ToppsTown

I just did a quick search, and there are only a few blogs pointing toward the placeholder page for ToppsTown.com, most of them with vague speculations about what the site will be. Well, naturally-- what else could there be at this point?

In light of the fact that the site launches tomorrow (is it June 1 already?!), I thought I'd do a quit post of my own-- though I'm sure I'm not allowed to give much more away. ...Now that I think about it, am I allowed to say anything?

...It's where your cards come alive... that much we know...

Well surely I can say what is already out there on the web, and only a Google away. From an eBay lot:

ToppsTown is a virtual world that brings normal sports cards to live [sic]. Consumers log onto toppstown, enter the special codes listed on Topps trading card product and they can unlock virtual cards which can be collected and traded with friends, play sports related games, create an avatar and earn Topps points to design their personal clubhouse.

This information almost definitely came from a code card, which can be found in the Topps Series 2 trading card packs.

Another thing that I can tell you is that the team is excited to see this baby go live. This project has been a labor of love for so many people (aren't they all?). I look forward to posting again after launch, when I can be less cryptic...

TimesMachine

Sometimes I run across things that I assume will be lame, but in reality they are not lame. What serendipity!

One example of such luck is the TimesMachine, from... you guessed it... The New York Times.


From the section's intro:

TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel.

The functionality of this section is really cool, and the ability to delve into the content is fantastic, too. (The reason I assumed it would be lame: I immediately recalled the old microfiche machines I've had to use in the past. *shudder*)

It's so fantastic to me when a site with such authority creates something like this... who better to let you dive into the news of yesteryear than the Times? Now I just wish they'd get a little more user-gen up in here, not unlike the Library of Congress/Flickr Commons project that I love to bring up time and again.

Funding researchers, not research

I just spent ten minutes-- way too much time-- searching for a story I heard yesterday. I listen to NPR in the car, and on my way home I heard a great story about scientists... well, more on that later.

I searched NPR.org for every keyword I could think of, to no result. Science, scientist, fund, grant, Hughes, and combinations thereof. I even searched "600 million," which I remembered being a stat in the story. Nothing.

Then I realized that the story might have been on a program that doesn't live on the NPR site. I know it wasn't local news, so no WVXU... but what other program would it have been on? Let's see, I was probably rolling in around 6:30... ahh. Marketplace.

Sure enough, Marketplace has its own little site that isn't indexed on the NPR site and that I wasn't aware of. And the story, while essentially about money, didn't strike me as a Kai Rissdoll story.

Blech. Was there a better way to do this (without this thing)? A hundred keywords and ten minutes later, I finally found the story that I wanted to share with you: Funding researchers, not research

I am really interested in the idea of paying scientists to follow their passions, without so much micromanagement. I guess to me it feels like these hours I spend writing up blog entries about the things that I'm interested in, which in turn makes me smarter, more innovative, more aware and better at my job.

Naturally, I hope that these scientists make the kind of whirlwind discoveries that makes this bankrolling a regular practice. How can we not benefit from making science a highly desirable field to be in?

Mosio

This is really part two of yesterday's post about Trapster, which I discovered through Jott. Another interesting Jott-partner that I've been exploring is Mosio.

It is similar to Trapster in that it's simply the middleman between users. Users ask questions through Mosio, typically through their mobile device. Then other users, either through mobile or web, answer the questions. It's as simple as that.


Sites like these require a strong, loyal userbase. I'm not sure if Mosio and Trapster are there yet, but I do know that the questions I've seen asked on Mosio have been answered quickly and accurately. Here's to hoping the site keeps growing into the useful and powerful tool that it could become.

Trapster

When I have extra time at work, I sign up for stuff. Well, I sign up for stuff and I blog.

Lately my brother has been on my case about Jott, which is a service that translates voice to text for free. This has a number of awesome applications, including my brother's newfound ability to blog from the car. ("Hello, Jott? Please tell my blog that I'm on my way to Jungle Jim's with my sister. Over and out.")

I don't want to talk about Jott right now, but instead a service that I found through Jott: Trapster. (By the way, if you look up Trapster on Wikipedia you might get the following Marvel Comics character.)


The real Trapster-- by which I mean the site Trapster.com-- is yet another interesting example of what can be done by the sheer force of user power!! (Sorry, still in Marvel mode.) Here's what happens:

--You're driving, and you narrowly escape a speed trap.
--You let Trapster know.
--Trapster in turn texts any other Trapster users in the area.

Other interesting items:

--Trapster "learns" whether or not you're trustworthy, based on how many of your speed traps are confirmed by other Trapster users.
AND
--To bring it full circle, you can use Jott to make your Trapster post. So, instead of doing that deadly texting-driving combo, you can make a quick phone call to Jott and it'll let Trapster know.

Okay, maybe you still shouldn't be calling while you're driving, especially while you're jetting around speed traps, but the point is that stuff like this fascinates me. After all, the only thing that Trapster is really doing is starting, and facilitating, a conversation.

Congratulations, Matt Fischer!

Our creative department's fearless leader, Matt Fischer, took home the Cincinnati Ad Club's Ad Person of the Year award for 2008.

Here's a charming picture of His Fischerness himself, courtesy of Cheryl:

And for good measure, a picture of a few WonderGroupies cheering Matt on at an impromptu kitchen party:


Congratulations again, Matt!

Tok Wok THAP!

Quickly, here are some assumptions:
If 0 = the roughly number of people that read this blog during the week, then -3 is probably closer to the number of people reading at midnight on a Friday, and -10 is about how many people will care if I do a random, useless post about Batman foley art. So here goes!

Tonight I dug up some old Batman Detective Comics, because this is my weekend. I love the art as much as the next guy, but overall comics make me realize the opportunities I have been missing in my own writing. I'd like to give you some examples of onomatopoetic foley sounds that I find fascinating-- comics are known for their BAM!s and POW!s, but here are a few more subtle examples that made the hair on my neck stand on end.

Tok and Wok = Performed in unison, the sounds of a kick to the guy behind you and a punch to the guy in front of you
Fok = Similar to a Tok, the sound of a side-kick to the face
Swok = The sound of a rapid punch while avoiding being hit by a guitar
Thap = The sound of a blocked punch
Foof = Self-explanatory enough, the sound of an anarchist's sleeping gas bomb
Splush = The sound of a corrupt fatcat's head being dunked into the sludge he's been dumping in the local river
Klk, Snklk, Viiiiip and Snak = In that order, the sounds of a grappling hook being shot, catching and going taut
Snk = The sound when the grappling hook line breaks
Twung = The sound of bouncing off of a conveniently-placed, horizontal flag pole
Whump, Whud!, Thud = The sounds of Batman kicking a tiger in the side (yes, this happens more than once to various aural effects)
Krunggg! = The sound of a large man landing on a conversion van
Skash! = The sound of a light being broken by claws

And my personal all-time favorite...
Fratch = the sound of someone busting through a glass ceiling

These examples were taken from issues 608 and 612, in case you're curious about Batman fighting tigers and anarchists.

I'm mostly having fun of course, but this kind of attention to detail is what makes things like comic books such a unique experience. Next time I hit the inevitable wall that is Writer's Block, I need to remember to come back to the glory of the old stuff.

Stweven

A few weeks or so ago, "Stephen Colbert" started following me on Twitter. I followed back, because the posts were frequent and funny... often, Colbert quotes.

Recently, "Stephen Colbert" was discovered as a hoax and blah blah blah, and of course there's a whole expose' and shock and awe and betrayed feelings and how could you's. (Here's the fake Stephen's explanatory post.)

Now, first off... if it had been Stephen Colbert, he wouldn't have added you. But with that aside... what's the problem? The Twitter'r made you laugh and your Twitter account was full of Colbert quotes (We're America the Beautiful, not America 'Well, At Least She Has a Great Personality').

I guess the outrage is about the very principle of fraud, but in the words of Homer Simpson, "Marge, it takes two to lie: one to lie, and one to be lied to."

What? How long was I out?

Jennifer pointed me toward this article: "Sleeping Beauty awakes on Blu-ray." You knew it was only a matter of time before movie-watching became more interactive... though honestly, my guess as to a debut would not have been Sleeping Beauty.

...Although if you were asleep for 100 years or whatever, you probably shouldn't be all that surprised that your movies suddenly know what the weather is like outside: "The sky behind the castle will reflect the weather in [the viewer's] hometown, whether it's a blizzard in Cleveland or a balmy day in San Diego."

Does this add value to a movie? It's a gimmick, and while I'm all for gimmicks, I hope this kind of thing spurs really useful technology. The features this article mentions are new but not entirely compelling to me... why do I need to be able to send "movie mail" or chat during the credits?

Everything is Marketing

I'm currently reading Seth Godin's new book Meatball Sundae. At the very beginning of the book he postulates that everything is marketing. Boy, O, boy did that come home to me last night.

I have been testing my broadband speed recently, just to make sure I'm getting what I'm paying for. Not surprisingly, I'm not and haven't been for some time. About a month ago, I called the cable company and was on the phone for 2 1/2 hours trying to get the situation rectified. It was all for naught then. So, I had an open evening so I thought I would try again. I can't believe I just typed that sentence. I had a free evening so I thought I would call someone I'm paying for something and try to get what I'm paying for!! After another two hours on the phone talking to various employees from level 1 tech support to higher level techs to customer service all were pleasant, understanding and completely unable to help me.

This all leads me to two observations:

1. If you see your customers as your adversary, they will see you as their adversary. It was obvious that this cable company's goal was to give me as little as possible and get paid as much as possible for it.
   
2. If you have a dissatisfied customer, playing a loop of advertisements on hold does more harm that good. Someone at some point had the bright idea that when a customer calls in complaining about their cable or internet we should deliver them an ad for digital phone, over and over and over and over and over again, and somehow that will motivate them to purchase.
   

In the end the company refunded me the additional money I had paid for the faster internet connection and I had them drop my service down to the level they actually could provide. However, I sit here wishing and hoping someone will come to town and provide a competitive service and a similar price. While I recognize this brand and find there service relevant to me, I don't find any reward, either psychological or physical in being associated with them. And I certainly don't believe I have a relationship with them. And that's the point. Unless a brand can move beyond recognition to relevance, and beyond relevance to a recognition of a reward, and beyond reward to relationship they will constantly have a battle retaining customers. Eventually someone will come along that builds a relationship with the consumer and they will walk, no run away from the companies that don't.

Last.fm

My brothers, several of my friends and I have Last.fm accounts, which logs what you're listening to. Sometimes I feel a bit closer to my brother who's off at college, when I can see in real-time that he's jamming to Queen. (He's usually jamming to Queen.) It's nice to see that my audiophile friend is listening to a band that I recommended. It's interesting to find other bands that I like. Et cetera et cetera.

The data that Last.fm collects is used in a wide variety of ways. For instance, each week it updates your artist lists to show you who you've listened to the most. For instance, my Queen-freak brother Ryan (who is not, as it might appear, a nostalgic 40-year-old): Or my more musically-diverse brother Bradley: And due to lists like this, I get a good sense of my brothers' tastes in music.

A couple of months ago I started noticing a trend that I pointed out to Bradley. Where are all the women? Week after week would pass and, while I know that Bradley listens to everything under the sun, female artists rarely scale his lists. In fact, KT Tunstall was recently bumped from his top 50, leaving Fleetwood Mac to half-represent the ladies.

After teasing both of my brothers about this, I took at look at my own lists and noticed they were better, but not by much. My top 50 includes Regina Spektor, Tori Amos, Imogen Heap and about a dozen other female artists-- which still makes well over half of them dudes.

So let's look at the overall data, from allllll of Last.fm's diligent listeners. Surely the balance will be a little more fair?
Of the top fifty artists this week, three are female: Madonna ranks 17th, Amy Winehouse ranks 31st, and Feist pulls in at 49. Scroll through the list of 400-- the ratio stays pretty steady.

Sad, no?

This is my theory, and it actually comes from my work with WonderGroup. One of the things that we know to be largely true with children is that boys will be boys... but girls will be either. What this basically means is that boys tend to shun things that come off as girly, whereas girls like the pink and frills as much as they like Tonka trucks and beef jerky.

I don't know how this translates to the mass population on Last.fm, but it seems like a similar pattern could be taking place here: boys listen to male artists, girls listen to male and female artists. It takes a real game-changing female artist to raise through the Last.fm ranks... someone like, say, Madonna... or Amy Winehouse... or Feist.

The Problem with a Sense of Presence

One of the best ways to learn from Jeff/Spidey is to disagree with him. And so, while I actually agree with his post about Creating a Sense of Presence, I think that there's a downside that he overlooked.

The basic idea that Jeff brings up is that through social networking, one can feel closer to one's friends, family, coworkers. The flip side of this coin is the false connections, the false sense of presence.

It's in the way that I follow Diablo Cody and John Hodgman on Twitter, though these people are as unaware of me as possible. And while Cody, for example, is not, in any way, a friend of mine, I know what she's up to right. this. minute. I know what clothes she's wearing and I feel like I have some inside jokes with her.

When Facebook started gaining popularity, there was a slew of articles written about the new definition of friendship-- you can have Facebook "friends" whom you've never met, who you never will meet, and all that you "know" about them is dubious. While this is basically a given in 2008, lines are still being blurred through this idea of presence.

I've read blogs written by people who, for instance, create webcomics that gain popularity-- they are often bombarded with email from people who want to get closer, more friendly, more personal. There are two things going on here: 1) a thin veil of celebrity is created around anyone with 15 minutes of web fame, and 2) the sense of presence makes anyone with internet access feel as though their association with this web celeb is something more substantial than it is.

When, then, does the sense of presence become unhealthy? After all, the sense of presence is just that: a sense. Because of Twitter, your friends feel closer to you-- but they aren't, because you're tweeting instead of grabbing a beer with them. Your family knows what hilarious thing someone just said at work because you blogged it, not because you eat dinner together and share stories.

So where is the line between building relationships and faking them because it's easier?


----------------
Now playing: The New Main Street Singers - The Good Book Song
via FoxyTunes

Friday roundup

Some interesting links that you might not have stumbled across yet:

-->FoldIt: Solve Puzzles for Science! This is Web 2.0 at its best: putting users to work to fuel scientific research.

-->Esquire's 75 Skills Every Man Should Master. I'm not sure which one of my dude-friends del.icio.us'd this first, but I love this list. It reminds me of a grown-up Dangerous Book for Boys-- there a wide range of entertaining ideas here, from how to tie a bow tie to "create a play-list in which ten seemingly random songs provide a secret message to one person."

-->And just because I love Queen, here's a NPR story on Dr. Brian May, guitarist turned astrophysicist. (Actually, astrophysicist with a stint as a guitarist.) I rushed home to retell this story to my brother, who of course gave me The Eyebrow and said, "You didn't know that?"

Creating a Sense of Presence

I had an interesting experience today. I took the day off and went with my wife to the hospital for a very minor test. Lately, I've been using Twitter more and more and without thinking about it I posted that I had taken my wife to the hospital. Almost immediately, I received a text message from Red asking if everything was okay. Right after that I received a Facebook message from my nephew, who had seen my status on Facebook change. He asked if he could do anything to help. You see, my tweets automatically update my Facebook status. I had to quickly send an update and put everyone's mind at ease.

This brought to mind a post I recently ran across that I found very interesting. Within that post Leisa Reichelt mentioned the idea of how technologies like Twitter create a "sense of presence." This means those who post and commuincate via Twitter, Jaiku or Pownce have a presence in each other's lives. While most posts are meaningless, sometimes it illustrates the presence others have in your life. Boy, was this true today, it was as if my followers were right there with me.

There's an important lesson here. This concept of creating a sense of presence is a powerful thing and should be embraced by brands. Today, effective brands will seek ways to be present in the lives of their consumers, not in an overbearing way, but in an authentic way. If a consumer needs suggestions for dinner or a family activity, today's marketers must know their zip code, the weather and what local events are happening and become a partner with the consumer by offering this information to them along with a relevant brand message. By doing this the brand creates more than a consumer, they create a brand advocate.

Dino Run

Sometimes this blog has too much yakky, not enough pixelated dinosaur hijinx. This awesome game comes from mon ami Jared, who has excellent taste in such things.

Anyone want to go multiplayer?

Free Comic Book Day 2008

In exchange for reminding him about RSS Awareness Day, my friend Kris reminded me that today we celebrate the geek holiday that is Free Comic Book Day.

My brother (pictured) and I headed down to Captain Comic in Beechmont, to see what FCBD was all about. There was a huge selection of comics that you could choose between as your freebies-- I came away with Hellboy and X-Men issues, while Bradley chose Sonic and Iron Man. (Uh, separate comics-- I don't believe there's a "Sonic and Iron Man" storyline just yet.)


And of course I felt weird about only patronizing the store for free stuff (especially because this was the mom-and-pop comic book store of my fantasies), so Bradley and I also bought a few issues. I found a series called Grimm Fairy Tales that I probably shouldn't post pictures of on this family-friendly blog, but if you're imagining a buxom Alice in Wonderland you're right on.

Lately I've come across a lot of articles about the psychology of free stuff, and how it's still one of the most effective marketing strategies out there. What do you think? Any swag pull you into a store lately, only for you to come away with a small collection of racy fairy tales?

OMG, RSS

Are you kidding me?! It's RSS Awareness Day!



Only if you work here could you know what oddness that is-- I have had more RSS conversations in the past two days than in the rest of my life combined.

One of the things that came from those conversations is that I really should do a quick post about what RSS means to the lay man. And I was going to put it off for a couple more days but it's RSS Awareness Day, people. So here goes.

RSS... Really Simple Syndication... is a way to really simply syndicate content.

What, did that not help?

