correlatingcontent

Photo

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:53:56 +0100

Xynthia was here.And got painted by Vincent Van Gogh 120 years...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:05:03 +0100

Xynthia was here.
And got painted by Vincent Van Gogh 120 years in advance.

“I’m down with that, Jim.”“Word.”

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:48:40 +0100

“I’m down with that, Jim.”
“Word.”

Step back. I'll fix this.

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:49:34 +0100

“Entgegen landläufiger Meinung entstehen Ideen zu Social Media-Kampagnen nicht durch die Penetranz der Berater, sondern beim Kantinengespräch der Unternehmenspraktikanten. Diese tragen den Vorschlag in der Marketingabteilung vor, dort aber sieht man sich mit einem Problem konfrontiert: “Klar, wollen wir auch auf Facebook etwas machen”, sagte mir einmal ein Unternehmenswerber, schwenkte das Kölsch-Glas und setzte an. “Das Problem ist, dass die Budget-Zuteiler über Fünfzig sind und keine Ahnung haben.” Als Folge werden die erwähnten Berater an Bord geholt, um auf 45-minütigen Vorträgen die Chefs der Chefs mit witzigen Anekdoten und beeindruckenden Beispielen lehrreich zu unterhalten. “Okay”, sagen diese dann. “Ihr bekommt den Zuschlag. Aber macht es richtig.”

“Macht es richtig”, bedeutet im Konzernsprech: Kreation, Produktion, Auslieferung, Analyse – am Ende steht eine Excel-Tabelle, in der der Erfolg auf drei Nachkommastellen ermittelt wurde. Schön und gut – doch so funktioniert Social Media nicht. Mit dem Gedanken an eine Conversion Rate auf Facebook oder Twitter loszulegen, ist schlichtweg falsch – ein Einwurf, den die Berater ihren Auftraggeber löblicherweise auch nicht verschweigen, den Alphonso jedoch kritisiert. Social Media wirkt nicht wie der Schokoriegel an der Kasse, sondern eben wie der Kumpel, der mir mitteilt: “Boah! Super-süß, aber schweinelecker, das Teil!” Das verstehen viele Unternehmen nicht.

Und so kommt es zu diesen fatalen Kompromissen, in denen die Berater sich einen schlanken Fuß machen (“Keiner kann versprechen, dass danach die Verkaufszahlen nach oben gehen!”) und die Unternehmensverantwortlichen die Zügel ihres Kontrollzwangs nicht locker lassen wollen (“1.000 Fans auf Facebook müssen mindestens hundert unterschriebene Prepaid-Verträge bringen!”).

Es gibt noch weitere Probleme: Social Media ist unberechenbar und die Kiste kann auch nach hinten losgehen. Ein guter Berater klopft deshalb auch vorher die beworbene Ware auf seine Web 2.0-Tauglichkeit hin ab. Sich auf Facebook zu öffnen, bedeutet, sich der Kritik der Kunden auszusetzen. Wenn dann noch das Produkt nicht das einhält, was versprochen wurde (UMTS-Verfügbarkeit, Qualitätsjournalismus, 20 Pfund in drei Wochen) – dann knallt es.”

- aus “Die große Hure Social Media”, von André Vatter

Got one! And you guys KNOW how much I’ve been craving one...

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:44:57 +0100

Got one! And you guys KNOW how much I’ve been craving one of these babies.

Our very bohemian setup for watching “Tekkon...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:44:32 +0100

Our very bohemian setup for watching “Tekkon Kinkreet” tonight.

Sgt. Pepper (sans his lonely hearts club band) and...

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 02:22:00 +0100

Sgt. Pepper (sans his lonely hearts club band) and D’Artagnan’s niece’s daughter’s son in law’s granddaughter’s best friend’s cook’s father’s great-nephew riding the subway back from another unforgettable Cologne carnival night. My full D-Day Airborne Ranger uniform is such an incredible experience: guys salute me (and make room!) and ladies most definitely have a thing for uniforms that I JUST DON’T GET, and I call myself the empathic type. I mean, for god’s sake, isn’t a uniform a total no-brainer indicator that you’re dealing with a guy who made overcompensation his job? We’ll now enjoy another old episode of firefly and then go to sleep; we’re sooo tired, and tomorrow’s day 3!

Seven Nation Army by Vyvienne Longoriginally by The White...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Seven Nation Army by Vyvienne Long
originally by The White Stripes, via unicornology

Did you, my fellow Germany-dwellers, know, that Capri Sonne has...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:01:12 +0100

Did you, my fellow Germany-dwellers, know, that Capri Sonne has been available in Japan for, like, forever? And that Muhammad Ali was the face of the brand? Quite fitting, as they both display properties of a punching bag.

Note to...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:26:32 +0100

Note to “sometime-in-the-future-screenwriting-again”-me: BICYCLE SHOOTOUT-CHASES.

via Greg Williams, photog.

Welcome to carnival friday:Tone Loc - Funky Cold Medina

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:20:27 +0100

Welcome to carnival friday:
Tone Loc - Funky Cold Medina

Jamie Bolton’s minimalistic movie posters

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:37:17 +0100

Jamie Bolton’s minimalistic movie posters

This is just beautiful… the lord’s work becometh...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:03:24 +0100

This is just beautiful… the lord’s work becometh flesh. Or cloth.

The iPad future shock

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:26:38 +0100

“For years we’ve all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the ‘average person’. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.

Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.

Ask yourself this: in what other walk of life do grown adults depend on other people to help them buy something? Women often turn to men to help them purchase a car but that’s because of the obnoxious misogyny of car dealers, not because ladies worry that the car they buy won’t work on their local roads. (Sorry computer/car analogy. My bad.)

I’m often saddened by the infantilising effect of high technology on adults. From being in control of their world, they’re thrust back to a childish, mediaeval world in which gremlins appear to torment them and disappear at will and against which magic, spells, and the local witch doctor are their only refuges.

With the iPhone OS as incarnated in the iPad, Apple proposes to do something about this, and I meanreally do something about it instead of just talking about doing something about it, and the world is going mental.

Not the entire world, though. The people whose backs have been broken under the weight of technological complexity and failure immediately understand what’s happening here. Those of us who patiently, day after day, explain to a child or colleague that the reason there’s no Print item in the File menu is because, although the Pages document is filling the screen, Finder is actually the frontmost application and it doesn’t have any windows open, understand what’s happening here.

The visigoths are at the gate of the city. They’re demanding access to software. they’re demanding to be in control of their own experience of information. They may not like our high art and culture, they may be really into OpenGL boob-jiggling apps and they may not always share our sense of aesthetics, but they are the people we have claimed to serve for 30 years whilst screwing them over in innumerable ways. There are also many, many more of them than us.

People talk about Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field, and I don’t disagree that the man has a quasi-hypnotic ability to convince. There’s another reality distortion field at work, though, and everyone that makes a living from the tech industry is within its tractor-beam. That RDF tells us that computers are awesome, they work great and only those too stupid to live can’t work them.

The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get “real work” done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the “real work”.

It’s not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.”

- Fraser Speirs, from here

Finishing up Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver tonight....

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:03:40 +0100

Finishing up Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver tonight. It’s been a long read.

Video

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:19:17 +0100

Photo

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:54:34 +0100

THIS is IT.Picture found on engadget.5 hours 36 minutes to go.

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:24:00 +0100

THIS is IT.
Picture found on engadget.
5 hours 36 minutes to go.

Students of the Fakultät für Kulturreflexion at Witten/Herdecke...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:51:19 +0100

Students of the Fakultät für Kulturreflexion at Witten/Herdecke University in Germany have devised a fully functioning Neuroscanner that taps into the stream of semi-conscious musings that occasionally let creative types “space out”. I was chosen as one of the most suitable subjects for a first public demonstration: The above video shows a visualised phenomenological analysis of who, at my very core, I actually am.

Rooftop Tiles by Shiro Kasamatsu

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:00:31 +0100

Rooftop Tiles by Shiro Kasamatsu