From the NY Times the other day: Tom Green works from home (you can watch). A rundown of Hollywood actor Tom Green’s go-it-alone Internet TV show.

I interviewed Green a year ago in Hollywood as he was just launching his channel.

Spent the afternoon at Barcamp Block in Palo Alto, Calif. Mostly hung with Socialtext founder-CEO Ross Mayfield, above (good shot, no?), and Valerie Cunningham of PodTech. Did some people watching — Peter Kaminsky, Tantek Çelik, Jay Dedman, Chris Messina, Tara Hunt and Kaliya Hamlin were among those on hand today —  and enjoyed the Government Services 2.0 session led by Tara. (Look for egovDevCamp in Washington, DC, in early December.) Ross said 1,000 people attended yesterday and 400 today.

Some soccer photos from today, taken at a tournament in San Mateo, Calif.

Here’s a 4-minute video with Jessica Kizorek of Two Parrot Productions, conducted at the Web Video Summit in San Jose, Calif., June 2007. Jessica provides six tips for shooting effective Web video.

Watch MPEG-4 video | Ourmedia page
Low-quality Flash version on Internet Archive

Cross-posted to Real People Network

In Darknet I wrote about an enterprising startup out of San Diego called DivX, and when I was a columnist with Engadget, I interviewed Jordan Greenhall and Shahi Ghanem, the company’s top execs.

Jordan is still with DivX (saw him recently at Pixelodeon), but Shahi has moved on to co-found a Web 2.0 marketing company, Brickfish. The site’s tagline: "View. Vote. Create. Connect. Brickfish connects you to the bands, brands and things you’re passionate about."

The company is all about creating a new platform for driving consumer interaction and response through (brace for dreaded buzzword) User Generated Content. Specifically, they’ve working with about 100 clients so far in music, lifestyle and fashion to create campaigns that involve customers at a deep-rooted level.

In the spring, Brickfish designed a campaign in which Bone
Thugs N Harmony fans created new album covers (most in limited release) for the band’s new album. About 1,200 people participated for each winning entry in the “viral, p2p consumer-driven marketing effort,” Ghanem told me in a brief phone
interview.

A move into politics

Brickfish’s newest efforts center on sports, entertainment and politics. A few days ago Brickfish partnered with public policy think tank The Reform Institute to launch a “Design Your Portion of the Border Fence” campaign. The contest, which runs through Sept. 13, invites entrants to offer their opinions on the U.S.-Mexico border fence debate. Participants are encouraged to combine imagination and passion with artistic interpretations of what border-crossers should see when traveling from one side of the border to the other.

A war songs campaign, running through Sept. 15, invites both aspiring vocalists and impassioned activists of any political stripe to put their views about war to music. Prize winners get up to $500. (Personally, this doesn’t strike me as fertile turf for a marketing company, but kudos for charting new waters.)

“We want content creators to interact with brands and share their creations on their Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster pages,” Ghanem said. “We’re finding that a single piece of content can drive 800 to 1,200 interactions with the brand within 30 days. The multiplier effects are enormous."

Brickfish’s model is completely based on pay for performance or cost per engagement. "We get paid only when consumers take action, vote, share or play content," he said. "This is really web advertising 2.0. We’re changing the way online marketing works, using content as a catalyst.”

I don’t have the space here to provide a full rundown of their services — just a note to say, These folks are doing something very interesting.

Ran into a talented caricaturist, Coby Castro, the other day, so did a 15-minute sitting, and here’s the result.