Feel Reality

Crazy Catch by Ball Girl

There is currently a video circulating the internet of a Ball Girl making a crazy catch. In the slow-mo instant replay you see this girl make a 6 foot vertical leap up the wall to catch an otherwise instant double. Or is that just a little league rule? I don’t follow baseball. Here is the clip:

The video seems plausible and it has everyone debating whether it actually happened or not. If it was staged it was an excellent staging, like the moon landing. In all reality the girl did not make this stunt and the video is in fact fake. The production is a viral ad created for Gatorade by element 79 a viral video and marketing agency.  I’m not sure how it ties to Gatorade. I’m sure the folks at element 79 do. 

I’ve always wondered how these agencies ensure that a viral ad sticks. There has to be some formula and the select group of agencies that understand it are raking in cash from big brand companies.  The one piece I missed is how this video ties to Gatorade. Once people discover it, Gatorade will get a lot of “word-of-mouth” press coverage. But does that help their already recognizable brand?  What does this video sell? 

Traditionally viral videos were placed on sites that had non-obvious links to the benefiting site or brand.  For instance… I remember a site with a girl participating in a wet t-shirt contest, the headline read something like “I see your sister made it to spring break” and it had a “send to a friend” form on the side. The footer had a key word stuffed link to the site that was really benefiting. The basic premise was that you had a viral “host” page feeding PR, relevance and traffic to the “parasitic” beneficiary site.  The beneficiary site was of course, the company paying for the ad. 

Did YouTube and the other slew of online video sharing sites kill the benefits of viral marketing? Or is their other trickery involved? Maybe it’s more subtle… like Tyler Durden at work splicing images into the video. Watch it and then tell me if you’re thirsty.

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Top 10 Amateur videos on YouTube

Display quality video imaging sensors are now being incorporated into cellphones, cameras and fad gadgets like The Flip. This coupled with the fact that media and video production software now comes standard on windows and mac computers has resulted in a ProAm era where consumers are outproducing the producers. 

To put this into perspective: When Elvis Presley first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show during prime time, 60 Million viewers tuned in. It was the second highest rated US Television show ever (based on viewers). In April of 2006, Judson Laipply started off his YouTube video “The Evolution of Dance” to Elvis Presley’s “You Ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog”, 89.5 Million viewers have watched to date.

Here are a list of the top 10 Amateur videos on YouTube today, ranked by viewcount…

1. Views: 89,589,770 Evolution of Dance — middle aged man emulates the dancing styles from 1959 to the present.

2.  Views: 52,780,635 Hahaha — a guy makes strange noises that cause a baby to laugh uncontrollably.

3.  Views: 46,150,038 Potter Puppet Pals in “The Mysterious Ticking Noise” — Harry Potter finger puppet musical.

4.  Views: 45,100,920 guitar — Canon played by funtwo (pretty amazing really).

5.  Views: 38,939,867 Pleasing Partner with Mouth — halfway decent looking blonde with a tongue ring talks about providing oral pleasure.

6. Views: 34,246,273 Charlie bit my finger - again ! — little Brit kid puts his finger inside his baby brothers mouth. Twice.

7. Views: 27,898,840 Free Hugs Campaign — Grimey looking guy offers free hugs, the campaign spreads and everyone engages in public display of affection… well hugs anyway. 

8. Views: 25,072,974 Remember Me — Slideshow dedicated to American Soldiers overseas.

9. Views: 22,779,132 Hey clip Lip Sync video produced by two jailbait girls in tight and or revealing clothing.

10. Views: 20,928,688 Chris Crocker - LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! It took me a while to decide if this was a really ugly (and scruffy) girl or a metrosexual (at the very least) guy.  It’s a guy… this was pimped heavily by the mainstream celebrity gossip shows. 

There were two videos on this list that I questioned whether they should be included or not. The first one is #5, I think the video title was probably misconstrued, resulting in the large number of hits. However, the girl in the preview is the girl that you get in the video (no image splice trick) and she does explain the topic at hand. The second video that I had to question was #7. This video is done to a music score and they even pimp the background track in the title. However, the music takes second stage to the story line, so I figured it was like an amateur hour silent film with music.

Wanna know what it takes to make a top 10 video?  Check out this great article on the Top Ten Online Filmmaking Techniques at newteevee.com. 

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My Thinking Station

In attempt to show where my wonderful thoughts and ideas come from, I will be sharing a little bit of my world with you. This is where I clear my head when I’m not writing. The lab pics are coming tomorrow in response to John Chow’s “blog station / work area”. Plus this gives me a chance to show off my fancy new camera.  This pic wasn’t color corrected or adjusted in anyway and I think it came out beautifully.  I need to pay more attention to placement though, I had an odd sign protruding from my bike the last time I shot it too. Oh well, I will keep practicing.

