The Protagonist - George Bush Plus Nick Nolte

Call me crazy, but when I saw this photo in Stephen Holden's New York Times review of The Protagonist, I immediately thought the shot of Hans Klein looked eerily similar to a composite of George W. Bush and one of Nick Nolte's mug shots. You decide for yourself.

Banff Mountain Film Festival - 20 Seconds Of Joy

Wow! Went to the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour at the Mountaineers in Seattle last night. I've seen it in many different cities over the years, and it's always one of the top five highlights of my year. Last night, wow, 20 Seconds Of Joy, a journey through 5 years in the life of Norwegian BASE jumper Karina Hollekim, amazing, moving, and amazing. Here's the preview - the full length is not available on DVD yet, but I have to see this movie again!

Ryan Stewart On blist

Ryan Stewart has a really nice post today about blist. In his post, Ryan reveals a little bit more about our technology stack. Very exciting!

NATO Airstrikes In Afghanistan

This from the 'I may not be the smartest man in the world, but . . .' department: Maybe the best way to win the hearts & minds of people in Afghanistan is not to callously kill even our own hires with indiscriminate air strikes. I'm actually fairly certain that the resurgent Taliban do not do this, and at least in this regard - look like the good guy to the man on the street.
From the New York Times

Defeat Email Scraping

There are as many ways to break email address scraping on the web as there are . . . well, there's a lot - from 'at' 'dot' 'com' to images. But spammers never rest, so we have to keep innovating. This is the current state of the art:

Fantastisk Thanksgiving 2007

San Francsico & Santa Cruz

My Favorite Swedish Bands

I'm all about Swedish bands - maybe because my middle name is Gustav. I saw The Sounds over the summer at Roskilde - and have been listening to their new album on repeat for 2 weeks straight right now. Here's a taste of the kind of awesomeness I'm talking about:

I'm also way in to Johnossi right now, and here's a kick-ass Johnossi video:

blist on my SERP

I love that blist is now #8 on the Google SERP for "Mathew Johnson" - at least today, now, for me.

Yesterday's Top Keywords

the forgotten commodity
viral equation
how to visit cuba
the forgotten commodity
"viral marketing" "viral coefficient"
ad of the day
alex iskold
forgotten commodity
global warming ads quotes
how does facebook work
imacros
legal persian
matthew johnson seattle
mattishness
the forgotten commodity is
toyota/warcraft
viral equation coefficients
what is the difference between word and excel
mathew johnson seattle

WildlifeDirect - Blogs From Conservation's Front Lines

Conservationists in Africa are carrying out critical work to protect wildlife and habitats, under difficult, isolated and often dangerous conditions. WildlifeDirect was established to provide support to these conservationists via the use of blogs – this enables anybody, anywhere to play a direct and interactive role in the survival of some of the world’s most precious species - and really develop a deep understanding from current, first-hand accounts.

Richard Leakey is one of the driving forces behind WildlifeDirect - if you haven't read his fantastic book Wildlife Wars - I highly recommend it.

A Splog In My Name - I'm Honored

Not quite sure which step it is in the ladder, but it's definitely a step when you find a splog generated off your own name, when I first looked, there were contextual ads referring to the keyword blist, so I know I had something to do with it:

http://frirl.com/frl/sarahjeanne/3713/matt-johnson/

Round The County 2007

I had a fantastic time last weekend sailing around the San Juan Islands. One of our competitors put together a fun video from the weekend. I also took a few photos of my own.

Good times!

Minus Two Messages

Repro that! And it wouldn't be complete without a link back to WorseThanFailure, where you frequently find similar such things.

blist - Techcrunch & Screenshots

blist got written up by Techcrunch over the weekend. More importantly, Techcrunch managed to coax screenshots out of us - which is a pretty big deal. We are very proud of the innovative user interface work we are doing. Exciting stuff!

Ad Of The Day: Legal Persian

Since I read Farsi, I can tell you authoritatively that this website has nothing to do with cats, persian kitty, or other related euphemisms. It's a law firm serving the Persian-American community.

The real moral of the story is much untapped value to be had from innovating in ad-targeting!

Blogging Game Theory

This is one particularly impressive power you get from blogging:

If someone else doesn't blog, and doesn't have too much of a web presence tied to their name, you can just write a blog post with their full name in the title, and say whatever the hell you want - then you own them - anytime a prospective partner, employer, other important person - searches on that particular full name as a quick background check - they see what you wrote.

So, the moral of the story is . . .

The Difference Between Word And Excel

There is a lot of innovation going on in the Office 2.0 department these days. Some great use cases are coming out of it. I've sat across the table from a fellow copywriter - spitballing headline ideas and writing them into the same Google Document at the same time.

But fundamentally, people still use Google Docs or Buzzword (and Buzzword is very cool!) to write stuff - just like they use MS Word.

Excel is a different story. Nearly everyone uses Excel to do things that it wasn't conceived for.

Most people use spreadsheet programs to organize things - but spreadsheets were conceived and designed as an accounting tool. Accounting and organizing are definitely related, but they are definitely not the same thing, either. There is some real innovation to be had around organizing information - phone lists, sales leads, sports schedules, etc.

Other organizers exist, but none have really solved the problem - because none are as flexible, or powerful as a spreadsheet - so that's what most people continue to use.

Viral Coefficients & Equations

Or, an illustration of why marketers are charlatans who make up pseudo-math to give a false appearance of rigor.

Lets begin by searching on the keyword string "VIRAL COEFFICIENT" - all the top results have to do with Internet viral marketing. Now if you were actually using something like a coefficient in any kind of serious way you'd be deriving it and building it into an equation. Lets try searching on the keyword string "VIRAL COEFFICIENT" EQUATION - all the top results are from the natural sciences. I rest my case.

Advancing Usefulness

As Kevin wrote, we spent most of yesterday at the University of Washington computer science department talking to undergrads, grad students, and professors.

These are the kind of people who get really excited about what blist is doing - solving hard problems and really advancing the usefulness that people get out of computers in a fundamental way. People who know what they're talking about get a look at blist and say: 'that's important'.

Really exciting to show off blist to more people, more publicly, than ever before and get such great reactions!