Mike Flacy

An advantage to the truncated season of Lost due to the writer’s strike is that each of the remaining episodes will likely be filled with a fast moving plotline. Last night’s episode proved that assumption and then some. Locke’s faction of Losties finally got attacked by the mercenaries from Michael’s boat and Jack had to deal with the washed up body of the boat’s doctor, who hadn’t died yet according to the boat’s communication.

- The game of Risk was some sort of foreshadowing. Hurley says “Australia is the key” (The Losties flight 815 originated in Sydney.) Loved Sawyer’s face when Ben unloaded the shotgun.

- I despised the way that the writers dispatched the 3 remaining extras that followed Locke. Having each run directly into gunfire to check on their downed friends was ridiculous. Of course their comical deaths fit their roles as mere sheep following one leader or another.

- The death of Ben’s daughter was extremely disturbing. I had a feeling that Alex was going to be executed, but that didn’t change the impact of the moment. I thought to myself that Ben had completely snapped at that point and went for solace in his panic room. Little did I know he was going to bust out an ancient cave with similar drawings as the flipping countdown on the hatch timer. I can only assume that the cave controls the smoke monster, although there is a theory that he travels to Tunisia at that point in the story to recruit help and inform Charles Widmore of his intentions.

- The recruitment of Sayid was fairly predictable, but I was fooled by Ben’s intentions. The sly little smile he had after Sayid begs him to join the cause was classic Ben. It’s also possible that Ben killed Nadia to manipulate Sayid.

- In the end, the ironic part of Sawyer leading the charge back to Jack’s camp with Claire & the baby is nearly the same moment that Daniel admitted to Jack that the boat wasn’t there to rescue them. Neither camp is benefiting from either leader at this point. I’d imagine they will rejoin by the end of the season.

- I loved that the previews showed Keamy (Alex’s executioner) still alive. That son of a bitch deserves an up close and personal death from Ben.

Tiny tidbits I noticed that may mean something important. (or nothing at all!)

• Ben’s coat, when waking in Tunisia, had a new Dharma logo on it, swirly rings with a small sprout in the middle (possibly the Orchid station). It also had the name Halliwax on it. Halliwax was one of Marvin Candle’s names in the introduction of one of the orientation films.

• The painting of the Black Rock ship was hanging beside Widmore’s bed at the end of the episode.

• Alex typed the number ‘1623’ for the fence code.

• The Rocket ship hieroglyph from the hatch clock was also seen on the cave wall.

While I have always found American politics to be incredibly tiresome and out of touch with my interests, the internet’s collective latching onto Barack Obama’s campaign fascinates me from a social networking standpoint. It’s blatantly apparent on community-based news sites such as Digg, carries over financially to benevolent sites like DonorsChoose and grows exponentially faster on social networks like Facebook. Why have the majority of internet-savvy users latched onto the young senator from Illinois? The most obvious clue is the difference in technological understanding in the Obama / Clinton camps, most well defined by their web presence.

Social Networking Integration:

While Cinton’s campaign finally emerged from their social networking slumber to add links to official Myspace, Facebook, & Twitter groups this year, Obama has had 16 web relevant social links on his page including links to Digg, LinkedIn, and Eventful. He also has the clear edge when it comes to number of supporters within social networks. 600,000 more on Facebook, 150,000 more on Myspace, 35,000 more subscribers on Youtube, 22,000 more followers on Twitter, etc…

Additionally, Obama’s site launched a built-in social network to join people on a local level. It essentially organizes the most passionate Obama supporters to handle volunteer projects like phone banks, rallies, and get-out-the-vote efforts. Clinton added a similar system on her site at a later date, but it feels isolated in terms of communication and building relationships on a social level. The design of Obama’s network encourages online communication on an internal basis as well as self-designed organization of events with newfound, politically like-minded friends.

Neither candidate uses their site blog to personally write about each day’s events, but rather the campaign staffers handle it. Obama’s blog is more rapidly updated by comparison and offers more content on a daily basis. It also has an edge on number of commentors. There are slight differences to their social sharing choices of blog posts as well. Both sites include sharing links to Digg and del.icio.us, but Obama’s blog includes sharing links to Stumbleupon, Facebook & Newsvine. Clinton’s blog only extra link is to Technorati search which is a really strange choice and doesn’t seem to be used by her comment contributors.

Candidate Branding:

Obama’s web site is very much designed to brand his candidacy. Note the soft white light emanating from the background to reflect a feeling of hope in coordination with his message. The “Gotham” typeface as the graphical font default is clean, understated and well defined. The font also matches every single piece of Obama campaign swag that’s distributed; pretty damn impressive from a large-scale standpoint. Highlighted graphical links light up as if they were alive and full of energy. The color scheme, while predominantly blue, has light undertones of white & red to subtly create a feeling of patriotism.

Strangely Clinton’s site is oddly similar in format to McCain’s web presence, both of which look like free web templates. The sites are static, utilitarian and lack any uniform artistic design elements. Clinton’s web admins keep adding features similar to Obama’s site, but they don’t cohesively contribute to any type of branding for Senator Clinton. What’s left is a stale website that distracts or confuses the viewer with a link-crammed home page rather then engaging them with proper design.

I find Obama’s branding to be similar to companies like Apple and Target who entered the market as underdogs. These companies are very accessible to the American public, but with tremendous elements of heavy design involved. They target consumers by creating a feeling of stylish comfort with their products and market their design choices as an important purchasing decision. Similarly, Obama’s web presence, among other things, shaped a politician with less political experience than his rivals into a well designed brand, more effectively selling the possibility of change than Senator Clinton.

Regardless of my opinion on Obama’s politics, there is something comforting in the fact that he, or at least the people within his campaign, understands the Web 2.0 generation. It’s reflected in his website, his position on net neutrality as well as his relationship to young voters. In turn, that creates hope that he will surround himself with tech-savvy opinions on policy, assuming he wins the nomination and becomes President. That’s the most identifiable reason that social networking internet users seem to be attracted to his candidacy.

Seven days from the launch of a game that will probably hurt the box office receipts of Iron Man, I’m keeping myself in check over the deluge of information concerning GTA IV. It’s extremely tough to keep myself in the dark about one of the most anticipated titles in this generation of gaming, but a fresh entrance into the title is something that can’t be understated concerning the cinematic nature of the narrative. One story did mange to slip through the crack though; a piece over at Gamepolitics on the removal of a GTA IV advertisement from Chicago city buses. To sum up the article, the Fox News affiliate in Chicago pressured the transit authority to remove the advertisement.

Fox News, on a national level, is no stranger to ignorant reporting practices concerning the video game industry, but I see the entire national media in a full blown quandary concerning treatment of the industry. First off, airtime dedicated to the industry is completely abysmal. There are segments dedicated to weekly movie releases, but the video game industry doubled their 2007 box office take to the tune of nearly 19 billion dollars. The average age for gamers is around 34 years old (always rising) and the average age for purchasers is 40. I look at those staggering numbers and say “How in the world can news networks afford to ignore such a potentially profitable market?”

The most common answer: The industry wide stigma on a national stage is that the end users of gaming products are dominated by children. I can’t argue that’s certainly a large portion, but it’s no longer the majority. 60% of the market is comprised of 18 and over gamers; 25% of those being 35 and older. This stigma leads into the only coverage that the MSM offers to the industry, negative stories about the supposed relationship of violent video games to real life violence. Ironically, only 15% of total games sold have a Mature rating. The other 85% is rated between E for Everyone to T for Teen, which is very tame by comparison.

There are smart print organizations that have started to capitalize on the market, Newsweek being the most obvious choice. Newsweek has an extremely intelligent editor by the name of N’Gai Croal who launched a video game blog called Level Up in Sept. 2006. His blog is a highly referenced source for much of the industry and it gives credence to Newsweek, an unlikely source of gaming information. USAToday has also been very progressive when it comes to covering the industry.

Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, and ABC News have tremendous amounts of catching up to do if they plan on capturing the attention of the gaming consumer. They need to stop booking utter buffoons such as Jack Thompson and stop jumping to blame filled conclusions when tragedy strikes at one of our schools. Hire tech-savvy reporters that can offer educated opinions on the quality of new game releases. Book industry icons to offer analysis of upcoming consoles and their respective companies. Give equal time to positive stories like Penny-Arcade’s yearly Child’s Play charity that collects toys / games for children in hospitals across the nation.

I’ll continue to offer my “18 to 34 year old demographic” dollars to the companies advertising products in gamer savvy print and online media until then. Plus I’m totally moving into this building:

For money management, I’ve used a site called Yodlee in the past. Yodlee is tightly spun into the majority of the financial world and works as a central hub for my bills / accounts. When I need to go pay my mobile phone bill or check the balance of my student loan, I can type my password into Yodlee once and they will auto-log me into those accounts rather than having to remember several user names / passwords. Yodlee is extremely useful in that respect, but doesn’t offer a user friendly study of my finances or interface for that matter. This is where Mint comes in.

I tried out Mint a few weeks ago and I’m moderately impressed with their offering. First off, it’s absolutely free. Secondly, the user interface is incredibly streamlined. It took me about 5 minutes to get all of my credit card / bank / mutual fund information into my account and start to see my purchasing information analyzed (sample picture below). Mint breaks down your finances to tell you where your money is going. I can see what I spent on shopping, gas, entertainment, etc. without having to compile all the information myself.

I can also categorize any transaction that has been mislabeled (typically few). For instance, a payment to my Chase card was labeled a payment to Chaser’s Grill; a restaurant I can only assume. I changed it manually and set it to assign the correct title or category each time it appears.

In addition to their analysis, Mint offers competitive offers for your banking / credit needs with specific dollar figures on what you would be saving per year. For instance, I look at possible higher interest checking accounts through the site and sign up of one if I choose. While I don’t recommend limiting your search to the banks / credit card companies that are offered on Mint’s site, it does offer some perspective to the money saved by switching.

Unfortunately Mint is still limited in the types of accounts you can watch. While they have nearly all the banks / credit card companies / brokerage firms, they are lacking student loan companies, mortgage companies, and smaller accounts for electric / water / phone bills. It’s still too young to paint your entire financial portrait. They also have no way of importing data from financial programs / sites which forces you to re-enter all your account info. That is a big deal for folks with 30 or 40 different accounts to keep track of.

In comparison to Yodlee, Mint doesn’t have an auto-login feature for your accounts. I haven’t switched completely due to that reason, but rather use Mint as a supplementary tool. The budgeting graphs, spending trends, bill alerts and summary emails are enough to add value to whatever financial program you are currently using. If you aren’t using anything to keep track of your money, this is a fantastic place to start. But don’t blame me when realizing you spent $228 on Starbucks coffee last month. Check out the Mint forums for further information.

Hilarious re-write of Juno from Rod Hilton, writer at The Editing Room: Link

I started searching for an all encompassing instant messaging program a few weeks ago. For those that are unfamiliar with the idea, it’s essentially a program that controls all my instant message accounts (AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, etc.) as well as email functions. I had used Trillian years ago, but I knew there had to be some advances since then. I was perusing the net for suggestions when I came across a LifeHacker post and decided to give Digsby a shot. It was the only tool on the list to combine social networking tools into the program, a very attractive hook.

Digsby currently supports Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter accounts for their social networking portion. After entering account details for each, you will be automatically logged in and sent notification messages for new messages, tweets, comments, friend status changes, photos, etc… It’s also a fast way to reach your accounts without having to log into the services each time. Besides the Digsby layout to the left, little icons for each service will be placed in the task bar for quick access. Left clicking will bring up full mini-feeds of friend updates and right clicking provides quick access to changing status updates. By all accounts, Digsby has streamlined my social networking compulsion and general email upkeep. I just have to worry about clicking too many notifications about silly wall posts.

Digsby also handles multiple accounts of the same type very well. I have two Twitter accounts (work & personal) and two gmail accounts logged in at the same time. I can load up or update each without having to change my login information. I can also delete emails without logging into the system; fantastic for junk email. In addition to my hotmail account, I also have 4 instant messengers loaded into the system. Those are primarily accessed in the main Digsby window. You can set a status message across all your instant messengers at once as well as set it to show music currently playing.

Everything isn’t perfect though. Digsby is a bit of a memory hog. I have 4 gig of RAM in my laptop, so I don’t suffer from a lack of memory. Others won’t be as fortunate though. Secondly, I get Twitter error messages up the wazoo. I’ve turned down the number of times Digsby checks for new Twitters and it has somewhat helped. I’m not sure if it’s a problem with Twitter or Digsby. Facebook notifications, while useful, will drive you nuts if you have hundreds of friends. It’s not so bad with a small group though. Finally Digsby is Windows only right now, sorry to Mac / Linux users!

Digsby is still being actively developed and improves on a weekly basis. Digsby automatically updates itself and you can read up on their progress in the Digsby blog.

I also watched 30 Rock last night, but didn’t laugh once. I’m not sure if the show is losing its luster or not.

I’ve been a fan of NBC’s The Office since the inception of the show. The story arcs are more entertaining than most dramas and the uncomfortable comedy is almost always rock solid. During the WGA strike, it was certainly the show that I craved the most. Last week’s return was filled with laugh after laugh about Michael & Jan’s deranged living relationship and I expected the same for this week. While I didn’t laugh half as hard last night, it was one of the more down to earth episodes I’ve seen in a while.

My favorite parts of the episode weren’t any particular jokes, but rather the exchange between Jim and Pam after Michael returns from his blind date, Kevin’s heartfelt victory speech and Jim’s coy “proposal” at the end of the show. I’m truly enamored with their innate ability to switch gears on the fly and blend the comedy / drama into such an irresistible package. It’s one of the few shows that can do it effectively.

I also appreciated the toned down nature of Michael’s gaffs. Too many times this season, the writers have painted Michael differently than previous seasons. He’s certainly an incompetent boss, but having him drive his car into a lake due to a GPS or smashing company property in a moronic prank war was bordering on buffoonery. The writers let the character slip away early on in Season 4 and I can only hope that he’s reigned back in. By comparison, his obsession with a deceased chair model was a decent first step back to normalcy.

While I was anxiously anticipating the return of Agent Michael Scarn last week, I spotted a face from the past in a Volkswagen commercial on NBC. Specifically Shawn Fanning, the creator of the most well-known peer to peer transfer tool at the turn of the millennium a.k.a. Napster. The commercial is designed to be a faux talk show with a talking classic Volkswagen Beetle as the host. You’ve probably seen a version of this commercial by now as there are a few variations with different guests.

While the commercial rolls on with an interview of Shawn, the viewer never hears the word “Napster” in the conversation. Since Fanning doesn’t own the company anymore, I presume it would have been illegal for Volkswagen to mention Napster without getting the thumbs up from the new owners. There’s a couple mentions of free music, but nothing specific to Shawn’s relationship to his infamous program.

The baffling aspect of Volkswagen hiring Fanning as a pitchman is that he’s a nobody for the majority of the viewers. Granted he had a few seconds of screen time in the 2003 movie The Italian Job as an opposing villain to Seth Green’s character, but his face isn’t recognizable to anyone outside the tech world. The only reason I recalled his mug was because Napster was wildly popular during my college years. Add the fact that Napster was never mentioned in the commercial and their targeted audience becomes severely limited to people that have memorized Shawn Fanning’s face.

Plus it was a silly commercial to begin with…