Google Has a New Logo!

And New Zealand is getting a new flag.

Google. Always fixing what isn't broken and making it worse.

Take Maps for instance. Worked great before. Until they updated it, slowed it down and made it stupid. They give you the option to revert to old maps, but before they'll take you there, they want to know WHY you're reverting to the old maps. Because the new maps sucks and slows everything down and is stupid?

Maybe I'm not the guy to ask, since I use XP Pro at home (and Photoshop 7). Why? Because they work just fine.

Lately, I can't access the templates of some of my blogs hosted on Google's Blogger platform because...well...because THEY UPDATED IT AND NOW IT DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE.

"Refresh the page," they tell me. Good god, man! Is that your solution? "Turn it off and turn it back on again," is what techs tell end-users when they don't want to figure it out.

Here, Google: I refreshed. And I get a whole new error code every time! You guys are starting to suck.

You know, Google, I've been loyal to your stuff from WAY back, but I might be about done.

I'm Going to Blog Again...Again

I kinda don't care if anyone notices. I don't need the attention.

But I need to write.

I write for a living, but what I write is often watered down by the time it makes it out into the world, diluted by people who think they know what the market will respond to. So I spend a lot of time copying and pasting things that have already been watered down.

That's fine. Sometimes, it's not art.

I may migrate this blog over to Random Scratch, once the Google Blogger team fixes whatever is ailing my new template.

In the past, this place was advertising-industry-focused. There will probably be a lot of that again, as I both work in advertising and am a student of the....I can't say "craft," can I? In the sense that it is a dark art, maybe I can say "craft." After all, we're all about tricking, deception, sleight of hand, misdirection, and often lying with the help of an asterisk. Fine...craft.

I'm off to practice my craft.

 

Supersaturated Street Scenes - Nation's Capital

I know you do this, too. You find an agency's address on their website and then go see what their building looks like, wondering how you might like working there. I did that recently for an agency in the DC area looking for a senior copywriter. OK, maybe you don't do that. Maybe you're just weird then.

A lovely spring day in Washington, DC finds some citizens enjoying Georgetown Waterfront Park, oblivious to President Obama out for an afternoon stroll. (Larger happens when you click.)

Here's our last visit to DC on Google Street Views.

Super Saturated Street Scenes - Washington, DC

There are so many sights on Google Street Views; everyday and ordinary things, captured in a moment when a funny looking car drove by. Pump up the saturation level and the scenes take on a surreal and dreamlike quality. Or at least they do for me. I can find and frame scenes all day long.

Here a child is at play on the banks of the Anacostia River, apparently herding geese with a stick.

Anacostia Drive, SE, looking across to the District Yacht Club.  
(Click for the massive, full screen size)

This link will take you to more of my super saturated street scenes, and in cooperation with Google, all of my compositions will be brought together in a giant coffee table book available very soon*. When it's released it will be met with bookstore protests by privacy rights alarmists who think blurred faces and illegible license plates aren't enough to protect us from the evil Big Brother that is Google. "They drove by me! They took a picture of my house! We must stop this menacing intrusion!" Get over it. Your whole life is documented, right down to every item you ever purchased with your debit card. 

* Well, OK, not really, but I'm throwing the idea out there for Google to ponder.

Super Saturated Street Views - "Moving Pictures" Edition

Some time back, I was cruising around the world on Google Street Views and came across a Porsche just south of Bellagio in Italy, meandering along the shores of Lago di Como behind the Google Street View Car. I thought, "That'd make a nice Porsche ad." Then recently, I was watching a Rush documentary and wondering, "How come no Rush music has ever been featured in a commercial?" UPDATE: MTLB thinks Rush music was used for a Nissan Pathfinder commercial some years back. Regardless, this will make that look like trash.

So, I'm combining the two interests - Rush and Street Views. Here's an ad made entirely from Google, including the pull-away at the end using Google Maps. I even took the tune from YouTube, where every song you ever wanted to hear resides for free, except the music of Prince, who has a crack legal team that will sue your ass in two shakes of a backup dancer's tail if you so much as THINK of one of his songs without asking.

And every Rush fan, be they old school headbangers or fans of "The Mullet Years" will agree, YYZ is the tune that unites every generation of Rush fan, and I've selected the best :30 of that tune. So here goes: I'm ready to be a one man crowd-source with this thing and take a couple hundred grand, 'cause I need a new roof. (And a Porsche, s'long as I'm at it.)

