HELLO

Apple's latest little piece of genuius...the iPod hello commerical. I admit, I'm a sucker for nolstagia montages - especially when they're put to unexpected music, in this case, Inside Your Head by Eberg.

I only wish they had added a telephone that was more "futuristic" - think Minority Report - or even something out of Woody Allen's Sleeper.

iPhone could have made a stronger case for itself if it showed such cinematic imaginations - translation - in reality, the Future of The Telephone is Here.

iPodkini

As part of its swimsuit issue, Sports Illustrated included the iPod as a bikini. At first this bothered me...but then I started thinking about the sexiness of technology - and how that sexiness is often lost among its nerdy reputation and product coldness.

Indeed, leave it to Apple to create white computers, and MP3 players in wild colors. Is technology becoming sexy? Will it finally lose its masculinity and shed its image of dark, cold and inaccesssible. And what will this mean for women?

Naturally, the irony that it takes a naked woman to make me wonder if technology is finally becoming sexy which could benefit women as a group - is not lost on me.

Who are the terrorists?

For anyone living in Boston, yesterday was filled with bomb scare updates, bridge and T-station closings, major traffic jams and atypical police activity. At the end of the 8 hours of post-911 routine, we learned that the “bombs” applied to the bases of bridges and in major traffic areas were actually part of an outdoor marketing campaign for a show on Comedy Central.

In a statement from Turner Broadcasting, the network said, “We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger.”

Are you kidding? I mean, really, are you kidding? You are placing packages with visible wires and lights to major city structures at a time of war but it doesn’t occur to you that this could pose a public safety hazard?

Have we completely lost it in the viral marketing arena? Do the people involved with this hoax think it a success since we now all know about the animated show on CC (I refuse to type it here)? At what point do we put the good of our people above the good of press?

The ethical lines that we as advertisers and marketers keep redrawing and crossing is reaching a point where it will be difficult to step back. It keeps occurring to me that we are our own terrorists.

Message to the People

Deval Patrick has just announced he will publish a weekly podcast on his website. He cites that is important to continue talking with the people who elected him.

Hillary Clinton (actually Patrick as well) announced her candidacy in the 2008 election via her website.

What struck me about these acts is how they cut out the media from delivering messages. The media still reports on them, however political candidates are no longer beholden to them to communicate to the public.

On one level this is fantastic - people have a more direct connection to our elected officials. On another, I worry that it will continue to delude and passify the media's role in politics. Rather then true reporting - which requires research and follow up - they may be more apt to take from the print and audio given to them and simple cut and paste.

As the media's role changes (with increasing use of blogging and podcasting to get out messages), it will be interesting to note which road it follows - that of least resistance, or a return to the muckraking days on behalf of the public.

Apple introduces the iPhone

Steve Jobs introduced the long anticipated iPhone at MacWorld today. The new 11.6 millimeter phone includes a new user interface on a 3.5-inch wide touchscreen display—with new software that lets you control everything with just your fingers—a two megapixel camera and eight gigs of storage space.

Jobs also announced the new company name, Apple Inc. – another indication of Apple’s commitment the consumer electronic’s space.

Be still my little techy heart.

It's a girl

This is Little V. She is splendid. She is joy in the size of a postage stamp. She reminds me anything is possible in the digital world. 1GB of love for under $80.

Happy Holidays

This is quite possibly the coolest holiday card of the season...not only is it clever and fun - it's interactive and allows the user to make their own greeting and send it to their friends ... :)

www.rga.com/holiday

The power of ME

Time Magazine just named me the person of the year. How fantastic to have my power as a digital agent (professionally and personally) validated! How equally frightening since marketers have already begun to conspire to turn this back around to bite us in the arse (think Lonely Girl and the less public deceptions of fake consumer feedback).

Still, I revel in this acknowledgement…how’s them apples Chray?

Personal Un-interaction

My friend recently revealed that he plays Uno online…via his Xbox. (“Uno on Xbox?” I asked perplexed. “It’s not just for killing things,” he replied). I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. One, because it seems almost unmanly (not killing things and all); and two, because of my experience with Uno traveling through Europe. It was an entirely social experience – and while playing online is social…it’s not in person. Playing over beers with friends in a café in Sevilla seems very different from playing with strangers online.

It strikes me how much of our interactions are social, yet not in person. Doesn’t this inherently make them unsocial?? With the blow up of possible interactions – isn’t it ironic that we use these avenues to actually NOT deal with people.

The gears of communication

I have been remiss in my blogging. This has entirely stressed me out over the last couple of weeks, especially as my nemesis, Chray, was so quick to point this out.

In any case, as I stressed about this this morning, it struck me that as the proliferation of all our communication gear has exploded – communication itself has actually become poorer. Meaning the means to get the message out is there…only the messaging itself it totally lost. Perhaps not lost, but not necessarily thoughtfully executed. I’ve touched on this before in the discussion of Bill Joy and it’s been an idea at the core of Chray’s incessant soap boxing about blogger writing quality.

As the means to get the message out has become easier and easier, we’ve slowly but surely taken for granted what we’re actually saying. We see this across all mediums, TV in particular (do I need to get into a discussion here over Fox news?). We have become a society of throwing out messages without thought of consequence…as if to say communication for the sake of communication – and I realize you’re following me down a rabbit hole – but is that communication at all?

Truth is I began thinking about this not on a societal, lofty plain this morning, but on a personal one. How the rapidness of today’s communication means has diminished the ability to truly relate to and understand what we are thinking and feeling. Example – how easy it is to fire off an email vs. the time it takes to patiently hand write a letter. Following this line of thinking, I realized that I have a dear friend whose handwriting I have never seen…following that thought, I asked myself, do I really know this person at all?

Many tangents this morning…but something to chew on this week.

A billion served?
Does anyone else find it ironic that McDonald's-Japan gaveaway MP3 players infected with a spyware virus? Come to think of it...does anyone else find it weird that an MP3 player can exist on a cup?

I heart webisodes
I love that more and more webisodes are rising to the top of online muck. They are little nibbles of creativity with video...I especially enjoy the ones that have nothing to do with an advertisement. Here comedian Demetri Martin offers this Wes-Andersonian take on an overachiever. Check out the debut, "A Rare Condition" at clearification.com.

Google...Godzilla?

In what I can only describe as, "ya think?" Google has bought YouTube for 1.65 billion. The company's largest acquisition to date. They describe the deal as "natural":

"The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. (As quoted in AdAge)

Does this give anyone else pause? I am a Google fan - and have been since before the Google bandwagon went locomotive over the Internet landscape. But I'm starting to feel as if I've been hookwinked. It used to be that MicroSoft was the big bad. Has Google graced us with user-centric content to passify us into thinking they were on our side?

It should be worrisome to us all when one company's footprint grows so large that it blocks the sun. Godzilla never brought people flowers and presents when he came to town.

I'm suspect is all I'm saying.

September’s [ LI ] My montly list of best ofs and eceteras

Best site: www.captainsofindustry.com

Bloody hell they have cool gadgets. Where do they find the time?

Drama, Turtle, E: Last month I gave Abby Lou a Turtle – this month I give her a resounding E for taking her show on the road: Sydney, Beijing, Singapore, Frankfurt, London…all in the company of the wicked witch of Palo Alto.

Drama—To Chray for at least thinking about his resume…and for always trying to solve our differences by showing up with sporting equipment.

Best iPod Morning Shuffle: This month it’s going to Wed 19 Sep when I had the privilege of iPod-ing for the dept. Yea, I rocked it.

Jayner’s LOL: Altruistic Deshelling Really anytime Jayner’s parents make it into the blog – you can be sure it will be mentioned as a best of:

At this point, Mom jumps in: "Have dad tell you why we have 78 containers of unshelled peanuts in the cupboard."

[Camera pans back to me.]

"Uh, dad, why do we have 78 thingies of whatever on the shelf?"

Dad: "Oh. Mom and I have a one-armed squirrel that comes to the door."

Fran of the month: Fran’s been behaving herself lately…mostly, cause I’ve been busy. Never fear…she’s off to Italy this month—nothing like some Italians to bring out the crazy in Fran.

Is Pandora one of the good gals?


As those of you who know me, the proliferation of Internet radio has me waving a flag of HA HA in the face of Clear Channel. And as a Sirius subscriber, having so much music at my eardrums is pure bliss. I love the idea that the Internet grants us easy access to a plethora of musical choice. I love the idea that bands are not beholden to big corporations and a lot of money to get their music out there.

(Although – and I pause here with an irony of tangentative thought: the true age of DIY – the kind that was a lot more gritty then a myspace page, born truly great music and an ethos of questioning and challenging the status quo that I worry we will not see in this our culture anytime soon).

Where am I going with this – ah, yes, Pandora.com is the kind of Internet radio that develops its playlist based on what you already like: you tell it Death Cab for Cutie and Radiohead are your favorite bands, it plays Nada Surf and Broken Social Scene. Fantastic! When I first played with Pandora a year or so ago, not only did I love the music, but the technology of it was yummy. A big music brain playing before me.

Reading about the growing number of similar sites popping up in the paper today, I was challenged with the idea: is this good – or bad? Is it good to keep listening to music similar to music you already know? Or does that pigeon-hold you into a pattern of dullness? That is to say – by listening to things – ideas, music, words, do we prevent our brains from expanding into something new and learned? Sometimes I fear our new world has created so many silos that the experience of the big picture -we are incapable of hearing, seeing, feeling.

The Career-O-Matic

I often find myself wondering why I bother with the 60 plus work weeks…afterall we’re not saving lives here. It has always cracked me up a bit how seriously advertising and marketing companies take themselves. In any event, this digital piece by Wunderman (themselves a marketing communications company) made me realize we’re all kind of in on the joke: Career-O-Matic 3000.

Quality and access

Bill Joy, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, is quoted in Atlantic Monthly this month dismissing the idea that online communities could provide an educational boost for America’s young people. At the center of his argument is quality – a notion I touched upon in my 11 Sep blog.

[T]he real problem is, by democratizing speech and the ability to post, we’ve lost the gradation for quality. The gradation of quality was always based on the fact that words had weight—it cost money to move them around. So there was back pressure against … junk …

Yes. I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea that everyone gets to throw their two cents into the mix and some cents, for reasons beyond my comprehension, rise to the top. There isn’t a filter for quality. And it is troubling that much of what gets posted is taken as the truth without considerable discretion.

But who employs the filter? Who decides what is publishable and what is not? Yes, with so much out there it is easy to dilute information and art and ideas – but without an open forum for these notions, we’d be headed the way of media today – consolidated and controlled by a very few. Until we reconcile quality with access, there isn’t an answer to this that isn’t elitist.

Hungry for something

It's not entirely that I have been lazy - just nothing's come across my desk for me to sink my teeth into. Check this out though for a good laugh: Flash Beer . Carlton Draught's follow up to it's famed Big Ad.

Where is the truth and who has it?

I came across an article on the film “Loose Change” this weekend. Self-funded and produced by 22-year old Dylan Avery, the film began as a screenplay about the fictional account of he and a group of friends discovering that September 11^th was not a terrorist act of violence, but rather a US government-led attack.

As Avery explains on his site, upon researching for the movie it became apparent to him that the premise may not have been fiction. Thus, he creates the documentary – which gets picked up virally and is now one of the most watched videos on the Web. From his site:

"Loose Change 2nd Edition" is the follow-up to the most provocative 9-11 documentary on the market today. This film shows direct connection between the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the United States government. Evidence is derived from news footage, scientific fact, and most important, Americans who suffered through that tragic day. IT IS EVERYONE'S DUTY TO VIEW THIS FILM!

Truth be told, I have not seen the film. And I’m not sure I want to…I have a mental block on all films related to September 11^th. But the premise got me thinking about the power of the web to spread information – all information – correct and incorrect and how it frightens me that the line shifts so often and so easily.

I don’t claim that Avery’s film is a lie. But it is disturbing me that with the vast amount of information that is disseminated each day, it is becoming harder and harder to ascertain what the truth is.

In my mind, if there was an inch of truth the film, wouldn’t major newspapers such as The New York Times be picking it up and running with it? Or would they be too scared to act on anything given the chill the FCC has spread across our media?

The Internet is a glorious thing – and content generated by ordinary people is a phenomenal infoscape of experiences. (It is also one of the first things a good marketing agency leads with on a pitch – which really needs to give you pause). What is troubling to me is that ordinary people don’t subscribe to the same code of ethics as a journalist. It’s like when a cop becomes a private eye and doesn’t have to follow the law anymore…sometimes a good thing, sometimes scary.

That’s not to say that the state of journalism is polished and pretty. It’s actually quite disappointing. Still…I keep coming back to the idea that it is a profession for a reason.

So, Mr. Avery – he may have all the good intentions in the world…at the end of the day, I cannot wrap my head around his inspiration for the movie coming from a conversation with James Gandolfini. I pretty much stop considering him a viable resource after that.

As you can tell by the tangential narration of this article – I’m still trying to figure this out.

You cannot make a case for five

Over drinks the other night, Katie shared with me her lesson to her 9^th graders – Humanities v. Science. She explained to her class that the humanities were subjects related to ideas and culture – more of the gray matter. Whereas the sciences dealt with fact and trying to get to the truth of the matter. This was her example:

If you’re in math class and your teacher asks you to add 4+2 – and you don’t get six. Then you know that you are wrong. You cannot make a case for five.

You cannot make a case for five.

Maybe it was the cadence with which she spoke, or maybe the very beautiful simplicity with which she explained – but that phrase hit me. It started to transcend so much more than what she was relaying. It began to permeate into my recent thinking on reality v. virtual life. The virtual life, for all its magnificent imagination and creativity – it does not equal six. It will always be five just by its nature of being virtual.

It feels like it measures up and on every level that feeling begins to convince you that it is indeed real…only it’s not six.

Madden NFL 2007 recently came out – with a whole lotta hoopla in the gaming world. Jeff MacGregor, wrote a fantastic column on this in SI 21 August 2006:

“Take the violence out of football, erase the pain given and taken, reduce the grunt and the struggle to the push of a button, eliminate the magnificent inconsistencies of the human heart and it’s capacity for courage or cowardice, and the game, the war, is no more than fast-twitch exercise – a battle fought without personal cost. It is cause without effect, a victory only for technology and opposable thumbs.”

You can win at Madden 2007 – but you’ll never feel the beating, you’ll never taste the blood and you’ll never sweat the win.

That’s a whole lot less than six.

This translates on a personal level with me. I seem to continually be in a pattern of making a case for five. I can whip you up a fantastic story of love and romance – I can write words that will make you quiver and blush – but my words do not make a relationship come alive.

Still, truth be told, I am the Atticus Finch of number 5.