Love these PSAs for Literacy! So clever. This was totally how I felt about books when I was little. The OZ, Narnia, and Alice books were my favorites.

via The Big Blog

I hope you realize that this was a local news segment. Really.

While driving or riding as a passenger at night, I have a propensity to put up club (house, dance, etc.) music. Now that I’m in California again and thus driving a lot, I’ve realized why.

I used to do a lot of cross-country flying between LA and New York (JFK to be exact). I’d get on the plane around 11am and land around 8pm, stepping out into darkness. I’d grab a cab home and often, get a young cab driver, who’d be listening to club music on the radio. Usually around that time, the tunnel isn’t the best route to take, so we’d end up driving over the Queens-Midtown Bridge. It was always a beautiful view– the lights from the city, moving into the view of the skyline. And then the club music, but nothing too annoying, you know? It was perfect. It would gear me up to get back to my life, back into my routine, into my apartment– a feeling of coming home, but also of going somewhere, because New York was never quite home, but neither was LA.

Now, putting on that music in my car gives me back that feeling. I still don’t feel like I really live anywhere or in any one place (probably because I don’t), and I really don’t enjoy my routine now. But driving, in between going anywhere, is refreshing. Thus, I thought I’d share some of those songs with you! (Also check out Satoshi Tomie ft. Kelli Ali – Love in Traffic…I couldn’t find it to add on).

If you’re in the New York area or will be on Monday, September 21, check out Kristi Spessard Dance Projects’

– a dance tale about a young man’s sexual awakening over the course of a Southern meal.

at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO. It’s a Southern-style cabaret and party to raise funds for the company. Kristi Spessard caught my video, “Beans and Cornbread”, on YouTube and contacted me to use it in the show! Because of work, I can’t attend the show myself, but I would love to hear from anyone who does. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Tickets are available here. For more information about the show and Kristi Spessard Dance Projects, visit kristispessard.com.

I watched this TED talk on positive psychology and “the good life” with Martin Seligman some time ago. Something stuck out to me. Basically, when you are engaging, when you’ve entered “flow”, and you’re able to draw meaning from the activity, you garner true pleasure from it. According to Seligman, technology, entertainment, and design can relieve misery. This is why film can be so comforting.

Looking back at the Great Depression, box office numbers were at their best (even today, during the current economic depression, movie-going has increased). The 1930s brought us the glitz and glamour of Busby Berkeley musicals, uncensored gangster films and women in barely there evening gowns. Many of the great musicals of the 1940s, during WWII, were thought to be forms of escapism. Since the 1980s, the rise of “chick flicks” (from Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment to the likes of Bridget Jones’ Diary and He’s Just Not That Into You) have been a (guilty) comfort to women, single or taken, everywhere.

There is much film criticism out there that talks about the experience of watching a movie. You are in a darkened room with a larger than life projection up on the screen. Theaters are kept at a fairly cool temperature so you are comfortable. You are in a place where time and space are essentially suspended. You can completely engage with the film on screen. Now, whether you garner true meaning from the experience or not depends on the film and even then, that’s up for debate. Nonetheless, I think this theory is a good explanation for why people flock to movie theaters during hard times, why when we’re sick at home or we’re going through a tough breakup, we sit in bed watching movies on TV with the lights off.

So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a new channel on the block, or so I thought. “SyFy” is the new name of the Sci-Fi Channel. I have no idea whatsoever as to why they are misspelling the science fiction abbreviation with y’s or why they would want to. The new promo for the channel is a little random as well.

Carousels, wild animals, and dance parties don’t seem very science-fictiony to me. But then again, Sci-Fi’s programming over the last couple of years hasn’t been very science-fictiony. It’s as if they ran out of ideas and threw together a line-up of adventure and horror movies more suitable for the CW on a Saturday afternoon. It’s ironic that their new slogan should be “Imagine Greater.” They have such an opportunity, especially at this time, to create great science-fiction stories like those of the 1950s. I know everyone loves Tracy Morgan, but what does Scare Tactics have anything to do with science-fiction?

I think this rebrand suits their randomness, if anything. More about the rebrand on the Art & Business of Motion.

I know it’s been ages since I posted any real content, but I’ve got a few posts in the works. Some of the topics coming up are: branding and self-promotion through blogging, the art of the written note, and leadership. I’ve been so busy these past couple of weeks both personally and professionally– many changes going on. I’m looking to schedule some new posts starting next week so check back in soon.

In the meantime, I will leave you with this commercial. Not because I particularly like it, not because I think it is clever or the tagline is any good, but because I just enjoy seeing angry chinchillas waving guns around.

I really kind of love these?

Thanks to Ogilvy PR, who arranged a meeting with Becky, a rep from Intel to discuss upcoming products and whatnot.

When I arranged my meeting with Becky, the first thing that I found completely exciting was a chance to see the Vivienne Tam Netbook, up close and personal. Let me just say, it is so pretty. Prettier than Macs– that awesome flat red keyboard and the lovely little flowers all over the top. Yeah. And there’s netbooks coming soon from Disney, Hello Kitty, and possibly Pastry, the label by Rev Run’s kids.

Now, I personally thought it was a clutch-size laptop, which many others seem to think too as well since it was being billed as a “Mini” rather than a netbook. Becky was telling me that one of the new netbooks was one of the highest sellers on Amazon during the holiday season and so many of the customers were unsatisfied with the purchase, not realizing the difference between a netbook and a laptop.

So here goes me attempting to explain the difference: we all know a laptop is basically a portable version of the desktop computer; the netbook, however, is purely for consumption– going online, taking notes, etc. Think of it as the medium between a smart phone and a laptop. It’s not really built for storage, which means no photo editing, no downloading music. However, the netbook is really popular among college students (for taking notes in class) and bloggers on the go. As a web designer, I think it would be a great addition for doing cross-browser testing. Sure I’ve got Boot Camp installed on my Macbook Pro, but it’s kind of a pain to have to restart up in Windows and go back and forth.

The netbook is really more of a more portable complement to your laptop/desktop computer. Think: Macbook Air in terms of functionality, but cheaper– netbooks start around $300, unless you’re going couture for $1500-$3000. The Vivienne Tam netbook actually starts at $700. I should add that I’ve gotten in on some inside information– the pricing structure of the Air is soon to change and will go from being the $1800 it is now to being in the $600-$700 range. Um, can you say awesome? But before you run out and by an Air…

One thing the Macbook Air has up on the netbook is ULV (Ultra-low Voltage technology), meaning that not as much energy is being taken up by the processor. Coming soon is a new wave of laptops from Intel with a Centrino 2 processor. These will have ULV technology in addition to a newer, better processor (Centrino 2=DUO + 4G wireless technology). These laptops are ultra-thin (I got to see a working version from Lenovo and it weighed probably as much as my medium sized coffee from Swork) and will have all the capabilities of a regular laptop (along with a CD-ROM drive, thus one-upping the Air). I tried to get some insider news of anything Apple is working on to compete with these machines, but even Becky didn’t know– Apple is usually pretty hush-hush, even when it comes to their ad campaigns.

Now, I mentioned 4G technology above, and you’re probably thinking, if it’s anything like 3G technology, it sucks (Hey, I have AT&T Wireless too. I know as much as anyone that it feels like we’re all on Zack Morris’ wireless network.). But, it’s so much more awesome than anything you could have imagined. There’s something new spreading that works on 4G technology and it’s called WiMax. WiMax is already set up in Baltimore and Portland, which was done purposely for testing it out (low-population, less mountainous and wireless interference). The next city to get WiMax will be Las Vegas (it’s a flat desert land) and later will be the Bay area up north. What WiMax will do for you is give you wireless anywhere you go, not just hotspots as with 3G technology. You will be able to use a laptop data card for older laptops (currently the only carrier is Sprint’s Clearwire, but it will soon spread as WiMax is implemented), and the new Intel ULV laptops will have the technology built in. Now that is super cool. Remember a couple years back when that guy (anybody remember his name?) was talking about installing free wi-fi, well, everywhere? We’re getting closer to that except, um, not for free. Maybe one day…

Also, look out for Intel’s new Stars program launching this Summer. It’ll help you pick out which processor is right for you, so you won’t be purely relying on the product displays at Best Buy.

Creativity isn’t just about art and design, you know. Creativity plays a huge part in scientific invention. Not too long ago, I saw a couple of features on Inc.’s website– one was a slide show of the “Greatest Fictional Inventors” and the other was of “Inventors We Love”. It got me thinking about some of my favorites who weren’t mentioned, so I put together a couple of my own lists. Who are your favorite inventors, real or not?

Fictional Inventors
• Mojo Jojo
  The creator of many diabolical weapons. That Mojo did have an eye for branding, though. He had coordinated labels, signage, and his clothes, lair, and inventions all used the same color palette.
  
• Muppet’s Dr. Bunsen Honeydew & Beaker
  Who can forget their various contributions to the world? Including a gorilla detector, a copying machine, a germ enlarger, and an electric hammer. Personally, I like Beaker better. Who wouldn’t? Dr. Bunsen’s corny jokes were lame.
  
• Various Get Smart scientists
  They were often beaten down by Max testing out their clever, new inventions. The scientists in the movie version were funned up a bit, but were getting knocked around by other agents for being geeks. Backfiring inventions are much more amusing and less cliché.
  

Real-Life Inventors
• Art Fry & Spencer Silver for the Post-It
  Maybe my favorite thing ever. Those and Post-It flags. And Lysol wipes, but I don’t know who invented those.
• Gideon Sundbäck for the interlocking-teeth zipper
  So clever. What would we do without them?
• Grace Murray Hopper for the first compiler for computer language
  What was it again that that Harvard president said? Hopper was definitely one amazing woman.