YouTube has become the world’s largest pile of videos, sure. But for all its inter-excellence there's one thing the new tube hasn't been able to reconcile with the boob tube: channel surfing. Mindless, 2am *next...next...next...* channel surfing. You know, the kind that invariably ended up on Skin-a-max, HSN, or some bizzarro japanese gameshow...

Yes, it's true! Believe it or not, POKE NY stepped into the world just over a year ago now! We've come a long way in a year — learning to walk, mumbling our first words... Go ahead, you can say it, "Awww, they grow up so fast."

As you can see from the shot above, we've filled out a little bit since our first days. Though, to be fair, we've welcomed some friends to share a corner of our space. Ya know, just to keep things interesting.

You can have a look at what we've accomplished over the last year by clicking through to our portfolio. We've poured our hearts, along with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, into our first year of work. We've redefined the way that people shop online with Teroforma. We've been told how people like to Keep Life Sexy. We've even won an award for innovative design with our work for BBC's Love Earth. And, of course, our POKE Cam has received plenty of love. Overall, not a bad start for a bunch of passionate geeks doing what we love. And fear not, we've got plenty more lined up to make the upcoming year even more exciting than our first!

So, what did we do to celebrate our first year? Well, we thought about cupcakes, but those just didn't seem to do it. We debated grabbing a beer or two, but we do that every Thursday (and we've been joined by some amazing people along the way!). We considered doing something fun like driving go-carts, but they told us no-way after looking at our driving histories. So instead, we closed the office, threw everyone in a bus, and went away for a weekend. The POKE NY 1-year anniversary party was held on Block Island. That sleepy oceanside retreat never knew what hit them, especially when we spent an afternoon racing around the island on mopeds during our very own POKE scavenger hunt. Some Pokers even wore lipstick for the event — they had to keep life sexy!

And, of course, we're never without a camera handy. We've documented our adventures over the last year in the POKE NY Flickr Group. Feel free to take a spin through it if you'd like to see how we've grown up. And don't be shy! Swing by the POKE Cam and say "Oh Hai!" sometime.

SynchStep, meet world.  World, meet SynchStep!

SynchStep is a fun and easy experimental way to plays songs from your music library that match your pace.  That means when you're out struttin your stuff down "My Favorite Street", every step you take lands in-time with a drum hit, a bass slap, a piano chord.  It's kind of like being in your own music video, where your your music becomes the soundtrack to your life.  Ya, it's just like a your own music video, except you don't have to pay 3 hundo to some smug director and let his smarmy crew use your bathroom.

The idea behind SynchStep was to create an interface-less device.  See, each person has a unique gait, and SynchStep is built to adapt to your individual walking style.  It doesn't require people to wrap themselves around bizarre, non-ergonomic devices (keyboards?  are you listening?).

Originally SychStep was really a hand-made, custom built MP3-player. The experimental interface didn't even have a display - only an on-off switch.  It was given to people from age 10 to 65 to play with. Without explaining the device to any of them, each tester was told to go for a walk.  Surprisingly, everyone got it, probably because the "user interface" is really the user's body. Unfortunately, it was tough to hand out hundreds of hand-made, fragile gadgets that cost $250 each and countless hours of sanding and cursing.   

Then along came the iPhone and iPod Touch, both packed with all the hardware needed to run SynchStep.  This meant that if SynchStep was re-written, it could be given to everyone who had one of these little gadgets.  So, SynchStep was rebuilt from the ground-up to run on this new, shiny platform.  

While eventually SynchStep will be available to everyone for free, it's currently available only as a private beta.  It's being tested pretty intensely to make sure it's a great experience.  

The final version will be a one-stop shop, with minimal setup required.  Installing SynchStep will make you happier, wealthier, and more satisfied*

*SynchStep in no way promises to make you happier, wealthier or more satisfied.

Quietly last night on the LES, a new baby was born here at POKE New York. The labor was intense (I believe I heard someone say "passing a watermelon throught a garden hose is easier"? But it's Alpha...

It's live. It's called Teroforma. And we'd love you to start playing with it.

Poke was contracted last Fall to begin ideation in collaboration with a few great folks from Norwalk, CT on a new kind of tableware company. This brand, its values, its vision and its identity were all born here at 44 Bond street. In October of last year we even launched the Tero blog (http://blog.teroforma.com) to detail and track our progress bringing this new brand and company to life. And now - it's time for Teroforma.com to launch and start selling product.

Click this link to chat with POKE live at live.pokenewyork.com

It started out pretty simple. A live feed in front of the “Don’t give up” sign. If you show up and don’t see anyone, you can ring the POKE-bell to see if you can coax a Poker in front of the camera. It all sounds good…however, the constant ringing of the POKE-bell by excited internetters sometimes makes us a wittle crazy.

We're still amazed by how many cool interactions we’ve had with people on the site. Job interviews, new business conversations, chats with loved ones and even magazine interviews! It's funny, sometimes we'll log in after hours and people will be up there just talking away. About the darndest things.

It's really become an ongoing experiment. Truth be told, we didn’t really have a plan for adding the webcam - just some messing around a little with Red5 - then came the added chat feature. Before we knew it, people actually started using it. Lots.

Even a year into it's existence, our little cam still has a few bugs but boy has it really been a fun ride. Below are some funny highlights to check out:

• High_five gave us our first ever ASCII Shout Out.
• POKE friend, David Armano dropped by and we just shot the breeze. Then he very kindly blogged us at Logic+Emotion’s after playing with us for a bit.
• The folks at pocketfuzz.com took turns with us turning our cameras and touring around our respective offices. They've got a great pad!
• We've received heaps of responses to our webcam driven recruitment campaign.
• The cam even caught Data Bananna filming his pilot show!

The cam has most recently found redefinition as the masthead of our new and improved Pokenewyork.com. But fear not! Follow the link "live" link above to be taken to the cam/chat experience in all its glory.

Ok.

We didn’t shoot this one. But it needed to be shared. We’re doing some work with KY. They have a street team going around in an RV giving out free samples and taking pictures of people in their selection of…props. Nedim, Scott, and Ray seemed to enjoy, so if you see the KY truck don’t hesitate to check it out!

Hey you.

Yeah, You. That brand that is beholden to terrible interactive media buying and pointless bannerdom.

Right...YOU.

The one who gets giddy with excitement at your last .064 CTR.

It is time to go. Now. Read this.

Better yet. Skip that. Read THIS.

Still not getting the picture? Howzabout this:

A study released Tuesday found that about half of all clicks on display ads were by a tiny, non-representative, and economically unattractive group of Web users. These "natural-born clickers," according to the study by ad agency Starcom USA, Web analytics firm Tacoda, and digital audience measurement firm comScore, comprise a 6% slice of the population that is between 25 and 44 years old and in households with income of less than $40,000 a year.

Don't get us wrong, we measure 2x and cut once and all that.  We'll even do a banner or two every now and again. Especially if it brings a valuable experience with it. But banners are definitly moving into more of a supporting role. And if they are - how's that going to help you if a less than generally less than desireable target is the only person you're attracting?

Hey there. This just seems like a fun community idea, and a good motivation to put your profile online.

They’re making a huge jigsaw puzzle of portraits of people from all over the world. I uploaded my photo and set a profile today. Pretty neat. You can link your photo/profile to other people and aggregate groups of Openpuzzlers into themes.

It seems to me its the kind of thing a Classmates.com or Facebook or Reunion brand should have done. Even though I don’t know anyone up there yet - I can see how powerful it would be to use the grouping feature and group my photo with those I work with, those I worked with a few years ago as well as my high school or college classmates. All in all its a more experiential way to link up to new peeps and to get in touch with old friends and acquaintances.

Try this to start discovering: Head to Openpuzzle and do a search. My name is under “Tom Ajello” so I guess you can start there. There’s also some interesting advanced search functions such as the vicinity search to find peeps locally.

Bummer: As far as I can tell - I can’t deep link you to my section of the map or my profile. Not sure why. Hopefully that get revised. Forgetting something that silly will ruin the Organic on this thing…

Peece.

These got hidden away on my other camera for a while and I forgot about them…until yesterday. Poke held our own Secret Santa exchange over the holidays. The goodies ranged from DVD’s to funky books to race cars to…Bananmus Prime!

POKE welcomes the new Dell (PRODUCT) RED site to the world. With (PRODUCT) RED stuff, you’re still buying something you wanted all along, only this time part of the money from the sale goes straight to the Global Fund to help people with AIDS in Africa. ($80 if you buy the XPS ONE, which equates to months anti-retroviral treatments for one person). I hope they sell a bucket load - the more they sell, the more money goes to the people who need it.

Hats off to everyone who worked on this project: Chuck, Zolty, Richard and Noodle

This past week, for one day only, we ran a spot for the XPS1730 notebook, shipping with GRAW2 and the AGEIA PhysX card. It’s simple, gets the job done, and lets you shoot a big gun. Props to Chuck, Hess and Zolty for getting this puppy blowing tanks up.

See it in action at the Poke Playgound.

This is what we looked like a scant coupla months ago. It was skateboarding heaven (for anyone who could skateboard).

This is what we look like now.

They needed some warm bodies to talk about email snafus - Poke Benny and Poke Nikki raised their nervous little hands and volunteered. It got me thinking about digital communication, and in particular Spam.

For some reason, I’ve started reading my spam. I don’t know if it’s related to the iPhone displaying it and not letting me mark things as read, or if I am just disappointed with the amount of email I receive and need to feel like I receive more.

Either way I don’t care. Spam intrigues me more than where your lap goes when you stand up (seriously, what is it when it’s gone?)

I just love the way some Spam weaves random phrases from books into its body, or uses an intriguing subject line, such as “Resplendent boy”. Beautiful.

And I have to share my all-time favorite spam. I shall treasure it forever.

I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog if medicine prices here (link removed) are bad.

Look, the site and call me 1-800-XXXXXX) if its wrong.

My dog and I are still alive :)

Now, let’s ignore the killing oneself before carrying out the threat of the canine eating and go straight to the smiley face. It can’t remember a time when a smiley face has ever felt so menacing. Every time I read it, I can see the magazine cover with the gun pointed at the dog’s head. Smiley faces are supposed to help indicate your tone, but this one throws me right off.

Also, spammers are great communicators. They think about subject lines more than anyone - a key to effective communication via email. As a copywriter, subject lines are something I’ve toiled and stomped on for quite a while. But that’s for clients. Do I put as much thought into subject lines with friends or co-workers?

Upon reflection I realize that I have, on occasion, used them in evil ways. I’ve used a subject line as a smoke shield to the grenade I’ve hidden inside. Actually, I’ve hit the send button while miming the action of pulling out the pin and throwing the grenade over my cubicle. But that was in the old days of cubicle land. POKE is an open room. A loud, yelling, echo-ey room.

Will told me you should never write something in an email that you wouldn’t say to the person’s face. What about to a person’s back? Is that close enough?

Anyway, here’s the thought for the day.

If we think of the concept of email as a goat, aren’t we just spray painting the word ‘scape’ on it? Isn’t it possible that cubicle land, the bunkering down of people in their offices, or whizzing off missives on their Blackberries on the bus, that these are the real culprits in this communication battle? People, why can’t you all just step away from the machines and talk to the dude sitting next to you? (And I mean you, not me because I ain’t steppin’ away from anything and I don’t like to talk to people face-to-face.)

Why can’t we just all get alongsies?

Poke Ponderation Ends Here
Got a disaster story about an email exploding in your sweaty little hands? Head on over to Will’s blog and share.