You can watch the video below or at this link. (I promise it’s just a real link to the video on YouTube.) There’s also an interesting article on the video’s production, as well as an interview with the guys behind it here, but it may expire within a week unless you have a subscription, so read it quickly.

BONUSES:

1. In keeping with the tradition of unique music videos in a foreign language, French group Make The Girl Dance filmed the following for their single Baby Baby Baby. Before watching, be advised that it may be inappropriate to view in some environments (such as where you work).

2. Focusing on another element of the Hibi no Neiro video, here is a video made by design and consulting firm IDEO. Though they have all sorts of cool ideas on their Vimeo account, this one is one of the most interesting to think of. Being a multinational company, they created a Rube Goldberg Machine by using a sort of global chain reaction involving each of their offices. I don’t know how to embed from Vimeo, so it’s at http://vimeo.com/2096314?pg=embed&sec=2096314 (the link paranoid can feel free type that manually).

But that’s not what this post is about. Instead, I’m focusing on the marketing campaign for the software. The team at Traffik (the ad agency for this campaign, according to Coloribus) chose to treat the product not as a product, but as a movie. The commercial is instead a trailer, and familiar items like Clippy (IMAGE) become characters. Without including any spoilers (see what I did there?), the video and other links are below. Of course, this is a fake trailer. There are no plans to release a Microsoft Office 2010 movie. However, real or not, the concept is still pretty interesting to see, especially when they get to the font jokes and puns.

Microsoft Office 2010: The Movie ad on YouTube

Official Site, including the video and “behind-the-scenes” footage (Requires Microsoft Silverlight. Otherwise, view the mobile version)

Coloribus Info

Still in beta, 280 Slides (280slides.com) is essentially a stripped-down, simple version of PowerPoint. While that may sound negative, it’s actually one of the site’s greatest features. It means that you don’t have to navigate through complex drop-down menus to insert an element. Using the app is incredibly simple. The makers essentially took a look at the features included in PowerPoint and Keynote, analyzed them, and decided to scrap the ones you don’t use in order to make a program your grandmother can use. You can add all sorts of stuff in less than 3 clicks.

I’ve made a sample slideshow I created in a few minutes for this post. It goes over a few of the biggest features and benefits, sometime through examples. Check it out here. Keep in mind that I made this slideshow in a few minutes about a month ago, so I may have missed some features. In fact, a few may have changed since that time. Regardless, I hope it gives you a decent look at what can be done with this easy-to-use program.

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BONUS: Though I’ve mentioned some of these before, the services here are all based on the same idea of being able to do complex work online and offline with free tools.

Aviary is more or less an online version of the Adobe Creative Suite line of products, including Photoshop and Illustrator.

Evernote, which I talked about in the previous post (the link is 2 paragraphs up), allows you to create text documents, upload pictures, and so on.

OpenOffice.org is an open-source (think Wikipedia applied to software), downloadable office suite with products similar to the ones you’ll find in Microsoft Office. All of the programs work very well and can be saved in a format that is easily read by Microsoft’s programs

If you’re feeling in a stick-it-to-the-man mood and want to find more free programs that let you do things you’d usually pay hundreds for, check out Kompozer, Jahshaka, Blender, The GIMP, InkScape, Renoise, and Audacity. They’re all for website, video, image, and audio production and editing, and they all work pretty well. There are paid versions of a few of them, and a few are open-source, too.

As always, if you have any feedback or suggestions, let me know in the comments.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I was away from my computer for the first few days of the “hiatus,” but I ended up getting lazy for a few weeks. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but it doesn’t look like too many people noticed the break, as my view count is still relatively healthy. Either way, I hope there haven’t been any problems because of this, and I apologize if there have been.

Anyway, this is an interesting idea that I’m sharing today. Some of you may know of Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra. He’s a Republican member of the US House of Representative. Politics aside, here’s the funny bit. Hoekstra decided to make a Twitter account so he could “stay connected with his constituents” or something like that. Basically, he shares the same stuff everybody else shares, but he keeps it politically correct. Except for this. In the middle of last month (June), Hoekstra posted the following to his account:

Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.
8:56 AM Jun 17th from TwitterBerry

The exaggerated comparison was hilarious if you think about it. Plenty of people apparently thought it was, and at least one of them made hoekstraisameme.com. It’s a bit similar to Failblog.org or FML in that there is a relatively concrete definition of the meme–taking an everyday occurrence and complain, inflating it by comparing it to something ridiculously different, but with one thing in common. In case that didn’t make sense, here’s an example. I’ve been away from my blog for a while. Now I know how Kuhlmeier must have felt. (It’s a freedom of the press reference. Of course, the ones on the official site are generally much more entertaining than this one.) That being said, traffic on the site seems to be a bit slow. Hopefully it will pick up, as this is a great concept. Again, to help the makers out, check it out at hoekstraisameme.com.

