Saturday Video Roundup: creating a stop sign
Happy Saturday. For those of you who don’t work in the world of marketing and advertising, this is so accurate it’s a little scary.
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TunesDay: what is, what was and what almost was – the S&R interview with Don Dixon
I’ve been a very big Don Dixon fan since the late ’70s, so when his new CD, The Nu-Look, dropped I was bouncing around the living room like Snoopy doing a happy dance. Sadly, a lot of people don’t know Don’s music – although many know his work as the producer of Murmur and Reckoning by REM and multiple records
Read moreThe smartest shopping cart that ever lived
MediaPost reports this morning on an interesting new survey from TNS, which says that “sixty percent of shoppers across the globe believe that they will be able to pay for purchases using just their fingerprint by 2015, rated top by 25% of shoppers.” Never mind the chill that should send down the spine of anyone who values their privacy –
Read moreThe truth about “straight talk”
Q: How can you tell when politicians are lying? A: When they say they aren’t. As we wade deeper into the silly swamp that is Electoral Trainwreck ’08 I realize that most nights I wind up giggling myself to sleep. My old friend Disraeli famously observed that people tend to get the government they deserve, and as I’ve noted before,
Read moreGod bless Home Depot
Finally, an American corporation is getting serious about supporting our troops and their families. Thanks to Mike Smith for the tip.
Read moreEven better than the real thing: mass media and manufactured beauty
Give me one last dance We’ll slide down the surface of things You’re the real thing Yeah the real thing You’re the real thing Even better than the real thing I figured out a long time ago, even before I began encountering grad-level feminist critiques, that our media’s stylized construction and portrayal of female beauty was problematic. It’s bad enough
Read moreAn REA model for 21st Century broadband?
Our friend at the Niagara Falls Reporter, the Pulitzer-winning John Hanchette, today comments and expands on Denny’s analysis concerning the need for a new business model for news organizations. Denny’s post and Hanch’s follow-on, taken together, represent about as coherent a starting point for the discussion of the future of news as I’ve seen, and while I’m certain that no
Read moreSocial media, innovation and clueless agencies: new report tells us what we already know
If you know anything at all about the agency world, this new report tells you a whole lot of what you already know. ‘Agencies Don’t Get It,’ Survey Says Feb 28, 2008Clients are placing more emphasis on mastering social media but find their agencies ill equipped to help them succeed in that space, according to a new survey. TNS Media
Read moreThe volume war
Alan Wilder of Recoil (and formerly of Depeche Mode) has some thoughts on the state of music these days. So who shall we blame for the whole mess? Do we stick two fingers up at the record companies who have sat around twiddling their thumbs, peddling overpriced re-issues for years while their A&R men bombard us with shallow, faceless pop
Read moreTelecom immunity: how stupid do you think we are?
It’s FISA Day in your Senate – amazing how this was scheduled for Potomac Primary Day, huh? – and Matt Browner Hamlin has the agenda up at Holdfast. My big issue is item #4: retroactive immunity for telecoms. Verizon and AT&T have done all they can to pretend that they had no idea that their participation in warrantless wiretapping might
Read moreSocial networking: the next generation
Have you ever noticed how social networks don’t do a very good job of representing how our personal networks actually function? Sure, places like Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn have their utility, but their flatness is a problem. Think about your Facebook, for instance. If it’s like mine, you have friends there who run the gamut from “real life best
Read more2007 in Review, pt. 3: Sex, drugs and cellulite!
Welcome to part three of S&R’s first annual year-end round-up. I’ll begin by apologizing for my colleagues, who have wasted a lot of their time (and yours) yammering about “important” issues. Of course, I admire their intellectual gravity, but let’s be honest – that sort of seriousness is really misplaced when the intended audience is the American public. As we
Read moreUpon reflection: was I too hard on The Blog Council?
Last week I joined a legion of business bloggers in poleaxing the shizizzle out of a self-satisfied new project called The Blog Council. Josh Catone of Read/WriteWeb stomped them. Dave Taylor, who’s probably forgotten more about blogging than the entire council put together knows, took them to school. Robert Scoble – another guy who knows a thing or two about
Read moreA great new how-not-to resource for business bloggers
When a new innovation comes along, corporations typically follow a predictable arc. First there’s the “Ignore It” phase. Then, once it becomes clear that it’s actually important, they dive into the “Getting It All Wrong” phase. The first step in Getting It All Wrong is “pretend that the new thing works like all the old things.” Eventually they get past
Read moreThank god for Wal*Mart
Wow. How bad are things in Cleveland, anyway? As the world’s largest private employer, Wal-Mart is used to being greeted by large numbers of applicants almost every time it opens a new store. But the 6,000-plus people who applied for jobs at the new Supercenter in Cleveland’s Steelyard Commons took everyone, even Wal-Mart, by surprise. “We had to recount [the
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lullaby pit 