This is fantastic. Just don’t do it. Oh, and Magic Hugs? Hahahahahahahahah.
Meet MyKey Ford’s new programmable key/dashboard that does three basic things: it allows parents to limit a vehicle’s top speed, it allows parents to limit the stereo’s volume up to 44% of its max, and it allows them to set a sustaining chime if the seatbelts aren’t being used.
I applaud Ford for their efforts trying to take a proactive stance at attempting to make driving a bit safer for teenagers. But the new Ford MyKey is taking the driving nanny thing too far. Ford, sometimes you can over-do it with technology and this new innovation takes the cake.
Parents: talk to your children. Teach them about their automobile. Healthy relationships have a foundation of trust. When parents respect and trust their children their relationship matures. When parents trust their children and their children make a mistake (like a speeding ticket or god forbid, an accident) - lessons are learned - valuable lessons.
I can admit to learning some big driving lessons when I was a teenager. I sometimes think back at how lucky I was being able to walk away from some of the predicaments my car and I found ourselves in. And today, I cringe in fear at the thought of my children driving someday and making their own choices behind their own wheels. But, as scary as it is - I’m OK with that the responsibility I have as a parent to let my children make their own decisions and help them learn from their mistakes. That’s what parenting is about. And if there is one thing I learned from being a teen with too much energy - any attempt at bridling my spirited nature - was met with much retaliation.
I for one don’t want Ford teaching my son about automobiles. I’ll happily take that task on myself.
Awesome. When I first saw this stationary on SwissMiss today, I thought, man that really speaks to me. I’m always starting up things (projects, postings, exercise routines…) that I never finish.
But today I’m inspired. Today I have this notepad to rid me of my non-starter multitasking hell. Today I’m going to tell you all about this notepad and why it speaks to me so. Yes sir, today is going to be dif
Check out this neat music video for The Breeders song “Walk it Off”. Click the numbers and you can change your POV of the action as the video is playing. Everything hits “in time” with your clicks. Super cool and some really rick thinking I might add. Just another notch for the music scene and the constant marketing innovation we’re seeing come out of it.
We all know online video won’t exist solely in the “flat” format we consume it in today and little advancements like this show the depth of the medium waiting to be unleashed.
Quite often songs are written about the body. But different songs and more importantly different genres of music focus on different body parts. Guess which genre focuses on the “booty”? :)
This site is awesome. It’s called Fleshmap and it charts (based on a sample of thousands songs) the frequency of body parts in that genre. Then they represented visually on a map. The size of a circle corresponds to how often that part is mentioned in each genre. Click on a genre name to see a close-up that shows exactly what words were used.
from the site:
Fleshmap is an inquiry into human desire, its collective shape and individual expressions. In a series of studies, we explore the relationship between the body and its visual and verbal representation. (It) investigates the relationship between language and the body. Verbal manifestations of human physicality in music, poetry, and religion are distilled to their basic elements. In a play with language, the “body rebus” emerges as a visual representation of cultural expressions of the physical in us. Read more about their method here. Nice work!From YouTube:
“I was watching Larry King Live w/Bill Clinton tonight when a story from BBC News cut in about the death of Pavarotti. Between one of the scenes, my eye caught something. I took out the camera and rewinded my DVR and recorded it. This is freaky! It is a single frame, flashed once with a message. Pause the video during the 11-12 second and you will see the message.”
Wow. This sure is an interesting one to ponder. I have also placed it in a .jpg below.
Stealing your co-worker’s lunch is a downright contemptible act, that is, if it’s perpetrated by someone other than you. But, if you’ve ever had your lunch stolen, you know the the frustration and anger it causes. You know the revenge and ill-will it inspires. And you know that no matter how well you try to hide your lunch bag at the back of the refrigerator, something’s gonna be missing when you open it. Well, lament no more. The Anti-Theft Lunch Bag to the rescue…
Anti-Theft Lunch Bags are regular sandwich bags that have green splotches printed on both sides. After your sandwich is placed inside, no one will want to touch it.
If you’re interested in getting your hands dirty with these bags, please send an email to skforlee@gmail.com and you thank Sherwood Forlee for saving your egg-salad on rye.
So I found this site today. There is something about this app that celebrates Typography in every way my brain is inclined to see it. Play with it…and don’t forget to enter your own letters. Really amazing stuff - for such a simple toy.
Typography is a special thing for me. I wouldn’t say I’m the best Typographer - far from it. But I am always fascinated by typefaces and their relationship to how expressive a designer can be in any medium. I’ve found over the years (and it has always amazed me) how certain designers can really have communion with Typography while other so called “Designers” don’t even scratch the surface. To me, Typography is something that appeals to all senses. It’s a design adventure. (Just ask my buddy Erok (and his Typography Friday experiments.
