According to a Mercury News article, Zoom Media is responsible for putting up motion triggered advertising for the ‘Norm’ show near urinals in men’s rooms. Zoom Media specializes in the “18-34s”, a hot target market. It seems we’re in the “accumulation” stage of our lives, buying stuff. Big stuff, like houses and cars. I guess at 35 you switch over to accumulating things for your kids and living with what you’ve got. Hmmm, maybe I should be buying better stuff.

I good way to catch up on quality children’s books is to take a peek at the Newbury Award winners. I’ve found some old treasures there too, like The Westing Game!

It’s harder to tell when an online shopping site is going under. When you head into a store and see that their stock is dwindling (and it’s not because of a big Christmas rush!) and the workers don’t look too happy and there’s a general aura of malaise, well, the writing is on the wall. But an ecommerce site can look happy and peppy up to the bitter end. It’s been depressing going into certain bookstores lately, seeing their stacks getting smaller as they try to manage a decreasing cash flow. The problem is that a vicious cycle starts when I don’t want to go to that bookstore anymore because their selection isn’t big enough. Then they lose customers and go further downhill. But I hope a few of the better, more creative ones, will remain.

Business 2.0 has a detailed, but interesting, tale of creating a “dot com” ad. It tells of the creative process and results, which were: “We determined through research, that consumers liked the ads but still weren’t sure what the site did.” That is a common problem with dot com ads. You have an advantage if your domain name says what your site does and you can then use your ad dollars to wham that URL into people’s heads. But that is often not the case. (via xblog)

Commercial web sites make efforts to ensure that the ads they run are not going to screw up their users. Yahoo’s banner ad and JavaScript banner guidelines state: “Advertisements cannot mislead the user. For example, they may not mimic or resemble Windows/Macintosh/Unix dialogue boxes, error messages, or the like” and “banners may not contain graphics that simulate interactivity (ie drop down menus, search boxes and the like) without that functionality truly existing.” They also imply that they test all the ads, which makes complete sense. The ads are, in a sense, becoming part of their site, and therefore should conform to their standards of user interaction and quality. Lycos’ guidelines are similar.

Somebody very nice handed me a South Carolina quarter yesterday. Of course it’s a “D” (Denver mint), but I will be heading to the east coast soon and hope to pick up my missing Philadelphias.

The 5th Annual Air Guitar World Championships is August 25 in Finland. Yes, air guitar. Yes, Finland. “According to the ideology of air guitar playing all evil things disappear from the world whenever people play the air guitar.” The classical music station in New York City I used to listen to once held an “air baton” contest for at-home orchestra conductors.

X-Men was OK. It could have been done a lot better. But I enjoyed watching it, and I suppose that is what’s important, since I’m not a die-hard comics fan. Hopefully it can take in a lot of money and someone else can come along and do the next one tons better. These interviews with the actors are really amusing.
“Could Professor X kick Captain Picard’s butt?”
Patrick Stewart:”For obvious reasons [Professor X is in a wheelchair], he couldn’t kick Picard’s butt, but he could lick him. He could certainly kick the s–t out of Captain Kirk — and you can quote me.”
(via brainlog)

At used bookstores I always browse the childrens’ books section to see if any old memories pop out at me. I’ve found many almost forgotten treasures: Emil and the Detectives, the Mushroom Planet books, Pippi Longstocking. But I realized that they keep publishing books for children. They didn’t stop when my childhood ended. How obvious! But when I browse I wasn’t browsing to see what was new. I was looking for old. However, there’s a gap between when I stopped reading those books and when my future children will read. So my kids may benefit from my paying attention to what I’ve missed in the interim. Of course, browsing at the library, which filled many of my childhood hours, will probably fill in any holes. There’s got to be something more substantial than those silly “Babysitter’s Club” series and less hyped than Mr. Potter.

Craving some retro-gaming, but afraid people will laugh at your dusty old Atari 2600? Pick up the iTari. “iTari’s joystick is exactly like the original… only prettier!” And it plays all those old Atari games too, on its blazing 1.19 MHz processor. (via memepool)