Ricky Gervais was recently quoted as saying:
“You can’t knock up an episode of The Sopranos or 24 on a little handheld digital camera. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to sidestep TV or DVD. But TV companies will embrace it.”

I’m not sure that TV companies will ever be able to embrace things like YouTube that easily, not unless they give up on the Hit Culture Needs Heavy Investment Lie. Even the CBS approach is to use YouTube as a delivery mechanism, a “channel”, for their “hit content”.

I think this is a variant of the infrastructure lie that seeks to suppress social software. Why do people think that good robust production of digital things needs heavy infrastructure investment? Maybe it’s because nobody got fired for buying .

I need to think about it. There is something disturbing about that lie. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy YouTube, as long as they let me see clips like this one and this one and this one.

No.

It appears, though, that toast may be patentable, especially if what is toasted is a sandwich.

McDonald’s have filed a patent in the US and Europe for “simultaneous toasting of a bread component“. I thought I would have better things to do than to read the whole 55-page document, but I may be tempted. How else would I come across terms like “bread component” and “sandwich delivery tool“?

How else would I learn that “Often the sandwich filling is the source of the name of the sandwich; for example, ham sandwich?” Wow. I shall wait eagerly for the powers-that-be to apply that logic to a hamburger.

Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t be striving to get the IPR and DRM processes radically changed. Maybe there’s a better way.

Maybe I should come up with a new business plan. Buy up all the rights to the publishing of patents. And start a new journal, publishing them.

In the humour section.

Now if we could convince Hugh Macleod to do the artwork, we could have a 21st century Heath Robinson, with all the raw material coming from the patent filings. Hugh? Anyone else? Borat Sagdiyev maybe?

Thanks to Cory for the tip-off.

Take a look at what Sean’s been doing with The Intention Economy. I’ve tried to cover some of that space over at Shane Richmond’s blog; if you’re interested, read this piece on Customers and Differentiation.

All this brings to mind a wonderful photograph I saw over at Christopher Carfi’s Social Customer Manifesto, which I reproduce here. [thanks to Chris and to Carlson C, who did the original upload].

Looks like a few people like NewtailBlog; as Dave points out, people have tried it before, with varying levels of success.

Not everyone likes it, or maybe Sid was making some other point. That’s a prerogative that every one of us must have.

Stephen’s comment, following up on Sid’s, mentions the “rehearsal” attraction of blogging. I think that’s what Doc Searls meant when he said that blogging was provisional. For sure I use blogs to help me think things through, to improve my understanding of things, to learn from the bouquets and the brickbats.

So anyway.

Staying with newtailblog. I was privileged to have quite a few really talented bloggers at the last place I worked, and want to use this opportunity to introduce them to you:

Sean Park A great read for all kinds of subjects, but particularly on digital markets
Malcolm Dick Malc is one of the most thoughtful people I have ever known, objective and dispassionate
Phil Dawes He was the first real external blogger at the bank, and is a tour de force on the semantic web amongst other things. An absolute must-read for those more technically minded
Dominic Sayers Like Malc, a very thoughtful guy with real insights on aspects of IT, well worth tracking

Can’t remember where I saw it, but I recall someone describing Einstein as having real trouble with understanding things that others considered obvious.

Maybe that’s what real curiosity is. Having trouble with understanding the obvious, while having the passion to do something about it.
That’s what Sean, Malc, Phil and Dom do. And they’re my NewTailBlogs for today.

One of my favourite Homerisms:

“Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that.”

Yes, forfty [sic]. In years to come, I’m sure we will hear about people studying the works of Matt Groening to figure out the deep philosophical meaning behind forfty. People do these things. Reminds me of the raging debate thirty years ago related to why Jim Morrison intoned the words Mr Mojo Risin at the end of LA Woman. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth. Much pontification. Theories to do with magic and sexual prowess and whatever. Until Jim’s childhood next-door neighbour wrote in and said “My husband used to call young James that. It’s an anagram of Jim Morrison”.

Incidentally, Groening is probably the most prolific living neologism-creator, following in the footsteps of Lewis Carroll, Ogden Nash and PG Wodehouse. There’s a good summary of his Homerisms in Wikipedia; sadly, unless we convince the powers-that-be otherwise, the summary is set for deletion. So read it while you can.

Incidentally, why do humourists and comedians dominate the neologism space? Perhaps you have to have a level of noncomformism and a willingness to be laughed at as well as with, that strange almost-vain vulnerability that all good comics have.

Back to the point of this post. Surveys and measurements. Would you believe that 100% of the readers of LinuxWorld.com use Microsoft IE as their browser? Well, take a look at Don Marti’s post on the subject. In fact take a look at any of Don Marti’s posts, he’s usually worth it.

There’s a serious point here. We now use the web for all sorts of surveys and measurements and polls. Soon we will enter an age where serious companies make serious decisions based on the information. And they have no idea how flaky all this is. How rankings can be gamed. How readership and audience figures are weak at best and downright wrong at worst. Why a world of IP addresses and corporate proxies and RSS readers and aggregators lead to such weird results. Why location information and map-related mashups don’t always work.

Maybe it’s time to educate people about all this. Otherwise we will have a repeat of something that nearly killed me the first time around: the number of people who believe that Excel is industrial-strength. There’s a lot of them about. Still.

And maybe forfty per cent of them believe that Excel never lies.