Here's the reasoning:

• Rush and Porsche are a natural fit: Power + Precision
• Some older Rush fans are wealthy now, even in this recession, and Rush fans are out of the closet. This tune will stop them in their tracks, guaranteed.
• Porsche HAS to be hurting in this economy.
• It rocks.
• It was easy and cheap. Took me a few hours. Keep in mind, this is spec. We'll make it HD and pretty in a nice studio somewhere. (It's the IDEA that counts, bitches.)
• It's an opening for Google to license their Street Views for commercial usage, seeing as they're out to rule the online revenue world.

Well, I guess I've opened up an opportunity for at least three entities to order me to cease and desist, and to them I say, "Live a little and lighten up." (And feel free to hire me. And of course we can work on my lame tagline at the end. But it's easy, cheesy and obvious, in anticipation of the client's desires.)

Necessity is the Mother of Repair

Or "Google is Your Friend"

One of the household Dell monitors crapped out. Four months ago, when I was employed, this would've been solved by buying another monitor while cursing the shoddy workmanship of the Chinese who toil night and day at pathetic jobs that pay shit to give us the cheap, disposable stuff we demand. But as a man slowly learning the value of thrift, a Google search revealed that you could find bad, bulging capacitors on the power supply board. So I tore it apart and sho nuff, there the little bad bulging bastards were.

Regardless of what you're trying to do in your life, be it diagnose your own ailment, hang a ceiling fan or fix a power supply board on a cheap monitor, the forums are trolled by people slowly finding themselves out of work. They resent that you are trying to do their jobs and they hate thinking of themselves going the way of travel agents, encyclopedia salesmen, graphic artists and copywriters. The doctors get on the medical forums and say, "See a doctor! You probably have a horrible disease!" The electricians get on the "how to" forums and say, "Hire a licensed electrician or you will probably burn your house down!" and the computer techs get on the computer forums and say, "Stand in a puddle of water, plug the thing in and then stab it with something metallic and non-insulated! DIE, you stupid know-nothing fucks! And I hope all your porn gets deleted in the process!"

Despite the dire warnings from the computer techs, I set about saving some money.

So I tried to remember how to de-solder something and got those ugly-ass capacitors out and took them to Radio Shack, where the worthless clerk said, "Nope. I suppose I should have those since everyone seems to want them." I guess crapping-out Dell flatscreen monitors are all the rage. So I went to a crazy place in Winter Park, where a flying saucer and a pair of rockets have been landmarks for years. They have everything a mad scientist or a terrorist could want, including a wall of capacitors, none of which were of the rating I needed. So back to Google, who said, "There's an area of Orange Blossom Trail where it starts to go from ugly-industrial to totally sketch. In that creepy region is a place that goes by the name of Acme." Acme is staffed by a grey, long-haired guy who looks like he might be in a cover band at a beach bar on the weekends and a super-tall lanky dude who looks like he might be a refugee from the German techno scene. These gentlemen had the capacitors, for like 28 cents a piece. I only needed two, but I splurged and got four.

Then I tired to remember how to solder something and got those cheap bastards secure in their holes. Then I buttoned the thing back up and was quite pleased to only have two leftover screws when I was done. (Someone needs to tell those Chinese women and children making our monitors that they can save a couple steps.)

Then the test; that all-too-scary moment when you will be revealed for a fool or a hero. I was a hero. Actually, all credit goes to Google and the people who, for whatever reason, offer help at no charge, dispensing their little piece of knowledge on obscure sites so that someone else can save a few bucks. And apologies to the computer techs who didn't get my repair business. And to Best Buy or Target who didn't get to sell me a new monitor. We're all doing what we can in this economy. See you on the soup line.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The consensus seems to be that Google Buzz is too late. Early bird has been there and eaten that. We're all snoozing through the press releases and tutorials, if we even bother to look at them.

We've got all we can handle in terms of platforms to "share" everything with everyone.

This is Exactly What iGoogle Is to Me

Having all my toys in one place when I open a browser has proven a bad thing, as I am so easily distracted by the colors and sounds. Then again, if it keeps me from throwing fits and acting like a baby, softly cooing in that docile way the boss appreciates, maybe it's not so bad.

Bring me some smashed peas and carrots.

The MSN Janitor Reaches The Sacred Chambers

Apocalyptic Proportions

Previously in this twisted series:

Revenge of the Google Janitor

The Google Janitor Defects to MSN

The Google Janitor Defects to MSN

Legible

Revenge of the Google Janitor

Legible

Match the "Celebrity" with their Bio

T-Mobile and their MyTouch, in association with Google, is reaching out to all you boomers who still think these people are funny. To me this only says T-Mobile is desperate.



a. I was an original SNL cast-member, but quit after I imagined the show was all about me. Cocaine will do that to a person. I did a few very forgettable movies and one good one, then disappeared, got fat and lost all my hair. Now my friends at NBC are trying to help me revive my career by putting me in a supporting role on a sit-com that is doomed to fail.

b. I did impersonations on SNL. I also did a thing with Mike Myers that became a couple of movies that made me some cash. When I blew up really big on the show, I ditched it in the hopes of becoming the next Bill Murray. It didn't work out. But I'm rich, so fuck you all.

c. My ticket into show-biz was my off-the-wall, ironic name. I did a few films that still pay enough royalties for me to keep an apartment in New York. I'm now on a daily panel of loud-mouthed opinionators who dictate the thoughts and buying habits of a bunch of sad and lonely people who watch us.

d. I had a few skits on SNL that were recurring, mostly that involved me showing my underwear in a sick and pathetic attempt at laughs. I also thought the movies were calling me, and left SNL for the bigtime, but I can't even name a single thing I was in that you would know.

e. I did a pretty good Bill Clinton on SNL. Sometimes they bring me back to do Cheney or Chris Matthews, but Lorne put me out to pasture after McCain lost. I now wear a sad face all the time.

It Depends Upon What the Meaning of the Word "Is" Is

It's always amusing to learn what urgent questions Google users need the answers to.



I'll now answer these questions:

Yes.
Yes. And she's really going to take him home tonight.
No.
She was, but she's not anymore.
It's legal. What you do with it probably isn't.
He has expressed his fondness for men, though this may be a publicity stunt.
Extremely contagious.
Yes.
She was. but she's not anymore.
Often called the "Sixth Jackson," Michael's brother Randy is not the Randy Jackson you're thinking of.

Can Your Yahoo! Do That?

When I used to visit my grandfather when I was a kid, I'd usually make my way to what we called "the way, way back yard" where he had a couple of sheds. One housed his model trains, the other his tools and projects. In the latter were also old boxes of magazines, mostly LIFE magazine, and I could sit in the musty heat for hours and skim through them, reading articles and looking at pictures. It was fun to find out what a reviewer thought of an old movie when it was new, or how some old music I currently liked was being discussed as some sort of cultural sea-change upon its release twenty years earlier. Wars long over were being reported on in the now, and it was like time travel for me. Advertisements were great fun to look at as well, the styles, designs and fashions once cutting edge now laughable, viewed from the future.

Grandpa died and I was always sorry I didn't make it out to California for the funeral. I would've liked to have visited the old house on Del Mar Avenue one more time, with its brick driveway and deep lot, the odd yet pleasant smell when you walked in the front door, the furniture, like those magazine ads, passed by time and now somehow retro-chic. And I probably would've requested of my aunt, who was managing his affairs after he passed, that I be able to lug those boxes of LIFE magazines back home, to sit in my garage or attic, waiting to be pored over again from time to time, an archeological treasure for an amateur historian.

I haven't been back to Chula Vista in years, but I've seen Grandpa's old house on Google Street Views. The brick driveway has been replaced by concrete, the ivy that made up his front yard replaced by grass. The big swinging gate he made at the end of the driveway, leading to the first part of his three-sectioned back yard, is gone. Someone replaced the louvre windows in the front of the house. The roof, once peppered with white rocks in some 1960s architect's idea of stylish cool, is now just a regular roof. From the aerial view, it's obvious that someone didn't like the idea of three small back yards divided by banana trees and lattice work, and has turned it into a deep lot of grass. I think they even cut down the weeping willow that stood near the two sheds in the way, way back.

But the LIFE magazines are now in my hands again, thanks to Google. The only thing missing is the musty smell of California dirt and dust in the late afternoon of a dimly lit shed. And the sound of Grandpa yelling my name from the first or second back yard to come wash up for dinner.

You Know Who

George Parker has a few words to say about Yahoo!'s attempts to come back from the dead. Bill Green has a few as well. (Bill also weighs in on AOL's similar attempt.)

I'm probably not the fairest judge since I was an "early adopter" of Google back in the 90s. I simply liked the clean interface. It was a search engine and that's all I wanted. Now it's so much more, but it's still a great search engine. They quietly added the whole "home portal" bells and whistles with iGoogle, but you can still click on "Classic Home" to get that look that takes you back to a simple search.

AOL? How do they shake the whole "Grandma's on-ramp to the Information Superhighway" image they've dug for themselves? I know two people who use AOL, and they are on dial-up. Even the little yellow man has been co-opted by Google.

Yahoo!? Wow. Just as tough. That exclamation point was so "crazy wild" back in dotcom '96. So irreverent, so "nutty." Now? So silly. So stupid. You could make the case that the name Google is just as dumb, but it's now a verb. (Yahoo! tried to duplicate that success with their failed campaign, "Do you Yahoo!?") Go to Yahoo! now and they're begging you with pop-ups to add your favorites to the site. The page has a pleading, desperate feel, like any local newspaper's website or the countless identical sites of local TV stations. "We want to be your place to find cars, jobs, weather, news, casual hookups, horoscopes, lottery numbers, email, travel, music." They want to be your homepage, the first place you see when you fire up your machine. That's a lot to ask. Sure, Yahoo!'s Flickr is good, but other than that, I've got no reason to be there.

Yahoo! might pick off some old AOL customers, and maybe some old Yahoo! devotees will try out AOL, but most of us have decided what we like at this point, and any "rebrand" is easily detected for what it is; a desperate attempt to be relevant again. Bing? I'm not even interested. MSN was never a player in this game. "Try it! It's great!" people tell me. No. I like what I use. What's that you say? They have a cool background image that changes? Well then, since you put it that way!

Is Google a monopoly? Pretty much. But I'm not jumping to a competitor in the interest of thumbing my nose and playing the rebel. Google was the new kid long ago, and I like how they've grown. Smart moves, savvy business and a product that delivers a lot for nothing.

And rather than painstakingly creating the silly logo at top in P-shop, I just went to this easy site.

Sure, America is Online - Just Not With AOL

AOL is rearranging the deck chairs.

I think we all know why.

Click for Big

They Always Die in Threes

No, they don't. They always die - and people start counting again after three.


The fine ghouls of Google, in association with LIFE's photo archive, have updated the Google Image search page to prompt your searches for recently deceased celebrities. They know what you like.

Stinging Bing

I'd read nothing but positive reviews for Bing, so I decided to conduct a little test of the Microsoft search engine. A self-serving test, but a test nonetheless.

Yesterday I wrote a post called Swiss Army Airstream. I typed that phrase, without quotes, into Google. The post I wrote yesterday is the third search result for the phrase. Type the same phrase into Bing, and I stopped trying to find my post after ten pages of search results.

Now, I understand that Google might be indexing my blog faster than Bing since Where's My Jetpack? is hosted on Google's Blogger platform, and I also get that Bing might want to take their time indexing Google hosted results, much the way Microsoft's spellcheckers pretended not to know what the word "Google" was for the longest time. This isn't unbiased science, but I have proven, at least for myself, that there's no need to switch from a good thing to a questionable thing.

Facebook Vanity Search Results in Marriage

You've done it, don't lie. You Google your own name or you search for people with your name on Facebook. (There are way too many of me on Facebook, most of them in England, Australia or Scotland.) Well, a woman in Coral Springs, Florida named Kelly Hildebrandt did just that, and now she's marrying some guy named Kelly Hildebrandt from Lubbock, Texas.

I'd suggest the female Kelly keep her maiden name or maybe just hyphenate it to Kelly Hildebrandt-Hildebrandt.

Here's hoping you two have more in common than this. At some point the novelty will wear off.

Chrome is Shiny and Attractive

I finally tried it - Chrome, Google's browser. Like when Google first came on the scene with their simplified and clean search engine and blew the Yahoos, AOLs and Alta Vistas out of the water, I expect Chrome is going to make a dent in the IE, Safari and Firefox shares of the browser market. It will take awhile, but I think it will happen. I made the switch because Chrome is far better at supporting iGoogle widgets. Does that make me a full-on Google disciple whose personal history, future earning capacity and very soul all belong to the Illuminati and Big Brothers of Mountain Vista? Yeah, probably.

Just saw this nice spot as a pre-roll over at Hulu.