janequigley's shared items

Is there a more iconic sign of the times?

Pilfer: to steal stealthily in small amounts and often again and again

There are scumbags, and then there are SCUMBAGS. In my book, when you are a "publication" whose sole existence is based upon stealing and exploiting work from all over the internet by creatives, then you are the embodiment of the word "scumbag", and as such, PILFERED magazine is one such uber-scumbag.

When your website's About page defines you, in part, as such:

"PILFERED is a place where artists, photographers, designers, and the inspired can submit their favorite visuals pilfered from the web to share with one another. Founded on the spirit of web democracy, and built to aid in communicating ideas and concepts, PILFERED Magazine aims to assist in speaking the thousand words – visually."

You seem to be headed down a dangerous path.

The lawyers for PILFERED, however, can't have it both ways. Despite a publication title and raison d'etre that seems to promote the theft of intellectual property, their privacy policy page notes under "Prohibited Uses" that you may not:You may not use the PILFERED MAGAZINE site and or its services to transmit any content which...causes distress...upon any other person...includes any unlawful...material...may infringe the intellectual property rights or other rights of third parties, including trademark, copyright, trade secret, patent, publicity right, or privacy right.

Then they state under their "No Warranty and Limitation of Liability" :

"You understand and agree that you use the Site and Services at your own discretion and risk and that you will be solely responsible for any damages that arise from such use....UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL PILFERED MAGAZINE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES OF ANY KIND...INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES RELATED TO USE, MISUSE, RELIANCE ON, INABILITY TO USE AND INTERRUPTION,...DAMAGES RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, SALES, DATA, GOODWILL OR PROFITS, WHETHER OR NOT PILFERED MAGAZINE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF SUCH POSSIBILITY. YOUR ONLY RIGHT WITH RESPECT TO ANY DISSATISFACTION WITH THIS SITE OR SERVICES OR WITH PILFERED MAGAZINE SHALL BE TO TERMINATE USE OF THIS SITE AND SERVICES. "

And you think that these disclaimers will get you out of legal hot water when you are infringing peoples' copyrights? Really? REALLY??!!??

Founders and Chief-Thiefs Patrick Hoelck, Rudj, Nate "Res" Harvey, and Mia Van Valkenburg, promote themselves as "hav[ing] in the past spent hours surfing the web to put together presentations for various commercial ad and editorial jobs…and noticed the hours it took to gather images and felt it was time to have a massive image collective shared by the people, for the people." What about the people who's creative works you're stealing?

Their About page goes on:

"Content on PILFERED is submitted from around the world and carefully edited by an in-house team, as well as a new monthly guest editor, to keep issues cutting edge, fresh and informative."

Guest editors? What mini-scumbags have agreed to participate in such a scheme? Well, while their March 2009 issue was a "test issue", the rest:

• King Britt was the guest editor for the April 2009 issue, who describes himself as a "media revolutionary" and believes that he is one who "set the example of an individual who...show[s] what freedom truly is."
• Cory Kennedy was the guest editor for the May 2009 issue.
• For the guest editor for the July issue they had twins Gisela Getty and Jutta Winkelmann, described as being "actively involved with the German underground Communist Organization...they meet the young millionaire heir Paul Getty III and become life's play companion with him..."
• George Pitts guest edits the July 2009 issue, describing himself as a photo editor and photographer whose own photographic work "is an extensive meditation on Women...", and was a former editor for Vibe Magazine
• Guest editing the August issue is Tyler Gibney, and his site's about page lists his business "HVW8 Art + Design gallery was established in Los Angeles as a studio + gallery space for HVW8 and friends. The current mandate is to support avant-garde graphic design..." and then, for some inexplicable reason, contrary to PILFRED, has a contact person where you can contact their representative for licensing - one can only assume, for some form of compensation?
• Brett Ratner guest edits the September issue. I wonder how he'd feel if someone PILFERED one of his films?
• Christina Ricci guest edits the October 2009 issue - I wonder how she'd feel if someone PILFERED her likeness to sell products and services?
• Susan Kirschbaum guest edits the November 2009 issue
• Yosi Sergant guest edits the December 2009 issue - Sergant is descibed as a "community organizer...he organized and supported artists working to elect then candidate Barack Obama, including...artist Shepard Fairey" - enough said.
• Anthony Mandler guest edited the January 2010 issue- I wonder how he'd feel if someone PILFERED and profited from his movies, or how his friends like Rihanna would feel about having her work PILFERED? Readers, what do you think? Is Mandler a Jackass?

