about Bryant Simon on Starbucks

The Taste3 conference has put some videos from their 2006 conference up on YouTube.

about europe 2007

Leslie, Nick and I just got back from Europe.. I attended the Future of Web Apps conference in london, and stayed in amsterdam for the rest of the time. We were gone 10 days. We stayed in this awesome apartment in amsterdam, and this overpriced tiny baler hotel in london, the kensington close.

click here for all the photos













I attended a great panel about uk startups vs american ones... arrington got into a couple battles.. this guy is such a character.. he stands out as the most alpha male of the conference. TechCrunch is widely praised, but its not that tight.. dude calm down

here is the video of arrington saying "the bbc should be dissolved"



we went to this "geek dinner", which was pretty fun



we walked in on this amazing jazz band.. it was a sureal experience, everyone else was local... amazing music.. you had to be there....

about Lily Allen

this is the video for "littlest thing" her 3rd single

I uploaded her album for your pleasure, you can download it here

about what if rick james had become the hulk?

about Michael Pollan's nine key points

From last weekend's The New York Times Magazine comes Michael Pollan's latest article about The Age of Nutritionism.

1. Eat food. Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
Non-dairy creamer? You're out. You too, breakfast-cereal bars.

2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims.
Science keeps changing, so trying to follow fads won't guarantee health. You have a better chance at health by just eating a well-balanced diet.

3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
All those signs point to food that's been processed. More process = less nutrients and vitamins, never mind the environmental costs of producing the food.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.
Buy food at farmer's markets and you can avoid the foods listed in #3 very easily.

5. Pay more, eat less.
Pay for that grass-fed beef, but reduce your over-all beef consumption and it's not an exorbitant expense. Interesting figure from the article: "Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation."

6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
You don't have to turn into a bunny, but make sure you're getting greens. They pack a nutritional wallop, but science still can't tell you exactly what inside is so good.

7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are.
You know, that whole Mediterranean diet, "French Women Don't Get Fat" thing.

8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden.
Duh. If you cook from scratch, it's unlikely you'll add ferrous sulfate or sodium tripoly-phosphate to your dinner. See #3 above.

9. Eat like an omnivore.
Variety is important, and we've been reducing the diversity in our diets over the years. Plus "biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields."

about Yahoos Brickhouse

The problem for the big established companies is that all the new start-ups have the good ideas and so being unable to complete on innovation, companies such as Yahoo and Google are forced to buy out all the start-ups in order to get their hands on some fresh thinking.

Noticing this Yahoo is launching a new division of their company named Yahoo Brickhouse which will attempt to replicate the innovation culture found in the small start-ups. Whether it will actually work is a whole different matter but I’ll be very interested to see if it does.

http://www.businessweek.com Article

Big company incubation is certainly not new to Yahoo. Microsoft has an internal incubation effort called AdLab which is focusing on adCenter related innovation. Google has its Google Labs and 20 percent time.

about Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream

New flavor from Ben & Jerry's: It's vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and caramel.

Announcing the new flavor Wednesday, Ben & Jerry’s called it: “The sweet taste of liberty in your mouth.”

about happy valentines day!

about YouTube mobile

m.youtube.com, directs me to a page that was "not available", but did display a YouTube Mobile logo. YouTube Mobile is in the works, but what it's going to look like and act like is a different story. We know it's going to be aimed at mobile devices, so content will most likely be stripped down, and sizes adjusted to fit smaller screens. Could it be similar to Nokia and Vodafone's online services where a user can upload, share and view directly to a special account? Maybe it's just a stripped down basic YouTube.com site? From the current, non-existent site, It looks like certain outside IP's might be banned from viewing the content while the team at YouTube builds and works out the bugs. If you have any news on this, or want to drop a comment on what you think the YouTube Mobile ToGo service could look like, we'd like to start dreaming.

