J.R. Hartley is screwed

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I occasionally look at the Yellow Pages on my bookshelf and wonder “how much longer can they keep printing that thing?”

Well, my guess is “not very much longer at all”, given they delivered a new one today, and it’s the first Yellow Pages that’s ever fitted through my letterbox. If it carries on dwindling at this rate, in a couple of years’ time it’ll fit in my shirt pocket.

Here’s 2010′s edition versus 2011′s.

I’m reminded of the episode of This Week In Google when Leo Laporte asked his co-hosts if they’d used the Yellow Pages in the last year. Gina Trapani‘s answer was yes – to reach something on “a really high shelf”.

Or how about this popular, alternative use case from YouTube?

The Social Network and high drama

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One of the problems with making a movie about Facebook (disclosure: I haven’t seen The Social Network yet) is that it’s notoriously hard to make website development look sexy. Dramatic typing is generally the best anyone can come up with.

You might recall my post a while ago about Mark Coleran – the guy who designs incredible, exciting, but totally fake computer interfaces for films like Alien vs Predator and Blade 2. (Revisit them and marvel.)

Now here’s The Social Network’s equivalent piece of visual wizardry.

As revealed on their blog, Network Solutions worked closely with Columbia Pictures during the making of the film to portray, with pixel-perfect accuracy, the world-stopping moment in 2004… when Mark Zuckerberg registered a domain name.

I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it.

I’ve taken the liberty of including their painstaking rendition of a six-year-old domain registration UI below. When Facebook is written up in history, they’ll call this “the confirm.php moment”.

Note the charming username: zuckonit.

A life in logos

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Legendary TV producer Steven J Cannell has, I learn, died at the age of 69.

I say “legendary TV producer” –  in reality I know as much about Mr Cannell as he knew about me.  (I just did some research. He created the A Team, Rockford Files and about a dozen other US TV classics.)

So why am I so saddened by the news?

In my last post (about the movie This Is It) I posited that Michael Jackson’s company had “literally the most bad-ass ident in corporate history”.  I wouldn’t go back on that, except to say:

  • Stephen J Cannell ran a very close second, and
  • For sheer brilliance in keeping his ident refreshed, both visually and musically, over several decades, Mr Cannell deserves special acclaim.

If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, watch this, and experience vicariously what Paul Weller would call the “ever-changing moods” of one TV mogul. Relaxed. Amused. Aggressive. Bearded. They’re all here.

The Cannell ident was such a part of US pop culture it was memorably spoofed by Family Guy (not available online anywhere I can link to, sadly).

It also provided inspiration for the final moments of The Greatest Music Video in recent pop history: Justice’s DVNO.

I could write 10,000 words about why I adore this video, but thankfully I’m not going to. (Plenty of people did, though, when it first appeared. You have to love a music promo which inspires praise like: “This [scene] nicely displays the pros and cons of tightly spacing and stacking Eurostile Extended.”)

Plaudits to the creative geniuses behind it, stellar French types SoMe and Machine Molle.

Preparing for nothing

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So this weekend I finished watching the Michael Jackson movie This Is It, after stumbling across it on Sky Anytime the other day.

I recommend it, albeit reservedly, as it’s genuinely one of the strangest things I’ve seen in a long time.

I always loved the title of the Manic Street Preachers’ greatest hits album, Forever Delayed. It’s that feeling which pervades the film: we’re watching intricate, massively expensive preparations for a season of concerts which can never, and will never happen.

We’re shown segments of CGI-heavy footage – some in 3D – shot and processed to incredible standards for back-projection during the shows.

This Is It poster in ShanghaiBut the performance intended to happen in front of it lives on only as scrappy bits of captured rehearsal footage – some in costume, some not; some sung fully, other bits busked as Michael insists on saving his voice.

We see amazing special effects – but not integrated with the show. Instead they’re tested in isolation: a cherry picker taken on a dry run; some pyrotechnics detonated on an empty stage.

We watch as dancers rehearse being jettisoned into mid-air by pneumatic trapdoors. But other elements, like the giant on-stage bulldozer during Earth Song, don’t seem to have ever been caught on camera – so we’re shown “artist’s impression”-style computer graphics to illustrate how they would have looked.

There are dozens and dozens of people on the movie’s credits, with very important-sounding titles. But what they were actually working towards isn’t here at all.

Only a compromised, perhaps rushed, probably cynical, sketch of a sketch of it. And that fascinates me.

I took two significant learnings from This Is It.

Firstly, Michael Jackson – captured candidly – was an extremely creative, involved individual whose eccentricities were far less apparent in the company of people he trusted.

Secondly, his company had literally the most bad-ass ident in corporate history. You can enjoy it below.

The Trent end

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So, to all intents and purposes, Nottingham’s Trent FM is no more.

Global Radio’s announcement today that they’re soon to merge the station (along with the Galaxy Network, Red Dragon FM, Leicester Sound and Ram FM) into a monolithic “Capital Network”, effectively brings to an end the local service which started as Radio Trent in July 1975. All output will be syndicated from London apart from breakfast and drivetime.

The new network will be branded 95 – 106 Capital FM. (Not sure that’s quite broad enough, myself – why not go the whole hog and call it 87.5 – 108 Capital FM?)

As a business decision, I’ve no doubt this makes cold-hearted sense. And it’s hardly surprising in the wake of Global’s wholesale restructuring of Heart just a few months ago.

But I can’t help but feel sadness in the specific case of Trent. It is, after all, the radio station I grew up listening to. It is the radio station which – I’m only mildly ashamed to admit – I represented on the long-forgotten CITV quiz show for junior news-nerds, What’s Happening.

And it represents an era of commercial radio in the UK which – barring divine intervention – is never coming back.

So now feels like a good time to bring out these classic YouTube videos.

The first – in two parts – is a mini-documentary from 1979. Even the woozy jingle which kicks it off is enough to send me into undignified Proustian reveries of nostalgia – as Trent’s own Kid Jensen would doubtless have said.

Now come bang up to date with 1989′s two-parter Charting The Charts.

This follows DJ Danny Cox as he compiles the East Midlands’ very own weekly top 30, with the sole aid of “two huge Apricot computers” and a really noisy dot matrix printer.

Rest in peace Radio Trent, 1975-2011. We shall never see your like again.

Cute robots are singing to me

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Watched BBC Three’s excellent documentary about Beckii Cruel last night.

Don’t get me started on the programme itself  - I can’t remember the last time I shouted at the TV quite so much – but midway through came one of those magic moments which had me scrabbling for my iPhone to find out What The Hell Is That Music?

Surely even my trusty Shazam app wouldn’t identify a random piece of Japanese pop from 2006?

Oh, but it would. Here’s the fantastic Inryoku by Perfume. It’s where girlpop meets chiptune. Or as one YouTube commenter put it, perhaps more incisively:

THIS IS SO FRICKING CATCHY ITS LIKE LITLLE CUTE ROBOTS ARE SINGING TO ME ^o^

My obsession with Japanese pop, I should mention, is deep-rooted.

Here’s the second single I ever bought, at age 8, from Woolworths on Lister Gate, Nottingham. (Don’t ask about the first one I bought – it wasn’t anywhere near as cool as this one.)

This story 100% true – except for the story bit

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I blogged a few months back about those I “Cured” My Yellow Teeth ads, and the not-so-subtle methods they use to personalise their content.

Today I clicked on the promising story Work At Home Mum Makes £4,397/Month Part-Time (granted, I’m not necessarily the target audience here) and spotted the world’s most brilliant disclaimer at the bottom.

I’ve reproduced the disclaimer in full below, with my favourite bit in bold. Some impressive honesty on display.

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It is important to note that this site and the stories depicted above is to be used as an illustrative example of what some individuals have achieved with this/these products. This website, and any page on the website, is based loosely off a true story, but has been modified in multiple ways including, but not limited to: the story, the photos, and the comments. Thus, this blog, and any page on this website, are not to be taken literally or as a non-fiction story. This blog, and the results mentioned on this blog, although achievable for some, are not to be construed as the results that you may achieve on the same routine. I UNDERSTAND THIS WEBSITE IS ONLY ILLUSTRATIVE OF WHAT MIGHT BE ACHIEVABLE FROM USING THIS/THESE PRODUCTS, AND THAT THE STORY DEPICTED ABOVE IS NOT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY. This page receives compensation for clicks on or purchase of products featured on this site.

The term “advertorial” is a combination of “advertisement” and “editorial” written in an editorial format as an independent news story, when in fact the advertisement may promote a particular product or interest. Advertorials take factual information and report it in an editorial format to allow the author, often a company marketing its products, to enhance or explain certain elements to maintain the reader’s interest. A familiar example is an airline’s in-flight magazines that provide an editorial reports about travel destinations to which the airline flies. As an advertorial, the author of this article reports on a customer who has successful utilized Robert Allen’s product to improve her financial condition. Robert Allen’s program is not a job but an educational opportunity that can help individuals learn how to earn money through their entrepreneurial efforts. Anyone who decides to buy any program about making money will not necessarily make money simply by purchasing the program. People who think “I bought these materials so I’m going to automatically make money” are wrong. As any type of education has so many variables, it is impossible to accurately state what you may expect to achieve, however, the individual(s) depicted here not only bought the starter book, but also undertook one-on-one coaching, applied the principles to an area of the market that was growing, kept their commitments and continued to learn. If you do what the individuals depicted did, you may generally expect to achieve a great education in the area of your choice, but you should not expect to earn any specific amount of money. Typical users of the starter materials that don’t enroll in coaching, don’t keep their commitments and don’t implement what they learn, generally make no money. Though the success of the depicted individual is true, her picture and name have been changed to protect her identity. Consistent with the advertorial concept, the comments posted in the comment section are also representative of comments and experinces of other customers of Robert Allen which have been compiled into a comment format to illustrate a dialogue, however, the comments are not actual posts to this webpage and have been compiled or generated for illustrative purposes only. We are not affiliated in any way with CNN, WebTV, News Channel 6, ABC, NBC, CBS, U.S. News or FOX, and all such trademarks on this web site, whether registered or not, are the property of their respective owners. The authors of this web site are not sponsored by or affiliated with any of the third-party trade mark or third-party registered trade mark owners, and make no representations about them, their owners, their products or services.

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