When Lovers Turn Evil

Developers for hot platforms tend to become very excited; the leap onto a platform when it is young, create some blasting applet that gets tons of attention, then get waylaid when the platform owner decides that it wants the attention (and money) that comes with said applet. Everyone has heard of the troubles with Apple and iPhone/iPod development - now welcome Facebook as that lover that turns into Satan.

A good CNet article here: link

I had coffee yesterday with a new friend that told me about his experiences creating some compelling content for Facebook a while back. He went from zero to blasting in just a few months, and the results looked spectacular.

Right up until the day that they turned off the spigot.

This just serves as a reminder that depending on a large platform to hand over cash is a fool's gig; as my friend says, what you are really doing is early market testing for them, and the second they are able to see the monetization option, you are dead. So banking on Apple, Facebook, Twitter or even Google (the "Don't Be Evil" moniker notwithstanding) is a very shaky business deal unless you can find a way for the mothership to buy you before they kill you.

The current landscape is just too creepy. I'm gonna go make some music now...

[ddg]

Allie burns up the screen...

My friend Allie is getting all of the friggin' press that Denver has to offer. She's started up a line of jewelry, based on "The Barbie Crotch" (her words, not mine) that has gotten a lot of attention. Her most recent photo shoot, for 303 magazine, was literally "Too Hot For Print", so they ended up making a web-specific display: here.

Probably NSFW (although most of my readers work outside the typical cubicle farm...).

She's also interviewed in the most recent 303 magazine, and has been getting a lot of notice in the fashion world. It's fun to see someone you know catch a small version of the Big Ride; hopefully things keep moving forward for her.

You can see much more of her artwork at www.alliepohl.com

A new PLAY video

PLAY: Using the Xformer MFL device from darwin grosse on Vimeo.

I've been struggling making a video to show how to do chord and key changes with Step Sequencer (not that it is hard, but all of the video I've shot has been daft). So I decided to step away for a day and popped off a little video about using the Xformer Pluggo MFL device. It's something I use a lot, and want people to give it a look.

One thing that you, the more informed viewer, will probably question is when I use the accent setting on steps that are not active. Since I have a bit of a decay on the steps, the point is to add a little bump to the end of the step (as it overlaps the next step). Super-subtle, and possibly impossible to hear in the video, but I seem to be able to "feel" it.

Of course, I could be deluding myself. I've done it before.

Anyway - enjoy!

[ddg]

Mr. Moneybagsblogger

Loving this article by Daniel Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs). I'm one of his biggest fans; I have numerous times recommended his book "Option$", which is not only a great Fake Steve Jobs book, but pretty much nails down the Silicon Valley male persona. In this article, Lyons points out the folly of trying to make a living by blogging (unless your mortgage is for a trailer home). Spot on.

People often ask me why I shuttered the Creative Synth site. This is a good overview of what happened, and I was especially chagrined by my discussions with the manufacturers who work I covered. Over and over again I was told "We don't advertise on the Web, but if we did we would just give the money to Google." This was especially disturbing in cases like Native Instruments, where (at the time) my site was the only one doing any tutorial coverage of Reaktor.

If anyone is curious about whether Google sucks the oxygen out of the room, I'll tell you they do. Google Ad Sense? It's really Google Ad ¢ents, meager as all get-out, and a joke for anyone but the Huffington family.

Like they need the cash...

[ddg]

Oh yeah...

Sterling Dot Star from darwin grosse on Vimeo.

I forgot to post some of my work from last quarter. Here's a screen cap of a generative video bit I did for a Bruce Sterling literature overview - we were supposed to do a mediated artwork based on the collection of novels and non-fiction stuff we read. This is a 8-screen security station emulation with a bunch of media: some collected, some created and some collected-and-modified. It was a blast!

Max/MSP/Jitter, of course.

[ddg]