pLot Multi - News Media Blog

Anyone who knows me knows I love football. Anyone who knows me knows that any oportunity to use my ability to read metrics and apply it to football I will. Here is a cool observations.

In coming months I have to do some conceptual ideation targeting the ladies so I found a way to see if their internet habits are or can be made to be predictable. Women online are hard to read sometimes because their habits are so various. Younger women like fashion, gossip and connecting to each other, older women like shopping, travel and spying on their kids. There is no female pied piper like it daytime TV online.

The QB of one of my football teams is completely new to the seen. Only QBing USC for 16 games before being drafted and going to the Jets. If you check Mark Sanchez Google Trends you'll get about the same interest around the same times. Whenever Mark is featured in the media (like the day he was drafted ) you will see a spike.

So how do extrapolate female interest. You add what they care about. So my Google Trends search was changed a bit. I wanted to see how many people wanted to know who the QB with looks like Adrian Grenier from HBO's Entourage and the SoCal charm. My trend search was "Mark Sanchez Girlfriend" and some really obvious spikes registered.

The first interest spike was the day he drafted.

The second was during the period he went 3-0 and was being hailed as the next Joe Namath.

Lastly was yesterday. The day my teams QB became a man and helped the Jets win a playoff game.

Millions of women had to sit through football games with their husbands and see Mark and even though I know there are men with man crushes who would be interested. I can here my Jersey Shore buddies saying "I wonder who this guy is banging?" No doubt about it but the analytics do reveal when interest happens and how profound the public interest is.

Traditional media shows you what they want to be popular. It's a marketing fact if you show something enough and repeat a message enough people will believe it's true. The web does not work that way. If it aint hot, it aint hot on the web. So Google trends is the key to finding out when people care and you can match it to why.

Win a Super Bowl Mark and you will be the most searched bachelor on the web. GO JETS!!

Not in how it works or the content that is successful but video is the medium of the day and of the future. What you do with video will ultimately decide where it goes but the web will feel like what we call TV going forward.

pLot.Motion is a practice we are developing to be able to create content for the emerging formats. We can make a viral video or we can make a motion picture. Our skillset has been honed to do exactly what is being discussed in this article. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/business/media/24adcol.html

C'mon Rupert! Better yet, C'mon Mark Cuban

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/murdochs-google-gambit/

Mark you should know better than sign on to this type of thinking but I guess the challenges with HD Network would lead down this road. You don't fight progressive technology with regressive thinking. Billionaires who want to use their power to turn back time instead of using their gimungous resources to innovate and find revenue streams where they don't exist. No that would be too much for the richest men in the world to maybe hire the smartest men in new media to guide them and use technology to create revenues.

It's insulting to me that the guys who have the most advantages not want to compete with the guy writing a blog out of his basement. Rupert Murdoch is a hero for expanding his empire and being a shrewd mogul. But now that I am older I am leaning towards guys like Steve Jobs. Guys who innovate when the rest of the suckers are whining and want to take their ball and go home. What they are essentially proposing here is the worse form of player-hating I have ever seen.

Guys like Rupert are bullies who don't know how to compete on a level playing field with the unwashed masses making all these blogs and social networks. It's like how the people who complain the most about affirmative action are the guys who were C students in high school and still got into Harvard as a legacy.

You can compete Rupert. I believe in you. Throw money at guys like me and I would feel privileged to lead your linear media mindset into a new media modus operandi.

Once you have created a "thing" that then becomes a recognized verb it's hard to create the next thing that becomes a verb as well. Google is a "thing" that became a verb and of course we have all said even when using other search engines ) "why don't you just "google" it."

Now the guys who successfully created a new verb have something new coming around and I'm sure most of my fellow geek-o-philes have heard about it. I't's called "Wave" a name I hate so much that I hope it's only a working title. Although I'm not too psyched about the moniker I am about what this thing can do.

Google is really spearheading software via IP. They believe that one day your computer may carry no filles at all and that you will access all of your files in the air. That applications like Gmail which is a mail client that you access over the internet versus locally on your desktop like "Outlook" or for Mac's "Mail."

From what I know this "Wave" thing is like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Talk, all rolled seamlessly into one. The idea is to take all of your core tools you use to communicate and made them work together. I have watch demo after demo and although I am excited... I am concerned.

As a developer I know how when really smart guys start talking to each other, we come up with ideas that only 5% of the population understands. It's like when our really smart president starts talking about complicated subjects that make most of the population eyes glaze over, people start thinking he is going to create death panels. I completely get what they are trying to do but will people get it? I mean "get it" enough to change how they email, instant message and find destinations in time to make a part of their life.

Lets go back in time. [I love telling this story] There was Yahoo which everyone used (even though I liked Alta Vista.) and out of no where along came this one page search engine which was this big bright white page, wacky rainbow logo and a search field plus button. I saw this thing called "Google" for the first time and I in all my brilliance said "Why," Yahoo has the best commercials. This will never work.

Well... as i have be proven time and time again... simplicity works. While we at pLot were creating all these crazy applications that did all of these cool features someone created Twitter. It's so easy even my 72 year old granny can use it. That was what was so smart about Twitter. Simplicity. Can Google do it again with Wave... maybe... but it sounds complicated to me.

Sometimes being able to build anything like we can at pLot blurs your vision. We learned that here the hard way. Google really can build anything. And I mean anything. They steal all the best developers but the problem is sometimes when delegating from a mighty tower the people begin to look like ants that you can sheppard into any new ant farm. But the people aren't ants and some people have a harder time adapting to living conditions on ant farms than most.

Will Wave be the next big thing? Well from the hour and twenty minute video I watched it sounds like it. But will Britney Spears and fans and America's next top model watchers use it ???? They won't if it's harder to understand than why Tuna is called Chicken of the Sea.

This is a weird time in media because everyone can make media. Everyone can buy a Macbook and use Imovie to make guerilla films. I LOVE MEDIA FREE-FOR-ALLS because it's democracy at it's highest level. So what's my rant about. I am one of the proponents of all of this new media chaos so why am I not happy.

I worked for the Obama campaign on what I think is insignificant levels but my exposure to many of the different arms of that campaign made me privy of one thing. He is a regular human being like the rest of us. He has been able to leverage opportunities to get to this point but he is real flesh and blood and not the anti-christ. He may be a member of elite societies we may never know of but take it from a guy whose dad is a member of these elite societies... they aint all that.

The political landscape is at a all time maturity low. I can't have discussion with people who are far too liberal or too conservative. Whenever you are a zealot for anything you put your self in the position to not ever think intellectually about any topic. I watched several Obama conspiracy videos and they are all trash. I can make David Letterman look like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by splicing a few video clips together.

Does the rich control the world. YES!!!! Why .... THEY HAVE MONEY!!!! Lots of it. Are politicians beholden to corporate interest.... uh... DUUHHHH. But Obama is not an anti-christ come to deliver black people to the gates of hell or come to get revenge for slaves all the slaves who died in America's holocaust.

I love the internet. I love it flexibility and it's honesty. But it disappoints me. That's natural. People are disappointing. But please fight the urge to jump on the next conspiracy theory. I love KRS-ONE because he was the rapper that let me know it was cool to be smart. That I didn't have to hide my intelligence and that there was power in reading books. But KRS your comments on Obama is ridiculous. Obama is the launching pad for all great things.

Crabs in the barrel even in this digital age. We have a powerful tool in new media at our disposal. Lets be mature adults on how we use it,

(CNN) -- Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch expects News Corporation-owned newspaper Web sites to start charging users for access within a year in a move which analysts say could radically shake-up the culture of freely available content. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/05/07/murdoch.web.content/index.html

I'm all for the death of "old media" but Mr. Rupert Murdoch, you are making this to easy for digital publishers. Traditional media I love. The difference between "Old Media" and "Traditional Media" is when Traditional Media titans like the Wall Street Journal try to force their linear media business model down their subscribers throats it's refusing to evolve. It's a business model they have rejected online over and over and over again. The numbers are clear. If you can't get people to subscribe to porn anymore, you will not be able to get them to subscribe to news.

In 1995 I published my first on and offline publication called The Y'all Street Journal. The idea was to create a magazine that worked cooperatively with an online community and I called it "Hip Hop's first internet interactive magazine." http://www.ubiquitymags.com/magazines/view_publ_details.php?temp_publ_id=3598&l_back=%2Fsearch%2Fsearch_results.php%3Ffs_DATE_ADDED%3D4%26&

Why it's still online somewhere I am not sure but it's cool to see it's online footprint somewhere. Back then at the tender age of 23 I knew media was changing. I put this out on the news stands and sold out 25,000 copies. Here was the problem. I spent my life savings to print the magazine on my own with no ads. I built the online social network which was just message boards around stories and quickly was getting 500 hundred uniques a day which back in 1997 was great! The magazine was too successful, too fast and when I couldn't get investors then to wrap their head's around a social network that would be ad supported. I tried to explain then that you can't charge for online media because there is too much of it. I couldn't get funding which caused me not to be able to print the next issue. After living online for a while I learned a lesson and time has made it clear that the punk kid back then was right.

That brings us to today. Rupert and Newscorp have already ruined MySpace and now they plan to ruin the Wall Street Journal by expanding how much of WSJ.com's free content will now be subscription only. The NY Times has shown you can still monetize this content if you modernize traditional media. The Washington Post and WSJ.com has not been that successful.

What's worse is the lie that these publication's are telling. They are saying it's because people are getting the news for free that they can't survive. BIG LIE. Do you think that the 50 cents you pay for a newspaper pays for the paper, printing, and distribution of that newspaper. NO! Advertising pays for it all. In online media you can make rich media ads versus static display ads. If you even tried to innovate you can probably reach a larger audience and sell more ads. The assertion that the cover cost of a publication is what makes a traditional publication money is an outright lie. A subscriber pays even less when you subscribe to that newspaper or magazine so the assertion that online media can't be monetized is ridiculous when you think that you can serve more ads and give advertisers more value. The cover cost of a publications pays for getting that publication there. For the trucks, the drivers. The news stand gets a cut too. Media has always been free in a sense and the purchasing of said media was only a measuring stick for advertisers to understand how many people want your content. There is a better and more accurate way now and online publications can tell you exactly how many people want to read your content.

It was multinational media companies like Rupert's that drove the value of "eyeballs" online versus the "eyeballs" on TV or Print down and now they are are reaping what they sowed. The "Old Media" problem was created by Old Media and now that they are going to try to charge for it all they are doing is making room for guys like me. Good luck Rupert. What you are doing is making room for 3 guys in a garage who are really smart about finance, economics and all things "Wall Street" to create an online publication and crush WSJ.com .

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/technology/30cable.html?ref=technology

Technology and progress is always thwarted by old Technologies who don't want to become obsolete. TV is old media and fighting against fracturing, convergence and common sense isn't the way you thwart extinction. While pLot is developing for a DVR future, they want to sue against progress. It's not healthy but one day entertainment companies will look at their decaying fossils and realize maybe I should have hired smart technologist versus hire a slew of lawyers to rewind the clock and keep us in the 20th century. TV, Radio, Record companies and Media buyers, you are invited to join us in the 21st century. Either as a member of our society or bones stacked up for display in a museum.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/magazine/21FOB-medium-t.html?ref=technology

I don't believe in entering awards you must buy your way in. I mean that in itself proves how ridiculous the concept is. http://adage.com/article?article_id=137301 In this article in Ad Age thy make a few good points as to why the medium is nonsensical. I would like to add this. Television commercials is a dead and tired medium and I blame Nielsen. The rating system sucks and is not a real metric to test effectiveness. The technology exist to allow for real numbers if people stop and watch your commercial. We know what is DVR'd so we should know what s watched. That should be the prerequisite on judging an ad. Did people watch it. We marketing people love whats in our world and never really look at what the people we are marketing to love. That's what is important isn't it? One day pLot will enter these rigged contest that is just about how good your spot is as it is about how good your PR machine is and how many times you enter. We are in no rush because while everyone else enters contest we'll be spending our money on R&D. We will find out how to market in this new marketplace. That's our job. I'll leave the fishing for awards to the big do nothing agencies.

I'm sick of the puppets and gulp I'm sick of (although he is an institution) Spike Lee . Michael Jordan was marketed brilliantly for the 80's and 90's and now i the new Millennium the greatest brand in terms of marketing technique has not figured out how to connect their superstar to young people with the same impact. Puppets Nike? Again? Not cool. In this article http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/entertainment/does-big-apple-hold-key-lebrons-b-quest/ I talk about why I think Lebron would benefit from being here in NY. He won't make more money. He is Lebron James he can make the same money playing for a basketball team in Tel Aviv. Lebron's problem is innovation. He needs his marketing crew to be in the big pond with the big ideas that provide him with innovation. You can't market Kobe with the same "do you know, do you know, do you know" commercial that gave you Mike 23. This 23 needs ideas and NYC is where he will find it.

I'm a social media expert, not a Twitter expert but I am having fun watching all the excitement it is causing. As shown in my recent interviews in the New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/2009/06/06/2009-06-06_twitter.html , Kansas City Star http://www.kansascity.com/sports/story/1237625-p2.html .

All the hype, awe and fear is not new and will continue when the next show happens. "Social Media applications are like television shows not Television networks" is one of our mantra's here at pLot. The hype around them causes the best of us to overvalue and misconstrue their nature. When Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace he thought he was buying a media property like the NY Post or Fox Network. WRONG! MySpace is a show. Television shows like American Idol though very valuable are not worth over $500 million. I remember all the media hype around MySpace and it reminds me of all of this Twitter talk which is like American Idol hype or any other hot entertainment property when it is first adopted by the mass society. When the hype dies down and the ratings go south television shows jump the shark and so do social networks which MySpace has done this whole last year in efforts to become more Facebook like. Writers and producers get fired as has and is happening in the MySpace case. The titans of media don't even get what all the this new media stuff means because the brains that advise them have no idea. There is no study for whats happening in new media because it's too new, too organic and it's changing too fast. There is no book to study at Wharton business school or class at Syracuse Communications school. We at pLot know this stuff because we build social media applications from the software up. We know what happens when you launch, host and secure a social network and we know it's volatile nature. Like the Daily News and Kansas City Star, maybe the barons of Media need to call a guy like me that actually builds these applications in the real virtual world (now there's an oxymoron for you) to help evaluate the value and staying power of social networks and before the next guy buys Twitter for a billion dollars.

pLot used to be just the production monkeys who other developers knew built the coolest sites for the coolest people. We still do. The change is our focus on making sense of this volatile organic nature of new media and how to harness it for the propulsion of our clients products, services and messages. We use our Bureau API to create applications that users have an affinity for and then integrate our clients, products, services and messages inot a harmonious blend. This is what we think we were able to do with the Alife Rivington Club http://rivingtonclub.com which is a lifestyle brand (hence the "A Life Like No Other" moniker) by not just giving them a site to just hock limited quantity sneakers but put the life back into lifestyle brand. We are really proud about what we have done. Custom built blogs integrated with products. The holy grail of social networks is actually making them transactional which is a fancy word for making them make money. At pLot we are revolutionizing the web not by infusing it with greed but by creating value in new media and a tangible future in interactive marketing.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107349 Are we hired guns.... ??? ... Of course we are. pLot is the Clint Eastwood (the Clint in the Spaghetti Westerns not Dirty Harry) of interactive marketing hired guns. Our job is to influence the DIGITAL STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. I know you are tired of hearing me say that but that is our job. To use technology and new media to get our clients brand messages online. It's what we do and we are proud of it. Read On Folks.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=478455&Ntt=Yves Advertisers aren't going to make the jump right away however if you build it they may come and if they come so will the advertisers.

http://www.blackenterprise.com/entrepreneurs/2009/05/29/protecting-your-brand-in-social-networking

By far, VERY FAR... The web company I look up to is Google. they do everything right. Years ago before they launched I was at a geek convention and I heard a guy with a Russian accent explaining to another developer why his search engine was going to be a great option to Yahoo. He was humble and professorial and never made claims that it was the "Yahoo Killer " but I thought he was nuts. Years later we all know what happened to that guy Sergey Brinn and his company Google right? That shows how smart I was in the late 90's. Well know a new competitor has entered the fray read about it here ( http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-08/the-google-killer/ check it our here http://www.wolframalpha.com/ ) and theoretically it's scary. It has all good sound functionality and the features make me want to use it. "Google Killer?" I'm not sure but I will never a doubt anything ever again.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/22/AR2009042203659.html Want a sign that a social network is over with, watch the CEO Abandon ship. It's not Chris DeWolfs fault whats going on but media properties can only capture people imagination for o so long. Not all of us can be 60 minutes or Oprah. Everyone eventually jumps the shark and every show eventually goes of air. Media Properties have a life expectancy... the business model should be built around that understanding.

