Javaun’s Ramblings

Jen’s friend Christine alerted us to a fascinating and highly-addictive website called brand tags. The concept is simple: the site shows you a familiar brand logo and you type the single word or short phrase that comes to mind when you see the logo.

The site is a social tagging experiment, and it aggregates all of the phrases for each brand into a tag cloud. (For those unfamiliar with a tag cloud, it’s a way of visually showing the prevalence of a certain tag. The more often a brand phrase is tagged by users, the larger it appears in the cloud.) The site is a side-project of a marketer, and in his blog he reports that he received over 600,000 tags in the first 2 weeks.

NPR: Awesome AND Boring

What first comes to mind when the masses think of NPR? Fox News? Taco Bell?

NPR’s brand tag cloud.
High recognition and a lot of favorable brand attributes, such as “intelligent”, “smart”, “honest”, “good”. We also have some negatives: “boring”, “stodgy”, “old”, “who?”. There are some misperceptions to overcome, such as “liberal”. And let’s not forget “schwetty balls”, the legacy of a very memorable Alec Baldwin SNL skit.

Fox News’ brand tag cloud.
Ouch! The wisdom of crowds has spoken. No need to pile it on here.

Taco Bell brand tag cloud.
As khopper said on Twitter:

The largest brand associations with Taco Bell, after CHEAP FAST MEXICAN FOOD appear to be CHIHUAHUA and DIARRHEA - yikes!

Comments? What did the masses say about some of your favorite brands?

Just when it looked like my writing was becoming a habit, life got in the way. For the past 2 months, most of my off-work hours have been spent on the bike in preparation for this weekend’s race.

I have a few that I’ve put on the back burner. More immediately, I’ll probably throw out a lot of mountain biking related posts, since that’s preoccupying my thoughts.

Each morning, Alessandra Olanow chooses an NPR radio story to illustrate in tongue-in-cheek fashion.

as a morning practice I listen to npr and do a little sketch on one of the stories

It’s a really simple and unique idea, and she does it extremely well. Alessandra already has a following who listens to the radio and tries to guess which story she’ll choose.

You can also receive her illustrations as a daily email newsletter through feedblitz.

Here’s one from April 14: “too many boys: demographic crisis looms in china”

Illustration by Alessandra Olanow

That’s right! We absolutely love it here and we’re building our dream home in the outlying Washington DC suburbs. We can’t even believe our luck! Someone just stalled construction and left a half-finished home, and we’re going to take it over and finish it to our ideal specifications. Jen and I constantly complain that we don’t have enough room to buy more stuff. That won’t be a problem anymore.

The lot is situated on several acres of old growth Virginia forest, which we’re clearing to make room for an extended garage, concrete patio, and tetherball court. Not counting the 3 story deck, the home will be about 12,000 square feet. It overlooks the highway and is just minutes from a mall that has a Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant and the largest indoor Laser Tag in the DC beltway.

Honestly, we never thought we could afford a home like this, but it’s amazing what you can do with financing. Jen and I got a 5 year ARM with a 1.5% introductory rate that won’t adjust for at least 6 months. Because home prices always go up, they’re also extending us an equity line of credit for an additional $80,000.

Our new neighbors are awesome! They’re helping us pick out molded falcon sculptures and bronze torches for our front gate.

One downside is that we can’t ride our bikes to work anymore. Our commute is increasing from 30 minutes one-way to about 4.5 hours roundtrip. But I think we’ll be really comfortable in our new rides, thanks to the home equity advance. Jen and I are each buying one, since she gets up 20 minutes earlier than me and it’s therefore impractical for us to carpool.

We’re going to have 16 guest bedrooms and are really excited to host all of our old friends. Come and see us!

My friend Forrest is getting married this weekend, and I just gave him my standard advice on getting married. Keep in mind that I’ve only been married 2 years (all happy, I might add), so I don’t have any pearls on growing your marriage such as “don’t go to bed mad” or “every new day is a blessing” or anything like that. Sorry, I can’t help you there. This stuff is the solid fundamentals to survive the day and give yourself a fighting chance as a married man.

1. Show up on time. This no-brainer bears repeating, even if your family, friends, and would-be spouse normally tolerate your lack of punctuality.

2. Show up sober. If you’re not responsible enough to do the math, get someone else to be your teetotaler. Probably not the Best Man.

