Connecting the Dots

Migrating from Typepad to Wordpress

IF YOU GET AN RSS FEED FROM THIS BLOG, HEADS UP.

After significant and careful consideration, I've decided to migrate this blog, started in December of 2004, to a Wordpress installation on a server I control.

While Typepad has made many changes that are good for the blogging community, the platform is too limiting. Argue with me all you want (and many have already) but Wordpress is giving me what I want, how I want it, and the limitations on growing with Typepad are too constrictive.

The sad part is that exporting from Typepad is a God-awful mess of code. From URL's that were short, then not short, and underscores ("_") that turned into dashes ("-"), I've had to invest dozens of hours into changing the blog over.

The other sad part is that getting MY images from THEIR servers is a nightmare. While importing into Wordpress kinda, sorta works (but permalinks are all hosed up), all images are left on the Typepad server. I used a caching plugin to capture them, but it's a band-aid and not a comfortable, long term solution.

After waiting days and days for a response from Anil Dash, he finally responded with a connection to a guy named Mark Simmons, but by that time I was already down the road with the migration.

While I understand that Six Apart (Typepad parent) has zero incentive to help me get MY data out of THEIR system (data *I* own by the way), they've made it work juuuuust barely enough that they can stand on a box of righteousness and argue the finer points of ATOM and migration.

I'm paid up through December but just set the domain to transfer and will clean up loose ends if necessary, especially the RSS feeds so I don't lose you, my subscribers.

Farting and Social Media

Appalled that one of the top apps on the Apple iPhone app store was a $.99 app called "Bunny Farts" (iTunes link), I did the tweet you see in the image at left.

Is it just me, or does that tweet not come across as satirical?

Much to my amusement, I received this email today from a company that makes a competing "fart app" for the iPhone hoping I'd go look at their app and do a review:

Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 12:55 AM
pam@modstylez.com <pam@modstylez.com>    
To: steve (at) iconnectdots.com

Hello,

I'd appreciate if you can give me some feedback on our iphone app iLightFarts

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=317429824&mt=8

I realize that you are iphone app guru :) It'd be swell if you can place an honest review of our app.

Thank you,
Pam

<Satire> Besides being incredibly flattered to be seen as an "iphone app guru", I realized that I'd have to buy this app, try it out, and then do a review. Or perhaps do a review without buying the app and do a positive one since ModStylez actually reached out to me and sees me as a farting expert. </Satire>

No question I'm a big fan of comedy and even of flashlight apps for the iPhone, but how many does the world need? Do we also need competitive social media strategies when it comes to better farting capability with our mobile devices?

This sort of random Twitter harvesting (and subsequent emailing) is spam...plain-n-simple. ModStylez (a company who hosts with a Melbourne, Australia ISP so I assume they speak English and further assume they appreciate the satirical) is undoubtedly harvesting any-and-all tweets that mention "fart" apps, but if they'd actually read mine -- and had any sense of the ironic -- "Pam" would've understood that I think these sorts of apps are a complete waste of time.

These and other fart app creators need to do something useful or at least get better at authentically using social media when they reach out to people.

Acrobat Labs: Presentations

Yesterday Adobe released Acrobat.com Presentations and I was alerted to it through a post by Ryan Stewart, Adobe evangelist and energetic geek who knows how to position it.

There is a lot of competition in this space from delivery vehicles like Slideshare to what I believe is a better implementation of online presentation creation than what Adobe is offering in this beta release, 280Slides.

The issue I have with all of the offerings on Acrobat.com is this: I want to use the functionality (especially embedding) but I do NOT want Adobe's branding all over the container I embed on my site(s), blogs, etc.

As the economy tanked and free, branded offerings morphed in to paid, put-your-brand-on-it ones, these deliverables finally got to the point where they should've been all along. I want generic looking containers and just about everyone else I know does too. 280Slides understands this and you can see their non-branded container below.

The other thing I find intriguing is how much effort is put behind online slideshows and how a bunch of slides doesn't tell the story anymore. When more people are adhering to the PresentationZen philosophy of not packing slides with tons of bullet points, without the presenter telling the story, these embedded slideshows have minimal value.

Skype Awareness Builds

 

Forget the AT&T Picturephone shown at the 1964 World's Fair. Dismiss satellite transponder delivery of video (and its huge cost) and instead take advantage of what Skype can deliver...and for proof here's a one hour Oprah show devoted to Skype video sent from planes, submarines and explorations. (via GigaOm).