BONUS: As Hoekstra’s whole fiasco started with twitter, I thought I’d share this video. Whether you use Twitter or not, I’m guessing you know enough about it to laugh at this video. Dan Gurewitch from College Humor made a video called “Real Life Twitter.” The concept is simple enough that most people have wondered about it, but the execution is great in this video. He takes to the streets of New York, yelling things that you would normally just tweet. The majority of his “tweets” are pretty good, but a few stand out. Watch it here, and follow him for real at twitter.com/dangurewitch

Check it out below or here. Beware, though. It’s a long series (about 20 minutes total) of minisode-like videos and has some PG-13 language.

To start the experiment, I did a few posts that were designed to get traffic from other blogs. To isolate that, I turned off the search function–even if you were to look up “the economicist wordpress,” no search engines would find my blog. Though the experiment went well (the Wolfram|Alpha post alone got more than 20 hits in one day), I unfortunately forgot about that setting. For a week or so, I had no views, no comments, no incoming links, no nothing. It was definitely puzzling, but I scratched my head, kept posting, and hoped for the best. Nothing happened. The good news is that I just now remembered to change the setting, and views should again start coming in. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Moral: Try to remember the settings you change.

The Four-Hour Blog/The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss (author of The Four-Hour Workweek) fans will like this. This is his blog. Stuffed with how-to guides, “life hacks,” and more, I’ve never been disappointed in the year or so that I’ve been reading it.

Seth’s Blog
This is the blog of business author (All Marketers Are Liars, The Dip, and so on) and marketing guru Seth Godin. He’s a great writer and and he updates daily with fortune cookie-style Godin-isms. Cool fact: he checks almost all of his emails; I remember asking him a business question and getting an awesome four-paragraph response.

Freakonomics: The Hidden Side of Everything
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner are the two authors of the book Freakonomics, a title which (ironically enough) may have led me to pick this blog’s name (I have no clue, but it could have played a role). I’ve been reading for a few months, and the topics they pick tend to be fascinating. Posts are generally about psychology, economics, or a combination of the two.

BONUS: All of these authors (except Stephen Dubner) have spoken at TED (Techonology, Entertainment, and Design), a conference of some of the world’s most influential people. Past speakers include Bill Gates, J. J. Abrams, and Bill Clinton. Here are the links to their videos. Unfortunately, I can’t embed video, so this is all I can do without my own hosting. Sorry.

Tim Ferriss (Some language) on beating fear

Seth Godin on standing out

Steven Levitt (language) on crack’s economics

To try the test out for yourself, go to implicit.harvard.edu. To take another test of your choice, either click “Demonstration,” then “Go to the Demonstration Tasks,” or click the link I’ve made above.

BONUS: If answer-the-questions-in-plain-English questionnaires are more your thing, check out Blogthings.com. They have a plethora of quizzes, all of which can be shared with friends via Facebook or copy-pasting of HTML.

If that explanation wasn’t enough, the rest of the post should help. The basic premise of Hunch.com is a user-built automatic version of Yahoo! Answers. You ask it a question, it asks you a few questions, you answer them  to help it determine the answer, and you’re done.

The best way to illustrate that short of having you try it yourself is to share my experience with it. I recently bought a pair of earbud headphones after the ones I had started malfunctioning. I was looking for something durable with reasonable sound quality and wanted a middle-of-the-road price. I found a question like that, answered accordingly, and ended up buying a pair of V-Moda Vibe earbuds. No word yet on whether they’re definitely great or terrible, but I haven’t had any problems with them in the week I’ve had them for.

Another example is more relevant to you. As I wrote this post, I was looking at the front page of Hunch.com to make sure I had all the information I needed. I saw a question along the lines of “What URL Shortener Should I Use?” and clicked it, as I’d been looking at Su.Pr (Stumbleupon’s new data gatherer). I “told” Hunch I wanted to be able to find statistics, didn’t care much about this, cared about that, and less than a minute later, I had my answer. Tr.im is my current URL shortening service. Hopefully it’ll work as well as I’ve been informed.

In some ways, this is a lot like Wolfram|Alpha. You ask a question, then it finds you the answer without all of the extra information. The difference here is that while Wolfram|Alpha mostly deals with pure data, the human input Hunch.com has allows you to ask much more abstract questions and get all sorts of (good) answers. You can think of it as Wolfram|Alpha meets Wikipedia or eHow in some ways.

Again, the URL is Hunch.com. I’ve linked it to the Tr.im version, but you’ll end up going to the same place.

The URL is namechk.com. Check it out.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to ask or share below.

Though I don’t know how useful it’ll be to new readers now, Scamp’s URL is scampblog.blogspot.com. Feel free to check out the blog’s archive for some amazing ads and top-notch commentary.

