Friday News: Streaming Disney, all about fonts, women’s opinions, and a tale of two libraries
Disney to Launch Subscription Streaming Service in U.K. – Just in time for the winter holidays, Disney is beginning a subscription service in the UK, inclusive of digital books, movies, music, and television series, all for a mere £9.99 a month (a little over $15 USD). According to CEO Bob Iger, Disney is looking at this from the perspective of an app, rather than a cable-type service, as they believe that the app environment embodies the future of digital technologies:
Disney will roll out the service across Europe next year, with the aim of launching in France, Spain, Italy and Germany. There are no plans to launch the service in the U.S., but Iger would not rule it out. “The technology platform that this sits on is scalable to the U.S. and is scalable to our other brands,” he said. Netflix has pay TV window rights to Disney theatrical releases for the U.S., kicking in at the end of next year, and Canada, starting with 2015 theatrical releases.
New content will be added to DisneyLife as it becomes available. Movies produced by Marvel and the Lucasfilm “Star Wars” franchise will not be included, but “Star Wars” and Marvel subscription services could be launched in the future, Iger said. – Variety
Decoding the Secret Lives of Typefaces – So did you all know we’re using the term ‘font’ incorrectly, when we refer to, you know, computer fonts? Those — Times, New Century Schoolbook (a sentimental favorite), Courier, etc. — are actually typefaces. A very cool infographic that has a really good reason to actually be an infographic. – The Daily Beast
Famous quotes, the way a woman would have to say them during a meeting – I forgot about this article, so I apologize if you’ve already seen it, but it’s too good not to mention. Remember Jennifer Lawrence’s recent comments about how when she delivered her opinion in a straightforward but non-antagonistic way, her words were treated like verbal kryptonite? Alexandra Petri notes that “’Woman in a Meeting’ is a language of its own,” and translates some famous statements made by men:
To illustrate this difficulty, I have taken the liberty of translating some famous sentences into the phrases a woman would have to use to say them during a meeting not to be perceived as angry, threatening or (gasp!) bitchy.
“Give me liberty, or give me death.”
Woman in a Meeting: “Dave, if I could, I could just — I just really feel like if we had liberty it would be terrific, and the alternative would just be awful, you know? That’s just how it strikes me. I don’t know.” – Washington Post
Updated: Kansas City, Toronto libraries are engaged in a war of words on Twitter – For all of you baseball fans, this is pretty cute “battle” (and apparently a thing, now – did the Melville House/Penguin Random House Twitter ‘war‘ start this trend?):
You never know how playoff excitement is going to affect people. Kansas City is caught up in Royals fever as the postseason run has taken the team within a game of the World Series.
The Kansas City library is engaged in a fun Twitter battle with the Toronto library. The KC library fired the opening salvo after the Royals won 14-2 in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series… Kansas City Star
There was an epic twitter fight between some British bookstores a couple of years ago. http://www.buzzfeed.com/aarong31/three-bookshops-had-a-twitter-fightand-it-ruled-dmhw#.hdbZeN1dv