I'm behind on blog entries! Never fear, I am still living here. I've just been traveling a great deal for work.

Here's something to check out. My all time favorite mobile social networking application is trying a promotional beta. here's the link.

And if you're not on dodgeball, then you aren't geting out enough. Check it!

Someone's been busy! Verizon made a number of announcements recently. First, I saw that America's favorite teen crush (sorry Teddy Geiger, you're almost there...), Adam Brody, has cut a deal with the wireless carrier to create exclusive animated content. He's created a fictional comic, which will be animated and featured in fourteen 3-minute episodes on the wireless carrier's vCast feed. Verizon V-Cast viewers get all sorts of other little extra's with this: like ringtones, behind-the-scenes footage (not sure how that works with a graphic novel...Adam Brody sharpening colored pencils? Clearing his throat before a voiceover?), etc.

Verizon also announced a partnership with Heavy.com to provide comedy shorts on vCast.

This announcement brings with it the question of Heavy.com's advertisers - specifically, do they get to ride the mobile application wave too?

From a PR perspective, it should be interesting to see how long it will be before Brands can pay to place original content for viewing on vCast and what kind of viewership/measurement system someone develops to show networks and advertisers the value of buying into vCast.

Will there come a day when our phone bills are subsidized for watching a 15-minute branded infomercial on our handsets? Or will a barter system evolve - more pix and text messaging and peak minutes in exchange for watching advertising?

Time shall tell. Until then, I'll keep watching my phone...literally.

Thanks Mr. Parmet, for the link yesterday. I'll have to step it up here in the event someone may actually be reading...

I've been around in the blogesphere for about 10 years (yikes!) but static for a big chunk of time due to various evolving demands of my job. It's fun to be back and see how the tools have changed.

I used to be a Bravenet component girl but I thought I'd try this Blogger service and see how evolved the arena has become. It's ok...the html publishing format is nice, but over the next few weeks I may try to Pimp My Page because there are number of features they are missing here - starting with a "click" counter or a visitor tracking system. It's nice to be able to track the people who flame your comments section or just see who's reading. I'm a big fan of checking ISP addresses.

And that brings me to something I've been thinking about this week: the online medium is seeing a lot of traditional branding tactics transcending into this medium. Online stunts - such as the narnia rap battle (nice effort guys - hope it gets you PAID and off of free video sites) and "flaming" (ripping on established "online" stars to establish yourself and build a following)- are two tactics that I'm seeing more and more. The latter really ticks me off. I call that "hijacking celebrity for celebrity." It's an old O'Reilly tactic. Bill O'Reilly jacked up his viewership numbers when he attacked George Clooney on his show. Right now, desperate vloggers are flaming one of my favorite vloggers, Bowiechick.

At least O'Reilly was man enough to attack someone without hiding under the cloak of anonymity, like a lot of online flamers do. It's certainly easy to attack people online from the safety of a basement and an anonymous username miles away. That's one of the downsides of the Internet.

That said, I love that bloggers and vloggers like Bowiechick have the moxie to keep putting themselves out here in the public online forum.

My life would certainly be a lot more boring without them.

Today I was reading CoolHunting about Adidas' recent campaign for Adicolor. The Brand commissioned 7 directors to film shorts for each Adicolor hue.

So yeah, this concept has been executed with much fanfare before by BMW, Coke, etc. I didn't expect much.

That said, I opened up the "white" version and I almost spit my water out all over my keyboard.

Since about 1998, I've been shouting to my colleagues that porn was going mainstream. That Porn was "the future of America." About a year after that, the LA Times added an "adult film industry" beat reporter to their staff. I felt a small twinge of victory. I did. I'll admit it.

And here we are in 2006. With Jenna Jameson starring in one of the hottest ads I've seen cross over into the mainstream. Check it.

Hats off to the director, Tronic, for taking what could have been a lame, mainstream assignment and making it sexy. Literally.

Can't wait to see what the other 6 directors come up with.

So today I discovered Snubster and I have to tell you, I'm hearting it pretty hard.

I'll admit, I'm on myspace. And friendster. And dodgeball. I'm social networking myself all across the spectrum and I have been since most of these sites kicked their initial servers into gear. Since I have been a long time user of many of these sites, I'm comfortable admitting - it's getting old.

This contest out there right now - to connect with as many strangers as possible just to have "the most friends" (friends that you've never met? how exactly is that a friend?) - is pretty vapid if you sit down and look at the model that surfers are buying across the globe. And if you look even harder, you may become cynical of the crop of new social networking sites that are popping up like dandelions; you may even see them as outright pathetic.

I'm not there yet. I'm keeping my myspace.

However, I can appreciate what snubster is doing. The anti-social network. How Suicide Girls. Underground but mass. Counter-culture/subversive without being polarizing or niche.

So we'll see how they do. They're beta testing now, so who knows if they make it or how they will evolve. Right now I'm just happy typing into my list that Paris Hilton is officially "dead to me."

I haven't updated in while. I'm slackin'. What happened to my generation? Ten years ago the media were calling us slackers. Hollywood made movies about us slacking. Now everyone my age that I know, who vowed never to become their parents and spend their lives toiling for the man, work double the hours our parents worked. Generation X has truly lost its way.

I was thinking about this generational work-life predicament two weekends ago after having lunch with some friends. We discussed men our age, who seem to be leading a trend of quitting their jobs and not working. More and more, the model seems to be that Gen X women work and men do not. They don't make excuses about not working, they aren't unable to work, they simply do not want to work and quit their jobs. We sat and thought about this phenomenon and as we took inventory of our friends who are couples, we could only name a handful of them whose male partners are gainfully employed.

We considered this societal shift and some of the causes of it. A backlash to feminism? The result of our working mothers making it look too easy? The next evolution of the metrosexual: first he became comfortable getting a manicure, now he's playing house? Or more likely, now he's playing X-Box in the house.

As I walked home though the West Village, I stepped right on someone's street team marketing campaign.



Chalked along Sixth avenue and 10th Street, for several blocks, was this URL.

I don't know if this kind of grassroots, guerilla marketing tactic is successful enough generate traffic, but it got me to the site.

And I kinda wish I hadn't gone there.