Recent Entries
Jun 4, 2009 Uncategorized
I’ve been an avid Twitter fan for nearly a year now, and I’ve tried so many different clients with so many different features it’s sometimes hard to keep track.
But one that I recently discovered that really encapsulates the spirit of the platform is Twikini, a Twitter client for Windows Mobile. It supports direct messages, GPS location posting, twitpic, themes and much more. It is simply a joy to use.
I’ve been a Windows Mobile user since November and I can tell you there hasn’t been a good Twitter app for this platform until Twikini came around.
Better yet, it’s as cheap as a trip to Starbucks – just $4.95 USD to snatch it up, or you can do as I’m doing right now, and write a post about it on your blog and get it for free! Sweet, huh? A very smart promotions and marketing move on part of the software makers.
May 29, 2009 Uncategorized
Today, Google announced its new web-based (of course) platform for communicating and collaborating in real time, Wave. Upon first glance, this might be just the Outlook-killer that Google has been preparing to launch since they launched Gmail and Calendar, and more recently juiced both apps up with Tasks.
Now that communication happens in so many different places, so many of which are electronic, like Wave, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the value of a simple phone call, or better yet, a face-to-face meeting. As smart as I’m sure this platform will be at collaborating, organizing information and communications, it still lacks the human touch.
There’s something about the chemistry of human relations that simply doesn’t translate via text, regardless of the medium. Sure, there’s VoIP and video conferencing but those have yet to really become pervasive to many businesses.
Ad agencies and communications companies are all over new tech for conversing, but why would a locksmith need video conferencing?
Lately I’ve been struggling with the amount of paper that comes across my desk. Since I started my new job I have been fighting to keep things electronic – that way my information is searchable, I can organize it in as many different ways as I like, and I don’t have to think about where something is – I just bring up my search box, type a few characters and up it comes. I can’t tell you how much time Google Desktop and Xobni have saved me at work.
The idea of having all your emails and documents instantly searchable doesn’t appear to have any shortcomings to me, aside from its lack of portability (all my searchable items are stored only on my computer at my desk at work).
But what really has taken a while to sink in, and who knows why, is that a simple phone call is often all you need to get things done. It’s a serious reliever of stress to just be able to chat with someone on the other end, sort things out and have a laugh while you’re at it.
Personalities shine through, you can get a handle on what others are concerned about and get in a quick chat about random nonsense while you’re at it. It’s so easy.
So from now on, as much as I love to shoot quick emails, I’m going to make more phone calls. And I think I’m going to make more friends while I’m at it.
May 14, 2009 Personal Notes
Okay, okay, it’s been way, way, way, way, way too long since I last posted, I know. But I’m back now, I’ve been to China for two weeks, I have a new job and a new apartment, so there’s a lot to talk about here, aside from the typical journalistic stylings or musings on tech, the internet and advertising.
But in this post I want to just give a shout out to a few more blogs I love that I did not mention in my previous post. So here goes.
I’m on my way by Lindsey Anderson
Lindsey describes herself as follows:
L.L. is a “retired” broadcaster who hates everything (seriously). Really, it’s shocking the amount of things that piss her off to no end. L.L. loves punk and metal, current events, and running her mouth. Her past job as a beauty advisor is what gives her the right to tell you your foundation doesn’t match your face. L.L. loves tattoos and good times, but mostly naps.
Her blog is a lovely blend of humorous rants and pointed opines on a wide range of topics – personal triumphs, civic issues, the female persuasion, music, sports and relationships to name a few. It’s an oft-updated place that chronicles the life of a downtown-dwelling Winnipegger in a unique fashion.
Cake Wrecks by Jen Yates
The subtitle to this says it all – “when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong”. Check it out and have a good chuckle at these nightmares made of fondant, icing and cake from decorators with mush for brains.
That’s all for now, folks, check back soon. I’m going on a blogging spree.
Jan 19, 2009 Personal Notes, Social Media
This is just a quick post to give shout-outs to some other people blogging out there who I find humorous, enlightening, entertaining or just downright silly.
David Armano is the VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass, the digital advertising agency I had the pleasure of working for this summer in Calgary.
Honestly, his job title matters very little to me. What matters to me about this dude is that he’s one of those people online who just ‘gets’ it. And it’s not just a digital thing. Armano has a special talent for linking everyday ideas, concepts and thoughts with the digital realm, and doing it visually, too. And that’s what makes him a leader in his chosen vocation.
He believes in the power of social media – because he knows that it’s not technology that makes it powerful. It’s people – real people, caring people, influential people, inspiring people – that make great things happen in the digital sphere.
And he’s got a big ol’ shining example of the good that can come from wielding such power. He recently gave a second chance to a family friend in need of shelter by raising $16,000 (most of it in little over 24 hours) to help her and her 3 children find a new place to live. See, folks? Twitter’s not just for massaging your own ego or posting links to videos of simians. There are altruistic outcomes.
This one sells itself. An anonymous (and hilarious) writer takes cute animals down a peg. Read it. Follow it. Love it.
If ever you’re wondering, “hey, I wonder if someone out there has some advice on (topic x) when it comes to writing online” – this is the blog for you. Some of the best copywriters in the digital sphere post here, offering sage advice and guides to writing great copy on the web.
Oh, Gary Vay-ner-chuck. He’s the enigmatic and enthusiastic host of a daily video blog on wine tasting, and one of the cleverest people on the web when it comes to using social media to create and maintain a following. It’s his unique and oft-mad-hatterish personality that draws you in, and his propensity to stay in touch with his people (and his tweeple) is what makes him authentic and keeps people coming back to his site.
Allison and I worked together for a short time at Citytv last January, when I interned there as part of my coursework in school. I discovered her blog last week when she posted the link on her facebook page and was happily surprised to find she is into all sorts of neat interior design stuff and pop culture.
It’s not a big name with big influence. It’s not a total game-changer. And it’s not one that I need to read every day. It’s a cross-section of a life. It’s real. And that is why I like it. Well done, Ally.
And now I open the floor – what are your faves (industry-related or otherwise)? What makes them near and dear to you?
Dec 29, 2008 Uncategorized
Journalist and man-about-town Stephen Moss was in quite a smug mood yesterday after knowingly submitting what is clearly the most pandering and unmitigated piece of garbage in his twenty-five-year-long career.
Moss, a Carleton graduate and reporter for the Hawthorn Daily Corn Husker and News, has become known for his well-researched, balanced and articulate pieces on the plight of the common man in his home town of Hawthorn, Saskatchewan.
But as of late, his colleagues have noticed his ethic start to slip.
“Steve used to always have dark circles under his eyes from long nights of research, followed by early mornings of chugging double-doubles in between follow-up phone calls before deadline. Now, he comes in at 9:30 every morning after his yoga class, drinks nothing but water and he’s as happy as the day he started. It makes me sick,” said crime reporter and closet Marxist Bob Girardin.
“It seems he’s gotten into the habit of just copying and pasting from Wikipedia,” said health and education reporter Nick Mercado. “I know it’s a small town paper, but come on … some of our readers went to college. You have to try a little bit. Even [sports editor Lou] Wallace still drags his fat ass to volleyball games once in a while to see who the up-and-comers are … okay, maybe he just does it to check out high school girls. But at least he’s out there.”
Moss was called upon by editor-in-chief Rick Quentin to cover the annual charity barbecue and pig roast. The event included some very interesting goings-on, none of which were mentioned in Moss’ article.
“I just can’t believe he came, and there wasn’t one mention of the goat bingo. That’s our biggest draw,” said event organizer Barb Mikowski. “He was here for maybe ten minutes and he didn’t even have a note pad or one of those fancy voice recordin’ doo-dads.”
