From the “friends” folder in my RSS reader @andrewbprice @coreychalmers @laurajane_J09
I’m working on another blog project at the moment which you’ll find out about soon. Unfortunately it’s been drawing my attention away from this and the hiatus may last a couple more weeks because I am also going to U S of A! next week. Seems like a good opportunity to introduce you to some other bloggers who I think are pretty neat.
After several unsuccessful attempts at blogging, Andrew Price finally found a topic he liked enough to consistently post about. Basketball. Not something that I am particularly interested in, but I admire the effort he has put into this project. So much effort in fact that The Breakers coaches approached him for help! I don’t understand exactly what he’s doing for them, but it’s something like making complex Excel spreadsheets to help them make tactical decisions about players and competing teams. I love hearing about people falling into their dream jobs, especially if it comes out of something as simple as creating a blog about something you enjoy. I’m so proud of you Andrew.
As our creative directors move on to their next job, I will be keeping up to date with their new projects via this blog. For the past year and a half Corey has been my creative director in the first instance, but also a teacher, coach and friend. He’s always encouraged me to do better work, have bigger goals and read more books. When David Droga came to Auckland, Corey managed to invite me to an exclusive dinner being held for him. I got to speak one on one with Droga himself (mostly about raccoons if you wanted to know). Honestly one of the most amazing nights of my life. When I agreed to babysit Corey’s adorable kitten, he joked about how he was going to pay me back. But after everything he’s done for me (especially at this crucial stage in my career) it’s definitely me who will be forever owing gratitude. I will really miss you Corey!
My friend Laura had been a blogger since way back, but recently moved to Tumblr. As a result her blog has shaped up to be a delightful collection of images and video. As such I won’t spend too long talking about it, just go have a look for yourself!
Laura and I have also started up a monthly “club” with a few other nerdy girls. It’s called Nerd Soiree. We basically just get trashed on a Tuesday night and talk about what’s happening on the internet and in advertising. It’s proven to be rather fun and a great way to meet other likeminded people in Auckland. You’re more than welcome to join us via our Facebook page >
My impression of the #megaupload case being heard in NZ court
I was shocked when I heard Kim Dotcom et al were in custody and Megaupload had been shut down. When I realised it was the NZ police who had made the arrest, I was outraged.
My standard reaction was to find out as much as possible about the circumstances. During my search I found out some details about their court appearance that afternoon. By the time they were due to appear I decided to drive over to Albany and exercise my right to watch from the public gallery. The only other times I’d been in a court was voting (at Auckland High Court) and jury service (at Auckland District Court) where I was never selected on a jury. So I walked into the building not knowing where to go or who to talk to, but quickly spotted a bunch of cameras outside one of the courtrooms. A couple of reporters from TVNZ explained to me what was going on and that I could just walk into court and sit down.
There were about thirty seats in the gallery, almost all of them were occupied. There were quite a few journalists and then a bunch of supporters who all seemed to know the accused. Two teary eyed woman in the front row appeared to be partners of Dotcom and van der Kolk. I was sitting directly behind them and caught a wink (from Dotcom) and a blown kiss (from van der Kolk) which were no doubt intended in their direction. There were also a few Americans who we speculated to be musicians. I tried to strike up a conversation with a couple of them, and found out later that one of the guys, known as Printz Board, is part of The Black Eyed Peas. This is him in the Mega Uploads song:
The actual hearing was surreal. The Judge was clearly quite irritated by all the people in his courtroom, and took his frustration out on the press. He told them to stop taking photos before he’d even allowed them to start. (In today’s session, which I did not attend, he ordered press out of the public gallery.) I imagine it would be nerve-wracking for a district court Judge to preside over such a high profile international case, but if he felt uncomfortable why didn’t he hand the case to someone more experienced? I still can’t work out why the expedition hearings are taking place at North Shore District rather than Auckland High Court. It’s one of many questions I’m planning on asking a lawyer friend when I get the chance.
The Judge, who took about an hour to arrive, put the bail hearing off until Monday because it was late in the afternoon. It seemed apparent to me at the time that his intention was to lock the four of them up over the weekend. Afterwards I learned Dotcom had a lavish birthday party planned for Saturday, and this was the reason for the police acting when they did. Unfortunately for the NZ police by acting so hastily the only managed to arrest 4/7 accused. The others are apparently in Europe, where the courts likely won’t extradite them to the USA.
