derek abdinor

Fitting I should have stumbled upon this article about Open Source Business Models while waiting to board for the Balkans.

Tony Blair rounded on the media this week, calling it a ‘feral beast’, only out to create ‘impact’, and singled out The Independent for special vitriol.

One may agree with his rant, especially when taking into account the rabid sensationalism of the British Media. But, the first rule of dissecting politics: cherchez l’argent. In this case, Rupert Murdoch of The Sun had backed Tony and his ‘Cool Brittania‘ campaign back in the 1990s, as well as the Iraqi debacle and the lies around that. Blair was a master of spin, having been impressed by Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Watch “The Queen” for an additional view.

Sure, the media is a prostitute, but so too are many other forms of earning one’s daily bread. Blair “rode the tiger rather than being eaten by it“, much as did Diana, and now wants to cry foul.

This is not a political weblog, but about media in general.
Are the two still distinguishable?

Safari for Windows launched today/yesterday, and while I have worked hard as a mozangelist, I think this is a good thing. Safari comes with third party extensions (webkit) which I have not played with, but after becoming addicted to XUL in FireFox, which I believe is wasted as a UI layout and script engine, I would love to see what Webkit can do.

It’s very easy to write your own browser app, or extension, in XUL and a bit of javascript. XUL has cult-like following, and Quirk has built an amazing extension with it. Would love to see other social bookmarking (social spying) apps come out of Safari.

Brilliant video of the foreseen merger of Google and Amazon by 2014, and the way that “news” will be created. I actually think we are almost there, after all, if you can dream it you can build it. And if you build it, they will come.

All my mates in online media, heed,

http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/

Recent strike action reminds me of a game we made up years ago. Elan and I were studying a politics course, and realised that in South Africa the following holds true:

• Business trumps Labour through wages and restructuring
• Labour trumps Government through strikes, unions and the threat of the electorate
• Government trumps Business through regulation, taxation and transformation

Know them by their signals
Business: air squiggle (as in Waiter, I’ll have my bill now)
Labour: clenched fist salute
Government: admonishing stiff index finger

The air squiggle is difficult to do, the fist can be changed to a winning Gov hand with deftness on the downward “reveal”, and arguments about its accuracy in power politics will rage well into the second helping of Nachos con Pollo. We toyed with Media being a player bought and employed as an impact force, as it adapts well to fight any cause and is great at muddying the waters of any conflict.

Essentially the game teaches one about the intricacies of the South African playground market, in stores this Christmas. Chong Chah is gaining recognition through World Champs and an established study of ways to cheat.

Warning! This game is not supported outside the borders of South Africa. In the US you may experience a rigid finger from the temptation of over-utilising the all-powerful Government player. In China, the non-existence of organised Labour allows one to replace with the Bitter Lover: offering or witholding access to Chinese Government-needed raw materials for gifts.