Matt Agnello’s Blog

My online identity is comprised of a conglomeration of disjointed screennames, logins, e-mail addresses, web 2.0 accounts, two blogs, a website, and at least one PGP key. Since starting a new job and putting in around 70-80 hours a week, I just don't have time to micromanage them all. So my Google Reader account shows 1000+ all the time, I come home to 150 or more tweets that I haven't read, and I have no idea where to go first. I'm sure at least one of my friends has changed his or her marital status to "engaged" on Facebook without me catching it.

Services that do smart things with my data help a little to deal with the information clutter. Blogs that cross-post to Twitter or automagically upload photos to Flickr, such as Posterous, add up to a lot of clicks saved. Ideally, I'd love to have only a few outboxes to get information to all the places it needs to, a few inboxes to check every day, and an easy way to tell what's important and what's not.

I'm happy to note that I've reduced my e-mail to one box and almost one e-mail address (one for professional stuff+family+friends, the other for games and forums). For screennames, it's a little bit of a mess: two for AIM, only one that I use, one ICQ, and I recently discovered Gtalk for my Gmail accounts -- which I could use to talk to my AIM friends if I wanted to. And what's the best way for me to contact someone? Email? Txt? Twitter? IM? And which protocol?

It's a combination of dealing with a firehose of information in and having too many options getting it out.

How do you deal with the firehose? And how do you make sure people can get in touch with you without confusion? Comment if you have a cool idea, a system you're proud of, or a product/piece of software that's helped you out.

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Good morning, Paramount.

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Anyone know where you would return this?

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Matthew J. Agnello
http://hungryfilmmaker.com/

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What happened here?

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Coming out of film school, one of the first things you learn is that you can't use the term "avant garde" to describe bad filmmaking. Likewise, you can't use the term "buzz" as a catch-all for good advertising. Even though the Sydney Herald said Microsoft missed its mark with its newest ad, that's fine. Apparetly, all Microsoft wants you to do is talk about Vista.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla said the company was pleased with the initial reaction to the ad. "It's exactly what we were trying to achieve, which was to drive buzz," Mr. Pilla said.

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$300 million dollars later... Vista is supposed to be "delicious"?

To counter Apple's highly successful (and in my opinion, quite entertaining) Windows-bashing ad campaign, Microsoft has hired comedian Jerry Seinfeld as the face of a counter-campaign to drum up support for Vista. Unfortunetly, the result falls a bit short of what that kind of money should buy.

Initial thoughts: the ad lacks unity. Windows doesn't even come in until the end, and the ad never builds to the punchline. The tag line, that Vista is "delicious," is completely disconnected from the rest of the advertisement, and Gates is so subdued that Seinfeld seems cartoonish by comparison.

I'm hoping for a better job in the next few ads, but I worry that Microsoft has too many people to please to put out a unified message.

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A $50 pair of athletic shorts. Parking meters along a barely used street. Giant trees in the middle of the desert. A Prius for every four parking spots. And an executive producer who makes calls from her cell, texts from her blackberry at the same time, then asks me for a pen.

That's where I am at the moment: Beverly Hills.

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RemixAmierica.org is planning to do some user-generated coverage of the Democratic National convention coming up. I'm involved in doing a remix or two for them before and during the convention. One idea I have is to highlight a great speech in American history, revitalize it, and remind people that it's relevant today. If you have a speech in US history that you're passionate about and you think I should feature, make a comment and tell me about. I'm wide open for suggestions.

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