I don’t think Kim Dotcom is a “good” person – he’s made millions of dollars through questionable business practice – however he deserves more respect than he’s been given. The NZ government accepted $10Mil from him to apply for residency so it’s unfair for NZ authorities to treat him this way while he’s still innocent (until proven otherwise…). We’re talking about New Zealand police arresting a German/ Finnish citizen who is accused of breaking American laws in Hong Kong.
Without coming across as a hacktivist sympathiser may I also remind you that the British police are still holding an Australian citizen who was arrested [update] for alleged sexual molestation in Sweden. When it’s widely believed the real reason is the USA was trying to mount a case for rendition on national security grounds. [/update] Julian Assange has been under house arrest for over a year. Goes to show there’s nowhere for netizens to hide from American law.
It’s unlikely I’ll find the time to stalk any of the other Megaupload court dates, however if you’re interested in the case I suggest you read some of these articles:
Megaupload defendants in court today
Dotcom birthday party targeted
Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom bail decision reserved
From Rogue To Vogue: Megaupload and Kim Dotcom
Merry Chrischmitz or Merry Hell?
Filesonic Kills File-Sharing Service After MegaUpload Arrests
Prosecution: Gun in Kim Dotcom mansion was loaded
Kim Dotcom volunteers for electronic bail
So I’m going to #SXSW
Which I am SO excited about! I have a gold pass (for the purpose of getting into the overly popular talks) so I will go to some film talks as well as the interactive ones. No music for me, but I hear there are lots of free concerts so I’ll line up for those.
The highlight for me of the lineup so far is Amber Case, who if you haven’t heard is a cyborg anthropologist. She says interesting things like Steve Jobs’ death was an example of us coming closer to a singular conciseness. At the exact same moment in time millions of people around the planet were feeling the same emotions. This is Ms Case at TED:
It’s probably no surprise that I’m interested in a lot of the Branding and Marketing panels, just a few of the ones I’ll go to are:
- Building Digital Products with Passionate Users
- Creepy? Captivating? Ads in the Personal Data Era
- Don’t Just Sell Things: Change the World
- Hacking YouTube: Science & Secrets of Viral Videos
- How Your Data Can Predict the Future
- Skynet vs Mad Max: Battle for the Future
- We Made This, And It’s Not an Ad
- Why Ad Agencies Should Act More Like Tech Startups
There are a few alumni speakers who I hope to see return for 2012; Louis Theroux, Christopher Poole (of course), Felicia Day, Merlin Mann. I see Frank Warren is returning so I might have some luck in the keynotes yet to be announced.
I should also note this is my first time going to real America (Honolulu doesn’t really count). Bring on the delicious burritos, cheap makeup and oversized everything. After the conference I’m planning to head to San Francisco to see our friend David, Boston to see our friend Sophie and then NEW YORK to see what life should be like.
So awesome. See you there!
Being charatible with #tweetEAfrica @letgive and @kiva
At the moment I have two really interesting charity briefs on my desk. I’m hoping we end up making some great work for both organisations, but it’s got me thinking that my giving has fallen short lately.
So I’m getting my act together with three great initiatives!
The first is an idea from @edwardbroches to give $1 to @theIRC for each thing you tweet, I’m up to $13 at the time of writing this. You should get involved, and perhaps together we can make a small dent in the East Africa famine crisis. The hashtag is #tweetEAfrica and you can read more about it here >
Secondly is the new iPhone app called Snooze by LetGive. It’s an alarm clock which donates to a charity of your choice everytime you hit the snooze button. I’m guessing it was developed in response to the April Fools prank from ThinkGeek awhile ago.
Lastly I’m determined to start using my Kiva account. Everytime I go the site I get overwhelmed and can’t decide who to loan money too. Please share with me who you are helping or who you think I should help and harass me to actually do it.
How some space junk could help protect a human right
“There should be as little restriction as possible to the flow of information via the Internet, except in a few, very exceptional, and limited circumstances prescribed by international human rights law” – Frank La Rue, UN Special Rapporteur
It’s all very well and good to say we the internet is a human right, but how do we close the digital divide? A group called A Human Right have an idea which I think is pretty spectacular. Buying a second hand satellite! I’ll let them explain:
Here is The Daily Show video mentioned. “What kind of animal is Google?”
On a side note: remember that while groups like A Human Right are working to give everyone internet access, NZ politicians (backed by America) are still trying to take it away. Don’t vote for idiots.
