Context vs. Controversy

You’re a clichè, lots of skin, stuff that killed people, stuff that will kill you, policing the police, what Hitler is finding painfully unfunny, which European is holding suburban America hostage, how to get $80,782 from people who like you, and why the paparazzi are finally out of business.

BEYOND NASCAR

Making waves with a new website launch is so hard these days, what with taken domain names and beaten been-done-before concepts. Alas, newcomer Stuff White People Like, having dodged both 2.0 kisses of death, is off to a critically acclaimed start — and we think it has sprouted a new trend we like to call “affectionate stereotyping.”

But sensationalist title aside, the witty blog doesn’t actually talk about race at all — it’s more about a certain economic subset united by the common gene for Christopher Guest movies, “The” bands, Whole Foods, Nordic furniture, and Obama. And, somehow, it manages to capture those tastes surprisingly well, indulging the shared disdain for certain mainstream pastimes (say, television) to nail the exceptions (say, The Wire.) In fact, it does it so well you should consider yourself warned: you may end up feeling like a far too common, albeit culturally elitist, walking clichè. Do you have bad memories of high school? Listen to public radio? Got a lot of t-shirts? Hate “The Man”? Recycle? Then you’re a figurative “white person.” They even got us on the Michel Gondry front. Shame. See the full list, then join us in a disillusioned head-down retreat to the “white person” factory. But, in all seriousness, this is easily the smartest blog we’ve come across in a long time. Between all the “affectionate stereotyping” and the captivating, witty voice, it somehow manages to ask all the big questions of identity, society, culture, politics and life. Plato couldn’t have done it better himself — despite his quintessential ancient white personness.

LARGER THAN LIFE

Speaking of social trends, could fat be the new phat? We’re not talking about the acclaimed but oh-so-over- discussed Real Women of Dove, who are actually quite the hot stuff. We’re talking way, um, realer.

Like the “models” British celeb megaboober Katie Pierce, who goes by the alter ego Jordan, used in the launch of her eponymous lingerie line. The 29-year-old Anna-Nicolesque Brit tapped girls from her fan club to do the job — we’re resisting a joke about her “biggest admirers.” Unsuccessfully.

Then there’s the Big Ballet — another U.K. phenomenon that, Turkey Lake jokes aside, has been said to put good ol’ skinny ballet acts to shame. In fact, the tour has gotten so big the ensemble is extremely hard to book.

But, really, there’s a King Pin in fat town. Big Fat Deal has been around since 2004, dissecting with snark and irreverence the pop culture portrayals of weight and “hottyness.”

But the blog, written by the mysterious duo of Weetabix and mo pie, has enjoyed a recent spike in popularity. It’s even got a Facebook group. We’re pretty ambivalent about the premise here — BFD works under the “fat acceptance” mantra — given our tax dollars are paying for the costs of obesity. But we must admit good questions are being asked and good points are being made. Like how come fat women feel betrayed when a fat celebrity gets back into shape? And why are fat people expected to slim down, but get mocked when they exercise?

Trans-fat-loaded food for thought, have a bite.

MEMOIRS OF NOSTRADAMUS

We like the present. Mostly because it’s a lot like us: egocentric. So we’ve always dug indulgences like Today In Music History. But because we’re all about making people uncomfortable this week, we turn to times when the present was less of a gift: a “today in disaster history” dose of morbidity brought to you by The Living Almanac of Disasters.

Earthquakes. Fires. Floods. Crashes. Eruptions. Collisions. Bombings. It’s got it all. Twenty-eight years ago today, for example, 22 members of the US boxing team died in a crash in Poland. Or on our birthday, when in 1945 the Empire State Building took its first hit by an airplane.

So check your birthday. Your anniversary. (Like you need another disaster on that date.) The day you lost your virginity. Hey, let’s go crazy: the day you had your first prostate exam. Superstition stopping you? Phsh.

