Economist and co-author of Freakonomics Steven Levitt gave a talk at a TED conference in Monterrey back in 2004. In it he discussed the economics of criminal gangs and compares it to more familiar business territory. I'm not big on economics but this is fascinating and Levitt is a pretty entertaining speaker.
I might have mentioned it before but, since I think it's a great idea that deserves more attention, I'm going to mention it again - Cunning Quotes. It's a blog quote aggregator type thingy. Very Web 2.0 I suppose, if it's not too outdated for me to say that. Some brilliant stuff in there.
The Guinness Jazz Festival is on this weekend. Fuck. Everywhere will be jam packed with tourists and weekend warriors - no, worse than weekend warriors. They're the weekend warriors of weekend warriors. I just don't know what you'd call them but they clog up the bars and make it near impossible to get a drink. Couple that with the fact that everyone seems to feel the need to traipse around as many fecking pubs as they can manage and you're looking at a lot of lost drinking time. I don't like losing drinking time.
So Google have compiled some examples of when we can or can't use the term or any term derived from it. Huh? Well have you ever talked about googling? Have you ever googled your own name? Yes, of course you have. Except that unless you actually used Google, you haven't or so they contend. Now while everyone is shaking their heads at the audacity, I have to admit I was half-expecting something like this. You see if you met me when I was a kid and asked me about vacuum cleaners, I wouldn't have had the first bulls notion what you were talking about. You'd have shown me one and I would have shaken my head - 'Oh, you mean a hoover.' That's what we call them and always have done, yet I don't think I, or my family, have ever owned a Hoover vacuum cleaner. How much damage that has done to the Hoover brand, I don't know but since it seems to be quite localised, I'm guessing they're coping well enough. If it was a more global issue, like it is with Google, you can imagine them getting a little alarmed at the possibility of their trademarked name falling into the category of common usage. It's happened before and it's obviously a concern. Of course, it's hard to see how you'd stop it but the guidelines set out by Google, or their trademark lawyers more to the point, are actually quite common sense. It's pretty unlikely, though, that they'll really impact on everyday conversation and bringing it up now, after basking in the glory of your ubiquity, is bit like having your Kate And Edith. Still, I guess they've got to try to regain some modicum of control and this is actually an oddly old-fashioned and polite way of doing it - even if my head is awash with images of horses running free while stable-hands belatedly close barn doors.
Another new Irish cartoon blog has just recently started. Green Ink concentrates on doing political/satirical stuff based on recent news. We'll have to give him time to see how he gets on over the long haul but he's already the equal of anything you'd see in the newspapers these days. His jokes could be a little less obvious but, Iknowfrompersonalexperience, it's a bloody tricky one to stay on top of and it'd be a little unfair to expect him to get it spot on every time. Plus sometimes pointing out the obvious is just the obvious thing to do.
Over at The House Next Door, Eddie Copeland gives a rundown of his top 5 movie monologues. It's a pretty tricky task and not just for the usual reasons but, also, because you've also got to work out what defines a monologue. Building A House is actually almost entirely a monologue or, at least, a series of monologues but, since they're all done in voiceover, some might argue that they don't count. They'd be wrong but that won't stop some folks. Anyway Eddie's list is pretty interesting and there's some clever suggestions in the comments. I'm not one for making lists - apparently a big drawback if I want to pursue a career as a blogger - but Dennis Hopper's 'True Romance' spiel on the origins of Sicilians and Jack Nicholson's bit about taking his pills again in 'As Good As It Gets' spring to mind. There are others, probably even better ones, but those have always really stuck with me.
A potrait of Paranoid Visions and Strichnein DC frontman Deko. You can also check out Paranoid Visions' MySpace page where, for the time being anyway, you can listen to that charming Christmas ditty Hozanna In A Hiace.
I don't know how you'd get into it, or whether you'd make an awful lot of money at it, but if someone offered you the chance to make your living doing Film Noir Potraiture, you'd be terribly irresponsible not to take it. Jim Ferreira does some pretty nifty looking stuff and he's even got some Gothic Noir pics up because, you know, halloween and all that. Found through Eye Of The Goof.
