Moving on over

In an effort to streamline my digital existence, Pixel x Pixel will now be found as dragonflyROAR.

Find me here: http://dragonflyroar.wordpress.com/

Trent Still Rocks

Got this great email from Trent Reznor today (we’re close pals). He wants feedback:

“As we’ve moved from the familiar world of record labels and BS into the unknown world of doing everything yourself, we’ve realized it would benefit us and our ability to interact with you if we knew more about what you want, what you like, what you look like naked, etc. I know it’s a pain in the ass but we’d truly appreciate it if you’d take a minute and help us out.”

What a novel idea – asking your fans for feedback – sublime.

AMC says Mad Men must not Twitter

For the last week or so Brad and I have been following the cast of Mad Men on Twitter. It was a weird not sure how this works kinda feeling. The characters were coming to life in our own world…only they have never heard of the Internet. It was hard to wrap your head around, but altogether fascinating to see what they were doing.

AdRants is now reporting AMC has asked Twitter to remove @don_draper and @peggyolsen immediately. While I understand AMC’s position, I also know how much fun we were having following the characters we’ve come to love. It’s a shame to keep these characters in a box. Are we ever going to reach a point where creativity is allowed to stay in its maverick, organic state?

The Process

This comes courtesy of Eddy – LOVE it.

Pushing Mobile

These push pins, encouraging walkersby to text to learn more about the particular area (this one is the Children’s Musuem), are pushing up all over Boston. Love that the city is embracing mobile technology…too bad it couldn’t get out of its way to provide free Wifi thoughout the city.

Seth Godin writes: “If you are willing to satisfy people with good enough, you can make just about everybody happy. If you delight people and create change that lasts, you’re going to offend those that hate change in all its forms. Your choice.” Classic client conundrum.

read more | digg story

The High-Five

Today is my father’s birthday. Or I guess I should say, it would have been.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time at a leading, private financial institution (my client) interviewing and coaxing smiles out of a dozen employees. While really tiring it’s been an incredibly fun, learning experience. These are a diverse group of people – who would have thought that the hot-shot, kid trader spent two-and-a-half years in the Peace Corps? Or that a managing director majored in Religion?

It’s been a fantastic thing to bridge the financial v. creative (read: us v. them). I have come to realize and appreciate that I am just as competitive as any financial analyst; have a great love for the “win” and thrive on the energy of fast-thinking. Really, I’ve come to understand that the “Heck yea!” of trusting your instinct and picking the right stock – is the same “Heck yea!” of knowing you nailed a big idea.

I bring this up to share the following learned fact: following talking sports, asking someone about their kids will always get them to smile. I watched a couple of Dads this week talk about their kids and well, today was a bit of a challenge to make it through with a smile.

So it was with a great amount of irony that I found myself unexpectedly running into one of my interviewees on the street this evening. He greeted me with a huge smile and words of appreciation for what it is I do. To understand this tremendous occurrence, understand this: the man is responsible for millions of dollars…the man moves the Market – the man is THE man…I’m a dork who occasionally has some ideas. But he was impressed; he was a little bit in awe. He high-fived ME.

As I crossed the bridge heading home, pondering “Really, that just happened?” I started to smile and think, “That was an out-of-the-blue courtesy of my Dad.”

Thanks Dad.

LocaModa launches a digital slot machine…in Times Square. Really? Really?? How cool is that! Read more about it at Jayne’s blog.

Word-Scramble on Steriods

Mobile technology is certainly changing the way we communicate. It is also changing the way we socialize and entertain ourselves. When my friends at LocaModa invited me out to see their new Wiffiti/BarCast screen in action, I looked forward to a few drinks and geeky conversation about technology. Instead I found myself in a heated word-scramble game.

Welcome to Jumbli, a multi-player boggle on steroids. The object of the game is to find words within the letters scrambled on the screen before time runs out. Once you find a word, you put it into a text message and send to a specified number. Highest scoring word wins.

I’m a fairly competitive person –well fairly may be an understatement – in any case, the scene became a shouting, texting, laughing experience. So you can imagine my excitement when I learned that this was only a mini-Jumbli.

Jumbli! actually lives in Times Square on a giant HD screen (corner of W 47th and Broadway). When a round starts you are playing against people in NYC. If a round isn’t live, you’re playing against others on the web.

We’re going to see more and more of these type of public multi-player experiences, especially as our mobile devices improve. My advice, start practicing.

The new, hot tactic seems to be pick you’re own ending story-telling (who didn’t love the Choose your Own Adventure books from the 80s).

For active users – check out 1 million monkees.com which allows writers (monkeys) to contribute different tangents/chapters to stories.

For those with more passivity in mind, check out Get the Girl by Twix, which allows users to choose how the protagonist behaves.