By the way, I know these linked images are causing IE issues. I will get to that.  In the mean time I kind of enjoy not fixing IE’s quirks for once. Oh the agony that is Microsoft trying to play in the online market. If only Netscape would have tried just a little bit harder and not given up market share.  For the uninitiated, uninformed and otherwise left behind; get Firefox!

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In the Works

Just in time for my new camera we had another beautiful hail storm in Nebraska that resulted in this slight outline of a rainbow.  Proving, ever so slightly, that it is always darkest before the dawn. The weather was nice today for once, it would’ve been a good day to go out and take some pics but I had other plans.  Yesterday a present arrived, a shiny new set of Vance & Hines Slashcut Staggerd Exhaust pipes for my Vulcan 900 Custom. All I can say is WOW. It feels and sounds like a whole new bike. They sound mean and I love it! 

Tuesday I will be accepting delivery of a fi2000r Fuel Management System.  I am not sure yet if I will install it on my bike. There are mixed reviews as to whether or not it’s required with an exhaust modification.  I might ship it back and go for the Corbin Seat that I’ve been eying. As a side note, motorcycles cost much more than the sticker price.

Seth Godin preaches that in order to stand out you have to be remarkable.  I know that I’m not generating anything buzz worthy here… It’s almost like a personal journal.  I assure you I’m ironing out the kinks before I get into the meat of what I’m after.  In the mean time, I have posted a contact form, updated the about section and I should be working out a google sitemap so that I can get some real traffic.  I will also be offering expandable comments so that you can reply to a particular comment as soon as I figure out how that works. Maybe it’s a word press plugin since I mainly see it on WP blogs.  I had to go against the grain and use Expression Engine. Hopefully the folks at pmachine have something similar. 

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Becoming More Legit

As you have probably noticed, many of the images on my site were ripped off. As a web developer I know this is a major taboo and it probably hurt my legitimacy a bit. For what it’s worth I did create the site’s design myself, going with a template or even a “unique blog” design would’ve killed all credibility in my book. The truth is this is more or a nonprofit adventure for me and a way for me to get the word out on my thoughts and ideas.  So stealing the blog post imagery was a way for me to add a little spice and play w/ the lightbox effects while I nailed down a way to do in post imagery in a manageable, efficient manner.

With that said, I will start to post real images and bring more of my own touch to this site as we progress. My excuse is that I was between cameras. In the recent past I owned both a Nikon D50 and a Sony CyberShot T9.  The D50 took creat pictures but I felt like a tool lugging it around. I have a degree in Information Technology and Electronic Imaging and Graphics, so I did have to take a few required photography courses to get that, but I’ve never considered myself a photographer. Just as I have an interest in design, yet I’m not a graphic artist. With that being said I needed something between the pocket T9 camera and my big lug D50.  So I sold them both off and have been researching the best camera to fit my needs.  I narrowed it down to the Canon G9 and the Panasonic Lumix TZ5. 

I have always been a fan of the images produced by the high end Canon Cameras. As you can see from a previous post I was debating purchasing the G9.  That was until I got to actually play with TZ5. As I said before, the G9 seemed a bit quirky and it felt like it was trying too hard. I still believe this is a great camera but if you want user selectable ISO settings and Aperature Control, why not go all out w/ a dSLR? I have been down that road and the technical aspects took a bit of the fun out of it for me.  They say the best camera is one that you will carry with you and use. You don’t want to be left thinking “Gee, I wish I had my camera to capture this”.

So today was my birthday and I went out with my sister to check out cameras. She graciously allowed me to conduct my OCD like inspections of the models I was interested in and we talked it out to see what I would really use and enjoy.  I went with the TZ5 and I think I made the right decision.  The Lumix series uses top notch Leica lenses and it has a full 10X optical soom, besting the G9 while remaining more compact and in IMHO better looking.  It was fast, responsive and the zoom was clear, smooth and silent.  I love it so far and I look forward to sharing a little more of my world with all of you.  With that said, I look forward to sharing a glimse of the world through my eyes with all of you. 

Ohhhh and this site is seeing some traffic and feed subscribers but still no comments. I’m tempted to talk to myself to stop the lurking but that again feels cheap. So speak up, introduce yourselves and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with all of you. 

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Life is but a “Lucid” Dream

The “Life Extension” program allows you to be frozen in a cryogenic state for eternity while you’re immersed in a lucid dream that you control at arms length.  You decide the break point of your life; the moment in time where the lucid dream is spliced into reality.  You can go back and relive that one moment that you wish you would’ve done differently and everything from that point on goes the way you would’ve intended. You aren’t calling the shots, but the shots are going to work out in your favor because again… you are in control. 

