Francis Anderson

The Wall Street Journal has a piece on how people are cut and pasting other people’s profiles for their social network and dating sites so they look more interesting.

Edward Tufte would be proud! The NY Times has made an interactive graph depicting Box Office Receipts. Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue, while Oscar contenders attract smaller audiences that build over time.

Greg Verdino points us to a map of infographic that shows the top social networks across the world, published by French paper Le Monde. It highlights the vast differences when it comes to popular social networks.

VOXAN the exclusive and unique French motorbike brand presents its new extreme vision of the café racer. With the “super naked Xv”, Voxan by Starck.

Tonight, “Quarterlife” becomes the first program to be rejected by a television network (ABC), produced for the Internet, then purchased by another television network (NBC).

Now, the Internet makes it possible for beers whose sales volume or marketing budgets are not ready for TV to use the power of video — “sight, sound and motion,” as the advertising professors once intoned — to reach potential customers.

Avenue A Razorfish released the 2008 Digital Outlook Report yesterday. The purpose of the report is to help Avenue A’s clients understand consumer behavior in the digital space.

Meet today’s consumer vigilantes. Even if they’re not all wielding hammers, many are arming themselves with video cameras, computer keyboards, and mobile devices to launch their own personal forms of insurrection.

the application economy is anything that provides the consumer with things that are useful. So for consumers to take note of communications it must be you need to be: Useful, Foster useful interactions and Be available where and when they want.

The concept is simple. Members of Only Human share their stories publicly or anonymously with the community about mistakes they’ve made and lessons they’ve learned the hard way in life.

Broadland district council in Norfolk have approved a 22-home “green hamlet” designed by Conran & Partners, Terence Conran’s architecture and design studio, to be built in natural clearings in preserved woodland a few miles from Norwich.

New MoMA exhibit “Design and the Elastic Mind” (opened Feb 24,) features designs that translate the latest advances in technology, science and human behavior into objects and systems for the masses.

Anyone who has read “Radical Marketing” will be an admirer of how Harley resurrected itself through the Harley Owners’ Group. Now they have an (unofficial) digital social network …

The MacBook Air is overpriced and poorly engineered? You’ll be telling me it overheats next …

Can looting be patriotic? Two women who took part in Belgrade riots to protest Kosovo’s independence star in hit viral “Kosovo for Sneakers” … going from shop to shop with armfuls of footwear.

”As technology problems are solved, making the computer-television connection more viable and pleasurable for the average consumer,”

Ah. It looks like someone has done all my qualitative research for me…

“Free’ shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today”

Giving away free products and services can be a great way for marketers to interact with consumers.

That’s the challenge posed by Jian Yuan Water Engineering, which plans to create 100 villas in the city of Ordos, Inner Monglolia, comprised of 100 different designs by 100 up-and-coming architects.

Hearst intends to develop branded channels for YouTube, featuring syndicated lifestyle video along with user-generated videos.

Marketers believe the effectiveness of television advertising has declined over the past two years. The good news? They’re more interested in trying new formats and other forms of video commercials.

A recent landscape design competition sought to rethink the Vatnsmýri airport grounds in Reykjavík, Iceland, putting those old runways to use, for instance, as new urban park space.

Aimed at the budding businessperson, Sproutwire offers “a daily dose of the best small business articles that the internet has to offer.”

In another blow to its iconic status, Apple has become a signature sponsor for “American Idol,” acquiring exclusive audio and video performance download rights to the competition.

The JWT-created Branded Content minisodes run in the adbreaks of Sex In The City on TBS. Each ad break shows a micro episode of a story involving Callie: “[she's] smack dab in the middle of a quarter-life crisis—juggling life, love, work, dating, design

An interesting graphic demonstration of what 50k Euros buys you in various capital cities around the world …

Molson Coors Brewing Co. and Diageo are pouring some Canadian ad dollars into a fledgling video network that broadcasts directly to bars.

Few surfers in the world will ever be able to ride Tahiti’s infamous and dangerous Teahpoo waves, but Red Bull is making it possible to see what its like to ride one of those waves and do so at an angle even surfers themselves can’t see.

A double-decker bus wrapped with “Want It!” images will ferry customers from Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship to the Upper East Side, where they will receive free admission to several of the museums featured in the ads.

Consumer connectivity and control, a changing media environment, and a wide variety of seemingly undifferentiated brands have caused an important shift in “drivers” (motivators) of consumer loyalty and brand engagement, according to a Brand Keys study.

What’s interesting is the apparent lack of creativity at all levels at J.Crew; sure, Sartorialist’s subjects and photographs often inspire designers at fashion houses, but now they’re simply copied.

Working 60 hours per week and chasing job promotion “for the sake of buying the latest crap off the Sharper Image store shelf is no way to live,” says Adam Weissman, spokesperson for freegan.

“The corners of a room are often lost spaces, rarely exploited for the display of either art or furniture. I wanted to address this with pieces specifically designed to take up these vacant spaces…”

Never one to shy away from an experimental marketing technique, Scion has created shareable widgets to promote three of its makes. The Toyota division partnered with rich media firm Interpolls to create and distribute the widget to sites including Gamespo

Rock group Oasis have claimed the top two spots in a poll of the nation’s best ever albums on Monday, ahead of iconic albums by The Beatles and Pink Floyd.

Whether traditional TV advertising has truly lost its power, marketers and advertisers are already eager to find alternatives. The ANA survey shows a dramatic loss of confidence in the medium as the industry gears up to explore new ad formats and forms of

… to build an underground city under its canals. Six levels no less. I mean … where else?

Toshiba’s HD DVD technology has raised the white flag in its battle for high-definition dominance against Sony’s Blu-Ray. The war to succeed DVDs was compared to the Betamax/ VHS war of the 80s