Last February I added Google AdSense to my website:

I’ve gone back and forth about having these visual intrusions on my website.

But this came in the mail last week:

And now my website’s hosting next year has been paid for.

I think I’ll keep them around for now.

Addresses in favor of SUFFRAGE will be made by ROBERT G. INGERSOLL, THOMAS J. DURANT, J.F. KLINGLE and others.

All invited. Reserved seats for ladies. Members of Congress, you who have established this despotic appointive government over us, are respectfully invited to be present.

LOOK ON THIS PICTURE: Debt of the District of Columbia in 1871, after 70 years under an elected government…….. $3,000,000

THEN ON THIS: Debt of the District of Columbia in 1880, after 9 years under an appointive government……… $24,000,000

FIVE HUNDRED of our best citizens are houseless and homeless to-day in consequence of excessive taxation imposed upon them by this anti-American government.

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This advertisement was obtained from the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America collection and was originally published on January 20th, 1880 in Washington, DC. It is being republished here in order to continue my advocacy for full representation for the American citizens of the District of Columbia.

The other day I was canvassing the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America newspaper collection and came across this advertisement that was published on May 27th, 1910 in the Washington Times. It shows development plans for Randle Highlands, a neighborhood in Southeast, Washington, DC. I was curious about the results of the newspaper ad. As in, how much has the map changed in the last 99 years? Surprisingly, not too much. Most of the land was developed to plan, except for one large chunk of the land that remains “undeveloped” to this day: Fort Dupont Park.

The National Park Service website says:

This particular fort had six sides, each 100 feet long, protected by a deep moat and trees felled side-by-side with branches pointing outward. It was named for Flag Officer Samuel F. du Pont, who commanded the naval victory at Port Royal, South Carolina, in November 1861.

Although its garrison and guns never saw battle, Fort Dupont served as a lifeline of freedom. Runaway slaves found safety here before moving on to join the growing community of “contrabands” in Washington. The barracks and guns are gone, but the fort’s earthworks can still be traced near the picnic area on Alabama Avenue.

In the 1930s, the National Capital Planning Commission acquired the old fort and surrounding land for recreation. An 18-hole golf course was constructed. As the city grew, golf gave way in 1970 to the sports complex along Ely Place that now includes tennis and basketball courts, athletic fields, and a softball diamond. An indoor ice rink offers skating all winter. Where once the Civil War fort looked out over farmlands, city dwellers now grow vegetables in community garden plots.

This advertisement was printed 20 years before the National Capital Planning Commission changed the future of this neighborhood. I wonder what it would be like today if it wasn’t a park? Umm, I mean golf course. I was able to line up the old map with the contemporary imagery and by adjusting the transparency in Google Earth you can see how much has been developed. Click here to download the KMZ file for Google Earth

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Transcription below:

A dérive is defined as an attempt at analyze the totality of everyday life, through the passive movement through space. In the late 1950’s French writer Guy Debord first theorized this concept in his studies of architecture. Combined with another Debord term, psychogeography, which is “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals,” the dérive is a means for people to haphazardly explore and learn about their environment through random or pseudo-random methods. Examples of a dérives include exploring the urban environment with a predefined set of arbitrary rules, such as strolling down the street (a Flâneur) and taking only right turns when you see someone a walking a dog or making left hand turns only when you pass by houses that are painted white.

As Guy DeBord wrote in “Theory of the Dérive” in 1958, “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” In essence, the dérive is both an objective and subjective means to view the urban environment.

Fast forward to the present day. The urban environments still exist, and in most cases, these cities have grown substantially over the last 50 years, but there is also a new type of environment that exists today that did not fully exist in DeBord’s time: the digital environment.

Today computer users conduct their own strolls on the internet. They are loosely guided by search strings and mouse clicks. They surf through webpage after webpage seeking knowledge, entertainment, and connections through a medium that is not defined or limited to the physical space in which they live. Buildings become blogs and flâneurs become link lemmings, following the hyperlinks of their blind curiosity.

