Interesting Bits for Friday September 7th 2007

I could see this becoming a weekly thing, but I’m not actually going to proclaim such because sure as I do, it won’t happen.

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Locally, here’s the scoop on Duck and Cover, StL bands mascarading as other bands, courtesy of Annie Zaleski. She also recently posted a video of Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger” that I can’t even describe. Check it out.

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Bob Reuter has been blogging the best stories lately. St. Louisans tend to talk a lot about our car related war stories. I had the window of my car shattered and the stereo ripped out, discovering this one very rainy morning when I was already extremely late for work painting at the MUNY. A different car was stolen entirely, and I’m assuming it’s either in parts somewhere or at the bottom of the river. Drew’s car was stolen outside a party, and we spent several minutes walking around searching, because we assumed we’d just, er, misplaced it. Everyone seems to have similar experiences. But Bob’s story about the recovery of a stolen vehicle at a gas station on Jefferson is officially the best ever.

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This caught my eye because of a recent conversation I had about Russian history. The media fell in love with reporting news related to America’s relations with as an impending “new cold war” some time ago. However, Jay Winik in the Washington post paints Putin as not a Stalin or Khrushchev but a Catherine the Great impostor.

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There’s good news for me this week on Advertising Age. Apparently, there’s a growing demand for the newly dubbed “geek marketers.” According to Steve Rubel:

“They are marketers by trade, yet they also have a hard-core interest in technology and social anthropology. As curious individuals, they are constantly studying how digital advances are changing our culture and media. Armed with these insights, they regularly apply them in a marketing context by working closely with brand teams to codify new best practices.”

Er… yeah. That’s pretty much how I’ve been trying to describe myself for a while now. Most encouraging.

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In further geek news, I got an email this week announcing that one of my favorite online tools Diigo will be introducing a new service called WebSlides at this week’s Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Basically, WebSlides enables the conversion of your bookmarks to slideshows. Nifty. Here’s a review.

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Ok, and just one more geeky thing, I promise. But this is such a useful little tool in the world of online advertisement, I think. URL Split is “new service that allows web developers to create a single short URL that forwards to more than one destination.” Why is this useful? Because ad hits can be divided between multiple sites without funding, creating, and maintaining multiple ad campaigns. Read /Write Web discusses.

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And finally, don’t forget about ArtOutside this weekend! I’ll be there Saturday.

As for this evening, I have book shopping, errands, and a determination to finally see the The Bourne Ultimatum, which I’ve been drooling over. I don’t care if I end up swimming to the theatre, it’s going to happen.