Porsche is now running a marketing campaign in the form of online tools to photoshop your favorite model in front of your home. below is a piece of content created from the tool by your friends at Gizmodo. on their site they posted it with the caption: “as you can see, a $100,000 sports car really classes up the joint…”
As a marketing dork, Porsche fan and owner, blogger and proponent of rich and engaging thinking, this idea saddens me deeply.
Postings like the Gizmodo one will do more to detract from the Porsche brand rather than help its cause. the campaign couldn’t be more off target, it couldn’t be more ill-informed (no embed tags guys? really?) and worst of all, it couldn’t do LESS to entice a prospective buyer.
What’s that? “not intended for acquisition,” you say? to that I say, “bullshit - all digital should intend acquisition.” But what’s more, this thing isn’t much of a vehicle to spread the good word of the brand either. That is, unless of course thousands of smarmy bloggers putting a 911 in front of a trailer park is suddenly good branding?
Funny enough, if you talk to the marketing team at Porsche they will tell you “we’ve spent years establishing the Porsche brand - the visuals of our cars and where they show up. We choose very carefully how you experience Porsche and in what context you discover one.”
*insert long awkward pause here*
Oops, guess you’re making exceptions now, boys? just this once? Personally, I could see this being an amazing idea a few steps down the line during the process when you are already at Porsche’s website and you have just finished spec-ing out your favorite car. (Want to see this in your driveway - click here, etc.) that would be awesome. That would be valuable. And that would have a filter built into it preventing abuse like you see above.
Porsche has a special sauce - this just pissed in it. In 1963, Porsche taught the world what a sports car should feel like - both practically and in its marketing. in 2009 with the redesign of the 997, the launch of the Panamera and a slew of new fuel efficient answers the the “sports car” question, now is the time for Porsche to “re-teach” us and remind us of their position, not clutter the airwaves with mixed brand messages.
Sheesh.
Hey there. I discovered this neat little single-server today: Trip It!
what is it?
Trip It is an instant travel planner. Book your hotel. Book your back massage. Book your air fare (just not on Delta, apparently) and sent it to plans@tripit.com and Trip It will organized your itinerary and send it to you. Awesome. Would have been a Rich Idea if ANY of your favorite Airline or Hotel brands thought of it first. But they didn’t. So now one will have to acquire them. :P
I’m always hunting for new/interesting social web games. There is so much stuff out there that people are already playing (and we can learn A LOT from). I just discovered this tonight and haven’t had a chance to play, but it actually seems pretty interesting. Email Roulette could be a great way to meet people (blind dating meets forum lurking?) or at the very least give you a few hours of random entertainment.
from the site:
When you sign up for Email Roulette, you provide your email address and choose a user name. For security reasons, your password is emailed to you automatically. Upon receiving your password, you have log in to start playing.
When you submit your message, it gets sent randomly to another player who has signed up. They have the option of responding to you or not; you won’t know who it went to unless they write back… so you better make it interesting!
Of course, it goes both ways. If you want to send emails, you have to receive them as well. When you get a message, it will tell you the username and email address of the sender. You can choose whether to write back or not - the sender does not get any information about you unless you choose to provide it.
One way we try to keep Email Roulette interesting is making everyone send at least one Email Roulette every six months. If you go past that time, your account will be deleted.
I think I’ll try it. Anyone wanna play?
Nissan’s new “ECO pedal” has been engineered to encourage good fuel economy with a servo-actuated gas pedal that will push back on the driver’s lead foot when on-board computers detect wasteful acceleration. According to Nissan, vehicles equipped with the ECO pedal, and real-time fuel consumption gauges in the instrument panel, have returned a 5-10 percent increase in fuel efficiency. Electronic “nannies” are all the rage these days, with many cars being equipped with lane-departure warning, adaptive cruise control, ABS, GPS, it’s a wonder we all still remember how to drive!
The pedal is programmed to push back at your foot when its
computer decides you don’t really need to accelerate as fast as you
want. Nissan hopes that the pedal will teach overzealous drivers how to
drive more efficiently, ultimately saving 5 to 10-percent on your fuel
bill in the process and be introduced on some models as early as 2009.
Soaring fuel prices
and global warming concerns are pressuring automakers such as Nissan to
introduce more eco-friendly products. What better way to increase your brand’s recognition as eco-conscious than to create a new product like this that practically advertises itself. Brilliant. Rich Ideas don’t have to run in a media vehicle - they just need to change your brand’s perception. Feel different about Nissan now? I do.
so how does the eco pedel work?
