Buzz The Bridge

Omniture's Replacement

Headed out to San Francisco on Wednesday for Interwoven's GearUp 2008 event, a week long function focused on IWOV talking about their latest plans for content management. I'd been invited to speak on the   Weaving Optimization into the Website Strategy and Development Lifecycle, a name that was surprisingly to the point given a few of the other seminar breakout sessions. Flew out there Weds afternoon, caught up with Bill Haeck and Charlie Bleau at the vendor showcase, then managed to hike from the Marriott down to Fisherman's Wharf and sightsee a bit (pics) before crashing early Weds night.

The panel went well the next morning, though attendance was predictably low given its position in one of the last slots of the week. Easily one of the more civil, amicable discussions I've been part of, we discussed some of the challenges agencies face in getting clients to understand, fund, and apply site optimization tools like Optimost -- the co-sponsor of the session and one of Interwoven's latest acquisitions.

Probably the most interesting idea of the trip came up not as a result of the panel, though, but simply from the discussion I had had with Bill and Charlie the night before. The basis of this idea is based on two pretty simple assumptions:

1. Standalone web measurement tools such Omniture are a flash in the pan
2. Their technology will start being built into content management platforms which will enable simple "autotagging" of all site elements

For almost two years now One To One has been primarily using Omniture SiteCatalyst and SearchCenter to track and optimize campaign results across many of our clients, with only a few exceptions where the client already had existing tools in place they're comfortable with.

Omniture's technology in theory is terrific. In execution, however, they still have more than a few significant issues to work on, e.g., detailed SEM (SearchCenter) results are actually not available in automated reporting. The 1x1 pixel / page tagging methodology still makes sense as the most effective and reliable means of tracking website visitors, though, but Omniture's biggest problem has been and remains their customer service. At this time my company has not received a response on four vital issues sent to them in over a month despite repeated emails to all levels of their organization. And OTO's story is no different from what I experienced as an analyst at a prior agency while working on Omniture for one of the Big Three automakers.

Despite their issues, however, at the moment Omniture remains the most effective way of measuring how visitors find your site and use it -- mostly because no other competitor now exists in the marketplace, with Visual Sciences/WebSideStory/HitBox being purchased and most other competitors either being similarly acquired or falling by the wayside.

So what's next? Does Omniture monopolize the web analytics toolset industry for the next ten years, or is there an angle from which a competitor might take the throne? Maybe unsurprisingly, it was a director at Microsoft who had the following to say on Eric Petersen's blog The Future of Web Analytics, Demystified:

"In three years, there will be no Web Analytics vendors at all." -- Ian Thomas, Microsoft Advertiser & Publisher Solutions

I don't know about the three-year timeframe but otherwise could not agree more -- this is an evolution that will happen. So where then will the measurement go? Into the content management platforms.

Right now, closed and open source CMS vendors like Interwoven and Drupal provide always-evolving features which let site developers coordinate across departments and disciplines, and allow agencies and other vendors to coordinate with clients in all aspects of client site evolution. On properly implemented CMS platforms, the system manages all components of the site, and any tracking tags which need to be implemented can be applied either directly to the HTML or more efficiently through the CMS platform.

But if the CMS is already responsible for serving every element of the site, how difficult then would it be to evolve the CMS platform to serve a line of code which fires a unique tracking pixel each time any site element is served? And from there to include basic analytic tools, which can be evolved into more sophisticated measurement -- including integrated tracking of your ad campaign elements and other forms of distributed media?

With this level of measurement in place -- and no need for continuous design of new page tags and working with your developers to make sure they're tested and put live -- why then would anyone need or want to keep paying for an external tool?

When buying a car, would you pay extra for the steering wheel?

Note: Opinions above are Charlie's alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions of One To One Interactive.

R.I.P. The Wire

I feel like I last felt in October 2004.

The Boston Red Sox -- who had not won a World Series Championship in 86 years -- were down 3 games to zero in the American League Championship Series against everyone's favorite group of overpaid assholes, the New York Yankees. And somehow they won that game. Then they won two more. Then they won the seventh and final game, clinching their spot in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. And four games later they were once again World Champions.

As I stood out of the Foggy Goggle pub on Boylston St. in downtown Boston, looking up at the Prudential Center across the street, listening to a city gone mad, random folks hugging each other with joy for hours on end, traffic backed up to the suburbs with everyone wanting to be in the city, honking ringing across the town, I knew that no matter how much I watched sports for the rest of my life, I'd probably never see a win that meant so much to so many people. For sports, that was it, I'd seen the top. The Pats could win the next five Superbowls in a row, and it won't be as great. The Sox could win another 20 in a row, and it still wouldn't be as great a night.

And right now, having just seen a perfect close to a wrenching, bitter, loving, heartfelt, hilarious, insanely intelligent, meaningful, brilliant mess of a show, I'm pretty damn sure I won't ever watch another series that meant so much.

God I hope I'm wrong.

McNulte, Bunk, Lester, Daniels, Marlow, Greggs, Carver, Beadie, Chris, Burrell, Valchek, Michael, Herc, Vondas, Slim, Wee-Bay, Bubbles, Snoop, Clay, Bunny, Poot, Boris, Jay, Stringer, Avon, Bodie and Omar.... damn I'm gonna miss y'all.

Thank you, David Simon, for Snot Boogie and everything else that came after.

Mike In Iraq

I've met Ken and Dan's friend Mike twice, both times for no more than an hour, but he seemed like a solid dude, and both Ken and Dan were shocked and concerned when they heard -- as an Army doctor looking to get out of the service soon -- he was being transferred from Hawaii to Iraq.

Today Dan forwarded me an email with a few recent excerpts from Mike's journal, and it's tough stuff. Apparently their concerns were valid. As Ken just said, reading it just makes you want to share it with everyone with the hope of building some true anger.

Remind me why this is happening again?

"Hey all I am going to include some journal entries and one picture which was taken on Thanksgiving.  It is me, Matt a social worker, Kevin a pediatric neurologist and my roomate Matt who is my roomate and a dentist..

Nov 8
I have nothing to do with this boredom. I have no where to go and no one to share it with. If Ninna were here it would be tolerable because we could occupy ourselves together. Otherwise it is just waiting. I have some good TV series to watch. The one now is Deadwood. I should try to learn Danish. There are only so many hours a man can excercise. SHould I take pictures? Could I learn a new trade? I am bored stiff, waiting for the next year to pass and hoping that they will give me a 5 day pass.

Nov 16
Well Its been a trying couple days. My grandpa died 2 days ago in a fiery car accident. I have been calling everyone I can and thinking about grandpa alot. Yesterday I had to work all day and all nigh t whic h took my mind off it. I believe that Grandpa went out with a bang and the way he would have wanted to go. So I tried to send an american red cross message out so that I could go home for the funeral. The army denied it. They won't let me go home because grandpa is not a "immediate relation"
SO right now I am angry and frankly pissed off because I feel cheated, I don't feel supported here although I am giving the army my life and blood. As I am writing this I have had 3 hours of sleep last night because I was up treating a soldier with the worst migraine I have ever seen and then this morning at 0700 had to teach a group of medics how to give the flu vaccine. It feels like I support the army, I support my family, my family supports me and the red cross supports me but the army does not support my family. Bottom line "the army does not support families".
I'm mad and dissapointed and just want to fast foreward a year so that I can be living a normal life.

Nov 20
Fear. I've never really felt fear before, or at lest not the same way I do now. Before fear was more a paranoia. I was afraid of the dark, ora afraid of getting mugged. It was never realistic and never based in solid fact of being. I had felt fleeting fear when my car was out of control on ice. But that was brief and over once the threat was resolved. Fear. Now there is a looming expectation of possible death and a garuntee that there will be death and praying it is not me. I know that there will be another rocket attack where we will have dead brought to us at the clinic. It will happen.
I have changed my actions based on this fear. I do not eat at the times that you would expect an attack on the cafeteria. (Last week 6 pm 2 mortor attacks outside the Oasis cafeteria). WHen I walk I stay close to walls, I know where the closest bunkers are. Last night we had a report of a high likelihood of attack and I slept uneasy.
The feeling that I have when a mortor hits mu st be like a panic attack. My mouth goes dry, my heart rate increases. I have all this energy but no where to go. Sometimes I jump down below my bed and pull into fetal position until it passes. And then once the noise is done and the all clear is given, I run to clinic more afraid of what will come in and more afraid for others.. I don't think this is a good feeling to experience. It is good to live a life where you know that no one is trying to kill you. It is more comfortable. If you do die it will be an accident and likely your fault. And that is all I have to say about fear until the next rocket attack.

Nov 25
It is amazing how much money is wasted here. I see it everyday. We can order everything we want with no concern for money. All the medics got the most advanced stethoscopes (which they don't need). We can order any book or medicine we want. And above that everyone is driving a big SUV. The meals are excellent (42$ a pop) KBR charges 50$ for a bag of la undry. (I get my laundry done 2 times per week) My roomate just told me that the cost of this war per person which will come out of our taxes is 21,000$. It is outrageous and I feel that I am supporting this financial waste by being here. If you get the chance watch "Iraq for Sale" It is a documentary about the contracting companies here. Very good and as far as I can see very real.

Nov 28
I am a little bummed out tonight because a soldier died about 2 hours ago. There was a firefight outside of the wall of the base. I heard all the guns going off. And saw some bright lights falshing and some rounjds going overhead. Anyway some rounds appearantly came on base. This soldier was just standing outside the gym and talking to some of his firends and a stray bullet came out of the air and went into the left side of his chest and exited out of his back. They tried to do CPR at the scene, and tried to sho ck him with a defibrillator. One of our medics was there and he said the scene was chaos and he did not know what was going on. By the time he arrived to me, he was gone. Unconscious without a pulse. No blood pressure and his pupils were fixed and dialated( which means his brain was dead). I didn't do anything other than check to make sure he was gone and then pronounced him dead at 6:30. It really bummed me out. I guess that that could have happened to anyone. I was actually walking to dinner and a bullet hit just behind me and I went running behind a barrier.
He was a young guy divorced with children and he actually extended his tour here. He would have gone home last month. Its sad to think that his family t this point does not know that he is dead. He looked like a guy that was in good shape. But he was covered with blood. I think the bullet probably hit his aorta or possibly his heart. There was nothing we could do.
Hope to hear from all of you. Happy holidays!"

Nice, Dad!

Two weeks ago my father was asked to represent the Naval Academy onboard the not quite three years old Queen Mary 2 in Newport Harbor to help honor the new Master of the QM2 and Commodore of the Cunard Line. The event was partly sponsored by the Block Island Maritime Institute, see full article here and more pictures below to the right. Way to go, man, looks like it was a great time!

Let It Rain

Back in summer '99, just after my college graduation when I was still careerless and working at Martin's Tavern in Washington, DC waiting tables, I was working the deserted lunch shift one shitty, rainy weekday and came across this random piece by Henry Allen in The Washington Post. I don't think I'll ever again have my feeling about an afternoon so completely flipped around by one short article.

The gods of water, rain and rivers are angry.

Let us not anger them further by shaking our brown hydrangea cuttings at an empty sky. Instead, let us praise these gods, and regain their favor.

Otherwise, we worship the dust-devil of drought, which is a false god.

So we praise you, O Water.

The offhanded thunder of a rapids.

The way a hiss seems to rise from a nighttime river, like mist.

The fabulous breathy roar of old-time toilets with the tank up on the wall and the chain you pulled.

And the sabbath rang slowly

in the pebbles of the holy streams.

--Dylan Thomas, in "Fern Hill"

When you were a kid you'd lie in bed listening to rain on the roof. You shivered for the fun of it. You could make yourself feel goose bumps all over whenever you wanted. It was like feeling lucky.

Bubble, babble, burble, gurgle. Dribble, splatter, pitter-patter. Purl, trill, drum, trickle, chatter. Drip. Drop. Rumble. Grumble. Splish, splash, swish, squish, slosh, wash, swash. Rush, flush, gush, hush. Hiss. Kiss.

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

--Psalm 23.

"He had seen photographs of a city in Umbria that had been abandoned when the wells went dry. Cathedrals, palaces, farmhouses had all been evacuated by drought--a greater power than pestilence, famine, or war. Men sought water as water sought its level. The pursuit of water accounted for epochal migrations. Man was largely water. Water was man. Water was love. Water was water."

--John Cheever,

"Artemis, the Honest Well Digger"

When you go somewhere and there's water, you're someplace. When you go somewhere and there's no water, you're anyplace. I know a man who lived on an island in a lake on an island in a lake in Mexico. That was someplace, all right.

You've driven for hours. The lake appears through the pine trees with the soft suddenness of a cat leaping onto the dining room table. Everything is changed.

Wet T-shirt contests: You use water. An extra-light Bertolli olive oil might produce superior cling and transparency, but even a virgin olive oil lacks the clarity and indifference that define the purity of water. In this beer-crazed, music-maddened ritual, the water transforms women from wincing sex-objects into Nereids, water nymphs, ladies of the lake. Olive oil would be too sexy. Really sexy. Besides, it would be expensive and absolute hell to clean up.

You take a long swim in the lake before breakfast.

You butterfly-stroke the last 50 yards. You pull yourself up on the dock. Water pours off you. You didn't think about being wet in the water, but now that you're out of it, you do.

The dock seems somehow realer than it did when you left, the planks coarser, the grass beyond it greener. Your skin feels as if it's been buffed.

You pull off your suit. It hisses like rubber, and collapses around your ankles with a light warmth. You dry yourself with a towel from the laundry line. It's stiff and it smells clean, the smell of water and dryness at the same time.

Being dry is pleasant, especially where the suit was, but even more pleasant, you still feel buffed, as if you'd just learned you were in partnership with the lake, and impervious to water. You wrap the towel around you. You pull on a sweater you left on a rust- freckled lawn chair. You are impervious to its prickling, too.

Your old dog waits for you under the breakfast table on the porch. He bangs his tail. You edge your toes under the dog, whose warmth makes you realize your feet are cold.

"You're up," your mother says from the door.

"I went for a swim," you say.

You hope your mother is in the mood to make breakfast. You feel as if you should be rewarded for your swim, for your defiance of whatever wrathful and ensnaring water god lies at the dark and muddy bottom of lakes.

You figure you'll go swimming again tomorrow morning before you drive back to the city and your job, which are dry, weightless things, mere thoughts compared to the substance of water.

"I've got bacon and eggs," your mother says.

Hydrant open on a street in New York. Little kids run through the water with squinty eyes and saggy underpants.

A mother shouts from a fourth-floor window: "Joey ya stupid bastid ya gonna catch pneumonia and see who takes care a ya."

Water glitters, it wrinkles, it doubles sunsets, and turns pewter at dawn. It is as unforgiving as a mirror.

You can't think of water as a person, like a mountain, or a spirit like fire.

You talk about the milk of human kindness, but you'd never talk about the water of human kindness.

At its most loving, it is a puritan ecstasy--the sweetness of cold, the perfection of absence (taste, smell), so clean it makes the glass holding it look dirty, so pure that even ice seems like a corruption (though the cracking and hissing of the cubes has an arctic spareness).

You drive at night in the rain and if you're in a city, with lights, the drops on your windshield are like clear confetti.

Water is heavy. A pint's a pound, the world around.

When you wear waders into a stream the weight of the water crushes them around your legs until there are cold spots you think are leaks. You walk along the stream bottom. You feel gravel as if you're hearing it, not feeling it. Water is heavy enough that it transmits sound with a clarity that has a grinding edginess, if you're swimming underwater and you knock one rock against another. When you walk in water, the water is heavy enough that you have to let the water fill into the eddies behind your legs. You can run in crotch-deep water, but not for long.

In Vietnam in 1966, I saw a girl fill two five-gallon cans with water, hang each one from the end of a shoulder pole, lift them and settle into a steady trot down the road. She weighed maybe 75 pounds. The water weighed 80. I thought: "This is going to be a long war."

Water is best drunk: 1. from a gallon jar in the refrigerator, 2. with your hands, 3. in a cold-water shower at a beach house, 4. from a garden hose even if it puffs out your cheek and threatens to choke you.

After a thunderstorm you can open a window and put your face to the screen and breathe the rainy air, even inhale the water out of the tiny squares in the screen. The air tastes dark and new. The water tastes of the screen. The squares of the screen are shiny. They wink out, one by one.

Let it rain.

They're real people too

Really weird when you see pics like these and realize that those guys are just normal people who happen to be really, really frickin' good at something. Coco's the man but the trophy goes to Dice-K, who has as good of a "happy and stewed" face as I've ever seen.

Misfits

It's a little sad how happy this video makes me in a totally non-ironic way. What the hell did ever happen to Max Wright after Alf left him?

Redneck Weekend

A few weeks ago, my unfortunately named and soon-to-be-married buddy Gay Dan Madore gave me a ring and let me know he'd gotten two tickets up to the first 2008 "Chase For The Cup" NASCAR race, to be held on September 16 in Louden, NH, at the New Hampshire International Speedway -- and wanted to know if I had any interest. Not being a huge fan of NASCAR but knowing into it Dan gets -- Dan's one of those people who gets very emotionally invested in things in kind of an awesome, know-it-all way -- and also being told there was a lot of drinking and camping involved, I was definitely down.

So leaving work early this past Friday, we headed up to Lake Winnipesaukee in Dan's Wrangler Rubicon (Google the word "rednecks" -- it, Dan, and his buddy Kevin are on the first page of image results).
After stopping over briefly in Concord to pick up some gas and beer, we get up into the 'burbs of NH, grab a sandwich at the local store and eventually pull into the driveway of his buddy Colin's lakehouse in Alton where we'd be staying the next two nights. Colin himself was back down in Boston attending the Sox-Yankees game, and wouldn't be up until sometime Saturday afternoon. So Dan and I grab our rooms and throw on the game, which miserably doesn't end up being over for another 4.5 hours, with the Sox losing 8-7. We head in.

After a restless night sleeping with my head half hanging out the lakehouse window due to allergies from Colin's dog, we get up and Dan and I head to the center of  to grab some greasy breakfast (Me: Sausage Benedict, side brautwurst; Dan: biscuits and gravy) and then to the new Hannaford's to pick up grill items and beer for the race the next day. I love Hannaford's, btw, it's like a smaller Shaw's with better selection and beer.

So we head back to Colin's place, it's looking pretty dark and rainy out, but as the next Sox game doesn't start until 4:05pm we decide to go for some canoeing and fishing anyway. Dan rigs up his poles, we carry the canoe down to the lake, grab some paddles out of Colin's motorboat, and head out on the water to spend 2.5 hours futilely casting and reeling for nonexistent sunfish, trout, and sunflower seed fish. It starts to clear off by around 3:30pm, but as it gets clearer the wind picks up, and we have to paddle back furiously to make the dock.

As we pull up in the canoe, Dan's buddy Colin is pulling up in his Tahoe with his girl Danielle. Introductions are made, both seem pretty cool, and after some hawing about what to do next we all climb into Colin's motorboat and -- after some brief trouble starting the engine -- head back out on the bay to give the fish another try. Colin seems awesome, really nice dude who's a cop back in Mass, and much like every other friend of Dan's I've ever met, he spends most of his time mocking the Bald Guy. Which never gets old. For awhile the subject of most of his jests is our inability to catch a single fish -- he claims just a few weeks prior he caught "about a dozen" in two hours.

Two hours later not one of us has caught a damn thing, and after some mindless talk about the features of the Xbox 360 we decide to head in and watch the rest of the Sox game. Colin goes to start the engine again, and... it clicks. He tries it at least another six to seven hundred times while messing with the battery, and... just clicks. As all the powered lights and other features on the boat work just fine, it seems the starter is just shot.

So the new question becomes how to get back to the dock without an engine and without the paddles that Dan and I had left back in the canoe by the dock. There's talk of using anchor throws, swimming to land and getting the canoe/paddles and coming back, but in the end Colin suggests Dan just jumps in and -- swimming -- tows us back to shore. Dan being the hero that he is decides to go for it, and strips down and is in. Great stuff.

I felt guilty as hell, and a family who'd just bought a house on the shore nearby offered to pull us in their 'Whaler, but Dan would have done of it, and eventually we managed to get back to the dock and tie up. Colin's boat was still shot, but we were back and headed in for the rest of the game. Which -- thank Sweet Baby Jesus -- the Sox won, 10-1. We watched Wild Hogs after that -- terrible, terrible movie which Colin found uproarious, and we headed in after some mockery of my reaction to Dan's statement of our 3:30am wakeup time.

To be continued.

Colorado National

Ken just got to go to another The National concert last night in Denver, pissing me off yet again at how close I came to seeing them twice (once at Middle East, then missed opportunity prior to Arcade Fire show). From the words of Barber:

Gentleman - good show last night. They pretty much just played their songs as they appeared on their albums, but it was good to see them get all jumpy when they were jamming out. The violin guy loves to dance all around. Abel live is really good. And I live the drum line for Mistaken for Strangers - very unique

Was psyched they ended their set with About Today. Then they came back and played November for an encore.

Good stuff, will look out for them next time they come east. Two stage photos, a movie, and the set list below:
 

Unintentional Manhumor On The Rise

Thanks to the power of viral video, now more than ever in history we're able to look back on ourselves and laugh.

Remember American Gladiators? Used to love that show. On Wendesday a coworker forwarded an invite to tryouts for a new AG they're creating, along with an interview with Nitro that had him blatantly throwing co-gladiator Malibu under the bus for being a giant pussy and getting his face kicked by a far smaller contestant. See the facekicking here, great stuff.

Maybe even funnier is this random interview with a young Glen Danzig talking about his book collection. As there's no human way this guy was serious, I can only admire the subtle genius of this completely pointless but highly brand-focused clip.