This seems to me to be but one visual variation on Napster - which was inundated with copyright infringement lawsuits. Yet why hasn't PILFERED been inundated with similar suits by visual artists? There are plenty of well-known images, any one of which could be the cause for a suit that could shut them down. Copyright Action wrote about this site in May of 2009 here - and it seems that on more than one occasion, the site has been shut down, but why not permanently?

When people run around espousing the notion that "copyright is changing", I get it, and I know that. However, there is a huge difference between "changing" and becoming worthless or irrelevant. PILFERED seems to suggest that your copyright is worth something because it's worth stealing, but worth nothing in terms of the creator being paid for the use of their work. Hoelck, in an interview here, suggests " You either get it or you don’t and are pissed by it." No, we get it - you are promoting stealing of creative works. Anyone who's been a guest editor should hope that this "magazine" vanishes into the ether, because if these guest editors ever have their work stolen and they sue, the defendant in that lawsuit will hold up PILFERED and say something to the effect of "...why isn't what's good for the goose, not good for the gander?"

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All 101 episodes of Lost are available on Hulu right now (US only). The season premiere is in 5 days...plenty of time to catch up on all ~73 hours of plane-crashing, hippie-communing, smoke-monstering, eye makeup-wearing, nicknaming, time-jumping weirdness.

Tags: Hulu   Lost   TV

iPad About

Well bless my soul and whiskers. This is the first time I’ve joined the congregation at the Church of Apple for a new product launch. I’ve watched all the past ones, downloaded the Quicktime movies and marvelled as Apple’s leader has stood before an ovating faithful and announced the switch to Intel, the birth of iPod, the miniMac, the iTunes Store, OS X, iPhoto, the swan’s neck iMac, the Shuffle, Apple retail stores, the iPhone, the titanium powerbook, Garageband, the App Store and so much more. But today I finally made it. I came to San Francisco for the launch of the iPad. Oh, happy man.

Today had special resonance. In front of his family, friends and close colleagues stood the man who founded Apple, was fired from Apple and came back to lead Apple to a greatness, reach and influence that no one on earth imagined. But a year ago, it is now clear, there was a very strong possibility that Steve Jobs would not live to see 2010 and the birth of his newest baby.

With revenues of 15.6 billion Apple is now the largest mobile device company in the world, Jobs told the subdued but excited six hundred packed into the Yerba Buena Cultural Center for the Arts Theatre this morning. A few more triumphant housekeeping notes followed and then we were into the meat of it. Well, the whole event is available to be watched online, you don’t need me to describe it. He picked up an iPad and walked us through. Afterwards I was allowed to play with one myself.

I know there will be many who have already taken one look and pronounced it to be nothing but a large iPhone and something of a disappointment. I have heard these voices before. In June 2007 when the iPhone was launched I collected a long list of “not impressed”, “meh”, “big deal”, “style over substance”, “it’s all hype”, “my HTC TyTN can do more”, “what a disappointment”, “majorly underwhelmed” and similar reactions. They can hug to themselves the excuse that the first release of iPhone was 2G, closed to developers and without GPS, cut and paste and many other features that have since been incorporated. Neither they, nor I, nor anyone, predicted the “game-changing” effect the phone would so rapidly have as it evolved into a 3G, third-party app rich, compass and GPS enabled market leader. Even if it had proved a commercial and business disaster instead of an astounding success, iPhone would remain the most significant release of its generation because of its effect on the smartphone habitat. Does anybody seriously believe that Android, Nokia, Samsung, Palm, BlackBerry and a dozen others would since have produced the product line they have without the 100,000 volt taser shot up the jacksie that the iPhone delivered to the entire market?

