Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve been traveling the world for almost three years now and previously wrote how America is different from the rest of the world. From eating pizza to the metric system and more it’s really a different world out there. Here are some more differences that travel has revealed:

Football vs. soccer — First of all, Americans can’t even figure out what to call the most popular sport in the world. Somehow American football, where only the punter and kicker actually put their foot on the ball, came to be called football while the sport where athletes mostly use their feet is called soccer. Despite American kids starting play in organized soccer leagues in the pre-natal phase of their lives, America still isn’t too good at soccer. That doesn’t stop the country from watching the sport for a week every four years during the World Cup. That is of course until America gets ousted from the tournament yet again with a country whose population is the size of Pittsburgh.

Guns — Other than Middle Eastern cities undergoing a revolution where it seems like half the population is armed with AK-47s, America leads the world in gun ownership. It seems odd in a country that is relatively safe but there are an estimated 300 million guns floating around the U.S. Since only about 30 percent of Americans own guns, those who do so are heavily armed. In an odd anomaly, the country with the third highest rate of gun ownership is Switzerland, which could explain how all those holes got in their cheese.

Road trips — We’ve road-tripped on six continents and America is the best country on earth to hop into a car and explore. From old Route 66 to the Loneliest Road in America in Nevada, there are some fantastic spots to experience vintage America. You can even sleep in a wigwam along the way.

Window screens — Americans love throwing open the windows and letting in some fresh air. They can do this secure in the knowledge that they will not become an instant meal for mosquitoes and other flying critters. Not so in the rest of the world where window and door screens have yet to make an appearance. We often wonder why this is so. Someone out there who is more entrepreneurial than we could make a fortune selling screens to Europeans and others, or perhaps they prefer sitting indoors swatting at flies. We certainly know that Americans don’t.

Whole chicken in a can — We’ve seen canned lamb tongues in New Zealand and things we couldn’t pronounce in Southeast Asia, but what other country would have the absolute ingenuity to come up with not just chicken in a can but a whole chicken? Somehow this one will make us sing the National Anthem just a little bit louder come this 4th of July.

Peanut butter & ketchup — Americans eat the bulk of the world’s peanut butter and ketchup. (No, not at the same time.) Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are an American treat that is misunderstood in the rest of the world. We even saw an ad on a bus in Sydney, Australia mocking Americans for eating PB&J sandwiches, which is rich coming from a country that considers Vegemite to be a major food group. As for ketchup, it really does make just about everything better, well except for my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Big meals — American-sized portions are just that, the size of this vast country. From the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas (where people over 350 pounds eat free) to all-you-can-possibly-eat buffets, we know how to load up our gullets. When it comes to the most obese countries, America is #1. (Followed surprisingly by China.)

Cheap gas — We love our big cars and we love our cheap gas. Even though gas is relatively cheap in America, it’s the one item that causes major news alerts when the price goes up. Maybe that’s because every intersection with a gas station has the price posted prominently as opposed to say, a gallon of milk, which most people couldn’t tell you what it costs. By the way, the price of milk goes up too but that doesn’t seem to cause a major gasp in the collective psyche when it does.

Travel to Cuba — We’ve traveled to North Korea but somehow as Americans not named Beyonce and Jay Z, we are not allowed to hop a plane and visit Cuba, a country only 90 miles from our shores. Americans may only visit Cuba as part of an organized “educational” tour but are not permitted to leave the group and explore on their own. We’ve had this embargo on the country since 1960 to rid the country of the Castro regime. I don’t think it’s worked.

Clothes dryers — It’s a known fact that on a per capita basis Americans use a major chunk of the world’s energy. Ninety-eight percent of this difference is probably due to clothes dryers, which are rarely found in the rest of the world. Oh they exist, but dryers overseas seem to just tumble the clothes around for hours and hope the moisture just tires out and gives up.

What other differences have you noted between America and the rest of the world?

In 2011 Larissa and Michael Milne quit their jobs, sold their house and gave away their possessions to travel around the world with a Rocky statue. (Yo, they’re from Philly.) They are still on the road and write about their journey on their award-winning travel blog at Changes in Longitude.

A mystery man is on a mission to bring a little joy and a lot of high-fives to Canadian commuters.

The anonymous man has reportedly been appearing on light rail trains throughout the past month and walking the train cars delivering high-fives and smiles to the sometimes bewildered, but ultimately cooperative passengers, according to The Calgary Herald.

Alex Maissan, who saw the high-fiver in action on Monday, told the Calgary Herald, “You feel a little awkward at first, but once you do it you feel pretty great.”

One witness recorded an encounter with the friendly dude and uploaded it to YouTube last week, saying “I’ve heard of him, but hadn’t seen him until today. He announced on the train that he would be walking through and hoping to high-five everyone to make them smile.” The witness also wrote that the man told a joke and introduced people to one another.

