3 fun videos on how to get traffic for a blog/website:

(If you are looking for "Nude It", please go to: www.nude-it.com)

All you need to get traffic for a blog/website is an idea and a video:

"Nude It" reaches first 1 MILLION views online

"Nude It" has been posted on Youtube, MetaCafe, Break, CollegeHumor, and many other sites within the last four weeks, and it has now reached its first one million views.

To download "Nude It" go to: www.nude-it.com

While you wait for "Nude It" to be available for download, get this great new app that helps you with the ladies: www.thevirtualwingman.com

Watch my friend's reaction to the original "Nude It" video here:

Here are some of my personal favorite emails and comments:

1. "You know what would be really cool and even more "eye-catching" to your male viewing audience ... catching a glimpse of the girl at the end. You and I both know how these "sexy apps" sell well in the App Store, so just sayin' that end clip of the girl would smack it home a bit more."

2. "Hopefully you're reading this next to a girl with 36D boobs."

3. "Proof that it's fake: I went to that website and you can't buy it there anywhere."

4. "This is the only thing that could outsell the bible."

5. "Just downloaded it....WOW....but only my mom is here.....aaaargl...she gotta shave"

6. "I will buy on US $50 can u gimme the link how to buy the app. Does this really works."

7. "If this was real, then you'd see guys everywhere walking around with it and pointing it at chicks. So, it's obviously fake"

8. "The real trick is that you're supposed to think it's an amateur video. It's a corporate advertisement. They go to great lengths to make videos like this that look as amateurish as possible. Then you go to the website at the end, that you think is for some amateur comedy troupe, but it's really run by the international banking cartel."

9. You and your friends are lying... this was a fake... next time think in all details before recording. There are not coordination between the video an the real time action.

10. I'd like to thank the idiots who are actually going to the website and looking to download this. You fine people whose gullibility keeps heartless bastards like me laughing our ass off for days on end. On behalf of the sad souls of the internet, I thank you.

11. It's fake. People you have got to understand, the iphone does not even have .0001% of the computing power that would be needed to render something like this in realtime. You would need a super computer.

Bald Idea #39: "Nude It" app for the iPhone 3GS

It's time to take things up a notch with "Nude It", a revolutionary app for the iPhone 3GS. "Nude It" uses the iPhone's video feature to instantly process recorded video footage. It turns all video clips into "clothing free" videos. Here is a short clip of me and my buddies using "Nude It" for the first time last night.

Bald Note: Cab drivers and bathroom breaks

Ever wondered when cab drivers take breaks? Well, they don't. I caught this looking outside my window.

Past Works:"Barry", "Subway Melodies", "New York Talk"

This week I decided to post some of my past works. I picked three projects which all have two things in common: music & New York City.

1. BARRY (short film)
"Barry" is a 5 minute video profile on a New York City based musician named Barry Waller. He shares his thoughts on life and music while performing one of his own songs.



2. SUBWAY MELODIES (documentary)
Did you know that when the first subway took off from Grand Central station in 1904 the fare was only a nickel? Well, it looks like we are facing the inevitable $2.50 fare very soon. Yes - it is sad.

Because of my fascination with the New York City subway world (my favorite movie of all times is Luc Besson's "Subway") I created "Subway Melodies", a documentary which took me about a year to make. It is an experimental documentary about the musicians of the New York City subway system and its relationship between mechanical and human sounds. It explores the subway system as a stage and as a complex instrument that never stops playing. It presents the Metrocard as more than just a ride on the subway but a ticket to a unique musical experience that can be witnessed nowhere else in the world. Not a word is spoken in Subway Melodies and the entire film takes place under ground, never leaving the subway world.

Since Youtube has a 10-minute limit on uploaded clips for regular mortals like me, I had to split up the film into three parts. The total duration of the film is 25 minutes.







3. NEW YORK TALK (short film)
This is probably my most successful project I have made so far. It is entitled "New York Talk" and it has been screened at numerous film festivals worldwide. It has also been aired on TV a number of times, including two broadcasts on PBS earlier this year. I shot it on 16mm film to give it a timeless look. Please enjoy:

Bald Note: Thanks!

