internet cool?!

Well, the TV Networks, Entertainment networks, Cable Networks and Silly, closed-minded online networks agree. It’s happening. All around you.

Kick Ass.Viacom is STARTING to catch on to Rich Thinking. They’re going open.  They’re engaging their audiences like active participants instead boobing us like mindless sheep.  They’re giving us what we’ve been waiting for. Viacom and SouthParkStudios delivered on the promise they gave last year, and gave us all South Park episodes ever created for free. You can find them all at Southparkstudios.com.

Finally, the day has come…sorta.  :)

You can’t embed the entire episodes (only the 3000 available clips), but it’s a step in the right direction. 

El Camino :)Call me a dirty hick, but this thing is friggin’ awesome! Sadly, this post isn’t about design. (You can read me lusting after this thing here.) So what else is awesome? The smart peeps at GM’s Marketing department took advantage of the obvious naming surge (for the record I’m supporting, “El Camino”) that this thing would cause online and created a community naming site. Cool!

The site is up ready to go for auto-show season. So guys, head over and give this baby it’s rightful name :)

“EL CAMINO.”

See more photos of the car here.

This article talks about the video-game-as-forum-for-debut as though it is the only new move/trend in music. Funny, it seems to me this phenomenon is almost mainstream at this point. Music today has boundaries that stretch far beyond what gets on the radio or in the music store (wherever that is). We all know this. Or do we?

If you want really obscure stuff, it’s out there but you’ll probably have to look further than even video games. If you prefer ambient/electronic music with few or no words, a lot of artists have cropped up in this genre thanks to the bit-torrents, filepilez and gnutellas of the world. Electronic music took advantage of (arguably created!) this distribution mechanism as the genre’s relatively niche´ sound has proven to be difficult to effectively promote outside of its small fan base.

Just because things like iTunes exist, doesn’t mean you’re still getting access to obscure, different or incredibly “indie” music. Like anything else, for the real gems, you’ve gotta dig deeper.

If you’re up for some digging, here’s some I’ve discovered and liked: Mylo, Kavinsky, Digitalism, 65daysofstatic, Four Tet, Explosions in the Sky, Boards of Canada, oh and how could I forget: Aphex Twin.

who’s in?

For a second I thought the post was about “Rock Band Experts starting Real Band.” I wonder why hasn’t this happened yet! LOL. Seriously, anyone want to be in my band?

Hmm. Here’s another Twitter app. IMHO, (sorry Foamee, which i kinda dig) this is a much better use of what Twitter has to offer. And frankly (did I just say “frankly?”) it really speaks to me seeing as I spend somewhere between 8 and 20 hours week held hostage by some sort of train or car.

Hokay soh, you’ve heard of navigation systems now with updated traffic info, yeah? Cool.

but what if they crowd-sourced that data?

Enter Commuter Feed is a free service that lets you post reports on traffic and transit delays in your local area using Twitter.

For those of you in NYC - heres the feed for our area. Nothing much up there yet - but as it goes with crowd-sourced data the machine relys on user input. Let’s see how this one goes…

Just came across Dropio. A drop is a ‘discrete’ chunk of space you can use to store and share stuff (pictures, video, audio, docs, etc) privately, without accounts, personal registration, or an email addresses. Drops are not ‘searchable’ and not ‘networked’, they just exist floating in space, as points for exchange for individuals or groups.

really worth a peep.

You can create as many as you want in what seems like a ridiculously easy 1-step process. Things like a password, whether others can add to the drop, and how long you want it to exist all make this thing really flexible for both family and business public and private situations. The Drops are a simple platform for sharing which are by default private, but can be flexibly used in a range of ways from sharing family photos and videos to collaborating on work documents. Each drop has three primary input methods – the web, email, and voice – and a few secondary ones like ‘widgets’.

I’ve noted up there that each drop gets its own dedicated email address (for input) phone conference # and its own fax #. You can Fax documents right into the Drop feed! This thing is a huge innovation (and seems like an amazing extranet tool…) I bet a zillion bucks it blows up at SXSW this year…

Weeeeeeeeee!!

would you add him?Assuming by now you have heard of semacodes or QR codes. No? QR codes are a new type of bar-code you can scan with your cell phone to get the phone to execute some sort of function. It is most often used to get the phone to open a webpage. Just scan (shoot) the code and the phone opens the URL. QR codes are widely used in europe and asia but are slowly starting to appear in the americas.

This little app connects your code with your fbook profile - then uses Zazzle to throw it on a tshirt! (The shirts encode the URL of your mobile facebook page.)

Awesome. Now I can go to advertising industry parties and literally speak to no one. :)

Want to make one for yerself? Here.

So a pal of mine and fellow POKER, Richard Schatzberger (tumblr, flickr) handed me one of these babies today. Awesome. Just Awesome. This intro from the site says it all:

USBCELL - Time to Recharge the Battery Market

With over 15 billion batteries needlessly thrown away each year, and with the increasing demand for portable power by modern electronic devices - the battery has simply not caught up with the needs of modern life. Traditional rechargeable batteries have never been truly portable as they are dependent on chargers or adpators, and so most consumers prefer single use alkaline cells.

Anywhos, this is exactly the kind of thinking an innovation every market needs. What market are you in? How will you shake the category?

Meet BookTagger.

Each BookTagger profile is a graphical representation of your physical bookshelf on the internet. The bookshelf can then be shared with friends, family and others searching for the next good read. People congregate into book clubs and share reading experiences and catalogue all your books and track to whom they’ve been lent - kinda like personal library.

Could be an amazing idea for a company like Hyperion or Penquin…

So there’s all this hoopla about Toshiba airing their old commercial about football and what happens after the game and what-not, despite it being you know, not good. Side note - the ads sucked last night. I mean really sucked.

Yah so anyhowse, they aired this ancient commercial. In SD. In limited markets. (I actually don’t even remember it, so there’s a good chance it wasn’t in my market either…). People! IN Standard Def. In LIMITED MARKETS. Why friggin’ bother? Oh I know - so they can get online distribution, right? Um, no. At least not as far as I can see. This AM I couldn’t find it on the myspace page, the nfl page, or hulu. Jaysus talk about blunders.

 

Hokay so, while Toshiba has every right to spend its money on advertising, what they should have done was spent that 3 Zillion on some innovation. New interactive platform? HD burner / with cheap HD Disc distribution? HULU HD partnership??? Sigh. Nothing they showed in this ad is new in any way - so why pay boocoo for a SB Spot? Because they’re scared, that’s why. And they’re not alone…

We haven’t seen the end folks. In fact, this is just the beginning of the noise your favorite media brands are going to put you through during the next 3 years. They are coming to the realization their old model cannot hold. The writer’s strike. The Blu-Ray war. Hulu. Apple TV. Hell, even Jet-Blue’s TV sets. The signs of change are all around. What do we have to show for it? A tornado of desperation. Sweet.

BTW: If you didn’t watch the SB it had quite possibly the best 4th quarter that I’ve ever seen. (And I’m not just saying that bc I’m a Giants fan). Geaux Giants!! :P

Peeps, here’s a Rich Idea for ya: Make Mr. Obama say anything you want (like this!) with a handy dandy do-it-yourself Obama Propaganda poster. For better or worse - I’m pretty sure I just wasted the last 30min coming up with phrases for him. It’s simply and sticky. The best part? It’s probably NOT from his campaign peeps, SSK.

But then again, neither was this. :).

Enjoi.

PS, what’s the deal with the Don’t Give Up poster? I have a love affair with sticktoitiveness. Thanks, noodle for the shots!