Well,
the technology involved will make the pedal press upward whenever the
vehicle is moving too quickly for your own good. According to Nissan,
this system is able to improve fuel efficiency. The Eco Pedal has been
programmed to calculate the most efficient rate of acceleration in a
vehicle, and it might cause the driver to be frustrated with their cars
especially when they feel like a quick overtake. A meter on the
dashboard flashes and changes colours to help drive the message home
and it can be over-ridden if things are really just getting too much
for you.
This makes me mad/happy. We had a similar idea for one of our clients but they were too slow to make it happen (sorry guys, if you’re reading…). Anyway. This looks like a fantastic opportunity for Databanana to branch out.
Pretty cool, eh? I’ll post the new chapters as they happen. Maybe one of them will even be from POKE. :)
chapter one:
chapter two:
chapter three:
Pretty cool, eh? I’ll post the new chapters as they happen. Maybe one of them will even be from POKE. :)
how it works:
Rootclip provides an initial story idea with a “root” or starter clip - one to two minutes of compelling video that begins a story and is totally open-ended. The video gives the subsequent contributors whatever details they’ll need to continue the unchangeable parts of the story. How the story ultimately ends is up though, is completely up to you, the contributor. Contributors then submit their one-minute videos to move the story along to the next chapter, with voting on all video submissions so the most voted upon video is used for the next chapter. A total of six chapters are used to complete the story - and take that initial story idea into totally unexpected directions. Ultimately, Rootclip is about the user community. Contributors to YouTube, amateur and Indie filmmakers, budding screenwriters, even actors that want to show their stuff - all get a chance to contribute their best material to Rootclip to add to the story. The best, one to two minute video submissions are added over time to the original story idea until an exciting six to 12 minute film is completed.a lil’ incentive too!
Each one minute video submission that becomes a chapter in the story gets acknowledgment in the Rootclip video credits and a cash prize of $500. The Grand Prize winner gets a trip to the Traverse City Film Festival in Michigan to hobnob with Indie film producers and creative types. Michael Moore programs and plans this festival and will meet with the ultimate Rootclip winner. Are you listening members of the uber-fragmented network media? Are you watching FOX News with your average viewership of age 63? Your future targets are getting their entertainment elsewhere. Here’s a thought: stop watching your ratings drop and start participating. That is all.
Eric sent me to Yearbookyourself.com. I have to admit, I’ve seen things like this before and kinda ignored them, but something about the site compelled me to interact. So I did. And boy I’m glad I did. I mean, look at that hair. Fantastic.
Hokay soh, I’m not much of a fan of virtual worlds though I’ve dabbled here and there. You prolly already know this. But recently discovered Stephanie Rothenberg’s latest project doublehappinessjeans, a Second Life
sweatshop that produces designer denim by the underpaid labor of
virtual avatars; producing the goods in both physical and digital form. Wait. What? Yeah. Watch:
Unfuckingbeliveably mindblowing opportunities for discussion around Personal Fabrication (the ideas that one day manufacturing of complex products will be conducted digitally, through digital fabrication machines, while only bits (design information) would be transferred around the world.) Basically designs would still be centrally distributed while manufacturing will become clean and compact enough to happen anywhere. Doublehappinessjeans suggests that the sweatshop endures regardless of the sophistication of design or manufacturing. Through the virtual world, low-cost labor continues to be exploited, whether to design or fabricate real or virtual goods, either through ‘gold farming‘ or simply because design itself creates interesting / easy / creative opportunities for the “workers” to produce monetizeable stuff. I need to stop thinking about this before I explode. Incedentially, tweet my business partner @neonarcade for more on gold farming. He’s well more versed in its ins and outs than I. Rock on.
From the site:
Invisible Threads is a mixed reality performance installation created by Eyebeam artists Jeff Crouse and Stephanie Rothenberg. The project explores the growing intersection between labor, emerging virtual economies and real life commodities through the creation of a designer jeans sweatshop in the metaverse Second Life. Simulating a real life manufacturing facility that includes hiring Second Life “workers” to produce real world jeans sold for profit, the project provides an insider’s view into current modes of global, telematic production.
I’ve never really been much of an “Olympics buff” and I suppose if I
were to pick a game I’m most into it would probably be the Winter Games.
So I was just as surprised as you are when I really got into the
Beijing games this year. The much awaited Beijing Olympics 2008 have started, and funny enough, I had a trip to Mexico planned right in the heart of the games. I was a bit worried about how I
was going to stay on top of the Beijing Olympics action.
