As some of you may have heard the new Transformer movie is less than a year away and already the buzz is building the blogosphere. So for those who came in late - trusty old Wikipedia will give you a primer on the Optimus Prime and Cybertron - so I am going to save my breath for there is a lot of ground to cover here.

 

Essentially, the Transformers are the zenith of the geek fantasy. The ultimate incarnation of the uber-gadget. The epitome of

multifunctional capability. The all-in-one super tool. The I could throw out a few dozen more metaphors, but the idea here is that a core and somewhat primal geek need/want/obsession for cool shiny things (or more accurately called CSOs - cool shiny objects) are at the heart of innovation - they are the central force that drives the technology industry. This is a whole new emerging area of behavioral economics and I will deal with this in a subsequent post. And most device makers don't seem to get this.

 

For now I will keep this simple. Transformers like Bumblebee (see really cool video here) are convergence devices. With one major distinction - they are full-functionality no compromise convergence devices. The Bumblebee for example is a car *and* a robot. It is not a half-assed car-robot. At any given point in time, it is either a robot *or* it is a car. It is not a car-bot. It is not a robo-car. This, dear reader, is a critical point to make note of.

 

To illustrate, my Samsung i730 is also a convergence device, but it is no Bumblebee. It is a PDA that thinks its a phone. Its a phone that does not feel responsible enough to bring missed calls to attention. It tries to be a note-taking "pocket-PC" but fails misserably in its attempt. I even tried using Tengo- which BTW is amazing and helps a lot - but still cannot pull the i730 across the twin chasms of compromise and inelegance.

 

Now, on the other hand, we have the iPod. Which is very very good, but is no convergence device. It does not even make the pretense. It sets modest expectations and overdelivers. The i730 is an aspiring super-device but falls short. But I make the case that the i730 is disruptive or hints towards something disruptive (more on this in later posts). But before this disruptive technology hits mainstream, device makers and designers have a lot to learn from the no-compromise life of Optimus Prime.  If the boys at Samsung and their ilk of convergence device makers learn from the Transformers heres what we would have:

 

We would have 10 megapixel camera phones with retractable 20x zooms that carry 500GB of flash memory and pack the wallop of a pentium 4. And they would have a big keyboard that folds into the size of my thumbnail. Jokes aside, the key design principle would be that it would do one thing at a time. It would be one thing at a time. It would become other things at other times. It would mean taking a picture with the Cam-phone-pc-pmp in the "camera" mode in which this thing will need to look like a camera, walk like a camera and talk like a camera. Duh! But, once the picture is taken it will retract its 10 inch zoom, fold into half its size and become a scaled down laptop. Then, once the picture is emailed, it will then fold into itself into half its size again, become a phone the size of a snickers bar, sit quitely and pretend it knows nothing about taking pictures. That my friends will make me throw out my ipod. My Canon G5, my i730 and my Dell along with it. I know I would. I know Homer would. I know all my friends would. And that is a big market. Hope the Zune guys are listening.

 

[To learn more about Zune go here and here. To learn more about the iPod... well if you don't know about the iPod this blog post is probably a complete waste of your time]

 

Finally, June 28th was here. And I joined the throng of eager fans to see the new Superman movie...

 

(quick detour)So, whats common to Superman and Hulk? (Trick question alert)

If you said they are both super-heroes, you can consider yourself among those quick-finger types who take great pleaure in stating the obvious. Superman and Hulk ("The" Hulk?) are superheroes of vastly different natures, once you peer beneath the superficial similarities. The Hulk is a brooding beast whose involuntary powers are a result of a freak reaction to radiation exposure. (BTW have you wondered how the Hulk's underpants are the only piece of his clothing thats never torn to shreds?) Superman, on the other hand is the epitome of controlled super-powers. He can turn on and off his laser +  x-ray vision + superhearing +.... at will. Equally important Superman rarely goes into a rage - he is super polite as one would expect. Ok. Now that you are convinced that this actually a much deeper question, I will venture an answer that has been a source of much bother for me. Here it is:

 

They both require enormous talent- enormous talent or a lack there of to screw up movies about them. Both are fantastic characters with amazing adventures in the comics, that it takes enormous talent (of the order of Bryan Singer and Ang Lee - granted they have made better movies) to screw up the movie. Superman was a big let down for me. Tepid. Lukewarm. Uninspiring. Final nail on the coffin - worse than The Hulk along multiple dimensions!

 

Before you hang out your jaw in disbelief, heres why:

1. There was but a smattering of the super-action that I had eagerly expected. Other than the air-plane scene (which, if you think about it is actually pretty tame by Superman standards) there was much else if you discount the rolling ball that Superman catches. This is the kind of stuff that Superman normally does in between fixing an earthquake in the Pacific and an impending meteor crash from the far edge of the galaxy. Ho hum.

2. The climax invloves throwing a big rock into Space. Thats the best they could come up with?! The million dollar story writers in Hollywood?

3. Too much Lois Lane. Waaay too much. They should have named the movie "Lois Lane Returns" - atleast the right expectations would have been set. This is the same gripe I had with the Hulk. We want to see the superhero do some super stuff - not sit through 2 hours of psychoanalysis of their troubled girlfriends! Ever since Spiderman set a precedent for the sensitive side of Superheroes and character building, every super-hero movie wants to be a taken as seriously as emotional drama.

4. Finally - the stupidity. Lex stabs Supe with a shard of Kryptonite. The best doctors in Metropolis are unable to help. Theres even a stupid nurse trying to push a needle into the man of steel only to see it break. Just take the freaking Kryptonite out, leave Superman out to dry. He will get better in a matter of minutes and quietly fly away. Duh!

 

I could go on, but this level of mediocrity has already upset me too much. Great opportunity missed to make a worthwhile Superman movie. (BTW Routh is good. Bosworth sucks)

Bryan and Ang - I want my tickets refunded.

 

 

Consider this.

 

Wayne industries. A huge manufacturing-based corporation. Huge R&D spend on products that never make it to mass production. Massive internal stakeholder conflicts. A CEO/major stockholder whose priorities lie ourside of the business.

 

If you are not with me it, let me refresh your memory to where it all begins. And for those who lack the background knowledge on Wayne Industries, heres the quick overview.

 

According to the recently leaked internal audit of Wayne Industries by the accounting firm PWC we now have great insight into the internal workings and management of Wayne Industries, a once successful icon of American enterprise. According to the auditors Wayne Industries barely manages to keep within the boundaries of GAAP in the process of financing Mr. Bruce Wayne numerours personal activities and interests (heir to the Wayne empire). This includes the jet (rocket?) plane, the rocket-powered car and numerous other expensive-to-develop hi-tech devices. Further expenses accrue from equipping Mr. Wayne's close friend and partner Mr. Dick Grayson with similar state-of-the-art toys. While the actual equipment runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars, if we include other overhead such as the R&D costs, the custom production facilities and the ongoing maintaenance (apparently Mr. Wyane's personal aircraft is a gas-guzzler even by supersonic standards because of the extensive use of after-burners and heavy armour) the total tally runs into several times that amount. And it does not end there. In order to ensure the high level of secrecy Mr.Wayne likes to maintain, the company uses a very inefficient and highly complex procurement system - orders for low-voume custom work are massively inflated to make these look like mass-production contracts. The leaked report highlights one glaring example of this when Wayne Industries placed an order for 10,000 units of special head-wear with a Chinese company, when infact the actual need was for one unit! Further the memo indicates that this order is in direct violation of the stated corporate policy against outsourcing to China. Holy Batsh*&!!

 

 

Which brings me to the whole point of this post. Here you have a large manufacturing company, a once magnificent symbol of entreprenurial spirit that is being hit by macro-economic forces such as out-sourcing, not to mention mis-management. You get the picture. Now, put yourself in Batman's shoes. If you had to maintain this rather expensive crime-fighting lifestyle, what would be the *minimum* cash-flow you would need? I am not asking you to throw out the Rolls and the chaffeur, but does the situation not warrant a plan?

One of those days when you are in front of the T.V. randomly flipping channels in a mindless sort of way. And you stumble across a movie you last saw ages ago. In this particular case the movie was Escape from New York. This is a cheesy (although far less cheesy than its ridiculously bad sequel), yet memorable movie if only for its amazingly poor vision at predicting the future of communication technology. (yes theres a geek in me)

 

Interestingly this movie was made in 1981, 15 years before the sequel. The special effects in the sequel (Escape from LA) are sooo bad that they make the original look like a George Lucas production - in reality the effects in  Escape from New York is pretty bad - the gliders look plastic toys - which they obviously are. Of note is that Ernest Borgnine and Isaac Hayes are in the movie along with Lee Van Cleef. And Pam Grier is in the sequel to this John Carpenter series. Looks like John Carpenter finds a role for her in two of his particularly bad movies. No points for finding out the other. One surprising thing is Kurt Russel looks pretty much the same in the 2 movies almost 15 years apart!

 

One final note - aren't you always surprised by how movies (especially sci-fi) you thought were great as a kid often end up being cheesy shadows of whats in your memory?