Blogger Play Shows Us the Non-U.S. World

Click for high def

Art Director originally from Mumbai living in Dubai

Almost a month ago I ran I Can't Stop Watching, introducing Blogger Play.

I said:

See a photo you think cool? Hit the stop button. Click on the photo. The blog the photo came from pops up in the next tab. Stunning.

I'm tempted to throw up another monitor simply to scroll these photos 24/7. But then I'd never get any work done.

My highest recommendation. (Instantly Addictive.)

Now those Blogger bastards have made it even easier to use.

Blogger Buzz

Have you been enjoying Blogger Play? We introduced it here last month and so far it’s been mesmerizing viewers across the Internet with the latest photos as they’re uploaded to Blogger blogs.

Today we’re letting you take Blogger Play with you to your iGoogle homepage with the Blogger Play Google Gadget:

Click the button to get Play on your homepage!

We also took the opportunity to add keyboard control to the big version of Blogger Play: spacebar plays and pauses, and the left and right arrow keys move backwards and forwards.

I hate Blogger so much right now. Somehow I managed to avoid this evil, evil program and NOT put up a dedicated monitor just to run photographs around the clock.

I know it probably sounds as if I'm making a joke ...and I am... but also, not so much. This program is a threat to me. I really can spend hours watching it flow. Slapping it up on a 30 inch monitor in the living room with simple keypad controls for guests on a curving pedestal, is my idea of a beautiful interactive art exhibit.

(I'm a little surprised Blogger hasn't given us a blog-friendly version yet, one we can slide directly in to our code, just as we do YouTubes and Google Maps.)

Recently, when I find myself simply uninspired by any of the political news of the day, and I don't want to put up a YouTube, and the many thoughtful stories I have from you, our readers -- keep them coming! write, write!! -- just aren't doing it for me, I've been turning on Blogger Play and letting the photographs stream by.

When I see something I like, I click through and start poking around. This takes me to blogs I'd never see on my own.

Yesterday I saw a piece by an Art Director (an advertising person) in Dubai go by. Dubai?

I found the piece compelling, and stopped the photo stream.

Here's what the 30 year-old Satyen Adhikari says about himself:

Chronicles of the ridiculous

Satyen Adhikari

Dubai, United Arab Emirates
I'm an Art Director originally from Mumbai living in Dubai for the last 3 years. I'm currently with Ogilvy One Worldwide. The majority of the work published on this blog has been conceptualized by me.

Anyone who isn't American has no trouble realizing there's an entire world with people who do art, science, medicine, and everything else. Americans are insular. We Americans just don't get we're 3% of the world's population. Oh we'll say we get it if you press us, but in our gut we all think we're #1, and that them foreigners with their colored skins, the languages we don't speak, and the accents we can't understand their English through (which they'd damn well better speak), means everyone else is just plain stupid. We know in our hearts we will always be able to out perform everyone else when it counts.

Sixty years ago when the U.S. was the most powerful country in the world and had just won World War II, perhaps this knowledge, knowing other countries and people mattered, knowing it deep-down in our gut as a matter of reflex like knowing not to go into certain neighborhoods or you'd get your ass kicked, didn't matter.

Now it assuredly does.

Spread throughout this post -- click on the pieces to see full-size -- are advertising works by Mr. Adhikari, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which any New York, London or Paris agency would be happy to present to their clients. AND MIGHT BE. With Mr. Adhikari on a video-link from Dubai. After all, Mr. Adhikari works for OgilvyOne Worldwide.

It's the quality of the work, the competency of the performer.

Feel that warm breeze on your neck? The person behind you increasingly doesn't look like you.

Get used to it.

Want to see what the world is really doing?

People pour their hearts out in their blogs as perhaps no where else.

Watch the time zones sweep across the ever-turning globe in Blogger Play, as people post their families, their life, and their work.

The most artistic work isn't even close to coming from the United States.

Beautiful world... and increasingly, not dominated from North America.