Tag Archives: Youtube

July 15, 2023 · 22:07

A 2 minute warning?

Yes, we can relate. Yet some will think it is about the 1976 movie, and they are not entirely incorrect. It has a different relationship. It is about a BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230712-consumer-brands-leave-social-media-meta-threads) where we see ‘Why your favourite brand may be taking a social media break’. It is here where the speculations start. We are given “Like many of us, big companies are struggling to keep up with the number of social media platforms vying for their time and attention. They’re faced with the important choice of which apps to choose, in a market where social media can be an important brand-building tool and enable them to target consumers where they are most active.” You see there is more than one stream in motion. It goes beyond sniping (or shotgun marketing for that matter). It is about amount of considering versus smart considering. It was never far of my mind. You see my IP was set on a premise and even as it had options for advertising, or sniping. It was never about the timeline. Facebook overplayed its hand. Not initially, but over time people are starting to resent this approach. And like that 1976 movie, you could take a sniper rifle into the LA Colosseum and seek your target. One building with packed people, the chance to find your target is decently high. Now consider that Facebook was the Gatling gun and people started to shy away from that building you see that building holds 77,500 people. The Gatling gun (modern version) shoots up to 6,000 rounds a minute, as such the entire stadium is covered in 13 minutes. A sniping rifle can never get there, but its usage is different, each shot is a kill. It is precise and takes time. Sniping advertising is the same. It take time and effort (and causes less alarm). Yet the return on investment is almost always there and that was the approach I had in my new solution. It allows the ‘target’ the choice and that is the operative word. I do not think that brands are taking a social media break. They are (finally) figuring out that you can either market more and more, or you can start being smart about how you market your brand (almost like SPSS Answertree, 1998). And brands are figuring out that they start need to become smart about there approach (which would work out nicely for me as well). The article mentions Lush cosmetics and “The beauty company initially dropped off the platforms in 2019, due to concerns about fighting with ever-changing social media algorithms as well as the company’s worry about the potentially negative impact of social media on young people.” I reckon they were ahead of the pack when they decided that and they were considering what was wise, what was clever and how to be smart about it. Meta cares about its own bottom dollar first and that is where the users see the impact of a free service. I got there in 2021 and my models are looking very awesome, and their view is improving by the month. As such I mentioned a few months ago that I would indirectly be taking business away from Meta (and others), now if Amazon wakes up, they could end up with the home and away advantage all at the same time. If not it will fall to Tencent Technologies. I reckon that they are about to realise what I found and my mind would be worth a lot overnight. Apple is still not out of the race I reckon (if they have the answer to the qualifying question) but it is too much speculation. This is about marketing and that is only the start. You see, no matter how we see it. Whether we consider shotgun marketing, sniping marketing, blanket marketing and a few other methods. In the end these are the old ways and when the new ways come to pass a lot of granular discussions go out of the window. You all saw Meta (or Facebook), YouTube and Instagram marketing as the next wave, it was never that, it was a digital approach to Direct Marketing and SPSS shot that to smithereens in 1998 when they gave the audiences on global level Answertree. When you realise the simplicity and the connected improved results of that solution, that is when you realise that the age of Meta is nearly over. They had a good run mind you. They ran marketing into new directions for 19 years, just like Direct Marketing did 2 decades before and whatever came before that. This doesn’t mean that Meta is ending, but it will see a reduced interest and others will push the next wave. Who it will be? I have no idea, I am not tapping the vein of marketing. I merely saw another option that could have benefits for me, merely a benefit and that was enough for me. The next marketing wave is for whomever has a life dedicated to marketing, it is not me.

So there might be a 2 minute warning, although in marketing terms it is most likely a 2 years warning, as such someone will be raking in new solutions somewhere in 2025 and I reckon that this is when other options will be drowning out the voices of fake news and real news and create a new setting of what consolidates the marketing and advertising surrounding it. But that is my speculated view on the matter.

Enjoy the weekend, just 48 hours at best to go.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 10, 2023 · 09:50

Without intro course

Yup, almost going there. You see I got to this station in a slightly unusual way. I think it all started about a week ago when I saw the mermaid show on YouTube, where a youthful young lady (looking a lot like a partial tuna) was swimming in the Dubai aquarium with the sharks around her. Then last night I had a dream where a woman looking remarkably like a young Kelly Lynch (Roadhouse, 1989) was getting eaten by a shark. The setting however was that is was orchestrated (read: murder). The culprit had overlaid the back of her tail section with red paint and waxed that. The red paint was a stage of aloe vera and fish blood, the wax took the smell away. And after a minute of swimming, the wax started to give way revealing the fish blood and that had the sharks attention (all of them) and human blood might not be their forte, fish blood woke them up and send them into a frenzy eating the badly tasting tuna and destroying the evidence in the process. 

There was no intro, this was a clear act and there was no culprit in sight. As such the dream did not make sense to me, other than a scene for a movie that was not yet made. But it was several hours later when that scene opened up doors to the stages of an RPG I have been writing here. You see, we think of small terms, but in the age of streaming this stage alters. And to prevent rehashing the same missions I am doing now in Skyrim (and enjoying every second of it). It dawned on me that a new kind of NPC hoodlum was required. Also the stages I am writing about take a different approach. So what if someone was ‘colouring’ the clothing of fishermen and when they go out, the dinner bell smells loudly in the waters? I had been tinkering with a new NPC approach where we could evolve NPC reactions and options, but we need a similar stage for the antagonists. And lets face it, murderers tend to swim alone. Like rogue males in a contested battle arena. As such I would need half a dozen storylines each with a mastermind, some henchmen and  a setting. Most work for money, but some have other drives and as such we create 6-12 storylines all with location settings and targets and the nice part is that with every new game these settings alter. So different locations and different people. Yes, the methods can be identified, but you will not play the same game. You still have to find out who is the one you need to kill as well as finding the henchmen in that caper. As such we get bandits, assassins, smugglers and revenge minded people. This is a stronger setting because smugglers and revenge minded people might not be acting legal, they might not be wrong, they might be good people upping the ante of the game and your game play. 

Then we get to set out the bandits, they are clearly in one set minds (greed and lazy incomes). Yet as they are in different locations and in different locations per game that gameplay will alert you to unexpected sides as well. In some games we go to the same places, especially in the beginning of the second game you play. Yet what happens when you do that and you find a very different adversary, or none at all? You are merely off your game, you get to immerse yourself into the lore much more strongly and is that not the essence of any RPG? 

As such I have found another gimmick all in the new game, all options the RPG designers to the best of my knowledge never aimed for before, in the first it was not possible, but now we get to the stage where the consoles CAN offer this, but the stage is not explored. Or perhaps they are still working it out. But in all, this is where the streaming systems can evolve into the next console of choice. There is no intention to take out the PS5, but consider it net to your PS5 and Nintendo Switch. Sometimes you want to drown in RPG  for so many hours. It is good that there will be a system offering this to you. 

Consider that thought as you sleep through your weekend and thoroughly enjoy that sentiment.

1 Comment

Filed under Gaming, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

March 26, 2023 · 05:54

What business plan?

The very first thought when I saw a Nordstrom video less than an hour ago. In light of the closure of Nordstrom someone made a 4K walkthrough of the Nordstrom shop in the Eaton Mall in Toronto, which is their flagship. The shop is about 220,000 square foot and the first thought out of my mind was ‘Are you flipping kidding me?’ And I suddenly understood why Nordstrom never made a profit. I cannot understand why the people there did not see this right off the bat. In the first the shop looks pretty amazing, but overly spacious and not in a good way. The shop has about 70,000 square foot of unused space, that is a third and mall space is expensive. So to be wasting space to the likes of 70,000 square foot. I found one source with a price (not verified) of $1,450 per square foot, implying that Nordstrom was wasting $101,500,000 EVERY YEAR on empty space. So what kind of business plan is that? And the video (at https://youtu.be/6IQMgV_7uqE) clearly shows the waste of space. You could setup the entire shop in half the space and when you reduce the cost of one shop by $51,000,000 it amounts to a large sum of money. I do not care what the vision of these people were, when you optionally have 13 stores in the same setup, you are wasting hundreds of millions a year. Now, we know that the others are smaller, but it still implies that the stores were wasting close to half a billion every year. So what gives?

When I wrote ‘The unplanned story’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/21/the-unplanned-story/) on the 21st of March, I did make mention of “there is a weakness in your business model, but I do not think it was enough”, in this malls tend to be the same and I did not give it the consideration I optionally could have. I never expected that Nordstrom wasted space to the degree they did. There is more, it seems to be some elite store and Canadians aren’t too elite based (well over 40% of the male population loves their hockey jersey). A shop like this fits Los Angeles, optionally Rodeo Drive, but even then this flagship there would become a money pit soon thereafter, especially when you waste 70,000 square foot of space. 

