The movie has everything—Joss Whedon directing off a terrific screenplay he co-authored, a huge budget with huge stars, and, startlingly for a popcorn movie, emotional arcs for several of the main characters.

However, what has sent Avengers directly into my top 5 list of all time best superhero movies is how it culminates the previous four Paramount Pictures movies—Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor & Captain America.

Each of those movies seeded hints about this movies that followed and about Avengers, and fans like me stuck around all the way through the credits on each film to see the parting hints.

You don’t have to have seen any of the previous movies to thoroughly enjoy Avengers, but if you have seen any or all of the earlier movies your pleasure will be amplified by your memories of the earlier movies.

Avengers’ optional relationship to its predecessors makes this series different than, for example, The Matrix series where by the third movie nothing much made sense if you hadn’t seen the first two, played the video game and read the comic book (Henry Jenkins wonderfully describes all this in his book Convergence Culture.)

This amplification is the topic that I spent eight years of my life researching in a different context—Shakespeare’s audience. (See the top video on this blog or the summary of my doctoral dissertation under “Writing” for more.)

It’s a complicated trick to smuggle extra experience into a movie to thrill the fans that won’t distract the uninitiated. Similar to but different than pop cultural throwaways like — @CNNLADavid’s favorite line, “Better clench up, Legolas.” Said to Hawkeye by Iron Man as they zoom roof ward, it’s a one-second tribute to The Lord of the Rings’ elven archer from another fan-fave movie cycle.

What’s different about in-series amplification is that it lasts: 100 years from now a viewer of The Avengers who has seen the previous movies will have the amplified experience, whereas the Legolas throwaway is contingent on different knowledge.

For those of you (anyone? anyone?) who care about good old-fashioned aesthetics, this phenomenon is the cinematic version of what Stephen Pepper described as “funding” in his classic book “The Basis of Criticism in the Arts” (1949), only he was writing about painting and how the second time (T2) you see the Mona Lisa you are actually viewing both the painting itself and your earlier experience (T1), and the third time it’s T3 + T2 + T1, and so on.  (I’ve written about this here before: click the “Cognitive Funding” tab to the right to find those posts.)

Moving on to my top 5 list of super hero movies and why

Mystery Men (1999): Hysterical and brilliantly cast exploration of every comic book cliché and why they’re still powerful even though cliché. A passion project for everyone involved, it was probably the only superhero team movie to work well before Avengers.

Superman 2 (1980): Like “Empire Strikes Back” in the Star Wars series, and Spider-Man 2, the second movie with Christopher Reeve surpassed #1 in this series by light years when it came to the story. Although the first Superman had the inspiring flight sequences and John William’s magnificent score, it was in essence a two hour preview for Superman 2, which still blows me away.

Iron Man (2008): The movie so effectively deployed star Robert Downey Jr.’s real-life brilliant, charismatic bad boy persona into the Tony Stark protagonist that it took my breath away, and having both Downey and Jeff Bridges square off in the movie was like the Foreman vs. Ali “Rumble in the Jungle” back in 1974—two titans.

Dark Knight (2008): Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker was so intense that it killed him. Unlike earlier portrayals across all media, Christopher Nolan’s movie didn’t try to explain The Joker or to resolve his paradoxes—each time the Joker explained how he came to be the story failed to match the earlier version. It’s a brilliant exercise in Keatsian “Negative Capability.” That paradox was the engine that drove the movie, poised in perfect tension with the equally powerful engine of Batman’s motivation to fight the evil that killed his parents. Batman is the only superhero whose origin story and motivation are identical, and it’s an inexhaustible supply of narrative.

Avengers (2012): See the first half of this post: it’s not just one movie—it’s five blockbusters tied together.

What movies are on your list? Please share in comments.

Background: Amazon first transformed book buying, then all retail, then the books themselves, then added cloud computing, and now they’ve set their sites on digital advertising. How will their combination of customer reach, technology and personalization to serve brands? To paraphrase Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton, can Amazon own the entire value chain?

Here’s a sample question to get your juices flowing:

“How should marketers be thinking about Amazon in their media mix – can it be both brand and e-commerce?”

Can you ask a better one?

See you at ad:tech San Francisco!

“Facebook is like a tattoo. Make it trashy and it will keep you from getting jobs in the future. Keep it classy and it will be something you have your whole life.”

