LINKS FROM October 2006
Waistline Banging Like a Bassline
Turns out people's waists are much bigger than the pants sizes might lead you to believe.
"This report aims to look at the size of the browser window, and illustrate people's browsing behavior."
Tags: system:unfiled
"Today, ideas need to have multiple layers and meaning because you are no longer talking to a single person, but rather a group who are working together."
Tags: planning community media2.0 marketing ideas
Some possible pitfalls for Netflix? I don't think so, but it's an interesting point of view.
The Obvious Corp - Evan and Biz Take Back Odeo
The greening of The Valley, why sustainable companies matter.
Tags: business venturecapital web2.0 entrepreneur startups
Erik Spiekermann answers "What is the ONE thing you think every student of typography should know?"
Tags: typography design tips
"I have found so many easy ways to get any type of media instantly that I decided I would share this with everyone else."
Tags: bittorrent lists copyright television video movies
Some great photos of ordinary objects doing unordinary things.
Tags: design creativity books lifehacks
Tools for Making the Crap Great
"Creating tools and formats that give people a say and getting them creatively engaged will be the secret to making the "Direct Economy" a reality."
Tags: creativity technology design
New audience metric needed: engagement
"Well, as an advertiser I want to talk to an audience who’ll actually DO something. Yeah, I’m hoping to get a sale."
Tags: engagement advertising blogs marketing media2.0
Engagement Is Meaningless Without Sales
"So how do we measure engagement? Whatever the solution, and it should depend on the unique circumstance, the connection to sales is imperative."
Tags: engagement marketing advertising
Is 'Curated Consumption' A Marketer's Lie?
Some thoughts on the idea of curated consumption from PSFK. Good action in the comments.
Tags: curation marketing consumerism shopping
Embed marketing in products: Crispin Porter + Bogusky CEO
"Google and Starbucks both don’t use much traditional media to get their message across, he said. But that’s because their marketing is embedded in the brand."
Tags: business advertising design trend
Ad Agencies Being Left Out of the Innovation Party?
"For advertising to succeed and move up the ladder, it needs to break away from ego-centric creativity, the 'Madison Avenue' and 'Ad guys' nomenclature that's more albatross, than asset and sharpen its collaborative processes."
Tags: advertising business innovation
NoahBrier.com Engine to the Center of the World
Thanks to Google Co Op.
Tags: search
The Future Was Staring Us in the Face
"However, aside from his famed “reality distortion field,� the argument adheres to basic business principles and provides an extremely useful template for the introduction of new products and services into emerging or underdeveloped markets."
"As Mr. Schultz sees it, customers get a new cultural experience and Starbucks gets a 'halo'  the associations people have with beloved music, with 'quality, good will, trust, intelligence.'"
Tags: starbucks nytimes branding business
Music Is The Best, October, 2006
Ian Rogers gives his favorite albums of the year thus far.
Tags: bestof2006 music lists
What portion of Google's revenue is Search versus Contextual?
"Google derives about 78% of its advertising revenue from Search, and the remaining 22% comes from other sources, primarily Contextual."
Tags: google business search advertising money
An exhibit of urinals that look like flowers, shells and other natural things.
My printer, my social letterbox
What if the printer took some cues from social media and allowed your friends and family to print to it remotely?
Tags: ideas socialsoftware
"With 175,000 being created every day and the blogosphere doubling in size every six months, the standards for a quality weblog have become much higher. Here are 7 ways to optimize yours."
"And of course, that’s the trap for most brands. They confuse social media with traditional communication channels, and they do what they know: talk at people instead of with them."
Tags: marketing branding business media2.0 socialnetworking
"You can press and hold the Alt (Option) key, click and drag your cursor to select text freely without the constrains of regular text selection."
"I'd been considering a new MacBook portable, but it's increasingly obvious that Apple has a lemon on its hands -- or, rather, that far too many Apple customers have lemons in their possession or back at the shop for repair."
Tags: apple laptops customerservice business
"Reginald Pike's Yael Staav takes us from model to billboard in under 60 seconds in this impressive new spot from Dove."
Tags: video advertising culture beauty marketing health fashion bestarticlesof2006
A Newspaper Investigates Its Future
"The [Los Angeles] Times is dedicating three investigative reporters and half a dozen editors to find ideas, at home and abroad, for re-engaging the reader, both in print and online."
Tags: newspapers innovation nytimes journalism
"Now the challenge becomes matching the panoply of innovations to the business goals, otherwise you run the risk, as Google is doing, of losing focus and confusing customers."
Tags: google innovation business
Finally, some honesty in the business.
Tags: funny video advertising business
On the 7th Week...He Kicked Ass
Jeff breaks down this weeks games on Da Bears Blog by comparing the mascots.