Nonetheless, even if they couldn’t see that THREE BILLION apps would be downloaded in 2 years (that’s half a million app downloads a day, give or take ) could they not see that this device was gorgeous, beautifully made, very powerful and capable of development into something extraordinary? I see those qualities in the iPad. Like the first iPhone, iPad 1.0 is a John the Baptist preparing the way of what is to come, but also like iPhone 1.0 (and Jokanaan himself too come to that) iPad 1.0 is still fantastic enough in its own right to be classed as a stunningly exciting object, one that you will want NOW and one that will not be matched this year by any company. In the future, when it has two cameras for fully featured video conferencing, GPS and who knows what else built in (1080 HD TV reception and recording and nano projection, for example) and when the iBook store has recorded its 100 millionth download and the thousands of accessories and peripherals that have invented uses for iPad that we simply can’t now imagine – when that has happened it will all have seemed so natural and inevitable that today’s nay-sayers and sceptics will have forgotten that they ever doubted its potential.

“What can I do with it that I can’t do with a laptop or an iPhone?” they might now be objecting. “Too big for my pocket, not big enough for serious use. Don’t see the need. It’s a solution looking for a problem.”

There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: “Hold your judgment until you’ve spent five minutes with it”. No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects. You know how everyone who has ever done Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? always says, “It’s not the same when you’re actually here. So different from when you’re sitting at home watching.”? You know how often you’ve heard that? Well, you’ll hear the same from anyone who’s handled an iPad. The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class. This is a different order of experience. The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, it’s not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop – it is a whole new kind of device. And it will change so much. Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.

There’s much to like of course. The physical beauty and classy build quality, as in anything designed by Jonathan Ive. The shockingly low price — $499 for the basic model. The contract-free, unlocked nature of the 3G version. But there are two chief reasons for its guaranteed success.

1. It is SO SIMPLE. It is basically a highly responsive capacitative piece of glass with solid state memory and an IPS display. Just as a book is basically paper bound together in a portable form factor. The simplicity is what allows everyone, us, software developers, content providers and accessory manufacturers to pour themselves into it, to remake it according to the limits of their imagination. I’ll stop before I get too Disney.

2. It is made by Apple. I’m not being cute here. If it was made by Hewlett Packard, they wouldn’t have global control over the OS or the online retail outlets. If it was made by Google, they would have tendered out the hardware manufacture to HTC. Apple — and it is one of the reasons some people distrust or dislike them — control it all. They’ve designed the silicon, the A4 chip that runs it all, they’ve designed the batteries, they’ve overseen every detail of the commercial, technological, design and software elements. No other company on earth does that. And being Apple it hasn’t been released without (you can be sure) Steve Jobs being wholly convinced that it was ready. “Not good enough, start again. Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.” How many other CEOs say until their employees want to murder them? That’s the difference.

Slightly annoying that the iPhone autocorrects iPad into upas – which is a kind of poison mulberry I believe… you can bet that omission in the iPhone’s glossary will change with the upcoming release of iPhone OS 4.0.

I have always thought Hans Christian Andersen should have written a companion piece to the Emperor’s New Clothes, in which everyone points at the Emperor shouting, in a Nelson from the Simpson’s voice, “Ha ha! He’s naked.” And then a lone child pipes up, ‘No. He’s actually wearing a really fine suit of clothes.” And they all clap hands to their foreheads as they realise they have been duped into something worse than the confidence trick, they have fallen for what E. M. Forster called the lack of confidence trick. How much easier it is to distrust, to doubt, to fold the arms and say “Not impressed”. I’m not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design fixated and so on are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can’t bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire. The fact is that Apple users like me are the uncoolest people on earth: we salivate, dribble, coo, sigh, grin and bubble with delight.

No, I don’t have shares in Apple. I came so close to buying some as an act of defensive defiance in the early 90s when every industry insider and expert in the field agreed that Apple had six months to go before going bust. But I didn’t. If I had done I could now afford to buy you all an iPad. Yes, I do like and have tried to champion OpenSource software. How can I square that with my love of Apple? I’m complicated. I’m a human being. I also believe in a mixed economy and mixed nuts. I love our National Health Service and the National Theatre, but I also love Fortnum and Mason’s and Hollywood movies. “Apple,” Steve Jobs said, “stands at the intersection of Technology and the Liberal Arts.” This statement confused non-Americans who are not familiar with the phrase Liberal Arts (you can look it up here) but I think shows the fundamental cultural seriousness of Jobs and Apple which in turn explains their huge success and impact. He might perhaps more accurately have said that Apple stands at the intersection of Technology, the Liberal Arts and Commerce.”

