Weaving Web Dreams

There'in Lies The Rub

We love crafts and art, even when it touches on the strange and bizarre, but a recent post on Makezine has us scratching our head. The post features a 'rubbing' of a SUV. Rubbings, at least in our limited experience, are used to bring out and preserve details that might otherwise be lost. A good example is old, weathered tombstones.

So why do a rubbing of a SUV? Is the artist trying to indicate that the SUV is a tombstone for our culture? Is it art? Is it a political or cultural statement? We're not sure.

Putting Gmail To Good Use

We tend to start using a new application, learn just enough to be reasonably functional, then stop exploring its real power and possibilities. When we need to do something, our natural tendency is to try to do it in the same fashion we always have rather than checking to see if there's a better, more efficient way. Sometimes the answer to our pressing need is already there, sitting, waiting patiently at our fingertips.

Another "Don't try this at home" stunt (video)

I’m rapidly becoming addicted to watching video-clips online, and when I run across anything related to kickbiking or cycling it immediately catches my attention. A good example is the video popular clip below that was posted on Google Video without any explanation of the where it was taken or why.

The Secret To Robot Humor (Video)

As every good comedian and humorist finds out sooner or later, the real key to getting belly laughs from your audience is to connect with them at a gut level, and the key to establishing that connection is to choose the right audience. So, it’s no surprise that when Daniel H. Wilson, the author of How To Survive A Robot Uprising, visited Google recently to talk about the book, and tell a few robot jokes, he found a very receptive audience.

Banned Xbox 360 Television Ad

Some of the best work done by creative agencies never sees the light of day. The classic 1984 Apple Macintosh SuperBowl commercial almost met with that fate. A more recent example, strangely enough from Apple's primary competition, is the Xbox 306 television ad that Microsoft decided not to release. It's easy to understand why they felt that way (see video below), but never the less, the production values are amazing.

All About Eve

Eve Abbott - Organiser Extraordinare - was featured again on The Marketer's Podcast (January 18, 2006). You would think that she and Alan would eventually run out of interesting insights, management and marketing jewels, but this epi-pod clearly demonstrates that they are just warming up.

Just "Me And My Shadow"

We started putting Google Adsense ads on our blogs like this one a little over a year ago. "Why not?" we thought. Little did we realize that we were about to become 'shadow' employees of Google...

John Battelle Speaks at Google NYC - Video

If you wanted to promote your search engine, you couldn’t do better than to get an endorsement from John Battelle, author of the best selling book – The Search. And if you also happened to be promoting your video service, then why not get John to give a speech, video it, and distribute it for free via your video service. That’s exactly what Google just did.  Here’s the video. Very cool.

Listening To, And Involving Customers

Being the devoted Mindstorms users we are, we were searching for more information on the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system announced last week at CES in Las Vegas. Along the way we ran across an excellent article scheduled to appear in the February issue of Wired Magazine.

One Of Our Favorites Hits The Big Time

We listen to a lot of podcasts, frequently several podcasts a day, but there are very few that we feel we just couldn't live without. One of our favorite "Can't live without it" podcasts is ArtaGoGo, an absolutely delightful podcast subtitled "Art Over Easy". So, it was wonderful to discover today that ArtaGoGo featured is the first page of Yahoo's beta Podcast directory.