The holy grail of social media is making social media make money. Crains has featured one of our clients and work in this article http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20090417/SMALLBIZ/904179995 Great to be noticed for doing great work.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=136018 Incredible. Someone is starting a company that teaches other companies to do the very thing that's has proven not to work ever on the internet. Wait I will admit that I have considered to buy ESPN "IN" section subscriptions and yes I will admit that they execute that section of their publication well. I have still decided not to buy into ESPN's "IN" because there are too many blogs that can satisfy my obsession with the NFL draft. This is more bloated curriculum vitae selling hope to a disillusioned flock from church of traditional media. This article make me eager to go out and start a consulting firm on how to make the telegraph profitable again.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1370868150/bctid19261568001

I like to think of Google Ad Sense as the greatest pimp that e very lived. They put people on the digital hoe stroll take more than half the ad revenue and tell publishers you love us no matter how we are pimping you. I don't fault Google for it because as they say in the urban lexicon "game recognize game playa"

The worst thing about the advertising playing field is value is defined by the buyer and seller. Us digital guys have to be more adamant to get one for one with print. Why is our for sure, measurable eyeball not as valuable as the traditional, immeasurable eyeball. The honest answer is two things:

1. There is much more content on the web. More inventory means less demand.
2. The media masters of the world who hold the purse strings don't get the real opportunity

The value in an digital publisher will be defined by the publishers. We set our pricing and we have every opportunity to say what it's worth. We clearly can demonstrate we can be more effective than print or TV however we as digital publishers have to become more clever than banner and display ads. It's called "Interactive Marketing" for a reason. It's up to us to decide that we won't be whored out by the advertising pimps of the digital universe.

Investors typically ruin things for web creators. Greed usually ruins most good things. It is necessary because everyone wants to reap the capitalistic rewards of a great idea. We all want to make the most money possible when the opportunity presents itself. The problem is that functionality doesn't always agree with "for profit" endeavors. In this article where I discuss with the writer the pitfalls of such mergers and acquisitions http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=103460 we are all speculating what Twitter will do. If Google is the buyer I at least believe the site will not lose what makes it so great... simplicity. Take that away and you have nothing. "Nothing" is not good for any investor.

So Ad Age has figured out what I have been saying to my clients for six months http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135599. What sounds like a good idea because of the love most of us marketers have for our IPhones caused a bit of this. I love my IPhone and I have my apps that I find extremely useful and have integrated into my daily life but I can't exactly place my clients hungry for eyeball to use this as a method or medium to influence the digital stream of consciousness. One of the things we pride ourselves of is understanding the opportunities presented my new media formats. This is a cool opportunity, aspirational but not one that's going to bring much recall.

I was quoted in the recent Forbes.com article "Shaking Up Advrtising" http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/16/dockers-mobile-advertising-leadership-cmo-network-mobile-marketing.html in which it sounds like I am saying Iphone marketing is not worth it. Well it's definitely not. 17 million IPhone users is nothing to sneeze at but is it worth spending some ad dollars to create an application or worse run ads on a network of applications.

I never suggest to clients to do anything that requires downloading and installing. I stay away from any initiative that includes having to first find, then download and then install onto any device. Then to count on ads to take effect from there is highly exclusive audience which no marketer wants.

What we choose to do with almost all of our sites is build Iphone browser apps. A user is much more likely to visit a website from the Iphone versus any other phone so we make Iphone Safari browser based apps. It's more likely a user will visit a site made for Iphone than taking all the steps it takes to get an Iphone Application.

Ok so the thinking was Email would never overtake Social Networking. I made a dollar bet a long time ago that online users would get their email once a day and be on their social networks all day. That was my thinking back in 1897 but it didn't happen officially until today.

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i3a9dedf59710f3d5a7456e492e6d751f
Active reach in what Nielsen defines as "member communities" now exceeds e-mail participation by 67 percent to 65 percent. What's more, the reach of social networking and blogging venues is growing at twice the rate of other large drivers of Internet use such as portals, e-mail and search.

WOW! That is major news for us builders of social networks.

It's conference and convention season and every year I have to look at so-called marketing experts espouse utter nonsense and spin yarns using industry buzz words about digital marketing. Just wrong headed nonsense that proves they have never built anything or watched a community grow online and why. I mean there are good voices but most are split in two groups

Group 1:
I'm an MBA that has been an effective member of a marketing team. I got assigned digital in the 90's because no one else wanted it. I have hired vendors and had people create and buy lots of banners and micro-sites that go with my my 3- and 60 second commercial strategy. I can't tell the difference between a flash and AJAX but I have my numbers I have to hit and I have been doing it for so long I am branded an expert.

Group 2:
Graphic Designer who was a "creative" at an agency who got a long well with the new geeks who were brought in. I don't do flash or write any code but I dress cool and people think I am creative because I have a mohawk and ride a skate board. So I am edgy even though I can't really read metrics or analytics. I win lots of awards for my sites that no more than a couple of thousand people see because marketing people think I am cool.

This is why it takes so long to figure out what works in our industry. We have to sift though the dregs of our industry just trying to keep a job in a media revolution that has made a lot of marketing jobs obsolete. I know a lot of good people who are great interactive marketers and "get" where this industry is going but we are overrun with snake oil salesmen who really don't know this business and are just interesting outfits with grandiose titles.

One day I aspire to be one of those people because doing stuff is tiring and I just want to be the guy who does nothing but runs his mouth about nothing productive and gets a big check for being me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/nyregion/02open.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Drupal is to coders what Steroids is t Baseball players. An easy modular tool for companies and programmers who can't do what pLot odes with naural talent and need a short cut. I won't argue if Bureau.API is better or not. That's 0 - pinion and worth about ... 0. What I will say is look how many losers there are that can't code their own modular system software to develop CMS's and Social Networks etc. Maybe the concentration should not be on how many losers there are out there who can't do what we do to how special my team led by Man Hoang the Bureau Chief Engineer and Henrik Rypkema our Lead Developer that we can do it from scratch what all these guys lined up to do by cheating using Drupal. "Built Better By Bureau" is a statement I will be saying for the rest of my professional career. These sheep going to this class at Polytechnic U just proves it.

Those European socialist at the EU are at it again http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/technology/companies/25google.html?_r=1&ref=technology actually interpreting anti-trust laws in a way that really regulates business.

As an Information Architect I know the importance of building web application that first and foremost works for Internet Explorer browsers. As a developer I know how much developing for IE sucks much. It is the worst browser of the 5 major browsers that's out there. This is not an opinion, it's a known fact amongst all developers that IE just plain old sucks hands down. The problem is IE doesn't have to be good. It automatically ships with your PC and you need not search, download or install it. Is it unfair to automatically ship your browser with your operating system? I'm not so sure. Billy Gates built the monster called Microsoft the old fashion way. He created the unfair advantage through good business choices but there is no question it violates anti-trust laws in the traditional sense. You cannot compete with IE no matter how much it sucks but competing with Windows is much harder. The same interpretation of the laws would have to apply here as well. As an entrepreneur you want to believe if you do all the things right that creates the playing field you should decide if it's level. Why do 67.55% of all web users use the worst browser in the marketplace??? because it's icon is conveniently sitting on your desktop. My father is like most lay web users. He thinks the Internet Explorer logo quite literally means the internet and if you told him Microsoft built the internet despite me being his son I think some one can convince him and most users like him that Bill Gates did indeed benevolently gift us all the internet.

The truth is IE does suck and Anti-trust laws exist so that in a free market people can choose freely the best product in the marketplace. If we really intend to promote free competition in the market place by outlawing monopolies ship all the browsers that want to be shipped with Windows and Mac OS' . I think that would spur Microsoft not to let IE suck as much as it does and create an arms race between technology companies about who will be the dominant window navigating the cyber world. Competition drives innovation. Without competition you have... well.... IE.

It is a marketing reality that you have to refresh your branding to reflect the art and aesthetic of the time. I also have to include the disclaimer that one of my favorite clients is "Pepsi" and they have the equivalent of NASA rocket scientist working over there in the marketing army over in Purchase.

Unlike most critics of the new logo I don't think that Pepsi thinks this new logo is the magic bullet to their slumping sales. I do think that it can be characterized as a flop because of all the pomp and circumstance that came with it's launch and how they are pretty obviously connecting their brand to the "Change" revolution that was so welled rolled out by the Obama campaign.

Pepsi's problem has to do more with "Pepsi" the product itself and how they establish themselves as what they are and always have been... the "Anti-Coke." Coke is what you dad drinks with his Rum. Coke is what your middle age mom called all soda that was darker than grape soda. Pepsi on the other hand is the "choice of the new generation." Pepsi is Michael Jackson and Britney Spears on Mtv and the Mtv sponsor to all things young and cool. Pepsi is blue, Coke is red. Pepsi is supposed to be everything that Coke is not.

Problem is Coke and Pepsi have become the same thing to everyone because Pepsi's lack of command over where the younger generation is and how to communicate with them using New Media has lost direction. Previously you just had to use spots on Friends, Mtv Awards, Dawson's Creek etc etc etc and there you go... Choice of whatever generation that is new.

Now, kids don't watch TV on TV. Everything is on demand. And who and what is "cool" is a personalized, customized, digitized amalgamation of media that makes an account execution not as easy as doing a mini music video for a commercial with the newest pop strumpet available the magic bullet and center piece of an overall campaign.

The other issue deals with the fact that the "celebrities" that the youth follow in the paparazzi are all pictured with water bottles in their over priced bags because carbonated drinks are the enemy. Pepsi is characterized as poison by most health experts and Pepsi has done nothing to stem the tide of what is probably more hysteria than truth. Nutritionist say we don't like Carbonated drinks because they have no nutritional value. You know what else has no nutritional value.... WATER.

In being choice of a new generation Pepsi who has all the resources to do it has not seized control of this conversation or used all of the vehicles that are available to do so and counter attack what is a false theory. To reconnect to the "New Generation" making choices. Pepsi is using old tactics and hype that worked really well in the 80's and 90's but haven't shifted with the paradigm that is causing their current dilemma.

No logo or high minded typography is going to increase sales. The logo does it suck.... was it smart... well anything I could say would be 0pinion. Does it solve Pepsi's problem or even act as a catalyst for change? Resoundingly I would have to say no. It's doesn't semm original (see Obama campaign logo), it may cause confusion and kind of reminds me of how knock off logos are reproduced in China that looks just enough like the real thing to pass. It probably is way too high minded and artsy for the masses and it equals out to be one big so what?

I would list what exactly they should do but I get paid for that and watching the pLot phone for that call from the Commissioner at Pepsi.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134607

Interesting article in Ad Age which one part rings true, sometimes selling disgusting is a challenge that springs forth interesting results. Working with Adams Pharma (the original creators of Mucinex) internal marketing team who are now a part of the global Multinational Reckitt Benckiser was really fun because they looked at Mr. Mucus and the cast of Mucus based characters as the antagonistic protagonist in the campaign. It was easy for us because there was a story line already and what we had to do was to drive home the message that this product gets rid of the bad guy who also is the star of the show. Mr. Mucus clearly identified who we wanted out of our chest.

We had to make the site drive home the brand messages while make it unobtrusive for the audience demo that I call the "researcher." The person who is researching the product for it's uses and active ingredients but we still took every opportunity to drive home the pint this product will make the nasty booger man living in our chest go away.

Not high minded art but effective and fun I must admit.

If I had a dollar for every client that says why can't we just use "Ning" and we will be MySpace in a year! I always have the same answer... "SURE!" Ning is MySpace essentially. The functionality is pretty much the same but don't think you are creating a new media property using Ning. If you use Ning you might as well just use MySpace or FaceBook. The end result is really no different.

What we are able to do with pLot's Bureau.API is completely different from "Ning" or even "Kick Apps" because what we know about Social Media is that the unique functionality or a set of tools you give the user is the star of the social media show. There already are places where I can be friends with my friends inside of a network. So it's a tired old process that has been done and done again and done some more. What Bureau can do is create unique communities around unique collaborative functionality and tools. That's what makes people join new communities. If Face Book was exactly MySpace you wouldn't see the droves of people who are abandoning MySpace for FaceBook. The unique user experience is the value proposition for the user not the new cool and funky name. Without unique functionality users will ask "well, why am I here?"

Ning cannot create a media property. Social Media in a box is cool for a fraternity, your local union or a high school reunion. Bureau is for the serious social media application and out the box thinking that cannot be constrained within a template.

The newest question I get asked by clients is why can't my "usership" grow on my Ning based Social Network... well because it's a template and your users are quite frankly ... bored.

It's incredible to me that Mickey Mantle drank so much that his liver, his wife and sons where disfigured forever but he is considered the model what being a Yankee is. A-Rod trying to live up to a $250 million contract took steroids to try to be better when at least 1/5th of his competition was doing worse. Listen if any of my employees took a drug, in secret, to be able to live up to what I was paying them... TRUST ME! I wouldn't be trying to persecute them.

Let's look at the facts here America! The only people we should be protecting is the kids. We all agree children shouldn't be influenced by steroid users but it isn't Alex Rodriguez who let kids know ... ALL DAY... EVERY DAY... INCORRECTLY... That the reason why Alex is great is steroids. That isn't the reason why Alex is great and no steroid can turn Joe Average to Alex Rodriguez or Barry Bonds or any one who has been busted. The people who make this assertion is the media and the reporters who knew they would make a name for busting some one. It's the people who are attacking A-Rod making it seem all that he has accomplished was because of steroids. No kid would believe this or think this way without the news media constant accusations. It used to be for the sake of the kids that the media would hide the reality and the humaness of athletes. They let kids have their heroes and let athletes be mythical. Now there are so many (for lack better word) HATERS out there our culture has turned into one that has a blood thirsty need to destroy people. A-Rod you must remember was (n steroids or no) better than Jeter when he came here to NY. He hit better and had less errors and just won a gold glove at Short Stop. He tucked his ego away and moved to third base for Jeter. He won two MVP's post drug testing. He is easily the best player in baseball and we persecute him because of every stupid thing. NY ... good luck on getting Lebron you ingrates. I'm sure he has his Yankee cap on as he watches this nonsense.

Everyone needs someone to tell you "You're Bugging!" I have a few people I go to make sure I make great decisions for the staff of 22 that depend on me to make the right moves. I am a ultra creative guy who happens to have been writing code since my uncle came back from silicon valley in the mid 80's with a suped up Atari computer. So I am built to be an interactive marketing creative director if I like it or not. What I tend to suck at is being a business man and that is job numero uno at pLot. The great thing is I have my best friend who was built to play the role general hard line, bottom line, walk the line "dick-head" here at pLot because I am big expensive idea guy and he is quick to let me know calmly, simply and behind closed doors"no... you're bugging" The very best thing about our relationship is we are best friends for 20 years but that's just a very Yvesian thing. It has paid off. We argue and we face-off at times but never more than a few sentence. To put things in further perspective... for the two minutes that I had aspirations to be a rapper he was my dee jay. Literally Eric B to my Rakim and now we are gorwn-ups with grown-up issues navigating a big complicated business while reminiscing on old school memories and embarrassing me with stories like the two months I thought I could sing and wanted to start an R&B career. I was 16 folks don't fault me. Working with friends can be a horrible idea because firing friends and family is the hardest thing to do and they will take advantage. The upside is if you have the right friends and family they will separate the two relationships and if they are your real friends work harder for you than any other job because they are your friends... YOU'RE REAL FRIENDS. I get to be creative and kind of goofy and Eugene is the pragmatic jerk who keeps the business side rocking. He's still the Dee Jay and I am the rapper and we are still best friends.

Humans make the mistake of believing authority figures are automatically "good people" who mean well. You want to believe that police are automatically infallible boy scouts protecting and serving. Once they don the uniform they no longer susceptible to human flaws of imperfections and weaknesses that cloud human decision making. This logic seems to be the feeling that the Supreme Court applies in their recent decision where they have decided that the long held "fruit from a poisonous tree" rules that kept cops from breaking the rules are starting to be questioned http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/washington/31scotus.html?_r=1&hp . My father is a Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice, my brother is a NYPD Sergeant. I don't hate cops by any stretch of the imagination. But growing up with one for 32 years makes it evident and clear that law enforcement get tired, they do make mistakes, they are biased and they don't always follow the rules. The only thing protecting our so called "free" society are the constitutional protections that our country has in place that are supposed protect us from the tyranny of the government. The word "Tyranny" is the founders words not ours.

The founders lived in a time and had a perception that we don't. They lived under monarchies and where classism turned Europe into a place where they would rather go live in underdeveloped colonies seeking "freedom." The world that Justice Alito and head Justice Roberts grew up in, freedom was a given. It was something that made them unsafe and their conservative beliefs made them think that less freedom would make them more safe. They of course would never use those words but come on they preside over a federal legal system that is right over 90% of the time. 90% of all their cases end in a conviction. http://abajournal.com/magazine/judge_v_judge/ Some say it's 95% http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_464095.html Regardless it's over 90% and the public really believe that it's the Government that is going up against high profile attorneys all the time. Television has mislead people like Roberts and Alito to believe that when you are on trial you are the one that the Government burden to prove a case is too great a challenge and he seeks to make it easier.

Anything decided and governed by humans should not be right over 90% of the time. Most people can't walk down the street without falling 90% of the time how can we feel good about a system that puts people in prison and has a margin of error that is 90% correct and these Justices want to make their jobs easier with less checks on how they compile evidence. This is an incredible decision and there should be an uproar by our population. Which I don't expect because our population doesn't think there is a problem when per capita we imprison more people that China does now or when communist Russia in their heyday to a tune of 2.3 million. Land of the free, home of the brave huh.

Police make mistakes. They are going to. They are going to act on a hunch and be wrong. Not because they are bad people, because they are human just like me and you. The only thing we have at our disposal to protect us from the "tyranny of the government" (once again that is the framers words not mine) is our laws and constitution. If we start to let our fellow mistake prone, very human law enforcement people as great as most of them are the closer we are to creating a system that is in direct conflict with what the founders created our country to be against at it's principle. Our legal system was built to ensure that innocent people would not lose their freedom. Some where down the road of our history it was changed to ensure that criminal don't get freedom and damn the innocent. This is the byproduct of George Bushes America. Cynical, distrustful and acting on all the things that the reptilian part of our brain guiding our choices.

We are supposed to have evolved past these base knee jerk reactions. We are supposed to be a country of optimistic, free people. The torch for truth and justice not arbitrators of fear and cynicism. My brothers my best friend and even he knows his agency needs guidance although he would never admit it publicly (sorry Helm) the rules make cops follow the rules because they want good convictions. Without them we are our own worse nightmares.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134062

It aint over... but the future is not bright. It's built on Cold Fusion (mistake number 1), it's a disorganized mess of apps that don't allow third party development, the need to be everything to everyone and users... are... well uh... fickle. Facebook will have it's day as well which is the reason why pLot.Prop's second mantra is "Social Networks are more like TV shows, than TV stations." Most investors look at site's like FaceBook as if it's going to be around forever like NBC. The problem with that thinking is a social networks functionality has a lifespan of an audience's interest in hearing Fonzi say "heeeeeeeeyyyyyy" or Martin Lawrence saying "You Go Girl." It can only last so long as users are interested. The web will evolve and functionality will get better. Will Facebook be around a long long time? YES! but even the audience of Prison Break got tired of seeing the brothers break out of Prison and eventually we will be tired of being "poked" by people we all now want to forget. Quiet as kept MySpace is on life support but I give it 3 years to our old buddy Rupert Murdoch paws it off on some sucker. If he can.

There was a lot of circumstances that lead to pLot and more correctly Yves Darbouze (me in the 3rd person) not being more intimately involved in the Obama campaign. One being that I was working for Hillary at the time which was a company wide decision that I had no control over. I did consult and share with the Obama team the deck I called "Campaign 2.0" which I wrote back before the candidates announced their presidential bids. We gave one to Hillary's team, one to Barack's team and another to a candidate who decided not to run so we will leave him out of it

Obama's team called back. So did he. The thing that I noticed right away about them was their willingness to listen and gather all of the points of views from the best minds in the new media game. The only credibility I had was our interactive work on "Vote or Die" and I guess being a part of that youth voting movement gave us some credibility but the campaign had no reason to listen to me. I'm just some web geek creative director out of Brooklyn. They did listen and they also listened to hundreds of voices around the country and this form of consensus thinking led to his ultimate victory.

I am proud of what we have done to be a part of history. We even made up for not working with the campaign by creating this music video for the youth campaigns theme song. My daughters made special guest cameos as well. As I watched America swear in their first black president I realized how important it was for us to continue down this road of being involved in politics for the betterment of our country and truly being a part of the "change" culture we now are a part of.

I knew early on that when I grew up I wanted to be like Steve. Our names rhyme, he is a bit of an a$$hole and so am I, he's rich, I want to be. There is so many reasons why I sub- and - prescribe to the "Tao of Steve." All of the superficial points be damned I always appreciated the way he looked at business as art. My company wins a lot of awards ... biiiiiig deal. True but when I win I think maybe what we are doing is so much more than a winning web application. I created a piece of business art. The reason our fancy offices are decked in Apple computers is because it's a work of art on your desk and that fact is great business. We don't just follow the Apple mindset at pLot we swim in it. I give regular Steve-isms to the team and get a kick out of the aha moment when my proteges realize what ... ahem... Steve meant. “Good artists copy, Great Artists steal”: so said Leonardo Da Vinci, so stolen (allegedly) by Steve and adopted by me. There is genius in theft. We apply that everyday at pLot and we do because of Steve. As my hero who may not deserve to be my hero because he is as humanly flawed as.... well ... me makes guys like us the anti-hero good guy villain who wins the day but you hate his guts. Steve please get better. If you go from who will I steal Philosophy from. And I hold Apple shares that dropped when you announced your leave of absence. Get well Soon Senor Jobs. The Tech world needs you.

I have a goal this year. I want to find ... not remakes ... not lookalikes ... actual NIKE TERMINATORS pre 1994 will do but I want the pair that I saw in the original movie. I will hunt you down and I will find you!

http://adage.com/article?article_id=133539

The whole web retails sales industry went down 3% this Holiday. In this time of despair for many dealing with the recession it would be poor form to gloat if we did better than what the entire industry did this year but .........
HAH pLot.Commerce sales are up 25.79% wooo hoooo! We created this division of our company because we thought we can do better. Turns out I was right. Woo hoo WHY CAN'T I GET THAT SONG OUT OF MY HEAD!

Racism is not the same anymore. It's more covert. I like black people but don't want to live next door. I tell racist jokes but won't in front of my black friends. I like black music but don't want to party at a club where there is too many black people. Fox news is taking covert racism to another level. Please see the new "Black Republican" magazine here http://www.trustedpartner.com/docs/library/000143/TBR%20Fall%202008.pdf . This reinforces the problem as a whole. The term "Black Republican" is the problem in itself. My friends who are black republicans fall into two categories. One are my smart friends who just like to go against the status quo and hate taxes. The other are self hating blacks who want to prove they are so above race that they would turn their back on their own to prove they are cowboys or conservatives. Recently I had a conversation with one of my black republican friends about an old college argument where he was the only person who was against Affirmative Action in the class room. Even I can see fault with affirmative action and think maybe it's outdated. But I realized he had issues and I was dealing with lunatic because he hates affirmative action but has no problem with the legacy systems at schools like Harvard that allow C students to get in because their father, grand father and grand fathers went to that school. In affirmative action you make a middling to lower A student with lacking credentials get an opportunity at a Harvard. With a legacy a lazy, underachieving spoiled brat gets into the best school by birthright. If there is no legacy systems there is No George Bush, No John McCain, No Dan Quayle. The same arguments against affirmative action most egregious offenders are White Republicans. Democrats too... but the point is what I have always had issue with was even in the face of blatant hypocrisy Black Republican will rail against the institutions that will help their own children compete in a unfair marketplace to protect the institutions that serve their masters. It's a ridiculous concept that my fellow "magic negroes" can never cast any spell that will cure their low self esteem and self hate.

Ok this is not the greatest Xmas of all time if the numbers coming back from Wall Street servers as the guage of how happy they were. This has to be the most lackluster Xmas in the Darbouze family history. The girls who was on a Xmas austerity was on punishment and old not to expect any gifts this year. Not caused by recession but by plain old being on punishment. My spoiled kids never have shown one glint of excitement by Xmas. No matter how spetacular the gift it was just ho hum for the Darbouze girls. Well today for the first time they were excited and screamed for joy at their much less expensive toys when they received a special Xmas reprieve and was allowed to open presents they wer not expecting. The first time they ever treasured anything to do with Xmas. I think life is like that overall. We as humans don't treasure what we have until we lose it.

Well I am tryng to do less of that. This Xmas I am grateful to have the best web developers on the planet, the most creative accounts team ever assembled and the gift of love of my moms, my wife, and my daughters. Life is great no matter how recessiony this season was.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/media-agencies-research/e3id64fe7b10f6b9e96709816a2b88c17ac

pLot has always looked at media as the playing field leveler blah blah blah. We knew it, we talked about it and it's happening. We build media properties for the emerging media platforms because TV and onw way media is being trumped by better technology. "Millenials" don't view televion the way we did as the prime source of entertainment. TV is what you do when you have no internet access. My younger daughter and all around old soul shows no affinity to any electronic conveyance. She doesn't do TV or web unless she can't find anything else to do but my older daughter is a internet fiend, my niece Reanna prefers the web to her shows on televison and my 15 year old God son pay little to no attention to TV at all. It's PSP, to internet to PS3 and back again. TV is what you do when you have no internet connection. Hopefully the brands and the media world overal gets the joke that pLot tries to tell over and over again.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html

Network Nuetrality is at the top of what makes the web the web. The problem is that major communication companies don't know how to operate in a world that doesn't give them all the advantages. When you have stock holders the rules are usally win at all cost... Moral and Ethical. Google was the company that said "Do no evil" right in it's corporate constitution. I have applied that to the way we do business because at the end of the day I think it works. I think being fair and good to your customers and readers gives your business good business Kharma. I have applied it and can't give my readers the ability to sy if it works. I guess doing the right thing makes me feel good. Now my example of doing the right thing and still be successful looks like they are about to ruin the principles of the web and why it's so exciting to be in this business. Lets prepare for a massive kharma reaction to this ridiculous move. A great example of when too much is not enough.

The highest court in America has agreed to consider hearing a ridiculous constitutional claim and it has more to do with self hate and a man's lifelong need to show he is above his race by being the main antagonist of his race.

First you must understand that this case was presented to Justice David Souter who rejected a petition known as an application for a stay of writ of certiorari that asked the court to prevent the meeting of the Electoral College on Dec. 15, which will certify Obama as the 44th president of the United States and its first African-American president.

When right wing zealots couldn't find a place to go with this craziness they went to old reliable and most of the time silent and dependable negro Clarence Thomas who actually is giving these right wing crazies some credibility by personally asking his peers in Supreme Court to hear the argument that because Barack Obama's father was an English citizen that makes him a non natural resident of the U.S. and ineligible to be President of the United States.

The rule is simple. "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President..." Obama is born in Hawaii. This has been proven and the state has confirmed that he indeed was born in the state.

The ugly thing is that another African American who faced his own trial by fire for what can be considered a ridiculous disqualifier is the one who is championing a ridiculous cause. No other Justice would risk their reputations to touch this ridiculous case but old reliable Uncle Clarence Thomas is the one who would actually give this credibility. It's sad that this model of African American still exist. He didn't have to vote for Obama or suddenly become a liberal judge. I think it's great that there are black conservatives because it shows African Americans are not lemmings who mindlessly follow the Democrats however this is self hate at it's highest level

This action by Clarence Thomas was a statement. This was Clarence Thomas saying "good white people, I's gon help you keep these uppity negroes in line... you can count on good old Clarence. Good ole Clarence knows his place."

I'm disappointed in Clarence Thomas but what's new about That. He is usually a silent member of the Supreme Court who does not speak unless spoken to. I wish he applied his typical mode of operations here. That way I could have surmised that silently he is happy that a qualified African American and impressive symbol of what is possible was elected to the White House. Thanks Clarence for eliminating any hope that you have evolved.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/technology/internet/04online.html?_r=1&ref=technology

"It's a recession... e'rybody broke!" So sayeth the financial guru Young Jeezy. Even though he is right, here is the reason I created the pLot.Commerce division of my company as documented in the NY Times; ecommerce is a business that has no where to go but up. It may not be in it's infancy stages but it's not more than an toddler thats not to late to adopt and make yours. Our technology "Bureau.Transact" ranks right up there with the best transactional applications so we needed a stake in this world. You need only look at the situation socially. Black Friday is a nightmare and inconvenient and millenials are shopping online in droves because it's the laziest way to get Christmas shopping done. I predict that when it's all said and done online sales will rise yet again and brick and mortar will feel the effect of a recession.

When I take my creative director hat off and put on my CEO cap I have to guide the company capabilities into revenue producing initiatives. If you have the best dev team why not make the best ecomm sites because the marketplace will only grow and we want to grow with it.

When people ask what my company does it has always been hard for me to say "interactive agency." Even if a company did was create advertising that required "interaction" wouldn't you still be an advertising agency? I think so. When I think about what pLot is now, I have a hard time defining our self as just a developer of new media or internet publisher or some sort of consultancy. Our evolution into the self proclaimed category of "digital content producers" is because our core belief that the entertainment space will converge around the computer and use the internet as it's main pipeline of content. That "functionality" is is now a category of entertainment like drama, comedy, movie, tv radio show, column etc etc. For entertainment people will visit "X" site because it can help them do "Y" . Site "X" develops large amounts of traffic and users (which equates to audience) because of the sites ability to do "Y". That traffic and and amount of eyeballs and they turn that into tons of advertising revenue. If "functionality" is indeed a new form of entertainment then what do you call the producers of that form of entertainment. As the articles in the NY TIMES "Screens" this Sunday makes clear http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html the principles upon which I built this company on are becoming a reality. The current team of pLotters are the ones that will see to it that pandora's Little old toybox fully reveals all of her secrets.

My God Son, future web developer extraordinaire and overall digital gangsta who makes his godfather proud. Due to the uncanny resemblance to the Digital O.G. rumor is that I secretly produced this child when I was 17 and asked my Uncle Jacques to raise him in my stead. I'm so proud of this kid that I will let and spread that rumor myself. Young Tell you're a good looking kid.

As me and my best friend for the past 20 years and I were getting ready to vote. A tremendous figure in both of our lives Eugene's Grandmother who to me has been just "Grandma." She moved me. As we move into nominating the first African american president think about this everyone... Grandma's Grandmother was a slave. Thank god for change.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1370868150/bctid1868992248

This morning as I do most Sunday mornings in my real adult life I watched Meet the Press. My adult life did not begin when I turned 18 or 21 but when I became and started to act like an adult. The specifics of that time can be argued by many however what is clear from this morning on Meet the Press is that there is a page turning in America.

I always had trouble with Gen. Collin Powell in the sense here is a man who came up at a time where he had to be leaps and bounds better than his contemporaries but he always remained loyal to his commanders, his employers and the political party that he belongs to. He has always impressed me but his politics made me twitch at the thought he may be an "Uncle Tom" as we say. I'm not a democrat but it's hard when you don't hear much from a person to separate Powell who I admire and someone like Clarence Thomas or Alan Keyes.

The two men who raised me and are my role models are both staunch democrats and I, the independent until further notice have very liberal leanings, however we didn't support Jesse Jackson, we damn sure didn't support Rev. Sharpton and Alan Keyes does not exist in our minds. Guys like Clarence Thomas remind me of black men even I grew up with who wanted to be culturally like their white friends. To do so they would give up their personal dignity and display profound loyalty and commit horrendous acts of to prove it. Clarence Thomas is no anomaly in black culture but lets be real who is more harmful to African Americans as a people and their psyche, Clarence Thomas or Flavor Flav? Alan Keyes or Adam Jones of the Cowboys.

Clarence Thomas made me proud to be an African America this morning. He made his points clear and his comment on how a Muslim can be every bit of a loyal soldier and the attack on Obama by the Rupublican orthodoxy that have been emboldened by Karl Rove and his ultimate case study George Bush. He didn't back down or claim to have an epiphany. He didn't even have to attack his old friend John McCain. He supported Obama and stated what I believe is the opportunity America has in him.

Gravitas is a strong word applied to many men who don't deserve. Collin Powell should be the logo for the word Gravitas. He is an example of what my Dad has always wanted us to be. Today I saw a clear example of it Dad and I get it.

Please read this article in Ad Age http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=131639 . the first line of the article is an understatement

"As if you needed me to tell you, video is a hot consumer web product."

This is why pLot has gone from doing the cool animations for the web and TV lead ins to full blown video production. It's not web development its content creation and if you are going to be around for a hundred years you had better have this as a part of your practice.

We are still developers and damn good at it but as the pLot.Motion Mantra says: "the web is becoming ore like TV and TV is becoming more like the web. "

Great Information Architecture is at the base of everything we develop at pLot. When Henrik and Man were working on CP Luv the success of the site was based around Christophe's ability to create designs that understood how users eyes scanned the page. Learning from that experience with the early versions of Bureau used in CP Luv we have been following Christophe's cue and using Eye Tracking for TOBII.

Eye tracking is a general term for techniques for measuring the point of gaze – where you are looking – or for determining eye/head position. Today a number of methods exist for measuring eye movements, and the number of application areas is even larger.

These tools have taught us a lot over the past two years. One thing is that users have trained their eyes not to look where banners are traditionally. It's clear fro the data we have collected. Whenever it is my job to create effective banner ads I take this information into account to find interesting ways to engage users where they are looking without annoying the user/viewer and creating an atagonistic relationship with the viewer/user and the product we are helping market.

Information Architecture is a funny thing in the sense that there are some butt ugly sites out there that use great information architecture. Ugly is always fine if it's usable. Beautiful and unusable is a whole different thing.

Halloween is the excuse for woman to get dressed in their sluttiest costumes and be trampy and it's all for the sake of festivity. Although I am 100% for woman embracing their inner slut in a harmless manner every year I do draw a line at grown ass woman taking their cues from an pop song.

I was at the Deli getting my pre-game hoagie and there was a mother of two jr high school students. I'd give her 27 -30 years of age, pretty clear she was young mom talking loud in the deli to her friend who ws even younger. The argument ensued about who was going to wear the "Miss Officer" costume and how Lil' Wayne is her baby. Lil' Wayne should be no grown ass woman's "baby."

So new rule... if you are a black woman above 26 years of age.... get a life and wear some other slutty costume for Halloween because every girl in the hood will be Miss Officer this year.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2008/10/02/2008-10-02_bet_gives_rap_city_the_heaveho.html

I have mixed feelings on this. Rap City was the first show built around rap music or hip hop that came in clear and on cable I have ever seen. It was corny even way back when but with Chris Thomas "the mayor" and original host of Rap City but it was all we had. Now its gone and I don't think it's because of ratings. I'll comment later because I do believe the medium should evolve but Rap City is an institution and I have to admit I am sad to see it go. Even though last time I watched was onle to see my own work on the show and that was once in about 2 years. I just feel like it should be there. Will comment again on this later.

So the movies studios want to sue a software developer for creating software that copies DVD's. That's like suing gunmakers for every murder in Amerca. Read this article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/technology/01film.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin . Studios are using all their financial resources to sue software developers, arrest consumers and not using much of the billions of dollars they make into hiring technologist and evolving. The global threat of piracy will exist no matter what. They just have to have smarter business models and be on top of their "media" and how its disseminated. These dinosaurs are refusing to evolve and if you look at all great industries that try to tangle progress in courts and have legal battles to simply exist... they die. Simply stated they go away and vanish in a painful contorted oozing pile of litigious mess. Picture the wicked witch after a bucket of water hit her.

Don't get me wrong I work for this industry and I think most of the people there are very smart and agree with me. But in the time that they are spending in courts the studios could have found one great software development team to encrypt their dvd's to not work with realnetworks software.

Call me a Darwinist, but I truly believe the big boys shouldn't stifle technological progress and stunt our media evolution. They should welcome it, evolve or go by way of the dinosaurs.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=131211
Okay maybe a few comments... Let me cut and paste.

"BBDO, DDB behind
Of the shops that signed a memorandum of understanding with the commission in 2006 vowing to boost diversity, five did not meet their goals. Four of them were from the country's biggest holding company, Omnicom Group: BBDO, DDB, Merkley & Partners and PHD. The fifth was Publicis Groupe's Kaplan Thaler Group."

That makes up more than half the industry. Ok I will Shut up. Until I start talking again.

Think about this and go check the analytics before you answer...
WHO IS MORE INFLUENTIAL, PERZ HILTON OR OPRAH WINFREY for 16 - 28 year old girls. From the numbers I see it's not even close. Perez wins hands down.

This is the mark of changing media. How it happens is part execution, part consistency, part viability but mostly it's lightening in a bottle. Perez came around at the perfect time with the right content. He inspires us at pLot because we know no matter what application we build or how much better we are at pLot at doing what we do the key is you can't follow the Perez formula and all of a sudden be or replace Perez. Oprah is important. Oprah is powerful. Oprah does not have a clue whats going on in Prez's world and how his site is checked by young woman all over the states.

Perez inspires us to keep doing what we do at pLot because he is clear evidence New Media is Media and should be referred to as such. TV, radio, print should be referred to as old media.

Certain kicks fade but never go out of style. Every sneaker closet ust have ones, dunks, max's (I am very anti Jordan but every collection should have at least 4 versions starting with version 1) Classic Suede Puma's, an assortment of Chucks, (Cons and Weapons if you are thorough) and the argument of all arguments go to 5411 Reeboks. NO 5411 Reeboks! That's for girls. At the top of the list for Must have clasics are all forms and variations of classic Adidas. I get that most are Nike heads (as I) however All old school Adidas and their variations must exist in your closet.

Although these particular joints are not Shell Toes they do take me bac to a time which is why we collect sneakers. A time when you had your one pair that you would have untill Xmas or your Birthday and you cleaned and babied that pair of sneakers until you could no longer hide the scars of time. I had one black on white pair of Shell Toes that I cleaned through several tooth brushes but kept rocking to the proverbial wheels fell off.

The pair I wore today if I saw them in '86 at 13 years of age I would have found anything and everything to keep them clean. I buy sneakers to take me back to a time that I could not afford them. To the tie when I saw cats from Supreme Team ride by Linden SDA (my elementary school) in Benz's with ground effect kits on them hop out with pairs of Adidas that I had never seen coming in materials that either were added by dapper dan or bought from stores I could not afford to be shopping in. If they weren't sold at Dr. Jays or the Fulton Mall in BK I was not getting them

Classic like my Brooks Brothers tie never go out in style and since I met with a former presidential cabinet member today explains the nod to the red white and blue. Sneakers, gear is all about being classic.

No atter how many versions of photoshop that comes out it's still all based on the standard. the same goes with gear. The day Mu walked into our offices I was shocked to see someone who had similar sense of style. It was like looking at Tell 2.0. I thought for a second ok I'm buggin and maybe being arrogant however the kid wore bowties and kicks and for a while I thought I was the only one. I thought that was my staple and I took a lot of shit for my affinity for bowties. Then my wife came in and said hey whose the kid that looks like a miniature you. I introduced her to Mu by the elevator and when we rode down she said no seriously he really dresses like you.

Ok fast forward a few months... Mu becomes my best Producer ever. He has the work ethic and impresses me so much he receive a raise a month into working at pLot. Unfortunately for the young man he called e out on the field of battle of gentlemans wardrobe. The bowtie & kicks gauntlet thrown leads us to the content on hand. It's all about the bowtie (by Brooks brothers of course) Classic esemble mixed in with the BRAZILIAN ONES THAT LIKE YSELF ARE A TIMEELESS PAIR. It's also about the footwear because the kicks are just kicks but what makes them special are my cashmere socks. The young fella did not know what hit him.

Ladies and Gentleman this is only me pawing at my opponent setting him up for some power punches.

