Growing Department
As I alluded to in a recent Tweet, our Philadelphia team at Neiman Group landed one of the most talented designers in the city a few weeks back. Ryan Katrina, of Neuarmy fame, starts tomorrow, and we’re psyched to have him and his talents on board. The addition helps round out our growing team nicely.
While on the topic of hiring, if you’re a back-end developer interested in a new gig, let’s talk. We have an immediate opening and are looking to fill it with someone who’s smart, hungry and desirous of a unique opportunity.
Grand Theft Auto IV Reviews
Rockstar’s latest, available on Tuesday, is sure getting good reviews. It’s the highest rated game ever on Metacritic.
Missing the Details #1
I received the following confirmation email on an Urban Outfitters order I placed earlier in the week. While it looks harmless enough, take a look at the annoying user experience you have to deal with to determine the proper tracking link to click on.
This is precisely what happens when the creative and technical folks fail to sweat the details. It would require a bit more work on the back-end to parse out the order number and present only the appropriate tracking link, but it would be worth it.
Take away: don’t make your customers work.
10 Million iPhones Not Happening
Unless there is a dramatic jump in sales over the next 60 days, it’s clear at this point that Apple is not going to hit the 10 million iPhone sales mark it had hoped for in its first year. Since last June, they’ve sold 5.4 million phones, which would mean they’d have to almost double sales in the next two months.
This is why you don’t see Apple routinely making product sales predictions.
(Update: I was mistaken in what Apple’s publicly stated sales goal was. It’s not 10 million during the June - June timeframe. It’s 10 million for 2008.)
Mac Sales Continue to Outpace Industry Growth
Latest quarterly results from Apple are in. The highlights: $7.51 billion in sales and net profit of $1.05 billion. 2.2 million Macs, 10.6 million iPods and 1.7 million iPhones sold.
Mac sales continue to be the big story here, as unit sales were up 51 percent from the year-ago quarter. How does this compare to the overall PC industry? Gartner forecasted last month that the industry would see 10.9 precent growth this year, which means Apple is currently out-performing the competition by a factor of five.
Microsoft Live Mesh
Typical Microsoft speak on their new Live Mesh technology that aims to sync data across computers and mobile devices.
Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about.
With Live Mesh, you can spend less time managing devices and data and more time connecting with family and friends or collaborating with colleagues.
Good luck in getting this to work well. Apple has been trying to do this with .Mac for years, and even though Microsoft’s dev team likely dwarfs the resources Apple is throwing at .Mac, it’s an incredibly difficult thing to pull off.
And frankly, nothing Microsoft has done software-wise in recent years makes me believe they’ll be able to make this a compelling or functioning solution.
Ricky Gervais Featured in GTA IV
First it was movie tie-ins, then it was actual actors doing in-game voice overs. Now Rockstar is setting a new precedent by having an actor perform brand new material within Grand Theft Auto IV. Ricky Gervais, the genius behind the UK version of The Office and HBO’s Extras, will be featured somewhere in the game, due out next week.
Headline Tees
The Barbarian Group, the Boston-based creative shop best known for its work with Crispin Porter on Subservient Chicken, is helping CNN monetize their headlines by offering t-shirts with select front page headlines. From Barbarian:
As of this writing, CNN has three homepage stories that can be made into shirts, including “Dad mistakes young son for prey, shoots.” Can’t wait to be wearing that one out and about.
DirecTV: Blog it Out
By far, my favorite spot in the new Christopher Guest-directed series of DirecTV commercials is “Blog it Out.” Jonathan Michael Higgins, playing the role of a cable company marketing VP, delivers a hilarious strategy for combating the satellite experience.
The piano playing-esque typing gesture is priceless. The other spots can be seen here.
Griffey: What if He Never Got Hurt
Every time Ken Griffey Jr. approaches a home run milestone, you immediately have to wonder “what could have been” had it not been for the numerous injuries that plagued him during the last decade or so. Even with the stops and starts, his latest shot on Thursday leaves him just 4 homers shy of 600 for his career.
High School Team Scores 66 Runs in Two Innings
File this one under “rough outing.” A Japanese high school pitcher got knocked around a bit, allowing 66 runs in less than two innings of work. He retired just 4 batters and threw over 250 pitches, before he was finally saved when his coach threw in the towel. I guess the bullpen was inactive that day.
Note to NBC Execs: You Sound Like Morons
Maybe I’m missing something, but NBC Universal’s ridiculous stance that they’ll return to iTunes only if additional anti-piracy measures are implemented is a crock of shit. George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer at NBC, had this to say at ad:Tech this week:
Keep in mind, we’re talking about broadcast television content that is available over the airwaves in standard definition and high definition for free, yet NBC wants someone to not only pony up $2 per episode (and possibly more) but to add even more restrictions on what consumers can do with the content they buy.
They truly wind up sounding like fools when they talk about piracy and how much content on “leading MP3 players” is pirated. I’m sorry, but how does this have anything to do with selling video content through iTunes? No one has successfully cracked the FairPlay DRM and allowed iTunes video content to be distributed freely online. So what does that even mean? The MP3 argument doesn’t hold any weight in this equation.
By not offering their content for sale on the most popular digital storefront, all NBC is doing is driving more and more consumers to torrent their shows. Hulu is a good offering — I’m not debating that — but for a television network to restrict their shows to a browser-dependent medium, they’re doing nothing but limiting viewership potential online.
A peek at In/Out from 37signals
Often times I ask my co-workers “What are you doing right now?,” not to hound them or assume they’re doing nothing, but to ensure that everyone is being utilized and doing something.
At 37signals, they’ve built an internal app called In/Out to manage these macro-status updates, which is a great idea especially when you have full-time employees working remotely.
I’d certainly throw a few bucks a month their way if this was released as an actual product.
D.R.Adams Films Inc.
Friends of mine can attest to my obsession with Ryan Adams. Yes, he’s known to lack the self-editing skills of a normal artist and he’s had many on-stage meltdowns that have alienated some fans and turned a large segment of the press against him. At the same time, the guy isn’t shy about his life (he admitted in a NY Times piece to doing speedballs — snorting heroin mixed with coke — every day for years before recently sobering up) and his Tumblr account is a wide open book that is a confusing, yet highly entertaining, read.
This week he posted eleven facts about himself, including his take on an incident that has followed him around for years. Legend has it that he had a concert goer booted from a show for requesting Bryan Adams’ Summer of 69.
From Ryan:
How can you fault him for this?
Vitamins May Increase Risk of Death
According to new research, taking antioxidants like vitamins A and E to prolong life may actually have the opposite effect. Soon, cigarettes and copious amounts of alcohol will be revealed as being beneficial to your health.