You may or may not be in the queue for an iPad in March, April, May or June. Or you may decide to stay your hand for version 2.0 or 3.0. But believe me the iPad is here to stay and nothing will be quite the same again. You should know, however that plenty of industry commentators disagree with me. They have pronounced themselves less enthralled. It is perfectly possible I will be proved wrong about its enduring, game-changing place in the landscape and that people will gleefully rub my nose in this blog in two year’s time. I’m certainly not wrong about how soul-scorchingly beautiful it is to use though. And that, for me, is enough.

GoogleBless

Dear old Google. Sounds silly to feel sorry for them. But their text transcription service has a long way to go. I was asked to do s Skype interview for the BBC’s Newsnight programme today and I gave the producers my Google Voice number. This Google service isn’t available outside the US, but is basically a phone number that you can use as one number that directs itself to all your phones. It will call your handsets, whether landline or cell, send SMS texts and voicemail to accounts and so on.

Anyway, one of the Newsnight people left this message on my phone:

Hi, Stephen, it’s Natasha from BBC Newsnight in London. Just to say I’ve sent you two texts. One is to say that we could do it at eleven am your time after the launch, or any time sooner after the launch, or we could do it at midday as we suggested earlier. I, er, if you could text me back about that, and I’ve sent you the details of Skype that you need to do too. If you could give me a call back. Enjoy the launch and I’ll speak to you after that. Thank you Bye.

I’ve transcribed it from the voicemail sound file that resides online on my inbox on the Google Voice site. All fine. I have also ticked the option for Google Voice to send me a text transcript of any voicemail. Below is their interpretation of Natasha’s message… it’s rather endearing how hopelessly wrong the largest company on earth gets it.

Hi Stephen. It’s Jeff from BBC needs in nuns. And just to say I sent 80 tax, one, if to say we could do it. I left in i a m your time off to go into any time soon, or the court and full we could grab me today as we suggested at. A. F. I. If you could text me back byebye. I’ve sent you the details of skylights that you need to 3 T if you could give me a call. Bye. Enjoy the loans. I’ll speak to you after that. Thank you. Bye.

Bless

Producer note: All comments both negative or positive are welcome but please bear in mind that if a comment is abusive, contains swearing designed to offend, is deliberately aimed at upsetting others or is troll-like, I will delete it. Stephen Fry visited the Apple event as a private individual and was not paid. Best wishes, Andrew Sampson

There was a meta-message in today’s Apple event, not about the iPad in particular, but rather about Apple as a whole. Jobs’s brief preamble included a bit of extra emphasis on the fact that the Apple now generates over $50 billion per year in revenue. (Apple also emphasized this $50 billion revenue thing in their PR two days ago announcing their Q1 2010 financial results.) He also said that when you consider MacBooks as “mobile” devices, Apple generates more revenue from mobile hardware than any other company in the world; the three competitors he singled out were Sony, Samsung, and Nokia. The adjective he used was “bigger”.

Lastly, there’s the fact that the iPad is using a new CPU designed and made by Apple itself: the Apple A4. This is a huge deal. I got about 20 blessed minutes of time using the iPad demo units Apple had at the event today, and if I had to sum up the device with one word, that word would be “fast”.

It is fast, fast, fast. The hardware really does feel like a big iPhone — and a big original iPhone at that, with the aluminum back. (I have never liked the plastic 3G/S iPhones as much as the original in terms of how it feels in my hand.) I expected the screen size to be the biggest differentiating factor in how the iPad feels compared to an iPhone, but I think the speed difference is just as big a factor. Web pages render so fast it was hard to believe. After using the iPhone so much for two and a half years, I’ve become accustomed to web pages rendering (relative to the Mac) slowly. On the iPad, they seem to render nearly instantly. (802.11n Wi-Fi helps too.)

The Maps app is crazy fast. Apps launch fast. Scrolling is fast. The Photos app is fast.

