Parody newspaper The Onion was recently featured on This American Life. The 15 minute segment sits in on their team's weekly process for introducing and vetting funny headlines on Monday and Tuesday for the paper. It's an interesting look inside the creative process of a team trying to tell jokes in print. Normally explaining a joke saps it of any of its humorous qualities, but the writers at The Onion review, argue over and kill these funny headlines with academic precision.

It begins with every team member presenting 15 headlines. If at least two people vote 'yay,' the idea survives to see another day. They generate over 600 headlines at the beginning of each week, with most dying immediately on Monday morning. The key here, like in any team brainstorming session, is quantity: it takes lots of ideas to arrive at the few that are worth pursuing. What's different from standard brainstorming rules is the criticism: discussions immediately erupt over the relative humor of "Local girlfriend just wants to do stuff," as opposed to the similar, "Nations girlfriends call for more quality time." Ideas that feel like winners are cheered, whereas the losers like "Nations girlfriends" are immediately jeered. Theirs is a tough room.

Why does this work, whereas most teams would struggle and shut down under that kind of criticism? One answer is The Onion's strong culture. They have been around for 20 years developing an extremely strong sense of their own voice. Some team members have been there from the beginning, while newer team members have a powerful identity to live up to. Another answer is simply that there is power in their quantity of ideas mixed with a strong, collective editorial voice, even a critical one. The process needs to produce 16 winning headlines to print each week. The same process might not be able to take a product to market over a period of months, but it is extremely efficient at getting a funny newspaper out the door.

A few interesting points that came up during the segment:

• Some headlines get laughs right away, yet those are rarely ones that survive into print. They think they lack depth.
• Silliness is a hot button issue at The Onion. The team agrees that every silly joke needs an 'X' factor to be compelling, not just silly.
• They worry about how to innovate and avoid being stale and a parody of themselves.
• The biggest internal battle is between the old and new guard.
• The younger writers have a bigger tolerance for being silly.

Listen the full segment during the first 15 minutes of This American Life's episode, Tough Room.

There is an illegitimate version of Scrabble exploding in popularity on Facebook right now. It's called Scrabulous and it just landed in my network tonight. (Right now I'm winning thanks to "yokel" and "codex.") It has over three million registered users, 700,000 players a day (make that 700,001), and a juicy legal battle brewing. Two brothers from India are earning $25,000 per month in online ad revenue with a Facebook app based square-for-square on a 60 year-old board game currently owned by Hasbro (in the U.S.) and Mattel (abroad).

It's a simple implementation that feels fresh for a few reasons. Board games are social, but not scalable the way they are online. Scrabble is particularly well-suited to friend networks because it's a challenging text-based game played in sequential moves without time limits. People can start up multiple games easily and then play them out over generous lengths of time, a lot like chess players would trade moves over long distances by mail. Since it's so easy to cheat online, a big part of the fun is in holding yourself to the rules of the game and winning with your wits.

It's a wonder Hasbro and Mattel didn't think of this sooner. They do have plans with RealNetworks and Electronic Arts to release online versions of the trademarked game, but it doesn't look like these plans work within a thriving social network like Facebook. With the market for their board games stagnant, you'd think these companies would try to get their games in front of new customers in novel ways. Instead, with grand plans for new packaging and a folding deluxe board, they seem too comfortable where they're at already.

The two brothers who developed Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, are great examples of why the free market applied online works so well: you win by taking risks on a clear goal and trying lots of new things. They loved Scrabble and were frustrated with the options available to play online. They had an entrepreneurial spirit and turned their creation into a business. Eventually they listened to one their users' suggestions and refactored their application for Facebook and voila--it took off. If only Hasbro and Mattel had been as anxious to make their game fun and relevant! It'll be interesting to see how this battle plays out. Will those two companies buy out the Agarwallas or try to shut them down? What would you do if it were your move?

Ref. Online Scrabble Craze Leaves Game Sellers at Loss for Words in the NY Times

Sometimes the littlest things can inspire you. As I got ready for another business trip away from home I stumbled upon a photo experiment by two friends living far apart, titled 3191: A year of evenings. Soon to be printed as a book, Stephanie Barnes and Maria Vettese would each take one photograph every evening to share side by side on their blog. The effect of this simple story on the juxtaposition of the two photographs translates into something much more than the sum of its parts.

It's such a simple technique that it's easy for us to overlook. One image tells a story. Two images together begin to animate each other like frames in a film or panels in a comic.

This reminded me of one of Bryan's old photo experiments called Balance on the ZURBphotos site that, in part, inspired LuckyOliver.

This goes on our desert island web pages list. That's it--totally plain long list of tools with boring little descriptions way down there below, but it's one of my favorite pages on the web. Why? It embodies the awesome power of the simplest and most ubiquitous web tool in the world: Google's search. Every last one of these tools starts from the same place: that text input with the button that says "Search." Every possibility explodes out from that interface and it does so fast.

Let's look at some of what you can do:

• Books
• Cached links
• Calculator
• Currency Converter
• Definitions of words
• Product search
• Images
• Local business
• Movies
• Q&A
• Search by Number
• Site Search
• Stocks and Quotes
• Travel Info
• Weather
• Web Page Translation

And even that old standby, "I'm Feeling Lucky." We bet you didn't know about half of those, but give some of them a try. Prospective homebuyers, try typing, "1/3 acre in square feet" and see what it returns. Expecting a shipment by UPS or Fedex? Try typing your tracking number into Google instead of fumbling around on those other sites. Want a night out at the movies? Don't start at Fandango, just type in "Juno" at Google and you're on your way.

The fact that all of these technologies can work from the same interface is a major engineering feet. Google's Search technology is incredibly effective at inferring context based on the language of the little string of text you type into that field. Now none of this is news, but this unassuming page tucked deep within Google's Help section reminded me today of the depth and simple, clunky beauty in the design of the web's most successful interface.

Go see Google Web Search Features for yourself and play around.

I grew up loving Steve Martin's comedy. As a kid I remember his stand up (arrow through the head) and his appearances on Saturday Night Live (King Tut) stretching my bedtime later and later. Never once did it occur to me the immense amount of hard work and risk he put into his comedy act; it all looked so effortless and silly. Over the holiday break I picked up his recent autobiography, Born Standing Up, of which Martin said, "The is something about the genesis [of a career], that I think is worth writing about." For his book he wanted to roll back the clock to all the long unsuccessful years that built up to his rock star comedian status, filling stadiums of 45,000 people. His failures and his passion line the book. There are valuable ideas here for anybody starting out to create their own something.

"First of all, it's vital that you remember what got you a laugh and what didn't. ... It's very Darwinian, because a mistake can lead to a success. So if something goes wrong, it's actually an avenue to something going right later." — Steve Martin

Martin was passionate about his craft ("I just wanted to make people laugh.") and learned analyze everything for clues about how to improve each time he stepped out on stage. From the book it's clear that one of the keys to his success was his aggressive drive to try and fail, try and fail, again and again for something he loved. This focus did not lead to overnight success though:

"The consistent work enhanced my act. I learned a lesson: It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances." — Steve Martin

His consistency and passion carried him through to where bit by bit, over time, he gained a sense of mastery over his art and could command stadiums of people to roll in the aisles.

On being prepared:

On the influences of friends:

On lousy shows:

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Photograph by Sandee O. Check out Born Standing Up, highly recommended. For the iPod you can't miss with Let's Get Small, one of his double platinum comedy records. View his interview with Charlie Rose or a short clip of Steve performing at the LA Universal Amphitheater in 1979: