It started with a nasty comment from aLEX on Cinematical talking about the birthday of IMDB:
When I come to a site covering cinema, I don’t want to read the sort of squealing babble that belongs on a teenager’s Livejournal page. Either this is an amateur site, or it isn’t. Whoever’s in charge needs to decide.
Oh no he didn’t! Why’d he have to go and do that? the Cinematical soldiers come out of the bushes to defend their turf!
Adrien Khan starts layin’ down his smack on aLEX:
aLEX, mate, you need to lay of your Martha-bashing. You may have your point and have every right to raise it but - from the ferocity of your comments - it seems to me that you have a personal vendetta against her (I don’t come here to read as much as I’d like but even then I’ve seen similar comments in the past).
MarcV starts workin’ on that aLEX, cause he’s a Martha hatah!
Apparently he is not content with free ice cream, but he has to specify the flavor and temperature. Let him find that somewhere else.
Oh yeah boy, you take that ice cream metaphor and smack that aLEX dude around!
aLEX throws a punch back:
I’ve not asked for flat or humorless writing. Read Wonkette or Defamer (or, best of all, the archives of Gawker from Choire Sicha’s ditorship) if you want to see very witty and knowledgable posts that put the writing on Cinematical to shame. You may notice that the people writing those sites simply seem to be TRYING harder. The attitude in so many Cinematical posts is just too casual, too dopey.
Finally, the boss Karina comes in to regulate. Oh yeah boy, it’s on now. You going down!
The last thing Cinematical aspires to be is Reuters (in fact, we make fun of their “reporting”, and especially their “criticism”, constantly). But if you’re going to critique us, please widen your field of competitors beyond the wire services and the Gawker sites. Gawker does what they do well, but we’re obviously playing a different game, and we’re also just not that cynical. The new Gawker, especially, is far more nihilistic than we are…
–Yeah Cinematical, Gawker believes in nothing. They’ll chop off your johnson.–
…or than (I think) Gawker even used to be; its writers are universally vitriolic. We’ve got a little bit more of a taste for affirmative dialectics. Call me a pollyanna, but at Cinematical I like to hire writers who are passionate about cinema, and I like to see that passion come through in the posts. If Martha needs to talk about herself in order to talk about something she cares about, that’s not a problem for us, because we’re generally interested in her ideas. If you’re not, you shouldn’t be reading.
For the full on battle royale, go check it out on Cinematical.
I recently sat down with Heather Champ on AIM and instead of a traditional interview, I decided to have more of a conversation with her. Well, I actually think of it as a intellectual discourse on photography, blogging and flickr in general. Heather Champ has been around on the internet as a web designer since 1994, and as a blogger since January 1st, 2000. She currently works for Flickr, and also keeps her site as up to date as possible.
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by Kevin Myrick
So once again, there is a new network in town. 1938 Media describes themselves as a “vertically integrated marketing and design company. Our team is made up of writers, designers, editors, artists, directors, executives, poets and other assorted misfits.”
Misfits? Definitely so. I’m not going to beat around the bush about this new network, it’s a little, um… generic. Yes, generic is a good word for how to describe 1938 Media’s Blog network. First off, and this is just a cardinal rule of thumb I’ve gotta go with here: never, EVER launch a blog network when you’ve only got a few blogs that are generating and real content. The best so far that I’ve seen on 1938 Media is the blog City Book Notes and this particular post has to say is very personal when it comes to technology:
“I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. sometimes i go through this, about once a year or so - i just don’t want to have anything to do with technology except what’s absolutely necessary (like at work). my friends know by now that i’m a phone-loather and therefore rarely call anyone. and, as far as all this blogging goes, it was getting out of hand. ” - From City Book Notes… see the link above.
There are some others on the network worth mentioning. As far as political blogs go, Washington Hotlist didn’t make me wanna puke and my eyes didn’t begin to bleed. Wait. Let me restate that. Washington Hotlist was pretty good as far as blogs go. I was cool with it. I especially liked this post about Harriet Miers.
“If there was ever a reason to impeach the President for violating his oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” this is it. Not that I think that will happen nor do I think a divisive impeachment battle is what we need right now.” - Washington Hotlist.
However, one problem I do see with the network is A) a lack of continuity between the design of each blog, and B) A complete lack of editorial control. First, let’s deal with editorial control. Specifically with the blog Hollywood Actor. This post has only one line. While it was a funny line, I felt it needed more…. let’s take a look, shall we?
“Rocky 6. It’s pathetic.” - Hollywood Actor.
Need I say more? Yes, of course. Because I would be cheating you wonderful readers if I didn’t say more. While this is probably the understatement of the century (even though Rocky I and II were so freakin’ awesome, and Rocky IV had the Russian guy… oh yeah, you know you liked them) and frankly, I know that Rocky 6 is pathetic. What I want to know from this blog’s standpoint is WHY it is pathetic. WHY should I CONTINUE to READ THIS WHEN I COULD GO SOMEWHERE ELSE WHERE I CAN GET SUBSTANCE! So basically, yeah. But it’s all over the network. A lot of the city blogs have the same problems in that they are just randomly linking businesses and such. The gadget blog, Tone Geek is about as original as the idea of the wheel. It’s been reinvented again and again and will continue to be until kingdom come. But when you’re starting out badly? Eh… no.
One thing that is kind of cool about the network is that they are vlogging and podcasting besides blogging. I’m cool with that. Except one thing… half of the vlogs don’t work for me for some reason. Or they haven’t been “put up yet.” Now, lemme ask you something: if I’m launching a blog network, and my competitor is launching at the same time, and I have all the content in the world, with writers and podcasters and vloggers and whatever else I’m working on, and my competitor has meager amounts of content and has a “vlogging coming soon” image of an iPod screen, whose gonna get the visitors at the end of the day?
Another thing that I found mediocre about this site is how horribly done the graphics are. The company actually has a link for their portfolio, and I wasn’t really impressed with anything they’ve done. A 14-year-old Pakistani kid with a 486 and an old version of Photoshop could have done what they’ve done with graphics.
Ok, so maybe I’m being a little too hard on them. Maybe I should give them some time to develop and see what they come up with. Well, maybe is the key word. I’m not impressed one bit. It seems to me like 1938 Media came into the game a little too late and got the kids who sent on the bench waiting to play, and then decide to make a poor go of it.
But I guess we shall see, won’t we?
Meg Hourihan over at Megnut sat down at her computer with me at the other end on AIM and decided that, yes Virginia, cupcakes are delicious, Blogger isn’t all that cool, and Pride and Prejudice is awesome. You might remember Meg as one of the co-founders of Pyra Labs, where she and others created Blogger (you know, that über blogging site that Google bought?)
Anyhow, I sat down and talked with Meg about Blogger, what’s she’s been up to, her favorite type of cupcake icing and even Pride and Prejudice. A fun interview with a very fun lady if I do say so myself, and so here we begin with the first question…
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