Fake Plastic Noodles

I know that there is no such thing as anonymity on the Internet, but it still freaks me out every time a site hits me over the head with it, such as Oddcast did this morning.

Yesterday I visited the site after I was sent a couple links by one of their reps and today when I went back to do a little more research for this post, I heard (while I was surfing on another tab): “Good morning! Welcome back to Oddcast!” along with a little pitch on their case studies. Always remember: Big Brother is watching.

But I digress…

Oddcast develops speech-based avatars for use in viral marketing. Think of it as a much more interesting, more high-tech version of Elf Yourself with a proper voice track. It’s actually pretty cool. I mostly played around with a demo of their “photo face technology,” and besides the whiteness of the eyes and a little bit of choppiness, the effect is realistic.

You upload a front-facing photo and customize it based on anchor pinpoints around the eyes, cheeks, jawline, nose and chin. I used a photo of me from last year:

After you’ve placed your anchors at the appropriate places, Oddcast turns it into an interactive avatar, complete with blinking eyes and moving lips, with which you can add in a corresponding voice track. I can’t seem to find any way to embed it on my page - that would have been nice. There is a feature to email to a friend (I sent my boss an MC Chris-singing avatar of himself), but you can’t save it anywhere else unless you send it to yourself as well. I took a couple successive screen shots of my own for you to get an idea:

You’ll have to try it for yourself to really see how it works, and I encourage everyone to do so at least once, although I must warn you the eyes are a little freaky. They follow your pointer around the page like the eyes in old paintings on Scooby Do.

I can’t promise that the Oddcast avatars are going to revolutionize the industry, but they are fairly addicting. When I got home for work last night, I spent far too long experimenting with it, so if you have anything you need to do, you might want hold off.

I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, and like most people my age I rarely shop offline, so when I have to go outside to an actual mall it’s like a scene out of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. However, every once in a while I have a good experience, and my latest in the Coach store at Twelve Oaks is one of them.

A couple weeks ago, I drove forty minutes to the closest decent mall to Ann Arbor so that I could use a 25% off coupon for some retail therapy on an over-priced handbag. After perusing a few moments, I settled on this:

I’m happy with the bag - it’s big enough, has enough interior pockets and is quite pretty to look at too. That would have been the end of the story, except that I came home yesterday and found this in my mailbox:

Dear Melanie,

I just wanted to thank you for coming into Coach at 12 Oaks. You were such a pleasure to work with! I’m sure you will receive a ton of compliments on your satchel! Please come back and visit us!

Granted, I wasn’t exactly a difficult customer. I basically went in, pointed at the bag and said “please.” But an actual, proper handwritten “Thank You” note sent snail mail? Classy.

It’s amazing: I’m so immersed in customer service online - responding to people’s concerns, keeping an eye out for trends, etc. that I forget that offline customer appreciation is still quite effective.

Oh yeah, and in case you missed my Facebook status from a couple days ago, I’m no longer blond and I have bangs. I’m channeling my inner Karen O.

After the recent success I’m F*cking Matt Damon and even-funnier I’m F*cking Ben Affleck, I started thinking more about celebrity-based viral videos. Most of us love them, not only because they make us laugh, but they remind us that celebrities are human, e.g., they have a sense of humor, they’re just like us!

However, as Tom Cruise has shown us on more than one occasion, it can go the other way too. Even a minutely controversial video has the potential to destroy the credibility of a public figure.

So how have videos of celebrities online changed the way that you think? Is Josh Groban unassailably cooler than he was before he sang about Jimmy Kimmel f*cking Ben Affleck? Did you fall in love a little more with Will Ferrel after Pearl?

I know I certainly think Tyra’s got a little more crazy in her than I did before seeing this:

The Boston-based ad agency Modernista! recently redesigned their homepage in a real ballsy way - but not really having a “site” at all. When you go to Modernista.com, it cleverly (and a bit alarmingly at first) takes over the top left corner of your browser with general info tabs about the agency written in cutesy 2.0 writing like ab.ou.t, wrk and the ever-charming n3wz.

