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If you read this blog, you’ve been here.

Have a sexy weekend.

I used to be in the business of writing ads. I wasn’t great but I wasn’t half bad either.

One thing I noticed after being around for a bit (but always keeping up on the news and awards in the industry) is that the simplest ads usually grab the most attention.

BMW has a great example of this, sent to me by my fellow Creative friend Michael Champlin.

mmm… A++++ WOULD EBAY AGAIN

The line between people’s virtual lives and their real lives really are getting thinner by the day. Viximo’s SecondLife job fair on Sunday was even more proof of this.

We used this opportunity to whore promote the various jobs we have, both full-time in Boston and freelance around the world. What better place to hunt for people that know virtual worlds than in a virtual world? With the help of SecondLife celebrity Tuna Oddfellow, we had a dance party slash magic show slash virtual discussion about virtual goods and gifts and virtual worlds.

Yeah, I know that’s a lot of “and”s, but it really was that spontaneous.  If you’ve ever been to a job fair ever, you know that they are LAAAAME and usually stocked with lame people from lame companies promoting lame jobs. I completely expected this to be as lame, if not more.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it was one of the coolest job fairs I’ve ever been to. There was no tchotchsky (except that Tuna gave us all virtual Viximo top hats to wear), the people were generally interesting and there was even some crazy love connections.

With jobs (especially hi-tech jobs) becoming less and less “office”-y, is a Sunday afternoon in a virtual world the place to find awesome people?

As weird as it seems, we’re cool with stalkers around here. We actually promote you stalking us as long as you do it one of these ways:

Viximo is so jam-packed with awesome, we’ve got two Twitter accounts: @viximo which is pretty much just links to articles on virtual gifting and whatnot tweeted by our CTO, and @viximoelves which is much more conversational and is written by me. I’ll use @viximoelves to stalk our creators, but they’re both really good to follow at the same time.

What else… what else…

Oh yeah! I set us up a Facebook fan page.  Seeing as most (read: as of right now, all) of our retailers are Facebook apps, why not have a Facebook page?  Here you’ll get the news updates, some photos and all that general newsy stuff you expect from your friendly, neighborhood Internet startup.

Last thing. We’re doing a job fair type thing on Second Life this Sunday. I don’t know how to tell you how to get there or anything, but I do know that my avatar is named Shiggity Horten and I look like The Dude with a Bruins jersey on. Awesome or not?

I just found out today that the Globe article I blogged about earlier ran on the front page of the paper.

No, not the front page of the technology section or the front page of the back of the paper. The front page of the entire damn paper. 

Which tastes like awesome, am I right?

More importantly, major shout-out to Viximo Creators Juxsen and Lumen whose items were featured in color on the front page.  You can see a picture of the article by scrolling down or by being Viximo’s Facebook friend.

Apparently we made the papers on Saturday. Sweet.

Although “It’s like self-expression, almost” is the worst quote from the entire interview.

I wanted to take a second and highlight some of my favorite user-created items in our catalog — along with commentary about them. (Note: if one of these is yours and you are offended, I’m sorry. It’s all fun and games.)

(Note2: my boss just sighed “oh god, Claaark…” in his head when he read that. Didn’t you, Brian?)

First up, the award for The Cutest Damn Gift I’ve Ever Seen In My Life: Squirrely Squirrel by Juxsen.  I have a weird love for our bushy-tailed neighbors that stems back to a PSP commercial from a few years ago. I feel like this little guy would sit on my desk (along with Rocky) and just be awesome. If I could have him in real life, his name would be Tony and he would be an excellent cage fighter. He would also play a Nintendo DS and the harmonica.

Secondly, the award for Creepiest Item in the Viximo Catalog: Sexy Birthday Singer by voki.com. I don’t know if it’s that her voice sounds less like a woman and more like a 53-year old chain smoking truck driver from Des Moines, or that she sways awkwardly like she’s had four too many Jack and Cokes. She’s here to wish you happy birthday, then she’s off to the track to play the ponies and play in the mud (if you know what I mean, and I think you do.)  It is a happy birthday, indeed… Mr. President.

Third, the Item That Deserves the Awesome Compliment: Llama Llama Llama by KittenKat. This award can also be named the “WTF Award” because yes, it is just that random. Unlike the rest of our recipients, this one isn’t animated. But also unlike the rest of our recipients, this one features three llamas just hanging out. Try to take one look at it without asking yourself “WTF?”. You can’t do it. Now try to go lift a house. You can do that. You have somehow become more awesome just by looking at it. Chuck would be proud.

