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Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: nonfiction! (part 4/6)

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:46:55 -0800

Mark and I have rounded up some of our favorite items from our 2009 Boing Boing reviews for the second-annual Boing Boing gift guide. We'll do one a day for the next six days, covering media (music/games/DVDs), gadgets and stuff, kids' books, novels, nonfiction, and comics/graphic novels/art books. Today, it's nonfiction!

If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay: How to Know if Your Child's Injury or Illness Is Really an Emergency (Lara Zibners): Apart from a terrific title, the book has plenty going for it. Basically, Even if Your Kid Eats This Book is a detailed guide to everything you don't have to worry about. It has an orifice-by-orifice guide to detecting and removing Lego! A list of things under the sink that won't poison your kid! Sensible advice about how to get rid of dry skin! (Hot bath, then anything greasy from Crisco to Vaseline, then time). Full review | Purchase

Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America In 96 pages, Kirk Anderson describes the United States' previous boom and bust cycles and explains why the bust cycles are essential for innovation and improvement of living standards for everyone. Times of crisis, he says, open new opportunities for making positive changes. Full review | Purchase

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite (David Kessler):
Kessler delves into the psychology and neuroscience of our junk-food cravings, seeking an explanation to the conundrum of the person whose "will-power" is strong on many fronts, but who finds it hard to resist unhealthy foods (I class myself among those people). He concludes that we're extremely susceptible to reward-conditioning when the reward consists of foods that combine fat, sugar and salt, and that the food industry has evolved to deliver extremely efficient, super-sized portions of fat-sugar-salt bombs in a variety of satisfying textures and presentations.
Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/masonic-myth-tb.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">The Masonic Myth:
Unlocking the Truth About the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the
History of Freemasonry
In the introduction to The Mason Myth, Kinney (a Mason himself) wrote
that he wanted his book to be an antidote to both the "imaginative
speculations of 'alternative historians,'" and to those Masonic
histories that "succumb to the tyranny of minutiae, where a
never-ending stream of names, dates, jargon, and organizational
details numb the brains of all but the most dedicated reader." In my
opinion, he succeeds in both counts, having written a book that's both
highly-readable and down-to-earth.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060822562/boingboing">Purchase

Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old: A Step-by-Step Plan for Baby Sleep Success (Suzy Giordano):
It takes about an hour to read and does not involve doing anything horrible to your kid like letting her cry all night. Basic method: for the first 8 weeks, keep track of when the kid feeds and sleeps. At 8 weeks, use this to come up with a sleep and feed schedule that more or less fits the rhythm she's falling into. Gently encourage her to stick to it (e.g., if she's hungry before mealtime, see if you can distract her for a few minutes [the first day], then a few minutes more [the next].)

Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/get-high-now-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Get High Now Without
Drugs : Over 175 sensory trips and tricks for visual stimulation,
compressing time, lucid dreaming, mediation, and more
examines hypnagogic induction, theta wave brain synchronization tapes,
isolation tanks, ingesting the blood of schizophrenics, Transcendental
meditation, lucid dreaming, Yucatecan trance induction beats, binaural
beats, isolation tanks, kundalina transcendent, chanting, lucid
dreaming, mud sleep induction, risset rhythm, shepard tones, Sudarshan
Kriya, thalassotherapy, and more

Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811867137/boingboing">Purchase

The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business (Tara Hunt):
Hunt's book is a lot shorter on theory and manifesto than Cluetrain and a lot longer on practicalities, devoting a lot of space to explaining how all these tools work and citing examples of different commercial and charitable organizations that have used them to good effect (as well as citing cautionary examples of companies that bungled things badly, usually by being caught out in deceit of one kind or another). Because of this, Whuffie Factor is probably easier to put into effect as soon as you crack the cover, but it's also likely to go stale more quickly, as the specific technologies cited wane (Cluetrain may have pre-dated blogging, but it had enough theory-stuff that it's still worth reading today, ten years later). On the other hand, if Hunt's book does well, she'll have a nice side-line in producing annual updated editions.

Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/boy-wind-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">The Boy Who
Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
A 14-year-old boy in Africa builds an electricity generating windmill
out of scrap. With so many tales of bloody hopelessness coming out of
Africa, this reads like a novel with a happy ending, even though it's
just the beginning for this remarkable young man, now 21 years old. I
have no doubt that William--who is rapidly becoming a symbol of promise
and possibility for the people of Africa--will be leading the way.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061730327/boingboing">Purchase

Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip (Nevin Martell):
For ten years, between 1985 and 1995, Calvin and Hobbes was one the world's most beloved comic strips. And then, on the last day of 1995, the strip ended. Its mercurial and reclusive creator, Bill Watterson, not only finished the strip but withdrew entirely from public life.

Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/wicked-plants-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Wicked Plants: The
Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical
Atrocities
"It's an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise
offend. You'll learn which plants to avoid (like exploding shrubs),
which plants make themselves exceedingly unwelcome (like the vine that
ate the South), and which ones have been killing for centuries (like
the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother)."
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565126831/boingboing/">Purchase

How We Decide (Jonah Lehrer):
Lehrer, author of the celebrated Proust Was a Neuroscientist, lays out the current state of the neuroscientific research into decision-making with a series of gripping anaecdotes followed by reviews of the literature and interviews with the researchers responsible for it.
Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/depression-2-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Depression 2.0:
Creative Strategies for Tough Economic Times is a practical,
empowering, hands-on guide to persevering and even thriving in the
event of an economic crisis. Placing particular emphasis on
self-sufficiency and personal resilience, this timely, informative
book offers a hopeful way forward in a time of great uncertainty.
Bankruptcy, barter, and survival investing are just a few of the
important topics explored.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1934170062/boingboing">Purchase

Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry (Lenore Skenazy):
David Finkelhor, the head of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, has discovered pedophiles don't want to waste their time just flipping through MySpace pages or Facebook pages. It's as futile as trying to call up random numbers from the phonebook and trying to get a date. It's just a waste of time.

Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/best-iphone-apps-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Best iPhone Apps:
The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders I had a blast
browsing through this full-color, 228-page book about the very best
iPhone applications. I only knew about 25% of the titles recommended
by author Josh Clark, who tested thousand of apps to pick his 200
favorite work and leisure related titles.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/059680427X/boingboing">Purchase

Junky Styling: Wardrobe Surgery (Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager):
The second section is a detailed HOWTO for recreating several of their basic garments: a suit-sleeve scarf, a "shirt wrap halter top," a "fly top" and others, with copious notes about shopping for clothes to rescue and repurpose, instructions for unpicking seams, a glossary of textile types and strategies for working with each and so on.

Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/astonish-yourself-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Astonish Yourself:
101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life 101 mental
and perceptual exercises you can perform on yourself. In his
introduction, Droit says the purpose of the experiments is to "provoke
tiny moments of awareness," and to "shake a certainty we had taken for
granted: our own identity, say, or the stability of the outside world,
or even the meanings of words." Most of the experiments require about
20 minutes to complete, and often involve nothing more than merely
thinking about something.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0142003131/boingboing">Purchase

Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin (Kenny Shopsin):
Kenny Shopsin's restaurant began life as a grocery store, purchased for $25,000 by his father for his peripatetic son (Shopsin describes himself then as a neurotic who saw a therapist five days a week). In the grocery store, Shopsin found a kind of frenetic peace in cultivating and deepening his relationship with his customers (one of whom, Eve, he married). Gradually, he added prepared food to the grocery lineup, then more and more, as the satisfaction of cooking for others seized his interest, until the grocery store became a restaurant.

Shopsin's memoir is like the man: loud, opinionated, warm, exuberant and absolutely delightful. He had me when he revealed that he'd named one of his dishes solely to piss off Andrea Dworkin ("she's probably never heard of this dish").

Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/the-math-book-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">The Math Book: From
Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of
Mathematics Mathematics, as presented by Clifford Pickover,
is a palace filled with awe-inspiring curiosities. His latest is a
500-page, full-color tour of mathematical highlights from 150 Million
B.C. to 2007.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1402757964/boingboing">Purchase

World of Warcraft and Philosophy (Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger):
This collection of essays and short fiction addresses the ethics, economics, and metaphysics of Azeroth and its inhabitants.
Full review | Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/wild-fermentation-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Wild Fermentation:
The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture FoodsThis
book shows you how to make a wide variety of fermented foods: beer,
wine, mead, miso, tempeh, sourdough bread, yogurt, cheese, and other
more exotic foods.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931498237/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/getting-arduino-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Getting Started with
Arduino Written by Massimo Banzi, the co-founder of Arduino.
It's only 116-pages long and uses attractive hand-drawn illustrations
to get even the most clueless newbie up to speed. Filled with
easy-to-understand examples and projects
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596155514/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/sew-darn-cute-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Sew Darn Cute: 30
Sweet & Simple Projects to Sew & Embellish Jenny's whimsical
aesthetic sensibility really resonates with me: surprising and
appealing color combinations, rounded simple geometry, mixing patterns
with solids, pleasing textures, and designs that reveal their process
of construction. Her creations are the masterful result of many years
of dedication, study, experimentation, and creativity.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312383835/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/iphone-fully-loaded-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">iPhone Fully
Loaded shows you how to load (hence the title) your phone
with songs, podcasts, videos, comic books, blogs, applications,
photos, spreadsheets, databases and other types of media. I learned
something new in every chapter. The way author Andy Ihnatko uses smart
playlists in iTunes is pure genius, and it's the first thing I put
into practice. His advice on ripping DVDs into movies is the best I've
read, and I'm looking forward to trying his method of converting web
sites, email, and documents into spoken text.

Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470173688/boingboing/">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/sexology-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">The Best of
Sexology: Kinky and Kooky Excerpts from America's First Sex
Magazine collects the wackiest and most unintentionally funny
articles from America's first sex magazine, Sexology, The Illustrated
Magazine of Sex Science. "Homosexual Chickens", "Adolph Hitler's Sex
Life", "Sex and Satan", "Twin Beds or Single?", "Sexual Tattooing",
"When Midgets Marry" are just a few of the subjects covered...or
should I say uncovered?
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/076243323X/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/show-me-how-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Show Me How: 500
Things You Should Know Instructions for Life From the Everyday to the
Exotic My 5-year-old daughter and I quickly paged through
this book filled with cartoon-like project ideas and made a list of
things to do: grow an avocado tree from a seed, invent clay oddities,
assemble a super slingshot, tell time with a potato clock, blow a
humongous bubble, make a delicious s'more, and about 20 other
things.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061662577/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/sex-lives-of-famous-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">The Intimate Sex
Lives of Famous People This 600-page illicit encyclopedia of
the private lives of writers, politicians, athletes, popes,
rabble-rousers, composers, rock stars and sex symbols has been revised
and enlarged, with a dozen new entries, including ones on Kurt Cobain,
Malcolm X, Wilt Chamberlain, Ayn Rand, Jim Morrison, Nico, Aleister
Crowley, and more.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932595295/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/macrophenomenal-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">FreeDarko presents
The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats, and Stars
in Today's Game An idiosyncratic, highly personal take on
professional basketball. The illustrations and overall design are
stunning.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596915617/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/leibovitz-at-work-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Annie Leibovitz at
Work is not only a gossip lover's delight (she tells fun
stories about all the famous people she'd photographed, like Hunter S.
Thompson, The Rolling Stones, Queen Elizabeth, and Al Sharpton), its
also an inspiration for anyone who does creative work and wants to
continuously challenge themselves to become better at their craft.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375505105/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/kick-litter-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Kick Litter:
Nine-Step Program for Recovering Litter Addicts The training
method is so simple that it is explained in two pages. The rest of the
book consists of photos of the author's cats and cutesy captions of
what the cats "think" about the method. The book's cover jacket is an
instructional poster you can remove and unfold, and contains
everything you need to know to try this method.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0974658278/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/urban-homestead-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">The Urban Homestead:
Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City
by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, is a delightfully readable and very
useful guide to front- and back-yard vegetable gardening, food
foraging, food preserving, chicken keeping, and other useful skills
for anyone interested in taking a more active role in growing and
preparing the food they eat. I learned a great deal about composting,
self-watering containers, mulching, raised bed gardens, vermiculture
(worm composting), and raising chickens by reading this info-dense
book.
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1934170011/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/iphone-hacks-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">iPhone Hacks:
Pushing the iPhone and iPod touch Beyond Their Limits "You
can make your iPhone do all you'd expect of a smartphone -- and more.
Learn tips and techniques to unleash little-known features, find and
create innovative applications for both the iPhone and iPod touch, and
unshackle these devices to run everything from network utilities to
video game emulators."
Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596516649/boingboing">Purchase