UNTRIVIA

If all the disaster talk got you paranoid, here’s a refreshing reality check about what could actually kill you and with what likelihood. Because common availability bias (our tendency to overestimate the statistical prevalence of things we’re bombarded with in the media or have experienced ourselves) can really do a number on your objectivity. So here are your chances of dying from select non-health-related causes in the U.S.:

• Motor vehicle accident: 1 in 100
• Homicide: 1 in 300
• Fire: 1 in 800
• Firearms accident: 1 in 2,500
• Electrocution: 1 in 5,000
• Asteroid/comet impact: 1 in 20,000
• Passenger in aircraft accident: 1 in 20,000
• Flood: 1 in 30,000
• Tornado: 1 in 60,000

POLICE POLICE

And now for some real controversy — how much transparency should there be in government? According to Rate My Cop, an online forum where people voice raves and rants about police officers, a lot.

Under the tagline “You have the right to remain informed,” the privately-held website aims to do just that — keep citizens informed about the positives and negatives of the police force serving them. Because, after all, the police is a public service — so giving the public a say is only natural. Especially in light of the infamous Cop vs. Skater video of uncalled for police brutality that garnered over 4 million views in under a month.

The site encourages people to rate — anonymously but responsibly — each encounter they have with a police officer. And while we dig the concept of citizen empowerment through information and conversation, we wonder whether in this day and age of American Idol text voting and mass bandwagoning just for the sake of it, rating something as serious as the national police force may become a petty game of saying anything just to avoid saying nothing.

URGE TO PURGE

Our product pick this week is the latest book by famed New Yorker cartoonist S. Gross. We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons is, from the paradoxically comic title to the very last page of stellar artwork, an exercise in purging some of history’s heaviest burdens through humor.

In the publisher’s own words: “These witty, beautifully rendered images gleefully stomp through the darkest moments in history and remind us that humor can diffuse our unspoken fears and deflate an overwrought icon.”

Which resonates nicely with one of our favorite quotes by author and humorist Mary Hirsch. “Humor is a rubber sword — ” she says, “it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.” That, and it’s funnier than watching other people’s cats fall in toilets on YouTube.

LITTLE CHOP OF HORRORS

Found Saw disturbing? Thought No Country For Old Men was gratuitously violent? Then don’t go anywhere near what’s already being dubbed this year’s most disturbing film: Funny Games. It’s the latest work in English by acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke of Caché fame, starring (of course) the supreme Naomi Watts.

It’s about a well-off all-American family forced to make excruciating decisions about each other’s fates as they are all taken hostage by a ruthless duo of psychotic young misanthropes. And it’s already making waves in the critics circles.

Now, we’ve done a few brief stints in the psychology of violence and its effects on human thought, especially children. So we’re often thrown off by the gratuitous violence of today’s entertainment. But it’s interesting to see something that puts violence in the context of moral choice, making people extremely uncomfortable not by virtue of the violence itself but by posing the big, uncomfortable human questions.

Get uncomfortable starting March 14 at a theater near you.

OUTMANNING THE MAN

As if there isn’t enough controversy in today’s music industry already, one artist is doing the unthinkable: Jill Sobule is asking fans to fund her next record. That’s all the clearly talented singer-songwriter could do after she got dumped by two major record labels and two indie ones went bankrupt on her tenure. (Her ego must be on life support.)

She’s offering 12 levels of “pledges” fans can donate to: for $10, you get a digital download of the album once it’s made; at the $200 “silver level,” you get free admission to all her shows this year; then there’s the $500 “gold level” wherein Jill gets to mention your name in a song — you can upgrade that to the $750 “gold doubloons level,” which Jill says is “exactly like the gold level, but you give [her] more money.” (Gotta love it.) Or, you can go all-out with the $10,000 “weapons-grade plutonium level” in which you get to actually sing on her CD.

We give her points for extreme inventiveness. But points don’t get you published — she set a $75,000 goal. Well, guess what — in a little over a month, she more than met it and capped out at $80,782. How’s that for proving Kevin Kelly’s brilliant 1000 True Fans theory right?

And we must say this ultimate power-to-the-people thing is pretty awesome — traditionally, fans have always played a huge role in the music industry because their buying power ultimately decides what succeeds. But why not empower them even further back in the music production process, letting them decide not just what sells but also what gets made in the first place? Smart, we say, smart.

IMAGE AND LIKENESS

Alison Jackson has been on our radar for quite some time. We weren’t sure what to make of her work — she shoots celebrity lookalikes in classic paparazzi scenarios to a strikingly realistic effect, indulging us with what we secretly hope to see our favorite celebs doing. But then we heard her rather thought-provoking TED talk (aren’t they all?) and had a thought:

Her work is being criticized for glorifying the cheap business of tabloid and celebrity even more, but it actually does the very opposite: it makes us really think about why we’re drawn to celebrity culture in the first place. It makes all those pop culture idols seem like nothing more than packageable images. And it’s those superficial images we consume, not the real values of the people behind them — otherwise, why would lookalikes elicit the same emotional responses from us that real celebrity snapshots do?

Take a peek.

Eye Wonder

Hold on to your belt, hotel room “presents” that rock, visions from another world, a YouTube David, why we’re buying our own hyperboles, how 10,000 books will take over Cannes, and what a python and a kitchen appliance have in common.

BELT-HOLDER BEWARE

If you were ever the kid who begged mom for a box of cereal solely because of the plastic scramble puzzle inside, then you’ll get a kick out of Befuddlr: a place for hyper-customized time-killing that lets you create a digital photo scrambler out of any photo you upload, send it to your friends, and even time your quest to break the world photo unscrambling record.

Once you get the “befuddle it!” bookmarklet on your bookmark bar (just drag it off the website onto your bar), you can befuddle any Flikr photo or upload your own album and do an original.

We managed this one…

…in an impressive 36.1 seconds.

Do we have a new challenge for the belt-holder? Give it a shot if you dare.

WHAT LIVES UNDER YOUR HOTEL BED

We never thought it possible to find a little something from a past guest in a hotel room and actually enjoy it, but we were wrong. Turns out, there’s a new underground movement afoot where the artistically inclined and mischievous leave “secret wall tattoos” — artwork done in spaces normally covered by hotel furniture that is only revealed when said furniture is moved.

Rumor has it, Queens of the Stone Age vocalist Josh Homme started it all. He’s been quoted to compare the concept to a box of Cracker Jacks, in which you find a hidden toy. Turns out, artists are actually getting paid by (smart) hoteliers to do this kinda thing, which is okay since it’s still cool as hell in the context of the bland, visionless herd of mainstream hotel interiors.

Check out the photo collection so far, or watch this video tour of the secret world. And pack a Sharpie for that skiing getaway next month.

5,066-MILE CULTURAL BRIDGE

So while we’re bemusing the eye, why not amuse it.

Bulgarian English teacher and multi-talented artist Denitsa Boyadzhieva has a blog so humble yet visually compelling you’ll come to appreciate it without ever needing to understand the text: it’s artwork that truly speaks.

We love the phenomenal play of color and light in her photographs, and the childlike simplicity intertwined with complex adult emotion oozing from her illustrations.

Plus, we’re all for exposing people to culturally different art visions. Go, get exposed.

AIN’T IT COULL

Weighty YouTube hasn’t stopped the proliferation of other video- sharing sites. Granted, most of them range from poor-man’s ripoffs of the Goliath to portfolio vaults for porn school drop-outs. But one newcomer, coull.tv, is taking the video-sharing experience to a new, highly interactive level: one they dubbed “reactive video.”

The basic concept: not only can you search, share, comment and vote on video, but you can also use the proprietary Video Activator Tool to specify and tag different parts of a video, making various elements of it (people, objects, whatever) clickable. This results in a fully searchable vid, allowing other users to rate and comment on just specific parts of it.

The service is pretty new, so we’ll cut them some slack for the unclickable tags and other glitches we experienced. (Plus, we saw from the screenshots on their about page they seem to be pulling a John Hodgman — whose popular incarnation is, by the way, unsurprisingly absent from their collection of videos.)

But we see great potential: imagine being able to click an object in a video and instantly access a multimedia library of information available on it across the web, from news articles, to blog mentions, to Wikipedia entries, to music, to related social network groups, to images and more. In the great words of Tim Gunn, “Make it work!”

