For many movies these days, the shortest route to the top of the charts is through the alphabet.
Film studios have figured out that, all else being equal, it’s better for a movie to appear toward the top of the A-to-Z listings where people increasingly pick what they’re going to watch next.
“We call it alpha-stacking,” says Paul Bales of the Asylum, an independent studio that specializes in straight-to-video horror films. Last year, the company generated $16 million in revenue with movies that included Adopting Terror, Air Collision, Alien Origin, American Worships, and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies.
It’s not just the Asylum playing this game. Here’s the distribution of video-on-demand movies available from Comcast’s cable television service Xfinity:
Bales is hardly bashful about the practice. “It’s not something we’re doing. It’s a choice the consumer is making,” he reasons. “Americans are lazy people. They can’t be bothered to go past ‘L.’”
His only regret is that, with others catching onto the idea, starting a movie with “A” is no longer enough. In most alphabetical listings, letters are preceded by numbers, and indeed, films produced by the Asylum recently include 100 Below Zero, 13/13/13, and 500 MPH Storm. Bales’s favorite example, released last year, is #holdyourbreath, the hashtag symbol in its first character topping both letters and numbers in video-on-demand (VOD) listings. “It worked,” he says proudly. “It’s one of our best-performing VOD movies.”
(This, by the way, is coming from the same movie studio that produced Sharknado, a made-for-TV thriller about shark-infested tornadoes, which briefly captured the imaginations of Americans earlier this month.)
Playing the alphabet is hardly limited to on-demand movies. Phonebooks are typically front-loaded with small businesses that all seem enamored of the letter “A.” Authors writing under pseudonyms have been known to pick names that appear closer to the start of fiction shelves in bookstores.
But it’s worse for digital media, with seemingly endless supply but few good ways of navigating among the competitors. Companies depend on their products to appear in hand-selected feature menus, crowdsourced most-popular lists, or algorithmic picks. (Netflix recently said that 75% of viewing on the service is driven by its personalized recommendations.) Short of that, it comes down to tricks. People who make mobile apps, for instance, admit to naming conventions they hope will compete alphabetically in crowded app stores.
Alpha-stacking should, in theory, become less effective as more companies do it and better systems for discovering media are developed. Bales thinks the jig may be up soon: ”I’m hearing that there is push-back from the cable companies. I suspect that the push-back is coming from the major studios. Their titles come later in the alphabet. They’re not as shameless as we are.”
It doesn't need much of an introduction but just to go through the motions: Established in 1943 as a radio station and first broadcast on TV in 1948, ABC (American Broadcasting Company) is one of the "Big Three" — NBC and CBS are the other two — television networks in the United States and is owned by Disney (since 1996). Some big primetime hits for ABC have included Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire and plenty of other successes (and failures). Late this Spring, ABC introduced a revised logo and new on-air look designed by New York, NY-based Loyalkaspar. A comprehensive case study is available here.
Loyalkaspar went back to Paul Rand's original ABC logo to redraw the new version.Logo detail.The three colors, nicknamed Butterscotch, Garnet, and Aluminum.The light.
When I see the old logo with all those strange gradients and reflections it feels like someone didn't design it like that on purpose to serve as the main logo but that some series of unfortunate events led the logo to be like that after animation tests or some overzealous airbrusher went to town on it for a promo. Network TV logos are so overdecorated that it didn't raise any eyebrows. But when compared to the new softer look — which is still drenched in far more gradients and shines that Mr. Rand ever expected — the old logo looks almost comical.
If we assume that gradients are a must for ABC, then this is one of the better executions we will see. There is some purpose to it and the color variants give it an extra boost in moodiness. My only complaint would be that the top left part of the logo seems to me made from a shinier and more reflective material than the bottom right section that is more matte. Going back to Paul Rand's typography and proportions is a cute homage and makes a small difference, although nothing the larger populace will ever notice, but a pat on the back for the nod to history.
