photo credit: © 2010 CEA

I was lucky enough to be one of the 110,000 people in Las Vegas for the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show this past weekend, and I had a somewhat unexpected reaction to what I saw.  I expected to be surrounded by a dazzling array of innovative (if not bizarre) consumer products, on display for the world to see and fall in love with.  What I encountered was thousands of products that showed little to no original thought, and a collection of giant companies continuing to refuse to work together to improve the lives of their customers.  Here are a few observations: Read the rest of this entry »

I got this email from Facebook the other day, and a couple of thoughts struck me as I read it (the bold is my emphasis):

Facebook is sending you this notice of a proposed class action settlement that may affect your legal rights as a Facebook member who may have used the Beacon program. This summary notice is being sent to you by Court Order so that you may understand your rights and remedies before the Court considers final approval of the proposed settlement on February 26, 2010.

This is not an advertisement or attorney solicitation.

This is not a settlement in which class members file claims to receive compensation. Under the proposed settlement, Facebook will terminate the Beacon program. In addition, Facebook will provide $9.5 million to establish an independent non-profit foundation that will identify and fund projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security.

For full details on the settlement and further instructions on what to do to opt out of, object to, or otherwise comment upon the proposed settlement, please go to: BeaconClassSettlement.com.

If you have never heard of Beacon, or the lawsuit against it, check this information out. Not only did they have to shut the service down, but they have to now do the corporate equivalent of Bart Simpson’s chalkboard punishment? This is really great news, but I wonder how effective a deterrent/punishment the ruling really will be. It is one thing to rule in favor of the customers in a large class-action lawsuit and award massive damages in order to prevent a company from engaging in invasive or abusive behavior. But this strikes me as a slap on the wrist, and the punishment of having to fund a non-profit company that essentially duplicates the EFF’s incredible efforts will probably be about as effective as having Steve Ballmer write a two page essay on why monopolies are bad. I doubt Facebook learned a lesson here, in fact the lesson learned might very well be “next time, don’t get caught”.

As more and more ‘private’ information is moved online, it is going to be those companies that demonstrate an unswerving loyalty to the privacy and security of their customers who will be allowed to continue doing business. You had better believe that the day Google is caught exposing or misusing user data, it is going to find itself in deep, troubled waters. Personally, I don’t really put anything on Facebook or other sites that I would be embarrassed or endangered by, were it to leak out. But this case has served as a reminder that you can’t really trust any company to put your rights and expectations above their own need to turn a profit in order to survive.

After months and months of not being able to show you all our new pilot Team A.P.O.C.A.L.Y.P.S.E., we can finally offer you a chance to see it.  Several of the festivals we entered it into required that it not have been viewable on the web before submission, but now we can finally have a screening and put it on the web.  The screening is at the iOWest Theater in Hollywood on Friday, December 11th at 10 p.m. Most of the cast will be there and some of the crew, so if you do come and have never said hello to us in person, please do so.  Below there is some info on the show, and we hope to see you in a week!

Team A.P.O.C.A.L.Y.P.S.E. is a half-hour comedy series set in post-apocalyptic America. Ghostbusters meets Children of Men. Four “men” are forced to search the barren wasteland for women to help save mankind. No one on Team A.P.O.C.A.L.Y.P.S.E. (American Planetary Objectives Committee Avoiding Life’s Yesterday and Preventing Society’s Extinction.) wants to be there, but since the only alternative is death…they’re giving it a shot. They have limited supplies and even more limited brain capacity.

Written and Directed by: Nick Armstrong

View Trailer

Starring: Nick Armstrong, Kevin Ford, Ryan Gaul, Adam Jefferis, Jeff Kriese, Amanda Ohly, Douglas Sarine

Ryan Reeb is working on an animated short film called “Lillith & Thatch”, and he needs your help to complete it.  They’ve run up against a wall and they need some funding to push through and find the talented artists required to finish the project.  They made a Kickstarter page for the project so you can find out more about it and donate a little or a lot and make this dream a reality.  Please pass this info along and get the word spread far and wide, we’re trying to get Ryan out of his VFX artist’s chair and into a Director chair where he belongs!

This video is simple, beautiful, and very well done, which are my three favorite things to see in motion graphics work.  Just goes to show you how far good 3D tracking and clear ideas can take you.  It is a thank you to the sponsors of the AICP Southwest Festival that happened earlier this month, and was created by Corgan Media Lab .  I was not aware of these folks before, but I’m a solid fan now!  Discovered via Designcollector TV.

We finally found out who won the NexTV festival this past week. Unfortunately, Psycho Bob did not win, but the competition was stiff and the winners are all fantastic, so it was an honor just to compete against them. Here are all the winners in each category:

Grand Prize Winner:
Michael Swingler, Midlife

FIRST RUNNER-UP
Tony McNeal, Born That Way

BEST-IN-CATEGORY WINNERS:

SCRIPTED DRAMA

Omer Zigdon, Banisko

UNSCRIPTED DRAMA

Zeus Quijano Jr., Point Of Entry

SCRIPTED COMEDY

Tara MacDonald, Everything Burns

UNSCRIPTED COMEDY
Brigham Cottam, Wrestling With The Unknown

We’re looking forward to the next festivals, and are working on all kinds of new projects right now, so hopefully this is just the very beginning for us!  Also, side note, the still frame above is from the winning project, Midlife.

A while back, Stash Magazine linked to this cool little short film by Tim Bollinger, and I liked it, so I’m passing it along for you all to enjoy.  So enjoy it, darnit!

Last week, Nick Armstrong was awarded a fantastic honor at the New York Television Festival; Team A.P.O.C.A.L.Y.P.S.E. won him “Best Director”! Huge thanks go out to everyone who worked on the show, as well as the audience, fans, friends, and family that supported the project as it wound through production.  The trailer and commentary for the pilot have now been uploaded to the site (previously they had to be kept offline as part of the festival’s requirements).  The full pilot is slated to be on MSN soon, and I am sure we will be able to post a version here on the AV Club site soon as well.  If you saw the show, thank you, if you want to see the show, you will soon be able to.  We will keep everyone posted as the show continues to make the rounds, hopefully there will be some great news to announce soon.

A while back, I wrote a little bit about a project we had just shot, a short film to help pitch a TV show idea brought to the table by Gene. It was the first RED shoot for any of us, and it went extremely well- certainly a learning experience on many fronts. This piece has been edited for a while, and we are working on getting the project moved along to the next stages, but we decided that in the meantime there was no harm in releasing the video onto the web for everyone to enjoy.

This is a tone piece, or sizzle reel, or whatever you feel like calling it; it is designed to give you a taste for the show’s look and feel but not necessarily structure. I hope you all like it, we worked very hard to get it to this stage, and are working even harder to get it to the next ones.