Blog Tag, Which I kind of already did, without the tag part...
So, two days before Jeff Pulver came up with the blog tag game, I posted some stuff you might not have known about me. Of course, I didn't do tags, so it wasn't much of a game, so now I'll just repost some of that stuff and tag, b/c I've now been tagged twice. Plus, I'd like to take the opportunity to link to some of my favorite bloggers.
1) I have no sweaters.
2) I bounce my right leg up and down when I'm sitting without even noticing it.
3) I hate soccer.
4) I do not trust the snooze button... I reset the alarm even just five minutes from now just to be on the safe side.
5) I have a fear of heights.
Ok, I am tagging Eric Nehrlich, Scott Adams, danah boyd, Niki Scevak, and Brooklyn Met Fan.
The Kaneva Virtual Carrot on a Stick
So I signed up for yet another social network, Kaneva, and *yay* my avatar plays in it. And what's cool is that I'm not the only Oddcast avatar in there... check out this cool use of SitePal for this movie review page. One interesting thing going on in there though is that all the users are obsessed with friending, commenting and "raving" (giving a thumbs up) each other. Why? Because Kaneva has built a 3D virtual world that is in closed beta and only available to its most active users. Everyone seems to want in. It's fascinating to watch and I'd bet that they couldn't get that kind of usage if they paid people in cash. The only issue is, how long can you keep the donkey from getting the carrot? Do people give up after a while? I sort of feel like you need a disincentive here to balance it out... like some kind of measure of authenticity. So, for example, I shouldn't count as a very good connection. I'm new, I have no other connections. I have no previous contact with these people. People like me should count against them and real relationships, or at least real-looking relationships, should count more.
If anyone at Kaneva is listening, I'd love to see the beta of the virtual world and discuss how to make the site more authentic. It's a good site... pretty responsive... nice creation tools that are helpful, but still flexible... but I think this carrot might be fleeting in the long run.
Right phone, wrong OS
So, I've been eyeing the new LG phone that Verizon is selling, the "V". Here's a question. Why the heck would you make a phone that has a QWERTY keyboard if it wasn't a smartphone?
I'd love to find a way to get Windows Mobile on this phone, or at least Microsoft Word and Outlook, because I love the form factor. It's great because it looks and acts like a real phone on the outside, with real numeric buttons and such, but then flips open for advanced usage.
Is there any way to hack this?
Fun with branded, but non-paid, avatars
So, I needed a new schtick for my avatar and came up with something this morning. Starting today, for the next few weeks, I will update my avatar and deck him out with Jamba Juice favor colors depending on what I drank that day. Today's avatar is purple. Click through and click the play button at the bottom to hear what today's flavor was.
Just so you know, I was not paid for this... I just really like Jamba.
Well, check that, I did get a free smoothie for putting $25 on my Jamba Card, but anyone can take advantage of that offer until the end of the year, I think.
Webcams for everyone this year
So I just ordered a webcam for my nieces in Tampa and one for my parents. I have one, too. This will either be a completely game-changing way for my family to increase the amount of interaction it has with each other or be a total failure. Should be interesting nonetheless.
Now I just have to get my Dad off AOL dial-up and on broadband.
Let's not start sucking each other's blogs just yet: On Time's Person of the Year
So Time picked you and me... the users, as its Person of the Year, holding out YouTube as its shining example of a community driven media revolution.
I have two reactions to this.
First, I don't need old media telling me I'm special. Like Jarvis wrote, it has always been us. Only now, it seems to be fashionable and profitable to say so. Old media giving us a pat on the back reminds me of that line in Pink Floyd's Animals:
"You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in."
So, to Time, I give a big fat thanks but no thanks... the same reaction I have to blogging "A-lists". We're just people, living out our lives and talking. That's not special, that's just real. Unfortunately, it took the web a long time to get this close to reflecting real life.
That being said, my bigger issue is that it really doesn't reflect real life for most people. Most people aren't blogging or posting on YouTube.
And, in the year where it became obvious that we weren't going to "win" in Iraq, I have to admit, that I feel a little sickened that we're being so self-congratulatory about taking over the web. We're nearling 3,000 US military deaths in Iraq, now more than the number of civilians killed in 9/11... and we're talking about... YouTube? Are you serious? PS... Newt Gingrich pointed out something interesting today... 60% of young Iraqi males are out of work. He suggested fixing things over there by instituting an FDR-sized civil works program. Instead of paying soldiers to shoot people who have nothing better to do than to shoot at us, how about paying citizens to fix their own country and go to work.
Look, I'm impressed and awed by user generated media as much as the next guy. I mean, hey, I work for an avatar company.
But, let's reserve this award for the year that bloggers and YouTubers end the War in Iraq, Save Darfur, rebuild New Orleans, address global warming (I'm going to bike into the city today, December 17th and it's going to be 62 degrees in NYC), push voter turnout over 80%, fix our education system, ban Paris Hilton from all media, start getting states to fall like dominos on gay marriage, or all of the above. Right now, I think we're still doing a little too much talking to ourselves to deserve the proverbial reach around. We still have a lot of work to do.
Youre Not In The Movies
Fordham graduation is this Saturday, so in honor of that event, I thought this would be a fitting time to put up what might actually be my favorite movie--definitely one in my top five. Ben Braddock has just graduated and the only thing he's got planned for himself is a little "drifting here in the pool." Ideas? Well, everyone's got ideas for him... from "Plastics" to meeting with older women in hotels to taking out their daughters when they come down from Berkeley. Everyone thinks they've got him pegged, too. "Track star." "Agitator." (Gotta love the Normal Fell bit there as the landlord in Berkeley. Obviously, that got him the Mr. Roper gig.)
Its tough though. The one thing college doesn't really prepare you for is figuring out what to do with yourself after you're done, and so any graduating senior can relate to what Dustin Hoffman goes through in this movie. For one thing, its just a bizarre situation to be back home from college after you've lived four years on your own and now, all of the sudden, you're thrust back into their world. Your whole college life comes to a screeching halt, and now you're hanging out with people in their 50's. (At least my parents didn't buy me scuba gear and make me test it in our pool on my birthday in front of all their friends.)
The music (this seems to be a theme with me...) from Simon and Garfunkel is classic, as is the whole movie... Its tough to get more memorable than Hoffman's ride in his Alfa Romeo down to Santa Barbara to search for Katherine Ross's wedding, touched off by the "Mrs. Robinson" track.
So watch this, or go back and watch it again. Listen to every line. There are too many good ones that Hoffman's deadpan style might lull you past, but so many of the short ones are funny. He tells his parents that he's getting married, and then they realize that he hasn't even asked the girl yet.
"Benjamin, this whole idea seems rather half-baked."
"No, I assure you, its fully baked."
Anne Bancroft, who is like a million years old now (and married to Mel Brooks) rasps and smokes her way into Dustin Hoffman's world for the summer, culminating in a train wreck of a standoff towards the end. She "controls" much Ben's life, and the movie, until he finds what he actually wants and goes after it. So take some time off if you need, but not too much, to find your Elaine, and go after it like a track star. You'll learn why wood is better than wire, and how to keep a crowd at bay with a crucifix.
"Doesn't he seem like the kind of guy that needs to fight them off with a stick?"
Benjamin Braddock. Class of 1967.
College Baseball Poll
The New York Times featured an article about Fordham's plans for expansion at its Lincoln Center Campus--a plan that includes "a high-rise quadrangle for 10,600 students would be created on the
Columbus Avenue end of the superblock between 60th and 62nd Streets,
with seven new buildings around a 1.5-acre courtyard." This plan is far from new, though. In fact, the sketches that appeared in the article detailing what Fordham Lincoln Center might look like in the future actually appeared much earlier in The Ram--the University's student run newspaper in 2000. (I'm pretty sure it was 2000, because I think it was related to Fordham in the new Millenium. Anyway... I'm quite sure I've seen this before).
If I remember correctly, the plans also included moving the undergraduate business school to Lincoln Center as well. As much as I hate to say it, this makes a lot of sense. While I enjoyed my time at Rose Hill, if you are going to have a more competitive business program, it really needs to be in Manhatten. That is not to say that you won't have students living at Rose Hill taking classes at the Lincoln Center business school. Having the classes in the city gives the school better access to local businesses for internships, recruiting, and for having professionals contributing in the classroom with speaking engagements.
Even if this wasn't in the Ram before, it doesn't take a lot of effort to realize how valuable Fordham's location on 60th and Columbus is, and how underutilized it is in terms of the numbers of students it serves.
This is ambitious thinking and I hope it comes to fruition. I have two hopes for the plan, though. First, and most important, I hope the expansion is done in such a manner that it maintains all of Fordham's traditions--which include a very personal touch with small class sizes, accessable faculty, and a tight community of students. This also includes maintaining the influence of the Jesuit philosophy. I hope expansion of the student body doesn't dilute the amount of people interested in what this philosophy brings to bear.
Second, I hope that the alumni start opening their pockets when those little envelopes come in the mail when the school is headed in the right direction like this. The percentage of alumni who donate, especially relative to the number of people who got some kind of scholarships or financial aid, is pathetic. There's really no excuse for it. I hate it when people say, "I gave them enough money." Do you water a plant with a gallon of water the first day you get it and then forget about it? These percentage giving rates count bigtime in college rankings and the school, which doesn't run off of its endowment like Harvard or Princeton, really needs the money as it ramps up to become a premier institution. If the giving rates go up, then Fordham can actually see these ambitious plans through. Then, all of the sudden, you got a degree from the premier Catholic college in the country. What's that worth to you? Is it worth $100 a year for the rest of your life? Sounds like a lot? $5000 over the next 50 years doesn't sound like a lot to me, especially if all of the sudden you went to the 25th ranked school in the country (That's where Georgetown is right now... Fordham is 70th.) Anyway... enough of my grandstanding. This move is good for Fordham. I just hope they do it right and that the alumni give the school the support it needs to get there.
She Dreams in Digital: Second Life Versus Enhanced Reality
So I received a couple more comments on the 10 Reasons to go Short on Second Life post and now I have a new line of thinking here... but first I want to make a couple of points. Rick Schettino wrote:
"...And kids will be as deft in VR as today's kids are in MySpace or YouTube. Second Life is a whole lot more fun and adventurous than ANY "flat" entertainment centered website..."
Thinking that, because a technology is superior, that the product has more utility is certainly logical, but I don't think it's accurate. That's the same kind of thinking that makes people think that voice chat is better than IM, and so far, voice on the web hasn't even made a dent in IM usage. Sometimes, "old" technology has a usefulness that would disappear if upgraded. I like that IM is just text. I like that I can partially ignore it and still have a conversation with someone who is also partially ignoring me. I like that I can talk to 8 people at a time on IM which I cannot mentally do on Skype. It's not old or broken, it is what it is and it works.
Flatness is not the bottleneck in MySpace or YouTube, it's portability, relevence filtering, etc. If I could get the people most like me or videos I love recommended to me in a better way, that's infinately more useful than a more complex 3-D profile or viewing experience. We talk about the same thing in the avatar space. Are there better looking avatars out there rendered in 3-D? Absolutely. Is that going to make people want them more? I think the jury is still out on that, but certainly the simpleness of their avatars doesn't seem to be hurting Habbo Hotel, for example. If I had a choice between a lightweight, portable avatar that could do more stuff, versus a heavier one that was less interactive, but 3-D and rendered in video or something else besides Flash, I think I gotta go with the little flat people... at least that's the bet that Oddcast is making.
On more point from Rick, who I'm glad commented along with Stephanie is keeping me thinking on this. Commenters rule!
"It's not for everyone yet, SL won't benefit a wallpaper manufacturer as much as it will an energy drink brand."
Absolutely... and marketers need to realize that it works better for some than others. However, I think that's one of my fundamental issues with it as a platform versus the web. Wallpaper manufacturers can buy Google keywords and let the web work for them just as much as Coke can build out a whole music video website that has an immersive brand experience. The web as a platform works for everyone and if you have a platform that is only going to be useful to a subset, that hinders the experience. When I needed a replacement pen for my Toshiba tablet, I googled "Toshiba replacement tablet pen" and got paid results that I clicked through and bought. There's nothing about 3-D that could have helped my experience.
The experience that I will certainly bet on, and the original point behind my post is that, fundamentally, I do believe in a better merging of the web and reality, but I don't think it comes from building a reality on the web... in VR. I think it comes with assitive technology that is useable in the outside world. I'd rather walk around in a real showroom with a pair of glasses that gives me Robocop/Terminator like product information based on what I'm looking at versus sitting at my computer walking through a virtual showroom. VR is going to make it's way into my shades before it pulls us all further away from reality online, in my opinion. When I'm walking down the street, and I look in a store, I should be able to say, "Do they have red socks?" and get an answer because my shades know what I'm looking at and they are connected to the store's database. I want my shades to plot my course in reality with little assitive arrows to the nearest Jamba Juice. That's were the web and reality get merged... not in a big constructed experience online, in my opinion. That's where marketers can spend better dollars... with floating coupons over there offline stores in real life targeted to me. Of course, we're a little ways a way, but not that far.
But that wasn't the point of my post, actually.
Four digital media jobs for the next four years
When industries change, new job opportunities are created. Nowhere is that more true than in digital media right now. A lot of times we complain about the lack of adapting going on in this space and how content players and brands are slow to move, but there's a real human resource bottleneck going on. New trends are creating needs for unique combinations of skills and knowledge, and having a real tough time finding them. Here's a set of positions that are sure to be very lucrative going forward.
Commercial Online Video Production: There's been tremendous growth in the amount of online video content and it's only going to continue. About half the online population has the means to capture video and only about 11% actually uploads it anywhere. In some way shape or from, that's all going to be monetized. If you think that all of the TV commercial folks are going to thrive in the world of the 7 second spot, think again. Not only that, but with better targeting and plummeting costs of producing content, more and more commercials will get made to uniquely suit each audience. If I were to start up a creative business now, I'd start making cool video commercials tailored for the web. Demand is sure to skyrocket and the tolerance for branded messages interrupting my video consumption will be very low, so they have to be great.
