colin nekritz

When I was a young artist before picking design and art direction as a career, I loved pop-up books, to the degree I used to make my own, with paper, pens, scissors and crayons. I got decent at making them, but never on this, jawdropping, a scale.

The The lovely and talented Lisa Hannigan, who I only discovered through the haunting song “9 Crimes,” has a video that harkens of when music videos were art, in this case, her video really HAS art! Art as two fantastically cut, designed, and illustrated pop-up books! The books were lovingly hand-created by Lisa’s brother and artist Jamie along with Maeve Clancy. With exquisite detail, they not only match the song near perfectly, the video itself has a whimsy that matches Lisa the musician.  This is music as art, in an art form as a video, showing art that is materials, it’s fantastic!

As one of the first round of users of Google+ I’ve been poking it listlessly with a stick for weeks, inviting people, and watching with baited breathe to have a eureka moment… it’s not come yet. It’s a bit like when Google Wave came out and many wanted in, like Wave Google rolled out + with the exclusivity one can only guess to create a, ahem, “buzz,” but in some way that approach backfires with resentment, after all for other social networks there’s no waiting. Once you’re one of the lucky few, though that number grows exponentially every day, the excitement gets tempered with a “yeaahh … now what?” Drag people into circles and read the feeds and think “wait, this is like Facebook?” Yep. It is. And while I’ve heard the Google apologists say “yeah but on Facebook you can’t broadcast to only curtain people and not others.” Uhhh, really? Yes you can. At this point the majority people I tend to follow on Facebook I’m seeing much of the same posts on Google+. Awesome! I’ve always wanted to go to two sites to see the same information between friends.

Here’s a way Google+ would be better, let it’s feed aggregate the Facebook feed, after all you can cross-post between Twitter and Facebook (both directions). But of course the fact you can’t tells you what this pissing match is really about, Google vs. Facebook. Only Facebook has a massive headstart, tends to make sense right away, and an easy prediction is will always be the giant while Google+ is riding a crest like Wave. More and more Google is the new Microsoft, trying to play catchup by using a type of copy machine, only in this case to Microsoft’s Apple we have Google sticking Facebook in a Xerox and doing a “look at meeEEE! We’re Google!” Oh, it probably will have a dedicated bevy of users but mark my words, it’ll be niche in the social wars. Next.

When I guest lecture I try to impress upon is that the speed of communication in 2009 is changing, changing exponentially, over the way things were. Less isn’t just more, less is critical to your message. I hate to make a blanket statement, but the majority of people from my halfway-through-life age on down to especially kids these days, don’t read. It’s not that we don’t read or that nobody can anymore (many can’t but that’d be a much longer post), it’s that we’re bombarded. People don’t have to time to read ads, much less articles. There’s a reason why, while at the doctors office, WebMD, a magazine you only find in such places, instead of stories, they pretty much had snippets and soundbites, up to two or three a page. But it works, it truly does.

This isn’t a discussion about is this right or wrong, the soundbite being too short when the reality is there’s not black and white to things but shades of gray. I agree perhaps it’s a slippery slope where everything needs to be distilled into seven words, but again, to get through the clutter, it’s a necessity, unless of course, you don’t want your marketing to succeed, then by all means, write war and peace on an ad in 12 point type. people will be skipping right by you. That’s not how it’d done anymore, the motto “change or die” applies. Clients that get it, are viable, clients that don’t, nice knowin’ ya.

Anyways I’m a visuals person, so here’s some visuals. An AMC ad from the ‘73:

We won... despite this heap steering like crap!

Find yourself a time  machine and go back with $3,000 and this car can be yours, race car drivers not included. A little trivia, AMC was the first car company with a bumper-to-bumper warranty, granted it was only 12 months.

Balance this with an actual ad of today…

Toyota makes great cars, their agency makes great ads.

I’d love to pitch something like this to a client myself.

Here’s another goodie:

VW cars, tuned like a horn section.

This is a European ad, in America all the funding to real orchestras has been cut (as well as most anything to do with creativity), hence most Americans probably can’t tell these are instruments. It’s a brilliant ad though. Go Europe!

Being a fan of Audi and an ex-owner, I don’t think this is their strongest ad, but it still gets the point across:

Audi, now sadly jumping into the SUV craze.

