Jeff Chausse
Digital Strategy + Design
Your On?
Seagate appears to have built an entire branding campaign around one of the most common (and most annoying) grammar errors on the web. Either that or it’s a clever play on words that I’m too dense to understand.
I saw it in a banner ad and figured it was a one-time goof up, but no, it’s plastered all over their main web site, a promotional microsite, and even in a press release.
Taglines like this don’t come out of nowhere. Usually a whole lot of thought goes into them. Could a grammatical slip like this make it past an ENTIRE company? Wow.
I emailed their PR contact, Erin Hartin to ask if I wasn’t getting the joke. I’ll let you know if I hear back.
Checking In – Baby, Work, GTD, RoR…
Uh-oh, it’s time for another obligatory “Haven’t posted in a while, better put something up” post. Here’s the run down.
Baby John has just passed 6 months (I can’t believe it) and he’s doing great. He’s at the age where he’s just starting to figure out how to trick his parents into doing his bidding. But he’s still super-cute, has a pretty consistent sleep schedule and hasn’t been sick a day in his life, so I can’t complain. His first two teeth have popped in, and he’s eating solid foods. Which means, of course, the Great Poop Change – any parents will know what I’m talking about.
Work has been nuts. Busy, busy, busy. In all my previous jobs, I’ve basically been an expert in one thing for one company. In my current role, I’m expected to be an expert in everything for everyone. Not that I’m not up to it, but compared to agency life, working at a startup was a walk in the park.
One project I’m particularly excited about is a blog-based site we just “soft-launched”, which has been impressively successful even without any promotion aside from “friends and family”. I’ll have a post about that as soon as it’s officially live.
Related to the craziness of work, I’ve embarked upon learning and living the “Getting Things Done” methodology. I’ve completed reading the book, and even though I’ve only just started “living” it, it’s already dropped my stress levels 90%. Even if you don’t have a crazy job – even if you don’t have a job, you must read this book. It’s not just about accomplishing tasks, it’s about relieving your mind of worrying about your tasks so that you can live 100% in-the-moment – whether you’re working or relaxing.
I’ve never said this before – and never thought I would, but here goes: This book has changed my life. I am definitely not the first tech geek to catch onto GTD - just Google it and find out how many others are turned onto it – so I’ll try to avoid proselytizing it too much here.
I’ve also, for the umpteenth time, tried to get up and running with Ruby on Rails. I believe 100% in the promise of RoR, and that it will make developing a breeze once I’ve mastered it, but the learning curve for the total newbie is so steep… especially for someone who initially came from an ASP/ColdFusion background, where you can start with a single page with some inline code, and work your way up from there. My brain is having a hard time latching onto the use of generators and memorizing all the “magic” conventions. I’ll get there, though. I have a pretty simple web app I want to do for work, that would make a good starter project. If that goes well, I have a much bigger RoR-based side project in the planning stages.
Anyone who’s blogged for a while knows that the blogging bug comes and goes in waves, so I’ll be back again in no time, but for now, time to Get Things Done…
Blogged by Zeldman!
Along with a couple dozen other folks, but still, woot! That can’t hurt for PageRank. Previously, my most high profile linkage was from Wonkette. Movin’ on up!
Cecropia’s “The Act” – Emotional Gaming
I was just lucky enough to get a hands-on demo of “The Act”, a totally new type of video game created by a local game development company named Cecropia. There’s a trailer of the game online, but it doesn’t give you a sense of what it’s actually like to play–which, right now, you unfortunately can’t do anywhere, because they’re still working out a business/distribution model.
Anyway, the game is an interactive cartoon, animated by former Disney animators. Of course, my initial thought was that it would be a next generation Dragon’s Lair of some sort. Well, that’s basically what it is, but it’s not at all what I expected.
The action in the game is controlled by a single knob instead of a joystick. But you’re not controlling the movements of the protagonist, you’re controlling his personality. Each scene requires you to interact (silently, there’s no dialogue) with other characters via facial expressions and gestures.
For example, in the first scene, you’re trying to pick up a woman at a bar. The way you do this is by carefully “ramping up” and “easing back” (via the knob) on your level of shyness/aggression–in reaction to her facial expressions and body language. In another scene, you’re trying to pass yourself off as a doctor, finding yourself in a cluster of other doctors. You’re trying to blend in as they alternate between laughter and seriousness. Again, you control this spectrum of emotion via the knob. Laugh when they’re serious, or neglect to laugh when they laugh, and the jig is up.
Unlike with Dragon’s Lair, the animation is totally smooth, and infinitely varied, with no obvious “breaks” in the animation. It truly feels like a real cartoon. Watching the game, you’d never know someone was actually “playing” the character.
The game was play tested as a coin-op machine in several locations around Boston, but it remains to be seen what its final incarnation will be. Regardless, if you ever get a chance to play it–or any possible future products using Cecropia’s technology–you must. It like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. If they can work out a distribution model, Cecropia is sitting on a goldmine.
LazyWeb Request – Movie Times Web Service?
Anyone know of a web service that can find movie times – either for a specific theater, or near a zip code, or for a specific movie? Anything would be nice…
Apple to Sell DRM-Free Music from EMI
This is huge. Apple and EMI have announced that Apple will begin selling DRM-free tracks from EMI, one of the “big four” record companies. I never saw this coming—at least not this soon. I figured some indie labels might have jumped first, but that would have just been a small baby step—and Steve Jobs isn’t exactly a fan of incremental change. I’m not sure how Jobs pulled it off, but kudos to him.
Now begins a great social experiment. DRM detractors have long claimed that DRM free music will sell better than protected music – the argument being that, thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet, a single unprotected file can spread just as fast as a million copies, so you’re only inconveniencing the “good guys”. Remove the DRM and the convenience factor will convince the good guys to buy more music. I want to believe this is true. I hope this is true. Now we get to find out.