I use Google Reader, which aggregates RSS feeds for me. So for instance, let's say you have a burning desire to read every WonderBlog entry as soon as it is posted, and you know that we post so irregularly that just checking the site isn't going to get the job done. By subscribing to WonderBlog's RSS feed, when someone posts here it automatically shows up in your reader. Badda bing badda boom.

At WonderGroup (so far!), there aren't a ton of people who use feed readers. However, that small percentage uses it a lot, and for a variety of things. The most common content is news-- people are reading Reuters, The New York Times, NPR, local news, USA Today, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal through their RSS readers. (If you think I'm hunting down all those links you're nuts.) It makes absolute sense that news would be the most popular-- you can trust that any breaking story will be in your reader pronto.

Non-news blogs are probably the second most popular, such as BoingBoing, Perez Hilton or PostSecret. The only other subjects making a major showing would be sports and advertising news.

To subscribe to an RSS feed, first sign up for a reader. Try Google Reader (especially if you use other Google services... no new signup needed), PageFlakes, Netvibes or any such service.

Then all you have to do is look for this icon: See the little orange thing before "Boing Boing"? That's your RSS icon, and just clicking it will bring up the feed reader options and syndicate it for you. You can see here that you could also subscribe to their podcasts (gray icon). These icons are usually in a sidebar or at the very bottom of a page.

Really... simply... syndication.

For love of Netflix

I have a friend and coworker named Jennifer. Here's Jennifer:


Jennifer is a recent convert to Netflix... and by convert I mean I was being downright evangelical about the glorious service that is Netflix. This is not a new blogging topic for me, but I will reiterate again that I don't work for Netflix or any known subsidiary of Netflix (...yet). I just plain love them heart and soul.

One day as Jennifer was considering subscription, she asked me why I'm such a vocal brand advocate for the red envelope. I gave her far more reasons than she was looking for, including emails such as this one:...or this one. :
So today Jennifer tells me about the havoc that Netflix is wrecking on her home life. To dramatically misquote her for a moment, "My husband keeps logging on and moving crap to the top of my queue, no matter how many times I rearrange things. Netflix is a threat to my marriage."

But Jennifer! You have come to the right person with your marital woes! Because one of the million beauties of Netflix-- which they don't advertise much but they should-- is that each account can have separate profiles... which means separate queues. Jeff, my rival blogger, has queues for each of his daughters, and when they return a movie it pulls a new one from their individual wishlists. Problem solved.

This post isn't meant to list the various (awesome) features of Netflix. My point is that Netflix, as a company, has their act together. They have the kind of vision that allows them to think, "What if our service causes untold numbers of domestic disturbances on account of a family's differing tastes?" "Well, Sir John Q. Netflix... we shalt divine a solution post-haste!"

Alright, not sure what happened there. Anyway.

Much of my job revolves around usability, which contrary to popular belief means much more than the navigation of the site. In Netflix's case, it begins with "can people find a particular DVD," but look at how much farther they consistently take it... and they stay a step ahead of the consumer, so that by the time we have a bone to pick, there's a user-friendly, why-didn't-I-think-of-that solution waiting for us.

P.S. Another service I love is Blogger because ohmygod I accidentally just deleted this entire post but they autosaved it. I just lost a year of my life.

The Problem with Analog to Digital Conversion

Today I left the house like any other day. I plugged in my iPod to my car interface and began to listen to Gnarls Barkley's new album (iTunes link). I then drove a couple of blocks to the nearest mailbox that gets picked up at 10 a.m. and dropped my NetFlix envelope in.

I then realized, that the greatest barrier to the move to digital communication, happens to be the ultimate expression of the analog world, humans. I can take a cd, like Barkley's The Odd Couple, slap it into my laptop, click import and I have a nice digital version in no time. However, the slow movement of movies onto the "Play Now" feature or onto Hulu is not a failure of technology but a failure of the human imagination. The industry just can't see how this helps them.

It's born out of a fundamental misunderstanding of a sight's stickiness versus it's slipperiness. While it might be beneficial to have a site be sticky, meaning it has features, tools and ways to connect with others, (caveat: see the first few minutes of The Office, embedded below.) the content should be slippery, meaning the content can be easily embedded in other sites via tags or RSS feeds.

Hulu's a perfect example of this. Making it easy for me to embed the content in this blog, means more eyeballs see the ads and more people hear about the site. While the recording and movie industries, are doing everything they can to make their content less slippery and difficult to pass along, they are only hurting themselves.

They're so analog.

Last week's episode of The Office, enjoy: