Way of Life, "The Ultimate Habit Building App"

On New Year’s Day, instead of signing up for a gym or joining a writing group, I binge downloaded apps on my iPad. Perhaps it was the grease hangover from a night of eating only chicken wings in a comedy club upstairs from a Chinese restaurant, or perhaps it was the usual grad student anxiety made worse by habitual procrastination to Academic Coach Taylor memes. Whatever the cause of my guilt, my answer was in the App Store. So, I downloaded a bunch of apps: one to count calories, another to create ambient music in order work better, harder, and faster, and another to figure out what mental roadblocks weigh me down, in order to – as the app urges – “live better every day.” To top it off, I bought a habit building app that reminds me to record whether I counted my calories, whether I worked harder, better, and faster, and whether I overcame those mental roadblocks. The app charts my progress over time and shares it with my social networks.

This remedy is one part Lifehacker’s cult of productivity, half part Anthony Robbin’s self-help-ism, and two parts Kevin Kelly’s Quantified Self. And like eating fried chicken in the dark, this remedy instantly gratifies but never quite satisfies. Like other purported technological cure-alls today, this one is identified through a neologism, is criticized as a buzzword, and is hailed by proponents as a movement. “Gamification” is this process of using game logics such as points, badges, levels, challenges, and rewards to enhance traditionally non-game experiences. This experience might be uploading your fitness milestones onto Nike+  and syncing it with your workout on the Xbox 360 Kinect; it may be boosting productivity at a call center by using leaderboards and badges; it may be competing with your roommate for tangible rewards using a sophisticated system of rules to more pleasantly accomplish household chores. It is the carrot and the stick; it is putting more life into your life.

Nike+ Kinect Training

In all these examples, there is a representational structure linking reward to achievement, cause to effect – a structure that gamification enthusiasts claim produces unprecedented behavior change. Gamification allows you to incentivize anything in your (or your employees’) life to make it more fun, more efficient, more effective. In the words of Jane McGonigal – the movement’s high priestess who galvanized a legion of marketers and game designers in that TED talk – games can make a better world and make us “SuperBetter”™ – incidentally, also the name of her latest game.

At MIT’s Futures of Entertainment Conference, a panel of gaming experts playfully refused to respond to a persistent question rising to the top of a crowdsourced backchannel – “What is the future of Gamification?” Dismissed by these experts as a a fancy name for customer loyalty programs that are a perversion of game mechanics, and disdained as “marketing bullshit,” it is easy to write off gamification as the latest marketing buzzword. However, as media scholars have witnessed in half a decade of critical deconstruction of what was known as “Web 2.0,” technological buzzwords are never empty – they are ciphers for configurations of cultural values that iteratively shape relations between people, systems, and institutions.

The gamified website for NBC's The Office

On The Office’s gamified website, users signed up as employees of the fictional Dunder Mifflin paper company and earned “Schrute Bucks” for making comments, posting photos and performing tasks that built engagement and buzz for the show. It didn’t take long for the site to be populated with user-generated content. In an interview with Mashable, the gamification startup Bunchball raved that “NBC loved it because they were paying all these users fake money to do real work.” Unlike the conception of pure waste that game scholars such as Roger Caillois have used to define play, the playfulness of gamification is consummately productive.

According to the Pew center’s survey of experts, gamification may retreat as a fad, but only because its mechanisms will become more entrenched and quotidian – a trajectory that Web 2.0 took in becoming simply “social media.” Therefore, despite the fatigue from yet another marketing revolution, media scholars must map the contours of Gamification’s discourses as they erect and legitimate motivational structures for narrowly predetermined behaviors in our work, leisure, and psychic lives. These are structures that capture our playfulness, our guilt, our desires, our energies, and convert them into quantifiable outcomes such as engagement in platforms, loyalty to brands, user-generated data, and user-generated content. In Blade Runner (1982), the visionary doctor proclaimed that “commerce is our goal here at Tyrell; more human than human is our motto.” And as the film has taught three decades of moviegoers, we have to ask ourselves what it means to be human. Similarly, as we reinvent our lives through gamification, we have to ask ourselves what it means to be alive.

