I got a twitter request from EstherK today that was followed up with an email. She notified me that I won a contest her website, My Urban Kvetch, was offering with PopJudaica! The two joined forces to advertise the Nice Jewish Guys Calendar by running a giveaway; the calendar went to the commenter that could best answer the following scenario:
Imagine you’re an advertising agency assigned to promote the Nice Jewish Guys calendar. Who is the ideal celebrity pitch-person for this product? Why?
When I saw PopJudaica advertise the giveaway on twitter, I was interested because a friend of mine had forwarded me the calendar a week before. The idea seemed obvious to me, so it came out fairly easily:
I think the best pitch for the calendar would be a viral video similar to Jimmy Kimmel’s response (F**king Ben Affleck) to Sarah Silverman’s (F**king Matt Damon); a celebrity montage of sorts. Maybe Silverman could do something hilarious, but lets go with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johannsen, as the hot Jewish girls looking for their dreidl in the haystack. They stumble upon the calendar and go on to talk about all the characteristics they love about jewish men (emphasizing the hilarious cliches, of course!) Their examples draw on the different Jewish male celebrities they’ve worked with on various shows and movies. After going on for a bit, they realize that some of these costars have been listening in the whole time. The celebrities (Seth Rogen would be hilarious!) grab the calendar, begin reading the bios and realize they have nothing on the guys in the calendar. They emphasize that the everyday Jewish guy is really the catch and that the calendar is proof of that. They end by saying “these are the guys you should be pining for”. The End.
Did I take the contest too seriously? Maybe. Did I write a good pitch? Yes. Do you have a copy of the calendar being sent to you for free? No!
The basic idea of the product is to motivate children to move and dance by varying the speed at which the music is played. The speed changes based on how quickly and energetically the child is dancing.
Professor Kimiko Ryokai has a joint appointment between the School of Information and the Center for New Media at UC-Berkeley. She started teaching Tangible User Interfaces at the I-School last year, in the Fall of 2007. Unfortunately for me, I graduated in the Spring of 2007 and missed her class by a year.The class hosted an open-house last week, which, of course, I could not make it because I have a 9-5 job and the open house was in the afternoon. Read the article on the showcase from this year here.
Looking through the project ideas on the course website shows a couple really unique ideas, including the Peter and the Wolf Storytelling Mixer which reminds me of some work I came across at Georgia Tech over 4 years ago. The crux of this mixer is bringing music to children, and this is part of what Gil Weinberg has been doing at Georgia Tech. He builds on the idea that music is good for children and their development, but that instruments are too complex for infants and children younger than 8 or so to play. Young children can benefit from creating and playing with music using simpler toys or instruments. Here’s a video about his Shapers:
This is where I have to admit that when I was applying to graduate school back in 2004, the idea of going to Georgia Tech’s HCI program and working with Professor Weinberg really excited me. I went to visit him during the summer of 2004, on my way back from Texas A&M, because I really admired his work. He was gracious enough to meet with me, but I did not end up going to Atlanta, instead heading to Berkeley in the Fall of 2005.
You can also watch a video about the Bubblegum Sequencer, a project from last year’s TUI class that got a fair amount of publicity:
It’s a Virginia morning in my inbox. Here’s another post about The University:
I just received an email from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Virginia asking for a donation. Now, I know that the SEAS has been strapped for cash lately since I had to pay for my own travel costs to guest lecture in a 2nd year class there this fall. Since there were no speaking fees, I decided that was my contribution for the year and I would reconsider making a donation in the year to come. The email I received this morning was the following:
Please let me know if you agree: This is NOT viral marketing. Correct? The reason this is not viral marketing is because viral marketing means that the message or content travels through a series of channels that are not always initiated by the original sender. So sending an email to your alumni base, is not considered Viral Marketing, it’s considered Mass Marketing, Mail Marketing, or in this case, Fundraising. In addition, a quick search of viral marketing on google shows the first result:
“Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that encourages email recipients to pass along messages to others in order to generate added exposure.”source
Right, and I do not see the email asking me to forward it on to anyone. Furthermore, if they paid a consulting agency to tell them that “viral” marketing was the next big thing, and all they come up with was this email, I’m certainly not going to give them any money. They just wasted the money they had!
Finally, I get that they are trying to make some joke that Viral Marketing isn’t Science, and they’ll stick to what they are good at: Science. But really that dismisses all the research that has gone into why viral marketing is so effective; this includes very scientific research coming from our nation’s Sociology departments.
My friend Emily Busse had a great video posted on her gchat this morning. The video shows Virginia (my alma mater, SEAS 05′) students congregating outside of Clemons Library during finals week, probably a couple days ago (video was posted on the 12th). Clemons Library is an institution at UVA; it’s 4 floors, computer lab on top, digital library on the 3rd floor, study floor on the 2nd and silent floor on the 1st. This was the place to do group meetings, study, or just hang out (yes, there were those types). Anyway, it looks like students were instructed to congregate in the patio area outside of Clemons library for a late night rave. Looks like tons of fun and makes me miss the crux of the UVa comunity and education: Work Hard, Play Hard.
So I wrote about it once or twice before, but WordPress spam is horrible. Before I added Akismet, I had over 2500 spam comments. I was deleting batches, maybe 20 at a time. It was tedious. With some help from my buddy Ivan, I got my WordPress API key and installed Akismet. The plugin adds a button to your comments’ options called “Check for Spam”
Once I selected “Check for Spam” all 2000+ comments were absolutely gone! I felt like a huge load had been lifted off my shoulders.
Note: Also in this post, I’m testing RealMac Software’s LittleSnapper (its hosting the screenshot) and Twitme (my twitter should update with a link to this blog).
I’ve been using 2Pad for a little over a month, maybe two, and I have to say that it has a ton of potential. Essentially, you go to their website and enter in your email address to create an account. Every week you get an email from the website (2Pad Weekly Update) that directs you to your account. There, 2pad collects all of the pictures and videos people have sent you. Since I use a Mac at work and Ubuntu at home, the service makes my life so much easier. I don’t have to download personal stuff on my work computer, and I don’t have to figure out which Ubuntu add-on I need to watch a particular video extension type.
This morning I tested their Share feature. When you log in, it asks you if you would like to share with other people that have sent you media. The interaction was not entirely clear, and I felt that the “next steps” should have been more visible to me, as the user. I wasn’t sure what type of email 2pad was going to send. But, I found out shortly after, from my friend Jess, what the email looked like. Essentially, 2Pad sends an email saying “here are all the pictures you have shared with me in the past” with a link for Jess to see what pictures I have in my account that she has sent me. Looking at the set they sent, I know that there are more pictures than 2Pad was showing.
The other feature I played around with, which took some searching to find, was the “Link” feature. I actually thought of the idea, contacted support, and then realized the feature was already available. I definitely think this feature should be available when viewing individual items, not just from the gallery. I had some problems when I created a link for a picture, and then a link for a video. The video would play for 3 seconds and then show the picture. I’m not sure why. Bug? Keep testing guys, this feature has a lot of potential.
There are some things that I would like it to be doing that it’s not doing yet, but the developers behind 2pad are terribly responsive when I tweet to them on twitter. They’ve let me know that soon you can take your pictures and upload them straight to Flickr. This would be an amazing feature as well for me right now because I’m currently putting together my 2008 photo album. I broke my camera this year so I’m relying on people to send me their pictures soon. I suggest you follow them on twitter if you would like!
Here’s the video I was trying to share. My Dad sent this to me last week:
Click here…
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