I loved this documentary about screenwriting. You will learn a ton of things you never knew before about the craft of writing for the big screen. There are tons of behind the scenes stuff that keep you thoroughly enthralled, if you’re a big film buff as I am anyway. If you’re a screenwriter (as I am) then you’ll truly love this entertaining and informative film.
It’s currently streaming on NetFlix right now!
I love when @ChrisBrogan blurts out “You’re doing it wrong” every once in a while on Twitter just as a friendly reminder that there isn’t one right way to do all these social things we’re doing. I think he does it as a reminder for himself more than for us. He’s right too. No matter what we do or how we do it, there will be those that will say we’re doing it wrong because we’re not doing it the same way they are. There are many common sense things that most of us agree with such as not polluting the tweet stream with endless barrages of promotional spam but there will be many who will disagree with that as well. and so it goes.
I am writing this because I am guilty of being a member of the social media police. I know how stupid it is to ever impose one’s view of how to communicate on social platforms but every once in a while I’ve crossed the line and stuck my nose in somewhere it shouldn’t have been. of course my intentions were good but still, we all have the right to use these platforms the way we want to use them as long as they don’t go against the terms of service for each network and don’t break any crimes.
For example, I was a twitter snob at one point in time. I didn’t mean it to happen but at one point I had a 10 to 1 follower to follow ratio which is very bad. It means I only followed 1 person back out of every 10 that followed me. I don’t know how it happened but one day I realized how out of whack it was and I decided to change it. I decided to follow everyone back that followed me. If it turned out that they were spammers or just not nice, then and only then would I unfollow them. My ratio has quicky improved but it’s still not a 1 to 1 ratio because there are still a bunch of people that still follow me that I didn’t follow back way back when. I know I need to take the time to follow them all back soon. Perhaps I’ll do 10 per day?
Anyway, I mention this because I was being a social hypocrite. I see many people on twitter today with far worse ratios than mine, such as 1000 to 1 or 100,000 to 1 and it baffles the mind. I wonder why they even bother coming to a social network when all they want to do is broadcast. They merely want to shout from their virtual bullhorn and feel like a dictator giving a speech to the huddled masses. It used to irk me to no end but now I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter one bit. They aren’t doing it wrong…and I’m not doing it wrong. We’re just doing it the way we want to do it, period.
The old analogy of twitter being like a cocktail party is actually pretty good. It is like a big party and each of us enjoys a party in our own unique way. Some like to be the life of the party and garner as much attention as possible while others prefer to lurk in the shadows and observe from a safe comfortable distance and most like to meet new interesting people and have small groups of conversations. None of those methods are right or wrong, per se. We have the right to mix and mingle or not do it at all. Heck, many choose not to even attend the party and you know what? That’s fine too.
One final note: no matter what you do, in the end, you’re doing it wrong in somebody’s eyes but it doesn’t matter at all as long as it’s your way and you’re enjoying it.
I’ve always liked this song but never knew who did it. The Shazzam app helped me find out while watching the trailer for a new Disney movie that’s using the song to promote African Cats. It sure sounds like Snow Patrol if you ask me. In any event, love the song.
Here’s an excellent example of how technology is helping famous film critic Roger Ebert find his voice again. It’s a fascinating look at the progress he’s made along with the technologies he’s used including one which involved slicing together a database of words he’s spoken in the past to create an audible library of phrases. Ultimately, though, his favorite solution is the computer voice from his MacBook.
Someday, technology will be able to recreate our own voice and produce smooth, human-like phrases generated from messages written on a mobile device or merely thought. We’ve been interested in artificial intelligence for the longest time, but we’ve got to invest more time in developing a more human digital voice.
Just as everything old is new again, the converse is always true…everything new will be old someday. Will Twitter and Facebook still be around many years from now? Who knows… here’s a toondoo I put together about a conversation we might have in the future.
Here’s my entire I.T. Happens Series
I tried to install the Google toolbar to my “Google” Chrome browser and got this most unexpected error message.
Google toolbar requires Firefox 2.0 or later.
Would you like to download the latest version of Firefox?
Not only is it idiotic that Google’s toolbar doesn’t work on its very own Google Chrome browser, but it even promotes the Firefox browser and even offers to take you there! To top off this experience of Epic Fail, Google has had over 3 years to make their toolbar work with its Chrome browser and still has not made it happen. It’s rather mindboggling when you consider all of the resources they have in manpower and money.
Yes, they have many more important bugs to fix and features to add (and promising startups to acquire and retire) but this is a perfect example of what happens when a cutting edge organization gets big and fat. They have gotten sloppy and they’ve lost their focus. It sure reminds me of another giant search engine outfit that become huge and stupid and lost their way (Yahoo).
Look, I like a lot of Google services (Gmail, Tasks, search is still good, etc.) but they have also suffered the same problems that have plagued other giants such as IBM and Microsoft. Their development teams have become separate silos of services instead of working together to build products that work better together. Remember how Microsoft Outlook had nothing to do with Microsoft Outlook Express? Google needs to tear down their walls, literally, and introduce their development teams. I highly recommend that they all have a movie night and watch the wonderful documentary “The Pixar Story” which is a blueprint on how to work as a team…and how to get a group of talented people to create beautiful things together. It’s currently streaming on Netflix right now.
While I’m bashing Google, I’d like to also suggest a few other things, in case anyone from Google is listening. They should start by rebuilding the atrocious address book in gmail by examining the gorgeous work done by the xobni programmers who’ve built a lovely plugin called Xobni for gmail. They should also do much more with Google Profiles by building a social network around that. Also needed is a Project management system. Their Google Tasks is excellent but it also has been trumped by several other small startups. They can merge tasks with google docs and gmail and its new Google Projects service and add the new social network from Google Profiles and then we would have a serious Facebook killer.
