Take Al Gore, Gore Vidal, or Vidal Sassoon. Would any of these gentlemen have turned as successful had their parents picked less recognizable names for them?

Likely. After all, how do you explain the success and phenomenon around someone named Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gisele Bundchen?

Clearly, it’s not about one’s given name, but how you manage to *live*it: fill it with life, meaning and gestalt. To put it into today’s social media speak, it’s about how you create the brand of you!

But what happens if social media turns into the new go-to engine for parents eager to hone in on the ultimate name for their kid? What happens if the über-popular engagement platform begins to not just promote but indeed shape parents’ decisions on what to name their kids?

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I’ve got a full work plate this morning, and my own set of feelings to process about the news of Osama bin Laden’s death (more on that will likely appear on my Tumblr later tonight), but wanted to get down a couple noteworthy bullets. If I have time, I’ll return and flesh these out into a coherent piece.

We all know that social media get the word out at lightning speed–but what struck me most about this news was not the speed of information, but the immediacy of community development. People are using Twitter and Facebook to work out what are, for many, complicated emotions. Relief, joy, anger, sadness are all appearing at once. This is in stark contrast to what we often see in traditional media soundbites (particularly video media), where broad strokes are painted when it comes to emotional content–i.e., those people are cheering, those people over there are not. Social media is creating a space where it’s acceptable, and useful, to express multiple feelings. This is also very different than, for example, the days following 9/11–when the war on Afghanistan was announced, it was largely extremely taboo in American public squares (online or off) to express concern, or disagreement. Part of that was the political climate, but part of that was that there weren’t necessary effective public spaces for people to be nuanced human beings.

I’m also struck by the speed with humor was employed as a tactic to process the news. Again, in contrast to 9/11, when we waited two weeks for the new issue of The Onion to come out–no one made any jokes before then. Not only was it taboo, but there just wasn’t a way to deal. (By the way, that issue of The Onion might be the best one ever–headlines like, “God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule, “Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves in Hell,” and many more gems.) Last night, some of the immediate jokes, some in good taste, some not, clearly paved a way for people to express all kinds of reactions to this global news phenomenon. My personal favorites were @marcfaletti‘s “It was that f***ing iPad location history, wasn’t it?” and the newly created @OsamaInHell account tweeting, “Wait, what?”

More as time allows today…

I’ve just gotten back from my first ever digital vacation—I spent five days in the Caribbean offline. Well, I’ll admit—I didn’t go completely offline. What I did was commit to 5 days of zero digital communication, and I didn’t answer or use anything on my phone. (It helped that I was abroad, so I didn’t want to pay insane roaming fees associated with both voice & data service.) The place where I stayed had free wifi, and I had my laptop with me so that I could write. My Kindle also has 3G and wifi. Ultimately, it was a matter of choice and then self-discipline to be out of touch. Some observations:

1. I wrote in my journal a lot more. All the things I might have tweeted or posted to Facebook went into a personal journal. It made me realize that since I don’t share deeply intimate details online, I have a lot of thoughts & experiences that don’t get documented in any way anymore. I have been, at most times of my life, an extreme self-documentarian (it’s probably what makes sharing random bits of it not that big of a deal for me), and even though I download Twitter backups, I’m wondering what I’ll be missing from this chunk of my life when I look back and see only the public bits. I still carry a paper journal with me everywhere; it just never gets used.
2. The only real urge to get onto Twitter and Facebook I had was when Mubarak was rumored to be leaving, and then actually resigned the next day. Social networks have become my lifeline for news & analysis, and though I had CNN International, Al Jazeera English and MSNBC at my disposal, I missed jumping into the breaking-news frenzy with my friends and colleagues.
3. Email, on the other hand, was a daily challenge not to think about checking. I didn’t necessarily want to know what was going on with work, but I had the nagging feeling of, “Does anyone need me?” It’s a big part of my identity, both professionally and personally, to be useful. I had to know that I was needed or missed. (Something I’d learned earlier in my online life, by the way, is that you cannot rely on social networks for this. Once you drop out, it’s “out of sight, out of mind.”) I need to work on this being such a big part of my identity, I think. A friend of mine says, “Truth is, you’re not needed. You’re completely replaceable,” at least in the professional sense. Accepting that is an exercise in a zen kind of freedom.
4. I was irritated by the feeling of not knowing what was going on in the world when I woke up every morning. I compromised by continuing to abandon the immediate picking up of my phone to check my social networks for news, but instead picking up my Kindle and going to the New York Times’ mobile site.
5. Sometimes my desire to get online really did feel like addiction. It reminded me of when I quit smoking, and my brain would try to make these little deals with me to have a cigarette. Luckily, I read a really good book to quit smoking that also helped me with answering those deals (except for the above news deal, I caved on that one). There’s a study that shows that stuff that happens online releases oxytocin in our brains, the same chemical that’s released in cuddling and affection. I suspect I was feeling a real lack of that experience and my “addiction” was trying to make it happen. “Just a little bit,” my brain would whimper.
6. I also fought urges to get just a little bit of work done. I would imagine for a second that I could just do that one writeup that was waiting to finished, and then I’d walk away. But just as I’m not a casual smoker, I know I’m not a casual worker. Just one and I’d be hooked, and back in the deep end. I chose to stay away and it worked for me.
7. Ultimately, all those urges were about self-discipline, something that’s lacking from the bigger discussions of, “Are we spending too much time online?” We worry that Facebook is going to suck us in and eat up all our time. It’s not Facebook (or Twitter), it’s you. You are choosing to go there and spend time, and you need to choose how long you’re going to be there. You do it with TV, you do it with going out with your friends, you do it with reading books. These tools are no different, except that you’re getting different chemicals into your brain that you are with some of your other free-time activities. Self-discipline is needs to be a part of our daily digital diet. (And if you have a problem with it, as I do sometimes, download a helper like Self-Control for Mac.)

