My site is currently under a crazy comment spam attack. I have received over 1000 spam comments in the last 24 hours and if this continues, I am going to have to disable the comment feature which would fucking blow. All comment spammers should die a horrible death. As a short haired blond crazy woman named Susan Powter once said, “Stop the insanity!”
Lego is currently developing an updated robot kit for their Mindstorms division called NXT and I am so pscyhed to get one. I have never built a robot before, though when I was a child I dreamt of doing so and even figured out all the pieces I needed to ad-hoc acquire. While I got some of the parts, I never got the tank tread that was needed for mobility and that in a sense stopped the development in its tracks. Now, many many years later, after reading the recent Wired aritcle about this project and seeing the demo on the Lego site, I for some reason have a burning desire to build my own robot. It comes out in the fall and I for one cannot wait until the leaves start a’fallin.
The really cool thing about the development process is how Lego has tapped the hardcore Mindstorms programming community for advice, testing and feedback which in turn is actually being incorporated into the product design. The original robot kit from 2000 was not that great but a lot of talented and smart people took those limited bits to amazing heights – sort of how we put a man on the moon with less computing power than what is in a regular cell phone. Now those same people are now working with Lego to ensure that the NXT kit is friggin fantastic. This is not an open source product and project though – Lego is keeping all proprietary data and knowledge and Lego is the one making the money here but that to me, and to the developers helping, is okay. Its better to have someone to turn to do, to own the factories, to handle packaging and shipping, etc. Sort of how RedHat sells Linux in a way. Everyone is just happy that the end product will be the best that it can be because the global knowledge base has been tapped in order to make it so. I have signed up to be a Lego Mindstorms NXT Pioneer and will find out some time in February whether or not I’m picked to write article, post entries and build robots as a beta tester. I am sure I have no chance, there are only 100 Pioneers, but as NY Lotto used to say, “Hey, you never know.”
This GeigerPod, an iPod inside of a Geiger counter, is simply fantastic. I love when people hack one device and make another one out of it, like when people turned their XBox’s into Linux machines or when Chris made a rechargable iPod battery out of an Altoids tin. Check out the entire Flikr set of the retrofitted counter. I say well done JavaMoose!
Via Slashdot
Topping my “I should have bought this stock at the IPO” list for the past few weeks has been Google. One of the reasons is because it continues to release cool apps. Take Google SMS for instance, which enables you to send queries as text messages over your mobile phone or device and easily get precise answers to your questions. No links. No web pages. Just text – and the information you’re looking for. Try the demo and see how you can:
Its pretty cool. If you are stuck in traffic during the holidays, play around. Tangentially related, I wonder if “texting” an approved way of referring to sending someone a text message, as in “I’m texting it to you now.” What do you think? I vote “yes.”
Now this is getting just plain silly: First the Subservient Chicken, then the Sith Sense and now Coq Roq – damn I wish I worked on the Burger King interactive account! Coq Roq is the web site for a made-up band called “Fowl Mouth” – its a great flash site that advertises BK’s new Chicken Fries (I can feel my arteries clogging just having typed that). Check out the gallery area; I think it’s neat how it switches from picture to picture.
Thanks Todd for sending this to me – and to think I thought Coq Roq was a gay band…
UPDATE:
What kind of messages does this site send out, especially when it’s backed by a huge corporation? Ultimately, what it’s doing is sexualizing fast food” is just one opinion out of many about this campaign. After the jump, read about all the controversy Coq Roq has kicked up.
From AdAge:
BURGER KING’S COQROQ.COM TRIGGERS CONTROVERSY
Some Sexual Double Entendres Removed From Site Overnight
July 26, 2005 by Kate MacArthur
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Even though it has suddenly removed sexual double entendres from its new Web site, CoqRoq.com, Burger King today denied it had received any complaints from consumers or other outside groups.
This screen grab was taken in the ‘Gallery’ section of Burger King’s CoqRoq.com site yesterday. Today, the ‘Groupies Love the Coq’ caption was removed. The company denies it made the changes because of outside complaints. The CoqRoq.com site is linked to Burger King’s main Web site and is promoted in a new Burger King TV commercial.
Crispin Porter
CoqRoq.com, created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Miami, the agency that created Burger King’s Subservient Chicken site, is designed to look like the kind of crudely outrageous Web site created by a rock band.
The Web site’s double entendre name, along with the lyrics, demeanor and the sophomoric presentation of the fictitious heavy metal group, projects the illusion of something designed to offend the sensibilities of mainstream adult America.
Among other things, CoqRoq.com, which is linked directly to the main Burger King Web site, includes photo galleries with Polaroid-style shots of young girls with the handwritten captions “Groupies love the Coq” and “groupies love Coq.” Since the site went live yesterday, those captions and others have been erased from the online materials. AdAge.com took screen shots of those removed materials yesterday afternoon.
“Nothing on the site has changed because of any reaction to the site,” said Edna Johnson, senior vice president for global communications for Burger King Corp., which is owned by private equity firm Texas Pacific Group. Mrs. Johnson said photo cutlines were written and then assigned randomly by computer software that as since been disabled. She said malfunctions in the Flash and XML programming were responsible for putting the “Groupies love the Coq” on the photos of the young women.
No complaints
Ms. Johnson said neither the marketer nor its agency, Crispin Porter, had been contacted by any groups. “We haven’t had any complaints. The site launched slightly more than 24 hours ago and the changes are typical of a new Web site that is being tweaked.” She added that a misspelling of Burger King had also been fixed.
