Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

We Are All Publishers

Almost anything we progeeks are into can be considered a form of publishing.  Knowing this is important to our careers.

That may sound strange when your interest doesn't come out as a book or a magazine, so stick with me here as I take a look at just what publishing is.

World Series of Phone Wars

We all know what sports advertising consists of, right? Beer and Viagra ads, wall to wall, with the occasional pitch for shaving cream and cars. Chest-thumping "macho" stuff, nothing with geek appeal to be seen anywhere.

Wrong. If the ads in the American and National League baseball playoffs were any indication, the King of Beers has given way to the Ring for Ears. Yes, our national pastime has become the latest staging ground for the cell phone wars - and the competition in the commercial breaks was much fiercer than that on the field.

How the Iron Chef Drove a Carving Knife Into Gourmet

Yesterday, Conde Nast made the rather stunning announcement that it was shuttering a magazine that was 70 years old – the venerable Gourmet. We’ve seen publications go down left, right and center recently, but to see one of that stature closed down is probably one of the most sobering reminders of the state of the publishing industry.

Equally interesting was Conde Nast’s reason for closing it down – the fact that the Food Network and culinary Web sites had made the publication obsolete.

Culinary Web sites we expected to hear – why drag a magazine into the kitchen and flip through pages to find what you need when you can fire up your browser, point it to Epicurious and enter what you’re looking for in a search engine?

Lessons For Geeks From An Ungeeky Source

You can't get any less geeky than Lifetime Television, right? That's the channel that your mom watches, filled with soapy telemovies about women in jeopardy. To most geeks, it's something they click through rapidly while on their way from Sci-Fi - excuse me, SyFy - to Cartoon Network. Family Guy referred to it as "Television for Idiots."

But Lifetime has some important lessons to offer us geeky career types - believe it or not.

Backlog In Media

Imagine you're someone that produces media - or maybe you already do  Perhaps you make video games, or manga, or fantasy novels.  You have a good thing going, and of course you have competitors, but you can deal with them.  You can do more, faster, better . . . except there's one competitor that's getting better all the time and has a LOT more material than you could ever produce.

The backlog of games, anime, comics, media etc. that's out there now.  That's a growing competition for everyone working in media right now.

When Watching TV Doesn't Involve a TV

Watching TV used to have a very concrete definition. It meant walking into the living room (or den, or rec room, or wherever else you kept the main family set), picking up the remote and clicking it on, then planting yourself on the couch to stare at the screen.

Now, the definition isn't so simple. Watching TV doesn't necessarily involve a TV anymore, and it doesn't involve being in your living room. Streaming video has rewritten the rules entirely.

Streaming Video: Coming Soon, to a Mainstream Near You

Last weekend, during a broadcast of American institution The Simpsons, a commercial appeared for Hulu, the streaming video service. It featured Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane doing the voices of several of his creations, including Stewie and Peter Griffin.

What was unusual about the spot is that you had network TV promoting what, in the future, may be its biggest competitor – streaming video services.

Hands On: X-Box/Netflix

So we're hearing about all the different ways to get online video.  I've been to Joost, Hulu, reguarly use Crunchyroll and Veoh, and have an interest in the subject as you can read here.  So when I heard about the X-Box 360/Netflix streaming video option I figured I'd check it out.  After all, online video is the future, I just wanted to see how much of it would involve the intersection of Microsoft and Netflix.