Philanthropnology

Last year, this blog covered the expected specs for the XO computer developed by the One Laptop Per Child foundation. Well, the price has gone up a little, and it's not solely for export anymore. This week the XO hit the U.S. and Canadian markets in a special give-one-get-one offer that runs through November 26.

“For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution,” according to OLPC's web site. And for the laptop you keep, T-Mobile is providing free wi-fi service at its HotSpots for a year. Or, if you'd prefer to just make a donation, $200 will pay for one laptop.

Check out Leslie Stahl's excellent 60 Minutes interview with OLPC’s Nicholas Negroponte and visits to children using the laptop here. (Sorry, there's pre-roll and CBS doesn't release embedable code. But the piece is good, so hang in there.) Masi Oka of Heroes introduces the reverse B.O.G.O. offer in this commercial that's on the air now. Watch it here.

Best Inventions of 2007

The Halloween candy isn't even stale yet, and Time has already published a “Best of 2007” list. The magazine ranks the best inventions of the past, er, current year, and at the top is the iPhone. (Yes, it's an obvious pick, but thankfully less quirky than last year's choice for Person of the Year.) Staff writer Lev Grossman explains how the magazine makes its selects in this video.

Not so surprisingly, many of the innovations involve transportation and ways to make it more efficient and eco-friendly. The Venturi Electric car runs on sun and wind power, while MIT's electric City Car stacks up like luggage carts at the airport. A gas-steam hybrid engine, which makes use of the heat it generates, improves fuel economy 40%. A dual-mode vehicle from HJR Hokkaido Railway Company runs on rails to the end of the line and then the tires take over. A bioethanol concept car from Sweden doesn't have doors but does have a 3-D dash.

French and Indian companies have teamed up to build a car that runs on compressed air. (The same Indian company is also launching a $2,500 car that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman predicts will wreak even more havoc on infrastructure and the environment. So – just thinking aloud here – how about working on dropping the price of the compressed-air model?) Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, which uses composite materials to lighten its load, also made the list.











Elsewhere on the newsstand, I.D. magazine included the iPhone in its current New + Noteworthy issue. (Sorry, no link available yet.) Other highlights include: some fancy New Balance kicks designed by DDC; Catherine Hammerton's ginko-inspired wallpaper; and Sebastian Wrong's font clocks from Established & Sons. The magazine is also giving away 19 of their picks in a very classy sweepstakes.

Need an album? (Part 2)

Some numbers are trickling in for Radiohead's pay-what-you-want experiment. According to the British version of PaidContent.org, just 38% of downloaders paid for the album. The other 62% took the album as a freebie, paying only the handling charge. PaidContent crunches the numbers further:

The average price paid was $6 (£2.88) [globally] but Americans were more generous, coughing up $8.05 (£3.87)...factor in the freeloaders, however, and it’s more like an average $2.26 (£1.08) on a worldwide basis and $3.23 (£1.55) from Americans. The most common amount offered was below $4 (£1.92), but 12 percent were willing to pay between $8 (£3.84) and $12 (£5.77), around the typical cost of an album from iTunes.

So how much did the group pull in? Well, the band hasn't released any official numbers yet. But Gigwise reports that just a few days after the release, Radiohead moved 1.2 million albums at an average of £4 each, for a total of £4.8 million.

Now, this is money earned with just basic overhead costs but without a label. How much did the band take in when Yorke & Co. were with EMI? CNET did some digging and spoke with an attorney who worked for A&M and has repped Sheryl Crow.

Chris Castle…offered an educated guess about what the British band was earning at the label…He guessed that when royalties were combined with money earned from publishing, Radiohead saw between $3 and $5 for every album sale…Castle also estimates that the band typically sold between 3 and 4 million units worldwide. That would mean Radiohead hauled in between $9 million and $20 million per album.

But Castle cautions that “it's way too early to try and assess whether Radiohead's experiment has failed or not.”

Monster Mashup

At the corner of Smith and Pacific Streets in Brooklyn last night, anyone with a cell phone was a screenwriter, thanks to TXT of the Living Dead. It’s a condensed version of the zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, projected onto a blank wall with dialogue supplied via text messaging.

