LINKS FROM May 2007
Widgets Suck, aka Surf to http://www.facebook.com/widgets/
"Please note that everyone, including curmudgeonly me, thinks that the people at FB are geniuses for building the Platform; and that FB uniformly calls third party add-ons applications  not widgets."
Tags: facebook widgets api extensions
16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools
"From navigating the Web in entirely new ways to seeing where in the world twitters are coming from, data visualization tools are changing the way we view content. We found the following 16 apps both visually stunning and delightfully useful."
Tags: visualization lists api mashup
Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulations
"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none."
Tags: postmodernism
twittering for busy execs
"Re-created Safari's browser chrome in Illustrator."
Tags: browser design illustrator vector
A Muppet Family Christmas part 3
My favorite Muppet joke (maybe ever), happens at 4:03 . . .
You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well
"In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves -- or their offspring -- to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines . . . "
Tags: search culture identity names trend
New York Times on how checks get split.
Tags: culture food restaurant money nytimes
"Here is a collection of cool business cards to inspire you. Most of them are from the Business Cards flickr pool, some of them from Ads of the World."
Tags: businesscards design
Download 2007 Digital Fact Pack
52-Page Data Guide to the Digital Marketing World
Tags: advertising marketing statistics business demographics internet research
"Instead of relying purely on viral marketing or mass media marketing alone, big-seed marketing combines the two approaches so that a large initial audience spreads the marketing message to a secondary audience." Read the full paper.
Tags: marketing research statistics viral
The mystery of the daytime idle: Why aren't you working?
"The funny thing is, everyone has an answer for themselves but is baffled by everyone else. Possibly this is like life itself."
Tags: culture city sanfrancisco jobs
Better living through self deception
"Perhaps the way to true personal acheivement and happiness is through lying to yourself instead of being honest, loafing instead of practicing, and purposely forgetting information."
Tags: health brain psychology happiness
Flamingo pair adopt jilted chick
"A pair of male flamingos have become foster parents after adopting an abandoned chick in Gloucestershire."
Tags: strange
"For the first time in advertising history, brand owners are offered the opportunity to buy meda space within someone's mind."
Tags: advertising marketing funny brain
An incredibly helpful news station exposes the dangers/pitfalls of emo.
Tags: funny culture emotions youth video
Kevin Ham, the $300 million master of Web domains
"Kevin Ham is the most powerful dotcom mogul you've never heard of, reports Business 2.0 Magazine. Here's how the master of Web domains built a $300 million empire."
Enter a few words or phrases and see how often they appear on twitter.
Tags: twitter statistics trend
Google's Video PlusBox May Be Its Most Disruptive Feature Ever
"There are no ads currently on the YouTube video, but you can bet that will change. What’s clear is that on this particular search the Times, the Post, and MSBNC are likely to lose a lot of the traffic that they otherwise would have gotten."
Tags: video business marketing google media2.0
Predicting American Idol winners with search.
Tags: search television trend culture analytics
"Vecteezy is an index of Free Vectors available for download by some of the best designers around the world."
Tags: illustrator design free gallery vector
From Vertical To Universal To Holistic
"To tackle this challenge, marketers need to pursue a holistic approach that involves optimizing for all of Google's vertical services."
"Quantcast is the world's first open internet ratings service. Advertisers can find reports on the audiences of millions of web sites. Publishers can ensure their sites are represented accurately by tagging them for direct measurement."
Tags: advertising analytics marketing demographics
Chris Anderson: "A while ago US News asked me for the five business books that had the greatest impact on me. Now they've published my list, along with the lists of other executives and notables."
Google is now showing the hottest trends for the day . . . interesting way to see what's going on at the moment.
Tags: google internet trend culture search
"This interesting video, from the folks at GOOD Magazine, shows just how much advertisers are paying to bombard New Yorkers with out-of-home advertising."
Tags: video advertising business nyc
"a Firefox plug-in that inserts emissions data into travel related e-commerce websites. The first version adds CO2 emissions information to airfare websites such as Orbitz.com, United.com, Delta.com, etc."
Tags: green firefox environment extensions
Jane Siberry's "you decide what feels right" pricing
"The Canadian folk-pop singer Jane Siberry has a clever system: she has a “pay what you can� policy with her downloadable songs, so fans can download them free  but her site also shows the average price her customers have paid for each track."