I keep on coming back to the thought, who were these people wasting money to this degree? You see, covid or not, I expect that covid had a massive impact, but the clear waste of space is boggling my mind. Malls are expensive and that keeps on badgering my mind. It also reminded me of a place called Meddens in Rotterdam. A fashion store with exactly the same setup in a place called ‘Lijnbaan’, there is however a difference. The people behind it were brilliant and they bought the entire block. They became an eccentric and exquisite shop, but as they owned the block, their $100K gamble became a multi million euro win and it funded expansion after expansion and after 180 years (in 2010) the 6 shops stopped. I reckon 180 years is a good run. A shop like Nordstrom that stated to CBC last month “Despite our best efforts, we do not see a realistic path to profitability for the Canadian business.” Well, when you waste that kind of space I am not entirely surprised. And it will not take long for places like Holt Renfrew, Hudson’s Bay, and Simons to gobble up the clients. Personally I hope that the staff members will find space in these places as well. They tend to be victims of a business plan, not the instigators of it. It took the parent company less than 10 years to see wisdom and with an earlier quote (I think it was CBC) that they never had a profitable year I actually wonder why it took this long. 

The more I saw of this video the more questions came to me and I have no idea what these board people were thinking (if they were thinking). I might seem happy, but I am not. I do not relish anyone’s downfall (Microsoft being the exception) and this shop was managed floor by floor by people who loved their job and their space. You can see that with EVERY display in that shop and there are many of them and we would want to give them a pass for covid, but the shop was not doing well years before that point and that partially angers me, waste tends to do that. A weird start to Sunday for me, but when I see the evidence I am not really overly surprised on the outcome, merely on some people not seeing this clearly years before me.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 6, 2023 · 11:03

It is the same coin

I got alerted to something via Twitter. It has two sides and a friend of mine had one side, as such I give you the tweet below. This of course made me look at the YouTube by Simon Pegg (the Hot Fuzz man). 

He was emotional and he has a point, but so does my friend. Optionally they do not realise that they are both a side of the same coin, one cannot exist without the other. It is a flaw in those heralding science as the one solution, it never is. It merely becomes some Theranos creation, all science and too much of it debatable. You see my friend had the answer in her tweet. Alan Turing created something from nothing. A setting that is utterly impossible. He got there through an artsy side in him. Alan Turing created the foundations of computers and AI, both required an art element to get there. You see, even when we realise it was all science, his brain had to make some leap of faith and that requires art, science alone will not let you do that. He created these two and his foundation of AI is still used today, over half a century later, with all the elements of evolved science, his artsy side overcame what did not yet exist. It is one of the reasons that (even if I was not eligible), I would have voted for Brian Blessed to become Chancellor of Cambridge in 2011, but I was not eligible. It became Lord Sainsbury of Turville, my issue here is that science was taking too big a chunk of what was almost an even Steven setting. I personally believe that Science without art is pointless, art without science is useless. It is not completely true, but as an axiom it often works. Science without art cannot grow because science for the most relies on previous data and as such NEW technologies cannot evolve. Alan Turing created (for the most) the foundations of electronics. It required investigations into the electron as well, but when you see that Alan Turing created AI half a century before we had any partial foundation of that is optionally evidence enough. 

The other side needs to be illuminated as well. Simon Pegg did this (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHEpywFCtwA) in his own emotional way and he does have a point, but so did my friend. The artsy people tend to ignore that science is their friend. Take any movie, the lights are set up to maximise the effect, it is not art, that foundation is science, science created the camera and a lot of other parts. They use that technology and they use it well. But it supports art and that is forgotten. That being said that children need maths, but they need art too and the science pushers are all about ‘forgetting’ the art and that power. You see, if you have all science and no art, you end up creating Theranos minded creators. The ones that are convicted for fraud and end up well over 11 years in prison. Art might have prevented this (and created an actual solution). In that same setting it might be the flaw that created FTX and the $33,000,000,000 losses it ensued. 

