“The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.”
—Pablo Picasso

This is pretty interesting. Aside from it being simply a cool idea, you’ll be surprised at how ingrained your mouse-clicking reflex has become.

It’s always worth keeping an eye on what Seth Godin is up to. His latest project is Squidoo, and you can read more about it in his latest eBook (I think it’s his latest; he might have churned out two or three more this morning), Everyone’s An Expert.

What’s Squidoo do? Well, Seth says Jeff Jarvis explains it even better than he does: “Seth is trying to create a new grammar for the essential introduction to whatever. He calls it a lens and though you’ll be able to create these lenses on his Squidoo, he also is very clear that you can create a lens anywhere right now.” There’s also a charity component to Squidoo, so non-profits ought to perk up their ears, too.

A beta is underway (a bummer that I wasn’t chosen; maybe in the second round), and some sample lenses have been posted here.

Takeaway for marketers: While it’s hard to tell quite where this might be headed until it’s possible to dig in and create a lens, ignoring such a big project by Seth really isn’t an option. Pay attention to this one.

Time flies. Dammit. The latest reminder is that Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

Talk about buzz marketing: Springsteen’s legend was built on the extraordinary word of mouth generated by his incredible live performances. It’s often been said there are two kinds of people: Springsteen fans, and those who’ve never seen him in concert. Having seen him about two dozen times, I’d have to agree.

When Born To Run came out on August 25, 1975, the official release of any material from his concerts was still a decade into the future. Fans would spend months scouring independent record stores seeking bootlegs of his live shows. Finding a badly recorded third-generation tape of even one song from a Springsteen concert felt like discovering the Rosetta Stone.

Fast-forward three decades. The 30th anniversary edition of Born To Run comes out next month. It consists of a remastered CD, plus two DVDs: one a documentary on the making of the album, the other a landmark concert that’s been traded for years on bootleg vinyl and video: November 18, 1975, at the Hammersmith Odeon in London.

And the Rosetta Stone is just a click away, no scouring necessary: This link on Amazon offers the complete Hammersmith Odeon version of the title track of the album NPR declared “one of the most important American musical works of the 20th century.”

Yep, time flies. Cool.

Answer: A lot of people.

In a world where millions of people pay $1.99 for a 30-second ringtone, paying $1.99 for a commercial-free episode of your favorite hour-long television show seems like a bargain.

In a world where you can take that show stored on your iPod and play it through your 19-inch plasma computer screen, $1.99 to catch up on that episode of your favorite show that you missed seems like a bargain.

In a world where you can carry 150 hours of video in the palm of your hand, how cool would it be to be carrying 70 full-length concerts by your favorite bands that could be played in video mode and/or audio mode? (No, you can’t buy full-length concerts on iTunes … yet.)

Takeaway for marketers: Make no mistake about it, this is gonna be big.