Well, between http://tvgratis.tv and a slew of awesome stuff by Google, I’ve genuinely aggregated enough Summer games content to keep my fix. Here is a collection of Google’s updated maps, gadgets, videos, sites, searches, 3D images and some Google powered Chinese sites that are purely dedicated to serve Olympics.
Google has designed a seris of web pages for the Summer Games. Among them, the home page for China has a bit more pizazz than our US home page, but both offer a stream of updated Olympics news, links to associated articles and video. The updated interactive US page offers a collection of Olympics related Google apps in the form of gadgets, maps, news, one box search and videos.I’ve embedded one of the apps below. Click the tab to expand the map.
Google has updated its maps for Beijing Olympics. If you cant make it to Beijing than track it through Google maps by exploring 3D stadiums, tracking medal counts and watching live sport results. They have also recently released a new Mobile search tool that allows its users to enjoy sports results at the top of every search results. On typing sports name or medals in your search query by heading to Google.com from your mobile, it will return all the details with respect to Olympics. In true Olympic fashion, the tool is multi-lingual (36 languages in over 60 countries) and covers almost all the different events.
Rock on. I’m off to the beach to score an Olympic-sized Mojito.
damn right. :P
Someone was telling me about this at dinner the other night so I went and hunted it down. It’s a great example of dynamic content affecting video. You see it a lot in interactive stuff…not very often in video. Kudos to Paltalk for a cool execution.
Shame the player sucks tho - no scrubber. It is kinda also a shame this thing couldn’t run on one of the more popular video distribution sites. And while I’m at it…shame they didn’t give the user access to more of the data so we could make more changes to the video.
Aaaand I’m out.
A client asked me recently, “Why do people want to engage with my brand?” We had a long conversation about brands and how great ones now seem to play out like “games” rather than “movies.” We went on an on about the importance of journey mapping for the consumer - creating a brand “bread crumb trail” that just keeps on paying off The Promise and engaging people further. We talked about Value Exchange and the truths of only trying to engage people if you have some form of intrinsic value to offer them for having given you their precious attention. We covered all the bases.
But with a look of almost dejected innocence he said again, “I agree with you Tom, but why are they (people) even there in the first place.” “What do they want from us?” “Don’t they have something else to do with their time?”
I went on for a bit about psychographics of the digital native (you know, people) wanting to be connected to each other and the things they are passionate about - and sure - most of this is true. But what’s even more true is I’m not sure I REALLY had an answer better than: People just do…
Thinking back, it was a bullshit, terrible response. I could just see the scoff welling up inside him. After all, aren’t we just a bunch of dorks playing in our basements? Are we? Clearly WE know that’s not the case - but really - what is it that makes us buy from FreshDirect, comment on Yelp, download all our movies, use Facebook on our iPhone (full disclosure: I own an n95, not an iPhone) and rely on Google and Wikipedia for truth? Are we programmed this way? Are the countless hours of Super Mario Brothers, Pong or You Don’t Know Jack and Metriod engraved in our psyche? Are we just hopeless sheep looking for a journey? Maybe. The smart marketers at Apple, JetBlue, Starbucks seem to think so.
But there’s another answer. One that has to do with SURPLUS. You know, SURPLUS. Idle time. The time you USED to spend watching Falcon Crest, Dallas, Saved by the Bell or Small Wonder. The time you used to spend watching Gilligan Fuck up the same rescue attempt week over week on the same island with the same cast, over, and over, and over again. It’s not your fault. You didn’t have a choice. Now you do. Now entertainment feels more like building a hobby, learning, interacting, communicating, connecting and reconnecting, playing and yes, even watching. Just all by our own rules. Our playing knows no boundaries - brands included.
These days there’s even more SURPLUS. You see - more technology creates more opportunity and curiosity. I think this is why we fill our time with all of these engaging forms for entertainment. We are occupying the SURPLUS.
This new time - “my time” - what are you doing with it for yourself? Marketers, what are you doing to fill it for your consumer? Product developers, how about you?
If you’re like most brands, not much.
But with a look of almost dejected innocence he said again, “I agree with you Tom, but why are they (people) even there in the first place.” “What do they want from us?” “Don’t they have something else to do with their time?”
good question.