This is one smart kid. I’m continually impressed by her take on the mediasphere that surrounds her, and asked her permission to share this comparison with the world. She kindly granted it.

That was less than 12 hours ago & I’m totally frazzled.

Unlike most of my posts, this has nothing to do with media– think of it as highly individualized anthropology.  Cue the Michael Jackson music because I’m looking at the Dad in the Mirror.

Here’s my afternoon’s itinerary:

3:10pm: Left house to pick up my kids (H, the 10 year old girl; W, the 6 year old boy) and W’s friend P (also 6).  It’s pouring rain.  I remember to get the extra booster chair for P out of my car and take Kathi’s SUV.  We have P because it is our turn for Tae Kwon Do carpool.

3:20pm: There is no parking near the school.  I park two blocks away.  It is pouring rain. Yes, I know I already said that but it stays annoying so I’ll keep saying it.

3:25pm: 47 moms and 3 dads cluster around the front of the school. When I join my fellow dads I quip, “look, we’re in the dad ghetto.” “We should get a velvet rope around us,” one other dad says.  “Yes,” I reply. “But it’s to keep us out, not to keep them in.”  H emerges.  Big hug.  Seeing no W or P she says, “Oh! they must be in the bus line,” and disappears to fetch them.  IThe moment she is out of sight W and P show up.  Before they can dive into the educational labyrinth searching for H my hands arrest their movement. “No, we’re just going to wait here.”  Five minutes later H emerges, “Ah! there you are.”  We walk to the car.  It’s pouring rain.

3:45pm: Leaving W and P to play with Legos in the car, I take H into her choir practice through the — you guessed it — pouring rain.  Aaron, the talented choir leader, tells me that practice will end at 5:30pm.  This shatters my evening’s plan as I had everything scheduled around a 6:00pm end time.  I am now running late.  I hate running late.  I race to the SUV.

3:55pm: W and P place their orders at Señor Taco, the surprisingly good local joint.  We then dart to Petco to collect dog food.

4:05pm: Burritos and quesadilla acquired, we zoom back to our house.  It’s pouring rain.

4:15pm: W and P play 30 minutes of “Smash Bros. Brawl” on the Wii, eat dinner, change to Tae Kwon Do uniforms.

5:15pm: We jump back in the car and zoom back to the choir practice.  It’s pouring rain.  While driving I call in another order to Señor Taco — “Hi, Mary, it’s me again.”  “Hi Brad!” — this time dinner for H and for me.  I did it this way so that everybody’s food would be fresh upon dining.

5:30pm: H’s practice isn’t over.  I check on the boys.  There is no blood coating the windows of the car from the inside.  Sometimes in life you have to settle.

5:35pm: It still isn’t over.  I feel pressure in my forehead.  Is it a migraine?  a stroke?

5:40pm: Choir practice ends.  The stroke subsides, for now, and I chivvy H into the car through the pouring rain.  As she climbs in, one of her fingers floats near W. So — of course, how can I not have foreseen this? — W bites H’s finger.  There is no blood.  W denies doing it.  H stands her ground.  I make it clear that if I discover that this has actually happened later that such punishments will ensue as to make the Terror of the French Revolution seem like a mere barked shin, only I don’t say this in so many words.  W confesses.  “W,” I say.  “Impulse control!  Please work on it.”  I wonder if any of them will notice if I use the Google Mobile app on my iPhone to search the keyword “orphanage.”

5:45pm: I collect the second order at Señor Taco.

6:00pm: I deposit the boys at Tae Kwon Do and drive H home.  It is pouring rain.

6:10pm: I escort H into the house.  She has her choir book and the “you might have to wait for a while after practice” novel.  She has her roller backpack that contains the 68 pounds of books she ferries back and forth every day to the fifth grade (!).  “Honey, where’s your jacket?”  She looks about.  She looks some more.  I feel the inter-cranial pressure mount again. “Did you leave it at choir?” “You were rushing me!”  Intemperate words spring from my mouth.  That Dad of the Year Award will elude me in 2011 just like 2010, and 2009, and 2008….  I get her into the house, plate her dinner and set up a show she likes via Netflix on the iPad.  I send quick notes to Aaron and his wife Dierdre about the jacket, send a separate note to the executive director of the arts center asking him to forward it to Lost & Found, and then I dart out the door.

6:20pm: I call my wife.  We chat while I’m driving to the arts center for the third time in less than three hours.  I find an open door to the center but not to the choir room.  I use the flashlight app on my iPhone to illuminate corners of the choir room.  There is one forlorn fabric lump in the corner.  Is it her jacket, some other idiot child’s jacket or a disused instrument cover.  Who knows?  Still chatting with Kathi, I wander the halls, eliciting bizarre looks from people in sundry meetings.  No jacket.

6:35pm: I look at my watch. Holy mackerel!  Tae Kwon Do ends in 10 minutes and I’m 12 minutes away.  I zoom through the pouring rain.

6:50pm: Tae Kwon Do lets out 5 minutes late.  I am waiting, an insouciant smile on my face, trying to suggest that I’ve been waiting a while.  They are boys, and therefore oblivious.  I guide them back to the SUV through the pouring rain.  H calls my cell.  A package arrived.  Per the Paternal Prime Directive she did not open the door, but she suspects that it is a package from Amazon and wanted me to know.

7:00pm: P is returned to the bosom of his family.

7:05pm: W and I arrive home.  It is indeed a package from Amazon.com.  I try to take W directly to the shower but he announces — in a voice that vibrates our neighbors’ windows — that he has to poop.

7:10pm: My burrito is cold.  I reheat it.  It now has paper stuck to it that is impossible to peel off.  “A good source of fiber,” I tell myself.

7:12pm: W emerges naked from the bathroom and dances in the loft, waggling his butt to show that he has wiped himself.  I escort him to the shower.

7:15pm: H rehearses her speech on manga for me.  It requires me to draw along with her.  I eat left handed.

7:20pm: I finish my burrito. The shower is still going.  “W?” I ask mounting the stairs.  My right knee twinges.  An old fencing injury.  Really.  My 12 year old Corgi, Dexter, huffs his way up the stairs next to me.  My knee just twinges.  He’s REALLY struggling.  “What?” I imagine him asking.  “You couldn’t have bought that one-level ranch home I liked so much?”  W is practicing Tae Kwon Do in the shower while making laser gun noises.  I suggest washing himself.

7:25pm: I suggest washing again.

7:28pm: I open the shower door and glower until he begins to bathe himself.  I go to check on H.

7:33pm:  W is now meditating under the water and not washing his hair.  I suggest that if he wishes to play video games again before puberty he rethink this stance.  He washes his hair.  Clean and looking like a large, peach-colored prune, he exits the shower.  “Please dry yourself,” I say and go back downstairs to make sure H has finished homework.

7:40pm: I return to the scene of the shower and find W practicing Tae Kwon Do, naked, in front of the mirror.  Just as I reach the door he KICKS the mirror and I hear a loud slapping noise not followed, thank heavens, by a series of tinkling noises.  “Don’t DO that!” I shriek.  “Impulse control, W, please!”

Tooth brushing follows.  I don’t know when.  I don’t remember what I was doing.  I might have blacked out.  No, wait.  Now I remember.  I went to the garage to get the DeLonghi space heater for W’s room, as it gets unnaturally cold at night and he is recovering from a cough. It looks like an old radiator from a New York apartment building, but it doesn’t make noise and doesn’t use electricity like a hair dryer.  I clean it and install it in his room.

7:55pm: The kids and I review their chore sheets and I award stickers for good behavior.  Down on my knees, at W’s level, I carefully go over the “don’t hit sister” line on the chore sheet.  “Do you deserve a sticker here?” “No.” “Why not?” “Because I bit sister and lied about it.”  “That’s right,” I say.  “And, by the way, because of this behavior you also lost dessert.  Sister gets dessert.  You do not.  Now please go upstairs.”  It is at this point that I see that a flurry of ants have colonized the island in the middle of our kitchen.  I see this because H has rested her arm on the island and 6 ants have crawled onto her sweatshirt.  I de-ant-i-fy her. At this point, W uses his arm to sweep across the island, infesting his pajamas with ants.  I de-ant-i-fy him and send him upstairs.  H generously agrees to read to him so that I can napalm the ants with Windex.  She dislikes bugs as much as I do.

8:05pm: Island cleaned, I come upstairs.  H trots off to her room to read.  I tuck W in and a thought occurs to me.  “W,” I say.  “Do you know what ‘impulse control’ means?” “No, Dad, actually, I don’t.”  I close my eyes and smile.  We then talk for a few minutes about the three words I’d like him to have in his head whenever a sudden desire to do something that might, perhaps, exceed the usual rules governing his day — kicking something, hitting somebody, throwing something sharp at high velocity toward the back of a waiter’s head in a restaurant (I speak hypothetically, of course).  “What words?” he asks.  “It’s simple, really,” I say.  “Just think, ‘wait a minute!’ whenever you have an irresistible urge to do something that might be bad, just think ‘wait a minute.’” He starts to talk about Bey Blades.  Laser sounds are involved.  “W,” I ask. “Can you tell me what I just said?”  There is a very long pause.  “Wait a minute?”  “Good,” I reply.  “I just like to know that you hear me once in a while.”  Kisses and hugs are exchanged.

8:20pm: I serve H her dessert — cherry pie and a glass of milk — and she happily reads her book while I empty the dishwasher, clean the kitchen, get the coffee pot ready for the morning, put the dog out in the pouring rain to relieve himself, and start going over tomorrow’s activities.  I notice that somewhere during the day the Henckle Kitchen Scissors Fairy has visited our house and stolen our scissors.  I let Dexter back in.  He nearly darts by me with muddy paws, but a quick lunge saves our carpets and my fencing past proves itself useful.

9:00pm: H is entirely ready for bed and happily reading her book.  She has only 20 pages to go, so I give her permission to finish the book so long as she rolls over and goes to bed upon finishing it.  She agrees.  I remind her that I will be waking her early to get ready for makeup picture day, as the pictures from the first go around show her beautiful face stretched by an expression one usually associates with electrocution.  She understands.  We discuss breakfast options (she is my picky eater).  Kisses and hugs are exchanged.

9:05pm: I begin writing this post.

9:41pm: H pops into the room to inform me that she has finished her book.  I sigh and wonder what the Google query on the iPhone managed to turn up.  However, since she is here it occurs to me to ask if she has indeed read the book for her Friday Book Club meeting, and if so what it might be.  She tells me that the title is “The Name of this Book is Secret” by Pseudonymous Bosch, but that she has not read it.  I send her to get the Kindle and proceed to download the book.  I also send a brief email to Kathi asking for confirmation on this title as well as if she happens to have brought the Henckle scissors with her to Los Angeles for mysterious reasons.

9:49pm: H returns to bed.

10:15pm: I go to check on H, listening at the door as she is a light sleeper and if I go in it will wake her.  It is possible that I hear the quiet murmurings of an audio book being played on her iPod Touch, but it could also be the sound of the now driving rain and howling wind whipping through the trees outside.  At least it’s quiet in there.  Sometimes in life you have to settle.

10:16pm: As I come back down the stairs I see that Dexter has levitated himself onto the couch.  If he had opposable thumbs I feel confident that he’d now be watching Animal Planet.

And that brings us to the present.

My wife amazes me.  She does this ALL THE TIME.  I feel like I must book a business trip just so that I can get some rest.

I’m going to join Dexter on the couch.  But since I have thumbs there will be no Animal Planet.

The coffee machine is set to go off at 6:00am.

Last night saw the fourth season premiere of “Castle” on ABC, and it was an enjoyable hour-long police procedural that has as its main job to UNDO everything that had been done during the cliff-hanger end of the third season, but in doing so the show had to undergo trans-genre surgery from its unique blend of “dramedy” to a more conventional drama. I only noticed the shift during the preview for the second episode airing next Monday.

Here’s what I mean: “Castle” is like “Moonlighting” with better crimes to solve. You take the super serious tone and rigorous plots of “Law & Order” and inject it with a court jester in the figure of Richard Castle whose job it is to poke fun at the police procedural genre and flirt with Kate Beckett, the tough-as-nails and totally gorgeous lead detective. Their banter is what drives all the charm of the series, while the plots keep the characters busy and give them something to banter ABOUT in the first place.

But not last night. Last season’s cliff hanger ended with Beckett being shot during the funeral for squad Captain Montgomery. And she bled out and started to lose consciousness, Castle declared his love to her and the screen went blank. This season’s premiere started moments later with Beckett being rushed to the hospital, the other characters standing vigil until she was out of surgery. Then, Castle and the other squad detectives began investigating why Beckett was shot. Three months later Beckett returns to duty with amnesia of the moments after the shooting. A new captain arrives as well as a shrink for Beckett (played by Michael Dorn of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fame), and there’s a B plot about a murder so trivial that the entire crime and resolution could have been squeezed into a preview.

The job of the entire episode was to get Beckett and Castle back to where they were before the cliff-hanger, with Beckett functioning and well, Castle poking fun and the whole storytelling engine (to use John Seavey’s excellent term) humming right along.

Except that there was nary a barb or zinger thrown in the entire episode. No ironic commentary. Not a laugh or a smile to be found. None of the characters seemed like themselves… as if they were guest starring in an episode of “The Closer” or “Law & Order: CI” where there are grim looks a plenty but no smiles. “Castle” has had more serious episodes before, but nothing like this.

The weird thing was that I didn’t notice until the preview for next week’s episode in which a guy dressed up like a superhero is either the victim or the crook (hard to tell) and Castle’s total delight in that circumstance lit up the screen. It was emotionally jarring– like when an intense moment in a TV show is followed by a McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” commercial with smiling happy families.

But THAT’S the “Castle” I started watching.

Conclusion: Different genres are good at different things. Drama forces change. Comedy — particularly situation comedy — forces circling around a central idea and exploring it in fractal detail.

“Castle” is a combo-platter of police procedural and situation comedy, but in the latter “situations” can’t change internally. They require external events to goose the characters into different modes of interacting. However, the gravitational force of the situation, the storytelling engine, will always move the characters back to the status quo. I can imagine a full-comedy episode of “Castle” (it would probably be a wedding) but it would be followed by a dramedy, just like this all-drama premiere was followed by a pendulum wing back to dramedy.

You can catch last night’s episode of “Castle” on Hulu, but if you’re new to show I’d wait until next week.

• Gartner Negative on PC Growth – Zacks.com – Last of several links about the lack of growth in the PC market.
• Gartner Cuts PC Growth Estimates, Blaming Economy, Tablets | News & Opinion | PCMag.com – Third of several links about the lack of growth in the PC market.
• Blame the iPad for Slow PC Sales – NYTimes.com – Second of several links about the lack of growth in the PC market.
• Are Tablets Taking the Place of PCs? – Digits – WSJ – First of several links about the lack of growth in the PC market.
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• Lucy Hood: Smartphones Are Bridging the Digital Divide – WSJ.com -
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• Balance of power continues to shift in the e-book wars — Tech News and Analysis -
• You Can Now Watch “The Big Lebowski” With Your Facebook Friends – Fascinating article from Mashable about a new social viewing opportunity on Facebook. However, the article is quite unclear about whether the opportunity is to co-view via simultaneous streams (rather like what happened in Second Life) or if it merely aggregates and time-stamps comments, rather like the social notes functionality for Amazon’s Kindle platform. Does anybody have insight on this? Joost, many years ago, was developing a simultaneous streaming technology but I don’t see it ready for prime time anywhere outside of Netflix viewing parties on Xbox.

If you like this, please follow me on Twitter as @bradberens for more!

 What the e-book retailer has also done is provide a great example of how media companies should be looking beyond the world of apps to the future of the web: one in which websites behave like apps, thanks to the magic of HTML5, and publishers can get the benefits of both without having to sell their souls to one app-store provider after another.

Passionately pro-HTML5, Ingram’s article suggests that after the last few years of of app frenzy we might well be seeing the decline of apps.

Seeking additional insight into the future of native handset and appliance apps vs. HTML5 web apps, I reached out to Scott Kveton, founder and CEO of Urban Airship, which is “a mobile services provider powering in-app communications and purchases for tens of thousands of mobile apps” and serves companies like ESPN, Tapulous, Groupon, dictionary.com, misnbc.com and Newsweek.

Scott Kveton

Prior to Urban Airship, Scott worked at companies including Amazon.com, Rulespace, JanRain and Vidoop, and he gets the mobile app ecosystem at a deep and helpful level.

Then, in the middle of our interview we heard this morning’s surprising news about Google buying Motorola Mobility, and so we widened the scope of our chat towards the end.

