BlogTV

Marc introduced me to a really cool live video blog that integrated a chat, and multiple video bloggers. You can find out more at http://www.blogtv.com/

The potential is pretty enourmous, given the popularity of reality based TV shows… and live news broadcasting.

It was a little bit of an attention strain: You were watching multiple vidoe conversations, a live chat with different threads, and whatever the heck you are doing on your own time as well. Also, I had to wonder about the alternative of just going next door and see real people and laugh at them?

I do think a nature show with a live component would be fascinating. Imagine asking questions to the TV while you watched the show. Also, how would it scale to millions of viewers? Hmmmm?

Buffalo Lion and Crocodile Battle

This is amazing. Thanks Jaymac and Canerican.

Time Lapse Video of A Digital Painting

Via Drawn… here is a time-lapse painting of a work by Jeremy Enecio. It is amazing to watch how it happnes:

Do you have your MBS degree? (Marketing Bull Shit)

Marketers love to draw conclusions from the vapors of the atmosphere and place them under your nose so that they may see if you will buy “the smell of crap” whilst they call the fragrance “rose”.

I heard two amazing lumps today:

1. Ad age (who should be ashamed) posted as it’s top article – the anouncement of the purchase of Chrysler should result in a 4.4% boost in sales just because of the transaction…. Uggghhhh. This is based on some “stretched” survey that people cared enough about the transaction to either buy, or not buy a Chrysler. Here is a clip:

   
   The automaker’s sales are expected to rise 4.4% this year simply because it’s under new management, according to CNW Marketing Research President Art Spinella, providing yet more evidence that consumers factor the well-being of a corporation into their purchasing decisions.

   I bet if Jay Leno toured the streets of LA in one of his famous impromptu interviews that he would find no one that even knew about the purchase.

   Also I think that Chrysler is doomed. Cerberus Capital Management will definitely make cost cutting sweeps – that is what they do. Also their philosophy states, “We invest in undervalued companies and their people, and help them to realize their potential.” Chrysler has too much value tucked into benefits and not into product. It isn’t undervalued, it’s disproportionately valued. They will have to kill the benefits to survive. The newspapers make it sound like Daimler gets an enormously bad deal… originally purchasing Chryler for $36 Billion and Selling it for $7.4 Billion. But there is a line item to be aware of – the benefits:

   DaimlerChrysler, however, will transfer nearly $20 billion in pension and health care obligations for Chrysler’s workers to the new company. That will leave Daimler as a smaller, but financially stronger company. (yay Daimler – oops Cerebrus Capital Management).

   Let’s see what Cerberus Capital Management does with $20 billion in pension and health care obligations?

2. Banner Ads – let’s stretch them for all that they are not. In an article on ARS Technica, research indicated that subliminal impressions of banner ads could lead to positive feelings about a company.

   How are you going to sell that to a client? “Hey if you buy a banner ad and we pay for 20 different impressions, you could leave your prospect with positive feelings.” Also, we will throw in a free toaster.

   People buy banner ads in hopes of sales and click throughs, just like other online ad purchases. These banner ads don’t perform as well as links in content or text ads. Also, people argue about their ability as a strong branding tool. I don’t believe they outbrand text ads.

   So, what I am saying is….Even if a banner advertisment leaves a good brand impression and subliminal positive feelings, a banner ad is a waste of money in comparison to text advertising. That is all. The research may be true. And the research may be interesting. But don’t make it bigger than it is…. Use your marketing genius to sell text ads.

eBay Scammer Theif is Evil – Way to Go Judge Judy for Saying the Truth

Thank you Judge Judy for telling it like it is. This lady is so evil. She should be locked up.

I know, maybe she should work for a “health insurance company”… they love those kind of relational passive aggressive scams.

Dollface

Are you chasing after beauty? Do you want a life you see but cannot have? Is that life real?

Are you the dollface?

Aaron and Hannah the Binturong

I got to do something new yesterday. I played with a Binturong.

A Binturong is a “Bearcat” from Indonesia, and is a pretty neat animal. It has brushy fur, a prehensile tail, great hands… and feet for holding onto things and a very palyful attitude. It says their musk smells like popcorn… but Hanah wasn’t very smelly at all. Another neat feature is that it is believed that they are capable of embryonic diapause, or delayed implantation, which allows the female of the species to time parturition to coincide with favorable environmental conditions.

Check this out:

Battle of the Ad Stars

Competition*. Whether it is for “career advancement” or just to say that you are the “best team of hula-hoopers”…. the spirit of competition is the same. *The results may vary widely, so use competition with caution.

It was good to release the spirit of competition in the Battle of the Ad Stars yesterday. Nothing says you are “more of a man” than putting on a dress and racing against your local anchorman. You can see all of the photos here…. but some of my favorites are below:

Also a big “THANK YOU” to Stan and Lou and Brivic Media for the T-Shirt designs and help.

Free to Revenue Generating back to Free?

Hmmmmm. I never thought I would ponder the business realities of Hot or Not? But so it goes in the wild world of the internet.

It seems that Hot or Not started as a free website in 2000, and six years ago moved to a pay feature that allowed you to sign up for dating at a cost of $6 per month, thus allowing you to meet the Hotties or Notties. Also with the combination of dating and virtual flower sales the site was bringing in $600,000 per month.

So what would you do if your site produced $600,000 a month?

How about, get bored, switch it over to a break-even investor driven free web site? That’s what Hot or Not did.

Here is a link to James Hong’s blog that discusses the change to free and how the move is to “facilitate relationships” on a much larger magnitued : http://james.hotornot.com/2007/03/return-of-free.html 

Due to “said boredom” and “pressure and competition” from free similar services – the Hot or not guys did switch the paid services to free. Completely inhialating $500,000 in month in what appeared to be pure profit (via Tech Crunch):

In the last year though a few competitors have popped up (see yesnomayb, a copy of the business model) and a number of free dating sites also started to eat away at traffic. Traffic started to drift sideways, and the developers were getting bored at doing little more than site maintenance.

So… there it is. Dumb? Brilliant? Will the traffic generated be worth the same revenue later? Would they have lost that much market share? Should they not have taken the revenue and invested in other business features that would have more legs?

I don’t know if these guys are married… but my life would be in danger had I made a similar decision.

I just don’t see how the ad revenue compares. And I am believer in paying for services that are acutally worth money. To me – I could care less about dating…. but someone (many someone’s) out there is willing to pay $6 a month.

Let’s hear it? I understand the allure of free to increase viewership, but what is the point? What is the point of business?

Dig Video

Color Match Your Photos Using the Masters

Boing Boing posted an article linked to Unfocused Brain that describes how to use photoshop’s “match color” to allow you to pull color from old masters paintings to improve your photography.

Give it a try, the results look worth it.

Unfocused Brain Article Link

$0.25 per Cock Roach and a Pass to Come Back to Visit

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is taking donations of….. well…. cockroaches… for the Brown Hall of Entomology on May 8th and 15th at the Cockrell Butterfly Center. They are taking the first 1000 roaches and I believe they must be alive.

Holy crap. It might be worth a day of camping out at the Museum just to see the horror of regular patrons at the expense of the roach collections. Goodness. I can hear the screams now.

Also, bonus for you unclean out there…. you could make a couple of bucks with your friends.

Graceland – Elvis’s Home

I went to Graceland on Friday. I highly recommend the audio tour and I really liked the fact that I was alone and could do the tour at my pace and spend time on anything I wanted. I was surprised by several things at Graceland:

1. How “normal” Elvis’s House was in todays standards (I know insurance agents that have bigger homes – things were so much smaller scale in the 50’s)
2. How much “success” Elvis had (he had so many gold records – without the cowbell)
3. How many mirrors Elvis had as decoration (the greatest love of all)
4. How weird you can get once you have more wealth than you can handle (porcelian monkeys are weird)

The decor at Elvis’s house was circa 1965, which is not good, and his costumes from the 70’s are crazy. One of my favorite tidbits was that Elvis’s personal logo carries the letters “TCB” which stands “Taking Care of Business“. Elvis does strike me as someone that “Gets Things Done“.

Please enjoy the photos below: