When I was a kid in the Texas public school system, there were always teachers that would subtly inject their own opinion into certain arguments. There was one teacher that said the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery. He gave a list of reasons the for the war, but it almost feels like saying that diminishes the atrocity, not to mention if it wasn’t the only reason, it certainly was the most important.
We were once given an example of why unions are bad, a hypothetical situation that seemingly rewarded the young and punished the veterans. Texas is a “Right to Work” state, which means you don’t legally have to be part of a union in order to work. There was never really much about ethics, and practices of business leaders. I guess that was the point of college. But I shutter to think how one friend talked so negatively about how unions make workers lazy, and just wanted what they didn’t deserve, without being able to see the other side of the argument. I have several friends that had the same educational experience I did, before college. I know what kind of trite they were fed. Some of them have changed.
The new Hot Chip album comes out next week. I’ve already pre-order my copy on iTunes. I found this video a while back. It really appeals to the nerd in me. It should be obvious who Alexis, the lead singer, is dressed as, but in case you miss the reference, the line “You’re my number one guy” is a line that Jack Palance’s character says to Jack Nicholson’s character (a.k.a. the Joker) before he has Jack (Napier) set up to be killed by a dirty cop, only to be horribly disfigured by Batman. Of course, the actual line was “You are my number one guy.” But perhaps I’m being to nitpicky. The video is pretty sick //
You spend a lot of money on school to do a job that anybody thinks they could do. Why on earth would you want to let them do it?
Subway is suing Quiznos and iFilm for inflammatory and false accusations in a “create your own ad” campaign. They posted over 100 videos made by Quiznos fans after they instructed them to draw “a comparison between Quiznos and Subway with Quiznos being superior.” The results were filtered, but the messaging was off to begin with. Quiznos has taken an aggressive stance against it’s number one competitor, so I’m sure the video review was very liberal.
I don’t think you have to be a professional to be funny or to have a good idea. But advertising and design are more about painting a pretty picture. You have to create something that’s well thought out and meaningful. Interactive, by nature, engages people to participate in the process of advertising. But if you rely on people to figure their own way through a campaign, you better be able to accurately predict the outcome.
I’m not exactly sure when these two campaigns happened, and if they occurred at similar times, but Chevy Tahoe tried an approach that let you make your own Tahoe commercial using canned footage and text overlays. The plan back fired in a big way when videos like this one flooded YouTube //
Fox news has decided to try and trivialize one of the most important elections in U.S. history. On Sunday, Fox will merge it’s coverage of the Super Bowl between two teams I don’t really care about (but maybe some of you do) with their coverage of Super Tuesday, the day that 22 states hold their primaries to nominate a candidate to run for the President of the United States in November.
Fox has already trivialized the democratic process. It was Fox News that first erroneously declared W the president in 2000. Most television news organizations followed suit, only to retract when they realized that it was still to close to call. The damage had already been done, and Bush sued his way into the White House.
But, I’m cynical. I’m sure Fox wont try to inject their bias politics into their coverage of the biggest annual television event.
My favorite part of this article is the discussion of the trend, noting how CNN will follow suit with “Ballot Bowl,” and how NBC has already “spiced up its football broadcasts with Keith Olbermann…who brought along the form, if not quite the ideological content, of his cable show.” Of course, Keith Olbermann was a sportscaster at ESPN before he came to MSNBC, but I’m sure that had nothing to do with NBC’s decision.
Countdown with Keith Olbermann is definitely my favorite news show. I studied journalism through high school and college, and he’s the only prime-time news anchor that does things right. He’s described as progressive, though some say that’s a smoke screen for the word liberal (I don’t agree that they are one in the same). Basically, he’s the anti-Bill O’Reilly. He’s dedicated to making sure the facts are correct, and he apologizes when he or anyone on his program makes a mistake.
Anyway, his show is online here. Countdown is broken up into segments, the 5 top stories of the day, and a few interstitials. If you click on a segment, it will play the selected one, and then cycle through the other stories. You pretty much get the whole show. I highly suggest you check it out. It’s a great news show, and it’s a good way to distribute the content using Flash.
Some of you may be aware that my drive in interactive design was sparked by disgust for Myspace.com. I finally deleted my account a while ago, incase anyone didn’t notice. This article was on Digg. International Delete Your Myspace Account Day is 30 January 2008.
I hesitated posting this until I saw this quote from this article on a follow-up to the post //
One blogger has declared January 30th “International Delete Your MySpace Account Day”.
But MySpace doubts that this will have a great impact on their network.
“This Delete-Your-MySpace day is just about being controversial,” Ms Horne said.
“MySpace is still the biggest social networking site in the world.”
In the words of BBC comedian Catherine Tate, MySpace does not look bothered.
My sister recently called me asking how to delete her Myspace account after it apparently sent something inappropriate to my brother. My baby sister never got one, though I tried to get her to initially. I’m glad she has more sense than me, though she’s probably having less fun.
It’s official. There is life on Mars. This inconclusive visual evidence absolutely proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt //
There’s a lot of wild theories out there. Some say it’s Sasquatch (a.k.a. Big Foot), some say it’s the virgin (cough) Mary, but I think it’s obvious what it is: Elvis came back from the dead as a reverse vampire and has allied with the saucer people to destroy the meal of dinner from a secret base on an uninhabitable planet.
This week, a few guys came into the office to show some work. Among the presenters were representatives of Digital Kitchen, a motion design firm with offices in Seattle, Chicago, and NY.
Check it:
Pardon the low quality. I figured it was a better one to embed at low quality and still get the idea across. Check out this Zune spot on their website.