Custom type family, ABC Modern.The logo and colors assigned to specific shows.In use.
In application, with the use of the new ABC Modern typeface, which has an interesting bluntness to it, gives the identity some edge and makes it feel contemporary without having to try too hard. Overall, a smooth redesign that goes back to basics. Relatively.
One of the feature limitations of using the Mir Display Server up to this point has been when using multiple monitors (or say a laptop connected to a projector) the only display configuration possibility is using a cloned mode whereby the screens are the same. Canonical's Mir developers have begun working on improved multi-monitor handling...
Microsoft is extending its Office mobile software to Android this week, bringing basic editing to smartphones running Android 4.0 or higher. Following the release of Office for iPhone, the Android variant is almost identical in what it provides and its requirements. You'll need to sign into the application using an Office 365 subscription to view or edit documents, and Microsoft isn't providing a standalone or free version.
Much like the iPhone version, Office for Android includes a recent documents tab and access to create Word and Excel documents. Microsoft is optimising the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps within this application for phones. There's no plans for an Android tablet version, and Microsoft is recommending users make use of the Office Web Apps on tablets. Just like the Windows Phone and iPhone versions, the editing functionality on the Android edition is very basic. It's designed to simply be used for correction, formatting, and comments. Basic formatting like bold, italics, and font color options are supported, but beyond this it's rather limited.
Documents are all stored on Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage service, and can be shared via email using the Android app. There's not a lot of settings included, with the simple ability to change your name that's associated with document comments. One difference from the iPhone version is that there's no option to purchase an Office 365 subscription within the app, replaced simply with a sign-in that requires users to already have an active subscription.
Office for Android is rolling out today in the Google Play store for US customers, and Microsoft says it's "gradually" expanding to 33 other languages and 117 markets soon.
Zeno Clash 2 is more than half off on Steam today, with a discount of 60 percent off until Aug. 1.
The game is part of this week's Midweek Madness Steam sale, available for $7.99 until tomorrow. Publisher Atlus is also introducing two new challenge modes and trading cards in this PC edition.
The latter will get you new backgrounds, badges, chat items and other Steam features, while players can expect to find a new Colosseum Challenge mode and a Frame-Rate Challenge mode. Colosseum Challenge is a wave-based atteck mode with 50 waves of enemies that increase in difficulty, while Frame-Rate Challenge is features surreal wireframe enemies that spawn with increasing frequency and push your PC's specs to the limit.
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The lyrics of “Peaches" discuss a man moving to the country to eat vast quantities of canned peaches at no cost to him. Briefly mentioned is the hard-working American man who cans the peaches in a factory downtown. The narrator also speculates that a finger sized hole in a singular peach may hold an ideal hiding spot for an ant. He then warns the listener; “Look out!" He calls. There’s a finite number of free peaches for him. Luckily, that number is in the millions.
What if Pacific Rim tossed out the whole "we're not doing Godzilla" pretense and just went full classic Kaiju crazy? We bet it would feel a little something like this. Watch as Guillermo del Toro's monsters are recut to sound just like the original big bad kaiju in this amazing recut of the Pacific Rim trailer.
It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown received mixed reviews during the time of the original airing. The special was considered by many to be a low point in terms of the history of the Peanuts animated TV specials. Many critics at the time questioned the purpose of the special, even though Arbor Day is a national holiday. The special is often held up by critics as an example of the downward decline in quality of the Peanuts specials, in terms of resorting to obscure holidays for storyline ideas. As such, the special has rarely been aired since its original broadcast, though it was included in the syndication package of Peanuts specials that aired on Nickelodeon in 1997. In its actual content, however, many rank it among the better specials to come after the “early period”.[citation needed]
The numbers: The world’s largest spirits maker said net profit for the year ended June 30 was up 8%, at £2.49 billion ($3.8 billion). Revenue was 6% higher. Shares were up 2.5%.
