Recently at Ten MInute Media

Burning the midnight oil here at Ten Minute Media with projects for Michael Bolton, Denis Leary, Teddy Geiger, Bone Thugs N Harmony, Lolene, Priscilla Renea... keep an eye open for some new project launches!

Łódź's today and Holyoke's tomorrow?

Łódź: It's David Lynch's favorite city.

This weekend I will be taking a day trip to the Polish city of Łódź. Having done a thorough scan of it's architectural and cultural treasures... I came across a very interesting development: a converted mill complex taken to a whole new level by Jestico + Whiles.

The project(s): Centrum Manufaktura and Andels Hotel Lodz look absolutely stunning, stylish, and very modern. Although they aren't pushing the envelope too far, it's still impressive from a design standpoint.

This type of brick factory structure is an abundant commodity in the city of Holyoke. Should this be the interior design standard for future mill conversions in downtown Holyoke? How great would that be!

As for Holyoke, in the meantime, Open Square is carrying the torch and has a similar mixed-use vision. As the market heats up we can all hope that there will be many rad converted factories.

How about that data-center?

LA Weekly Web Awards

I was recently informed that LA weekly awarded Slash a Golden Floppy-disk for "Best MySpace Page" at the LA Web Awards.



Here at Ten Minute Media, we are super stoked when a project we carefully handcrafted gets recognized in such a way! You can see the award-winning profile here, http://www.myspace.com/slash

Music for Relief / Haiti

Check out Music For Relief's "Donate to Donate" for Haiti, a compilation of unreleased music from Linkin Park, Dave Matthews Band, Slash, Lupe Fiasco, and more to help aid victims of the earthquake.

Artwork by Shepard Fairey's firm Studio Number One, web production by Ten Minute Media, and swift weekend teamwork from a bunch of great folks at The Collective, Ning, and TopSpin.

Increase Efficiency, Reduce Paper, and Travel!

This year I want to become as organized, efficient, and as digital/mobile as humanly possible. On top of that goal, in a few weeks I'll be leaving for Warsaw, where I'll be living for a few months, so I decided to jump full-speed into some useful, innovative, and entrepreneurial-focused services. Here's the list...

Increase Organization / Reduce Paper.

• EarthClassMail - Imagine being able to access your postal mail in the same fashion you check your e-mail, all while you're free to travel around the world. Sounds far-fetched, but it's all possible. If that's your cut of tea... check out EarthClassMail.
  
  
• Pixily - With Pixily, you can send all your existing paper documents and within a few days have a living/breathing, search-able archive of your papers. The only challenge is what to do with that ugly file cabinet now that it's obsolete. This start-up is based in the innovative state of Massachusetts. On another note, if you just want to focus on your receipts and business cards, Shoeboxed might be more your match.
  

Organize and Track Expenses.

• Expensify - Import your expenses/receipts, and generate IRS-friendly expense reports.
  

Access your data from anywhere.

• JungleDisk - Local storage is so two years ago. With JungleDisk you can store, sync, back-up and access all of your data on the cloud. It's a must-have!
  
  
• Google Apps - Online applications such as Gmail for Business and Google Docs are genius.
  

Manage Invoices.

• Harvest - Being able to quickly invoice clients, monitor time, and track month-to-month performance is a piece of cake with Harvest, an easy-to-use online invoicing system.
  

Voice-related Services.

• Google Voice - Check your voice-mail just like your e-mail, have a single number forward to all of your lines, send/receive/store your voice-mails and texts... and many other features.
  
  
• Grasshopper - Press "1" for Sales... Press "2" for Tech Support... Grasshopper is a smart virtual phone system with a major focus on entrepreneurs and small business. Another great start-up from MA.

If this is what we have available today, just imagine what will be possible a decade from now.

One More

And if we're counting live albums, I'd have to include "Glitter and Doom Live" by Tom Waits.

Top 10 Albums of 2009

Here's my top 10 list for 2009.

