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Posts from February 2010

Mommy, where do hashtags come from?

Mommy, where do hashtags come from? published on 5 Comments on Mommy, where do hashtags come from?

You know those time-lapse videos that compress days, weeks or years into minutes? The ones with flowers budding, blooming and then withering in seconds? Or late-1990s Silicon Valley startups getting venture capital, blowing it on espresso bathtubs and Dr. Pepper fountains, and vanishing into receivership?

I think Twitter may be the same thing, except for language. In spoken English, it can take decades – even centuries – for new words to emerge, become part of common parlance, and then fade into disuse.

But on Twitter, hashtags can live that entire lifecycle in the course of a day or two. A news story breaks, and competing hashtags vie for dominance. Then a few influential folks adopt the same one. Suddenly the conversation coalesces around it, the term trends, the spammers start using it, and then the conversation peters out as we move on to the next topic.

Is that the pattern? And how closely does it map onto the ways that words and phrases earworm their way into spoken language?

Maybe some up-and-coming linguistics student is already mapping the ways hashtags rise and decay, and getting ready to publish a dissertation… in 140-character increments.

Meanwhile, people, seriously – “snowicane“?

Originally posted on ReadWriteWeb.

You just unlocked the “exterminated” badge!

You just unlocked the “exterminated” badge! published on 1 Comment on You just unlocked the “exterminated” badge!

Pay attention, social media marketers… insects are a massive untapped market segment. What they lack in disposable income, they make up for in sheer numbers. And many of them are inherently social. Like, say, ants. And their entire lives are spent performing mind-numbingly boring, repetitive tasks – they’re perfect candidates for a FarmVille knockoff.

Think we can get Ellen Page to play the actress in the movie version of the cartoon?

Think we can get Ellen Page to play the actress in the movie version of the cartoon? published on No Comments on Think we can get Ellen Page to play the actress in the movie version of the cartoon?

Ok, did we all get it out of our system yet? The sly digs, the guffaws, the skeptical snorts? CBS is turning a Twitter feed, a Twitter feed, for crying out loud, into a comedy series, and there’s been a collective rolling-of-the-eyes out there in medialand.

The news that William Shatner has been tapped for the lead role – the “dad” of “Shit My Dad Says” – is icing on the cake for anyone who wants to pooh-pooh CBS’s programming savvy. (Yes, I said “pooh-pooh” in a post about “Shit My Dad Says”. Moving on.)

Well, here are three reasons I think this thing has a hope in hell – with the caveat that the vast majority of pilots self-destruct before they make it to air, let alone without ever becoming a successful series.

  1. There’s an audience. No, SMDS’ million-plus Twitter followers won’t automatically translate into a faithful TV audience. But those followers represent a big chunk of people primed to at least consider giving the pilot a look-see – and that’s quite a hurdle to jump. What’s more, many of them are die-hard fans… and if they like what they see, they’ll work tirelessly to promote the show to friends and family.
  2. Justin Halpern is legitimately funny. SMDS isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it takes real craft to crank out laugh-out-loud jokes that fit into Twitter’s 140-character limit, and he clearly has an ear for dialogue. Granted, doing that once every day or so is a long way from hitting the sitcom pace of three or four jokes per minute – but he isn’t alone in writing for the show. Andthat brings us to…
  3. The producers know how to walk the line without crossing it. SMDS is being produced by the creators of Will and Grace, a show that often flirted with transgressive humor and pushed the boundaries of good taste – often gave them a good, hard shove, actually. But they had an instinct for their audience’s comfort level. If anyone can pull off the balancing act that SMDS is going to demand, they’ll do it.

To everyone who says you can’t turn a Twitter feed into a TV series, of course you can’t. But can you take the talent, passion and spirit behind that feed, and channel that into another medium? Absolutely.

Will it work? I guess we’ll find out.

Meanwhile, my agent awaits your calls.

Know your rights!

Know your rights! published on 1 Comment on Know your rights!

Maybe I was lucky enough to fall into some demographic trough, but I was usually the only “Rob” in my classes at school.