JU-YES-YES-YES

And while we’re on the topic of great video, let’s take it up a notch and consider great film, the notion of which should now be in the Endangered Species book in light of the devastating blockbuster attempts, cheap comedies, corny horror flicks and other mainstream horrors flooding pop culture in recent years.

So we’re ecstatic to hear about Juno, a new Fox Searchlight film by director Jason Reitman (remember Thank You For Smoking?), sporting the most brilliant cast we’ve ever seen (really) and a promising Garden-Statesque soundtrack. And given that all this comes with our usual utmost aversion to hyperbole, take our word: it’s just that good.

On to said brilliant cast: excuse the bias, but we can’t help mentioning the talent behind our all-time favorite TV character, C. J. Cregg of The West Wing: Allison Janney. Then there are Arrested Development co-stars Michael Cera, fresh out of Superbad, and Jason Bateman, fresh out of The Kingdom. (Fox, thanks to your indie arm, you’ve made a small chip at redeeming yourselves from eternal damnation on grounds of canceling the cult primetime hilarity.)

Also in the posse: prolific Hollywooders J. K. Simmons and Jennifer Garner, whose obvious effort to step away from mainstream cheese we can’t help applauding. (Or, they got enough of the big bucks to carry them through years of indiesque income in pursuit of critical acclaim.)

Finally, we have off-to-an-impressive start debutante Ellen Page, who just won the Hollywood Film Festival award for Breakthrough Actress (Don’t we say “actor” for both genders these days?) of the Year and the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor. (See, the East Coast is rocking the PC thang.) And, speaking of awards, the Palm Springs International Film festival and the SAG Foundation honored Juno with the Chairman’s Vanguard award, which Little Miss Sunshine snagged last year. Shortcut to the Oscars?

Be your own judge:

The film opens next week, but still no word on when/whether it’ll be showing in Philly. Well, if not, it’s looking so good we may even suck up the wonderful experience that is the Chinatown Bus to New York.

PLEASURE-DELAYER SPECIAL

Okay, so it’s clear we can’t keep our hands off the visual media this week. Might as well embrace it: 2007 certainly has. At least when it comes to commercial work, we can safely call this year the year of gargantuan productions. After the Sony Bravia “Play-Doh“ spot from Fallon London, we got the Guinness “Tipping Point” from Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, London — which, if you haven’t already, you should absolutely see. For the laggards:

This sort of work is certain to give some the “Okay, but will it sell beer?” furrows, but we can’t deny it steals the word “awesome” back from gum-chewing teens and brings it to its roots of awe-inspiring marvel.

And, to be sure, this sort of awe doesn’t come easily. Genius MJZ director Nicolai Fuglsig admits it was the toughest shoot of his life. (And, yep, he’s the one that directed the Sony Bravia “Balls” spot.)

Not hard to believe: it all took place in a small Argentinian village at 3,000 feet altitude. To get there, the crew had to drive 30 miles on dirt roads and cross 12 rivers. Then they took over the 1000-person village for 2 months with 140 crew and 130 extras. Speaking of extras, these were all completely untrained and non-English-speaking locals, so casting took 18 days. When all was finally ready to go, 26 trucks rolled into the tiny village carrying 6 cars, 50 fridges, 70 wardrobes, 400 truck tires and 10,000 books.

See the $20-million magic happen:

Awesome, no?

SPOILER: YES, IT WILL

And, finally, let’s sign off with our good friend from Will It Blend. This time, the Blendtec beast takes on a Guitar Hero III guitar. Reminds us of those Discovery-Channel-style “snake swallows something 10 times its intestinal width” scenarios.

Ooh! Ooh! Can we do an elevator next?

We’ve got a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Hits, Punches and Other Impact

Three-minute verdicts, humanitarian aid for your vocabulary, Brazilian models, hyper-social networking, what Harry Potter and the Yankees have in common, and where you can get a side order of sweaty hunk with lunch. Welcome to the Hits, Punches and Other Impact issue.

IMAGE VS. LIKENESS

Amnesty International, always the shocker, is on a latest spree to remind us that toy recalls are the least of China’s reputation problems. In a new campaign busting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the human advocacy crew is out to expose the contrast between China’s marketing efforts and their internal practices, a discrepancy that reeks of blatant hypocrisy.