"The problem is that most folks, besides not believing they are special (a tragic oversight, by the way), are so dulled out or fatigued that their innate intelligence, creativity, and passion are encrusted with inertia and thereby rendered sluggish."
Tags: passion inspiration creativity education
How to Run a Meeting Like Google
"No one wastes time searching for a purpose at Marissa Mayer's meetingsâ€â€even five-minute gatherings must have a clear agenda"
Tags: meetings management business google tips
Swimming With Famous Dead Sharks
On the replacement of the shark in Damien Hirst's famous “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.�
"Intention means you want something, a state of the universe that doesn’t yet exist, and that you are willing to act to create it. In constrast, Attention simply means you are observing something."
Tags: attention
Finally, jeans made just for moms.
Poking is stupid -- and genius
"The profile world (facebook, myspace, bolt, etc) seems to be the ultimate “safe� medium. As an alternative to keeping in touch with people by contacting them, we can simply leave something that others can come across if they wish."
Tags: socialnetworking culture relationships psychology
Are Marketers Serious About Ceding Control to Consumers?
"Customer service becomes a powerful media department when consumers chronicle their experiences with your brand."
Tags: marketing advertising business
Colbert Demands Royalties From YouTube/Google Merger
"Colbert demands royalities from Googles recent acquisition of YouTube and runs throught all the great entries in the Colbert GreenScreen Challenge."
Tags: funny video youtube google business media2.0
Announcing The Techdirt Insight Community
"Companies sign up to engage the Techdirt Insight Community to raise issues, get feedback, test ideas, review products, make strategy suggestions. . . or any number of other services that require a dedicated group of experts."
Tags: blogs business research marketing technology
Project 365: How to Take a Photo a Day and See Your Life in a Whole New Way
My oneaday made the cut: "In a more self-reflective variation, our pal Noah takes a photo a day using the webcam built into his MacBook." Cool.
Tags: photography blogs
Screening People with Clearances
"We don't have infinite dollars to spend on security. We need to choose where to spend our money, and we're best off if we spend it in ways that give us the most security for our dollar."
Tags: security airports travel design
The Awfulness of College Lectures
"So if what he's saying isn't very interesting, why do we subject ourselves to it? How did this become the primary method of education?"
Tags: education learning college
A checklist for organic and paid search
"The ACCM Search Marketing Intensive session titled “Integrating Your Organic and PPC Search Marketing: A Checklist for Merchants� provided a look at best practices as well as a list of what not to do."
Digital Competition - Avram Miller
You know when you read one of those things where someone has said everything you're thinking . . . and then you realize they said it seven years ago?
Tags: internet business venturecapital
10 seeeeeriously cool workplaces
Photos from ten really cool looking spaces created to inspire creativity.
Tags: creativity design business management architecture furniture productivity
How YouTube Kicked Google's Ass (and everyone else's too)
"If you go back and look at YouTube's traffic, the day they let people embed their videos in MySpace pages is the day they took off and never looked back."
Tags: youtube google video business startups
"One trend I’ve found is the high number of innovation efforts within established companies, and how rarely they have any effect."
Tags: innovation business management
Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities
"In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action."
Tags: design internet blogs search attention web2.0
Knocking the exuberance out of employees
"If you knock out exuberance, you knock out curiosity, and curiosity is the single most important attribute in a world that requires continuous learning and unlearning just to keep up."
Tags: management business passion creativity
Paradigm shift: What Google didn't buy
"They could have considered buying The New York Times. But no--they didn't, did they--and the decision to spend all this money on YouTube shows that the coffin nails of mainstream media are already strewn across the open grave"
Tags: google youtube media2.0 nytimes business newspapers
Engagement Is a Euphemism For Measuring the ROI of Brand Advertising
"Between Google, with its algorithms . . . and TV brand advertising, with its outdated input metrics that are useless for measuring real return on investment . . . is the “fuzzy middle� where the battle for the future of advertising will be fought."
Tags: advertising engagement business marketing television
Should I Make a Flash Site? Flash Website Flowchart.
"As you can see, it gets pretty complicated, but hopefully you can apply this flash website flowchart the next time you are trying to decide whether or not you should create a flash web site."
The 20 smartest companies to start now
"Howard Schultz, Steve Case, Vinod Khosla, and other major investors are sharing their best startup ideas. And they're willing to give a collective $100 Million to the entrepreneurs who can make them happen."
Tags: venturecapital business entrepreneur startups
Book Sales Get a Lift from Google Scan Plan
"Publishers are starting to report an uptick in sales from Google Inc.'s online program that lets readers peek inside books, two years after the launch of its controversial plan to digitally scan everything in print."
Tags: books copyright google search business
"Revolutionizing branding is the real play at the heart of all this. Google thinks they are closer now, with YouTube in their back pocket - because they have a platform for experimenting with branded ads."