I know all too well how powerful Skype can be. Two years ago I did an event in Minneapolis for a small group where the speaker came in live from Sydney, Australia over Skype. This man, Malcolm Cohan, directed television commercials in that country so set his lighting -- and projected his personal energy -- in a way that came across quite well. I setup a video camera so that he would have a great experience (and closer connection to audience members) since I could pan the audience, zoom in on a questioner, and Malcolm could even see them laugh at his jokes (essential feedback when doing thing like this virtually).

Like Oprah did with Twitter, this sort of awareness of Skype is certain to continue its acceleration and its adoption by mainstream users.

No Facts on the Today Show

On almost every 'news' show I watch today, I'm almost always stunned by some supposed fact (or the way it's positioned) that makes me say, "Huh!?!"

This morning's NBC Today show was no exception and I call "bullsh*t" on their report.

A segment about rising gas prices was one I wanted to see so was flipping back-n-forth between CNBC and NBC and caught the segment in its entirety.

The report illustrated one main point -- about how rising gas prices were affecting average Americans this upcoming summer driving season -- by showcasing a San Francisco family who'd decided to forgo a driving trip to the Grand Canyon and instead opted to drive to Orange County, CA (and then Today noted that the family would try to save even more by staying with family on their trip vs. staying in hotels).

This was my first 'Huh?' as I know the rough mileage from SF to AZ and from SF to the Los Angeles area, and this factoid about gas prices didn't add up so I grabbed my laptop and looked up some rough and conservative stats about the difference in mileage and what gas might cost this struggling family:

• San Francisco, CA to Grand Canyon, Arizona
  765 mi – about 14 hours 19 mins

• San Francisco, CA to Long Beach, CA
  406 mi – about 6 hours 16 mins (up to 7 hours 50 mins in traffic)

• Mileage difference would equal 359 miles. Even if this family drove a Ford Expedition and averaged, say, 10 miles per gallon and gas was at $2.75 per gallon, the cost of the driving trip one way would be $98.72 or less than $200 total for the family vacation.

My second "Huh?" was the probable real decision making criteria for this unfortunate family of four: The total cost of the vacation, not just the gas prices.

Even if they'd stayed at Motel 6's on the trip and ate all meals at the cheapest possible restaurants, their vacation cost on a Grand Canyon trip would undoubtedly exceed $1,000 and "staying with family" on an Orange County, CA trip would save those hotel costs, many meals out, save that ~$200 in gas, and so on.

Positioning this family as making their decision on gas prices alone was disingenuous at best and flagrant misrepresentation and a breach of journalistic ethics at worst. In any event, this is a perfect example of why there is such low regard for TV news reporting among those of us who think for ourselves.

Apple Ad in New York Times

Yep...I notice this is my second post about the New York Times, but the last couple of times an ad like this has run I've been busy and missed it. Snagged it today and here's the video should you miss it too:

Is "The New York Twitter" the Future of News?

I've been in dozens of conversations over the last several weeks about how "blogging is dead" and "Twitter is the future of news" to "people only have time for the headlines" and the inevitable, "Of course newspapers are dying, whose got time to read an entire article?"

Oh really? If that's the case, we've got really big problems kids (and they go beyond accelerating panic and fear about swine flu pandemics). If the objective with all of these new communications technologies is to be able to simply skim over the surface of news and information, then expect to see only the skin-deep stuff, the superfluous, and the inane.

It's one reason why I gravitate toward those on Twitter who add value through linking to articles or posts. Yep...if something intrigues me I'll go out and read it. In depth understanding is what I try to gain and maybe go off on tangents finding other opinions, perspectives and relevant information.

I reject those who think that we can truly know something through only the headlines.

Apple "iPad" (or "MacbookMini") is it *Finally* Coming?

I own an Apple Newton (with the 2.0 software) and occasionally get it out to play with it. The Newton OS 2.0 software finally got the handwriting recognition down so that glaring and funny errors weren't there for the press to ridicule (Apple's Newton Reborn: Will it Still the Critics? by John Markoff for the New York Times, from 1994).

For a loooong time I've believed that Apple was just moments away from a tablet. I've wanted one ever since the Newton was murdered discontinued and have been convinced we're right around the corner. Fortunately I'm not the only one who missed predicting the introduction of just such a device.

I don't care much anymore. My hope is that Apple will do it eventually and it will be a lusted after, must-have device just like an iPhone, but my Macbook Pro, iPhone and a netbook suffice just fine for now.

Here are three posts where I was convinced such a device was nearly here, but clearly was way off:

• November 2006: Apple Tablet: Why it could happen...

• March 2008: Apple iPad: Would you buy a tablet-sized iPhone?
  

• October 2008: Apple's Netbook: The Kindle Killer?

Now the rumors are all over the 'net that "It's coming! It's coming!" from flash memory purchases to rumored production starting up to Verizon being the chosen one for a new, cheap iPhone and a netbook-like device.

I'll wait until Apple announces something and in the meantime, sit back, relax and enjoy this Welcome to Newton video from 1993...

Save $125 Billion With Solid State Light Bulbs

All of us need to get rid of our incandescent light bulbs.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has projected that our nation could save 29% of our national lighting energy consumption by 2025 -- $125B in energy costs -- if all of us converted to solid state lighting (SSL's which mainly are LED's and OLED's).

The DOE has this site devoted to SSL technology and even an "L Prize" for innovation and breakthroughs in SSL.

Ever since I purchased a Toyota Prius and a Neuton rechargeable lawnmower, I've been both delighted and stunned with the compromises one has to make today to be more energy efficient: the Prius averages 47mpg but is less substantial (and luxurious) than what I'm used to in a car and the Neuton batteries (lead acid's) and its engine is inefficient enough that I have to cut my lawn every five days or the mower bogs down.

I've been on the hunt for LED lights for my home -- and 40w, 60w and 100w bulbs seemed to be scarce and certainly NOT available at retailers like Home Depot or Target -- but they're now beginning to appear from companies like EarthLED (and their 100w bulb replacement with a tiny fan in it to keep it cool and ensure the life is long) to companies with initiatives like those at GE and at Philips.

The kicker is that these bulbs are very expensive.

Facts About The Digital Economy

Having information and facts at-your-fingertips about the internet and web is absolutely critical whether you're a startup needing content for your pitch, a marketer needing to understand a 40,000 foot view of trends, a corporate user needing to understand mobile access to the 'net or international usage, or if you're just someone like me: an info-junkie who needs a constant data fix in order to constantly track what's hot and what's not.

This report is put out by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, an organization that is a "...market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. Its mission is to educate policymakers, opinion leaders, and the public about issues associated with technological change, based on a philosophy of limited government, free markets, and individual sovereignty."

"PFF's research combines academic analysis with a practical understanding of how public policy is made. Its senior fellows and other scholars are leading experts in their fields, with distinguished careers in government, business, academia and public policy. Its research is substantive, scholarly, and unbiased."

Covered in the report are these key areas:

1. The Growth of the Internet
2. The Hardware Sector
3. The Communications Sector
4. Digital Media
5. Electronic Commerce
6. Threats to the Digital Economy
7. The Worldwide Digital Economy

One of the best parts are the active links in each chapter's EndNotes which allow you to drill down into many areas covered within this report.

Here is the download page and a direct link (PDF).

A Different Perspective on Earth Day

When I saw Steve Martin live at a bar outside Minneapolis in the mid-1970's, he'd always close with this message which made me realize the importance of conservation...and I've never forgotten that lesson:

SteveMartin-Littering

Roll your mouse over the gray box to invoke the audio player

("Always take a litter bag in your car. It doesn't take up much
room and if it gets full, you can just toss it out the window!")

We Are Not Alone

Former astronaut, Dr. Edgar Mitchell, came out some months ago on a BBC broadcast stating unequivocally that he had personal knowledge of extraterrestrial visits to earth. This CNN article on Monday reiterated that position well:

Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, asserted Monday that extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the U.S. and other governments.

He delivered his remarks during an appearance at the National Press Club following the conclusion of the fifth annual X-Conference, a meeting of UFO activists and researchers studying the possibility of alien life forms.

Mankind has long wondered if we're "alone in the universe. [But] only in our period do we really have evidence. No, we're not alone," Mitchell said.

How many galaxies are there in the Universe? William Keel, Professor of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Alabama, summed up the proposed number of galaxies able to be seen by the Hubble telescope:

"...the Hubble telescope is capable of detecting about 80 billion galaxies (although not all of these within the foreseeable future!). In fact, there must be many more than this, even within the observable Universe..."