about lacoste remix

Client: MAUI >> Advertising Agency: DDB >> Agency Location: Chile >> Agency Website: www.ddbchile.com >> Creative Director: Victor Mora

about the justin timberlake challenge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRExHAme8uU
this was the original challenge ad..

about 127-my sweet little terrorist song

I love the camera effects on this.. simple.. nice.

about Jennifer Gentle "Take my hand" (live)

about P. Diddy - Last Night (feat. Keyshia Cole)

about donuts are forever

There are Dilla-related events posted up at Stones Throw. To tide you over until then, DJ Soul sent out a Jay-Z-ified remix from his all-dilla Assorted Donuts mixtape, available free online very soon. It's called "Don't Cry" and it is typical Jay Dee: brilliant, shattered soul.

via Fader

about Motion Sketch by Scott Snibbe

Motion Sketch 1991. (Sun Sparcstation, custom software)

Motion Sketch in your Browser

"Motion Sketch (1991) evolved out of an exploration of how to make cinema with one's body. In film school, I had been extremely inspired by two experimental animation pioneers. The first, Oskar Fischinger, pioneered a cinema of pure abstraction. His earliest films are simply black and white forms, drawn frame-by-frame in charcoal. Yet the resulting movements, such as in Study Number 7 (1931), have incredible emotional power. The second pioneer, Len Lye, pioneered "direct cinema," created by marking directly on the film surface with pens, inks, or by scratching emulsion off of black leader, as in his masterpiece Free Radicals (1957).

I was searching for a way to make a hard-edged abstraction like Fischinger's by using my body directly as Lye did. In an epiphany one evening staring at the computer, I realized that the cursor was the most interesting object on the screen. Here was the only place that my body, through the mouse, came into the computer. Based on this understanding, I created Motion Sketch, which attaches the movements of ones hand to the movements of abstract forms. These forms exist in a short one-second loop. The temporal complexity comes from the continuous layering of these forms, creating a rich motion painting."

-Scott Snibbe,

This is sick.. you click and drag your mouse and it creates this kaleidescope..

about How the "Pavement Picasso" Does It

about The Knife - Heartbeats

the mp3

about Anna Nicole Smith is dead.

I'd just like to thank The New York Times for placing the story of the death of former Playboy and Guess? Jeans model Anna Nicole Smith on page A12 rather than on the first page this morning. CNN had hour after hour of coverage last night with Paula Zahn, Larry King Anderson Cooper dedicating way too much time to the topic.

My coworkers reacted quite emotionally to the news.. im like "chill out people"

There's a rumored statistic that's been floating around for some time, that 70% of Americans consider tabloid TV show Entertainment Tonight as their primary news source. I guess CNN might be trying to take over that role.

about cookie getta

about Nigeria - Hyena Men

I was searching for images on corbis.com and found this story underneath a photo of a baboon on a chain

Dayaba Usman with Clear, his baboon. They belong to a group of 10 entertainers who work across Nigeria with hyenas, monkeys and pythons. Once the animals are trapped and tamed they travel to villages where people shower them with money as they parade in the street. However a more sinister use for the animals has been reported in "This Day" a newspaper in Lagos. Reports say that a gang of men armed with their animals went to Kankia market in Kankia Local Government of Katsina State, where they robbed their terrified victims of 66,000 Nigerian Naira (approximately US$510). It is alleged that the gang, chased by police, engaged in a gun battle during which two of the robbers died. During the fight the gang let off their hyena and monkey which attacked the police, one of the policemen was left lying critically ill in hospital.

about Never on schedule, but always on time...

about the future.. windows 386

about a law that would ban iPods when crossing street

From AP:

Walk, jog or bicycle across a New York street with an iPod plugged in your ears and you could get slapped with a $100 ticket under a new law proposed by a legislator from Brooklyn.

State Sen. Carl Kruger's bill would also outlaw the use of cell phones, Blackberries, video games or other electronic devices when crossing the street (Kruger said the legislation would be introduced this week).

