That's right. Just in time for Valentine's Day. The Thicket Store is now open via cafepress.com. Buy up these great clothes, hats and mugs today while they last. Yeah, right.
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January 2006
Jan 31, 2006
Jan 30, 2006
Morning Music for Marketers 028
Produced on GarageBand 3.0, here's the first and maybe last Morning Music for Marketers songcast.
It's raining in Washington for the morning commute so here's Wish Goodbye from Ben Hyde to get you moving.
Jan 20, 2006
Jan 14, 2006
Opportunistic Zipcars
I walked to my nearest Whole Foods today amidst whirling winds to purchase some tasty Kozy Shack rice pudding and outside the store a full fleet of Zipcars (a car sharing/reservation company) were idling with employees offering to drive you and your groceries home for free. The Zipcars tag is "wheels when you want them" and this was a great day and great way to show the value of their service.
Visualizing Sound
does your iTunes visualizer hypnotize, fascinate or annoy?
my vote heavily falls on the latter.
the moody color shifts and wiggly oscillations are pure strange and this programmed chaos is generally off beat (this grates the head of any musician).
the real point here is that it's always spectacular when sound and visuals are in sync. certain advertisers and animators put an enormous amount of hours establishing sync cues and the rewards are often a more involved audience and an ad where "everything feels right." to do this well sound designers can't have just a few hours before the project is due. he/she/they need to be there when the visuals are created, ordered and finalized.
did anyone (everyone) see that insane Christmas house light display all sync'd up? awesome & ridiculous.
the Volkswagen commercial where the wipers and street environment are sync'd? smooth perfection.
here's a good online animation by Marco Cibola for The Delphi Collective's website. I can't support the placement of the animation object but the work itself is a nice example.
Jan 10, 2006
Spike Jonze's Knack
In the advertisement linked below director Spike Jonze (and an agency) challenges reality to deliver something that delights and captivates (rather than tells). The man has a knack for mixing fantasy & reality. At first I thought the advertisement was signalling the end of Gap's khakis but then it became so screen fresh that everything became another creative surprise. Check it out by clicking the image below (also, props to a tight fitting soundtrack).
Dear Apple, I can't believe I can't detest your many menus/navigations (I probably should).
It's a contest to count the navigation menus (without any prizes).
One man's comparison of cable vs. satellite
Go ahead and try and look for the apples to apples comparison to help in selecting cable vs. satellite. Looking at their Web sites didn't help. I faced this heart-wrenching decision this year when we moved to our new house and got the two HDTVs I convinced my wife to let me purchase. She says she can't tell the difference, but perhaps that's a Mars vs. Venus thing. Anyway, through painstaking comparison's of content available, equipment to purchase, commitment contracts, and more I was able to land on my decision. Between Comcast and DirecTV, I chose Comcast. As much as I liked DirecTV and had been a long time customer, I simply could not rationalize the up front investment of their version of Tivo for HD, not having locals in HD without a traditional antenna, or the lock in for another year. I may return to DirecTV but now I'm on Comcast with their lame DVR, but loving HD. Please god, send me a Tivo Series 3 with the cable card slots before anyone else. BTW -- The clincher was this channel to channel comparison chart I had to build from scratch.