Turns out, when China promised to kick up human rights for the 2008 Olympics, they went ahead and made a bunch of minor touch-ups to the death penalty system (a.k.a. itsy-blitzy change) and vouched to give foreign reporters more freedoms.

But “freedom” is the last thing one such investigative reporter, Zhao Yan of the New York Times, got when he tried to appeal his three-year prison sentence for an alleged political vendetta. The appeal was dismissed in under 3 minutes. He was recently released after completing the sentence.

Which is an unsurprising event, given a long-standing law has been allowing police to shove crime suspects in jail for up to 4 years without trial. Since 1957. That’s half a century of legalized anti-freedom, granting suspects not even a shot with the whatever loose justice system does exist. Meanwhile, China’s busy opening the world’s largest, blingest luxury airport.

The irony, of course, is that the entire marketing campaign to boost China’s international image for the Olympics is funded by the tax yuan of these very same people facing human rightlessness on a daily basis.

Read up on what’s wrong with that picture and check out the full Amnesty International creative.

VERBAL STEAL & DEAL

The wonderful people of the Red Cross bring all kinds of aid to those in need. Including the linguistic kind. Overheard in a shared restroom, we bring you this uncovered vocab gem of the week, courtesy of the lovely women of the American Red Cross:

Squidget |’skwijit|

noun: Too short to be a midget.

[Definition spoken in a matter-of-factly, isn’t-it-obvious tone by utterer upon inquiry.]

WON’T SEE THIS ON A BILLBOARD

We’re starting to understand why Brazil is on a mission to ban outdoor advertising: because they have so much higher standards for what constitutes compelling, culturally relevant visuals. (As opposed to, you know, babes-boobs-and-beer billboards.)

Case in point: 27-year-old artist Bruno 9li. Inspired by alchemy (even saying “alchemy” is pretty damn badass in and of itlsef), his ink-on-paper and mural art may just be Brazil’s hottest contribution to culture since Gisele Bundchen. (What, we do have to acknowledge the mainstream’s tastes. Chill out.)

In the sea of sameness (hello, pseudo-anime and anything with distorted doll heads), Bruno 9li’s work stands out as something we’ve never seen before. Do check out his full exhibit to feel a little more enriched, or at least a little closer to Gisele.

UNTRIVIA

The college set. A small (18 million) and often annoying (ah, the swollen sense of entitlement) demo. But one with enormous market influence: a combined power of their own disposable income and what they puppy-eye their parents into buying, a solid, opinionated word-of-mouth network, a tendency to be early adopters of, well, pretty much anything, and a lifetime of consumption ahead of them. Their relationship with the marketing world, to say the least, matters.

So here’s a snapshot of how this dynamic has changed over the past couple of years. Anderson Analytics, a youth-oriented market research getup, sets out every year to probe what brands the kids are digging via their annual GenX2Z College Brand Survey. A top-line:

2005: Nike, Coca-Cola, Polo, American Eagle, Sony

2006: Nike, American Eagle, Sony, The Gap, Old Navy

2007: Google, Apple, Target, Facebook

What else the kids care about:

On the web:

2005: CollegeHumor, Facebook, Google, MySpace, eBay

2006: MySpace, Facebook, CollegeHumor, YouTube, Google

2007: …here’s where it gets tricky. This year, more than ever, the differences across genders are really starting to show:

Women:

1. Facebook, 2. MySpace, 3. Google, 4. YouTube, 5. PerezHilton, 6. PostSecret, 7. Craigslist, 8. AddictingGames, 9. eBay, 10. SlickDeals

Men:

1. Facebook, 2. ESPN, 3. Google, 4. YouTube, 5. Digg, 6. CollegeHumor, 7. Yahoo, 8. MySpace, 9. Amazon, 10. Engadget / Fark (tie)

The gender breakdown gets even more interesting. Even though Facebook tops both charts, twice as many women rank it #1 than men, and MySpace is nowhere to be seen in men’s top 5. So the survey seems to assert that social networking skews much more female in the 18-24 set.

