The campaign is for a treatment for Alzheimer’s.

More. [He also has a portfolio site under his own name-as-domain-name, but it's dominated by a super-pokey Adobe Flash interface that makes it grim to navigate.]

Hairless clean
ShedAway Pet vacuum attachment

More

Some people ask to ride me, which … depending on which saddle they have, the English or the Western…. I don’t like the Western. If they have the English, I usually agree.

RIDICULOUS.

Blah blah Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, whatever. I still don’t care about Old Spice, but I love this campaign and this actor. What a trouper!

It’s fine to say, “Keep your hair on. They’re working on a fix.” or even “Sounds like you follow faux-clever jerks on Twitter.” You’re entitled to that opinion. But a basic principle of sound Web design is to make sure the user always has a “scent of information” to follow. If users find themselves someplace unexpected, a good design will help them on their way. And that’s just for people navigating the site. If they’re following links to specific pages, getting them there should be a no-brainer.

If a person follows a link to a specific page in your site, it’s just silly to think it’s perfectly fine to send them anywhere else. If your developer knows enough about the device making the request to shunt it to a different layout of the site, the site should be capturing enough about the link the user selected to get all the way there. If it dumps the user on a TOC page, your developer simply didn’t complete the job. And if hash-bangs, or whatever the new hotness is, don’t work well enough or consistently enough with the major pathways into your site, then maybe you should resist the temptation. Who knows? If an iPhone can’t find your page with your newfangled whatsit, maybe Google can’t, either.

Those of us who have been using mobile for a long time are familiar with this half-assed approach. We’ve been seeing it on television and newspaper websites for years, going back long enough that some of us could kind of understand why a Web team’s use cases didn’t capture us. But that’s not the situation today, even for those legacy outlets. So why would a new-media darling, which surely has a massive base of users on the current It Device, whatever that may be, repeat such a classic old-media mistake? Engaged audiences already greet redesigns with suspicion—why not take the time to make sure the functionality is solid?

It stars Willem Dafoe in about a dozen roles. It is directed by Dante Ariola, whose “First Taste” (for Coke) also touches on branching out, while his “Idle Thumbs” (for Virgin Mobile) tackles a series of characters. He also made one of my favorite ads: “Snowball” for Travelers. He does a nice job with these stream-of-situations stories. Maybe because of all his videogame work!

Marvel at the just plain weirdness of the Coke Dragon ad (and Coke’s complete redemption with Border Guards). Recoil at the crass commercialization of Tibetan suffering by Groupon. Contemplate whether Darth Vader kid in the VW ad is a girl or boy.

Gotta watch ‘em all.

Maybe.

If you’d rather read something thoughtful and insightful, here is a bonus link about advertising, sort of: an excellent article discussing how meta Mad Men really is.

The revisionism, of course, is already beginning, so as much as I respect the sentiment that the politics can wait, I think it’s at least as important to reinforce clearly that no matter who did this, we are still well aware of the overall context of this horrible attack.

This was the centerpiece messaging for Sarah Palin’s “Take Back the 20″ campaign, before 2010′s midterm elections. She can revise her web pages any way she likes today—it won’t change the fact that she published this image right alongside her own smiling face.

Note: www.takebackthe20.com’s accessibility has been spotty for several hours, and it’ll probably be hit hard for a while yet.

Update: Giffords herself on this overheated rhetoric, in an interview shortly after the healthcare vote, when Giffords’s office had been vandalized:

Update January 9: The spin is dizzying. As Dave Weigel notes, Current Palin spin for target map would make more sense if she didn’t spend 2010 doubling down on it.

Among the people who gave the impression that these were targets: Sarah Palin. When she announced the list in a tweet, she wrote “don’t retreat, instead – RELOAD!” I’m not an expert surveyor, but I’m not sure what sort of tools need reloading. Jonathan Martin points out that after the election, Palin tweeted about her success (18 of the seats went to the GOP) by saying “remember months ago ‘bullseye’ icon used 2 target the 20 Obamacare-lovin’ incumbent seats?” Throughout 2010, when Palin was criticized for the target map, she either didn’t respond or mocked the “lamestream media” for interpreting her gun metaphors as calls for violence. At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, for example, she got big applause when she said “Don’t retreat, reload — and that is not a call for violence!”

Building good interactive experiences—on the web, in apps, wherever—is hard. Everyone smart who is doing this, especially with a very young device like the iPad, is adopting a “build and then iterate” strategy. To do anything else would take too long, cost too much, and still get it wrong. Get it out there with the minimum feature set to be engaging, and then revise it to do more stuff, do more interesting stuff, do stuff better.

Wish you could email a friend an article, send a link to Twitter, or even, FSM forbid, “like” it on Facebook? Awesome, send the maker of the app a request, post to Twitter, write an article on your blog, shout it on the corner if that floats your boat—and here in San Francisco it might be surprisingly effective. Hey, hit all the channels you want. But do you honestly believe that anyone making an iPad app for subscription material is already completely done with the feature set? Really?

And when Murdoch’s iPad thingy finally comes out, and it omits all that stuff by design and has no plans to add it in, please don’t complain about that, either, because how could you not see that coming?