src="http://boingboing.net/images/shop-class-xm.jpg"
width="100" height="100" align="left">Shop Class as
Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work Matthew B.
Crawford's book is about the the importance of using your hands to
make and repair things. He compares the kind of life many people in
developed countries lead -- inside cubicles, working on things that
are several levels removed from the physical world -- to a life of
skilled labor that requires ingenuity and experience, and provides the
kinds of challenges that human beings were made to relish.

Full
review |
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594202230/boingboing">Purchase

Other installments:

Part One: Kids

Part Two: Media

Part Three: Gadgets

Last year's guides:

Boing Boing's Holiday Gift Guide part one: Kids

Boing Boing's Holiday Gift Guide part two: Fiction - Boing Boing

Boing Boing's Holiday Gift Guide part three: Gadgets and stuff ...

Boing Boing's Holiday Gift Guide part four: Comics, graphic novels ...

Boing Boing's Holiday Gift Guide part five: Nonfiction - Boing Boing

New Phones from NTT Docomo Japan

Deb West — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:01:00 -0800

It is always interesting to take a look at what some of the foreign manufacturers are producing for their luxury electronic lines. It seems that the series of new phones being offered by NTTDocomo Japan are heading in many different directions.

Some of the items that caught my eye, in particular because I thought they were beautiful and slightly unusual, are the prototypes for the Touch Wood phones. Not yet in mass production these phones are only able to be seen at trade shows in Switzerland and Japan.

The phones are being created as a joint venture with the "more trees" reforestation project founded by musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and others. They are made with specially treated wood from the thinned forests in Japan managed by the "more trees" project. Each handset is unique featuring the particular grains, patterns and natural coloring of the tree from which it was made. No artificial paints or colors are used in the unique compression process developed by the Olympus Corporation. The cypress phones are much more durable than other phones with wood bodies, are resistant to water and will keep their natural shine. I just thought they were beautiful.

For the those who are less ecologically oriented, the company is also releasing the Docomo "style series." This includes the F-02B which is a jewelry quality waterproof phone with a snap on perfume holder, the L-02B which comes with a special content for beauty tips and the N-01B with deigns and colors inspired by French manicure designs.

Let's just say that the company is busy covering all angles of the phone market!

Gallery: Touchwood Phones

Filed under: Gadgets

New Phones from NTT Docomo Japan originally appeared on Luxist on Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New Zune HD Colors Coming December 1 [ZuneHd]

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

Remember those non-existent Zune HD colors that popped up in the Zune software source code? Well, looks like some of them made it to production. The Pink and Magenta versions land on December 1....

Hewlett Packard: High quality printing

noreply@blogger.com (Tom) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:17:00 -0800

Agency: CLM BBDO France
Creative Director: Eric Pierre
Copywriter: Vincent Pedrocchi
Art Director: Cédric Moutaud
Photographer: Jean-Yves Lemoigne

Avett Brothers & The American Budget Network

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:43:45 -0800

Funny Or Die Link

Chris Higgins enlightens (again) with his Mental_Floss post of a collection of videos supposedly showing a Home Shopping Network scenario gone wrong. This is music video for The Avett Brothers’ “Slight Figure of Speech”, courtesy of Funny or Die, with Andy Daly providing some hilarious subterfuge.

But wait, there’s more! You’ll notice an 888 number on the video. Call it. It’s free and meta. And also check out Higgins’ post.

Link.

RAW COLOR - Vegetable Design Research

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:16:57 -0800

Earlier, we spotted RAW COLOR's first project at the Dutch Design Week 2007. The project 100%JUICE demonstrated the power of natural color by extracting "natural ink" from vegetables.

