More genious from The Office. So good, able to be experienced over and over again, and full of great stuff. That's what she said. And as a bonus, check out some of BJ Novak's stand-up at Caroline's in NYC in June of this year - phenomenal.
My wife and I were in Taiwan this past week visiting some family and as a tribute, thought I'd post this great clip of Joanna Wang covering People are Strange by The Doors. Wang is a Taiwanese singer/songwriter and the daughter of famous Taiwanese music producer Bing Wang. I love her hypnotizingly deep and melodic voice, especially in this raw and unscripted cover. For more info on her or her debut album, check out her YouTube site.
According to a Jan 2 report by Heather Hopkins, Sr. Analyst of Hitwise, Christmas eve 2008 marked a new peak for Facebook. On that day, traffic to the site accounted for 2.18% of all US Internet visits, compared to the average of 1.42% for November. She hypothesizes that this increase in US traffic is the result of 3 factors: 
Read the full article here.
John Legend is the man; check out this great performance in December. His new album Evolver is also worth picking up (click here).
This is an interesting clip that tries to look at the impacts, negative or positive, of social media on the PR firm. I agree with the sentiments of the 2nd interviewee, Jeremiah of Forrester Research, who believes social media is enhancing the role that PR can play, as now users and consumers are able to communicate more quickly and with greater reach than ever before. He goes on to argue that companies (and PR firms) need to remember one of the basic maxim's of business and selling: LISTEN. Social media has given PR firms and the companies they represent a never-before seen look at the impressions that users and consumers hold. Leverage and engage with social media, don't be afraid of it.
This is a cool mash-up of Go by Common and Shut Up and Let Me Go by the Ting Tings. Probably could use some additional producing to cut out some of the overlap singing but otherwise, it got me boppin my head. Both originals are great unto their own right so I'm sure there will be those that feel this is an unforgivable transgression but oh well. Enjoy!
Kara Swisher interviews Sr. Product Yahoo Executives Tapan Bhat then Ash Patel regarding Yahoo's Open / Social Launch. The interview is fairly insightful as to the direction that Y! will be moving toward over the next several quarters which boils down to: 1.) dramatically improving the way Y! brings together the most relevant content for each specific user (i.e. increase relevance), 2.) improve the quality and speed of content sharing and social invention (I believe to really re-court lost programmers/bloggers that believe Y! to be a technical dinosaur).
Dwight from The Office transofrmed himself into some of TV's most iconic characters for a summer edition of Entertainment Weekly. The above is him as Xena Warrior Princess, but he also gave his take on MacGyver, Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek) and Paulie Walnuts (The Sopranos).
Alec Baldwin's character combined with Tina Fey's writing, are probably the two primary reasons that 30 Rock is so insanely good. Enjoy this clip of his best insults to Liz!
Recently at the Globes, Baldwin and Fey won Best Actor and Actress respectively in a TV Series Comedy. In classic Tina Fey style, her first words after taking the stage for her acceptance speech were, “Good gravy. As a kid I had all of the Foreign Press action figures.” She also spoke about staying grounded even when you've had an incredible year as she has. “If you ever feel too good about yourself, they have this thing thing called the internet. You can find a lot of people there who don’t like you and I’d like to address some of them now; BabsonLaCrosse, you can suck it."
What inspires me most about this is that about 9 months ago, my friend made the decision to look into how to do this, started talking to people that would have good input, then decided to do it. Sound simple enough in theory, but I can assure you there were obstacles he had to overcome along the way, the most important one being simple apathy; but none of it deterred him and now Every Future is not longer an idea but a reality. Attributes like self-motivation and inititave are mankind's most under-utilized resource, and I'm happy that I have friends, like the founder of Every Future, that are chock-full of it.I've seen all of them before and what you'll notice about each of them is they involve one (or a combination) of the following elements:
Here's one additional comment on item 3 "quirkiness". Many marketers fail at this one, as they simply try to think of something strange or different without actually achieving quirky. The main thing to remember about trying to make a campaign quirky is that it should elicit an eye-brow raising response; if the user simply notes that it's strange but not any more than say noticing your pee smells like funny after eating asparagus (read more), then it's not quirky. Worse yet, it may come off as "trying to be quirky" which is the kiss of death for viral campaigns which are supposed to inherently be inventions of inspiration (not intention). For my money, you've achieved quirky if you can show it to a few test users (age should be 16 - 38, but obviously depends on your intended demo) and get them to have one of the following responses:
Good luck to all those viral marketers out there in 2009!
I'm not much of a golfer but I know plenty of fanatics (my dad being one of them) so I present this in their honor. Happy 2009!
I agree whole-heartedly with Rayport's take, stressing out of the first reason (maturity of online as an ad channel) the increase visibility of metrics. The foundation of the necessity of online advertising for marketing campaigns are metrics that are clear, accurate and meaningful. Online ads have taken ad dollars from other forms (and will continue to do so) because they're simply able to justify the spend/impact better with these metrics.
Read the article in full here.
This is kinda like me, except instead of sneeze I fart, and instead of waking my baby up, I wake myself up. But basically the same thing. I'll video record myself doing it and then post it later.
Did you know that a panda's diet consists almost entirely (99%) of bamboo, of which it will consume 20 to 40 pounds a day? In order to do this, these guys spend 10 -16 hours a day foraging and eating, while the rest of its time is spent sleeping and resting.
If you're crazy about pandas, check out the International Panda Rescue here. These dudes are a tad intense but I imagine you have to be if you're spying on poachers; but looks like they're achieving results so more power to them.
In all seriousness, pandas are cool so if you see one on the street, give it a hug. Unless it's a hooker. That might cost you and lead to other stuff (unless you're into panda hookers).
On finding a new job:
The summary:
Another movie in the vein of 40 Year Old Virgin type comedy starring some old new faces (Paul Rudd, Jason Segel) and some new new faces (Rashida Jones from The Office, Jason Samberg from SNL). It looks good though so I hope it comes out in Hong Kong.
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