Matt Glover at Chewing Pencils has launched a Christmas Cartoon group project. Come up with a Christmas themed cartoon that mentions the word 'blog' somewhere in it and Darren Rowse of Problogger will decide the winner. Winner gets to be featured cartoonist on Chewing Pencils but mostly it's just a handy way to make a couple of new contacts and garner some extra traffic. Some of theentriesso far.
Scott Adams has an interesting post, over at his Dilbert blog, about success/failure and knowing when to quit. He uses the Dilbert TV series as his main example, explaining that it failed because, even though everyone seemed to like it, nobody got really passionate about it. This, he states, was evident at the first screening of the pilot. Had 90% of the people there hated it but the other 10% loved it, then it could have been a success. Whether the argument is foolproof, as there are obviously other factors that can contribute to failure, it does stand out as a pretty sound early indicator especially when dealing with content and the such. I hate Star Wars, I absolutely loathe it, and I'm not the only one. However there are plenty of people out there who love it to a ridiculously disproportionate level. And not just that. I can't say I've ever met anyone of my generation who is indifferent to Star Wars. It always seems to be one way or the other but nobody can deny it's been a huge success. I can't understand why it's so popular or why people flocked to see the abjectly poor prequel jobbies but they not only did, they even queued overnight and probably even longer. That's not to say that a film can't make money by just being likeable but for true long term success you need to inspire love. Now even if you're loved there's still a million and one ways you can fuck it up (and don't I know it) but if you can't get someone actually excited about your idea, then your dead in the water.
How does this relate to BifSniff Cartoons? Do we inspire a passionate response? Other than from the very devoted members of Brian and Martin's fan clubs. Judging by some of the comments, it would seem people develop fairly dramatic views of the cartoons but whether that actually translates into love/hate on any sort of a consistent basis, I don't really know. It certainly hasn't turned into revenue or even anything you might call a qualified success - even if it has paved the way for other things that might do better. There could be other reasons it has stagnated like it has, time constraints have certainly taken their toll, but in his blog Adams recounts Dilbert's initial success was because the 10% who got it, passed it on to their friends, talked about it and hung it on their walls. How many people out there have a BifSniff Cartoon pinned to their corkboard?
So Frank's managed to find the time to do one of those funny cartoons (you remember them, don't you?) he's so good at. No idea what that title means and no, I didn't come with it, so it's actually quite reasonable that I don't know - this time.
Frank's also had time to get back to his latest bugbear. He's growing gradually obsessed by the idea that we should now start targeting the search term 'funny pictures'. His argument seems to be bolstered by the fact that even though he's only had one post mentioning the term, it has reached no.6 in our search term charts. Bet you didn't even know we have search term charts. Now that would seem all very good and well but he fails to mention that just two places below, and on the strength of one post mentioning, we have 'legend rte' and just a few below that we have 'nigger cartoons'. In fact, if we go down through the list we'll find it is cluttered with loads of useless, irrelevent terms. Not to complain, that's what the blogs are for - a sort of scatter-gun approach to traffic building - but does it mean we should start focussing in on any of them? Of course, Frank will argue that funny pictures is less irrelevent and he's right. But is it relevent enough to become such a focus for us? I don't think so. I'm absolutely certain that if we targetted it, we'd get a pretty nifty boost in traffic. I've no doubts about. What I do doubt is the quality of that traffic. Are people searching for funny pictures really looking for funny cartoons? I don't think so. It might be something handy that brings in some incidental traffic but I have a sneaking suspicion it might just bring in some really crap traffic too - people looking for funny pictures of half-naked ladies puking finding themselves faced with strange puns can react with some hostility. I'm keen to get switched over to Wordpress and explore what we can achieve with del.icio.us or stumbleupon etc etc. Farting around with more google search terms just seems like a waste of the precious time that Frank is so keen to point out he has very little of. All in all, I think that while search engine traffic is your lifeblood if you run a site for a youth hostel in Galway after two years of cartoons, it's something we should be growing less dependent on.
You can catch more of the Top Chumps series at Irish Election. They apparently got a mention in The Star on Monday but neither Frank or myself have seen it yet. If you fancy helping us out Cian has put up a three point plan of things you can do. We're still harbouring notions of getting these into shops for Christmas but it's not going to happen without a bit of input and some more publicity.
Essentially we want you to tell us if you'd be interested in a pack (or if you saw one in a shop, would you buy it?) and who would you like to see in the deck. We can't put everyone in, you know. The most important thing though - tell people about it. Tell other websites. Ring up your newspaper. Deluge the phonelines at TV3 news. Why should you do it? I don't know! Just fucking do it and we'll work out why later. This is no time to be asking questions.
Seems our buddy Tom Raftery has stirred up a bit of hornets nest again. Apparently some other blogger, Noah Kagan, was hotlinking an image from Tom's site. So Tom, as he is prone to do, called him on it - originally titling that post Noah Kagan Is A Thief. The reaction in the comments made him backdown slightly but not entirely. I've mentioned hotlinking before, we get quite badly done by it, and have generally taken a quite liberal approach to the problem - mostly because the people who did it probably didn't know any better. However sometimes, when it is blatantly obvious that the person in question should know better, it has annoyed me enough to want to find a way around it. Noah Kagan seems to have been around for some time now and really should know better, yet he seems to be doing it wholesale. Many commenters on Tom's site say he should have sent out an email to Noah asking him to remove the image before going public. Horseshit. If you know some sham, an unrepentent thief, living down the road from you has robbed you, is it out of order or sensationalist of you to call the police? No, of course not. If you found that your next door neighbour was tapping into your electricity, would it be frowned upon for you to scream blue murder at him on the street? I don't think so. Noah Kagan, from even the most cursory glance at his site, steals bandwidth without a thought and Tom was right to call him on it. Yes, Tom overreacts sometimes but he got it spot-on this time.
Ok, fast food restaurant training should include a section that explains the difference between a 'hello, I like you, I hope you come back again' smile and a 'hello, I like you, if I wasn't working right now I'd follow you home and wait til you were asleep before breaking in and stealing your used underwear' smile.
I'm sure Garda training at some stage must have covered something about not getting drunk and having a fight when your on duty but, maybe this pair were off that day. The dumbest thing about it is that they were scrapping over who would buy the next round. There's only two of you! How fucking hard can it be to keep track? How does any criminal ever get caught in this country?
There was no cartoon this week because Frank is busy being useless.
Don't forget you can register your interest in owning our Irish Election Top Chumps here.
Right so, we're famous then. Our little top chumps idea seems to have gone down better than we'd expected - they even printed the Enda Kenny one in the paper. I expect the whole spherical blogo thingy will light up with talk of our greatness any moment now. Any. Moment. Now.
In other news - Building A Housescreens in the Cork Film Festival tomorrow. Apparently I didn't tell anyone, in the real world, about it and that seems to have annoyed them. Anyway, that's half six in the Kino, for anyone who's interested.
I'm probably coining an entirely new phrase here but we've been Blogorrahed. Actually they mentioned us before but they called us crazy delicious Corkonians and I wasn't sure how to take that. Now it seems we're freaking them out, in a good way, and that's more like home territory for me.
Another new Irish cartoon blog has just recently started. Green Ink concentrates on doing political/satirical stuff based on recent news. We'll have to give him time to see how he gets on over the long haul but he's already the equal of anything you'd see in the newspapers these days. His jokes could be a little less obvious but, I know from personal experience, it's a bloody tricky one to stay on top of and it'd be a little unfair to expect him to get it spot on every time. Plus sometimes pointing out the obvious is just the obvious thing to do.
I don't know how you'd get into it, or whether you'd make an awful lot of money at it, but if someone offered you the chance to make your living doing Film Noir Potraiture, you'd be terribly irresponsible not to take it. Jim Ferreira does some pretty nifty looking stuff and he's even got some Gothic Noir pics up because, you know, halloween and all that. Found through Eye Of The Goof.
You can catch more of the Top Chumps series at Irish Election. They apparently got a mention in The Star on Monday but neither Frank or myself have seen it yet. If you fancy helping us out Cian has put up a three point plan of things you can do. We're still harbouring notions of getting these into shops for Christmas but it's not going to happen without a bit of input and some more publicity.