While some still myopically place the dérive as a strictly urban activity, the digital environment, both manifesting itself on the internet and in computer games, are akin to megalopolises, cities, towns, and villages in their own right. Examples would be the vast digital expanse of games like The Sims, World of Warcraft, or Second Life, which feature digital environments where thousands upon thousands of people from around the world interact within the constructs of the respective games, while never needing to physically meet each other in person. Another example would be those that comment on blog posts or message boards, where the website itself becomes the city, and the articles, blog postings and forum topics become the streets, and the users are the flâneurs, strolling and trolling through ever-increasing content.

However, combined together these participants do not always take part in a de-facto dérive, but rather are merely present within this complex digital environment and may take it upon themselves to conduct a dérive. And that is what I am writing about today.

For quite a few years I eschewed the presence of advertisements on websites. I found them to be visual clutter, like an architectural eye sore of a blighted city. Over time, however, I grew bored of my blog’s layout and I felt that my little digital city (errr, scrapbook) needed some urban planning and ideally, more citizens (visitors, errr, I guess they’d technically be immigrants?). So on a whim, I decided to start serving Google AdSense ads on my website. At first I reverted back to my original reaction, where I thought that my new urban design was tacky and had failed, but then something changed.

As a god of this alternative reality, I was only seeing that which I had coded and created myself. Like looking at a vast sea of sameness, day in & day out, I began to warm up towards these visual invasions that were created in someone else’s digital environment. I began to see that they offered a welcomed distraction. In fact, it is this very type of distraction from the spectacle of reality that first Debord spoke of many years ago. Why does this spectacle exist? What website lies beyond that ad? What is at this animated exit on my digital highway? And why was it so important that someone is actually paying money for the ad to be shown?

Thus began my own digital dérive into on-line advertising.

Since I cannot legally click on my own ads (Google considers that fraud), I went to my friend’s blog, which has a small text ad at the top. Out of genuine curiosity, I clicked on that ad. The resulting page also had an advertisement on it. I clicked on that ad, whereupon I discovered that the resulting page also had ads on it. So click on that ad as well…

The premise of this digital dérive through on-line advertising is quite simple. Explore the internet only through pages with advertisements. Where do you end up? How many ads do you click on before you hit the dead end of the digital alley? Before you jackknife on the information superhighway? What observations can be made through this type of stroll through the internet? Do you end up in digital city or a dark alley of get-rich-quick schemes?

To many people, time is money. But to many others, so are clicks on ads. Depending on where this digital dérive begins and ends someone is making money and someone is also theoretically losing money (unless of course, the act of taking part in the dérive benefits the person paying for the ad, as in, you discover something meaningful on the website of the ad you clicked on). Like the construction costs of the buildings (not to mention their monthly rent) in Paris that Debord strolled through, few things are really free. It takes time to click on ads, just like it takes time to walk down the street looking for houses that are painted white. But unlike construction costs or rent in a building, a digital dérive can be conducted in the comfort of one’s own home and with minimal resources- without the need for shoes or even clothes- only a computer connected to the internet, which over the last decade has become extremely inexpensive. Or completely free if you go to the library.

In essence, a digital dérive can be done in private, while the dérive of Debord’s day was done in public. But if no one sees you walking down the street and you don’t write about it or share the experience with others, did the dérive actually take place? Paradoxically, while a digital dérive can be experienced in private, where no one sees you in person, your journey does leave a trace– in the form of the websites logs. Your IP address will show up on each of your stops in your digital dérive and while it does not leave an exact size 10 shoe footprint, it contains its own geographic markers of where your IP address resolves to. But its a footprint that is scattered across the internet instead of sequentially left in the dust & mud of city streets. It’s a solitary footprint that webmasters cannot immediately tell that a dérive had even taken place. Similarly, people walking down the street participating in a dérive do not nessesarilly have signs saying “we are conducting a dérive,” but they can be see by others in the urban environment.

