Forget having to have a multi-million dollar budget to make it onto the big screens. For a mere $20,000 and 3 years, you can land yourself in movie premier at the Sundance festival. Did I also mention that you can do this in the comfort of your own room? That is exactly what former Web Designer Michael Belmont did.

The outcome is a 1hr26min hypnotic and berzerk film called “We Are the Strange”, which utilizes a technique that Belmont dubs Str8nime, which is a combination of strange + 8-bit + anime. Wired.com recently wrote an article about him and even listed the steps to making a DIY Str8nime movie on your own. Check out the trailer for We Are the Strange.

Keeping up on the pace of the ever-evolving Internet is no small task, so I wanted to do my part by sharing a few new tagging sites that I’ve recently learned about. I’m sure most of you know about del.icio.us (bookmark URLs; write tags; other people can browse through your bookmarks) and Digg (bookmark URLs; other other people can browse through your bookmarks and ‘digg’ it too; bookmarks are sorted by topic). Here’s some others that are starting to get popular:
= Furl.net (not .com)- described as ‘An easier way to save and share your online discoveries’. It’s like another Digg or del.icio.us but the homepage is very bland, which puts me off some but the site is a part of Looksmart.com, so it’s understandable.

= Simpy.com – yet another site tagging/bookmarking app but looking through their customer reviews. It seems that they could be serious competition for del.icio.us because of the other features being offering.

= reddit.com – similar to Furl.net and others where you get to post what’s new and popular, but different in the way that, based on user votes, items get dropped or raised on the list of ‘cool’.

= MyWeb.Yahoo.com – Yahoo!’s beta version of site tagging. For me, not very interesting and isn’t at all different than what the other sites are doing. As a Yahoo! fan, I’m disappointed.

= Blogmemes.com – offering the Hispanic community a way to promote and share links, stories, videos and other ways to share culture. In other words, a Spanish version of site tagging which I think is an interesting spin on things.

= ma.gnolia.com – tries to differentiate itself but is really just another site tagging app – although it is prettier than some I’ve seen.

= Stumbleupon.com – keeps track of your preferences as you search the internet, recommending similar sites to the one that you’re on. In other words, they use the search display advertising algorithm for web browsing.

= Technorati.com – Scours the web for blog posts and entries about social media items. It’s like getting your water cooler gossip fix without leaving your desk.

= Newsvine.com – An instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment. It is people actively submitting articles from online news sites about the things that they are reading/interested in/ talking about/etc. Like Technorati, but with real articles instead of blogs.

Now that you’ve been brought up to speed on tags, try out the services and tell us what you think!

Over the Labor Day weekend I caught up on the TivoCast items I downloaded from Rocketboom, and saw this clip that featured an interview with Susan Crawford about OneWebDay (OWD). OWD is a yearly celebration of the Internet that takes place on September 22^nd. What a great idea! As I listened to Crawford’s passionate statements about the yearly global event, I decided to go ahead and check out OWD’s website.

As I perused the blog, I came across one post (“Have you thanked the web lately?”) that noted “OneWebDay gives us a chance to reflect about the ways in which the internet has changed the world, and to shed light on information-flow blockades around the globe.” and provided a list of suggested activities one could take part in to participate in the global celebration. Since there’s not an event in Atlanta this year, I thought I’d share the online activities for OneWebDay to help spread the word and maybe gain interest in a local event for next year.

Their main goal this year is to encourage people to make their own short videos and post them on blip.tv or YouTube tagged “onewebday2007″. Some of the suggested topics for user generated videos include:

• how the web has changed your life
• how you’d like the web to change the world in the future
• highlights of what you’ve seen online the day you make the video
• your favorite online event ever
• something you’ve done online with other people in other countries

I think these are great topics, and if I didn’t have this thing about posting video of myself on YouTube – I’d definitely submit one. I don’t mind writing though, so I thought I’d take a minute to talk about how the web has changed my life.

Through the years I’ve had access to the Internet, I have used it as a tool to meet other people and connect in a fashion that wouldn’t be possible without the use of the web. Growing up, many of my friends were people that I met online in IRC chat rooms. I wasn’t the coolest kid in school (which I know is hard for many of you to imagine now), so I didn’t have many friends and I had a hard time confiding in others. With the anonymity of the internet, I was able to discuss issues and obtain viewpoints from others. Along the way, I found ways to express myself and build confidence in the person I was. Since those awkward years, I’ve managed to make real life friends, but I’m still in contact with a few of my IRC buddies, which makes me very happy; they were a key part in my formative years and I won’t ever forget them.

