Welcome to the second half of my top ten list of the most seismic events in the media landscape over the last year.

You can find Part 1 right here.

1.The iPhone
With this device Apple has once again changed the landscape by not only taking an existing device and making it what it should be, but more importantly, redefining what it can do. While it may not change the rules of the game in the same way that iPod did, it’s definitely proven that a web-enabled integrated media gadget is something that consumers not only want, but are willing to pay for. And once again, everyone else is reduced to being compared to Apple.

2. The Writers’ Strike
At this point there’s no way to know how long this is going to last, or what the full impact is going to be. But as we reach the end of the year, and the original content begins to dry up, it’s becoming clear that the post-strike world is going to be different than what came before. Even before it began the days of the limited distribution monopoly were coming to an end. Now an audience that was already moving off of the tube and onto the web is now going to be migrating even faster. And with developers beginning to discover how they can monetize web content, there’s no reason that writers won’t start to look for bigger and better deals in a new media marketplace.

3. FaceBook
While MySpace pioneered the idea of using a web community as a content marketing mechanism, FaceBook has taken it to the next level by offering up an API that lets developers and users build content that’s available through their viral portal. It’s not always pretty, or intuitive, but applications like Scrabulous are proving that it’s an idea that works. And the fact that their competition have gathered together to create an open API of their own means that it’s important, even if they had some privacy issues.

4. 300
The film that started 2007 out with a clang. This linear media mashup managed to encapsulate the current zeitgeist from the political to the technological. With scenes ripped straight from the comic book that spawned it, 300 features a casat of impossibly sculpted actors fighting virtual monsters inside insane digital environments with camera effects \ripped straight out of a video game, All set in an ancient Persia that never was. While the story itself may be a little simplistic, there hasn’t been a film that’s landed with this much of an impact since the original Matrix.

5. Bioshock
Although most videogames may seem stuck in the silent era when it comes to telling a solid story, this game managed to break free from the pack by taking the player to an under-sea paradise that has fallen to ruin, and then building metaphors onto the metaphor. From the moment they enter this world, it is up to the player to uncover the narrative of corruption and violence that turned a Randian dream into an objectavist nightmare, and fight the monsters it spawned. Combining a free roaming environment with a carefully layered narrative, Bioshock has raised the bar for the kinds of stories that can be told through a video game.

My Dad turned 84 this year.  That means when he was born computers were things that didn’t really exist outside of science fiction, if they had science fiction back then, which they probably didn’t.

But my father also isn’t much like the average octogenarian.  He’s been a serious gadget guy for the last 40 years.  He had a $1000 nixie tube calculator for his office in the 60’s.  His first computer system filled a thirty square foot room.  He had hard drives in the 1970s, and was writing database code until he was in his late 70s.  Oh, and he hikes a mountain every week.

So when I got to my parent’s house and started to help my father out with getting his brand new Toshiba Vista laptop up to speed and in shape it was an odd bit of work.  He isn’t helpless, and he’s genuinely curious.  And he understands all the pieces of what it takes to use a computer in the Internet age, he just can’t quite put the puzzle together.  And that’s mostly because he doesn’t have a fundamental feel for the Internet as an all purpose tool for answering his problems.  If he sees that there’s a nail sticking up, he’ll look for a hammer, rather than trying to figure

Faced with an inability to get the wi-fi working, for example, he’d purchased two wi-fi routers. But it turned out that there was wi-fi on his dsl modem all along. He gets the general idea of what kind of solution is needed, but he can no longer dig down into the technical miasma to find the specific answers to his problem.  He should be able to buy something and have it work, but the modern digital world doesn’t really work that way.

But as I was helping to get the machine up and working, and introducing him to the wonders of Youtube, I realized that in many ways my father is a great example of what differentiates a mainstream user from the digitally literate . 

For a power user the net is their oyster.  It’s an ocean with endless opportunities to plumb the untold depths of undiscovered content and information.  And if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you can find like minded souls who will lead you to the richest veins of the most awesome stuff.  It’s filled with places where I can give my info to get some info.  And of course it’s the environment the current generation are growing in. So when they grow up they’ll turn into a single uber-organism. A giant cthuloid monster ready to give it’s hard earned cash to the next mega-trend faster than a japanese school-girl with a goth fetish.

But that said there is still a large audience of content goldfish happy to take whatever they’re given.  They are only able to explore what is right in front of them, and will only understand what is explained to them.  They are consumers, not explorers. Infinitely loyal, but very hard to reach beyond the end of a remote control.

NPD has been publicly posting the video game console hardware sales numbers for the last year.  It’s fueled the fanboy wars, and also made Sony’s lack of traction with the PS3 embarrassingly easy to track. So suddenly, with a lot of posturing and puffing, and probably more than a little pressure from the console manufacturers, they decided to stop. Now they’ve changed their minds.

At least they had the good sense to point out their own mistake:

NPD Group’s David Riley admitted in an e-mail Monday, “Honestly, it was terribly naive of me to think that we could simply stop providing these after giving them freely for a year.

Nothing is going to change. All will remain the same… The ‘Big Three’ [Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony] are on board, so we’ll be providing these figures indefinitely.”

I think this is ultimately a win for them, and showing a little contrition will go a long way in their favor.  They got some publicity, and the major companies have now given them their blessing.

It’s also a win for the power of online communities.  They flexed their muscle and the man backed down.