The brains behind the operation is Paul Notzold, who took about 500 frames from the thriller (relax, it’s in the public domain) and then created speech bubbles for about 150 of those frames. As Notzold explains on his web site, “Text messages sent in from participants show up in those frames in the order that they are received. The movie moves forward when a new message is received. The other frames are action frames that play through automatically until they hit a speech frame. Once all the speech frames have been filled the movie can then be viewed from beginning to end with the new audience generated dialogue.”

The project is part drive-in, part comic book, part Lichtenstein pop-art, part Mad Libs, part New Yorker caption contest and part flash mob. Although the project is uncensored, texters kept it relatively – and surprisingly – clean. There were the made-in-jest marriage proposals, variations on “all your bases are belong to us” and generic greetings (“Hi, Joe”). But there were also plenty of pop culture references (Geico, Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah) out of sync with the narrative, upping the comic effect.

Gothamist.com gave the Halloween-night project its seal of approval. And Wired recently detailed a showing outside Paris. “Notzold's road kit is deceptively simple: a Mac, a projector (and something to stand it on), a camera and a generator. Helpers distribute a cell phone number on pieces of paper -- Notzold always gets a number for the country he is in, making it easy for locals to participate.” Below is footage from the event in France.



What’s next for Notzold and his SMS project? That bastion of inane banter: the 30-minute local news broadcast. Back to you, Bob.

What to expect when you’re expecting a writers’ strike

On Tuesday, a federal mediator joins the talks between the Writers’ Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. Time's ticking, and it's not looking rosy. “Writers could walk out as early as Thursday if their union can't hammer out a new three-year employment contract with the studios to replace one that expires at midnight on Wednesday,”according to the Los Angeles Times.

So why is everyone at loggerheads? “This showdown between writers and producers is the result of a long-brewing fight over payment for online distribution of TV shows, movies, Webisodes and other new-media content,” explains Maureen Ryan in the Chicago Tribune. “In Hollywood, the WGA-AMPTP battle is widely regarded as a defining moment in the entertainment industry's digital coming-of-age...The guild wants jurisdiction over such works and it wants agreed-upon payment rates for new-media content; it wants an increase in the DVD compensation rate; and it wants a percentage of revenue derived from content sold over the Internet or delivered with advertising.”

And what would TV look like during a strike? Daily, late-night shows will be hit first. In primetime, “Long-running shows like NBC's ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ are likely to stay in original episodes longer because they are further ahead in production than new programs like ABC's ‘Pushing Daisies,’” writes Brooke Barnes in The New York Times.

Animated series like ''The Simpsons'' and ''Family Guy,'' completed up to a year in advance, are strike-proof for this season at least. Much more problematic are complicated serial dramas like ''Lost,'' which networks typically broadcast without repeats...Networks have been stockpiling reality material in the event of a strike. The CW network alone has five completed reality series ready to go: the returning shows ''America's Next Top Model,'' ''Beauty and the Geek'' and ''Pussycat Dolls Present,'' and the new entries ''Farmer Wants a Wife'' and ''Crowned,'' about beauty pageants.

ABC has two reality shows from Oprah lined up: “Oprah Winfrey's The Big Give” and “Your Money or Your Life.” CBS has ordered up episodes of game show “Million Dollar Password” with Regis Philbin. “Dateline” might even make a comeback on NBC. The Peacock has also floated the idea of running the British version of “The Office.” The networks could possibly dip into their cable offerings for rebroadcast on primetime. FX's “Damages” could air on Fox. Past episodes of USA's “Monk” or the new season of Bravo's “Project Runway” could air on NBC while ABC could replay Lifetime's “Army Wives” or even ABC Family's “Kyle XY” or “Greek.”

Taxi design, redux

A previous post in this blog discussed the new logo gracing the sides of taxis all over New York City. Well, The New York Times has been moderating a very smart discussion about the merits and weaknesses of the logo in its City Room blog. And in the spirit of "if you don't like it, why don't you do it?" they've asked for alternative ideas from design professionals and readers.

