Competitions, Strategy, Portability & more…

This is just a small update. As you may know I am a graphic designer / communication designer as well as (now) a music producer. While the design side of things is purely commercial I noticed the data portability group got into a little hot water with their logo being too similar to that of Red Hat’s logo (apparently). When I saw they were holding a competition for a new logo i quickly whipped up an entry and I’ve just been informed it’s in the top 15!

You can see the top 15 here: http://dataportability.techcrunch.com/ (Mine is the first logo). It appears my logo is one of the more favoured logos which is excellent. If you are in a voting mood feel free to vote for my entry

Now on the other side of the coin – Music Production – I take it very seriously but at this stage I’m yet to have any official releases. I prefer to just remix what I like and pick up new techniques along the way. I made an entry into the Foals remix competition and now my remix is live. You can listen (stream & download) here:

http://www.last.fm/music/Foals/_/Electric+Bloom+(Blaze+Tripp+Remix)

The winner is based on the number of plays (scrobbles) to the last.fm system. If you arent registered to last.fm you really should. I personally think it is one of the best social networks around as it brings you closer to the people who like the same music you do. It works better than anything else I have seen anyway.

I dont normally enter competition so I find it funny that I’m in this spot now to try and promote these community based competitions. In any case it will be interesting to see the outcomes.

If you feel like sharing the love your votes will be appreciated very much

What makes Vinyl so much better than CD?

The artwork.

What about non-contextual advertising & how to capture bad attention

…and the power of unexpected advertising.

Google makes so much money from “contextual advertising.” This basically means they serve (somewhat) relevant advertisements to users based on what they are searching for or looking at on other websites. This was a good idea at the time of conception and it’s proved to be extremely successful & profitable for Google and a lot of their advertisers.

But, Is “Related Content” enough?

Many have speculated over Google’s ability to make money in the future & if contextual advertising is enough to sustain the company. I often though these concerns weren’t very valid with Google being an 800 pound gorilla who is completely dominating online search & online advertising. I mean lets face it, it’s their cashcow and they don’t have a another similar sized income stream to fall back on.

Enough about Big G though, what about YOU!

I don’t know about you but I quite like stumbling upon things I don’t know existed and various things I would not normally find out about. I mean cmon, that’s what advertising is all about isn’t it?

So lets explore different methods of getting to people. Like setting up a fake youtube user called lonelygirl15 and making random videos and decieving the viewers that it is a real girl out there somewhere… yeah.. right. Interesting example though. It’s a slippery slope when you start tricking your users though.

When SEO Fails & The Importance of Impressing Real People

Flash isn’t dead. In fact, Flash could well be growing in more of a niche than we realised. A lot of people may already know this but STOP PRESS: 1. SEO is great, but it’s strategies & implementation tend to spoil a website (gasp, ooh ahhh!). 2. Flash is great, for multimedia style presentations with fantastic creative displays of information & visual elements – when you don’t need to index a million pages & be number one for everything and top 10 google and ppc and adsense and paid links and ctrs and arrrrrrrgh! . . . . . Brain Explode!

My point here is simple: talk to more REAL people (not search engines). The best way to do this is to draw them in with creativity & good flash.

Don’t get me wrong, SEO is important.

…But there are so many people on the bandwagon. It’s gone to the extent of a large number of people using SEO practices as the basis for building websites.

Why not engage & use real life principles.

Be Creative

Be Spontaneous

& most of all

Be Intersting

Also I have found a good site with some good visual flash FX (effects) for those interested after the jump.

It’s Been A While & Why The Road Is Looking Clearer

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted an entry. This is due to a few reasons…

• I sort of got annoyed with having to blog and post.
• I got annoyed with the whole “tech” scene and the “tech blogging” scene.
• I got REAL busy.
• … then (as if on cue) my laptop hard drive died and I lost 80gb worth of work, emails, files, financial files, music production files, music & more.
  (ps: do not try to tell me how to prevent this in the future, believe it or not – it doesn’t help)

Things are back on track now though and I have also been doign work with an Advertising Agency and it’s really interesting stuff. There’s something fulfilling about harnessing creativity and getting paid for it.

The calm after the storm

So now things are starting to calm down a bit more I have to finish off a bunch of client work and then I will be venturing into the slightly unknown: creating my own sites, ideas & monetising them. Ideally I would like an easy to maintain supplemental income on the side whoile being able to focus on client work 9-5. I have a whole bunch of new ideas for websites and I will be launching them on this blog soon. So stay tuned. Eventually I want to work towards a project that I will create when I am more relaxed

I’m “semi” glad to see Web 2.0 losting its buzz

Web2.0 served it’s purpose to excite the buzz surrounding the web but now it’s petered off. I’m glad about this because people need to focus on real things, not fuzz & fluff hot air ideas that will get you nowhere (case in point: too many to mention).

But truly this point needs a whole post to elaborate completely on the whole situation.

So why would you want to come back here?
Writing in my style is the idea. I just want to make it short, punchy & do stuff a little more creative around here. Plus in the past I focused on absolute shit boring things. Let’s keep it succinct & interesting. You don’t really have to come back but in the future I hope to be writing stuff that will make you come back!

And also in the news!

• I got my first iPod – 30gb video (very nice)
• I’ve been working on a quad g5 (which has just been superceeded, but even still, it rocks)
• I got a pocket watch!(next on the list: smoking jacket & pipe)
• I got a lava lamp (life almost seems complete now)
• I got a new digi cam (flickr here I come)
• I’m getting CDJ’s. (i think i’ll post mixes up on here? who knows!)
• I got some Dreamhost hosting (cheap, huge, fast, reliable – hell what more could you want. want to sign up? use the promo code blaze50 when signing up and it’ll get you $50 off – sweet!)
• I got my first wireless mouse ($15! – late bloomer)
• I still have the same hot girlfriend! (no she hasn’t left me yet! bonus! :p)

Anyway enough of the personal stuff…

Have a good day & thanks for all the fish.