Friday Night Lights Deserves to Live

Two weeks ago on Popwatch (You do read Popwatch, right? Okay, but you do, at least, read EW.com, right?) Michael Slezak asked an important question that got me thinking about my favorite shows on television this year: which bubble shows deserve to live?

Every year, tons of television shows face the chopping block as new pilots get picked up and more god-awful reality television crowds our screens. Now, you all know I’m not much of a TV-watcher, but this year, one of the best shows I have ever seen on television is facing the prospect of being axed, so I needed to speak up about this. So in order to do my little part in trying to save Friday Night Lights, here is my open letter to NBC.

Dear NBC:

I am writing you here on my blog in order to ask you please not to cancel Friday Night Lights and to please pick it up once again for next season. Apart from Scrubs and Heroes (both NBC shows, coincidentally), Friday Night Lights is the only show I watch religiously: I skip meetings and dates (yes, it’s true, and I’m still single because of it) to make sure I am home on time to watch every episode, and I spend a considerable amount of time on the NBC website watching deleted scenes.

Some of my friends will tell you that I only like this show because I, myself, used to play football. In a small way, they’re right. But Friday Night Lights is much more than a show about football: it is a show about relationships and decisions, all of which are perfectly portrayed each week through fantastic acting - special kudos to Taylor Kitsch and Brad Leland - and intricate pacing, crafting, and editing. As a writer myself, it is clear to me that Friday Night Lights features some of the best television writing of this decade, and there have been few shows in the history of television that have so aptly captured the intensity and banality of high school life at the same time. Plus, the football is pretty awesome too.

You don’t have to take it from me though: Friday Night Lights is the second-highest ranked new television series on MetaCritic this season, and has garnered critical acclaim from almost everyone worth listening to. Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times even went so far to call the show a “fiercely controlled and inventive work of art.” What’s more impressive, however, is just how much everyday TV viewers have grown to love the show. The following quotes all come from Popwatch, but a quick Google search will show you that there’s many many more like them:

Because neither Survivor nor Bones are available (legally) on the internets, to my knowledge, the obvious choice would be to cancel Friday Night Lights and watch it tomorrow morning on NBC’s website. But I shouldn’t have to do that, NBC, because FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS IS THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISION AND IT OBVIOUSLY SHOULDN’T HAVE TO FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL! Argh.
- Whitney Pastorek

Every week I watch I think “They couldn’t possibly top that, it was perfect” and every week the writers of Friday Night Lights prove me wrong and come up with something better. A show this good comes along once a decade, maybe… We’ve only grazed the surface of how good it can be and its already the best thing on the air. You’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t hold on to this one, NBC.
- Lisa

Friday Night Lights is without question the best weekly dramatic program currently on television, period. People say they want quality television, the “family values” folks cry for family shows. Well, here it is folks - an intelligent, high caliber, family program. Right here on free broadcast television! And what are you morons watching? American Idol!
Let’s face it - FNL will never be a ratings monolith. Shows this intelligent just can’t compete with the titillation of finding the next Pussycat Doll stripper or American Idol. But, there must be some way to make sure this program stays on the air. Kudos to NBC for sticking with it, and hopefully they’ll hang in there until this show can find the audience it deserves.
- Sybil

You see NBC, I’m not the only one that wants to save this show. Sure, it may not have brought in the ratings you expected, but if you move it to a better time slot, get some good marketing people working on it, and give it some time to grow on the American public, Friday Night Lights may just become the benchmark for quality television programming. You wouldn’t want to cancel something like that.

Regards,
Sameer Vasta
FNL Addict

LogoMaid Apologizes to Dan Cederholm

I wasn’t the only person who wrote a blog post about LogoMaid and how they ripped off the SimpleBits logo. Apparently, their rip-off was vehemently denounced by pretty much anyone who came to know about the theft. (Yeah, I know that’s a whole lot of links there, but there were a lot of people upset about this.) Well, it seems that LogoMaid has succumbed to the pressure and has posted a public apology to Dan on the Flickr page that started this all:

In name of Vilords media I need to apologize for the inconvenience caused. I feel really sorry that we didn’t remove the logotype rightaway (sic)…and let this situation ascalate (sic). It took us too long to understand the designer we worked with for over 3 years obviously did copy the main shape of your logo. We figured it when we saw the owl logotype (added today) which was removed from the offer almost instanly (sic) after the friendly notification from ara_p (thanks).

