Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

Have More Stereotype-Fu!

If you enjoyed our previous columns on the art of Stereotype Fu, I've made a video presentation using my original columns!

http://youtu.be/96FOBFA-ICc

- Steven Savage

News from the North - Jan 29

Bilingual URLs
Canadian domain names will soon be allowed to use accents. The move by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) will allow French websites to use the proper accents in their URLs. This won't be a problem for Canadian users - bilingual keyboards are available and are in use in the Federal government.

Truth in Advertising vs Freedom of Speech
File this under A for Audacious. Rogers, the cable company cum wireless provider, has asked the Ontario courts to strike down the requirement that a company needs to have "adequate and proper" tests of a product before making claims about that product. The company claims that the wording violates its freedom of expression. The court case, expected to start in June, is the latest in the company's battle against the Competition Bureau, which started in 2010 when the Bureay levied a Cdn$10 million against Rogers for misleading advertising. This could be Canada's /Citizens United/, a case in the US that ruled that corporations are people.

Canadian Small ISPs to Get New Wholesale Rates
Starting February 1, small ISPs in Canada are getting new wholesale rates. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commissionm (CRTC) enacted new rules last year on how the larger service providers charge independant ISPs for service. The larger providers, including Bell and Rogers, were given a choice - flat rate per user or a specific capacity. Teksavvy, one of the small ISPs, expects to have to raise its rates as a result. The move starts to level the playing field, but still gives a lot of control to the majors.

Online Econmy Expected to Double by 2016
Boston Consulting Group released a report at the Davos, Switzerland G20 summit saying that amount of online business is expected to double by 2016. An online presence will be almost mandatory by then, even if no online sales are done.

Someone Has Confidence in RIM
Fairfax Financial Holdings, Ltd, has doubled their investment in Research In Motion. The company now owns over 5% of shares of RIM. Could this help or hinder RIM?

Siri Has Competition
Apple's Siri now has a competitor, Evi. Evi, created by True Knowledge in the UK, can also respond to verbal questions. Unlike Siri, Evi is available on both iPhones and Android devices. Someone really should put them in a debate with each other.

Facebook Suing Spammer
Facebook and Washington State have filed suit on Ascend Media for "clickjacking". "Clickjacking" gets people to like a site, which then gets posted through their Facebook accounts and spreads. Ascend Media has taken in US$1.2 million a month gross.

Excerpt of Book about Chinese Internet Censorship
Rebecca MacKinnon has written a book about how the Chinese government censors the Internet in the country. The excerpt mentions the "China Internet Self-Discipline Award", given out to people who foster "harmonious and healthy Internet development". When a government starts using words featured in The Prisoner (ie, "harmonious"), something has gone horribly wrong.

--Scott D

Lost in Translation 23 - Remakes Are Magic

The 80s saw a major change in how toys could be advertised. A regulation that prevented companies from making cartoons based on a toy line was dropped* by the Reagan administration. This opened the door to several lines, including Transformers, Jem and the Holograms, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, and My Little Pony**. Hasbro created the My Little Pony toy line in 1981, releasing the ponies in 1982, with several cartoons based on the toy ponies. The cartoons were aimed at young girls, the same demographic the toys were. One little girl in particular, Lauren Faust, gave her My Little Ponies distinctive personalities as she played with them.

Ms Faust grew up to be a writer and creator, particularly of cartoons. She worked on such series as The Powerpuff Girls before helming one of the biggest cartoons of the 21st century - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In creating that cartoon, she took the personalities her toy ponies had and gave it to the Mane 6 - Twilight Sparkle (a book smart but naive unicorn), Rarity (a fashionable but vain unicorn), Fluttershy (a kind but shy pegasus), Rainbow Dash (a brash tompony), Applejack (a down to earth but workaholic earth pony), and Pinkie Pie (a genre savvy party pony).

There are many keys to the success of MLP:FIS. The big one is that it has a broad appeal. While the show is aimed at young girls, who Hasbro wants to pressure parents into buying the toys, there's enough in the series to attract a large peripheral demographic***. Shout outs and homages abound, from Looney Tunes to Benny Hill; something for everypony. In addition, Hasbro itself has not bothered to take down episodes from various sites, including YouTube, in part because company officials have no idea how to react to the show's success. Since the series exists to sell ponies and ponies are selling, the officials have decided to let things stand.

Another key is how the show presents dilemmas for the Mane 6 to solve. In the 80s, typically there was one character who was designated as being always wrong, even if that character's idea made the most sense. In the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, Eric the Cavalier held that designation - he'd would always make a suggestion that the others would reject for the group's, even if his idea made more sense. In MLP:FIS, no pony has that designation. Conflict can come from any two characters, and the solution is to work together and use each others' strengths without making either pony feel bad, using the power of friendship.

A third reason for the success is the treatment of the fans. Fanon names for minor ponies, such as Derpy Hooves and Doctor Whooves, have become canon. This is unprecidented. Yet, it lets fans feel more included, something that goes with the message of the series. The names don't affect anything with the Mane 6, but some ponies, including Derpy Hooves, have made more appearances as a result. There is a synergy between the creative crew and the fans.

Over and over, the term "respect" has come up in respect to making a successful remake. In this case, the respect isn't necessarily towards the original material. Instead, it's respect towards the fans that has made My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic a success.****

Next time, an anti-war TV series.

