Mental Floss article by: Chris Higgins

Excerpt: First up, Vince Clemente, producer of Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters — a documentary about players of the classic NES Tetris. Clemente said, “[Blowing in the cartridge] is actually terrible for the games and makes the contacts rust. You’re really not supposed to do it. But it works. [laughs]” This sums up the problem: although intellectually we knew that blowing into electronics was bad, we did it anyway. It seemed to work.

So I turned to another authority, Frankie Viturello, who is one of the hosts of the gaming show Digital Press Webcast among many other gaming-related projects — he also worked in a game store for years. Viturello’s first response was: “While I admittedly may have dabbled in a little cartridge-blowing as a naive NES-playing youth, I’ve long-since been an advocate for not doing it with the stance that for whatever it may do to aid in the temporary functionality of an NES, it ultimately opens the door for damage and distress to the hardware.” So I went deeper — in the following mini-interview, I have added emphasis in various places.

Higgins: “How did this lore about blowing into the cartridges spread across the US?”

Viturello: “It was very much a hive-mind kind of thing, something that all kids did, and many still do on modern cartridge based systems. Prior to the NES I don’t recall people blowing into Atari or any other cartridge-based hardware that predated the NES (though that likely spoke to the general reliability of that hardware versus the dreaded front-loading Nintendo 72 Pin connectors). I suppose it has a lot to do with the placebo effect.

Read full article here at Mental Floss

by Rob Schwartz, Global Creative President TBWA

Last week I had the distinct privilege of judging the Tomorrow Awards, an advertising award show dedicated to showing the future of communications, today. That’s right, along with my fellow “Monster Judges” from all over the world, we were tasked to scout out and celebrate the best ideas that point the way forward although they have been launched in the here and now. The show is the brainchild of Ignacio Oreamuno, the charismatic and energetic Executive Director of the Art Directors Club and founder of IHAVEANIDEA.org. Now, I cannot reveal what won. But I will share a few pieces that point the way to the future. So in no particular order here are some ideas that captured my imagination in terms of storytelling through technology, social, mobile, and yes, t-shirt.

First up is the Google Glass Project.

You cannot be in the business of creativity today and not admire the folks at Google. They remind me of the Beatles as they create hit after hit. They also remind me of General Motors, in particular the”Motorama” years  of the 1950′s, which showed consumers the “future today!”with all manner of amazing and mind-blowing technology.

One such future-product is Google Glass. It’s a technology you wear, kind of like a pair of glasses. It helps you explore your world with the web literally appearing right before your eyes. And share it. (There’s a cool p-o-v feature that lets you share what you’re looking at.

See videos, cases and read full article here.

Well, there’s several different ways people look at subcultures. I use the model that the sociologist Kenneth Westhues put together. In it, he claims there’s basically seven characteristics of subcultural behavior:

1. Their relationships tend toward communism with a little “c.”
2. Their interpersonal relationships deviate from the nuclear family and monogamy.
3. They’re only marginally political.
4. They reject the rewards and status of mainstream society.
5. They look to tribal elders or spiritual leaders.
6. They believe that what they’re doing is superior to mainstream society, which they consider morally or philosophically bankrupt.
7. They exist apart from mainstream society by creating their own folkways, mores and ways of living.

But there’s also psychological ways of viewing subcultures. Read more.