Now, I don’t quite buy the fact that LogoMaid is truly apologetic and was unaware of this all from the start. This is simply the reaction of a company that has come up against a battle it can’t fight anymore and is doing all it can to make save whatever little credibility it has left.

Lesson to be learned: when you know you’re wrong, fess up and fix the problem. Don’t blame other people.

Review: TMNT

After almost fifteen years of waiting for the return of the fighting turtles, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be watching TMNT on opening weekend. I had my awesome purple Donatello headband all set and even went looking for my Ninja Turtle slap bracelet. The early nineties were making a comeback big time in my apartment. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when, after watching Kevin Munroe’s remake of my childhood classic television show, I realized that TMNT was nothing more than a ploy to grab the money of over-enthusiastic fans like me. I should have expected it, I know, but you can’t blame me for hoping just a little that they’d be able at least make a decent film.

In this film, everyone’s favorite turtles aren’t quite ‘teenage’ anymore: they are holding down menial jobs (though I don’t understand why they need rent money if they live in a sewer) and dragging themselves through their everyday lives without much purpose. When a set of monsters - and the return of the foot clan - ravage the city, the turtles spring back into action, putting aside personal vendettas in order to work together to save their town. Cheesy. It would have worked if it was Shredder coming back to life (again), but this time, the enemy wasn’t menacing, the story wasn’t compelling, and all felt a bit too contrived. And there was definitely not enough Donatello.

The supposed tension between Raphael and Leonardo seemed too artificial, the relationship between Casey and April was overly superficial, and the one-liners that usually made the cartoon witty and gritty at the same time fell flat in the film. Case in point: Michaelangelo came across as a pothead loser rather than ‘party dude’. Sure, the animation was pretty neat, and the fight scenes were sometimes intense, but there was nothing remarkable on display that Pixar hadn’t already done with any of its features over the past ten years. The true highlight of TMNT for me was seeing Master Splinter - voiced by Oscar-nominated actor Mako just before he passed away - kick some serious arse.

In all, TMNT may be a decent way to kill your Sunday afternoon, but it surely wasn’t worth the fourteen year wait between Ninja Turtle movies. And the hint of a sequel towards the end of the film means that we should be expecting even more animated turtle mediocrity very soon. And sadly, you know I’m going to watch that one as well with my purple Donatello headband in tow.

Facebook is Telling Stories

I have wondered about Facebook’s revenue model in the past - because we all know ad revenue is great, but not really effective on a site like Facebook - but a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal with Mark Zuckerberg gave a tiny hint of where Facebook may be going in the future. And just because I know most of you don’t have a subscription to the WSJ, here’s a little snippet of the article:

I don’t get the sense Mr. Zuckerberg is a big fan of traditional media. He was famously photographed at a big media powwow wearing Adidas flip-flops. I snuck a quick glance down and noticed he still had them on. “Actually, I don’t have a TV but I do read newspapers. But how I read them is important. I don’t pick up a physical newspaper — I’ll get sent a link. The experience is very different, given to me by different people. What my friends sent to me or what other people think and send to me.”

In effect, Facebook works in a similar way, only on a grand scale with software helping pull out relevant information. “In the next iterations, you’re going to see real stories being produced. ‘These people went to this party and they did this the next day and then here’s the discussion that was taking place off of this article in The Wall Street Journal. And these two people went to this party and they broke up the next day.’ Whatever, you can start weaving together real events into stories. As these start to approach being stories, we turn into a massive publisher. Twenty to 30 snippets of information or stories a day, that’s like 300 million stories a day. It gets to a point where we are publishing more in a day than most other publications have in the history of their whole existence.”

If Facebook truly is in the business of creating stories, then this kind of ‘personalized news’ - and the subsequent ability to charge for these stories - may be what makes Facebook a viable business instead of just an awesome Web 2.0 application. In my brief encounter with Zuckerberg a few years ago, I could see that he had aspirations to make Facebook more than just a social networking site, and a movement towards this kind of ‘relevant journalism’ may fit into his vision quite nicely.

UPDATE: I just found a great post on GigaOM about Facebook becoming the new publisher, where Liz Gannes sums it up quite nicely: “So watch out, gossip rags - you’re Mark Zuckerberg’s next target.”

Elliott Yamin and Rickey.org renew my love for American Idol

I’m not afraid to admit it: for the first season of American Idol, I was hooked. I followed the competition, made a few friendly wagers as to who would win - my money was on Kelly from the start - and lose, and I even postponed a dinner date to watch the final episode. Since then, I’ve gone on to buy both of Kelly Clarkson’s CDs and was absolutely giddy when Since U Been Gone hit huge popularity around the web. Kelly Clarkson was truly my American Idol. (Oh, and we’re not going to mention Canadian Idol or any other spin-offs on this here post, so don’t complain - this is purely about the cultural behemoth that is American Idol.)

The funny thing is, once the first season was over, my interest in Idol weaned to the point that I didn’t quite care. The only real exposure I had to the show was through the periodic updates my brother would give me; basically, who won each season and if there were any absolutely ridiculous videos I had to watch.

Recently, however, my Idol interest has been rejuvenated, and while I will denote Elliott Yamin and Rickey.org as the main catalysts for my newfound interest, Idol fever has been simmering for quite a while.

First was my vehement opposition to giving Jennifer Hudson the Oscar. Sure, she was good, but she was by far the least talented actress out of everyone that was nominated. To be honest, I didn’t realize she was a former Idol until started hearing that fact plastered over the media, but it was the first of many new exposures I had to the show. Seeing Katharine McPhee, Carrie Underwood, and Chris Daughtry climb the charts was yet another reminder that America loves their Idols.

So when I discovered Rickey.org, I knew my Idol obsession would begin again. Since I don’t have time to actually watch the entire shows, Rickey.org is perfect for me: it collates the highlights of every show in video and audio - and adds some good commentary - and keeps me in the loop. (By the way, that audio player that Rickey.org uses is very slick. Anyone know if it’s available on the web somewhere, or did he design it himself?) It also has some great features about Idol alumni, which is how I heard about Elliott Yamin.

Elliott Yamin was the third-place finalist on the fifth season of American Idol. To be honest, I’m shocked he didn’t win: the man has a much better voice than Taylor Hicks or Katharine McPhee (though I must admit that Katharine’s were probably a big part of why she made it that far - the girl is pretty cute) and has a charisma to match that voice. Yamin recently released his first studio album, and already I’m hooked. He’s got soul like Robin Thicke and funk like Justin Timberlake, and he’s also got that awesome beard and crazy hair going on to help his cause. Really, if you haven’t heard any of his stuff, do check out his MySpace page and listen to some track samples. Sure, he doesn’t write his own music, but he’s definitely got a groove that I can get into, and is probably the only Idol since Kelly Clarkson that I really enjoy listening to constantly.

All that to say that Idol is finally interesting again - granted, I still only catch highlights on Rickey.org - and that I’m looking forward to see if Chris Sligh can really ‘bring chubby back.” Because you know, us chubby guys with curly hair need to stick together.

SimpleBits Gets Copied

As a writer, there are very few things that bother me than when people take my content, my words, my thoughts, and pass them off as their own. I’m all for re-purposing content and sharing ideas, but blatantly ripping off someone for your own profit riles me to no end. So I’m taking this opportunity to tell you all about the recent atrocity that has happened to one of my favorite designers, Dan Cederholm.

Dan, web designer and icon creator extraordinaire and blogger over at SimpleBits, recently posted a screenshot on his Flickr photostream about a company called LogoMaid that has stolen the design of his SimpleBits logo and is selling it on their site for profit.

Now, I’m not here to take sides - okay, so maybe I am, I’m completely sure Dan was blatantly ripped off in this case - but what disturbs me most is that LogoMaid (as you can see in the comments to the screenshot) is actually threatening legal action against Dan. Instead of resolving this matter in a civil way - and really, instead of admitting their mistake - they have decided to become aggressive and reactionary, which isn’t helping their cause in any way.

If you have a Flickr account and have something to say about this, please do go to the thread and voice your concern. And Dan, if you ever do decide to take any legal action against LogoMaid, I might have a few dollars to send your way for the legal fund.

UPDATE: Daring Fireball says it quite nicely: “Intellectual property thieves have much in common with other vermin, such as cockroaches and rodents: they don’t like the light. Expose them and they hide.” I’m glad I’ve done my own tiny little bit to expose them, even though my readership is quite low.

Web Worker Tax Relief

A recent post on Web Worker Daily caught my eye and got me thinking about how tax legislation needs to change to accommodate the rising trend of people who work remotely from home through the web. Now that I’m officially a ‘web worker’, any incentive given for telecommuting is welcome news for me.