Just a note: After reading Scamp’s last post and starting to write this one, I proceeded to opened up my email. Interestingly enough, Creativity‘s (a division of Advertising Age) headline for this story was “Scamp RIP.” I just want to clear the air preemptively and say that I didn’t intend for the similarity. I guess that great minds just think alike when writing titles for web-based stories .

Introduction aside, TECC is a sort of online Hallmark, with the word “effing” used about as often as the Hallmark logo is. Every greeting, graduation, congratulations, and other card contains the word in some form, in a huge, marker-like font. While probably not appropriate for all types of recipients, I’d say that this is an interesting new way to send a message to a good friend. The sheer novelty itself calls for a good laugh in most cases, so give it a try. The seller even offers free shipping (UK only) and will handwrite the card if you’re a bit sloppy.

The cards are available for £2.20 each, with 50p international shipping.  TECC also sells mugs and business cards.

Currently sold out, this is just one of the 50+ items available at the store.

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Many people are familiar with the feature on Google that allows them to type in, say “6+6″ and have the answer shown to them separately from the search results. The feature allows for some things besides simple math, but doesn’t go very far. Wolfram|Alpha is a new solution to that problem. Built in partnership with Dell, this tool has some serious power.

Calling itself “the world’s first computational knowledge engine,” which basically means that it is considered to be more intelligent than the competition, WA works very well at what it’s designed to do. It looks pretty, too. The linked page shows the results for a search of “Time in Anaheim.” The search was done from a computer in Michigan, so WA pulled up two clocks for comparison as well as other time-related information. Other queries you can use include company lookups and comparisons, dates (“September 11, 2001″ brings up the basic details of the World Trade Center attacks), and locations. There’s more, but you can see all of that at the website itself. 

Besides the calculator, there are resources that easily put WA head and shoulders above the competition. The information search function is interesting, as it quickly combs through all sorts of data and puts it all in one easy-to-read page. In essence, WA’s search condenses the information you would find on Wikipedia (here’s “Pirates of the Caribbean”) and displays it in the form of charts, maps, animated images, and other visual aids. For the geeks among us, the coolest thing about WA is not that it shows all of that, but that it shows all of that without having gathered the information in advance. Unlike Wikipedia, dictionary.com, and other resources, which must have pages set up beforehand, Wolfram|Alpha gathers its  information after the corresponding search. 

To summarize this whole thing, Wolfram|Alpha is a deceivingly simple, yet amazingly smart tool for anybody looking to gather information and statistics. It’s not a replacement for Google, Yahoo!, or Ask when it comes to abstract or personal searches (you wouldn’t be able to find your friend’s MySpace with WA), or identical terms (“MP3″ showed information on the chemical compound), but it beats them hands-down when it comes to finding a complex group of information in one place. What could take ten minutes to find and read on another search engine takes less than one on WA. Check it out at wolframalpha.com and let me know what you think.

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BONUS: Many people have called Wolfram a sort of search engine, though it doesn’t really work like the traditional Google or Yahoo! search. However, along with WA, there are plenty of alternative search engines out there. Some of the ones I’ve found useful are listed below. Both of the socially responsible ones are based on Google or Yahoo!, but the others work with their own programs.
Cuil had a lot of buzz as a sort of Google killer when it first came out due to its privacy policy and number of indexed pages. It’s worth looking at.
SearchMe has a very cool visual search option that displays webpages in an iTunes Cover Flow-style format. Keeping with that iTunes-like theme, it also includes multimedia like music videos in its results.
EcoSearch is a socially responsible search engine in that for a certain amount of searches their website processes, they will donate money to plant a tree. So far, over 2500 have been planted.
Hoongle is a sort of mashup of EcoSearch and FreeRice.com. They are having an issue with donations at the moment, but the idea is that they donate rice for every search.

What do you think of the current visual layout?

(polls)

Recently, I had a Blue Screen of Death error that somehow rendered Safari (my browser of choice) inoperable. Before I discovered the resources below, I had no backup of my favorites. In case that ever happened again, I decided to get rid of my save-it-on-my-computer practices. I moved my bookmarking, RSS reading, and note-taking (I used to just use Microsoft Word) to the web, where I have less to worry about in case my computer crashes, but I can also access my favorites from any computer I choose. This post goes over some of the tools I use.

By the way, I have omitted a few tools that, while useful, are not practical for everybody. For example, some of you may know about StumbleUpon. It’s a useful tool for finding random (literally) content on the web and for bookmarking pages quickly. Back when I used nothing but Internet Explorer and Firefox, SU was fine for me. I loved using it when I got bored, and it was a quick way to keep tabs on the content that I liked. The problem was that after I switched to using Google Chrome, it became useless to me.  StumbleUpon, like the other omissions,must be used with a toolbar. The ones I recommend are almost all available in a bookmarks-bar mode.