On-line advertisers want you to see them. They want you to purchase their product & services or be influenced by their very existence. But the digital dérive outlined in this entry is not for them to exploit. It’s for you. Its a means of self-discovery through external stimulation. A method to understand the vastness of the digital environment through a single conduit: advertisements. It doesn’t have to be solitary- two people can sit in front of a computer and choose which ads they think will beget more ads. Moreover, this dérive doesn’t have to be as I directed above, instead you can take turns clicking on ads and clicking on regular links simply to see where the path leads you. The rules are not hard and fast, but rather they are up to the flâneur. Its merely a form of digital exploration that might yield it’s own rewards for you, while paradoxically adding a couple cents to someone’s coffers and removing a couple cents from someone else’s coffers. In essence its a postmodern example of psychogeographical exploration, but without predefined borders; where the environment is wholly located on your computer screen, at a specific location on the surface of the earth, and you are the flâneur strolling from one disparate location to another, without a passport or a map, just strolling, strolling, strolling.

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The image at the beginning of this entry is from my entry titled “ Postmodern Cartography: You Are Probably Not Here.”

Talk about having a postmodern moment!

This screen grab of my blog entry features an ad from one of the organizations that I was mocking…..

For the last few weeks Van Jones, the White House’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, has been vilified in the media and on-line because signed on to a document in 2004 that supported a new investigation on what happen on 9/11/01. Due to the subsequent public relations fallout, he resigned from his position over the weekend. Yesterday afternoon I decided to do a search for news articles related to this episode in 9/11 political theater and came across something I wasn’t exactly expecting.

I recently saw a photo on-line of someone’s hand-written white shirt that basically said “follow me @USERNAME” and was inspired to modify his concept. Thus the image above is by no means an original design. However, I was looking through other t-shirts featuring roughly the same notion, and very few used the concept of following @USERNAME placed on the back side of the shirt. Most of the tacky shirts on customization websites merely mention that the wearer is on twitter or ‘huge or twitter,’ but since they are generic and don’t mention the user’s actual name, they have little practical use. In this design, the Twitter Bird (does she have a name?) extends the branding to visually legitimize the @USERNAME. Replace the stylized Twitter Bird with your company’s logo and, in theory, you’ve got a brand & social marketing t-shirt campaign. Or what about an entirely fake URL? “I PREFER TO BE FOLLOWED BY @JESUS” Or “I PREFER TO BE FOLLOWED BY @SPAM” By using an incorrect @USERNAME the wearer is poking fun at the nature of the website, but paradoxically advertising the @USERNAME. Since I joined Twitter I’ve taken issue with the lexical aspect of following people and while I’ll eventually start following (in name) people, I am curious about how this t-shirt design will slowly creep into the mainstream. On the other hand, I hope its not from people buying this shirt, which is cool in concept, but also somewhat aesthetically tacky.

About 15 minutes ago I visited my Profile Page on Facebook and noticed a familiar map of mine was being used without my authorization:

My website’s Fair Use policy states “For any intended commercial use of content on this website, I request that you contact me so that we can arrange appropriate compensation.” There was no effort to contact me before using my map in the advertisement and had they chosen to contact me, I would have requested some form of compensation. I decided to report the advertisement to Facebook:

I also sent the company, which I am purposely not linking to in this entry, a polite cease and desist e-mail asking them to either take down the advertisement or pay me and I sent out a tweet linking to this entry. Maybe I should pursue further action? Let’s see how they respond…

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UPDATE – A few minutes after I sent my Tweet, I received the following responses:

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Later in the evening I noticed that they merely changed the graphic and kept the original ad:

Makes me wonder if they are using someone else’s image illegally?

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UPDATE – This morning I received this e-mail:

So I get to BUG him about a $10 coupon after my copyright was violated? That ad was probably seen by thousands of people! What a crock.

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UPDATE – August 12th, 2009 – I decided to do some sleuthing and found that the image that Groupon.com replaced my image with was also a copyrighted image! Using the website TinEye.com I was able to eventually trace their current image to this blog entry. I contacted the copyright holder and he said that he had not given them permission to use his photograph either….

I came across these zoomorphic fantasy maps a few weeks ago and smiled. They brought back fond memories of when I was in second grade and used to draw large futuristic cities during my free time in school. I prefer to think that those sketches were the visual result of the influence that Sim City had on me back then.

These black & white bird’s eye view sketches show an elephant (above), rhinoceros (below), and sea turtle (below) all include the text of the campaign: “Our life at the cost of theirs?” The aim of this campaign is to frame the encroachment of urban life within the scope of contemporary degradation of the natural ecosystems these animals live in. By drawing these imaginative urban areas within the outlines of the endangered animals, the artists present a poignant perspective of whether our urban societies can sustain their current growth without damaging the animal’s fragile habitat.

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Since the original images are larger than the formatting I use here, I have shrunk them down for layout purposes. By clicking on the images, you can see them in full-size.

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CITATION
Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, India
Executive Creative Director: Piyush Pandey
Creative Director: Sumanto Chattopadhyay
Art Directors: Mayur varma, Mandar Wairkar
Illustrators: Swapnil Nilkanth, Nishikant Palande
Copywriters: Sumanto Chattopadhyay, Karn Singh, Mandar Wairkar
[VIA Ads of the World]

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View the other fantasy maps:

Last month I created a Facebook group called Washington Metropolitan Area Residents For A 24 Hour Metro. Each week or so I’ve been sending members of the group different subway related YouTube videos- ranging from Improv Everywhere’s Subway Art Gallery Opening to Toronto’s subway dance party. Last night I came across another iteration of the faux-flash-mob-that-decides-to-dance-in-a-train-station-meme and decided to share it with the group. It features 200 well-choreographed dancers getting down to a remix of Julie Andrews singing Do-Re-Me from the musical The Sound of Music in Antwerp’s Central Station. Similar to the efforts behind the T-Mobile video, I believe the motivation behind this video is related to the promotion of the Belgian theatrical version of “Looking for Maria” or “Op zoek naar Maria,” which is based on the Sound of Music.

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Below is the behind the scenes video and two different perspectives of the dance:

So with Congress possibly changing DC gun laws to give DC colonists a token vote in the House of Representatives, I found this advertisement for a bicycle rifle to be somewhat humorous. With this rifle, I can lock & load & cycle and I make sure no one knocks me off my bicycle! I could discharge the rifle at a car’s wheels in case I feel that the car is getting too close to me. Imagine how I’ll be able to proactively protect my life and save myself from getting into accidents with larger vehicles with this handy rifle. I’ll have the most formidable bicycle ever!! The constitution might say we have a right to bear arms, but it doesn’t say anything about the right to have bicycles with arms. I predict the bicycle rifle will become the new Cycle Chic accessory item of Washington, DC cyclists. Just remember, you read it here first.

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When I wrote about my neighborhood last year, I mentioned that the League of American Wheelmen competed on May 20th, 1884 on the land that would eventually become my current residence over a hundred years later. The advertisement above is from the program of the competition on the Library of Congress website.

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Related Colonist Entries:

QST magazine is the most widely read Amateur Radio publication in the country. Since 1915, QST has been delivering the latest news and practical information from the world of Amateur Radio. In September I was contacted about supplying a map similar to the one in the photograph above for an upcoming advertisement in the magazine. While I didn’t have the original map shown above, I was able to print a copy of my “New Blaeu” map for Brian Wood of the DZ Company. The advertisement below is featured in the December edition of QST Magazine on page 150. If you see it on the newsstands, please pick up a copy! Click the advertisement below to be taken to www.dzkit.com

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Related Antique Entries:

Friday afternoon I went with Liz Glover to the Huffington Post’s DC office to shoot a video with Jason Linkins. When we were done filming indoors, we went outside and shot some humorous man-on-the-street interviews around the White House. On the way back to the office, I spotted the advertisement above on the side of the WMATA bus and decided take a few photos.