Here is this week's online buzz about this blog:

egotvonline.com (video: "homeless advertising")

beyondmadisonavenue.com (video: "twitter reality tv")

tonytown.com (video: "why I love living in new york city")

I need to say thank you to a few people who help me a lot with this blog on a constant basis. Thanks to Noreen for her endless support and feedback on my entries. Thanks to Tony Hunt (tonytown.com) and Kyle Lacy (kylelacy.com) for spreading the word. Thanks to Sylvia (krivickova.com) for helping me with the production on many of these videos. Thanks to Juneyup and Kaitlan for their production help. And a very special thanks goes to my girlfriend Nadia for keeping up with all this crap, and for helping me out on it many times.

There are so many more videos to come.... it's crazy!

Bald Idea #38: Why I love living in New York City

With every new video entry I give myself a new challenge to make sure that each video looks very different from the previous one. This time I decided to make a video with no footage - just stills. No dissolves - just cuts. No dialogue - just titles. Ennio Morricone's "The Crave" sets the mood and rhythm for it. (If you haven't seen "Legend Of 1900" - you haven't lived)

I used a recycling process for this project: I looked at all of my past video entries and found a new story in them. Another way to put it would be: I was too lazy to shoot something. This is yet another quirky testimonial to express my love for the most amazing city in the world: New York.

Bald Idea #37: Recession Solutions: Part TwoInteractive Online Reality TV

In a recession, more and more people turn to the internet to look for work, to communicate, and to watch their favorite shows and movies for free. Free wifi is everywhere and many public places, such as libraries and Apple stores, welcome anyone to try the net for free. The fusion of TV and internet has already started and it is just a matter of time until the first interactive game shows launch online.

My new "what if" video asks you to join the first twitter based reality TV show in which the viewers get to send instruction to the character with live "tweets". The show is uncensored, unscripted, and most of all: unedited. But why use just one camera, when there can be FOUR? The viewers can decide which camera they will watch.

Log in. Play. Watch.

Bald Idea 36: Recession Solutions: Part OneHomeless Advertising

It's been two weeks since my last blog entry, but there is a good reason for that: I have been working on a new series of ideas called "Recession Solutions". The first part, entitled "Homeless Advertising", just hit the news this morning:

Bald Idea 35: Commercial: Time Warner

I started working on a new video entry that might take me about 2 weeks to complete. The concept of that video has a high viral potential, so I want to take my time with it to get it just right. In the meantime, I have to turn to writing (ugh!) to blog about some of the other new ideas.

My Bald Idea #35 is an ad for Time Warner. The set-up: A wideshot of someone's back yard on a sunny afternoon. We see two guys sitting on lawn chairs. One of them is typing away on a laptop, while the other picks up a stone. He throws the stone at a tree and two birds fall out of it.

He says:

"Hey man, I just killed two birds with one stone."

The other guy turns to him and says:

"Me too. I just signed up with Time Warner. That gives me over 100 HD channels AND high-speed internet access."

The Time Warner logo comes on.

Bald Idea 34: Sharpie Ad Campaign

A couple of weeks ago I made a Sharpie commercial, and I now think it could easily be turned into an entire ad campaign which would have a creative and human touch. Sharpie would simply present a series of short clips made in various animation and drawing styles - all made with Sharpies of course. A new tagline would be needed: "Life In Sharpie" or something amongst those lines.

Here is the new Sharpie ad and the adjusted first one (to match the campaign):

Bald Idea 33: The Dating Adventures of a Bald Guy

Note: It has been a few days now that the youtube promo view count has been stuck at 305. Apparently, this is a common issue and thousands of people are complaining about it on youtube forums. So far there is no fix for for this bug. I re-uploaded the promo video and the Sharpie ad, so the view count went back to zero and all links are lost. Youtube - get those bugs fixed!!!