Then there’s an ad like the below, it needs no explanation.

Truth in advertising.

Ouch. People wonder why the iPad is currently the leader in tablet computers need look no further than the review of the Viewsonic ViewPad 10 done by Wired.com.

Any article that starts “There’s a really famous road — maybe you know it. It’s paved with good intentions. And by now you should know all too well where it leads” is probably going to be filled with some awesome prose about a bad… something-or-other.” Indeed, and I love the comment “No manner of fussing could get Angry Birds running on this machine.”

To be fair, trying to implement one closed-source and one open-source OS on one device, more importantly, one piece of hardware is a bit of a nightmarish lofty goal. To then implement it even more poorly is a headscratcher. At least the article didn’t call it an “iPad Killer.”

Yes I get it. Ads help pay if not entirely pay for web development and web pages, it’s the engine that keeps developers eating beyond Ramen noodles and helps finance them to create wonderful things. That said, don’t, if you’re a programmer, delude yourself into thinking anyone actually likes ads because the truth is, excepting maybe a few of us with a thing for the Superbowl who watch it FOR the ads, consumers really don’t like ads. I’ve railed in the past in online and in lectures about websites who, through whichever mechanism, will bog down to actually hanging up if a web advert doesn’t load, killing the experience of the page, and hopefully driving users to go elsewhere. Good to great web sites and apps are designed where the content, that is the information the viewer WANTS to see and is going there specifically for, gets loaded first. Ads should come in last and be programmed to be loaded in such a way it’s done unobtrusively and not interfere with the loading of content. If anything, coded in such a way that, even if the ads load to fail, all the content is displayed because, after all, that IS what the viewer is looking for, not an ad.

So imagine my joy when I went to check out the weather the other day on the Weather Channel app to get… nothing. Nothing! My smartphone was on a network, in fact, two – both 3G and a WiFi connection. I could go to any other app or browser and load anything else that needed to access the internet for it’s data. For whatever reason, the Weather app wasn’t giving me weather because whatever ad service they use must have been hiccuping, causing the inability to load the actual weather info, you know, why someone would USE it?! This simple act sent me back to the Weatherbug app, which, I don’t like their features as much, but it loads, in fact, the version I have is ad free, and even if it wasn’t, provided it worked, it would get my business.

“[Business] is not like a sporting event. It’s very common to read blog or newspaper headlines, and the words “X Killer” I assume because it must get more clicks. When it comes to competing products, however, success isn’t always so black and white. Any kind of new product introduction, the company is probably is not hoping to completely kill any other company, in [the iPads] case competing products are hoping they can be part of something, something big.”

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, intelligently firing back at someone at a Consumer Reports event who asked the inevitable tiresome question some idiot will always ask about tablets and will there be an “iPad killer.” The correct answer is yes, yes there will be an “iPad Killer,” it will be the next iPad after the last one, etc. It’s the leader of the segment, all other are followers, end of story. Sadly that doesn’t make for good headlines or pageviews, nor does it satiate Apple haters who in truth only a very small, but vocal, mass.

So the press and the panic-loving public is all a-tizzy over the latest news that Apple’s iPhone (and iPad) is tracking user’s location, despite the fact if any user had cared to even glance at the first page of Apple’s iPhone software license (4.9 MB PDF) it says on the first page, fourth item, the iPhone uses location services, in which it outlines what people are now up in arms about, only proving nobody reads legal documents they click “okay” to, regardless of the fact the reality is the onus is still on them, not the manufacturer. Or if they had thought for a second how location services work on ANY device, any smart phone or phones in general that have to generate data that locates you on a grid, GPS, cellular triangulation, WiFi location maybe they’d have had a clue why this really isn’t a big deal or at least how much they’re the ignorant ones, but that won’t stop people trying to make one of it. Despite the fact Android tracks you just as much as the iPhone, as does other smart phones, it’s clear that because the iPhone arguably the leader, makes it the easy punching bag here, everybody loves to build a person or company up just to tear them down. The reality is Google’s searches have been tracking you long before smart phones, or do people gloss over how you’ll find a slew of ads popping up on various sites mysteriously similar to things you’ve searched for, even for things mysteriously near locations your computer may be at?

