View from my office window

The weather in Philly is perfect right now. 12 hours out my window(which is a little dirty on the outside,sorry).

inspiration everywhere

A couple of weeks ago I took a day trip up to NYC with fellow 160er Ryan Brown to participate in an Improv Everywhere stunt. We were required to download an MP3, pack a bag of goodies (the list included items like glowsticks and masks), wear a white shirt and arrive in Battery Park just before 8:30pm. Not only was it a lot of fun, but ended up being a great source of inspiration. Check out the video and be sure to stick with it to the end- once the sun sets the shots are incredibly beautiful.

WHO’S DOWN WITH NJP

We are! And from the mean streets of Baltimore, we recommend Jesus Christ (Bail Bonds).

I’LL DRINK TO THAT

As both branding practitioners and Philadelphians, we’re all–trust us–acutely aware of our distorted image among the nation at large. It goes a little something like this (all together now): “Cheesesteaks, Ben Franklin, and Rocky, oh my!”

And sure enough, the Tin Men who populate the New York–ahem–national media have opted to trot out the wheezy warhorse yet again. Ugh.

It’s one thing for GQ to rate Philadelphia #6 in its recent “40 Worst-Dressed Cities in America” feature. It’s another to lethargically line up all the usual suspects (and more) as they detail our allegedly legion sartorial felonies and general gross misdemeanors against aesthetics. From Ben to Rocky to Whiz, the gang’s all here.

Oh, and this otherwise fine magazine called Philadelphia “P-Town,” which automatically consigns the reporter in question to whatever circle of hell hacks populate. Last I checked, “P-Town” was the nickname of a beachside berg located 400+ miles northeast of Philadelphia and its national reputation among the best dressed was nothing less than FABULOUS!!!

I would enjoy directly shaming the offending scribe’s writing ability, eyesight, and general manhood in florid, graphic terms. But given the evidence of his preposterous yet all-too-predictable laziness in depicting Philadelphia, well, he’d never even bother a feeble response. So whatever.

Anyway, this is not simply an instance of me getting my Irish up and howling at the moon. I’d really like to take a moment to juxtapose those who earn gentleman’s C’s with those reporters who bother to do their homework. Case in point: The New York Time’s Style Magazine’s recent feature “Drink Up: North Philly Beer, Part 1.”

Bravo to the Times for stepping out of Madame Cliche’s stereotype wax museum to shed a little light upon the Philadelphia we natives recognize as home. Fantastic taprooms and bars. A crazy-ass bounty of tasty local craft beer. Witty bartenders. All doing their part of create not only a beer culture that is the envy of the nation, but a dynamic, entrepreneurial, fun city that is large enough to accommodate all kinds, GQ’s mullet-headed mooks and quote-unquote beautiful people alike, not just a bunch of tired, moldy chestnuts.

So let’s all lift our glasses and celebrate the (sadly) rare success of the national media confirming what we Philadelphians have all known for a long, long time. Don’t worry about being late to the party, fellas. Welcome to Philly. In fact, let us buy you a drink.

Digitizing Books with CAPTCHA

Did you know that every time you fill out a two-word CAPTCHA, you’re helping to digitize books?

A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. We all encounter these on the web, and spend about 10 seconds filling out a CAPTCHA each time. Worldwide, that’s 500,000+ hours daily! A few years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn figured out a way to direct these hours towards a larger effort.

“reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher.”

Many projects for digitizing physical books currently exist — the process involves scanning the book pages and turning them into text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). However, OCR isn’t perfect and requires additional attention to decipher hard-to-read words. reCAPTCHA has revolutionized the process of digitizing books by sending an image that can’t be read by OCR to be deciphered by people through the CAPTCHA process.

reCAPTCHA began as a project of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and was bought by Google in 2009. The project is currently digitizing old editions of The New York Times as well as books from Google Books. Check out this podcast for an additional overview on the reCAPTCHA process as well as this 2006 Google TechTalk with Luis von Ahn, the founder of reCAPTCHA.

The next time you fill out a CAPTCHA, think about the book you just helped digitize!

“DIDJA HEAR” WITH 160OVER90 GOSSIP COLUMNIST PARK HILTON

Keeping the rumor mill cranking, Park Hilton is spreading the latest news, gossip, tweets and things randomly shouted out. Here’s what’s currently going around at 160over90:

According to copywriting intern Thomas O’Brien, “[Executive Creative Director] Jim Walls was once a member of the early ‘90s rock band Blues Traveler. Or maybe it was Hootie and the Blowfish. Wait, which one sang ‘Mambo No. 5’?”

Doubts are still swirling about the existence of Designer and Canadian Justin LaFontaine’s Canadian girlfriend.

Still no word on the reason why recent Notre Dame grad and Designer Bobby McKenna only uses the stall.

Due to the recent heat wave, some are describing that Sansom Street’s scent is changing from wizz and whiz to dead raccoon stuffed with ricotta cheese.

The heat wave is also causing some to speculate that the 100º+ temperatures will finally reveal that New York Festivals winner and Creative Director Tammo Walter (AKA: The T-1000) is actually made of liquid metal.

Designer Daniel Blackman’s “beachbody” being described as more like “a large body of water.”

Working on a project for Miele vacuums, ECD Jim Walls and Account Supervisor Dan Giroux spent yesterday afternoon visiting different appliance retailers, to which they responded, “What? There is nothing weird about two guys vacuum shopping.”