About 15 or 20 years ago, I witnessed the partial dismemberment of the Cybertronic kind via videotape (VHS ruled at the time). And probably next year, I'll or we'll get to watch it all over again. But this time, it probably won't be as good as it was before. Every sophisticated movie Transformers fan I know have been on their edge of their seats since the announcement Michael Bay was attached to helm the live action Transformers. And apparently, their fears are justified. Check out the URLs below. More than meets the eye? You betcha. And at the moment, it doesn't look good.

Bay has a lot of responsibility to shoulder and looking from the decisions he's made (just don't listen to what the cast are saying, it's their responsibility to pimp the flick), it's a spectacular crash. I'm really hoping that I'm spectacularly wrong on this one. Check out the links below.

Transformers Set Visit Preview

Awesome or plain bad decisions? (Check out the TF bots, they're not what I remember!)

Confirmed: Movie Jazz is a Pontiac Solstice - Movie Set Reports

Brian Goldner speaks... er types & Hasbro Kingpin Brian Goldner Discussion Thread

Latino Review of the whole thing

Thank yous to Fariz for the heads up.

The Creative Revolution (1954-64) was essentially the tussle between design and meaning; between form, beauty and concept; between telling and receiving. In graphic design and advertising it changed everything. Helmut Krone (1925-1996) was a leading seditionary. He started out as a graphic designer who despised advertising -- and finished up as an art director claiming to be a graphic designer, 'the only one in hard-core advertising ,' he said. Krone shaped the two most important ad campaigns ever: for Volkswagen and the 'We try harder.' work for Avis. These two campaigns explored the difference between graphic design and advertising art directionin fact Krone's work defined modern art direction for print. Krone's work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian. He has been inducted into Art Directors' Halls of Fame from New York to Berlin.

I am not the first to be smitten with the new Macbook and I'm pretty sure I won't be the last too. I've been reading the Apple site for news and updates on their transition from PPC to Intel processors with great interest (almost religiously, I'd say), knowing that in a not too distant future, I'll be a Switcher, using either a Macbook or Macbook Pro for our small design/advertising business. And while reading up on what the unhappy/happy owners of the new machines are saying on forums and blogs, I came across a webzine called Roughly Drafted by Daniel Eran.

A couple of interesting post at Roughly Drafted:

Useful knowledge for future Switchers:
How the transition to Intel is very different than the move to PowerPC.

The 'Mac OS X Closed by Pirates' Myth started and propagated by tech sensationalist, Tom Yager of InfoWorld (I will not provide a link to Yager's column, google it if you're so inclined.)

So that's two interesting post for interested Switchers or would be Switchers. The next part talks about Mac ads.

This is something that I've suspected all along, something I've thought about but kept to myself since, well, I attended an interview for a copywriting gig but failed to land the said gig. I mentioned this to a CD that not all advertising are created to sell products directly, some are created for brand awareness (I was justifying the strategy behind a few mock ads for a tomato ketchup brand). Needless to say, I kept all this to myself and refrained from posting publicly because:

a) I'm not an ad pro, therefore my 2 sen carries no weight;
b) If I was smart, I'd already be in advertising or someplace where smart people are richly compensated instead of slugging it 9 to 5 at a dead end job right now.

With all due respect to Seth Stevenson who writes for Salon, I've always believed that he got it all wrong on his Ad Report Card post on the new Mac ads ("I'm a PC, I'm A Mac"). I agree that advertising should ultimately be about pushing a product. But not all advertising are created to sell directly. If you want it to sell directly, then go door-to-door a.k.a Direct Selling. What Chiat/Day, Apple's agency of choice, has done for them is to create an image of Macs being better than PCs; repeating the core message of all Apple products and advertising strategy.

Again, I'll restate this: Product sales is the ultimate goal of an advertising campaign (some film director told me in public forum that he hates advertising in ALL its form and purpose. At the core of what makes advertising work is knowing that makes people tick and if you hate advertising, why be a film director in the first place because in essence advertising and film works towards manipulating the mind to agree with a story or product benefit). Okay, I'll give that the new Mac ads doesn't make me want to buy a Mac. But in my case, it's different. I've already made up my mind on getting a Macbook after I've saved enough or when I've enough cash in hand to purchase one. But for the would-be Switchers, they need a push in the right direction to clear up any lingering doubts prior to a purchase. People need something that works right out of the box and that was the message behind the new Mac ads. That was the push they needed.

I have two words for our Mister Stevenson: Remember 1984.

Post inspired by: Stevenson Fails 'Report Card' on Mac Ads.

This week didn't start as well I hoped it could've been. But you have to roll with the punches. And after rolling with the punches, get yourself the new Macbook maxed out with 2GB of RAM, a 200GB of external storage and a 19" LCD FP from Dell to go with it.

But the real scoop this week goes to: Songbird. Check it out. The browser for multi media (yes, you read that right: multi media and not multi-media) downloads. I stumbled on this through an Apple blog but I can't seem recall which.

Just don't download at your office, the net's too slow to begin with.