Our close proximity to NYC definitely has its benefits such as having easy access to pop-up galleries and events such as this past weekend's Gizmodo Gallery. If you're not familiar with Gizmodo, it's pretty much THE blog to go to for entertaining and informative insights on tech and gadgets.

The guys over at Giz decided to display the best of Gizmodo for the general techy public. They gathered up "the biggest and best from this year, strange tech from the far reaches of the world and prototypes from the dawn of the electronic age" and set up shop at the Reed Annex in the Lower East Side. They then looped the gallery idea in with a Toys for Tots fundraiser and let the fun begin!

Head to their site for a full list of items displayed and check out N-GEN's highlights below:

The biggest attention grabber was most definitely the 103-in plasma screen, but then again, it was hard to miss. The giant plasma displayed Mars in 3D, an ultra-high def virtual reality panorama from photographer Joergen Geerds, and video games galore. Other notables included the Back to the Future-modded DeLorean, which one homeless passerby touted as "the original bat mobile" that "could smoke any *expletive* cop car in this city, yo!," a live "Will it Blend?" demo of a charged iPhone (which resulted in a minor explosion), and the amazingly clear-pictured, yet equally expensive 11-in OLED TV from Sony.

Over at Social CMS Buzz, there's an intriguing list of sites built on Drupal - some of which I wouldn't have guessed (Mission Metallica? Looks like custom Flash all the way to my eyes).
Social CMS Buzz article

Here's a link to Drupal founder Dries Buytaert's more extensive - and more informative - list.

I'm excited about this - it's happening at the same time as the AIIM-OnDemand show, so I'll get to go to both:

Drupalcon is being held at the same time/place as AIIM International Exposition & Conference, the largest content management technology conference in North America. Though technically independent of each other, the Boston team is working to arrange some cross-event access. The goal: introduce Drupal to thousands of potential new Drupalers.

Drupal is a powerful open-source system for building community-based web sites.

We're using it to power this blog, and I've also begun using it to build some in-house utilities for N-GEN.

Here are some projects I've done in Drupal:

• http://xinetusersgroup.org
• http://coveredincathair.com
• http://ngenroom.n-genstudios.com

Drupal is built in PHP with a MySQL database. I'm running it on Linux but it'll work on Windows and Mac OSX hosts as well. The community is extremely stroing and quite responsive. The system is highly modular, and has inspired me to consider building a website toolkit for our own projects, modeled on the Drupal approach. This is as yet a pipe dream, but stay tuned.

Drupal has been featured in Packt Publishing's CMS awards for several years running, and this year won the Overall Open Source CMS award.

More info here and here.

TracyLocke's Joanna Peña-Bickley is #15 on the Silicon Alley People's Choice list!

Congrats to Joanna, who's been an insightful commentator on our business as long as I've been reading her.

People's Choice Link

Joanna's Blog

Follow-up article from Logic + Emotion on the question "Should Digital Agencies be Blogging?"

A quick read through the post and comments will be worthwhile, I promise.

Quote:

For me it comes up to this: Will you take advice of an accountant or a lawyer that only read some articles but never done any work themselves? So why take advice from a marketer that never blogged before. (You all know about Coke Zero and Sony psp flogs). I believe you have to practice what you preach. The first thing I've done in FRANk was to start a company blog. It's not much and we didn't "find our voice" yet but I think all this will come. The critical thing is to be part of the conversation as soon as you can. Because if you're not, well, you're talking to yourself.

Link

Original poll here.

OK, this is fun - a little off-topic, but it's Friday.

Background: earlier this week, Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired, made a stand against foolish PR hacks who were sending him releases without thinking about whether he might be interested, or even if he was the right person to contact at Wired. He went so far as to post the email addresses of the offenders on his blog, and has vowed never to accept another email from any of them (or anyone else who so offends). More on that here.

Now, it seems the PR a-hats are trying to steal each other's customers (their marketing pitch is "We're not on Anderson's list").

Here's a nice exchange:

7:18pm, Handelsman to Blinn

I am going to hire someone to stand outside your office... 5k commission on new business to your staff, plus a 20% raise just to leave with your clients.You made my night. And yes, I am forwarding to all of your clients your note that you don't work late or hard... thanks... I do.

7:25, Blinn to Handelsman

If you do make sure she is good looking? Maybe she can hand out a one sheet on how not to get blackballed by the media.

Read more on Silicon Alley Insider here

Great piece from David Armano of Critical Mass about Agencies in the blogosphere.

Favorite quote:

Blogging forces you to refine what you believe in and gives clients and peers a peek into the heart and soul of your firm.

I would take conversation and community over Flash and glitz any day.

Logic+Emotion: Should Digital Agencies Be Blogging?

And check out the Publicis blog here.

What do you get when you make a widget that contains a feed from a blog? A Blidget.
(Slightly) more info here

Have a look at the N-GEN Room blidget link to the right - it allows you to add our feed to your blog, your Facebook page, or any one of numerous other locations supported by Widgetbox.