King and Country is a Hong Kong based company, I saw an ad in the BBC History Mag - and their miniatures (1:30) look stunning, spanning the ages from Roman legionaries, past Saracen warriors of the Crusades, to WWII pieces like the bike in the image. Amazing detail level, but at just under £100 it is for the dedicated collectors out there.
Of course, there are many options so drool a little bit for more regular geeky stuff as well. Next time in London, I'll make sure to have some extra space in the suitcase on the way over - and taking the time to visit Forbidden Planet. Their insets in the SW magazine has convinced my of a burning need to Stormtroopers and bookends to decorate a little bit. A web store that not only has "Star Wars" as a menu choice - but then drills down and lets you browse by Episode? ...good thing there is a duty limit on ordering other items than books.
And Wired is once again in charge of the whole Wired.com business, so now you can get "enhanced" articles, like the one on LonelyGirl - with extra podcast and video from the photo shoot, or the Myspace murder article - with a full page of extra background information and links (including cached versions of now deleted profiles and blog posting)
"unscheduled disassembly" - RIP Columbia, technical terms convey so much more? (From the rather interesting article on infrasound - and how we can use digital listening to understand more of what's happening in our near space, both above and below - from volcanoes to ballistic missiles and meteorites)
And finally - putting things in perspective, based on the brilliant Bob Garfield article on YouTube. [Bob is also podcasted Onthemedia]: Google spent some 1.65 bn on Youtube. Sure, that's a lot of money.
But only about 18% of Googles revenues (back then, not adjusted for further growth since) - or less than 2,5% of the ANNUAL advertising spend on television in the US alone.
So, if you belive the 100 millions streams might grow into something bigger, and get a tiny slice of the ad budgets out there, then maybe, just maybe 1.65 isn't all that crazy.
Besides, it was a partially stock based deal - so they just "printed" the money... right?
