In case you missed it, this is a viral video for Absolut Vodka. I find it odd that a viral video can have a roaring tiger graphic and yet still be to subtle.

Now if they could only come up with a Takashi Murakami tablet…

I haven’t had a chance to write here for awhile. Work, life and Pinkomag.com have all been keeping me pretty busy. I did get a chance this morning to upgrade my version of WordPress to the new 2.5 Release Candidate 1. Pretty huge. So far it is working great.  Very slick and easy to work with. The navigation options in the admin screen have been cut in half (always a plus) and they finally FINALLY included an imbed video button! Check it out for yourself.

If you’re interested in helping the people over at wordpress by testing the new code, download and install Release Candidate 1 of WordPress 2.5, and join their testers mailing list.

Anniversary Dinner – Amazing videos are here

As a Facebook convert, I rarely check my Myspace account anymore. Recently, when I have logged on, I’ve been greeted by numerous suspect messages and comments. What is most alarming is that these messages aren’t coming from nameless fictional teenage girls (we’ve all grown to see through those) but from my own, real, flesh and blood, friends who’s accounts have been hacked.

These messages have been becoming increasingly frequent. This morning I got a message from a friend of mine asking me to ignore any messages coming from him about classmates of ours having been murdered. I didn’t ask questions. I just went to my preferences and deleted my account.

Myspace had better do something about this problem, and soon. In the meantime, for anyone not trying to screw me with a false coupon scam or bogus sex site, you can find me on Facebook.

Sufjan Stevens, if you are reading this, I think I have your next concept album.

This has been circulating around a number of forums recently. I’m not sure where it originated. I certainly can’t take any credit myself. Therefore let us assume that, like Wikipedia, this is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Here is how it works…

1. Go to Wikipedia. Select “Random article”.
This is your band name.

2. Select “Random article” again.
This is your album title.

3. Select “Random article” fifteen more times.
Those are your track titles.

This is what mine looks like:

Band Name:
Govind Swaroop

Album Title:
Sangihe Scops Owl

Track Listing:

1. Lauren Taylor

2. Seminole County, Georgia

3. Calera y Chozas

4. Climax (narrative)

5. Huthwaite

6. Hebron

7. Jekyll and Heidi

8. La Haute-Côte-Nord Regional County Municipality, Quebec

9. USS Pickens (APA-190)

10. M’Chigeeng First Nation

11. Ryan’s Rock Show

12. Hattiesburg (Amtrak station)

13. Captain Paul Ames

14. Sydney cockle

15. Colorado School of Mines

Enjoy!

There where many reasons for this of course. I had several projects at work go in to production at the same time. My daughter, being a small person, was frequently ill. Finally, my father, the nigh-invulnerable force of nature, had some illnesses of his own. (It was as if the world was telling him he was, in fact, grandpa aged.) All of these things colluded to provide me with a sizable, and frankly implausible, list of excuses. I used them liberally.

None of these excuses however had nearly as much of an effect on my blogging as that pesky Mark Zuckerberg and his damnable Facebook.

Unlike the “Digg Effect”, which causes an overwhelming surge in traffic, thereby crashing your website, the “Facebook Effect” causes a overwhelming sense that all sites outside of Facebook are no longer necessary.

The sensation is similar to leaving the downtown retail district and going to the mall. Everything you need is right there! Who needs a record store or a book store? They are all at the mall! Who needs a myspace page or a twitter account? Who needs a blog?? Who needs weather information or traffic reports? You have widgets for all that!

Next thing you know, you find yourself stumbling, glassy-eyed, around the food court. You are wondering where the time as gone, and how you ate all those Cinnabons. And when exactly did you get a Harry Potter Sorting Hat widget anyway? It stuck you in Hufflepuff? Seriously??

Sooner or later I’ll have to leave the mall and stumble, blinking, in to the blinding sun and hot asphalt that is the rest of the internet. I guess I can’t stay in here forever. Not to worry… Facebook will always be there when I need it. Right now, however, I could really go for a Cinnabon.

Enjoy.

If you are looking for effective widgets, check out the one below from the Superbad site. Or check out that funky clock in my sidebar. Both are good examples. More companies are going to catch on, and then you can expect a flood of this kind of advertising. Most of them will be awful, but hopefully a few will be truly remarkable. Enjoy.

P.s. Sites that have widgets on facebook are seeing huge increases in traffic. Check out Quantcast’s recent report on the facebook effect.

Hey, I’m in the top 10%!

I would like to thank all of my visitors for this honor, especially the hundreds of people everyday who find my youth aids poster while they’re looking for naughty pictures on google…

This award is for you.

Edit: Thanks to Seth Godin for pointing me in the right direction.

Let’s say you’re a big company. When you see a site like Youtube or Myspace, you get really excited. You should! This is exciting stuff! Then, in your excitement, you call up your ad agency, or your web developer, and you say “Hey, we need to make a site like that!”

Ok… Stop a second.

The truth is, somebody already made Youtube. If you don’t believe me, here is a link. Myspace too. You can go there right now. Your customers are already there!

Now, If you want those customers to notice you, maybe then you need to give your ad agency or your web guys a call. Both are experts at making the kind of stuff people will notice.

The best part? You don’t need to make a new kind of TV station. Somebody already did that. You just need to make the ads.