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Ari Paparo Dot Com
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Ari Paparo moving to blog.aripaparo.com
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:17:00 +0300
As some of you loyal readers (ahem, both of you) may have noticed, updates to the blog have been somewhat infrequent of late. Compared to twitter and delicious blog posting seems so, well, literary*.
I am moving my more frequent postings to a tumblr account at:
http://blog.aripaparo.com/
If you use an RSS reader you can add this feed:
http://blog.aripaparo.com/rss
Tumblr is like a hybrid between a blog and the "feed" at Facebook. It includes blog postings, twitters, links, videos, etc and is updated multiple times per day instead of once per month.
I will still maintain this blog for now but postings will also appear in my feed so I'd recommend updating the bookmarks and feeds.
* In the Jane Eyre sense, e.g. not something one would want to do in one's free time. Although I really, really enjoyed the whale chapters of Moby Dick so perhaps I will start a Physeter macrocephalus blog.
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A Note from the Google Mailroom
Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:44:00 +0400
As many of you know from my twitters lately I've been on a diet. My biggest temptation by far is the abundant quantities of M&Ms sitting around the Google office. They're so ubiquitous and enticing that I've taken to making my away message various taunts to the M&M fairy such as "Not eating M&Ms," "No M&Ms here," "M&Ms don't exist," etc.
I just got this email from the mailroom (so professional!):
Hello Ari
I just wanted to inform you that Mail Services has received an Inter-Department mail piece addressed to you from "The M&M Fairy". (No Joke) Unfortunately I am not able to get in touch with the sender since "The M&M Fairy" does not appear on Moma [internal directory]. This item can not ship using Inter-Department mail service since the service is for documents only. In addition to the fact that the envelop contains non-documents, Mail Services is restricted by Google policy to ship food items. The InterDepartment envelope contains 9 pkgs of M&Ms. I just wanted to let you know in-case you are able to communicate with "The M&M Fairy" that this package will not ship.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank You
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Quick Idea for Social Networking
Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:55:00 +0400
Here's a quickie. The beauty of twitter is that by limiting each entry to 140 characters you're forcing creativity. Same reason accomplished artists paint "still life with fruit" over and over again.
How about this...a social network where you have a maximum number of friends. Like 15. And whenever you add another friend, you have to bump one to make room. And just for fun, when you first sign up you are automatically assigned 15 friends based on your interests.
At first, you say "well, that sucks because I would have to pick and choose my friends and people would be insulted."
But I'd bet the dynamic would actually be a lot more fun. More like hanging out with different people on different nights of the week. You could even take it up a notch and have forced rotation Volleyball style; every week you lose a friend and have to pick a new one.
Good idea?
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What I Blog About
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:01:00 +0400
Created by Wordle, recommended by ANP!
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True Blood Viral Marketing
Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:01:00 +0400
I'm usually the last person to know about anything, so imagine my surprise this morning when I stumbled upon a well-executed and exciting viral marketing campaign for the new HBO Vampire series, True Blood.
I was walking down Allen street when I saw a poster for what looked like a deep red colored malt beverage. Everything was there from the silhouettes of attractive people to the warning to "drink responsibly", but the product advertised appeared to be...blood.
Went to the advertised website. Awesome parody of an alcoholic promo site. The "Type Finder" is hysterical.
Saw a link to the blog at bloodcopy.com. A bunch of YouTube videos about vampire-related political stuff. Cool.
Click to YouTube itself and link to the user BloodCopyCom and check out his videos. A lot more vampire politics and intrigue. Apparently the vampires are considering coming out of the closet! Oh my.
Finally, don't forget the Revenant Ones where vampires hang out their dirty laundry (Tide even gets out Blood stains!). Side note: Wikipedia defines revenant as "a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living"; ooh spooky.
Anyway, the series is created by Alan Ball, executive producer of Six Feet Under, so it definitely gets my attention.
And, as expected, the innovative marketing campaign is by Campfire Deep Focus (while the media is by Deep Focus, pretty much the best agency around for social marketing).
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Mystery Woobie
Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:16:00 +0400
We've been getting a bunch of little gifts for little Noa. Thank you if you've sent something; no need if you haven't.
Today a packaged arrived with a cute pink woobie blanket with Noa's name embroidered in the corner.
No card.
No message on the packing label.
The buyer's name: "Joseph Gones". Google it, pretty much nothing comes back. Nothing in my gmail search, nothing in my address book, nothing at all. I suspect it's a misspelling of "Joseph Jones," but that search also yields nothing.
The address of the buyer: 594 Broadway, Suite 1011. Hmm, sounds corporate. Google it. Points to Statement PR, a company I've never heard of with no meaningful info on their homepage and little else indexed on Google.
I have three hypotheses:
Mr. Gones is actually a close friend of mine and, as usual, I'm letting my Aspergers get in the way and can't remember who he is.
Someone I know asked their significant other to buy us something and Mr. Gones forgot to put a note in the package.
A reader of this blog sent me an anonymous gift as some sort of PR come-on in the hope that a C-list blogger like myself would write about them in some way.
I've emailed them asking to contact Mr. Gones. If you're reading this and you're actually my old college roommate or long-lost sibling, please leave a comment.
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Silicon Alley's Secret Weapon
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:27:00 +0400
I'm normally loathe to compare the New York tech scene with that of the Valley. The point many of us in the city have been making for years is not that we "are just as innovative" or can "compete for talent" with the West Coast, but that we have lots of natural advantages for start-ups, including access to advertising agencies, media companies, university talent, etc. Obviously Silicon Valley is a class of its own for technology, no one's going to argue that point.
So what's interesting to me lately is how many resumes I've seen from young engineers and product managers looking to move from the Bay Area to the City. What could a twenty-something go-getter in the tech field want that wasn't available along 101?
In a word, girls.
The first time I heard the complaint from an interviewee I thought, well, maybe he's a bit of a playa. A playa needs a field to play in.
Then the second guy I talked to sheepishly mentioned that he was, you know, young, and dating, and well, the SF scene isn't that great for heteros, and you know, the girls don't exactly dress that nice, and New York, whoh, and SoHo on a warm afternoon, I mean, who needs Sand Hill road?
When I asked bachelor #3 why he was interested in moving to the East Coast and he mentioned a couple of innocuous "New York is so exciting," "everyone should live in New York," I knew what was up. I said, "so you're moving here for the good looking women?" and he burst out laughing and admitted it was true.
But there's hope! Coincidentally, today's news brought word that H1B applications were being used to bring Eastern European models to the US, and that legislation was proposed to increase their numbers. Unfortunately, most of them will still end up in New York. Look on the bright side, once you're rich on stock options its much easier to meet women.
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Noa Moxie Paparo
Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:29:00 +0400
Noa Moxie Paparo arrived at almost 2AM last night. 8 pounds 5 ounces, 20.5 inches. Mom and baby doing well. She'll have her own blog soon. Check out the Noa Blog for constant updates.
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Third Party Ad Serving Basics
Tue, 20 May 2008 19:18:00 +0400
Google explains how third party ad serving works. Pretty good stuff from the home of text links!
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Becoming a Management Guru
Wed, 14 May 2008 20:07:00 +0400
As many of you know, I often envision myself as famous and important. The best path to such fame and fortune is through authoring a management guru style book. The success of such book generally hinges on the creation of an acronym summarizing the thesis. Further, such acronym should provide guidance that is both intellectual and physical, as such physicality is the principal way in which the audience attracted to said books is likely to absorb and internalize the meaning of the thesis.
This came to mind today in several meetings where I observed the usual corn fed sales types jumping to conclusions based on limited data. Ladies and gentlemen, the acronym-thesis that will launch my career:
Listen to what people are saying...
Inhale deeply to give your brain the oxygen it needs...
Think about what was said and how it relates to the problem at hand...
Exhale and let your mind explore the meaning...
React to what was said and draw conclusions.
Yes, yes yes. I am buying my head mike.
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