Considering the deal brokered in the House yesterday concerning the FISA courts, I thought this sticker was more than a little timely. This particular pay phone is located just outside the Kwik Shop across from my office, and seriously made my day today. Thank you crazy-left-wing-Lawrence-hippies.

Here’s quick camera phone snap from our shopping at Paper Source on saturday. Teressa was enamored with all of the pretty paper in the store, while I was immediately drawn to the robots. This is a reoccurring theme in our relationship. It also kicked in the way-back-machine.

In college Matt, Dan, Grady and I would get together and spend many an afternoon rocking out in our basement. One standard was a song by Matt and Dan entitled “When Robots Fall in Love.” We were so ahead of our time. By the way the song had a great hook…trust me. I wonder if we have a recording of that somewhere? Hmmm.

As I poured out my breakfast today this little guy fell into my bowl of Cheerios! I can’t remember the last time I found a surprise in a box of cereal…now if only it was legos. ;)

p.s. Sorry the pic’s a bit blurry…I had to leave the packaging on for a friend of ours who “loooovvvessss hot wheels.”

WTF? Is there a huge demand for Amazon.com content in Southeast Kansas? Just thought it was too weird not to post.

Hope everyone has a happy Stevenote day. Hopefully some cool stuff comes out…not that I could afford any of it right now!!?!?

So the MacBook Pro is finally here. It took 3 different delivery attempts (long story) for Fedex Ground and me to hook up…needless to say I’m not a fan of Fedex Ground (normal fedex and I seem to get along just fine). Anyway, just thought I would post a fun photo booth pic and drop a quick list of observations on the machine…which is still missing a name by the way.

• It is fast….very fast.
• Two finger scrolling rocks.
• The screen is BRIGHT.
• The case is hot and the fan runs a lot.
• Parallels rocks.
• My desk at home is much more pretty. (I used to have a 15″ CRT on there)

Hopefully I’ll be able to churn out some more creative projects at home in addition to the cool stuff that is happening at work. I just signed on to help out on a couple video projects, so I’ll be putting the ol’ MBP to good use. I’ll be sure to post them as the projects progress.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!

“I’m just thinking out loud here, but: If you wanted to undermine a religious zealot terrorist mastermind without martyring him and inspiring thousands of potential followers to tread in his blood-soaked footsteps, what would be the most effective way of dealing with him?

Maybe spreading a few stories about how he’s not as pious as all that? So that potential followers either (A) turn away in disgust and disillusionment, or (B) think perhaps the West, and all the Whitney goodness that’s there, isn’t so bad after all?

It’s a propaganda coup. It’s also deliciously perfect … clever, funny and hilarious. It makes Osama a figure of mockery instead of somebody to respect (if you’ve got those sympathies, which I don’t) or fear.

Then again: Who hasn’t, at some time or another, found Whitney Houston to be the ideal woman? It’s all too plausible.” -Joel Mathis

If Joel is even remotely right, this is the greatest propaganda coup since “lose lips sink ships.” Bravo Joel. Read the full post here.

Cue the Alliance to Rescue Civilization, a group that advocates a backup for humanity by way of a station on the Moon replete with DNA samples of all life on Earth, as well as a compendium of all human knowledge — the ultimate detached garage for a race of packrats. It would be run by people who, through fertility treatments and frozen human eggs and sperm, could serve as a new Adam and Eve in addition to their role as a new Noah. -NYTimes

Talk about your all-time-off-site backups. :)

Update: If you’re feeling that life is void of backups check out the Lawrence Apple Users Group meeting tonight for more info. If you want an über linux solution check out Jim’s great tutorial. I just picked up a P4 Dell (which now has ubuntu) from a friend and I plan on using Jim’s solution to backup the girlfriend’s iBook and my G4 daily.

However, I think that this particular piece of commentary about advertising and innovation is a more than a little inaccurate and is nothing more than a pot shot at the industry. The following is a quote from his post:

“I’m fond of saying, when people in the advertising business ask me where my disaffection with that industry comes from, I tell them to do the math:

The Cuetrain [sic] wasn’t written by a Leo Burnett employee.
Movable Type wasn’t invented by McCann’s.
RSS wasn’t invented by JWT.
Robert Scoble doesn’t work for Fallon.
Techmeme wasn’t invented by Saatchi’s.

