links for 2010-02-08

February 8, 2010

  • A brawl has been brewing between North Face and a competitor borne from the notion that the clothier is pompous-and-self-righteous. Cue South Butt. The so-called parody brand was started by innocent-sounding-18-year-old Jimmy Winkelmann who took advantage of North Face's name and logo to create his own line, which is now reportedly worth a few million.
  • You can now view more photos and videos inside TweetDeck, meaning that for some users Tweetdeck is going to start being the way they interface with rich media. Clicking on links to Youtube videos will now show the video in a TweetDeck preview window. Flickr image links will also now open in a preview, along with pictures from Posterous, Mobypicture and Twitgoo. Users can also upload to Mobypicture.

    In other words, heavy Tweetdeck users are going to start finding they use their browser less to upload media to Twiter apps.

  • weetDeck is erasing your need for a browser. It saves you the trouble of opening a new page or tab for small pieces of media. Obviously, you still need and want a browser, but maybe far down the road TweetDeck becomes a browser. (Twitter apps on the iPhone already do this.)
  • "As part of our annual forecast, JWT presents 100 Things to Watch in 2010. Many of the items on our list reflect broader shifts we’ve been following: – Growing awareness and action around health and wellness and the environment – Warp-speed developments in technology – Accelerating demographic, political and economic political power shifts – Industries redefining or reinventing themselves to survive or to fully leverage these power shifts • This year, many of our Things to Watch reflect repercussions of the Great Recession, from ―energy dieting‖ to ―luxury goes East‖ to ―trip bundling.‖ • While some of our Things to Watch may not yet reflect a broader trend, we believe they eventually will ladder up to one. • The people on our list—from pop culture, sports, politics and other sectors—have the potential to drive or shape trends in the near future."

Meh.

Courtesy of Flowers & Fleurons

I love second hand book shops, and I am also a fan of graphic tees (depasse I know). That’s why I was intrigued by Out of Print Clothing.
With Out of Print Clothing, you can proudly wear some of the world’s great books. Each tee-shirt depicts an iconic or out-of-print book cover ranging from classic to long forgotten covers, yet all are strong images that speak for themselves. (Reminds me of the various Penguin artifacts I own). The company works closely with artists, authors and publishers to license the content that ends up in their collections. Like a well-read book, each shirt’s quality is made to feel soft and worn.

Out of Print T-Shirts (coolhunting.com)

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Ninety-three percent of teens ages 12 to 17 go online, 75% of them own a cell phone, and 66% say they text. In fact, 58% of 12-year-olds now have mobiles, compared to 18% just five years ago.

Teens prefer reading news online to Twitter (guardian.co.uk)
Blogging not so big with teenagers anymore (vator.tv)

Teens and young adults shirk blogs and spurn Twitter (nationalpost.com)

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Obama v Jobs

January 31, 2010

Steve Jobs vs. Obama: Who Got the Bigger Buzz? In this (somewhat flawed) comparison, Obama had the more positive response overall, 65% of social media chatter, while Steve Jobs and the iPad only had a 42% rating.

Haiti: Visa’s Fees

January 16, 2010

Visa’s Fees on Charitable Contributions
As the tragedy in Haiti unfolds, Americans are generously donating millions of dollars to aid organizations. But when Americans donate to charity with their credit cards, the credit card companies are (in some cases) getting rich … keeping 3% of the donation as a “transaction fee”. That percentage is far more than it costs them to process the donation.

Related:

Should credit card companies charge for charitable donations (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
For Haiti, Should Credit Card Companies Waive Processing Fees? (alan.com)
Be careful when donating to Haitian relief efforts (seattlepi.com)
Some Card Fees Waived for Haiti Aid (bucks.blogs.nytimes.com)
The VISA Credit Card Scam: From Now On, Use Your PIN! (pindebit.blogspot.com)

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Instead of spending millions on commercials for this year’s game, Pepsi is putting its cash in the Refresh Project, an online cause marketing campaign that asks readers how the company should give away its grant money.


McDonald’s: Monopoly Free Parking
To celebrate the return of Monopoly at McDonald’s, Cossette, Vancouver brought the game’s Free Parking to the real world, providing free spots for 1,500 cars daily in various lots throughout Western Canada.

Related:

Pepsi Decides to Use the NFL a Different Way (marketingpilgrim.com)
Social Marketing Gone Awry: Pepsi Refresh Needs To Refresh Its Security Settings (techcrunch.com)

Pepsi kicks Super Bowl and goes social (tomaltman.com)
Pepsi’s Social Marketing Campaign Stumbles Out of the Gate (seekingalpha.com)

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Future-thinker Shane Hope explores the cultural and technological norms of the distant future, expressing them through the fictional schoolwork diaries of children in the era of “memochems, divvies, and exocortical existence.” His work with Compile-A-Child exists at the intersection of science fiction and imaginative childhood innocence, built on extensions and iterations of emerging themes in transhumanistic cognitive science.

(Video) The World According To 9 Year Olds
Questions include: identifying the most famous celebrities, their first computer interactions, and their fears. If nothing else, it will make you feel a bit older than you currently are.

The decade according to 9-year-olds from allison louie-garcia on Vimeo.

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Apple’s tablet will not only act as an e-reader for books, magazines and newspapers, but will play video, games and surf the web underscoring Apple chief executive Steve Jobs’ ambition to carve out a new market. The launch of the tablet is said to have been Jobs’ main focus since he returned to work after a six month medical break. Last month it was reported that Apple had been talking to book publishers about putting their content on an e-book platform.

Skiff Gives E-Reader Market Viable Ad Strategy
Another e-reader device – this time from a major magazine publisher – will hit the market sometime this year. Hearst previewed its new Skiff Reader at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show along with the announcement that Sprint is providing 3G connectivity for the e-reader and will sell it at Sprint retail outlets and Sprint.com.

Possibly Related:

Analysis: Could a tablet replace your notebook? (macworld.com)
Gorgeous iSlate design guess: reed-thin, button-free (dvice.com)
CES: When did the Tablet become the Slate? (timesonline.typepad.com)
Apple snubs Intel for tablet chips (venturebeat.com)
Microsoft’s Ballmer May Announce Tablet PC Tonight (microsoft-watch.com)
The e-Reader story of CES 2010 (engadget.com)
Skiff Reader to hit CES (ubergizmo.com)
Skiff and Sprint to Preview Skiff Reader at CES (shoppingblog.com)
Hearst-Backed Skiff Challenges Kindle With E-Book Ads, Videos (businessweek.com)
CES2010: Hearst’s Skiff Reader makes play for newspapers, magazines (seattlepi.com)
Skiff takes e-readers to new territory: flexible screens (dvice.com)
Report: Apple tablet coming in January (msnbc.msn.com)
Speculation has Apple tablet arriving in January (thestar.com)

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Pantone announces color of the year
Pantone has announced the color of next year as Turquoise, a bold and bright shade of blue/green.

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The New Cavemen Lifestyle Has Found a Home in the City
The Paleo lifestyle as it’s sometimes called, combines a diet that reflects the feast-famine conditions of our hunter-gatherer beginnings – heavy on meat and light on plants – with an exercise regime that hones essential skills of the time such as sprinting and leaping.

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