Targeting Gone Wrong

Just 4 Fun: 23 Years Later

Mein Twitter Ist Sch***s

YouBundle: Bookmarks 2.0?

I spotted the 60 second pitch of start-up YouBundle over on Tech Crunch, and decided to have a look. YouBundle offers an interesting additional layer on social bookmarking. It is designed to make bookmarks more useful by allowing users to bundle links together into a metaphorically mashed up piece of content about a subject.

The idea intrigues me because i collect links on a variety of topics, as well as refer to linked articles selected by others. I really do find it a step up in terms of getting the best insights on a subject. But one of the hassles is that links are like tens or even hundreds of separate sheets of paper on a desk. Without some way to find the best -- without some way to organize the best into subjects, it's difficult to truly make the most of them.



Enter YouBundle, a tool that lets you and of course everyone else group a set of links and package it as a content bundle for use by yourself and others. You don't need to limit yourself to articles; video and audio also work rather well, I am told.

So, for example, I have several hundred links on BT on a bookmark site. With this tool I could sort them into areas (tech, legal issues, privacy, competitors, mobile BT, funding announcements, etc.) and group them into a more useful whole. Now, stuff like my wonky interest in BT is not the real focus here, I don't expect, but it would work even better for mainstream interests.

Here's how their CEO pitched it:



I am intrigued. Haven't got my beta invite yet (I just applied) but it sounds like a nice advancement on something I have increasingly come to rely on.

Head on over to TC and give him an up arrow. It's a good idea.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

The Reason Why We Get The Presidents We Do

Crazy Acid Throwing Neighbor - Watch more free videos

White Paper Thursdays: Social Network Best Practices

I found this an interesting and engaging preso on social network best practices, so I thought I'd share. You may wish to click through to the SlideShare site so you can see it in full screen as the type is tiny.

Social network websites: best practices from leading services

view presentation (tags: web2.0 socialplatform community matchmaking)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

White Paper Thursdays: An Internet Bill of Rights

I found this brief slide show interesting -- about the need for governance and safeguards, if I may be so bold as to oversimplify, on the web. Give it some clickage.

A Bill of Rights for the Internet

view presentation (tags: rights bill internet)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

I'm a Biancalana Booster!

Magnificent news for a branding and design agency called Anthem in SF. One of my favorite people, Barbara Biancalana, has joined their team on the Safeway account. Anthem is rather lucky to have her, in my biased opinion.

Way back when I was relatively new in the business, I reported to someone who reported to Barb -- don't make age assumptions based upon the chronology, she was but 3 years old at the time -- and she was already setting the world on fire. She was Management Supervisor on the Quaker account, and what I loved about her -- well, it's a rather long list, but some of the highlights include:

Strategic leadership
Team building
Relationship building
Biz Dev
Development of people
Creating an enjoyable and fun environment

Not a bad list of highlights, eeh? She's a smartie-- so bright that she gets a single account from a client and within a couple of years there are a dozen accounts under her watch -- there because clients see that she gets it and gets what they need and -- here's the best bit -- empowers her team to provide it.

Barb, who has no idea that I am writing this public fan letter, tells me that she is lucky to be joining Anthem, which is a rapidly growing branding and design consultancy that has done some amazing work for a variety of companies. I am not a follower of that space, but did a little checking and these folks know their stuff boy oh boy do they -- they do simply breathtaking identity work, and lovely packages that fill my cupboards. What makes Anthem different is they are integrated -- meaning they offer branding and design work plus the necessary production expertise to make it all happen. Anyway, a shout out to Barb, Anthem, and the fine people at Safeway who, by the way, make the world's best frozen pasta entrees, along with about 943,000 other things.

I am certain ya'll are gonna love each other a whole bunch.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Paris IS Hot!

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Pizza Completeza

It's Not Monkeys, It's Dogs

You know that probability mindtwister about how monkeys in a room could randomly clack at keys and generate Hamlet with enough time? That randomness can sometimes generate seemingly unrandom things?

Well, it's not monkeys, its dogs. Or rather dog. True story, the most photogenic dog in the world, my Sleepy Sleepington,



stepped on my laptop which has Yahoo as a homepage. As should all laptops, I might add. But anyway, as near as I can tell, he stepped on Fre (one paw step would do it) and when the Yahoo Panama drop down opened he somehow clicked on Frenchfry.com, which brought the computer to a community site for Ozzy Osbourne. He jumped at the screen change, and now my backslash key sticks, but it was remarkable nonetheless.

Now, truth be told, I hate Osbourne's music, but the site was really interesting because it showed how community has become an integral part of the music business. the same business that earlier in the past decade was suing college kids for file sharing. This is a fan site, but the writing is clearly on the screen, err, wall.

The site has a primitive feel to it, but the structure and content really say a lot about how digit heads have changed even the nether cultural recesses of dreadful music.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Am I Intruding On Your Web Experience? GOOD.

The people at iMedia have lowered their standards enough to publish another missive from me, this one about the need for advertisers to intrude on users occasionally so that commerce can continue and the web can remain the deal of the millenium. Please click on over to take a look.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

BrightRoll Takes Its Show On the Road

We are working with BrightRoll to produce a roadshow on best practices in video. The series, entitled "All Eyes on Video," is intended for agency professionals and will provide them with the industry's most up-to-date information around smart online video advertising. The seminars are led by Tod Sacerdoti and Charlie Whittingham.

I got to attend today's event in Atlanta, and thought I'd telegraph a little of the content so that, in case you are on the fence and living in one of the five future cities of the tour, you can come on down, as it were.

Incidently, the future events are in these cities:

-- Wednesday, August 6 - W Hotel, Dallas, TX
-- Thursday, August 7 - The Funnel Mill, Santa Monica, CA
-- Tuesday, August 19 - W City Center, Chicago, IL
-- Wednesday, August 20 - Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA
-- Thursday, August 21 - Michael's, New York, NY

For more information about any of the scheduled events, please contact the BrightRoll PR team at: brightroll (at) launchsquad (dot) com.

The presentation outlines high level industry trend info, the sort of stuff that people are always asking for, to better demonstrate the potential value of video in different marketing situations. It then offers a series of best practice learnings -- stuff to help people get what they are paying for in video.

Soapbox: We've worked with a variety of video companies, both as a buyer and as an agency, and one of the most ubiquitous characteristics of all of the companies in the category is that TO THE FIRM, every person I have met, spoken with, or heard about is honorable. One of the things you never hear in video is "my competitor is crap" and I really value that from all of the firms because it reflects a sense of mutual respect and a shared goal of moving the industry forward. I want to emphasize that that is true of BrightRoll just as it is of all of the competitors. It makes it a pleasure to work with video companies, whether as a project event producer or indeed as a buyer of video inventory for other clients.

Anyway. I think the seminar series has a lot of value. Providing informaiton to make planning and buying easier and more effective is a real contribution.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Apple Parodies

Blippr: Twitter Meets Reviews

Am I the only person with a long attention span anymore? As sad as it makes me when I write a white paper and people tell me they only read the summary, it is a fact that in our current world we have access to so much info that one can be hard pressed to delve in deeply other than So You think You Can Dance.

Another thing to think about is how lots of times our opinions of things can be best stated in a single sentence. And that is the marvelous idea behing Blippr, a service I was introduced to by my business partner Cory Treffiletti.

Blippr lets people leave 160 character reviews of media -- movies, music, DVDs, games, etc. -- that can then be enjoyed by an interested in public. ad lest we forget our 14 year old brothers and sisters, you also get to choose a smiley for your message!



I went over to the site and liked what I saw. First a two line reg form. Perfecto! Then I got to reading some blips and found them very engaging, far mroeso than I would expect was possible in a text.

Here's what one person said about the Juno movie:

OVERRATED! My dislike for this film is augmented by everyone else's inability to see how much it sucks. Cringeworthy dialogue, unlikable characters, lameness.

And another about the band Alarm and its Standards album:

The Alarm is one of those great 80's rock bands that never made it as big as U2. I always thought they were better than u2. The CD has all the greatest songs.

It reminded me of that "in five seconds video series on YouTube:











You get the spirit. So in closing, I thought I would try to give a review in 160 characters:

Blippr is great. Twitter meets revewing. 160 character reviews from regular people. You get the gist fast. Get Blipping at www.blippr.com.

Thanks for reading, And don't forget to write.

We're Watching More TV!

In the 1950s, people could feel good about leisure activities. It was all about what percent of the country now had a dishwasher and the like. But leisure gets a bad rap these days.

And these data from Nielsen show Americans watching more -- TV, Internet, and Mobile vids. Which begs the question: what are we doing LESS of? I realize that telewebbing drives some of the growth -- the use of multiple media simultaneously. But I also have a feeling that sleep and quiet time is down. For better or for worse.

In any case, there's more time for ads, and that's the main thing. ;-)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Brad's Acres

Check out Brad Berens's hilarious post on the enduring relevance of Green Acres as a storytelling engine, and its potential ratings power in our digital world.

Note to Brad: Your damned post put that frigging theme song in my head for 36 hours. Wait, now its back. Damn you! ;-)



If you play to the end, you will see that Grape Nuts fill you up, not out.


BTW, a Gabor is the only person that came make snobbish elitism lovable. And so busty, too!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Geek Magazine: A Hilarious New(ish) Development

So I was in Borders over the weekend, and spotted two facings of Geek magazine, a title that, in their words,

...is dedicated to anything and everything that geeks like to obsess about; Toys, Anime, TV Shows, Games, and DVDs. But there is more to the modern geek so expect the lowdown on all sorts of things from the latest apply-to-the-forehead headache cure to the technology behind space currency and the personalities behind our geek-driven culture.

Oh, I personally rebel against the label geek, and truth be told have only a couple of the prereqs outlined above. I am more likely to read what Britney's doing than what Paul Allen is up to (in fairness to my voyeuristic tendency, let me point out that Paul never, to my knowledge at least, got out of a car with no underwear on...,) but I really am struck by how many people are so willing to accept -- nay, embrace -- the g word and by how geek-driven our culture really is. It's not OK! mag readers that created FaceBook, after all. So I salute geeks, and Geek Mag, which I found an interesting read even if I could care less about anime. Actually I care less than less.

But these people are examples of their target, who organized a singles night complete with light sabres. Best quote "We just need to come out of our hobbit holes and meet."



And you have to smile at an offline media industry saluting techy geeks that are eventually going to put it out of business, and at a TV business where, to take the most extreme example, showed "New York", VH-1's paragon of classless bling, and her Mom, watching and commenting on YouTube vids in a 60 minute special some months back. People watching people on TV watching vids on the net. Ya gotta smile.

And Geek Monthly's Blogs are fierce!

What next...Geek Monthly Comic Con playmates?

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

AOL: It's a SocialThing

As AOL struggles to evolve, and by struggle I mean pursuing a veriety of paths as are many media companies, their initiatives in LifeStreaming are pretty interesting. If you are an AIM user you may have read or tried their BuddyUpdate offerings, which allow users to track other people across a variety of social media platforms like Twitter.

Now they have purchased SocialThing, a product in private beta that promises to add a host of additional life streaming capabilities to the AOL operation. The Boulder CO operation is one of the ten companies in the TechStars incubator initiaitve, which provides dinero and counsel to ideas that hold a great deal of promise.

Here's a promo vid for TechStars.



It got me to thinking about my biggest pet peeve of social media -- that I do not have time to keep up with the goings on at a dozen different social communities, but I am driven to join them because each offers tailored functionality to foster a specific kind or set of kinds of interaction.

SocialThing appears to be similar to FriendFeed, though doubtless there are differences I don't understand. But check them out, and bravo to AOL for pursuing this direction which from my view appears to be a winner.

The Miracle That Is Xobni

I am not a negative blogger, so hearing praise for a product isn't unusual here. And neither is hearing about Xobni, the email application add-on that is like having the most organized personal assistant on the planet by your side.

But I rarely call products miracles. And Xobni is one. OMG is this thing cool. It makes life 5000% easier -- OK, OK, email life -- by tracking contacts, conversations, and attachments and providing fascinating stats about your contacts as well. It's an Outlook add-on that means you will never spend 13 minutes searching for an attachment again, among many other blessed gifts of functionality.

And the MF-in thing is free as in gratis. My gift to you this AM is the link to download the miracle that is Xobni. The instant you do it you will be sending good karma to me for prodding you to do so.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.