just another blog pressed for words

I don’t have a lot of free time these days. So before I take off for the night (or morning, as the case may be) I like to click around some good old fashioned time-wastin’ sites to clear the day’s fluff from the lint trap that has become my brain. Sometimes it take a full hour to get to all the stuff I’ve missed throughout the day.

Don’t tell my wife, this is a critical part of my daily routine. Without it, I would likely go insane.

Anyway, here are a few of my favorites. I don’t get to them every day, but they are all worth a look.

BuzzFeed
The viral web in realtime. I’ve been watching this one since it was a wee little lad. Now it is all growned up and awesome.

booooooom.com
A great daily collection of illustrators and photographers. And the dude that runs it did some custom shoe designs for Converse and (RED)’s 100 project.

thisiswhyyourefat.com
Truly amazing blog about terrible-for-you food. I heard these guys just got a six-figure book deal… well done!

Photoshop Disasters
This one cracks me up constantly… like, out loud. And then people look at me funny.

20×200
Quality art at good prices. All original, all limited edition, and mostly awesome. 8″x10″ prints are priced at $20! New prints available on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

http://coolhunting.com/
The original awesome stuff blog. Really great artist documentary videos.

cpluv
Great daily design/interactive/motion blog. One of my favorites.

yourlogomakesmebarf.com
Ok, I just found out about this one, so I’m not sure if it’s a daily reader or not. This is good for those dark nights of the soul when you think you’re shitty at everything you do, including art direction (come on addies, you know what I’m talking about).

Cornify
Admittedly not a daily read in any way, shape or form. But it is the #1 unicorn and rainbow service worldwide. Somebody please tell me who is #2.

I Googled the following and these are the results:

“Big Ideas” = 2,580,000 matches

“Small Ideas” = 77,400 matches

“Tiny Ideas” = 2040 matches

“Minuscule Ideas” = 351 matches

Seems like the whole world is talking about big ideas, but wouldn’t you expect the usual creative process to be the other way up? Millions of tiny ideas of which a few grow to be big ones. It’s  a language issue. Part trend , part ego, and part bullshit. But now it is becoming meaningless and boring.

To give the language of “Big Ideas” a competitive set, I Googled  to find others that get a similar score. The results are as follows:

“Men’s Shirts” = 2,170,000 matches

“Denim Jeans” = 2,210,000 matches

Next time you find yourself in a meeting  telling or listening to someone (including me!) reassuring you that your brand needs a “Big Idea”, picture in your head that we are recommending it to be as special and unique as “Men’s shirts.” Last time I looked I had  16 hanging my wardrobe.

Any suggestions for some language  that is at least as unique as “Chino’s,”  which scored a mouthwateringly unique 87,000 matches, please let me know.

I’m attached to print.  Old-fashioned newspapers and magazines – despite the gloomy headlines heralding their despondent march toward death, I’m a diehard ink fan.  Only a few newspapers have really nailed the online experience, and the New York Times is one of them.  Vivian Schiller, who recently departed the Times for NPR (may she catapult them into the web 3.0 future with equal success) did a fantastic job making the digital Times alive with video, podcasts, discussion boards, and more background on reporters and columns than any masthead could hope to offer.

My favorite column, on screen or paper, is Rob Walker’s “Consumed,” in the Sunday Magazine, in which he chronicles the tipping point of consumer products, websites, organizations or generally underground cultural movements that emerge into the popular consciousness and eventually, into the conference rooms of ad agencies and mainstream marketers (remember flash mobs?)  You can count on Rob to arm you with intelligent, totally in-the-know topics in stealth (which sometimes means accidental) marketing.

Check out Rob’s column from this Sunday, examining the success of the Snuggie, the blanket with sleeves that has seen sales inexplicably skyrocket.  A reminder to those of us in the advertising profession never to underestimate the power of the infomercial, or the role absurdity plays in marketing.  These are stories you can’t pitch.  But you know you’ve succeeded when uncensored parodies appear on YouTube and facebook.  Well said, Rob.

We’re developing for a lot more screens, which means thinking about new conventions for interface design. Good post on Core77 calling out a fancy user interface for a gestural entertainment center created by UX studio Kicker and electronics manufacturer Canesta. Check it out.

Kicker gives some background on how their research brought them to the ‘wax on, wax off’ gestural language, and how they began with a couple of important guidelines – stay away from anything that feels like the Minority Report, and don’t do anything that would be embarrassing while sitting on the couch with a date.

 

We love us some internets. We love us some big big screen HDTV. How come they feel so disconnected from each other. I know in the near future they will be in a serious relationship but right now their status is lets just say… complicated.

 

 

If you like searching for content on the web but are tired of your small screened laptop to watch it check out the new open source platform media player http://www.boxee.tv/ super cool app that brings all your media to a remote controlled service online, as the creators say “you don’t have to mess with a webpage to watch tv anymore”. This thing is hot. Hot Hot. Yes you can watch all your own media and any DRM free media content on the web, you can listen to last.fm and watch a flickr flow with the tunes playing etc. you can also have live updates from your friend’s list of what they are watching or content they recommend. And being all open source more is being written for it right now.

 

 

This is a primo disruptive technology. You think your cable provider likes this? Well funny enough Boxee is so fresh that even the new cool kid on the block of disruptive flow -aka Hulu – is uneasy. Boxee is preparing a pitch to content providers on why allowing users to have their content on Boxee is good for them, and in the spirit of their open source roots they have made a wiki for users to help them prepare said pitch. Awesome. http://boxee.pbwiki.com/

 

 

Happy non appointment viewing.

 

 

update: iphone remote app – awesome integreation

enjoy

 

Israeli musician Kutiman has created new music remixed from unrelated YouTube clips of people playing other pieces of music. Really amazing shit.

In his own words “It was really amazing to see how often different movies match together without me even touching it.”

Check it out for yourself: http://thru-you.com/#/videos/

I found it on booooooom

This may be the best art magazine in the world. If there is any
doubt check out the March ‘09 issue.