I was walking through the East Village the other day when a dark sticker triggered a strong memory in me.  Someone had decided to slap a One Eyed Doll sticker on a pipe jutting out of a building and the second I saw it I was transported to another place.

I'd written about One Eyed Doll back in 2007 when I was writing my way to some extra college cash with music reviews and feature stories.  I talked to Tyrese, interviewed Paramore before they were on anyone's radar, and rubbed elbows with rappers.  But there was nothing like the simple pleasure of receiving a CD in the mail.

One Eyed Doll was one of the artists that sent me a CD, and then when I wrote about her she followed up with a handwritten note thanking me along with a short stack of stickers.  The same sticker I saw pegged to the pipe just a couple days back.  

In honor of the romance of it all, I decided to do a quick search and dig up what I wrote about her three years ago.  It's funny the way we change and develop as writers but keep pieces of our voice close and consistent.

You can find the article below:

"One-Eyed Doll is dirty, corrupt, and dangerously sweet. Her dark, humid rock tantalizes heavy metal fans and grants entrance to the mainstream with bustling popular harmonies. Adorned with humungous guitar riffs and Kimberly Freeman's sugared girlish voice, the debut album Hole will send you into a fit of pleasurable desolation.

One-Eyed Doll doesn't hesitate to reveal what's on her mind. Her candied voice praises suicide and Prozac, and sends and ode to needles in a mental hospital. To contrast the disturbed images of desperation, One-Eyed Doll also stands strong for what she believes.

She won't tolerate players, abuse, or hypocritical America. Freeman stands strong against an ex in "Scapegoat." The track is introduced with a plucking guitar progression before drums slide into the background as the track oscillates between slow composure and raging intolerance.

"And I'm not your scapegoat, / And I'm not your punching bag, / And I won't be sorry, / Cause I'm the best thing that you'll never have," Freeman fumes. "Scapegoat" has all the elements of the sweet and anti-authoritarian Avril Lavigne at her best. Only Kimberly Freeman takes on this role naturally, while it seems Avril has to strive to achieve the disaffected image.

The assailing side of One-Eyed Doll attacks listeners with "Suicide Serenade." We become acquainted to this track with the first four notes of the "Star Spangled Banner." Just as a singer might say "see," the guitars scream with fierce anger before coming to a close. Then a pop beat combines with Freeman's sweetest voice to bop a repetition of "Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy America!" The track quickly teeters back to harsh metal and descriptions of people falling to their graves.

"Master" broadcasts the artsy side of Kimberly Freeman's work. The subtle track holds an aura of slow paced surrealism. A sample of laughing and screaming kids quietly decorates the track as the simple track radiates with raw beauty. The quirky side of One-Eyed Monster reveals itself in "Hoochie Mama." Scott Sutton, who appears as a frequent guest throughout Hole, shines on the drums during this track. Sutton slams the percussion while changing tempo and rhythm. Freeman's intelligent and playful lyrics refuse to allow a seedy man to think he has a chance with her.

"You think it should be easy to get in my pants. Well it took me five minutes to put these things on, I can hardly breathe let alone be turned on," Freeman seethes. "And I don't want to hear your new death metal riff," she adds to drive home her disinterest. Disturbing yet wonderfully addictive, One-Eyed Doll proves that Kimberly Freeman is the foul, daring girl that every man wants but won't necessarily get.

The Austin-based artist won't let men control her, and she's certainly not taking anybody's foolishness. One-Eyed Doll would prefer control your emotions with her hook laden tracks, incredible voice, and diverse range."

And I thought I had it made in luxury, eCommerce, and online communities.  This study is a riot.  Apparently finding the male volunteers was the most difficult part of their research.

One of my favorite quotes from an accompanying article on the topic:

"Curiously, faster bending and twisting movements of the right knee also seemed to catch the eyes of women. As a potential explanation, the researchers noted that 80 percent of all people are right-footed, so most people "are putting their weight on their left leg and using that leg as an anchor while the right can do more fancy things," Neave suggested. "It is a bit of an odd finding, so we need more studies to see if this feature is replicated."'

The world really is a magical place.

Phone Wars: Native vs Mobile Apps  Deciding whether to allocate your resources into mobile apps or a mobile web experience is one of the toughest questions in mobile today and it has everything to do with Wired's recent The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet.  This is one of the best examinations of the question I've seen in a long time, but I can't help but wonder when we'll have a more definitive answer.

Should We Listen to Futurists or are They Leading Us to the Nerdocalypse? Ray Kurzweil says we'll know the answer to that question by 2045. 

QR Codes: Are You Ready for Paper Based Hyperlinks? A solid list of how companies are getting creative and using QR codes to their advantage.

On Retargeting: Fix the Conversation An interesting suggestion on how we could take a tip from Facebook in creating more effective and user friendly retargeting strategies.  My first reaction was, "Genius, but so difficult."  Turns out TellApart implemented a mockup of John Battelle's suggestion with in the week.  Amazing.

I've never been sure whether it was a good thing or not, but I've always read voraciously in some sort of fleeting effort to pack my mind with as much wonder and knowledge as possible.  As far back as I can remember it's been like some sort or race against the clock, and I want to maximize every moment.  

Until the internet came around reading was a mostly solitary activity, but the rise of link sharing has left me yearning to share a piece of nearly everything I find fascinating or well written.  And so in an effort to share (and actually blog more), I've decided to start a reading series.  

These posts will include the highlights, the life changers, and the reads that have meant the most to me as of late.  So welcome to the reading series and I hope you enjoy.

The image above is a picture of Bethlehem. I found it looking for a display ad and had to find a place to share it.

A Bird App That Adapts on the Fly This app integrates live information feeds so birdwatchers know what they're likely to see in their area at any given time.  These are the kinds of apps we will come to expect in the future, and the people who figure out how to retrieve influxes of data intelligently will win.

The Rise and Fall of Quicksand I thoroughly enjoyed this read on culture and quicksand and then (admittedly) watched the finale of True Blood.  When one of the characters was getting buried in cement I couldn't help but wonder, "Is this the quicksand of the industrialized world?"

Hotel Boss Taps China's Luxury Market A good read for anyone interested in the China luxury market, but what stuck with me most was the part where The Regent claims that their guests spend a majority of their time in the hotel room's bathroom.

Booyah's MyTown just started implementing product check ins to its 2.5 million user base, adding a bit of Foursquare-like functionality to their app.  Scanning item barcodes earn users points and the potential for real life perks, giving retailers the ability to track consumer patterns, geo-local info and more.

TheNextWeb praised the value of this kind of data, but said that MyTown will both suffer and reap the rewards of needing to stay tied to physical location.  As it stands, app owners need to actually scan the barcodes on the products they want to track, meaning they have to be standing in an actual store to check in. This plays into the geo-location trend well, but if I were MyTown I would be looking beyond the strings of physicality.

I will admit I have never played MyTown's Monopoly like game and so I don't know the gameplay implications of adding virtual checkins, but let's put gameplay aside for the sake of spelling out the huge e-commerce opportunity here:

Imagine if product check ins could also take place online.  Any participating retailer could add something like a QR code badge to their online product pages so that users could check in with online retailers as well as in physical stores.  Retailers could gather a more complete data set for where consumers are discovering and lusting after products and with every online partnership MyTown gains increased visibility.  

At first people would see the badge on product pages and wonder, possibly downloading the app and jumping on board.  Then, if the app delivers on its promises, people get hooked, more retailers join the bandwagon, and virtual MyTown badges become the e-commerce version of Facebook's Like buttons on the web.  Looks like MyTown could be poised to Run This Town Tonight.

Dear Time Inc, Hearst, Conde Nast, Here Media, Meredith, and all the rest of the magazine publishers moving to the iPad,

I get almost a dozen magazines delivered to my door and read almost every issue cover to cover, coveting old issues until I have time to go back to them.  Conde Nast, Time Inc, Here Media Inc, I am your ideal customer, your fanatic, and the person who said that no matter how thin the issues get and how much the media world suffered, I would always find a way to get my New York and New Yorker on Mondays, as well as another magazine almost every other day of the week.   I'm one of the magazine readers that boosts "the average time a person spends with a magazine is 45 minutes" statistic (as well as a bevy of other statistics).  I take all your surveys, I renew on time, I talk about your finest articles, and I feel cheated.

Time, Wired, and a few others who have moved to the iPad, you are leaving your subscribers out of your media revolution.  Wired Magazine's June issue has reached the iPad for $4.99 and after they had to go back to the drawing boards because of Flash incompatibility issues, I'm dying to know what it looks like.  Not only because I'm a Wired fanatic, but because I care about the future of publishing and want to know what at least a part of the future is becoming.  

I do not though, believe that I should have to subscribe to the print version of the magazine and then buy every issue from the app store at newsstand prices.  I understand that the app needs to make money and we're trying to teach people that good journalism is not free.  These are important points, but did you completely forget your loyal subscribers when you moved to the iPad?  What happened to acknowledging and rewarding the customer who has paid to be a part of your brand for years?

Maybe I'm out of line.  Maybe I should have to pay full price for every version of the magazine that I read but I won't.  In my ideal world, when I got my iPad I imagined having the flexibility of a tangible magazine first thing in the morning and last at night, with the portability of access to the same words on my iPad on the go.  I imagined that I would be able to enjoy your media property as a full brand experience that just gets better as technology advances.

But now I must choose.  

Instead of having me on both sides, reading the magazine like I have for years and then showing off the crisp reading experience of Wired on the iPad to everyone I ever see, I'm frustrated.  I'm your loyal fan, your influencer, the customer who will spread word of mouth recommendations to people who trust me, and you just lost me a little bit.  

There's still a chance to change.  Email your subscribers a promo code for a certain number of free issues on the iPad, give us a loyal customer benefit for digital/iPad access the magazines we happily pay for in print.  Use us to bolster your app download numbers, let us spread your enthusiasm and help you through this tough time.  Give us that 360 degree brand experience and value us the way it felt like you did for years.  I'm telling you, you'll keep us forever.  

Choose to ignore us though, and you'll force us to choose.  And if it gets to that point we'll both be losing something important.

Signing off with a hopeful Always,

Lauren Proctor