AdVerve 56 - Get Whirled with Joe Sabia.

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Joe Sabia of SF-based Whirled,  of Rockmelt demo vid, zombie speeding and Mad Men cigarette fame, joins us for some good clean all-natural fun. What’s the difference between Vimeo and YouTube? Why plug a manifesto? What makes Tumblr so awesome?

We get to the heart of what makes something catch an audience's eye, why mediocrity might not be so bad ... and why the internet may be the best thing that ever happened to really boring people. Also, Joe busts out the Morse Code chops. It's a riot in dots and dashes.

AdVerve 55: Tryptophan! Santabration! ...and Airport Frisks.

That yearly bacchanalia of peace on earth and goodwill to men.

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We get you in the holiday spirit with the curious origins of Thanksgiving and some pre-Christmas foreplay. Also, Bill manages to squeeze in a full-sized rant about the new TSA body scans while Angela tries desperately to reel the conversation back to tinseltown and the roots of the Christmas stocking. (Not what you learned in school! But probably even less true.)

We sorta do never quite do get around to making that “thankful” list. (Although Santa knows we tried.)

Also in the confession booth: the worst Christmas presents we ever got. Email us yours!

Linkle-toes:

- The alleged origins of the Christmas stocking.
- Muslims Wearing Things.
- Full-body scanarama! A gift from a grateful nation.
- There used to be two Black Fridays.
- Deep-fried Thanksgoodness!
- Watch out for fire though.
- TSA scanner man.
- Battle: Los Angeles.

AdVerve 54: Monster Media

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Culture journo Carolina Miranda (@cmonstah), the magnificent brains behind C-Monster.net, WNYC's Gallerina and the Perfect City documentary, joins us for some high-meets-low culture fun and games. She chats us up about the scariest road in Peru, what she looks for in a would-be tourist attraction, the changing face of compensation and expectations for writers in the tech age, and journalism’s no-fly zone... if it even has one anymore.

Plenty of twists, turns and giggles along the way. Miss it at your inner wanderluster's peril.

Image from Carolina's photo diary: When Classicism Meets the Northern Peruvian Coast.

Linky do-dahs:
- Keith Olbermann gets a mini vaca.
- Carolina on the future of freelance journalism.

- Her Huffpo/Slate response. (Scroll down four or five comments.)
- More scary road fun.

AdVerve 53: Q to the A, Take 1

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Here’s something we might do every so often, particularly when the Almighty Internet seems to be burning with curiosity. This episode we took your questions. Any questions. All of them.

So here we tackle visa issues, what dream guest we’d have on (with no option of refusal), whether we need digital advertising, the drivers license test in Sweden, bullies, Cheez-Its versus Cheese Nips, whether the nature of the machine corrupts potentially good Presidents, if product placement has become the creeping Kudzu of all potentially cool things ... and why we don’t have a Facebook fan page. (Yet? Dunno.)

Also, we tell the one chocolate-peanut butter story you shouldn’t tell if you want to make friends at ad:tech.

It’s a marathon gamut. For next time, send us more of your questions.

Linky doo dahs:

- Whirled. That’s the agency that did “Every Cigarette Smoked in Mad Men.” (This is also the agency of Joe Sabia, who interrupted Angela on gchat mid-podcast with something to the effect of, “GIVE ME A SHOUT-OUT! YOU WON’T, YOU’T,” followed by what he promised would be a haiku but was actually just a bad joke. ;P WE LOVE YA JOE.)
- Humanoid robots rehearsing kiss scene.
- Interview with McDonald's head chef.
- French visa information for residents in or around San Francisco. (That’s where Angela started her process.) To live/work in France, contact your local French embassy, as all processes will vary by region.
- Donut cheeseburgers. That had nothing to do with anything, actually. We just had to share.

(Image.)

AdVerve 51: Ignoranima

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No guest this week, so we springboard in 58 different direction as we often like to do. We kick off with Maureen Dowd's article on how Sarah Palin makes ignorance chic, fertilizing the warm podcasty earth for the blossoms of debate: portrayals of women in power, patriotism and American governments/companies, fameballing on the coat-tails of Steve Jobs and all those goddamn strikes that are always happening everywhere (but especially in France).

We also steamroll our rage tractors into The Social Network, the Zuckerberg factor, and if Aaron Sorkin is man-biased.

Take that venty venti latté to go, kids. It's wild in this here West.

