onfocus

I know I'm stressing out about getting things wrapped up before my trip to Austin because it's affecting my dreams. Last night I had a dream that I was in Texas, flipping through a conference related magazine. I stopped at a glossy advertisement that was a bluish-gray iconic photo of a footprint on the moon. The ad copy said, "The next technology breakthrough will be like blogging on the moon." I have no idea what that means, but I like the sound of blogging on the moon.

[image from NASA]

I'm not a big fan of putting pictures of myself up here, but I figure what the hell. It didn't really fit into the design, but I put a picture on my about page. You may have seen me at another site from time to time too.

Last night skp and I saw all of the Academy Award nominated short films, both animated and live action. Somehow the independent theatre in Santa Rosa got a copy of them for a week. (They accompanied ads for the shorts with, "You have no idea how special you are!") The place was completely full, and the owner of the theatre came out and spoke before the show. He said this was the smallest town to get the print and it will be sent to LA after it shows here. It was so good. Much better than last year's nominated shorts that we saw after the Oscars. My choice for best live action is The Accountant, a 35 minute dark comedy about the state of agriculture culture in our country. And a 3 1/2 minute cartoon from Pixar, For the Birds, made me laugh until I cried.

It makes me wish theatres would play shorts before the main feature. There are some great things being done under 90 minutes.

If you haven't visited the page for the snapGallery script lately, quite a few people are using the script to post pictures. There are about 35 galleries in the news section; vacation photos, family photos, party photos, weird experiment photos, artistic photos, professional photos...well, you get the idea. photos.

I also put up a new snapGallery of photos from a walk yesterday.

This picture cracks me up. It looks like the bird on the left is going to say something to the bird on the right.

February is over! Man, that was quick.

I can always tell I'm about to see a Flash widget because my laptop starts a high whine. I usually click a link, hear the whine, then see the Flash. The annoying high pitch sound continues until I leave the page. I imagine my new laptop doesn't like it. "Whaaaaaa! Flash. Whaaaaa...," it's saying. "ok, ok, shut up!" I say then click away. It's a fairly new Dell. Maybe Dell has something against Flash.

What happens when Neil Finn rings up Radiohead, Eddie Vedder, Sebastian Steinberg (from Soul Coughing), and a slew of others and asks them to visit New Zealand for a week of live shows? 7 worlds collide. It comes in both CD and DVD forms. whoa. [via A at ElasticHeart.com 2/26]

I'm disappointed that O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference is prohibitively expensive ($1395.00) for independent developers like me. It's one of the drawbacks of not working for a large company, but it seems there should be some sort of sliding scale available. I'm sure it's very expensive to put on a conference like this, and I understand the need to make money. But when the topics include Building Community Wireless Networks, I wonder how many people actually building the grassroots networks can attend.

If you haven't read it yet, Jason and Meg (and lots of others) are talkin' 'bout weblogs. With a capital J.

damn, damn, damn. This always happens. While I'm in Austin for SXSW Interactive, Neil Finn will be playing at a club in San Francisco. When I'm home from SXSW, he'll be playing in Austin. (3/15 Austin Music Hall.) damn.

marketing a market research method: "ZMET...the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique....represents an unusual attempt to put some of the insights of neuroscience (along with generous helpings of semiotics and Carl Jung) to profitable use as a window into consumer attitudes..."

This New York Times article is selling ZMET for some reason, but it's definitely not unusual to blend psychology with marketing. All of the pros do it. Edward Bernays, the godfather of the PR industry, was Freud's nephew. He used his uncle's discoveries to help sell everything from World War I to cigarettes. I'm fascinated by Bernays because he's shaped much of our modern consumer culture but isn't widely recognized for doing so. And that's the way he wanted it.

Check out this somewhat eerie chapter about Bernays from the excellent book PR! by Stuart Ewen.