- 1 in 5 people suffer from mental illness, so it is unlikely that your life will remain untouched by this insipid disease. Attending with a friend who is suffering would be an amazing way to show your support. 

By Chris Marriott, Re-posted from www.torusoft.com

I hope Apple re-makes the 1997 Think Different ad to include Steve Jobs.  He’s definitely among the group of people featured in that ad.

Personally and professionally, October 5, 2011 was a sad day.  The world lost an Einstein of our time.  Steve Jobs stood apart.  He was a genius.  He fundamentally understood what people wanted from technology before they did.  And he made that technology a reality, which forever changed our society for the better.

I didn’t know Steve Jobs personally but, any of us who use Apple’s products knows quite a bit.  His world view is manifested in the design of the tools that millions of us rely on and love.

The world has indeed lost a visionary and a person like no other.  Steve Jobs’ legacy will live on because he didn’t just create Apple, the company.  More importantly, he created Apple, the culture -both within Apple’s campus and all over our planet.

Here’s the 1997 ad that Apple ran called Think Different:

http://youtu.be/dX9GTUMh490

By Chris Marriott, Re-posted from www.torusoft.com

At the All Things Digital conference in 2008, Steve Jobs was quoted in an interview with Walt Mossberg, likening PCs to trucks:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. … I think that we’re [sic] embarked on that.”

With the introduction of the iPad, I predicted the demise of the PC as we know it.  My prediction was simple: over the next two to three years, the only people who will be using PCs as we know them are professionals who create content, manage systems or otherwise need serious computing power to do their jobs.

HP is the biggest PC manufacturer on the planet.  They’re the market leader.  So why on Earth did they just decide to exit the PC business and focus on the enterprise, printing, networking and services?  Because their operating margins on PCs under $1000 are less than 6% - sometimes lower.  Any PC maker competing in this space needs to sell on volume and volume alone.  The flip side of the coin here is that Apple’s market share of PCs over $1000 is hovering around 90%.  Compare HP’s operating margin of ~6% to Apple’s ~28% and it’s not hard to understand why HP is jettisoning what will quickly become a money LOSING operation.

The question is how did this happen?  In a word: iPad.  Since the iPad debuted last year, Apple has sold 30 million units and counting.  Even now, they can’t build them fast enough to meet demand.  The reality is that the vast majority of those 30 million people, laying out between $500 and $750 on an iPad, also didn’t buy a cheap PC.  The end result is that sales of low-end PCs are collapsing.  HP has made a decision to get out before the point of no return.  Considering what’s happening, Dell and Lenovo (neither of which have viable iPad competitors) are in the same boat.  Consumers are buying iPads in droves and this pattern is going to have a direct impact on the cost of IT in business.

Within three years (probably less), businesses won’t be able to buy cheap PCs.  Consumer purchasing trends dictate what options businesses have for deploying technology to their employees.  What will it mean to a business when the only ‘PC’ they can buy costs $2000?  $3000?

Apple continues to push the envelope of what a tablet is, and what it can do.  At this point, tablets are not an adequate replacement for content creators.  For everyone else though, iPad is bringing appliance computing to regular people.  Low hardware costs, low training costs, low support costs, and low software costs (the App Store is the bane of high-priced suite software, but that’s another story).  Over time, iPads will be able to do more, talk to big displays and perhaps offer a desktop-class work environment.

The big question is how long will it take before iPads completely replace high-cost PCs in the workplace, like the ones used by professionals and content creators?

The cheap PC is going away and HP’s about-face confirms that.  For you Mac users out there, I’ll close with a question:  what will happen when the average selling price of a PC matches the average selling price of a Mac?

By Chris Marriott, Re-posted from www.torusoft.com

Brian S. Hall’s post on Google failing to innovate pretty much sums up how I feel.  I couldn’t agree more with his assessment of what Google has become and the sinister business model they’re trying to execute:

http://brianshall.com/ 

Warning: some language in his post isn’t fit for work.  However, I think the general idea that Google buys and copies -and no longer innovates, is bang on.  I’ve been very critical of Google in the past year or so.  From where I stand, It’s like their corporate culture developed in a self righteous bubble devoid of morality:  Zero respect for intellectual property unless it’s theirs; zero respect for content rights unless they created it and; continuous double-speak in an effort to look like a victim or good-guy, while doing everything it can to undermine anybody who doesn’t subscribe to their lowest-common-denominator world view.