Brand and social network savvy designers are going to be king in the sponsored world of free content. In a skinnable web, pimpin' ain't easy, especially when you've got to mix in a brand that isn't normally associated with coolness. Demand for branded MySpace layout desginers should be at an all time high. Some Winamp skins are a great example of branded design whose look and feel is so attractive, that people actually demand your brand. AIM has opened up Triton to interactive and branded immersive backgrounds and YouTube is sure to have more sponsored channels coming. It takes a certain kind of eye to manipulate the elements of a brand, retain their brand identity, but make them fit seemlessly in a visually appealling way to the irregular, non-IAB standard world of sponsored channels, skins, widgets, bling, etc. Oh, and did I mention they can't look like an ad? PS, if you can do this well, I might have a job for you at Oddcast.
Interaction architects. Digital advertising isn't flat anymore. More and more brands are building environments that resemble web applications or casual games than they do banner ads. That's kind of a different animal than a lot of production folks are used to, particularly when we're trying to stay social media optimized at the same time. Where does the embed code go? What should the user see when we're processing their video? Does every creation have it's own unique URL? Development of a good interactive site is sounding a lot more like you're trying to build YouTube than an ad. I think a lot of former information architects and developers would be well served to look into working at advertising firms to help build environments that make sense to the end user. Developing a branded application with the end user in mind, like you would try and build a useful online service, can often end up with a different result than something meant to promote a brand identity first.
Social media caretakers. Who follows the buzz on the web about your product? Who answers the comments on your blog and comments on the blogs of others? Who accepts and adds friends on your brand's MySpace page? Being in a conversational and social environment has created a whole new set of tasks. Its easy to think that you an hire a college intern to do all of these little things, but keep in mind that these interactions are often the most visable and forward facing part of your business to end users. Its a balance. Theres a need for someone not so senior that they won't roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty but someone experience enough to keep strategic messages in tact and also know when to run things up the flagpole to upper management.
What's consistant about all of these positions is the presense of three basic, human, non-automatable, non-outsourceable skills:
1) Communication skills
2) Creativity
3) Ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes
Know how to express yourself, be constantly generating new ideas, and realize that you aren't representative of anyone but yourself.
Insane Trick Pool Shots
One thing I haven't meantioned a lot is that I like to play pool. I tend to play at Amsterdamn on the Upper West Side or Slate on 21st. I'm a bit streaky, but I can hold my own. Perhaps nextNY should do a pool tourney sometime..
I found this on College Humor:
Google and Monopoly Money
It's widely accepted that a good strategy in Monopoly is to buy just about everything you land on.
So, here's a thought question for you... Given where Google's share price and multiple is right now, why wouldn't they do pretty much the same thing, particularly with revenue generating businesses?
Just about any profits they could buy that are trading cheaper than their own stock would be, even growth stocks.
So where's the natural limit to this idea? Surely they can't integrate everything all at once, but when you've got this much house money to play with, is there a really good reason not to go all out on an acquisition strategy. YouTube should be just the beginning.
Productive Day
Starting later on in the afternoon yesterday, I had an unprecendented streak of productivity around the apartment.
Remember the vacuum cleaner that Mom offered me? (Even though Mom was virtual, the vacuum was indeed real.) Well, it turned out that she had tossed it in the garbage before the offer and pulled it back from the curb when I said I wanted it. When it was on the curb, someone cut the electric cord off of it, meaning some vacuum cleaner surgery was necessary.
I give you, Frankencord...
I also put up vertical blinds, too. This should have been a lot easier, except for the fact that all of the window and door frames in my apartment are metal. This makes putting anything up in a window a huge 
chore. I have a cobalt tipped drill bit for this, but the frames are hollow on the other side, so there's nothing to catch the screws. I came up with a clever way to hang the blinds despite the fact that the screws aren't really anchored at all... I'll spare you the details.
After the blinds were done, I put up Christmas lights, which came out great because, coincidently like my old apartment, I'm on a corner due to an adjoining garage. That gives me 
windows on three sides actually, two which are visable from the street.
I even have them set on a timer, so from 6:30PM to 2AM, there are lights on 75th Street.
I sort of want to just leave them up year 'round, like in my college dorm room, but I guess that's not really socially acceptable when you're an adult.
In addition to the cleaning and window dressing, I also did some cooking... a new batch of tomato sauce. Some of this is going to wind up on a pizza, because I was at Cangiano's over the weekend with my grandmother so I bought some pizza dough. I have some great pizza pans for this, too.
This is what happens on winter weekend days without kayaking. Things actually get done.