All God's Children...

If you're in Sarasota, Florida this coming week for the Sarasota Film Festival, make sure to check out the premier of the amazing documentary, "All God's Children". Beautiful and powerful, made by 2 fabulous Brooklyn filmmakers.

Giving it away - blogcastr

OK, I'll throw this idea out there, because I'm pretty sure I won't have the chance to make it myself.

Could someone please create:
A RIA that allows me to write a blog post, and then cross post it to multiple blogs? Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, Moveable Type, My Space... hell, Open Diary, I don't care.

If you give me a cut, I'll even design the UI, branding, etc.

Or if there's something out there that does this well, and is pretty, could someone tell me about it?

Thanks!

Can you have a digital desire path?

So, first off, what's a "desire path"?

From Fritinancy:

Desire path: A term in landscape architecture used to describe a path that isn't designed but rather is worn casually away by people finding the shortest distance between two points.

Here's one from the Desire Path Flickr photo pool:

But can there be such a thing as a desire path when dealing with software, or websites?

I've seen plenty of situations where software users have created elaborate real world workarounds to make up for badly designed software.

Stickies all over someones desktop so that they can remember important info, or tasks to be completed:
or printing screen shots of software for reference, so they don't have to dive into hard to navigate tools...

Can you make the case that these represent user desire paths? The shortest distance between two points--the task, or goal, and the completion of a task or goal?

In landscape architecture, desire paths are communal. One person acts as the trail blazer, and as more and more tread the non-path, a real path emerges. It becomes more and more acceptable to take it. You are basically given permission by everyone who has gone before you. (As an aside, I remember a fascinating video of people crossing a street against a light... it's like we flock across. One maverick pedestrian starts the crossing, and soon it's like the rest of us are compelled into crossing. I guess a desire path is a geographical manifestation of this kind of behavior.)

So, do these stickies, and printout books, represent desire paths? They are definitely short cuts. Are they communal? Often coworkers teach other coworkers how to make them, so that they too can short cut the "pain points" of the crap software they are mandated to use. Or am I just pushing the metaphor too far?

Whatev... I'm gonna start slipping digital or user desire path into conversation, and see if it sticks.

GM to move 50% of ad budget online in 3 years.

From Shelly Palmer:

GENERAL MOTORS will shift half of its $3 billion advertising budget to online and one-to-one marketing within 3 years. That indicates a rapid increase over the $197 million GM spent online last year. The company plans to embrace a wide variety of formats, including gaming, search, interactive applications and more.

More interesting, and telling news for those of us who work in what used to be lovingly called the convergence space. (What was it that was supposed to be converging again?) Apparently GM is going to be focusing $1.5 billion on gaming, search, interactive ads, and more.

I'm beginning to believe more and more in a punctuated equilibrium evolutionary model for the media space. Natural selection is at work, friends. I'm fascinated to see what we all evolve into next...

And, on that note, where is all this interactive ad content going to come from? Traditional agencies (much like some of their big media masters) seem to be stuck in their own tar pits...

Where does "Blue" end and "Red" begin?

A fascinating project that used the Amazon Mechanical Turk to have random people name the color presented to them, and then created this beautiful map of how we name colors.

Tag! You're it! In the press...

The Austin Chronicle wrote a nice summary of our panel at SxSW. With some good quotes.

Cut, Print, Your Turn

But what does it mean?

Photo by Richard Whittaker

SXSW Interactive may end, but some bits keep going, like the Unnamed Exquisite Corpse Movie, which made its sorta, kinds debut.

Taking its inspiration from the old surrealist thought experiment, it brings a new meaning to film-making as a communal experience. Quick skinny: a cast and crew has two weeks to make five minutes of a film. When they're done, they send the last minute of their segment to another cast and crew, and one instruction ("Use something pink." "This actress is pivotal." "There needs to be a fake eyelash.") and see what they come up with. Confused yet? The film makers are betting you won't be by the time it's completed.

"We hope that there will be a through-line, and that there will be a wonderful, watchable movie," said moderator and executive producer Meghan Scibona of Small Media XL. "Actually, we've all watched the first 20 minutes and we're shocked about how well it works as a short."

"It's gone somewhere exciting and interesting," said projected innovator Jason Nunes of Adobe Consulting, "and it's not a mess yet." With four of a planned twenty segments in place, the group plans to send push the experiment as far as possible by getting international collaborators.

Small Media XL's face lift...

Check out Small Media Extra Large's new website. The creative production company that specializes in creating extra large content for small screens.

TagFlim.com is live and kicking

The first four segments have been shot, and their last minutes are posted to the web. Check 'em out:

MobLogic

There's a great article on NewTeeVee about MobLogic, the next series from the folks who brought you WallStrip, and produced by a good friend of mine.

Looks to be a fun show... the tone of Wallstrip applied to politics and news. About freakin' time. Are you paying attention old news media? This is that time in all those Spike Lee movies where he appears with a giant stop sign, and screams "WAKE UP!"

OK, OK, so it's brought to you by CBS digital... I know, I know... but at least it looks like they are doing it right.



Oh, and if you're around, there will be a launch party for MobLogic at SxSW. I'll be there!

The city that never sleeps ... nor stops talking

Fun info viz from MIT:

The City That Never Sleeps or Stops Talking.

1000 True Fans

An interesting article about making a living as an artist in the era of the long tail.

"A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans...

Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what you do. That "one-day-wage" is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let's peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate."

New design of jasonunes.com

I've also just posted a redesign of Jasonunes.com. An attempt to make it a bit cleaner, and more to the point.

Take a look, and if you get a second, let me know what you think.

The "Tag, You're It!" website launched today...

Tag, You're It! is a project that explores collaborative media creation by applying the rules of the Surrealists’ exquisite corpse game to filmmaking. A panel at SXSW on Tuesday, March 11th from 5-6pm will discuss the project and issues around this kind of collaboration.

Throughout 2008, a diverse group of filmmakers will create a feature film, utilizing the exquisite corpse structure as a mode of collaboration. Each team will create a 4-5 minute segment on film or video. When they are finished they will pass only the last minute of their film to the next team, along with a prop or object featured in their segment, and photographs of all the actors who have appeared in the project. No other information will change hands. The next team must incorporate some or all of these elements into their segment. Each production team has two weeks to write, cast, shoot, and edit their segment. The final product will be a feature-length film, in which the complete narrative will be revealed for the first time. The final film will be submitted to the 2009 South By Southwest Film Festival.