If you disagree with my assessment, that’s cool, but either way, pay attention to the mountain of lawsuits against Google and its Android OS -49 and counting.  They’re in a lot of trouble and they created it themselves.  I predict that Android will become very expensive to license once Google settles with Oracle, Apple, Microsoft and others.  And regardless of how many copies of Android are out there, depending on the damages awarded or injunctions imposed, it might go the way of the dodo bird.

Google’s recent behaviour with the Nortel patent auction is very telling.  They start the bidding just shy of US $1b, are offered to join a consortium with Apple and Microsoft but refuse, and then when they lose the auction, they complain that everyone is banding together in a conspiracy to destroy Android.  The simple truth remains, however: Google wanted those patents for themselves and were not interested in cross-licensing any intellectual property.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because the same thing happened when Google decided to copy Java and not pay licensing to Sun (now Oracle).  Just days ago, evidence was presented in the Oracle vs. Google suit that Google executives made it clear to Larry Page and Sergey Brin that Android indeed infringed on Java IP and that they should license it.  Google chose not to, and now they’re being sued by a company much larger, with deeper pockets and a massive patent portfolio.  I can’t feel sorry for anyone who pokes a dog with a stick and complains when they get bit.  I use that analogy because to me, it feels like Google is acting like a child.

When your unwillingness to share, results in you losing the thing you wanted, don’t complain to the world that it’s unfair.

In the end, there’s only one reason Google wanted Nortel’s patents to themselves:  They know Android infringes on valid and original patents held by their competitors.  Google doesn’t have a deep patent war chest as it’s a young company.  It needed those patents to defend itself and now they’re owned by the people already suing them.

I hope Google reaps what it sews and faces facts.  You can’t rip off people’s ideas and give them away for the purpose of creating a platform for your products and services.  As software developers, we feel exactly where Oracle, Apple and Microsoft are coming from.  The patent system is not perfect and needs reform.  However, it’s obvious that it’s still required because companies like Google are actively copying their competitors, refusing to pay licensing fees and making a profit in doing so.

By Chris Marriott, Re-posted from www.torusoft.com

Sooner than later, there’s going to be some serious fallout in the mobile phone industry.  At this moment, Apple commands approximately 7% of the global mobile phone market.  This includes non-smart phones or ‘end & send’ phones.  The crisis brewing is not that Apple has 7% market share, but that it now rakes in 57% of the mobile phone industry’s profit. We’re on the verge of mobile phone manufacturers shutting their doors just as iPod competitors did over the past ten years.

In fact, Apple’s share of the phone industry’s profit has increased from 47% this time last year to 57%.  So think about it this way: 93% of phone market has to fight over 43% of the profit left over from Apple.

I wrote in one of my past blog posts about how this scenario will have drastic consequences on the mobile phone industry.  To paraphrase my earlier assessment: No company can survive on unit sales.  If you’re not profitable, life in business is short.

More troubling than Apple owning 57% of the phone industry’s profit is that they’re doing it with premium devices.  The iPhone costs between $99 and $299, yet competes well against phones costing as low as $0 with a contract.  People who pay good money for phones are the same people who pay good money for apps, music, movies, TV shows and books.  So not only is Apple more profitable by an order of magnitude than its competitors - Apple retains the customers it wins by way of its massive eco-system.  Developers continue to gravitate to the App Store because they’re making money.  The eco-system in turn drives device sales. This is something Apple’s competitors still haven’t figured out.

I have no doubt that before 2011 is out, several phone manufacturers will bow out of the market and that even the biggest ones (read: Nokia) will be sliding into oblivion.  This scenario is exactly the same as what Apple managed to pull off with the iPod, yet companies like RIM, Nokia, HTC and Motorola don’t seem to understand that they’re finding themselves in Creative and Microsoft’s shoes from the last decade.  Those companies didn’t react to Apple and its business model fast enough and ultimately canceled their iPod-competing products.  With phones, it’s only a matter of time before R&D stops, and even the best efforts of sales people and marketers fail to compete with Apple.  We’re almost there.

By Chris Marriott, Re-posted from www.torusoft.com

It occurred to me recently that something disturbing is at the core of Google’s business model and overall strategy.  I’m not talking about specific products like Android, Google Docs, Chrome, etc.  I’m talking about Google’s practically singular source of revenue: Advertising.  Advertising is the only thing that makes Google any money.  Most would agree that an overarching aspect of Google’s model is to push advertising via free offerings like email, chat, productivity suites, even mobile phone operating systems.  Products like Gmail, platforms like Android, and services like YouTube exist almost entirely to create millions and billions of portals into the Google advertising and algorithm machine.

If you consider the products Google makes and the services Google offers, one ought to consider what is ultimately most valuable to Google as a company.  It’s not the products and services themselves, it’s Google’s advertising, integrated at a deep level, that’s valuable.  Advertising is extremely important to Google because officially, that’s where 99% of the company’s revenue comes from.  In fact, Google doesn’t want to be in the business of selling anything except advertising.

And there’s the trouble.  Google ultimately sees premium content the same way it sees the products and services it gives away: A conduit to advertising views and the collection user data.  Ultimately, Google’s business model seeks to devalue Internet based products and services through advertising.  Their business model seeks to devalue content and creativity in the exact same way.

So why is that problematic?  Why would having access to all the music, movies, tv shows, books and magazines for free be a bad thing?  Because devaluing content will also devalue the people that produce it.  Looking forward, if all the content you consume was ‘free’, our society will cease to value musicians, actors, writers, singers, even athletes.  If premium content becomes nothing more than an avenue for advertising, and Google becomes its gatekeeper, what motivates talented people to challenge the status quo with their creativity?  Not much if Google’s the only one making any real money.

The current market for TV shows, movies and music is far from perfect.  Artists are paid too little while studios and labels pull down big bucks for minimal effort.  But, at the end of the day, people pay to watch and listen because only a select few among us are talented enough to entertain.  I pay for songs because I can’t sing and I love music.  I pay for movies because I can’t act and want to be entertained.  Most creative people do what they do because they love it.  Money is a side-effect.  But without significant reward, exclusivity or prestige, why would anyone become a musician or an actor?

I think ad-supported products, services and content have their place as loss-leaders.  But at the same time, many people chose to pay for things so they can avoid advertising entirely.  Google wants to create the expectation that advertising is attached to everything you consume. And then there’s the issue of quality: most of the music, TV shows, movies and books out there, frankly, aren’t very good.  But some if it is just stellar and that keeps us coming back for more.  Ads are the same way - most of them suck, with only a few being either entertaining or otherwise captivating.

Google wants to create an environment where you can’t escape advertising because you can’t do without its offerings.  I get the model, but I have little interest in seeing Google devalue content while permanently marrying ads to everything I listen to, watch or read.  Google’s model is in direct conflict with artists that seek to be rewarded for their talents and anyone who seeks to consume or own content divorced of advertising.  Fundamentally, I think Google’s model will ultimately fail as people realize that good content is and always has been worth paying for -and that most of us want less advertising in our lives, not more.

by Julian Marrentette.

Well, like many, I delayed mine until later in the year when presumably one could expect better weather. But unlike many, I decided to go to Russia. 

Perhaps I should back track for a minute to explain.

In 2009, I took my summer vacation, my overtime, my sick time and eventually even left my job to help my friend Dave Carroll manage the deluge of press inquiries and opportunities thrown at him after the release of his “United Breaks Guitars” YouTube video.

Yet by 2011, you would have thought his story had gone the way of the dodo—a noted but forgotten species. But such was not the case with United Breaks Guitars. In fact, Dave still had a handsome career, both playing and speaking about his experience with the airline industry.

Fast Forward to June 2011

ring ring 

DAVE  - ‘Hey Julian, want to go to Russia?

JULIAN - ‘Hell, yes!’

That is how on September 30th I found myself flying from Halifax to Norilsk, Siberia—via Toronto, Dusseldorf and Moscow. You see, Dave’s little YouTube ditty had garnered attention ALL OVER the world.

As you can imagine, with Dave making worldwide headline news back in 2009, I’ve noticed a definite pattern with airport counter staff whenever we fly together and have to check in our instruments.

1. “Oh shit, it’s HIM... lets get this right!”

or 

2. “Oh shit, it’s HIM... who does he think he is? I am going to make sure that he follows our policies about traveling with...” 

You get the point. 

For this trip, the band and I started our adventure in Halifax without Dave. And even though I dropped his name like it was going out of style, we still had to check-in our instruments that we were taking with us to Mother Russia.

The flights went well, flying with Air Canada from Halifax to Toronto, and Lufthansa from Toronto to Moscow, including a wee stop in Dusseldorf. Upon arriving in Moscow, we were tired, excited and to be honest, a little nervous about our first peak behind the former Soviet Union iron curtain. This feeling was compounded when we took a wrong turn going through immigration and ended up in what I can only describe as the equivalent of the pit and the New York Stock Exchange: mayhem. I gathered the guys around to make sure we had our stories straight when a lovely airport attendant gently motioned us over to the “Westerners” immigration line-up, featuring a room of orderly rows, light muzak and friendly immigration staff. 

Once through Russian immigration—which took no more than 90 seconds/man—we headed with suitcases in hand to the oversized luggage area where our instruments would be waiting for us. Or where they SHOULD have been waiting for us, had they been in Russia. 

After much sign language, broken English, my non-existent Russian and finally explaining that we had a translator waiting for us on the other side of customs and could I please have her join us to help, we discovered that our instruments were either in Germany, Toronto or still in Halifax.

Here is where things get interesting, in the global interconnected sense of the word “interesting.” Once I realized that we wouldn’t’ have our instruments—and that no one was really sure where they were, and that the airport in Norilsk Siberia is closed on Sundays, and we were playing on Monday—I texted Dave to give him the heads up that he might be doing a solo show, while we would have to stand around and play “air” instruments as the band.

Having left from Boston from another engagement the night before, Dave was meeting us in Moscow to join us for the last leg to Siberia and was in the air when I texted him. When he landed and received my text, he sent his thoughts out into the cyber world, and they went something like this:

So as I touchdown in Moscow I'm greeted with a text saying Chris and Mike's guitars and Julian's drum cymbals didn't make it. We aren't sure where the instruments are right now but I'm pretty sure there are no instrument rental stores where we perform first in Siberia. And that's why I volunteer to carry my guitar through airports everywhere.

He also tweeted this with #AirCanada and #Lufthansa. Now at this point I should say thank you to companies like Radian 6 and their amazing software that helps companies understand what people are saying about them in social media world. I say this because about 15 minutes after Dave posted this to his Facebook and Twitter accounts, both Air Canada and Lufthansa had got in touch with him to acknowledge that they were aware about the band’s missing instruments, and they were doing everything they could to find them, AND they would be in touch with him very soon. (I don’t need to point out the difference between this and nine months of waiting for someone from United to basically tell Dave to PFO back in the “United Breaks Guitars” incident of 2009.)

The next day, over an early breakfast in Norilsk, a Lufthansa representative called our bassist Mike and very clearly apologized, letting him know that our luggage had been found and would be in our possession as soon as the airport in Norilsk opened again on Monday, the day of our first gig.

by Mike Hachey, CEO Egg

This article originally appeared in Mingle Magazine (minglemag.ca), March 2011

There are so many reasons why people volunteer. Some people do it to gain career experience, network and build their resume; to develop skills or learn new ones. Some people volunteer to build self-esteem and make themselves feel better. Some may volunteer as a result of an instilled set of values that compel them to act on a belief in the importance of helping others.  And others volunteer because they have experienced firsthand the cruel sting that life can inflict.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine asked me to join a communications committee for the Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia. I had never been involved with a charity on that level before and was hesitant to get involved. I was like many Canadians, not sure how I could make a difference and influence others to donate. What could I do to help? Then, in a light bulb moment, I realized I could do something. And in a potentially major way. I could use my skills as a film producer to make enlightening videos to help arm the foundation with ammunition in the battle for public awareness. I could help tell the stories of those suffering from mental illness.

Through the process I’ve learned so much. I’ve become aware of how huge the stigma is despite the fact that mental illness touches everyone: our friends, co-workers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters … and even our children. The statistics are staggering- 1 in 5 suffer from a mental illness. That’s 20% of our population, yet only 4% of the total health care budget is spent on mental health. As a result, mental illness drains 51 billion dollars in lost productivity from the Canadian economy each year. As a business person, the numbers don’t make sense to me. As a human being, it concerns me on an entirely different level.

We are all adjusting to a world with growing ambitions and shrinking budgets. Some complain that the sky is falling, while others claim that technology will save us.

In the world of commercial production, technology might just do that. Some of the time.

35mm motion picture film will always have its place. It has a dynamic range to the image, a capacity for controlled depth of field, and huge latitude with colour, contrast and density that allows for extraordinary images. 

The writing is on the wall, though, and even motion picture camera manufacturers have read it and have shuttered their shops.

It's all because the video option has finally begun to punch above its weight as it improves with each passing season. Specialty cameras like the PHANTOM (shoots at ridiculous frame rates), or technical marvels like the RED (incredible resolution with the flexibility of a RAW image) and the ARRI ALEXA, now share the stage with a (somewhat) smaller option. 