1. Phoenix - "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix"
2. As Tall As Lions - "You Can't Take It with You"
3. Brendan Benson - "My Old, Familiar Friend"
4. Sondre Lerche - "Heartbeat Radio"
5. Brand New - "Daisy"
6. UGK - "UGK 4 Life"
7. Empire Of The Sun - "Walking On A Dream"
8. The Bird and the Bee - "Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future"
   
9. Bat for Lashes - "Two Suns"
10. The-Dream - "Love vs. Money"

Enjoy some Holiday Music

'Tis the season... so enjoy some great Holidays tunes brought to you by the fine people at EMI Music. Click here! Every time you send this player to your friends, EMI will make a donation to the EMI Music Sound Foundation and The Grammy Foundation. Great cause, great music, and great project to conclude 2009 over here at Ten Minute Media.

Over the Last Few Months...

Over the last couple of months, here at Ten Minute Media, we've finished a slew of projects, here and there, for New Kids on The Block, Katy Perry, Kylie Minogue, 30 Seconds to Mars, Linkin Park, Jason Mraz, Alice in Chains, Billy Bush, T-Pain's Nappy Boy Entertainment, Cat Deeley, Joey McIntyre, Brendan Benson, Jon Reep, James Patterson, and many others... I look forward to more exciting projects this upcoming year!

Another small Renaissance City: Telč

On the same cue as Zamość, I came across another small Renaissance City in Eastern Europe by the name of Telč in the southern regions of the Czech Republic.



Telč's street scape is enhanced by dynamic gables, continuous arcades, and impressive sgraffito façades. It's a much deserving World Heritage site.




I'm eager to get over there this spring when I'm living in Warsaw.

Zamość?

On an after-work research spree, I came across a beautiful aerial view of Zamość and was excited to find a dense, miniature city plan. I never knew much about this small town in Poland, but this picture along with images of the market colorful Armenian merchant houses that line the market square, inspired to me to find out more.



According to UNESCO, Zamość is a "perfect example of a late-16th-century Renaissance town", not only in terms of Poland but for the entire of world! It's supposedly one of the only untouched Renaissance cities on the planet. It has an interesting story too: Jan Zamoyski, an extremely wealthy Polish magnate, had tremendous sums of money to burn so he hired a reknown architect to create what they considered to be an "ideal city" and a capital to bypass paying certain trade tariffs. Clever. When all was said and done: the outcome was vivid, unique and awe-inspiring.


Zamość... it might even be more adorable than Cieszyn. Hopefully on my next trip, I'll have the opportunity to explore Zamość.

Last Saturday's Voyage to NYC

This past Saturday, a bunch of friends/entrepreneurs spent the day in NYC. Instances of the dreadful flu knocked out a couple of our comrades, but Sam, Zach, Caleb and I headed on our way. We grabbed lunch at Daniel Boulud's DGBG Kitchen, where we met up with Dominic of Garment Valet, and then made our way into the depths of SoHo to see some compelling art, cast-iron architecture, and furniture design. After parting ways with Dominic, we were joined by Justin, a friend of Zach and Sam of One Mighty Roar / BuildInternet.

We then made our way uptown to Columbus Circle to explore the Museum of Arts & Design where we were enticed and inspired by the current exhibition, Slash: Paper Under the Knife. Highly recommended. After that, we walked up to Verdi Square, one of my favorite general areas in the city... as I made the claimed that coffee taste better the closer you are geographically to The Ansonia. How could that not be true?

We headed back down to SoHo for dinner at Mercer Kitchen, and were joined by Andy of One Blue Brick / Edopter. The conversation was great... the food was so/so. Come on Jean! After narrowing down to the original Pioneer Valley crew, we hit up the Upright Citizen's Brigade for the some hilarious improv. I haven't laughed so hard since Jim Jefferies. After that came to an end, we made our way back to our neck of the woods. Time well spent. Always a good time in New York City.

Holyoksterdam!

Welcome to a City of beautiful canals, elegrant architecture, cobblestone street(s), and loads of history. Let your imagination get to work as to what Holyoksterdam could be. It's cool being a "fossil Venice" but it's damn cool being a Holyoksterdam.


Just some rambling... maybe I'll put my somewhat facetious proposal sometime.

Upstarts Book Launch

I just got back from Donna Fenn's Upstarts! book launch party. It was at 7 World Trade Center in New York City and attended by many of the vibrant, young entrepreneurs featured in the book. If you haven't ordered a copy of this book, you can do so at Amazon or pick it up at your local bookstore.