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media/e3i6e1ea93903c4b3a3ba7b9ad5982d8a2b

I read and react to all the trades. I have the same schedule every morning. NY Times, Wash' Post, Ad Week, Ad Age, Media Week, Daily News, Wall Street Journal. That's my day to day reads while I get focused and reading is my excuse not to run in the morning. Didn't run this morning either but hey had a lot of reading to do. and this article did not get me thinking as a digital content producer. I make content for TV too so this should not be a problem, right?

RIIIIIGHT...

My feelings about Media Buyers is a holistic one. I realize we are not there yet. The dinosaurs with the prehistoric ideas still run the show. They still go where they are comfortable. That's my advantage. What we are building at pLot is where we are going. That future is here like when TV came on the scene. By the time the dinosaurs figure it they will be well on their way to fossilization. pLot will be ready and seasoned creator of digital content.

The Super Bowl will always sell ads. One Day when everyone's computers are wirelessly synced to their HD flat screens and HD streaming will be the Norm, the NFL will broadcast the Super Bowl online. We know that day is coming. We see it. The so-called broadcasters see it.

These articles are great because the connote that maybe there is a reason for advertisers to not love TV. There is but it's still in it's a toddler learning to walk and eventually run media. Three more years and then you will see the old ways gone away. Old guy ad execs get ready to pull the rip cord on your golden parachutes because New Media is on it's way.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=130766 This article reads like I wrote so I won't trouble you with the side commentary. READ ON!

http://adage.com/article?article_id=130747

We shut down the company formally known as "pLot.Dev" biz development division for two years only "ghosting projects for big advertising agencies who at the moment only fake having interactive capabilities. There was two key reasons why we did this:

1. We had experienced the effect of a paradigm shift where our core clients (the music industry) had moved away from having the cool cutting edge site for their artist to just having interns make MySpace pages. The kicker here was that months before a MySpace ever existed we were pitching the Music Industry execs a white label social networking site based around their artist who would use their magnetism to be "people aggregators" for the community. The label execs hated the idea, hated the concept and the rest was history. It taught us a great lesson. NEVER WAIT FOR A CLIENT TO EXECUTE GREAT IDEAS! And with that the Bureau API went into R&D and pLot.Properties was born.

2. MEDIA IS EVOLVING! Our core customer went from a fringe audience of web users to being developers for emerging digital formats that isnow the pre-dominant entertainment vehicle. The numbers do not lie. The 18-35 market is online far more than they watch television or do anything else. They even socialize online more than they go outside. Disturbing but true! As an innovator pLot had to make itself not fake itself into being the subject matter expert that would allow and help companies like Kelloggs win online.

Developing an API and growing new practices within an already set of core capabilities is an arduous undertaking and huge investment. pLot Motion, Interactive and properties are divisions of pLot that were created to study and create techniques for producing digital content for this changing landscape.

Media is changing. Audiences and how to market to them has changed. We have made the changes to our agency and our technology set so when the dinosaurs who are the currently in control of the marketing purse strings have the epiphany that eyeballs on tv and eyeballs on the web are the same eyeballs and they are far more valuable and measureable in the interactive space.

This is the marketplace reality I have been preparing pLot for and this Kellogg's article is clear evidence that we are on the right track

America has a twisted way of revealing falsity.

As a father of two little girls I just wanted to make my stance known and understood. DAUGHTERS!.. you bring home a baby... or even act a little pregnant... at 17... I don't care what sport the baby daddy plays.... IT IS NOT OK!!! I won't even justify this foolishness with political comment. But imagine the racist comments disguised as "jokes" that would have came from the Republican attack machine if this was one of Obama's daughters. The sad thing is everyone knows it and is pretending like it is not true.

If I was a NFL Football player I would have to be retired to allow EA to put meon the cover of Madden. Check this out http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/galleries/the_madden_curse/the_madden_curse.html . I don't remember a player featured on the cover of this game that has not had their season doomed.

Being a programmer by habit if not by nature if not by nature if I place code in an application that causes the app to cease to function I know that regardless of the reasons why or whether or not I can explain the anomaly or if logic can't technically explain why there is a conflict or corruption in the application, I JUST STOP USING IT!

The data we have about players on the Madden cover is resolute. The cover is far more than a curse. It's a condemnation. For a New York football fan like me it's clear, nothing good will come of our starting Quarterback being featured on the cover. The Jets are already cursed. They need no more bad luck than the bad luck they already have.

Is it a Madden curse, bad luck or just a coincidence. Bill Parcels, the great football mind and press conference orator extraordinaire says you are what you record says you are. The cover of EA Sports Madden NFL whatever year record clearly says that if you pose for our cover you are doomed to be carted off a field on a stretcher.

As I watch the election of 2008 and continue to be disappointed by the commentary and the covert as well as overt ugliness of it I am so disappointed in people.

At the beginning of the campaign I wrote a deck that was submitted to one of the presidential hopefuls that was to be thought of as a primer on how to be effective online. Thank God for email paper trails because without that no one would believe that the strategy I wrote was the exact one employed by the Obama team. The campaign we decided to consult obviously lost and left their web initiative to be guided by a blogger. Dumb? Maybe not. Was it a direct reason why the candidate lost... YES!

They went old, tried and tested guy with a political resume. The new brash upstarts with the new ideas were not listened too because new is scary. New is uncharted territory. New is too unpredictable. Kinda like a candidate we are about anoint as the democratic nominee

New was and is necessary in these times. War's are fought in a new way. Borders in the world are new. The way people communicate is completely new. Even our media is brand spanking new. The blogger our client hired to run the campaigns new media initiative to the seasoned veteran politician and public servant to the candidate and candidate's understanding of the world as it once was, was also seasoned veteran but had no clue as to how to launch a campaign online and that was pivotal decision in the campaign that most don't know about.

Once upon a time a younbd brash candidate, who was new, who was catholic and had young hollywood people advising him about this new mediumcalled television . while the older, more experienced veteran politician was ill prepared for this medium called television. The young guy iwon because the world was newand ready for change.

Are you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ2IfqaFE-4

March 9th is long past but is this how we memorialize the greats????

He was the greatest rapper alive until he died. This is just wrong.

Anyone please help us find Biggie

My God please help Biggie!!!!

Someone has kidnapped Biggie. The entire pLot team is distressed.

While shooting the footage on green screen at our studios I kept getting the question... "why would you put an interactive agency in the middle of 100,000 square foot television studio? " The answer is simple... "Because TV and the web are becoming the same thing"

Well kinda....

When I created the company pLot Multimedia Developers LLC, I wasn't just making a long name for my own self importance. The goal has always been to look at the web as the leveling of the playing field for the multimedia content creator. I can make websites that would have an audience and sell product to the planet. What mattered was the content and the execution. Money still helps but if you look at a Perez Hilton for example, he reaches more people daily than entertainment tonight. And thats the web now. Its all about out "executing" the old standard and you will have users diverge from TV to the web.

At the Screen Gems studios in the middle of mid-town Manhattan, we are able to apply live action video shot in green screen studios and mixed into our sites and motion pieces. We want to be subject matter experts when it comes to shooting on green and Chris Cooney and our family at Screen Gems is affording us the opportunity to do just that. We are learning a ton from the seasoned directors around here who shoot films, big time commercials and television shows. We are applying their years of experience to coming up with the best practices in this medium.

Its the future and we don't want to fake it. We want to revolutionize the medium and push the envelope so I where the creative director hat as well as the executive producer hat. You know what? It fits nice!

I encouraged my development team to all start blogs to chronicle the times we were developing what we are yet and still to become. I don't really want to make this the professional blog talking about the industry... this is the blog about whats going through the mind of the professional, not the profession. Its an ovearching look of the life of the person who does the work.

When I created pLot in 2001, I just wanted to have an LLC to do freelance work under. Now its become much more. I once just wanted to be the cool company that built cool things. Now I want this little agency to change the world's culture. We may never become so prevalent as to create the company thats product become verbs like "Google." But we will be remembered for doing something innovative. May be a delusional goal but goals are meant to be lofty. Why shoot for normal, we should shoot for the extraordinary.

So this blog will be the archive of thoughts as I go through the journey of creating a legacy. Something, someone will find suitable to remember for creating something special.