Thoughts on business, startups, and technology.
This had me howling like a crazed hyena. By Shpigler the Shark, whose motto is, “Listen to me and you’ll get far in business and life! Trust me.”
Now for some Friday fun. You’ve gotta see this video brilliantly-done mash-up of the cute & quirky Lindsay Campbell from Wallstrip (CBS). It’s off the hizook!
(The insane mastermind behind this is Wallstrip shooter/editor Terrence Elenteny. Awesome job dude!)
Now for some Friday fun.
And now, the lyrics to “Here Comes Another Bubble”, from the Richter Scales (though admittedly, the lyrics are all in the video already…)
got me a cs degree
honor roll, MIT
moved to palo alto
opportunity knocked
thought i had the perfect plan
took a job at webvan
traded in my twenties
for a worthless pile of tech stock
suffered through the market crash
lost a giant wad of cash
pink slips, burger flips
would you like some fries?
happy days are here again
larry page, sergey brin
time to write a business plan
so i can be like those guys!
Chorus:
here comes another bubble
it’s a monster rally
all around the valley
first you need a buzzword
then a second and a third
pick at least two industries
you’ll revolutionize
find yourself an engineer
feed him pizza, buy him a beer
give him just a fraction
of a fraction of the pie
need a good domain name
must be cheap, can’t be lame
something cool like
flickr, meebo, wikiyou, mahalo, bebo
“telephone” without the “t”
“digg” but with triple “g”
make your elevator pitch
code it up and flip the switch
Chorus:
here comes another bubble
the VCs are backing
baby let’s get cracking
blog blog blog it all
blog it if it’s big or small
blog at the cineplex
blog while you’re having sex
blog in the locker room
babies blogging in the womb
blog even if you’re wrong
won’t you blog about this song?
launch party, nicely dressed
what’s the point? sausage fest
blue shirts, khaki pants
looking like a line of ants
need to get a facebook page
all these guys are half my age
twenty nine, past my prime
i feel so behind the times
Chorus:
here comes another bubble
in a year we swear
we’ll all be billionaires
make yourself a million bucks
partly skill, mostly luck
now you can afford a down payment
on a small house
if you want a bigger one
hillsborough, atherton
better hope the same thing
happens to your spouse
IPO… lucky you
have your cake and eat it too
private yacht, party jet
why not buy a matching set?
build yourself a rocket ship
blast off on an ego trip
can this really be the end?
back to work you go again
Chorus:
here comes another bubble
and when we are gone
this will still go on
and on and on and on and on
and on and on and
POP!
I’m jealous of the students at Kansas State University.
In their class “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology”, assistant professor/cultural anthropologist/media ecologist/student of the world Dr. Michael Wesch has put together some amazing videos derived from what must have been some very interesting discussions in his classes.
He’s known most for his award-winning video The Machine is Us/ing Us which made its rounds in the blogosphere a few months ago. His site, mediatedcultures.net, houses all of his digital ethnography projects.
A recent project, which began as a brainstorming exercise about “how students learn, what they need to learn for their future, and how our current educational system fits in”, culminated in the stirring video A Vision of Students Today:
Here are some of the statistics shown in the video:
These numbers come from the collaborative effort of his 200 students, a shared Google Document, 367 edits, and a student-created survey that 133 of them answered. While not entirely scientific, it’s a fascinating snapshot.
And it sounds like a fun class too!
Via: Scobleizer
In case you didn’t know, Sony (SNE) BRAVIA is a collection of high-definition visual and audio devices. They include LCD and front & rear projection televisions. In fact, BRAVIA stands for Best Resolution Audio Visual Integrated Architecture.
Didn’t know that, did you? Me neither. I thought it was a bunch of colorful balls, paint, or bunny rabbits.
Just this past Thursday, Sony unveiled its latest BRAVIA TV ad, featuring 200 colorful Play-doh bunnies hopping around Thomas Paine Park in Lower Manhattan.
I would have loved to have been there while they were filming this. According to the article “Sony goes from balls to bunnies” from MediaGuardian.co.uk:
“Technically this is the most difficult thing I have ever done,” said the ad’s director, Frank Budgen. “It is an incredibly difficult situation to control. You have New Yorkers wandering through frames and you have no say over it because we’re doing it for real.”