He cited the death of a 21-year-old man who was listening to music when he stepped off a curb and was hit by a bus in Brooklyn in September, and the death of a 23-year-old iPod listener last month. Charlotte Troisgros, 16, a Manhattan student talking on her cell phone in a crosswalk near City Hall on Wednesday, laughed and said the law may not be such a bad idea.

TechNewsPulse is also talking about it and sourcing Reuters.

posted by: Leslie

about C-SPAN prank calls

about some rambo game show type shit..

about Thai Xing

My girlfriend Leslie (that writes some of these posts) lives over near this awesome Thai spot on Florida ave NW in dc.. I had read about this on chowhound, and I did some research and couldn't find the menu anywhere online, so I'm posting it here.. Leslie scanned it in..

basically its s small place in a basement in dc.. and you can sit at a small table or take it to go.. the decor of the place is very homey and welcoming.. much more than you would ever imagine.. think books, birds.. this guy is like the kind of guy that would sell you a gremlin or something.. hes like a magician.. a asian wonder.. he always wears this cool bandanna.. and he makes the food in his kitchen while you wait.. he doesn't talk much while cooking.. and hes quite reserved.. but it makes for a wonderful setting for a dinner for 2.. I did 3 and it wasn't as fun..

my advice is this.. order in advance.. and come and eat there.. but plan to stay for a while...

Thai Xing Menu.pdf

about Peel - subscribe to mp3 blogs

http://www.getpeel.com/

peel allows you to subscribe to mp3 blogs. this is really well done.. I highly recommend you all check this program out..

check out these hip hop mp3 blogs to get you started..

• Cocaine Blunts
  
• Captain's Crate
  
• Comboplates
  
• Diddy Wah
  
• Ear Fuzz
  
• Hippocampus
  
• Home of the Groove
  
• Moistworks
  
• Office Naps
  
• The Rap Up
  
• Of The Mirror Eye
  
• The Ten Thousand Things
  
• Steady Bootleggin

it is rss for mp3s.. do it...

about the super proposal

about microsoft cracks down on russian bootlegging

LINK

Russian school principal buys computers, which, apparently unbeknownst to him, were loaded with bootleg copies of Windows. He now faces jail time in Siberia. Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks it’s bullshit; Mikhail Gorbachev went so far as to write an open letter to Bill Gates asking him to intervene. Microsoft’s response, more or less? That the principal should enjoy his time in Siberia.

Fake Steve writes:

And you guys at Microsoft still wonder why the entire world hates you? Man oh man. You’ve got more money than God and yet you’re gonna toss some poor broke-ass Russian in prison? Evil.

about steve jobs thoughts on music

essay from steve jobs about the future of online music

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

Steve Jobs has published a 2,000-word essay on Apple.com titled “Thoughts on Music”. A more apt title would have been “Thoughts on DRM”. The nut of it:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

about cops that cant see properly

In the area around the D.C. Courthouse on Indiana Avenue NW near Judiciary Square, and we suspect elsewhere in the city, there are massive plumes of steam coming from the grates in the sidewalk.

We usually don't pay any attention to the steam that regularly comes up from the grates around town, but thanks to the cold, cold, Vostok-esque weather, these are reaching higher than the surrounding buildings. Walking through them is like flying in fog; you get completely disoriented for a few seconds until the wind blows it away. People have been standing around and gawking at the white, fluffy Old Faithfuls on D Street NW.

However, despite being called beautiful by a couple of passersby, the sinister steam towers has taken at least one victim — namely, a Metropolitan Police Department car. Piloted by intrepid steamonauts, the car pulled into a opaque parking space directly over a grate and then promptly backed into a streetlight, apparently knocking it off its base. Seeing the car enveloped in steam looked like something out of Aliens, but soon enough a tow truck arrived to save the stranded vehicle from slow white death.

So be careful. It does smell a little funky, at least.

Cameraphone pic by Andrew Wiseman

article from DCist

about ringtones.. and why Disco D is so excited about them

about tomorrow is Bob Marley Day - so lively up yourself!

