Jeff Chausse
Digital Strategy + Design
A Monkey…
in a handstand…
on the horns…
on a goat…
on a can…
on a tightrope…
Happy weekend, friends.
Web 2.0 Ennui
No, I’m not going to cease blogging or anything, but I’m suffering from a bit of Web 2.0 ennui – a personal bubble bursting if you will. The sheer number of people out there who think they’re working on the Next Big Internet Thing is staggering, when 99.99% of it just involves shoving the same information around in different ways. It’s all quite overwhelming. Do I want my RSS feeds in my email? My email in my RSS feeds? Aggregated or not aggregated? Perhaps this will pass, but I’m thinking this is actually a healthy development. It’s about time I develop some offline hobbies. If I may quote my own blog post from the last time something similar happened, (as inspired by Lloyd Dobler)
“I don’t want to blog anything, aggregate anything, or syndicate anything as a hobby. I don’t want to aggregate anything blogged or syndicated, blog anything aggregated or syndicated, or syndicate anything aggregated, blogged, or syndicated, or tag anything aggregated, blogged, or syndicated. You know, as a hobby. I don’t want to do that.”
New Book by Chris "Long Tail" Anderson Explores the Economics of Free
“FREE” sounds like a fantastic upcoming book discussing the problems of making money from digital content. It’s not out yet, but BoingBoing.net reviews an accompanying Wired article. The key thesis is this: There is no such thing as a market for digital goods, only a market for digital services.
The book/article also discusses the huge psychological gap between products that cost nothing, and products that almost cost nothing. I can certainly attest to this, as I recently signed up for JungleDisk, a data storage service backed up by Amazon.com’s “pay-as-you-go” S3 storage service. Their rates are extremely low, and I haven’t really started using it, but I did rack up a $0.02 bill thus far (you’re charged a penny per 1,000 requests to list your files, a penny for 10,000 get requests)
Even though these three cents probably have me covered for months of requests, my first reaction when seeing the two cents on my account was an instinctive “Uh-oh, am I sure I want to commit to do this?”. All over TWO CENTS. Money I would hesitate to pick up off the floor. Eventually common sense prevailed, but something in my “lizard brain” was triggered.
I’m definitely looking forward to this book. As DRM dies a quiet death, the time is ripe for this book.
[Photo credit: me! I've been waiting for an excuse to use it...]
Amazing Optical Illusion
Even better than the rotating snakes, and Mr. Angry and Mrs. Calm – check out The Big Spanish Castle.
Best Doom Mod Ever
Beware the Rickroller.
Also, check out this video of Scarlett Johansson naked
Sphinn – Digg for Interactive Marketers
I randomly stumbled onto Sphinn.com and was about to write a snarky blog post (or at least a tweet) about it being yet another unpronounceable Web 2.0 site name. Then I hung around for a bit and realized it was actually a pretty informative site. Basically, it’s a Digg clone devoted to online marketing content. Now, since 99.999% of “internet marketing” content is total crap, this is actually a pretty useful service, and I’ll be visiting frequently.
And it’s not that hard to pronounce… Just like “sphinx” without the “x”, I guess.
Stupid Mortgage Tricks: Voluntary Foreclosure
Stuck owning a house worth less than your mortgage, and having trouble making the payments? Selling the house won’t really help, since it won’t pay back the mortgage. Why not try “voluntary foreclosure?” Of course, you lose the house, but if you play your cards right you can actually stay in your house for 8 months or so, payment free, on top of not having to pay back the mortgage.
Obviously, foreclosure is often a drawn out process, due to laws usually designed to protect the homeowner. But a company called You Walk Away sells a $995 “kit” to help you intentionally complicate things for the mortgagor – extending your free ride as long as possible. They will then supposedly help clean up your credit rating.
Legal? Apparently. Unethical? Oh HELL yes. But the mortgage industry doesn’t exactly have a spotless ethics record, either.
Water Bottles as Building Toys
Not only is “Y water” a healthy, organic drink for kids, the bottles become building toys when empty.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Cecropia Unveils “Personality Gaming” Demo
A while ago I posted about Cecropia, a game company which had pioneered a totally unique video game called “The Act“.
Using a simple knob, the player smoothly adjusts the silent protagonist’s personality, causing the characters around him to react accordingly. All the action takes place in ultra-smooth Disney-quality animation, with absolutely no UI elements – creating the first true interactive cartoon.
Unfortunately, Cecropia has had a real problem with “The Act” – namely, how to market it. It’s far too short to make into a console game, and the knob (which most users don’t have) is pretty much critical to the experience, which would require a special hardware investment for most people. The animation quality is far too high to package into some kind of Flash game. It really would make a perfect arcade game. Unfortunately, the market for this kind of arcade game died out in the early 90′s.
So, anyway, they’re taking their technology in a new direction, facing up to the realities of today’s gaming market, and trying their hand at interactive Flash “advergaming”. They’ve put up a demo on Cecropia.com. I won’t tell you how it works (figuring it out is part of the fun). If you’re at all involved in interactive marketing, get in touch with these guys. What they’re doing is truly groundbreaking, and they deserve a lot of attention (and money). And, who knows, maybe someday The Act will see the light of day, in some form or another.
Proof that Marketing Does not Employ Engineers
A little mechanical engineering humor for the weekend.
From vowe dot net.