Heh. I can imagine. It’s kind of funny seeing random bystanders in the commercial. Did you catch the kid making a face at the camera? I would have totally done that too.
Back in July 2005, Sony BRAVIA did something similar in San Francisco as well. They sent 250,000 multi-colored superballs down a hilly street—I’m guessing somewhere in Portrero Hill?
According to Sony, this took two days and twenty-three video cameras to shoot.
An entire block was closed off and special compressed-air cannons shot the balls into the air, while earth moving equipment poured thousands down the street. Not that you’d know it from the finished product, but these balls can do some damage, so all the cars were props and crew members went so far as to having protective shields and crash helmets.
I would have loved to have seen this too. I wonder if the dog in the commercial was a prop or just a lucky coincidence. The river of balls must have been awesome. It kind of makes me want to buy a bunch of superballs and unleash them in North Beach—right into the tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf. Muhahaha!
Sony BRAVIA hasn’t limited their fun to the US though. In July 2006 they visited Glasgow, Scotland to blast 70,000 liters of non-toxic water-based paint all over a couple of buildings. Sounds crazy, right? Watch:
Now that looks awesome. Paint and explosions. How cool is that. This effect required over 1,400 separate explosions and 250 people over the course of ten days. All that paint needed twenty people to mix it on-site. According to Sony, cleaning it up was a royal pain too.
The effect was stunning, but afterwards a major clean-up operation was required to clear away all that paint!
The cleaning took 5 days and 60 people. Thankfully, the use of a special water-based paint made it easy to scrape-up once the water had evaporated.
I’ve got to hand it to the Sony BRAVIA advertising team. They’ve done some amazing work! Must have cost Sony a fortune too.
Though, after watching all these commercials, I still had to look up Sony BRAVIA to find out what they were really selling…
Now for some Friday fun. A friend just tipped me off about this. Two guys from CollegeHumor, Streeter Seidell (a Frontpage Editor) and Amir Blumenfeld (a Senior Writer) have been involved in a Prank War for last 7 months or so.
It started innocently enough, when Streeter played an iTunes prank on Amir. Then Amir retaliated with a fake date. From there, it gets nasty. Real nasty. The kind of nasty that makes you go “Oooo did he really just do that??”
The latest prank by Amir is a classic. I’d recommend watching the whole series in chronological order to see how they go from Ha ha! to Oh DAMN! But if you’re the type to read the end of a mystery novel first, here’s the latest (and greatest, IMO) prank:
Not only are some of these pranks hilarious, but they’re also a great vehicle for self-promotion. These two have been getting calls left and right. Newspapers, radio stations, even DeadSpin.com interviewed Amir about this prank (to which he said, “I kinda felt bad about that”).
Since these two guys are humor writers and comedians, this is some fantastic publicity. Sure, it’s costing them a bit (in terms of dignity and girlfriends, perhaps?), but I’m sure they’re going to get noticed by some “industry people.”
It’s probably also generating some great traffic for CollegeHumor. I myself just watched a bunch of other videos there, as I eagerly await Streeter’s next revenge prank. Muhahaha!
Here’s an amusing idea. Remember VH1’s Pop-Up Videos? How about a product that offers a way to add captions, text, word bubbles, etc to videos?
Some sites offer this functionality for photos right now, though mostly to create lolcat photos (like Big Huge Labs and ICanHasCheezBurger Factory, of course).
Now extend this to videos, and there are all kinds of possibilities! Like:
The education field is one that is near and dear to my heart. Ideally, I’d love to create a business in the education (or environmental) fields. While my first business may not be education-related, that’s my ultimate goal.
So from time to time, I collect information and research on America’s education system. Here’s an interesting video from ABC news show 20/20: “Stupid in America” by Josh Stossel. It’s a 40+ minute segment that covers some frightening (though potentially biased & sensationalized) issues about American public schools.
It doesn’t just cover unruly classrooms and low grades; it also covers the difficulties of school budgets, public schools vs private learning centers, the shocking number of bad teachers, the harm of teacher’s unions, the school system as a monopoly, the politics of the education system, and charter vs non-charter schools.
(Thanks for the link, Sandy!)