More Thought
under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.
Here’s a free Mac app allowing you to call up, via customized abbreviations, any text string you copy and paste frequently. Best of all the text is placed pre-formatted - returns, bullets and all. It’s become a staple here at Brainstorm. You can download your own at app4mac.
If you can get past the vapid brand identity and UI, PimpMyNews, the talking social news site, is an interesting concept. The site will read your RSS feeds to you over your mp3 player, iPhone, etc. or computer.
[via: PR-Squared]
NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet, a holiday product parody, promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.”
Robert Scoble explores the notion in this BusinessWeek piece re: the running debate over where we’re headed with aging, albeit ubiquitous, email paradigms versus spam-free Tweets.
[via: Scobleizer]
Track the Hive’s Buzz
Aggregate the aggregators at Popurls.com—simultaneously follow the most current posts from all the top sites like Digg, Newsvine, YouTube and Flickr. Or, “find your favorite thing,” over at Buzzfeed.
Peter Bruhn’s Swedish type foundry is preparing a new freshet of fonts to flow forth and flourish among us—according to Typographi and Bruhn himself.
[via: Sheer Brick]
A word from A List Apart about design based on simile.
Looking for a digital color scheme that will last the ages? Colour Lovers explores masters inspired color schemes.
Can’t see how your two soda bottles a day are impacting the environment? Chris Jordan’s images will help you visualize it. View his amazing statistical depictions at Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait.
Regardless of your geopolitical views you’ll likely appreciate the satirical humor of this product parody sketch run amok.
Okay this would just be a goofy flash-based Spirograph-esque toy if it didn’t generate downloadable .svg (Scalable Vector Graphic) files—which it does. Pattern enthusiasts, meet Qbesq.
Here’s Google’s take on the phrase, “Across the pond.” Visit Google Maps, enter New York to London in the search field, scroll to step #24.
How to reduce Firefox from a memory hog to a piglet. Caught this Firefox usage tip over on Ade Olonoh’s blog (see comments).
If you’re a developer or just interested in CSS, check out this article entitled, #IEroot — Targeting IE Using Conditional Comments and Just One Stylesheet,” over on the PIE site.
An iconic-rich, one-click site on how hundreds of the planet’s most noteworthy brands came to be. Updated daily.
From the Bonn Physikshow—A lesson on YouTube regarding the denser than air properties of hexafluoride (likely sulphur hexafluoride) gas.
Enter at your own risk. A proof of concept that design does matter. Havenworks.com hailed on Digg recently as perhaps, “…the most poorly designed website in the world!”
Originally published in Communication Arts November Design Annual 2006, here’s their list of 50 essential bookmarks. Conspicuously missing, sites such as Delicious, Technorati and Lifehacker.
Sure to appeal to the megalomaniacal extraterrestrial in all of us. World, meet geoGreetings. When you care enough to send a satellite image.
An interactive glimpse into the the random and spontaneous feedback Jackson Pollock once realized in his medium—sans the clean up.
Pressed toast with panache. From the, “Table Manners Collection,” Delfts Toast Pan by Minale Maeda. As seen on “ohmygooshness.”
Tags: Higher Ed Marketing, Public Relations, Social Marketing, Featured, Electronic Communications, Technology marketing, Foundation Marketing, Web 2.0, "You", Marketing
January 5th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Starbucks puts its brand to work…
While the above is quite true, Starbucks has employed an unconventional means of rebutal, it should be noted that this is a case of a company utilizing its brand to mislead the general public.
They mislead the public when they say that it is illegal to trademark the names of Ethiopia’s three fine coffees. If you go to the USPTO site you will find that Yirgacheffe has already been issued a trademark.
Consumers, accustomed to equating the Starbucks’ brand with corporate social responsibility will not bother to research any further. So it is not only the means of conveyance, but rather the values of the Starbucks brand that have allowed a corporation to escape the criticisms of the general public. As companies become savvier with respect to marketing and brand utilization, consumers will have to be more discerning.