I saw Wall-E today at the Disney Studios at a special screening. Some observations:

• This was a “perfect” movie. And that is not a term I use lightly. I deem perfect movies one’s whom I can’t find a single fault with. One who’s every frame is necessary, perfect and flawless. From soundtrack, diegetic and non-diegetic sound, dialog (or lack there of), mise-en-scene, color, focus…etc. The only other movies I really bestow this to currently include Rushmore, Shawshank Redemption, Godfather, Finding Nemo, Germany Year Zero, Bicycle Thief, 400 Blows and a few others.
• The soundtrack was amazing, a striking blend between sardonic self-referential humor, amazingly moving themes and perfect tonal variations. However, not as moving on first listen as Finding Nemo was.
• The beginning 40 minutes will be studied by film students of the future as an example of how restraint can lead to drama, tragedy and comedy in turn, often at the same time.
• It is not a movie for kids. This was hard sci-fi, dark and frankly quite disturbing in parts. Its not like Nemo’s faux death at the end during the “swim down” sequence. This was severe Christ-allegory mixed with a near dire satirical take on humanity.
• This was the first Pixar film where I wasn’t taken out of myself thinking “I wonder what kind of shader they used?” or “the timing there is perfect.” This wasn’t animation, it was almost super-reality.
• Seeing a movie done by Disney and screened by Disney is fantastic. No commercials. No trailers. A flawless digital projection with the most perfect sound I’ve ever had at a theater. This was in the main theater at the 500 S. Buena Vista studio (the very first).
• How is it one of the most affecting love stories I’ve ever seen was between two robots with no dialog? Seriously, a metaphorical/figurative spark? And it works?
• I think Andrew Stanton and Brad Bird are the heir apparents to Ollie and Frank.
• A hell of a lot attention was given to motivation to technology, even when suspension of disbelief was needed for its use (ie, scale in space-flight)
• After the movie Amy and I were walking in downtown Burbank and saw a woman, overweight, in a wheel chair, shuffling her feet to move it (ie, she really didn’t need it), drinking an extra large Coke from 7-11. It was quite unnerving.
• If anyone calls this a “cartoon” or a “kids movie” I’m going to smack them in the head. It is a Film.

See this movie, as it is film history in the making.

In 2005 when I started my job, it was the nascent cusp of the Web++/2.0/whatever movement. The intention seemed to be taking the power of the Internet back as a connective medium and apply that as a means of shortening the distance between want and action. Basically that means using technology to connect people rather than exploit them.

The movements in technology were centered around ways to share ourselves through media and discourse. They removed the isolation of Web 1.0 and applied the lessons first applied on the Internet in the beginning (WELL, etc) and took them out of textual and into multimedia context.

Now, along with the innovation, a new form of journalism emerged that centered around a mix of business journalism, tabloid and reportage. It was refreshingly non-breathless, to the point, full of personality and the events and people around this centered around a kind of geek-summer-camp notion of “wow, we’re all alike!”

Somewhere along we lost it.

Where there used to be innovation, discourse, commentary and debate, I feel like the Web world and blog world has devolved into the equivalent of shrill party planners repeating each others noise.

Content:

• Press release rehashing
• Reblogging
• Retweets
• Regurgitation
• Bitchmemes (yes, irony intended) and LinkBait/DiggBait
• Made for TechMeme/Made for Digg content

And then the parties.

You’d think that with the brilliant minds that are applying themselves to the great issue of how to make money in a decentralized medium, we’d have a way to come up with something more exciting than parties.

Mashable at this point is weak content mixed with party planning. What does Mashable actually do besides plan parties which celebrate absolutely nothing? Rehash other people’s news rather than breaking their own? Not adding any editorial to any content, and strictly reprinting press releases basically? At least TechCrunch has attitude. They have 8 parties going on this summer. EIGHT! TechCrunch has a party too that Arrington twittered about. Great.

So can I propose we curb the parties and maybe use that sponsorship for something other than trying to be heard and drinking crappy booze? I can get drunk with geeks and it’d be a lot more fun than at a bar sponsored by Sun.

Rather: use the money and create salon’s that serve to further discourse about the world we live in. I always say it: we’ve been given amazing tools, and just like I said after Gnomedex, maybe its time we use it for something other than gazing at our own belly buttons.

June 20th was my 3rd anniversary of me at Warner Bros. Records.

Time does fly! Three years ago I was just leaving academia after a few years off from corporate world work, and totally green walking into the 3300 building.

It has been challenging, fun, educational, sometimes frustrating and often rewarding. I have worked with the smartest people I know, and for two of the smartest people I’ve ever met.

