Am I the only person who cries during a good ad?
Google and BBH always manage to produce astounding work. I don’t know what it is about these latest TVCs that makes me get a little teary. Parenthood and homophobic bullying are not even topics I can relate to. I’ll put it down to a true stories told well, and the piano music.
Does anyone else choke up during these or other ads? I should note that I don’t well up during movies or TV shows, not even the Titanic. Which may go to prove that the best writers make ads not art.
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:
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.
Run your own tv ad with google!
This is kind of amazing. So I can basically air my awesome concepts and legitimately enter them in award shows.
I love Google, but I am starting to get scared.
via If This Is A Blog Then What Is Christmas >
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.
5 things I would like to see in wave
1.This should be on gmail as well, the option to have a message delivered to the recipient at a set time in the future. This would be useful for sending reminders to other people, digital time capsules and at least a million other things. Such a technology existed in the late 90s when e-cards were popular, the options were “send now” or “send at future date”.
Why is this not standard these days?
2. As seen in this video, it would make cooking so much easier and creative. Pamela Fox suggested it be a gadget not a bot (as I originally concepted). Currently rethinking it and more on that to come…
As far as I know there are tons of interior design applications and all of them are rubbish.
My idea is you upload photos of areas of your house to a Wave gadget and change the colours of the walls/ carpets etc straight onto the photos. You would be able to add furniture into the picture straight from an Ikea (for example) catalouge and if you gave dimensions of the walls, this could be used to position things as well as feng shui. Being on wave means you could work with family and housemates to find colours and furniture everyone likes.
4. Whenever you leave a job you get a big card signed by everyone in the office, which you lose at work drinks before getting a chance to read it. Wouldn’t it be better to have that card online so you could access it later?
My proposal is a wave gadget with ecard templates which coworkers can decide on and then decorate using photos or drawings of the person leaving. When everyone signs the card with their personal message there is an option to leave a link to your facebook or linkedin account so you can stay in touch. When everyone has signed it a designated person would publish the card and add the leaving person to the wavelet.
5. Imagine if Protools or a similar company made a Wave Gadget which allowed multiple musicians to upload and mix together their tracks in one place.
No more emailing different parts to each other just one place to mix the music, discuss the lyrics and potentially even publish straight to Myspace/ Purevolume/ Lastfm when finished. Instead of paying for expensive mixing software each song could just have a 5 second soundbite at the end promoting the brand who made the gadget. Would be perfect for start up bands and school music projects.
Recipeasy
This is my idea to use Wave to make my life easier. A Wave bot which detects food names from your conversation and adds them to a gadget which suggests recipes. If a supermarket chain built this they could deliver the missing ingredients to your house!
Read more about it on the Google Developers Blog >
Recipe tear off cards in supermarkets, advertising the bot:
Chrome adds less ads
“It’s unlikely that ad blockers will get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising needs to get less annoying.
“There will always be some group of people who want to block ads for personal reasons. But if we do a good job on the advertising side, people won’t want to block ads. People will find them actually useful.
“I think there will be a nice equilibrium. If people get too aggressive with ads, then ad blockers will become more popular and companies will get less aggressive with ads. The market will sort itself.”
- Linus Upson via >
I’ve found my perfect job
Digital Creative Director for the world power in their NYC offices. Now I just have to work on fufilling the requirements:
BA or MFA degree in Design or related discipline
- I have a BCS in a related disapline, but already know my acedemic scores are not high enough. Thinking of maybe doing a MFA or a MPhil in new media, which university?
At least 12 years of agency/in-house experience leading digital creative for iconic global brands.
- Well I have total about 3 weeks worth of this. Might need to work on that, if I start now that means I can have this job in 2022 when I am 33.
Ability to work in a rapid paced environment on multiple projects in a scrappy, start-up atmosphere.
- Done! Although I don’t think it will be very “scrappy start up” by the time I get there.
Proven expertise at highly creative, global, interactive, innovative online marketing techniques.
Ability to communicate and sell ideas in client like setting and apply strategic thinking to our most innovative challenges.
- I’ll work on these ones over my 12 years of experience.
Knowledge of Flash, ActionScript, HTML, CSS, 3D, motion graphics and computer programming.
Advanced skill in InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop.
- I can do all that! Although not so hot on 3D…
Lose Belly Fat on NYT?
I hate this ad so much that I blocked it from coming up near my content. They must have saved so much by getting a 4 year old to design it in paint that they can now afford to spam it across the internet… but on the New York Times? Since when were they using Google Image ads? Guess they aren’t doing so well with the new membership platform to resort to such cheap ads.
Speaking of Google ads though, my RSS subscriptions halved when I put ads in my feeds. It’s like people don’t understand that it costs money to publish content online and if you’re not willing to pay for membership then you pay by seeing ads. Similarly when people complain about TVCs, okay annoying that they are on SKY/ Foxtel where you already pay for content, but if you don’t want to pay to watch free to air channels the least you can do it sit through an ad break every once in awhile.
Halloween
This old advert aptly describes my Halloween. Went to Google and ended up carving a pumpkin and a long with it my thumb (same thumb which got stitched back together in hospital last year when I cut into that instead of a pomegranate). Ended up finishing the job with a spoon (pictured left).
On Saturday James and I dressed up as a tiger and a circus master and went to dinner and a party. Got lots of stares at dinner, some place voted “Best Italian in Sydney” last year and it was terrible. Food took forever and came out burnt. Most pretentious blogs contain photos of meals at classy eateries, so I may have to start doing the same and writing actual reviews.
Why am i always in dressup at Google?
Going to have lunch with our account manager at Google today, and it’s Halloween tomorrow so I think there might be a few trekie outfits around the office. I am going as a tiger. Kind of a cop out as I already have a tiger hat and I seem to use it for all dressup parties. Tomorrow night though I will be accompanied with a trainer in sequined vest and whip! I love it.
Also here is a Halloween idea from Mac (makeup not computer):
Some of the black lines ruin it, and that yellow hair is disguising! It’s much lighter in the paintings.
Google wave geek group
photo by @gadgetfarmer
Last night we went to this thing at Google (that’s me in the red cardigan). There were lots of geeks, and pies.
I still have yet to establish how this product will be useful for non-nerds, can you think of anything?
A gallery of Google logos
I’ve always thought that designing the special event Google logos would be a dream job for me. Above is my favourite, from when the LHC was turned on.
See Over 300 Unique and Creative Google Logo Designs here