Last year, I turned to the world of drawing for just a few days. I wanted to create a comic book that would combine several of my past dating stories. I made the cover page,... and that was it. I don't remember why I stopped, but I am thinking about continuing. The original title was "The Dating Adventures of a Bald Guy."

Bald Idea 32:How To Promote Your Blog

I finished the editing of the promo video last night, but since my internet hasn't been working for the past 24 hours, I was not able to upload it until now (at work).

A big THANKS to the models: Anastasiya, Demi, and Zhanna for doing a great job on Saturday (and for showing up!). A big thanks to Evelyn for her great camera work, and a special thanks to Nadia for her wonderful assisting job.

Here is the final video:

Bald Idea 31: Commercial: Sharpie

I have always had an interest in animation and found especially the rotoscope technique fascinating. This weekend, I digitized some old test footage of a friend of mine, picked a sequence I liked, and exported all of its frames. I then printed out all of the frames onto regular Staples printing paper, placed a blank sheet of paper over every printed image and drew each image again by hand with a Sharpie (well - many, MANY Sharpies). I then scanned all drawings, made some minor adjustments in Photoshop, and imported them back into the video editing program (Final Cut Pro). What came out is my 'Bald Idea" #31: an ad for Sharpie.

Bald Idea 30: Ad Campaign

It has been a very experimental week for me. I changed my website many times, I adjusted the new clips many times, and I tried many different ways to contact others who might be interested in what it is I blog about. I learned a lot. The website and the blog will undergo some visual changes within the next couple of days, to optimize the performance of this project.

The latest 'bald idea' was to create one ad campaign that uses the same concept for different products. When a duck shows up in the beginning of an ad, everyone knows that the ad will be for Aflac. When a lizard starts to talk, we know it's for Geico, and when vikings pop up, it will be a Capital One commercial. But what if ONE character is used to advertise and promote DIFFERENT products and services? Once that character would show up in the beginning of an ad, the viewer would never know what the ad will be for and that would create a fresh and new mystery approach to advertising.

Here are four mock-up videos to get the campaign's idea across:

Bald Idea 29: Ad: Who Is The Bald Guy?

There are three stages to this blog project. The first stage is the setup. The second stage is the branding. And the third stage is .... of course a secret for now.

In the setup stage the 'Bald Guy' establishes himself online. Random clips start showing up on YouTube featuring the Bald Guy doing every-day things, such as making dinner and sleeping. The clips contain no additional info, no text, no links, no music, and no sound effects. The same goes for the blog. Entries of random ideas are posted and linked to the corresponding youtube clips.

In the second stage, the Bald Guy brands himself. Each clips starts and ends with the logo, which is also the website info. The videos are no longer random one-take clips but quick and simple video illustrations of the Bald Guy's ideas. Each clip is meant to advertise a certain product or service.

In the following weeks a series of self-produced ads will be posted here, which means there will be a lot less writing but a lot more visuals. By the end of the summer, this blog experiment will reach its third stage in which the blog itself will be morphed into something else than just a blog.

Be part of this fun experiment and feel free to comment on the upcoming clips. Hey - it's for free!

Bald Idea 28: Ad: Pizza Blog

This blog entry is all about pizza. Why? Well - because I love it! My favorite pizza place here in NYC is Lombardi's in Little Italy. New York City's restaurant business is highly competitive and critics' reviews and ratings get to say who lives or dies. However, a few hardcore bloggers have established themselves as respectable food critics these days, and with the help of certain sites and iphone apps, such as urbanspoon and yelp, they found ways to reach out to the every-day pizza lover or vegan fan.

Last night, my friend John in LA contacted me through my blog and suggested I'd produce a 'bald clip' featuring the bald guy eating a slice of pizza. I figured, I'd take that to another level and make him a quick little ad for his blog instead. So, instead of writing about my idea, just watch it here:

Bald Idea 27: Ad Campaign: Twitter

Francesco, who wrote about my fictional iPhone 3GS ad on iPhoneItalia, contacted me to stay in touch. I thought that was great because I don't have to track him down now to thank him. His article's link alone gave my iPhone ad over 1,400 views on YouTube within just a few hours.

