http://www.fifthandmain.com Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:59:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This, right here, is why the iPhone has succeeded as a platform in the ridiculously crowded handset space. From MacRumors:Apple yesterday seeded iPhone OS 3.1 and iPhone SDK 3.1 betas to developers for testing, and users have been digging through the new releases to document new features. Among the changes ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/07/why-the-iphone-succeeds-as-a-platform/ Personally, I haven't had trouble with AT&T's handling of the 3GS launch. Days prior to the device hitting the market, the company announced that I would be eligible for the fully subsidized rate for the iPhone, saving me $200 to break my old contract as my plan had outlined when ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/06/from-gadgetlab-how-att-stumbled-through-the-iphone-3gs-launch/ http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/06/2009-slp-service-eoy-video-terror-island/ It's sad to read posts like this. But it's important to take note when prolific bloggers close their sites. In an era when the vast majority of blogs now drop the intent of becoming a passionate user's publishing platform, and are now focused on this ethereal drive for monetization and ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/04/goodbye-speakup-celebrates-seven-years-of-great-design-dialog/ This is a great video of the presentation Polish designer Jacek Utko gave at TED this February. I disagree with his premise that readers are only leaving because they don't want to pay for yesterday's news and advertisers are following them. I think the technological shift in publishing is ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/03/from-ted-can-design-save-the-newspaper/ I started working for myself in August of 2007. Before that point -- say, July -- I had been working as a corporate wonk. The people I worked with, they really knew how to meet.Things changed for me almost immediately when I went freelance, though, and there were suddenly real ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/03/how-quickly-can-you-make-meetings-irrelevant/ I've been having this on-going conversation with my dad -- old news man that he is -- about the galactic reset going on in the print news media. This morning, mom forwarded me this link to an op-ed from Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph. It's an interesting read, illustrating in ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/03/daniel-hannan-on-the-political-net/ If you haven't seen it, head over to AcousticConversations.com and check it out. That is, if you like music. And if you have a pulse. This is the latest post from the blog on the show. -- I'm in San Jose right now. Did you see that coming? What with my clever ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/03/repost-acoustic-conversations-with-matt-vrba-live-now/ It's about time. http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/02/google-launches-cloud-sync-for-mobile/ I just finished recording a great discussion for the soon-to-be-launched, if not long-awaited, OutsourcedCMO show in which we not so much dissect, as gloss over, Amazon.com's retail reign in spite of economic turmoil. It's an interesting discussion that spans the history of online direct selling, including the online cambrian era ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/02/amazon-to-unleash-kindle-format-to-mobiles/ http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/01/tyler-stenson-acoustic-conversations-promo/ Last night, we hung out with Tyler Stenson. He's a musician, a guitarist and troubadour, and he joined Curt Siffert and myself for the innaugural episode of the 2009 season of Acoustic Conversations. The AC show itself hasn't been posted yet, but stay tuned... it'll be up online soon. Read on ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/01/tyler-stenson-on-acoustic-conversations-and-the-11-people/ I know, I must have been like this as a kid. I remember getting my first Yamaha B600 keyboard from Santa when I was a kid. I think I passed out. But take a look at what product scarcity has done to 50 kids on Christmas morning: http://www.fifthandmain.com/2009/01/the-future-of-greed-in-america/ First, let me acknowledge just how much of a rank amateur move it is to show up for an hour presentation with an hour and a half full of content. That's what you get for tooling around with a known quantity the day of the event without timing yourself. I apologize for ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/12/to-pmi-portland-attendees-thanks-and-a-note/ http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/12/fifthmain-interviews-howard-teibel/ Clients will note that I'm an unabashed fanboy of SlideShare, and wish I had even more time to allow myself to get sucked into presentation goodness each day. They recently held the world's best slideshow presentation and top marks went to this bit of brilliance; educational and beautiful and not ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/11/worlds-best-presentation-at-slideshare/ Terry Tate: Reading Is Fundamental I share all the Terry Tate vids in my PR courses, but I hadn't caught this new bit of Pain Train brilliance until just this morning. Hat trick to Dr. Island for the link! http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/10/275/ Some of these shots blow me away. This is about as close to "Speed Racer" as we can probably get. These are from the first night race in Grand Prix history. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_singapore_grand_prix.html Of particular note, make sure to look at 11 and 23, both taken with a tilt-shift lens to great affect. http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/09/incredible-singapore-grand-prix-pix/ As strange as they are, I admit it, I smile during the new Microsoft Seinfeld ads. For that, apparently, Microsoft deserves some props. Thus the heart of the matter: The ads are not intended to sell Windows: They're ads to sell The Windows Brand. Think of it as The Soul of ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/09/robert-palmers-really-interesting-point-regarding-the-new-ms-ads/ Ad #2. I love the dinner conversation. The grandmother is oddly appealing. Oh, and it's wildly insulting to everyday people. Wonder what the strategy is there? http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/09/microsoft-and-seinfeld-new-family-ad-goes-live/ I bought a D3 when it first hit the streets and I'm stunned by it every single time I hold it in my hands. Then I take pictures with it. This thing belongs squarely in the middle of the secret lair of the League of Awesomeness. Looks like the D90 is ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/08/nikon-d90-test-run-with-chase-jarvis/ Via Gruber at DaringFireball, I found myself laughing aloud at this: Open source natural language processor that attempts to identify idiotic comments on the web — like a spam filter for stupidity. UPDATE: Their server seems to be struggling to handle the traffic, at the moment. http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/07/stupidfliter/ Jeri Cartwright posted this at the Media Relations blog (excerpted here) regarding a recent stretch of layoffs in Utah -- her home turf. Many interesting things to think about in a few short passages. Content is still king. Talk all you want about new media, but someone has to write the ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/07/the-market-for-real-journalism-will-continue-to-change-whats-coming-will-be-better/ Courtesy of ReadWriteWeb this afternoon, "Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds", original post at the WSJ here. In summary, Ed Moran at Deloitte did a survey of 100 major brands that have online communities. They all suck. What does "suck" mean in this case? Thirty-five percent of the ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/07/deloitte-says-branded-social-networks-are-a-bomb/ http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/07/lorenzianocom/ Just as news continues to pour in about shrinking magazine subscriptions across the industry, MagCloud pops up to shake things up a bit. Still in beta, so publishers are by invite only, but definitely check out the service. It looks to fill a niche in industry publication that has long ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/06/magcloud-magazine-self-pulblishing-print-on-demand-press/ http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/06/burgerville-a-health-net-of-oregon-customer-story/ I've been talking with my man Brad Trnavsky for what seems like years about his need for Internet Greatness. But, Brad isn't a would-be pornographer, as far as I know, and he doesn't have any direct connection to the Revision3 Internet Mafia Clubhouse. He's a sales guy. And a geek. So about ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/06/local-boy-cleans-up-nice-salesmanagement20com-profiled-by-benevolent-ning-dictators/ Steve Jobs can do what he damn well pleases, thank you very much. If he -- and team Apple -- demonstrated anything in yesterday's WWDC Keynote address, it's that. Because frankly, they took their stage time yesterday to demonstrate a whole lot of old news, and they buried the hidden ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/06/apple-wwdc-keynote-iphone3g-and-snow-leopard/ As soon as this technology incorporates Multi-Touch a la the iPhone or Surface, it'll be something really worth looking at. Right now, it just blows me a way a little bit. From scientificblogging.com: The HoloVizio is a 3-D screen that will allow designers to visualize true 3-D models of cars, engines or ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/06/holovizio-3-d-holodeck-001/ SLP Service: Year in Review from SLP Service on Vimeo. http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/05/slp-service-year-in-review-2008/ I caught this article by Paul Farhi on washingtonpost.com this morning covering CNN's use of their fancy new "Magic Wall" in the on-going election coverage. The Magic Wall was developed by Perceptive Pixel, the company leading the large-format chage for the multi-touch operating system developed by founder, Jeff Han. Multi-touch ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/05/washington-post-clogging-links-in-articles/ It's all medical, all the time. Mark-o is back with a new baby story. Pete is going under the knife. Curt's working to get those voices out of his head, and Matt is just trying to keep the choppers out of the classroom. http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/05/ep-49-eastern-bloc-warmth/ When I was employed by big-corporate PR, I used Google News Alerts religiously. Still do. It's a fantastic service, constantly filtering the Google index for current news relevant to my search query and delivering it to my inbox every day. At Apollo, I was interested in news about our company, ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/04/how-to-use-google-news-and-blog-alerts-to-build-your-populist-media-empire/ Had a meeting at a new agency today -- 2Plural/evive. I don't know what their name is, actually. The letterhead says evive, and looks cool as a palindrome, but the website is 2plural, as is the moniker on their cards. A bit of identity crisis there, about which I'm sure ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/04/meeting-at-2pluralevive-and-the-curse-of-flash-websites/ Here is the first of four pieces I'm working on for Health Net of Oregon. The video was originally part of a four-part series on the communities that Health Net serves through their customers, intended for staggered launch in 2007. Unfortunately, it took far too long to get the four ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/04/health-net-of-oregon-humane-society-now-up-on-vimeo/ New Voices. New Bar. Same old swill. Beer:30 Live is back! First new episode in over six months, and we still don't have anything smart to talk about. This week on the docket: Matt nearly looses his head in his first bike race of the season, Mark-o levels with us about his wife's ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/04/ep-48-same-old-swill/ I don't particularly want to comment on the quality of the production here -- MS clearly put some money into this concept, which I believe speaks for itself. But if you have to make something like this to sell the act of selling your products, is that a sign that ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/04/microsofts-internal-vista-promo-video/ Back in early February, I wrote about a wonderful presentation-cast response to a reader email that Lessig delivered on his blog, eloquently stating that he supported Obama, and why he chose to do so. Here is another wonderful opportunity to see one of today's great orators discussing the primary process, the ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/03/lessigs-open-letter-to-pennsylvania/ "My name is Damon Wright, and I'm a business writer." That's true. My name is Damon. It's my middle name, used six years ago the hide my participation in the Apple campaign from my then-day-job. I had thought that I'd exhausted my 32 weeks of fame, but someone has just posted ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/03/damon-wright-apple-switch-video-rears-its-ugly-head/ http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/03/oregon-humane-society-a-health-net-of-oregon-customer-story/ Thanks so much to Daniel Burka for this nod to his friend and photographer Steven Desroches. Desroches took the photo linked below at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. It captures so much brilliance of story-telling composition in one, single frame. Fearless This is, after all, an example of how to describe ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/03/telling-a-brilliant-story-with-no-words-at-all/ This is a good summary from Jason Calacanis summarizing his take on "Scoble's Law" (wow, I can't believe Scoble is coming up with a law behind his name): "The less you talk about yourself, the more folks will talk about you." This is more of a cardinal law of organic self-promotion, ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/03/more-on-that-cute-sarah-lacy-why-she-is-a-fuse-connected-to-a-stick-of-toilet-paper/ It is hard to describe the disaster that befell Sarah Lacy at the SxSW conference in Austin this week. In an interview with the often-tight-lipped Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Lacy managed to single-handedly turn her audience into an angry mob, wielding Twitter posts like pitchforks and torches, all aimed at ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/03/sarah-lacy-modern-journalist/ Announcing the Air Poo. Available Summer, 2008 http://www.airpoo.com http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/02/poonovation/ Just got this episode of a new "Quarterlife" parody from good friend Daniel over at the Independent Comedy Network. If you don't think the writer's strike has been good for new media producers, check again. As far as pilots go, I would watch this over ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/02/28-life-from-icn/ Here's something that's NSFW: a viral video picking up steam on YouTube that reveals what the animals are really saying on the BBC hit documentary series, "Planet Earth." Put on those headphones and proceed at your own risk! http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/02/f-planet-earth/ I've been AWOL for the last four or five days now, trekking to Tulsa for the funeral of my grandmother, Wanda Peters. I have some more thoughts to share on her passing and will get caught up there soon. In the mean time, thank you for your patience as I ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/02/in-salt-lake/ One of my favorite podcasts is WebbAlert, a technology news show hosted by Morgan Webb, highlighting daily tech news and social media memes. It's daily, no more than about six minutes per episode, and Webb does a good job of covering the geek news I need with a ripe sarcasm ... http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/02/devry-sponsors-webb-alert-shows-big-ed-has-nose-for-new-media-after-all/ Here's a wonderful piece showcasing the purity of art taking place in online media. Think of it as "Johnathan Livingston Seagull: Redux". Leo's Song from impactist on Vimeo. http://www.fifthandmain.com/2008/02/leos-song/