RSSMix.com Mix ID 214243

Congratulations You Got It

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:20:41 -0500

I would have a lot of trouble getting sleep right now if I were you, so now I wish you luck sleeping.

Could Someone Please Get This to Mark Boal before the Oscars?

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:40:20 -0500

I don't have his email address, to I'm hoping if you do you could get this to him.

52. The Digital Decade

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:35:27 -0500

March 4, 2010

Writers and pundits can't figure out what to call the first decade of the 21st Century. The New Yorker did a bit by Rebecca Mead on the failure to find a hook for this time - the Oughts never took off. The Millenials are people. It's a decade without a name...until now

I propose we refer to this period as the first totally Digital Decade.

It is the first decade of widespread internet use. It is the first complete decade in which I utilized digital photography from start to end. It is the decade that saw the end of analog TV broadcasts. It is the first complete decade of cell phones, email and social networks.

In a nutshell, it is The Digital Decade: 2000-2010. That's my vote. I challenge you to come up with something better.

It's Snowing in Georgia, Again

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:35:32 -0500

March 2, 2010

Upside down world. Natives say they can't remember the last time it snowed in March.

Welcome Tribal Con

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:17:10 -0500

Sorting Seeds in the Sun

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:39:56 -0500

Spring comes early

Classic Website 'Dead End'

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:35:41 -0500

Fri-No One's at the Ad Agency-day, February 19, 2010
From my desk in Athens.

As I continue to troll my way through Atlanta advertising agencies, I keep eyes open for more examples of what does and does not work on websites. And while this unnamed agency's website looks OK (it falls victim to the chunk'o'color design scheme I find redundant), it has some basic web problems.

I got to this page by clicking 'Who We Are.' After I click that three names and a bunch of the color chunks I was referring to pop up. Why not start with a profile that is showing? Not in the cards. So I click on Bill's profile here and here I am - no links to the next guy's profile, just the link to the annoying 'extra click' page 'Who We Are,' which makes the browser back button more useful and faster to load. Whoops.

What you are seeing above, I would call a classic website 'dead end'. I'll probably throw that term in my definitions shortly as well.

xoT

HAHAHAHA WINTER

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:56:40 -0500

Utilizing Multiple Browsers for Project Management

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:11:39 -0500

February 16, 2010
From my desk in Athens, Georgia

I am currently working on two major projects, three actually - but the podcast does not require lots of browser tabs to be remembered.

I have installed three browsers on my computer: Safari, Firefox and Flock (the social networking browser by Mozilla / Firefox).

If I leave a window with multiple tabs open, my computer asks if I want to save the tabs for the next launch of the program. So, at the end of the day, I close all the windows I don't want to save and leave open the window with tabs that I want to save.

For Flock I save my tabs about Atlanta ad agencies I am currenlty researching and the Google Docs I use as carrots to lead them along my path. So Flock, right now, is dedicated to this project which has been ongoing for over a week and will continue until my target caves.

I am also working on much nicer portfolio websites for www.brogunier.com and for portfolio.tobinrussell.com using a program called Pixelpost. I have a window with multiple tabs about this project saved on Firefox. When I want to continue that project I can launch Firefox and all those annoying code pages will reappear. I haven't launched Firefox in days, because I haven't need to work on that project and Flock is my primary browser.

Bonus: Let's say you have a work email account at Gmail and a personal email account at Gmail. You can't be signed into them both at the same time..unless you are signed in on different browsers! Get my drift? Same with twitter or any other account you need to be logged into.

(Note to self/world: The next step in browser/platform development needs to be allowing multiple identities to be signed into one platform. Just needs to happen. Tweetdeck and a handleful of others do this on the iPhone, but it needs and probably will happen on computers soon enough.)

xoT

The Liquid Properties of Fire II, Nice Desktop

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:10:19 -0500

This file is optimized for use as a desktop - it stretches 1650px wide and if it distorts how will you or anyone else ever know? Click the image for the full size image, then right click the big one to download it to your desktop, then make this cool, energy saving image your desktop - plus you can see files on black a lot easier.

The limited rights version without the tag is $400 via Paypal. Bump up the resolution to full for another $200. Buy yourself some rights and you need be negotiating with yours truly. I like it for your next ad campaign and there are 20 more like it.

This is actually the second entry I have done on this topic: I have a series of images of fire which looks very liquid but I never published it - it's about a month old on this site. My German friend claims every German knows fire is 'plasma' but I'm not 100% buying it.

In any case I love how liquid fire can look - and I adore shooting light sources because...well...they are light sources! You are starting with the result and all you need to do is subtract from there. (My love of screenshots is no doubt another firefly to the light behavior of yours truly.)

And as a side note regarding 'Best Tools,' I am away from my fully current, very expensive CS4 creative suite as this fire shot was put together, so I used the best online photoshop editor out there. www.pixlr.com. So close to PS it is uncanny. Love it. Works great. Totally intelligent. Up there with the best PC program of all time for image management the Faststone Image Viewer. Nothing on Mac I am aware of comes even close. Even Capture One Pro falls flat compared to Faststone.

