ugachaka :: Jacob was here

I have posted about ARGs here before, but I wanted to link over to my new blog at wannabeMogul.com where I just put together a lengthy post about the ARG and viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight by 42 Entertainment, the same guys who did ILoveBees for Halo 2, and the mysterious death of Heath Ledger.

The viral marketing campaign is intense for this movie, and the death of Heath Ledger almost made me suspect it was going to get even more outrageous.

Bloglines has put together a list of the top 1000 blogs. I had no idea how some that I read regularly ranked among the world’s best. Check it out and see where your blog or the bloggers you admire ranked.

For one, I didn’t realize that Mark Cuban’s Blog Maverick was as highly read as it is–ranking it at 114–or that the Dilbert blog feed was ranked so high–number 2.

Interesting to check out. Add some links if you want to fill up your feed reader.

via BizInformer via Duct Tape Marketing

If you are still in the dark about RSS readers, Small Business Trends linked to a little video that could help you understand it all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU[/youtube]

I am a huge fan of ONnetworks and all their HD-produced podcasts. My love stems mostly from two of their programs: The 5 Minute Drill for my fantasy football addiction and Play Value for an entertaining “Best Week Ever”-style doc on the history of videogames from the very beginnings of Nintendo. The podcast follows along nicely with a book I am currently reading called Game Over on the history of videogames. You can check it out at the link below.

Game Over Press Start To Continue

Check out the latest edition of the video cast below, and be sure to check out all the Play Value episodes to feel smarter about your own knowledge of the videogame industry.

 I stumbled across this post by Mark Fletcher about his passion for the IBM keyboard of old.  Although I can’t find the same obsession myself, I am very particular about keyboards that I use.  Right now, I have a Logitech MX 5000 Bluetooth with the laser mouse.  It was nice when I got it, but lately, I have found myself lusting after something like the diNovo Edge with those soft laptop-like keys.  I think something like that might be more nice to my hands–I tend to type very hard and fast.  I’m  a go-getter like that.  My Logitech desktop hasn’t been working the greatest with Vista as of late, but maybe I can learn to love it again.  My passion for laptop-like keyboards is probably just because I was on my laptop for the last 2 weeks waiting for some bad RAM to be replaced on the ol’ desktop.

Unfortunately, I can’t possibly justify in my head buying such a keyboard for that much.

It makes me think though. I have the same obsession with certain kinds of pens.  I like the heavy liquid ink flow types–keep your ballpoints away.  I wonder if it is all part of the same trend.

As some of you may NOT realize, before Mark Cuban was famous for his moves on Dancing with the Stars, he was (and is) a sort of Internet celebrity. Not the YouTube kind. The kind that had a great idea and followed his intuition to walk away pre-Internet bust and go on to own the Dallas Mavericks (and make them awesome, by the way).

He recently posted up some older posts about his life pre-Internet fame and fortune, and although I have read his back story before, I found his take on everything extremely candid and inspirational.

The up and coming of Mark Cuban:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

…and after you get through those, keep reading his Success and Motivation posts. Golden.

Makes me want to pursue my own ideas sooner rather than later.

Just a note that I decided to change up the blog design a bit. The dark colors were starting to wear on me, and everytime I posted a video in that old design, it would throw off my layout a bit until I tweaked it.

I really wanted a fluid design with a larger, more readable text, so this design is looking to be a change for the better.

I also joined Blog Rush–see widget in the right sidebar–to popularize the site a bit and generate some traffic. Click some links on it to check out some related content. It’s a good service, and you can sign up to put it on your own blog by clicking the link at the bottom of the widget.

Enjoy. Comment if you like the new design.

The Society of Professional Journalists have started up a blog about the “technical side” of journalism, Technolo-J–clever. I look forward to seeing some quality posts about multimedia journalism and the future impact of multimedia journalism techniques.

With all this Halo 3 action, I have neglected my favorite Nintendo obsession from the Gamecube days…Super Smash Bros.

The latest updates that you may or may not have heard….

A new video highlighted the awesome new singleplayer story line that will be part of this new title. The plot of previous Smash Bros. games has not been too thick–mostly just a series of missions where you must kill 1 to 600 opponents before time runs out or your lives run out. That’s good news.

New characters have also been announced. Ike from Fire Emblem, Pokemon Trainer (who fights with Pokemon and Diddy Kong have all emerged onto the new battlefield.

You can read the postings about their announcements, but I can’t say that any of these characters really excite me that much. Where’s the meat, Nintendo? It’s what’s for dinner!

Profiles of the newbies:
Ike
Pokemon Trainer
Diddy Kong

The game industry has numerous podcasts that you can follow to get your gaming information. I know because I follow about 25 right now.

My favorites tend to be video podcasts because they are 1) short and 2) more visually engaging/interesting and also easy to follow in the corner of the screen while I do work. Favorites of the moment are G4TV’s X-Play Gaming Updates and The Daily Feed (I don’t have a DVR to catch the TV versions of these broadcasts) bringing the news in a quick format. TeXtra is also a good one to pick up on if you are interested in all things gadget-y and technical rather than just videogames.

What is strange about my following is that I don’t even have a video iPod. I just watch them on my desktop either while working or doing other things around the apartment.

A recent posting on The Guardian’s Gamesblog pointed out one of the complaints I have about some of the more long-winded podcasts out there.

Most podcasts try to be like blogs. People want to read short, sweet postings with pretty images and links to more information on the whole. Long postings have to be very in depth and intriguing in order to gain a following. TeXtra is one of the longer ones but cuts off usually around 5-6 minutes.

The videogame podcasts coming from sources like 1up (at least it is video), Gamespot (just audio) and GameSpy (just audio) are not published as frequently as these smaller podcasts and choose a 1-hour, weekly format. Most of them are massively long. Not only does it require you to spend an entire hour listening to catch all of their discussions, but when one of the segments covers games you aren’t particularly interested in or topics that are old news (like something that happened a week ago), it makes it almost painful to sit through a podcast that long. You can’t even skip to a more relevant part because there are no labels or visual cues as to where you can find the next “chapter” or discussion in the audio file.

When I am particularly busy, I often find myself skipping through in 5-minute jumps and hitting the end unless I catch something of interest.

I would think with these pubs being generally speaking more tech savvy that they would get their act together a stop torturing us with these long podcasts. I wouldn’t mind not having flashing intro and end graphics or theme music if you just cut up your hour long show into five 20 minute shows or–better yet–5-10 minute segments.

This format would follow the norm for podcasting in today’s world and make it easier for someone obsessing over all things videogames all the time every waking moment of my life following many blogs to handle.