PS—Things I did do on my vacation: ran a lot, did yoga, ate relatively well (no peanut butter M&Ms all week!), watched a few Oscar contenders, read Girlbomb’s amazing memoir, drew comics, napped, drank margaritas. Other random analog things, too. It was utterly fantastic.

The Honorable Justice Clarence Thomas has been a judge on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1991. The last time his voice was heard during proceedings was five years ago. According to court manuscripts, he has since not asked any in-court questions or engaged in dialog while on the bench.

According to the Pew Research Institute, young online audiences seem to be taking a similar approach.

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Former MSNBC political show host Keith Olbermann has just announced his new show will air on Current TV.

No secret – I have long been a fan of Current TV.

The S.F.-based (partially) user-generated cable programmer has long been on the forefront of innovative journalism.  Side by side viewer-created short “pod” submissions, Current has its own group of young vanguard journalists. Audiences help to determine at least part of what’s to air, most of which then gets plenty viral distribution up and down the participatory Web.

Next in, Keith Olbermann will be the first veteran broadcasters to join the citizen journalist crew.

It should be interesting to see if and how Mr. Olbermann and Current TV’s participatory media will blend to something greater than the sum of the individual parts.

AOL just paid $315 million for ‘uber blog’ The Huffington Post. Social network giant Facebook seems worth $50 billion. And global media powerhouse News Corp. relies on what’s likely the world’s most popular consumer electronics designer, Apple, as their next exclusive content distributor.

Clearly, the face and valuation of media continues to be in major flux.

In this highly dynamic environment, let’s see where Current and Olbermann can take things next.

Have you been to a book store lately? No, not online, not the virtual kind. I mean the real thing. The old-fashioned brick-and-mortar version. The real McCoy.

This past week I went book hunting up and down Manhattan. Apparently, I had forgotten exactly how tedious the process was compared to the comforting efficiency of an online shopping experience.

Well, five! store locations and several book-hunting hours later, I finally did walk away with my priced copies.

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Ikea – hey, what’s not to like? You pick and choose from its vast furniture selection exactly what you like, pass through a (relatively) quick check-out and off you go, enjoying your new purchases.

So, how does a popular self-serve furniture store figure into this yours truly digital technology and media blog?

Attending the recently-held Paley Media Center’s IC 2010 event in New York, a-la-carte programingwas among the hot hot button issues. The notion that one day we could freely pick and choose Ikea-style (and thus pay only for) our personal cable, satellite, or IPTV channel favorites scares the living daylight out of some while others believe it’s a must or at the least - unavoidable.

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A few years ago, Radiohead released a  video shot entirely with a 3D array of lasers rather than with lights and cameras.  Now the Montreal-based band Arcade Fire has partnered with Google to promote a song using another new technology: HTML5.  For bands like Arcade Fire and Radiohead, it’s about supporting their songs in new ways and reaching new audiences (we’re writing about it, aren’t we?).  For Google, it’s about advancing the cause of both HTML5 and their HTML5-enabled Chrome browser.

It’s not quite accurate to call the Arcade Fire/Google collaboration “The Wilderness Downtown” a ‘video’.  Directed by Chris Milk,  the website is essentially a showcase of several HTML5 features.  Leveraging Google Street View, the site first asks the visitor to enter their childhood address.  If Street View images exist for that address (they didn’t for my childhood address in the New York City suburbs), those images are incorporated into the video – complete with panning, effects, and overlayed animation.  In other words, the presentation  is “geo-personalized” for each viewer (if you grew up in an area that’s been covered by Google Street View, that is).  That’s  cool factor #1.

Multiple browser windows opening on cue, all playing video in sync (allowing, for example, a flock of animated birds to fly from one window to the other)?  Cool factor #2.