Tags: youtube google marketing business video
Should the Yankees be Surprised?
"Beane says this because the sample in the playoffs is too small. Just like the Tigers found out in their series with the Royals a week ago, in three games any team can win."
Tags: sports baseball economics nyc
More on the PayPerPost Debate (or "Tim Draper where are you!?!?!)
Jason Calcanis on PayPerPost as what he calls 'deceptive marketing.'
Tags: blogs advertising ethics marketing
Videogames as the Future of Everything: Spare Me
"Studying videogames in a larger context is useful for UI/man-machine interaction, for immersive entertainment, and for non-linear storytelling. Not much else."
Tags: videogames culture
Sony ex-chairman warns on future
"Japan's consumer electronics industry is dying, Sony's former chief says."
Tags: business japan technology
Brands Crazy for a Second Life
"SL has achieved "memeiness", meaning that journalist and bloggers . . . are very happy to write about another brand legitimizing this new virtual world. Companies aren't so interested in the audience, but the PR that their SL presence can generate."
Tags: secondlife advertising marketing
"Are industries based upon rapid fire information inherantly less stable than ones based on selling material goods?"
Tags: advertising media marketing business videogames
Calculating the ROI of blogging
Charlene Li at Forrester offers some thoughts on how to think about the ROI question as it relates to blogging.
Tags: blogs business corporateblogging
10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website
"These are the top 10 things I learned from attending the Future of Web Apps Conference 2006 in San Francisco earlier this month."
Tags: tips internet marketing design startups usability business
Are Engagement Believers In Denial?
"Where do we start? I’d like to propose six new dimensions that advertisers need to inject into this engagement discussion right away"
Tags: engagement attention marketing
"Business is about taking a bright idea and assembling a team that can turn that idea into a product and bring that product to customers who want to buy it. It's that simple. "
Tags: venturecapital lists business marketing
Is The "Traditional Venture Capital Model" Broken?
"So we need a new approach to the kind of companies we fund and we need a new approach to how we fund them and how we get out of them."
Tags: venturecapital startups business
Google + YouTube: What it means
"YouTube is winning the hearts of the audience because video search simply doesn’t work. You have to instead rely on the opinions, ratings, and playlist compilations of others to discover good video."
Tags: google youtube video business
Try your hand at painting. Virtual style.
Tags: art
"To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse."
The Unique And Beautiful Snowflake Trap (Or Why 90% Of You Must Die)
"Because despite what Google says it’s not about page rank. Or page views. Or even popularity. It’s about inspiration, ideas and cool people."
"A deep lesson is being taught by Netflix: in a post-network economy where value creation outside the boundaries of the firm is exploding, staying closed will, more and more often, be a dominated strategy."
Tags: trend business strategy netflix
Pitchfork Reviews Jet's Shine On
This is the most incredible review for an album I've ever seen.
"Summarizing the latest news and discussions from 212 NFL blogs."
Flavorpill is a different kind of long tail business.
Tags: culture internet longtail nytimes
"If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they'd punch you in the face."
Tags: advertising marketing comics funny
"The following is a write up of my notes I prepared for an appearance on the BBC World Service show Culture Shock about the state of privacy."
"Fandom has become a mechanized process of blogging, programming playlists, shooting and distributing videos, file-sharing, and even remixing tracks. Beck’s sticker cover is just one way that he has acknowledged this shift."
Tags: music remix creativity design cocreation
How Did Newspapers Land in This Mess?
"The underlying theme in Tribune’s unraveling is that in a time of technological transition, the two publics that are served by many of the nation’s newspapers are no longer getting along so well."
Tags: nytimes business newspapers
And if You Liked the Movie, a Netflix Contest May Reward You Handsomely
Netflix is offering $1 million prize for improving their collaborative filtering by at least 10 percent.
Tags: netflix movies nytimes attention
"Rule #1: Make things that people love."
Tags: marketing customerservice
A blog dedicated to the best food in the entire world.
Tags: blogs food reviews travel
SteelPixel Web Hosting and their No-Advertising Model (Word-of-Mouth-Marketing)
"We don’t really spend money on advertising because we feel the dollars a customer spends with us should improve the services we provide them."
Tags: marketing advertising trend customerservice
Does Drinking Help Your Career? Maybe, CEOs Say
A new study has stirred up debate about what role socializing plays in the workplace.
Tags: networking alcohol business
How Brands Participate in the Conversation at OMMA East
"There is no "ideal owner" for social media initiatives within an organization, but there is definitely a first mover advantage where the individual with the passion for doing something with personal media often becomes the internal champion . . . "
Tags: blogs marketing business media2.0
"I think that misunderstanding over degree of difficulty issues is one of the major reasons for conflict between insiders and outsiders."
Tags: writing expertise difficulty