August 6th, 2009, 8 Comments »
I was talking last night about how much of our home media consumption is time-shifted. We pretty much only watch shows that I’ve downloaded or recorded on the PVR. I only listen to radio via a few podcasts. I discover music on my own schedule, as opposed to MTV or the radio.
I started thinking, then, about how we could time-shift media we enjoy outside the home. I wondered if the digital distribution of movies to movie theatres meant that they could display the movies when I wanted, instead of according to their schedule?
Couldn’t they open up their schedule to voting? For example, what if I had twenty people from my office who wanted to attend a summer blockbuster at 4:00pm, but the movie is scheduled to run at 3:00pm and 5:30pm. Couldn’t we, hypothetically, visit the cinema’s website and vote to change the movie schedule for that day?
Once digital distribution is commonplace, a cinema should run entirely like any other shop at the mall. It has no requirement for a skilled and scheduled projectionist, so the movie schedule could change daily based on the whims of its patrons.
And seeing as we’re changing movie start times, why can’t we vote on which movies the cinema runs? The real answer is that the producers, distributors and cinemas have this farcically baroque system for scheduling movies and dividing up box office revenue. That could change, though. Just as MP3s, Napster and iTunes has tranformed the music distribution channel, technology shifts could change the way movie sales work.
A vote-for-upcoming-movies model would reduce the amount of guesswork that cinemas have to undertake when scheduling movies. Combined with the crowd’s ability to adjust the schedule, these changes might, in theory, increase the average attendance per showing.
Surely some independent cinemas have tried this model. Have you heard of any?
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April 10th, 2007, 9 Comments »
Via Metafilter, there’s an interesting travel piece in Slate. Tim Wu attempts to used WikiTravel to choose a rock-climbing location (and associated accommodation) in Thailand. He fails miserably:
My plan for this trip to Thailand was based on a somewhat corny vision: I wanted to climb a limestone cliff with my bare hands and look out at the ocean below, while pursuing a mind empty of stray thoughts. That meant I had three basic questions: Where can I find rock climbing in Thailand? What kind of people go there? And where can I stay? On all three questions, Wikitravel failed to deliver—in part because it’s still new but also because, ironically, Wikitravel fails to capitalize on the full potential of the Web.
Things go wrong because some of the central tenants of Wikipedia (and associated sites like WikiTravel) are neutrality and fairness. That’s exactly what I don’t want in my guide book or travel writer. I want to read an opinion on the best destinations, attractions and restaurants, not a consensus. WikiTravel apparently has nice things to say about all destinations, in the interest of fairness and neutrality.
This is why it’s such a joy to read travel writers like Bill Bryson of Bruce Chatwin, and why National Geographic Traveller magazine has pretty pictures, but is totally soulless.
In fact, Wu’s serious problems appear when he tries to choose a place to stay. Apparently, “it’s no fun visiting and ranking dozens of grimy hostels and boring hotels, especially when you’re on vacation.” I just checked the WikiTravel entry for Malta, and there are no accommodations listed at all. Clearly, WikiTravel needs more attention.
Thanks to Trey Ratcliff for the photo.
UPDATE: As per the comments, the accommodation listings aren’t associated with the main country page, but are linked off of each individual city page. For example, here’s where you would find lodgings in Malta’s main city of Valletta (listings are pretty slim there, anyway). That’s partially my bad, but seeing as both Tim Wu and I made the same mistake, there may be a usability issue there as well.
9 Comments »