The post I’m referring to essentially outlines a proposed bill in the USA where employees that telecommute would be eligible for some substantial tax savings every year. I don’t know what the chances of such a bill passing will be, but it does make considerable sense and would be a perfect legislation to be introduced here in Canada as well. The proposed bill in the States includes some important provisions:

• A vastly simplified flat rate home office deduction ($2500 or the profit from your home-based business, whichever is lower), replacing the current complex prorated system that requires exclusive use of part of the home.
• A telecommuting tax credit that gives employers up to $2400 credit for each employee who starts telecommuting during the year.
• An exclusion from employee income of employer-provided telecommuting equipment including computers and broadband access equipment, making such equipment a tax-free fringe benefit.

The benefits of telecommuting are evident: working from home helps the city grow and the environment prosper. With fewer people traveling into the downtown core, there is less stress on roads and civic infrastructure, as well as a lower level of carbon emissions from vehicles. Telecommuting also eliminates the need for expensive office space and the resources required to keep those spaces maintained. The effective web worker will also have a higher level of productivity because they are uninterrupted by the surroundings of the office environment and the need to travel to and from work. This increased productivity would in turn help business profit, which in turn is better for the financial outlook of the city and country.

Taking all this into account, it makes sense to give web workers an incentive to continue with their current working habits and telecommute. Now I just need to find an enterprising MP who might be able to make this reality. Anyone have any suggestions or know a Member of Parliament?

Movie Poster Design

Last year, at the Toronto International Film Festival, I had the opportunity to meet a young man that works as a designer for an advertising firm that creates movie posters for large Hollywood Studios. Since then, we have exchanged a few emails and he has taught me a lot about the process of conceptualizing, creating, printing, and distributing these posters. He’s asked me not to share his personal or work details here, but I thought I’d talk a little bit about movie posters for a bit since I’ve been thinking about them for a little while.

While the trailer may be the ultimate movie marketing tool these days, the movie poster is still crucial to the advertising strategy for most major studios. People may get intrigued by the scenes in a trailer, but they connect with the one-sheet; when I think of The Silence of the Lambs, I may think of Hannibal Lecter, but it is the haunting image of the woman with the moth covering her lips that resonates and lingers. Cinemas are lined with posters advertising upcoming films and the movies that are now playing, and each theater you enter undoubtedly has the one-sheet of the movie showing just outside the door. Essentially, the movie poster then becomes the “calling card” for the film, accompanying movie reviews and promotional material, and even being collected by film enthusiasts everywhere.

The creation of a movie one-sheet is much more than simply advertising, it is art. While immense importance is placed in the fact that each poster tells the right story to the right audience, designers take pride in their craft as being an intricate art form; each poster is a meticulously designed amalgamation of film stills, digital art, and typography.

My designer friend tipped me off to a great weblog that focuses solely on movie one-sheets and film marketing called Posterwire. If you’re at all interested in the great art that is coming out of the film advertising agencies, this is the blog to follow. And since Premiere could make a list of their twenty-five favorite movie posters, I’ve compiled a list of my ten favorite one-sheets (as far as I can remember, my list changes pretty often) after the jump - not in any particular order, of course. Enjoy.

March Madness and Bracketology

As I type this right now, we are eight games into this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament, and so far, all eight of the teams I called to win in my bracket have picked up their ever-important wins. For those of you who are interested, here are a few links to who I’ve picked through each round of the tournament, and a look at my final four: Midwest | East | South | West | Final Four

For those of you that are still a bit confused as to what is going on, every year I make my predictions on the NCAA March Madness Tournament based on a few factors:

1. Did I attend the school?
2. Have they been playing well in the regular season?
3. What conference do they play in?
4. Are they one of my regular schools I support? (Kentucky, UConn, Maryland)
5. Do I know anyone that went to the school?
6. What is their ranking?

Clearly, as you can tell from this list of factors, it isn’t surprising that I picked my former college, Georgetown, to win the tournament; luckily, this year, they’re actually one of the best teams in the NCAA so it isn’t such a long shot. For those of you who struggled to complete your brackets this year, I’d suggest coming up with a similar list of criteria and just go with it. For example, Matt Thomas’ list of criteria is pretty intriguing, and has led to a pretty exciting bracket.

