WTF AOL?

Broad strokes: AOL buys Tacoda.  Less than six months later, Dave Morgan is back in startup land and Curt Viebranz is on the street. What's going on here?  Buyers were led to believe that AOL was bringing scale to behavioral targeting and cross-platform digital marketing.  They promoted a bunch of Tacoda people into key sales positions.  Now the top two Tacoda execs are out of AOL and Platform A has a new president.  Now what happens?

My prediction is that Morgan's folks start migrating out of AOL and joining up with him (and/or Viebranz) at the next opportunity.

Ripe Digital INFront

I went to Ripe Digital's INFront last night, to see what programming they have in store for advertisers. Since they're an agency client, I had an inkling, but it was good to see a formal presentation so it could be brought to life. The RipeTV network served up over 85MM videos in 4Q 2007, which was an increase of 80%. So it looks like Ripe is on an upswing and people are digging the content. Speaking of the content, I was lmao at the concept of "Jack With The Box," where a guy stays in a small box (probably about the same size as my first NYC apartment) for 30 days. If he can stay in there for the duration, he gets $100K. Meanwhile, viewers can interact via digital media, throwing ideas at Ripe over what they should put in the box with him, what he ought to eat, etc. If you're the person who comes up with the idea that gets the guy to run screaming from the box, you get the $100K.

Oh, also, some skateboarder named Danny Way wants to skate down the face of the Luxor in Vegas and jump the Sphinx. I'd pay to see that.

PAIN

If you have a Playstation 3 that is connected to the Internet (and why wouldn't it be?), check out a downloadable game called "PAIN." I played this pointless thing for about an hour and a half last night, and I was laughing my ass off the entire time. PAIN attempts to answer the following question: If you were invincible, you had a giant slingshot, and for kicks you decided to launch yourself with said slingshot across urban landscapes, what is the funniest thing that could possibly happen?

For me, the answer to that question is: Launch yourself into the air with the slingshot, land in a smokestack, which explodes, launching me into the air again, do a cannonball into a piece of scaffolding, grab a wooden crate in mid-air and wing it into a a billboard, land on another box, which explodes, launching me into the middle of the street, where I get hit by a passing taxicab and am dragged for a block and a half until I fall into an open manhole. That will score you something north of 300,000 points.

Cocooning

I spend a lot of time at home on the weekends these days.  Sure, there are the occasional night out at friends' houses or dinner at Mom's place, but most time is spent just hanging out or working on projects around the house.  This weekend wasn't much different.  I finished up my home gym, picking up some Gold's Gym dumbbells (similar to these) where you can select how much weight you want on the dumbbell.  It beats keeping 10 pairs of dumbbells around for different exercises and having to buy more when you go up in weight.  I had two really great workouts this weekend - my lats and back are hurting, but that's because the rest of my muscles have had a two-month head start on getting into shape. Lauren got me Call of Duty 4 for Valentine's Day, which was a great gift, but I already had it.  So I took it back to Best Buy and exchanged it for Devil May Cry 4, which I thought was an incredible game.  I've never played any of the others in the series, but the storyline and the graphics were really cool.  And if you're into administering ass-beatings unto hordes of weird-looking demons with guns and swords, this is the game for you.  I really can't believe how great some of these PS3 console games are getting.

I didn't consign the weekend to video games, though.  Yesterday, I spent most of my day in the garage, building the frame for something I hope will be a sort of cubby for our garbage cans.  It seems with all the wind these past few weeks, the garbage cans get scattered all over the side of the house.  I line them up nicely at night and when I get up in the morning, they're scattered all over the place.  So I bought some treated lumber and sketched out something on a sheet of paper.  Basically, it will be like an upscale dumpster with a slanted roof that hinges up so I can put stuff into it.  It also has doors in the front, so I can slide in three of those big, square garbage cans they sell at Home Depot.  I have the frame done - now all I have to do is put siding on it (the same stuff that's on my shed out back), affix the hinges and paint it.