I myself tend to grasp back to an old Market research credo. “The scientist, or mathematician will show you the course of best margins of profit, or best results. The presenter, or politician makes sure that you look forward to the attached invoice” it is a bit artsy but therefor not any less true. We need to realise that art and science are to sides of the same coin. Science made it circular and the artsy people gave it a nice image. We need another and there is one part we should all agree to, if Rishi Sunak wants to imbue a sense of science, he better be ready to imbue an equal measure of art in these people, because Simon Pegg is right about that part. Science without the art will have far reaching negative impacts. We need one another to see it, one shows us, one presents it and that has been the case from before that writer William Shakespeare became a reality. It goes back all the way to the outdoor Theatre of Dionysius where in 500BC Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes performed, but we forget that science created the stage for over 15,000 people to enjoy, that part was science, not art. And it was there centuries before Christianity became reality.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 3, 2022 · 22:23

A shortcut to viewing

Yes, I was here sitting on the sofa, considering what to write about, when suddenly my mind had an idea. It has them all the time, but this one seems like a moneymaker for the right programmer.

You see most of us have particular interests to see on Youtube. And we can go there again and again, or set up something to do that for us. As I is havening to be really lazy, option two works well for me.

So here is the idea in a simple graph (see below)

The mobile app for phone or tablet has the app. There we select the interest, optionally a location and a timeframe. We then select spawn and an icon is created. Clicking on that icon takes us to YouTube and filters exactly what we want to see. In example one I select cats or kittens, with a timeframe of last week, the second is Skiing, with the location of Whistler, BC and a timeframe of last month. You can make your own selection and each one comes with an icon of choice (some preselection is optional). And when you get on the train, bus or whatever. You merely select the icon and away you go. I also added a QR code that allows the person to hand the selection to be used in YouTube, or use it to spread the app. It seems so simple, but there is nothing out there that does this and I think that something like this might work on TikTok as well.

Just a small idea, use it if you can and feel free to cash in on it, a small donation to yours truly will always be appreciated. Well this is my Saturday evening suddenly a little more productive than I realised. So have a nice weekend and do not forget to smile at times.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT

Tagged as , , , , , ,

November 22, 2022 · 06:51

The arms race

It sounds weird, but whenever I see two brands fight each other for market I think of the old arms race (when Russian equipment allegedly worked). In this war it is GoPro Hero versus DJI Osmo and would you have it, a man named Matt Gonzalez posted one really good review putting both against one another. Now two things I like about it was the neutral flavour of the review. He was giving both sides a fair chance and gave what he thought mattered. The review called ‘GoPro Hero 11 VS DJI Osmo Action 3 – DON’T MAKE A MISTAKE’ (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNHWjUXxtHs) is excellent. For me the GoPro won, but there was another side that Matt was unaware of. You see he gave you correctly the information, but in Australia the two differ by a mere $10, and at that point the larger sensor by GoPro owns the entire field in my personal opinion. DJI had a few other things that worked in their favour, like the touch screen front display and the ease of their connector (magnetic), yet I personally come from the world of photography and a larger sensor is a massive advantage in my mind. Their are a few more advantages, but as he states, it is a personal choice in the end and he is correct. Because he is on the fence, not taking a side this review is much better than some other comparing reviews and it is well appreciated. I have been looking at the GoPro Hero 11, especially if things go my way, and I have been smitten by all these walkthrough videos, yet the idea of having a GoPro is enticing for a few ways. It was also the stage where we hear that not much changed, but for a player like Google (or Amazon) a lot changes. When we consider that these videos also get advertisement, the idea of a software solution that can identify the video, the location, map it out and have advertising that connects to that specific street is one that is currently not completely researched. Deeper machine learning opens that field for more directed advertising, optionally opens the pricing. You see 5G will take localisation and personalisation to higher levels and thousands of walkthrough videos that allow for inserting advertising that is not merely to the point, but also to the place and to the interest of the watcher will take the forefront and it will be sooner rather than later. Consider merely this video where GoPro and/or DJI could appal to the 61,000 subscribers. Or perhaps a London Walking tour video with 331,000 subscribers and most likely at least twice as much watchers. These number work and I am merely pointing at TWO video’s. So, yes there is a market no and there will be a much larger market soon enough. You only have to wait for the 2024 Paris Olympics when thousands more videos will hit YouTube, and I have no idea how much TikTok will get, but I feel certain that they are already on board. But perhaps just like the $6 billion I found players like Google, they will fret that it is not enough, too small a find. Of course when you see ‘Google Reports Slowest Revenue Growth In Nearly 10 Years’ where we see “$69.09 billion vs. $70.58 billion expected” my $6,000,000,000 which is merely the lower estimate going for a lot more was not that much, it was a mere 402% of the total annual margin of profit, so I think I have something and now we see the stage of additional advertisement revenue. OK, I am not stating that the second part is a given, I am merely stating that this is a path a place like Google could entertain. And with the walkthrough videos they can test and experiment, when Paris 2024 comes with their tens of thousands of videos it will become lost opportunity. But then perhaps like the Russian weapons side, the Google engineers have become a little too flaccid, they cannot entertain that race in innovation. I cannot tell, I was never that kind of engineer. I still feel strong about the solution that can put any Russian reactor in meltdown mode. But that is me, always skating the edge of innovation, even when I am not wanted there. But as I see it, I am sitting on IP that gives Google (or Amazon) $6 billion plus so there!

In the end this was about GoPro versus DJI and that is still the case, they have opened up markets and that will continue in other ways too. You see, I watched a dozen over the last week and NONE of those videos gave me a travel agency advertisement that traveled to THAT location, you still think my idea is in the air? If someone watches a travel video to a greek island, d you want to see an advertisement to a car, or to a travel agent? What would have the best impact? You tell me, it is not a race I am in, but I am seeing it happen like all the other watchers.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

October 18, 2022 · 18:59

The rut of the game

Yup, I am in a rut, it happens to us all. Anyone claiming that it will never happen to them is lying to you, there is no exception to that rule. We will all face it, whether we are in creative more, in production mode, in management mode or in operation mode. Rut is a dangerous thing, it tends to precede burnout for some. You see rut is not always dull, it is not always repetitive, but the brain sees a return to similar enough settings to treat it that way and it comes across as dull and/or repetitive. But there is a much larger issue in play and I cannot define it. 

For me it started with one of the series I was writing. I got to the stage that I wanted to up the ante and add to the flavour of Greek mythology. So my mind wandered all over the field and I suddenly remembered an old (very old) lesson. You see organised crime and corrupt officials have the same flaw, the same weakness. It is ‘unfathomable loss’. So even if they have no issues stealing from you. When you start killing their children they go all huffy and puffy on these innocent kids, however they never considered your innocence when they stole from you and there lies the rub. But that setting is also dangerous because the main player gets ‘changed’ in the process, no matter how close he is related to Hades. As such I started to recall one of the lost episodes (I truly forgot where I put them). You see, you can orchestrate a player, you can expose them to the social media (with images and YouTube footage) hoping that one of the caught players will lose their mind and kill for you. You can take strife and do the killing yourself and kills those corrupt protection people as well. But the rut starts when that becomes repetitive. You need to change the menu, even though the act remains the same the journey to these acts can alter, and for me there is the added setting of taking a Greek take on the events. The adulterous female party can be thrown in that Turkish cave (formerly Greek) and let the change to a Medusa be the act where her lover the corrupt politician ends up relying on mercy which will never come and as a statue he will be as dead as anything else and placing that statue in the garden of a certain enabler should create the right tone. Not only can he explain the statue, but when they examine the statue he would be in much warmer waters than he would be happy with. And that is merely the first three players. I need a few more, but then the rut set in. Avoiding the repetitive is essential, as such looking for Greek solutions might not make the right cocktail, even though it feels right. There were a few options, but I wanted to keep that player out of the equation until much later (like the season 2 cliffhanger). 

So the rut that I fight is against relying on the repetitive, the mundane and the creation based on existing paths. Now I could hand him an accuracy International AX338, but that is out of character. But it would be a tool that the protective details have access to and we only need to change the ammunition for one with more ‘bang’, an altered bullet and the bolt system would end up seeking refuge in the skull of the shooter. Yes, that might work, but I would need to check some elemental engineering principles (which will take some time). And that is one problem solved, but like the old Greek dramas, I need something with fireworks, like a gift, but not the gift, the wrapping becomes the killer, so it needs to be fun enough so that the reader sees the gift and sees the menace that the gift represents, even as the wrapping will be the killer in the room, yes that might work. 

Still two solutions to find and doing this whilst I fight the rut of the matter is not the greatest setting for any creative mind, but there I am ploughing ahead trying to change the stage, change the setting and change the speed of things in motion. It is what it is. That is the danger of rut too, relying on yourself is dangerous, because what the mind sees as different could merely be a change of perspective and that is an additional danger that every creative mind faces. And in that I am no different than any other creative mind. That too matters (for me at least).

So whilst I try to fight the rut of the game, I might do some gaming in the process of working things out. It always worked in the past.

1 Comment

Filed under Stories

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

October 12, 2022 · 19:52

No one wonders?

It all starts with a BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63207771) where we are given ‘Chinese technology poses major risk – GCHQ Chief’, there are two settings here. The first one was the BS approach by the Yanks (that place between the Pacific and the Atlantic river, South of Canada) and the UK issues. The Americans basically called Huawei (China) evil and refused to hand over any evidence. The UK stated that no foreign nation should be in charge to a major infrastructure. The UK is setting the centre stage to policy and that is fair and decent. In the Netherlands that same policy was used by founders Rob Romein and Franz Hetzenauer to create Tulip computers and they got rich real quick. You say Potato, I say Tomato. But policy is a real issue and that is fair in any government. So today I get to see “China has deliberately and patiently set out to gain “strategic advantage by shaping the world’s technology ecosystem”, the head of the intelligence agency told an audience at the Royal United Service Institute for its annual security lecture. Sir Jeremy argued the Chinese Communist Party was aiming to manipulate the technology that underpins people’s lives to embed its influence at home and abroad and provide opportunities for surveillance”, OK that is a decent accusation and it will not be easy to prove that, or basically it will be a stretch to prove it. We then get “China’s development of the BeiDou satellite system – a rival to the established GPS network which he said had been built into exports to more than 120 countries. He claimed it could be used to track individuals or combined with plans to knock out other countries’ satellites in the event of a conflict”, which is one approach, but could the Chinese government not claim that GPS could do exactly the same thing? In addition we get “the intelligence chief said he would not stop children using TikTok – which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance – although he said young people should be more aware of their personal data and how it could be shared”, OK fair point and awareness of personal data is a good thing, but doesn’t Facebook (and Meta) do he same things? I have seen advertisements on Facebook that should never have appeared, as such too many players are doing exactly the same thing, but for us China is red and evil, would they not claim the same thing regarding Facebook and YouTube? We are then given “He said the UK should continue to welcome students from China but “be really clear on the areas of technology where we will require additional safeguards”. Areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing were particularly important, he told the audience”, which is a fair point. Although it is not out of the question that this should be a marker between commonwealth countries and any other country. In that regard places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand have to agree on similar settings. In this Sir Jeremy Fleming (a more dashing lookalike of Michael Andrew Gove) has a few issues on the table that make sense and although we wonder why the Americans are so easily accepted, they issues all make sense. It reflected for me how I am happy that I offered my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and not to China, although the new partnership between China (Tencent Technologies) and Microsoft is not making any waves at all, funny ain’t it? I wonder if we are hitting a critical point of nationalism at this point, and where should the inventors sit? The fact that Google and Amazon are decently clueless on where I found the grounds of 50 million subscriptions will also hit Facebook at some point and I accidentally stumbled on this, the invention had a different foundation and direction, but as I aw where it could take me, I left it to these two titans to slug it out and Google dropping the Google Stadia implies that they are losing more than they reckoned on and that leaves Amazon (who is seemingly still in the dark), so now my hopes are that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accepts my offer. But the underlying stage also exists. I still have my 5G hardware, a stage I saw two years ago and no one else is seeing this, they are all hoping that Facebook makes good on their Meta and they are all in some wait state that it comes for them, I designed my hardware with the view on Neom, as well as the changing stage of marketing, a stage that ill be very different from 2024 onwards (OK, it might be 2025). But those in a “wait-state” will lose out if they cannot adjust their course and I will (extremely hopefully) retire with a nicely filled bank account to sing out my retirement with good food and seeing nice places, I worked 40 years, so I feel entitled to my decently whistling wish. Yet between the lines there are battlefronts. The issue for the Commonwealth to find the right allies, to align with the proper parties and be decently neutral against the others. Yes, we all oppose Russia in the Ukraine stage and that is fine, but do not for one second believe that America is our ally, our friend. Their friendship changes election after election and in the end they are merely their own ally, so when America implodes, and it will, we should be aware and we should be willing to continue with true allies, one that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could be, if we could for one minute stop listening to stakeholders, whose alliance is their wallets and their wallets alone. I tried to warn people for 3-5 years that stakeholders are corporate tools that releases the media as their goals see fit, I showed years of data in that direction and soon there will be no choice, if they get their wish, they fill their wallets, they say ‘Oops!’ And they walk away, and where we will we all be at that point? The larger issue is not why we were unaware, but where the media was when the elements were in view. The missing Iran reports regarding Yemen, the list of Pi Phone articles that are only now showing up, the serious questions that the media should have lobbed at Jack Dorsey and Twitter over the last few months and the list goes on, filtered information is not news, it is news founded on discrimination and that is the stage we face, but what else are we not given? Who knew on the partnerships between Chinese Tencent and Microsoft? Who asked the serious questions? I will let you seek and search that part yourself. 

