Well…I made another Wordpress blog today at http://www.meetthegoddards.com and for whatever reason, it messed up Flawed Human Being big time. Not sure what I did (waiting for a Support response from MediaTemple) but it sucks. Flawed is back but I lost a lot of server-side tweaks I made and all my posted images. I am feeling really lazy at the moment and just want to have a Sunday. I will be fixing all this soon (and backing up my blog more often as well). Just thought I’d let my legion of fans know. *opens a beer*
Blog Images
April 19th, 2009An Open Letter to Fox 42 KPTM
April 17th, 2009
Hello there. I’ve been meaning to write you for years, and I do mean years, about your utterly horrible promos (Dysfunction Junction anyone? What about ‘Funnytown?’) and utter lack of competency in anything your division of Fox touches. It is ri-dic-u-lous how out of touch you are with the local community and how completely amateur your production and quality values are. Granted there is not much local competition in this arena, but shouldn’t that make you shine instead of become another unimaginative local news station?
Regardless, I have come to terms with everything above and do of course watch your station regularly (but never your news, god NEVER your news). Anyway, the reason I am writing is because of your (again amatuer) Children’s Hospital time update ad that comes up during the 7 – 8 hour (and I assume other times throughout the day). I am in marketing and understand the importance of cross-promotion but here’s my feedback and, in my opinion, a list of things that need to change instantly :
- I have a widescreen HDTV (as I am sure many of your users do) when the Children’s Hosptal ‘Time Box’ Ad comes out from the left of the screen it causes the widescreen format of your shows (like American Idol for instance) to switch to a vertical letterbox format. Also the sound cuts out which, when watching any show (but especially one about singing!) is absolutely annoying and extremely unprofessional. Then, the stupid clock stays there for 10 seconds and it all happens again when the program ‘cuts’ back to widescreen mode. Can you really, in 2009, not figure out a way to do this WITHOUT program interruption? Seriously…is your TV crew that utterly lazy that they cannot research the correct way to have a promo like this appear without being completely janky?
- Why in god’s name do we need the ad for Children’s to include the time? People have clocks. People’s TVs have clocks. People’s DVR boxes have clocks. Can’t your marketing team think of a more inventive way to brand Children’s along with KPTM without some arbitrary reason to do so?
In closing, I just want to remind you this is 2009. Again…it’s 2009. Be inventive. Be professional. Be cutting edge for christ’s sake! And stop the constant stream of sub-par ridiculousness that has perpetually come out of KPTM for 10+ years. Don’t you think your audience deserves it? Or are you only in this for ad revenue?
~ m
In closing, I didn’t include this in my original letter, but : BADOW! Also…I legitimately apologize if you or anyone you know works at KPTM. I am not out to offend anyone, just think it’s high-time local news stations get their act together on air and online.
KPTM Email Fail
Bullshit or TwitShit…I mean, TwitShirt
April 17th, 2009Yesterday I started seeing buzz about a newly launched Twitter-related website called TwitShirt. I looked over the site and, beside some early database issues (due to traffic I assume), I thought it was a cool concept. I like Twitter. I like shirts. I like getting paid. I also used to work at PayPal so I liked the fact they were using it as their payment platform. Then I went on my merry little way (and even gave them a little shoutout).
A few minutes later I saw this post from @camh where he pretty much bashed the makers in a bad form, finger-wagging kind of way and it made me re-think the whole Twitshirt concept. Maybe it is rather shitty that Twitshirt has an opt-out button…but no opt-in option. It seems to assume that every member of Twitter has been in the t-shirt slogan making business for 3 years and now it’s time to cash in. Also, the concept of Twitter posts being the property of the author or creative commons has been talked about recently but I think it is still somewhat of an unknown.
However, it may be good to cover your ass, as even Twitter’s Terms state :
We encourage users to contribute their creations to the public domain or consider progressive licensing terms.
I think the main thing that surprised me about this whole scenerio was @camh’s honesty. I love the fact that he called Twitshirt out about this because Opt In and Opt Out has been something of a sore subject lately anyway.
With Twitter being such an advocate of people using their platform in inventive ways, it begs the questions : What is fair? What is a violation? Am I going to have to watch my radar for other sites that pop up in the future and Opt Out of each one I can’t get behind?
What do you think about Twitter and Creative Commons? Did you Opt Out of Twitshirt or add your username to TweetCC and if so, why?
UPDATE : Well, looks like the community has spoken and TwitShirt is listening.
New Bellevue University Website
March 27th, 2009My team and I have been working on a redesign of Bellevue University’s website for around 7 months now. It’s my pleasure to give my readers a sneak peek at the near final version of our design. You can check it out at http://new.bellevue.edu! We’re still tweaking a few things so if you see any weirdness, please pass it along. Otherwise, thanks for looking and keep checking as we move into Phase 2 of this project. Later Gators!
Richard Lloyd of Television
March 17th, 2009Here’s a new poster we did for Richard Lloyd of the punk band Television. He’s apparently into crazy music theory stuff and tube amps (or so I’ve heard), so this is what we came up with! Enjoy!
