smays.com

"Steve cleans the blog cages"

We had VIP's visiting the office today. VIP'ish enough that The Big Guy gave the tour. When the group got to my door, the boss introduced me, which usually comes out something along the lines of, "Steve's our web guy." Today he went with, "Steve takes care of our blogs."

Why is this worth a mention? I'm not sure it is. And I should point out that I assist The Big Guy when he needs a little formatting help or wants to attach a file.

It caught my ear, is all I'm saying. And while helping with the corporate blog is a small part of my duties, it was... interesting to be introduced in that manner.

And someday "blogger" will be as quaint a job title as "radio announcer."

Lucy and Ripley

It's been too long since I posted some pup pix. Lucy and Ripley are Golden Retrievers who live at our house. If there's a sweeter creature on the planet, I haven't found it. But then, I haven't been looking.

Lucy (left) sleeps under the bed. When the world is too much with me, I can reach down put my hand on her and drop right off. Ripley has her own spot on Barb's side of the bed. When I come home each evening, the pups are waiting at the top of the stairs, tails wagging.

Remote-controlled Tarantulas

I fail to see the charm or humor in such a toy but if you have fifty bucks you can own a set of remote-controlled spiders. Big bastards, too. 7" leg span. According to the National Geographic Online Store, they're suitable for ages 6 and up. Uh huh.

Stocking stuffer or pants shitter? You decide.

Cartman intros Colorado line-up

I'm not a fan of college football OR South Park but can still appreciate the humor of having South Park character Cartman (who is from Boulder it would seem), introduce the starting line-up for a recent TV broadcast of a Colorado game (Disclosure: Learfield --the company I work for-- has the media/marketing rights for the Buffaloes).

Equally interesting (for me) was finding the video on a blog titled Awful Announcing ("Putting announcers on notice since 2006"). Once upon a time, if you didn't like the play-by-play announcer, all you could do was write the university or the network (Learfield in this instance) and bitch. Today, you start a blog and have your say.

Hey, where are you guys going?

Remember the scene in Men in Black where Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith walk in to headquarters and all of the aliens are packing up and fleeing the planet?

Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott announced Monday he will leave a 35-year career in Congress in which he epitomized the Republicans' political takeover of the South after the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. He becomes the sixth Senate Republican this year to announce retirement. Democrats effectively hold a 51-49 majority in the chamber, including two independents who align themselves with Democrats. Lott's retirement means that Republicans will have to defend 23 seats in next year's election, while Democrats have only 12 seats at stake. (AP)

It wasn't a good sign in the movie, and I'm not sure it's a good sign now. I'm waiting for someone to discover a GOP Star Ship being constructed in the New Mexico desert.

Long live King Bob!

Friend and co-worker Bob Feldisch has been with our company about a year longer than I. He's taking on new duties and the post on our corporate blog is note-worthy.

When King Bob started with Learfield:

• Ronald Reagan was President
• Lee Iacocca was pitching K-Cars
• “The Terminator” was released
  
• Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial
• Apple released the very first Macintosh

Since that time:

• King Bob has logged about one million frequent flyer miles serving his clients
• He’s driven over half a million miles across Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois and Oklahoma
• He has generated nearly 30 million dollars in sales for the company

This makes a great blog post but you probably wouldn't see this much imagination and fun in a corporate, inter-office news release. I love the fact that the blog was was the first and --as far as I know-- only place this news was posted.

World's smallest indoor radio-controlled airplane

“The Butterfly” and it is billed as “The Living Room Flier” a full radio controlled mini plane you can fly around your living room. “Full Proportional radio control enables you to fly with precision in any room 12′ X 16′. Just add 4-AA batteries to the combination transmitter/charger and you’ll be ready for action anytime Take the Butterfly with you ANYWHERE in it’s own protective aluminum briefcase (included!). The Butterfly costs $239 and it would take Lucy about 2 seconds to shred it.

Calculate your Real Age

I love these things because they almost always tell me what I want to hear.  You answer 10 or 20 questions about life style, diet, family medical history and so forth. Sort of the web's answer to those scales that would tell your future as well as your weight.

My Real Age is 44.5 (not that there's anything wrong with 59), my life expectancy is 92.5 (compared to average of 78), which means I can expect to live 12,200 days. But who's counting.

As soon as I have something to say

Even infrequent visitors to smays.com have noticed that posting has been way down in November. I'd like to tell you I'll get back up to speed soon but the blog mojo has slipped away for a bit.

No need to bore you with the details, just know that I am still here and plan to return to daily posts (minimum) in the near future.

The real meaning of Thanksgiving

Americans Enjoying Thanksgiving Tradition Of Sitting Around At Airport

Thank you Mr. Heaton

I've been trying to come up with something in the way of a Thanksgiving post. I was gonna just punt and then came across this post by Terry Heaton:

"...we are most vulnerable at the moment of success. It’s when we choose to shine a light on US and all our greatness. This is why it’s so important that we maintain a heart full of thanks, one of gratitude that will survive the roller coaster ride of life. For in the end, we have no power over anything — only in how we react. And I can tell you from experience, my friends, that a heart full of gratitude will survive where others will not."

Music videos, guerrilla style

Sheryl Crow on using YouTube to promote her new CD:

"As far as I know, MTV and VH1 don't play music videos any more; it's all reality TV and game shows, so I don't know if they'll really pick up a video. To me, it's an interesting time because you used to make a video for a million dollars with a great director. Now, you spend $10,000, if that, with no hair and make-up, and do it completely guerrilla style. For example, we did a song called "God Bless This Mess" about the war and we shot it in front of the White House and nobody stopped us. It's really really exciting to just go out and shoot, like how Bob Dylan shot "Don't Look Back" -- it's just a guy with a camera and you're performing the song."

Sports bars draw fantasy footballers on laptops

Interesting trend showing up in sports bars. Fantasy football fans are showing up with their laptops to watch games on the big screens while following stats on the little (laptop) screens. Smart bar owners are embracing the trend with free wifi and drink specials. You can listen to Ethan Lindsey's at NPR.org.

"Stop Death by PowerPoint"

| View | Upload your own

Lifehacker: "Presentation consultant Alexei Kapterev put together a must-see slideshow on creating great presentations. Hit the next button above to flip through it and see how to stop killing your audience with boring PowerPoint presentations (no audio, the slides speak for themselves)."

"Like your own personal jet fighter"

Found this link on Doc Searls' blog. He couldn't think of a way to describe this and neither can I.

Scott Adams: "I'm sorry I destroyed your country"

"Whatever you think about the reasons for invading (Iraq), everyone seems to agree that we botched the occupation, and the results have been a disaster for the Iraqi civilian population. I feel like I owe them an apology for letting my idiot government screw them so thoroughly.

Your first reaction might be to explain all the rationalizations, and how war is messy, and it was really Saddam’s fault, and blah, blah, blah. But apologies don’t work that way. I could be wrong, but I think the Iraqi people who were minding their own business would like to hear an apology.

But how? My idiot government won’t apologize on my behalf. And if I fire them and get a new idiot government, they won’t do it either, until fifty years are past. That seems too late.

So here’s my public apology to the Iraqi civilians who did nothing to deserve their current situation: I’m sorry I trusted my idiot government to handle things correctly. I should have been watching more closely. To be honest, I never once thought to even ask if there was a post-war plan. That was clearly a mistake on my part. For that, I am sorry." [Full post at Dilbert.Blog]

Scott Adams is fearless. There were 164 comments to this post when I checked and many were in no mood to apologize for anything.

"I'm sorry for the way things are in China, I'm sorry things ain't what they used to be." -- John Denver

Airline: "We all have our baggage"

"Each episode of this fascinating series (A&E) showcases the highs and lows that passengers and crew face behind the scenes of Southwest Airlines. Follow Southwest Airlines pilots, flight attendants, and airport employees as they hear heartwarming passenger stories and experience occasional outbursts, weather-related anxiety, and heightened security measures all while trying to meet everyone's urgent timetable."

There are few things I hate more than air travel. The flight doesn't bother me. It's the associated hassle. I'd rather get a root canal.

So when the networks started running stories about what a shit storm it's gonna bet next week... I get a warm, rosy glow. Because I will NOT be traveling. If I lived in St. Louis or Kansas City, I might drive out to the airport and watch for an hour or two. Knowing that I can get in my car and drive away... mmmmm.

Now, tell me something disgusting about yourself.

Blog Readability Test

Enter your url and The Blog Readability Test Page purports to determine "what level  of education is needed to read your blog." If you made it through junior high you should have no trouble with smays.com. I assume the less education the better, up to a point. Candidly, I always assumed my readers had about an 8th grade education. [Thanks, David]

New Get A Mac ads

Three new TV spots from Apple. Boxer, Podium and PR Lady. I share these as examples of creative TV spots. Vista doesn't need me piling on.  And I just bought a copy of XP to load on Barb's new MacBook (a Christmas present she knows she's getting.) Not sure what will happen (vis a vis Vista) here at work, but there's an outside chance I might never have to suffer the Vista Tribulation.

IBM Report: "The End of Advertising as We Know It"

Podcasting News points to a report compiled by IBM with the scary title: "The End of Advertising as We Know It." I'm not sure what IBM knows about the state of advertising but they surveyed more than 2,400 consumers and 89 ad execs globally.

The report from Big Blue forecasts "greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50."

When I read stuff like this, I ask the men and women in our company (who sell a LOT of advertising) if they get a similar read and the answer is always, "Nope, everything is A-OK." No changes on the horizon. Everything is hunky-dory.

Well, five years isn't that long. We shall see what we shall see.

PS: Here's one more graph from the report summary:

More than half of ad professionals polled by IBM expect that in the next five years open advertising exchanges (currently led by companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL) will take 30 percent of current revenues now commanded by traditional broadcasters and media. Nearly half of the advertising survey respondents anticipate a significant (greater than 10%) revenue shift away from the 30-second spot within the next five years, and almost 10 percent of respondents thought there would be a dramatic (greater than 25 percent) shift. Two-thirds of advertising experts surveyed by IBM expect 20 percent of advertising revenue to move from impression-based to impact-based formats within three years.

MicPort Pro

The MicPort Pro (from CEntrance) might just be the USB mic preamp I've been looking for (for years). It's a little gadget that lets you plug a professional grade dynamic mic into the USB port on a computer. I've tried several USB mics but none really sounded all that good. And I have a mixer with pre-amp that allows me to use a good mic with the MacBook but that means lugging around more hardware.

I won't try to describe the features and functions of the MicPort because the video at the bottom of this page does a fine job of that. ("No drivers. No batteries. No latency. Just plug it in and you are ready to record.")

You can hear what it sounds like on this 30 second video clip. Yes, I'm still playing with Photo Booth and and yes, the audio/video still isn't sync'd. Once they get that fixed, this will amuse me for hours.

Photo Booth not quite ready for prime time

One of the new features (toys) in Leopard I've been most excited about is the addition of green screening in iChat and Photo Booth. This is the effect they use on The Daily Show (and the evening news) to make it look like the reporter is standing in front of the White House or the Supreme Court.

Mr. Jobs left me with the impression that I could put a still image or video behind me and have hours of fun. You can see the result above. I think I could get the lighting and the green screen working but the sound is off for some reason. One hopes this is fixed in a future update.

More ads flowing to blogs?

The Society for New Communications Research is a think tank on new media. They recently asked a couple of hundred advertising agencies about their plans to advertise and market in "conversational media" (blogs and podcasts and such). Among the findings:

"In the next five years, a majority of advertising and marketing professionals expect to spend more money on so-called conversational media--or online media that encompasses things like blogs and podcasts--than on advertising through traditional media such as newspapers or magazines.

Today, a majority of these agencies said that they spend about 2.5 percent of their total budgets on conversational media, but by 2012, they plan to tip that percentage to more than they spend on traditional media."

From a post by Stefanie Olsen over at the C|Net Blog (Thanks to Kevin O'Keefe at LexBlog for the pointer.)

As one who has made his living from "radio spots" for 30+ years, this is hard to imagine. But five years isn't that long. I guess we'll see.

Band of Bloggers: War Through A Soldiers Eyes

Watched a really interesting program on the History Channel last night about military bloggers (milbloggers) in Irag:

"For the first time in history, modern technology is enabling viewers to experience war as it really is... directly from the battlefield. An ever growing band of military bloggers are using the internet, video cameras and cell phones to deliver honest, powerful and uncensored content. Band of Bloggers will be the site that will collect this raw and riveting "soldier generated content."

