just another blog pressed for words

Modernista!’s Director of User Experience, Bob Goodman, will be a featured speaker on an upcoming Webinar to talk about how UX, social media, and taxonomy intersect. Bob tells us one featured topic is the way UX design needs to support both content consumption and conversation in the same space. “The experience of reading and the experience of publicly commenting on what you’re reading aren’t separate anymore. They happen in the same space and nearly the same time. People read about something one minute and share and talk about it with their personal network of friends and followers in the next minute; that’s an interesting opportunity in how you design for conversation.” Look for Bob from 1:00 to 2:00 EST on Wednesday, June 2. The webinar is hosted by Early and Associates:

http://www.earley.com/webinars/taxonomy/taxonomy-user-interface

M! is seeking awesome strategy interns for immediate start!

email CV ASAP to cflores@modernista.com
w/subject line= I’m Strategic

Boston in the Summertime!

M.I.A.’s new album title, /\/\/\Y/\, has the interwebs ablaze around the relationship between creativity and Google visibility, lovingly referred to in the ad world as SEO. Essentially, Google only picks up on the letter Y from the album title, leading to results on Yahoo or Generation Y, and absolutely nothing on M.I.A. or the album itself (I even tried the quotation mark trick, to no avail).  Folks over at hipsterrunoff and PSFK are asking a lot of good questions:

Does being un-Googleable kill chances for success in the modern world?

Are artists + businesses “constrained’ by having to consider the googlability of their brand, or is the ’search engine’ a tool that has helped every1 access more information + opportunities for commerce than ever?

Or, as one commenter puts it,

Intentionally or not, M.I.A. is making an anti-Google statement and reaching new heights of counter-culture irony. Which may well come back to taunt her, forcing her to use the alternate name MAYA for Google/iTunes/etc. purposes (this was the case with Justice who had to give their album † the alternate name “cross” to have it show up on Google).

So what does this debate mean for advertisers? Is anti-Google the new underground? If a brand wants to support a sense of exclusivity and nurture an in-the-know audience, should they strive for this search-engine-invisibility? Or would that make things difficult for a genuinely interested audience? At the end of the day, does it all just seem like it’s trying a little too hard, and being a little too arrogant? (I’m speaking in general, and hoping that M.I.A.’s intentions were to be progressive, not abrasive).

Maybe what’s more interesting isn’t what this means for advertisers, but how the things that used to only matter for brands are permeating everyday life. It’s not just musicians thinking about the Google cred of their album, song, or stage names. With a generational shift towards cultivating personal brands and standing out from the mainstream, SEO is starting to matter for the average Joe and Jane. Or, should I say, Jayne. An article in the Wall Street Journal commented on the importance of Google — when naming your newborn child.  And that was in 2007.

So what I really wanna know is what hipster parent will be the first to legally name their kid in ASCII. Now that would be ironic.

In his fantastic book A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink writes simply, “We are our stories.” His point? We compress all of the experiences, emotions, facts and information about ourselves into narratives that convey who we are and give life meaning.

He’s right. If we couldn’t tell our own personal stories, the facts and figures about most of our daily lives would be, frankly, kind of boring.

This same concept is increasingly more important in our business today, when no matter what we say about brands, people can go online within seconds and find out the truth. As a result, Transparency has become a buzzword du jour. But just as important as Transparency is taking those facts and features we’re making transparently available and crafting a compelling story. Or even better, allowing people to craft their own.

Google (yes, we like them) is doing just that with their Google Search Stories tool. Building on the idea behind their excellent “Parisian Love” Superbowl commercial, this tool lets anybody turn their own Google searches into stories they can share with the world. The finished videos are also stored on the Search Stories landing page, and my favorite so far (perhaps not surprisingly) is called “Out of Office”.

Does it get much better than this? Google has essentially given people a way to use Google to tell other people why Google is such a fundamental part of people’s lives. Plus, it’s simple, fun, shareable and literally makes the Internet itself a more interesting place. Genius.

I’ve not seen a better example of what the new “advertising” can and should be. And I’m inspired to let this be the new bar for success when crafting our clients’ brands’ stories.

Very much interested in thoughts – on this subject and on storytelling in general. And if you have your own Google Search Story, share it with us. We’d love to watch and learn.

This video isn’t new. But it’s a good thing to watch every now and then just to put your day in perspective.

I’ve written recently about Google Earth Deforestation Maps. The latest update to Google Earth contains Sea Floor Maps. Scientists, such as Sylvia Earle, are using these maps to monitor the health of our oceans. In 2009, Sylvia won the Ted Talks with her speech about the oceans. She questions why land spaces are being preserved but not water spaces.

Not just for scientists, surfers are in on the game too. The Surfrider Project “Rise Above Plastic” focuses on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the Pacific Ocean that contains 100 million tons of plastic and kills one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals globally each year. Scary.

Take the Plastics Pledge by simply eliminating/reducing plastic in your life, and you will make a difference.

Read Crowd-Sourcing Solutions to Plastic Filled Oceans for more info.

I like dags .. and dogs too. I’m certainly a fan of the movie Snatch, but this post isn’t about a movie; it’s about dags.

I’m a regular visitor and supporter of the Peanut Pet Shelter in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The shelter owners do some great work taking in stray dogs (and cats!) and finding homes for them. They’ve also recently opened a clinic, so that local pet owners can get their dogs and cats spayed or neutered for free. The clinic is made possible through donations and private financial support.

If you have an interest in helping out the shelter, you can make a donation or choose to sponsor an animal through the “Share the Care” program. It’s very rewarding to sponsor an animal and then learn that the animal has been adopted–I’ve sponsored two dogs that both were adopted by homes in the U.S. Fun stuff.

So check out the shelter site and see what you think. I hope you’ll love the dags as much as I do.

An agency producer’s only loyal friends. The Lynyrd Skynyrd life-giving strength to clean out an in-box, the Sigur Ros “( )” passion to create Keynotes, and the Coltrane to seam together technical specifications. In an office of 60, without vertical barriers to keep us apart, a haven for rest, relief, and revival.

His headphones.

And now they’ve gone busted. Shattered. Fallen. All, from a jolted movement during a morning session of Trololo. A fitting tribute to Edward Hill’s ability to find weakness in us all. F#$%.

07/12/2008 – 03/24/2010.

“What’s for lunch?” my coworker asks, usually somewhere around 10:15 a.m. We pick a spot, and two hours later, we eat. Just like that. Our lunches aren’t extravagant, but we certainly don’t have to worry about running out of money, or food.

Yesterday, after lunch, I came across this series of photographs on Time.com. “What the World Eats” explores just that, what people around the world are eating. And it’s fascinating. Families spend anywhere from $1.23 to $500 a week on food.

Take a look.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519,00.html