Update: the movie’s been taken down 🙁
Not something you want to see late at night, by yourself, in a dark & empty house. Click on the glowing items to see what happens, this is so totally creepy.
Month: June 2005
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Tyler keeps ’em busy
Today I received word of Tyler’s doings in Japan. My parents took the kids for the afternoon and reported back that he’s keeping everyone on their toes. Here’s the email I received from my father.
Dear Igor (my father’s endearing handle for me)
First we went fishing in a shallow pond. Bamboo poles, dried octopus tied at the end of a string, no hooks. Actually, lots of action. Then we strolled through the park, Tyler leading the way. He found a badly designed water fountain which when he turned it on shot water straight up 15 feet. Lots of fun, even though everyone got soaking.
Then we all went to Asahi-yu for a bath. Tyler loved the hot but failed to appreciate the cold. He was full of questions: How deep is it? Why does the water smell of tea? Why do they have a bath outside? Will you wash my hair? What is the hot room for? I pointed out to him that he was the only one talking in the bath and gave him a towel, which I had to remind him three times to keep with him but not take into the bath. He’ll get the hang of it.
After we got out of the bath and got dressed, he went exploring. He decided to take a look at what was going on in the woman’s side. Tyler, the great explorer. He’s unstoppable!
Rick
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KRON TV blogger meetup
On Saturday, I headed over to check out the KRON4 Blogger Meetup. I was not sure what to expect but who could turn down the offer of free food and interesting conversation? I think all of us there would agree that we would have liked to have more structure to the afternoon but KRON achieved its objective to introduce themselves as the first local TV station to "get it" and break down the wall between Big Media and the grassroots movement that local bloggers represent. Terry Heaton, the televsion consultant who launched the collaboration between bloggers and Nashville television station WKRN, is working with sister station KRON4 here in San Francisco to blend the hyper-local snippets of local bloggers into their news. Terry’s efforts in Nashville have resulted in the very well received, Nashville is Talking aggregator site,
I think Terry summed up their motives best when he said, (I paraphrase) "We don’t want to dictate from above but support from underneath." KRON has already committed to building their own aggregator of local blogs and Terry said that KRON will be inviting selected bloggers on television to share their views of local events. If KRON follows the WKRN lead, we’ll see KRON supporting selected local bloggers with ads and sponsorship and more get togethers & conferences.
My favortite comment of the afternoon? Being introduced by Terry to the General Manager of KRON, Mark Antonitis, "Hey Mark, here’s Six Apart, these guys are like the NTSC of the blogging world."
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The largest sloop in the world
In the artists rendition on the left even a J-boat looks small in comparison to the 247 foot sloop, Mirabella V. The 290 foot mast stands taller than most redwood trees and is constructed of 31 tons of carbon fiber and stands 70 feet taller than the roadbed of Golden Gate Bridge. So tall is the Mirabella V is that it cannot fit under any bridge in the world! The mainsail has the surface area of a football field and had to be constructed from seven sections. Even so, it takes two cranes to remove the mainsail from the 90 foot boom.
For a cool $250,000 you can charter the Mirabella for a week (doesn’t include food or drinks) and it apparently costs $4 million a year just to keep her in operation.
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Technorati Beta
It’s out folks, the latest and greatest version of Technorati is now available in a public beta. It’s smoothed out its corners and added a whole host of pre-loaded searches of top searches, news, books, movies right up front. If you login to your account on Technorati, you can also view your Watchlist searches right from the home page. In the words of Founder & CEO David Sifry, the goal is to make the site "accessible to more people and, specifically, people who new to blogging." Right on!
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GPS Moblogging, another first
Two years ago, my sister was moblogging with full GPS support (click Location Info) in Japan on Tokyo Tidbits. Now, a full two years later, her boyfriend has cobbled together several services and a bluetooth-enabled GPS device which talks to her Nokia 7610 phone to do the same thing.
Ah progress.
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Podcast at 30,000 feet
In what has got to be a first, Jason Calcanis “Planecasts” from 30,000 feet about John Battelle’s new company, FM Publishing.
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The Fine Art of Search Engine Marketing
I dropped by the recent OMMA (Online Media, Marketing and Advertising) conference here in San Francisco and got a healthy education on some of the finer points of search engine marketing. What was most startling to me was the finding by one of the panel members (it might have been Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer, he was throwing a lot of stats around) that the ROI for most search engine campaigns is now up to $1.50 for each dollar invested. The significance of this was not lost on the audience. Search Engine advertising is no longer a marketing expense but a sales channel.
I may be stating the obvious to some of you but this struck me as significant. When a traditional marketing activity moves from the expense column of a balance sheet to the revenue side, it completely changes how management views this activity.
I had the good fortune to catch up with Joshua Stylman of Reprise Media and he explained to me some of the things that Reprise is doing to optimize marketing for their clients. Reprise also runs the Movable Type-powered blog, SearchViews so they’re drinking their own sherry (it tastes better than dogfood)
For The New York Times, they analyze the top stories from the RSS feeds to make selective keyword purchases to drive readers to the nytimes.com site.
For a Lord of the Rings merchandiser, they spider their client’s site to extract product names and use them in combination with general phrases related to Lord of the Rings to bid on "tail terms" which are extremely specific and thus low cost but highly effective and relevant. The case study (registration required) goes on to quote attaining a 1:6 ratio of ad dollars spent to every dollar generated!
I don’t know about you but if I had a campaign that returned $6 for every dollar spent, I don’t think there would be any doubt in my not looking to maximize resources spent on that channel.
I found the tenor of this conference refreshing. Unlike other conferences which had the feel of a shrill carnival, this one was more in tune to the art of good advertising; the importance of creating something that is of value to not only the advertiser but, equally important, the consumer. I appreciate that there are companies out there that are taking the time to work out phrases that will find me exactly those things out on the tail that I might want. Spend your money to optimize the tail, relevance will trump brute force "Punch the Monkey" schemes every time. Anyone remember the x10 camera?
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Keen, local footwear
I’ve been seeing more and more of these funky looking mocs around town that I began to wonder if this was some kind of local favorite. Keen Footwear broke onto the scene with such subtle force that it was hard to pin where their fanbase was coming from – it just seemed to be that everyone you met at the local Edison School was sporting a pair.I saw them again on the cover of the June issue of Business 2.0 where they were featured as one of The New Instant Companies and then again, today in Alameda Magazine where the article goes on to say that they are based in Alameda where they plan to stay, no matter how big they get.
Yeah! I cool and subtle badge to promote my local homies on the Island.