But here’s our thought: Take Digg. It allows people to see what content others in this whole big Internet universe are digging, exchanging information and opinions with the world at large rather than with a small social circle of actual friends and acquaintances, as is the case with traditional social networking sites. None of the Digg-type sites pop up on women’s web favorites list, but they do on men’s. (Fark and CollegeHumor are just other bystander ways of connecting to what tickles others.) Could such sites be a form of “hyper-social networking,” allowing users to connect with others beyond their immediate “society” in broader, less intimate ways?

So it may be, then, that social networking holds equal appeal to young men and young women. It just manifests itself in different ways as these two groups choose to relate to the world differently.

Something to think about.

CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT FICTION

Lately, we’ve been on an unintentional busting-the-print-is-dead-myth spree. On the whole death vs. evolution note, it’s not just the medium that’s evolving: its consumption also is. So what happens when you cross two dinosaur media — books and snail-mail — with a new-age phenomenon like peer-to-peer and social networking? You get Paperback Swap, a Netflix of sorts for books that’s completely free and a true testament to an old-fashioned code of honor.

Here’s how it works: you sign up (with a valid email and USPS address), sift through your old books to decide which ones you’re willing to swap, and post them on the website, adding to the over 1.6 million books already available. Just for doing that, you get 2 free book credits, so you can go ahead and request 2 books after browsing through the e-library. (Credits are the exchange unit on PBS — every time one of your books is received, you get a credit you can use to request someone else’s book.)

Then you just sit and watch your mailbox: the books, after they arrive, are yours to keep. Free.

The only thing you ever pay for is postage when other members request any of your books (about $2.13 a book using Media Mail). But, then again, they pay postage when you get theirs, so it’s all fair and simple. And, speaking of postage, PBS has neat shipping labels you can print out at home to make it all even easier. Or, you can go hardcore and join the Box-O-Books program where you can ship multiple books in one big box and swap with other boxers, saving on both postage costs and wait time.

And, for the musically inclined, there’s also sister-site SwapaCD, the self-explanatory similar program for CD’s.

Here’s the thing: if we remember our copyright classes from way back correctly, there’s something called the “first book doctrine,” a loophole in copyright law that allows you to transfer (for payment or not) a lawful copy of copyrighted work (like a book or CD) once you’ve obtained it. Basically, whenever you buy, find, receive as a gift or get your hands on a book in other ways, it’s yours to do whatever you like with. Including swapping.

Whoever thought the big break in peer-to-peer media exchange, always the hot-button issue in digital media, would come from the very media written off as dead?

FOOD & FIGHT

This week’s as-seen-in-Philly: spotted in the midst of Philly gem Reading Terminal Market (and in the midst of lunch rush hour) is a full-blown boxing match, complete with a loudspeaker-armed announcer, a DJ, various sponsors, and ABC Action News coverage.

We couldn’t quite figure out the purpose of the whole shebang, but it seemed like some sort of boxing match ticket sales stunt. More than anything, though, we couldn’t figure out why such a stunt would be pulled in the middle of the indiest of fooderies.

But, hey, perhaps there’s some truth after all to legendary Bulgarian wrestler Lyutvi Ahmedov’s even more legendary adage: “The grub makes the fight.”

We’ve got a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Mmm-Hmmm

Invisible furniture, molecular ad cuisine, pricing out the art of living, 1406 ways a photo lens can change your outlook, why the world is 774% friendlier than this time last year, and what Regis Kelly has to do with iTunes’ impending demise.

TUNING OUT OF ITUNES

No question the iTunes empire is one to be reckoned with. And many have. Last year, Microsoft released Windows Media Player 11 jukebox software, which included Urge, MTV’s digital music store. At that point, the Microsoft/MTV partnership had been around for a few months, so the new player/store platform sent bloggers and business analysts alike on a rave spree.

Well, all that stuff went down the crapper.

Take 2: Viacom is dumping the PC guys tribe for RealNetworks, whose struggling Rhapsody music service could use a symbiotic partnership with MTV, a brand so digitally challenged its iconic status pedestal is shaking like a polaroid picture.