Besides a Wikipedia link and a Facebook profile, the only information about Modernista! is in the form of Google news search results, meaning that anything that links to or mentions the agency will show up in the feed. Can’t you just see your average CEO shudder at the thought?

It’s a serious stride in corporate transparency. Well done.

via The Denver Egotist

Interesting post on Copyblogger today: “10 Questions Every Blogger Should Ask Themselves Before Posting.” Because I am fully incapable of not giving my opinion when asked questions, here are my answers. It’s not completely self-indulgent, though, I actually have a purpose in mind. Now that I’ve been blogging here for 8 months, I’ve been wanting to go back over everything and really examine what I’ve learned and what I can improve upon. Think of it as a third quarter progress report.

1. How quickly can my readers understand what my post is about?

Hmmm. I certainly hope my readers understand what this post is about from above. Don’t know how much clearer I could be.

2. Does my blog offer something novel or unexpected?

I think so. The one thing that I love about my blog is that it’s not just about work. There are so many profession-specific blogs out there that comment on trends and issues, and as much as I enjoy hearing what someone thinks about Story A, I am also interested in the more personal aspects of said blogger.

I’ve always felt it important to reveal a bit more about who I am as a person in addition to my what I do on the 9 to 5. I love what I do - and it takes up quite a bit of my life outside the office - but it’s not who I am 100 percent. By mixing in more about me, I can include more readers into this world - engaging an audience I respect professionally, and bringing in another who may not be immersed in this digital culture. Fun for all.

3. How helpful is my content?

In the past few weeks, it hasn’t been. I’ve suffered due to professional business and personal stress a sever case of writer’s block. I have sitting in my folder about 10 drafts of posts that I haven’t been able to churn out. By the time inspiration strikes again, they will no longer be relevant.

4. Why should my readers trust me?

Despite evidence to the contrary, if you’re in PR, you have to be trustworthy. Of course the consensus from the general public seems to dictate otherwise, but it’s been my personal crusade to scream to the masses (and disgruntled bloggers) “We’re not all bad. Honestly!” I have nothing to hide on here, and I think that my friends, family and colleagues would agree that I’m an open book.

5. Does my content speak to people on a human level?

Sometimes I think it might be on too human of a level. See above.

6. Is my post easy to read and scroll through?

I heart lists and bullet points, and should make more of an effort to use them more often. Ditto for images. I find myself zoning out when blog posts have acres of text with no optical distractions. It’s the curse of the Gen Y reader. So I’m going to practice what I preach for this one. Here’s a puppy:

7. Does my content cover what needs to be discussed or answered?

This is definitely something I could work on. I have a few posts that I’m really proud of, but I would like to expand my repertoire. I’ve only been blogging here for 8 months and I’m most certainly not a PR pro yet, so it’s still a learning process for me.

8. Am I revealing enough information about my topic?

While you want to focus your posts with one central idea to help with clarity, ask yourself if your blog, as a whole, fully covers your subject matter. Are you holding back? The more information you provide, the more of a response you will likely generate with your work. Of course, there is always the danger of going overboard and saying too much. But the more open your blog appears, the more attractive it will be to your potential readership, especially those who like to link, bookmark and comment.

9. Am I fulfilling my readers’ expectations?

This is one of those questions that is impossible to answer without proper feedback from your audience. I get a fair amount of comments considering how few people actually read my blog. Overall, I’m guessing for those who have actually reached the bottom of this post, I am, but for the rest I probably should have stopped typing ages ago.

10. Am I reaching out for support?

Always. Mostly through Twitter, general blog reading and social media. I also encourage interaction on here and invite comments and thoughts on all posts. I’m also quite proud that I’ve been written about or blogrolled by a few bloggers for whom I have high esteem. It means a lot to me.

Anyone care to weigh in with their answers? (See? Reaching out for support!)

Image of Spikey the Yorkie from The Puppy Daily

Before you move on to another blog that has much more important things to say than I do today, let me leave you with this one…

When searching for blogs today, I came across an iTunes meme. Premise was pretty simple:

1. Put your iTunes/music player of shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write down that song name, no matter what.

When asked “What do you like in a guy/girl?” my iTunes came back with the Carnegie Hall recording of David Sedaris’ essay “Six to Eight Black Men.”

That is all. Lord help me.

I received an e-mail this morning from Sigur Ros, yours and my favorite ethereal Icelandic rock band, announcing that they will be taking over the entire front page of the UK YouTube homepage tomorrow. Now I know that Sigur Ros isn’t exactly unknown, but YouTube? Seems a bit over the top for a band that doesn’t exactly have a lot of name recognition.

Therefore, I have to assume that their sponsorship has to be simple band awareness (get it?) because I doubt that most people on YouTube would give a hoot about Jonsi and the gang. Perhaps it’s the perspective on Sigur Ros is different in the UK, but I think your average YouTube viewer might find it, as my mother has said, “sad, depressing, and wail-y.”

This YouTube channel will be the first ever to stream a full-length DVD - Heima, their recently-released music documentary about Iceland - and will include a user-generated feature for viewers to create their own Hemia movie using supplied images and music clips.

Part of me hopes that this does get the band more coverage, because the music really is fantastic, but the other side of me wants to be able to secure (and afford) tickets in the tenth row just like the last two times I saw them.

And a somewhat-related rant:

More and more I’ve become annoyed at the amount of indie or non-mainstream bands being picked up by hipster-execs for commercials. Like last year, when someone came up to me if I had ever heard of this “new artist” called Feist who was on that Apple commercial and I had to tell her with mild disdain that Feist had already been around for years in one form or another. Or like when I shuddered the first time I heard Of Montreal on an Outback Steakhouse commercial (Full disclosure: They’re one of MS&L’s clients, but the Of Montreal thing was way before we won the account). It’s like they’re impeding on my deserted hipster island, taking my food and throwing it to the fishes.

Stop exploiting my music, a-holes! Why don’t you go tap Fall Out Boy for another Verizon commerical?

“So, how is the jet lag?”

I must have been asked this question about 20 times last week, and about 10 today at work. In all honesty, it hasn’t been bad. On the morning of my flight to London, I woke up very early in order to get accustomed to GMT and upon my return, I went to bed at 8:30 EST to sleep it off. Don’t get me wrong: I am tired, just not from time zones. Mainly I’m tired from all the running my friend Bonnie and I did around the city.

The week started off with a bang after we met up with a group of London bloggers at The Camel and Artichoke in Southwark. I had sent out a Tweet about any social media gatherings going on while I was there, and Lewis from ShinyRed pointed me to Andy Bargery’s group.

It was fantastic to place some faces with the names, particularly the aforementioned Lewis and TechDigest’s Kat Hannaford. I also got a chance to meet Matt from Londonist, Susi and Jaz also Shiny, Peter from My London Diary, Cedric from A Mountain Dweller in the Thames Valley, Sandrine from Buzz Attitude, and although I hear that Tim Callington was there as well, I didn’t get a chance to meet him.

For an overview, check out this video of the night put together by Chris at ontoLondon. There’s a special treat at 6:22.

Also met up with my good bloggy buddy Stephen Davies while he was in town for the Media Content World Summit, as well as my fantastic, newly-promoted-to-head-of-digital colleague from our London office, Justin Hayward, for a few at Bar 38 in Hammersmith.

The rest of the week was filled with a lot of touristy stuff, as Bonnie was with me for her first trip abroad. I finally got a chance to see St. Paul’s and the Tate Modern, as well as spend some time in neighborhoods I wasn’t really familiar with like Shoreditch, Hammersmith and Islington.

On what little right as an American I had to act as her tour guide, I made sure to take her for a curry on Brick Lane (we snagged a bottle of wine a free poppadoms from the doorman) and to go shopping in Camden. She loved both. In fact, I consider it a personal achievement that her Facebook status today read:

Bonnie…has left her heart in London, and needs to return immediately to reclaim it :)

The only thing I wasn’t prepared for was the walking. Living within walking distance to my office and most shops already, I really didn’t think the extra miles would affect me at all. I was wrong. Dreadfully, dreadfully wrong. By the end of Saturday, my feet were so sore that when stepping off a curb on Oxford Street, the impact of the pavement produced a solitary tear on my left cheek.

Something tells me that I should have brought more supportive shoes.