I noticed today that Mashable’s SummerMash LA event is sponsored by a company called The Schwaggin’ Wagon. Their website says they launched the business after a conversation “about how much swag goes to waste after tech conferences. [It was] noted that, in addition to children, there were plenty of adults who could use some extra t-shirts and hats for free!”

I’ve bolded the above for emphasis, but no doubt you already noticed the discrepancy in the spelling of the company’s name, Schwaggin’, and the spelling of the noun in their description, swag.

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The Chris Anderson discussion was a uniquely Hollywood cocktail of the enlightened apocalypse. About 60 guests, all in the blockbuster business, a mix of actors, agents, artists, studio execs, media types, digital entrepreneurs, game developers and political commentators gathered to hear a polite version of their own eulogy, complete with Q & A.

The event was at the Bel Air home of entertainment mogul Peter Guber. The backdrop couldn’t have been more poignant. Chris sat in front of Guber’s massive wall of awards, an honorarium of old-media triumphs, and delivered his take on how the sky is falling and why that’s OK. Guber, who is no stranger to managing rowdy personalities, (he ran studios for years, but more germane teaches a entertainment class at UCLA), did a stellar job of giving Chris a forum to speak in what could have been hostile waters.

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Tonight I’m going to hear Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, speak about his upcoming book, “Free.” In a previous post I presented my position on the culture of free, the gift economy and how I think it’s driving the quality of content and applications towards amateur hour. It will be interesting to hear Chris address web economics and I hope to engage him in a discussion about what this means for the future of web-based entertainment content.

I’m specifically interested in Google and how they’ve enabled the culture of free online. From my perspective, Google is bad for business. Let me qualify that, bad for business-as-usual (added). By offering everything you need on the web for free, Google has effectively put web-based business opportunities on life support. (more…)

This month’s Wired magazine has a nice feature on Jury Hahn, the founder of MegaPhone, one of Safran Digital’s technology ventures. Jury is the creative force behind MegaPhone, a unique software that turns digital billboards from cluttering eye-sores into elegant, multi-player, video game battlefields, where gamers control their players by pushing buttons on their everyday cell phone.

This is MegaPhone ’s second round of kudos from Wired. In late 2007, the company was identified as one of the faces of innovation to look out for in 2008. Watch for them at a screen near you. (more…)

The gift economy that powers much of web 2.0 is unsustainable. The internet offers an unmatched infrastructure for the distribution of communication, information and entertainment. But professional creators i.e. bloggers, video producers or application developers that build web 2.0 products and help us realize the value of that infrastructure won’t keep making their content and giving it away for free much longer. Why should they? (more…)