What a scene of Shakespeare looks like in a URL
Hashify is the amazing way to store content in a URL, built by my friend David Chambers (who taught me PHP and therefore can be credited with anything that works on this site). Less than a day after officially launching the site has been picked up by Hackernews and the internet has gone crazy for it. So much so that he exceeded the bit.ly API cap. Apparently someone copied a novel in Hashify, but I could only be bothered formatting my favourite part of Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is what it looks like in a URL (shortened so your browser can handle it) http://bit.ly/ictNA0 >
One of my favourite things about the internet is that clever people can gain overnight success without any help from “the man”. Well done David!
Best April Fools Pranks
I was gutted when I found out Newton’s Virus wouldn’t work on any of the laptops in our office (hopefully they’ll bring out an update soon), because this art virus would have made a great prank:
Instead I went into one of my workmates computers and added some things to their autocorrect. They haven’t discovered it yet, but next time they write an email with “what the fuck” it will be automatically corrected to “what the fudge”. It’s quite polite really.
With 12oclock just passed that’s it for my pranks. I’m looking forward to seeing what the big American companies do later today. In the meantime here are some of the better ones to come out so far:
Artline Tweeter 140 – a pen that tweets as you write
Kirspy Kreme put out a career ad looking for a new donut hole puncher
Pirate Bay saw an eBay auction for the site itself and are now The Pirat eBay
Turns out Australia is going to host the 2022 World Cup after all
Someone is getting their eight year old kid tattooed in order to win tickets to Chris Brown
$10 for a 2 hour dolphin harness ride around Auckland
Google realises it’s own service Places is a content farm and has omitted it from search results.
Apple store to open in NZ <- for international readers this is DEFINITELY a joke (hat tip @LukeChandler)
Sunglasses that will block out all ads
Seen anything else good?
Why I love Lady Gaga
When I first heard Lady Gaga (the disco stick song) I wasn’t a fan, to say the least. I hate most current “mainstream” music, with the exception of my home girl Beyonce. So the Telephone video was my first proper introduction to Gaga. And I’ll admit I had it on repeat for days. I was hooked.
Watching the “Google goes Gaga” interview today I realised just how much there is to love about her.
Firstly her respect for the people that work at Google. While most people think they’re all nerds, Gaga actually fits right in she has close friends that work there. You can tell she loves the interweb and is more intellectual than most pop stars. She really is just like me.
It’s that notion of being a “real person” which is central to her fame. Sure she makes mistakes, but for the most part she’s honest and raw with the people who interview her. It’s intriguing getting to know the human being beneath all the regala.
Gaga comes across as incredibly positive and deeply religious. According to some very good debaters it’s because she’s a puppet for the illuminati. More likely it’s the best way to deal with fans who treat her like a God when she preaches. Her message: she’s just like the rest of us and if we work hard enough we can be just like her.
I hope by the time I’m Gaga’s age I’ve been nominated for half the amount of awards she’s won (although mine will be advertising not music).
In the Google interview she calls Rebecca Black a genius for using Youtube as a means to gain fame. It’s true Stefani Germanotta could have been another talented NYC piano player like Regina Spektor (who’s music I like a lot better), but instead she became a performance artist. And a bloody good one.
Enjoy the interview as Lady Gaga awkwardly spends an hour readjusting her short dress so her black undies don’t get in frame:
Ok ok we exploited hipsters in this ad, and freegans.
Well I owe @alexjcampbell an apology after I said hipsters are redundant in advertising. I’ve succumb to the peer pressure and there is a hipster in this ad.
Although it’s not just an ad it’s a piece of art by Tane Williams and it’s up for grabs (click here to enter the draw to win it). The best thing about it is he’ll get rid of all that yellow banky stuff in the middle and draw your own profile picture in there. In the mean time if you recognise a few of your mates you can upload the picture and tag them in it on Facies. I think it’s a pretty sweet prize, but of course I’m biased. You can see what Tane has done with the rest of the ASB tertiary campaign on Corey Chalmer’s Beeplog.
This week on the interwebs
Some of my workmates have been signed up (against their will) to a semi regular email about the best things on the interweb. It’s kind of a checklist of things you don’t need to show me because I’ve already seen it a month ago.
If you’d like to receive these weekly emails you can subscribe by leaving a comment below or by emailing:
I promise the content will always be amusing and never be the same stuff which is on my blog/ twitter feeds.
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Lost (a mobile ad-venture)
To promote ASB’s mobile banking we created an immersive film which could only be viewed on mobile devices in the location where it was filmed. The story followed a hapless film maker (@AlpacAndy on Twitter) and for one day users could follow Andy around Auckland city helping him look for his lost iPad.
We also put the story online, with a twist. You could only watch each episode after answering a question related to location where it was filmed.
A fresh start for a family in need
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of working at Amnesia Razorfish in Sydney. The project I was most proud of has finally been launched!
Just by looking at houses listed on the REA site you can help a family in need get a house of their own. Check it out at freshstartproject.realestate.com.au.
For every page you visit on the REA site you are awarded bricks. A little icon follows you around the site showing how many bricks you have so far. Donate the bricks you collect to the project by posting a support message to Facebook.
When 1 Million social bricks had been donated work began on building a home for a family in need. People who had donated bricks on the site and real estate agents could all volunteer to help build the physical house.
The work in progress was filmed and blogged about. All credit is due to the people who turned this idea into a reality, a real home for a real family.
Pioneering the interwebs does not equate to success #wavegoodbye
I recently watched a documentary called We Live in Public, about an internet entrepreneur called Josh Harris who physically predicted future online trends. In the 90s he was often compared to Andy Warhol, but Josh knew people didn’t want 15 minutes of fame, they wanted to be famous all the time. In the days of dial-up he invented social media by creating an underground “hotel” where residents interacted through 24/7 surveillance. When he got sick of that project he and his girlfriend moved into an apartment with cameras everywhere and crowd sourced their lives.
Yes that’s right he did that way before rubix cube guy had the idea.
The amazing thing is no one has heard of Josh Harris. Even the CEO of MySpace had no clue who he was, and yet he pioneered web 2.0. Go watch the movie.
I feel Wave has fallen to a similar fate, too advanced and bold for it’s time. Sure it probably would have taken off it had integration with Gmail, but that’s not really the point. People are saying they predicted it would fail because of various faults with the interface, but the interface did no justice to it’s working capabilities. The back end of Wave was far beyond anything else currently available and I sure hope in 10 years the whole internet functions the way it does.
Will be interesting to see what the talented team behind it end up doing. Josh Harris has been long forgotten and is currently living in Ethiopia, it would be sad to see the Google Wave team fall into the same obscurity. (Hopefully Greg leaves Google to become the next Willy Wonka.)
To all you haters, I hope in a few years you have the hindsight to see Wave pioneered Web 3.0.
I’ve always thought this looked like a fun job
Or rather, I used to wonder how I could work in the Google offices without knowing software engineering… and doodling was the answer. Although creative labs would probably be a better fit.
AT&T wasn’t so bad at technology in 1993
Watching these inspiring ads it’s funny to think that AT&T (and Apple) are now so slow at adopt technologies which have been around for years like “face time”.
It’s also funny to think back when these ads were made I was playing Heaven and Earth on my Dad’s Mac and none of the other kids at my kindergarten even had computers at home.
Washing machine company apologises for your missing sock
…and even offers to give you a new pair if you add your lone sock to their lost sock database. Very engaging and product relevant, I love it.
Claim you free socks at www.lostmysock.co.nz >
Rhys darby makes hp computers look cool
Okay, it’s not Rhys Darby that does it, it’s Dr Dre… Mr. Darby just makes us Kiwis look a little bit slow as he usually does.
BUT WATCH THESE ADS ANYWAY BECAUSE THE ARE QUITE FUNNY
By the way I went to the New Zealand consulate (in Sydney) today to get a new passport. It was nothing like the one in Flight of the Concords which was disappointing. On the lift up I was honestly imagining 70s wallpaper and a platter of Mainland cheese to greet me.
News update
If you haven’t read yet I am famous on the Google blog >
Also I have added a menu to the site with some popular links. Enjoy it while it lasts as I don’t particularly like it and it may vanish soon.
Speaking of site features, I have a comments section after every post. After receiving several emails and facebook messages about a post the other day I thought maybe no one had noticed it. Well it is there and am happy for you to use it as a soapbox.
Send tweets into the future
As reported earlier this week I said I would like to see the ability to send messages into the future. This would be most useful with emails or waves, but I have just discovered a way to update your Twitter or Facebook for a future time.
Laterbro lets you log in using your social network of choice and write a status update and update the time you would like this to be posted. Could be useful for sending birthday messages when you think you will forget or be away from a computer or for us down under to send messages into another timezone. >
Poem about endangered dolphins
Watch it here > and the thing that really gets you is even you want to bully this kid about how lame the poem is.
