PIXEL MAVERICK

I love music.

I love beautiful web design.

I love discovering something great while it is still relatively unknown to most of the world — still obscure, hungry and pure.

It is because of these three great loves that I find the indie music site TheSixtyOne so amazing.  I originally heard about TheSixtyOne from a TechCrunch article and was blown away.

Here is a quick review of some of the best features of this site.

The Interface - The interface is beautiful in it’s simplicity.  The band has the ability to upload a picture that best represents them while their song is playing and that pic spreads the entire span of the browser.

Band Info - The information about the band appears in small partially transparent overlays that pop up throughout the song.  If you want to know the full info on the band you can click it, if you don’t you still learn some factoids about the band without interfering with the primary experience.

The Navigation - The navigation is minimal to keep from intruding on the main experience, but simple and intuitive so the user figures out how things work within a few seconds of interaction with the interface.  The “Info” overlays are clickable, and you explore bands by using the large Prev/Next arrows on the sides of the browser.  The main navigation is unobtrusive at the top right & the Action tools (Share, Fav, Download) are accessible from the toolkit lockup on the left side of the browser.

Additional Band Content - In addition to being able to write band info that appears in the previously mentioned overlays, the bands are able to upload additional content (Images, etc) that appear occasionally much like the info overlays.

The Variety - TheSixtyOne features bands that span all areas of music from SoCal to Folk.

“Wattup …braaaahhhhh?”

“Sometimes we just play concerts alone in the woods for the trees”

“One of these Sons of William is not like the others”

If you want more content and connection from TheSixtyOne you can also check out their Facebook Page or their blog, although from the dates on the posts for both of those it does not seem like they are very active.

TheSixtyOne is not a replacement for iTunes or Pandora.  You need those music options for on demand & preferred channel listening, but TheSixtyOne is definitely a beautiful vacation from those options when you want to find something new.

Hopefully the owners of TheSixtyOne will keep to their core offering and we never see them sellout and veer from that simple brilliance by adding stupid content like the crap that MTV spews these days.

I hope this review is helpful to any music lovers, and that more people and enjoy TheSixtyOne as much as I do.

I found a great Slideshare presentation today from Luckie that provides a nice look at how retail is using social by presenting 8 case study examples + some review commentary on each.

One of the strategist at Luckie, David Griner is the author of a blog called Social Path that is excellent.  It is one of my favorites in my blogroll and if you do not already follow it, I suggest you start.

As someone who is passionate about soccer (football/ futbol/ etc), and has played the game since I was 5 years old …it has always bugged me that in the United States soccer gets frequently labeled as wimpy, sissy, fluffy compared to other more American sports.  Anyone who has played the game knows that this is far from the truth and knows that soccer players are some of the toughest most in shape athletes in all sports.

So …”Thanks a lot!”, to the Guardian.co.uk for making this your front page feature image this morning.  That picture will definitely help to dispel the whole sissy sport myth.

A nice little bracket challenge from Fox Soccer Channel for 2010 World Cup.

Here are my awesome picks for who will get out of the first round + how the rest of the tournament will shake out.

Do people outside of the USA partake in the whole “march madness bracketology” thing too?

I came across this horrible product this morning while doing my morning blogroll reading (via AdFreak).  I continue to be amazed at the products that people will invent …invest in …and ultimately purchase.

I don’t see this product becoming the next Snuggie, but I am sure it will become a top seller in the wedding gag gift category.  If they made a doggie-bed version of this blanket, I would buy it for my gastrointestinally challenged dog.

Perhaps these guys should merge their business with the Butt Stench guys, and they could own the entire stink category.

A really great presentation by Arturo Joensuu that I found thanks to one of my favorite blogs Digital Buzz.

R.I.P. is probably a little strong, but not entirely inaccurate.  Social media, relationship marketing, converational marketing, transmedia, new devices like the iPad and the increasing adoption of mobile as the primary connection to the web ….all of these things are contributing to the devaluation of the original logic behind the mass media “yell the same message louder” old sales funnel.

The social web and the devices that we use to engage with it are changing the mindset of how people become aware, consider, and connect to brands.  I think that what this shift really represents is more of a reconciliation to how society connects as humans really, we just got used to the mass media approach to consuming information because that is all that was being offered.

I am stuck in Seattle thanks to 18 inches of snow dumped in VA last night — so along with two other stranded Martinites we killed some time today by going to see the highly anticipated movie Avatar.

All I can say is WOW.

I have a 5 year old so I see pretty much every animated movie that comes out, but Avatar blows all of them away by a mile.  The level of detail that is captured is amazing …the facial expressions, the eyes, the way the skin wrinkles or compresses/releases when touched, the flutter of a leaf from one of the plants in the Pandora jungles …I knew I was watching animation but seriously it was very hard to tell it apart from reality.

