My new favorite place to surf is The Commons on Flickr. The Commons is considered to be the world’s first public photo collection. Everyone is welcome to review, describe, and comment on the photos. In there you can find amazing gems like the above photo from this collection:

“In 1911 a group of scientists and adventurers left Hobart under the leadership of Dr Douglas Mawson. They were bound for Macquarie Island and the then unknown parts of Antarctica. The scientists of the expedition produced information that later made an major contribution to knowledge of the region. The exploration of new lands established precedence to claims, formalised in 1936 as the Australian Antarctic Territory. Although James Francis (Frank) Hurley was the official photographer to the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, other members of the expedition also took photographs.”

There are tons of historic photographs from such collections as The State Library of New South Wales, Swedish National Heritage Board, and The Library of Congress, among many many others. Browsing is like taking a mental vacation. The imagery is so stunning and rich. Every photo evokes a detailed story.

Take some time and flip through a few images. Which ones are you drawn to?

To the rescue, comes “PuppyTweets”, a product you can pre-order on amazon.com TODAY (hurry, what’s stopping you??!!). I don’t know if it’s a novelty aimed at people looking for the next greatest way to waste time at work, or if there are people who truly need to “hear” from their pets while they’re away (oh, maybe they’re the same people).

Here’s how it works — you connect a USB receiver to your computer, download the PuppyTweets software, create a Twitter page for Gator, and then place the PuppyTweet tag on his collar. Every time Gator barks or stretches a signal is sent to your computer, and one of the 500 pre-loaded phrases is automatically posted on his Twitter page. Yup, Gator’s Twitter page. So if Gator likes to stare out the window and bark at squirrels, or he likes to pace around the house from 2-5, you could be getting tweets every few minutes….yippee. 

As maker Mattel describes it , “a Tweet from your pooch is a virtual smooch!” – but I think even Gator would tell you “smooch this and get a life”.

In a “jump the shark” moment from which they likely never will recover, aging pop-punk heroes Green Day performed “21 Guns” with the cast from their Broadway musical “American Idiot,” reducing a great song to a pompous, bombastic, “Up With People” meets “Rent” sing-along. (Can this possibly be the same band that once gave us “Dookie”?)

Ok, I get it, Green Day’s Grammy performance may have been a little over the top and kinda silly, but what Jim fails to realize is that is probably the reason why Green Day gave the green light to such a project/performance in the first place. The Grammys are over the top, silly and stupid - kinda like the most of music industry in general.

I can see the 3 members of Green Day sitting around a table, enjoying some pizza, maybe a couple of beers or soda pop while laughing at the fact that their album “American Idiot” has gone Broadway (suckers!). The band has an occasional antagonistic nature about them and very thought off such a production probably had them say “Why not?”. Yeah, it may bomb, it may be completely awful, but I think Green Day will survive just fine. They have a pretty good catalog of songs/albums that have generated a solid fan base since the early ’90s. Possible minor setback, probable - “un-Punk”, maybe - jump the shark, don’t think so.

It’ll probably give us a look back and laugh moment, if anything.

Anyway on a separate note, enjoy this clip from Best in Show.

• Learn more about Google Buzz here.
• Watch the Google Buzz video presentation here.
• Article: Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter

That’s what my 16-year-old granddaughter Myranda told me she had in December in a matter-of-fact description of the happening.

I had earlier read a report that among this younger demographic, text messaging had not only far surpassed e-mailing, but conversation.  The report also stated that 500 text messages a day by this demographic is not unusual…that amounts to 15,000 a month.  Myranda told me she has a friend who had 17,000.

Maybe this revolution in communication involving these staggering numbers of messages by individuals has been in the news, but I’ve missed it.  The volume is apparently made possible by unlimited text messaging use for a modest sum per month, in Myranda’s case, about $30.   And, the fact that many of these people can type fast, about 6 characters a second or 360 per minute, which translates to about 60 words per minute, some of them without looking, even pecking away with the phone in a pocket.

Apparently, according to the Wireless Association, there were more than 740 billion text messages sent/received during the first half of 2009. That’s an average of 4.1 BILLION text messages sent/received each day. And, that’s nearly double the number from the previous year, when only 385 billion text messages were reported for the first half of 2008. 

Myranda tells me that among her acquaintances, the usual circle of friends that text each other on a regular basis ranges from 5 to 12 people.  The texting usually starts when they get home from school, and can go on for six or more hours until they go to bed.  They text while watching TV, listening to music or doing homework.  However, they are limited to 160 characters per message, and so they can do homework, watch TV, et al, while waiting for a response.  Probably good training for multi-tasking.  As Myranda pointed out, one of the axioms of this form of communication is that “social life through texting doesn’t stop.”

The texting also goes on while a circle of friends are together in-person at get-togethers including overnights.  I said to Myranda, “why don’t you just talk to each other?”  She says they do, but they will text one another if it is a private matter.

On the other hand, I was at the home of a good friend who asked me to look at a group of friends of her three daughters who were sitting in the family room, all texting.  Who are they texting I asked?  Each other, she said. Okay, makes perfect sense, I said.

As I look back, I’m thinking that if I could have just texted my ex-wives across the dinner table instead of talking to them, I might have saved a lot of alimony.

In the pioneering landscape of social media, it makes sense that NASA is well-seated on that wagon.
Check out TWEETS FROM SPACE.

(Did that sound like The Muppet Show announcer from “Pigs…In…Space?” -’Cause it was supposed to.)

YouTube video of this morning’s Shuttle Endeavour launch.

Astonaut Soichi Twitpics only minutes ago from over Sakura jima, JAPAN. Active volcano, which errupted recently.

In yet another glimpse at the fascinating inevitable convergence (i.e. ‘head-on car wreck’) of technology and personal identity, Microsoft recently announced the release of its miniscule auto-snapping Vicon™ camera, capable of being worn on a necklace and documenting up to 6 days of moment-to-moment daily life and interactions.

The device, which was originally designed for more altruistic purposes of Alzheimer’s patient support, will reportedly soon be available to the consumer market—though for what purposes one can only imagine. Indeed, apart from the obvious issue it raises of who in the world could be so interesting as to watch for days at a time, it offers a more interesting observation altogether on an emerging sort of ‘author-consumer’ conflict  that the whole social-media environment continues to illustrate.

That is: a person who at one moment rails against retail sales clerks asking for their address to complete a simple cash purchase, or cries foul at customer service departments for soliciting participation in a survey at the end of a crappy phone call with some $3 per hour drone in Bangalore, and then the next runs home or pulls out their phone to foist every pedestrian, mundane detail and image of their lives into the public sphere.

So what gives? How do we reconcile the two? By understanding them as actually very different, even antithetical things. Not as apples-to-apples behaviors but rather a distinct cause and effect: one is a collective cultural force, the other a set of sterile technical practices that precipitated it.

It’s increasingly apparent that, at heart, the ‘new’ social media phenomenon is really driven by a very old innate need for identity and recognition—for some small proof that we still actually matter—only now on steroids in response to an increasingly vast, impersonal, disconnected world bent on starving it. It is a movement born less of technology, than as a sort of rebuttal to it and the ways it was being employed to invade our privacy by governments and corporations: essentially blunting their power to intrude by exposing ourselves (or the parts we choose) first. 

Similar to the way that racial epithets are co-opted by an aggrieved group to defuse their impact, our new exhibitionism and self-fascination are ultimately direct, natural human responses to the devaluation and even indignity inflicted by most interactions or experiences today. Meaning that posting some fish-eyed photo of my visit to the bank teller is less about me personally than my ability to turn the tables and starring role on the world, and then boast about it. The act empowers me, if only in some small way.

So, what then are we to make of Microsoft’s newest ‘life caching’ device? If you accept my totally unverifiable reasoning here, quite simply this: that social media is increasingly revealing itself as less a ‘technological’ trend, as initially thought, than a sociological one. It is a trend rooted more in the neuroses, appetites and human hard-wiring of psychology than in the circuitry of the phones, PDAs and laptops that facilitate it. The tools change, the disc storage grows, and the components shrink. But the behavior and its causes are as simple as elementary school playgrounds, and about as likely to change much until the world ever does. 