Michael Bierut of Pentagram says, "that attempt to combine the NYC logo which is being used elsewhere with T in a circle (why?) and that (again) bluntly rounded off and oddly-spaced A-X-I just seems a little ham handed. Maybe it looked good on paper, but I don’t find it convincing on the side of a cab."

A graphics editor at The Times, Jonathan Corum, goes for the practical and suggests highlighting “the most important piece of information: the medallion number. Encouraging riders to remember (or at least notice) the number of their cab is a simple and cheap public safety measure, and would likely speed the return of lost property.”

For Oscar Bjarnson of Systm, X marks the spot. He borrows iconography from a treasure map for some of the typography. "I’d go with something simple. Maybe a typographic solution with some hint of the new NYC logo embedded."

Readers are weighing in, too. Scott Schwebel asks: What would the t-shirt look like? Well, it gets the Lady Liberty treatment. "New York City represents to the world all that is America and the dream of a better life...Why not try and have that message reinforced everyday on the street with one of our highest profile city experiences/icons?” says Schwebel. The huddled masses yearning to, er, move crosstown.

And Michael Condouris turns the checker pattern into a piece of type. “Make it easy to read, incorporate the checker pattern into the X for a little designiness, and you’ve got something fun, obvious and clear.”

And the partially anonymous reader Amanda P. succinctly incorporates into the logo the action of hailing a cab. Hmm. Perhaps NYC's Taxi & Limousine Commission should have held a contest for the new logo. Smart Design, which pro bono spearheaded the effort behind the current design, could have set up the parameters and shared some of their insight with potential contestants. And a contest might have even eliminated some of the suggested "tweaks" that probably came from the the Commission.

What happened to the jingle?

When’s the last time you heard a jingle on a TV commercial? Recently it seems that jingles are relegated to low-budget spots for local mattress stores. Instead, the big advertisers are going for two kinds of music, depending on their budget. Option one: Real, existing rock/pop songs that use some borrowed interest to lend some cool to the products they're selling. Option two: very catchy tracks by emerging artists. On the airwaves right now is one of the the later, an Old Navy commercial with a track by unsigned artist Ingrid Michaelson. "If you are chilly, here, take my sweater..."

Michaelson's MySpace page was discovered by Secret Road Music, a "management company that specializes in finding little-known acts and placing their works in soundtracks for TV shows, commercials, movies and videogames," according to this story in The Wall Street Journal. As a result, Michaelson had three songs featured on Grey's Anatomy last season. But with success comes some angry fans. On her blog Michaelson writes, "it makes me a bit upset because it seems that some people love knowing about an indie artist, but as soon as they garner some attention, these people get mad! But you have to understand that this is how we make a living!"

Target's "Hello Good Buy" campaign relied on an existing hit and reworked the Beatles'classic "Hello Good-bye." But the retailer also uses new music to soundtrack its spots. Running now is a commercial with music from a group called the Icicles. Maybe you've had the la-ti-da refrain running through your head.

But wait, it doesn't seem the jingle is completely gone. Leave it to reality show producer Mark Burnett to resurrect it. CBS has ordered eight episodes – probably stockpiling for a WGA strike – of a new series tentatively titled "Jingle." According to Variety,

teams of players will be given weekly jingle-writing assignments -- coming up with, say, the next Oscar Mayer wiener song or a new pitch for Coke -- and will then have to perform them in front of a studio audience. Viewer votes will determine a weekly winner (whose ditty will end up in a real ad) and loser (who will go home)...The ultimate winner will likely get a large cash prize and a job at a major ad agency.

A job at an ad agency? In-sourcing music? Maybe the jingle's not dead yet.

Need an album? Take an album.

Can an honor system work when it comes to business? Or art? Admission to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a suggested – not manadatory – $20. A few restaurants and cafés have experimented with a pay-what-you-wish plan. Freakonomist Stephen Dubner has examined the trend among musicians. For example, indie singer/songwriter Jane Siberry has been letting fans decide what's a fair price for her songs. (On average, people are paying her $1.18 per track, with 99 cents as the suggested price.) And on SongSlide, musicians’ songs are available for download on sliding scale, starting at 59 cents.

