Friday Videos: Kangaroos, Cookie Monster, Beagles, and Pee Wee

As I ramp up the restructuring of my blog, let's keep it entertaining. Here are some of the most interesting videos I came across this week:

Catching a Kangaroo

I don't know what this is, besides a very odd 30 seconds.




Cookie Monster: Share it Maybe

Between this and Mr. Rodgers, PBS has it going on. Sounds like a blog post on viral media and public television coming up.




Beagle Flips Out Over Lemon

Exactly what it sounds like :)




Pee Wee Herman Voices the Dark Night Trailer

From Jimmy Fallon




Have a great weekend!

Marketing of Pixar's Brave

After taking a bit of an "I'm just busy" hiatus, we're back to bring inspiration along with a hefty dose of SEO, SEM, marketing, social media, and all things geek and tech. This falls into a couple different categeories.

I saw yesterday that Pixar released a new, more expanded version of their upcoming movie Brave. Here it is:



Looks pretty amazing - which is what I say every time a new Pixar movie comes out (exception: Cars2 *shudder*). But then I saw someone else posted Pixar's Japanese version of the trailer (with subtitles):



The difference in content, focus, and tone is remarkable. Obviously the American version is pandering to what the brand of Pixar itself means to the American public, its family-focus, bring the kids, not scary at all, ha-ha funny. It appears the Japanese version focuses more on developing the story and culture and leaving us with a serious linger on mystery and potential danger. And while I think their branding/marketing is spot on for the masses, the Japanese version makes me want to see it more.

What do you think? Are they spot-on with their marketing? Should they have done something different? Which one do you like better?

Video Friday: Catchphrases that Stick

Because of io9.com's list of 10 catchphrases you swear you never use, I was inspired to snag some videos with famous sci-fi quotes (at least famous to me). Let me know what you think!

"Make it so."


This is Unix...




That's no moon...




Three seashells




Three seashells - in French?




Have a great weekend!

Friday Videos: Star Trek Sitcom, Papa Johns Freakout, Transformers, Google Search 2010

Star Trek: The Sitcom

A few years old, but bumped into it again this week. Brilliant.




Papa John's Freakout

Pizza can never be completed quickly enough for college-age Veruca Salt.




Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Official trailer!




Google Zeitgeist 2010

How the world searched in 2010




Have a great weekend!

MONDAY Videos: Hat Cat, YMCA Classic, Gandalf, Snowboard WIN

Missed the post on Friday, so what better way to start out the week than with those interesting videos?

Kitty + Hat + Cat = Hilarity!




YMCA: Christophers

This one's a few years old, but good all the same.




Gandalf Goes to the World Cup!




And a WIN!

I know we usually focus on FAILs, but this is just too cool.




Have a great week!

Inspiration: Paradise - There's Nothing to It

Another quote this week for your inspiration joys, from the song "Pure Imagination" from the 1971 movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:

If you want to view paradise,
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world?
There's nothing to it

Okay, so it's the silliness of Willy Wonka, right? Wrong.



The quote tells us that if you want to view "paradise," if you want to view a heavenly realm of existence, all you need to do is look around yourself, look at where you are.

You're already here.

I know this wraps back into last week's post, but it's of a different flavor.

If you "truly wish to be" where you envision yourself, if you want to be there, you "simply" must craft it. You create your own reality, your own paradise. Reality has no weight but that which we add. Shakespeare may have been indulging in ethical relativism when he wrote in Hamlet "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," but that ties into our daily lives.

Every morning can be painful, every day a chore. And it will all be stress and misery.

Or every morning a seed of success, a chance to help others, a winning proposal to get important things done.

Thinking makes it so.

And if your thinking is not on par? If your thinking is a cause of poison in your life? That's on your shoulders.

Want to change the world?
There's nothing to it


A great debt of thanks to William Shakespeare and Leslie Bricusse (writer of "Pure Imagination") for my inspiration today.

Monday Inspiration: Order from Chaos

Dom Deluise as Captain Chaos in Cannonball Run

Order can beget contentment, happiness, and even motivation in the same way that chaos can make you want to cringe or even crawl up into a little ball and cry out for your mommy.

I have a confession to make: I am not the most orderly person in the world. And that's okay. I keep things in my own form of organization (I say that "I organize spatially" - my wife disagrees with that categorization). But in today's non-stop pace of information and business and managing work and family time, things fall through through the cracks. Those things accumulate. And then they become a project in themselves.

So today's message is a simple one: Clean your room! If it's your office space or your inbox (or inboxes), make sure that you have a place for everything - and put everything in its place.

"Woah, woah! But Eric," you quiver, "that'll take me a whole day - I'll lose a whole day of work!"

Relax! You've let it go this long; don't break yourself trying to get everything done at once. Break the Gestalt you see as potential clean into bite-sized pieces. Create a plan. Write it down somewhere. Stick to it. Heck, make it a 30 minute scheduled appointment in your day. Before you know it, you'll be on your way to more order in your life and your work.

And the best part of the whole thing? Each step, each piece of your ordering lifts a weight off your shoulders. You will feel lighter. You will feel freer. And that, in itself, can be a motivation, can be the wind of inspiration blowing at your back.

Challenge: Do something small today to bring more order to your life. File some papers, disentangle your computer cords, throw something away that needs to be tossed. Post in the comments what it was and how it made you feel.

For my part? I have 4 very active inboxes, all of which need a good cleaning. I will clear at least 2 of them at some time today and update this post at the end of the day and let you know how it went.

What will you do to to make your life more manageable today?


UPDATE: In the spirit of full disclosure, I have only cleared one of my inboxes to less than 5 emails. Hoping -- NO! I will complete the other 3 tomorrow.

No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try.

Friday Film on Tuesday: Dumb Funny, Darksiders, Avatar on Pocahontas

This isn't early, but late. So more to love this Friday! Enjoy.



Hahaha...someone said in the comments of this video "If you think this is funny you must be six years old." I did not realize I was six.


Darksiders

One of my pleasures is video games. Granted, I only just finished Mass Effect and Bioshock this past year. And I'm working - very slowly - on Fallout 3. But I played the demo of Dante's Inferno (AWESOME!) and was impressed.

This looks equally impressive:



Avatar on Pocahontas on Avatar on...

I recently saw Avatar in full-on IMAX 3D. It was tasty and delicious. And it blew my mind. For me, the story was a 6.5/10, but the movie magic that happens with 3D and the special effects would bring my overall rating to an 8.5/10. The trailer blew my mind. But let's look at the mashups, shall we?

Newport on the ...Browser?

I'd like first to wish all my readers a wonderful and prosperous 2010: I think we're in for one heck of a year. Or at least I'm willing to make it successful!

This past weekend I traveled over the river to Newport on the Levee to see Avatar in IMAX 3D (and it was worth every cent of the parking and the $15/per ticket and wearing glasses- Amazing! But that's a separate post. This is a short one.).

When we were driving towards the packed parking garage, I noticed the Newport on the Levee logo on a sign. I noticed it over the summer, but this reinforced my insight and I had to post about it. Here's what I saw:



And the first time I saw it, it took me 0.3 seconds to relate it to what I thought that logo looked like.

Anyone else?

Okay, I'll just spill it:



To be clear: I'm not claiming the logo designer stole or even drew inspiration from the Netscape logo before putting together the Newport on the Levee logo. But I found it similar enough to be just a little uncanny.

Do you have any thoughts? I'd love to read them. Simply comment. And I'll respond :)

Friday Vids: FFXIII, Iron Man 2, Toyota Sexist? (+ Stoned Cats)

Another Friday, another bunch of videos, and always more to love. To keep the streak going, we're going to continue to geek out on you, starting with some video games:

IGN Daily Fix

Final Fantasy XIII has been released!

...in Japan. Check that fanfare!



So pleased it will be coming to Xbox360.

And the Jessica from the Fix was right...


Iron Man 2 Trailer

...is frickin' awesome!



Noms for the eyes.