Today, it's worth checking out RAW COLOR No.1, 2 and 3 which demonstrates their continued visual research on vegetables and examination of their internal structures. One of the results is a natural color map categorizing the diversity of vegetables by shades and families.

RAW COLOR is a cooperation between designers Christoph Brach & Daniera ter Haar and demonstrates the often unnoticed beauty of our everyday veggies.

More pictures after the jump!

(more...)

Rudolph - And not the one you're thinking.

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:09:12 -0800

I apologize if you guys have seen this Max Fleischer beauty. Until tonight, I had not. But ...

I. Fucking. Love. It.

Enjoy it over the weekend. And then, it's back to the Christmastree mines you Humbugs.

Peace.

The link, and you have to click on "Original Movie"

Instant creative solutions for advertising

marka — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:13:44 -0800

Jeff Anderson and Isaac Silvergate are the creative team behind the multi-awarded and acclaimed 'Great Schlep' campaign that played a part in getting Obama into office. They've won virtually every advertising award, including a Titanium Lion, D&AD Black Pencil, Grand...

Schweppes brings 1950s Christmases to life

Adweek Blogs — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:42:32 -0800

Mother London adds live-action arms and hands (along with some goofy and mildly smutty humor) to classic 1950s Christmas illustrations in these amusing 10-second spots for Schweppes tonic water in the U.K. The voice talent includes Martin Freeman, who played Tim on The Office. The best line has to be: "Don and Tabitha, you're just in time. I'm about to hose down Felicity!" Via The Inspiration Room.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

iPhone Owners More Likely to Pony Up for Digital Content

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:40:23 -0800

Apple has trained iPhone owners to enjoy paying for digital content more than the general online population, a survey suggests.

Media law firm Olswang on Wednesday published its 2009 Convergence Survey, which analyzed e-shopping trends among iPhone owners and general online consumers. Apple enthusiast blog 9to5Mac summarizes the findings regarding the iPhone demographic:

73 percent would pay to access online a film just released in cinemas;
67 percent would pay for access to a film that will not be on DVD for at least two months;
54 percent would pay to access a film which is already on DVD or pay-TV;
41 percent of iPhone users would already be willing to take out subscriptions to access their favorite TV shows;
42 percent would pay for an online book.

Those numbers are quite high when stacked against the figures from the general online population surveyed:

58 percent of people would pay to access online a film just released in cinemas;
52 percent would pay for access to a film that will not be on DVD for at least two months;
40 percent would pay to access a film which is already on DVD or pay-TV;
30 percent would already be willing to take out subscriptions to access their favorite TV shows;
30 percent would pay for an online book.

Olswang found these numbers about the iPhone demographic to be “striking,” but they are what you’d expect. The App Store made purchasing apps incredibly easy, and many of the high quality apps are dirt cheap.

Above all, my view is that the App Store, which serves over 100,000 apps, has conditioned us to demand more and more from a single device. In turn we’re evolving into a demographic that craves more from the digital as opposed to the physical.

These numbers are quite striking indeed. And it suggests the rumored Apple touchscreen tablet, which several independent reports have said will focus on e-reader functionality, does have potential to resuscitate the dying publishing industry — because there would most likely be a large amount of overlap between the iPhone and “iTablet” demographics.

Meanwhile, a recent report from The New York Times cites sources who say a consortium of magazine publishers are jointly planning to build an “online newsstand” — a “new iTunes for magazines.” It would involve publications repurposing their print content into multiple digital formats to be sold through a new company, sources told NY Times. If that’s the case, today’s survey suggests they’ll find a friendlier reception among iPhone users than among the general population.

See Also:

SMG Names Monica Gadsby CEO-Multicultural/Latin America

lwentz@adage.com(Laurel Wentz) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:16:50 -0800

In one of the first top jobs to combine both Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic market, Monica Gadsby will run Starcom MediaVest Group's Latin American network in addition to her current job heading SMG's multicultural operations in the U.S.

SMG Names Monica Gadsby CEO-Multicultural/Latin America

lwentz@adage.com(Laurel Wentz) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:16:50 -0800

What Do Matt Lauer, Social-Media Experts and My Kid Have in Common?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:21:25 -0800

As a Small Agency Owner, and blogger-about-town for my friends at Ad Age, I thought why not do the lazy thing . . . scratch that . . . original thing . . . scratch that . . . I mean appropriate thing and give some Thanksgiving shout-outs.

What Does Black Friday Even Mean Anymore?

sdumenco@adage.com(Simon Dumenco) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:51:15 -0800

What does "Black Friday" circa 2009 mean anyway? It's always been a weird marketing construct -- as if consumers ever really cared that the day after Thanksgiving is the chance for retailers to clear the red ink from their ledgers and go into the black (though who knows how realistic that expectation is this year). And while the supposed joy of frenzied bargain-hunting still gets celebrated in the media (shots of bustling mall scenes will surely open local newscasts across the country Friday evening), the darker possibilities, like last year's gruesome Walmart stampede remain an unsettling subtext. ,

Must Weep TV: Bringing Ma, Pa and Biological Child Together

ldobrow@adage.com(Larry Dobrow) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:34:16 -0800

Come tomorrow afternoon, many of us will congregate with family members we haven't seen in a full 12 months. We'll banter about the weather, feign interest in meandering anecdotes and quietly critique every aspect of each other's being. Come nightfall, we'll embrace warmly and promise to re-adjourn 365 days hence, then set about covering the freshly picked emotional scabs with ointment. But for the next few hours at least, we're all about bringing families together. In that blithely unaware spirit, I heartily recommend ABC's new celebration of unity and forgiveness, "Find My Family".

Unabashed Price Slash Seems Just What WWE and Its Fans Needed

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:32:00 -0800

Value has been a key focus for Exec VP-Marketing Michelle Wilson and WWE, which managed to boost ticket sales 29% during the third quarter by cutting pricing, a result most leagues envy thanks to a tactic most have tried to avoid.

Power150 Roller Coaster

noreply@blogger.com (Ilya Vedrashko) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:41:25 -0800

With all due respect, any ranking system that suffers wild daily swings like this is probably off. Is AdLab really almost twice as good today as it was yesterday, all because of a bunch of retweets of a single post?

It's one thing when Power150 was Todd's generous but private enterprise, but now that it's the industry's sort of official (and copied) "Who Is Who", there's gotta be a better way.

Would people go for a traffic tracking code?

JetBlue and JWT Parting Ways

rparekh@adage.com(Rupal Parekh) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:08:30 -0800

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- JetBlue Airways and its creative agency, WPP-owned JWT, are splitting up, despite a four-year run marked by the airline doubling its footprint to some 60 markets and earning a dedicated terminal at New York's JFK airport.

Hulu's Massive Traffic Bump? Thank ABC, New TV Season

mlearmonth@adage.com(Michael Learmonth) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:06:08 -0800

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Fueled by the fall TV season and the addition of ABC shows to its library, traffic to the video site backed by NBC, ABC and Fox spiked nearly 47% in October from the prior month, the biggest single-month percentage gain of the past year.

Publicis Worldwide Names Olivier Altmann Chief Creative Officer

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:35:56 -0800

Tipsy Turkey Brought to You by Georgi Vodka

kwheaton@adage.com(Ken Wheaton) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:41:32 -0800

Vodka isn't the only thing this Thanksgiving-turkey story is full of.

Tipsy Turkey Brought to You by Georgi Vodka

kwheaton@adage.com(Ken Wheaton) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:41:32 -0800

Vodka isn't the only thing this Thanksgiving-turkey story is full of.

Open Letter to Ms. Internet

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:57:16 -0800

Dear Ms. Internet,

As someone who has spent 8+ hours a day with you over the past 10 years, both for professional and personal needs, I have to say that having a long term relationship with you is challenging at best and you are starting to get a reputation for your celebrity-length relationships.

You are young and in your prime and are the hottest girl at the dance. Your reputation precedes you wherever you go, from Sand Hill Road, CA to Varick Street, NY, and even then, we all want a piece of you.

The problem with this is that you are breaking hearts everywhere you go and businesses built on-top of you fail before they ever have the chance to breathe. If you are here for one night stands, then let us know as many of us expect you to be marriage material.

Let me explain.