But I digress, I’m here to divulge something to show how silly this is by publishing my information by running the iPhone Tracker software that will check the data iPhone is keeping. The scandalous results of my mysterious travels? Well, for one it shows I can actual teleport to areas apparently, areas where I’ve not been or my iPhone is cheating on me by going out to places I’ve not gone, turning itself off between stops. It shows how the data isn’t accurate, beyond the fact people are missing the fact it’s not really logging your exact location per se, simply a general area, it’s wrong. I’ve not been to near the Connecticut border, Mount Vernon, nor have I been up near Teaneck or Paterson or some area near Milburn or the uppermost corner of New Jersey. Yes I travel the I80 corridor and yes I travel by train to Princeton on occasion, and yes I live in Manhattan and travel throughout NYC as evidenced on the map, but many of the other clusters prove this data is incredibly inaccurate. Also zoomed in it doesn’t show what building I’ve been in, or what block I’m on, or what restaurant, even which highway or what train would be open to pure speculation or guesses, zoomed in you get very scattered dots far apart, not pinpointed data. Additionally there’s no time stamps, it’s narrowed down to by the week, that’s it.

Conclusion: Seriously? This is posing as news? Were people and the big news machines asleep last summer when Apple already answered to their location services in August to Congress about data collection? If there was a person who wanted to accuse me of some crime or being at some location by my iPhone data it would inevitably be tossed out of a court of law as non-credible evidence by an expert witness. Can we move along to actual news? Perhaps how engineers may emulate the skin of cephalopods using metamaterials, for military camouflage and other uses?

Update: All Things Digital (ATD) had a lengthy informative Q & A with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, SVPs Phil Shiller and Scott Forstall which, again, prove much ado about nothing in terms of the data and how it’s used. Also interesting in how it can assess data points far far away which explains somewhat why my data shows I’m places I’m not.

It’s an incredible age we live in where we can attend large concerts in real-time with not just thousands but millions of others, sharing the same experience. Sure one can say it’s not the same as actually being there, to which I can say I didn’t have to wait in line for any overflowing portable bathrooms; I got REALLY close to the artists and could watch from various non-stationary angles not being crushed by the masses; and it didn’t cost me a dime to attend outside of the cost of my internet connection I already pay for.

Coachella appeared live on YouTube to what’s being reported as over four million viewers able to watch 61 bands live. Those with Twitter could even comment on a live feed. It’s a bit like being at a concert and able to chat amongst millions of users, well by “chat” to which we’re talking one-way conversations but we are talking about the internet here in all it’s grandstanding, ‘look at meeeEEE’ narcissistic glory. In fact unless your social media contacts all live under rocks it was hard to glance at any feeds without #coachella tagging appearing somewhere. In essence it was like your friends or acquaintances text-messaging you they were at a really cool concert but in this case though you could drop in on them, anywhere and at any time.

What’s maybe glossed over in all this YouTube, despite pretty much owning the internet video market, doesn’t normally do streaming, for streaming you have to look elsewhere. When YouTube DOES live stream it truly steps up, nary did anyone from the music biz to bands say they’re coverage was lacking, the contrary, it was done professionally and with class, you could even watch the stage hands take down and set up the next bands if you liked too, just like being there.

Of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch, someone had to pay for all this, in this case the webcast’s main sponsor was Wrigley 5 Gum (with a slightly confused branding identity, apparently they are 5 Gum or 5 React Gum?) which, without them divulging the info, we may never know how much of a bath they took. Yes. Most likely it’ll be a bath, streaming that much bandwidth, beyond just the costs of the camera crews and technical infrastructure isn’t done on-the-cheap. It’s hard to know what the ROI will be for them being the exclusive sponsor, nor will we know the portion they paid for and how much YouTube and our internet overlords at Google picked up, which I’m sure was quite a bit. What Wrigley’s 5 Gum and Google’s YouTube DID pick up is kudos, granted the latter didn’t need recognition, but 5 Gum almost certainly picked up considerable market awareness, which isn’t entirely tangible, as much as the bean counters would like it to be. Clear winners, outside of the viewers, were the bands themselves, many of whom may have had limited exposure before who may go on to become more household in name.

For those who missed any of Coachella you can catch various edited-down clips of selected songs, complete with 5 Gum adverts and links to 5 Gum’s social media deployments, at YouTube’s Coachella Channel.

Oh, and the Mumford & Sons set was simply fantastic!

