The Adnostic

Los Angeles Magazine:

A guide to the best ethnic restaurants in LA (I will definitely make use of that in the coming months). An abridged history of The Magic Castle, a private club for amateur and professional magicians (I hope I can find someone who has connections for an invitation to dinner for one of the Zen Master's trips South. You can't get in without knowing a member). An article on an entrepreneur making a go of California modern pre-fab housing by using the construction of his own home as a case study and a renowned architect in the area of residential design. It looks gorgeous. Not the traditional pre(viously)-fab(ricated) housing, more like fab(ulously)-fab(ricated) housing. The finished home even received a five star energy rating which is unheard of in residential construction. I hope it takes off and LivingHomes achieves an economy of scale.

Domino Magazine:

A home decorating magazine popular with Gen Xers and Echo Boomers. Pretty pictures. Blah, blah, blah. Stuff for my scrap book. Blah, blah, blah. An article on having a voluntary blackout weekend once a month to take a break and slow down via unplugging and help the environment - now that's interesting.

The writer and her husband decided to go electricity free for a weekend, allowing themselves only the stove and the refrigerator. She complained about the day going slowly and the oddity of not being able to turn on the TV, the computer, or the stereo. She experimented with boiling dinner napkins on the stove to get rid of tough stains (I wondered if that would work with my nice dress shirts and favored t's) and even hosted an outdoor dinner party complete with light from a candelabra suspended from a natural canopy of trees.

I've become more and more interested with the issue of marketing green products and the prospect of persuading consumers to adopt sustainable habits. It would be nice to be able to use marketing strategy to help the environment as well as a client's bottom line. Now that's convergence.

Wired Magazine:

Yes, I know this is a repeat, but I love Wired. I'll ditch any other magazine, but not Wired.

There was of course the cover article on YouTube and its quest for solvency and profit and the phenomenon of LonleyGirl15. The potential for YouTube to achieve any viable income through advertising is ultimately limited by the lack of true relevance that has made Google AdWords so successful. One of the problems is the people go to text based blogs usually for a gain in knowledge and occasionally or entertainment. The opposite is true for online video. So what is relevant to someone looking for funny clips of stupid pet tricks and moments of far too public embarrassment except further entertainment? And how can behavioral targeting be properly researched and implemented for a medium who's materials are far more morphic and fleeting than any television season.

A solution will not come wit ease or lack of missteps.

Total magazines read so far - 5.