And I went from Director to VP, so I did something right I suppose.

Here’s to three more!

This morning my dad came over and we spent the entire morning testing out my new stereo setup by going through Rhapsody on the Sonos and adding cool tracks to the queue. What started as a test of just pure audio (ie, “the mids on this should be a good test”) ended with us digging out obscure tracks from days old.

Sonos Surfing, as I’m now calling it, is seriously addicting. We ended listening to Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (Wilco way before there was Wilco), The Beatles, The Ventures, Badly Drawn Boy, Michael Hedges, Neil Diamond, The Ronettes, The Shirelles, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, The Kinks, R.E.M., Tuatara, Fleetwood Mac, etc.

Eclectic.

The act of sitting there though, with a hand held controller and just adding and adding the queue is so enjoyable. Its a creation of your own mood through music in realtime, and like personal DJing.

Highly recommended. My dad will be coming over again soon to do more Sonos Surfing.

I also must say, its great to just sit there with my dad, united by mutual love for music, and loose yourself in the experience.

Anyone else with a Sonos or Rhapsody or just a CD collection ever do Music Surfing with a parental unit?

Why Work at Warner Bros Records?

WBR is the top label in the US with some of the most respected acts in the business, including R.E.M, Neil Young, Muse, White Stripes and Green Day. We are currently celebrating our 50th anniversary. Besides that, we are the only label with a Technology Department entirely dedicated to doing great stuff online. We run the department as a startup, with all the benefits, toys, electronics, servers, Macs, conferences and geeking out. And free soda. And video games.

You can read about some of our technology initiatives here:

http://tinyurl.com/3wpzj3
http://blackrimglasses.com

We are not the IT department.

A love for music is a BIG plus. Passion and drive for the interesting, the new and the cool in technology, culture and music is necessary for a rewarding experience at WBRTECH.

The Position

Director, Technology Development

Key Areas of Responsibility

• Specing, development and engineering of technology infrastructure and applications for the WBR Platform
• Working with outside developers on features and engineering
• Help with server configurations and settings
• Monitor service stability and performance
• Troubleshoot implementations of technology and programs
• Work independently and collaboratively in equal measure with the members of the technology team
• Document current and future configurations, process, techniques and procedures
• Take the extra 10% of the work on one task to decrease the work by 50% on the next: AUTOMATE
• Participate in on-call support when necessary

Qualifications

• BS in computer science or equivalent experience
• 4 years minimum experience with LAMP infrastructures
• Expert level familiarity with PHP, bash scripting, python, C, C++
• Expert level familiarity with MySQL and relational databases
• SVN experience
• Expert level familiarity with XHTML, AJAX, Javascript, CSS, including CSS2 and XHTML strict/transitional
• Web production workflow knowledge (ie, cross-browser optimization)
• A strong desire to learn the new and interesting in the technology space

Bonus skills

• Experience with the Drupal content management system
• Experience with emerging technologies (iPhone, Facebook Platform, OpenSocial)
• Flash expertise (CS3/AS3)
  

If interested, please e-mail wbrtech [at] gmail.com with resume, link to your site, examples of work, etc. Please pass this on to whomever you think would be a good fit.

1) Location aware services + 3G data, local database storage and good API’s means that we’ll see a proliferation of applications that are contextually aware. I can imagine a todo-list application that knew if I was at the super market, at home or at work (Omnifocus is working on something like this). Or imagine a location aware blogging engine. Lots of possibilities for data analysis there and visualization using world maps and such.

I can also imagine a good ski-slope map application, hiking applications (including flora/fauna lookup).

2) Its the first handheld device I’ve used (talking with the 2.0 firmware) that fits as a logical extension of my desktop. This continues with MobileMe and the fact that it seems that app authors are treating the iPhone as such (such as NetNewsWire). With seamless synchronization, my phone is my consistent link back to my desktop. I can imagine services being made on the API to extend this further, such as the ability to run a remote spotlight search on your desktop computer and get results back on your phone, then being able to transfer a found file back over.

Or imagine location-slinging of content like video from your home, with transcoding on the fly. I could also see this link working for asynchronous data treatment. Take a picture, or note and assemble a package of information that is tagged (location, time, date) and waiting when you get back to your computer.

3) A lot of room for interesting art. “Where I’ve Been” etc. I like the possibilities of recording movement with sound and image. I can imagine you could assemble interesting audio pieces that way, or visual treatments of your daily movement. I wish I was back in art school when this came out.

I’m bloggin REM setlists so they show up on their tour site!