And now a really, really big band is doing the same thing. Downloads of Radiohead’s new album, "In Rainbows," go on sale on October 10 for whatever you want to pay.

The Wall Street Journal does the math in this piece. “Consider the economics of the average CD. It retails for about $16 and costs about $6.40 to manufacture, distribute and sell in a store, research outfit Almighty Institute of Music Retail says...The band pulled the ripcord on EMI, so it doesn't have to share profits or help pay the label's overhead. As a well-known band it's also able to take the knives out on marketing and promotion costs, cutting these by as much as two-thirds. Subtract these expenses and Radiohead may be able to distribute an album for as little as $3.40 a copy.”

CNET calls the deal a "watershed." And the folks at Boing Boing say, “it's such a slap in the record industry's face. An unsigned superband, treating loyal fans and customers like loyal fans and customers instead of thieves -- what a revolutionary concept.”

And are those loyal fans interested? Well, overwhelming demand caused the album's site to crash shortly after details were announced. Word is that Radiohead isn’t making any advance copies available for review, but Rolling Stone has posted some concert versions of the new tracks. Or listen to a classic here.


powered by ODEO

UPDATE: How much are fans paying so far? According to NME, about £5 or $10. And a poll by Idolator.com says about 40% plan to pay between $2 and $10 while 18% plan to pay more than $10.

Moving violation?

You might have seen this on the side of taxis driving around the city: a new logo. While the pattern on the side of the trunk is a nice nod to checkered cabs of the past, you have to wonder what's going on with that type. (What's a t-axi? What's with the superbold heavy treatment on the NYC?) Admittedly, what used to be on the doors was a mishmash of stencils and decals. But you can't help but wonder if a really, really great opportunity was squandered. Just imagine the t-shirt sales. Even the old logo for the TV show Taxi had some style.

Designing with multiple partners is never easy. Like they say, a camel is a horse designed by committee. The boldfaced NYC logo comes from Wolff Olins, the firm that also designed the symbol for London's 2012 Olympic games. Smart Design led a team that included Antenna Design and Birsel + Seck to create the decals for the Taxi & Limousine Commission. To be fair, the project also included some changes inside the cab. Still one can't help but wonder what the logo would have looked like if Pentagram or Milton Glaser had gotten their hands on it. Unbeige weighs in with some criticism here.

And if you recently noticed some flowers on the tops of taxis, they're part of a projects called "Gardens in Transit" which runs through December. Kids from schools, youth programs and hospitals painted the stained-glass looking flowers on decals as a creative and/or therapeutic outlet.

Mr. Murdoch, tear down this wall.

Will Rupert Murdoch remove the subscription firewall in front of most of the stories on the Wall Street Journal’s site? At a Goldman Sachs conference last week, the mogul explained that "it's certainly on the front burner to decide what to do there." Last year wsj.com pulled in about $50 million in subscriptions.

No decision has been made but a free site "looks like the way we are going," Murdoch said. "Would you lose $50 million in revenue? I don't think so…But you'd lose some tens of millions to start with. Then, if the site is good, I think you'd get much more than that back just in textual search. And I think you'd get not one million paying customers, but, around the world, you'd get 10 to 15 million regular daily hits on it, and that would be the most affluent, the most influential people in the world...And I think that could grow."

Just last week The New York Times dropped its TimesSelect subscription service for some of its online content. The feature produced less revenue than wsj.com, pulling in about $10 million annually, although The Times said that number met its expectations.














“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of nytimes.com. According to an article in the paper, “These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.” Get the story from Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and CNN. (Graphic courtesy of wsj.com.)

The Emmys on Fox

Lost amid all the hullabaloo about the expletives and clumsy, censoring cutaways on Sunday’s Emmy telecast was Stewie & Brian’s salute to TV. And by salute, they mean a song about the “wide selection of trash” on the tube today.

Not surprisingly, Fox made it through unscathed. The section about that network was limited to a few lines about Sanjaya’s performance on American Idol. The other networks got a poke in the eye. Here’s the rundown of insults.

NBC
Scrubs “reminds us that a sitcom doesn’t have to make you laugh.”
“So I hear they’re bringing Seinfeld back to save a little face…And I hear Isaiah Washington is taking Kramer’s place.”

ABC
“They’re always brewing up some brand-new primetime swill…like the Geico cavemen.”
“…With its hits like Desperate Housewives continuing to thrive…And those women look sensational for being 65.”

CBS
“Today they’ve got some shows that are remarkably obscene. Like the show about the little boy who lives with Charlie Sheen.”

Probably the best bit of the song was for HBO. “The Sopranos is a show I’d recommend. Because you never know just how it’s gonna…” Then the audio drops out and they cut to black. Even James Gandolfini laughed at that one.

Interestingly, the song – with different lyrics – appeared on the Family Guy as a rant against the FCC. The same party that made Fox so jittery about all those four-letter words.

And what a nice surprise it was when 30 Rock won for best comedy. Finally, a decent speech from someone. Thank you, Tina Fey.

Pushing Daisies

If you like TV, the new fall season is always a bit like Christmas morning. There are things you’ve been counting down the days for. And things that are just taking up space under the tree like gift-wrapped socks and underwear. Here’s to the new ABC/Warner Bros. show Pushing Daisies being a big, red, shiny new Schwinn.

This past Saturday, the New York Television Festival had a special sneak preview of the show, followed by even more special Q&A with the show’s creator/executive producer Bryan Fuller, director/executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld and one of the leads, Lee Pace. Fuller, who wrote for Heroes last year, explained that the idea came from a story arc he’d considered on another show he’d created: Dead Like Me.

The show delivers so well on so many levels. It’s part fairy tale, part science fiction, part romantic comedy, part criminal procedural. Sonnenfeld and his DP have dialed up the colors to a candy-coated goodness for a story that’s actually quite dark. And he has the cast move through Fuller's smart dialogue at a good clip (like a screwball comedy from the 30's.)

The pilot covers a lot of ground and sets up a unique framework exceptionally well. And Jim Dale – yes, he of the Harry Potter audiobooks – has a great turn as the show’s narrator. Ellen Greene – yes, she of the original Little Shop of Horrors – plays one half of the retired synchronized swimming act, the Darling Sisters. Swoosie Kurtz is the other half. Anna Friel & Lee Pace actually have chemistry. And much of it takes place in a bakery/café that's the shape of a pie. If all of this keeps this up, it looks like every Wednesday at 8 will be like a very good Christmas present. Like a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine.

Pushing Daisies makes its broadcast debut on ABC October 3. Watch it. TiVO it. DVR it.

Hello, Hulu

The joint venture between NBC/Universal and News Corp. finally has a name: Hulu.

"Why Hulu? Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we're building," says Jason Kilar, Hulu's CEO (formerly of Amazon). Not to mention it is a couple letters shorter than YouTube (YuTu?), sounds vaguely Hawaiian (hula) and a little Star Trekky (Sulu). And this report from Reuters explains that Hulu is the Chinese word for a kind of gourd.

Hulu's beta version isn't scheduled to launch until October, providing some on-demand traction – and revenue – for the networks' new season of shows. More on Hulu from BusinessWeek and Adweek. And get the Wired take on the other video newcomer Joost here.

UPDATE: Now NBC/Universal says it won't renew its contract with Apple to sell TV shows through the iTunes store. Is it one of Jeff Zucker's negotiation tactics or...ba buh bum...or will Hulu sell shows for NBC?

FURTHER UPDATE: Apple says "oh no you didn't" and decides it won't sell any new episodes of NBC shows currently for sale. So NBC teams up with Amazon.com to sell them through it Unbox platform. One problem. Downloads won't play on iPods. Say whuh? Fix it fast. Please.

Mahalo for searching

If it's not an algorithm doing your search, what else is there? How about people. Mahalo bills itself as "human-powered search." It's from Webrepreneur Jason Calacanis and, according to this Fast Company article, is backed by "...$20 million in venture capital from a bevy of blue-chip investors--Sequoia Capital (original backer of Yahoo and Google); News Corp.; CBS; maverick Mark Cuban; and Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal..." Basically Mahalo is a series of hand-culled directories for popular search terms. If they haven't put together a page for your term yet, they politely reroute you to Google. Mahalo even accepts -- and pays for -- user-created directories via the Mahalo Greenhouse.

And just what does "Mahalo" mean? It's Hawaiian for thank you. The Hawaiian lexicon also gave the Web the word wiki, which means fast. (The tram at the Honolulu airport is called a wikiwiki.) Now only if someone would come up with the online equivalent of the pu-pu platter.

Light fantastic

Let there be light. Some interesting things are going on with light nowadays. One technique uses flashlights and a long exposure to paint images, and it's currently being used by a few folks right now. There's an engaging, new commercial for Sprint on the air. There's the work by the Japanese performance group Pika Pika. And light illustrates the lyrics in a video by The Willowz.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the Sprint commercial, which was directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris (of Little Miss Sunshine) and shot in L.A.'s MacArthur Park. Post house Brickyard explains what was tweaked, "The spot, shot entirely in-camera, was created from a series of still images linked together to achieve a live action effect...some compositing to bring the various layers of imagery together."

Below are several projects that Pika Pika put together in 2006 and the first couple months of 2007.

The Willowz video for "Jubilee," directed by Toben Seymour and released January 2007.

And of course, Picasso painted with light nearly 60 years ago. More images from a light graffitista in Germany here.

Meanwhile, Graffiti Research Lab brings together taggers, hackers, geeks and gawkers with open-source code and tips for light-projected graffiti on office buildings and bridges. Get the how-to here. Or just watch below.


In France, two VJs (known collectively as Uruk Videomachine) project images onto buildings and bring the architecture to life. Below is a clip from a performance they put together in Dijon. (It gets really good at 3:32 in.)

And back in Paris, Diesel used holograms in the runway show for its Spring/Summer 2008 line.

Who's driving a hybrid?

A recent study conducted by Autobytel reports on who's buying hybrid cars. The statistics are surprising. The buyers aren't just young Blue State drivers on the two coasts. (And they're not all like Ed Begley, Jr. and Laurie David, either.)

40% are Republicans.
36% are Democrats.
12% are Independents, and another 12% consider themselves unaffiliated.

31% are in the Northeast.
16% call the West Coast home.
21% live in the Midwest.
20% are from the Southeast, while 12% are from the Southwest.

57% are over age 45.
16% are 65 or older.

48.5% don’t have a college degree.
24.5% have a college degree.
27% have a graduate degree.

52% have a household income of $60,000.
35% make less than $40,000 a year.

(Courtesy of the What's Offline column in The New York Times, which cites a Reader's Digest article that quotes from the Autobytel study linked above.) In related news, Toyota announced it's testing a hybrid that can be re-charged in a regular outlet and will run for much longer than previous plug-in engines. Meanwhile, Porsche is developing a hybrid version of its Cayenne SUV.

An era of Serra

How do you move the 550 tons of steel that's part of the Richard Serra retrospective at the MoMA up and into the second story of a mid-town building? Randy Kennedy of The New York Times details the choreography to do just that in this article.

"Plate by curved plate, workers from Mr. [Joe] Vilardi’s Long Island company, Budco Enterprises, hoisted each piece from an empty lot on the museum’s west side to a makeshift two-story-high platform, slowly lowering it onto three humble hunks of metal with rollers, called skates. A forklift then nudged the plate, roller-skating it into the building to its next appointment, with the gantry. Dangling from the gantry’s cross beam were cables with two crablike steel claws that grabbed the plate and hoisted it into the air. The gantry then glided down the room with the plate, which appeared strangely weightless, like a velvety orange sail being wafted by a breeze."

As Michael Kimmelman exlains in his review, "That second floor at the Modern, by the way, is the show’s tour de force. A high, huge and like so much of this museum, totally unlovable space, it was conceived for housing Mr. Serra’s sculptures." Certainly Serra's pieces just can't be parked anywhere. Frank Gehry specifically designed a space large enough to hold Serra's sculptures in the Guggenheim in Bilbao. It took an old Nabisco factory -- now the Dia Beacon -- hold more of Serra's torqued ellipses. And the Gagosian Gallery, which played host to more spiral, toruses and spheres in 2001, has to be one of the largest gallery spaces in Manhattan.

A slightly less complicated installation in the garden of the MoMA is below.


The retrospective is, of course, incredible (despite what this guy at the Washington Post says.) The newest pieces continue to engage the visitors. Some people walk the perimeter as if they were in a labyrinth while others go straight to the center of the ellipses. Two works in particular, Band and Sequence, add serpentine elements and surprise to the bending of balance and perspective that Serra does so well.

Kwik-E-Marketing

You've probably seen advertising for it on TV and online, but not in a commercial. To promote the Simpsons movie, 20th Century Fox has been partnering with companies like 7-Eleven and JetBlue. Mr. Burns hijacked the blog of JetBlue's David Neeleman for a few days this month. Twelve 7-11 stores have been converted to Kwik-E-Marts through the end of July. And in a clever reverse product placement, the stores sell Springfield-worthy products such as Buzz Cola, Krusty-O's cereal and Radioactive Man comics that are "flying off the shelves." One lucky fan ran into an incognito Matt Groening while visiting the Burbank store and got an autographed box of Krusty O's.

A ubiquitous, unnamed "source close to the movie's promotions" told Brandweek, "It wasn't really about lining up as many partners as possible, it was about having the right partners in the right context and the right message." It appears that the efforts for 7-Eleven were spearheaded by agency Tracy Locke with some serious input from Groening and his team at Gracie Films.

In addition, the movie studio paired with USA Today for a contest to see which Springfield would play host to the movie's premiere. (Springfield, Vermont gets the honors.) Fox also got on the YouTube bandwagon with this 9-second video.


And now Haaper's Bazaar has even gotten into the game. The August issue has the Simpson family and a cartoon version of Linda Evangelista in Paris wearing the latest from Versace, Chanel, Marc Jacobs and more. Get your cartoon couture here. The current issue of Vanity Fair asks Conan O'Brien what it was like to work on The Simpsons. More writers, the voices, other funny people and even Murdoch provide VF with the inside skinny and color commentary here.

Of course, you can create your own Simpsons avatar here. There will probably be a few more surprises before the movie opens on July 27. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Burger King has launched SimpsonizeMe.com while Leo Burnett says, "Hey, we pitched that to you!" in this NPR report (courtesy of Agency Spy).

Next big things?

At the 54th annual Advertising Festival in Cannes, Leo Burnett and Contagious magazine ran a seminar called Wildfire 2007. Ninety-five percent of the seminar was highlighting a lot of things that have already received a lot of attention. (Club Penguin. JetBlue's story booth. The spoiled brat $9.99 gimmick for Domino's Pizza.) However, in the last few minutes of their presentation, they listed a few things worth watching in the coming year. Life Cake is purporting itself to be a combination of YouTube, Wiki and Facebook that will launch soon. Stikfas is -- surprise -- a stick-figure toy. Blyk is an ad-supported free mobile service in Europe. Photosynth is from Microsoft. If you're looking for photos of an object or place, it will search multiple sources online. Then it collects those images and creates a 3-D model. Will these be the next big things? Check back in a year.

Dramatic chipmunk & friends

Five perfect seconds. Does anyone know what the soundtrack is? Here's a link for the original clip. (The chipmunk was an animal segment on a Japanese TV show.) Now there's even a t-shirt and a Facebook application.


French D.J. combo Justice serves up some great CGI on t-shirts in this video to their catchy single. It seems even the Old Grey Lady has a bit of crush on them in this profile. (The NYT has moved the article behind a paid firewall. Click here for the same article republished in a Scottish newspaper.)


Some clever performance art with the iPhone. There's a company behind it that sells software for "electronic" magicians.