Remember the early day of the war when network reporters (and anchors) were "embedded" with our troops, reporting from "the front lines?" Well, a lot of those reporters have got the fuck out of Dodge or been forced to do their reports from the basement of the Baghdad Hilton.

Questions of objectivity aside, you can't get much more "front line" than these men and women. Some of them have even rigged cameras to their helmets to record video.

If Vietnam was our first televised war, Iraq is our first blogged war. If you're a blogger or read blogs, you'll want to watch Band of Bloggers.

That vending machine has feet

Video report about a Toykyo designer who has created a dress that can be transformed to make you look like vending machine. The idea is to help you hide from muggers and rapists. Dumb as it sounds, I kind of like it. In fact, I tried something similar a couple of years ago.

The doors to our offices at work (those of us fortunate enough to have offices) have those narrow, vertical windows. About 4 inches wide and a couple of feet high.

I had someone take a photo of me hard at work in front of my computer and then sized and trimmed the image to fit the window. Anyone walking back and peeking in would see me slaving away.

I think I've seen drapes fit cubicle openings and attempt to accomplish the same thing. Ah, the hours we spend trying to avoid real work.

Ubiquitous computing, blended reality

From Rolling Stone interview with William Gibson: "Totally ubiquitous computing. One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn't cyberspace is going to be unimaginable. When I wrote Neuromancer in 1984, cyberspace already existed for some people, but they didn't spend all their time there. So cyberspace was there, and we were here. Now cyberspace is here for a lot of us, and there has become any state of relative nonconnectivity. There is where they don't have Wi-Fi.

In a world of superubiquitous computing, you're not gonna know when you're on or when you're off. You're always going to be on, in some sort of blended-reality state. You only think about it when something goes wrong and it goes off. And then it's a drag."

The Office writers mock studios from picket line

As the writers' strike enters day three, some writers and producers are taking to the video sharing site YouTube to express their frustrations. A YouTube channel created by the Writers Guild of America, West posted a video titled "The Office is Closed" yesterday, featuring the off-camera writers and on-camera stars of the NBC comedy "The Office.

I don't pretend to understand the subtleties and issues surrounding the writers strike, but I do know that I'd be happy to pay $2 an episode (or $5) to get The Office online. This is just one more whitecap in the sea change going on in media. The web has shifted (IMHO) the power to the creators, away from the suits.

Messages from our troops

In this Onion News Network special feature, our soldiers stationed abroad remind us there's still a war going on. This is biting, edgy satire at its best. And this has to be what the soldiers are thinking when they're ordered to record those "It's going great!" videos for the folks back home.

Messages From Our Troops To The Families They Can Barely Remember

Help! I've fallen and I can't blog!

It's been almost a week since my last post and I'm starting to get "We thought maybe you'd fallen and broken a hip" emails from friends. It is just taking me a hell of a long time to shake the bug I picked up. Didn't feel like the flu or a bad cold but I have no idea what it was. I'm just hoping I'm right on the "was" part. Feeling better and eager to catch up on the blogging.

Let Larry King keep driving, but take away the show

On Thursday's "Larry King Live," the King asked Jerry if "Seinfeld" was canceled back in the day, and Jerry seemed genuinely shocked that Larry didn't know. "You think I got canceled?" Jerry shot back. "I was the number one show on television, Larry ... 75 million viewers in the last episode."

As Larry played it off and went to commercial, Jerry threw in one last zinger: "Can we get a resume in here for me for Larry to go over?"

Okay, Jerry's probably a bit frazzled from the endless promotion of The Bee Movie. And taking a (verbal) poke at an old man is never cool, but come on!

You can't remember if Seinfeld got canceled?! Time for some shuffleboard, LK. Watch the video at TMZ.com and judge for yourself.

Time Machine (OS X Leopard)

I mentioned Time Machine (the backup application built into the new Apple OS) a few posts back. I think I said the proof of the pudding is in the restoration of files, not the backup. It didn't take me long to mistakenly delete some files I needed (too bone-headed to describe here). I just flipped back in Time Machine until I found a version of my desktop that contained the missing files... selected just those files... and Time Machine restored them. I'm not sure how it could get much easier than that.

Immune System 2, Virus 1

Offline since Wednesday afternoon, fighting some kind of bug. Feeling better today but staying home another day. I'll get around to unanswered email eventually.