I spent a month out of the country. I called at&t (painstakingly rebranded from AT&T after billions of dollars) to get my Blackberry Pearl (out of warranty, crashes frequently, cracked screen) ready for the trip.

The first rep told me texts would be 50 cents either direction; I needed a $24.99 international data plan (by my average usage, I would have spent $500 on data without that $24.99 buffer), I could cancel the data plan immediately on return, and that she could not tell me what the rates were to different countries.

The data plan part surprised me. Glad I called ahead, first of all. Second, when you have international dialing plans, you should keep them on an extra month (it’s only a few dollars) to wait for the billing to hit. I was assured data was different and I could cancel immediately.

I transferred to the international rep, who could actually add the appropriate features, after 5 more minutes listening to obnoxious at&t ads (as opposed to, say, calming music). This rep told me texts would be free to receive and 50 cents to send; I needed the $24.99 international data plan, which I could cancel immediately upon return, and that rates were $0.99 to $1.99 to the countries I wanted to call, except for the UK, Italy and France, which were on a $0.59 promotion. She also directed me to the website where I could see more details.

I called this morning on my return. After the first 5 minutes of obnoxious at&t ads, I spoke to a third rep who confirmed I could cancel the data plan immediately, but then realized she could not remove it, so she transferred me to international.

The fourth rep told me she could cancel my international data plan, but that I should wait an extra billing cycle to cancel. This is because it takes time for the international carriers to tell at&t what the bill is.

1. Why should I believe the fourth rep and not the prior 3?

2. Why should the consumer pay for at&t’s billing process?

3. Why is the the consumer fucked either way? (remove international data plan –> pay hundreds in delayed charges. keep international data plan –> pay for an extra month of a service you no longer need because you are back in the US).

4. Why is there no accountability?

I have gotten financially screwed (in amounts $24.99 to $100) by Verizon, Sprint and at&t over the years. In each case I paid because a rep told me wrong information, but the carrier of course did not record those conversations to hold themselves accountable.

I think the carriers are a dying breed. They have systematically fucked their clients. (A recent report showed that 15% of their revenue is, on average, from overage minutes.)

Where will be the Netflix to my Blockbuster?

Who will be the next JetBlue / Southwest / Virgin America?

What is the barrier to entry for a customer-facing new carrier?

Speed Racer is all of those things. It’s also one of the most visually stunning movies I have ever seen. Behind the predictable melodramatic scenes, Disney-style moralism and Emile Hirsh’s effeminate sailor/hipster costuming , some absolute masterminds were at work at what I can best describe as real multimedia.

It’s one thing when Baz Luhrmann does good cinematography. Or Fellini. Take something as lollipop as Speed Racer and if it can evoke emotive force from visuals alone, it’s brilliant. It doesn’t piggyback on deep intellectualism or love or poetry. Just visuals.

In a typically bizarre New York evening, I walked the red carpet for the movie between Susan Sarandon and Fred Durst (?), watched it, ate a hot dog without the hot dog and hung out with a detective.

It’s 8:30pm on Wednesday. I took a break from my internet addiction and turned on the TV while I ate dinner. Keep in mind the only channels I get are the ones my antenna picks up, and as a result I have an unopened Slingbox sitting in my storage closet next to my laptop from 2000.

American Idol was on, and Jason Castro was on American Idol. This is Jason.

It was my first Idol moment.

He reminded me of someone from the Stanford hippie crowd, minus the ego. He played a version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with a ukulele. A version by a Hawaiian artist.

Of course if Idol had their shit together they’d publish that information immediately for people who are concurrently online and looking to find out more about the song.

With the iTunes ads plastered all over the Idol site you’d think they would offer it as a pay-to-purchase. Logical, no?

I am not an Idol fan. I will probably not watch another episode or part of an episode this entire season. The rest of the episode is playing while I type this and I’m not into it.

But if I could subscribe to Jason Castro’s performances on the show, and have them delivered to me, be it via Facebook, Twitter, gmail, RSS, YouTube… wherever… I would.

Idol, for all its massive success, is missing the digital opportunity. Jason Castro’s page doesn’t let me watch his previous performances, and when I tried to check out his videos, I got this bullshit expandable Ford Edge ad that refuses to close unless I click on it. (ARE YOU SERIOUS, FORD?)

I clicked on “Add to Friends,” and a lame message showed up to join MyIDOL. Not going to happen. Ford ad still up.

Then I found one of his performances, and finally got rid of the Ford ad.

Why isn’t it easier for me to see his past videos?
Why don’t they all play in sequence until I hit “stop”? (one useful function of real TV).
Why hasn’t Idol extended its digital tentacles into all the sites and services people online actually use?

Slap a Ford pre-roll on the videos instead of the bullshit expandable frozen ad that ensures I will never again visit americanidol.com.

Take advantage of the fact that I wanted to subscribe to Jason. That way FOX wins a new pair of eyeballs (that they would have never had on TV) and better, a recurring set of eyeballs that will watch his new video every time it hits my inbox (whichever inbox that is).

Better still, even though I only watch a fraction of the Idol broadcast, I’m a more engaged and passionate viewer because I’m watching my favorite part. That’s what we do with TV anyway—watch the pieces we want.

Take it further still and suggest other videos I might enjoy.

Do all that and you’ve got a distributed digital revenue stream for Idol’s broadcast content.

What we have now is simply a crappy digital experience.

Oh, that and FOX’s Hulu.com joint venture with NBC. Maybe FOX should contract out the Hulu guys to fix the Idol site?

A lot of the big media guys talk about how tough their lives are and how they can’t make up enough money with digital distribution that they are losing with people fleeing the TV for better things to do.

Seems like they’re leaving some obvious opportunities on the table.

In the meantime, go Jason! I won’t see you again or vote for you but you rock!

UPDATE:

I went back to Google and found this Jason Castro fansite. Then checked out the chat room. Read below:

I took their advice, googled “Jason Castro rainbow,” and found this blog, with YouTube video already up.

Still no word on whose “Rainbow” version it was. Glad to see the bloggers have it together. Guess what, no brand advertising on the fan site or live blogging site. Isn’t that where the marketers want to be?

Solution: a Swiss fire department rap video:

Duly noted, another example of cross-culture pollination via YouTube. Duly noted, they make fun of the effeminately gay guy.

But what’s really cool here is the following. In the old paradigm, if you want to get a message out to people, you craft something general-purpose and bland and you push it out to a huge audience, hoping people watch it. (think TV commercials). It’s called pushing a message out.

In the new paradigm, you craft your message (or advertisement) as entertainment, you make it specific to an audience, and you let people pull it in.

Now more than ever, people are going to watch what they want to watch. They are not limited to a few dozen TV channels and scheduled programming. So who do you want to watch, and what are you going to give them?

(via this blog)

The Top 10:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Paris Hilton
4. Naruto
5. Beyonce
6. Lindsay Lohan
7. Rune Scape
8. Fantasy Football
9. Fergie
10. Jessica Alba

(Adult search terms and company names are removed from the list. Otherwise we might see something more like this… with “Yahoo” surpassing “sex” as the most popular Google search.)

I used to point to how more people vote for American Idol than for the US presidency as an indicator of American culture. Somehow that seems so… insignificant in light of this list.

And if there is any doubt left that we are not the most cultured pumpkins on the planet, I present the Top 10 Google searches in France for October 2007:

1. sncf (national rail service)
2. fnac (cultural products retailer)
3. meetic (online dating)
4. tecktonik (new dance trend)
5. assedic (public fund for unemployed)
6. lequipe (sports magazine)
7. tf1 (private TV channel)
8. eurosport (sports cable TV channel)
9. michelin (pneumatic industrial)
10. air france(national airline)

Brazil gets my vote for the most random Top 10 (also Google, October 2007):

1. fusca tuning (car tuning for VW bug)
2. aracaju (city in Brazil)
3. saci (Brazilian folklore character)
4. zeus
5. popeye
6. mensagens de natal (Christmas messages)
7. vanessa hudgens
8. gwen stefani
9. lotus
10. bart simpson

More countries here.

Somehow the origin of the term “Black Friday” has less to do with retailers entering the black (the biggest US retailers turn a profit every quarter), and more to do with early descriptions of the throngs of shopper traffic by cab and bus drivers. (source)

How throngs of traffic conjures up the term “black” is a bit beyond me, but it is precisely that traffic that is pushing more and more people to forgo the 5am sales and just shop online.

And with that, Black Friday is giving way to Cyber Monday.

According to this eMarketer report, US shoppers spent $530 million this year on Black Friday, and $730 million on Cyber Monday.

Fun (but intuitive) factoid for employers: 60% of those dollars were spent from work.

There is something socially and psychologically really fucked up about this. First, wedgie-proof underwear are about as conceptually efficacious as calling antacids a solution for eating poorly and excessively. Wedgie-proof underwear don’t stop the wedgie (or the bullying and psychological/physical aggression that precede it) but they make it hurt less. Antacid remedies don’t do anything to solve the problem of excessive and poor eating, but they make it hurt less. And someone’s profiting from their sale!

Then again, this is the same country that systematically makes it more affordable for us to buy processed foods (by subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup) then healthy things like… vegetables. (NY Times op-ed here, by the Omnivore’s Dilemma author). So that medical procedures are the “remedy” for unhealthy lifestyles, malnutrition and obesity. Makes sense! Now go eat!

But because they are adorably literal as only kids are, check out Jared and Justin, both 8, for an awkwardly hilarious demonstration of how wedgie-proof underwear work:

Thaks to Geekologie for the video find.)

Notice how coverage stops literally at the Mexico border:

Why does the data stop there?

(update sometime later: Apparently the border fence largely stopped the fire from spreading south, with Baja California losing about 60 homes. How ironic!)

Most important, you have updated contact information for all of your contacts. This is crucial to keep in touch in an industry (advertising, interactive media) where people are switching jobs more frequently than (insert lame analogy.. more frequently than Pamela Anderson is switching husbands? Than Britney switching hair extensions? Etc).

I have maintained for almost three years that LinkedIn is missing one HUGE, OBVIOUS thing that is fundamental to a social network: photos. In an effort to project as professional an image forth as possible, LinkedIn has gone all this time without profile photos, perhaps treating profile photos with the same disdain that people have for photos on business cards: highly effective for real estate agents and budding actors, not sophisticated enough for the rest of us.

This line of reasoning is silly and ineffective. Social networks need photos, even more so for business. On a tangentially related note, rumors have been circulating that Facebook will replace LinkedIn or render it obsolete once they enable users to have multiple profiles (eg. Julie for friends, Julie for family, Julie for work).

Today LinkedIn changed. Congratulations!

Last night for example I made an increasingly rare trip to 27th St and wound up putting pink sparkly stickers on the bouncer who tried to play tough sweaty guy on my way in. Why was I carrying stickers? How did they stick despite the sweat? Etcetera.

On the subject of self-important irony, here’s the Hipster Olympics. I found it on my Facebook feed:

I was at the Whitney Museum a couple of weeks ago for the Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era exhibit and started to get nostalgic for not being my parent’s generation and a hippie. Unless hipsters are the new hippies. Were the hippies as self-absorbed? Am I happier just extracting what I want (occasional Phish, Regina Spektor)?