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This is the personal blog of John F. Morton. It's where I talk about the stuff that interests me. Primarily technology, marketing and pop culture. If you are looking for my portfolio of work, visit johnfmorton.com. Thanks for stopping by!

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How To Make a Mix Tape In the Digital Age

I love music and used to spend hours making the perfect mix tape to share with my friends. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. If you’ve got some MP3’s, some time, and some friends you want to make a mix for, check out muxtape.com. If you make a mix tape, send me a link.

BTW, Music companies, if you are listening, don’t kill this site. If someone can make the act of listening and sharing music this fun, I’m sure there are ways you can live with it. Just add a ”buy this track” button next to each song and it’s doing your job for you.

The Elephant in the Room at PSFK Conference New York

Yesterday I attended PSFK Conference New York. My overriding impression of the conference was that we marketing professionals are all struggling to define what we’re doing. There were loads of smart people presenting their perspective on the web 2.0 world and none of them were wrong, although they often openly contradicted each other.

At one point Rob Kallin, founder of Etsy.com, the online craft market place, and Andrew Hoppin from NASA seemed to be trading jabs about the laugh-ability or viability of Second Life as a useful collaboration tool. Although I personally dislike Second Life due to what I consider a poor user interface, it is valuable to some people. Andrew Hoppin gave the example of people living on the space station being able to share the same virtual space with people back on Earth is a good thing. He’s right! Second Life may be the best existing tool available for that at present.

Noelle Weaver, from SS+K, kicked off the “Social Media” session by asking the attendees how many of them have tried to erase a social media profile in the past few weeks. In a room full of Web 2.0 thinkers, a surprising number of hands went up, roughly 15% by my estimate. A room full of social-media-types erasing profiles? Another interesting contradiction.

By the end of the presentations the Indian proverb about the blind men touching an elephant and then describing what an the animal was like based on their impression. The morale of that story is that basically that people who are too insistent that their personal view is right are ignorant. That wasn’t the case at the PSFK event though. It was about sharing viewpoints and trying to figure out what this gigantic creature in our midst really is. If we keep describing what we feel this thing is and share those thoughts, we’re going to figure it out.

Looking back on the day, Grant McCracken pin-pointed the key to success for all of us in this business with a concept he called “brute noticing.” (Slides from his presentation available here.) It’s a term I really love. He said our clients depend on us “seeing things early and clearly, on grasping new patterns.” Since this creature is growing and changing so fast, no one person can figure it all out alone.

Follow up: PSFK has started posting some of the videos shot that day on YouTube. Below is one where Steve Rubel says the most newsbite-friendly line of the whole conference, “The Web site is dead.” He does admit saying he likes “saying things are dead.” It made for a great line at the conference. For more video from the conference, click here.

Two More Links To Make Your Internet Experience Complete

Opinions are like blogs, everybody’s got one. But some blogs are better than others, so I thought I’d share a couple that you might not know about. The first is focused on the ad business, the second is a thoughtful perspective on our culture. Both are worth checking out.

Ad Aged—Will Madison Avenue Become Detroit? by George Tannenbaum, as you might guess, is the advertising focused blog. I worked for George for a couple years and he’s filled with insightful and entertaining observations on the state of the advertising industry plus the state of the rest of the world. Luckily, he now shares them with the blogosphere. Check out “Daily dumbness update” for a good example of his take on the state of advertising. You can tap directly into his POV on Ad Aged every morning.

Chock-A-Blog, by the one-named author “Tom” is a little bit technology, a little bit entertainment industry, a little bit marketing, and, well, a little bit of everything else that catches Tom’s eye. It’s updated sporadically, but there is a new entry you can be sure it’s always well-written. Chock-A-Blog is where I learned about TXT of the Living Dead, the latest version of Night of the Living Dead as recreated by SMS messages. It also had a nice perspective on the end of the writer’s strike with “What to expect when you’re expecting an end to the writers’ strike”. Add to that a critique of the critiques of the new New Museum. Very varied topics, but informative. Be sure to give Chock-A-Blog a try.

How To Download Youtube Videos, Part 2: Super Easy

How to Get YouTube Videos on your iPod and iPhone from john morton on Vimeo.

If you don’t have time to watch the movie above, just visit Tooble.tv, download the free Tooble software, cut and paste the URL of your favorite YouTube video and presto, your video is in iTunes. That’s super easy.

If you’re on a PC, or just want more flexibility, also check out the earlier post How to Download Flash Video and Play It Back on Your Mac. (And More.). Contrary to the title, you even get some PC how to instructions there as well.

The 3 Buzzword Takeaway of SXSWi 2008

I’m on a plane traveling back from my very first SXSWi. If you’re a geek, and there’s a chance you are if you’re reading SuperGeekery.com, there is a special place and time waiting for you down in Austin next year at SXSWi. Put simply, it’s dorks, nerds and geeks gathering in one place sharing/challenging ideas, rubbing shoulders the Internet famous, and going out drinking and partying like it’s pledge week at a college where the jocks are nowhere in sight.

I’ve had many people tell me this week that the scheduled SXSWi sessions are incidental reasons for attending; the people you meet and become friends with are what make this such a special experience. I feel like I met fewer people than the typical geek but I still managed to meet quite a few people that I hope to keep in touch with. If you’re one of them, thanks for stopping by! I’d love to hear from you, just shoot me an email.

If you didn’t attend though, I want to give you a 3 buzzword take-away of what I’m taking home with me, minus the networking and friend-making.

There's more to read. Click here for the rest. >>