3. Don’t lock your knees. When you’re standing up at the ceremony, keep a slight bend in your knees. Locking your knees out for a sustained period of time cuts off the blood supply to your brain, causing you to faint. They actually teach you this in the Army, where soldiers are required to stand at attention for hours during certain ceremonies. One friend in the 82nd Airborne told me about a time when his company was standing at attention with bayonets affixed to their rifles. Someone locked his knees, passed out, and gored the soldier in front of him.

Three points is a nice litany and easy to remember. As a corollary though, I should probably warn people to watch out for wedding pranks, such as friends who kidnap the bride between the reception and honeymoon.

Rivals.com is reporting that Terrelle Pryor has chosen Ohio State over Michigan. Terrelle is a quarterback and rated as the top high school recruit.

Doesn’t Terrelle realize that the one thing Michigan consistently produces is top QB’s, albeit ones that go in the later draft rounds? After 4 years handing the ball off to the tailback on downs 1-3 and punting on fourth, the Michigan quarterback is uniquely suited to the ball-control football that dominates the NFL. I don’t think anyone has any real insight into why Michigan players are so good, so clear-thinking, so “mature” when they get to the NFL, but here’s a few theories:

1. With so few passing plays called, our QB’s not only attempt to execute perfectly, but they’re also wary that one errant throw, one INT, one mistake, and they might not get a second pass attempt until the next game.

2. Because our QB’s know they won’t get many passing attempts, they instead watch film, practice their footwork, or instead LISTEN to their QB coaches.

3. Not only did they get into Michigan, but they showed clear-thinking by simply choosing Michigan. In other words, they had the brains to make the correct choice, so it only follows that they will make future high-pressure decisions correctly.

4. Maybe it’s the helmets? The famous winged helmets, designed to help the QB identify the receiver, may actually work in these formative college years.

Does anyone else have any bright ideas?

We can all look forward to Terrelle Pryor terrorizing Michigan on the gridiron in the upcoming years. Unless of course they turn him into a linebacker, which Big Ten schools are known to do to QBs. Above all, I truly wish him success in his career as a Buckeye and hope that he garners many of those pot leaves that OSU players wear all over their helmets.

The NPR Digital Media team just went Beta with a new social media site to give individual voters a chance to share their personal views on how a candidate can get their vote.  The site is live here: npr.org/getmyvote.  The site is open and anyone can join and upload their point of view as audio, video, or text. 

The site is the brainchild of Andy Carvin, one of my NPR coworkers and a well-known evangelist of social media. NPR’s election unit will be covering personal commentaries uploaded onto Get My Vote throughout the rest of our election coverage. Andy gives many more details about the site, its origins, and plans for NPR and PBS member stations on his latest blog post.

NPR is returning to Austin for South by Southwest 2008, and this time NPR Music be broadcasting and web streaming live music from the event — including R.E.M.’s first appearance at SXSW on March 12. Other performers will include My Morning Jacket, Vampire Weekend, and Yo La Tengo.

NPR Music will also be on-scene conducting interviews, and Bob Boilen of All Songs Considered will be hosting much of the broadcast. Carrie Brownstein will also be participating in a blogger panel at the event.

If you haven’t checked out our new music site that launched in November 2007, it’s an outstanding non-commercial destination to discover new music and artists and listen to live studio sessions and interviews.

More updates and concert schedules will be posted at the NPR SXSW 2008 page.

Levi Leipheimer, new to team Astana for 2008, is currently barred from racing in the 2008 Tour de France due to a doping penalty incurred by last year’s Astana team.

VeloNews covered Levi’s announcement of a new website to protest Amaury Sports decision.

Levi’s website is taking online registrations/signatures to the petition. Swag is also in the works.

www.letleviride.com/

The Collective, the Canada-based filmmakers who created the Collective and ROAM, is about to come out with their third film, Seasons.

The website is up at www.thecollectivefilm.com and includes a downloadable trailer.

Seasons’ premise seems to be different than its predecessors, using the Collective’s production knack while grounding the movie theme a bit more in reality. Seasons doesn’t quite bill itself as a documentary, but it certainly has elements, such as rider interviews, training, and competitions.

Here’s the official teaser:

Seasons is a film that follows 7 of the world’s top mountain bikers through the course of 4 seasons of one year. The film explores what it means to be a full time rider as told through the lives of downhill racers, slopestyle competitors, and big mountain free riders.

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