MattCreamer.com

• Robert Rauschenberg, Pioneer Of Pop Art Movement, Dies at 82 - WSJ.com
  Robert Rauschenberg, whose use of odd and everyday articles earned him a reputation as a pioneer in pop art but whose talents spanned the worlds of painting, sculpture and dance, has died, his gallery representative said Tuesday. He was 82.
  (tags: art death)
• Five Questions For…Bill Watson - American Press Institute
  Production of content nobody wants. Lack of feedback from the readership produces a situation in which newsrooms assume everything they are doing is vital to someone, and they won’t let go of it. How many readers actually would notice if you dropped the “
  (tags: newspapers Media)

• The Brooklyn Paper: Apple of their eye: Microsoft ‘banks’ on Brooklyn for first store
  “We’ve talked to Apple about opening their first Brooklyn store, and we’ve also talked to Microsoft about opening the first retail store,” said Faith Hope Consolo, chairwoman of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s retail leasing and sales division.
  (tags: microsoft brooklyn retail)

• Costas Now: Bissinger Vs. Leitch
  (tags: blog sports)
• Is This the World’s Cheapest Dress? - New York Times
  Steve & Barry’s is to fashion what Tower once was to music. It’smanna, a store that sells stylish celebrity-branded clothes at prices that are absurdly inexpensive, lower than those at Old Navy, H & M
  , undercutting even Wal-Mart by as much as half.
  (tags: shopping money nyc retail)

• BlackBerry Kickstart, the clamshell flip phone? We’re unveiling it to you for the first time! | The Boy Genius Report
  (tags: blackberry mobilephones)

• How to Buy a Flash-Based MP3 Player - Reviews by PC Magazine
  (tags: tech mp3)

I have two pieces in this week’s issue. One’s a recap of last week’s Venice Festival of Media and the other is a news piece about the third installment of Millward Brown’s ranking of the world’s most valuable brands. I’m coming up short in finding a thread that winds through both stories so I’m not even going to force it.

On a personal level, I’m all full up on ad conferences. I go to about a half-dozen a year–and that’s not nearly as many as a lot of folks I know–and the returns are now severely diminished. To sum up: Too much jargon, too many cliches, too many 30,000-foot analyses at the expense of talking about things that are actually working in the marketplace, little back-up of big swinging digital blather. In practice, Venice was no exception. As a symbol, however, the fact that the folks who determine where to place ads and who are architects of overall communications strategies can turn out in force for a two-day event in an old European city does represent something of a power shift that’s gone on in the ad world. Once famously relegated to the last 15 minutes of the pitch, media is now front-and-center. Media fragmentation has made the planning and buying of ads a trade unto itself, that stands apart.  In just its second year, the conference–and it is a conference, notwithstanding the “festival” part of the name–has scale and a level of buzz you don’t see around many industry events. Still, it’s not going to upset the center of balance now located in Cannes, where creative types descend every June to give each other awards and drink heavily. Cannes is an institution; Venice, now, is a curiosity, a meaningful curiosity, but a curiosity all the same.

More on the Millward Brown ranking in a separate post.

• Windows is ‘collapsing,’ Gartner analysts warn
  Calling the situation “untenable” and describing Windows as “collapsing,” a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.
  (tags: microsoft windows software gartner)

• How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)
  Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year… which is at least $2,000 a year…. which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you’re
  (tags: business entrepreneurship tips productivity Money planning startup)

• Relax, Chill and maybe Blog - GigaOM
  My doctors told me that if you are going to spend an inordinate amount of time in front of a computer screen at night, you might have a tough time going to sleep. The screen flicker makes your eyes, and your mind, think it’s daytime, hence you have trou
  (tags: life lifestyle blogging blog)

• The Believer - Interview with Luc Sante
  The con is a kind of jiu-jitsu that turns the sucker’s own greed into its principal weapon. The greedier you are the more likely you are to be conned, and for the greater a sum. Since people regularly dispose of their intelligence in their rush to be sw
  (tags: history writing literature books newyork nyc)
• Who Walk In Brooklyn » Blog Archive » Luc Sante: Walloon For The Hell Of It
  I reviewed Mason & Dixon for New York mag during my year-long tenure there as book critic, and everything had to be topical, so I got one week in which to read and review the 900-odd-page slab. Needless to say it wasn’t profound.
  (tags: books)