From the Jamaica Observer - February 5th, 2007

Twenty-six years after his death in 1981, the musical and philosophical legacy of Robert Nesta Marley OM (Bob Marley), is being celebrated worldwide, especially on his birthday, February 6.

From Jamaica to the Americas, to Africa where this year's Africa Unite show will take place in South Africa, Bob Marley's 62nd birthday will be celebrated across the continents. In Jamaica, there will be a week of celebratory activities in his honour revolving around some of the things with which he is identified.

Bob Marley would have celebrated his 57th birthday on February 6. On the home front, the celebration climaxes with the Smile Jamaica concert set for February 10, at Nine Miles in St Ann. The event, being staged by Ghetto Youths International, features the Marley clan in sons Stephen, Damian, Julian and Kymani along with a host of other acts including Bunny Wailer.

But kicking off the series of activities is the first of two symposia on Monday (February 5), the eve of Bob Marley Day. The three-hour symposium titled Welcome to Jamrock: Reggae Music's Influence on Tourism and the Economy, takes place at the Bob Marley Museum (56 Hope Road) between the hours of 7:00 and 10:00 pm.

about Billboards That Know You by Name

Mini USA has launched a series of "talking billboards." The billboards can identify Mini Coopers using a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in the car's key fob. As drivers approach, a customized message flashes on the billboard. "Hi Jackie! Don't crash the car."

Being identified by a billboard sounds kinda creepy, but the messages are based on information submitted by Mini owners who've opted into the campaign. Nonetheless, it still seems a bit like the "Truman Show" or a poor-man's "L.A. Story."

Mini and its ad agency say the snooping billboards will "intensify the already strong 'tribal' feeling among Mini owners and stimulate their desire to support the brand." That's a big horse pill to swallow. If a company claims that its buzz marketing program will "intensify already strong tribal feelings," chances are it has OD'd on its own Kool-Aid.

Just last year Mini concocted another expensive gimmick: encrypted magazine ads that could only be read by Mini owners who'd been sent a kit with a special viewer to decode them. A lot of work just to be marketed to.


via nytimes

about “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity"

That's how one ad person sees the world, as quoted today in the NY Times ("Anywhere the Eye Can See, It's Likely to See an Ad"). The average American is now exposed to about 5,000 ad messages per day, but that's not enough for an ad person who sees the world through the sights of a shotgun and the rest of us as ducks.

about Why social media are important

Here's a few statistics that explain why:

• By March 2006, 84 million Americans had broadband at home, a 40% jump from 2005 figures
• By March 2006, Pew estimated 48 million Americans were regular online content creators
• By the end of 2005, 139 million people in the world had a DSL (broadband) connection
• In 2005, $6.7 billion worth of digital cameras were sold in the U.S.
• About 41% of all cell phone owners use them as content tools
• By the end of 2005, just over 1 billion people were online -- that's 1/6th of the world
• Asia represents the world's most populous online segment
• By July 2006, 50 million blogs had been created and their number was doubling every 6 months
• About 7,200 new blogs are created every hour
• By 2006, 10 million people were listening to podcasts in 2006; by 2010, it's expected to be 50 million people
• About 100 million videos are viewed every day on YouTube; about 65,000 videos uploaded every day
• In 2006, MySpace had over 100 million registered members, most of them from the U.S

via creatingcustomerevangelists

about Ricky Gervais meets Larry David

I love the office... soo much.

about CBC Asks for Typos

LINK

This is a new one. The Canadian Broadcasting Company admits they're not perfect and prone to typos. So, they're asking people to tell them when nasty typo happens to land in one of their stories. Great idea.

found via micropersuasion.com

about tbs paying $2mil for boston bomb stunt

BOSTON (AP) -- The Massachusetts attorney general says Turner Broadcasting Systems and Interference Inc. have agreed to pay $2 million for a Cartoon Network advertising campaign that caused a widespread bomb scare.