Now That's a Website

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:23:29 -0500

This Atlanta agency, Fletcher Martin, has a great website. It looks great. It works great. It does cool things that don't get in your way. The copy is intelligent and friendly. It has little nuggets of embedded media, like the interview with Andy Fletcher (audio is a little weak, but not catrastophically so) - and here's a kicker - when you are scrolling through the principles at the agency it doesn't lead you to a navigational dead end. This is a number one problem on many Atlanta agency sites I've visited - always with the back and forth on the browser. Whereas this site smoothly moves you along, maintaining form and framing for each topic, then returning to the lovely central form of the main page with the textual background, centralizing the main topics, never losing site of the web visitor's quest for various types of information.

Now THAT'S a website.

51. Photoshop

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:08:40 -0500

Saturing photos? Adding black and white effects? Extra shine on the surface of some glossy advertising copy? All that stuff we could do before Photoshop.

This leaves us the question: What is Photoshop really for?

"I'm pretty certain Selleck Waterfall Sandwich is the real reason Photoshop was created."

Shout out to Amanda Eisen. Thanks girlfriend

50. The Paradox of Choice

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:38:20 -0500

James from the Hurt Locker paralyzed by cereal boxes

Winter Georgialand

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:55:37 -0500

49. iPhone

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:52:42 -0500

great computer :-)
mediocre phone :-(
but love the computer
more than my own ;-)

48. Uberganizairz

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:58:33 -0500

etymology -Play on the words 'uber' and 'organizer'

def. - n. an elite type of political organizer trained with a broad array of skills and also a special, superpower type of skill, which can be deployed in extreme situations. Frequently dwells in GreenCorps or, on the flipside, at elite Christian Universities in western Virginia and rural Michigan.

Uberganizairs can:

Plan press conferences from a mountaintop which has been removed and get people there
Find strategic flaws in management systems and implement a broad variety of fixes
Lead national TV and media crews up the sides of very tall damns to 'get the shot' of the political action

This is a brief video introduction before we learn about three Uberganizairz' special skills:

Upload Anything? Google Docs just keeps blowing me away

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:39:12 -0500

I am much too big a fan of Google Docs. With the exception of having terrible printing exports and settings, having all my documents online is an amazing conveinence. Having access to documents anywhere vies against sharing documents with anyone as collaborators for which is the bigger convenience.

Whoa be the day Google gets eViolated (you peeped eViolated here first BOYZ!) by cybercriminals...it will happen and I am crossing my fingers, praying to Jeebus, my Gmail and Google Docs, and now Google Calendar and Sync don't fall flaming out of the sky with it.

And then there is the big brother aspect of Google, recommending counselors or branded therapies when you get a troubled email from a friend or lover? Just creepy.

But then, in the usual understated way, I run across this today. Google Docs now supports at least the VIEWING of ANY DOC on your F-IN' computer? These guys have the programmer slaves in the basement working 23-6, I swear!

This means photopresentations can be uploaded (not that I couldn't create them in Docs with their presentation program anyway) and any other kind of document on my computer can be handled by Google Docs. Wow.

I knew computers had a long way to go, I just did not know how far they would go. Thank god it's all happening before the 2012 Oil/Religious/Nostradamus Apocalypse! A couple of more years to appreciate this amazing technology before the energy runs out and we're all riding bikes to the farm.

At least animals won't be locked in factory farms anymore. That kind of karma you can't put a price on. I might even give up Google Docs for that.

Next: Google Sync almost makes Paper Toast! But I still have a Quo Vadis dammit, and I like it.

Driving Web Traffic, an Experiment in Inanity with Results

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:32:58 -0500

The simplest way to drive traffic to your website, by far, is to key into what people are looking for - so why not create a website or blog dedicated exclusively to posts at a collection of other popular blogs - say a feed mix of all the Gawker websites. Set up a twitter account and a blogger account and post an exact headline with lead text and link to Gawker sites on the blog, then post a notice up at Twitter for everything you post - about 50 posts a day - and watch the traffic pour in. Not to mention the Twitter throngs if you properly has the shit out of things.

As for myself, I will simply limit myself to headlines that are clearly lies, like "Robert Pattinson Shows Up at Minneapolis Premeire of New Moon," post a crappy photo of Robert on a non-descript corner and watch the local traffic roll in.

This I will do.

What Mike Tyson's trainer knows about making a competitor

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:31:12 -0400

I have a friend I will call Ray. Ray talks a lot of shit, but on the other hand Ray knows what is required to make a champion. He'll say "You're the next abolitionist. You are the Abraham Lincoln of New England, B!"

If you missed the documentary "Tyson", the most interesting part to myself was his relationship to his trainer in Brooklyn, Cus d'Amato. The documentary has Tyson recounting his original training by Cus. Cus spent most of his early training drilling this message into Tyson's head, "You are the greatest. You are the best out there. You are simply better than your competitors."

Tyson said he realized that without this basic level of confidence, without this voice from outside his normal reality, he would never have made it further - and it's Tyson's belief that fueled his own competitive spirit.

This is not a characteristic of an intellectual upbringing - at least not mine. Lucky for me I have one friend who hones in on what is at the core of my value and drills it into my head whenever I see him. Shout out Ray.

Doubt is important. Confidence is fundamental.