The director’s cut runs 3 hours, 47 minutes

The director’s cut runs 3 hours, 47 minutes published on 1 Comment on The director’s cut runs 3 hours, 47 minutes

Most TV news credit sequences I’m seeing these days rival Avatar for sheer sensation. “Dude, it’s like I’m totally flying. Through. The news!“

The only problem is, the net effect becomes “Holy crap! HOLY CRAP!!… HOOOOLLLLYYYY CRAAAAAP!!! Good evening. Wheat futures dropped half a percentage point today in light trading…” They raise the dramatic stakes so high that, unless the lead story is “Monster robot army rampages through Oslo,” the actual news is bound to be a disappointment.

(Then again, if your news network’s dominant narrative is that the President is actually an alien bent on the destruction of the United States of America, you can probably meet that standard without breaking a sweat.)

Guess the patent application’s a no-go, too

Guess the patent application’s a no-go, too published on 1 Comment on Guess the patent application’s a no-go, too

And just in case you want to see this one being drawn, here’s the high-speed version:

And the full version, complete with running commentary:

Once again, CamTwist, you rock my world.

The… horror. The… horror.

The… horror. The… horror. published on No Comments on The… horror. The… horror.

By now, the web is replete with stories from social media mavens, reporters and ordinary folk who innocently logged into Chatroulette, just to, um, check it out because they’d heard it was, um, interesting.

And then they discovered that, yes, it’s exactly like what people said it was. They saw people touching themselves in Very Private Places. People exposing themselves. People holding up dirty words on pieces of paper. People reading Ayn Rand. And worse.

And then, just when they’d finally reached someone who appeared normal and started to chat with them, that person would click away from them.

It’s StumbleUpon meets speed-dating, an opportunity to make your eyeballs bleed and your soul recoil while delivering devastating body blows to your ego. And isn’t that what social media is all about?

This is cartoon number one of a special triple-update day, in honour of all the lovely folks who’ve joined Noise to Signal’s Facebook fan page and pushed us over the 500 mark! Thanks – and a shout-out to Mr. 500 himself, Tod Maffin!

Closing on 500…

Closing on 500… published on No Comments on Closing on 500…

The Noise to Signal Facebook fan page has nearly 500 fans. And while I try not to be a metrics junkie, well, that’s a pretty fundamental part of who I am. (How many now? Reload. How many now? Reload.)

Therefore, and notwithstanding the generality of the foregoing, I make you this promise: the day we top 500, I’ll be celebrating with a rare, almost-unheard-of triple update. That’s right: three N2S cartoons inside of 24 hours.

So if you haven’t joined already, how about becoming a fan?

Update: So… you people did that in UNDER FIVE HOURS?! (Tod Maffin was number 500, sometime around 9 pm last night.)

Okay, then… triple update coming today. Meanwhile, uh, I’ll do a quadruple update if you convince the military junta in Burma to step aside. #worthashot

Place your bladders in the locked and upright position

Place your bladders in the locked and upright position published on 4 Comments on Place your bladders in the locked and upright position

No, really, it makes perfect sense: administer a substance that makes people desperately have to pee. At 30,000 feet above ground. With 120 passengers. And two working toilets.

You just know someone, somewhere, at some airline’s corporate headquarters has to be thinking, “Heyyyy… what if those were pay toilets..?”

Relationship status

Relationship status published on 7 Comments on Relationship status

By now, you’ve probably had the same experience I have of learning about a close friend’s marriage breaking up because their status changed on Facebook. There’s something a little alienating about the fact that a server somewhere in Facebook’s infrastructure had the goods before I had even an inkling of trouble in paradise.

But then, the whole relationship thing in Facebook is fraught. I have to imagine there have been screaming, tear-filled fights because one partner clicked “In a relationship” while the other clicked “Hey, let’s not rush things.” Or, maybe worse for some people, “Sweetheart, what are you putting down for ‘relationship status’?” “I’m glad you asked, because I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

No matter which checkbox you’ve been ticking – no, that’s not a smutty double-entendre – have a happy Valentine’s Day.

Seen Alex‘s and my 2010 Valentine to you from Social Signal? Here ya go!

A video Valentine

A video Valentine published on 2 Comments on A video Valentine

From your friends at Social Signal and Noise to Signal, our social media valentine to you!

My love Alex conceived and wrote the text, created the video and suggested two of the cartoon ideas… I got to focus on the doodling. Enjoy!

Social Signal’s 2010 Valentine is a celebration of how the Internet can help you find love and keep it alive.

RIP NFG IE6

RIP NFG IE6 published on 1 Comment on RIP NFG IE6

The word that Google has decided to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 as of March 1 will come as welcome but bittersweet news to designers and developers who have wrestled for years to make perfectly compliant sites work properly in that wretched browser.

Welcome, because this could well be the death knell for IE6. You can make a legitimate case to clients that, hell, if Google isn’t supporting it, why should they?

And bittersweet, because the death of an old foe feels almost like losing a friend. No more nights curled up by the monitor together, trying to remember obscure hacks and puzzling through baffling JavaScript errors. No more repeated “!important” declarations. (sniff) No more (sob) custom script to get “hover” to work… or workarounds for (snuffle) transparent PNGs… sweetie, could you pass me that box of Kleenex?

Oh, who the hell am I kidding? The only tragedy about IE6’s passing is that it didn’t happen three years ago, and involve giant snowmobiles with poison-tipped 12-inch spikes embedded in their treads. (And what do you want to bet the meddling feds would have some objection to poison-tipped 12-inch spike-riddled snowmobile treads? But I digress.)

Consider the number of Web sites that have required major time-wasting workarounds. How many? 200,000? 300,000 at a very conservative estimate?

Say it took a developer two hours to get each site to work properly. That’s 600,000 lost hours… or more than 1,643 years. And at an average life span of 67 years, that’s… 25 lifetimes.

Now, if corporations can have the same rights as people, then surely abstract life-equivalent calculations can, too. Internet Explorer 6, you’re under citizen’s arrest for murder. That’s right,murder. 25 counts.

Given how arbitrarily and unjustly the death penalty has been applied, I can’t in all good conscience give in to the temptation to sentence IE6 to be taken from this place to a highly magnetic place and to be overwritten with zeroes until it is dead, and may Bill Gates have mercy on its soul.

Instead, install it on a computer that has also committed a heinous crime, seal it in a watertight box with a large solar panel affixed to each side, and set it adrift to live out the rest of its days on the shore of some deserted island. (“Hey, Professor, what’s this?” “Don’t touch it, Gilligan! It’s IE6!!”)

And then pop the cork on a bottle of champagne, and let the bells ring out. Ding dong, the Six is dead.

How to use your laptop as a lightbox

How to use your laptop as a lightbox published on 2 Comments on How to use your laptop as a lightbox

Work took me to London this week – exciting stuff, as I’ve never really been (that overnight at Heathrow doesn’t exactly count), and I’ve been loving every jet-lagged moment of it.

But that didn’t mean I could skip my deadline at ReadWriteWeb this weekend, did it? And yet here I was eight time zones away from my beloved Cintiq – excuse me, that should read “from my beloved, comma, from my Cintiq…” – and from my tracing paper. It was late at night and, seat of empire and cultural crucible though London may be, I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be a 24-hour art supply shop anywhere near my Islington hotel.

Also, that would have required me to move. Did I mention the jet lag?

This video is all about how I solved the problem, thanks to my trusty MacBook Pro and my beloved (dammit, there I go again) Canon SLR.

(Oh, and many thanks to Stephen Whitehead for a very kind offer!)

How I got to London

How I got to London published on No Comments on How I got to London

In lieu of a real Noise to Signal, here are some doodles from the airport.

In fairness, there’s plenty to do and eat and purchase at YVR. But I was there latish, and a lot of things were closed.

That said, I did not in fact get drunk – had a workshop to do on Friday, and besides, who wants to endure jet lag and a hangover?

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