Brad Berens: you’ve built your business on powering in-app notifications and e-commerce. Every time Steve Jobs sneezes there’s a press release, but how big a deal is this Amazon vs. Apple conflict REALLY? Walk me through the ecosystem as you see it.

Scott Kveton: I think that the Amazon vs. Apple conflict is a hint at things to come. For the last couple of years, publishers, retailers and anyone with a customer relationship have bristled at the idea of having to pay a “platform tax” (the 30% Apple, Android and others take). It was inevitable that Amazon and others would look for ways around this and natural that they would turn to the web to make it so.

Amazon has to play nice with Apple right now. Amazon’s customers are on iPads and other mobile devices. If the rumors are true, we’ll see an Amazon Kindle tablet based on the Android operating system sometime soon. If that is the case, then Amazon can start building their own eco-system where they completely own the value chain. That could be huge. The Amazon Kindle tablet would be like a massively distributed point-of-sale device.

Not only can I already do a lot of what I do on iTunes on Amazon’s website (buy music, books, movies, TV shows), but with a Kindle tablet I’d also be able to use it to buy things I need at home. That poises Amazon to take an even bigger piece of the retail market. Why have a shopping list on your tablet when you could just place the order right there? Throw some benefits to Amazon Prime users and now you have real motivation for those customers to sign up and lock in.

The reality is we’re still in the early stages of this market. Content is all about delivery today, but that’s just the start. Diving deeper into that content, discovering content from your friends or what is recommended to you by the cloud is all coming soon. Access to the platforms that provide us what we want, when we want it will be the key drivers and differentiators for these successful platforms.

The triple-A threat (Android, Amazon and Apple) is looking to be in the right place to build a whole new eco-system and be the gatekeepers for content to consumers everywhere.

Berens: What advantages do native apps have over HTML5 apps?

Kveton: What we keep seeing in the conversations are descriptions of HTML5 as bringing an “app-like experience,” with the “experience” being the key difference.

Native apps are designed specifically for the devices where they live and as such take advantage of the unique properties of mobile devices. Things like cameras, sensors, geo-location, NFC, accelerometers. The next wave of native apps is going to integrate these features into the functions of their apps in order to provide much richer contextualized and personal experiences.

And we’re not talking about which ads get served here. We’re talking sophisticated, predictive communications between apps and individuals — past behavior, preferences, where that user is going and at what speed — to predict what the user wants at that very minute. Users will love this: they’re going to be disappointed with HTML5 apps that fail to provide that individual attention.

I can see a whole industry of middleware provider who will help HtML5 developers hook into these functionalities. They can save themselves a lot of effort by focusing their development on native apps and continuing to innovate around mobile specifically.

Berens: I’m intrigued by what you just said: “I can see a whole industry of middleware provider who will help HtML5 developers hook into these functionalities. They can save themselves a lot of effort by focusing their development on native apps and continuing to innovate around mobile specifically.”  I’m not sure I quite understand it: are you saying that the ostensible middleware providers would take care of connecting an HTML5 web app to the more intimate affordances of the handset? Or that the middleware providers are an unnecessary evil?

Kveton: Yes, the middleware providers will help both connect to the more intimate affordances of the handset (camera, sensors, accelerometers, et cetera), but also provide a layer of compatibility that hooks into existing workflows. I will want to be able to send notifications, deliver content and understand usage more than ever before and that will only get more complicated as each of these platforms has its own tools and eco-systems. Today’s Google/Motorola Mobility announcement puts an exclamation point on that.

We’re going to see companies go with tighter integrations of device and OS, which means they will be able to expose more to developers/publishers. Again, middleware providers will be there to make sure those publishers can address the wide-range of sophisticated devices without the hassle of having to learn all of the gory details.

Berens: What is the biggest challenge facing HTML5 developers?

Kveton: The same challenge that all mobile developers face: how to get noticed, downloaded and — most importantly — how to get the apps used frequently.

Native app developers have a leg up here because they can use push notifications to create ongoing conversations with their users. Push is one of the most important features an app can have, and it’s not available to HTML5 apps. So they are going to be hamstrung once the apps get installed on the device. Our developer community has already solved this problem with native apps for iOS, Android and RIM platforms, and we’re seeing a ton of them succeed in attaining ongoing, frequent app engagement. The importance of push cannot be underestimated.

Berens: Let’s flip this around. Given Urban Airship’s revenue model you are, obviously, a proponent of native apps, but aside from the “get around the 30% vig” issue, what other benefits are there from choosing HTML5 over a native app?

Kveton: One of benefits of HTML5 apps is that you can immediately get your website mobile-enabled. So many companies jump right in with an app and forget about their own website. Websites need to be optimized for mobile viewing– the phone number has to be linkable to make a call. So HTML5 can solve a lot of things right out of the gate: you can mobilize a website and get your brand on a device with an app at one time. HTML5 also helps with cross-platform compatibility. Apple, Android and other platforms already support HTML5.

Eventually, it will be write once, be everywhere much like it is on the web today. We’ll never be 100% HTML5 apps (just like we aren’t 100% web apps on the desktop today) but we’ll see the value of HTML5 grow over time.

Berens: Last week in Advertising Age, Jay Habegger had an interesting column about a different Amazon initiative, which is to use their data to power targeting of online display media on third party sites.

To me, this seems like a natural extension of your thoughts about Amazon owning the entire value chain— do you agree?  And what about other potential players in this sort of competition?  Wouldn’t Google compete with this Amazon tablet? And what about other app-rich mobile operating systems like Microsoft or Nokia Ovi?

Kveton: These fully-integrated stacks are really interesting. Again, Google/Motorola comes into play. Now Google is going to be able to ship a complete phone (hardware & OS). I firmly believe this is going to force Microsoft’s hand in this space as well. You can see that Nokia’s stock is up this morning on the news. Owning the entire value chain is really compelling (see Apple) but its really, really hard to pull off.

If I’m Google I would be VERY nervous about someone like Amazon coming into the advertising space. Amazon’s impending Android tablet is another piece of the puzzle for them to own even more of the value chain and coupling that with their data for an advertising play is really compelling.

[Cross-posted with the iMedia Connection blogs.]

We’ve seen this elsewhere with the PepsiCo10 in New York and Europe, the Brandery in Cincinnati, and now PIE, the Portland Incubator Experiment, is about to launch its fall class right here in my town — Portland, Oregon – smack dab in the middle of the Silicon Forest.

What’s in it for the startup? $18,000, office space for three months and a rich community of other startups, PIE alums, the digital team at W+K and a mentor network that includes thought leaders from companies including Target, Coca-Cola, Nike and – as of just last week — Google.

You don’t have to be a Portlander to apply—applications so far have come in from the Northwest and as far as Vermont and Tennessee.

The deadline is August 8 at 11:59pm, so don’t wait—get cracking on that application today!

Imagine being an entrepreneur with a nifty idea who gets to work directly with folks who have rich startup experience of their own from Google and YouTube.

And on the flip side, many young digital companies begin with technology, then move to a terrific user experience, and only then do they think, “Hmmm, what about revenue? I know, let’s sell some ads!”

But that’s not how major brands want to get involved—they want to get baked into the process early, and they want opportunities beyond advertising, including strategic, technological and other communications-related innovations.

And what terrific advocates for brand-centric development in Target, Coca-Cola and Nike!

Apply today!

Further reading:

• Details on how PIE works.
• Learn more about PIE in this February 2010 interview with co-founder Renny Gleeson (who also happens to be global director of interactive strategies at Wieden + Kennedy) from the iMedia archives.

I’m on vacation and somewhat unplugged, but I was still connected enought to receive a surprising email from Netflix yesterday saying that if I want to retain both unlimited streaming and one disk out at a time, then my price will jump from $9.99 per month to $15.98 per month– and that this will happen by September 1st.

Thin-slicing report: my first thought was, “huh, guess it’s time to cancel Netflix.”

(Side note: the inevitable social media death spiral has already begun, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.)

Whomever made this call at Netflix HQ doesn’t understand how locally unsatisfying but globally satisfying the current Netflix product is.

Even though I probably only borrow a dozen titles per year in disk form — and those disks become a Tivo-guilt-like homework assignment — my satisfaction index for those choices is moderate if unscrutinized. These are things I know I want to see to a sufficient extent that I’ll actually forego other options in order to have Netflix send me the disk. Netflix is so low-pressure compared to the other video rental services it is driving out of business (no late fees, etc.) that I don’t pay attention to how much of the $120 per year is wasted or not optimized– a real set it and forget it service. And the unlimited free streaming on top of that makes me even less likely to ponder the value.