Though evidence is necessary to remove any doubt, I've long held the belief that we're not alone. Sheer numbers of possible planets where life could exist number in the billions and in the hundreds of millions for earth-like planets that could inhabit life.

How hard would it be for a civilization advanced enough for interstellar space travel to keep contact to a minimum or make sightings fleeting?

Dr. Mitchell was interviewed on Kerrang Radio, July 23, 2008. Listen to Mitchell saying there is life in the Universe. He says we have been visited, and that UFOs have been covered up by the government for a long time. He says he's been inside military circles and they know we've been visited and talk about it behind closed doors. He says he's been involved in certain research committees and knows people who know the real story.

Dismiss it or argue the possibility all you want, but what if we are not alone?

Why isn't Dean Kamen on a Wheaties box?

Why do we pay so much attention to sports heroes and celebrities, when the people doing the work to advance humankind are virtually invisible?

Over four years ago I wrote a similar post to this one about scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil. My son was 10 years old and had to choose a "hero" and write about what made them one. When I saw the list I was appalled and emailed his teacher to ask why current and contemporary inventors, scientists and visionaries were excluded?

60 Minutes had a piece last night about the US military working on something akin to a "Manhattan Project" for prosthetics. This is certainly a response to the huge numbers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan maimed from war in unprecedented numbers.

The firm they worked with was none other than Segway inventor, Dean Kamen and his DEKA group. Many of us have already seen the video about the prosthetic arm developed under a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Amazing doesn't do it justice.

From a wheelchair that can climb stairs and allow the user to 'stand up' to talk at eye level with others to the Segway and a Stirling engine water purification system for small villages, Kamen and crew are taking big ideas and manifesting them in to a reality that is changing the world. 

Yes, I realize that not every kid can be an Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison or Ada Lovelace, but reaching for a dream allows a kid to accomplish much more than if they don't, and though sports achievement can impact many other areas of someone's life, an inventor mindset means that a kid learns to look at every process, method, possibility or vision they have, and to figure out how to make it more efficient or to leap forward in a revolutionary way.

Compare that to the ability to slam dunk a basketball and answer this question, "Do you want your child to aspire and emulate some NBA star, or instead become an inventor like Kamen and make a difference in the world?"

Jarvis to the Newspaper Industry: You Blew It

Been following Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine for some time and he wrote a speech he wished would be delivered to the Newspaper Association of America at this week's meeting and delivered it with with one key theme: you blew it.

He starts off with this:

You’ve had 20 years since the start of the web, 15 years since the creation of the commercial browser and craigslist, a decade since the birth of blogs and Google to understand the changes in the media economy and the new behaviors of the next generation of - as you call them, Mr. Murdoch - net natives. You’ve had all that time to reinvent your products, services, and organizations for this new world, to take advantage of new opportunities and efficiencies, to retrain not only your staff but your readers and advertisers, to use the power of your megaphones while you still had it to build what would come next. But you didn’t.

You blew it.

This is worth a read if you care at all about strong journalism and, especially, investigative journalism. Unless you're a fascist, of course, and would really love to have a weak media filled with easily intimated bloggers (all with day jobs) so you could push your agenda with no one calling you out on it. Nicely done Brother Jarvis.

Would *you* pay the $20 cost to get 160mbps internet at home?

Read an article just now in the New York Times. It seems that there is a very interesting offering being delivered in Japan that makes it all the more apparent that the cable companies are purposely limiting broadband speeds from what I (and many others) believe is a strategic attempt to protect their cable TV delivery franchises by limiting video, TV and movie delivery over the internet.

J:Com, a Japanese cable company (with TV, net and telephony services), is delivering 160mbps internet service at a cost to J:Com of network upgrades of $20 per home!

At my office, I have Comcast's DOCSIS 3.0 service that runs at 50mbps download speed and 10mbps upload speed. While blazingly fast compared to the 16mbps down/2mbps up speed I have at home, it took an installer over an hour to hook up the Cisco box (about the size of an audio receiver) and the modem. Apparently J:Com's service requires just a modem which is a self-upgrade (they just ship you the modem or you pick it up at one of their stores).

• J:Com's pricing for the 160mbps download and 10mbps upload is 6,000 YEN (US$60) per month with no bandwidth cap.
• Comcast's pricing for the 50mbps download and 10mbps upload is US$139.95. A 250GB monthly bandwidth cap is in force, regardless of which Comcast tier of service you buy.

