1am - In a Hotel Room

Playing about with Walter... Stuck in a hotel art...

I'm sitting writing this in my hotel room. I'm in London tonight for a day chocked full of meetings tomorrow for my day job. By the time you read this, or more to the point by the time I upload this, I should be safely back home and waiting for the weekend to load.

So what has caught my eye this week? Well, two people in the hotel bar had a loud discussion about how dire the situation was in their PowerPoint production department. So that's clearly where all bad PowerPoint presentations are made then.

Another couple of gentlemen in suites have been discussing how on earth they are going to mask their sales figures to reflect a dire month of sales. Not sure what there business is, but I'm not convinced I would buy anything from either of them. They clearly have no passion for whatever it is they sell.

A young lady is being approached by a lonely sales rep, but she's having none of it and is actually using sarcasm quite well. I would definitely buy her product, I wouldn't want to be on the end of her sharp yet linguistically agile tongue. There's a phrase I have never before used, I might keep that one and use it again.

The lady behind the bar who shall remain nameless is quietly murmuring to me that she's completely worn out from listening to it all, and has no idea when she is likely to get a day off. I must say that every time I stay in this hotel which is about three times per month, she has always been on duty and I wonder if she does indeed live here.

So shenanigans in the bar have kept me entertained for forty minutes, but I must confess that this entertainment is nothing compared to my time in a five star hotel in the North East of England when a husband and wife decided to have a fight that carried on in the bar for an hour, and then carried on for a further hour in the room next door to my colleague, where I was informed by phone at 1am, that they had completely smashed the room to pieces and the table lamp was wedged in the wooden door. My track record of picking hotels clearly isn't great. Given that I spend most of my working week in a hotel room for my day job, I really must get better at this.

The other things that have caught my eye this week are only marginally to do with art. Google now let's you take a tour of the Abbey Road Studios of The Beatles fame, and you can take a tour here: http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/interactive-design/step-inside-abbey-road-with-google/

Retail chain Forever 21 denied making illegal copies of Adobe, Autodesk and Corel's software, alleging in a U.S. Lawsuit that Adobe tries to bully customers who are accused of piracy into paying exorbitant licence fees.

Adobe sued Forever 21 in January, in a copyright lawsuit filed along with software makers Corel and Autodesk. All three companies claim that Forever 21 "wilfully, maliciously and intentionally" used their software without proper licenses.

The retailer allegedly skirted copy protection technologies to illegally install software on its computers. Continuing to carry out this behaviour even after the company was alerted by Adobe to its infringement. The company now wants a jury trial to determine financial damages. Forever 21 filed its response to the lawsuit denying it has infringed any copyrights. So this will be a case worth following. I doubt for one moment the court will rule in Forever 21's favour, we shall wait and see. If the court does rule in Forever 21's favour, then it will be interesting to see if other retailers follow suit.

I must say that as much as I love Adobes products, recent price increases have made it difficult to justify keeping up to date with its software. That's a real shame for those who are small single artist based businesses, they have to pay exactly the same as the huge design houses. Maybe Adobe and others should do something to encourage small digital artists a more financially viable way of owning its products.

I know that the subscription means that a large up front cost is negated, but it's still a significant overlay for us that might not even make the cost of the monthly subscription back through sales on Print on Demand. Surely there is a market for companies such as Fine Art America and the other POD services to make a deal with the software vendors so that we can keep creating digital art?

That brings me on to my next question, what is missing from Print On Demand services? Is there a feature that you would dearly love to see made available? Be it free samples of their papers and canvas or access to discount art supplies? Let's see if we can collectively figure out what's missing and let POD services know what we as artists who provide them with the art to make them money really need in order to keep producing the art that they sell.

 

Copyright M.A - Beechhouse Media