Jeremy Dean Goes Back to Futurama: Art you can ride, even if the oil dries up

I loved my father dearly but there was one question guaranteed to get us arguing:

What is art?

One of the great blessings of my life is that my father and I arrived at an understanding on that question before he died; not exactly an agreement, but an understanding. It went something like this: Art is not art unless there is some skill involved.

For my father, that definition excluded a lot of "modern art" unless I could show him where the artist's skill came into play. Some 35 years have flown by since then, but I think he would agree with me that the latest works by my friend and colleague Jeremy Dean qualify as art. That's because Jeremy is creating art that cannot be realized without skill as well as perception, objects that have the power to make people ask questions and question assumptions, even as they impress with their physical accomplishment. I'm talking about the Hummer-Escalade-Hoovercart, the object at the heart of the Back to the Futurama project. (There are more pictures here.)

I actually wrote a piece about this on my "On the Road" blog because it relates to cars and travel and life's journey. Starting next month, Jeremy is going to take a GMC Hummer or Cadillac Escalade and turn it into a horse drawn vehicle (the image above is just one of many models Jeremy has made to visualize the concept).

Making cars into carts is what people did back in The Great Depression and in the States they called them Hoovercarts as a play on Hoovercrats, a term coined for supporters of Herbert Hoover, the president who presided over the worst of the Depression. In Canada they were called Bennett Buggies, after the prime minister at the time. They arose from a surplus of cars relative to a shortage of affordable fuel. Folks fould that one horse or mule could pull a Model T Ford quite easily if you took out the engine. And there was grass and hay to be had even when money for gasoline dried up.

This project is going to take a lot of energy and expertise. Over the more than five years I have known him, Jeremy has proved to be an endless source of energy (the making and distributing of Dare Not Walk Alone being the most obvious proof). But now he could use some help on the expertise side. Not that Jeremy is a stranger to hands-on-artisan work. I have seen numerous examples of his home remodelling and he is a skilled craftsman, a practical maker of things built to last.

So, if you know of someone who has the skills to chop a car, hitch a horse, or fit out the inside of a vehicle with kick-ass sounds and video systems, why not use the Contact link on Jeremy's home page and let him know. You can also pledge your support of the project (that page features a great video about the project as well as cool gifts you can get in return for your pledge).

When March rolls around Jeremy will ride this creation into a major art event in New York. I'm pretty sure the TV news cameras will be rolling when this happening happens. How many people will "get" what this creation says about the world today, cultural values, lifestyle choices, sustainability and human frailty? I don't know. But this engineered weirdness will get a lot of people thinking. And that's art.
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Balls On Fire, Rolling Down the Road

Hopefully Dylan will forgive the play on Wheels on Fire but I just wanted to do one last post of the year and put two sites on your New Year's Eve list:

The Biggar Bonfire: We attended this event several times when we lived in Scotland and it is well worth braving the cold. The pipes, the bars, the flames, the smiling faces. What's not to love about this Hogmanay event.

The Balls of Fire: We never made it to this one, but again you have the pipes, the crowds, and flames. Only this time they are swirling balls of fire, proceeding down the main road and into the harbor. There's a webcam and more on the site.

So let's hope these and all the other end-of-year festivities around the world usher in a New Year that is brighter than the one that is ending. Here's to a great 2010 for all!

Back to the Future of Cars? Test Driving Jeremy Dean's Futurama

And now for something completely different, on the road.

Back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the only economic crisis in the last 100 years that was worse than the one we're enduring today, a strange new form of road vehicle emerged for the first time: the horse-drawn automobile. In America they were dubbed Hoover carts or Hoover wagons, after Herbert Hoover, who was president when the depression hit and was widely criticized for not doing more to prevent or alleviate the suffering it brought. In Canada these vehicles were called Bennett Buggies after that country's Prime Minister Bennett who was in power from 1930 to 1935 (and of whom it has been said "his own wealth (often openly displayed) and impersonal style alienated many struggling Canadians").

