spodgod

Reading this story from the Daily Star via DigitalSpy, I wondered why I’d never noticed the unfortunate spoonerism at the heart of it before. I mean, now I’ve seen it and read it out loud – several times – it’s like it was always there, staring me in my big moon face…

“Jamie Oliver has angered Angelina Jolie by mixing up the name of her daughter Shiloh Pitt.

The chef has apologised by sending the actress a pudding made from Cheerios cereal, say reports.”

Oh. Dear.

As someone who makes a serviceable if paltry living out of writing for various magazines, news that Google plan to get into publishing would seem on the surface to be cause for celebration.

Ah… but is it? IS IT? The answer is, probably not yet. Perhaps. Oh, let’s stop whipping the perimeter of that Bonsai eh? No one really has a clue what they’re up to.

What we do know for definite is that the great Google, masters of the Internet, owners of your first born’s first born, have filed a patent for a system that enables users to create custom print magazines filled with content of their choice and, crucially, targeted advertising.

It’s an interesting concept, disassembling the magazine format and tailoring it to user choice. From Google’s point of view, it’s another medium to sell advertising into – and it’s our guess that’s why they’re involved.

Predictably, some SEO bloggers have gotten into quite a lather about this, going all gooey and space age about the possibility of future magazines you can make yourself. You can have the review section of Empire without the tediously subjective top ten lists. Your DIY newspaper might be full of sport results and lacking in Britney coverage. So far, so libertarian.

Call me old fashioned. Call me a brown teapot or a penny farthing – but I’m not sure that’s such a super idea. I love me some magazines – and one of the things I love most about them is discovering the stuff I didn’t know I wanted to know. The new band interview that made me go out and buy the CD, the David Shrigley cartoon that lead me down his gravity well of madness or the Jon Ronson feature about religious extremists that I never would have Googled.

If we become editors of our own magazines, then who will discover this stuff for us? Is that our job now? Because, cha, that’s one of the reasons I buy magazines – so I don’t have to go looking for things I just might like.

Internet browsing is one (rhizomic, chaotic, organic, spontaneous) experience, reading magazines is another (finite, authoritative, linear, planned). I turn to magazines to be mollycoddled and comforted, stimulated and enlightened. I turn to the Internet for deep background and reference, chance and happenstance.

Of course, there’s another thing that concerns me – and that’s my job. But that’s a matter whose complexity is better suited for another entry…

Poor Santa Claus. Still reeling from the ignominy of having Christmas lights renamed “Winter decorations” in some UK towns last year, the gravitationally challenged present deliverer has been instructed to ditch his trademark laugh. Santas in Sydney, Australia now have to say “ha, ha, ha” instead of “ho, ho, ho”… because “ho” is black American street slang for “prostitute”, as every Antipodean five year old surely knows.

One Santa described as “disgruntled” said he’d been told not to use the term because it might “frighten children”.

We quite agree. What child wants to be placed on the knee of a strange old man who repeatedly calls them a whore, then gives them a lollipop?

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Dudes, forget the fricking iPhone with it’s 12 zillion dollar price tag you have to pay in cash, updates that turn it into a plastic chunk o’nothing and two year contract that has to be co-signed by your mum. Who needs that crap-on-a-stick when for about £200 ($400) you could have an Eee PC instead?

The Eee PC is an ultra-small laptop – there’s just 7 inches of screen – but it packs in everything you need from a portable computer, including a proper QWERTY keyboard. For your paltry four hundred bucks you get a tiny Linux based notebook that’s pre-loaded with open source software. There’s Firefox for browsing, Open Office for all the boring stuff and Skype for chat. Built in WiFi ensures you can steal bandwidth wherever you roam.

The solid state, built in flash drive is only 4GB (at the moment) and there’s no CD or DVD – but who cares? It’ll network with your main computer if you need to load new software and there are ports to plug-in USB keys.

At just 1.2 lbs it’s small enough to chuck in your backpack – ready to whip out when you want to video conference using the built in web cam, watch movies, update your blog, email work, feed your Fluff Friends in Facebook, call your girlfriend, write some invoices, check your shopping list, write your novel, watch girls soaping themselves up on pornotube…

Did I mention that I really, really want one? I do. 

Radiohead’s former label EMI are recycling the Oxford mope rocker’s back catalogue in a manner that’s as canny as the band’s recent release of In Rainbows. That’s the album Radiohead put out as a pay-what-you-like digital download.

With the back catalogue release, punters have a choice of three formats; an old school CD boxset retailing at £39.99 for seven discs, a DRM-free digital download for £34.99 or a squee-tastic bespoke USB key version, filled with CD quality WAV files for £79.99.

Meanwhile, CNET have spun initial sales statistics for In Rainbows into a gloating story that derides the download tactic as a failure. The gist of the piece is that most people paid much less than the going rate for the album, with 62% acquiring it for free. Buried alongside this bombshell are a series of lesser numbers, which show that 38% of folks paid between a penny and 20 U.S. dollars for their download. In other words, nearly 40% chose to pay for In Rainbows when they could have had it for free…

The article fails to take into account – or even mention – that a number of people might be taking the “try before you buy” approach, saving their pennies for the forthcoming boxset version of the album. Retailing at £40 (about $80), a deluxe package with full colour artwork will be released on the 3rd of December, alongside a second CD full of brand new music. The CNET feature also neglects to mention how many downloads were recorded. That’s because Radiohead aren’t telling. British web site Gigwise (www.gigwise.com) estimated a first day tally of 1.2 million downloads, based on pre-orders. That’s about three times as many as the last album Hail to the Thief sold in its first week. Judging from comments on a number of forums, we’re betting that a large portion of those were folks who wouldn’t ordinarily buy Radiohead’s music.

To make it entirely fair, let’s factor in some of Radiohead’s savings too. There was no label campaign to fund, no posters, parties or press junkets. Every penny of profit will go into Radiohead’s coffers, instead of up some A&R man’s nose.

Whether you look at In Rainbows as an experimental act of altruism or the latest in a long line of rock follies – one thing remains certain. You literally could not pay for the publicity that the stunt has generated. That has to be worth the fluff from anyone’s pocket.