BlogOfBenglert

clientsfromhell:

Client: “I have a great idea, and I’d like to bring you on board as a partner.”

Me: “Go on..”

Client: “It’s great.  I want to recreate Google, but make it better.”

Me: “How?”

Client: “Well that’s where your expertise comes in.”

Fortunately, I am no longer in middle school so this happens much less often these days.

Dear Motion Picture Academy,

If you had nominated both Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) and Sam Rockwell (Moon) for Best Actor, I would be conflicted. I wouldn’t be sure which one I wanted to win.

George Clooney was flawless in Up In The Air, so I guess I’m rooting for him. But seriously? No ZQ for best actor, no Zoe Saldana for best actress (even though she was in your precious Avatar! (More on that later))? No nomination for Clint Mansell’s haunting, brilliant score for Moon?

We get it. You hate science-fiction. You have since before many of the acting nominees were born, and maybe you always will. Let me point out a few reasons why you probably shouldn’t.

1) The TV guys are way ahead of you on this one. In their heyday, Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 have won serious Hugo and Emmy awards — no, not the ones you usually give to sci-fi as consolation prizes (best VFX, best make-up), but rather best actor, best dramatic presentation, best series.

2) Your new favorite, Avatar? A mediocre film, save for its VFX? One of the highest grossing films of all time? It’s science fiction. But as science fiction goes, it’s pretty bad. So having nominated it does not absolve you when so many better films came out this year. And yes, I see you nominated District 9. Congratulations. Maybe you’re turning around.

Like the Grammys last week, you’ve made some very bizarre choices that show how out of touch with the reality of the moviegoing public you are. While Avatar was about spectacle, Trek and Moon were about people. People on spaceships are people too.

Better luck next time,

Ben

Le sigh.

I originally wrote these as a set of Facebook status updates, but figure I will post them here for a wider audience.

If you can’t figure out who the iPad is targeted at, or who it might become truly useful for, that’s fine! Keep buying your Macbooks and your iPhones. It’s not like those products are going anywhere. Consider that the range of opinions represented in the tech news media (gadget blogs etc) is a very thin slice of the pie. To put this in perspective: A large portion of our country is still on dial-up. So while you, the top 2% in terms of technological knowledge/access, “want a tablet that runs full OS X”, the majority of people don’t care. They just want something that’s simple, elegant, and impossible to mess up. As much as it pains me to call AT&T’s 3G network “broadband”, consider that for many people, the 3G iPad will be their first broadband device. Ever. Some people really just want to email and surf the web, and $15/mo is a pricepoint that dial-up users accustomed to $10/mo can live with.