* Although ads for the toys still could not air during the show
** Please hold your squees until after you've read the column. :)
*** The last time I saw such a peripheral demographic was in 1995 with /Sailor Moon/. The general reaction from the older male periphery then was, "What did I watch and why am I still watching?", a reaction seen today with new bronies.
**** You may now squee. :)

Comics: In Greater Competition With ... Everything, Really

Why Piracy is Not Responsible for 'Ruining' Comics [Op-Ed] - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews

A very good analysis of what other factors, apart from piracy, may be responsible for causing the comic market to weaken. On my own site, I did an extended analysis on this argument; I suspect the problem is cyclical throughout all media as our range of options expands across the board. Everything is now becoming that much more competitive with everything else, with each media type becoming a differently-flavored incarnation of that struggle.

-- Serdar Yegulalp

Blow Your Mind: Should Apple Buy Hollywood?

Think about it.

- Steven Savage

Must Read: Digital Comics Roundup

The gang at Comic Book Resources put together this fantastic roundup of the state of digital comics.  Go read it anyway or I'll make you watch "The Last Airbender."  For those who did, or are undeterred by my threats, big takeaways:

• iAuthor has a LOT of people thinking about comics on the iBookstore.  Pay attention to this, it could shift the battleground over digital publishing.
• Graphic.ly is going to do self-publishing.
• Pay attention to Robot Media.  They seem to be expanding a lot.

- Steven Savage

Nitendo To Launch Own Network

Well, it finally happened - Nintendo is doing its own network.  Not clear if it's in time for the Wii U launch or what, but a welcome addition to the company.  Well, in short, it's a needed one.

Of course details seem scarce, but let's be honest - Nintendo has to do this to keep up.  It's not something new, it's something they have no choice but to do.

Now a few things:

• Is this going to be a minimal-network or are they going to do anything different with it?  Nintendo's "do different" ability has served them well in the past (you think we'd have Kinect without the Wii?).  They may leave people unimpressed or suddenly have competitors scrambling to keep up.
• They may use this to steal the thunder of competitors.  Watch when the announcements occur.
• How much is made - and how much has to be built.  There may be job opportunities here.
• How do you get things distributed between this new network?  Developers should keep up on this.

- Steven Savage

 

 

Ask Steve: Insane Lists of Job Requirements And You

Thanks to our own Tamara Hecht for noting a need for this post - and it's a chance for me to launch an experimental "Ask A Progeek" section (thinking of having it organized both for individuals and in general).

So it happened.  You found your perfect job, or come to think of it in this economy, any job.  Anyway, you look at the list of requirements, which almost inevitably is some kind of insane wish list, and you realize you don't meet them.  Yet, you still want that job and indeed can do it.

What do you do? 

First, let me put your mind at ease - if you think that that entire list has to be fulfilled perfectly, you're almost inevitably wrong.  Except in the case of certain scientific, engineering, and legal requirements, you don't have to fill the list out perfectly.  Chances are that list has been through so many hands no one actually cares that much.

Keeping that in mind, there's three things to do:

Magrathean Diary #7: Organiz-ized, Pt. 4 (How To Wikify)

Last time out I suggested a wiki was the single best way, hands down, to organize any project that has its own world. Now comes the thornier question: how exactly do you do that?

The same thing that makes a wiki powerful—the ability to make an article out of absolutely anything—can also be its undoing. When I first created my internal wiki for Flight of the Vajra (the project that inspired this whole series of articles in the first place), I was tempted to treat the wiki like Fibber’s Closet, just throw in everything I could think of first and find a way to sort it out later.

Thing is, this turned out to be a not-half-bad approach. I could stuff things into the wiki as I remembered them—at first as s simple stub article (“Henré Sim is the creator and pilot of the Vajra. [tags: stub]”), and then later as a full-blown piece with internal structure. The hard part is remembering to actually go back and expand on all those provisional entries, lest you end up with nothing but a wiki full of undeveloped stubs and no actual organization.

When the number of entries reached about thirty, I decided to stop stuffing and start organizing, by taking the material I had so far and assigning it to a number of proper categories. The first five that came together were this:

People. Actual characters in the story, divided into major, minor, walk-on, and mentioned-in-passing.

Places. A list of locations where story action takes place—cities, worlds, people’s habitations, etc.—as well as a list of locations that are mentioned and which need some descriptive data attached to them, but are never actually encountered directly.

Things. Devices, vehicles, products, foodstuffs. This also includes technologies; almost no world-building goes on in any story without some discussion of the technologies that are used in it. I was originally tempted to break technologies out into their own subcategory but I left it as-is for the time being.

Universal Background. This one’s a bit tricky. It’s a term I coined to encompass big, overarching topics which fit four basic criteria:

1. They affect the entire setting in some normative way.

2. These are things which if you pull on them, the whole universe falls apart. (Without them, the universe we created doesn’t function.)

3. They are what gives this story its unique flavor. (Without them, the universe we created doesn’t stand out all that much.)

4. They define extremely general concepts that do not easily fit anywhere else.

There can be some overlap here with the Things category, but for the most part I used it for key concepts: money, space travel, law enforcement, information technology, etc.

So far, so good, I told myself. Then things started to get … abstract.

And more on that adventure in the next installment.

-- Serdar Yegulalp

Netflix Is Back?

OK they may be still playing juggle-the-rights, but Netflix did pretty well for Q4 (beating expectations), and numbers suggest they might be over that hump of sort of annoying everyone.

They're also abandoning their video game rental plans, which makes total sense.

Frankly this is a bit better than I expected, but as a Netflix booster who got disappointed in some of their activities, I'm not sure I can say "they're back," even though I love the service.  It's a positive sign definitely - and it looks like they're aware that Amazon is coming for them.

Oh, and again, where's OnLive in all of this . . .

- Steven Savage