The NY Times Magazine this weekend is a special issue focusing on Screens. This fall issue is usually reserved for news from and about Hollywood and about movies and filmaking. This years issue involves all types of screen, mostly digital and the special concerns that come along with the proliferation of screens.Three good stories linked below and there are more NY Times Magazine Screens Issue

Kevin Kelly writes Becoming Screen Literate

Everywhere we look, we see screens. The other day I watched clips from a movie as I pumped gas into my car. The other night I saw a movie on the backseat of a plane. We will watch anywhere. Screens playing video pop up in the most unexpected places — like A.T.M. machines and supermarket checkout lines and tiny phones; some movie fans watch entire films in between calls. These ever-present screens have created an audience for very short moving pictures, as brief as three minutes, while cheap digital creation tools have empowered a new generation of filmmakers, who are rapidly filling up those screens. We are headed toward screen ubiquity.

Current Mad Men discuss all these screens, marketing, advertising and cross media communication. The last line of the quote below is the big takeaway.

Bastholm: Trevor Edwards, Nike’s main marketing guy, had a great quote. He said, “Nike’s not in the business of keeping media companies alive, we’re in the business of connecting with consumers.” That sums up digital pretty nicely.

Rasmussen: Clients are not saying, “Make us ads” or “Make us Web sites,” they’re saying, “Create interaction between our brand and our customers.” That’s our job now.

Clive Thompson writes in, If You Liked This, You’re Sure to Love That , the story behind the Netflix price and recommendation engines. Psychological hunches modeled with mathematics.

THE “NAPOLEON DYNAMITE” problem is driving Len Bertoni crazy. Bertoni is a 51-year-old “semiretired” computer scientist who lives an hour outside Pittsburgh. In the spring of 2007, his sister-in-law e-mailed him an intriguing bit of news: Netflix, the Web-based DVD-rental company, was holding a contest to try to improve Cinematch, its “recommendation engine.” The prize: $1 million.

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It was written on November 24th, 2008 at 1:28 am
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