Toyota Yaris: FAIL or WIN?

So Toyota Australia had this idea: jump into the social media bus and try to steer it a little in their direction. They solicited user-generated entries for ads for the Toyota Yaris AND let the world decide which one would win.

The following video, the winner, is safe for work, but the language is VERY double-entendre and has been called worse things than sexist. And they're Australian.



And a barrage of bloggers and tweeps and "opposition" popped up and had that winner pulled before going to air.

So, the question is: fail or win? I think their idea was a win, but the result of the idea was questionable. But not a fail. It's a lesson learned for anyone trying to exploit social media. You're herding cats. It can be a win and a fail. And when you're dumping something onto the internet, you're not just dealing with your consumers. You're dealing with every single person who has nothing better to do during the day than become offended by something and write letters.

But in a way, this is a huge success. Lots of coverage, lots of media - at least on the internet. And if you think about it, when user-generated content generates more content, you've arrived. I present a parody of the marketing initiative that led to the Yaris experiment:




Random: Catweed

So here's something relatively random: cats getting high on plants. Weird thing is, it was in my search results for the Yaris. Not so weird it turns out: the clever bugger listed the video description as:

Fresh Organic Chronic Catnip @ www.catweed.com .Toyota Yaris - Clean Getaways commercial rocks, now catweed rocks.

See? SEO isn't exactly magic ;)

Now, for those stoned kittehs!



Have a great weekend!

Friday Videos: Pee Wee Returns, Gap Girls, Dog Fail

Pee Wee Herman Returns

Well it's about time!




Gap Girls

Why does this video scare the heck out of me?




Dog Fail




...and that is all! Have a great weekend!

Friday Film: P-P-P-Poker Face, FAIL, Cute, Today Show

Will I ever consistently title this Friday post? No. Probably not. Friday Film good? Maybe Terrible Tube? We'll figure something out. Or not. Here's your ration:

Can't get enough p-p-p-poker face? Here's a triple dose with Lady Gaga vs. Christopher Walken vs. Cartman. Worth every second. A cowbell reference here would be trite.




Did somebody ask for an epic FAIL to wrap up their week? Of course! But you'll be emphatically sore for a while after watching See Saw Epic Fail




Ooh, sorry about that. I know it hurts. How about cute to cure that ache?




Dang. Too cute. How about some pseudo-news? Kid reporter on The Today Show? Deirdre. And the freak out that follows...




Good round for the week. Anything you would've included? Not included? Let me know, and have a great weekend!

Twitter Headlines Wednesday: Gaming, Lists, and CSRs

Okay folks, let's make this quick. I've got to get to my DVRs of Heroes (yeah, I'm still doing that), CSI: Miami, NCIS, and V.

Looks like the mass integration of every social media interface to every other social media interface is almost complete. I've got my Tweetdeck pushing to Twitter and Facebook, my Linkedin linked in to Tweeting, and my ping.fm as the one site to rule them all.

And along comes Microsoft and Sony. Facebook and Twitter for everyone! (Okay, so the PS3 still lacks Tweet capability but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.) My biggest question is: Who wants to pause a battle with a Big Sister (reference to forthcoming Bioshock 2 - yay!) to txt a tweet about how you're going to have to reload your last save file? Interesting integration, but not sure how well it'll be received.

Twitter's doing some things to refine the lists process. Biggest complaint I have on the lists bit is: You rolled this out when I had almost 1000 followers? Now I need to categorize them? Argh.

Here's something happy about how a company can use Twitter to make customer service that much better.

And on the side: some sports pros angered their coaches, everyone's goofy over "New Moon" (Read some Anne Rice!), and something about Lady Gaga. Or something.

Until Next week, hold on to your Tweets! (or let them go, and if they come back they love you; if they don't, it was never meant to be.)

Tech Geek Thursday: Anti-Gravity, Alien Arms, LHC

An Anti-Gravity Emdrive?

Okay, so the video's not that exciting, but perhaps we're looking at the Stage0 of the Jetson's flying car!



Granted, it's got some scary military things going on for it (click the link in the subject title) but at the least, a Skywalker speeder?


Aliens (the movie) Robot Arms!

Panasonic-owned firm Activelink Co. built this robotic exoskeleton called a Dual Arm Power Amplification Robot. The Activelink slogan is delightedly science fiction-esque: "Creating a New Human Machine Age." According to the company, "Using Robotic Technology equipment anybody can become a superman. We are bringing this dream one step closer to reality." They should hire Sigourney Weaver as the Activelink spokesperson.

...so everything Ellen Ripley said was right...

LHC Breaks (because of) Bread

Here's one for the books. CERN's Large Hadron Collider has once again been shut down. No catastrophic helium leak or failing magnets this time. The culprit? A speck of bread, which officials believe was originally part of a larger baguette. To make it all the more ridiculous, it's thought that the piece of bread was dropped into the works by a bird.

The morsel found its way into the doomsday device's outdoor machinery, sparking a temperature differential that triggered an automatic shutdown sequence. I know, I know — I'm sure that ruins all the images you had of a bird navigating the LHC's 17-mile-ring like a Death Star trench run, but there it is.

Yay Science!

Wednesday Twitter: Creepy, Driving Celebs on Pandora

Creepy Google Search turns out to be the same creepy Google search, just on social networks. Surprise, surprise!

Adam Lambert drama ensues with whining about his album cover. I didn't know the guy in Highlander was doing an album. Oh, that was Christopher Lambert? Nevermind.

Oh noes! It's Twitter. In traffic! Lots of whining on the Bay Bridge. Cheese vendors requested to add complimentary tastings to the whine.

Lost fans? William Atherton was trick-tweeted in the latest version of JJ's trickery. Dick? Anyone?

Finally, what we've all been waiting for, it's Pandora doing the Twitter (and FB) dance. Bring it.

Plenty of joy on Twitter this week. Love on it.

Inspiration Monday: Excuses and Others and Bill Murray

I'll kick off this Monday's inspiration with a quote from the newest entry in the Whedon-verse, "Dollhouse," from the first episode of the second season.

Everyone I know is pretty poorly constructed. Everyone has an excuse for not dealing. But eventually, that's all they are. Excuses.

The take home on this one?

Stop making excuses. You are tired, you are worried, hundreds of things are going on in your life. But you have amazing potential. For the most part, why have you not achieved? Excuses. Stop making them, take control and open yourself to success. Excuses never cut it, especially now.


I also heard something this weekend that made me think of this post:

What you do for yourself will die with you. What you do for others will live on forever.

The sentiment is solid. Give to others first.

Today's lesson? Stop making excuses for why you're not succeeding and succeed. And do something - today - that is completely selfless, completely for someone else, and realize that you are not wasting time but gaining personal satisfaction. Talk to someone... and I am reminded of and revert to the end of Scrooged with Bill Murray.

Enjoy, don't just do this today but every day, and if you haven't seen Scrooged, see it. Now. Have a great week!

Friday Internet Videos: Cameron's Avatar, Fatal Farm, and Fred

Time for another round of online videos that you may or may not have caught this week.
Enjoy!

James Cameron's Avatar

Many, many people have been awaiting a glimpse of this trailer from famed Titanic (or if you're like me: Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss) director James Cameron. And here it is:



I loved this movie when it was called The Emperor's New Groove.

What? Everyone already got their snark in. That's mine; the avatars kinda look like when the king turned into a llama.

Seriously, though, I'm thrilled by what I saw. I'm a huge fan of quality science fiction fantasy and a guilty pleasure fan of movies for CG sake, so I can't lose either way. Solid prediction: the video game will probably suck.


Fatal Farm Leftovers

Fatal Farm had some leftovers from the MTV Movie awards, some wonderful parodies. If you cannot laugh at this, ...you must've had an amazing week.




FRED

I'm going to go ahead and warn you: this was a suggestion from my daughter, thought I've seen quite a few of Fred's videos. Fred has risen from relative obscurity on YouTube to an internet and is now real-life star of sorts (he sells clothes at Justice and had a cameo on iCarly). Worth the watch to shake up your reality and keep in touch with a younger generation. Oh, and it's hilarious.

Harry Potter and Other Twitter News

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Tweet

Last night at midnight saw the first showings of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (and it reportedly pulled in $22 million just in those showings). Not surprisingly, there was some Twitter activity coming out of those showings.

Whether or not folks who could not make it sat, glued to their computers waiting for tweets tagged with #hp6 and #harrypotter does not concern me so much as the violation of a glaring cell phone screen periodically popping up, distracting me from a movie I paid $10 to view. I tweet just about everything I do that relates to social media or web design or might be interesting to my followers. But tweeting through a movie is an issue of respect towards others, and a line I will not cross.
_____

Twitter Reality Show?

Called "The Final Tweet," here's the pitch:

In this choose your own adventure type journey the players rely partially on the influence and knowledge of their twitter followers and supporters, the strength of their teamwork, and their ambition to advance them from spot to spot... and bringing them one step closer to that final tweet. Teams will unite, squabble and laugh, looking forward to what Twitter Headquarters has up their sleeves. Twitter followers at home will live and play their journey as the teams document themselves by tweeting updates.

I know. I just threw up a little too. Maybe we can start a reality show that works on the premise of enacting pilots for the most miserable reality show imaginable. But these guys are out. That's a ringer if I ever saw one.
_____

Tweeting the Crime

26-year-old Annemarie Dooling, a NY web producer and social media nut was present when her bank was robbed. So she tweeted right after it happened, through her role as a questioned witness.

At first it was cool. RT's all around!

Then the internet made it ugly. People without all the facts assumed she tweeted through the process of the robbery. She got nasty tweets. By yesterday evening, she had hidden her updates.

One of the downsides of Twitter is that it allows for the acceleration of ignorant consumers to jump to uninformed conclusions. I wish Annemarie luck.

Google Pushes in the Right Direction

Oooh, snap! I talked the other day about how Google was working its way in to the Obama administration. Prime mover: network neutrality.

Biased primer: without network neutrality, corporations and money will decide how fast you get access to what you want to see on the internet by controlling (tightening / loosening / freeing) bandwidth for whomever pays them money. It's like The Godfather, but for the internet, and at a point where you can merge TimeCop and Godfather III and you can go back in time and put a cap in that guy's --

So the point here is that Google is letting users search for those filthy blockers.

This is a potential technology disaster, and I welcome Google to put the pick-axe in the back of the skull of the guy wearing the cable mask. Even if all that means is the most basic horror movie tenet: Turning on the lights.

World's Largest Snowball Fight: Epic Fail

As the Sioux City Journal (?) reported, organizer Mike Basak of the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to trump Michigan Technological University's 2006 record snowball fight involving 3,600 attendees.

Hey, more than 4,000 people joined the Facebook group! Only it was just a couple hundred that showed up. Reasons given were that it was too cold or there was a basketball.

Of course Mike, a freshman, should've been tipped off by his senior year Facebook group experience where 15 people joined "Hey Totally TP Michelle Oplatki's House Cause She Broke Up With Me" but he was the only one to show up to her house. That's if you don't count Michelle's dad, already on the porch with a shotgun.

The real life lesson here, while not uplifting, is that much of the world is well aware that some people already flaunt verbal commitment. Online gives them even more distance as in "I didn't even say anything, just clicked something on a whim."

Which returns me, yet again, to a theme that is apparently going to - rightfully - run through this blog. Technology is good for us. Web sites and search engine optimization and usability and social networks just...work for us. But it's not just a game. It's not just numbers and avatars and network connections. Every link is a person. And if we don't get off our asses and use this technology as a tool to connect in the real world, we will inevitably fall into a recursive pattern of leaning back, clicking, and occasionally smiling. But only occasionally.

Because quoting "Why's the carpet all wet Todd?" "I don't know Margo!" is just not that great unless you get that immediate recognition and - hopefully - chuckle.

I'm going to have to start a movie blog.