Story in Boston Magazine

Young Gun: Would You Let This Kid Save Your Town? Brendan Ciecko made his name—and a boatload of money—as the music industry's go-to website designer. Now that he's finally old enough to buy beer, he's decided to take on a slightly less sexy project: remaking his hardscrabble hometown.

The story hits newsstands today but you can read it online at BostonMagazine.com. I hope you enjoy.

Innovate Holyoke

Last Wednesday, Governor Deval Patrick unveiled the next steps for the massive high-performance computing center planned for downtown Holyoke. I'm glad to say that things are moving forward, and quickly at that. The HPCC should be completed by 2011. At the press conference, I had the honor of speaking at the podium to share my enthusiasm and walk everyone through the project's online presence. The event and various details are outlined here and all the latest news can be found at InnovateHolyoke.com, which was launched by my company, Ten Minute Media. With the computing center, Victory Theatre, CanalWalk, Mountain Park, and a few other new developments, noticeable progress is definitely being made.

P.S: Holyoke has a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the Republic of France...

Meetings in NYC

A week or so a go, I headed down to New York for at meeting at Hachette Book Group. Rather than drive in like I usually do, I took Amtrak from Springfield. I can't wait until the line comes back to downtown Holyoke so I can walk from down the street to the station.

I arrived earlier in the day for a stroll through the city and so I could stop by and say hello to some clients. I headed over to Warner Music Group headquarters in midtown and as I was leaving the building, I bumped into one of the most dapper musicians around, Tim Nordwind from OKGo. We talked for a bit and then I went on my way to EMI / Capitol / Virgin down near the beautiful Flatiron.

Then, I was onto the main reason I was in the city, a meeting with the good folks at Hachette, the second larger publishing group in the world. I met a bunch of the talented people that lead many of James Patterson's online initiatives. I also had the exciting opportunity of meeting James Patterson! Overall, I was very impressed with the way they do things over there.

After the meeting, I had a quick dinner at Brasserie Les Halles and then I was on my way back home. It's always an adventure when I'm in New York, I can't wait to go back.

It's All Here

This past Thursday, I was in Cambridge at Akamai Technologies headquarters for the start of the day. I was recently appointed to the Advisory Council for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' "It's All Here" campaign and was there for the launch event. Powerful words were delivered by Greg Bialecki, J.D. Sherman (CFO of Akamai), and Robert Culver (CEO of MassDevelopment) to warm up the crowd. Soon after, the Commonwealth's communications guru, Kofi Jones took the floor and unveiled the campaign. You can read more about the initiative in the Boston Globe.

Anyways, from the invention of chocolate chip cookies, to the technology that powers the internet, endless innovations flow from this state and it's time to take another look at everything that's here... especially those cookies.

The Wodka Wars

"Vice Scandinavia correspondent Ivar Berglin travels to the front lines of the Vodka/Wodka Wars – and discovers that the tortured history of Russian-Polish relations can be saved in a bottle."



At first glance, I thought this would be a comedic piece about vodka, but as the documentary played on it revealed a powerful story of Polish nationalism, identity, history - and of course, the rightful origin of wodka. I was very impressed by this video.

Note: When I was in Kraków a few years ago, there were no people walking around in giant beer costumes. Maybe next time?

Jim Jefferies in Boston

Last Friday, Elizabeth and I headed to Boston to see emerging comedian Jim Jefferies. He has been the talk of the Edinburgh Fringe / Comedy Festival, regarded as the UK's most offensive comic, and he's also a client - I was very excited to see him live and say hello.

Before the show we had dinner at Gaslight Brasserie, a French bistro in the South End. The decor was very similar to that of Pastis in NYC (very, very similar menu) and Kingston Station in Boston - covered in shiney white subway tile, a floor of mosiac tile, antique lighting fixtures. After dinner, we walked over towards the BCA to pick up our tickets and meet with some friends at the Beehive, which was right next to the theatre.

After that, we went over the theatre to see Jim Jefferies.

I've seen lots of his older material, and recent HBO Special... I must say, his current stand-up routine tops any I've seen or heard so far. Witty punchlines, intense stories, dirty and clever, no boundries. You must hear it for yourself.

He'll be back on the East Coast in September at Carolines in NYC. I might need to experience his live show once again, it's worth it.