High-fives never get old, and they are a surefire way to perk up your day. Check out this video of a man roaming a college campus in search of high-fives, and this list of some of the most epic high-fives of all time.

h/t Reddit

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A Chicago woman was grazed by a bullet Wednesday morning after a handgun was left unattended on a city bus seat.

Police say the woman was riding the No. 47 bus on the city’s Southwest Side when her neighbor, who was riding the bus with her, picked up the gun after it fell to the floor, ABC Chicago reports. The man reportedly thought the .22 caliber pistol was a toy.

When the gun fired, a bullet ricocheted off the floor and struck the woman in the thigh, though it didn’t pierce her skin. According to ABC, she refused medical attention and left the scene limping.

Officials have designated the incident as an accident but are working to locate the pistol’s owner, according to NBC Chicago.

Though guns are not allowed on public transit in Chicago under the state’s new concealed carry law, weapons have turned up there multiple times in recent days. In a separate incident last Thursday, a city bus driver confiscated a gun that apparently belonged to an individual involved in a fracas captured on cell phone video, the Chicago Tribune reports. The incident is under police investigation.

Wednesday the Chicago City Council unanimously approved Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s strict new gun store law that would require retailers to videotape all purchases of firearms and limit sales to one gun per month per buyer. Gun rights advocates have said the plan is tantamount to a ban and a court challenge is expected.

I have a quote on my desk by the iconic 20th century photographer Ansel Adams, whose beautiful and meticulously crafted landscapes are breathtaking tributes both to the beauty of the American west and the power of flawlessly executed art. While his photos appear to capture and represent the spectacular power of pure nature, seemingly untouched by modern man, Adams used large-format cameras for high resolution, filters to highlight contrasts, and the Zone System, a technique he pioneered to achieve the best film exposure and development.

“There is nothing worse,” Adams said, “than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”

Wise words for marketers and communications experts these days.

In this age of almost unfathomable depth and accuracy of measurement, we are able to capture sharper images of audience, reach, interaction and engagement than ever before. With real-time analysis, brands are now able to inform their communications and marketing initiatives with extreme precision.

So why must we wade through so many fuzzy concepts?

Perhaps it is because there is a big difference between information and insight. And while insight is what everybody claims to want, it is information that many organizations are drawn to in an attempt to increase their odds for success.

Who can blame them? They are suddenly competing and engaging in more markets, on more platforms, with more people than ever before. If they are told that there is a tool that will exponentially increase their ability to understand and speak authentically with their increasingly diverse and dispersed stakeholders, how could they possibly pass on that opportunity?

My frustration rests more with the communications professionals and brand managers whose passion, faith and wishful thinking for measurement is eclipsing their ability to think strategically. And who are downgrading the value of creativity, insight and strategy by overselling the capabilities of what are essentially just tools. Amazing, powerful tools — but only as useful as the minds that employ them and the insights and actions they inform.

Still, some agencies and organizations are like an over-equipped armies whose generals believe there is a military solution to every problem. Resources have been allocated, on both the client and agency sides, to develop, procure and employ these tools. So dammit, we are going to use them.

And we should use them. Not the other way around.

I love the power and efficiency of digital measurement, but I am beginning to fear that too much information is not inspiring insights, and driving greater levels of creativity and boldness, but rather drowning them in rising floodwaters of data.

With such incredible tools of research and discovery now readily available, there is the expectation that every idea can and must be reduced to quantifiable fact to ensure success. And if an idea can’t — if it is too new, too strange, too risky — then it is smarter and safer to go with the idea that can be justified with data.

We want the tools to do the critical thinking for us. And that is just not how it works.

The magic — and power — of unexpected and well-executed creativity is in its ability to surprise and amaze. Rarely does that spark survive when it is forced to consist of and conform to the sum total of its parts. When the expectation is that everything can be clearly quantified, the goal is to leave no room for error. Instead, it often leaves no room for surprise.

The elimination of surprises — pleasant and unpleasant alike — may be in some way reassuring to the most devout digital fanatics, and the brand managers who have fallen under their spells. But it is utter, dreary tedium for consumers — and a veritable death knell for the kind of passionate, deeply resonant engagement that forges lifelong relationships with brands.

When metrics and measurement drive the creative process rather than inform it, they quickly become a weak proxy for insightful, inspired thinking. Adams passionately understood the critical need for technical expertise — but in the service of creative vision, not at the expense of it. If we don’t maintain that same careful balance as we hurtle towards ever-greater levels of innovation and precision, we could easily see the stunning panoramas of great brands slowly reduced to an endless series of hastily snapped, uninspiring digital snapshots.

 Today at Google’s I/O developer conference, Android Wear was a central topic of discussion. The LG G Watch was one of the devices on display, and it’s going live for pre-order at around 4:30 PM PT today. The Android-powered wearable device is set to retail for $229 and ship to buyers starting July 7, but I got a chance to use it early at a special press event today. Read More