Archive for: Services

Remember when ‘friend’ was strictly a noun? The fact that it is now also a verb provides just a small sense of the impact that Mark Zuckerberg has had on society, and why he was designated Time‘s Person of the Year.

Just a few years ago, sociologists were warning that the Internet was diminishing social interaction (and social capital). Now, 500 million friends later, Facebook (and myriad other social networking sites) has turned that around. In the process, it has changed the way we communicate. When is the last time you spent an evening watching television without catching a few commercials that mention the companies’ Facebook page? If you’re in the communications business, how often are the communications products you produce  used on a Facebook page? Read

In their 2004 book, Heavenly Intrigue, Gilder and his wife, Anne-Lee, point the finger at Johannes Kepler, founder of modern physics, as the murderer (by poison) of the great 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe. In order to verify — or refute — their findings, Tycho’s body was recently disinterred from its crypt in Prague for state of the art forensic testing.

In his New York Times article this week, John Tierney says the story has all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster — full of sex, intrigue and murder. Seems that some producers are already interested. We can’t wait to see the movie.

In the midst of this fevered election season, we should take time to mark the passing of Ted Sorensen, speechwriter, advisor and friend to JFK.

We live in an age when White House speechwriters have been known to tweet their friends, alerting them to their authorship of last night’s well-crafted line.  Ted Sorensen’s life stands in stark rebuke to our credit-hungry age.  He lived for loyalty.  He never took credit for President Kennedy’s words, not even the phrases memorized by school children and etched in stone.

That loyalty extended for life.  Ted’s memoirs are riveting but circumspect.  He was a one man keeper of the eternal flame. Read

Mark Zuckerberg is consumed with being accepted. And accepted he was: the prestigious Philips Exeter Academy, Harvard University. But despite his academic achievements, he was socially awkward – even Aspberger-like – and at times cruel. His was a personality unfit for social success.

At least that’s how writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher portray the creator of Facebook in the new movie The Social Network.  The movie is framed by two parallel lawsuits filed against Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg. And flashbacks to life at Harvard and in Silicon Valley offer both moving and cynical views of how a young college sophomore changed so rapidly and consequentially the way the world communicates. Read

Who would think that Hollywood could produce a blockbuster out of the story about the founding of Facebook — a movie that is centered on a pair of court cases, with the action being driven by legal discovery sessions in a pair of board rooms? Actually, the trailers made it clear The Social Network would be entertaining enough. What surprised me was just how good it was — and how relatively balanced and nuanced it turned out to be.

Going in, there were some reasons not to expect any semblance of balance. For starters, the film was based on what is generally regarded as a one-sided book. Strike one. And Hollywood is not exactly known for fair and balanced depictions of the business world. Strike two. And the screenwriter was Aaron Sorkin, who generally likes his characters to wear white hats or black hats — no shades of grey allowed. Strike three. Nope, that one turned out to be a foul tip.  In fact, Sorkin went on to hit this one clear over the fence. Read

Traditional Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts usually include activities like running telephone banks, transporting voters to-and-from polling stations, and canvassing street corners. In the age of digital communications, however, all this has changed. Certainly candidates and political interest groups are using social networking sites like Facebook to help drive turnout. But now they’re using these sites in a different way.

According to a report in Politico, the best way to communicate your message is to connect it to t(w)eener heartthrob Justin Bieber.  “Just last week,” Politico reports, “rumors spread that Bieber’s fan base was so active on Twitter that the microblogging website has servers dedicated just to him.” Read

About five years ago the American Film Institute compiled a list of the greatest quotes in the history of film. I didn’t envy their task. There have been some great ones. How to get it down to a hundred? The AFI almost could have come up with that many from the film Casablanca alone: “Here’s looking at you kid.”"This could be the start of a great friendship” “You wore blue, the Germans wore grey” “I’m shocked, shocked to discover there has been gambling going on in this establishment.” “Of all the gin joints in all the towns all over the world, why did she have to come into mine?” (The line was originally supposed to be “bars.”  Humphrey Bogart changed it to “gin joints.” Writers beware.)

But the AFI did a good job narrowing it down to 100, and their top 3 picks tell us a lot about what it takes to reach people. The big lines they picked out all say something about what makes a great line great — not just in a film, but in a speech, an article or any communications vehicle.

The AFI’s top 3 choices were:

1. “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The producers of Gone With the Wind had a hard time getting that one past the censors in 1939, but I think what makes it so memorable decades later is the way it expressed Rhett Butler’s core value. He was deeply in love, but nothing was more important to him than maintaining his self-respect. It wasn’t even a close call for him.

2. “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” This line, originally in The Godfather novel, summed up the character of Don Corleone as played by Marlon Brando. He was always willing to negotiate, always willing to cut a deal. But he had the power to make sure he got what he wanted, at a price he was willing to pay. Bargaining session over.

3. “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. Instead of a bum, which is what I am.” Brando again, this time up against the mob in On The Waterfront.  The line (delivered by Brando to Rod Steiger as his brother in the film) expressed the frustration of a character struggling on the docks after glimpsing the prospect of fame. But the line’s real meaning didn’t become fully clear until later in the movie, when the Marlon Brando character “ratted” out the crooked union boss, after his brother was killed. It was when the Brando character testified against the mobsters who were running the docks (and who had killed his brother) that he showed he did have class, he was a contender — and no longer a bum doing the mob’s bidding.

All three of these lines were great, I believe, because they expressed the characters’ core values — what they really stood for, what mattered to them, what they did give a damn about. Just like a speech should.

Communication today is about immediacy.  That’s why the telephone and the TV are going out of style.

According to a study completed by the Pew Research Center in August, only 42 percent of Americans consider a TV set to be a necessity – down ten points from last year.  Similarly the landline telephone is moving toward extinction. Only 62 percent of Americans view it as an essential appliance.  And, not surprisingly, 46 percent of respondents in the 18-29-year old range see a landline as a daily necessity of life.

It’s not that Americans are tuning out or going off the grid. Far from it. Read

Ghostwriters are used to being behind the scenes. When the applause comes at the end of a speech, the writer doesn’t take a bow.  But that doesn’t mean there are no hard feelings.

The hit TV show Dancing With the Stars invites celebrities to compete with some of the world’s best professional dancers.  That is unless you’re a writer.  According to young-adult author Ally Carter (author of the Gallagher Girls series) executives at the ABC show don’t seem to view writers as celebrities. Read

It’s not an uncommon situation.  Being in a foreign country, clumsily trying to navigate the native language, and receiving blank stares – or, scowls – in return.

That’s exactly what Deborah Fallows – wife of famed journalist James Fallows – describes in her recent interview on NPR and writes about in her new book Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language.  When Fallows accompanied her husband to China, she had taken a few semesters of Mandarin. But when they arrived, she found it a real challenge to communicate. Read