Stritar's chronolog

Daft Punk, Arrested Development, and how content is becoming an experience

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:32:28 GMT

What a great year for content! In October 2012, Red Bull Stratos set a benchmark for what can be done with branded content. The jump was watched live on YouTube by 8 million people. A few months later, Gangam style established a new standard for how far online virality can take you. It became the first video to reach 1 billion views on YouTube. Powered by the internet. These two extreme cases probably won't be topped for quite some time (internet time, that is) and are clear leaders in their categories. But lately, I've noticed two other great examples that clearly show something else - where commercial content (promotion) is headed. It's all about delivering experiences, which are created and amplified by digital marketing.

Daft Punk

I've never ever seen so much buzz about a release of a new album. Ok, my streams aren't filled with information about Biebers and Gagas, so I can't tell what's happening there, but I'm sure Daft Punk won big time. The crazy release that's been going on for months, with teaser videos, song loops, weird promotions and shitloads of publicity. Facebook, Twitter or Reddit, Daft Punk seem to be all over the place, and everybody was trying to be the first to publish the link to the stream or download of Random Access Memories. The first single from the album already received more than 23 million views on YouTube (in 6 weeks), and the song is number 1 in many countries, besides breaking Spotify streaming records. What a comeback!

Arrested Development

Some of you may have heard about Arrested Development. It's one of those shows that got cancelled after only a few seasons, but kept a strong fan base that was waiting for years for a movie to be made. Then, the mighty Netflix came around, and something even better than a movie happened. Season 4, with the original cast! The trailer that launched a few days ago already has more than a million views, which is a lot compared to the 3.5 million who watched season 3 finale. Awesome stuff, can't wait to see it.

So what

A music album with lots of supporting content and infinite publicity, a TV show with a loyal army of geeks? These two cases are more alike than it seems at first sight. They both offer more than the content itself, they offer experiences. They are both fueled by the internet. They are both children of online virality.

Google search trends for Daft Punk and Arrested Development peaked in the past days.

Daft Punk gave us a something that goes beyond an album, they gave us a complete story that's funky, appealing and mysterious (and filled with 80s revival and robots). Netflix will be fulfilling a fantasy that we've been having for years, and they will make us come like never before. The complete season (15 parts, 8.5 hours) will be available at once, so fans will be able to watch it in one peace! The US internet will surely be consumed by Netflix on May 26th.

Do you see what's happening? Everything, even (commercial) content, is becoming an experience. Otherwise, it's overlooked in the sea of information overload.

UPDATE (16.6.2013): It seems Arrested Development's transmedia experience is getting more interesting. Yesterday evening, one of the most fascinating characters in the series, dr. Tobias Fünke, got it's own sizzle reel and website, promoting his acting skills. Great stuff.

What's hot on the web - Part 7: The greatest metameme ever?

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 20:49:02 GMT

By now you've probably already noticed Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" is a pretty amazing song. It's actually one of the most played songs ever on YouTube (currently on 17th place with around 260 million plays), and already has plenty of great remixes and variations. One of the covers that is really worth mentioning is the performance by Walk Off The Earth, where five people play this song on one guitar.

This great cover already has more than 120 million plays itself, enough to get its own parody by The Key Of Awesome. This funny adaptation of the cover has more than 7 million views, and the puppet interpretation of the adaptation almost 400 thousand. But wait, there's more. A few other guys, inspired by the parody, converted it into a Tetris theme song version, with around 50 thousand views, and a parody of the puppet version of the parody version exists too. Enough to create one the the greatest metamemes in existence, and to make it to What's hot on the web series.

You'll enjoy this, and don't get too confused.

The original

Views: 259,894,229
Published: Jul 5, 2011

The cover of the original

Views: 121,555,950
Published: Jan 5, 2012
Inception level: 46.77 %

The parody of the cover of the original

Views: 7,524,547
Published: Feb 8, 2012
Inception level: 6.19 %

The puppet version of the parody of the cover of the original

Views: 396,868
Published: Feb 8, 2012
Inception level: 5.27 %

The response to the parody of the cover of the original

Views: 49,580
Published: Feb 16, 2012
Inception level: 0.66 %

The parody of the puppet version of the parody of the cover of the original

Views: 642
Published: Mar 18, 2012
Inception level: 0.16 %

Pretty impressive stuff, isn't it? Man, I love the interwebs.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

What's hot on the web - Part 6: The most amazing unique music acts

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:32:17 GMT

Welcome to the next episode of the fantastic What's hot on the web series. It's been a while since we did this, and since one of the previous posts was focused on fails, I think it's only fair to give memes with a positive attitude a chance too. This part of What's hot on the web cover various unique music acts, each amazing in it's own way. I've been gathering these videos for years and these are the greatest I've noticed so far. You've probably already seen a few, but hopefully missed a few too, so enjoy the show.

11-year-old boy covering Lady Gaga's Paparazzi

When I heard this boy play his interpretation of the hit song from Lady Gaga, I was simply speechless. Greyson Chance become the hottest stuff in an instant, his performance taking him to as far as the Ellen Show. See for yourself, and while you're at it, observe the girls' faces in the background. It's obvious that something magical just happened.

Dude plays trance on an acoustic guitar

It's safe to say that Ewan Dobson is a guitar god, and his song Time 2 fit for any local dance party. This video clearly proves his fingers have a life of their own, making this act one of the most awesome things ever. Prepare to be amazed.

Blue Man Group and Drumbone

Blue Man Group are well known for their amazing (and interactive) out of this world acts, ranging from music to theater (if you have the chance, go see them!). One of their famous performances features their cover of The Who's Baba O'Riley, but at this point, we will rather focus on an act of their own, the Drumbone.

Pale kid raps fast

Busta Rhymes probably felt a bit awkward if he ever saw this video. One dorky kid. White and pale. Kicking everybody's ass in speed rapping. Priceless.

Bobby McFerrin doing his thing

Meet the original beatboxer. Yup, this is the guy that sings all the vocals in Don't worry be happy, and this is one of his solo acts.

Axis of Awesome - The ultimate four chord song

This one was quite a hit some time ago. An awesome band with and awesome name proving that all the hits songs in pop history are actually the same. Four chords is all you need for being a rock star. Or an internet star.

Hang drum solo

You may not find this video as fascinating as I do, but take a closer look. This guy is actually producing magical sounds on a barrel of some sort. Ok, two barrels to be exact. Which is pretty cool if you think about it.

Obadiah Parker putting emotions into Outkast's Hey Ya

I've always though that Hey Ya from Outkast was this funny song (the video probably had me fooled). But then I saw this guy. And it made me feel happy and sad at the same time. Beautiful.

The iPhone band

When the band Atomic Tom got their instruments stolen, they got this amazing idea. They performed one of their songs called Take Me Out live on a NYC subway, using only iPhones. The performance is not technically perfect, but we can still wonder if this the start of a new trend.

local: Perpetuum Jazzile - Avsenik Medley

Perpetuum Jazzile's Africa should've been here, but I've already included that one in one of my previous posts. But this other one is pretty cool too, and very Slovenian. Polka kicks ass.

This is it for now. Did you find anything you like in my selection? Do you have any other favorites I may have missed?

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

Trends of 2010, according to Facebook, Google and Twitter

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 07:42:29 GMT

The year is coming to an end, and our favorite big brothers all published reports about trends inside their ecosystems (Facebook, Google, Twitter). Even though the services are not perfectly comparable (information gets pulled and pushed: while you search, you pull data; on social networks the data gets pushed to you), I think they can provide a clear picture about the general state of the Web in 2010. Three obvious winners emerged, coming strong in all the charts. Apple made the iPad the most wanted gadget around, FIFA World Cup mania took over the whole planet, and Justin Bieber topped the celebrity world. I was curious about the comparison, so I've joined all three lists, gave all topics a score, and put the results into pictures. Sadly, I'm not a designer to make a really cool infographic about it, so this will have to do.

#	Google (points)	Facebook (points)	Twitter (points)	Total (points)
1	HMU (10)	Chatroulette (10)	Gulf Oil Spill (10)	iPad (21)
2	World Cup (9)	iPad (9)	FIFA World Cup (9)	World Cup (18)
3	Movies (8)	Justin Bieber (8)	Inception (8)	Justin Bieber (16)
4	iPad and iPhone 4 (7)	Nicki Minaj (7)	Haiti Earthquake (7)	Haiti (13)
5	Haiti (6)	Friv (6)	Vuvuzela (6)	Oil Spill (10)
6	Justin Bieber (5)	Myxer (5)	Apple iPad (5)	Chatroulette (10)
7	Games on Facebook (4)	Katy Perry (4)	Google Android (4)	Inception (8)
8	Mineros / Miners (3)	Twitter (3)	Justin Bieber (3)	Nicki Minaj (7)
9	Airplanes (2)	GameZer (2)	Harry Potter (2)	Friv (6)
10	2011 (1)	Facebook (1)	Pulpo Paul (1)	Vuvuzela (6)

I've only left out "HMU" (Hit me up) and "Movies", because the first is an expression, and the second is a generic term. Hope you like it, see you around in 2011.

Apple's strategy of becoming a content provider might simply be ingenious

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:38:22 GMT

Apple is an interesting corporation. Some love it, some hate it, but the fact is, Apple has become the biggest technology company in the world. An interesting turn of events, from a company that nearly went bankrupt a few decades ago, to a player that we know today. Looks like Steve Jobs really is one of the greatest visionaries of our time, as his comeback in 1996 together with the introduction of the iMac and the iPod managed to turn things around for Apple. Looking at these facts in 2010, the iPod may turn out to be even more important than it seems, creating a digital music revolution and providing the foundation for Apple's strategy of becoming the world's dominant commercial content provider.

Apple was always known as the great innovator, and all of its products and services(!) strive towards perfection. This vision of making things people want and need (or don't need but still want anyways) has moved beyond hardware and software, towards a new direction – providing both free and payable content in any form. And because of the loyalty and fanaticism of their customers, they are one of the few that are actually able to make this work on a global scale. And be aware content is more than just actual news, it's multimedia (music, videos), it's software, it's books, it's just about everything, and Apple was the first to notice this potential and put it into action.

It all started with the iPod (2001) and its biggest sister, the iTunes. Today, iTunes is the largest music retailer in the US, with over 10 billion songs purchased. With the introduction of the iPhone (2007), its biggest sister, the App Store became one of the largest software marketplaces in the world, selling more that 6 billion applications in two years. The next gadget, the iPad (2010), was launched with a bigger sister too, the iBooks, which is currently messing up Amazon's Kindle operation, even though the success of this story is still hard to estimate. A few weeks ago, Apple also introduced the new cloud powered Apple TV (2010), which will enable selling (actually renting) fresh HD movies and TV shows using the iTunes platform. And to complete the circle, there are rumors Apple will also provide a subscription service for newspapers, supposedly the iNewsstand, which could actually become the biggest of them all.

So, how did a "personal computer" company come to this position? If you ask me, the answer is simple – Steve Jobs. This visionary was able to predict where the future will go and if you look at the situation today, when this business model is proven to work, it's really trivial. When personal computers were on the rise, it was obvious business and sales will be in hardware and software. But in the present information era, where billions have access to the web, overloaded with information, it's almost obvious that business and sales will be in providing content: data and information in all forms.

Besides Apple TV, Ping, a social network on top of iTunes, was also introduced on Apple's last "mass". I won't speculate on how cool it is, because I haven't tried it and am not sure if I will. But the fact is that iTunes has 160 million users and generates a lot of revenue. Ping actually represents a first integrated wide scale social market place, which probably is the future of social electronic commerce, so it will be interesting to see what will happen. No matter how cool, adding a Facebook Like button on Amazon simply isn't real social commerce.

That's Apple, once a computer manufacturer, today a diversified technology and media corporation with great know-how in electronic commerce and providing content, while pioneering (again) in social commerce. Besides owning a complete set of platforms for providing and selling different types of content, many of them market leaders, they also offer beautiful hardware and software infrastructure for their implementation. Something we will be seeing in most living rooms of the future?

The Web is going rogue. The Web is going mainstream.

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:16:40 GMT

Times are changing, and the World Wide Web isn't any different. You've probably already noticed your mother on Facebook and it's not too hard to understand that interests of specific generations can be a bit different. The same goes for young people, who are obviously growing up in a world of their own, a confusing world overwhelmed with infinite amounts of information.

In the USA, already 93% of people under 18 are online. A massive group, which is probably the main driving force behind changing how the Web looks, and they are actually doing quite a good job in making it mainstream and pop. The Web used to be a part of the geeky subculture, but lately it's becoming just one of the mass media, another television on steroids.

YouTube

A great example of this pop transformation are top videos on YouTube. Star Wars Kid, David After Dentist and other classic home-made videos are starting to look unimpressive compared to Lady Gaga's and Justin Bieber's music videos. If you check the current list of most viewed videos, you can see that YouTube is really becoming more of a PopTube, where record labels are dominating the chart with high budget music videos. Lady Gaga managed to be the first pop artist with the most viewed YouTube video, but was quickly dethroned by Bieber. A sad fate for the biggest online video sharing tool.

Twitter

When people who actually have something smart to say are getting less followers on Twitter than pop princesses, you know something's gone wrong. Ashton Kutcher, the king of Twitter and the guy who beat CNN to one million followers, was overtaken by Britney Spears in the number of followers just a few moths ago. This is just the beginning - the following list provides information about top Twitter users, where you can see more and more pop stars whose accounts are emerging and taking the lead. Perhaps I'm not the correct target group, but Britney's Twitter account with her 423 tweets pretty much sucks!

Google

Google is kind enough to allow us insight into it's most popular searches of every year, which offers great overview of the culture of a specific era (Google Zeitgeist: 2007, 2008, 2009). This is The spirit of the times, as seen by world's biggest search engine:

In 2007, there were no people or other pop brands on the top 10 list of searches.
In 2008, Sarah Palin became 1st and Obama took 6th place, but that was mostly because of the US presidential elections, which can't really be considered pop. Pop star searches included Heath Ledger on 5th (because of his death) and the band Jonas Brothers on 10th place.
In 2009, the trend of pop searches continued. Michael Jackson became 1st (due to this death), New Moon (Twilight movie) finished 6th and Lady Gaga 7th. Creepy enough, but wait until Justin gets on the list in 2010.

These are some of the cases showing the evolution of the World Wide Web, currently ruled by it's undisputed queen, Lady Gaga. The scary part is that all of this is probably just a virtual portrait of the real world of today, where Pop Stars and Supermodel reality shows are helping to create new values and a wannabe society. And the Web is not just a victim of this trend anymore, it became an active player helping to promote this new and strange culture.

All of this saddens me a bit, and this is my puny effort to change this trend. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

What's hot on the web - Part 4: Performances gone wrong

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:03:09 GMT

A lot of time has passed since our last What's hot on the web broadcast, so I bet you are already eager to see more. The series is doing quite well, but the time has come to do a bit of specialization. This part will be focused on weird (and therefore funny) performances from around the globe, turning into epic fail. Looks like some people think they are ready for the spotlight, but they aren’t. Youtube, you can make our day.

Model takes a tumble twice

I don’t know what's funnier about this one, the commentators who can't stop laughing or the model who does the boogie woogie. We all know fashion has it's price, but the price for this one is a new type of dance nobody can reproduce.

Staying on stage fail

If you have a public performance and you actually do choose to play on playback, make sure you stay on the stage. Otherwise, everybody will know what you're doing...

Ken Lee

This one already became a legend. A girl, performing at a Talents competition in Bulgaria wanted to sing Mariah Carey's Ken Lee, a song which nobody heard of. It turns out she got the lyrics of Without you a bit wrong, which is amusing the jury. Later on she tried to repeat the performance and do it again with the right lyrics, but the original version took the most applause. The extensions of this meme went so far that even Mariah herself made a comment about it.

Is Europe a country?

Stereotypes have it that Americans suck at geography and that blonds are a bit, well, you know... This one proves them right. In a show where people compete against fifth graders, this girl fails miserably when she thinks Europe is a country.

American educational system

On beauty contests, answers of the competitors are always a bit interesting. In this case, it looks like Miss South Carolina didn't quite understand what the question on American education was and she answers a totally different thing. Besides, even if she answered something, nobody knows what that was. A sad irony.

Exclusive nightclub fail

There are a lot of interesting moments on TV shows and quizes, so we won't even try to go through all of them. We’ve all seen The wheel of fortune, where people have to guess the right letters and words. The following competitor almost had it, but not quite. Check your spelling capabilities before you go playing a game like that.

Wrong price is right winner

Another cool quiz that produces a lot of awkward moments is Price is right. This one is twice funny. First, this woman makes a really stupid bet, putting her in a situation where she has almost no chance of winning. Besides, when the price is told, she thinks she actually won. Twice. Triple fail for that one.

Coconut breaking

People do all sorts of crazy shit to get noticed. Like this guy, who sets out to break a few coconuts with his hand. Hm, even before you see the footage you can tell this was a bad idea...

I hope these perfomances make you think before going public. Once it’s online, you’ll be marked forever.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

What's hot on the web - Part 3: A peek into obscurity

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:39:25 GMT

You know the drill. The world wide web is a beautiful thing filled with cool and funny stuff. A lot of that stuff gets unnoticed by most of the people, so consolidations are needed. I like weird and unexplainably attractive things, things that are differently funny and geeky. Because we've already went through the classic ones, this part of the series is a bit more obscure. Presenting What's hot on the web, part 3.

The Techno Viking

The Techno Viking is supposedly the only guy who could kill Chuck Norris. The story is happening on an open air party where this guy tries to pickpocket a visitor. Little does he know that around the block the Techno Viking is lurking. Once he get into his element, the dominance doesn't end until the end of the movie.

All your base are belong to us

This one is based on a lousy translation of a video game. The cyber community and gamers found this so hillarious that somebody actually made a song out of it, video included. All your base are belong to us!

local: reporter Andrej Stare drunk

The legend has it that all Slovenian TV reporters are a bit drunkards, because their job demands spending a lot of free time while on the set. One the funniest is a sports reporter Andrej Stare, who magnificently commented on a hockey match between Slovenia and Croatia. Totally drunk, of course.

Hope you had a good laugh. But beware, you don't want to piss off the Techno Viking.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

What's hot on the web - Part 2: The classics

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:03:20 GMT

Wheee, the second part of the very cool and funny series What's hot on the web. This time I bring you three more viral things from the beatiful World Wide Web. Hopefully there is enough information in the post to get you up and running, in case you would like to see more.

Literal Versions

We have already noticed that a lot of people have too much time. Luckily a few of those people actually found something useful to do, and so came literal versions or literal music videos. Literal versions are edited versions of music videos where lyrics talk about what's going in the video. There are quite a few of them, but in my oppinion, Total eclipse of the heart is the best one.

Demotivators

Motivational posters are originally intended for schools and offices and work with a motivational punchline that helps people through the day. Well, the cyber community wouldn't be normal if it didn't abuse that to the maximum, thus demotivational posters were constructed. You can notice them by a picture with a thick black border, a punchline and an explanation under it. They are funny, cool and most importantly, there's thousands around the web.

local: Perpetuum Jazzile doing Africa

Perpetuum Jazzile is a Slovenian vocal band that is getting global publicity these days. One of the reasons is their interpretation of Toto's classic hit, Africa. It is just inspiring and awesome, with more than 5 million views already.

