You Never Get To Taste the Bread

David Carr, on the illusory nature of online relationships, as exemplified through a recent dinner he had with Clay Shirky:

As it turns out, Mr. Shirky became very good at bread eating at a young age, so his mother decided that he should also be good at bread making. We all chewed on the bread as Mr. Shirky told the story of learning how to make bread as a 10-year-old.

Now, he could have told that story in a blog post or in an e-mail chain, but it became a very different story because we were tasting what he talked about. The connection in an online conversation may seem real and intimate, but you never get to taste the bread. To people who lead a less-than-wired existence, that may seem like a bit of a “duh,” but I spend so much interacting with people on the Web that I have become a little socially deficient.

Needing/Getting

Once again, OK Go has outdone themselves with a creative new music video that pushes the limits of what’s possible in the medium:

Car and Driver has a great “making of” feature on the insane amounts of work that went into this.

Obama Reverses Positions on SuperPACs

Sad that it’s come to this, but I understand the necessity:

Aides said the president had signed off on a plan to dispatch cabinet officials, senior advisers at the White House and top campaign staff members to make clear to donors that they should support Priorities USA Action, the leading Democratic “super PAC,” whose fund-raising has been dwarfed by Republican groups. The new policy was presented to the campaign’s National Finance Committee in a call Monday evening and was set to be announced Tuesday.

“We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” said Jim Messina, the manager of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules. Democrats can’t be unilaterally disarmed.”

Still, it’s not an unprecedented move, given Obama’s similar reversal in 2008. Principles are nice, but apparently in the end, all that really matters in this system is winning.

My Favorite Aperture Presets

Presets. They are the poor man’s Photoshop actions. A decent preset can totally change the mood of a photograph with the click of a button. It can make it into something unique or consign it to the failure pile.

I’ve recently been on the lookout for some filters/presets/actions/whatever to take my photographs to the next level. In the course of my journey, I bought the Flare app for my Mac and found it to be a colossal waste of money. While reviews stated it was great for beginners and adequate for professionals, I found their preset filters to be amateurish and unpleasant. Many of them mimicked the effect of having an old film camera, complete with emulsion spots and grainy texture. This might be fine for photos I produce playing around with my iPhone, but I would never think of presenting anything produced by Flare for a client.

Thus, I retreated back into the arms of my current photo app of choice, Aperture 3 for Mac, and tried to find some decent presets to work within it. It’s a minefield out there when it comes to finding decent presets. A Google search for “Aperture presets” turns up spam site within spam site, and most of the sites I came across felt as sketchy as hell. That being said, I did find one (XposurePro) that, despite its spartan appearance, actually had some pretty decent stuff for sale (you can pay via Paypal, for those who are wary of site security, as I am).

After copious searching and experimentation, I’ve arrived at a tentative list of my favorite presets (click to enlarge before/after):

Toy Camera – Alright, this one’s kind of a cheat because it comes with Aperture, but I’ve consistently found it to be a good go-to if I want to punch up my images. Increased vibrancy and a hardcore vignette make the blues and reds in your images really shine.

Monster Punch – This preset puts a lot of emphasis on Edge and Edge Sharpening. The result is a photo that pops, while still looking quite professional. While this preset is quite Warm and its Tint borders on a bit too purple for my tastes, it is a great starting point. It also reminds me of my colleague Tammy Swales’ photography style, and that’s never a bad thing. Monster Punch is available for free.

Vintage Fashion – Much preferable to Aperture’s default Vintage preset, Vintage Fashion gives a glamorous, old-school feel without making everything feel washed out. Vintage Fashion is available from Xposurepro for $2.99.

Retro Vogue – There are a lot of apps that purport to give you a retro/vintage look, but few do it as subtly and with as much grace as the Retro Vogue preset. The colors in Retro Vogue are a little bit punchier than those found in Vintage Fashion, but they still look fantastic. I can tell this is going to be a preset I’m going to return to again and again in the future. Retro Vogue is available from Xposurepro.com for $2.99.

Woody Harrelson Gets Chased Out of Reddit

Woody Harrelson is starring in a new drama called Rampart. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard it is pretty solid.

A few days ago, some PR wizards decided to use Reddit’s “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) community to do a little publicity for Rampart. They created a page for him that read as follows:

Hi Reddit, it’s Woody here. I’m in New York today doing interviews for my new film RAMPART, which opens in theaters on February 10th. I’ll be checking in from 3-4EST today and will get to as many of your questions as I can, so start asking now! Be back soon.

A deluge of questions followed, as is typical for these AMAs. However, either Harrelson or the PR people running his account were instructed to only answer questions about Rampart (or in ways that referred explicitly to Rampart). In fact, if you read some of his answers, they sound like they’re coming straight out of a press kit for Rampart. As a result, Harrelson ignored the vast majority of other non-related questions, thus violating the “spirit” of Reddit’s AMA section.

Subsequent to this was a Reddit backlash the likes of which has rarely been seen. Reddit was outraged (OUTRAGED!) that Harrelson had attempted to use the site to brazenly promote his new film. But while others have done this sort of promotion in the past (e.g. Louis CK), Harrelson’s attempt struck the community is totally inauthentic and blatantly self-serving. The site is now awash with meme pictures of Harrelson, unpleasant trivia about Harrelson’s family, as well as rumors of some kind of sexual liason that Harrelson ostensibly participated in with a high school student in LA.

PR professionals, take notice: do not toy with forces beyond your control or understanding. Speak to communities such as Reddit correctly and they will reward you with lavish praise and tons of page views. But do it with a hint of insincerity and they will respond with the anger of a thousand suns.

[In fact, to state the obvious, when it comes to this sort of online promotion, or ANY online promotion, the less PR people are involved, the better and more interesting the resulting content usually is.]

The iEconomy

The New York Times has been doing a phenomenal job assessing the human and economic toll of all Apple’s wonderful, magical gadgets. Their first piece explained why it is we’ll never seen an iPhone manufactured in the United States. The second one delves into the corners that are cut in order to deliver iPhones and iPads, and the tragedy that can result.

Apple has been in the news a lot for this lately. A recent, fairly effective episode of This American Life showed the personal side of this process. That episode presumably forced Apple to respond, which resulted in a response in kind from This American Life.

Apple fanboys have expectedly rushed to Apple’s defense, and while they are only partially correct, I feel there is a coming reckoning for all of this. At least, I hope there will be. Throughout all this reporting, there emerges one fundamental truth: if Apple really wanted the conditions at factories to be completely humane, it could make it happen. It could insist. It could create a supply chain that was beyond reproach. Sure, they might need to charge a bit more for their products. Their profit margins might not be the same. They might not be able to make as many iPads per quarter as they can at the moment. But they could theoretically do it.

They don’t, because no one cares. They don’t because the voices of their shareholders are louder than the voices of their consumers (who are voting with their dollars and buying products left and right).

At some point, the American people will need to see the human cost of all of our toys. When that day finally arrives, may it also bring dramatic change along with it.