Kim, With Love to You

I just found out about a schoolmate of mine who died. Her life ended with emotionally resonant exclamation marks -- which suits her better than any eulogy -- and, because of the strange way death moves, every living memory I have of her is back with me in vivid colour.

A year out of high school, she found me on AIM and randomly asked, "Are there ever nights you can't turn your brain off? And you're tired but you can never never sleep, because the thinking won't stop?"

I didn't answer, probably because I wasn't sure how. It was the last time I heard from her. But years later, when nights like the one she described became frequent spectres in my life, I remembered Kim and wondered what she'd been looking for.

The question now is futile, but it still wants asking: What could I have given her?

Twitter as Service or Utility.

Obama Gets the FDR Treatment

The current cover of Time magazine is a ready-made archive piece:



Comparisons between President Elect Barack Obama and Franklin D. Roosevelt began in earnest when Obama launched his first fireside-chat-style weekly address to the people -- on YouTube. Voici:



Seems like, for the meantime, John F. Kennedy's slipped off the juxtapo-radar. Which suggests people are thinking less about Obama's youth and charm, and more about how his communication strategies will actively change the political face of the States. (FDR was, after all, a talented piper of both mice and men.)

Shepard Fairey Takes on Prop 8

Read up. Feelin' it? Sign here. (V-v-v-via.)

Facebook, This Far is Too Far.

Well and good if you're gonna feed on my love handle complex, but whether I pass a razor over my Holy Grail is between me and God -- not me, God and your ad board.

Low-Hanging Beef

Dear Editor/Reporter/Producer:

Please click on the link below to take a very brief survey (less than 5 minutes) to help us to educate public relations practitioners and allied professionals about how to work effectively with you; the media.

No. But here are a couple of bones:

• Use my name. Or do that nifty direct mail auto-replace thing with Word. (You have Word, right?) Nobody needs to know how wide -- how very, very wide -- you cast your eager net.


• Master the (subtle) difference between a colon and a semicolon.

God help those public relations practitioners and allied professionals. Full letter here.

Wyclef Jean and Cookie Monster.

Need more be said?

Off-topic, I like how Hulu has a video search feature right inside the embed. (See upper right-hand corner. It's slightly cut off, but still usable.)

Go ahead, try running a search on it. Results hosted by Hulu are returned within the window, meaning whatever site you're on -- in this case, my blog -- instantly becomes a streaming media dashboard.

Sassy.

Star Trek Movie Footage.

For those of you not in the know: JJ Abrams, creator of modern-day serial masterpieces Lost and Fringe, is releasing a prequel to Star Trek in May 2009. Early on I heard Winona Ryder was cast as Spock's mom, but that's nothing on this still curiouser discovery: Sylar, my favourite unhinged Heroes sometimes-villain, is young Spock.

What am I even supposed to do with that information?! 

Comforting FYI: Leonard Nimoy will reprise his role as old Spock. He also did the "Space: the final frontier" voiceover in the trailer (available on the website, linked above, or at the BBC, linked below).

Read more casting tidbits.

Worth Noting.

Diggin' how, like, 10% of the search traffic to my blog comes from people Googling "I sent that bitch a smiley face."

Hoarding History

MoveOn.org is giving away free stickers commemorating Barack Obama's November 4 win. Headed "Yes we did," a play on Obama's speech "Yes we can," they're designed by Shepard Fairey, one of my favourite street artists.

Tasty, tasty. Would've ordered a print, too, but they're already sold out. Guess I'll have to settle for vacuum-sealing my Nov. 5 copy of the NYT.

Neat how there's also an option to let MoveOn shill the stickies on your Facebook page. It was one of those rare instances where I was like, "Yes, marketer, please use me."

By the Way,

Obama won. And I'm saying this now because it's the first time in days that I'm sitting in near-complete silence -- you know, far away from ad-heads and musicians and newsmen and cab drivers and grinning kebab vendors prattling about how they feel about it.

Lo and behold, I can finally react. And hmm, this is pretty neat.

It's Gov 2.0! Bring on the mash-ups.

Two Really Good Quotes I Heard at ad:tech

Not remembered to scale.

Social media only further reveals who you really are.

-Alisa Leonard-Hansen

And in response to me, addled by some separate thing, asking whether she has always taken criticism well, Susan Bratton replied thus:

When I started public speaking, I'd get back comment cards that said truly awful things -- that I'm fake, or "who do you think you are?" -- and then I realized there might be something there. I realized I wasn't authenting enough.

What she said stuck out because critique like that can seem really personal -- like the whole world hates you, not because you're doing something wrong (and thus fixable), but because you're damn unlikeable.

Instead of drawing a warm bath and putting on the last-night-on-earth music, Susan saw this as a chance to glimpse a part of herself you can't always see on your own.

It might have been a gift, and she used it.

Democracy's Trendy with the Tech Elite

Websites that've playfully reminded me to vote:

Facebook, right in the header.



Google AdWords -- in the Campaign Management dashboard.



MySpace, between pages. This is actually an interstitial ad for E-Research Council, but still.



Meanwhile, traditional media entities like PBS have partnered with Google to make this year's election the most transparent ever. Got a mobile cam? Covertly video your experience at the ballots. Twitter and My Fair Election are also using crowdsourcing to police the polls this year.

Other sites jumped the gun: betting destinations cast lots for Obama, and even Facebook Lexicon "suggests" (eh, I'm iffy about this) an Obama win.

We'll know in 12 hours.

Let the Games Begin.

I'm in Manhattan for ad:tech NY, staying at a fatally swanky place called The Time. The video above is of the winner of last night's bikini bull-riding contest, which took place at Johnny Utah's at a party hosted by XY7.com.

No one I spoke with has any idea what XY7 does, and I'm willing to bet it's out of business before it can impose another mechanical bull onto us. To be fair, I have been wrong before. The Rubicon Project, for example, continues to pour chocolate fondue fountains on seething throngs year after year.

Read the post, and keep up with all the general grokking and fun-having at the ad:tech blog.