Watch this:

Then go here, and watch Amazon’s new commercial for the Kindle — which was selected as the winner of a fan contest:

I’d call it appropriation. What do you say?

A new app called “Freedom” locks you out of captioned cat pictures and pointless babble (yes, the entire Internet) for a specified period of time.

The newspaper industry is lobbying hard to make the effect permanent and have the software installed by default on all new personal computers.*

(via Zoomdoggle)

* Completely false.

Google’s type-ahead search suggestions often provide interesting insight into what the world wants to know. Recently I was curious about the most commonly researched definitions on Google, and realized that what I discovered resembled a twisted snapshot of the year in review. I submit the following:

• love
• ethics
• culture
• socialism
• integrity
• irony
• leadership
• twitter
• agnostic
• pandemic

Of course, Steve and the Chili’s team just won a Mixx Award for Search Marketing on Tuesday night, so I’m sure he’ll have found a way to hijack all my organic results in 24 hours or so. There’s a lot on the line here — personal brands are at stake.

You’d also see me flipping the bird at CityofBoston.gov as I submitted payment for a questionable parking ticket I received last weekend.

Like I said — the results would be pretty interesting.

The copy reads:

“I am treated as an individual, I am not a number. People at Senior Whole Health know me by name.”

And his name would be… “Member, age 67.”

I bet that stock photo guy feels pretty darn special.

(click the image or here for full size)

Just when you think you’ve seen everything… This is truly remarkable.

(Hat tip: @eschenck)

This may be about to change, with a surprising player in the media convergence environment: gaming consoles.

In the UK and Ireland, Xbox Live members will soon be able to watch premium content and live television from Sky TV straight from a Xbox 360 via a broadband connection. (Watching live television on your TV doesn’t exactly sound revolutionary, but stop and think about how much that premium-cable-plus-DVR package is costing you versus your $20/mo broadband connection.) Integration with Hulu may be soon to follow.

Why is the Xbox 360 the right platform for this convergence? For starters, they combine the hardware of multiple devices in one: the standard 120GB hard drive could replace the need for a separate TiVo/DVR, and deals with Netflix and other media partners make standalone devices such as Apple TV unnecessary.

But most significantly, the Xbox 360 already has a huge user base. More than 28 million units have been sold since the console’s launch. And even more significantly, more than 17 million of those users are Xbox Live subscribers, meaning that well over half of these consoles are already hooked up to a broadband connection. The potential of this platform as a consumer media solution was proven when over 1 million copies of the Netflix application for Xbox were downloaded and installed in the first three months of its release.

While newcomer Boxee represents a huge leap in web and TV convergence, boasting social networking and media services like Last.fm and Pandora in addition to streaming television programming, its adoption may be hampered by the fact that it is just one more device to sit under your TV. Recall that Betamax was a better quality video solution, but VHS took an early lead in market share and never looked back. With a three-year lead in retail availability, the it is doubtful that the 360 will see serious competition from Boxee. And the 360 is keeping up on social features as well, adding Facebook Connect and Twitter integration in the near future.

Of course, no one is buying an Xbox 360 purely for its media capabilities — yet. Keep in mind that for a time, the Playstation 3 was also the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market, making it a completely respectable home-theater purchase even for someone with no interest in ever playing a video game. It would not be a surprise to see Microsoft continue to evolve the Xbox 360 platform with additional partnerships and further software improvements geared towards transitioning the console into the role of an “all-you-need-is-one-box” consumer media hub.

(Image via Gizmodo)

Does it get any better than this?

Too many people in advertising seem to think Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase is actually “the media budget is the message.”

Once again proving that a big budget is not a precondition for smart advertising.

(Found locked to a signpost outside the Porter Square T station.)

[And yes, I phoned in the headline -- this too is a bastardization of the intent of McLuhan's oft-misquoted line.]

I recently found myself explaining to a colleague why I keep a print of René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images hanging prominently above my desk. I certainly don’t have a profound intellectual appreciation for Belgian surrealism, nor can I speak more than fourteen words of French. This hangs alone to remind me of something.

In English, the subtitle reads, “This is not a pipe.” Many people who see this for the first time think Magritte was just being intentionally ironic — of course it’s a pipe! But it’s not; it’s an image of a pipe. Hardly as useful when you need a smoke.

I bought this print long before Bob Hoffman penned this vivid denunciation of strategists. I’m not sure what meeting Bob walked out of that pushed him over the brink, but I would have to describe his state of mind as “highly motivated.” 

And he’s got a point. Talk is cheap. Strategy without execution is futile. (You may recall IBM’s Buzzword Bingo spot imploring us to “stop talking; start doing.”) People came out of the woodwork to commend his post in the comments.

But one comment caught my eye, and captured exactly what (to me, as a *cough* strategist) the discussion is all about:

as a former ad strategist, i actually love this. but i’ll also add that business needs DOERS who THINK. there’s a whole lot of doing going on, but not enough of what’s DONE is GREAT.

Plato called these individuals philosopher-kings – “thinkers as well as practitioners” in the words of Ken Roman – and suggested that only people such as these should we trust to lead us.

Thinking, or talking, without doing is meaningless — that’s all Bob’s trying to say. Talking about social media is not social media. The Treachery of Images reminds me of this on a daily basis.

Doing without thinking — well, ask Tropicana about that. There’s a role for strategists yet.