Makes you wonder about the slow upgrading of current US cable networks -- especially if it really is as cheap as $20 per home like the article states -- which makes my tinfoil hat paranoid assumption (that the cable companies are protecting their TV delivery franchises over the public good as I stated in this post) all the more valid.

World’s Fastest Broadband at $20 Per Home
By Saul Hansell

If you get excited about the prospect of really, really fast broadband Internet service, here’s a statistic that will make heart race. Or your blood boil. Or both.

Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here’s how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed.

Read the full article here.

Broadband Providers: "Let's cut 'em off at the pass!"

Even the most naive and casual observer can see that the threat from services like Hulu; both Apple's TV and movie offerings within iTunes; Joost; and the accelerating number of media center software offerings (providing access to ANY video on the internet), pose a huge threat to the cable companies and other broadband providers.

They are all clearly trying to get out ahead of the user market (and the maturity of video provider business models as well as the open source media center software) and put caps in place before wider adoption occurs.

As a tail-end baby boomer with enough of a geek nature to be involved far too deeply in the 'net, web and social media in my business, I realize I'm atypical within my demographic on how I, and as a result my family, use our Comcast broadband connection. With Comcast's 50mbps down/10mbps up DOCSIS 3 setup in my office (Note: we were one of two companies in their Minnesota rollout of this new technology) and 16mbps down/2mbps up at home, I'm dealing daily in video, photos, moving around large Zip files, screensharing, personal publishing, and numerous other online activities. These activities are mission critical to our small business, my wife's and my client interactions, as well as family activities and connecting with others. 

Comcast, one of the largest providers in this space, directly affects all aspects of our digital lives. With my family and my current and increasing use of the internet for an every expanding array of online activities (Skype calling; my son's video gaming; Flickr and Vimeo for photo/video sharing; online backup of our computers; use of our new Mac mini media center), we are certain to end up violating Comcast's draconian 250GB bandwidth caps (er, I mean, Network Management Policy).

The kicker? According to Comcast's executive escalation group, I can't even pay them more for higher tiers of service with no cap or, as one representative told me in March, "...the cap is the cap, regardless of the tier of service."

Did you know that, in Comcast's case, they can simply cut you off for exceeding that 250GB cap with no warning and that their promised metering tools are still missing in action?

Then I read this recently about Time Warner's laughingly low caps and realized that, if Time Warner gains traction with this approach, Comcast will follow suit and we'll all have to watch and do whatever these providers allow us to do online.

You're NOT a Court Jester

As someone who carves out time early each morning to scour my RSS feed reader, I'm always aware of what I'm not accomplishing by investing the time necessary to consume input from my trusted sources.

It's one reason why each April Fool's day I cringe on the truly lame attempts by geeks to be funny and how 90% of these attempts are not worth the time to view or read.

That said, there are truly some good ones this year that even I -- someone who appreciates people and humor attempts that are well done vs. those from people who should no better than to act the fool -- are finding to be worth checking out:

• Wow: Qualcomm's Convergence Project

• YouTube Upside Down

• (Could actually be true!): eBay put Skype on iPhone ‘to boost price of NSA backdoor'

Even with a few funny ones, remember geeks: if the court jester displeased the King, he was beheaded.

TV is Toast: Mac Mini Media Center

My friends and family are sick of hearing me espouse the virtues of the Mac mini media center I built last weekend, but the experiences since have made me realize that TV as we know it is going to be toast much quicker than I thought even two years ago.

Though I considered AppleTV as one solution, it's too limiting as it's Apple and iTunes-centric. Instead, I am using PlexApp, an open source media server forked from the XBox Media Center (XBMC). I've downloaded and am playing with Boxee as well, which is positioned as a social media TV platform so friends can see what each other is watching or has watched. 

Using this has profoundly shifted our use of our HDTV. From my watching of HD shows from Revision3 to Hulu shows as well as those from Joost. It's been fun to get hooked on an old science fiction show with my son as well as my wife who discovered several shows she watched many years ago and is delighted to view again.

We can even bring up DVD's I've backed up to the 1TB external drive which is also increasingly holding all the video I've shot over the years (and never pulled off the miniDV tapes). In addition, my multiple gigabytes of photos will end up there as well as all of our music.

iTunes? Yep. We can leverage all that it has to offer from movie rental or purchase to podcasts to music.