Now I had read about a similar public awareness campaign related to rat abatement that compared DC to an unnamed metropolis, but this graphic takes the hilarity to a new level.

1) All praise the holy rat sun! After all, 2008 is the Year of the Rat! The rat is associated with aggression, wealth, charm, and order, yet also associated with death, war, the occult, pestilence, and atrocities. The rat’s sun will set January 25th, 2009, but I suspect they’ll stick around for the Ox.

2) Behold the Washington Minarat! Shaped similar to a campanile, there is a curious minaret to the left of the mighty sun rat. When did the Washington Monument transform itself into a part of a mosque? Did the graphic designer purposely exclude the Washington Monument? If the designer was trying to imitate the campanile at the Basilica Of The National Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception they did a very very poor job. Maybe they were mocking the war in Iraq? The first minaret was constructed in 665 in Basra, Iraq during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I.

3) Height restrictions are the answer! The reality is that the skyline of Wahsington, DC is mostly uniform without any building being taller the width of the street, plus twenty feet. This means that the varied skyline in the advertisement above does not represent Washington, DC, but most likely another unnamed metropolis.

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Not photographed bonus advertisement on the back of the bus was a parody of the Got Milk? campaign, which asked the viewer “Got Syphilis?”

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Later in the evening I went to a friend’s house who happened to have a fake rat. I decided to take a photo of the pointy kitty sitting on my leg. Some day I’d love to take that fake rat and add a small remote control car to the underside of it in order to create a rat than can “run” around.

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Anyways, expect the interviews we filmed to be on-line shortly and in the meantime watch out for the rats.

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Related Animal Entries:

I don’t think I’m allowed to be paid for my vote? Am I?
A $500 gift card is just so utterly tempting.

This week I am posting photos from New York City that took last weekend.

The photograph above was taken from the 6th floor window of Hotel Rivington in the Lower East Side using a 15 second timelapse.

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Related New York City Entries:

Today I mailed a copy of one of my favorite maps to a company that intends on using the map for an upcoming advertisement. I can’t post too many details until the advertisement has been completed, but I intend on posting the photos when they become available. It should look awesome :-)

Tonight I went to the Adidas store in Georgetown because my friend DECOY was celebrating her birthday and another friend was DJing. After parking my bicycle down the street (Georgetown doesn’t have many bicycle locks), I noticed the sign outside of the Ralph Lauren store. This sighting marks the first time I’ve seen a QR Code in Washington, DC. I decided to snap a picture of it to see if I could decode on my computer and below the fold you can see the results:

Who would have thought that there were 20 phantom women who are between 26 & 28 that exist somewhere between Washington, DC and the District of Columbia?

I’d sure like to meet one of those ladies.

It should be noted that the Facebook entry for DC is missing the definite article, as in “the District of Columbia.” Currently it dsnt reed rite.

Related Facebook:

Today I decided to see if I could link to my Facebook or MySpace page. NOPE.

On Monday evening I noticed that Facebook was promoting it’s internal advertisement system on my notification panel. As a curious person I decided to check it out and see why I receive so many stupid ads for dating websites. I remember reading a long time ago that at the height of MySpace’s popularity their servers had trouble keeping up with the demand of the user traffic, and while those times have passed, Facebook seems like a clear alternative for social marketing.

So what should I link to? This blog or my on-line store? I chose the on-line store because if I am paying money for a service I might as well get some money back. I also don’t actively promote the store because it’s become too cumbersome to manage and I haven’t added any new maps in ages.

But what to specifically link to? This is where is gets fun.