A collision of two phenomena conspired to put these strange hybrid contraptions on the road: a. the rapid growth of automobile ownership in the 1920s, notably the Ford Model T, and b. the rapid drop in the affordability of gasoline during a time of mass unemployment and asset devaluation. The result? A sizable population of people who owned cars--having bought them with cash--but were unable to afford the fuel to run them. Because the bottom had fallen out of the market for used cars, some people figured why not take out the engine, add some poles, and harness up a horse? The hardware, wetware, and skill-set required for this conversion were readily available, particularly in more rural areas. (And pretty much all of North America was, at that time, more rural than it is today.)

Now imagine being shot forward in time from 1930 to 2010 and the first thing you see is a cart horse shackled to a Cadillac Escalade or GMC Hummer. Would you be surprised? Probably not.

Such is the thinking behind the recent conceptual works of contemporary artist Jeremy Dean. Few automobiles capture the excesses of the first decade of the 21st century better than the Hummer and the Escalade. They are both the apotheosis of consumerism and the antithesis of sustainability. And the juice that keeps them going--petroleum--is liable to such violent price swings that we live our lives just one act of terrorism away from prices that most people could not afford.

As an artist, Jeremy has always sought new ways to bring our reality into perspective. As a documentary filmmaker, Jeremy has spent a lot of time uncovering and studying images of the past. So when he encountered Hoover carts during research on a documentary, Jeremy couldn't shake the image and its potent symbolism. And while the world of today is clearly very different from the world of the 1930s, the realization that we have been pursuing a life-style we cannot afford to sustain is even more pressing today than it was 80 years ago. Jeremy has dubbed this project The Futurama of Cars.

You can see more examples of the works here. And you can help Jeremy realize the Futurama of Cars: an actual 21st Century Hoover Cart that Jeremy plans to drive through New York in March, 2010. That's right, a working horse-drawn vehicle based on a Hummer or Escalade. So heads up if you own one of these vehicles--Jeremy is accepting donations, and he doesn't mind if the motor is blown. And heads up any chop shops who want some free publicity for helping make this dramatic horsepower conversion.

Indeed, anyone can help move this project forward by visiting the KickStarter web site. Check out the wild project video and consider making a pledge. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful rewards on offer for pledging, including Warranties, Registration, and Titles.

As works of art, these 21st century Hoover carts take our minds on the road, on a journey through concepts like wealth and poverty, excess and indulgence, environmentalism and sustainability, waste and frugality, form and function, practicality and absurdity, art and atifice, design and desire. Why not come along for the ride

Opera to the Rescue? Definitely worth a listen

I just spent my evening at the Opera. Not the fat lady sings kind of opera, more of a browser with wings kind of thing that just happens to go by the name Opera. And I am really impressed (even though I'm tone deaf and can't tell a libretti from a Lambretta).

I have checked out the Opera browser several times in the past and each time was impressed at the way successive versions added new features, often ahead of IE (not hard to do) and Firefox (quite a bit harder but Opera has been doing it). However, I did not feel compelled to make it my default browser. When Google Chrome came along, seemingly faster than Firefox and with good stability, I made it my default browser. The recent emergence of the Mac version of Chrome into beta meant I could run it on both of my work boxes (one a PC, the other a Mac--yes, when it comes to tech--I go both ways).

But the latest Opera, version 10.10, has really impressed me and may become my new default. I was particularly interested in a combination of three capabilities that might be unique to me, but could make a difference to many other users.

First capability: An integrated email application that can read Eudora files. (For the younger generation, Eudora was a very popular email application last century and I still use it today because it's reliable and easily searchable. Unfortunately, the makers of Eudora abandoned it many years ago and it's starting to show its age.) I've been looking for a Eudora replacement and Opera might be it. I had been reluctant to give up Eudora's trusty filter/folder system of message management but Opera replicates it while using a more flexible system of "views."

Second, there is a Turbo feature that speeds up browsing on slow connections. Regular readers of this blog will know that my home office connection to the Internet is via satellite, specifically HughesNet, which can be very slow at times. Tada! Opera Turbo helps me cope with that.

Third, regular readers of this blog know that HughesNet makes it hard to access my own blog. (Something so weird I made a video about it.) But guess what, Opera sees my blog even when Firefox and Safari and Chrome and IE7/8 do not! Yes, it sounds crazy, but it is verifiable (a video of this phenomenon in action is coming). So there is no other way to put it: Opera works when the others don't. (And no prizes for figuring out with which browser I am writing this.)

There's a bunch more cool stuff in Opera 10.10 that I have not fully explored yet, including file and photo sharing and audio streaming (the audio thing was the source of the "worth a listen pun" in the blog post title). Even though Opera does not have a large share of the notebook and desktop browser market, the company is clearly pushing ahead with innovations and picking up enthusiastic users in the process. The company is also well established in the mobile and embedded browser market (check out the browser in your Nintendo Wii).

Over the next week or so I will be checking out more features and, if this whole HughesNet workaround capability pans out, I will be posting my impressions here.

The Cost of Windows 7

I just wanted to highlight a good blog post I read today in Information Week about the way Microsoft prices Windows upgrades.

Under the clever headline "Microsoft's Non-Family Values" blogger Dave Methvin lays out the logic behind charging $120 to upgrade a single Windows XP or Windows Vista machine to Windows 7. After all, Apple only charges about $25 for an OS upgrade (and offers attractive "family" pricing for multiple licenses). Not surprisingly the answer to "Why does Microsoft charge so much?" boils down to "Because it wants to and it can." The reason Microsoft wants to is the alliance--some would say "unholy alliance"--between hardware makers and Microsoft.

Basically, if it costs $120 and a bunch of hassles to get your old notebook running Windows 7, and a new notebook can be had for $400 with Windows 7 installed, there's a good chance you will opt to buy the new notebook, which helps the hardware makers--keeps the production lines moving and the cash flow coming--and helps Microsoft justify the huge fees it charges the many different computer makers who need the rights to install Windows 7. Of course, that $400 notebook is usually an under-powered teaser model and the PC makers hope you will go for the $1,000 models once they get you in a buying mood.

A good example is my own Sony VAIO that I bought new with XP installed about 4 years ago. No way is Sony going to support Windows 7 on that machine. Sony wants me to buy a new machine. Period. (And if the refusal to support Windows 7 is not incentive enough, Sony apparently has a backup plan that consists of making the fan get so loud and annoying I am forced to retire the thing or lose my sanity.)

Unfortunately, unholy alliances being what they are, Microsoft can't offer a $20 per PC upgrade deal even if it wanted to. The hardware makers would scream foul. They would lose out on sales of new hardware AND face demands for drivers and support and all the related hassles that hardware makers hate to deal with (mainly because they are expensive).

How ironic that I have a reliable 4 year-old computer that delivers entirely adequate performance under Windows XP or 7 yet is a dissappointment to the company that made it. Reminds me of the car industry.

FCC chairman wants USF to apply to broadband

This is a positive development: FCC chairman wants USF to apply to broadband - FierceBroadbandWireless.

Beware the Impression of Speed in Windows 7

I am still exploring Microsoft Windows 7 on the Sony VAIO notebook I bought a few years ago and, like many people checking out Windows 7, I am still getting an impression of improved speed. But this could be dangerous. I suspect the need for speed is driving a lot of Vista and XP users towards Windows 7 but the question you need to ask is this: How long will it last?

Any experienced Windows user knows that fresh installs of past versions of Windows were pretty nippy compared to two-year old install. Sadly, a machine that has been running the same Windows 2000, XP or Vista install for two years is likely to be slowed down by a hugely bloated registry and all kinds of DLLs and taskbar apps and startup items and such, even if you've been using a registry cleaner and optimizer.

A new Windows machine is bound to seem faster, as is a new install. This is particularly tricky for XP users because you can't upgrade XP to 7, you have to do a fresh install of Windows 7. And when you do that you wipe the slate clean, so to speak, and things sure do seem faster. The big question is: How long will that last?

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has answers to that. Is there anything in the design of Windows 7 that would lead us to hope it remains fast? Just click on COMMENTS below to share your thoughts.

Web Site Building Bits and Tips

Just a quick post to share some links you might find helpful if you are building a new web site. I've been helping several folks with their web site aspirations lately and came across these, in no particularly order:

First, how about a menu? It is pretty easy to create a nice top level menu using css and an unordered css. The tricky bit is a drop-down menu. That link will take you to a very simple but effective design which requires very little code.

If you are familiar with jquery you can use it to create a menu like the one on the left. The html/css/js code for doing this is available from this page, linked here. But what if you want to sketch out a complete web page design with menus and page elements?

For this there is a tool called Mocking Bird that you might want to check out (works best on a very broadband connection). Another new tool that might be worth looking into is: www.wix.com. It's a web site that let's you build a web site that uses Flash (like Mocking Bird, Wix is an example of an application delivered as a service, in other words, Software as a Service or SaaS, just like Salesforce or the marketing product that I've been working on: Monetate).

With these two web design apps you can create pages or edit templates using a web-based interface. As with many SaaS offerings the feature set is continually evolving so I suggest you check them out rather than rely on my giving you a snapshot of their capabilities.

When you are designing web pages, the grid approach can be very helpful. Here is an article on grid-based design that I found useful, full of links to related content (I am finding Smashing Magazine a good resource in general, for everything from WordPress themes and buttons, to coding tips).

The ability to draw a design on a grid and then have an application generate the required CSS is a huge boon to web site developers. Here's an article that has links to 15 ways of accomplishing this. (What a difference these would have made when I first started messing with CSS layouts.) Another solution, not on the list of 15, is 960 Grid System. As the name implies, 960GS simplifies designing around a width of 960 pixels, which is a common choice these days for page width.

Finally, for this post, I want to mention XAMPP, software that let's you test a lot of stuff on your Windows laptop or desktop before putting it on a Linux/UNIX web site. With XAMPP you get the ability to run Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl (the AMPP). Of course, this then gives you the ability to install WordPress on your Windows box which is very handy when developing sites in WordPress. Fro Mac OS X users there is similar functionality in MAMP.

Happy page building!

Can You Hear Me? Radio interview at ad:tech

As you can see from the lack of recent posts on Cobbsblog, things have been particularly busy this month. My November started out with a trip to a trade show in New York called ad:tech. This event brings together a very interesting mix of companies that are in some way or another related to digital marketing.

Digital marketing is one way to describe what my work for Monetate is all about, so I was at the show checking out the digital marketing scene and looking to learn whatever I could. (Quote du jour: "A real expert always looks to learn more and does not always try to look like he's learned everything.")

Judging by the huge crowds, digital marketing is doing well these days. For all our sakes I am hoping that the larger-than-expected attendance bodes well for the economy in 2010.

Shortly after I fought my way through the check-in lines and gained entrance to the exhibit hall I was interviewed for WebmasterRadio by marketing guru Bryan Eisenberg. Here is a link to the interview. (I apologize for sounding out of breath but I had to shout to be heard above the crowd--the sound engineers at WebMasterRadio did an amazing job of filtering out background noise but they couldn't change the fact that I was shouting.) Oh, and here's a link to Bryan.

Anyway, if you take a listen to the interview you will get an idea of what Monetate is about and what my role as "evangelist" for the Monetate technology involves. (If you can't listen to the audio right now, the short answer is that my role as an evangelist is to get people excited about what the technology can do.)

I carry out my role by communicating across multiple media, most of which don't charge for participation. Over the years I have learned how to do this out of necessity, often working for startup companies that did not have a marketing budget to speak of (or we had a budget but it got eaten by engineering, or product delivery, or something else that was deemed a priority over marketing at the time).

Starting from back in the days when this type of thing was called guerilla marketing, I have pioneered the idea that if you offer up free content that is also valuable content, people will find that content, consume that content, and give some respect to the content creator. So when I created a web site back in the mid-nineties that was full of high quality computer security information, people who had read the content would call up looking for security advice, which we sold as security consulting, creating a blue ribbon client portfolio that became very valuable and was eventually snapped up by a much bigger company that paid us a premium for it.

A dozen years on and I am working on marketing a marketing product, finding that a lot of people have twigged to this strategy, so things are not quite so easy. But the strategy is still sound and I will keep persevering, adding new tactics like social media (an umbrella term for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs) to my arsenal. And of course, radio interviews whenever they present themselves.

Zombies, Swine Flu, and Kindling: What a Difference 6 Months Makes

Wow! I did not realize it was THAT long since I had posted here. I blame the day job, which is often the evening job and weekend job as well. Fortunately that job is going well and I am racking up kudos for my blog posts on marketing. I am also getting quite adept at the social media thing. (Here's a link to a personal post where I rounded up 19 things you should do if you want to promote your company, band, film, book, profile).

A lot of people are somewhat familiar with some of the social media basics, but it is how you employ them all in concert that makes social networking work, from Twitter to Facebook and LinkedIn, to your blog, your pics, your videos, your tr.ims, your stats and your Google Analytics (which reminds me, I need to add these last few to the list, maybe: Hey 19, Part 2, the Remix).

What has this got to do with art? Everything. There may be some artists who seek obscurity (like the Buddhist monks in Shangri-La that were on PBS last night). But most art is intended to be experienced. And that seldom happens without a push from somewhere. Consider Jeremy Dean, the Brooklyn-based artist who created the indie doc Dare Not Walk Alone (that I had the honor of producing). He has been cooking up some cool conceptual art for several years now, but it was connecting with a gallery that gave his private art a push in the public direction. Jeremy will be showing at big art events in December and March and already has some cool art video online.

Speaking of that aspect of pushing art forward which is often referred to as "publication" and/or "distribution," we are seeing the "and/or" converge taking place right now in technology like Amazon's Kindle. You can now read Kindle books on your iPhone and PC as well as on the actual Kindle device.

Which brings me to the book I wanted to review here: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. This is a novel by the first "new" author I have read entirely on the iPhone. The book came out in print a few years ago and sold well. It is currently around #300 on Amazon. But the book is in several top 10 lists on Kindle, which is how I came to see it while using Kindle on my iPhone. I was intrigued enough by the reviews to download the free preview and on reading that I figured I would like the book, so I paid for the full Kindle version.

There were three things that I enjoyed about World War Z. First and foremost I admired the extent to which author, Max Brooks, had thought through all the implications of zombieism (sp?). Then he extrapolated a new reality from a defined set of data: zombies eat flesh, zombies can only be killed by destroying the brain, zombies can survive under water, zombieism spreads through biting and the dead re-animate after infection, and so on. The book explores the logical and logistical end game. By doing so it reveals worrying weaknesses in current technology, science, cultures, and religions. (Hint, this is a global catastrophe of 2012 proportions.)

Second, the narrative structure created by the interview excerpt device was refreshing and very effective. You learn very little about zombies or the war through direct description. You get most of it by inference. And you get a lot of rich characters too, which keeps things fresh. Brooks is skilfull at giving each a unique voice and strong presence, using little more than their recorded words. He also manages some great humor of the dark, battlefield kind.

Third, I found this to be a fascinating book to read against the backdrop of the global H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic. Indeed, I think that may be part of the reason for the book's success, the series of epidemics the world has been seeing, coming from far distant places right into our everyday lives and forcing us to think hard about a lot of things we would rather keep to the back of our minds.

I am not a big fan of horror stories, particularly ones that dabble in the supernatural. The genius of World War Z is that Brooks makes fighting zombies seem very real and anything but a figment of the imagination. Consider this: In talking about the book over dinner one night I found myself saying "If this zombie thing ever happened for real, it would be really bad." Talk about willing suspension of disbelief.