Real Jenn, Virtual Jenn

Virtual Assistant Jenn is one of "the latest of many customer friendly innovations at Alaska.com." Real Jenn is not. Here is our conversation...

Whoop it up!

Adbusters has posted my short story "Whooping it Up in the Uncanny Valley" on its web site. It's much easier to read than the PDF I created awhile back. Enjoy!

This reminds me that I need to keep submitting my fiction. Since starting a full-time job, it's been hard to write, nonetheless send pieces out.
[LINK]

Reading at Google

If my postings on this blog have been scarce lately, it's because I've been working full-time as a copywriter for Google since June. In addition to having far less time for things like blogging, a lot of what I'm working on isn't exactly public at this time.

One of my favorite aspects of working at Google (there are many) is their Authors@ series. Every week, amazing authors of all stripes come and share their work and answer questions. Whereas I'd be hesitant to commit to a reading on a weeknight, I'm eager to spend my lunch hour listening and learning. And in this case, reading!

Last month, I was invited to join She's Such a Geek editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders, and fellow contributor (and Googler) Ellen Spertus, for an author event. You can catch this event and the others via Google's Authors@ YouTube channel. Enjoy!

The tune in, check out, read up round up

If you direct your attention to the upper right-hand corner of this blog, you'll see a brand new widget. It's a jukebox, playing tunes from my friend and former Razorfish colleague, Evan Sornstein's, own music label Dynamophone Records. Evan's got a great ear for melodic, electronic acts. If I were a music critic, I'd do a much better job describing the Dynamophone vibe. Fortunately, I don't have to. Because whenever you come to the fBlog, you can click play, adjust the volume, and hear for yourself. If you like what you hear, please show this small, independent label your support with a purchase or three.

Last month's Maker Faire was incredible in many ways, from the robot wars to the geek-lebrity sightings to the diverse creativity on display in the craft section. But the best part was visiting my friend Meri Brin's booth for her small press Fixed Orifice (that's me, her, and Mark Stramaglia of Wizard Master--speaking of friends making cool music--on the left there). I'm especially fond of the Spirograph t-shirts.

Incidentally, "All Fixed Orifice Press items are hand silkscreened, and created from recycled and salvaged items whenever possible. All items are limited edition - short runs of less than 30 for notebooks, 10 and under for t-shirts."


My first day of work in my brand-new job (rhymes with oogle) was capped by an event at the nearby Computer History Museum, where my friend John Alderman was signing his new book, "Core Memory," with photographer Mark Richards. This book captures the history of computer technology to date in a stunning series of images by Mark, accented by succinct historical summaries by John.

"Core Memory" was edited by my husband, Alan Rapp, whose been making his own splash in the blogosphere. He's now a regular feature of the Chronicle Books blog. In this week's post, he examines the notion of "radical transparency" for book publishing, using the recently announced BLDG BLOG book as an example. Needless to say, this is one feed I am definitely subscribed to.

Introducing Friendly Banner

On the rare occasion when I have clicked on a banner ad, it's typically been the result of trying to click on a content link and missing. Banner ads tend to be ignorable, at best, obnoxious and distracting at worst. So when given the task of helping create a banner ad campaign for Washington Mutual (or WaMu if you're nasty), through my current role as a copywriter at Avenue A | Razorfish, I was determined to create banner ads that even I would want to click on. In short, a different kind of banner altogether.

The result is "Friendly Banner," which I am proud to introduce here. Simple, funny, and context-savvy, Friendly takes the "suck" out of banner advertising.

Fat
Lost
Blinking problem
Hola (my personal favorite)
Easy money
Naked
Compliments
Kaching!
Refund
Thin
Joint checking
Tiny

And here's Landing Page:
Checking + Savings
ATM Machines
Customer Service
Online Banking
Tax Refund
Via Search

This campaign--which is the brainchild of yours truly and my wonderfully smart and talented collaborator, Associate Creative Director Evan Sornstein--has been a copywriter's dream come true. I've not only gotten to create and develop a wonderful character with a distinct voice, but I've gotten to use humor, and to address the audience with respect for their intelligence and Web-savvy. Wow.

The best part? It's working. I'm can't how well, but let's just say we're not getting angry calls from the client. Friends have emailed to report Friendly Banner sightings around the Web. On top of it all, we're getting wonderful feedback from the blogosphere.

