Month: January 2003

For an addictive game, try Flash Flash Revolution. It’s basically like one of those dance arcade games with the pads you step on to the beat, but here you hit the arrow keys instead. It sounds simplistic, but don’t be fooled…

adweek.com presents its list of the Top 20 Ad Campaigns of the Last 20 Years. Each entry in the list is linked to a page with more information and examples from their respective campaigns. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Coke and Pepsi made the list, but I was quite happy to see that Absolut did as well. I’ve been collecting Absolut ads since the early ‘90s and never tire of their variety and originality; I have well over 600 now and still keep up the collection.

There are several recent TV ad campaigns that may eventually make a list such as this one. I’m guessing that more of the people producing these ads are close to my age; the references, music, and sense of humor used in many of them definitely point in that direction. However, I predict a backlash to this sudden nostalgia. I have a strong connection to music, so when someone suddenly appropriates a song and plays it ad nauseum, it really bothers me that my impression of the song becomes tainted. I suppose that’s what remote controls are for, but it doesn’t change the fact that many songs I considered forgotten gems have become mainstream sell-outs.

Well-known author John le Carré has written an eloquent op-ed piece on W and his Crusade (W’s horrible gaffe, not mine) in the UK’s Times Online. Although lately most of Europe has been on a general anti-American spree, it’s not without some merit. le Carré voices some legitimate concerns that the American press has seemed to ignore…

…or maybe just morons. ZDNet reports on a study finding that “78 percent of respondents claimed they found pop-up ads ‘very annoying,’” yet statistics in another study show that “pop-up impressions jumped from 1.2 billion to 4.9 billion between January 2002 and September 2002.” One explanation offered is that “Current click-through rates are inflated because many Internet users are not familiar with how to close the pop-up window.” Even though I never underestimate the stupidity of the average user, that just can’t be right. I think that for whatever reason some people just can’t resist clicking on those stupid pop-ups, ensuring that they get enough hits to stick around. DON’T DO IT! With Mozilla as my browser I can’t remember the last time I saw a pop-up ad (newer versions of Netscape have the same capability, I believe), and even with Micro$oft IE there are applications to filter out pop-ups. Use them. Love them. And stop clicking on those damn ads!

I kid you not, although I wish I was. “Director Steven Soderbergh and actor George Clooney are eyeing a March 2004 start date for "Ocean’s Twelve,” a sequel to the hit 2001 Las Vegas crime caper.“ Ocean’s 11 was an OK movie, but not strong enough to merit a sequel in my opinion. And then there’s the matter of the story. It was a fun plot, but one that forced you to suspend your disbeliefs in the name of movie magic the entire time. So Hollywood’s reaction is to milk it for all it’s worth with yet another improbable situation with an even larger ensemble cast. Sorry, can’t see that working…

“The disguised e-mails, being sent to key Iraqi leaders, urge them to give up, to dissent and to defect,” as well as touting foolproof penile enlargement techniques and get rich quick schemes. OK, I made up the last part (at least, I hope I did).

This page has a huge collection of the advertising artwork of Theodore Geisel AKA Dr. Seuss. I knew he did something like that before becoming famous for his children’s books, but I had no idea of the extent of his work. It’s a little disconcerting to see his familiar style in such a different context…

The Online Journalism Review presents an interesting interview with Matt Groening on cartoons and the Internet. Oh, and check out the Slashdot discussion for a constructive discourse on the issues geeks bitching about CSS layout and browser readability of the site.

MP3Newswire is running a story about the “2002 MP3 Losers” and “2002 MP3 Winners.” That the RIAA was considered the biggest loser should come as no surprise (and gets a big thumbs-up from me). However, it confounds me that the music industry just refuses to accept the new paradigms that technology and the Internet have created. Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, is quoted by the BBC as saying “that music [will] always be available for free somewhere on the net despite costly court battles to shut down illegal music sites…It has got to be accepted that file sharing will always be there just as shoplifting is accepted as wastage in the retail sector.” This is the reality of the music industry these days, yet the RIAA chooses to combat this at every turn in a vain attempt to turn a profit at all costs rather than embrace it and nurture the technology. I think the most short-sighted thing of all is that if the music industry did it right, they could reap huge profits while winning over consumers in the process and guaranteeing themselves a role in the future of the industry. Why they don’t get this I just don’t know…

The rest of the lists are worth reading as well, although by my rant you’d think there wasn’t anything else there. 😉

Follow-up: Janis Ian (best known for her 1975 hit “At Seventeen”) has written an article entitled The Internet Debacle – An Alternative View (and an even better follow-up) with refeshing viewpoints on technology and the music industry from an artist’s perspective. It apparently generated a surprising amount of responses, including one from Hilary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA. Many insightful points and propositions are made in the articles, but most if not all are constantly being disputed and nitpicked by the “Internet-challenged” RIAA. What a waste…

Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe, a shop in the trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, is serving a new coffee drink, the Trent Lotte. It reportedly consists of separate but equal parts coffee and steamed milk. It comes in two different cups and the customers may integrate them as they see fit. As heard on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” quiz show.