blog.hardcore.lt/ve 2.0

Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:12:15 EST
From: WarrenE(at)aol.com
To: badsignal(at)lists.flirble.org
Subject: [BAD SIGNAL]1.44 MB
Sender: badsignal-admin(at)lists.flirble.org
X-Mailer: 7.0 for Windows sub 10502

I have hotshit broadband, these days. I can suck 1.44 meg out of a half-decent server like a crack whore de-spunking a virgin businessman. As it were. 1.44 meg is nothing. I can send that anywhere. I can dump it on free webspace without filling anything up, because, hey, it's only 1.44 meg. Back when I was working in web-animation, 1.44 meg was the studio's absolute upper limit of file size for a 3-minute Flash webisode.

1.44 meg is, of course, a floppy disc. I imagine most of us still have floppy disc drives.

Even on 56K, 1.44 meg is only a few minutes' worth of download time.

http://www.floppyswop.co.uk is an art site with a good idea. Contributions are limited to 1.44 meg. It has to fit on a floppy.

Floppies are/were viral. Distributable.

With increased speeds, 1.44 meg is also distributable. It's emailable. It's quick to FTP into some webspace.

I was reading the LiveJournal of Liz from the band SWARF earlier. She was looking for ideas to promote the band with.

And I'm sitting here thinking, with some donated brainpower from someone who knows video and someone who knows Flash, they could put together a one-minute thing with visual and music and it'd come out at 1.44 meg. And they could put it out into the world and say, share it with your friends.

Hell, produce a short piece of music. 1.44 meg. And say, there it is, it's under a Creative Commons license, spread it around like the clap.

Because people will spread around good stuff for you. Most people get boring email. Most people get shit from Nigeria, and demands that they increase the size of their penis immediately. It's a golden little moment when you get a piece of art, that you've never seen before, that you'd never get from TV or radio, turn up from a trusted friend in your email box.

Use http://www.fpdf.com or one of the other free PDF builders, and produce a 1.44 meg poster, handbill, pamphlet, postcard.

Stamp the delivery webpage with a 1.44MB logo and link it to this letter as a text file, explaining it all.

(Yes, I've been drinking. Shut up or I'll bite out your adrenal glands and chew them up like grass.)

Just a thought.

--W