The best part is the ease with which developers can create plugins that bring other video sites to Plex. In the works are CBS and ABC ones and more.

Why is TV toast? Because even Comcast cable can't compete with the on-demand capabilities (and MUCH better user interface than the embarrassingly bad one they offer) of apps like Plex and the ecosystem that has already exploded around it. Yes, they can try to slap us around with draconian measures like their 250GB cap to stave off the inevitable move away from what they offer, or do what I view as the smart thing: embrace these moves, help the development of Plex, Boxee, XBMC and others, and be the preferred delivery method for it all.

So I'll keep moving along with what we're doing and hope I'm not exceeding the cap. NOTE: I did ask recently -- when on with Comcast's executive resolution center -- that even paying more for a business class account is still subject to that 250GB cap. Weird.

Mogulus: Yep...It's Still a Beta Product

This is a cautionary tale about a jaw droppingly fabulous technology that simultaneously was quite a frustrating and shaky experience as a producer with what turned out to be just over 94% uptime today. This story also illustrates how inventive and innovative technologies are really pushing the envelope with cloud computing.

Over the last several weeks, I invested days in due diligence on video streaming eventually signing up with Mogulus, "...the most powerful live broadcast platform on the internet." While I don't doubt they'll achieve that vision someday, the tiny gray label in their logo that says "Beta" means that they're actually, "...the most powerful live broadcast platform on the internet in beta."

Any non-online software company will flat out tell you NOT to use beta software "in production". Of course, Google's permanent affixing of the word "beta" under Gmail means that beta has become a convenient excuse when something goes wrong and, frankly, makes you and I as users partly to blame (which reminds me of that line in the movie Animal House when, after destroying the car belonging to the brother of Flounder, one of the fraternity pledges, Otter tells him, "Hey! You fucked up...you trusted us!"

I spent all day today running an online channel filled with several dozen videos, organized into storyboards, for a 24 hour internet broadcast channel for a client. Luckily, the 28 minutes during the live, streaming conference event for my client worked flawlessly, but at least five other times during the day the streaming channel simply went black (though the ticker at the bottom of the screen worked but no video played) and four other times there was stuttering or videos repeating parts of themselves.

Frantic calls from other team members ensued, I emailed support and it corrected itself in minutes (varying from 5-8 minutes) so the email replies were always, "Ahh...I looked at it and it looks fine."  Each time this happened (or the several times the video stuttered or replayed short snippets of a video 2 or 3 times), we lost viewers which was the real irritant.

TV = Brain Off / Computer = Brain On

In 2004 Steve Jobs famously said about TV vs. computers, "We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on." It was one of those statements that seemed like a throwaway (and one most of us did the old head bobbing up-n-down about), but it's become more and more true since then.

My wife and I often take our laptops upstairs and lie in bed finishing up the days emails, exploring, and increasingly watching "TV". In fact, my brain gets SO turned on that I find it hard to go to sleep...so I've actually stopped doing that in order to relax, quiet down and nod off (and older relatives have cautioned on how "you're going to ruin your marriage" by playing with our laptops at night vs. with each other).

When I first saw the delightful Alec Baldwin Hulu ad on the Super Bowl -- with its clear and humorous reference on how TV watching turned your brain into a gelatinous mush they could scoop out and eat (since they're aliens, after all) -- the brilliance of the campaign took my breath away.

It did so because of the NBC team's recognition that most of us in the always-on, always-connected participation culture -- increasingly turning our attention away from all traditional mediums like TV, radio, newspapers and magazines -- view television watching as the mind numbing, brain mushing pursuit it is, but still one we turn to when we choose to be entertained passively.

The team obviously recognized that doing a fun advertisement to get our attention, directly addressing this obvious fact within it and, of course, delivering a service that meets our needs whether we're watching an actual television set or have our brains turned on with our computing devices, they nailed it.

Jobs nailed it too over four years ago with that statement. He didn't say anything about turning your brain on to perform tasks, but rather computers as an extension, a stimulator of our brains.

As we all move away from purely linear, serial tasks and processes toward a world where we drink in information, news, entertainment while connecting with others in a parallel and associative way, I'm eager to live in this time of awakening where more and more of us are living in a perpetual state of having our brains turned on.