As the tournament began, my brother made a very astute observation: the NHL and the NBA would be much more exciting if they followed a similar playoff strategy as NCAA Basketball. A short regular season would rank all the teams in the league going into the final playoffs, and each team in the league would have a chance to play in a do-or-die bracketed tournament to decide the league champion. Logistically, it may be hard to set up at first, and I’m sure the players’ union in each league would have a public outcry, but in the end, both those leagues would benefit greatly from the hype that comes from a bracketed tournament.

Surfing the web with brackets in mind, I found a book on Amazon called The Enlightened Bracketologist, which turns the art of having an opinion into a sport. Pretty interesting idea, if you ask me. In response to the book, Slate came out with some interesting interactive brackets to help you decide the best ad slogan of all time (Just do it), the greatest film deaths (Bambi’s mom shot by hunters), the most poignant ‘where were you when’ moment (9/11 attacks), and the most ridiculous marital argument (When are we going to get married?). Go and try them out and have some fun with them. And then go watch some NCAA basketball.

Web Property Dependency

Jennifer made a post on Lifemuncher the other day about how much she depends on Google for her everyday life. Which got me wondering how much I depend on certain web properties for the various things I do on the web. So I decided to take inventory:

Email: GMail
GMail is the backbone of my livelihood. Being a freelance web worker, everything I do is run through email, from my To-Do lists to my contact management to my social correspondence. GMail’s conversation threading is what makes it invaluable. If any other desktop application had a similar feature, I’d switch right away.

Blogging: Wordpress / Tumblr
Wordpress is the ultimate blogging application: trust me, I’ve tried almost every single one. Recently, I’ve been playing around with Tumblr, which has a lot of functionality I’m hoping can be built into my next Wordpress install.

Photos: Flickr
There’s not much more I can say here: Flickr is large part of the reason why I love the internet. And that’s even after Yahoo! acquired them.

Video: Vimeo / YouTube
I don’t create many videos, but when I do, I always upload them to Vimeo: the Flickr-like interface really makes me feel comfortable there. Of course, when I’m looking for video, Google-owned YouTube is always my first stop.

Bookmarks: del.icio.us
Yahoo!’s acquisition of del.icio.us was a smart move, because it sure has some geek cred. Sure, it may not be pretty and it may not have the best social functionality, but if you’re looking for bookmarking, it doesn’t get much better than del.icio.us. In fact, it also powers my short ends on my website.

Comment Tracking: Co.mments
I wasn’t too picky about where I track my comments, I just needed a place to do it, especially since I leave five to six comments on various weblogs every day. Co.mments has a clean and easy to use interface, which is what sold me.

Documents: Google Docs
For presentations and projects needing layout flexibility, there are no better applications than the ones in iWork. But when someone sends me a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet, Google Docs (I used to use Writely before it was acquired by Google) does the job. I’ve recently started using the collaborative functions on Google Docs as well, and there really is no better substitute for the clunky Microsoft Office.

Events: Upcoming
Easy integration with iCal is one of the main reasons I use Upcoming as my primary event manager. While Google Calendar and 30 Boxes are both brilliant calendar apps, everything that Upcoming doesn’t do is perfectly taken care of by iCal.

Invoicing: Blinksale
I don’t even think there is any competition in this market. Blinksale is the best way to invoice your clients. Period.

Site Statistics: Google Analytics
I’ve been thinking of using Mint for a while (and I think I will when I launch my new web strategy) but for now, Google Analytics is free and gives you much more information than you could ever need. And it’s remarkably easy to set up.

Maps: Google Maps
"Google Maps is the best. True dat. Double true!" If you don’t get the reference, go back to a Lazy Sunday last year and you might get it.

News: Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News feels much more intuitive for me, and has a distinctive human touch. Google News feels too automated. Are there any other good current news aggregators out there?

Feed Reading: NetNewsWire
This doesn’t even count because it’s not on the web, but it’s just to say Bloglines and Google Reader aren’t really of use to me because I have my Macbook with NetNewsWire on it everywhere I go.

Music: Last.fm
iTunes manages my music library perfectly, letting me add tons of metadata to every track I own. On the days where my 17gb of music feels inadequate, Last.fm’s tag radio has enough goodies to keep me occupied for hours.

So as we can tell from the above list, I’m not as dependent on Google as I would have otherwise thought. In fact, I probably use Yahoo! properties just as much as Google properties. That being said, if I did lose GMail, the world as I know it would collapse, so maybe I’m more vested than I thought in making sure Google survives and thrives.