Marriage material is when ecosystems (family) can bloom and everyone expects them to last so that society can adopt them into the fabric of life. Ms. Internet, you are making this impossible.

Consequences of your actions:
The rapid pace of innovation (which I love and made my name in) within the digital media space (including you, Ms. Internet) is going to contribute to its very demise. How can we build sustainable businesses when the life expectancy of an online business is virtually one capital raise and the entire industry is onto the next-biggest thing?

Why this whore-ish attitude does not work:
· Advertising: have you ever written a check for $100MM to one digital media partner? No. Let me explain why: Digital media partners (i.e. Hulu, Ad.com, AdMob) deliver a structured product (sometimes service) to meet the needs of a particular client. Generally, there is never enough inventory to spend significant dollars (scale issue) or by the time we have tested the particular product, the industry is onto the next best and greatest product (innovation issue).

· Venture Capital: I’m speaking from an outsider but there is a real movement from within the industry to change up the deal mechanics as within the digital media space, it’s just not sustainable. The speed of innovation is important here because if a company spends it’s venture money building a product for the market tomorrow, in two weeks, it may be out of fashion. I wrote a blog post about this a few years back about how social communities are like clubs – you do not want to be the hot one or you are the un-cool one next Fall.

We do not need more Friday or Saturday night flings. We need companies and services that have the time to breathe and blossom into something sustainable. My frustration comes from within the advertising world – we (you) are making it very hard to shift large amounts of money online with this type of attitude. Scale issues are solved when the market has time to mature and so far, we’ve had very little time because of the pace of innovation. I’d like to write a check for hundreds of millions of dollars, similar to how my television brethren do so, and with that, think about how much value that would be created within the digital media ecosystem.

Having said all of this, I love innovation. Innovation is important to any ecosystem and allows the ecosystem to keep evolving. As a person, I tend to be just ahead of the innovation curve but as a marketer, I can see that we’re moving a little too fast for the online advertising community to evolve.

All the best,

Darren Herman
(t): @dherman76

Quick Links: November 20, 2009

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:23:38 -0800

Twitter Traffic Declining
ComScore, Compete and Nielsen all report traffic to Twitter.com declining, after months of continuous growth. Has Twitter reached it's plateau of users?

Video Game Marketers Use Social Media
Great insights into how social media is providing value to video game marketers, not just in reaching players, but understanding them.

More Mobile Commerce: REI
Yet another retailer is enabling mobile commerce. REI has now added the ability to buy through their iPhone app.

Ideas and action, talent is a species of vigor

marc rapp — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:08:00 -0800

Hopefully you have had the opportunity to read something from Eric Hoffer. His philosophies, writing and social commentary are always enlightening. His personal story is very interesting as well. Richard Florida, within the last four years, has been an influential voice regarding the creative class (someting Hoffer often spoke of) within societies and communities. I thought I would pull some quotes of Hoffers for readers to absorb. Enjoy. If you have the time, check out some of Richard's writing and research, too.

"The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action."

(And this excerpt is more interesting.)

"They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor."

-Eric Hoffer

Twitter + LinkedIn, Just Like PB & Choco?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:32:34 -0800

Twitter and Linked In announced yesterday that they are integrating their platforms so that LinkedIn users can "amplify" their status updates to the Twittersphere, and Twitter users could feed their updates (hashtagged #in) into the professional networking site. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone apparently referred to the match as a "perfect combination," like "peanut butter and chocolate." Image courtesy of PC World.

Putting aside the clear confusion Mr. Stone has over what makes a perfect combination — he is clearly not familiar with the stunning combination of pretzels and ice cream, or Speculoos and bananas — let's stop for a moment to really talk about integration. It seems every social web service these days is working on some big-deal partnership with another social web service. Why? Theoretically, integration is for users, so that they don't have to visit more than one site, or post to multiple platforms, in order to spread their message with the largest number of people.

But despite what you may read in the companies' quirky blog posts, integration is not just for users, just like Kix is not just for kids. Integration is first and foremost for the company's benefit; joining forces makes them bigger, stronger, and broadens their reach, which ultimately means more revenue from business or premium memberships, and often from ad revenues. No one really knows the true benefits of this new deal, however, since the financial details (just like those of Microsoft and Google last month) are undisclosed, reports the NY Times.