The takeaway: American tipplers are helping. After stripping out currency fluctuations, sales were up 5% in North America, helped by sales of Crown Royal and Bulleit bourbon. Sales only rose 3% increase in Asia-Pacific, and they fell 4% in Europe.
What’s interesting: Diageo’s plan has been to expand in emerging markets, which now make up 42% of its total turnover. Yet those markets are proving somewhat unstable. The company named slower sales in Brazil, in part of new laws against drunk driving, as well as in Nigeria, China and South Korea. Still, even though other high-end liquor makers are struggling in China, the result of a crackdown on conspicuous spending among government officials, Diageo is expanding. Earlier this month, the company took a controlling stake in the Chinese liquor maker Shuijingfang for £233 million.
The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest reaching" system for developing intelligence from the Internet.
Children of America, rejoice! After a decades-long wait, a US company has finally come up with a way to sell Kinder Surprise-style toy-filled chocolate eggs in the country, sidestepping a 1938 ban on inedible toys being placed inside sweets with a new design.
The ban, which is meant to protect children from swallowing the plastic toys masked by the chocolate shells, also prohibits the import of Kinder-style sweets. Over the years, US officials are reported to have seized thousands of the treats, which can attract fines running into hundreds of dollars at the American border.
But Kevin Gass, who runs the New Jersey-based Candy Treasure, has now found a way around the prohibition. In his version, the toy is cased in a plastic capsule with a thick ridge that separates the two hollow chocolate halves. For American regulators, the ridge, which is visible when the foil covering the sweet comes off, serves the purpose of warning children that there is something hidden inside the chocolate. As an added precaution, the toys are also larger than the ones found inside foreign versions, according to ABC News.
A long-standing online petition addressed to the US Congress and digitally signed by more than 3,000 people asks US lawmakers to “help us restore the Ferrero Kinder Egg to shelves in the United States. This small matter can bring joy to millions of American children.”
WASHINGTON—Despite the sense of importance virtually all people place on the details of their day-to-day lives, a new report out this week from the Pew Research Center found that only three in every 10 million things that happen actually matter.
within hours, Republican leaders in the Senate and House had rejected and ridiculed the idea as a tired repackaging of old proposals.
“It’s just a further-left version of a widely panned plan he already proposed two years ago, this time with extra goodies for tax-and-spend liberals,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), saying he had learned of the proposal late Monday night.
“All revenues from corporate base-broadening measures should be applied to corporate rate reduction and to modernizing our international tax system, not for unrelated spending,” said Business Roundtable President John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan.
It’s been almost a year since Minnesota-based kiddie collective Y.N.RichKids took over the Internet with “Hot Cheetos & Takis,” the undisputed song of that summer. Back in May, the group dropped two new tracks—“My Bike” and the NSJ Crew’s “Khaki Pants”—but there was still the issue of paying the kids for their work to settle. The parents of the kids—Naz, Ben 10, Fly Guy, Frizzy Free, G-6, and Lady-J—have reportedly been fending off labels left and right, but the first payday is a new song called “My Limo” written with somebody named Big Wiggles for a K-Mart fall ad campaign. Produced by Chicago’s DraftFCB for K-Mart, the video has the kids—now retitled Da Rich Kidzz—shilling back-to-school supplies and dropping the “Shop Your Way” tagline while proclaiming, “The school bus is my limo.” There's no direct mention of K-Mart, but ...
Poke pale maidens, brawny men, and goblin cooks in Dragon’s Crown
I don’t know why I’m surprised, given the character designs I’ve seen in this game, but there’s a bit of Love Plus/Doki Doki Majo Shinpan in Dragon’s Crown, in that you can use the touchscreen (or control stick if you’re slumming it on a PlayStation 3) to bother people for a reaction.
It looks like you get the same reaction no matter what area you aim for, so if you’re a total perv about it, that’s mostly on you.
Wondermark.
A Softer World.
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