1. In-flight airline entertainment is at a crossroads, as airlines decide between spending on wifi upgrades to let people use their own devices and on airplane entertainment technology like seat-back systems. JetBlue is going for the wifi option, and Boeing is upgrading wifi systems on their planes, while a few international airlines are passing out pre-loaded iPads to keep passengers entertained. In addition to the ever-rising costs to access in-flight wifi, there’s also the matter of it inevitably being slow.

2. Netflix has new competition to keep an eye on: Sky made a deal in the UK with Warner Bros., the new Redbox-Verizon service plans a Christmas debut, there’s word Disney could jump into the fray soon, UltraViolet might finally make some noise, and cable VOD stands to encroach further on Netflix’s territory.

3. Predictions are starting for the Foreign Language Oscar race, but you can take Iran off the table for the back-to-back win because it will boycott the Oscars due to outrage over Innocence of Muslims. Or at least that’s the reasononing Iran’s culture minister claims. Alyssa Rosenberg thinks there might be more to it. Either way, Iran won’t be thrilled to hear that more film projects about Muhammad are in the works.

4. Theaters continue to struggle, with the iconic Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco and the Roxy Theater in Philadelphia darkening for good. A pair of designers believe new design thinking can help turn theaters around. Theater owners might also follow the branding advice of AMC Theaters’ Shane Adams, who impressed many on Twitter last week. At least AMC and other theaters can continue to charge whatever high prices they want for snacks, thanks to a lawsuit dismissal.

5. There was a huge deal in the music business, as Universal Music Group finalized the acquisition of EMI Music’s recorded music unit following European Union and US approval, which was contingent upon the new combo selling off some assets, including the contracts of some prominent artists. Even after that, Universal will end up with control of about 40% of the US and European music market and immense power over the future direction of the industry.

6. Alyssa Oursler insists that Pandora and other music services have nothing to worry about from the Universal deal, and Pandora’s attention is elsewhere right now anyway, specifically on supporting a proposed bill called The Internet Radio Fairness Act that would lower streaming service royalty fees to put them par with what satellite radio and cable companies pay. Independent stations also support the bill.

7. There’s a redesigned PlayStation 3 coming out, but don’t expect to get a cheaper deal on a previous model. You can expect more mobile options from Sony, and Electronic Arts is also trying to take advantage of multi-platform gaming. You’ll be able to play multiple Hobbit games on multiple platforms, and Sesame Street is also pointing the way toward the future of gaming.

8. Wal-mart won’t be selling Kindles anymore. The stated reason why is somewhat vague, and it could just have to do with frustration with Amazon. Some readers are getting frustrated with higher e-book prices from Amazon, while Amazon will try to hook more with Kindle Serials. Amazon will have a new competitor thanks to a new e-book venture formed by Barry Diller and Scott Rudin.

9. Conditions at China’s Foxconn factory, which makes the iPhone 5, got even worse, with a riot temporarily shutting down production. This has come at a tenuous time for China’s corporate environment and raises larger questions about Chinese manufacturing, while Foxconn’s owner is looking to expand his business efforts beyond the country. Apple insists it is improving foreign factory conditions.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past few weeks: Cheers Oral History, Live TV Controversy, Auction Plans, The CW Signs With Nielsen Online, Dish Talking Internet TV, Changing Households, Variety Buyer, Cable Battles Consoles, Emmys Coverage, Female Employment, Netflix & A&E, Measuring Social Buzz, Tweeting Isn’t Watching, Microsoft Hire, New BBC. 

1. There have been a flood of articles the past few weeks about how the conversion to digital projection threatens the future of small, independent theaters, historic movie houses, and drive-ins, and it’s been most interesting to see the local news stories about how individual theaters will cope and what the loss of a theater might mean to a local community, in an era when it’s already tough to get people out to theaters.