According to Mikowski, whose paunch could explode out of her pants at any second, goat bingo is a game in which participants pay for a square on a grid, which is drawn on a large patch of grass. Then a goat is then set loose on the grid and whosever square it defecates on first wins. It is an age-old tradition in Hawthorn which Moss, drunk with the power of the media, chose to ignore.
Quentin is less than impressed with Moss’ flagrant disregard for what the people of the town find captivating.
“The article more or less writes itself. You show up, interview the idiot getting pies thrown at him, eat hot dogs till you get meat sweats, get a couple quotes from locals and get your ass back to the newsroom. But Steve’s article is mainly a long diatribe on the sorry state of condiments. I know what it feels like when they run out of sauerkraut. It’s a sad moment for everyone. But it’s not news,” said Quentin.
Nov 19, 2008 Uncategorized
This is part one of a series of posts – I am sharing a collection of articles I wrote last year for a fake newspaper entitled The Radish. Consider it my homage to The Onion. First up: a woman kills all emotion online.
Online chatting became a meaningless, emotionless void Sunday after eighteen-year-old Veronica Hardin, better known as kittenmittens87, used LOL in place of a period after every sentence of a 45-minute-long chat session with friend and confidant Becca Feldham.
The result of said conversation is the exacerbation of every ounce of emotion possible to express through the internet. Millions of users across the globe attempted to become angry or hurt by the killing of feelings online, but were unable to do so. Experts are calling the phenomenon “emotional constipation.”
“I don’t know how to describe what’s going on inside me. I used to know what joy was like, when someone would email me a video of a monkey drinking its own urine. I could reply LOL, and that was enough to let them know I was giggling to myself in the comfort of my basement,” said Martin Van Grumsbold, a sad, sad man who still lives with his mother.
“Now, I just stare at the screen, unable to relay to my girlfriend in Russia, who is a model, by the way, that I’m making a very clever pun about Greedo shooting first by using a colon and a capital P.”
Hardin has been using Microsoft’s instant messaging monolith MSN Messenger since its release in 1999, when she was only a child. Using the software, she conversed with friends, and soon picked up on popular internet shorthand; like 
to indicate happiness, 
to indicate discontent, and the ever popular LOL, an abbreviation for Laughing Out Loud.
“When we started chatting online, it was so innocent,” said Feldham.
“Those little things used to mean something.”
The arrangement of symbols to create images representative of feelings in the online world is known as an emoticon, a portmanteau of emotion and icon. But now, the emotion has been squarely left behind, thanks to Hardin’s flagrant overuse of LOL.
“We were just kids, fooling around with the computer when we wanted to get away from doing homework. I had no idea it would come to this,” said Hardin, as she wiped a tear rolling down her cheek.
“I didn’t really laugh out loud at all,” said Hardin. “And now, I’ll never have the chance again.”
Internet experts and grammar Nazis have long predicted the demise of communicating over the internet since online chatting became popular in the mid-nineties with the rise of chat software like ICQ, MSN Messenger and Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Silicon valley communications expert William Reichert couldn’t be happier with the situation.
“The day has finally come where people will realize that the internet is not for such frivolous things, and get back to its one true purpose,” said Reichert. “Which of course, is massively parallel computing to discover life on other planets. Or maybe the perfect amount of cheese for microwave nachos. That’s always been a life goal of mine.”
Nov 18, 2008 Brands, Personal Notes
A nice spread of chocolates from Coppeneur.
Christmas is coming up, and I have been thinking about what to buy my parents and other relatives. While probing the web for ideas, I came across the North American arm of a fine chocolate maker based out of Germany called Coppeneur.
Before I give some of this stuff away I decided I might as well try it myself. I ordered a handful of different treats from their online store in order to get a sense of what they had to offer, and I referred to a chocolate tasting guide from Seventypercent.com for a chocolate-tasting how-to.