I had an opportunity to read a great article in Wired on one of my many flights this week about how Cameron created his own video/camera technology to be able to shoot this film.  He could look through the camera at the actors wearing the tights and the funny balls all over (like they do for gaming, etc) and not only does he see the actor’s avatar in the lens …he sees the virtual world of Pandora around him/her.  So, instead of simply capturing all the various movements of the character and then letting the programmer animation geeks do all the rest he was able to have the actors perform many of the scenes just like they would if they were shooting a regular film.  This must be one of the core reasons why it all looked so real, because it basically was a real human performing the actions under the watchful direction of Cameron.

“He started by hiring USC linguistic expert Paul Frommer to invent an entirely new language for the Na’vi, the blue-skinned natives of Pandora.”

“With the language established, Cameron set about naming everything on his alien planet. Every animal and plant received Na’vi, Latin, and common names. As if that weren’t enough, Cameron hired Jodie Holt, chair of UC Riverside’s botany and plant sciences department, to write detailed scientific descriptions of dozens of plants he had created. She spent five weeks explaining how the flora of Pandora could glow with bioluminescence and have magnetic properties. When she was done, Cameron helped arrange the entries into a formal taxonomy.”

They could have just stopped at incredible animation and it would have still been great.  But Cameron took this passion to the next level.  He hired linguists to develop the entire langage of Pandora — he hired botonists to create and formally document each and every plant on the ficticious planet.  This entire world is captured in a book that will allow people who loved the movie to explore all the details of Pandora as if they were exploring a real new planet/place.

This movie is a product of passion and it shows in the details.  This movie should win every award possible this year & I hope that Cameron takes this passion a step further and creates Pandora online.  He should create the entire world of Pandora as an online world and make it available to everyone for free.  He could be like Lucas and monetize every last pixel, but I think he could outdo Lucas by making it open to everyone and just making more movies (and a few action figures of course).

Simply amazing.

• @darightrev Thx Mark >> how are you doing? I hope all is well for you, fam, imc2. PH iPhone app is very cool, Scott outdid himself in reply to darightrev #
• @giovanni …not seeing any fields to submit your name & email address on the contest page …am I missing something? in reply to giovanni #
• @giovanni cool >> will check, thx in reply to giovanni #
• @giovanni …weird, now it is there (did not do anything …closed the browser and tried it again) in reply to giovanni #
• Social Seek – Very Cool (free) app agencies should be trying out. 1 ? though, …is the person who did the demo a kid? http://bit.ly/2tqiIV #
• How much did that meeting your were just in cost?? Use this to figure it out >> funny app http://bit.ly/NJpc7 #
• @bryanfuhr Thx for RT in reply to bryanfuhr #
• @conradlisco Thx for RT in reply to conradlisco #
• @darrellwhitelaw Thx for RT in reply to darrellwhitelaw #
• I just added myself to http://twitr.org Twitter Directory under #advertising #social-media #blogger #
• Really great interview with Razorfish Shiv Singh by Conversation Agent. http://bit.ly/1ClPCR #
• @Dave_Friedman Thx RT in reply to Dave_Friedman #
• @angelaconlon Thx for the RT Acon …what a cool site huh? Part Two should go up later this week in reply to angelaconlon #
• @andyrutledge Thx for the RT Andy …I was very impressed with this site. Part Two article should go up later this week in reply to andyrutledge #
• FTC is aiming for some truth in blogging http://bit.ly/rIDlG #
• Check out my new article >> New Online Grocery Alice.com Might be CPGenius – Part Two | ploked.com http://tinyurl.com/lq6b5x #
• An unfortunate case of Acronyms in Advertising …whoops http://bit.ly/4NQY4 #

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I am officially addicted to XtraNormal.  I have created a second animated short film, and at this point it is a bonafied series since there is a standing lead character + the theme seems to be a slightly nerdy advertising geek (ahem…me) that likes to talk to various outlandish individuals like clowns, ninjas, …pimps (I just leaked the next episode, ha) about innovative things happening in advertising and communications today.

Watch out Hollywood.  With the launch of episode #2 I am convinced that I am a hilarious screenwriter by the way.  Please watch and judge for yourself, ha.

I actually saw this about a month ago and forgot to blog, tweet, etc. about it.  I must have gotten sucked into some sort of fire at work and it slipped my mind.  I am so glad I came back across this video today because it is simply amazing. I am definitely not a bike guy (the BMX or the wannabe Lance Armstrong kind) but you do not have to be to watch this video and be captivated.  The dude featured in this video is Danny MacAskill, and is a freak of nature as far as balance and precision coordination goes.  Clearly I am not alone in my love for this video as it has over 4 Million views on YouTube at this point.

…Also the song selected for the video is badass too, which always helps.