2. Because I skipped a week here, this is old news by this point, but still worth making sure you saw it: Joe Biden helped to negotiate a new deal with China that will allow more Hollywood films into the country, and even independent filmmakers got some bonuses from it. And you know what, I didn’t think I was going to get a Lionsgate reference in this time, but while googling for more info on the China deal, I saw that Lionsgate has signed a video-on-demand deal in China. Thanks to Lionsgate, the Chinese will get to see Dirty Dancing whenever they want!

3. Hollywood foreclosures are up, a consequence of new technologies, says Greg Sandoval, and there could be even more empty homes in LA in coming days as new laws requiring condoms are prompting the porn industry to threaten leaving the area, plus porn stars in particular are struggling financially.

4. Netflix has resurrected the Qwikster idea again, offering a DVD-only monthly plan, but unfortunately we don’t get to laugh at the dumb name this time around, as it doesn’t have any special name. Peter Kafka still sees this as Netflix not really caring about DVDs; indeed, CEO Reed Hastings keeps saying streaming is the end goal. Meanwhile, Blockbuster stores are just about at their end, period.

5. While Netflix is all about streaming, Warner Bros. is looking more to the cloud and to downloadable content. Wal-Mart is looking to help out the UltraViolet system with in-store instruction. And Facebook is looking to start a trend of social cinema by hosting movies on its site.

6. Spotify is still struggling to convince some musicians that their service is financially advantageous for artists, but music label chiefs are starting to be won over. Google Music isn’t working out as hoped yet, though, and we’re still waiting to see what Apple might offer in a streaming service within the current online music landscape.

7. Video game retail sales dropped significantly in January compared to last year, while social gaming from companies like Zynga, now trying to separate itself from Facebook, is more promising, and kids love the iPad for games.

8. A few weeks ago, I hadn’t even heard of Pinterest. Now I could fill a whole WAYM post with links to Pinterest articles alone. Of course, I probably don’t need to include them in WAYM because you’ve heard of nothing but Pinterest lately, but here are a few just in case you’ve somehow missed out on the Pinterest frenzy: Pinterest’s traffic has been huge and user engagement figures are high, especially among women. The service mainly makes money from affiliate links, and there’s some question about how much users realize this (and if they would care). Pinterest has been a boon for small businesses, but it perhaps has a porn problem on the horizon.

9. If Pinterest is for women, apparently Google+ is for men. Not that many men, though, as  Google+ continues to languish, unused by most. But some say Google doesn’t care if you use Google+ regularly or not. The point is getting you just to sign up so Google can grab your biographical data.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past few weeks: NBC Wins Sweeps (Sorta), Apple Being Tough, Aereo Streaming Service & Aereo Doomed & Aereo Sued, Fall Pilots & Pilot Analysis, Mad Men Marketing, DVR Use Stats, TV Everywhere,  GOP in HW, Doctor Who Fandom, Google’s TV Efforts, Decline of the Episode & More on Episodes, New Comcast Channels, Comcast Going After Netflix, BSkyB’s Internet TV Plan.

2. Lionsgate will test out a new low-budget release strategy, and a pair of theater chains plan independent releases of their own, which David Poland hopes is the good news for indie film it seems. Ted Hope and Cole Abaius are optimistic about the future of modest-budget indies, while Paul Thomas Anderson is just going straight to billionaires, who will be especially handy once all the state tax breaks dry up.

3. Blockbuster is seeking a buyer, which could put Carl Icahn back in the regular WAYM rotation. In related news, studio DVD money is plunging, online movie downloads are outpacing TV sales, Apple is still dominant in those downloads (though Walmart is inching closer), and Netflix users are #1 in loyalty.

4. At a time when nearly a quarter of global internet traffic involves illegal downloads, the White House is working up new digital copyright laws. I hope Obama’s better at this than the MPAA. Of course, a notable number of users say they don’t want to pirate, but the nonsense just drives them to it. One study found that it’s not music being pirated the most or even Hollywood movies. Of course, it’s porn, which has prompted porn industry lawsuits against sites like RedTube, but RedTube thus far has finished on top (no pun regretted).

5. Google caught Microsoft stealing its search results for Bing’s use by launching a sting operation that would make Henry Gondorff proud (if you don’t know who that is, you should google it, or you can bing it and probably get the same results). But some see Microsoft’s theft as smart, even as Google turned it into a PR coup. Flickr had a potential PR disaster with news it had accidentally deleted a user’s 3,400 photos, but it managed to recover all of them. The BBC had to be embarrassed when, after it scheduled 172 websites for deletion claiming it was necessary due to budget cuts, a clever netizen archived them all for only $3.99.

6. Many are using iPads to timeshift reading of online content throughout the day. Many fewer are reading the new iPad newspaper The Daily, which is most notable thus far for being buggy and not Flipboard. Magazines for iPad have mostly been a bust, though there’s hope for the new Sports Illustrated approach, which Apple could still screw up by getting all Appley and proprietary, as it has with e-book sales.

7. Twitter’s been busy lately, what with the Super Bowl and Egypt, plus there are rumors about charging users and a possible multi-billion dollar takeover. Facebook is one of Twitter’s potential suitors, and while Facebook has also been busy with Egypt, it has still managed to trademark “Face” in Europe and pick up the prostitute slack from Craigslist, despite only just turning seven years old.

8. Activision has made major cutbacks, the most publicly notable result being that Guitar Hero is dead (long live Guitar Hero!). Analysts are trying to make sense of Guitar Hero’s demise, blaming greed and the transitory nature of novelty, but the upside is we now have an awesome infographic about the life and death of Guitar Hero. In light of Guitar Hero’s fade, Rus McLaughlin fears for the future of Call of Duty.

9. Citigroup has taken over EMI, which Bobbie Johnson sees as just more music industry cluelessness; Ticketmaster has some new competition but also a new European acquisition; Spotify’s coming to the US, no really, it is, any time now, really soon; Pandora is going public; Warner and Sony Music are skidding; and the car cassette deck is dead (long live the car cassette deck!).

10. Some good News for TV Majors links from the past two weeks: Support CPB, Pilots Chart, FNL Reviews, Ad Ratings, Olbermann to Current & Olbermann Impact, CBS News Moves, Super Bowl Coverage, Ryan v. Eastin, Top Gear Trouble, Sky & Piracy, Mad Men Takedown, Money for Online, UK Sitcoms, Sheen’s Value.

1. This one deserves a standalone entry of its very own: Cheezburger Network, the company behind LOLcats, just raised $30 million in its first round of venture capital funding, and earned an entry in the Taiwanese animated news as a result.

2. The Internet has gotten really, really big, so big that we’re running out of old-school IP addresses (but surely not LOLcats). It’s not so big that it can’t be turned off by an entire country, but big enough that there are even ways to get around that. After all, Mathew Ingram argues, it’s not the particular site you access that matters, it’s the power of the whole network that can help foster revolutions. Many are now wondering if the internet could be turned off in the US.

3. We worry about online privacy, but few of us do much to protect ourselves. Maybe if privacy policies were in the form of cool infographics, that would help out. Google is “helping out” by making it difficult for us to search for BitTorrent sites, but don’t worry, you can still search for “how to kidnap a child,” among other delights. But you have to work harder to find “Egypt” in China right now.

4. While Steve Jobs’ health situation prompted a stock dip, Apple is otherwise flying high financially, with record earnings, revenue success in China, and big iPad and iPod Touch sales. iPads are also making a mark on global PC market share, and even the Mac is gaining again. Playboy won’t be available as an iPad app now, but Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily iPad-only newspaper app will launch next week.

5. Outside of the item that kiosks for the first time now have higher market share than rental stores, the ancillary market movie news has pretty much just become Netflix news: Netflix is now the number 2 video subscription service (behind Comcast); it has topped 20 million subscribers, with growth driven lately by streaming; and Facebook integration is coming next, as are more aggressive studio content fights. But it’s not all puppies and rainbow streams for Netflix: Comcast could be gunning for it, sustaining its quality content and growth will be a challenge, Amazon just got a step ahead in Europe, and some instant-watch customers are annoyed at the removal of the DVD queue from their connected devices.

6. The King’s Speech is gaining major Oscar momentum, racking up PGA and DGA award wins, and such indie films (or sorta-indie films, if you’re picky about whose money is behind them) are enjoying more Academy love than the majors. But A.O. Scott castigates the Academy for not giving enough love to foreign cinema, thus curbing its momentum in the U.S. Meanwhile, the Hollywood’s non-award-worthy films are getting more love overseas than they are at home. Unfortunately, no one loves British film…well, except for The King’s Speech (a sorta-British film, Harvey?).

7. The best and worst of the Sundance Film Festival has been on display for the past ten days, and the award winners were announced last night, while last year’s Sundance standouts have made a significant Oscar nominations impact. The deal-making at Sundance went pretty well and even headed in some new directions, and Ted Hope left Sundance significantly buoyed about the future of indie cinema (which includes the return of Good Machine).

8. With albums selling so poorly, music executives being tossed around, and the future of digital music still uncertain, many new ideas are coming along: “instant” singles, a digital music awards show, more niche retail stores, 360-degree music videos, happily dismissing MySpace, and Spotify, which has finally closed its first US deal (with Sony) but is wary of Apple.

9. The Nintendo 3DS is now officially on its way, at the same time some see the PSP as on its way out. Many employees are on their way out at Disney Interactive, as that division shifts from console games to online and mobile ones, and that also doesn’t speak well of Epic Mickey. Disney should think about hiring the eighth grader who developed a game that topped Angry Birds, and how about some games with female protagonists?

10. Good News for TV Majors links from the past two weeks: Done Deal, Egypt Coverage, Mobile Activities, The New NBCU, Ratings Primer, Hulu Future Options, Netflix Taking Aim, Twitter Feed, BBC Sitcom Debates, Olbermann’s Legacy, FCC Approves, WealthTV Sets Precedent, Golden TVeets.

What I discovered was that after the many changes in technology, when it comes to some video games you truly can never recapture them as they originally existed. It is over 16 years since Myst’s original release, and it is having a revival. In the last three years, it has been re-released on the Nintendo DS, the PSP, and, most recently, the iPhone/iPad OS. Having difficulty locating a copy for my computer, I ended up playing the iPhone OS version on my iPad. I was surprised by how easily the game had been adapted to the iPad’s input methods. Myst had always been notorious for its visual beauty, and it was deeply pleasurable to find myself traveling its luscious landscape. The system of touching where I wanted to go, what I wanted open, etc. was surprisingly seamless and intuitive; but I couldn’t shake the feeling that by giving up the mouse and keyboard, I had somehow radically changed the experience of the game.

This experience only increased when, after exploring an underground chamber, I had to run off to a meeting. The game saved at the exact point that I had finished playing, and it was all too easy to pull the game out as I was waiting for my student to arrive and quickly finish off the puzzle I had been doing. In the early 90s when the game was released, it required reasonably powerful computing power and a game play experience was bound by these technological limitations to particular spaces and, generally, dedicated play time. By choosing a version of the game that I could easily pick up and put down at a moment’s notice anywhere at all, I had changed it drastically. Now, instead of being a dedicated journey, it had become a world to explore and puzzles to do in the dull moments that are part of everyone’s life.

Perhaps the change that had most drastically altered my experience of Myst was the rapid and extensive growth of the internet. After about an hour and a half of play, I found myself stuck. This is not an unusual experience in Myst. Friends who had finished the game, and most hadn’t, had told me about creating huge bulletin boards and walls full of maps and post-it notes in order to keep track of the information necessary to finish. Most had eventually just given up. I had a choice that wasn’t available to them, a choice that as I played became increasingly difficult to resist. As the internet has grown, it has been a repository for what Pierre Lévy has called collective intelligence. Some of this collective intelligence has gathered around games. The internet is replete with detailed walk-throughs, explaining how to beat a game step by step. While many consider this cheating, something Mia Consolvo has effectively explored, others consider it a productive use of shared knowledge that makes video games accessible to more players. That was the logic that I used when I took my first peek at a Myst walk-through, quickly gathered the information that I needed to get the code for the next step of the game (all in less than five minutes), and returned to playing.

My attempt to discover Myst as it was discovered by so many others almost a decade ago was an enjoyable and exciting one. I finally understood why its graphics were considered so newsworthy and was impressed that even today the aesthetics of its world held up. While it was inescapable that I experienced this in the context of the many games that built on it and the tremendous evolution in graphics that followed it, it is notable that over fifteen years later its visuals hold up well. I was fascinated by the game’s incorporation of live action video, something that has not been taken up by other games on a large scale, and found it very effective. While in the time I had, even with cheating, I was not able to find my way off the island (which reminds me of the next important thing that I missed), I did feel that I had begun to see what had made the game so powerful at the time and appealing enough to continue into the new millennium. But even more distinctly, I realized that I, and the many others who were playing for the first time on PSPs and iPhones, had not really had the Myst experience and that, when technology had changed so drastically , I probably never would.

1. Jeff Price has launched a six-part series looking at the state of the music industry, from revenue to piracy and everything in between. Former UK music exec Rob Dickens suggests radically lowering the price of music to save it from piracy and boost revenue, an idea which Ian S. Port agrees with and insists won’t devalue music. Google is testing a new search engine designed to curb digital music piracy in India, but the music industry doesn’t think Google is doing enough to fight piracy.

2. Google is trying to keep up with Apple in mobile activations, but despite Google’s impressive revenue results lately, Henry Blodget insists the company is just a one-trick pony of search wonders. Pretty good trick, though, like Google Instant, which is garnering fans, if not more revenue. Google has figured out another trick: avoiding paying taxes thanks to a complicated overseas scheme.

3. Apple has tons of cash laying around, so if I was the 9-year-old iPod, I’d ask for a really expensive birthday present (maybe an iPad?). It’s still too early to tell if the iPad will make a ton of cash from magazine and newspaper sales but apps sales for Apple devices have reached the 7 billion mark, and a Nielsen study shows consumers increasingly connected to such devices. Apple needs to watch out, though, because its fart app supremacy may be in jeopardy. (I’d bet the 9-year-old has suggestions for improvement there.)

4. New York Times ad dollars have declined, as have magazine launches this year, and online advertising is thriving, but UK journalist Peter Preston says the evidence just isn’t there to prove that the internet is killing print. Also counter to what most would assume, a market analyst study claims that hard news generates more ad revenue online than LiLo news. And I’m sure we’d all be in much better moods for clicking on ads if newspapers could figure out better ways to counter abusive commenters.

5. The Weinstein Co. has hired a new production president, who will hopefully get them back on the award-winning track. Weinstein Co. does have a few films nominated for the Gotham Awards, which apparently hosts a great party. The Weinsteins can fill hours of cocktail conversation at the party with tales of their battle against an NC-17 rating for Blue Valentine. Also a good Gotham Awards party conversation starter: the MPAA ratings and male nudity. If Ken Loach shows up at the party, be sure to have a big drink handy; he might talk your ear off about how cinema has been debased by Hollywood and TV.

6. The two studio news stories I haven’t linked to lately because I got bored of hearing about them have now threatened to become one: MGM and Lionsgate. Hearing nothing but glowing praise for Pixar can get a little boring, but here comes a little bad press to shake things up: accusations of sexism for the firing of its first female director. Steven Zeitchik has some info on movies you’ll never hear from again, and you’ll likely be hearing more about 3D sound — literally! Ha! See what I did there?

7. Netflix this, Netflix that, Netflix the other. Blockbuster? Not so much. Sorry ‘bout that, DVDs and video stores. And sorry studios, you coulda had a piece of that.

8. Redbox is entering the video game rental business, while game sales continue to decline, and EA’s stock price took a hit allegedly due to negative Medal of Honor reviews. Maybe EA should follow the Kinect’s lead and have Oprah give it away to her audience; I’d buy stock in whatever it is that makes people act like that. But such passion raises a question: should game developers be swayed by fan input?

9. Twitter is popular in Brazil, but not at the Washington Post, and Twitter is more popular than Facebook for click-throughs. Facebook Places has not hurt the popularity of Foursquare yet, nor has The Social Network hurt Facebook’s popularity. And internet popularity might be measured more by social networking than searching soon, as long as we’re not measuring popularity by actual profits.

10. Some good News for TV Majors links from the last two weeks: Ratings Delineation, Mad Men finale reviews and good tweets, Cable & Satellite Future, Albrecht Profile, BBC Freezing the Fee, Over-the-Top Competitors, Glee Cast in GQ, Quitting Cable, Networks Block Google, Creator Demands.

1. Digg is trying to renew its influence with a redesign, Perez Hilton might be losing his influence, and the influence of blogs in general could be fading. Conversely, user-generated porn is on the rise (be on the lookout for the .xxx domain). And whether it’s used to access news, celebrity gossip, or porn, every citizen in Finland now has the legal right to broadband.

2. Google is gunning for Facebook, though tech insiders say its odds are long. Google is also still trying to make things work with China; MG Siegler is disappointed with Google’s concessions therein. Finally, Google Wave is now open to everyone (now that no one cares about it anymore), and the company is now enabling same-sex domestic partner health benefits for employees.

3. The FTC ordered Twitter to be more careful with user information and account security, which is ever more important, as the social media service is growing across the globe (heads up, Mark Zuckerberg). This growth is also reflected in the number of cool stories about Twitter this fortnight, including about the use of the hashtag, how tweeting is physiologically like falling in love, the importance of tweet cred, Twitter scholarship, Coke’s success with Twitter ads, and how Twitter has transformed NBA free agency.

4. There was a bunch of news about the dynamic between print and online this fortnight, most of which you heard plenty about (such as Rolling Stone sitting on the McChrystal story and seeing online outlets run with – or steal – it), but there were a few other stories that might have gone under your radar: newspapers’ share of revenue from digital advertising is declining; traditional media is having fun with Tumblrs; iPad magazines aren’t impressing yet and aren’t effectively social; YouTube trumped traditional media with the news that BP has been burning up turtles; and News Corp.’s paywall for online access to The Times is now up, a move Steve Blacker says Rolling Stone should take note of.

5. Pixar rules, Jonah Hex drools. The U.S. government cracks down, a file sharer battles back. A Fox marketing executive takes the heat for Knight and Day, but Cruise’s stardom likely fights on for another day. Screenwriters are struggling to find work, while Fox struggles to treat screenwriters like they matter.

6. indieWire offers a mid-year report on the specialty box office; the foreign-language Oscar winner The Secret in their Eyes could end up earning an impressive $7 million, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is headed toward becoming one of the 25 highest-grossing foreign-language films of all time. Restrepo and Cyrus also saw impressive earnings in recent weeks.

7. DVD’s days as a regular WAYM entry may be numbered: Blockbuster is being dropped from the NYSE due to its low share price (though the company has been granted more time by lenders to restructure its debt), Apple is backing streaming video online over Blu-ray, Ryan Lawler sees Hulu Plus as a DVD killer, and Will Richmond agrees with Jeffrey Katzenberg that DVD ownership may soon be a thing of the past.

8. Video games as a business: Console sales are down but games were up slightly in May, Microsoft says it’s going to wait and see on 3D, and UK tax relief for the games industry has been canceled. Video games as art: Tom Bissell argues that video games deserve more respect, Roger Ebert relented in his games-aren’t-art battle but gamer Gus Mastrapa was disappointed that he did, and Dennis Scimeca has a mixed response to a handful of video games presented as art exhibits.