And while the corporate powerhouses are busy forging all sots of anti-iTunes alliances, a grassroots army of boycotters is afoot. Remember how years ago non-profit Mozilla‘s free, open-source Firefox made Microsoft’s Internet Explorer obsolete even for hardcore PC-ers? Goliath iTunes may be headed down that same road thanks to Songbird, a fresh new David born out of open source king Mozilla. It’s a piece of web/desktop mash-up genius that lets you find and organize music, on and offline, in a beautifully integrated way, far beyond what iTunes can offer.

Besides the neat design, Songbird has infinite, mind-blowing capacities: it’s cross-platform (so Mac Guy, PC Guy and, um, Linux Guy can play nice and share), comes in 39 languages (so you can finally get original song titles for that Zimbabwean album there), and will play any music file format, including mp3, OGG, AAC, FLAC, WMV and more (suck that, MPEG-4). And that’s just the beginning. Best part? Songbird will pull all media files from a web page you’re viewing (say, Bitter:Sweet‘s band website) into a playlist you can, well, play on your desktop. Plus, it’s got all sorts of community features like blogs, forums, website buttons and super-cool merchandise (profits, of course, go to funding the project). Overall, that birdie is getting the Brain Pickings seal of approval right smack in the middle of its birdie forehead.

But the bigger point is, all these developments show one thing: the whole iTunes monopoly, with its proprietary bullshit and various usage limitations (how many computers have you authorized to listen to your library?) is quickly turning into Regis Kelly — old, pompous and annoying. We say time for change.

UNKODAK MOMENTS

The trouble with the whole digital thing is that it makes it super easy for everyone and their mother to take pictures and splatter them all over the web. They do it, too. And we can only take so many photoblogs and albums of people’s chubby kids playing with other people’s chubby kids. Good thing there are folks out there claiming photography back from the overexposed and the cliche. Folks like those at FILE Magazine, a “collection of unexpected photography.”

FILE mag aims to reinterpret our way of looking at imagery and the world at large. They also make a point of what they’re not: a photoblog, a photography contest, a home for family albums, a source of glossy fashion spreads. It’s an actual magazine in that involves actual editors curating unconventional photography wherever they spot it, then contact the authors and ask to include it in The Collection, currently 1406 photos wonderful.

We were pretty taken with all projects we looked at, but a couple of favorites did emerge:

Back of the House explores the culinary world behind the scenes, zooming in on the human element in the fine dining subculture. Endless Summer takes on the postcardish, touristy, aging-boomer-stereotype side of Florida and counters it by delving into its opposite. In Misspent Youth, photographer Andrew Newson takes a trip to his childhood school some 16 years later, looking at simple memory triggers with the complex eyes of a life-worn adult. The aptly titled Untitled steals glimpses of scenes, places and objects that no one seems to notice, letting their static, geometric qualities take on a hypnotic, haunting vibe.

Pick your own favorite projects or submit your own off-center photography.

ART IMITATES COST OF LIFE

A fundamental rule of art is that it’s not to be taken at face value. Another fundamental rule of art is that there are no rules. So a 20-something couple from New York, originally propelled by creative vision and starvation, has rolled with the latter and turned the former on its head.

Wants For Sale is a strikingly how-come-no-one-thought-of-this- earlier concept that challenges the starving-artist stereotype head-on.

Here’s how it works: Artist wants iPhone. Artist paints iPhone in acrylic on 2″-deep gallery canvas. Aritst posts painting for sale at $649.17, the exact price of iPhone. Art enthusiast sees painting, loves it and buys it. Artist gets iPhone. Genius.

Once a painting is bought, its online status changes from “Want” to “Have” so you can see the kind of stuff that people buy. Wants range from daily cravings like a buffalo wings (have; $12.70) and beer (have; $7.00) to nitty-gritty living stuff like one month’s rent (want; 1,056.07) to intangibles like financial security (want; $1,000,000) and a night of booze-induced amnesia (have; $100.00). So much for the whole artists-can’t-do-business-to-save-their-life notion. Although we do have to wonder why only beer snob beer would do and what kind of superhuman workouts are involved in getting a six-pack in just a month. (While having buffalo wings and beer.)

The folks even offer to paint anything you want, with the fair disclaimer that it has nothing to do with the Yankees. Yep, Christine and Justin seem like quite the characters, which is also evident in their minimalist, sweetly quirky self-intro.

AD SERVING A LA CARTE

Earlier this month, Australian ad-personalization-solutions pioneer Qmecom unveiled a platform truly revolutionary, a much-needed marriage of today’s two biggest marketing trends: customization and that whole 2.0 experience thing. No, it’s not your grandmother’s behavioral targeting. It’s a beautiful system of complex algorithms that goes by the (not-so-catchy) name of Personalized Video Advertising Platform and does just what the name implies: allows advertisers to personalize a video ad to the individual viewer. Their explanation of the platform is a bit wordy and confusing, so we’ll digest it for you and spit it out.

Here’s how it works:

The algorithm engine takes your regular Flash file and breaks it down into molecular-level creative components. (These can be any video and static elements, including colors, text, sounds, images, calls to action, offers, message tags and more.) The system then uses these to generate a library of possible creative templates. Next, the templates are matched against the viewer’s site visit patterns, any CRM and data profiles, or historical and/or real-time behavioral data. The template that best matches the viewer’s personal patterns is delivered, resulting in the most engaging creative possible.

So say you’re doing a shoe campaign for adidas. You decide to run a Flash banner on Amazon. Frequent shopper John Doe stumbles upon it after having just looked at desks and messenger bags. You know from his Amazon profile that he’s 19. And his user history tells you he always buys stuff eligible for Amazon’s “free super saver” shipping option. Oh, and he’s recently bought a couple of kelly-green shirts. A-ha, you say to yourself (if you’re a Qmecom algorithm, that is) and figure he’s a college student shopping for back-to-school stuff who likes green and is a sucker for price-related promotions. So you deliver that neat stop-motion animation of the green Campus sneaker and throw in your “free overnight shipping” promotion for shopadidas.com. J.D.’s all “oooh, check thiiiis out…” and you’re all “sweeeeet.”

If you’re still not buying/getting/fully appreciating it, check out some samples of campaigns they did. We were particularly impressed with the BMW 3 Series email campaign and Virgin Blue Airlines web stuff. We just can’t wait to see what Qmecom can do with ad delivery on social network platforms where info on personal preferences is rich and aplenty, supplied eagerly and willingly straight from the source.

UNTRIVIA

And speaking of social networks, anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock knows they’re on fire. But 774% on fire? That’s how much worldwide traffic to newcomer Tagged grew between June 06 and June 07 according to comScore. Boy-hee.

So while this may be standard fare for a newly launched net as it garners its first members, the major social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo) have also been rolling in the traffic dough. MySpace is keeping at its steady climb with 72% growth and development beast Facebook is soaring with 270%, probably largely due to the recent addition of numerous widgets, mini-platforms and other developer fare.

And just in case you’re suspecting traffic stats are driven by “samplers” who rarely visit the websites, rest assured daily visits are also growing like the number of celebrihoes making trips to jail: MySpace is up 72%, Facebook 299%, Hi5 65%, Friendster 96%, Orkut 75%, and Bebo 307%.

This leaves us wondering how much time and engagement all the online dwelling displaces from good ol’ face-to-face conversations, hanging out with friends and other such pre-2.0 social activities. But oh how much easier it is to befriend someone by clicking a shared music interest link than by, you know, learning actual social skills and getting out there. And who cares if your new buddy happens to be one of those 29,000 registered sex offenders, you both dig High School Musical. (Although probably for very different reasons.)

LACK-A-RACK

If you happen to share our love of minimalist design and our disdain for applied physics, then you’ll also happen to dig the Self Shelf.

It’s pretty much what it sounds like: a shelf that looks like a book. It attaches to the wall invisibly thanks to a back bracket and holds up to 8.5 lbs. (That’s almost 3 War and Peaces, or almost 23 US Weeklys. Your choice.)

Get it for $29.95 from Firebox or pass it on to your friend who, you know, actually has something display-worthy to put on it. (Nope, Harry Potter doesn’t cut it.)