Armed with my new knowledge of the six categories of chocolate tasting, I present to you my first ever review of a dark chocolate. This one in particular is Coppeneur’s Trinidad 72% with Habanero and Lavender. I opened up the package to discover it comes with a nice little book on the company’s history and product lines. Unfortunately it was all in German and I was unable to translate. Still, it shows the maker cares a lot about the presentation – and you can see that throughout the packaging, from the silver wax seal to the graphic imprint on the chocolate itself.
Great presentation all the way through, from the packaging down to the imprint on the chocolate.
Aroma
The first test is the smell of the chocolate itself. My initial impression is that it’s incredibly fresh, as the smell of the peppers mixed with the chocolate is potent but not overwhelming. This is what I imagine an equatorial plantation smells like.
Look/Snap
Next we test how it looks and how it breaks apart. According to Seventypercent, good chocolates are a more reddish hue than black, indicating finer quality cocoa beans were used in the production of the chocolate. And that’s exactly what it looks like here. The chocolate has a nice brownish red colour with a clean snap, indicative of good production. No air bubbles here!
Taste
Enough fooling around with this whole smelling it and looking at it business – let’s bite into this sucker already. Taste has the most weight when rating a chocolate, and rightly so – why else would you eat it if not for the taste?
The chocolate came with a nice little book, written in German.
On initial placement on the tongue the chocolate bursts with strong flavours of the Habanero pepper and coffee beans with lighter touches of the lavender mixing in. It melts slowly and the spice of the pepper remains constant, while the richness of the cocoa bean shines through. Overall, it’s a really nice flavour with just the right amount of spicy kick from the pepper. It’s neither too sweet (an indicator that the makers are masking poor quality ingredients with too much sugar) nor too bitter. My basis for comparison is close to nil, but I have to say it was a taste sensation unlike any other chocolate I’ve tried.
Melt
“One of the reasons chocolate is so pleasant is that cocoa butter melts very close to body temperature,” says Seventypercent. That means it shouldn’t be cloying or sticky when it melts. From my experience tasting just now, I can tell you that this one performs quite well – it melts smooth on the tongue and doesn’t break into chunks, it just liquefies in a pleasing manner.
Length
The length of a chocolate refers to how long the aftertaste lingers once the chocolate is eaten. Since this one had a particularly spicy bent, the aftertaste lingers for quite some time and reveals the strength of the
A nice touch - the logo and graphic imprint on the chocolate itself.
Habanero along with the purity of the chocolate. At 72 per cent cocoa, the chocolate is on the high end of the scale – Seventypercent says it won’t review any with less than 55 per cent and recommends chocolates with 60 per cent and higher cocoa content.
Opinion
Finally, there’s a category for the chocolate taster’s overall impression of the chocolate, taking all the previously reviewed factors into account.
I have to say, as a novice chocolate taster, I found the 72% Habanero & Lavender from Coppeneur delightful. The spiciness was a surprise, but certainly a pleasant one. What was really remarkable about the chocolate was its fresh aroma and taste, indicated by the strong flavours and lasting aftertaste. And the crowning touch for me was the attention to detail in the packaging and presentation of the bar.
Oct 31, 2008 Uncategorized
Feist: A beautiful voice and an oblivious tribe leader?
I’ve been spending some time listening to the audiobook version of Tribes: We Need You To Lead by Seth Godin. In the book, Godin talks about how people inside organizations and around the world are all connected, and need to be connected by tribes. These tribes are the cirlces of people centred around a leader – someone who is creative, confident and who the members of the tribe look up to, follow and emulate.
Godin cites The Grateful Dead as a key example of how a tribe can lead to success in any industry. The Dead didn’t rise to fame by climbing to the top of the charts with a hit single. They relied on the Deadheads, their legion of unwavering fans, to see their live shows and buy their albums. They were a tribe who helped the band be successful by loyally attending shows and honestly spreading their love of the band among their friends. This, says Godin, is the power of tribes and the mark of leaders – people who see value in something and want to share it in an unselfish way.
