From Kevin Marks, Boy Genius:

I took Dave Winer’s mp3 , and the joho chatroom transcript, and synced them up.

http://homepage.mac.com/kevinmarks/johodebate.mov

Even handier in QT player, as you can search for words there.

Hybrid audio/text gang-blogging.

Enjoy.

Thanks, Kevin! This is a really interesting experiment. I’m just a little nervous about the semiprivateness of a chat being exposed in the full public of the Web, but, hell anyone could have joined. The joining of the sound and audio does change the medium if only because in this instance the chat goes by line by line so you can’t see the entire scrolling transcript. (And I should perhaps explain that the random references to “doggy-style” are an homage to Halley’s scathingly funny post about bed and breakfasts (blogged here).)

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Worthwhile magazine, about what makes working life worthwhile, is shipping its first issue. (Yes, it’s on paper. Its blog is pretty lively, though.) You can view pdf’s of its table of contents and a handful of articles here.

Halley, who had a lot to do with getting the blog going, is a senior editor, as am I.

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Want to know what cognitive dissonance sounds like? Yahoo Local is running radio ads featuring Howard Dean pitching their product. You can hear it here.

It’s a funny ad. In both senses. And it sure raises some questions: Why the hell is Howard Dean pitching products? Although the ad is charmingly self-deprecating, why would Dean want to put himself in William Shatner Land? Couldn’t he have waited until after the election? Is this a form of fund raising for his group, Democracy for America? And what will Dean be pitching next? Sedatives? Throat lozenges?

It’s a coup for Yahoo Local. It does not feel like a coup for Dean, although because the ad is so funny and self-mocking, it could be a lot worse.

[Disclosure: I am an unpaid advisor to Yahoo Local.]

Bogus Contest!

What product endorsements would make sense for Kerry? Bush? Nader? Other politicians?

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An odd email arrived today. It begins:

We would like to introduce our new-born site, where you can shop around most wanted and needed items in your life. Our weapon section has wide range of hard-to-find machine guns, silencers, armour-piercing ammos and others.

First of all, let\’s check our 3 top-selling items:
1. Russian surface-to-air missle SA-14 \”Gremlin\” (upgraded analog of SS-16 \”Strela\”) from our supplies in Kazakhstan.
Due to high demand, it takes about 4 weeks to backorder that item.
Weight is 10,2 kg., lenght – 1427 mm. You can make a huge party and you can have tons of fun launching your \”Gremlin\”
with your buddies.
2. Israeli bestselling submashine-gun…

It’s just about 100% certainly a phony: There is no url given and the 800 number and fax numbers are both Verisign’s. The msg came through APNIC, an Asian ISP. If you think there’s anything more to this than a joke or a lame attempt to spur some bewildering calls to Verisign, let me know.

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Doonesbury today refers to a column by Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter. As a public service, you can click here instead of typing in the 3-line url yourself. In the column, Bereuter explains why he thinks the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Why, he actually cites Paul Krugman!

Bereuter is not running for re-election.

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Personally? Having just seen the last debate, I’ve decided to vote for Kerry.

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Don’t forget, if you want to join in a general-purpose snarkfest during the debate tonight, tune your IRC client to irc.freednode.net and join #johodebate. (Details here.)

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I missed Vietnam by virtue of the quirky granting of conscientious objector status, but reading Britt is like remembering what I never lived through. His review of Going Upriver within our political context and his Vietnam experience is reality-based and remarkable.

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David Isenberg points us to an amusing Flash envisioning of what it’ll be like when databases fall in love and get married. Um, a little more literally, it depicts a phone call to a pizza delivery place.

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I’ve been re-reading Chris Locke’s Gonzo Marketing and I’ve been struck again by what a damn good book it is. Chris writes so well, and so entertainingly, that it’s easy to forget how profound his ideas are. Gonzo is a visionary work, which is not a word applied to many (any?) marketing books. And it’s got more ideas in its little finger than most marketing writers have in a lifetime.

So why didn’t Gonzo knock Who Moved My Stinky Stinky Cheese off the best-seller list? It didn’t help that Gonzo was published a couple of weeks after 9/11. (Oh, thank you, terrorists!) And, frankly, I don’t think the title helped: It sounds like it’s about how you can pull off wacky marketing stunts when in fact it dismantles marketing’s basic assumptions and points it in a new direction: micromarkets, voice, engagement.

There’s plenty I disagree with, and, sure, a voice as strong as Chris’ doesn’t appeal equally to all, but so what? At least there’s lots to disagree about and at least it has a voice. Go buy a copy for a friend in marketing…

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