.:Out-of-the-box:.

“The Americans don’t give a damn if the newspapers go down”, Christoph Keese, Springer’s head of public affairs

Some time ago Rupert Murdoch stated strongly that Google is his enemy in, I believe, monetizing from on-line media.  Very brave, although both sides are super powers on their markets, I don’t believe such statement can call any of these two companies into real action. In this context, I prefer less conflict-generating message I read today in New York Times article. It is about Axel Springer’s approach to paid digital media.

This article highlights very important point, that can be missed in Murdoch’s yelling on “grand theft news”. Axel Springer’s name for that point is “noncommodity journalism” which has huge direct monetizing potential.

I agree on that point. I’m a blogger, I add my own two cents to gigantic basket of user generated information you can reach on the Web. In this basket, many of us, contributors, are pure amateurs with no pen-power. Some are just undiscovered natural-born talents. Judging on this dimension isn’t critical, I believe. We live in Web 2.0 era where users gained back ruling power over Internet, at least they think so in this highly commercialized Internet where vendors just give users more attractive and flexible tools. That’s the major difference between 90ties and now I see. 15 years ago when I discovered Internet I had to be a technically savvy to contribute back to the Internet. Who was not so savvy, could only communicate over Internet and download stuff. Now no technological knowledge is necessary to bring professional content to the Web and many people have already realized that.

So, in such a world, how can a publisher think of pushing me to pay for the digital information presented on their pages? High quality and rare content is the key. From undiscovered bloggers to big media companies I can simply split content to crappy and cool. Usually I perceive content crappy not because author has no writing skills. More often I’m disappointed because exposed topic gives just an idea, a beginning of something without any real content and good ending helping me to grow with my own conclusions. So I’m searching and search doesn’t help in crystallizing the idea. Even if it does I waste time to handle more information than I need to be finally able to articulate that missed conclusion.

I miss journalism with a thought so much that if I find such a source I appreciate it almost like a magical experience to live back in ancient times. There is so much just copied & pasted information repeated on the web that I’m astonished every time I find a jewel, where writers are people who really want to say something. More and more I’m trying to avoid semi-automatons driving for new clicks with every trick Web 2.0 technology gives them.

One of the unstoppable trends in the Web is to give as much as possible, as fast as possible. With that trick working next step is to bind people to the the resource and monetize indirectly. No one can fight with it and win. Fair enough, but I see more and more space for: (1) not so fast delivery, (2) not so much of information really hard to comprehend why I need it, (3) well written stories which have everything they should have to be perceived as complete.

Compare Kotaku or Polish Polygamia with Escapist Magazine or Edge in games industry to see one example. Totally different approach in news chasing.

Will "Reverse" achieve as spectacular success in America as it has recently done Poland?

Older I am, more confused I am with my approach to movies. I remember when I was first time in America couple of years ago and had very interesting conversation about movies with some local guys. I was asked a simple question: what kind of movies do I like.
At that time, for me, movies in theaters were just a cheap and easy alternative for live spectacles, for which I could not (yes, my fault) find time to organize myself and go. So I was choosing usually more ambitious movie projects with more flexible schedule at big cinematic complexes and I was watching them quite often. I looked for some artistic taste in each and every movie I had watched. Coming back to the question,  I answered, “I like ambitious movies and prefer directors with crazy ideas”, like Lars von Trier, Coens brothers, David Lynch to give some examples. In response I heard: “that’s funny, I go watching movies to relax and stop thinking for a moment, not to torment myself with hard to understand content”. And I had understood that approach too. I appreciated simple action and brainless comedies too, but not as a majority of my choices.

There are different tastes and I believe many people can say totally different story, if somebody asked them the same simple question. I think that many more go and watch movies just to experience some primal sense fun with easy story and great special effects. That’s where the power of Hollywood have established itself for a while. For me balance is important. I’m happy to perceive that a good mixture of fun, f/x pimping up the atmosphere and rich, surprising story seems to be more common in recent movies. It just makes it harder to judge simply, which movies are 100% good and which are 100% crappy with no single line of defense. Fair enough.

I’m giving this long introduction to my yesterday’s activity, which was a trip to local cinema and watching new Polish movie entitled “Reverse”. I’m talking about it because this movie is our, Polish, candidate for American Academy’s Awards, best known as Oscars. Having all above indicators in mind, I’m wondering if that movie will be anyhow noticed by American critics. I think “Reverse”, although it’s not easy movie to understand for a foreigner, has all these elements I have already mentioned. It has good balance of general fun. It has great story established in a period about which we (at least young) Poles would like to forget and go on. It has also some very interesting techniques used in the movie. Movie is prefabricated to look like old black&white production from the past. It has some shifts between past and presents. The only weakest point is camera. I see so many talented Polish guys behind the camera in American blockbusters. Seems so sad that those, who still make movies in Poland are “old school” so badly. Still a great movie, see below musical theme with well known trumpet player, Gary Guthman performing for it:

Movie’s theme is set in Poland, in middle 50′ties of the past century. A few years after a War War II, in still demolished Warsaw, a post war Polish society and community is rebuilding itself. Poland is influenced badly by early (and hardest) stage of communism with Stalin being still alive. In these “interesting” times we see a simple family of three women: grandmother, mother and adult daughter, struggling in very new for them, hostile world of distrust, invigilation and law made for officials, not for the people. These women have their daily problems bound to the times they lived in. I don’t want to spoil the story, so I’ll add that all these struggles are told in a mix of Woody’s Allen and Coens brothers style. Black humour, parallel personal stories and dramas being correlated in strange way. Movie simple binds you to your seat until it ends. Gay ends, because at the end, it even pays the attention to the modern definition of diversity.

Film has become very popular in Poland, but still I wonder, how will it be perceived in far Los Angeles. We have a history of Oscars given to dear Polish fellows for artistic, niche productions, like Wajda’s movies. Competition doesn’t look as a short list, though. Will see, I wish them good luck. Impressive movie.

courtesy of David Longo. Click the image to see more of his amazing works.

I read an interesting article about future platforms in gaming. Square-Enix Executive Yoichi Wada says nothing new, but reminds that “Cloud Computing” will impact heavily also Game Industry.

Social and browser based games will grow dramatically Mr Wada says and Polish Gaming Magazine “Polygamia” fears that if it becomes true, real hardcore gamer related genres will unfortunately die unpopular to all these 10-minutes long game-play browser,facebook, mobile alike alternatives.

I fear not such a thing. Today proves that RIA (Both in Microsoft’s Silverlight and Adobe’s Flash applications) can handle sophisticated 3D engines. What they mostly lack is hardware acceleration and good tool-set back-end for game industry. But still I can play Quake in a browser. Browser, mobile and other you’d think small games grow in size and maturity. I can’t imagine how far it can go in the future but for sure I’m not expecting another Mafia or Farmville clones from Facebook as dominant examples in Cloud Gaming AD 2020.
What I expect is usage of local hardware (GPU, CPU) in some Internet aware device where 100% of the content will be streamlined from the Web. Natural, further evolution of what we have now, don’t you agree? I’m expecting that not hardware capacities but social networking power can be major trigger for new customer acquisition and that’s what have already started, big time!

Today’s hardware and technologies allow us to make it all what Square-Enix’s executive says even now. RIA games grow in size and maturity in amazing speed. Blocker is market readiness to accept dramatical shift in mindset (own versus use) so fast. Industry leaders need to evangelize consumers on that and in fact that are Mr. Wada’s motives in my opinion.

I’m personally not that afraid of shift itself. I’m afraid of equal offer available globally. I do not live in US and I perceive that many services are US and at general a particular country centric. Well educated consumer in Web 2.0 era thinks globally and gets benefits from that.
If a local store cannot offer good price and Dollar is cheap, I make a decision to import something even from Australia. It sounds absurd to my parents but to friends in my age that’s natural decision making.

If service is not available and it is definitely attractive people start cheating. That’s the case of Xbox Live in Poland. That’s the business of all commercial VPNs who allow people to freely utilize treasures of Netflix and have Sky TV over Internet.
As a vendor you can’t possibly block motivated user from evaluating you. They’ll bitch at you (as Polish Xbox users do every time they have good ground to speak), but still they will use it. In Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing era there is no such thing like “not available to you” for whatever reason.

Yeah,

Another “Hello world” in the blogosphere. I feel like I had already done that before. I’ve been blogging since 2004 or 2005 if I remember correctly. Many initiatives with different scope and content maturity. Once in Polish (my native), once testing international reader. Language proficiency in this history has taken also a very crucial part.

I remember very well that first post on MSDN Blogs in English. I tried to make my first professional blog on that platform, sharing my thoughts on Microsoft technologies with local and international readers.

For the moment, idea was not bad, but I quickly realized that with every post written, I’d been more and more interested in local only reader. Reasons were many. In Poland, I was presenting at conferences, trainings and other events for local developers. Language itself was not the problem, but if two Poles do talk, why use English in the background when I referred to something online.

So my English Posts category is long dead there. Quite recently I stopped marking Polish posts with [PL] prefix in the title. I realized that I’m not going to post any more English posts on that site. Not since that blog is cross posted on http://www.msdn.pl pages. [PL] prefix was nice, because I noticed that many other Polish bloggers used that prefix style to highlight their rare English postings (with [EN] for a change). Really interesting observation in social context and unspoken netiquette growth.

With growing popularity of that blog (as for my own acceptable scale), I realized that those pages are more official, regardless of my own statement.

Redesigning my private pages is the reaction. More and more I needed something rather private, something not so strongly branded with “MS only” label. Some place where I could start discussing and examining different topics. Some place where I could tell my international friends and colleagues that this is the place where they can follow my progress.

So I started with this entry. There will be more soon, that’s the blogging idea, right?

To give you short introduction what you can find here in the future, I’m going to explain basic content categories:

• Home – this page obviously gets everything
• Game Industry- My thoughts in this area from tools to design, from trends in business models to simple demands on the market. Definitely an industry worth watching.
• Labs – I’m a creative soul. So I want to share with you some news with my current developments and investigations.
• Microsoft – I work there, so I presume I’ll sneak in some MS-related information too.
• Polish Software Industry – I’m paid to know well what’s going on in my local software market. I’m proud Polish by the way, so why not to promote my country and software from it? Regardless if MS or not, Polish brilliant minds are worth international awareness.  
• Programming – Yeah I know.. I’m addicted. From time to time I presume I’ll paste here some source code too.
• Various Rants – Isn’t it what are you reading just right now?

Cheers,
Daniel Biesiada

PS. As it’s fresh, greetings to all of you guys, whom I met in Los Angeles, CA at PDC 09 this month. It was great time, and Carl Franklin was my best surprise.