Since then, the Internet has played an even bigger role in my life. Without the Internet I:

• Wouldn’t have my awesome job
• Wouldn’t have found my awesome apartment (yay for Craigslist!)
• Wouldn’t have an efficient way to communicate with a large group of people all at once (where would we be without email or social networking sites?)
• Wouldn’t have met one of my very best friends

But enough about me…I want to hear how the Internet has changed the lives of our blog readers. For those of you without a YouTube-phobia, I encourage you to submit video for OneWebDay and share the link on this blog post. If you’d rather not create a video, at least share your thoughts and feelings on the Internet in the comments below. I’m fascinated by the different stories I’ve heard so far, I’d really like to hear yours!

Okay, maybe communication never truly left … but our awareness of it has grown keen as we shape effective customer experiences in interactive media. Recently, Donovan (Director of User Experience) gave a presentation about web 2.0’s impact on the landscape of user (customer) experience.  He convincingly described how web 2.0 capabilities evolved as a response to user needs and allow the web to become, among other things, the communication medium people envisioned 10 years ago.

In this changed landscape of customer experience, what is communication exactly?  How do we ensure customers not only get our messages but also find them relevant and convincing?  How do we coordinate messages across multiple channels to deepen our relationships with customers?

As a start toward answering such questions, I just published “Rediscovering Communication“ for the online magazine UXmatters.  Please add your insights as we journey through this exciting landscape together.

For the past few months I’ve had terrible back pain. (stay with me, I have a point). I finally broke down and made an appointment with an orthopedic doctor near my home. During this process I thought to myself … “Man I wish there was a website that reviewed local businesses like this, so I would know if the place I just booked an appointment with is any good.”

Of course, only AFTER I scheduled the appointment did I discover Yelp.com, a website designed to “find, review, and talk about” businesses in local areas. Funny enough, the day after I found Yelp, Jeff Hilimire emailed me about it, and later shared a recent Fortune article. The article tells success stories from businesses who have been positively reviewed on the website, including a hairdresser who has so much business now that he has to “ice his hands on weekends.”

It’s fair to say that not everyone will experience the kind of sucess the hair salon did, but it is interesting to see this concept working. Certainly online reviews are nothing new, but Yelp does a great job of creating community around the reviews. The Fortune article says “Yelp doesn’t require users to reveal themselves, but it coaxes a lot of them into the open as a way to keep everyone honest and civil.”

I kinda think that Yelp has a bit of a Facebook feel. Users can write reviews and post images for any business. And, Yelpers can even develop an “elite” status by uploading a profile picture, using their real name, and remaining active on the website. Fortune called these Yelper-Elite the “squeaky wheels” - who, with their ability to get invited to exclusive events, can determine the fate of a new restaurant.

Well, I’m about to test Yelp. I actually did find my orthopedic doctor in Yelp, who was favorably reviewed. We’ll see after my appointment today if the review stands up!

In case you haven’t heard, the real identity of Fake Steve Jobs has finally been revealed. If you still want to believe that Jobs is behind the wildly successful The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog, then please click on the little X at the top right corner of your browser and get back to whatever you’re doing before you were distracted.

An attempt to expose Fake Steve Jobs fails

Many have wanted to uncover the true identity of the Fake Steve Jobs (aka FSJ). In May, BusinessWeek covered the blog once news surfaced that the author was selling a book about the FSJ parody on Amazon. And then three weeks ago, the heat was turned up as Fake Steve Jobs posted an entry about how Valleywag was attempting to uncover his true identity. That’s when the story really changed because that’s also the time when a significant list of potential bloggers was posted. The list included:

• Leander Kahney, managing editor of Wired News and author of the Cult of Mac blog.
• Eric J. Savitz, the West Coast Editor on technology investing for Barron Magazine.
• John Paczkowski, a technology news blogger for All Things Digital.
• Andy Ihnatko, a technology columnist for Chicago Sun-Times and opinion columnist for Macworld Magazine.

All of the these authors seemed like good candidates for the anonymous blogger job. Unfortunately, they all denied involvement or simply avoided answering the question of whether they were/were not the person behind FSJ. There was even speculation at some point that Valleywag was behind the blog but all things changed yesterday.

Fake Steve is finally exposed

Well, it turns out to be Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine who covers enterprise computing and consumer electronics. For over a year, Fake Steve Jobs has been entertaining many of his readers (including myself and several other notables at Spunlogic) with his “candid thoughts.” For instance, he pokes fun at the ideas of Steve Wozniak, talks about how Apple’s responsible for the rise in the stock market, and even talks about iPhone snafu’s. Daniel has “channeled” Steve as if he was Steve Jobs — as a reader, you know that there’s no way that the blogger is Steve Jobs but you still want to believe that it is (in a Santa Claus kind of way).

