Advertising: Movies, TVs and Magazines Work Together in Web Campaign

As major marketers shift more of their advertising spending to the Web, media companies like Hearst Magazines are scrambling to keep up.

New York Times

World Premiere of Sufjan Stevens' "BQE" [Brooklyn, NY; 11/01/07]

Nostalgia for modernism + urban planning + indie rock + Brooklyn reference + orchestra = Sufjan Stevens' "The BQE"

Constructed between 1937-1964 as part of infamous city planner Robert Moses's master vision for New York City's social reality, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway rose as 11.6 miles of neighborhood-severing, money-eating, limited-access overhead highway grimness. The book about Moses's modernist cruelty and obsession with cars over human needs is called The Power Broker, a relentless, detailed portrait of one man's egomania in urban planning.

Which is part of the reason why, when Sufjan Stevens said he had written a symphony about the BQE, people got so excited. Maybe Stevens would, through the power of art, convey this bleak inter-borough piece of citywide dismay as something majestic, the way he had transformed Detroit or Decatur.

Known for his chamber-pop miniatures about humble white working-poor life, Stevens has become indie's populist orchestrator. But he's also enough of a fool to try his hand at large-scale composition, having boasted of writing 50 albums extolling the dignity of local culture. Fans who celebrate his outsider ("indie") ambitions to excel in academic forms clap for his being at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave festival regardless. Given classical's lust for young flesh and filled seats, the crossover of Stevens's rapt fan base into three nights of sold-out crowds already deems the event a success.

Pitchfork

AdMob Offers First Facebook Mobile Advertising Solution

San Mateo based mobile advertising solutions provider AdMob has announced AdMob for Facebook Mobile, a mobile advertising solution for developers of third-party Facebook applications.

AdMob has enabled optimized mobile ads for Facebook Mobile, which developers can use to monetize their mobile applications. Developers can start showing ads and earning money immediately.

AdMob for Facebook Mobile is said to be the first monetization solution for Facebook Mobile developers.

TechCrunch

Pay Up, Kid, or Your Igloo Melts

A virtual penguin teaches kids how to spend real cash, upsetting some parents.

New York Times

AOL To Announce Internet "Do-Not-Track" List

Most consumers are familiar with do-not-call lists, which are meant to keep telemarketers from phoning them. Soon people will be able to sign up for do-not-track lists, which will help shield their Web surfing habits from the prying eyes of marketers.

Huffington Post

Howtoons cartoon science project book

Howtoons is a terrific new science project book that has how-tos in the form of comic strips. Co-author Saul Griffith. who has been writing Howtoons comics for MAKE for the last 3 years, was recently awarded a MacArthur "genius" award.

Part comic strip and part science experiment, Howtoons shows children how to find imaginative new uses for common household items like soda bottles, duct tape, mop buckets, and more–to teach kids the "Tools of Mass Construction"!

BoingBoing

Bands find video games a ticket to fame

PARIS (Reuters) - Singer-guitarist Walter de Castro couldn't believe his luck when he found out his band's song "The Core" would be featured on "FIFA 2008," the Electronic Arts popular soccer game.

Reuters

Devendra Banhart and Paul Klee at SFMOMA

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is presenting an exhibition that pairs the artwork of Paul Klee with the drawings and beautiful freak folk music of Devendra Banhart. According to the SFMOMA, the exhibit, titled Abstract Rhythms: Paul Klee and Devendra Banhart, "explores the relationship between music and visual art." It features more than a dozen of Klee's works on paper along with thirteen of Banhart's drawings, created along with his new album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Seen here at left, Klee's "Der Verliebte (Man in Love)" and, at right, Banhart's cover art for "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon." From the SFMOMA:

BoingBoing

Gnarley: FunnyOrDie Extends Into Extreme Sports

Will Ferrell’s FunnyOrDie video startup is spreading its wings with a new site: ShredOrDie, focused on extreme sports and hosted by pro skateboarder Tony Hawk.

TechCrunch

In Foray Into TV, Google Is to Track Ad Audiences

Google plans to announce a partnership with Nielsen to give advertisers a better snapshot of how many people are viewing television commercials on a second-by-second basis.

New York Times

Facebook Experiments With Ads Targeting People’s Interests

The big promise of advertising on social networks has always been the ability to target members by their own self-proclaimed interests and demographics. Facebook, as expected, has quietly taken a step in that direction with its Facebook Flyers ads (these are sidebar advertising widgets that Facebook still controls, as opposed to the majority of ad inventory on Facebook that falls under its deal with Microsoft). In terms of revenues, these Flyers probably don’t amount to much yet, but this is one Faecbook experiment worth keeping an eye on.

TechCrunch

Gore's Current TV enlists Web users to shape news

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) - Current, the television network backed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore, is embarking on a new Internet strategy to enlist viewers in submitting video and commentary to create broadcast TV news.

Reuters

Coals to Newcastle: The Donald Hands Out Free Money on the Upper East Side

Donald Trump’s people hand out free money outside the Barnes & Noble at 5th Avenue and 46th Street, to promote Mr. Trump’s new book, Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life.


New York Observer

‘Dexter’ campaign gets away with murder

It’s not just kids who are freaked out by Showtime’s advertising for Dexter, the program about a forensics expert who moonlights as a serial killer. A new viral campaign is scaring the bejeezus out of plenty of adults. Those with a macabre sense of humor should visit SliceoflifeTV.com, where you can enter a friend’s name and a few other details. Soon enough, the friend gets an e-mail link to a video news report that makes it look like he or she has been targeted by a serial killer. Of course, the most successful virals are often the ones that either humiliate or terrify (see the old Ring Two viral from the U.K.). For the easily gullible, this Dexter effort more than fits the bill, as New York Times ad writer Louise Story found out when she sent it to a few friends and family (some of whom may have stopped speaking to her). The campaign was produced by London-based digital agency Ralph, which happily reports that in the U.K. it “proved so controversial that Ralph received calls of complaint from the public and London’s Scotland Yard Police.”

AdFreak

Viral Campaign for 'Alive' TV Series Launches Before the Show Exists

In an extremely premature bid to build audience buzz and hook a network partner, the producers of a new sci-fi/horror TV series shoot a few clips and drop some clues online before the show's even in the can.

Wired

ABC Reshapes the Evening News for the Web

Aiming to attract younger audiences, ABC is using its evening news staff to produce a separate and distinct 15-minute daily news program for the Web.

New York Times

Blogged with Flock

YouTube lets users map videos onto Google Earth

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Google Inc is bringing the world of online video and map-making closer together by allowing users of its Google Earth software to watch and hear YouTube videos mapped to specific locations.

Reuters

"Regis And Kelly" Go 3-D For Halloween

This Halloween, viewers will feel like they can reach out and touch Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa, both on TV and at Walgreens drug stores.

The stars of "Live With Regis and Kelly" always dress up for its annual big Halloween show, but this year, the Oct. 31 episode will be broadcast in 3-D.

Viewers will be able to enjoy the special effect if they pick up the required 3-D glasses at the photo department of a local Walgreens store as part of an advertising and promotional deal.

Huffington Post