I think my cat’s going to get bed envy when he sees some of the great snoozing places these kitties get.

“It’s pretty clear that human beings aren’t improving,” said Spencer Greenberg, 27 years old and the brains behind Rebellion’s AI system. “But computers and algorithms are only getting faster and more robust.”

Savor that for a moment. But wait! There’s more:

The firm’s current portfolio is largely defensive. One of its biggest positions is in gold stocks, according to people familiar with the fund.

The defensive move at first worried Mr. Fleiss, who had grown bullish. But it has proven a smart move so far. “I’ve learned not to question the AI,” he said.

Letting the Machines Decide: New Wave of Investment Firms Look to ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in Trade Decisions

What is the four-sided Mind of which Nick Carr speaks — this imaginative, rational, inventive, subversive angel striding through the ages, showering the generations with its beneficence? Who is this promethean shapeshifter, whom we’re now in our churlishness binding to some rock for the crows to feast on its innards? What Carr is describing isn’t a historical reality — it’s a god. And it does not exist.

Reading isn’t just a monkish pursuit: Matthew Battles on The Shallows

Rothstein also noted in a post that “If you’re a reporter, you’re supposed to be objective. We shouldn’t know if he voted for Ron Paul, President Obama or David Hasselhoff. If you’re going to be reporting on any political movement, you are supposed to take an unbiased position.” This is how a smear campaign starts, with an argument that in principle, [ostensibly] sounds correct, but really is, at its core, ill-informed, ignorant, and sensational. —Foster Kamer

I’ve been reading about the Dave Weigel thing all morning, only because I couldn’t get away from work long enough to focus on it yesterday. Wow. Village Voice blogger Foster Kamer sums it up nicely and has all the pertinent links. It’s a tawdry tale of true believers being angry that someone who knows a lot about them and can see them so clearly, hacks who fantasize about being take-down artists suddenly discovering the value of “journalistic principles,” and, in the end, a really great demonstration of something Jay Rosen has been blogging about heavily lately: the ideology of news reporting gives priority to ritualistic theatre above accuracy, transparency, and fairness.

Dave Weigel’s Twitter stream

Update June 27: Nate Silver weighs in on the bizarrely unrealistic central issue here:

Is the expectation really that journalists aren’t allowed to develop opinions about the subjects they cover, even if those opinions are expressed only in private? We have a name for people who are so indifferent about society: we call them sociopaths. Or is the expectation that journalists are allowed to have opinions, provided that they keep them secret?

Also of note, the very sensible observation that the ‘blog ethos’ of frankly including point of view “is just magazine-journalism ethos with the addition of cat pictures”. This approach is immeasurably richer than the fake-objectivity approach of newspapers because, as Jim Henley continues, “The writer will make sure to include a substantial account of challenges to her perspective, if only to knock it down later.”

“When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding,” the memo said. “Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”

Yes. The memo mentions “Coke.”

From Saving Chevrolet Means Sending ‘Chevy’ to Dump

—

UPDATE this afternoon: The policy is already reversed.

It sprang to life on May 19th with a quiet message: “We regretfully admit that something has happened off of the Gulf Coast. More to come.” It’s been faithfully maintained since, and the writer has been invited to give PR advice to readers of the Guardian:

6. Be willing to laugh at yourself! After I spilled a salad on my lap, I immediately tweeted about it.

@BPGlobalPR: Eating at a very expensive restaurant and spilled salad dressing on my pants. Not sure how to tackle this.

And now the writer has given an interview in a substantially more serious vein:

Do you want to know what BP should do about me? Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be? They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto[n] and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand. Honestly, Cheney’s publicist? That’s too easy.

I can’t help but admire BP for hiring Cheney’s publicist, though, I have to admit. But then, that is exactly the kind of sensitive and responsible approach we can expect from a company whose CEO claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was “relatively tiny” compared with the “very big ocean”.

Yessir. Heckuva glob, BP.

“After a 13-hour wait, it’s like giving birth,” he said after emerging from the Apple store.
“You’re in labour for 13 hours and you’re tired and exhausted, you’re hot one minute then you’re cold the next, and you’re in pain, but then there’s the ecstacy when you have this little thing in your arms.” —iPad goes on sale as Apple faithful flock to Britain’s stores

It actually leaves me breathless, it’s so horrible. On the same building where the above sign appears is this mural (or at least was – I haven’t been back there for a while):

Seriously. What the hell? This time it’s personal!

Well, someone is at least making an effort to be true to SWP’s horrific tagline—”Cover the Earth” (I almost wish I had made that up)—and still make something aesthetically pleasing and that, you know, doesn’t invoke the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster.

See an animated ad on this theme – worth going just for the cardinal depiction. The frog is also awesome. Dear SWP, notice how, in the animation, your logo only appears at a distance where it—and its apocalyptic tagline—cannot be readily discerned. Smart!

I know some wonderfully creative people who really know how to get stuff done. Over the weekend, I volunteered some time to help them produce 48 Hour Magazine, and it’s already available at MagCloud. It was a crazy idea and a wonderful thing to be involved with – and I can’t wait til the next one!

Update: CBS has issued a cease-and-desist letter claiming infringement on “48 Hours.” Mat Honan is collecting information about the process and the coverage.

Update June 15: State of the case, with links to other recent coverage

This one feels inevitable, doesn’t it? Apple has one heck of a phone in the iPhone. But that’s all it is — one phone.

Android software is being sprayed across so many handsets that eventually one of the handsets will deliver an experience better than the iPhone. — Apple vs Google: The Next 10 Battles To Watch

When was the last time that “sprayed across so many” devices “eventually” yielded an experience (for regular users) that was substantially better than a carefully controlled and designed UI limited to a few, thoughtfully specified hardware configurations?

Look at this awesome text message. It is from How Hipsters Date, and it was discussed in a blog entry at the Village Voice. Go read it. It has other, equally rewarding links.

Reminds me of the tempest in a teapot when a Twitter user reported receiving a text after a blind date reading, “I was told you were pretty, and you’re not. I feel badly misled.” (The result was a totally appropriate, immediate, and sustained outpouring of support.)

Memo to would-be brilliant parting-shotters who write this crap: you sound like an ass, and now everyone on the Internet is hearing about it.

Bonus link: the fantastic and wonderful “You Can’t Text-Message Break Up!”

(Also watch the intro scene showing the receipt of the message at dinner with the family.)

The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and counting.)

But that’s not true, as a 30-second Google search reveals. At the most charitable estimate, it’s neck and neck with a Lady Gaga video. Since Lady Gaga came to prominence about 8 minutes ago, and the Charlie video has been online for 3 years, I don’t find this claim compelling. (Yes, I get the Web-vs-TV point—I’m not even bothering to look up those numbers—but the argument is also about simplicity vs high production values.)

But whatever. Shirky gets lots of attention and consulting gigs and book deals and so on, so obviously he’s reaching audiences very effectively. I have a full-time day job, and I’m trying to stay faithful to my goal of taking at least one good picture of an animal every day this month (doing well!), so I left it at that.

And then a friend shared a link to Wikibollocks: The Shirky Rules, by Tom Slee. It goes into some detail about this recent essay, adds considerable depth to my main loss of connection with it, and compares it to other work by Shirky.

Then again, that Shirky article was posted on April 1. Should I be embarrassed right now?

Update June 2010: Another article critical of Shirky’s methodology

Brad Templeton writes about his wonderful contribution to the Downfall meme and about Constantin Film’s YouTube-based attack. He also addresses his scrupulous approach to making this delightful example of fair use in the service of fair use.

Read more about it in the EFF entry.

Look, let’s face it. The iPad is the most exciting opportunity for the media in many years. But if the press is ceding gatekeeper status, even if it’s only nominally, over its speech, then it is making a dangerous mistake. Unless Apple explicitly gives the press complete control over its ability to publish what it sees fit, the news media needs to yank its apps in protest.

Yes, this is that serious. It needs to wrest back control of its speech from Apple Inc.

—It’s Time for the Press to Push Back Against Apple:
Yank iPad apps unless Apple cedes complete control over the right to publish, by Ryan Chittum

In an aside, he includes, “yes, the iPad has a Web browser, but the monetary leverage it could gain with apps is what’s concerning.”

Getting the App Store dropped into its lap is the best thing that’s happened to print media in decades, and arbitrary restrictions are a pretty good deal in exchange for access to hundreds of millions of accounts already set up for more or less one-click purchasing. Yanking apps because you don’t like the restrictions is a perfectly fine recommendation, but I’m not sure what kind of leverage print media really has that would allow it to dictate terms to Apple. Face it, media outlets: building a large base of users that keep active credit cards on file with you is hard work, and Apple—not you—succeeded in doing that work.

(As a matter of fact, no, I don’t think I’m entitled to get news for free. I am a longtime subscriber to quite a few websites.)

Update: Jobs has replied to an inquiry saying that the Fiore app-denial was a mistake that is being fixed. Which is fine—maybe the terms of service were meant to apply to harassment or defamation, or came from an overprotective pen in legal. Maybe Jobs is responding to the “Pulitzer” part of this story. Who knows. The point stands: it’s Apple’s store, not a First Amendment issue.

Yesterday I saw a 26-second movie being used as a magazine cover described as the kind of thing that will enable the iPad to ‘save’ magazines. But I didn’t like splash screens on websites, and I don’t like pre-roll ads on video, so why would I want this? People are falling all over themselves to tout the “immersive” experience this kind of development allows. It’s cool for some stuff, sure. I’m just getting a little fatigued by how many things people want to turn into a Total Experience.

A blog entry at O’Reilly complains that stand-alone magazine apps are trapping information in silos. For now that has to be an artifact of the iPad debuting without multitasking or fast switching. The smoother the switching, the more insistently the advertisers will demand hooks to their properties, so at least some of this has a built-in shelf life. But it’s still being brought to us by the companies behind the Power of Print (under its oh-so-evocative logo). I can’t wait for this thing to get to version 2, and let some of this hype/handwringing play out already.