All is well until you look up and realize that the one thing you thought you knew for sure is slightly out of place. The sky is no longer blue and your world has been swallowed by a portrait of a perfect Vanilla Sky. 

Lost in Hollywood’s secret sauce translation; “Vanilla Sky” became just another rendition of “The Family Man”. The story of a man who had it all, lost it, and was forced to find what truly matters in life - love. Behind the man in the mask there was a deeper concept though… The idea that truth and fiction are determined by the creator. We determine not only what we want to believe, but what we want others to believe about us. We reveal just enough to keep the fairy tail alive.

I don’t believe we are all just putting on a show. We buy into the show as well. As Tyler Durden put it: “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

So life is a lucid dream.  We are in control, but only at arms length. Things can always go awry and unfortunately we can’t splice a scene and do it over. We are in control of the opportunities and obstacles that we create, but only those that were created by us. In the real world, the one with the blue sky, we are still forced to find our way through the maze of the world’s intentions.

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The Treehouse Effect

All through life we are exposed to clicks. We would like to believe that these groups are left behind after we exit high school and enter the real world, but it never really works out that way. When clicks move into the work environment, it can be detrimental to company moral. I am not one to stand around the water cooler, but I’ve always enjoyed stirring the pot. I try to avoid these clicks as much as possible while leaving one foot wading in the pool. I don’t want to push things to the point of being ostracized, but I don’t want to be caught wearing the NKOTB slap bracelet either.

I don’t care much for the corporate ladder. Since becoming a web developer I have made it a point to stick to smaller companies. I thought this would cut down on red tape and extinguish title envy. I was sadly mistaken.

Clicks are going to exist in every company with three or more employees. On top of that, no matter what our role may be, you will be forced to adorn a title to let the rest of the world know what you do for your employer.  Titles are arbitrary and unless you’re card has the word “president” or “CEO” on it, it won’t carry much weight. However, titles mean the world to the title holder.  Titles not only encompass what you do, they reinforce your chain of command. You may not like acting like a boss, but given the right situation, you will attempt to pull rank. Your title not only defines who you are in the grand scheme of things, but also who you should associate with when it comes to making the key business decisions.  This is where I believe the system falls apart.

I call it, the Treehouse effect.  When a company is forced into a corner and they have to make key decisions that effect that livelihood of their business, they hold meetings with the “key decision makers”. The problem is, the longer you have been around, the more you have developed the “hive mindset”. Lower employees, who don’t have fancy adjectives on their business card, are often left out. In the corporate world you can’t fit everyone into your conference room, but that doesn’t mean you can’t open up the channels of communication. In a smaller company you can and should fit everyone into a meeting room when it comes to making big decisions. Everyone’s opinion should be taken into consideration and you have to remember that brainstorming is a two way street.

If “Information Sciences Inc” had valued the ideas and input of Bill Gates, you might not have had Microsoft’s name in front of your OS version.  If “Your Business Software” wouldn’t have fired Mark Cuban for failing to open one of it’s chain stores while making a large sales call, you might have heard of them as well.  The point is… You need a hierarchy to establish a pay scale and to enforce the chain of command, but you need to realize that chain works both ways. Take the sign down from your tree house and let everyone else in. Diminish your hive mindset and realize that not everyone sees your business through your eyes. Listen. And people will share their vision.

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Top Affiliate Challenge Reality Show

Thor Schrock, the second runner up of Joel Comm’s “The Next Internet Millionaire”, is about to embark upon a reality show of his own; “Top Affiliate Challenge”.  I first met Thor in Lincoln at an event held by Shoemoney for the NPMMO group.  First impressions… I thought Thor was a real go-getter with a charismatic personality. I was excited to watch him represent Nebraska on Joel Comm’s internet reality show, even though I have never been a big fan of the long copy sales letter king, Joel Comm.  Thor owns a successful computer repair shop in both Omaha and Lincoln Nebraska and he is now starting to dabble on the web, which has turned out to be a great match for his networking skills. 

The “Top Affiliate Challenge” will be filmed in Lincoln, Nebraska and unlike Joel Comm’s exploitation, all of the advice and tips will be available free during the season.  Thor is bringing in some heavy hitters from Search Engine Marketing world for his show including Shoemoney, John Chow and Ken McArthur (whom I have never heard of up until now).  Shoe has the home fienld advantage, I’m not sure how this will help other than shortening his commute. At least Shoe will be able to share his new 2000 sq ft Shoemoney Plex with John Chow so that he can see how the other half lives, haha. 

In all reality, this should be an exciting show and I really look forward to it.  I will be giving my few cents worth of insight and episode recaps as the season progresses . As an interesting side note… both Thor and Shoemoney have a difficult to remember silent “c” in their last names. 

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