The tools

Because the crash occurred before I shut down my previous blogs, and I used my bookmarks to store ideas for my future posts, Evernote (which recently reached 1 million users), Fleck, and LaterThis became indispensible tools for me. I use each one for a different purpose, but they’re all very good when it comes to bookmarking websites. On top of that, they’re very easy to use. To set them up, you just have to create a bookmark for them (each one has a simple how-to guide on its website). When you want to save the page you’re on, just click that button and a screen will appear asking you to fill in whatever details and tags you’d like. Evernote has some other cool features, including the ability to take actual notes and to highlight certain parts of a webpage to bookmark.

Bloglines has helped me replace the use Safari’s built-in RSS reader. It’s been a great tool to use when I find a blog I like.  The reader’s format is easy on the eyes, yet simple. Most media (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) can play back to you right from the page you’re on, and it’s easy to subscribe to blogs from their feeds or main pages. Besides being in most “subscribe with” lists, Bloglines also has a bookmark available that works the same way as the ones available for Fleck and LaterThis.

Though it’s not related to the computer problems I discussed, I’ve also had issues with online shopping. When browsing, I find a lot of products and services that I think are worth looking at again later. The thing is, I don’t want to save them with the other bookmarks, and I don’t want to sign up for their store’s membership just to be able to add it to my wishlist. For this, Amazon.com’s “Add To Wishlist” button is a great tool and addition to my Amazon account. It is, like the others, a clickable bookmark that you drag to your Bookmarks/Links bar. When you find an item, regardless of which website it’s on, click this button and enter the price and any comments you may have about the item. Click “Add To List,” and you’re done. The next time you visit amazon.com, the item will be on your list along with the information you entered.

Like I said, the repair that I had to get for this computer meant that I no longer had some of my most valuable assignments, pictures, or videos. To prevent that from happening, I bought an external hard drive. I also backed up some files online. Box.net, Mozy, and other storage solutions allow you to upload your files of any type to a drive that’s independent from your computer. This practice can come in handy in case your data gets deleted from your hard drive or if you want to share with a large group of people (of course, you can make data private as well). If you want unlimited storage for free, Yahoo! Mail, though inconvenient to use for large amounts of data, allows you to email content to yourself. There is, however, a size limit on files.

For almost any purposes, whether they’re writing notes, saving websites, or storing media, a private blog is a sort of Swiss army knife. With WordPress, there’s Press This, a feature similar to Evernote that lets you publish your thoughts and bookmarks. If you want to keep it private, just change your blog settings. I’ve used this method for a journal of small ideas related to upcoming events, but the way you choose to work with it is up to you.

If you’re absolutely paranoid that the Internet Illuminati will steal all of the bookmarks and files from your online accounts or do something even more sinister, an index card and/or a camera can be enough to save your thoughts and reminders. I’ve taken pictures of interesting websites after seeing them at a friend’s house or while I’m away from my computer. Along with simply writing URLs down, it’s an easy way to keep track of your mental to-do list.

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All of these tools are indispensible backups for your media, memories, and personal information. In case an emergency like mine ever happens to you, I want you to be ready. Please try out the ones that you can make use of and share what you think or any suggestions in the comments section.

The problem with these tools (and the solution)

While I hope that this list has helped, I should warn you that a few of these services are terrible for productivity and efficiency if you use them incorrectly. You may have heard of the term “everything dump,” which is basically  used to express that something is literally a place where you put absolutely everything into. There’s no organization, no order, no nothing. While everything dumps can be good for keeping your mind clear of tasks by putting them into an outside space, cramming all sorts of garbage into one place can make it easy to procrastinate when you’re looking for a task you left in said dump. You can go in looking for info on that project due in two hours and get sidetracked by that video your friend sent you and you bookmarked. To help minimize this, I suggest coming up with a system of categories and tags to keep work separate from play. You can just search for a tag that has to do with work (mine is “thisisforatask”) and keep your mind off of whatever else you may have in the dump. I took it one step farther and use Evernote for work-related  bookmarks, LaterThis for interesting things to read or look at, and Fleck for play-related topics. I also made tags for all sorts of things. Thisisabusiness, thisisafunnyvideo, thisisaseriousvideo, thishascooleffects, thiscouldgoinapost, and so on are all parts of my tag cloud.

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How AWESOME was that? How many bands can say that they’ve had the sheer guts, let alone the idea, to play in people’s front yards? Not only that, but multiple yards? There were quite a few homes in the video. I won’t ruin anything in case you read this before watching, but what did you think of that ending?

BONUS: This isn’t their only ad in this “Sponsors of Tomorrow” campaign. For more, including their “Oops” spot, go to youtube.com/channelintel.