Boston bomb scare

Main article: 2007 Boston Mooninite Scare

On January 31, 2007 Interference Inc., an advertising firm retained by Turner Broadcasting System Inc., placed several devices around the city of Boston, Massachusetts, and several other communities around the Boston metropolitan area as part of an advertising campaign. The dozen or so devices were discovered throughout the day by concerned citizens and SWAT teams and prompted a massive metro-wide bomb scare as more and more devices were discovered. Turner confirmed the packages had been placed as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign, and a statement released by Turner Broadcasting clarified that the packages were in fact magnetic lights, not bombs. Two Boston-area men, Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky, who had been hired to place the devices by Interference Inc and Turner Broadcasting Systems, were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and "placing a hoax device." Adding to the bizarre nature of the incident, as late as 1 p.m. on January 31st, CNN.com was reporting the incident as a "bomb scare", despite the fact that CNN and Turner Broadcasting are owned by the same parent company, Time Warner Inc. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, Boston Mayor Tom Menino, and other interested parties seemed to regain their sense of humor about the incident as soon as Philip I. Kent offered to compensate the city and and other affected agencies for their expenses, although one or another individuals at Turner Broadcasting Systems would appear to be guilty of conspiracy to place the hoax devices. According to Massachusetts law, a "hoax device" is "any object that a reasonable person might assume to be infernal" (explosive), and is a felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment. (Source: Jan Freeman, The Boston Globe, Ideas section, "The Word" February

Devices and unauthorized merchandise sold on eBay

The incident prompted opportunists to acquire the promotional devices from other cities and auction them on eBay, with prices ranging from $500 to over $5,000 USD. Other eBay users created unauthorized merchandise commemorating the event, including such items as T-shirts, stickers, and custom LED signs.

about the superbowl ads

http://youtube.com/superbowl

http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/postseason/superads

about Disneyland ads.. lebovitz style

Great photography by Annie Leibovitz and some really amazing art direction here

about Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

First off: This video gave me goosebumps.

From the video (actually excerpted thoughts, but make sense when strung like this as they did): "We are the web... when we post and then tag pictures... we are teaching the Machine... Each time we forge a link... we teach an idea... THE MACHINE IS US/ING US."

The video is actually a project from the Digital Ethnography project at Kansas State University (digg the effort, but their mark looks a little too much like another mark we all know). They are looking for feedback on this draft, so help 'em out by commenting on their youtube post here.

Such an amazing video and project. Props. The connections, the conceptions... the possibilities of understanding humanity. The Web. The Machine. Sign me up.

posted by: Leslie

about richie?

about evil flash people..

about advertising in a post-9/11 zeitgeist

I can't decide whether this helps, hurts, or does nothing for their cause.

Their cause: a marketing campaign by Turner Broadcasting for their cartoon TV show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force" (left).

The situation: Boston temporarily closed parts of bridges, subway stations, an Interstate highway and even part of the Charles River on Wednesday after the authorities found what the police described as suspicious devices at nine places.

What's whack (and oh-so-post 9/11): Explosives experts removed the device at Sullivan Square. Officials from the FBA and the Homeland Security Department were called in, as well as bomb squads, and extra police officers were deployed around the city (right).

TBS's statement: “The ‘packages’ in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger... the outdoor marketing campaign... had been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia.”

posted by: Leslie

about magnificent snowmen in the streets of Russia

While DC is expecting cold temps and a few inches of snow - at best - Russia flexes its Northern *ahem* prowess in this magical advertising campaign for a play called "Snow Show" (the Story of Slava Polunin).

I couldn't seem to find the creative firm behind this idea, but that the images made it in the two papers I read thus far this morning (Wash Post Express and Wash Times) says something for its reach.

Anyone have more details? (I'd ask my Russian colleague today, but she's travelling on business)

IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO BUILD ONE:

posted by: Leslie