The final award is given to long-time creator and first-time multiple-award winning Juxsen for The Item The Entire Viximo Office Loves: Surprise Afro! Do you remember the summer of ‘94? I do too. I had Crash Test Dummies playing nonstop on my Walkman**.  

Bill Clinton was still a virgin. OJ was slowly becoming less of a football player and more of that guy you’d like to introduce your ex to.  And on the second day of Woodstock ‘94 you woke up with an afro. It was a good year to be alive and heading into sixth grade, wasn’t it? We laugh every single time we give this item and every single time we even think about this item. Needless to say, it’s hard to drink milk at work. Supreme mad props to Juxsen on this one.

Honorable Mentions: Crazy Sandwich*** (Nicola Santellani), Mrs Whippy (Maxine Lee), Punk Rock Love (Beth Granter) and Poo (KittenKat).

Have you had a stroll through the new goods lately? Anything else stick out in your mind and make you tingle?

** Actually, I did not own a Walkman. I had one of those tape players that only fast-forwarded. To rewind, you had to take the tape out and fast forward. I grew up in Oklahoma. You know what I’m talking about.

*** I so badly want this one to be animated. With a tiny voice. And maybe it would smell like onions somehow.

CAMBRIDGE, MA (VIXIMO) In today’s news, the Fruit Flies for Never Neverland made their first wave of attacks against the Viximo elves.  Reports from the front lines of the attack have a count of at least 2 casualties, including an unidentified victim from the Loaf of Bread cavalry.  Efforts to save the victims were futile.  A recent news briefing at Viximo indicates plans to use this opportunity to demonstrate their new fruit fly trap technology.  There are no plans for negotiation at this point.  Funerals for today’s victims will take place next week in the Junkyard.

Ummmm yea.  Anyway, just a heads up for everyone to please be careful about leaving food out in the kitchen.  It attracts bugs and Clark.

P.S. We’ve got a BRITA filter in the fridge now, so feel free to offer either bottled or filtered water to our friends of Viximo.  If they ask for bottled water, be sure to act like an ass and have a 30 min. debate about how they’re destroying the environment, one .. bottle … at a time.

This public service announcement brought to you by the letter J.  “JUNKYARD DOGS: THE ROLLS ROYCE OF HOT DOGS!“

One of our superstar engineers, the always moving Aaron Pfeifer, sent this around the company to tell us to put our crap away in the kitchen.  We can’t even tell each other to be clean without being sarcastic about it.

I sent out a whole batch of invites recently and one came back with a reply that struck me as interesting.

It was from a fashion designer. She was asking why she should even be interested since they do ACTUAL gifts and items.

Let’s assume you’re a fashion designer.  Or an architect.  A concept artist.  Or that you design real things in real life.  3D and whatnot.

Are you working on your own line of t-shirts?  Anyone who’s anyone knows and/or has heard the cliche (but true) line that word-of-mouth is the best advertising ever.  Imagine having a virtual version of your shirt that users could give to each other.

2,000 giftings of your shirt from one friend to another (hello “eWord-of-mouth”) could turn into actual t-shirt sales.

What if that concept mobile phone you worked on (either for class or in your free time) was seen by a Motorola executive surfing Facebook one evening? He loves it, thinks it’s groundbreaking, gets your name right from the item, calls you up, offers you a job as one of their designers.

Just an example of using digital goods to promote your actual goods. (And yeah, you could even charge for them and make money on the promotion. Love the Internet, eh?)

So just as soon as I send more beta invites, viximo.com starts acting a little screwy.

If you got an invite today and are trying the site out for the first time, please hold on to judgement until we figure out what the issue is.

I’ll update the blog as soon as it appears everything is back to normal.

[Updizzle @ 12:15p]: So as soon as the engineers got out of their meeting, I was attempting to show them the issue. And of course everything worked fine for some reason.

[Upshizzle @ 5:30p]: The error has  been pinpointed! As it turns out, new designers in the system who haven’t set their email preferences will see an error when anything happens to any of their gifts.  This includes anyone commenting on their goods, complimenting their goods, flagging their goods, etc.  This whole situation should be fixed when they push a patch to the servers tonight.

I’m sorry if you’ve been affected by this bug. Everything should be back to normal by tomorrow morning.

[FInal Upizzle, 2pm 7/3]: All fixed. I just got the email that everything should work now. Please click the feedback link inside viximo.com if you notice any other problems. I love you.