But just like the video drama marketing spoof lonelygirl15, all things must come to an end! At least it was fun to read while it lasted.

Not since David Hasselhoff joined reality TV have two of my favorite things come together like this. R.E.M. has embraced Web 2.0 with their recent R.E.M. in Dublin website. In a recent concert there they actually encouraged people to bring video cameras to record the concert and put it on Youtube and other social networking sites. They’ve got Flickr photos, a blog, tags and even RSS feeds. Might Athens, GA be the next Silicon Valley???

PS - for those of you that don’t know me, I was kidding about “the Hoff” being one of my favorite things. He’s barely in my top 10. Again, kidding.

Who said that Microsoft isn’t doing anything cool these days? Oh wait, that was probably me. In light of the iPhone and absolutely everything Google does, who could blame me? But I was wrong! If you haven’t seen this product, check out their new Photosynth technology. In the words of our own Dan Dooley, it’s just sick.

Photosynth is a product of Microsoft’s Live Labs. On the Live Labs site they claim to “believe that the Internet is as important as the Industrial Revolution or the Renaissance. Our mission is to help realize this vision by advancing the state-of-the-art in Internet products and technology. We are scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs with a passion for building and understanding complex things, but with an eye towards simplicity. And above all else, we aspire to bring together the online community to make the world a better place.” Or, if I may paraphrase, they try to “be more like Google.” Or maybe to be tongue-in-cheek, to “do less evil”. Dang, I’m doing it again.

The Photosynth product essentially takes photos of something (object, place, Chevy Chase, whatever) and analyzes them for common traits and similarities and then makes a 3D-ish view of that object. It’s really one of those things you have to check out to really “get”. So good for you Microsoft, now make Outlook 2007 actually work and I’ll stop sending you all that hate mail.

* Thanks to our friend Jason @ Target for letting me know about this!

Can you develop Frito-Lay’s brand and produce their “Mockumentory” ad campaign? Of course you can! With the power of social-media and a bold “hot dog” flavor, you can not only do these things, you also have the chance to be one of the lucky winners to have a year’s supply of Doritos . . .

So why my sarcasm? Other than the fact that social media is by far the tastiest spice currently being traded in the marketing world, I believe that social should be social. Can you still taste that “social” football-flavor left over from the Doritos’ SuperBowl campaign? Do you think that engagement with your community/customers betters your brand online?

The one great thing that Frito-Lay has done is understanding that the online channel is a viable one, and that consumers have no problem going from offline to online. Now let’s see if they will really ever get social.

Check out the Dorito’s X-13D Website.

We have all asked our friends, families, and co-workers the simple question, “What are you doing?” because communication with those individuals is important for our relationships.  Depending on the time of day, mood, or inflection of tone when asked, the response can vary. And you never know what you’re going to get.  The same is true with the site called Twitter that provides users a forum to answer this one little question – with no more than 140 characters (more detailed description here). 

Jeff called this site to my attention earlier this week, and though I felt the site was slightly egotistical, I decided I should research a little before I made any judgments.  But honestly, to think that Twitterites would want to know what I’m doing “right now” would be very self-centered.   Apparently, Helen A.S. Popkin, a contributor to MSNBC, agrees as she writes “Nobody cares what you’re doing.”

After spending many hours on the site (yes, I take my research seriously) I have to admit that I’ve become addicted to refreshing the public timeline to see the types of answers users are submitting.  Posts occur almost every second, from users all over the world:

• At the Rockies game chatting w/ our sales guys. Fascinated by the lives they lead - tons of travel & critical interactions. [tiny twitter]
• just now remembering to take happy pill. crap. no sleep until… 6am?
• Waiting for the Comcast man to arrive… I wonder if he’ll do anything this time?
• Long day. I am thinking about the alligator physicals and a surgery on a snake tomorrow. My feet are killing me. I need bionic feet.
• Found a Fanta Orange soda in the fridge…haven’t had a Fanta for years, didn’t even know they still existed

Twitter can be used to communicate with others, but why through this medium?  Why not through email or instant messaging?  Is society getting to the point where everyone feels the need to tell anyone interested what they’re up to?  And why do we get so caught up in the information provided by the online communities we participate in?

It’s highly unlikely that any of my family or friends will adopt Twitter.  They follow the mindset of “I’m already using this site – I don’t want to keep up with another,” and I can’t say that I blame them.  I have too many accounts, more than I’d like to admit, but I’m intrigued by Twitter now (Thanks Jeff…).  As it’s new to me, I’ll keep playing with the site and see how it I feel about it later on down the line. 

But for now, I’m closing the browser and getting back to work.