I don’t often post about OSNAP.net, but I was looking through some budget items (postcards/flyers actually) and found that my new favorite printer 48 Hour Print also prints flyers.

Not only do they print flyers at a great price, they also include some fantastic advice (something I’ve been trying to get out of a Seattle-based Newsvine.com group) about flyer design.

If designing flyers for nightclubs, live events, or shows is part of your routine, please take a moment to read their tips. It’s an incomplete and basic list, but at least it will get you started on the road to repairing (worst case) some of the bad designs I’ve seen out there.*

* I guess I should apologize if I offended over the ‘road to repairing’ comment. I’m not assuming your designs are bad, I’ve just been saddened over the years with ‘local’ show flyers.

So I was thinking in the shower (where most of my strange ideas emerge) this morning about a viral phone-chain. Here’s the rough:

1. Setup a Web site called “viralphonechain.com”
2. Allow people to enter their location, name, phone number, etc. as a Nationwide call-chain member.
3. Vote on a date and time where the calls would occur (9AM PST?)
4. Start the call-chain on the West coast with one person calling the next person on the list, with the hopes that enough people have signed up to get a West coast call finishing on the East coast.
5. Keep all calls under 1 minute.
6. Create an interface on the Web where the first person logs-in, receives a single phone number, a name, and a code to give the person they call (eg: Bob Smith, 206 555-1234, code # 13908).
7. The person calls the number, introduces themselves, and tells person #2 the code number.
8. Person #2 logs-in to the Web site, enters their code, and receives the next number, name, and code.
9. Continue this process until we reach all members and the call finishes at a destination the East coast.
10. Allow members to post video and audio of their calls and whether or not they successfully contacted their number.
11. If a number is not reachable, a button should be available on the Web site that would generate a new code and a new contact, until a successful call is made.

I haven’t come up with a reason why this project should be undertaken, other than an interest in whether or not it could be done. Perhaps a phrase should be carried along with the calls, such as “Come here, Watson. I need you.“

Any takers? I imagine the ad revenue would be sufficient, and what if we could get sponsors, or even some celebrities mixed in. Since each member would have no idea who they were calling until they entered their code, it would be cool to mix in, say, Ellen Degeneres. Perhaps this could be an on-going project, with the first iteration being US-based numbers, the second being Worldwide, and the third an effort to make a coast-to-coast call where no-one would be placing a long-distance call (say, based on zipcode?)

Of course, security concerns already hit me like a brick, like what level of ongoing privacy would be offered to participants since they are revealing their name and personal phone numbers. If the project got big enough, perhaps we could hide the actual phone numbers in a Sprint-sponsored pool of numbers?

I’m not usually the type to title a post in all capital letters, but the Egokast LCD belt buckle/player makes me scream out “WANT!”

For $289 (+ $25.00 in shipping), you get an LCD player (320×240) @ 3.5″ (26k colors) that accepts SD cards (comes with a 512MB card but you can get up to 2GB on those bad-boys). You also get other features like photo slideshow software, etc. as well as a belt clip (as seen in the photo) charger, etc.

Christmas can’t come soon enough!

I have a little side project (well, it became more than a ‘little side project’ when I hit over 1 million pageviews in under 60 days) that handles some images (cats, walruses, the like).

I took another look at my Google Analytics today for the page (it’s basically 1 file that repeats based on [n] images/page). Take a look: