...hush...

On iRacing

2008-09-18T13:37:00.003-05:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been enjoying my delve into iRacing.com, an incredibly realistic driving simulator that has quite the physics engine backing it.

If you're at all interested in motorsports or fancied being a racecar driver at some point, I highly recommend you give it a go.

Shameless self promotion

2008-08-11T14:03:00.001-05:00

Go see my newest blog. Any self respecting foodie will love it.

Now testing - Lively

2008-08-01T08:24:00.003-05:00

Just a quick note for you guys to remind me to review Lively. Lively, is Google's response to Second Life, though it seems a lot campier. I downloaded the Beta last night and will give it a week or two before I post a full review.

Here's the promo video

I've actually never tried second life, so I'll need to get into that as well. What has me wanting to try Lively? To be honest, I like to try EVERYTHING Google puts out into the general market. I really enjoy the openness of their platforms and love the idea of adapting all of these free Web tools and services into a business and marketing environment.

Can't wait to get started on this. Do you have experience with Lively? E-mail me your thoughts.

On Blogging

2008-08-01T08:11:00.002-05:00

At one point in time, I was a much more dedicated blogger. I started blogging in an early form back in 2000. Only back then, I was constantly updating an AngelFire HTML template that was my second attempt at a Web page.

I got into the whole programming and designing end of digital thanks to my JRN 101 professor. My first Web site was done in Microsoft Front Page. It took me forever as I recall now. I also remember fumbling a few times learning to use FTP software. About a year later, I stumbled onto Blogger and loved the freedom I had to only have to worry about tagging my text breaks and things that I wanted to bold or italicize. I also became addicted to the daily writing process. I am convinced it made me a better reporter in the long run. I'd write, write and write. It also got me into scouring the web constantly, trying to find the next cool thing to write about (thanks for the free investigative reporting class blogger!).

During my weird and wild journey through blogging, I got hooked on a few writers, one of them being Regina Lynn, a blogger, author and all around lovely woman who has been writing for Wired.com for more than five years.

Now Regina is bowing out. I'm bummed. I've read, laughed, nodded in approval and learned new things with her every Friday for the last several years. Here's to you Regina. Thanks for being a bit of an inspiration.

On Digital Strategy, Powerpoint

2008-07-30T07:55:00.006-05:00

I work at an agency that loves its "decks," which is a really dumb way of saying Power Point. I find deck writing very frustrating - mostly because the people you'll inevitably present the deck to have no desire to sit through 20 to 50 slides of what you're already telling them anyway.

Sure, strategy is really important, and I'm of the opinion you shouldn't even bother creating concept creative without it, but there is a point where you just need to tell a client what the hell you're going to do for them.

I learned this first hand during a recent presentation to a group of people that I would classify as "light-tech" clients. I believe you can classify people in the modern business environment into three tech categories:

*Non-Tech Adopters
*Telecom Adopters
*All Tech Adopters

I, unfortunately, was presenting a very long, strategically sound deck for an "all tech" audience that was very clearly a group of Telecom adopters. How do I know? They were all furiously typing away on their Blackberries, as I presented on some very cool Web 2.0 applications we planned to use to build their brand. Not to mention, when I asked how many of them knew what a "blog" was, only two of the 10 in the room raised their hand.

So, we ditched the deck after five slides and proceeded to wing it on the strategy. In the long run, it went very well. Maybe I need to ditch the deck more often.

On corporate transparancy

2008-07-11T08:13:00.003-05:00

Recently, I've been reading about a lot of havoc and drama that has been created over a video that Draftfcb shared that eventually made its' way over to George Parker (love him or hate him, he's totally transparent and isn't afraid to share his opinion)over at AdScam.

It got me to thinking about an article I read a while back on how more corporations need to be more transparent. Bottom line, I believe corporations need to not only be transparent, but they need to be brutally honest. The audiences we're pushing this marketing and PR content to (it all comes back to content doesn't it? ) has a pretty good nose for bullshit.

So when I read the threads and responses from leadership weaving a web of lies and twisting the facts, it's more than a little troublesome. Being in the ad and marketing business, I understand the need to spin a message, but I also see that when someone already has the information, it only makes things infinitely worse when you get called out by your own employees for trying to cover it.

Maybe it's time for more companies to start being a bit more transparent.

Case in point for Draft... if they'd just leave this video issue alone, or take the lump from George's critique of it - the discomfort would eventually pass. Whether the blog was supposed to have the video or not, it was clearly a PR produced video intended for broad distribution eventually anyway. ... It's out there, some people aren't going to like it. Deal with it.