Call me crazy, but this is starting to make me think of Wal-Mart, the ultimate one-stop shop. Because isn't that what web services are trying to do? Combine forces to offer consumers everything they want in one place, and make themselves more money while doing it? And we all know what that has done to us. Bye bye neighborhood butcher, hello pre-packaged salami — with a side of crayons.

But that may be a little too far ahead to think about on a Tuesday. In the short term, heed this warning from PC World: Twitter and LinkedIn are two different animals. If you integrate the two accounts, be sure to make smart choices about what you share across the services — what's perfectly acceptable on one network may not work on the other.

The TGIF 'Revolution' Is Nothing Without a Marketing Strategy

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:00:10 -0800

Will the skillful use of TGIF -- Twitter, Google, the internet and Facebook -- make you a good marketing manager? I think not. TGIF is only half the story.

Even at Age 90, the Irrepressible Stan Cohen Covers All the Bases

rcrain@crain.com(Rance Crain) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:00:00 -0800

Stan Cohen -- my first boss and my best boss -- celebrated his 90th birthday recently amid a gala get-together of his many friends and business associates.

What Will a Successful Media Company Look Like in the Future?

jbloom@adage.com(Jonah Bloom) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:00:00 -0800

Some in media circles seem to be waiting for the return of yesteryear instead of using these turbulent times to make the changes necessary for their media businesses to thrive in the future.

P&G's Production Move Makes Industry a Worse Place

tiezze@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:00:00 -0700

So P&G is now going to choose with which production companies its agencies can work in the U.S. Sounds great. What happens now?

Megabrands Index

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:00:00 -0700

Megabrands Top 200 Brands ranked by measured U.S. media spending. Top 200 Megabrands By measured media spending in 2007

Walker Marketing Hires Interactive And Media Talent

ETan@adage.com(Emily Tan) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 09:27:23 -0700

Vuncannon And Clark To Join The Company

Fifth Place Isn't Always the Worst Place to Be

sdonaton@adage.com(Scott Donaton) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:10:03 -0700

There's never been a better time to be an also-ran. That's the thought that occurred as I read this story about the CW network's new "cwickies" ad format. It describes various innovations at the CW -- innovations of the kind broadcast's Big Four have resisted. What the piece also implies, but doesn't say directly, is that CW can do things its much-larger rivals can't because it has less to lose; it draws fewer viewers, and has fewer advertisers. But less to lose also means more to gain.

UPDATE: Cult of Mac Blog HAS Moved

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:15:40 -0700

The Cult of Mac blog is moving to a new address. The blog can now be found at www.cultofmac.com. And we’re serious this time. We’re still part of the Wired family, just decamped to our own domain to make some mischief. We even have several posts from this week, if you’ve been wondering where we’ve been…

Here is the new RSS feed. We’ll see you over there.

After 10 Great Years, a Farewell to the Readers of Ad Age

rothenberg_randall@bah.com(Randall Rothenberg) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 21:00:00 -0700

And so it ends, not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with a column. How appropriate. In 10 years, I have written some 300 columns for Advertising Age. Coming on top of the 250-odd columns I'd written earlier for The New York Times, this decade's worth of journalistic gymnastics should have hinted to all readers what ultimately happened: I fell in love -- with advertising, marketing and media and the people who are transforming them.

Mobile-Home Market in Flux, but Warren Buffett Finds a Road to Profit

bjohnson@crain.com(Bradley Johnson) — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 21:00:00 -0800

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- Warren Buffett this decade became the nation's No. 1 manufacturer of mobile homes -- or, as the industry prefers to call them, manufactured housing -- by acquiring Clayton Homes and bankrupt Oakwood Homes in 2003 and 2004, the two worst years for mobile-home shipments in decades. Good timing by a famed contrarian? We'll see.

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Fox Unveils Tots Game Show, Two Dramas, New Time Slots for Mid-season

Fox, the first network to announce its mid-season programming plans, said it will unveil four new series, along with new time slots for Glee and The Cleveland Show. Additionally, it announced it will...