If I’ve had a little extra bliss in recent weeks, it’s because I finally feel like I’ve mastered control of the ridiculous amounts of information I choose to and not to ingest on a daily basis. I Tweeted about it a while back and instantly got numerous responses from folks wanting to know the secret. I said:
16 yr working, 15 yr InterWebs/email, 7 yr smartphone, 5 yr RSS, 3 yr social networks – finally have info mgmt system that works for me.
First, some context. On average, I:
Read and react to more than a thousand emails a week
Send more than 300 emails a week
Subscribe to a couple hundred RSS feeds, for around 400 posts per day
The artist, Dyna Moe, started doing the illustrations after doing a Christmas card for a friend in the cast of the show. I discovered her illustrations via a fansite towards the end of Season 1. We started looking forward to them every Monday during season two; quietly thrilled for her as she met the show creators when star Jon Hamm was on SNL ; and are now ecstatic to see her creations turned into the instantly-popular “Mad Men Yourself” tool on the show’s official website.
I see this as a textbook example of how the new New Media should work: A fan / friend starts creating an homage to a brand. That brand does not sue or discourage the fan doing unofficial work, even though she might be making a few paltry bucks. Nor does it jump in and try to co-opt, compete or take over. It lets the homage play out. Once it becomes clear that the homage is successful and additive to the brand, it embraces that homage. It then hires the fan / friend to extend that homage in an official way that is true to the brand and the artist.
It appears that when you climb to the top of the mountain of media enlightenment, you’re likely to find a teenage boy from England. Whether you find nirvana or fools gold depends on which young man you find.
Live long and prosper by pretending not to be Bruce Greenwood?
I dragged my sainted wife to the new Star Trek flick on Friday and as usual, she found the secret hidden gem that no one else ever would.
In the morass of explosions and makeup, she was initially confused over the actor-character match-ups between Sarek (Ben Cross) and Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood). Now neither looks much like the other, but that’s precisely what lays at the root of the strange (dis)connection. Read the rest of this entry »
Candid, unposed photography generally makes for the best covers.
Time prohibits this being as fleshed out as my last Guilty Pleasures post, but a Twitter debate with my pal Houston last night compels me to make a brief case for this album as a horrible, wonderful gem.
The album, actually called Two the Hard Way, is billed to “Allman and Woman,” ie: Greg Allman and Cher, during their brief marriage. It was a critical and commercial flop.
But it had an wonderfully terrible airbrushed cover. Allman looks like a intellectually challenged dog who caught a car and doesn’t know what to do with it. Cher looks like, well, Cher.Read the rest of this entry »
Whether you’re an Apple fanboy (like me) or a hater, you had to enjoy the skewering delivered by The Simpsons last night. It was some of the sharper satire we’ve seen out of the show in a while. (See video clips after the jump).
But for all the merriment rampant in Apple’s Mac/PC ad campaigns, Steve Jobs isn’t known for his sense of humor on such matters. Especially when the first ad of the first commercial break was for the Macbook… Read the rest of this entry »
I do loves me some Elvis Costello, particularly when he stretches himself by mixing genres, going symphonic or starting a talk show that looks to be much more in-depth and interesting than your average gabfest. I may have to bump the DirecTV subscription a level on the basis of this show alone. And the upcoming episode with Lou Reed may well make my head explode with fanboy glee.
To be clear, I’ve never worked for Virgin Records. Nor have I ever stolen a master tape of Sticky Fingers. But somehow this Cracker tune summed up my mood on the drive home tonight:
If you're happy and you're stylized, put your hands on your hips...
I recently bought Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 on the strength of its reviews. It may have been a mistake, as I haven’t been this addicted to a video game since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. (I know that GTA 4 was empirically better, but I just never found it as engaging.) Read the rest of this entry »
As a new media guy, I suppose it’s heresy to say that I find some of the en vogue (or at least formerly en vogue) services to be utterly ridiculous. Twitter’s one example (but that’s another post).
I tried really hard to see Second Life as something more than a timesuck for gullible ex-dungeonmasters and marketing consultants with enough disposable time and income that they don’t mind slow, jerky, crashing animations of their alter-fauxegos. But I’ve come up empty. I mean at least WOW gives you the entertaiment value of killing stuff.
This is my personal bastion of blather unrelated to my business, including but not limited to: family pictures, cool gadgets, music, pop culture and moderate media punditry unrelated to Dallas / Fort Worth. If I haven't posted lately, it means I'm busy on the day job. You can follow me more frequently on Twitter. More details and contact info here.
RT @cyberjournalist: This is too funny: People search for "Bing" on Google.com and now Google Is Bing’s 4th Largest Referring Source htt ... [mikeorren]
Anna Nicole's life being turned into an opera by the Royal Opera House in Britain. /via @hughhefner Coupla horsemen o'pocalypse just loosed [mikeorren]
@dallasprogress Should note one reason am happily married is that I didn't try to trick out my bookshelf to impress. Gotta be who you is :-) [mikeorren]
I don’t want you under my roof with your 86 proof watered down ’til it tastes like tea. You’re gonna pull my string, make it the real thing. — Chip Taylor
Best of…
Banjo, The Best Dog Ever™
There’s an old saying that “I wish I could be half the man my dog thinks I am.” That’s a good one. But someday, I also hope to become half the man my dog was.
The Wedding Toast I encounter far too many people in this world who are dead behind the eyes — Houston isn’t one of them. He is a real man in the greatest sense, and his powers of perception and his constant search for what is real and genuine in a fast-food world will continue to enrich both your lives.
Why I think the economy is even scarier than I thought Pegasus News: "Square Pegs" 10/9/08 Peter is at the door. He's broke and pissed and Paul is off on one last exotic resort junket before he goes into court-ordered rehab.
Search, data and the responsibilities of news orgs Pegasus News: "Square Pegs" 6/16/08 Technology is allowing us do things that seemed a pipedream three years ago. Along the way, we need to reflect on the downsides of the upside.
Why I love local Pegasus News: "Square Pegs" 1/27/08 ...if local is a sentence, lock me up and throw away the key
The State of Journalism Duke Magazine 9/10/07
[Kevin] Sack might be surprised to see our database of every candidate, official, and contributor in our region-something the newspaper does not provide. He might be appalled to learn that mere citizens reported on elections in towns that journalists eschew. When we cover mundane things, we get hundreds of responses and thousands of eyeballs-partly because of technologies Sack fears, delivering unique and wanted information to each individual.
Mud starts flying in Dallas District 9 Council race Pegasus News 4/21/07
When we put up our political database, we certainly hoped to generate thoughtful discussion and debate about local elections. We didn't expect to become a battlefield of leaked information, mis-information and confusing whodunits.
Lessons from the launchOnline Journalism Review 1/17/07
...we launched a prototype entertainment site; won an EPpy award; nearly fell to pieces; and made more mistakes than we can count -- But we’ve learned some invaluable lessons about local digital media along the way. Here’s a sampling of some of the things that we think we know now.
“Chelsea” offers a secret to my FB friends. We look up your FB pages during jury selection. Just sayin…