So even though no local choice is a slam dunk — the way going to see “Cars 2″ with my kids this week is likely to be an eventful and memorable outing — my global level of satisfaction with the service is acceptable.

Likewise, my endless Netflix instant-streaming queue is composed of things I vaguely want to see but haven’t gotten around to yet. “Huh, they’ve got ‘Hot Tub Time Machine,’ already… okaaaaay.” Most of what I watch on Netflix I watch alone, and so the choice of what to watch is quite arbitrary and mood driven. There is no killer content on Netflix — nothing I can’t get elsewhere if I really want to see it — just an amazing range of good-enough content for vegetating on the couch after a long day. I don’t do a cost-benefit analysis because I still think of the streaming as a freebie on top of the disk-rental agreement.

Until now.

Now, Netflix has forced me to think critically, and that’s never a good idea with a customer. Here’s a sample of my internal monologue:

Is $7.99 per month is a good enough price for unlimited Netflix streaming by itself. What about Hulu Plus? Golly, I’m already spending a ton on Comcast and they have free and fee VOD… do I really need Netflix? What about Amazon Prime? I already have an account there.  Should I spend the $94 I’m about to spend on Netflix streaming on a Roku box to hook Prime up to the big screen in the living room?

And the same is true for the disks: for $120 I can buy most of what I want, use VOD via Comcast or Vudu or Xbox/Zune, or look more carefully at the offerings at my local library.

In Barry Schwartz’s remarkable 2003 book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, he articulates that the problem of internet plenitude is that for every choice we do make the opportunity costs of the choices we don’t make sucks away our satisfaction away from the lucky thing chosen.

The current Netlix service — the one going away in the fall that combines one disk with unlimited streaming –neatly jumps over the Paradox of Choice because the opportunity costs of each choice are ameliorated by a different sort of plenitude. If I don’t like the disk, I can stream.  If I don’t like the stream, then what about that disk lying on my desk?

Each service compensated for the faults of the other, but — I think — neither is worth paying for itself alone when there are so many alternatives.

Right now, I’m paying monthly or annual service charges for:

1. Comcast Cable with Premium Channels
2. Amazon Prime
3. Netflix
4. Hulu Plus
5. Xbox Live Gold

Something’s gotta give.  Until that email yesterday I wouldn’t have imagined that Netflix would be on the list of likely evictees.

Now it is.

• Xbox Will Introduce Interactive Ads to Games – NYTimes.com – Neat!
• Nielsen sees Web grocery growth, plans new service | Reuters -
• Digital Lifescapes: More Mobile Broadband Subscribers than on Wireline -
• Onswipe Wants To Make Slate, Forbes And Your Website Feel Like A Native Tablet App -
• For the First Time, a Self-Published Author Sells a Million Kindle eBooks | News & Opinion | PCMag.com – Wow!
• Movie Studios Reassess Comic-Con – NYTimes.com – One day I’ll make it to Comic-Con!
• Information Needs of Communities | FCC.gov – Interesting stuff.  You can download a PDF of the full report here: http://transition.fcc.gov/osp/inc-report/The_Information_Needs_of_Communities.pdf
• Online Ads Sales Forecast to Rise 20% – WSJ.com – eMarketer’s Hallerman predicts big growth for digital ad spend– the latest prediction.
• Nintendo Crashes The Tablet World With A Game-Changing Entrance | Fast Company – Very cool– Nintendo makes a new play for the Living Room.
• LUMA Partners » Resource Center – very useful.
• Microsoft’s Kinect to control TV, YouTube, more games | Reuters – Microsoft’s play to own the Living Room continues…
• The Internet in 2015: Mind-blowing Video and mobile traffic – Jun. 1, 2011 – Fascinating stuff!
• Publishers turn to digital business services to offset declining ad revenue | Poynter. – Fascinating industry development.
• The Pattern Seekers | Hybrid Reality | Big Think – Interesting set of playing cards.
• Visualisation shows the topics New York Times journalists are writing about | Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog – Fascinating.

If you like this, please follow me on Twitter as @bradberens for more!