The camera, in short, is a mildly intriguing novelty, one of many to come. Why we want or need it at all is the far bigger and more interesting story.

PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have both committed to developing healthier products and promoting healthier, more active lifestyle choices.  But those ideas can be a tough sell to consumers who love (or hate) their brands because of their bubbly, sugary, sweetness.  And both brands seem to be finding that an easier way to change their image might just be to change the world first.  PepsiCo is forgoing Super Bowl ads this year and running a major social media campaign called The Pepsi Refresh Project.  Through their website (refresheverything.com), Facebook page and YouTube Channel, Pepsi is encouraging people (young people, ideally) to do something good for their planet.  Individuals, groups and organizations can submit ideas that would positively impact their community and beyond.  Submissions are voted on by other viewers/entrants/participants - and Pepsi is giving monthly grants from $5K to $250K to help make those winning ideas a reality. 

Coca-Cola, who has had a longtime partnership with the Olympics, is promoting the first “zero-waste, carbon-neutral” Olympic sponsorship.  The company is making good on their sustainability vow by providing everything from emission-free soda coolers, to Olympic Village furniture made from salvaged pine-beetle epidemic wood, to dressing the staff in uniforms made from recycled bottles.  But days before the Opening Ceremonies, of course, is the Super Bowl - and Coca-Cola will be advertising.  Coke is running two spots as part of their Open Happiness campaign, which as the company puts it, is to remind people that “whenever they enjoy a Coca-Cola, they play a role in helping us make a difference in the lives of others.  By opening a Coke they create a happiness multiplier” (a “pay-it-forward with soda” theme, if you will).  Coke has also teamed up with Facebook to offer fans virtual gifts to send to friends and family.  Each virtual gift is matched by a $1 donation to  Boys & Girls Clubs of America, as well as giving the sender a sneak preview of the Super Bowl spots.  And their website, livepositively.com, further encourages visitors to get involved somehow, whether it’s donating to relief efforts in Haiti, recycling for the Green Schools program, or serving the community as part of the Sprite/MTV Step Off Challenge.

So are consumers going to swallow what some might call “propaganda”?  Or will the dollars spent translate into glowing halos around the brands?  In the end, does it really matter if the efforts positively impact individuals, communities and the environment?  I haven’t made up my mind — I’m a water drinker myself.

As MSI’s Director of Interactive Services, I love the part of my job that involves geeking out over technology. I was about 12 years old when Blade Runner came out and remember thinking, “Giant video billboards. Pfft. Yeah, right.” I pooh-poohed my way through the movie, scoffing at such impossibilities as video conferencing, in-ear communicators, tablet computers, and glowing umbrellas, among many other flights of fantasy.

Watching Blade Runner while sprawled out on the brown shag carpet in front of my father’s monster Betamax machine, I don’t think I could ever have imagined that so many of these items would have trickled into our everyday use within my lifetime. They seemed so far away as I would get up on hands and knees to flip the knob (”ka-CHUNK”) on our living room TV. I certainly wouldn’t have believed that only seconds after the birth of my son, I could wirelessly beam an image of his beautiful newborn face to my 95-year-old great aunt in Galveston, Texas from our hospital room in Chicago. I pass no fewer than 5 massive video billboards during my morning commute. People Skype each other regularly, Bluetooth devices pegged into random ears, and even the infamous glowing umbrellas are for sale on Think Geek. Now come developments like the iPad and Google’s response, the Chrome OS Tablet.

Maybe take some time today to think about the differences between the world that surrounded you as a child and the convenience and amazement that technology offers today.

MSI makes it our business to keep up with the monster steps that Interactive technology takes every day and how you can apply it to your marketing strategy. It’s not just our business, it’s our lifelong passion. If you think of your website as a static piece of brochureware, give us a call. I bet you’ll be amazed by what technology, and MSI, can do for you.