paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
September 1999: Just the fax ma'am. Just the fax.
Hardly an hour passes that our fax machine doesn't vomit some hastily thrown together 'shot (yes, I said 'shot) onto my desk. I read some of them, and others just get to accompany me to the little boys room when we've run out of toilet tissue. Love them or hate them- Ahem, hate them or hate them, fax-shots are just a sales tool like any other. They just happen to be one that destroys rainforests. A bleary three page list of poorly described components boasting prices 50% higher than I already pay and large areas of black shouldn't cause a red mist to descend on me. Yet it does. At least when you get junk mail it's at someone else's expense. They've had to pay printing and postage costs and so they'll be trying to be vaguely interesting and worthwhile. When some database toting oik faxes me It's muggins who picks up his printing costs. Our old HP-Fax is getting through cartridges like they're going out of fashion. And in this thoroughly modern world it doesn't stop there. Spam e-mail is rife too. CLICK HERE FOR XXX TEEN ACTION is a pain in the arse but poses no discernible threat to the flora and fauna of the Amazon basin. Our own environmentally friendly fax-shots are kept to a single page and contain a minimum of 45% re-cycled prices.
Hey! Here comes the point!
Your own web-site for just £499! That was the tempting offer promoted on a recent unsolicited fax from 'Internet Gurus' to our offices. For your half-grand you get four, yes, FOUR (count 'em!) pages and four photographs of your choice! Ok, perhaps not a steaming hot deal for the net literate likes of you and I, but this fax does spotlight a very rapidly expanding and lucrative area of I.T. All those IBM e-commerce ads and www.addresses@splashed.com all over our televisions are starting to make fat bald men in Jaguars want a net presence. They don't know what they'll do with their site, they just know they want one. Domain names are now £50 or less, you'll find free hosting and all you need is Microsoft Publisher 97 to painlessly write HTML. The only other ingredients you need are an appointment, a metallic grey Ford Focus, a sharp suit and the feigned air of someone who knows all about Frames and Java. I kid-ye-not. Five hundred quid for a days work? Who's clock do I have to err, wind? Even my dear old dad (XJS owner) is setting up a site to promote his Automobilia (old petrol pump globes, enamel signs and the like) business to the yanks and Japanese who kill for a slice of pre-war English motoring heritage. The same heritage that fifty years ago they were trying to bomb!*
Like the fax machine boom of the 80's, the web-site will be the 'must-have' business tool of the '00's. And this time absolutely no trees have to die.
Quick, I need an idea…
The entertainment industries borders are blurring. Where once stood separate entities called Games, Films and Music, there now stands a gestalt entertainment creature with writhing tentacles and big staring eyes on stalks. It's going to get even worse when they're all on the same DVD format. We've enjoyed A Bugs Life, The Fifth Element and Golden Eye, both as a film and a game, any of which you could call a modern classic. This line of reasoning led me to a startling thought. The greatest untapped source of game ideas has to be pre-console films. Extending this thought, logically, the pinnacle of pre-console-moviedom must be The Italian Job. I was going to demand that someone quickly buy and develop the licence, but reading MCV at the weekend, I see SCi has done just that. Now I have to re-write this whole paragraph at short notice. I've a hundred words to find and I've run out of ideas. Unusually, no one has upset me this month and I've no exciting product news to make you swoon. So instead, I'll 'fill' by recall a conversation I had a month or so ago when I walked into my local used game dealer:
"I'd like South Park please", I asked, proffering debit card.
"You write for the Indie magazine, don't you?" He said, recognising my 'trademark' yellow shirt and baldness.
"Errr, yes, the odd bit", I replied, blushing daintily.
"It's an excellent mag. You're page is always a good read."
"Thanks", I said, maintaining my relaxed composure as my head swelled.
"This is really neat, It's almost as cool as when we had Dave Lee Travis in here."
I paid and left, ego dragging along on the dusty floor behind me.
*This is technically a xenophobic lie.
I hope this is ok for you. If it's 'pants' let me know and I'll make sure someone upsets me, so that I can use my angst like an old blues singer to write something of beauty, with spleen venting and name calling.