I finally joined Twitter last week and I don't hate it. It was fascinating to learn how Twitter is designed to work and connect people. It is extremely simple with very limited features, and because of that it works without flaws. It is clear to me that Twitter is just the beginning of a new era of communication and networking, and especially with the handy Twitter iphone apps, it is destined to be a huge success.

Just like Google, Twitter doesn't need advertising. Why? Because Twitter IS the advertising platform. But what if Twitter needed an ad campaign to compete with another service (kind of like Bing is competing with Google now). That is where my Bald Idea #27 comes in.

We see three fisherman sitting in a small boat under a bridge. They all look worried.

One of them looks at the other two and speaks with a trembling voice: "We're all in the same boat here."

One of the other two replies: "Look, that's all water under the bridge."

The third one shakes his head and says: "There is something fishy going on here."

A narrator says: "Noone really knows how and why some expressions are remembered."

The Twiter logo comes on.

The narrator continues: "Maybe one of yours will be."

A title fades up below logo: "Twitter.com. Express yourself."

The ad cuts to another scene. We see a man enter a rowdy bar. The man is wearing a white golfing outfit and carrying a basket full of golfing balls. He walks up to the bar and signals the bar tender for a drink.

The bar tender says: "You got a lot of balls to walk in here like that."

The ad campaign could be a series of similar scenarios using other common expressions and sayings such as "this is a piece of cake" or "driving someone up the wall" or "bend over backwards." The list goes on.

Bald Idea 26: Ad Campaign: iPhone 3GS

This is what happens when you are on a cup cake sugar rush: you can't let go of an idea!

Today's Bald Idea is a follow-up idea on my previous entry: an ad for the iPhone 3GS. For some reason, several iPhone news sites in Italy have spotted my iPhone 3GS ad on youtube and have written several articles about it. Based on the generated traffic from those sites and also based on people's positive comments (thanks to the internet I can get instant free Italian-to-English translation), I can tell I am on to something. That is worth writing a follow-up idea that I have had for a long time.

The iPhone 3GS can do pretty much anything. When its predecessor, the iPhone, came out a couple of years back, a series of fun sketches appeared on Youtube, focusing on what else the iPhone can do. The featured functions were of course all made up, such as using the iPhone to shave. But what else do you REALLY use it for?

My Bald Idea would be a fun campaign about every day situations that the iPhone is used in, but not really intended for. The campaign would be a series of unrehearsed interviews of people that are randomly picked out on the street, in a mall or in offices. They each would tell their personal story about how the iPhone helped them get through the day. For example: a young man wearing a suit tells his story: "I was sitting in an important meeting yesterday in which I had to take notes. Just as the presenter was about to go over the most important part of his presentation, my pen stopped writing. I couldn't just interrupt the meeting to get a new pen, so I pulled out my iPhone 3GS instead and used its "Voice Memo" feature to record the rest of the presentation. After the meeting, I listened to the recording and finished taking my notes."

Bald Idea 25: Commercial: iPhone 3GS

You guys were great! Yes, the turnout was more than disappointing, but - hey - this way you'll get to stand out and will be noticed! THANK YOU! Also, a very special THANK YOU to Nadia and Sylvia for making this happen!!!

Anything that Apple comes out with is simply amazing. Their products always look fresh, modern, and almost futuristic. Their ad campaigns are extremely effective by being very simple (just like their products) and easily integrated into our every day lives. However, I still feel Apple is missing the 'human touch' that so many companies are attaching to their products and services these days (best example: the Prius campaign with tons of choreographed people creating a moving 'human landscape'.) All iPhone ads, however, seem to focus on the technical features of the product only, and all we see is JUST the product (because that is Apple's approach). But I never see anyone using it or having fun with it.

So here is my Bald Idea for an iPhone 3GS ad. This time I won't write about it, but instead I created a video for it: