Matt Griswold (dot com)

"Hollywood in the broadest sense of the word is much like Detroit. It’s a manufacturer’s..."

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:57:32 -0700

“Hollywood in the broadest sense of the word is much like Detroit. It’s a manufacturer’s mentality that reigns, seemingly indifferent to the consumers it serves.”

- Bill Mechanic (source)

"…data visualization is more than complex software or the prettying up of spreadsheets...."

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:20:53 -0700

“…data visualization is more than complex software or the prettying up of spreadsheets. It’s not innovation for the sake of innovation. It’s about the most ancient of social rituals: storytelling. It’s about telling the story locked in the data differently, more engagingly, in a way that draws us in, makes our eyes open a little wider and our jaw drop ever so slightly. And as we process it, it can sometimes change our perspective altogether.”

- Data Visualization: Stories for the Information Age

Did You Know 4.0 - updated in partnership with The Economist,...

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:07:32 -0700

Did You Know 4.0 - updated in partnership with The Economist, v4.0 includes new facts and figures focusing on the changing media landscape, convergence and technology. [via MrTruffle]

"Traditional agencies tend to see themselves as guardians of the brand, while interactive agencies..."

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:56:29 -0700

“Traditional agencies tend to see themselves as guardians of the brand, while interactive agencies approach briefs from the consumer’s perspective.”

- via FT.com (reblog framling)

Are you happy? Change something.(via somethingchanged)

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:55:25 -0700

Are you happy? Change something.
(via somethingchanged)

"We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination. At first we..."

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:09:10 -0700

“We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination. At first we thought it might be intelligence. Everyone likes to believe that’s what makes start-ups succeed. It makes a better story that a company won because its founders were so smart. […] There are plenty of people as smart as Bill Gates who achieve nothing.”

- Paul Graham (via Bijan Sabet)

Fanny Pack X - Round 1

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:59:56 -0700

If only to defy graying hair, umpteen new babies and members dispersed across the country, FANNY PACK X has kicked off once again in what marks its most technological, protracted, and sober draft to date.

ROUND 1

Adrian Peterson (RB MIN)
Maurice Jones-Drew (RB JAC)
Matt Forte (RB CHI)
Andre Johnson (WR HOU)
Drew Brees (QB NO)
Tom Brady (QB NE)
Larry Fitzgerald (WR ARI)
Peyton Manning (QB IND)
Randy Moss (WR NE)
Michael Turner (RB ATL)

After ROUND 3 it quickly becomes obvious that my player knowledge is still drawn from days wasted playing Madden ‘96 on SNES… on a related note, Dan Marino has since retired :(

10 Steps to Viral Success

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:26:53 -0700

Despite my distaste for the V-word, I am resigned to give the people what they want, and humbly submit — in preparation for your coming boardroom brainstorm — these 10 infallable steps to “going viral”:

Be exceptional
Be extraordinary
Be strange
Be special
Be unprecedented
Be inimitable
Be rare
Be unparagoned
Be singular
Be peerless

Yep - that’s it… 10 randomly chosen synonyms for the word “unique”. Total bullshit, sure; but I’d argue it’s closer to the truth than the volumes of non-sense that have been granted to the reigning champion of advertising lexicon, AND you’ve just saved hours of reading, conference panels, and distraction.

“Viral” is not a tactic… it is, at most, a symptom of being undeniably remarkable, lucky and smart all at the same time. Considering luck resides in the frugal grasp of serendipity, I suppose this list is unsurprisingly as inconclusive as its peers.

I leave you then, with the time saved above, to be remarkable, smart and focused.

Just Do It

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:28:00 -0700

I’ve been reading Spencer Ante’s Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital (Amazon) whenever I get a chance to breathe - which hasn’t been often lately. Doriot’s story is a fascinating one for anyone interested in business, and Ante has been blogging some of his notable quotables (“suck it Trebek!”) for a while on the book’s blog.

This one caught my eye recently:

“A real courageous man is a man who does something courageous when no one is watching him.” — Georges Doriot

Like many things about this man, there’s little glitz to the substance - it’s simply factual, universal truth. I would further argue that you can replace “courageous” with almost any other adjective and it would hold up: honorable, genuine, ambitious, evil, loving, hard-working, the list goes on.

The point is this: anyone can look/act good under the glare a spotlight… people always act when the boss is looking, politicians kiss their wives when the cameras roll, and people will go to unimaginable lengths to do good for a stadium of onlookers; but it’s when there is no spotlight, no charade, no “thank you” at the end of the act that people’s root self is genuinely expressed.

This is not new, novel or particularly insightful — it’s simply factual, universal truth to live by. I would think the world a better place if assholes would simply be assholes all the time, regardless of circumstance - at least then you know.

Historical Moments Retold on Twitter

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:52:06 -0700

Given that Twitter is currently reigning as the virtual watercooler for everything from world events to daily minutia — every #hashtag an artifact for future archeologists to unscramble — you have to wonder: if only Ev and company had come up with this just a few hundred years earlier, what 140-character gems might we have gleaned from our forefathers?

Thanks to Historical Tweets (@historicaltweet) we now have our answer…

The Problem With “Campaigns”…[kudos to Deb...

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:17:00 -0700

The Problem With “Campaigns”…
[kudos to Deb Schulz, via @rossraeburn]

Tesler's Law of Conservation of Complexity

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:30:00 -0700

I’m not quite sure how I came to cross paths with the thoughts of Larry Tesler lately, except to say that in the cacaphony of our wired lives, the Spartan designer deserves to be heard, understood and followed. I especially like the economic parallel which hides beneath it - how we trade, value, exchange and often disregard the scarcest resource (and currency) of all: time.

Tesler’s Law of Conservation of Complexity states that:

Every application must have an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The only question is who will have to deal with it.

In an interview, Tesler further enumerates on his law:

If a million users each waste a minute a day dealing with complexity that an engineer could have eliminated in a week by making the software a little more complex, you are penalizing the user to make the engineer’s job easier.

Whose time is more important to the success of your business? For mass market software, unless you have a sustainable monopoly position, the customer’s time has to be more important to you than your own.

Whether you fancy yourself as a experience designer, an insurance salesman, a roadie, an entrepreneur, or just an everyday human trying not to suck: there is a priceless lesson here for life and business.

[via ProgrammersParadox]

Where Does the Money Go? The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics...

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:27:17 -0700

Where Does the Money Go? The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics study (April 2009) looks at the basics of our everyday financial lives. [via FlowingData]

Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:00:21 -0700

Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies:

Codename: EATR, the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies. I guess that’s one way to cut our oil dependency! I also love how Fox News so predictably created this sensational headline from what is otherwise a “grass powered robot”. (via agentmlovestacos)

Augmented Reality Utility… Finally!

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:46:43 -0700

Augmented ~~Reality~~ Utility… Finally!

Judicial Activism

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:43:00 -0700

“At this point, perhaps we should all accept that the best definition of a ‘judicial activist’ is a judge who decides a case in a way you don’t like.”
— Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) [via squashed]

Not quite, Russ. To downplay the serious issue of judicial activism in this fashion is an ignorant and shocking pronouncement that the Senate cares so little for their constitutional powers that they are inclined to pass them off to the bench. No doubt a more ‘efficient’ way to get things done — but that doesn’t make for much of a republic.

My Life in the Clouds

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:11:05 -0700

Okay, I’ve finally had enough — after an unexpected and completely dibilitating hard drive crash (aren’t they all?) this weekend, I have, like all victims overcoming tragedy, decided to pickup the pieces and move on. I am therefore officially making it my goal for 2009 to shift more than two-thirds of my digital existence to the greener pastures of “The Cloud”.

Goodbye Microsoft Office, hello Google Docs
Goodbye Quicken, hello Mint
Goodbye bookmarks, hello Delicious [again]
Goodbye folders, hello Flickr [exclusively]
Goodbye iTunes… oh wait :(

IT fanboys may scoff at how quickly I shake off my longheld ties to physical disks and pricey programs, which they will claim to be “more secure”… to which I say:

Anyone willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. — Benjamin Franklin

Freedom, in this case, is our inalienable right to have our information (and media) at any time, in any place, and displayed on any acceptable device with complete integrity and usefulness; to own this information despite that we do not physically possess it; and to decide one day, on a whim just as impetuous as this one, to move our lives and information from one cloud to another.

“We the people” need a Thomas Payne for the Information Age.

Super Spanish Mario Inquisition and 60 other great ancient video...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:31:28 -0700

Super Spanish Mario Inquisition and 60 other great ancient video games, courtesy of Gizmodo. Part of me has always longed for some B.C. battle action — the Bible has more M-rated action than the entire Resident Evil series… and, unlike WWII, it’s surprisingly untapped. Bring on the FPS Daniel in the Lion’s Den! [via agentmlovestacos]

Any other ancient adaptations to add?

The Vendor/Client Relationship

Wed, 27 May 2009 21:48:23 -0700

The Vendor/Client Relationship

Map the Fallen - in honor of Memorial Day and the more than 5700...

Mon, 25 May 2009 23:10:31 -0700

Map the Fallen - in honor of Memorial Day and the more than 5700 soldiers who have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. MapTheFallen.org (Google Earth v5+ required)