Go throw a video – that’s the fun concept behind the beta video dashboard launched today by Unknown Vector. It’s called uvLayer and it was first unveiled publicly at the NYC Video 2.0 Meetup last Tuesday.
Video 2.0 NYC finds perfect venue
January 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Webster Hall offers the perfect New York grit no bullshit cutting edge decadence that NY Video 2.0 Meetup needs (and accordingly, all 400+ people there last night seemed to be wearing black). Last time I was in Webster Hall – 2o or so years back – it was to see the Dead Kennedy’s or Mad Cow Disease or something like that. The place hasn’t changed a bit, you can really blow minds in a concentrated way here with big black speakers hovering overhead like space craft of destruction. You can walk around this place just staring at the walls, and I believe I have.
Video 2.0 NYC Tomorrow
January 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment
My favorite Meetup – Video 2.0 – gets rolling again tomorrow night at a great new location, the legendary Webster Hall in NYC.
Bare knuckle knockout politics ahead
January 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Hillary takes a thumpin’ in South Carolina, Teddy Kennedy comes out today for Obama, Caroline Kennedy had an impassioned plea for Obama in a NYTimes Op-Ed yersterday, Kerry threw his French chin behind Obama a few weeks ago – for a guy who is about one word – CHANGE – Barack Obama is dragging the fossilized Democratic liberals along with him. The Republicans long for Ronald Reagan, the Democrats lust after another John Kennedy. Are we that disappointed with what is before us that we have to re-invent the past?
Friar’s Head to China
January 26, 2008 By 1 Comment
Who her?
This pic (left) was posted on 1938Media Friday night with the headline Mark Rose and Her. Her is Michelle Oshen, Loren Feldman’s main and only squeeze. We were outside the legendary Friar’s Club on East 55th Street and the three of us – Loren snapped away on his iPhone - were between courses on an Olympian steamer, lobster and cheesecake for me (yeah, real) and dessert for them orgy between the Billy Crystal Room and the main dining room that has the vibe of a church to comedy … actually a monastery. The Friar’s I remember – Buddy Hackett, Shecky Green, Alan King, Dean Martin, Frankie, Sammy, the whole Rat Pack, they were the real deal, the crazy drunken foul-mouthed bums from 60′s TV specials who gave us, for an hour on black and white TV, a glimpse into the good life unhinged, the carefree glamor that characterized the best of the late 50s and the 60s before the Vietnam war.
Loren is talking crazy about China. How big is China? Unfathomable. What does it take to crack the China market? China is an entrepreneurial mecca, the great story of our generation. China has had a tremendous impact on our economy and it will only increase exponentially. So Loren is heading to China “within the next 30 days” at a propitious time. The faltering U.S. economy is rippling bad news through the world economy and China’s business practices sometimes seem more important than our own. If we’re going to do business together we should find a way to talk to each other in a language we can understand.
More on that later.
Heath Has Legs
January 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment
The New York Post trumps the Daily News today by recognizing that the Heath Ledger story has legs. It has it all. Ingrained, incestuous celebrity New York, intrigue, death, many paramours on the fringes, a young child, the images of the scruffy hooded guy strolling his child in Brooklyn (will his Carroll Gardens home now be on the tour bus schedule?). It’s like another day and time when James Dean holed up on the upper west side of Manhattan and captured the iconography of his time in rain-soaked strolls through Times Square.
The chronology of this story borders on celeb fiction. Unlicensed masseuse discovers Heath dead and calls Mary Kate three times before thinking to alert police. Mary Kate sends over her bodyguard. Apparently more than 20 minutes pass while the masseuse and Mary Kate decide what to do with an obviously dead body. So the awaiting blockbuster Batman movie becomes to Heath Ledger what “Giant” was to James Dean. Only the good die young is a song I think about – Buddy Holly, Bruce Lee, Jimi Hendrix, James Dean, Joplin, Morrison, all around the same age as Heath Ledger. Marilyn blossomed and peaked and died at 36 in Brentwood. Can we imagine her a day older? Will we ever stop wondering about Marilyn Monroe?
This story has legs. And right now they belong to Mary-Kate Olsen.
Fake Richard Edelman Protests Suspension
January 24, 2008 By 1 Comment
EXCLUSIVE. This just in: The attorney for Fake Richard Edelman has contacted PRBlogNews to vehemently protest his client’s suspension from Strumpette due to alleged 
plagiarism. Fake Richard Edelman is charged with lifting the words of Joseph Goebbels for a speech in Davos.
“My client is a fake,” said Joseph Santangelo (left), partner at Santangelo & Morello, legal counsel to Fake Richard Edelman. “How do you charge a fake with plagiarism? He should be given a raise and promotion for his brilliant work. Now that he has been vilified and tainted in the public media I am sure that he will find it extremely difficult to get another Fake gig. We are mulling our options.”
Fake Richard Edelman is accused of “a wholesale lifting of source material” from Joseph Goebbels, “Der Rundfunk als achte Großmacht.” by Martin Turnbull, Dean of the Communications College at the Kepler School of Management.
Fr. Brian Connolly of Strumpette said in a statement: “We’ve launched a thorough investigation and intend to review this matter fully. Until such time as we can make a final determination, we are suspending Fake Richard Edelman without pay.”
“You have not heard the last of Fake Richard Edelman,” said Mr. Santangelo.
Meanwhile, the real Richard Edelman has made his annual pilgrimage to Davos to release findings of the Trust Barometer. This year, it seems that for some reason people trust business more than ever. According to the Financial Times the Trust Barometer includes this breakthrough insight:
The Edelman study confirms this view: most of those polled said they would not buy products and services from a company they distrusted and, conversely, would take their custom to one they trusted.
The Year of the Visual Web
January 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment
This is the Year of the Visual Web, when video explodes on the web and our Internet experience jumps to a higher level.
Here’s an example. BlinkX is a video search engine. I inserted search term “Heath Ledger” to produce this wall of video. Scroll over each one to see date and origin of the video. Click on it to launch the video. My Internet connection must be a lower/high speed. Too much lag time for many videos, especially from big media sites like CNN.
Link Whores Unite
January 22, 2008 By 1 Comment
My blogging is commensurate with my success in business. The busier I am with billable hours, the less I blog. You have to sacrifice something and for me the choice is clear. And you become 
more cautious. You have clients to protect, an image to convey. The less said the better. Why say anything? We are being pummeled with bad economic news and that sets a foul mood and taints everything anyway.
I empathise with Phil Gomes, Steve Rubel, and all the other bloggers whose names are below Richard Edelman on the Edelman site. They’re not going to blog about their mercurial boss or rail against a cruel and punishing God. The best we can do is link to others and let them speak for us.
Bill Slezdick of Tough Sledding hits on a touchy though increasingly relevant subject that in the past was referred to as the “Feminization of PR.” Too many women in PR? Some agencies have outstanding orders for “anything with balls” to fill out professional staff.
The Queen of saying nothing is Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100, who has not posted to her blog since May, 2006. As Abraham Lincoln reputedly said, better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
I was touched by Jim Horton’s recent post on the death of his father. I am always impressed by the consistency and intelligence of his posts. Ike Piggott at Occam’s RazR has one of those brains that scramble up like a fritzed out ham radio and then come into sharp focus long enough so you think at least he knows what he’s talking about.
Jason McCabe Calacanis always has a lot to say, sometimes about topics other than himself. Mahalo is producing its own daily video by Veronica Belmont and that’s cool. Maybe Jason is taking a page from Loren Feldman at 1938 Media but Jason is going more WallStrip than burn down the house, re-enact the French Revolution of Loren. We want personality baby!
I am glad that Eric Starkman is tackling the important issues in his post on The Dehumanization of Britney Spears but I don’t get the connection between the Brit and Kitty Genovese. Britney invites TMZ and X17 photogs into her house, she endlessly cruises Hollywood with trailing packs of paparazzo, she sleeps with the enemy and bares all her weirdness for us scandal-starved masses to take in. Kitty Genovese was a real victim, Brit is complicit in her own demise, no matter how tragic it may seem. I suspect that Eric is passing through the Britney story and he is not fully immersed in the daily (minute to minute) details.
more link whoring later …
Where Would We Be Without TMZ?
January 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Like ATMs, cell phones and the Blackberry, it’s hard to imagine life without the hot news celebrity gossip site. Right now they are camped out with two live feeds in front of the 
courthouse waiting for Britney to arrive. Yesterday they caught Britney on a shopping outing with her new highly questionable … and still married … escort paparazzi Adnan Ghalib. She was screaming f**k you to the hordes of paps and baby talking in her new fake British accent. And today she goes before the Judge (if she shows up) in her custoidy hearing. Good luck!
Does Britney know that she’s sleeping with the enemy? Does she know anything anymore? She wants to convert to Islam, she reportedly wanted to fake her own death and move to Pakistan, she held off cops topless and cursing in her home last week with her kids before being hauled into the hospital for psych tests. How do we know this – the same way lawyers, prosecutors, journalists and Judges get the latest on Britney – they read TMZ.
Just when you think the Britney story can’t get any more bizarre it ramps up to another level. Is that the definition of a train wreck? It is horrible and destructive yet you cannot look away.