Advertising people are supposed to be in “the idea business”. But none of the ideas that have excited me in the last 5 years or so have come from Madison Avenue. Not one. Zero. Zilch. Nada.” -Hugh Macleod

I agree that there is a lot of hubris in the ad industry as a whole, and the term “creative” as a job title is more than a little off kilter. However, this sort of egoism is required when on a daily basis 1 out of your 1000 ideas is able to take hold and really accomplish something for your client and agency. Advertising people are still in the “idea business,” just not the ideas that MacLeod is interested in.

In response to MacLeod’s list of grievances with the industry I offer up my own list.

Let me preface this with the fact that I’m not a current marketing/advertising practitioner, but I have a degree in it and a large number of my friends are down in the trenches of the industry. I instead make educational software, it is much less stressful. :) Let me start by saying that I can’t argue with his first point in regards to The Cluetrain Manifesto as it is a great book and continues to be the gold standard, even 6 years after it was published. However, let me move on the points with which I disagree on.

Movable Type wasn’t invented by McCann’s. RSS wasn’t invented by JWT.

In regards to his second and third point, that Movable Type and RSS weren’t invented by the ad industry all I can respond with is that television, radio and magazines weren’t created by advertising professionals either but rather, where mediums with which to tell their clients stories….they were developed and invented by technologists, exactly how Movable Type and RSS came about.

Robert Scoble doesn’t work for Fallon.

As much as I love Scoble he only has credibility in the technology sector so why should he work for Fallon as they aren’t attempting to influence anyone in the tech industry? How would Scoble be able to help Fallon with one of their clients like Brawny? Not sure.

Techmeme wasn’t invented by Saatchi’s.

Next up on the list is techmeme giving publicity to writers/bloggers, which is what Saatchi‘s does in the “real” world. This really isn’t a valid argument as Saatchi’s isn’t trying to influence the insular blogosphere which is what techmeme is currently syndicating. If somehow the PR world got turned upside-down with agents and casting directors subscribing to RSS feeds then there would be a legitimate grip…but for right now the argument is null and void. Why would an actor in New York want a write up in some technology based blog in Montana which could then be re-syndicated by techmeme? I don’t know…do you?

I would also like to discuss the quote that sparked this post by MacLeod in which Doc Searls states:

Whatever marketing becomes will start, I believe, as a technology trend.

I completely agree but what Doc said is nothing new as TV, Radio, the Telephone and the Printing Press where definitely not invented by marketers, but rather by technologists. As much as I love a lot of people in the Ad industry they are not gods, just people trying to solve problems for their individual clients and using various mediums to do so.

I agree that there are parts of the ad industry that are stagnant and a lot of people who are still clinging to the old ways of doing things, however there are plenty of people (link, link, link, link, link and link–my old roommate works for that last one) really thinking and I can only hope that some of the reasons MacLeod is fed up with the advertising can be remedied as the next wave of marketing online comes about.

One cannot look towards Advertising to come up with the next big-technological-thing, however you can look for them to create one killer way of apply that technology to delivering messages and telling stories for their clients.

p.s. Sorry for such a long post but while I don’t drink all the kool-aid the agencies put out there, I do feel the need to defend some of my friends from KU as they are hard working ad/pr people, fighting to promote their brands.

How does the word “jazz” personify a mixed flavored diet soda? Is it the mix of African and Western musical traditions, with a touch of folk sensibilities that personifies this particular carbonated beverage? This is the kind of stuff that gives jazz music a bad name. I can’t wait ’till this fails miserably, unlike my new favorite soda…7UP natural.

p.s. I would kill to be a fly on the wall when this new soda was being branded and named…I’m sure it was just a bunch of people sitting around thinking they were being “creative.”

Apparently the show wasn’t picked up by any of the networks, however a very high quality version of the pilot has “somehow” managed to find its way on to youtube. Personally, I think this might be some kind of marketing device by Bill Lawrence and crew to save the show. The idea being if they can drum up enough support on the Interwebs they can bring the show back. Here is a great quote about the show appearing online by Lawrence:

“I don’t think any network likes the idea of a show that they passed on being out there for people to see so viewers can say, ‘Look at the crap that they put on TV and they passed on this one? It makes them look dumb.” -Bill Lawrence

Give the show a look see as it is hilarious, and it includes Paul Campell from BSG. I for one would love to see a show like this return to the airwaves. I’m so sick of all of these ridiculous reality shows and their fake-real people and plots. Not only did I really enjoy Nobody’s Watching, but I also love the fact that it lampoons TV execs and reality shows. Two for the price of one. :)