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Albert 3.0, Llamas and Presidential Candidate Metaphors

Temporary blogdrought continueth, I'm afraid. Normal service will be resumed, etc.

Meanwhile, three quick links of note:

1. Utterly wonderful to see my mate Albert Lai smiling out at me from the cover of the latest Canadian Business magazine.


They interviewed Albert for the front end feature piece in a special section on "What's Next". The piece isn't online yet, alas, but I think they post things eventually.

Albert's still one of the nicest, smartest, and hardest-working people in the North American tech scene. Great to see him getting this kind of attention.

2. Heard about this site on Leo Laporte's excellent TWiT show: TheEndIsTheBeginning.

Llamas, origami, a link to an article about the RIAA crackdowns on student downloading, and the message "You are being manipulated". Hmmm...

It's a teaser for something, certainly - something launching on July 4th, 2007. But for what?

Leo thought it might be a viral thingy for some new movie. I wonder - the combination of llamas and the RIAA makes me think of WinAmp.

WinAmp is a really powerful cross-platform media player from developers Nullsoft. Really useful product - great for moving audio and video files you own back and forth between different formats and devices.

The founders seem to have something of a llama fixation going on. They describe themselves as: "One part genius. Three parts llama. And a sprinkling of corporate AOL." Plus, there are llama jokes and images spread throughout the site and even embedded as easter eggs in their downloadable product.

What have they got up their sleeves, I wonder...?

3. Equally puzzling and intriguing are the videos launched on behalf of US Senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel. Here's one of them:



Hard to know quite what to make of this. It's a really interesting approach though, and I can't help admiring the guy for his creative courage. When's the last time you saw a Presidential candidate with the confidence to use such oblique metaphors?

Plenty of discussion of this elsewhere, including an MSNBC interview in which the Senator attempts to explain the videos to a particularly obtuse host.