Feist, despite her mainstream success with 1-2-3-4, also depends on her loyal fans to keep things active in her career. She rewards fans by sharing personal anecdotes at shows and other gestures that tell fans “hey, I know you, I know where you’re from and I care about things you care about.” By rights, she’s an accessible star.
She has a significant amount of influence as the leader of her own tribe. But when that power is taken for granted, as it was the night of her show in Winnipeg, it can really reflect poorly on her. Let me explain. During “Secret Heart”, Feist had her camera operator put the camera on the floor, pointed at the back of her shoes. She then lifted each sole to reveal the words “THE PYRAMID” written on two small pieces of paper, taped to her soles.
My immediate inference was that the “secret” she was “dying to reveal” was that she was having an after-show party at The Pyramid (a popular music venue in downtown Winnipeg). Two hundred, yes, 200, other people thought exactly the same thing, and marched straight down to the Pyramid after the show.
Meanwhile, Dave McKeegan, the proprietor of said venue, was enjoying his night off by having a few beers with his friends and watching Monday Night Football. The one staff member actually at the venue called him in a panic when people began to line up outside, abuzz with chatter of when their precious tribe leader would make her appearance.
McKeegan begrudgingly made his way down to work as the fervent Feist fans poured into the Pyramid, waiting patiently for the maiden of the eve to arrive. The two staff members served drinks to fans and the ebb of conversations continued to move from hope to disbelief to anger and back again. But she did not show. Nor apparently did she intend on ever doing so.
According to a sound engineer who spoke with the artist shortly after her concert’s end, her intent was to give a shout-out to one of her favourite venues in the city. She had an early flight the next morning to skirt off to Regina to prepare for her next show. However, rumors of her appearance at The Pyramid were going around before her show commenced, so her intent is muddled in the sea of speculation. It’s possible she at one point intended on showing up and then decided against it after an energetic but tiring performance. Touring takes a lot out of artists. I will give her that.
But her failure as a tribe leader is her apparent broken promise to her loyal fans, who were eager to make a connection. Successful tribe leaders, as Godin says, are people who are willing to converse with the tribe, share ideas and give of themselves as members of that tribe.
At the very least, if she felt unwell or too exhausted to make an appearance at The Pyramid, she could have sent someone to inform people at the venue she wasn’t going to be there.
I think this is where common courtesy meets the mark of a leader. The more we all understand the influence we have on people as leaders of our own tribes, the better leaders we will become and the more successful we will be.
I think I’m going to send Feist a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People. Just for kicks.
Sep 22, 2008 Ad-vice, Brands, Personal Notes
So, I’ve been working on some freelance stuff lately, doing website designs and copywriting while I wait for news to come about some more steady employment. Freelancing is fun because you can do it on your schedule and being your own boss has its own special perks (read: waking up at noon).
But in this time of market meltdowns and financial recessions, I wonder what effect the current global economic situation will have on “the little guy” in the industry, like me (right now).
My initial thought is that it probably won’t have a serious effect, unless all the freelance work you’ve been doing was for big financial institutions. That’s an unlikely situation, though. I think the more subtle change we’re going to see is that when the dust settles and businesses begin to rebuild themselves, they will think strategically about including more ‘guaranteed to work’ strategies and taking less risks creatively when what they should be doing is exactly the opposite.
If you want to be a brand that’s constantly on the tip of people’s tongues, you have to constantly (and consistently) be doing things and saying things that surprise people. The more we can strike a balance between fresh creative and a more pragmatic approach, the more people will appreciate and even welcome our messages, our symbols, our brands. Marty Neumeier noted that a brand is not a product or a logo or even what a company says or does. It’s “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organization.”
The more we can remember that, the more we’ll come to recognize that building a brand goes beyond having a really tight IMC plan. Beyond an awesome campaign. Beyond a box, a great spokesperson or a history of award-winning creative. It involves living and breathing your brand character. Understanding that every decision you make as the owner of a product or a corporate entity reflects upon your brand.
And the reason that is and will always be true – brands don’t belong to us. They belong to YOU.
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