But even industry insiders were surprised by the gaffe of the CoqRoq site, with some noting that the bar, first raised first by Burger King’s subservient chicken and later upped by the Paris Hilton erotic carwashing spot for CKE Restaurants’ Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., has pushed the limits of what fast-food marketers will do for attention.
“There’s a fine line between getting the attention of the core target and risking offending the masses,” said Chris Carroll, senior vice president and director of marketing for Subway’s Franchisee Advertising Fund Trust.
The lead singer of Burger King’s fictitious rock band CoqRoq is named Fowl Mouth.
Ralph Norman Haber, partner, Human Factors Consultants, an expert on subliminal perception and subliminal advertising, said there’s nothing subliminal in the site or its advertising and that both males and females appear to be targeted equally.
“As far as I could see both sides of each one of these comes in for being the target,” he said. “Everybody is picked on and it”s kind of fair game. I think it’s probably an effective ad. From my point of view I thought it was very creative.”
However, outsiders are asking how a corporation of Burger King’s stature could have approved the use of such a concept.
‘Offensive in general to families’
“Just the name Coq Roq in general is offensive to families,” said Aliza Pilar Sherman, an authority and author on women and the Internet and founder of cybergrrl. “I can’t imagine if parents of a smaller child saw this. They’d say they don’t want their child exposed to this. Where do we as responsible individuals draw the line? Of course there’s freedom of speech but does that mean Burger King should be perpetuating stereotypes, negative attitudes and demeaning behavior to the market.”
“Burger King is perpetuating a crude type of stereotype,” agreed Dr. Martha Allen, director of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press. “They’re serving junk stereotypes degrading and harmful to women.”
The fact they adjusted the site indicates “they’re crossing the line and they know it in some sense,” said Pat McGann, director of outreach for Men Can Stop Rape, a group that works with young men to foster healthy relationships with women. He called the entire site an example of material that confuses men about what it means to be a man.
Sexualizing fast food
“What kind of messages does this site send out, especially when it’s backed by a huge corporation?” he asked. “Ultimately, what it’s doing is sexualizing fast food.”
I use FireFox as my web browser as much as I can help it – there are still some sites that are better viewed using IE but that number keeps falling – because its so wonderful. I love the tab based browsing and the bazillion of other neat features that FireFox offers. Today, I was checking out the various extensions offered after reading about a social networking plugin on Slashdot and found the following fun (to me) plugins:
A little over a year ago, I posted about a number of interesting search engines that haven’t gotten combined the amount of press that Google alone has garnered. Today, the NY Times had an article about search engines which provided two more interesting engines that I felt compelled to list. Here they are:
The $150 PlusDeck2 is a cassette deck the size of an internal CD-ROM drive that pops into any desktop PC’s 5.25-inch drive bay. It turns tapes into MP3’s – or, for true retro music fans, record MP3’s onto blank cassettes. Yes, you read that correctly. Check out the picture below:
It’s best feature? Why, validation for saving all my tapes all these years of course! As the NY Times put it, “pack rats who saved hundreds of tapes, to the annoyance of their significant others, will suddenly seem to be masters of foresight.”
So very true. I just moved apartments a few months back and lugged all my tapes uptown, not even really knowing why, expect for the fact that I just couldn’t throw them away. I must have over 125 great albums on tape that I’m just dying to convert to digital. I have tons mix tapes that I made through the years, like some off of Z-100 full off funny songs like “New Kids Got Run Over By A Reindeer” along with various “High 5 at 9” countdowns from the early 90’s. I have a tape of me, age 4, reading a book and me, age 3, setting up blocks and them knocking them down (I wanted to hear how loud the crash sounded). I have an audio journal from a ski trip that I took with my aunt, uncle and cousins in the early 90’s which to is me is hysterical. Basically, there is a virtual treasure trove of music and audio now sitting at my fingertips and I cannot wait to get this device and convert these babies into mp3s. I need to order this ASAP.
Challenge Darth Vader to a game of 20 questions he likes to call The Sith Sense. My object was an radish which he guessed on the 17th question. Once again, the agency handling the Burger King account has developed a seriously cool viral concept. I especially likes the effect when Vader shakes your screen.
Cool stuff.
Thanks Scott
M.A.A.P. is short for Massively Authored Artistic Project and is a succinct way of describing what Yellow Arrow is all about. Maybe you have seen one of the dictinctive yellow arrow stickers around the city and didn’t know what it was. Here is a quick rundown from the site itself:
“Participants place arrows to draw attention to different locations and objects — a favorite view of the city, an odd fire hydrant, the local bar.
By sending a text-message (SMS) from your mobile phone to 1.646.270.5537 beginning with your arrow’s unique code you associate it with a short text — messages can range from literary quotations to personal commentaries to game-like prompts to action.
When another person encounters the arrow, he or she sends the code to 1.646.270.5537 and immediately receives your message on their mobile phone.
Through this location-based exchange of text-messages, the Yellow Arrow becomes a symbol for the unique characteristics, personal histories, and hidden secrets that live within our everyday spaces.”
Michael Shanks posted about this “global public art project, urban game, and tool for collaborative experimental travel” in August, 2004 and Wired picked up the story around that time as well. Since then, it has only gained momentum and today when I got an email from Yellow Arrow, I thought I would share this project with those that read this little blog. So, sign up, get some arrows and tag the city your way!