Then a window opens allowing  user input and manipulation of sophisticated graphic objects via both mouse and keyboard.  Since all this is implemented locally via HTML5 at the browser (rather than by some JavaScript calling back to a server), latency is about zero – it feels as if it’s running locally on an installed application (which, in fact, it is – the browser).  Cool factor #3.

However, if a user tries to access the site with a browser other than Google’s Chrome, they’re presented with a warning prompt that the ‘film’ will not render properly in their browser.  In my experience, while the presentation took longer to load on Firefox, I got relatively similar results, though.  It leads me to question the warning, especially since according to the WC3 (the HTML5 standards organization), the browser with the most complete implementation of the HTML5 standard right now is built by – wait for it – previously standards-unfriendly Microsoft, with their just-released beta of IE9 (that this is not widely known is yet another in a series of missed PR opportunities for Microsoft).

So, OK, maybe the “Chrome only” warning is a little reminiscent of those “For best results use only <foobar>-branded accessories with your new <foobar> product” warnings – still, the loading time and overall performance with Chrome was pretty impressive.  Whether it’s a fair fight – whether the site is built on browser-agnostic strict HTML5 or Google’s cheating a bit by optimizing for Chrome is another question (and not an unreasonable one – we’ve written before about Google’s big plans for Chrome to evolve beyond the role of a browser into the cloud-based Chrome operation system).

All of which speaks to a fundamental obstacle facing the adoption of HTML5 video – standardization.  While the new <video> tag threatens to someday make third party video middleware such as Flash and Silverlight irrelevant, the significant hurdle of insuring compatibility across all the various browser HTML5 implementations out there remains.  Further complicating things, each browser company often has its own competing business agenda.  For the WC3, getting HTML5 off the ground can sometimes look like an exercise in cat-herding (in fact, there still hasn’t yet been agreement on the underlying video codec).

This is one of the primary reasons widespread adoption of HTML5′s native video tag is still a few years away.

Who’s dreading the advent of HTML5 almost as much as Adobe?  Probably the web developer, who will have to test on five different browser HTML5 implementations rather than on a single Flash container.

For more on HTML5 video click here.

When you live in a foreign country, sometimes it’s the little things:

Upon moving to Berlin last year I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was thedailyshow.com not geo-blocked over here, but entire episodes would stream with no commercial interruption whatsoever!  I know, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, does it – still, I’d get a little kick out of that commercial-free skip from one segment to the next each and every time – it felt like I was getting away with something.

Like I said, it’s the little things.

Until recently, that is – watching an episode at home a few weeks ago, I was surprised to find a low-budget German commercial for a shooter video game inserted into my previously commercial-free Daily Show stream at each segment break!  Interestingly, the commercial’s audio was missing and the video resolution was awful.  More interestingly still, after the spot, I was returned not back to the start of the next segment, but was instead deposited at some arbitrary point three quarters of the way through the episode.

It’s been that way for a week now: the same soundless, grainy German shooter video game commercial during each commercial break, followed by a return to some random spot later in the episode.

It all felt like such a hack that I got curious – so as a quick experiment, from my office one day I fast-forwarded to a few of the segment breaks I had seen carrying the soundless, grainy German shooter video game commercial when streamed from home  …and lo and behold, no soundless, grainy German shooter video game commercial!

This meant the source of the commercial is relatively local.  Still, it could be there’s nothing shady going on at all: my home ISP could be streaming from a content delivery network with Comedy Central-sanctioned advertising support, and my office could be streaming from a CDN without.  However, given how thoroughly hacked the insertion of the commercial (and the commercial itself) feels, I wonder if something more ‘informal’ is  happening – could it be that my residential ISP is recognizing this particular traffic as a particularly popular video, and so is buffering the stream themselves while they (somewhat unsuccessfully) attempt to insert a commercial they (rather than Comedy Central) sold?

It’s not such a far-fetched premise: I’m continually amazed at the expensive original recording music drops being used on German TV- there’s simply no way some of these low-profile German TV programs are paying Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith and Nirvana for the use of 3 of their most recognizable hits, all within the space of a minute or two – maybe things are just looser over here

On the other hand, detecting the presence of the stream would require some level of packet inspection – something I’d be surprised could happen in privacy-minded (and Google Street View-unfriendly) Germany.

The soundless, grainy German shooter video game commercial – it remains a mystery.

Back from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, strangely, of all things, it was micro-blogging that got rejected.

Yup! No Twitter, no Facebook status updates, no quick text shout-outs. Nope! Nada! Nothing!

To be sure, any and all mobile communication on all carrier networks was out. Voice and data. You name it.

While I initially suspected complete event-caused subscriber overload (my Blackberry screen message said as much), I soon discovered this “no mobile” diet is a perfectly normal scenario on D.C.’s National Mall.

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