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Super Bowl Hangover
The New Orleans Saints, the perennial NFL doormat for most of my 40-something years (remember the Aints?), had a season to remember. And football fans got to see another tightly contested Super Bowl for the second year in a row. But lost among the wild celebrations on the field and in the city of New Orleans, clouding our perspective like a hurricane induced hangover (when you die of cirrhosis of the liver it’s called “natural causes” in New Orleans), was the Saints decision to go for it on 4th and goal at the Colts’ 2-yard-line, with just under 2 minutes left in the 1st half, down 10-3. Pierre Thomas was stuffed a half yard short of the goal. The Saints with their high octane offense, tried 4 running plays and not 1 pass into the end zone. Putting aside the Saints got the ball back, marched down the field to kick a field goal as time expired in the half, cutting the deficit to 10-6 and ultimately won the game, was this this a good call by Saints coach Sean Payton?
New York Times: “Microsoft’s Creative Destruction”
Op-Ed piece by former Microsoft employee Dick Brass on why America’s most famous and prosperous company has failed. Quite on point. I saw this first hand (and more) while I was there. MS has become so large (approximately 80K employees) that it’s become clumsy and an oxymoron: a technology company incapable of innovation. The focus on “software and services” garners massive profits (“Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago”), but dysfunctional silos guard their own turf and thwart innovation
More critically, MS has no relevance beyond being a “productivity brand” — that is, they have no consumer brand identity (“Let’s hear it for SQL Server 2008!”). Name one MS consumer product success story, excluding the XBox (“despite billions in investment, its
Happy Birthday: Stan Getz
Known simply as “The Sound” for having one of the most beautiful tones ever on the tenor saxophone. A disciple of Lester Young, Getz started playing professionally at 16 and achieved something most jazz artists post-1940 never received: popular acclaim. His bossa nova flavored albums of the early 60′s were chart toppers. In fact, his collaboration with Brazil’s Joao Gilberto on the 1963 GETZ/GILBERTO album and more specifically, the Antonio Carlos Jobim penned hit “The Girl From Ipanema,” was the last time a jazz song was #1 on the popular charts (the song was knocked off the top by songs from little band you might know — The Beatles). He could have rested on those laurels and kept on playing bossa nova influenced jazz, but he took his music in new directions (including fusion) for another 20 plus years.
“Cherokee” by Stan Getz and Lionel Hampton from HAMP AND GETZ (Verve, 1953)
SLATE: Did Steve Jobs Just Kill Flash? How the iPad could dictate the future of the Web.
Interesting piece today from Farhad Manjoo in Slate. It’s worth subscribing to SLATE if for no other reason than to read Manjoo, whom I consider one of the better technology analysts. He notes the exclusion of Flash from the iPad wasn’t a big surprise, given its exclusion from the iPhone (and iPod Touch).
Apple believes that 1/3 of all crashes on the Mac OS are the result of Flash. John Gruber, the Apple focused blogger of Daring Fireball has written extensively about Apple’s various fights with Adobe on this and other issues (including how long it took them to release a Photoshop for Mac). Additionally, as I’ve noted before, any inclusion of Flash (Hulu, for example) would ultimately hurt Apple’s iTunes download business — why pay $2 when you can stream for free? Apple believes HTML5 will be the next new standard.
Lastly, web sites with video will be forced to make their sites compatible with Apple’s must-have products. Manjoo points out Steve Job’s track record when it comes to these kinds of exclusions: Apple received a lot of criticism when the first iMac didn’t include a floppy drive (remember those?) in 1998 and, more recently, the MacBook Air didn’t include an optical drive (though I would hardly include this laptop as an Apple success story). In the long run, Manjoo is betting we’ll forget we ever wanted Flash.
TV tonight: PBS’ FRONTLINE: “Digital Nation”
PBS\’ FRONTLINE: \”Digital Nation\”
For those of you not watching the season premiere of LOST, PBS’s FRONTLINE airs “Digital Nation” at 9 PM PST, exploring the ramifications of information overload and a world constantly connected.
“We’re going to need a bigger boat!”
Clay Shirky at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York argues we don’t have information overload problems (“we’re always dealing with information overload”), but rather we need to think of it as “filter failures.”
Whatever you want to call it Clay — I’ve still got 372 unread articles in my Google Reader!
Boing Boing: Clay Shirky on information overload versus filter failure
Happy Birthday: Roy Eldridge
One of the distinctive characteristics of jazz as a musical form is the need for a musician to express themselves with a distinctive individual sound. Jazz values the individuality of expression. Twenty musicians can sound completely different while playing the very same horn. Why do I mention this? Roy Eldridge would have been 99 years old today. For my ears, few things excite me as much as the sound of Eldridge’s trumpet — it is the sonic equivalent of an ice cream sundae with all the “fixins” — exciting in anticipation and delicious in execution! Nicknamed “Little Jazz,” Eldridge’s sound has been described by jazz historian Gary Giddins as “human,” meaning he played the trumpet like he was speaking — an Eldridge ballad had a beautiful raspy quality, while uptempo numbers were more guttural, emerging from his horn in squeals of excitement. ”In his hands, the trumpet was an exceedingly personal instrument, scarred with the same gravel that characterized his singing and driven by the same impetuousness and humor that leavened his conversation” (Giddins, VISIONS OF JAZZ, p. 189).
In terms of influence, Eldridge was the bridge between Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie and the Bepoppers (Miles Davis would follow). Nicknamed “Little Jazz” owing to his diminutive stature, but it’s fitting the name also signified the musical form itself. Here’s Eldridge playing “I Only Have Eyes For You” on LITTLE JAZZ (Clef, 1954):
“I Only Have Eyes For You” by Roy Eldridge, from LITTLE JAZZ (Clef, 1954)
Jazz and Me. Happy Birthday: Bobby Hutcherson
I was born in the rock’n'roll 60′s, was force-fed a healthy diet of soul music by my father as I grew up, went to high school in the late 70′s punk era and, while I love the music from my childhood, I started listening primarily to jazz about 15 years ago. I don’t remember exactly how it happened or what I was listening to (possibly Miles, Coltrane or Getz), but this music spoke to the adult me in a new way. I could play a rock song I liked over and over until I was sick of it and didn’t want to hear it EVER again. But jazz was different — the music was more complex and demanding: I’m sure I’ve listened to Miles Davis’ classic “Kind
Of Blue” album thousands of times, but each time I play it, I hear something completely new. I guess I’m also a “retro” kind of guy — I’ve always loved mid-century modern architecture, art and movies so perhaps this was the next logical progression.
Today is Bobby Hutcherson’s 69th birthday. Born in LA, Hutcherson, along with Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson, is one of the three seminal vibraphonists in jazz history. He began appearing as a sideman on numerous albums in the early 60′s, including Jackie McLean’s “One Step Beyond” and Eric Dolphy’s masterpiece “Out To Lunch,” but his own albums for Blue Note in this decade stand as some of the finest in the post-bop world. Here’s one of his signature original compositions, the waltz-like “Little B’s Poem:”
New York Times: Bill Carter’s Final Words on Conan
Interesting article by Bill Carter in the NYT yesterday on the Conan O’Brien “Tonight Show” saga. Despite receiving an impressive outpouring of support from fans for his last week hosting The Tonight Show, the younger viewers did not watch regularly in the previous weeks or Conan “would almost surely still be hosting” the show. At least, the fans were not watching on media that could be aggregated with traditional linear viewing and accepted by the television industry in overall numbers. Clearly, the difficult to attract 18-34 demo identified with Conan (he regularly beat David Letterman in this group), but the “ease of assembly” (to borrow Clay Shirky’s theory on communities in his “Here Comes Everybody”) for watching him was