To celebrate the first published web page approximately 20 years ago, below is a very large, yet very fantastic, informative, educational, and helpful infographic done by Kiss Metrics in the style of yours truly.

That’s right, the web as we know it isn’t even the legal US drinking age of alcohol, let that sink in while you think about how much almost all of us rely on the internet each and every single day, pretty good for a fad.

Today Microsoft announced the end-of-the-line for the Zune, a piece of hardware that, at one time, Microsoft’s CEO Steve “Monkey” Ballmer claimed was the “iPod killer,” if ever there was hyperbole. In the tech industry if you want to know when a company is swinging at air or that a product has a slim to nil chance of knocking off it’s competition but in vain looks for some press or PR that it has something good, white is potentially just shite, use “[insert device here] killer.”

Recently Motorola and Android came out with their much ballyhooed [ahem] “iPad killer,” the Xoom. Those ooohs and ahhhs you hear is people attaching the fact Google is behind the OS may serve to distract you that Google hasn’t exactly been hitting entirely home runs lately, there was Wave, Buzz, and even a debacle of their own smart phone Nexus One. Nexus One pitted Google’s newly acquired status as a lumbering threat to competitors at odds with the smart phone hardware and service provider market, many who were using Google’s Android OS gladly on various manufacture’s hardware. Suddenly Google had both it’s OS AND it’s hardware in one device and wanted to come out dominating, only to come out lagging, after all, if you owned the roads and sold cars that ran on gas, and then the gas company came out with it’s own car that ran in it’s own gas and touted it’d be the end of other cars, would you let it use this gas company’s car use the roads, and wouldn’t you think twice about using their gas ever again? Most carriers turned on Google suddenly being a competitor, they did so behind closed doors, some started to switch from Google’s Android to start pushing their Blackberry and Windows Mobile Devices. Google learning the hard way, you have to play nice with the competition when they own the network. It served to prove Google maybe doesn’t know much about how it’s own industry works, there’s a reason Microsoft never en mass started making it’s own PCs, and why Apple smartly yanked it’s OS license to clones in the 90s, it doesn’t serve a greater purpose to always own your own ecosystem, history has taught us that.

Perhaps that’s why Google teamed up with Motorola rather than claim it’s own hardware, or they felt sorry for beleaguered Motorola [editors note: I've done work for Motorola, I am rooting for them in some plane of existence], rather than make it’s own hardware. Google will make a great OS, called Honeycomb, and great software to go on said device, and Motorola will make the great hardware. Perfect, right? Well, not exactly. It’s pretty good hardware though the new iPad 2 pretty well spanks the new Xoom in every speed test, early adopters have been essentially beta testers for the Xoom (which every time I mentally say it sounds like the Zune, which failed, omen?), it’s been a buggy, problem riddled piece of hardware. To top this off, and not sure it’s even related due to sales going to a type of rabid anti-Apple fan base who forgo quality to just not buy Apple, Xoom’s sales have been sluggish at best.

As I write this on the ides of March; et tu Colin? Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Xoom, not to praise him. As I’m all railing for the use of web standards, that things should be written to work on all devices well and be compliant and scalable, should just run, not hog system resources and should not need plug ins (i.e. Flash must die!), you would think, especially if you’re Google, you’d know better; and you’d be wrong. Tests show Xoom can’t properly render the most scalable, workable version web underpinnings yet in HTML 5, can’t play videos properly, or display animations or properly execute Javascript. In short, Xoom can’t properly handle the web in 2011, and it’s a supposedly future-going product. Worse, Xoom put through the paces, can’t even properly render HTML 4 (that standard was set in 1999).

Sure not all tech comes out perfect, it’s all about evolution anyways, that keeps most people somewhat happy, new buyers, stockholders, tech pundits who like to rave or rail on product, mostly everyone. Unless of course you come out with a new tech gadget and release it before prime time just in order to capitalize on a wave [ha, a pun] of some technology bandwagon, hoping for the best that it’ll keep on selling after some rapid fanbase takes the plunge and hope for a return on investment. Perhaps the reason Apple has done so well isn’t because it’s making industry leading decisions, creating decent wide-demographic-swatch user-based sets of products as it has for decades, but rather, it’s never gone on the record to say this-or-that item as a [insert product] killer.