The iPad hardware is exactly what you think. It looks great, it feels great. It’s very nice to hold. (People are complaining about the wide bezel around the display, but without that, where would your thumbs go? You don’t want your thumb that’s holding the device to cover on-screen content or register as a touch. Trust me, it’s just right.) Just like with the iPhone, it’s all in the software. And the software is obviously marvelous in many ways. It is clearly the result of deep thought and hard work.

But: everyone I spoke to in the press room was raving first and foremost about the speed. None of us could shut up about it. It feels impossibly fast. (And our next thought: What happens if Apple has figured out a way to make a CPU like A4 that fits in an iPhone? If they pull that off for this year’s new iPhone, look out.)

Apple doesn’t talk much about the technical details of the iPhone. They never talk about CPU speed or the name of the chip being used. They don’t tell you how much RAM is in there. Part of their vision for moving computers from technical culture to popular culture is about getting away from defining these things by their technical specs. So the prominent talk about A4 is telling. This is something they want us to notice.

I mentioned this year-ago quote from Apple COO Tim Cook the other day, but it’s apt here, too. Cook told BusinessWeek, “We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.”

Apple now owns and controls their own mobile CPUs. There aren’t many companies in the world that can say that. And from what I saw today, Apple doesn’t just own and control a mobile CPU, they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world. Software aside (which is a huge thing to put aside), it may well be that no other company could make a device today matching the price, size, and performance of the iPad. They’re not getting into the CPU business for kicks, they’re getting into it to kick ass.

They’re Microsoft and Intel rolled into one when it comes to mobile computing. In the pre-taped video Apple showed, Bob Mansfield said of the iPad, “No one else could do it.” Only Apple.

And so my takeaway from this — with the bragging about making their own CPUs and their annual revenue and their size compared to companies like Sony, Samsung, and Nokia — is that this is Apple’s way of asserting that they’re taking over the penthouse suite as the strongest and best company in the whole ones-and-zeroes racket.

It’s not as if I haven’t had a point of view on all of this tablet computing device stuff that’s been lighting up the Internets for the past several months, but for professional reasons, I’ve had to keep mum. Suffice it to say, I’m really excited about Apple’s iPad, announced today, and I’m even more excited about what can be done with it.

However. I’m pretty sure that I’m in the camp that believes that this is not the salvation that most publishing companies have been looking for. Not that the device falls short in some way, but rather because nothing can save publishing as it’s been operating for the past several decades. The iPad does nothing to change the brutal mandate that has been pushing publishers to change for these many years; if anything it compounds the imperative.

As a general principle, there’s no way around evolution, and in this specific instance the reality is that there is no direct translation of the print experience to digital media. That is, the content can be translated, but it’s not likely to be as literal as many might expect or even hope. Those looking to the iPad to return us to some semblance of a print-like reading experience are basically wrong, I believe. In fact, lots of really smart people will continue to get this wrong going forward. We’re all still figuring out. That’s the definition of an opportunity.

 

This morning I happened across the above graphic in an older Center Networks post and it triggered a quick thought on a familiar theme.

I have often chided marketers for focusing too much on specific tools, platforms, sites and shiny objects. You know what I'm talking about. Your boss meanders into your office and casually asks you about some sexy social media thang that they saw mentioned in this morning's Wall Street Journal or the latest issue of BloombergWeek. Or your agency arrives to present -- iPhones, Androids and tablets in hand -- and they're all atwitter with talk about some cool thing that every marketers must do this year: mobile, social, mobile social, augmented reality, QR codes, skywriting, ironic-retro slam dance marketing or whatever.

But it's often even worse than that: the directive to innovate comes not within the context of some larger, perhaps more sustainable trend (we need to think about what the emergence of a realtime web will mean for how we connect with customers) but within the lack-of-context of some specific tool (Mike from product management says he wants a million Twitter followers by Thursday.)

Two weeks later, you have a program in market. Three weeks after that, the one trick pony on which you've placed your bets is headed to the glue factory -- they've been bought and rolled into something else, they've changed their business model, they're out of business. Two weeks after that, you're embarrassed to have your Second Life avatar name on your business card.

Sound even vaguely familiar?

So back to the image at the top of the post. We've all seen those swanky Web 2.0 logo collages. I've used one in a post or two on this blog. Hey, I've even seen one big digital agency (not naming names) throw an animated version in a PowerPoint to impress a client with how tuned-into social media they are (um, yeah). As you can probably tell, the version above is a bit different.

In May 2009, blogger and Guardian reporter Meg Pickard took one of the original logo collages from 2006 and marked it up to highlight the companies that had been acquired (see the minty fresh green kisses) and those that have bit the dust (note the lovely lavender hugs) to give a sense of how much this rapidly evolving space can -- and has -- changed in just a few short years. Now, acquisition isn't necessarily a bad thing (YouTube, Blogger, last.fm are still doing just fine) but bouncing your final round of payroll checks certainly is. And although I'm too lazy (did I say lazy, I meant busy busy busy) to do the work, I suspect a 2010 version would have plenty more lavendar Xs on it. Of course, it would also have a host of new logos that our ancient ancestors had never seen way back in 2006.

Why do I like Meg's interpretation of the logo collage so much? Because it is a clear visual reminder that the tools themselves don't matter and that putting emphasis on of-the-moment buzzy media darlings may be fun but might not get you very far.

If you're a marketer, odds are good you've placed some bad bets over the past couple of years -- maybe you were rock-solid-sure that Revver (remember them? no? hmmm...) would be the video platform of choice for generations to come, only to lose the community of branded content watchers you'd amassed over there when YouTube drove them into the dirt. Perhaps your friendly neighborhood social media guru convinced you that Plurk or Jaiku was the right microblogging platform for your company because that Twitter thing was 'so last year'. Maybe you spent a couple of years of your life at a web start-up that never quite made it to the next round (I know I did) or worked for a company headquartered in Second Life. :-)   

Making mistakes is not only natural but necessary. We don't have the luxury of waiting for this whole social media thing to shake out. We need to innovate. We need to have a sense (clear or otherwise) of where we think media and marketing might be headed next. We need to move forward because we can't go back to the bad-old-days of spray and pray interruption advertising. But motivation matters more than innovation.

We have an obligation (to ourselves, if to nobody else) to exercise a bit of restraint when it comes to chasing shiny objects. Our current crop of objects are shiny enough and most marketers haven't figured out how to make the most of them (pimp). 

We need to stay focused on what matters for our businesses: meeting objectives and beating goals (not to mention serving customers better than ever before) by using the right combination of approaches. We need to put strategy first (pimping again.)

And when we do place bets on new tools, we need to do so with one eye focused on lessons learned. For example, a marked up collage for 2015 just might show Facebook or Twitter logos behind Xs or Os. Future Us might be embarrassed by how excited Current Us were about Foursquare or Gowalla when we see them labeled as dead. But if, rather than getting hyped up on the tools themselves, we went into each experiment focused on:

(1) what will this allow us to accomplish today -- real objectives people, not dopey crap like 'get a million fans or followers', or even dopier crap like 'check off that geolocation box on our innovation checklist' -- and...

(2) what lessons will we take away from this for tomorrow -- will we know more about how to foster community, will we better understand our customers and what they expect out of their relationship with our company, will we have established any baseline practices for realtime engagement or right-time-right-place delivery of information...

then at least we will have achieved something...

At least that's what I think... How about you?

Drop a comment. Or if you'd rather discuss it with me live, tune in for a free Powered webinar tomorrow (January 28th, 2010 at 2pm Central) where I'll talk about the importance of putting strategy before tactics and some of my colleagues will discuss their takes on what 2010 holds in store for marketers (P-to-the-power-of-IMP).

Or the Sex Positive Journalism Awards, the winners of which were just announced. From the News/Features category:

Second Place: "Red Sex Blue Sex," Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker
Judges said: “An intelligent compare and contrast of the sexual cultures in the red vs. blue states that reminds you that 'family values' are often more aspirational than actual descriptions of daily life among evangelicals. Professed abstinence often leads to teen pregnancy, STDs, early marriage-and early divorce. And lots of shame. Talbot is too much the mainstream journalist to come out and say it, but her article shows us that religiously motivated sexual repression leads not to happy families but instability and sadness.”