So many question and no one wonders how a simple guy like me has the inside track on 50 million optional customers, you think Google would have dropped their Stadia if they could gain 50,000,000 optional customers? Figure it out and yes, some will consider the main point that I might be spreading that stuff that grows the grass in Texas, but I asked myself questions and also doubted myself. Stakeholders will not do that, they will merely proclaim that the other side does not exist (or is irrelevant). 

It is time for you to wonder what else they are missing and that is aimed at my 5G IP. A side of 5G none of them have. 

Enjoy the day, you should, preferably before the Russian decide to make all the Ukrainians glow in the dark.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Military, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 30, 2022 · 14:11

The union of games

This started yesterday in the oddest of ways. I have had a few thoughts in this direction, but I do not remember this being so outspoken or clear. It started watching YouTube. Not sure what I was watching but something got stuck in my mind. Then my mind was thinking about the Assassins Creed series and how they always have a bird do the ‘hard’ work. That got me thinking. You see the Paris and London areas are nice, but what if it is modern days (Watchdogs: Legion) and a modern version of Paris (one or the other), now consider not an assassin but a thief and the thief does not have one animal but three. So like the Beastmaster (1982) with Marc Singer before he started hunting aliens in V, a stage where he gets support from three animals. One on land, one in the air and one in the water and it does not stop there. With the chosen animal, he also gets bonuses and that is where we almost intentionally stuff the player. They get one choice each and it has to last them the entire game, so you can select the animal and get the bonuses, but you forfeit others. For example, a cat has night-vision and gives him a large boost of agility, a dog has amazing smell and he becomes stronger, and there is the third animal a horse which makes him fast, really fast and strong, but he misses out on the other two. The same for water. With a fish he can swim underwater without end, the frog makes him agile in water and he gets infrared vision and a third animal (undetermined). The same for flight. It would be even nicer if there were 5 animals per side, more options and more replayability over time and that is what streaming needs, replayability.  The city has over half a dozen storylines, and in this each storyline has multiple sides, so that the player gets to make choices and live with consequences. But there is more (there always is), it is not merely the skills he picks up, but when he takes the view of the animal, also the way that animal sees the world giving the player a lot more to deal with. We have seen similar parts in games like Fur Fighter (Dreamcast), Fly (CBM Amiga), and a few more, but never to this degree and to such a blending of different sides. It could be awesome, but consider that on a game like Watchdogs: Legion, but the map is now 400% larger. So in Legion the map was about 3.5 kilometres each side, now we go to 7 or 10 kilometres each side. Now it becomes a whole new challenge. In that game we could run from place to place, now it becomes a whole new challenge. And it is a much harder challenge as you need to find your entrance in nearly every building (or optionally could) the cat has its ways, as does the dog, but the other animals cannot be dismissed. They all have a power bonus and that matters in the game. So it will be up to the creator to also include some level of added bonus. The cat and the hawk combined allow for one punch KO’s, the stork gives him the ability to carry much heavier loads (they used to deliver baby’s in the old days) and so on. No one has ever made a game like this and with streaming new possibilities open up, even the option to have well over twice the amount of ‘open’ houses in the beginning and add to that from there. So if you replay the game a year later you might never enter the same building again (on a mission).  

So whilst Ubisoft brings you a new iteration of something you have played for over a decade, I created the foundation of new IP in less than 24 hours. So any indie developer who reads this, have at it and good luck!

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

September 27, 2022 · 11:54

Bloomberg cake time

I got a nice surprise yesterday. Bloomberg handed it with the article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-09-11/amazon-will-spend-15-billion-on-programming-this-year), there we learn ‘Amazon is the Least Understood Company in Hollywood’. It was interesting because I do not know anything about tinseltown (Hollywood) and I put all these creators, streamers or not on one pile. It seems that there are differences and the article brings out a few sides I never considered. So when I read “Amazon has been making original series for as long as Netflix with far less to show for it. But there are signs its strategy is starting to pay off” my mind started procedure ‘Wake up’ and I took notice. You see, I created plays as stories, mini series, even a movie, but with nothing more in mind than a story. I put some of it in my blogs and that is the end of it (or so I expect) and as a storyteller. 3 series, 2 mini stories and a movie is not a bad result, especially as it is not my field, I am in technology. I am a call centre operator, a customer care person and I am happy there, even though I also miss technical support. So as we see the three things we need to be mindful “Six Gulf States told Netflix to remove videos that violate “Islamic values.”” My movie ‘How to assassinate a politician’ was specifically designed for these states. Then we get “The world’s second largest movie theater chain declared bankruptcy” yes this is sad, but it is also a sign of the times. Hollywood did not help here, they are all about creating more and too little about creating higher quality, that is definitely part of the equation and I am NOT looking at Marvel movies. Their endgame was magnificent, I still watch it at least twice a year and I might upgrade that one to a 4K edition when possible (I still do not have a 4K TV, so no rush). Then we get “Mark Bergen’s YouTube book is now for sale”, I merely wonder why that is a factor? Let’s be clear, it might be an optional work like  the Social network, you know, that movie with Mark Zuckerman’s lookalike Jesse Eisenberg. But that is optionally one movie, perhaps the book has more than I reckon, but I haven’t read it yet. So when we get to “Netflix has spent more than Amazon over the last decade, and produced a much higher volume of shows. But Amazon Studios chief Jen Salke has a $10 billion budget. If you include sports, Amazon is projected to spend $15 billion on programming this year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. That’s comparable to what Netflix (and many others) will spend”, we see the first element I foresaw ‘produced a much higher volume of shows’, it is about more, not better. And there is the rub. Lets be clear, Netflix has created high quality work (the Sandman) no one denies this, but Hollywood produced in 2019 (pre Covid) 792 movies, that is almost 2 movies a day just to see it all, now we get that they cater to a niche and every movie house has a niche. Yet in 2000 they only produced 371 movies, that is quite the jump in less than 20 years, and as we are aware that the number of writers did not exponentially increase they either tailored to less quality or upped the pressure on writers giving that very same result, yes that is a personal view on the matter.  As we get to “Yet we know that Amazon is a very successful company that generated $470 billion in sales and $33 billion in net income last year. We also know that its advertising business is booming” we can speculate that they are doing something right, or they have additional data none of the others have. So when this is supported by “This is Amazon’s greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. The company has seemingly unlimited resources — and no real need to win, at least not right away. While Netflix and Disney stress over whether shows attract new customers or prevent people from canceling (or churning), churn at Amazon is almost nonexistent” We optionally see a second part that is not mentioned and merely hinted at. It is not the resources, even though that helps. They can cater to THEIR population, which implies that churning is reduced to zero, and they keep focus on the projects and so far that is paying off. There is a benefit when you OWN the bank, but I reckon that they have a stage where they cater to a plan that holds 100% of their customers. Reality makes me rephrase that into ‘that holds 95% of their customers’, a stage both Netflix and to a lesser degree Disney cannot adjust for. Not unless they spend a whole lot more and that is the danger, they do not own the bank and the first insight that involves ‘Islamic values’ is actually a lot more important. Instead of creating an offspring with the focus on the gulf states, the ego of Hollywood thinks it can do it all and there is the trap that sinks 1000 titanic’s. To be honest, I would love to see the data that Amazon relies on but I reckon that only a few (at Amazon) ever get to see that whole picture. A simple lieutenant does not get the image the generals have and these generals have to make the hard calls, the tough calls and so far it seems that them at Amazon re making the right call. I personally speculate that they are playing the long game whilst the others are limited to quarterly pushes, until the next stockholders meeting. That is why in the end Amazon will overcome nearly all hurdles and most others are sunk as they were unable to see three hurdles ahead. The article holds more and Lucas Shaw did a really good job here, he showed me a few sides I never knew (why would I), and it brought information and delight all at the same time, so you should definitely read that article, it is worth your time.

Now I need to focus on fortune cookie marketeers, hopefully more in several hours.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,