I went on for a bit about psychographics of the digital native (you know, people) wanting to be connected to each other and the things they are passionate about - and sure - most of this is true. But what’s even more true is I’m not sure I REALLY had an answer better than: People just do…
Thinking back, it was a bullshit, terrible response. I could just see the scoff welling up inside him. After all, aren’t we just a bunch of dorks playing in our basements? Are we? Clearly WE know that’s not the case - but really - what is it that makes us buy from FreshDirect, comment on Yelp, download all our movies, use Facebook on our iPhone (full disclosure: I own an n95, not an iPhone) and rely on Google and Wikipedia for truth? Are we programmed this way? Are the countless hours of Super Mario Brothers, Pong or You Don’t Know Jack and Metriod engraved in our psyche? Are we just hopeless sheep looking for a journey? Maybe. The smart marketers at Apple, JetBlue, Starbucks seem to think so.
But there’s another answer. One that has to do with SURPLUS. You know, SURPLUS. Idle time. The time you USED to spend watching Falcon Crest, Dallas, Saved by the Bell or Small Wonder. The time you used to spend watching Gilligan Fuck up the same rescue attempt week over week on the same island with the same cast, over, and over, and over again. It’s not your fault. You didn’t have a choice. Now you do. Now entertainment feels more like building a hobby, learning, interacting, communicating, connecting and reconnecting, playing and yes, even watching. Just all by our own rules. Our playing knows no boundaries - brands included.
These days there’s even more SURPLUS. You see - more technology creates more opportunity and curiosity. I think this is why we fill our time with all of these engaging forms for entertainment. We are occupying the SURPLUS.
This new time - “my time” - what are you doing with it for yourself? Marketers, what are you doing to fill it for your consumer? Product developers, how about you?
If you’re like most brands, not much.
P8tch
We’ve all heard of qrcodes by now - basically - TinyURLs for mobile. Well, these you can wear! Each two-by-four-inch, velcro-backed twill p8tch has a Mysterious Commando Design on the top, and a QRCode on the bottom. The QRCode on the p8tch contains a URL. If you scan the code with your iPhone, Mobile Safari will take you directly to that URL. Or, if it’s a Google Maps link, directly to the Google Maps app. Or, if it’s a YouTube link, it’ll show a movie. Cool, right?
Neat!
image credit: brandon king. click photo for his flickr
Since my last posting on Muxtape, a lot has happened in the
Social Music arena. It has risen to the top of a heap of interesting
single-serving websites (ones with a super simple purpose and an
equally effortless user experience design) and its elegant simplicity has
made Muxtape the buzzy-leader in the online mixtape market.
Different mixtape services serve different purposes. The interface is basically one big button and all kinds of mashups have been built on top of Muxtape. See: Muxtape With Coverflow [Mac], MuxtapeStumbler, MuxSeek Search Engine and MuxScrobbler - a script to synch your Muxtape listening with your Last.fm user profile.
Yep. The resurgence of music is upon is an I’d argue its bound to be more meaningful than it’s previous revolutions.
enter Favtape
The newest entrant into this field is much easier to use for publishing collections. Favtape creates a Muxtape-like interface for listening to the full-length version of your Pandora or Last.fm favorited songs. A feature which Muxtape users have been screaming for since launch.
It’s simple (remember the single-serving website movement), and it’s super cool. There are tie ins to Lyric Wiki, a ringtone search, the ability to listen to more songs that are similar or by the artist and other features. It’s powered by the Seeqpod API, which you’ve probably heard of if you’re one of the 82 zillion iPhone fans out there.
Favtape just launched this week. Can’t wait to see where it goes from here - but Favtape isn’t the only newbie making a play in the resurgence of music.
meet Mixwit
Ok. I REALLY dig Mixwit. (And I’m really pissed I didn’t think of it.) Check this out:
MixWit is a Flash mixtape creator with a very nice interface and gives you the YouTube-esque ability to embed your player on web pages. See my mix below. The service can have songs added by URL or through Seeqpod or Skreemr MP3 search currently. Hope more are to come!
Click the play button below or RSS readers click here to see it in action.
It’s a great example of how flash can be used for authoring and social apps and still be SEO friendly. This tool is going to put Mixtapes EVERYWHERE.
The cassette tape border around images users upload is really visually appealing. It’s fun to use and to get (listen to) and to publish. Even more so than the other services we’ve seen out there. It’s more fun to use as a publisher than either of the services mentioned above.
another note
It remains unclear as to whether any of these services are actually legal. Streaming solutions are definitely “more” legal than outright downloading (and if Mixwit like solutions keep allowing for song purchase they’ll spread some much needed good-will). But there is a thin red line still being balanced. Legal decisions may be made about services like this in the coming years that will affect streaming solutions. Funny enough, the original mixtapes were arguably illegal as well, though. But that didn’t stop you for makeing them for the honeys, did it?
Rawk on and happy mixing!