Bloom 2.0

A huge portion of my time at Nortel has been spent on the company’s Green story and its Corporate Social Responsibility efforts. As such, today is a pretty cool day at Nortel — as the company begins to shout from the rooftops about how its product portfolio is leaps and bounds more energy efficient than those of rival Cisco through a very strategic ad/communications campaign. Check out the ads in the Wall Street Journal and San Jose Mercury News, respectively, here and here.

And type “the Cisco Energy Tax” into your search engine and follow the links. Congrats all around to my peeps at Nortel.

Some fun with Animoto, which I learned about on Techcrunch.com. Thanks again Mr. Arrington. (Oh and for you lurkers, we had a baby).

When I was a kid I always wanted one of those kickass arcade games — the full sized ones like they had at Chuck E Cheese and the pizza shop down the street. Then, as a teenager, a friend of mine was throwing out (w00t! w00t!) his Space Invaders game (left). I snapped it up and took it down to my parents’ basement. It was gold. We played for hours and hours until the bulb died. We couldn’t find a replacement bulb for it so we got rid of it. (Those were pre-Internet days and I bet we could find a replacement bulb today). My dad replaced that with an air hockey table which used for a bit, but then turned into a buffet table when we had parties.

That was one longwinded intro to a cool list I found online today: The 50 Greatest Arcade Cabinets in Video Game History.  Can you guess No. 1? (hint: 730 pounds of pure disc-throwing joy)

After much discussion and  speculation about its timing, the “is” on facebook’s status is DEAD! Good riddance to bad is.

Now I can put my favourite Seinfeld quote, witty observation or latke recipe beside my name.

Or, maybe I’ll just add in the is:

“Richard Bloom is realizing old habits die hard.”

Snapped these while at Loblaw’s the other day. I really should’ve bought the General Tao chips and I’m curious as to what Smokin’ Stampede taste like. Mmmmmmm….ribs.

A week after seeing Into The Wild, the true story about Chris Mccandless’ voyage to and in Alaska, I can’t get the story out of my head. So today I went to YouTube to see if there were any extra clips or footage floating around online. What I found was pretty interesting. Below is a clip of one guy’s visit to “the bus” as well as the movie trailer and a 20-20 segment from 1997. You have to see this movie. My advice: don’t read about his story before you see it — it will make it that much more powerful.

Ok, maybe it’s my new-found fascination (and career) in marketing, but after noticing that Feist was selected for the latest iPod commercial, on my way into work today I heard her song 1-2-3-4 on my satellite radio. I love it. But I’m not sure if that’s because it is a good song, a cool one-camera video or because I’m intrigued how Apple is now a bona fide star maker through its commercials. Didn’t it also do that with Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl, too? I’m sure it’s happened with other songs as well but those are just the two that stand out.

UPDATE: I just found this on thestar.com talking about the exact same thing.

Friday’s David Letterman interview with Paris Hilton smacked of vintage Dave. Check it out.

Ok, I know this smacks of SPAM from before there was Netscape and the graphical Internet, but I kinda like it.

Jim Carrey with girlfriend Jenny McCarthy.

’tis the season for food, family and frankincense. Well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. Shana Tova.

Just back from an amazing screening at the Toronto International Film Festival: Body of War, the documentary on a 20-something Iraqi War veteran’s mission to end the war. It was one of the most powerful documentaries I have ever seen. Many people in the theatre were in tears for this beautifully told story about Tomas Young.

After the movie, producer Phil Donahue and Young answered questions from the crowd. Young, who was paralyzed after being shot in the shoulder during his fifth day of duty in Iraq, also brought his mother — who played an integral part of the story.

Then, Eddie Vedder (yes, THAT Eddie Vedder) who contributed some songs for the movie performed. Without a doubt, one of the most-memorable nights of my life.

Read some more about the movie here, here and here.

Word that Business 2.0 is shutting down turned today into a bummer. I loved that magazine, referring to it as the Maxim for MBAs and short-attention-span reading. I loved its bite-sized stories, topical features and amazing perspective on tech-biz.

I will miss it dearly. Now, I guess I’ll have to stick with my Wired and WSJ Marketplace.

Now, I wonder if they’ll offer me a refund for the subscription renewal I recently submitted. ($14.58 CDN for two years — which, perhaps, was one of its problems? I would totally have paid more.)

