Jon Litwack

Yoko Ono… I guess you have no friends…

// March 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

While perusing my Facebook feed this lovely sunny Saturday afternoon, I noticed a post from my buddy Joshua Andrews (for those of you familiar with Jewish Mayhem) mentioning a lecture by Allan Tannenbaum about his new book surrounding the lives of Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

Clicking on the link brings me to an event page for the lecture, and my typical behaviour is to check out A: The venue and B: The date and C: The number of attendees.

Venue’s in New York, so it’s a no go as I’ll be in Toronto all week. Additionally… I’m not all that interested in Yoko Ono nor John Lennon

The date is April 5th… fairly soon.

The number of attendees… 6 confirmed guests.

Admin for the event is Yoko herself.

Now one could easily say “Wow… she’s really unpopular. She only has 6 confirmed guests.” and a more rational one could say, this crowd probably doesn’t even know there’s a facebook event for it, so who knows, maybe there will be 5,000 attendees.
Either way, Yoko either did a really piss poor job of promoting this event via facebook, or she just completely flew over the nest of her own marketing tactics and promoted this to the wrong people… In fact, it doesn’t look like anyone has even been invited to the event.
Either way… 6 people… I get more people on the confirmed list for birthday parties.

Moral of the story: Always remember the first component of any social engagement strategy. People.

If you’re interested in attending, check out the link here http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=24109266984&ref=nf

Toodles,
Jon

For all y’all that use iTunes – Mojo – The playlist stealer

// March 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

Not sure why I haven’t posted this one yet, but it’s pretty damn cool.

For those of you that are accustomed to using iTunes network sharing while at the office (because your own playlist has gotten tired), there’s a plugin that now allows you to share across the interwheb.

Check it out here: http://deusty.com/

You can add me as a friend “jonlitwack”

Forrester’s 404

// March 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

So my daily dosage of Forrester Research is lacking at the moment…

Where do you suppose that puts them on their own Cxpi chart?
Just kidding.
Hope you’re back up soon guys…

In the meantime, y’all should check out their Facebook page. It’s pretty nifty http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forrester-Research/5807839110?ref=s

To all y’all who don’t “get it”

// March 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

As of late, my UX practice has been focused more on social strategy, and as a result I get the occasional odd glance from my colleagues. For the past while my strategy has been primarily build focused, and rest assured (though I doubt any of you are losing sleep over my career decisions) I will continue to focus on build; however, I think that social engagement is quickly becoming a part of agency mindset surrounding the holistic framework of an interactive strategy. So with that said, yes, I am a pusher of social engagement as a practice. It’s not a buzz word. Web “2.0″ IS A BUZZ WORD, the idea that EVERYONE should build a social network is RIDICULOUS, and if I hear the word AJAX used one more time in reference to a front-end language I’m going to scream.
The point I’m getting at today is that in the wake of new media absorbing the social culture wave (Way too many surfing references there), everyone is trying to find business value in every network out there, and I’m sorry, but chances are , most of the time, you’re not going to.
A lot of people question the value of Twitter, and it’s a reasonable issue to question; however, perhaps… just maybe… Twitter serves a very unique purpose, has no real business agenda to speak of, and merely exists for those who DO find it useful.
I personally don’t use Twitter, but only because I have a hard enough time forcing myself to update a blog once a day, let alone a microblog ten times a day. There’s nothing to get. If you don’t use it, then just don’t. At the end of the day you can only strategize around platforms that you understand, and those that don’t will never truly be able to effectively leverage the medium. That’s really all there is to it.

If you don’t want to use LinkedIn… Don’t. But don’t come crying to me about how you’re ten years behind the times simply because you failed to grasp the concept of social networking beyond the ability to connect with people you already know. That was NEVER really the point of social networks.
If it was, they wouldn’t be networks, they would simply be static connections, and somewhat reminiscent of ICQ, ie. just another way of connecting to a friend. But that’s not what social networking is about. Social networking is about the ability to connect to nodes of networks that you may not have had access to before. That’s why police are using it to investigate murders, HR reps are using it to find new talent, and… well… there are obvious darker implications that I won’t get into today.

Before I go off on too much of a tangent, all of this supposed “2.0″ wave crap all boils down to this. There’s nothing new about what’s available to us. What is new is the way in which we are willing to use web. It’s not the technology, it’s us.
We can now create, aggregate, tag, rate, share and filter en masse.
The best part about all of it is that you don’t have to take part. Don’t join a social network, don’t register for any sites. Most of the content will show up somewhere open and free if its’ interesting enough anyway.

I’m done ranting, have a good night,
Jon

Google Map’s Latest Feature – Locate a Drug Dealer or Pimp near you!