Wünderbar linkaroos:

- Making Ignorance Chic
- (...speaking of,) Chelsea Kate Isaacs tries repositioning self as drunk sexy vlogger. A new ego's born every minute, and this one's full-grown!
- Aaron Sorkin responds to Ken Levine's review of The Social Network, and assertions that it was misogynistic. (His response is in the comments and worth the read.)
- The Niqabitches

AdVerve 50 - Evaporatively Cooling SocNets

Douglas Coupland, warning you about Street Map-infused dreams.

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Deb Wiseman (@wisey) of Media Monitors revisits us from Down Undah. We play 5 x 5 x 5 and explore such existential topicality as dystopic futurists spinning social media into a hell-bound handbasket, Australian do-overs (including this show, which we tried and failed to record two weeks ago), Gap's logo takeback, cyber bullying and out-of-closet suicides.

There's also a little bit of politicking and this whole evaporative cooling thing, deftly applied to Silicon Valley and then hippies.

Link badness:

- Douglas Coupland's Dictionary of the Near Future (NY Times)
- A Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next 10 Years (Globe and Mail)
- The Evaporative Cooling Effect
- Ben Elton's Blind Faith
- TwittaBling

When Email Can Screw You! - @AdLawGuy Talks Shop

Not always, honey bunny.

In case you missed it, @adlawguy's advice from last week's e-newsy was "Don't Put It In Writing." It cites the one time in your creative career you should think twice before leaving a paper trail behind. The situation isn't as rare as you'd think, and it's good to keep in mind, especially in these creatively derivative times. :P (Former guest Joe La Pompe can talk to you all about that subject.)

A snippety-snip:

While most lawyers will rightly tell you to put everything in writing, there is one area in which you definitely want to think twice about leaving a paper trail.

When I get an email that says “We want to do a take-off on Star Wars, can we do it?”

My immediate response is "Not anymore."

Here's a copy of the newsletter if you want to read the rest. (You can also listen to guest Debbie Morello go into JOURNO RANT mode! It's our favourite state of being.)

Stuff like this can only be had chez the hallowed AdVerve newsletter. Don't miss out! Subscribe to our email updates and be the toast of your next pahtee!

AdVerve 49 - Immediacracy

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Everyone has access to any story – or do they? People want it right now more than they want it right — maybe. Photojournalist Debbi Morello adds a different perspective on those questions in what can be only called stream of consciousness media rant meets technology with a journalism chaser. Not since Esquire labeled The View’s Hot Topics “a mesmerizing ballet of passion and ignorance” has a show description been more apt. CAUTION: JOURNOS WILL CRINGE. We also check off life during wartime via Deb’s compelling lense.

Linkage:

– Spot.us
– Angela is hanging out at MIPCOM.
– Huffington Post loses more free labor.

AdVerve 48 - The Renegade Education Confessional

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Matt McDermott (@MMMcDermott) of Renegade, the Renegade Agency Confessional and the Baltimore Sun stops by to talk smack about the educational system. Along the way he tells a few hoary stories about his own experience teaching English at a hard-up Baltimore school. Solutions: we discuss them. It ain’t easy. And how does this apply to advertising? EVERYTHING APPLIES TO ADVERTISING, LADIES AND GENTS.

Worth catching: racial tensions, knife fights, and more irrational squid paranoia that leads nowhere but a higher decibel level.

Linkie winkies:

- Marlboro school uniforms.
- The analysis on Professor Ogbu's analysis of the "rich, black ... and flunking".
- INVERTEBRATE GOBBLES SHARK, WHICH MAKES IMPOSSIBLE DOLPHIN NOISE.
- Caustic Soda Podcast.
– Matt from the doc Hard Times At Douglass High.

AdVerve 47 - Edward Boches Deconstructs the Universe

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Of social, that is. Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer at Mullen, Edward Boches talks Diaspora, that newfangled social node thing hell-bent on saving us from the privacy oblivion that is Facebook. But are we really that oblivious, or is it just the clueless ones that are all freaked out? You gotta KNOW THE CODE like those brassy twenty-somethings (whose women will selectively block access to your Foursquare Player Badge).

Traditional frameworks for social media, recreational activity, thinking about agencies, even for how our brains function are unraveling ... and we unravel right along with it.

Linkage:

– Super Sad Love Story
– Mashable Jobs client on slave quest.
– Creativity Unbound (Edward’s blog)
– @EdwardBoches