Geek Marketers

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Steve Rubel describes (in AdAge.com) a new kind of marketer: "Enter Geek Marketers. These cross-trained specialists are fluent in both worlds and bridge them. They are marketers by trade, yet they also have a hard-core interest in technology and social anthropology. As curious individuals, they are constantly studying how digital advances are changing our culture and media."

Call me a Geek Marketer wannabe. Companies are figuring this out. Until they do, there’s money to be made filling this void. [via AgWired]

Sunglasses with hidden video camera

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Too pricey by a long shot but I confess I’d love have a pair of these.

“A very stylish pair of sunglasses with a colour camera brilliantly hidden within the frame to give colour pictures and exceptionally clear audio, all recorded on to a personal video recorder. This is a wired, but very discreet system, and the beauty of it is that you know that whatever you look at is what is being filmed. The personal video recorder includes a built-in colour monitor and speaker, 32MB internal memory, which can be expanded by inserting a more powerful SD/MMC card and the ability to time and date stamp all video recordings. This really is “state of the art” equipment which is ideal for investigative journalists, private investigators and “mystery” shoppers.

Game Day 09.01.07

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One floor below my office is the Learfield Sports Operations Center. On Saturday, the place was hopping for the opening weekend of the college football season. Our guys produce 19 college sports broadcasts here (and some more off-site).

The play-by-play audio comes back to Jeff City where our producers and board operators mush it all together and send it back out –via satellite– to about 800 radio stations from coast to coast. Think shuttle launch but more people will be pissed if something goes wrong.

They start back in May and then work their asses off for the next four months. I won’t even try to mention everyone by name. And this short (6 min) video doesn’t begin to capture the energy (and sometimes tension) of “game day.” But Broadcast Operations Manager Tom Boman does a nice job of summarizing some of what it takes to get all these games out to stations.

Once again, shot with the Casio EX-S770 and edited in iMovie.

Cryptonomicon: Email vs. F2F

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“Some complain that e-mail is impersonal — that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. some would say that’s not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately.” — Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson (pg. 800)

Brad Sucks

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Bradphoto200701
What was William Gibson listening to while writing Spook Country? Among others, a group called Brad Sucks. I never heard of ’em but if Mr. Gibson likes their music, I figured I’d take a listen. And liked what I heard. Brad Sucks invites you download their music for free but I clicked the iTunes link and bought the CD for ten bucks (after sampling each of the songs on the CD).

"In 2001, I started using the Internet (blogs, MP3s, P2P) to spread my music and not worrying so much about copyright violation. I’ve even been giving the source of my songs away for remixers to play with. I figured that spreading my music should be the number one goal and so far it’s worked out pretty well."

Does Brad Sucks get radio airplay? Comment if you know.