In studying great advertising, we see visions of brightness: lightness, darkness, and the colored shapes of textures among the silences. We hear sounds and detect impulses awakening our inclinations to touch, engaging with our moods, our hearts, and our minds. Those surprise juxtapositions create meaning and tell stories that touch us. It is what makes us humans. They are our connections with what is good, what is wonderful in our world.

And great advertising can bring us to that wonderful place.

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The web is bulging with truth and lies. How can we tell who and what’s for real out there?

People and companies can be whoever they want to be online. They can pick and choose their best features and hide their flaws. A company’s website is a lot like a MySpace profile if you think about it — showing only what they do best and only showing the “good” photos. And MySpace members are basically branding themselves — using video, imagery, music, and paying consideration to wardrobe and copywriting. Someone who’s ugly can look gorgeous with the right photo. And a company that sells complete crap can look very polished and slick. Oh, and beauty products can demonstrate absolute “miracles.”

Oh sure, one could argue that this is no different than it used to be. Advertising has always been over-promising; companies have always been showing their “good side.” Consumers should be used to it. Right?

I’m not so sure. Yes, sometimes it’s very obvious that a company is over-promising, for example on the wrinkle cream image above that I found on a flashing banner ad. But what about comparing insurance companies or buying a book? What about meeting someone from an online dating service? Filing your taxes? How do we know who’s telling the truth?

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Account Services or Creative Services, black or white, peanut butter or jelly, heaven’s forbid mix any of the two or you’ll get a whole lot of gray (and some brownish, purpleish sort of color). This is often how the world has spun. Well, it’s time to stop that world and spin it the other way. I came to Azul 7 destined to be a creative person, a writer with a passion to be heard, a journeyman with only one destination planned; the next ‘creative genius.’ Now, I can only stop in awe to that fact that I’m warming to this whole Account Services “stuff.” I’m not quite passing the buck on ever becoming some sort of writer, (even if that only consists of love letters and poems to Brett Favre, yes that’s right) but I’ll tell you things could not have blended so perfectly together if I tried. This whole idea I was engrained with about Account and Creative being so far removed that, “you’d better pick what you want now or you’ll never find yourself on the other side,” doesn’t seem to have any validity for me anymore.

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As I continue to look at the creative landscape — advertising agencies, design firms and technology companies — I continue to ask myself, how is it that a hardware company is teaching the creative industry how to be innovative? Ten years ago we were doing some pretty cool things with online tools. Creating sites with innovative tools like Flash. Building multifaceted pages that provided layers of content that served up text, multimedia tools, personal user interfaces, and video that was not only compelling, but also useful in its teaching.

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Little more than a month after removing their shows from iTunes, NBC appears ready to kiss and make up with Apple and return their lineup to the iTunes Music Store.

No NBC shows are on the store yet, but it seems that this would be forthcoming with the 2nd half of the TV season about to start.

This could’ve been a negotiating tactic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if NBC relented seeing as how Jobs was able to strike a deal with all the major movie studios, not to mention the enormous success of the iPhone.

Read the original article on TechCrunch.

With Apple’s release of MacBook Air, has cloud computing finally gone mainstream?

Cloud computing, or where computing is moved from personal computers to an application server or a collection (”cloud”) of computing resources, is a hot topic these days. Amazon made waves with its EC2 and S3 services, and Google’s been in the news this past year with its Google File System.

But up until the MacBook Air, the closest “cloud-like” devices available to the non-technical user were the Asus eeePC and gOS. And despite the tremendous progress that has been made on Linux distros in the areas of user interface design and technical ease of use, those devices are still on the fringes of comfort level for the average Joe.

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Dance and technology have been a part of my life since I can remember. At the age of three, I started taking dance classes, playing games on the family Apple II and Atari 2600, and watching MTV. It wasn’t until I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison that I started to combine dance and the wonderful world of geek-dom.

My first real test of putting a lot of elements and people together was my senior honor thesis performance, My Name is Alice (2001). It was a post-modern cabaret at Club Inferno in Madison, WI. The live performance included original recorded music, projected video in various places throughout the club, a moving photo gallery, and a sound instillation.

My second, even larger test, talking string (2006), was my thesis performance for my Master of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University. This twenty -minute performance incorporated camera-based sensing as well as bend sensor and push button sensing technology, Cycling `74s Max/MSP and David Rokeby’s softVNS visual programming systems, MakingThings’ Teleo, all which controlled the mixing of the sound score in real time.

During these two projects and the smaller ones that surrounded them, I never thought of project management in the sense that I know it today. The closest I got to managing any of these performances was setting up rehearsals, telling people when and where they had to be for tech and dress rehearsal, as well as the performances. Other than that there was probably some sort of timeline hidden somewhere. I know that my MFA committee made me put timelines together for the performance and dissertation document.

When I first met with Chris Cortilet for an informational interview he started talking about how they were looking for a project manager and with my background, I would fit into that role well. I had never thought of myself as a project manager in a traditional sense, but now looking back at how I kept a day planner at my hip throughout college, I realized that this was what I was doing, even if I was not creating Gantt charts in Microsoft Project 2007.

The best part of being a Project Manager at Azul 7 is that I can be around all of these creative people that inspire me every day. I also get to use some of my expertise when it comes to the video work we create for ourselves and our clients.

Unfortunately, we’ve had the first buffalo/car collision in the State of MN this week. We at Azul 7 are happy to say that it was not our Buffalo. He is safe and sound and will be back for more posts.

At MacWorld this morning Steve Jobs announced the fabled “MacBook Air”. We picked up early tidbits from the MacWorld blog. Here are some of the specs:

- Crazy thin - ranging from 0.8-1.2″
- Crazy light - less than 3 pounds
- All wireless - Apple stuffed 802.11n inside this beauty
- No optical drive - install Apps via CD through an application called “Remote Disk”
- 80GB HD standard, 64GB solid state drive optional (should be great for battery life!!)
- Full size, backlit keyboard, multi-touch mouse pad, and iSight camera

The new MacBook Air ad is up on Apple.com: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/#ad

One day before the highly touted Macworld 2008, Apple unveiled its newest promotional grabbing headline on it’s website apple.com. From an article on Wired’s Gadget blog late Monday:

“An Apple insider told Wired today that the company’s new ultraportable, expected to be seen in public for the first time tomorrow, has an extremely thin profile and is shaped like a teardrop when closed — thicker at the top behind the screen, tapering at the bottom behind the keyboard.

“It’s unbelievably thin,” said the source.”

“There’s Something in the Air” is a reference to the expected MacBook ultraportable laptop that’s been rumored for months all over the Internet. The Wired article speculates that the “MacBook Air” will do away with wired technology altogether, opting instead for wireless connectivity via WiFi, 3G (through AT&T), bluetooth, or a combination of all three.

We won’t be at Macworld but will be watching online. to see what kind of goodies Steve and Co. bestow on the rest of us.

Check out the original Wired.com blog entry.