Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Konrad Ng, the brother in law of Barack Obama created a youtube message. Here it is. Konrad wrote about his experiences at the DNC for Giant Robot issue 56. He’s a good guy, I met him recently in Hawaii. If you don’t know him, no worries, he’s a professor at the University of Hawaii. When I met him, I figured he was going to spout off about Obama, but no, he was chill and only talked about it a little when others talked to him about it, and even then he was simple with his words and didn’t go nuts.
Continue reading
On the left is a compact flash reader. What uses these of late? Unless you have higher performance gear or something old, there's nothing I have that uses it. While cleaning recently, it turned up. I almost threw it away. The middle is the Marantz 620. It just came in the mail. The weird thing is that it came with a Compact Flash card. The 620 doesn't accept a Compact Flash. It does take a SD. So...
On the left is a compact flash reader. What uses these of late? Unless you have higher performance gear or something old, there’s nothing I have that uses it. While cleaning recently, it turned up. I almost threw it away. The middle is the Marantz 620. It just came in the mail. The weird thing is that it came with a Compact Flash card. The 620 doesn’t accept a Compact Flash. It does take a SD. So what’s that for? Today, I found an Aiptek 3100 at a yard sale. $3. It was in a strange case. I thought the case was empty, but inside was this videocamera. Guess what? It takes a Compact Flash card.
Continue reading
The next question is:
If we were in Bitch Magazine's spot and put out an email, would we get the support? Will we get the great discussion with over 110 post responses and such? Can we accomplish raising the money in 3 days? Will our readers rally? I certainly hope so, but for some reason, I have my doubts.
Here's why
a) We get little feedback. We once had a vibrant and funny letters section. It...
The next question is: If we were in Bitch Magazine’s spot and put out an email, would we get the support? Will we get the great discussion with over 110 post responses and such? Can we accomplish raising the money in 3 days? Will our readers rally? I certainly hope so, but for some reason, I have my doubts. Here’s why a) We get little feedback. We once had a vibrant and funny letters section. It usually gets cuts super short or it turns into a letter with a photo and a caption section. That’s bold for a 1/2 page. b) Maybe it’s an Asian thing, to sit and be quiet and just read. I’d take that as a great compliment. Asian film festivals often have this problem. An audience of Asians who won’t ask a question. If they read the mag and are so happy that they can’t say a word, that’s a great thing. I doubt that’s true. c) Recently we made a scavenger hunt in the letters section, but with no responses. The only ones were on the robot lounge, and it was more critical, than anything. It was jokey, but still, no response. Are our readers more apathetic than most? I see great letters sections in other magazines, even “bad” ones. d) I often hear, “I’m behind a few issues.” Or “I need to subscribe.” I know it’s a hassle, but those people don’t get around to it. e) Maybe because we have stores, do people think, “oh the magazine is fine.” How do our stores affect the publishing industry? They don’t. f) I know my own blog actually has a bunch of readers daily. I appreciate it genuinely, but feedback even here is pretty sparse. It seems like the same 10 people make comments. g) We have corporate ads? It’s never enough. Even with folks like Scion who offer a lot of help, Thedirectorschairsite.com, Emotes, Uglydoll, and so on, it’s still a grind, we don’t have 30 pages in ads. The ratio for ad pages to content is usually fairly high, but ours isn’t. We have great advertisers, but that’s still limited. Did you know we rejected a cigarette company’s advertisement? That’s dollars “missing”. It would suck if we have to regret that. I’ll end it at G for now. If we had to send something like this out. What do you think would happen? Maybe I’d get proved wrong.
Continue reading