Hope you enjoyed the selection.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

Organizing music collections using iTunes

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:32:46 GMT

When I got my first iPod a few years ago as a business gift, I was overwhelmed. The thing was pure cuteness and usability. Then I got a cold shower few minutes later, as I tried to put my mp3s on it. The damn thing wouldn't work without iTunes. Apple's strategy to force software to users is a bit Microsofty, and is in my oppinion one of the worst things the company is doing, getting criticism all around. But It turns out this approach is helping them on their world domination tour that's been going on in the past years, as more and more people are switcing to Apple and Macs.

Switching from Winamp to iTunes got me acquainted to music libraries. Winamp also supports it, but it was a bit in the background those days. iTunes had it in the main and at first I though that's just another stupid thing I had to do for nothing. But the more I went into it, the more fond I was of it. Today I am a power iTunes user and I think my library is a piece of art, with houndreds of hours put into it's organization and optimization. Meta data is very powerful, and having songs classified, tagged and labeled leads to simple and flexible use, after the bigger initial investment.

Here are a few approaches that can help you keep my giant library under control:

Labeling and smart playlists: Using correct labels for artists, genres, etc. and rating songs enables the use of smart playlists. I have one main playlists that combines all songs rated more than 2 stars. I have a few similar which focus on specific genres. These are the playlists I use the most. Their biggest advantage is that I can add new songs to iTunes and after I rate them, the automatically go to all the correct playlists, so I don't need to worry about making generic playlists with listenable songs.
Using album covers: This feature is very cool for browsing album collections. Instead of having to read what's in the library, you just look for a specific album cover. They say a picture is worth a 1000 words and it's true. By using cover flow or grid view, you can quickly and easily find the album you are looking for.
Using folders for playlists: Albums should be organized using folders. In my case, I use a root folder named Albums, which contains sub folders according to genres (Rock, Electronica, Pop, etc.), which contain subfolders according to sub-genres (Classic Rock, Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, etc.). This allows me to easily browse (or shuffle) all albums, if I feel more specific, just albums of one genre, and if I am in a really picky mood, just specialized collection of music from a sub-genre. This structure could be achieved by using smart playlist focused on genres, but then all the singles would also be added to the lists, so I prefer managing this by hand.
Using Comment as a tagging tool: Comments can be used as tags, because smart playlists can be configured to play songs where comment contains a word. This means that the system will work even if you put more words (tags) into the comment field. I use comments such as Replace (this song needs a better version), Label (this song is not correctly labeled) and New (this is something new and should be listened to - because date of adding to library is not correct in all the cases) to have a better overview over the songs in my library, and better choice for listening.
Making advanced logical statements: iTunes smart playlists only work with ALL or ANY of the rules or conditions you apply to them, which corresponds to mathematical OR or AND statements. I can set the smart playlist to contain ALL the songs of the genre pop AND rated more than 2 stars AND last more than 2 minutes. Another possibility is to set it in a way it contains ANY the songs that have a bit rate of less thant 192 OR have a comment that contains Replace (these songs need to be replaced). But you can't combine both OR and AND statements in one playlist.
Actually there's a workaround, but you have to put a bit of efford into it and use a folder as a container. All the playlists inside the folder will be treated between themselves as ANY (OR), but each playlist can be configured as ALL. For instance, if you want a playlist of both best and fresh rock songs that will contain (ALL rock songs AND rated at least 4 stars) OR (ALL the rock songs AND made in the year 2009 AND rated with any stars), you just create two separate smart playlists (one for best, one for fresh), add them to a folder and the folder acts as the complex AND/OR playlist, combining both.

These techniques can probably be used also with other music libraries software and can hopefully make easier and better use of music collections. And if you know any other cool tricks, please let me know.

