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List and Learn

The rapidly evolving sphere of technologies and applications that facilitate collaboration is startling. One example which we hadn't heard of is H2O Playlists, a fascinating project to allow experts (or "filters") to create playlists of books, articles, sites and other material and thus "set the stage for a course, discussion, or current event".   And this from the site's About page:

H2O Playlists make it easy to:

transform traditional syllabi into interactive, global learning tools

share the reading lists of world-renowned scholars, organizations, and cultural leaders

let interested people subscribe to playlist updates and stay current on their fields

promote an exchange of ideas and expertise among professors, students, and researchers

communicate and aggregate knowledge -- online and offline.

Stray Links

A site just for user-created ads (via ad freak)

Teens, Tweens Abandon TV, Study Finds Waning Interest In Television

Elaborate online game for Axe Unlimited

Sony announces mobile mini-sites for future movie releases

Trollback 2 Back

(from the nytimes via adpulp)

Great work for Court TV from the Trollback agency in New York, making use of billboards, posters, coffee sleeves and other inventive non-traditional placements.  "For example, the ads atop taxicabs will say “Getaway car.” The deli bags will be labeled “The stash.” The umbrellas will declare “Undercover.” The signs on the sides of buses will say “Witness relocation” and the signs on the backs will say “Roadblock.”

Love the ideas, and as a professional DJ, I salute ex-dj Mr. Trollback's philosophy :)

he believes that “the only way to get a message across is to engage your audience in some way.”

That is a lesson he says he learned before working in advertising, when he was a D.J. and realized “if you can’t engage people, you’re a loser.”

“It’s about what’s happening in the exact moment you’re reaching an audience,” Mr. Trollbäck says, “if you make people smile, if you make people think you’re cool.”

“Advertising is doomed if it doesn’t mean anything,” he adds.

W W Web

A must-read article on the startling state of the Web today from none other than Kevin Kelly, writing in the August edition of Wired. 

looking back now, after 10 years of living online, what surprises me about the genesis of the Web is how much was missing from Vannevar Bush's vision, Nelson's docuverse, and my own expectations. We all missed the big story. The revolution launched by Netscape's IPO was only marginally about hypertext and human knowledge. At its heart was a new kind of participation that has since developed into an emerging culture based on sharing. And the ways of participating unleashed by hyperlinks are creating a new type of thinking - part human and part machine - found nowhere else on the planet or in history.

Not only did we fail to imagine what the Web would become, we still don't see it today! We are blind to the miracle it has blossomed into. And as a result of ignoring what the Web really is, we are likely to miss what it will grow into over the next 10 years. Any hope of discerning the state of the Web in 2015 requires that we own up to how wrong we were 10 years ago. (emphasis added)

Nail in the coffin

In case you hadn't already read a hundred articles on the death of the 30-second spot, here's a bunch from today's crop:

From the Financial Times (sub. required)

Webisodes to promote I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

Did someone say "paradigm shift"?

Double Click Study on the Internet and Purchase Influence

Down With Commercial Radio!

We're just beginning to see, with both satellite radio and the explosion of podcasting,  the beginning of the end of mass media domination of radio.  We can't wait for the end of the mind-numbing era of commercial radio, particularly when we read of a 10 million dollar settlement just reached in a payola scandal involing Sony BMG .

A complete betrayal of public trust, and utterly disgraceful. Stories like this expose the arrogant underbelly of smug major media companies whose grip on mass culture is slowly slipping. 

What does J-Lo have to do with all this? It was her crappy music that was a part of the investigation.

Monday Links

Personal MBA - for the book list lover in all of us.

Social dimensions of "tagging" information and Google Maps + Tagging The Planet

BW on consumer-created ads

Novel viral marketing approach for Boston suburb (via agendainc.com)

Hipster Doofus

Cool Good article on the demise of hip. 

I've long argued with my friends and colleagues in the music world that there is no such thing as "underground" music anymore: everything is accessible, linkable and known to anyone willing to make a little effort. The underground music trends that I've been a part of started by pockets of people working far outside the mainstream, and you had to make a serious effort and commitment to be part of it. 

Now, the process by which trends, or non-mainstream movements, begin and reach mainstream recognition has accelerated to the point that it is virtually instantaneous. And not only are they uncovered faster, they are also much quicker to be appropriated by companies cashing in "cool" trends. It's one of the by-products of our connected, digital age.

Rabble Rouser

Rabble Rouser - Check out this short interview with Shawn Conoahan, founder of Rabble, a "community that lets people network with other users based on the media they create and share". (via influx). 

Changin' to Engagin'

Madison Avenue Engages New Media Metric: Engagement, Struggles To Define It

Out with the old, in with the new.  "Frequency" is losing it's place as the key media planning metric.

all agreed, however, that the move was being driven by two factors: The clutter of advertising media that is making simple exposure to an advertising message irrelevant; and the emergence of digital, interactive media capable of demonstrating consumer engagement.