Archive for April, 2009

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What Do Monkees And Gorillaz Have In Common?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 21, 2009 by admin in Music

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

They’d both go ape over the new Gorillaz documentary Bananaz

I’m sure there’s some deeper significance to the fact that in grade school, one of my favorite bands was the Monkees, and that many years later, one of my favorite bands was Gorillaz. One thing is for certain: I didn’t grow up much in the interim. During the little growing up I did do, I was exposed to a lot of live music and production (my mom managed a music store, and had a lot of connections at live venues). From an early age, I had plans to be a failed pop star who would later have a successful career as a producer. I had some definite success with the former, the results aren’t fully in on the latter. In any case, as a result I’ve never been a big fan of conventional pop music acts; some of my favorite artists over the years were production teams or their projects. Zang Tumb Tuum, Chemical Brothers, Brian Eno, and Thomas Dolby would be a few examples. Which is part of why I’ll never forget seeing the first Gorillaz video. I loved it from a creative point of view, but was almost ecstatic when I later found out that the cartoon characters were the band. Which should make the new “behind the music” documentary Bananaz that much more amusing. It’s going to be released on DVD in June 2009, and the trailer is featured at left, but you can view the whole thing on line now at Babelgum, Oo-oo!

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I Know You Don’t Know Jack, But Have You Met Seth?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 20, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

Monday, April 20th, 2009

An attempt to bring a little intelligence back to our Monday time-wasters…

I had never noticed until yesterday the remarkable resemblance between the animated host of the web version of You Don’t Know Jack and the byline photo on marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog. Which is our odd segue into this week’s slightly brainier edition of our Monday Demotivators. We received a complaint last week that our little Monday tradition had “devolved from a thought-provoking Monday diversion into a desperate Flash game linkfest“. While that’s a fair observation, I feel obligated to point out that I’m pretty sure that that’s the whole idea here! All the same, I’m willing to consider the possibility that maybe we’re reaching the point that marketing guru Seth Godin calls The Dip, wherein it’s hard to tell if we’re just not pushing ourselves hard enough, or maybe it’s time to throw in the towel. Guess you’ll have to come back next Monday to find out. In the meantime, if You Don’t Know Jack, get to know him. It’s a simple game, but it requires a little intelligence to score well. Although popular as a computer game for over a decade, the TV version with Paul Reubens only lasted six episodes. For those who like a little word challenge to get the day rolling, try DeepLeap, “The Fast-Paced Time-Wasting Word Game!“. Kind of like Scrabble, except someone’s constantly shoving new letters at you. And kind of bridging (heh) the gap between using your mind and Flash game brain death, we have BridgeCraft, a cute, cute, cute little game in which you help little creatures called “Euwins” build bridges to help them rebuild their world. I find games like this rather annoying, so I think I derived more pleasure from just letting the Euwins drown by building faulty bridges. And lastly, for those of you who actually do enjoy Flash game brain death, we have Power Golf. Happy sandtraps, and Happy Monday!

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What’s Your Facebook Footprint?

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 19, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

Does the green movement’s use of the web cancel itself out?

Last year we wrote about how Ford was having a Fiesta, and that you weren’t invitado. Well, they’re finally going to market the car next year in the states, and they apparently picked 100 bloggers from over 4,000 applicants to pump their product through social networking. Which all got me wondering. What is the carbon footprint of our time spent on the web? Well, apparently two Google searches produce the same amount of CO2 as bringing water to a boil on your stovetop. Some other examples: the total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 was nearly 5 gigawatts, which is enough to power Las Vegas on the hottest day of the year. What about the trillions of spam messages sent annually? They consume enough electricity  to power 2.4 million homes, and release as much carbon dioxide as 3.1 million cars consuming 2 billion gallons of gasoline. Which begs the obvious question: if that’s the impact of spam, what about porn? Based on all of this, will the benefits of buying a Fiesta be undone by all the blogging and Facebooking about them? You decide. Current estimates would put Facebook’s overall carbon footprint at half of New York City’s (thanks mostly to all those photos you share!). That somehow doesn’t sound as bad as the fact that Avatars in Second Life consume as much electricity as actual Brazilians, but it’s still a hefty figure. Fortunately there are lots of Facebook apps to help you manage your carbon footprint. If you actually take this topic seriously and want to figure out your carbon footprint, there a plenty of resources like the LowImpactLiving.com Impact Calculator, and this WSJ article takes a good look at a few products and how their footprints are measured.

CNN Gets Punk’d By Ashton Kutcher On Twitter

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 18, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

Will an Oprah endorsement kill Twitter before people know what it is?

I apologize in advance to any Twitter addicts reading this, the piece will almost certainly be longer than 140 characters. The fact that Ashton Kutcher punk’d CNN the other day, combined with Oprah’s first all-caps tweet (see below), spoke volumes about Twitter’s future. First of all, Kutcher really did punk the game, with donated billboard space. That’s not viral marketing, it’s germ warfare. And many would agree that an endorsement from Oprah is more like a command to a zombie army than it is an indication of the validity of something. I predict that unless Twitter either implements some amazing and broadly accessible real-time search (as has been suggested), or builds a more Facebook-like central site that incorporates additional social networking features, the service is destined to max out somewhere around the number of active crackberry users. If Twitter is all about sharing what you’re doing at any given moment, you have to remember you could get the same information about many Americans by just looking at that evening’s TV listings. And those same Americans are probably not texting very much yet. I mean, although a Google exec may be showing a lot of ignorance by calling Twitter just another e-mail service, these Americans we’re talking about are the same people that in a CNN poll responded to the question “Do you use Twitter?” with  6% saying “Yes,” 64% saying “No,” and 30% saying “What’s Twitter?” Read the rest of this entry »

Brains – They’re Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 17, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Does taking quizzes on Facebook mean you’re stupid?

As a person who (like many) spends a little too much time on Facebook lately, I’m a little perplexed by reasonably intelligent people who spend a lot of time taking inane personality and pop culture tests, and then publicly displaying the results. I guess it’s a kind of vanity combined with curiosity, which in an ideal world would be true self examination. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that when given expert advice, the brain shuts down, which this Wired article tries to use to explain why we listen to idiots like Jim Kramer of CNBC. Be careful though, because if you listen to Jim too much, you’ll end up poverty-stricken, and that’s not good for your brain either. It’s kind of sad that in a world where people’s brain development suffers because of malnutrition, people are not only eating perfectly good brains (I mean, you’d expect this from a politician, but y’know…), they’re also slicing them up for research to figure out how they work. Don’t they realize that HowStuffWorks.com already has it figured out?  I also find it interesting that in spite of the fact that we have mindmapping tools to offload some of our processing, a tech support person can still be dumb enough to be indistinguishable from a chatbot. Which is pretty disturbing to know if you’ve ever tried to carry on an intelligent conversation with the award-winning artificial intelligence named Elbot. Anyway, if you really feel like taking a quiz, try these tests on the BBC Science site. They have the benefit of not making you look like an idiot on Facebook. I personally scored perfectly on everything except morality. And if you want to enhance your brain power, read Brain Rules. And we’re experts, so just let your brain shut down and go buy it. Now. Read the rest of this entry »

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