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October 12, 2004
ToorCon, SpaceshipOne Launch, and the Long Tail Effect of Media Retail
That was a long hiatus from blogging for me. A lot of events have passed since late August. A few of us from Syn Ack Labs presented CUTLASS at
ToorCon 2004 in late September. The talk went well, although CUTLASS is still far from being finished.
After ToorCon, Todd and I headed up to the Mojave Desert area to see the first launch attempt for SpaceshipOne, which took place on September 29, 2004.
The neat thing is, we were part of history in the making, as it turned out, since the SpaceshipOne team won the coveted X-Prize. Todd made a great movie of the event.
As part of that brief trip, we also got the chance to get together with our friends Patty and Gary, who took us to Gyu-Kaku for dinner. We've never
had Yakiniku barbeque before, so I will be writing a review on that shortly. We also went to a Brazilian Churrasco restaurant, which was quite a carnivorous experience. After that, I just needed to take a break from eating meat for a few days. Whew.
So, what's up for October? There's still a lot of work to be done for CUTLASS. I guess CUTLASS is really the reason why I hadn't been working on blogs lately. There's an interesting article from Wired magazine I just finished reading about the Long Tail effect of media retail. Apparently, contrary to popular belief, consumers do not like being confined to read, listen, and watch only the top-selling books, music, and movies. This gives companies like Amazon.com and Apple (iTunes) their successes in selling less popular media. This success is due to the Long Tail effect.
Posted by Kathy at October 12, 2004 10:24 PM