The Canon 5D Mark II looks just like a Digital SLR. That is because it is a Digital SLR. It just happens to also shoot High Definition video.*  It made a splash on the inter-tubes a couple of years ago with a video shot by a photographer named Vincent Laforest (watch here).

Here is what that means:

At a new lower cost, you can get incredible images out of a single operator camera. The full selection of lenses that you can mount to a Canon camera will work here. This includes long lenses, fast lenses, fixed lenses, and even specialty lenses like tilt/shift lenses. The image is gorgeous, it works well in low light and it can be tucked into places that a beefy film camera could never fit.**

Here is what it means to you:

The toolbox has expanded that little bit larger. The thoughtful approach will allow the creative to open up a little more. Low budget doesn’t have to mean low quality. Nor does it have to mean guerrilla. These cameras are being used to shoot big-brand campaigns, Television series, and Feature Films.

It is only going to get wilder from here. The latest iPhone boasts a camera with incredible capacity. If you are laughing at the day when hi-grade spot will be shot on an iPhone... then you are laughing at the past. It has been done and you couldn't tell the difference. 

'Because you can' doesn't mean you should. We are always here - at Egg - to talk through the ideas you have to truly explore what the solution could and should be for your idea.

*There is ‘high definition’ and then there is ‘high definition.’ Like coffee, cars, and exotic dancers – a wide range of options fall under a single term. We’d be happy to explain the differences. About HD. 

Not about the dancers. That explains itself.

Scene One: Enter the radio script. Interwoven peaks and valleys of life-altering information destined sell a product, deliver an urgent government message to the masses, or… go entirely unnoticed.

Here is my advice on how to avoid that last outcome:

Critically important to the success of our spot is the duration. Not so much the eternity it took you to rewrite it seven times (with lots of "help") and finally get it approved, but rather the 30 seconds you now have left.

Radio commercials with crammed-in copy tend to overload people's brains, which are - needless to say - consistently bombarded with a variety of media. And people will react to an ineffective spot by ignoring your commercial or, at least, forgetting it instantly. So, you need to adjust your message for short attention spans.

Being the creative person you are, you may be tempted to create new formats. (The 38-second spot, the :19 and the :64 spring to mind.) But here's the thing: Media people are notoriously uncreative. They think in increments of 15 seconds. Sad really. But, for the time being, they cling to power.

I apologize that I have to engage you in some arithmetic. Blame it on the fact that I'm an engineer. Your script may contain more than one part - for example, dialogue and announcer parts. And this is where it gets really complex. All the parts must add up to the number of seconds your media person scheduled.

I have found that this equation is complicated by such variables as legal copy, offer tags, and especially the French language. French is romantic. It takes more time, just like French cooking. But done right, it's delicious.

As noted above, you're a highly imaginative person. And, as such, I'll tell you right now that, when you read your script to yourself, you will imagine that it's 30 seconds long, even if it's really 39 seconds long. Here's why: Your mind works faster than an ordinary person's. You might as well know that now. You have to dumb yourself down and count every 24 seconds as if they're 30. (That's a 20% differential, but you can ignore this unless you're an account executive. Account executives lover percentages, probably because they're as attached to numbers as media people.)

The bottom line on this point is that, while we now have the technology to get any size script into any size format, you don't want to hear what it sounds like. Besides, why should you have to do all that extra work? Write less and make a point of leaving the office every day at 3. 

But, before you go…

There's a whole other part of scriptwriting that many of the best writers neglect. I'm talking about writing titles on your scripts. This is such an intricate process, that in many cases only a working title can be readied in time for the recording session. We engineers and sound designers have no idea why the title is so often not the title. We have come to accept that the script called 'Bone Crusher' on Tuesday morning is known as 'Gossamer Dance' by Wednesday afternoon. We accept that it's "just because." However, consistent titles  and draft numbers - really do help ensure that everyone's singing from the same song sheet. (That's so to speak, but also literally true in the case of jingles.)

Now a few final words - about the parts of your script that aren't words: the sound effects and music. The more you can tell us about things like environmental placement, music references, how big you want the explosions to be… the better we'll sound to you. There's nothing more embarassing to me than setting your golf resort commercial in a steel foundry, or your tractor-pull spot in a dentist's office.

Thanks for letting me throw my two cents into the mix.