Things I just don’t understand: unboxing

Unboxing, for those of you who don’t spend all day on gadget blogs, is the practice of taking a thing out of a box, taking photos of the whole process and posting them as a news story. It’s very popular and to me, completely incomprehensible.

Fast forward a few months.

Apple’s latest iPhone is not just out: it’s in your hand.

You take it home, carefully open the packaging and there it is, glistening in all its gadgety glory.

What now? Do you (a) start playing with it immediately? Or (b) drop your trousers and rub yourself against the cardboard box for a few hours?

The Goateesaver: now I’ve seen everything

It reflects your personality. It declares your individuality. Your goatee is much more than just facial hair, your goatee style helps fashion your identity. We understand its importance to you. That’s why we created the GoateeSaver shaving template, the innovative grooming tool designed to give you the perfect goatee every time you shave.

The model on the front page appears to have a squinty beard. I’m just saying.

Journalism: can pay, won’t pay?

Here’s a thing. If the sites you regularly visited started charging, would you stick with them?

I’ve been mulling over some stuff Rupert Murdoch has been saying. Essentially he’s arguing that the free, ad-supported content model for online news and magazines isn’t sustainable, which I think is right – The Guardian website is brilliant, but the Guardian business is pissing money – and that the future is going to come with a price tag.

Will it work?

I’m trying to imagine how you’d charge for online content. Straight news, presumably, would remain free – it’s not particularly unique – and everything else would be behind some kind of pay wall. Would it work? Would you flinch if, when you went to read a Charlie Brooker column, you had to pay 1p, or if Media Guardian was completely off-limits to non-subscribers? If Techradar made all its news free but its features, reviews and columns subscribers-only, would you stump up? If Q asked for 10p for its exclusive, in-depth interview with [insert your favourite pop star here] would you stump up the cash?

I’m not sure I would – not on a computer screen, anyway. I’ve written before about my truly terrifying newspaper and magazine bills, and I’m quite sure that I’d pay a sub for e-paper versions (provided the e-paper was good enough, like the new big Kindle for newspapers or a lighter, full colour version for mags). But I don’t think I’ve ever paid to read an article online. I tend to balk at registration, let alone payment. A bundle – pay for the print version, get free access to extra stuff online – might work, but online-only… I’m not convinced.

What about you? Can you imagine a way in which paying for content – with the exception of stuff that businesses will put on expenses, such as Concrete Today or whatever – could actually work?

High street electrical shops: bloody miserable

Der der der der der! I woke up this morning! Der der der der der! Went to a well known branch of a high street electrical chain! Der der der der der! It was rubbish! Der der der der der.

The slightly more coherent version is over here:

It’s a depressing old world at the moment.

The combination of a global recession, swine flu, impending climate Armageddon and the continuing existence of OK Magazine are enough to make anyone feel down.

But if you fancy cheering yourself up a bit then we have the answer: pop along to your nearest high street (or more likely, retail park) electrical retailer.

The wisdom of tramps

One of my world-weary .net columns has made its way online:

I’m not suggesting that social networks are bad. But again and again I’m finding that I seem to be living in a different world to the tech triumphalists [with] their sunny Californian positivity.

Just what the Internet needs right now: tax

From the You Couldn’t Make It Up department:

you’d need a very special brand of lunacy to decide that the best thing to do right now would be to put a tax on internet ads and broadband connections. Guess what? The government’s considering exactly that…

To appreciate the genius of the idea, you need to know what the monies raised will be used for. You’ll need to take a deep breath. Ready? Okay then. The broadband tax will make broadband more expensive in order to ensure that rolling out broadband isn’t too expensive.

The Internet ad tax will make advertising more expensive in order to help out broadcasters whose advertising revenues are plummeting because advertising is too expensive.

Free costs money. Who’s going to pay for it? Er, you

Me, on Techradar:

We’re so used to the idea that everything online should be free that we don’t even think about it.

Of course the iPlayer should give us HD video for free. Of course Spotify should stream music for free. Websites? Free. News? Free. Video? Free. Software? Free.

There’s only one problem. Free costs money, and there isn’t enough of it.

It’s quiet. Too quiet

Sorry the blog’s been heavy on the work side of things lately. I’m proud of the stuff I’ve linked to, but the blog’s been all links and not much drunken, incoherent ranting over the last few weeks. I’m the first to whinge about blogs that just link to the bloggers’ other work, but I haven’t had a lot of free time recently – so when I’m not working, I haven’t been online. Normal incoherent, knee-jerk, drunken, poorly argued, badly punctuated service will resume soon.

Who should you sneer at online?

It’s all very confusing: one of my recent .net columns is up on Techradar:

Print out this cut-out-and keep guide, pin it to your monitor and you’ll always know exactly who to look down on…

If you’re on Bebo, you’re 14. If you’re on MySpace, you’re not in a band and you’re not an imbecile, you’re pretending to be 14 and you’ll soon be on the front of the local paper.

One of the sites I slagged was Asmallworld, the exclusive social network for the filthy rich. I was amused when, just after this column hit print, a designer posted it on Asmallworld and the responses proved me right.