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A new video has been posted on Revver by the BNLs. Click below to watch.

The idea behind "The Long Tail" is that while something may have big profits to begin with, in general the revenues drop quickly and then levels off IF the product has any kind of lasting power and ultimately the residual profits amount to more than the original big hit.

The Bible probably has the longest tail of all.

The arts are curious because many offerings are ephemeral. The Theatre does not have a long tail at all. Nor do gallery offerings. Products that tend to have a long tail include the movies (through DVDs), literature, and music (in the form of CDs and DVDs).

I've been thinking alot about the Long Tail in the last few weeks because of what has occured for me posting on Revver. Initally I might get a few bucks in revenue on a video when I post it. After posting MANY videos, each continues to make a little money, but none of them make significant amounts of cash on its own. The revenue from the tail will end up being much higher than the initial hit.

The U.S. is just wierd.

I caught wind of this insanity on my brother's blog today.

It has 85 tools and is being featured on Think Geek. Given it's size and heft, it is a conversation piece--a work of art perhaps. It is fun though.

The movie, Marie Antoinette is adverstising on Revver. They have uploaded several trailers and the ad on the end is always for the movie. I haven't noticed the ad at the end of any other videos, so it possible they are only advertising on their own videos. This is brilliant in one sense and stupid in another.

1) If you advertise on Revver ONLY on your own videos, your net cost is $0 to advertise. Why? Revver shares ad revenue with the poster of the video 50/50

2) If you advertise only on your own videos, you have no chance of being seen on the thousands of other videos on the site.

It is a strategy that costs nothing but limits exposure. Below are the four trailers.

Barry's continued online conversation this month is both stimulating and enlightening. The participants are focusing on Policy in the arts.

The folks in this conversation include:

Moy Eng
Rick Hernandez
Bob Lynch
Cora Mirikitani
Anthony Radich, and
Andrew Taylor

My favourite quote came from Andrew Taylor who wrote, "Policy is constraint on behavior. Constraint is the essence of art."

Check it out.

I am a pretty regular participant at the AVS Forum due to my interest (and mild fanaticism) of the ReplayTV hardware platform. I joined the board in 2001 shortly before I recieved my first ReplayTV--a hand-me-down from my brother Alec. It propelled me into a spiral of positive addiction.

While I have never met any of the folks I interact with over at the forum, there are a few I think of as friends and many who I think of as casual acquaintances. I thought I would post a link to the UAL post. The resulting conversation was varied and pretty interesting. The thoughts ranged from the fairly positive to some pretty heavy indignation.

The thread is worth a glance at. The conversation is lively and I think everyone poses good thoughts.

Today’s post was going to be about my work in Baltimore with the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, but happenings in Chicago trump that post.

I flew from Baltimore to Chicago in an incredibly un-eventful flight this evening as my wee video attests to.



I arrived in Chicago and went to the service desk to see if I could get an upgrade. I was upgraded to first class between Chicago and Denver. We got on board United flight 959 and everything looked great. The plane was loaded a full 20 minutes early, which for a Chicago flight is astonishing.

Well, the luck didn’t last.

Suddenly three passengers were being escorted off the flight by security. That turned into six.

One of the flight attendants shared with us that several men has been acting strangely, passing cell phones and iPods back and forth and then claiming that they didn’t know each other. Worse, one man they were looking for was not in his seat and couldn’t be found. Apparently they had come from an Arabic airliner, or so the rumour went.

One of the flight attendants looked particularly distressed—she was the one that saw the men acting oddly.

Then two more men were taken off and the captain told us everything had been attended to and the bags of these seven had been taken off the plane. The cabin started clapping. At least until the door was opened again at which point an eighth man was taken off. We were told something about some of their names perhaps being on a watch list.

We pushed away from the gate two hours late and many people were awfully grumpy.

Moral of the story—don’t share your phone and iPod with a stranger!

While it would have been nice if these men hadn't gotten as far as getting on the plane, I'm glad that United took the time they did to ensure everything was safe and secure. I do hope that, as the captain said, "it is probably just a big misunderstanding" but better safe than sorry.

Anyhow, I have posted a shortish video of the goings on that I took with my Treo and edited in iMovie. Sorry for the bad video and audio, but it was taken with a cell phone for pete sakes!



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