// March 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

Don’t you hate when your favourite drug dealer doesn’t show up contextually on Google???
Well worry no more! Thanks to Google Street View they can’t hide anymore!

Click on the pic for the proper link. Feel free to zoom out… You can get full d33ts on the “purchaser’s” plates.

Credit to my buddy Cbab on this find (or whoever he got it from…)

Cheerio,
Jon

****EDIT****
This image was removed from Google Maps several days after this post went up. Clicking on it will result in some form of 404 messaging.

Macbook Hiatus

// March 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

Last week, yours truly took a wee tumble on some ice.
Now ordinarily, that wouldn’t do any real damage as I’ve been known to get hit by cars and still keep my tech intact. HOWEVER. On this particular day, I was lugging a projector back to the office, so my weight was being portioned out across my shoulders at an uneven ratio of 5 lb. laptop on my left, and ?? lb. projector on my right. Long story short, company property took precedent over mine, and my Macbook Pro got… well… bent.
I found this out when I got into the office (bruised and scratched up) and put my lappy down to find that it wasn’t sitting evenly on my desk.
I lifted it up to check to see that the surface wasn’t covered by the usual things that make my laptop wobble, ie. wires, jacks (of the game variety), pens, post its, etc.
Nope, nothing there, so going in on close eye inspection, there was a 10 degree bend in the bottom corner of my hardware.
Took the Apple Store a week to get the new parts in, and a full day to fix.

Lessons Learned:
When I don’t have a laptop or any computer to use, I clean… Obsessively.
I get an impulse every 30 minutes to check Digg.com, and when I can’t, I have to turn the tv on to CNN… Not an effective substitute.
I get anxiety attacks from not being able to work, or at least look at work every two hours.
My blackberry begins to function well beyond its means, and the speed of the internet brings me back to being 12 years old… except back then it was normal to wait for a whole minute to load up a webpage with three images on it.

Anyway, I’m all fixed up now. I popped a new video up on the Facebook page… Stay tuned for more appropriate data exploitation between Drupal and FB.

Cheers,
Jon

Can we say missing confirmation number generator filter?

// March 13th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

I can… but not 3 times fast…
Anyway, this recent pic showed up on Consumerist.org today.

Moral of the story… Hire good business Analysts

Nine Inch Nails already showing success – $750,000 in first three days

// March 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

So ummmm… *cough* *cough*
Yeah… That’s a lot of money for something that’s free, and in reference to a post I made when the album came out, I suppose this may actually start impacting the business model of the major players. History shows that their strategies are all derivative of “monkey see, monkey do”. I don’t see why it will be any different if we see a few more examples of this kind of growth via grass-roots means of distribution.

Gary Gygax dies today at age 69

// March 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

Gary Gygax, creator of DnD (Dungeons and Dragons), passed away today. He supposedly was in poor health, having suffered several strokes and other ailments to the heart.
Gygax departs from this world leaving us with my favourite part of the web today… MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) such as World of Warcraft.

Nine Inch Nails offers new album sans DRM or cost.

// March 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Stuff

When Radiohead put out ‘In Rainbows’, I guess most of us looked at the situation as a combination of disenchantment with the major lables, coupled with the “thought” that most people are just going to download it anyway, so why not just capitalize on making themselves look more down to earth.

I for one, having worked in the “music biz”, have NO CLUE as to how things will turn out in regard to monetization. I guess ideally, it all comes down to who can drive the most fan affinity, generate ticket sales, sell merch, etc. Maybe CDs will become a relic like 8 Tracks, and ultimately the only real “hardware” market will become audiophiles who want to spend $200 on vinyl for those “rare tangible pressings”.
Realistically we’ll have to wait for major labels to shut down in order to see independents like Rezner and Yorke get their way. Until then, enjoy paying $20 for two pieces of plastic sandwiching aluminum foil.

On the note of DRM today, Trent and Thom aren’t the only ones shunning Digital Rights Management (at least in the mainstream spotlight), Random House recently announced their anti-DRM policy on their Audiobooks. That’s right kids! You won’t have to worry about the MPAA knocking your door down for all those Christopher Pike audiobooks you’ve illegally downloaded!

Oh yeah… the link to the album’s page is here: http://ghosts.nin.com/main/home
For those of you that would like to learn more about DRM and all of its loveliness, check out the EFF’s page about it here: http://w2.eff.org/IP/DRM/guide/

For those of you wondering if the album is any good, I’ll refer back to the words of Rob Gordon (From High Fidelity) and say “I haven’t quite absorbed that one yet”.
It’s a soundtrack album. Lots of ambient noise. Great for some… Not really my schtick.