On May 25, 2008, the Mars Phoenix Lander announced its landing on Mars on Twitter. This event, however, was eclipsed by Mike Arrington’s profound Twitter post and the ensuing debate. From my point of view, that of a tech-influenced publicist, I see several major problems with this whole situation and how it was treated by NASA.

I should probably include some background information before I point out the glaring missteps. NASA announced in July of 2007 that it was launching a web 2.0 campaign in an attempt to get people excited about the space program again. They set out to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to connect to their younger demographic, hoping to inspire this generation to be more interested in science and space exploration. It’s a great idea, in theory.

Please note: I truly hope that this is taken in the purely productive tone of which I meant it to be. Before we can truly understand how to do something better, we need to understand what was done wrong.

The first problem, as I see it, was putting this campaign in the hands of someone who is probably older, with a background in either traditional PR and marketing, or even possibly, technology (speculation). Getting someone who has a lot of experience in technology and marketing, is a very common mistake. Obviously, you hired someone who was not a Facebook user or Twitterer, but they knew about the technology and thought it would be wise to use these very popular platforms. The logical thing to do would have been to use someone with experience with that demographic, and experience in influencer marketing (i.e. someone like me). Who would better understand the social network demographic than someone who was in said demographic? Exactly.

The second problem, and possibly one of the biggest, was not paying attention to key bloggers. There is no shortage of amazing bloggers with a huge network of followers. If you want to address a large group of people who are clearly social network users, why not state your intentions to a blog like Techcrunch? Considering they use material from people who send messages on Facebook, I think they might pay attention to an email from NASA. Twitter didn’t even blog about this project. Message to Twitter – While you were responding to the “Twitter!” post on Techcrunch, with your “Techcrunch?” post, NASA was using YOUR site to send the first images from Mars on this mission. Nicely done.

The third problem, is not as much of a problem as it is a suggestion. If you want to be involved with emerging technology and Silicon Valley culture, do some research. Take a lead from people who have done what you are trying to do, and have been doing it for awhile. New media, usually involves new methods. For example, the best viral marketing tool on the web, is video. If you want young people to think that NASA is cool again, then stop releasing videos of NASA with boring, old people. Connected Ventures posted a video on Vimeo that was all of the employees doing a lip dub of “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger, in place of a job ad. They wanted young smart people, so they posted a fun video, showing how cool it would be to work there. You’re NASA! If you guys just had a sense of humor and produced some fun videos and released them on Youtube and other video sites, you might get a better response. People love aliens and UFO videos, and you are the space program. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to figure something out.

We all understand that space exploration is not as popular as it once was. There was a time that people lived and breathed NASA. It was estimated that one fifth of the population of the world watched the live transmission of the first Apollo moonwalk, and one quarter of the world’s population watched the Christmas Eve transmission during the ninth orbit of the moon with Apollo 8. Right now, @MarsPhoenix has 8,858 followers on Twitter. Great leaps have been made since 1969. With all of this new technology, and NASA’s partnership with social media, people can actually participate in space exploration, instead of watching from the sidelines. We can do this in a way that no previous generation has ever been able to do. But you can’t just use the technology and expect people to find it. Use an integrated approach, including old media. Attract the older demographic, the people who did actually watch the Apollo 8 Christmas Eve transmission. You have a long way to go to get people excited about the space program again, but you can do it. Hey, you made it to the moon didn’t you? This should be easy.

In case you were wondering if there is a connection to LA in this article, there is.  Mission design and control for the Mars Phoenix expedition is handled by the NASA Jet Propulsion Center in Pasadena, CA.

#2 Make My Logo Bigger Cream (3 installments of $29.99) – All of you designers, men or women, will appreciate this. If you’ve ever been asked by a client “Can you make my logo bigger?” you will definitely see the genius in this product. OK, so I know it’s not a real product, but it’s still pretty funny. You can buy a T-shirt and other swag from the site though.

#3 Pixelated Posey Necklace ($24.99) – Disclaimer: Do not wear without expecting some extra-long, awkward stares at your paraboloids (wow, never thought I would use that word in a sentence again). Ultimately, its the coolest girl geek accessory. The posey and its lovely purple color makes it very feminine. While the pixelation makes it completely geek-a-rific. The ultimate in Geek Chic. The product page has a dubious “Product not found!” but I hold out hope that we will see it again soon. If anyone can find it anywhere else, please let me know! (via Shiny Shiny)

#4 Geek Chic: The Ultimate Guide to Geek Culture by Neil Feineman ($29.95) – This book is all about evangelizing the fact there has never been a better time to be a geek! It’s true, geeks control the world. This book is about the rise of geek culture in film, TV, music, and advertising, and includes a timeline of geek history, and profiles of O.G.’s (Original Geeks), including Ben Franklin, Tom Edison, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Spike Jonze. If you are interested in this book, you may also like The Complete Geek (an Operating Manual): Rules and Secrets of America’s New Power Class by John Deep ($15). This manual includes hysterical sections like “I’m Awkward, You’re Awkward–and That’s Okay – The Secrets of Geek Dating Rituals,” “GQ (Geek Quotient) Exam,” and “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Geeks.”

#5 QT-Pi T-Shirt ($16) – If you’ve ever spent anytime trying to memorize pi (I only got to 15), you need this shirt. I know Pi Day recently passed, but maybe you can get this one for next year. Do you lines like “What’s your sine? It must be pi/2 because you’re the 1″ or “I want our love like pi…irrational and never-ending” turn you on? Wear this pink beauty out and wrangle some nerds! You can thank GeekBouteek.com for making this one (check out the new “Geek is the new black” shirt). For another great pi shirt, Pi by Numbers, from ThinkGeek.com.

#6 Mini Business Card File Cabinet ($12.99) – I wanted to post this one especially for the LA geeks. With such an over-the-top number of mixers and meetups we’ve had in the LA tech scene recently, I thought it was only appropriate to include this. Now you can organize you business cards neatly in this shrunken file cabinet, and even file them by event or importance. Now, when you wake up in the morning with a crippling hangover after drinking way too much at Ritual, you can empty your pockets, purse, wallet, bra, etc., and neatly file them in a safe place. So, when you plan your next mixer (let’s be honest, who isn’t?) just go to your little file cabinet and do an email blast!

#7 Broken Image Necklace ($19.99) – One person’s corrupted image is another person’s jewelry.  I bet this necklace would have been really cool.  But it didn’t load, so I wouldn’t know.  What could it be?  A flower?  A smiley face?  We will never know.  At least it gives you a chance to use your imagination.  From I Love Blocks.  They also have the Pixelated Posey Necklace (see above), and the Click Necklace.  All very geek chic.

#8 T-Qualizer Babydoll Tee ($19.99-$24.99) – Another winner from ThinkGeek.com.  I may not be the first person ever to blog about this shirt, but it’s still really cool and deserves to make it onto the list.  This shirt has a heart shaped EL-lit cut-out heart, with bars of an equalizer that move to different sound frequencies.  Take this baby out with you next time you head out to the club for a few turned heads.  T-Qualizer also has a Wi-Fi Detector Shirt, T-Qualizer Shirt (men’s), Animated Retro Table Tennis Shirt, and 8-Bit Dynamic Life Shirt.

#9 Engagement Ring USB Flash Drive – Most girls can say they want a big rock from their beau, but only a truly geeky one can say she wants one of these.  “Hey baby, I’m not ready to give you my heart, but here is…my data.”  A nice gesture at least.  The premise of it is genuinely sweet though.  They are designed so that if you join the rings together, data can be transferred back and forth between them (for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, as long as they both shall live).  They can also transfer data to a PC through a lovely beaded necklace.  These gems are not yet in production, but cross your fingers and/or write an email to the designer at www.jflume.com (while you’re at it, tell her the site sucks).  She does seem to have some cool other USB designs,  if you can figure out how to navigate the site.

#10 Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device (Recent price drop! $359) – I recently received mine and I love it!  The screen is very cool and unlike any I’ve seen before.  It uses technology called electronic paper, that reads like real paper, allowing you to read in direct sunlight.  It has wireless connectivity through the Sprint EVDO network, so you can download books directly from the device, subscribe to newspapers and magazines, subscribe to blogs, browse Wikipedia, and browse the internet.  It also has MP3 capability, in case you like to listen to music when you read.  Sorry if I seem a bit zealous about it, but I am totally geeking out over it.  We are still in the honeymoon phase.  There are several kinks that Amazon I think needs to work out with it, but I definitely think its the future.  It’s so sexy too!  Grr, baby!

Well, I hope you liked the list, I hope to do this somewhat frequently.  Maybe not in a Top 10 list, but whenever I see something cool.  Let me know what you thought of this, and let me know if you think I should do something like this weekly.  Coming soon: Geek Chic for Him.

Startup Camp is a two-day event that occurs on July 10-11 in Silicon Valley, before Foo Camp (July 11-12). Startup Camp is hosted by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and will have room for 6-8 startups. It will focus on fundraising, PR, working with investors, and viral marketing. Speakers will include:

Michael Arrington: founder of TechCrunch; co-founder of Achex, Zip.ca and Pool.com
Caterina Fake (tentative): co-founder of Flickr
Mark Fletcher: founder of Bloglines and ONElist
Marc Hedlund: co-founder of Popular Power and Wesabe
Howard Morgan: founding investor of Idealab; partner at First Round Capital
Evan Williams: co-founder of Pyra Labs (blogger.com), Odeo, Obvious Corp and Twitter

It will be a great weekend, and you should definitely apply. If you’d like help with the application, I will help you, but you have to take me as your +1. We need to show Silicon Valley its not all beaches and mixers down here! We can work too. If you’d like to apply on your own, apply here by June 6. Good luck!

xoxo,

SiliconCalley

“This flurry of experiments is painful but probably necessary, like a teenager’s goth phase. The endgame is clear, however. Artists will give away recorded music and consider it promotional, just like music videos.”

Such a perfect description. The music industry is clearly floundering. Within the past year, huge steps forward have been made. Pirated music has been plaguing the music industry for years now, and recently some solutions have been presented. Madonna, U2, and Jay-Z have signed huge deals with Live Nation. Radiohead released their album “In Rainbows” to their fans for free, and asked for donations. Imeem has been making deals with record labels to stream their artists’ songs for free, for a share in the ad revenue. All these recent happenings are leading the demise of $1 iTunes tracks, and $20 CDs.

The solution that most people are hoping for is using recorded music to be used as strictly promotional materials, and to make the money back solely on nonreproducible aspects of the business. For example: merchandise, licensing, concerts, and appearances. But there are several problems with this model. One, is that how do writers, producers, engineers, and mixers make money? They usually get percentages, or points, on each album sold. The second, is what will happen to newer artists who can’t charge $120 per ticket or expect a crowd of 5,000? Which brings me to my point.

MyAWOL.com is attempting a way out. MyAWOL (Artists With Out Labels), is an emerging LA startup, whose aim is to revolutionize the music industry for unsigned bands. Backed by members of the English rock band Genesis (one of the 30 highest-selling recording artists of all time), and run by a winning team comprised of heavy hitters in the media industry, this company may have what it takes to show us the way. The management team is headed up by CEO and founder, Andrew Bentley, the former CEO of EMI Asia Pacific, CFO of EMI International and Virgin Music Group. Rounding out the management team is Cat Guirado-Cheadle (Britith model/actress), Vlad Lodzinski (media executive with experience in large conglomerates, i.e. MTV and UPC), and Jarrell Pair (an advanced media producer and researcher, with a background in augmented reality, virtual environments, 3-D audio, and electronic music).

MyAWOL a 360 degree music resource that brings artists, venues, fans, and industry insiders together in a virtual community, catering to their individual needs appropriately. They are trying to bring fairness back to the artist and integrity to the way deals are structured. MyAWOL claims to provide artists with a set of tools to manage their career, while also giving them access to new fans through video content, live gigs, radio stations, and festivals. They also offer venues with tools to find new talent, organizing shows, and subsequently promoting them. MyAWOL also has areas for music industry insiders to find new talent and business contacts, and they offer a large database of music industry contacts for artists and industry people alike. Of course, there will be a section for music fans to find new artists and shows. They also host a bi-weekly insiders podcast, featuring some major industry heavyweights.

While all I can do is speculate on the specific features, I do find something in particular extremely interesting. Jarrell Pair, CTO of MyAWOL, collaborated with Duran Duran and the University of Southern California to produce the world’s first immersive video and audio recording of a live rock concert. He also worked with Duran Duran in developing the first use of augmented reality technology in a live concert tour. Pretty interesting, eh?

MyAWOL is currently still in development and is slated to be starting closed beta in August 2008.

You know how I looove to brag about the LA tech scene. We may not be the center of the tech universe like our Northern counterparts, but we can have geek brunches on the beach. Take that Silicon Valley!

I will be hitting it up, along with my trusty sidekick Abbie aka BusinessBoomer (hopefully, she doesn’t even know she’s going yet). I’d love to meet everyone, so please say hi! I’m sure you’ll recognize me, so you have no excuse. There are a lot of tech events this week that I will hopefully be going to, so either check back here or follow me on Twitter to see which ones I will be at. Here are the deets:

RSVP here if you want

It has been said that the average American sees 3,000 advertisements over the course of a day. That seems like such an outrageous number. So either the Union of Concerned Scientists is lying, or we have just gotten really good at ignoring them. We fast forward through commercials, ignore banner ads, change the radio station during commercials, and skip past the ads in magazines. I have done a lot of research on the subject for my business. All of the examples I have just given, are examples of inactive, or passive, marketing. Active marketing is what happens when you are selling someone a product when you have their complete attention. This is why Social Media Marketing is so effective. For example, when you are watching a Youtube video and seeing a hot girl ask for a can of Monster, you are paying attention, and the advertiser sold a can of Monster.

I’m sure this is what Founders Joseph Morin and Juan Prado were thinking when they started working on Storybids. The two, from Irvine, CA, spent two years researching and developing before they secured a “Series A” round of venture capital financing in August 2007 from STN Labs, a Toronto based VC. A few months later in February 2008, they soft launched Storybids in beta.

Storybids also offers online media distribution and video analytics measurements. They do this by search engine optimizing the final video, and the submits to several video hosting sites like Youtube, MyspaceTV, Metacafe, DailyMotion, and Veoh simultaneously allowing dashboard reporting on the video’s performance.

I like the idea, but I hope that people don’t go to crazy with it. Next thing you know, you’ll start seeing videos like this with ads. “Charlieeee, you bit my delicious Oscar Meyer Wiener Hot Dog. And that was really good!”

Go LA Startups!!

xoxo,

Calley

I think it’s only appropriate – this being a LA tech blog and all – that we feature the up-and-coming technology I like to call Hollywood 2.0. Hollywood 2.0 is something that has been on the tip of every Angeleno’s tongue for months. Everyone here – and in most other cities – knows about The Writers’ Strike. While everyone else was wondering if they would ever see McDreamy and Meredith Grey lock lips again, some of us were thinking about what this would do for the future of film and television. One person who definitely got it right was Eric MacDonald, CEO and Founder of Zhura.

Zhura is an web-based application for screenwriters. I think everyone in Los Angeles can say that they know at least a writer or two (the barista at Starbucks is constantly asking me to pass along his treatment), and they aren’t usually the most technologically advanced people we know. Zhura gives them a space to write and edit their blog using advanced editing tools, share their scripts privately with friends and colleagues, and collaborate with other screenwriters.

You first sign up for a free account. Then you continue to your personal section, which is your workspace. You use professional screenwriting tools to write and edit your script from any computer. Then you can create a private group, where you can invite your friends and colleagues to view your script. The workspace in this section, allows everyone who was granted access to read and simultaneously edit your script. It also keeps track of who made what correction. Finally, there is the public section. This is where you can apply a Creative Commons license to your script, and open your script up to the public. Then all the Zhura members on the site at the time, can comment on your script, and with the right license, make corrections to it.

There are obviously amazing features on this site. The portability, document sharing, and the edit-tracker, are all very useful. But what interests me most, is the Web 2.0 aspect. This kind of community can really help turn amateurs into professionals. I used to be a member on ModelMayhem, a photography social network site. You post pictures, and photographers, makeup artists, models, stylists, and agents could comment on them. I started on it in the very beginning so I saw a lot of pretty terrible photographers. Occasionally I will go back and look around, and all of the people I dreaded seeing had turned into really amazing photographers! Constructive criticism from people in your industry, can really help someone grow in their field.

In my opinion, a community based on making life easier for screenwriters, will definitely do well. I can’t tell how many times I’ve seen an out of work actress “accidentally” attack a writer in the middle of the street. These guys could definitely use a break. Aside from all that though, I do believe that Zhura will have a very big part in the future of online video. Making a new generation of writers, will result in a new generation of Hollywood. That’s what Hollywood 2.0 means.

xoxo,

Calley