What's hot on the web - Part 1: Know your meme

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:54:12 GMT

I am one of those geeky people who are always up to date with what's going on on the web. I surf a lot of recommendation sites, blogs, cool portals, etc. and collect useless knowledge. You could say I am one curious dude. Therefore I often get asked by friends about What's hot on the web.

Well people, there's a lot going on. A lot of bizzare and freaky stuff, online mocking between Diggers and Redditors, narwhal worshipping and girls playing with cups. Some are made epic, some are too boring to make it. The cyber community is making some things viral, and yes, Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. Too bad that is so last decade...

Here is the first part of hopefully a series of cool internet memes I stumbled upon. Not actually so new, but still funny stuff to see.

Rickroll

It looks like Rick Astley's Never gonna give you up became one of the most popular music videos on the web. Why? Because it became the most important part of a really popular prank, called rickroll. The way it works is that you send somebody a link to a cool video, which turns out to be a really cheesy 80's music video. Backuped by radio, television, basketball games and the geek community, Rick Astley almost got the Best Act Ever award on MTV Awards. He likes it, but hopes his daughter won't get embarrased.

Btw, check out this hot video of drunk girls having a drinking contest.

Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a plane is probably the most web hyped movie of all time. Even before it was shooted, there were already thousand of blogs, web pages and articles written about the movie. It wasn's a real success, but concerning it was a low budget film, did pretty good. The reason for it's buzz was mostly because of the expectation of main line in the movie, done by the cult actor Samuel L. Jackson. Pretty cool.

local: the Arsonist (Požigalec)

This is a local slovenian internet phenomenon. Some guys were supposed to make a citizen's arrest on an suspected arsonist and were later on interviewed by the news. Besides having a funny southern accent, the story begins with the guy explaining to the news that he tried to steal some guy's bike and noticed that he had a gasoline can. Therefore he got the idea he was the arsonist that did some fires in the area. The funniest thing about it is that he asked the guy "Why do you need a bag if bought a bike?". Well, the thing got so viral that some guys made a reconstruction of the story, a music video and also an online merchandise store. Pretty funny (and weird) stuff indeed.

Stay tuned for the next part of What's hot on the web.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

Michael Jackson's death - this year's biggest business

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:43:18 GMT

We have finally seen it. Michael Jackson's death ceremony. I have seen parts of it, a bit out of curiosity, but I also enjoy his early music (Bad was actually one of the first songs that gave me the shivers) and I wanted to see other artists perform his covers (meh). I am not here to judge the ceremony, but I should mention that I was sickened by all the hypocritical people that were talking on his final event. Yesterday he was a freak, today he is a saint. That was to be expected, as we have seen it in similar situations before.

I have always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist and the idea of him staging his own death doesn't seem that far fetched for me. Today, in a world that we get live coverage of famous people going to the toilet, we didn't get even one clear picture, movie or anything that could prove the body was really his.

Michael Jackson was heavily in debt, we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. It turns out that his death could be worth in that range. Let's check a few lucrative after his death businesses:

The O2 concerts: Michael was supposed to have some 50 concerts in the O2 arena to cover some of the debt he has produced over the years. They sold a lot of tickets, and now, when it's clear that the concerts are not going to happen, not everybody is returning the tickets. They are the ultimate fan relic, to keep or to sell on eBay.
Music and merchandise: After his death Michael became the first artist to sell more than 1 million downloads in one week. Combine that with all other stuff people are buying and you can calculate quite an interesting figure.
The ceremony: Hundreds of millions of people watching, infinite television stations broadcasting. That should top even the previous two.

I would like to point out again that Michael Jackson was one of the greatest pop artists of our time and I hope I didn't insult any of his fans or family with my critical thinking. If he is still alive, all I can say is good work - you got us all. But in both cases I am interested to know who benefited from this outcome and what figure are we talking about, as I am not able to make an estimate. Hopefully it will be enough to pay for all of his debts and let (him and) his family live a normal life.

UPDATE (26.10.2010): At the time of this post the movie This Is It was nowhere to be seen, supposedly grossing 260 million.