On Firefox 3

2008-07-10T08:17:00.004-05:00

I HATE that Campbell-Ewald won't allow me to run Firefox 3 and hate it even more that I'm not allowed to update my iTunes to 7.7, largely because both releases of these applications are just that good.

Here's my rundown on why Firefox 3 is "the balls."

1. It's Fast, Fast, Fast

Did I mention it's fast. It's light years away from Firefox 2 in my opinion. Thanks to the Gekko 1.9 engine, the browser renders pages so much faster faster and uses fewer system resources overall.

2. Changes to the location bar

I know a LOT of people find this feature annoying. I however have found it to be incredibly useful. Previously known as Smart Location Bar searches through your history as you type in a URL. This bar searches through your history and bookmarks simultaneously and presents a drop-down list of recently accessed pages with that same keyword. It works even if you already know the URL.

Best of all, if you hate it and you have even a moderate amount of coding background so there is a way to disable it requiring a small tweak to the about:config file. An Add-On further allows you to learn which of the search results you want to always be on top.

3. OPEN SOURCE!

As a former add-on (i always preferred "extensions") and theme developer, I love how accessible the browser is. I really dig that there are so many adopters of a browser I've been using as long as I remember it being out there. Firefox 3 is Acid 2 Browser Test compliant , which makes it standardized alongside Opera 9 and Safari 3. Read, get with the fucking program already IE . Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a stickler to adhering to web standards in both page design, coding and programming.

4. Security updates

As said in the CNet review "There are also numerous security features such as Malware and Phishing protection, Instant Web site ID, support for the Extended Validation Secure Socket Layer (EV SSL), enhancements to the Password manager, and greater security for Add-Ons."

Nuff said there.

5. Web developer specific tools!

For developers there are new Web-based content handlers, greater search engine keyword support, a new password manager, the Firefox 3 Extension Manager (EM) and oodles more.

My favorites are the beginnings of the Firefox intentity network, better integration with Mac OS X's look and feel and site specific preferences that are now integrated directly into the browser sans extensions. With Firefox 3 you also get an early look at FUEL (Firefox User Extension Library), a JavaScript library designed to make it easier for extension developers by minimizing XPCOM formality and using more "modern" JavaScript ideas.

Go download it. Immediately.

Who loves working on automotive accounts...

2008-07-07T09:55:00.003-05:00

Things keep getting worse for the general and keep getting worse for the big D.

Scary time to work on an American automotive account.

On Broadcast Advertising

2008-07-01T07:55:00.002-05:00

I won't pretend to be an expert in Broadcast Advertising. I've never worked with the medium, and to be honest, TV is really starting to bore me. Therefore, I don't get into commercials in the same way I used to get into them. But as someone who works primarily on automotive accounts, I do tend to pay some attention to the auto industry ads. I'm also a big, big fan of vintage auto ads, like this little gem below.

What I love about vintage ads is that they always seem to pack in music in a very fun way. I look at the commercials they're producing today and they just don't have the same kitsch value. Auto advertising is really an art, because it doesn't do anything anymore. If you look at the research that's out there, a lot of consumers don't even pay attention to broadcast car commercials anymore. What primarily influences their choices are Internet sites and word of mouth from friends. Sure styling plays into it, and there is a lot of weight based on name recognition etc. But to be perfectly honest, I'm VERY glad I don't have to market cars using broadcast.

Check out Jalopnik's votes for the Top 10 Best Car Commercials of the 1960s. They're great.

Cooking and Recipe sites anyone?

2008-06-30T08:13:00.003-05:00

Last night was my last night of carbs for another two weeks.

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I've put on an additional 10 pounds since my wedding and that I'm probably getting to be in the worst shape of my life. This is very disappointing to me as I'm sure you can imagine.

So, last night, I made one of my biggest guilty pleasures - an all olive pizza that takes on a significant Mediterranean flavor. But last night, I did something different. I finally got brave and grilled my pizza.

I'm happy to report that this experiment turned out fabulous. I used a pre-made crust for my first attempt. After brushing the crust with a healthy dose of olive oil, I dusted the entire crust with herbs and a light coating of cracked black pepper and garlic salt. I made my own tomato sauce from scratch and then added Colossal Greek Black Olives, Kalamata Olives and Cracked Sicilians.

It was fantastic. The flavor of the olives penetrated the crust and the sauce... and the cheese melted very evenly. Creating unique and different pizzas is something I've started to take very, very seriously. Thankfully, I'm not as obsessed as this guy. Ask my wife, every one of my pizzas is a little different, whether it's the sauce, the seasoning of the crust, or the length in the oven. Every one is different, because every one is influenced by my mood.

But now, it's back to South Beach, which means I'm back to lots of lean meats. So tonight, I'm continuing my Mediterranean tour and plan on prepping a Tuscan-style grilled steak.

Here's the marinade, which I got from the boards over at Chow.

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh oregano leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary leaves

So,Chow is my go to for new recipes. Other than the Food Network Site, do you guys have anywhere you surf for new recipes.... I'm a little out of practice. Happy eating.

On Organizing Digital Music Libraries

2008-06-29T09:03:00.006-05:00

One of the things that has always bothered me about utilizing my numerous MP3 players is that they never seem to be able to port album art from MP3 player to MP3 player and system to system.

So, needless to say, it's frustrating when synching from one iPod to another and so on. Thanks to Lifehacker and a few of my own tricks, I've been able to find album art very, very quickly when I find holes in my cover art library, whether it's on my Shuffle, my Nano or on my various iTunes library at work or at home.

One of my favorite sites for finding art very quickly is Albumart.org, which serves as a search engine for album art. It indexes everything from blogs, to shopping sites and random web pages to find high resolution art for album covers.

If you're an indie music buff like me Slothradio.com has a nice library that Amazon and the others may not have.

Happy hunting and happy listening.

Sorry for the Hiatus

2008-06-27T09:18:00.004-05:00

I'm back... and I can honestly say that I'll probably be back to regular blogging again. I had no idea how much work planning a wedding, doing a wedding, going on honeymoon and pitching new business at work would be. Needless to say, it was quite a ride. But now that weddings, Vita's medical boards, and a lot of other drama is behind me, I can get back to my cynical take on life, marketing and the web.

A reader recently asked me why I don't have a blog roll. I guess I've just never been a huge fan of them. I don't go seeking too much traffic with this site, and really maintain my URL to maintain a good snapshot of who I am on the web. I posted about that very topic a while back. But, thanks to the encouragement of some friends who also maintain blogs, I've been considering getting back into the regular foray and may endorse a few blogs that I frequent.

So, look for more topics, more stuff and more fun.

Also, if you want to read some thoughts from someone I've been reading lately, check out Ken Burbary's blog on web business. The handful of posts I've read so far are intelligent and well written.

Thanks for putting up with my constant absence from this space. Stay tuned folks, there's lots of changes on the horizon. Oh, and if you do care, the wedding was lovely. Here's a photo.

On Yahoo's: Shine

2008-05-28T10:04:00.002-05:00

I've been meaning to review Yahoo's new portal for women, Shine, for some time now. After spending about 15 minutes a day on it for the past two weeks, I think I'm ready to pass judgment.

Here's the rundown:

Shine is in essence Yahoo's first target of a specific audience as opposed to its usual topical approach (Sports, News and Entertainment), but operates under the same principles.

What you get with Shine is an aggregation mash up of original blogs, user generated content and content from major publishing partners including Conde Nast, Hearst, and Time.

Yahoo's press release says:

The idea is to provide women between the ages of 25 and 54 with information "most relevant to their daily lives.

So, how well is the mash up executed?

Average at best. This is yet another attempt by marketers to tell women who they are as opposed to allowing them to tell the brand who they are.

While I like the cleanliness of the design, the massive font is distracting and looks unprofessional. Navigation, sucks it, big time. When you click on a content channel like, say Love and Sex, a secondary navigation bar opens with Related Topics. The thing is when you click on one of them in any channel you are taken to a list of posts in that topic back on the front page design and the topic navigation goes away. Changing the design colors and taking users off channel is a big no no for me and most designers who want their users to actually be able to find their way around. This seems typical for Yahoo though.

Content is dull. Many of the topics and bloggers write in an incredibly sophomoric style and focus solely on gossip, avoiding being overweight and the proper way to leave your husband if he's cheating. Sigh... I realize that I'm not a woman, but they have to be interested in more than Hollywood, affairs and soap operas.

Don't get me wrong, I like my fair share of "lifestyle" and "fluff" content every once in a while, but Shine isn't doing anything new here. It's just boxing it different and front paging some really terrible advice from its users.

Granted, I'm not in the demographic, but if this is who real women are, I'm glad my fiance isn't one of them.

Go back to the drawing board Yahoo! Retool this beast, get away from dedicating prime real estate to the perfect pair of jeans, the next chick flick and get a little substance. Either that or go with a new masthead that says Yahoo:360 - Desperate Housewives Edition. This just doesn't show any innovation. It has potential but needs a soul.

On Automotive Spy Photos

2008-05-22T07:32:00.003-05:00

Recently, I had my year anniversary at Campbell-Ewald. And for the last year, the majority of my work has been on the Chevrolet account.

Now, many people either see the Chevy account as the kiss of death, or see it as the way to make your career. I'm probably somewhere in the middle. On the plus side you get to work on an automotive account, which for a car geek like me is absolute heaven. And, on the negative side, you get to work on an automotive account, which is stressful, difficult and puts you under constant scrutiny. I enjoy the stress of working on Chevy. I believe it forced me to be a decent marketer as fast as humanly possible. And it strengthened my journalistic, research and web skills ten fold.

I now scour RSS feeds more often than I did when I was an investigative reporter, and am constantly tapping industry sources for other info. I now go directly to the consumer to figure out my audience and think we're producing stronger stories and advertising as a result.

But what I haven't figured out yet is to cater to the spy crowd. How do I leverage the Jalopniks and the AutoBlogs of the world? I know I get excited about spy photos... how do I capture that sort of enthusiasm for Chevy vehicles. That would be the theoretical golden ticket.

The audience is a powerful one... and they can be harnessed, but the big question is, how do I get around the legal ramifications of showing pre-production vehicles masked off without upsetting the balance.

Another blog

2008-05-16T09:44:00.001-05:00

Just as an FYI. I'm now working on another blog with a co-worker.

It's called Clownshoes. Feel free to visit, comment, and disucss.

On Visual Search Engines

2008-05-01T07:20:00.004-05:00

My mom sent me a link to Searchme.com yesterday. I had heard about this being in secure beta testing, but wasn't aware it was now open for regular viewing.

If you've never checked it out, it's probably worth a quick test drive. It's not necessarily anything revolutionary, but it caters to those who love to browse through something more visual than a big list of hyperlinks and meta descriptions.

The Likes:

It's just plain beautiful. It's fast on my G5. The icons to sort subjects that can be taken in many ways is both helpful and beautiful.

I dig that it highlights your search term right on the actual screen capture. It's something I've not seen with other visual search providers.

I enjoy the iTunes like presentation style and like that you can skin it to a light or dark setting.

The meta description data still pops up if you hover over the visual window.

The Dislikes:

I get that it's still Beta, but there are clearly problems with the search algorithms within this search engine. As I normally do with any new search engine I get a look at, I used my last name as the initial search test. I was sort of shocked to see that a lot of the results were really old... digging up stuff that I was connected to in the late 90s and early part of 2002 and 2003. It only had one connection to my recent work - which was my editor's letter in Cobalt Mag. I get that it's beta, but it didn't even pick up Danieleizans.com.

I'm left underwhelmed with the use of flash. It's nice, but they could have jazzed it up and done something at least a little bit different than the same cover switch that iTunes uses. The visual style is not impressive enough to make me want to ditch Google. I do love the use of icons to narrow the search down though. That's quite impressive.

Finally, I'm left wondering why they didn’t partner with Google to drive the queries. It's not as if that wheel was broken. It seems it would have been just as easy to put the pretty paper on the best tool out there.

Overall verdict: I'm reasonably impress, but won't switch my daily engine, but this is nice for people who might not remember anything about a site aside from what it looked like. It's stunning in the way it gives me ideas for digital magazine presentations and for anyone who wants to have more fun with a search engine, but I think these visual search engines are a bit campy.

Some cool wallpaper

2008-04-29T08:27:00.003-05:00

I don't often post about good design nearly enough anymore. However, today, I was cruising through Smashing Magazine and was taken by this post on using desktop images to serve up calendars. It got me to thinking about how some members of an advertising group are preparing to have people skin calendar software to portray their message. Wouldn't a desktop wallpaper be just as useful?

I tend to think if someone is interested enough in your calendar, and you want to use it on a desktop application, why wouldn't you just make it a wallpaper instead of something that needs to integrate with the software.

Thoughts?

On Digital Magazine Design

2008-04-24T08:51:00.003-05:00

I was cruising LinkedIn this morning when one of their Question and Answer topics caught my eye. There was a woman in India looking for advice on how to promote a digital newsletter.

Having just a little experience doing digital publications for several Chevy vehicles, I offered up my recommendations for setting up a method to virally promote the publication.

Then I got a look at it.

Her magazine, Architectural Evangelist needs a pretty big overhaul in my opinion.

It seems clear that the publication was designed solely in flash. Doesn't appear that they're using any of the big magazine, magalog programs.

I'm fine with having to click through to read the type closely... but the font is barely readable even in the sub head sections.

Good design for newsletters and magazines online must be taken into account... otherwise, there's no point in producing them.

Love the tabs on the AE newsletter and I like the interactive graphs, but this needs a serious overhaul from a useability standpoint. If you were the quality assurance engineer on this project, what would you flag first?

Thought

2008-04-11T07:47:00.002-05:00

I've been a little haunted this morning, both by past memories and by my impending future. It's sort of weird to reflect and plan all at the same time. I'm getting married in a little over a month.

This morning, I had a dream. I was recalling the first time I met my future wife for the second time... the real time I suppose. Our first meeting was probably not positive. We never were really formally introduced... and now... on a Saturday morning at 10 a.m. with her dog on my couch and her soundly asleep in my bed, it's sort of surreal to think about all that now.

On the new Modernista! site

2008-04-08T09:04:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, someone referred me to the new Modernista! Web site. For those of you who aren't familiar, Modernista! is an agency with offices in Michigan and elsewhere. The new site is bold, very bold actually.

It totally embraces Web 2.0 by utilizing Wikipedia as the background. They've created layers to have their Wikipedia entry and all of the links to portfolio work go to other Web 2.0 applications like Flickr and YouTube. They've also embraced 2.0 link labeling and allowed for even their flaws to become a part of their site.

It's nice to see an agency putting their money where there mouth is.

On Creativity

2008-04-01T09:25:00.003-05:00

I was doing a little reading the other day and came across this little gem. It was a decent pick me up for my crazy week.

"You have the power to create. Your power is so strong that whatever you believe comes true. You create yourself, whatever you believe you are. You are the way you are because that is what you believe about yourself. Your whole reality, everything you believe, is your creation. You have the same power as any other human in the world. The main difference between you and someone else is how you apply your power, what you create with your power. You may be similar to others in many ways, but no one in the world lives her or his life the way you do."

- Don Miguel Ruiz
Excerpt from The Mastery of Love

So, what are you creating today?

An itch that needs scratchin'

2008-03-24T07:39:00.003-05:00

While I've always been a big fan of automotive design, lately I've been taking a lot of time to take a good look at motorcycles. My closet passion for bikes has taken on a frenzy as of late, and I'm to the point where I've actually researched classes and am prepared to sign up when dates are announced. Now, that leaves me with one problem... once my course is over, I'll have no bike.

Ahh, the fun begins.

I absolutely see no point in purchasing a crotch rocket nor anything as burly as a Road King.

So where am I leaning? Somewhere towards the smaller cruisers actually. If I had the money, I'd probably just buy a nice Sporster 883 Custom. I like the lines, the classic styling and the midrange power of the bike.

I'm not going to pretend that I don't see myself tearing up the road at some point or another, but for this particular ride, I'm looking to slow down, feel some wind against my skin and think about nothing but the open road and engine noise.

On Google Sky

2008-03-19T08:33:00.003-05:00

Not that long ago, I posted on Google Streetview.

Yesterday, thanks to the folks at LifeHacker, I started checking out Google Sky. Basically, you can get the same satellite views you're treated to in Google's Earth application. Skywatchers and astronomy geeks rejoice.

I'm also partial to Google Moon, which allows you some fun facts on the various Apollo missions in addition to letting you check out all the moon's nooks and crannies. It's a nice little distraction.

Embedded Google promo video below. Yo.

Video Games: Guitar Hero - Van Halen Edition?

2008-03-18T10:20:00.001-05:00

If this rumor became a reality, I'd pee my pants in a fit of joy.

The French Love My Web Site

2008-03-14T07:26:00.004-05:00

Though I have no explanation for it, the number of visitors from France to danieleizans.com is up %600 from February. After I spend a little time with good ole' Google Analytics, I'll be sure to let you all know why the spike has occurred. In the meantime, I hope my French visitors (all 56 of you) are enjoying the site. If you are one of the returning French visitors I've been able to identify, what has you interested? Comment or grab me by one of my contact me.