Last night, Jimmy Fallon hosted the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards. Despite consuming lots of online and traditional media each day, the only reason I remembered this was because of Twitter (UberTwitter, to be exact). Normally, I’m not one for award shows of any kind. But after seeing that my entire Twitter feed was Emmy-related, I thought I’d turn it on for a few minutes. And I literally mean a few minutes.
Despite not liking award shows, I still like to be in-the-know about the winners, who wore what and any awkward happenings like the special “moment” that Taylor Swift and Kanye West shared at the 2009 VMAs. So thanks to social media, I was able to check my Twitter feed throughout the night to see who won. Twitter was the only reason I felt ready to discuss the winners this morning, when in fact my television was on for less than five minutes.
En route to work today, someone commented on how glad they were that Modern Family won and I was quick to agree, since I enjoyed reading numerous tweets about their big win last night. (Important note: If you do not watch Modern Family, I’m not sure if we can be friends. It is by far the funniest show on TV and quickly knocked The Office out of my favorite TV show slot. Sorry Michael Scott!)
NBC wisely played up social media by encouraging people to check out the live-stream behind the scenes videos and tweet to the host, who announced some of the presenters via viewer’s tweets. Since I missed pre-event coverage (the one part of award shows that I sometimes watch), Yfrog also came in very handy. They had a page dedicated to photos from the Emmys, so I still got to see some dapper suits and designer dresses, though I never actually saw celebrities stroll down the red carpet.
Social media was a good fit for the show last night, since the host himself is no stranger to it – Jimmy Fallon sometimes uses Twitter during his show to engage audience members and viewers at home.The Hollywood Reporterhas said that the early numbers are too close to call but regardless of the official ratings, I think NBC can call the Emmy Awards a success.
Did you watch last night or follow along through social media? And now that we’ve chatted about social media, can we please discuss the dress on January Jones?
I’m not a big picture-taker anyway, but I usually feel like dealing with my digital camera is a hassle. While I can take a photo on my BlackBerry and e-mail it or upload it to the web instantly, the quality isn’t as great as it could be. But before I can share a photo from my point-and-shoot camera, I have to get home, hook it up to my laptop with the USB cord, upload the photos to my computer, and then upload them to Facebook, Tumblr or wherever else. I’ve often wondered why we can’t just cut out the middleman already and send our photos directly from the camera to the web.
Luckily, Kodak has released a new little camera that does just that. The EasyShare M590 is a whopping 14 megapixels (for the sake of comparison, my BlackBerry’s camera is 3.2 MP and my years-old digicam is about 6) and is the world’s thinnest 5X optical zoom digital camera, which means it will fit nicely in my purse. But the best part is that you can instantly e-mail your pics and video or upload them to YouTube, Facebook or Flickr instantly.
The fact that it comes in a lovely shade of purple (my favorite color) and retails for just $199.95 means I’ll probably be buying this little gadget as a Labor Day present to myself! I know Labor Day isn’t traditionally a gift-giving holiday, but the fact that the labels on my current camera’s buttons are entirely worn off means it’s probably time to upgrade.
Major Spillage: Toyota has launched an app to teach us how to lower our fuel consumption by changing our pedal-to-the-metal driving tactics (aggressive driving and frequent braking are huge fuel wasters — the less fuel, the fewer CO2 emissions). The Glass of Water app is a virtual glass of water that reacts to your driving as if this glass is actually on your dashboard. The app captures distance, driving time, average speed, idle time and water spillage, and you can analyze the results more closely at the website they’ve set up. Disclaimer: Do not check to see how much water you’ve spilled while still operating the motor vehicle.
Let Me Take You Down: To promote the new Lennon exhibition at The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the establishment “planted” die-cut strawberries in the Strawberry Field section of Central Park. Curious passersby picked the strawberries to reveal info about the exhibition.
Hearts Will Go On: Providing a look at the Titanic we’ve never seen before, the Expedition Titanic team (no Bill Paxton, unfortunately) will be diving the depths later this August to explore the famous shipwreck — in 3-D. Not only will there be this 3-D footage, but thanks to current social media and digital technology, the team will update Flickr and YouTube in real time and divers themselves will tweet about exploring the wreckage (once they come up for air, we hope).
Click here to let us know that you’d like to be added to the mailing list for the monthly edition of “word.”
Our client Kijiji is currently hosting a Pet Fitness Sweepstakes to help pets get in shape for the summer (did you know that 44 percent of dogs and 57 percent of cats are estimated to be overweight or obese?). If you live in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Atlanta, or Houston, enter a photo of your pet for the chance to win a $1,000 pet supply gift card! Your pet will also be featured on Kijiji’s pet slideshow (above) for the chance to become Internet famous. So what are you waiting for? Visit Kijiji and send in a pic of your animal companion!
I noticed something very intriguing about an ad for the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the 6 train this morning — the photo caption was credited to a Flickr user! (I was so suprised, I even documented it with my bad-quality BlackBerry camera.) It turns out the Met held a Flickr photo contest, and the winning picture was featured in the ad.
In an interesting coincidence, Getty Images just launched a new Flickr partnership today. Getty can now contact Flickr members and ask them if they want to share their images for use in a special Flickr-branded Getty collection. Flickr has long been a great place to find beautiful photography, and it’s fantastic that its users are getting the respect they deserve from the photo industry.
Last night, Maria and I attended the first NY Tech Meetup at its new location at FIT. It was packed with over 700 New Yorkers of the geeky persuasion, and it was nice that everyone was able to fit into the auditorium. We got to check out some cool new tech startups, my favorite of which was enjoysthin.gs, a very visual bookmarking service (like delicious, but prettier). We did a quick video interview with creator Ted Roden, so hopefully you’ll be seeing that up here very soon!
Google Image Labeler is my new favorite online game. It allows you to play a word-association game in partnership with other live users, and it helps Google improve the relevance of image search results. Everybody wins!
Here’s a cool article from TechCrunch about how the world is quickly becoming geo-coded through a handful of location-based social communication networks. Ever tweet about a specific location? Upload photos on Flickr with a location tag? Post reviews to Yelp? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you are taking part in some of the simplest forms of geo-coding.