Usermonkey says: "I saw a nicely designed banner ad for WaMu today and actually clicked it. I think the last time I intentionally clicked a banner ad was in 1999." [LINK]

At BrandflakesforBreakfast, the word is: This is great on a few levels:
1. A bank with a sense of humor is a bank that feels human.
2. Acknowledging an ad campaign as an ad campaign takes the edge off the sell.
3. It's entertaining. Copywriting, creative and programming all singing together.
[LINK]

Carol Hiller, on her MySpace blog, wonders, "Is this some craven attempt on the part of a 22-year-old copywriter/Flash developer to buddy up close enough to grab the money I keep under the mattress, for their 82-year-old Chairman of the Board's golden parachute fund?" (Answer: I'm 33, actually. And, you keep money under the mattress?) [LINK]

And Cup of Java writes: "This might be the best landing page I've ever seen...so far." [LINK]

Thanks, bloggers!

Last but in no way least, I want to give credit to the entire creative team at Avenue A | Razorfish, who've contributed their ideas, criticisms, humor, and hard work to this effort: Creative Director Luther Thie, fellow copywriters Kate McCagg and Margo Stern, Flash animators Thomas Lough and Brian Forstat, and associate designer Rhatia Carr, as well as client partner Peter Guagenti and all the wonderful media planners who've worked so hard on this. Incidentally, Avenue A | Razorfish was just named the No. 1 Interactive Agency for 2006 by Advertising Age. Woot!

This is just the beginning. Look for new Friendly Banners and other cool stuff soon.

Oh, and hey, I'm posting this of my own volition. So it's not, you know, WaMu or agency-lawyer approved. Yo.

THIS JUST IN:SmartBiz.com and BrandFlakesForBreakfast.com have published a joint blog post that's all about Friendly! They write: "It's friendly. You'd think that would be common sense in an ad campaign, but look around. Plenty of ads talk down to their customers, yell and scream to their customers, or even worse - bore their customers to death. Friendly wins." [LINK]

Gursky documents North Korean gymnastics

How to desribe the mind-blowing, exactingly choreographed, monumental-scale human spectacle that is North Korean gymnastics? I have only caught an astonished glimpse of its true glory on a pirated DVD of lamentable quality bought off of eBay for no small fee. Even so, words fail me. But the photographer Andreas Gursky is sharing this off-limits experience, through his megamegapixel, large-format images. I caught a glimpse of the work in the last issue of Wallpaper.

As the world's most collectable living photographer, Andreas Gursky has photographed a wide array of scenes: from the worker bees at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, seen from high above, to a remarkable neutrino observatory in Japan (Kamiokande, 2007) Now the photographer has captured North Korea's incredible Arirang Festival, featured as a spectacular gatefold in this month's issue of Wallpaper*, where 70,000 choreographed performers entertain 50,000 rapturous spectators.

Can't wait until they come to a gallery near me

Gursky!
Gursky!!
Gursky!!!
Gursy!!!!

Get the full scoop here.

My interview with Lee Gutkind, author of the new book, Almost Human: Making Robots Think, appears on Wired News today -- without a byline for some reason. Lee's book examines the subculture behind academic robotics. If that sounds boring it's not. As I write in the introduction, " He uncovers a surprising amount of action -- from the RoboCup, in which Sony Aibos modified by rival teams compete in soccer, to the barren landscape of the Atacama Desert in Chile, where roboticists put a prototypical Mars rover named Zoë to the test."

Here's a snip:

Wired News: A number of people in your book don't sleep, don't bathe. Is there something about robotics that appeals to this personality type, or does the work itself take over?

Lee Gutkind: You can't just do this for eight or 16 hours and walk away. Even debugging a program will take a whole day. So I think it takes a patient but obsessive personality. Don't forget also, it's a very male-oriented culture. There's not a lot of joking, not a lot of flirting, because there's no one to joke and flirt with. You're flirting with your robot is what you're doing.

WN: Although the field is overwhelmingly male-dominated, in your book we do meet a number of highly accomplished female roboticists. How are women influencing robotics?

Gutkind: Just look at Manuela Veloso. It took a woman in a sea of men to get the men to start talking to one another. She gave them a game to play, and she triggered off their testosterone and set them in a competition that brought them together. Would they have come together in a room at MIT or the White House to share their code? No, but to play a game and beat the pants off somebody from Stanford, that's another matter entirely. Similarly, Nathalie Cabrol, the NASA representative, got the scientists and the roboticists to work together and get a robot to do science.

[LINK]