Dino Baskovic Can’t Lose

Leave it to my ol' boss to remind me, the 35-year-old whipper snapper that I am, to keep on top of nonsensical wacky web fads.

Do you remember that one goofy viral video of the band OK Go on treadmills from a year or so ago?  Their newest installment blows well past it.

Remember when MTV used to have innovative videos like this?  Heck, remember MTV?  Anyway, there is a back story to this Rube Goldberg machine-inspired meme.  Apparently the band was upset when their record label prevented them from earning royalties on the YouTube version of the video if said video was embedded on other websites and not directly viewed on said YouTube.  A recent op-ed by OK Go's lead singer elaborates on the issue.

What makes this new video -- 3.4 million views and counting -- even more intriguing than the last -- only 1.4 milliion views -- is that State Farm subsidized it.  "State Farm," you ask?  Yeah, me too.  Some where, some how, the band and the insurance behemoth made fast friends so that the video would benefit both parties (more coverage at BusinessWeek, Digital Media, Mashable and TechDirt).  Social media circles are buzzing about the secret handshake, whether this is a isolated case of strange bedfellows or a sign of brand synergies to come (State Farm has two subtle placements in the first 60 seconds, then the band thanks them outright at the close).

Business speak aside, it's just a refreshingly cool and creative music video.  Watch it.  Love it.  Share it.  You don't even have to like the music.

Thanks, boss.  I owe you one.

UPDATE: YouTube Darlings OK Go Say Bye-Bye to EMI (Mashable, March 10, 2010)

What just happened?  Did Microsoft do something right for a change?  Something, dare I say, cool?

According to Fast Company, Microsoft just released a new dashboard codenamed "LookingGlass" that tracks a company's social media cred.  It's still in beta and will only be available to paying customers -- at least initially.  FC pegs it as a better PR tool than Seth Godin's latest contraption which has a few eyes rolling in my line of biz, but that's another post altogether...

LookingGlass isn't entirely unexpected but nonetheless a nice surprise.  It comes from Redmond's own labcoats and helps to bridge a gap between self-proclaimed web gurus (like me) and PR flacks trying to make a buck in a Web 2.0 world (like me).  That, and Microsoft can't let the upstarts and whippersnappers have all the fun.

Also last week, TechCrunch reported the launch of WebSiteSpark, a free software suite for web developers that includes a web server, database engine and other goodies.  Not the first time they've offered trials like Visual Studio gratis, but for good for three years?  Not bad, not bad.  And if that doesn't pique a penguin's interest, then a stripped-down 2-meg download of Microsoft's Web Platform Installer will.  Even the apps are worth a glance: you'd be surprised what a Windows web server can run.

For many years, web pros shunned Microsoft like bad sushi.  Unless your hapless corporate IT department demanded otherwise, you opted for  alternatives ranging from Java to Dreamweaver to Mozilla to MySQL.  Internet Explorer was the reigning heavyweight everybody loved to hate (and hack), and Microsoft was no fan of open source.  Fast forward to now: the market changed and Microsoft had no choice but to follow.  Now the company doles out virtual machines like an open bar, dangling free drinks to web developers that eschewed expensive licensing in the past but are willing to tinker with new toys anytime.  The Developer Toolbar and IE8 Readiness Toolkit were big hits, as was the IE team's shocking revelation that it gives a damn about the web's future after all the incessant bitching... well, you get the idea.

So will a few freebies sway enough indie web designers to matter?  More Silverlight sites than Flash?  Less Google, more Bing?  LookingGlass and a dish of downloads may not be enough to wrestle the web world away from established analytics, frameworks and IDEs but it does prove one thing: Microsoft can still innovate and, in the process, compete.