TEA London News & Views

The Sony Walkman

Without the original Walkman there would probably be no Apple iPod. Sony engineer, Nobutoshi Kihara, made it a personal mission to design the Walkman so he could listen to operas during long plane journeys and change the soundtrack of the high street. The first Walkman played analogue cassette tapes but the idea was successfully transplanted into newer audio formats including CDs, MiniDisc and MP3s. You can see the Walkman’s DNA in pretty much every portable music device. If stick an iPod next to the original 1979 Walkman, they look like they are brothers.

PageRank (The Oracle)

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm originally developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while still at university. PageRank went on to become a website called Google, you may have heard of it. Unlike other search engines, which simply scanned the content of pages, PageRank analysed a page’s incoming links too – rightly assuming that a site with loads of incoming links from reputable websites is likely to be reputable too. The rest is – ahem – search history.

Napster (1999)

I’m not talking about the Napster, the subscription service, which pretty much has nothing to do with Shawn Fanning’s groundbreaking file-swapping software. Copyright protectors can say what they will about how Napster facilitated copyright violations on a massive scale (it had 60 million users at its zenith); however piracy was around before the Internet. Napster was eventually taken down. What was important about Napster was not it being an enabler for the proliferation of pirated media but its development of P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing. More importantly they forced Record labels and other content rights holders to radically rethink how they did business and give up on their reluctance of publishing on the Internet. P2P is already being used in many legitimate guises prompting the likes of Warner Brothers and Paramount to sign deals with upstarts BitTorrent and TV streamer Joost to distribute their content.

Roomba

Before it unveiled the Roomba Floorvac for the home market in 2002, iRobot built land-mine-clearing robots, which used the so-called crop circle algorithm. This very same technology was adapted to make the Roomba circle and sweep autonomously. Within a year of its launch, iRobot’s Roomba Floorvac was the top gift request on American wedding registries. Sales of the revolutionary vacuum cleaner surpassed the combined total number of all mobile robots previously ever sold.

Digital Video Recorder

When ownership of this gadget crept past 1 million in 2002, TV and advertising execs worried aloud that DVRs enabled viewers to skip commercials and would ultimately be a sure-fire killer of TV. “There’s no Santa Claus,” one CEO said. “If you don’t watch the commercials, someone’s going to have to pay for television and it’s going to be you.” Fast forward 10 years later and 40 percent of households have a DVR; whether out of habit or laziness almost 50 percent of DVR users still watch the ads; networks have, on average, seen ratings jump 10 percent, thanks to the DVR.

February 2012: A royal theme

Once again our designer in residence James Hock dedicated considerable time into creating our second window display for 2012.

It is a decidedly royal theme, quite appropriate as this week marked the start of Her Majesty’s 60th Jubilee.

I hope you are all amused by this.

With special thanks to James Hock for the Window Display and Niusia Winczewski for taking the photos.

Happy New Year everyone… yes.. it’s a bit late bit hey it’s still my first post for 2012. Besides, it’s not February yet. And to start the year(so to speak), this bunny is actually going to be doing something out of character- a review on a TV show/movie (I’m not sure what it is)

Black Mirror 1- National Anthem

First of all, I have to admit I haven’t got a clue who Charlie Brooker was (I do not own a TV and I only read books with pictures) and basically choose to watch it ‘cos everyone around me told me to (the TEA London crew included). And you know what they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. Besides, I seriously need to write something before the end of the month to fulfil my contract so hey, why not. So I sat down and turn Black Mirror 1 on as I enjoy my supper of pita bread, organic houmous, ham and cucumber.

The verdict:

Ahem.. am I the only person who think it’s shit (yes, that bad)? I am sorry but seriously? If it’s meant to be thought provoking and challenging, then it failed miserably. The only thing that was challenged was my patience. I think I understand what it is trying to do but is way off the mark. Yes, I get the ‘what if’ question, but in order for the ‘what if’ question to challenge our cerebellum, it needs to as grounded as possible i.e. to imitate life. But the real problem I have is not the question, but the answer. I couldn’t care less if the Prime Minister has to have sex with a pig, a toad or a unicorn, but the fact remain there is only one answer to the question. And it’s definitely not the one Mr. Brooker picked.

And when a solution is totally far fetched, the story becomes a mere fantasy. In this case, a fantasy with no action. Imagine LOTR(the trilogy) and Star Wars(all six) with no action at all, and now imagine having to watch them back-to-back. Need I say more?

Honestly, I think the show it’s just an exercise of vanity. Most of us are sensible enough to keep our dirty dark fantasy in our head where it would remain what it is- a fantasy. But Mr. Brooker on the other hand decided to turn it into a show and call it a dark drama. I think he even wrote himself a character in the show but that’s for you to decide.

Notes:

• TEA London totally disagree with me
• I made a comment likening the show to reading The Sun and apparently, that’s the point. But really, if I want to read The Sun, I would buy it. And if I don’t want to read it, why would I suddenly want to watch it on TV?
• What about the effect of Twitter, YouTube etc. ? Err.. is that not common knowledge? It’s 2012 for Pete’s sake!
• Someone said ‘Perhaps you are not the target audience”. I say, “ Perhaps, you are right”

BE

Disclaimer: The views of Bunny Ears is not necessarily that of TEA London’s; or that of anyone else’s for that matter.