9. Two researchers who argued back in 2004 that peer-to-peer file-sharing did not have a negative impact on recorded music sales have now reversed their position, while T Bone Burnett decries the fact that creators aren’t being rewarded financially for their music. A new company has cropped up to help boost that reward by licensing music for YouTube videos, and Peter Kafka says even though digital music distribution is a terrible business. Google is right to get into it.

10. Some good News for TV Majors links (and please note the new URL at the site – the “blogspot” is out): Pay TV Doing Fine, Network Summer, Captive Audiences, Daily Show & Women, Hulu Plus, Ratings Kick, Viacom Loses, Multi-Cam Dominance, Til Death Weirdness, Treme Finale, Franco Returns.

That said, don’t for a second think that I’m even considering taking advantage of Apple’s 14-day return policy. For although there’s a lot that my iPad can’t do, there are a few things that it does very well. By far the iPad’s greatest virtue is its form. It’s as if it had been designed specifically to be used in places and situations where laptops can be used only awkwardly, for example, in bed. Laptops are a horrible fit for the bedroom – they can be scalding hot, they fill darkened rooms with light, and they require that you sit up while using them. None of this is the case with the iPad. Its shape is more like a book than a laptop, and it does not overheat. Moreover, there’s an external button that prevents the screen orientation from rotating automatically, allowing for hassle-free viewing and surfing in the prone position. If I didn’t know better, I might just think that Apple developed the iPad solely to solve the pressing dilemma of how to transform the bedroom into a site where members of the digerati may maintain maximum productivity and uninterrupted connectivity, all without waking up their significant others. (Fittingly, the iPad’s “performance” in the bedroom has factored prominently in early reviews of the device. In a series of tweets, a swooning David Carr of the New York Times raved about using the “sexy” iPad in bed, only later to suffer some good-natured ribbing for his pillow talk at the hands of Gawker.)

The iPod’s biggest selling point is not that it will replace your laptop, but that its the furthest thing from a laptop. Even so, the better acquainted I become with my iPad, the more convinced I become that the laptop isn’t necessarily the best point of reference for trying to figure out what the iPad is (or isn’t). I’d suggest a more relevant comparison remains to be made with the remote control. The iPad is a colossally expensive and yet delightfully satisfying remote control that will find its niche as an interface connecting users with content residing on more full-featured devices. This isn’t just another way of saying that it will factor prominently in the cloud computing “revolution.” Rather, I’d suggest that, like the remote control, the iPad’s “killer app” very well may be television.

Already I’m using my iPad to control my television set (via an app that augments my TiVo remote control with a full QWERTY keyboard); to watch television programs (via Netflix’s and ABC’s free streaming video apps); and to talk about television via Facebook and Twitter. Granted, prior to April 3 I did all of the same things on my laptop. If the iPad is to become the next iPhone (as opposed to the next Apple TV), it will be because it somehow enhances an experience that a growing number of viewers already are well acquainted with: that of dividing their attention between their television sets and their laptops.

So far, my sense is that the iPad enhances this experience by taking something away from it – namely, the laptop. Personally, I’ve always had mixed feelings about the laptop in the living room. Simply put, watching television with my MacBook in my lap has always felt a little bit like work: the posture and the gestures it involves make me feel as if I’m still at my desk writing about television as opposed to on my couch tweeting about it. The iPad, on the other hand, is far less obtrusive, and far more flexible. I can sprawl out with it on the couch without fear of receiving third degree burns. I can take it with me in the kitchen (or, full disclosure, the bathroom) during commercial breaks. Perhaps best of all, there’s no mistaking what I do on the iPad with what I do on the MacBook: the former’s multitouch interface and single-task architecture is different enough from the latter’s graphical user interface to trick me into feeling as if there actually remains some semblance of a division between my labor and my leisure. And so after only two nights in my home my iPad has earned itself a place of pride on the coffee table, where it sits right next to all the other remote controls.