{{myquote|Pigott’s Law of Web Publishing: The instant gratification of blogging makes it easy to skirt reality or even outright lie – but if trees are going to die, let’s tattoo them with the truth.}}
Archives for June 2007
Flight Tracker
Posted on June 22, 2007 Written by
It’s great to be home for a while… no extended travel anywhere on the near horizon.
That’s a good thing, as I’ve got kids’ birthdays to worry concern happily conjure in July and August. It’s also a good thing because I almost got used to living out of a suitcase.
I knew travel would be an issue with the new job. Enough of an issue that had it been offered a year earlier, I wouldn’t have accepted. The kids are a little older though, and remember me when I come home. Mostly.
I added a little feature to the sidebar. Each of these icons represents a flight I’ve been on since January 1st. Thirty-one of them since the start of this blog. At some point, if I get really bored, I’ll add roll-over effects that give you information about each specific flight. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, travel[/tags]
An Inconvenient Irony
Posted on June 19, 2007 Written by
Al Gore is angry at all the attention Paris Hilton is getting. From The Sun:
“The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton. We have to ask ourselves what is going on here?”
Sadly, Paris Hilton is a figment of our collective imagination. She is a celebrity without merit. A star without a firmament. An empress with no clothes. She is the product of a culture that places so much value and credibility with fame, that we can take a cause seriously only after it’s been adopted by someone famous. Like these Live Earth concerts, for instance… no one cares about saving the planet until the Chili Peppers and Madonna an-
Oh. Snap!
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Live Earth, Paris Hilton, Al Gore, celebrity, activism, pop culture[/tags]
Anagram Maker
Posted on June 16, 2007 Written by
Thanks to Scott over at the Media Orchard, for finding me the Internet Anagram Server.
Without his help, I’d have never known that “Media Orchard” was really just a re-spelling of “Admired Roach.” You know – that adorable little pest that you can’t seem to shake.
There must be truth to these – as “Occam’s RazR” yields “Czar’s Macro,” loosely translated as “The shortcut fit for a king!” That’s making better communication simple.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Scott Baradell, Media Orchard, wordplay[/tags]
More on my pet project
Posted on June 16, 2007 Written by
I’ve still been plugging away in my quest to bring online tools and social media to the realm of disaster relief.
Here is a message I recently posted on the Red Cross Online Disaster Portal – which is being hosted at WordPress.com for the time being.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The links there roll back to my webspace – partly because you can’t upload mp3’s directly to WordPress.com – and partly because I am using a php-based link tracker to follow the downloads.
The other piece of this project is still in Beta. (I’ve been waiting to say that for a while, heh heh…) The Red Cross Twitter channel is open. We’ll push that out in selected trials for evacuations and such, but we want to limit the traffic at first. We don’t want to establish it as a primary channel until we’re sure the traffic volume won’t crash Twitter.
The idea is that people in evacuation zones could “follow” the Red Cross Twitter feed from their cell phones, and find out about shelter locations and service delivery sites.
Please let me know what you think – or if you’d like to help us test some of this stuff.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, American Red Cross, Red Cross, disaster relief, communication, social media, Twitter, WordPress[/tags]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Misdirection Redirected
Posted on June 15, 2007 Written by
It’s amazing how much you can learn from your mistakes.
I’ve now cracked the code on my own site, and have established proper redirection from the old location to the occamsrazr domain.
This means that old links will eventually find their way to the proper post. My rankings will take a hit – but a small one. While I was at it, I went ahead and skipped up to WordPress 2.2.
Those of you still on Blogger or another platform – come to the light… all is well. I can help you move…
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, WordPress, blogging[/tags]
Plating
Posted on June 14, 2007 Written by
Somewhere down the line, there will be a rant about nouns that verbify, but that will have to wait.
While on one of my recent trips, I was struck by an observation: my food has suddenly gotten fancier. This would be easy to explain if it were a simple matter of giving up McWendy King for actual pay-at-the-table restaurants. But no, I can state for the record that my food – in presentation alone – is getting fancier.
I blame the “Iron Chef” series from the food network. I even found myself joking with colleagues that this particular establishment would have to work harder to get a full “5” from me on ‘plating.’ “Plating,” of course, being the judging criterion encompassing the visual aesthetic of the collective ensemble. Or – for those of you who aren’t interested in looking up those words – the cooking equivalent of the Swimsuit Competition.
I can only guess that restaurants worth their salt (and only a fresh-ground sea salt will do) are banking that more of us are aware of this notion of “plating,” and are doing their best to ratchet up to the new expectation. Not that poor decoration and placement will cause me to walk out on my prime rib. It won’t. But a little attention to detail goes a long way. 
It makes the difference between “carefully stacked pork medallions, arranged over a mound of creamed potatoes, with a pound-sign shaped cross-hatch (#) of asparagus lovingly woven across the top. I suppose that if my food is going to touch, they’d better prove it was Intelligent Design, and not accidental evolution caused by my server’s tectonic arm movements.
(Note – the picture above was not my meal. I did a Google Image search for “plating iron chef” and this pic was the second that popped up. I had already written the (#) line. Eerie.)
So, apparently I have been slow on the uptake, but I can see this trend has been gaining steam. I’m sure there is a generation of chefs that now feel empowered to be creative, but there is soon the very real threat that this will be considered a new expectation – a standard part of service instead of something unique.
The lesson for marketers – or anyone else who is selling something (like a message) – is stay alert to the demands, expectations, and intelligence of your clientèle. If your customers are getting smarter about how your service can be done, they will have more stringent expectations about how it will be done.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, marketing, Iron Chef[/tags]