RIP.

If you’re like me (and I know I am!) your inbox is constantly bombarded by bacn (sic). According to reports, the term has only been around for a few days and is a form of spam — but without the anger. It’s those regular emails you get about a new facebook message, a Google alert or comment on your YouTube videos. As The Toronto Star explains: The oddly spelled term has been defined as “any email you receive that isn’t spam but isn’t exactly a personal message, either.” Marketeer Seth Godin says: Bacn is a new epidemic. It’s spam without the anger at the sender. The Linkedin, Facebook onslaught of noise won’t last long, because we’re all being trained to ignore it…Yet another nail in the “email used to be useful” coffin.

All of this bacn talk made me think of my favourite scene in Pulp Fiction:

Vincent Want some bacon?

Jules No man, I don’t eat pork.

Vincent Are you Jewish?

Jules Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all.

Vincent Why not?

Jules Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals.

Vincent Yeah, but bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.

Jules Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ‘cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That’s a filthy animal. I ain’t eatin’ nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces.

Vincent How about a dog? Dog eats its own feces.

Jules I don’t eat dog either.

Vincent Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?

Jules I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy but they’re definitely dirty. A dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way.

Vincent Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?

Jules Well we’d have to be talkin’ about one charmin’ motherfuckin’ pig. I mean he’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I’m sayin’?

Vincent: [laughing] That’s good.

As part of my voluntary restructuring and downsizing program, I’ve been doing spin classes at my gym. It’s a crazy 45-minutes of cycling, bouncing up and down on a bike, and shvitzing. The only way to get through the class, IMHO, is to think about other things to pass the time more quickly. Here’s what I think about while spinning.

1. Once this song ends, I’m that much closer to being done.
2. Dear god, when is this song going to end?
3. Bayes Theorem. Also known as Bayes’ rule or Bayes’ law. The probability of an event A conditional on another event B is generally different from the probability of B conditional on A. However, there is a definite relationship between the two, and Bayes’ theorem is the statement of that relationship.
4. The accounting equation. Seriously. Assets = Liabilities plus Owners Equity. I have no idea why I think about that, but on the bike, it all makes sense.
5. Why I don’t blog more often.
6. How can one human sweat so much?
7. Drink, breathe, drink, breathe.
8. Hyperconnectivity.
9. Booster Juice’s  Strawberry Sunshine smoothie. (Quite possibly the best drink ever  invented).
10. Pad Thai.

Big thanks to Josh for allowing me to be his backup guy at Sunday’s Toronto FC game vs. David Beckham’s LA Galaxy. Becks was hurt, so he didn’t play — but the game was unbelievable (even though the final score was nil-nil). We had 4th row seats, smack dab in the Red Patch Boys section. We didn’t sit down once and some guy kicked over my FULL $8.50 beer. Still, what a night. Photos and video below. (Editors note: Man, GooTube really scales down viz…the originals on my laptop are wayyyyyyyyyyyyy clearer).

• Brief photo slideshow can be found by clicking here. (You can see Beckham in the fifth picture, sitting on the bench, wearing a suit. He’s beside the guy in yellow)

• This video is of the hilarious Beckham song.

• Here’s what it’s like after they announce the starters:

• Passing around the giant flag:

• A French chant. The fans just wouldn’t let up (either would the woman screaming with laughter behind me):

• Corner kick!

This classic clip from Office Space was totally me this morning driving into work, except I was singing O.P.P. and Insane in the Brain on my Sirius satellite radio.

The wonderful message that welcomed me home on my birthday. Thanks Kyla!

It was 32 years ago today (the hottest day EVER according to my grandfather) that my adventure on this planet began. What else happened on this day? Funny you should ask.

• 1498 - Christopher Columbus reaches the mainland of North America.
• 1793 - The metric unit of mass, the kilogram, is introduced in France.
• 1944 - 13-year-old Anne Frank made the last entry in her diary.
• 1963 - Coolio was born in a gangsta’s paradise.
• 1964 - Adam Duritz of Counting Crows was born.
• 1975 - Bloom is born.
• 1981 - MTV made its debut at 12:01 a.m. The first music video shown on the rock-video cable channel was, appropriately, “Video Killed the Radio Star”, by the Buggles.
• 1982-2006 - Yadda, yadda, yadda.
• 2007 - You read this.