Tags: music business pricing money
"Its only when you get the whole picture you can fully understand"
Tags: video planning marketing youtube
Court decision strengthens aggregators
"This is yet another court decision in favor of the disruptive innovations of Media 2.0, and it strengthens the business model of all aggregators that provide a significant public service by placing snippets of copyrighted material in one place to enable
Tags: media2.0 aggregation google copyright law
Media 2.0 Intel (May 16, 2007)
National TV moving local, newspapers getting in to video and the problems with the wheel metaphor for media companies.
Tags: media2.0 television newspapers video
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface
"Why choose a particular typeface? Here are thirteen reasons."
Tags: typography lists font
"Good scans of the Voynich Manuscript are hard to find. These are from the Yale Library (download instructions), though unfortunately in a proprietary graphics format, which I converted to jpeg." Not sure what to do with this . . . but seems worth having
Tags: photography history research codebreaking
"a major feature of the Web is the recording of human behavior in its many forms. To a lesser extent is the creation of truly new behaviors."
Tags: culture internet behavior
Not advertising as art but art in advertising
"Dali in some ads. Love that Alka Selzer demo."
Tags: advertising art commercial
"Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate."
Tags: visualization language
Bummed I'm missing it, some great speakers there.
Tags: conference trend planning marketing business london
Gladwell: "Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage."
Tags: culture economics politics statistics
"Context defines the value of functionality and there are plenty of times you might not want to carry even a small digital camera at which point, the worst camera you have on your phone is going to be better than the best camera you have in your house"
Tags: camera mobile convergence technology
Stewert Butterfield responds to Flickr Complaints
"There are several policies which will be changing as a direct result of this incident and the goal is that nothing like this ever happens again. Any errors from now on should be on the side of caution."
Tags: flickr business transparency community
not funny haha, just like, funny on the inside. LOTI.
A fairly amusing video from Microsoft that features a restaurant conversation between 'advertiser' and 'consumer.' Like Amber said, not funny on the outside, but rather disturbing you're laughing on the inside.
Tags: funny video marketing microsoft
Such gems as "good luck finding shameful entry-level employment."
Tags: funny
"Either of two blue lines running across an ice-hockey rink, usually 60 feet from each goal, and dividing the rink into defensive, neutral, and offensive zones."
Tags: language definition
Human Joysticks (NewsBreaker Live interactive cinema game)
"The debut of interactive crowd gaming in movie theaters. Captured opening weekend of Spider Man 3 in Los Angeles. Created by SS+K in collaboration with Brand Experience Lab for msnbc.com."
Tags: video design marketing games movies advertising
Branded Utility: Interview With Johnny Vulkan of Anomaly
"Brands being genuinely useful to their customers, employees, suppliers and the people they touch."
Tags: brandedutility marketing business interviews trend
How To Make $10 Billion In Ad Revenue Without Measuring Unique Vistors Or Page Views
"Google never had to worry about old fashioned audience metrics because Google figure out how to optimize the delivery of ads based on what people DO, and more importantly, based on what’s on their minds  their intentions. . . "
Tags: google advertising marketing
A video giving the inside scoop on internet porn statistics. NSFW
Tags: statistics sex video internet pornography
"The aerodynamic SENZ umbrella claims to resists storms up to wind force 10!"
Tags: design
Free Online RSS, Atom or OPML to PDF Generator
"It's dominated by diminishing return economics - it's just another mass media play in a micromedia world. In that mass media world, remember, MTV was QVC - they were basically the same business model for different domains (music vs consumer goods)."
A great Flickr photoset with things including "How to Understand Postmodernism"
Tags: howto flickr photography postmodernism
"April state of the media industry. Includes Viacom vs. Google, Digg, Joost, Ford's success on iTunes and marketing via social networks."
Tags: media2.0 google itunes marketing
"In one setting Bell can fill halls with people who gladly pay hundreds of dollars to see him and stifle their coughs in reverence to his craft. In another, more than 1000 people pass him by without even the slightest acknowledgment."
YouTube Starts Paying Star Users
"A select group of content creators will get promotion on the YouTube platform, and we will help them monetize their content. This will help erase the the stigma around the user-created content, and, to be honest, these guys are media entities. . . "
Tags: youtube marketing celebrity video
Nocturne: Free "night vision" app from the maker of Quicksilver
"If you enjoy sitting outside with your laptop, but the sun is making your screen almost illegible, try flipping Nocturne on  the contrast and darker backgrounds should help make reading and navigating much easier."
"I’m reading a well-reviewed contemporary novel, trying to look hip. I’m wearing a beret to hide my bald spot. Hopefully one of these young women will talk to me. I am Starbucks."
Tags: funny advertising starbucks
Foodie Evening vs. Coffee Morning
"He now understands why I drag myself out of bed extra early once a month to host LikeMind. The magic of intelligent, open, and interesting strangers coming together for a little coffee and conversation is truly a wonderful event."
Tags: likemind
Forrester's new Social Technographics report
"At the heart of Social Technographics is consumer data that looks at how consumers approach social technologies – not just the adoption of individual technologies."
Tags: research socialsoftware marketing business
"Gaussian distributions tend to prevail when events are completely independent of each other. As soon as you introduce the assumption of interdependence across events, Paretian distributions tend to surface because positive feedback loops tend to amplify
Tags: networks powerlaw business research bestarticlesof2007
720 degrees of dunkilation.
Tags: basketball video
Attention is a function of the medium
"As bloggers we may have committed a grave strategic error - if we spun our points out to 200 pages with the customary filler, photos and charts not only could we sell them at £10 a copy but people would apparently commit hours of their lives to reading
Tags: attention media books culture
"Which ones will "converge"? Well, each of them -- or, really, none of them -- but they'll each still be optimized for the primary function."
Tags: technology convergence gadgets
And related points of interest.
Tags: maps visualization goodforpresentations
"Read over 4200 brutally honest independent reviews of selected shops and assorted establishments in over 150 superfuture cities."
Tags: city culture design reviews travel shopping
A connected thesaurus.
Mere Luxury Isn't Enough for Superrich
As luxury brands move into the mass market, they need a new way to make the superrich feel special. Welcome to the 'experience economy.
Tags: marketing luxury culture trend
Why The Luxury Market Continues To Roar
"The biggest trend of all, and the one I should have mentioned first, in addition to the search for the memorable, the unique and services that have high value, is what I call the rise of connoisseurship and the hunger to know."
Tags: luxury interviews marketing trend
Survey Reveals Luxury Marketing Gaps
"The study also revealed that 85 percent of luxury goods marketers want to engage in more one-on-one marketing; however, only half of them actually do so."
Tags: marketing luxury research
Very cool web clock.
Tags: design visualization cool
All about the recently redesign US passport, which "comes with 13 inspirational quotes, including six from United States presidents and one from a Mohawk Thanksgiving speech."
Tags: design politics travel strange
"You put all that together and you think, what would the advertising customer like? And what they would like is they'd like a single way in which they can see ads and then have the computer do the allocation for them."
Tags: google advertising future marketing business
"And we think the way we have structured this Oral-B thing will make it easier to do that [make a difference in people's lives]. Because it puts everyone at the table at the same time, working together on the biggest and best ideas for the business."
Tags: interviews marketing advertising cpg
likemind - Meet Creative People in Your City
"Talking to people with such an eclectic mix of creative talents made for a very enjoyable morning - the kind that really brings home the opportunities that all this blogging and social media are opening up."
Tags: likemind culture creativity
Seems that everything is 'becoming a brand'.
Tags: branding funny marketing
Viacom's Dirty Hands? Google Responds To Big-Bucks Suit
"For now, no one knows how courts will determine whether YouTube has directly profited from pirated clips. But if the company steps up efforts to monetize itself with ads, it’s plausible that the courts will conclude that YouTube is profiting from pirat
Riding a bike without brakes on the streets of New York may sound insane. But to the zealous adherents of fixed-gear bikes, they are a thing of beauty and a way of life.
Tags: trend culture bike nyc nytimes
"Year Zero" project = "the way a viral campaign should be run"
"While the major labels continue to try and hold onto the past, Reznor’s attitude and approach is a glimpse of the future. Instead of looking at his album as the finish line, he’s using it as part of a bigger, all-encompassing experience for fans."
Tags: marketing music viral advertising wordofmouth transmedia
Who says we need our logo on every slide?
"Most companies with a PowerPoint template certainly insist that their employees use the company logo on every slide. But is this good advice? Slide real estate is limited as it is, why clutter it with logos and trademarks, footers, and so on?"
Tags: presentation design powerpoint
Guess Who's Knocking on Marketing's Door
"If conversation is advertising's new sweet spot, should consumer affairs play a more central, strategic role in the marketing equation?"
Tags: conversation business marketing consumeraffairs
From London: "Eight months into my pregnancy only one man has given me his seat on public transport. Were the rest afraid of being sexist?"
Tags: culture london gender subway psychology