Super Bowl XLII Oakland To Phoenix Flight Southwest Airlines

This is a video of the flight that I took from Oakland to Phoenix to attend Super Bowl XLII and the events before the game. It was a Southwest Airlines flight that left at 1:30 that day and got in at about almost 5 PM.

TechCrunch Reports That Red Envelope's Closing It's Doors

Yep. Red Envelope, which has sent a number of gifts to me, is closing down after several years of operating at the margins. Here's TechCrunch's word:

Everything up to this point is fact - what comes next is rumor: We’ve heard the company is basically laying off all of the staff and shutting down in the next few days. We have an email in to the company for comment.

Stay tuned.

Michael Irvin At Hall of Fame | One Of The Greatest NFL Speeches In History

Please listen to this speech by former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin. It's one of the greatest speeches in NFL history.

Reflections on the 40th anniversary of King's assassination

At a time when we were, ostensibly, trying to come together, it seemed the divisions had never been more pronounced. Each of us who lived through, and recalls, those times bears a certain number of wounds. The reaction to King's murder was rioting on a scale this country had never known. What started as a peaceful march for the rights of sanitation workers in Memphis became violence none could ignore.

We must not forget. For the sake of our children, we dare not.

"We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

~ Senator Barack Obama

read more | digg story

SF- BIG Panel On Digital Ad Talent - St. Regis Hotel, SF

The San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group or "SF-BIG" asked me to make this video of their "Reach" event held March 20th, 2008 at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. The topic was on what ad firms look for in digital ad talent and what advantage -- if any -- San Francisco has as a center of digital media. The panelists included Melinda Mettler (Academy of Art School of Advertising), Alyson Hyder (Avenue A | Razorfish); Bernie Albers (Federated Media); and David Greenwald, (i2iplacement). In all it was a great event and the breakfast was terrific.

iTunes Makes Apple #1 Music Retailer In U.S.A

According to ArtsTechnica.com, Apple has risen to become the number one music retailer in the United States, and all of those transactions are online - not one single money exchange was done by a cash register in an Apple store.

That's amazing. Apple has surpassed WalMart, BestBuy and another online retailer Amazon.com to reach this position. But this should firmly cement in the mind of the public the fact that online retail is not a fad and is the next wave of transactions.

But ArtsTechnica points to a "dark side" of Apple's success because many "offline" retail purchases are of high-end CD's, so Apple's success means that the overall revenue of the music industry is falling.

Factor military duty into criticism, Mr. Limbaugh. Did you volunteer, Mr. O'Reilly?

Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as Jeremiah Wright, received five (5) military service deferments, four for being a student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968.

In 1961, amid an increasingly turbulent time in this country, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," Wright gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the recently integrated U.S. Marine Corps. Remember, it was not until the spring of 1968 that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. All men may have been created equal, but in the U.S. in the 60s there was little assuring they would be afforded equal rights in most places.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

How many of Wright's detractors, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly to name but a few, volunteered for service, and did so under the often tumultuous circumstances of a newly integrated armed forces and a society in the midst of a civil rights struggle? Not many.

While words do count, as Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss point out in the April 3rd piece in the Chicago Trib after looking into Jeremiah Wright's history, so do actions.

read more | digg story