Oddly, I just discovered that the White House now has a flickr feed with high-resolution photos available for public viewing and civic use. Duh, of course a social media enabled campaign leads naturally to a social media enabled White House. Our political discourse takes a leap forward permanently (unless the next American President deletes all these social media accounts, or these social media services cease operations).
Wow, elementary school SHOULD be awesome now, assuming kids get to use digital media tools and the Internet to assemble commentaries and reflections with all this great material available for mashup (somehow, I fear we're not even close to this at the moment).
Well deserved recognition at Demo 09 for a lot of hard work on a very innovative communications app called Sharegrove.
Back around 1991, at the dawn of the interactive media "revolution", I made a silly vow that the largest video display in my home would always be a computer monitor. The line of reasoning was "everthing worthwhile would emit from a computer screen rather than a television screen". The Internet is the greatest generation gap since rock and roll. We're now witnessing one aspect of that generation gap: the younger generation chats digitally, and the older generation treats those chats as written correspondence. Until our CEOs blog, our Congressmen Twitter, and our world leaders send each other LOLcats – until we have a Presidential election where both candidates have a complete history on social networking sites from before they were teenagers– we aren't fully an information age society.
When everyone leaves a public digital trail of their personal thoughts since birth, no one will think twice about it being there. Obama might be on the younger side of the generation gap, but the rules he's operating under were written by the older side. It will take another generation before society's tolerance for digital ephemera changes.
Now I recall mulling over this same issue a couple of years ago...framed at the time as the "transparent versus opaque generation gap".
... something I am surprised has not been more widely expressed. Colin Powell concludes his endorsement of Barack Obama with the observation that conjecture about whether Obama was ever a Muslim is wrong-headed. What ever happened to the principle of religious freedom in America?
For much of this week, I witnessed first-hand Netflix's integrity in dealing with a major service outage. Colleagues worked round the clock. Throughout the ranks, there was resolve rather than fear, and always a determination to do the right thing.
Ironically gratifying to see Y! Smart Ads, the initiative I incubated with many wonderful collaborators, featured on this slide about Yahoo's efforts to maintain a leadership position in display advertising. Part of a shareholder presentation, filed with the SEC in late June 2008, that argues to preserve the company's present strategy, management team and board of directors.
Yesterday marked a significant inflection point for "The Initiative". Chrysler has publicly endorsed the merits of dynamic message personalization as part of an online advertising strategy. They did so by confidently associating the launch of the 2008 Dodge Caravan with Yahoo! Smart Ads.
We (the extended Y! Smart Ads team) will make them proud.
In quick succession, the New York Times, NPR's All Things Considered, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN's Jim Ledbetter have reported on the recent announcement of Yahoo! Smart Ads.
This counter-point essay in the NYT Bits Blog lays out the challenge and thus opportunity that Smart Ads present to the advertising industry:
It's gratifying, and a bit startling, to see this idea to increase the relevance of display advertising so quickly capture the imagination of highly intelligent and articulate observers. There's no turning back, because we certainly would not wish the alternative on anyone.
Oh, I almost forgot... I'm hiring product marketers dedicated to the Yahoo! Smart Ad initiative -- the positions are on LinkedIn, and on careers.yahoo.com
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My partner-in-life Laura and I recently honeymooned in the Banff and Jasper national parks of Canada. I can not think of enough superlatives to describe this UNESCO World Heritage site. Up close, and from afar, the entire region exudes epic beauty.
The above quartet of talented jazz musicians led by Henry Hung deserves much credit for the festive atmosphere of our recent wedding on May 19, 2007. Trumpeter Henry Hung, guitarist Brian Moran, percussionist Micha Patri and the unidentified bassist brought their unique jazz touch to a repetoire spanning Aaron Copland, Cole Porter, Joao Gilberto and the Beatles.
These musicians rocked the house, and even brought my father to his feet in an enthusiastic drum circle. That was no small feat!
Laura and I pulled off our wedding on May 19, 2007. In celebration of our special moment, we engaged in the traditional drumming of the garbage can lid and cow bell.
We are indebted to our families and friends for helping to make this joyful day possible. I've posted some photos taken by guests.
Interesting NY Times article this morning about Loren Pope . While the writer focused on Pope's admirable impact on college counseling, I gravitated to the short mention of Pope's association with Frank Lloyd Wright.
With further research, I found wikipedia entries on both Pope and the 1200 square foot home Frank Lloyd Wright designed for him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Pope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope-Leighey_House
What a fascinating individual!
A Yahoo staffer noted this recently... Barack Obama, or more likely his campaign team, has established a flickr photo feed to cover his campaign for the U.S. presidency. Here, he announces his candidacy to the residents of Springfield, Illinois -- poetically associating himself with Abraham Lincoln.
I suspect of all the presidential aspirants, he will be covered most extensively by user-generated content and various social media systems.
