I was sick of the old design and needed to shake it up a bit. I like this look a lot, despite the white on black text. Call it a tribute to the original Wired News design.

Yesterday I saw a Pontiac television ad that flashed a Google Web page with "Pontiac" entered. The announcer said for more info, Google Pontiac. Google is accurate enough that Pontiac can rely that Google will turn up Pontiac first, and that Pontiac can also train users to go back to its site and also use Google, likely lowering their overal marketing budget since Google ads are much more cost efficient. It moves advertising more towards allowing advertisers to have confidence in having product names identified and found. AOL's keywords had a similar purpose, but the purity of Google's search makes it work. If Google continues to clarify product searches, I'd love to see an initiative to tie the PC based search results with mobile short codes next to the result links they kick back. That has the potential to seriously boost off-deck carrier promotions, regardless of the region.

This is a beautiful demonstration of augmented reality on a cell phone, as published in a recent article by Gizmodo. There is a video at the end of the article, which is really worth seeing.

It's hard to see, but notice how on the table to the right there is no action figure above the black and white grid, but in the phone you can see the little man. Augmented little man reality. That little pirate is cool. Actually, maybe that's a little Zoro.

The opening title sequence was brilliant. The rooftop fight scene was super cool. One interesting chase seem that was almost a blend of video game and real life, with crazy changing depth perception shots. Overall, some of the most inspiring set design and color us in the last few years. Suckiest script possible. Almost a total waist of all of the great work on the artistic and effects side, with some seriously weak-ass acting. If your a digital game/set designer, check it out. If not, kind of a lame movie.

A review worth reading concerning Yahoo's mobile UI, as written by The Register.

It's snowed a few feet last night in NYC. Went out and walked around in the snow. Quite fun. I was in the mood for a suspense flick to weather the blizzard, and saw Vertigo for the first time. Probably one of the best movies I've seen in a while with some terrific shots of San Francisco in the 50's. Anyways, it's got a creepy soundtrack, and during a few of the suspensful moments, the trees would know against my window from the blizzard outside, or worse, the glass would snap from freezing. Every time there was a loud pop it would scare the hell out of me. Highly recommended flick in storms.

By the way, if any of you are in SF this weekend, you've gotta go see The Lovemakers play. Must be the sickest Valentine's show out there.

Props to the marketing guy that came up with the title for this action flick. Nice.

The trailer has every cliche movie line from Matrix to Aeon Flux. Sweeeet.

Sorry it's been a while. Not much so little just a bitty amount of time now. But, I saw this quote from a letter to the editor in the Dec 26, 05 issue of BusinessWeek and thought it was amusing:

"Many venture capitalists are simply lucky imbeciles hiring other lucky imbeciles to run most of the Valley companies."

- Frank Petkovich
San Francisco

Then again Frank, aren't we all?

Last night I uncorked a Fin du Monde. A beautiful Quebec beer that Darryl introduced me to in Toronto. In my last post, Steve Jobs said he asks himself daily if what he is doing is how he'd want to spend his last day on Earth. After a few sips of that beer, it became clear what I'd do, and why they came up with such a brilliant name for a beer.